Crazy From the Heat?
My Twitter is blowing up right now over 2 shocking developments: Jim Riggleman quitting as Washington Nationals' manager, and the Philadelphia Flyers trading 2 of their best players. Riggleman's team has won 10 of 11 to nose above .500, but he wanted a contract extension and the Nats reportedly wouldn't even talk about it. The Flyers want cap room to sign a top-flight goalie, but these moves seem to suggest that one year after making the Stanley Cup Finals, they may already be blowing up the team. Then again, today's shockers may be seen as typical in a summer of sports craziness. Work stoppages, possible work stoppages, post-game rioting, we've seen it all so far this summer... or have we?
The biggest story of them all right now is the NFL lockout. The NFL lockout is about one person: DeMaurice Smith. As soon as he became the director of the NFL Players Association (replacing the late Gene Upshaw), I had a bad feeling about him. When he told players to start saving their game checks, I was right. Smith wanted this lockout. He took over the players' union with one goal in mind: to make waves. Smith likely felt that, following a legend of players' rights and NFL stability (post-1987) like Upshaw, the only way he could earn the players' respect was my making a huge splash, and a work stoppage is just that. He just told his loyal followers that they're not even close to a new deal, which is likely more about keeping them all in line supporting him than it is about tamping down expectations. This work stoppage is not effective for Smith unless and until it actually causes meaningful things (training camp, etc.) to be affected.
The great thing for him (and the problem for us) is that the players are happily drinking the Kool-Aid. Drew Brees' comment that the owners sensed "weakness" when Upshaw passed was sickening to me, and I'm sorry if so many people like him, I DO NOT. The Saints have been such a great story these last couple years, but I am no fan of Drew Brees. Make no mistake, this lockout will spill over into July, then August, and we likely will have a shortened season. Perhaps this means we might get Fox and CBS carrying CFL games to satisfy the die-hards' desire for pro football in August.
It will also shine a greater spotlight on college football, although that may not be what the collegians want right now. With the Ohio State scandal, the lingering fallout of the USC mess, the NCAA all set to take down North Carolina, and the coaching imbroglios at Pitt and West Virginia, I'm sure the NCAA was content to fly under the radar, at least until the season begins and maybe they can let the play on the field direct public opinion. One thing is for sure, with the turmoil at Pitt and WVU (and the hiring of Paul Pasqualoni at UConn), Syracuse looks pretty good in the Big East this year.
And now, we can add to the NFL lockout the probability of a NBA lockout. David Stern made his last best offer to the players, and it looks like they're going to reject it. They've already cancelled the summer leagues. The NBA lost me with the last lockout in 1999, best known for Patrick Ewing pulling up to talks in his limousine and then crying poverty for the cameras. Millionaires vs. billionaires does not get me excited. I'm sure the NHL, fresh off the best Stanley Cup Finals ratings in years, is eager to pick up all the casual winter sports fans who will be screwed when the NBA stops again.
That is if the quality of play we see in prime-time improves. Even though the ratings for the Finals were good, the series itself wasn't, necessarily. The ice quality ranged from okay to awful; if anything, this served as an advertisement for why the Stanley Cup Finals should not be played in June. I know the networks insisted that the NBA and NHL championships be moved from May so that they don't pre-empt May sweeps, but at this point, the Stanley Cup Finals in May would likely get better ratings for NBC than most of what passes for their regular programming. And with cooler temperatures, the play would not be so sloppy in the last 10 minutes of every period.
Also, the first few games were most notable for the chippy (to put it mildly) play. The Boston Bruins play the intimidation card: they hit to injure, they like to mix it up, they like to get in your head. As a Buffalo Sabres fan who saw Bruins take out not one, but two key players in the playoffs last year, I was not surprised when they started Game 1 by looking to hit anything in a blue sweater. The problem is Vancouver decided that the best way to respond to this was by sinking to their level. As a result, we had Alexander Burrows biting a Boston player, Maxim LaPierre making light of said incident in Game 2 after Burrows was not suspended (which he should have been), and lastly Aaron Rome's high hit on Boston's Nathan Horton, which resulted in a concussion for Horton and a suspension for Rome for the rest of the series. The remainder of Game 3 may as well have come from the movie "Slap Shot", as the Bruins looked to pummel Burrows in every way possible; the refs likely ejected him for his own safety. Then, the Bruins fans (who rallied around their fallen star and helped turn the series in Boston's favor) responded to the sight of Vancouver's Mason Raymond being carted off in a stretcher in Game 6 by cheering and chanting, "Let's Go Bruins."
Despite holier-than-thou sportswriters telling us that such things are the reason why "nobody watches hockey", the ratings show otherwise, particularly for Game 7, and by then, the nastiness had subsided. However, if this style of play were to continue and the NHL were to revert back to a Broad Street Bullies-era style, it would spell disaster for hockey. Hopefully, next season, with more eyes on the sport (especially if the NBA is locked out), the league will be more conscious about restoring order to the game. The thing that gets me about that Boston-Vancouver series was that with all the chippy play, there were NO fights. Dropping the gloves and solving things that way might have prevented a lot of what happened in that series. Might they have been discouraged from doing that because of the NBC cameras and the enhanced microscope on hockey during the Finals? I certainly hope not. Two players leaving on stretchers is a lot worse than a couple guys throwing down.
And speaking of throwing down... the riot in Vancouver after Game 7 was a damn shame, and it gave jingoistic flag-waving types the chance to belittle the entire nation of Canada, and gave Boston fans a chance to yell, "See, their fans are just as bad as their team!" The post-mortem of the riot shows that it was unruly mobs of troublemakers who were only looking to use the occasion of the game as an excuse to cause mayhem. The same result would have happened if the Canucks won. The worst part about this is we'll probably end up seeing some Citizens Review public forum a year from now, in which we'll be told that the greatest travesty about this riot was not the riot itself, but how the police treated everyone... just like what has happened in Toronto recently in the aftermath of last year's G-20 summit riots. The revisionist history in that forum, absolving destructive anarchist rioters and putting all blame on the police because innocent journalists and bystanders got rounded up with the rioters, was sickening.
In short, the month of June has been enough to make you shake your head incredulously. And there's lots of summer left...
The biggest story of them all right now is the NFL lockout. The NFL lockout is about one person: DeMaurice Smith. As soon as he became the director of the NFL Players Association (replacing the late Gene Upshaw), I had a bad feeling about him. When he told players to start saving their game checks, I was right. Smith wanted this lockout. He took over the players' union with one goal in mind: to make waves. Smith likely felt that, following a legend of players' rights and NFL stability (post-1987) like Upshaw, the only way he could earn the players' respect was my making a huge splash, and a work stoppage is just that. He just told his loyal followers that they're not even close to a new deal, which is likely more about keeping them all in line supporting him than it is about tamping down expectations. This work stoppage is not effective for Smith unless and until it actually causes meaningful things (training camp, etc.) to be affected.
The great thing for him (and the problem for us) is that the players are happily drinking the Kool-Aid. Drew Brees' comment that the owners sensed "weakness" when Upshaw passed was sickening to me, and I'm sorry if so many people like him, I DO NOT. The Saints have been such a great story these last couple years, but I am no fan of Drew Brees. Make no mistake, this lockout will spill over into July, then August, and we likely will have a shortened season. Perhaps this means we might get Fox and CBS carrying CFL games to satisfy the die-hards' desire for pro football in August.
It will also shine a greater spotlight on college football, although that may not be what the collegians want right now. With the Ohio State scandal, the lingering fallout of the USC mess, the NCAA all set to take down North Carolina, and the coaching imbroglios at Pitt and West Virginia, I'm sure the NCAA was content to fly under the radar, at least until the season begins and maybe they can let the play on the field direct public opinion. One thing is for sure, with the turmoil at Pitt and WVU (and the hiring of Paul Pasqualoni at UConn), Syracuse looks pretty good in the Big East this year.
And now, we can add to the NFL lockout the probability of a NBA lockout. David Stern made his last best offer to the players, and it looks like they're going to reject it. They've already cancelled the summer leagues. The NBA lost me with the last lockout in 1999, best known for Patrick Ewing pulling up to talks in his limousine and then crying poverty for the cameras. Millionaires vs. billionaires does not get me excited. I'm sure the NHL, fresh off the best Stanley Cup Finals ratings in years, is eager to pick up all the casual winter sports fans who will be screwed when the NBA stops again.
That is if the quality of play we see in prime-time improves. Even though the ratings for the Finals were good, the series itself wasn't, necessarily. The ice quality ranged from okay to awful; if anything, this served as an advertisement for why the Stanley Cup Finals should not be played in June. I know the networks insisted that the NBA and NHL championships be moved from May so that they don't pre-empt May sweeps, but at this point, the Stanley Cup Finals in May would likely get better ratings for NBC than most of what passes for their regular programming. And with cooler temperatures, the play would not be so sloppy in the last 10 minutes of every period.
Also, the first few games were most notable for the chippy (to put it mildly) play. The Boston Bruins play the intimidation card: they hit to injure, they like to mix it up, they like to get in your head. As a Buffalo Sabres fan who saw Bruins take out not one, but two key players in the playoffs last year, I was not surprised when they started Game 1 by looking to hit anything in a blue sweater. The problem is Vancouver decided that the best way to respond to this was by sinking to their level. As a result, we had Alexander Burrows biting a Boston player, Maxim LaPierre making light of said incident in Game 2 after Burrows was not suspended (which he should have been), and lastly Aaron Rome's high hit on Boston's Nathan Horton, which resulted in a concussion for Horton and a suspension for Rome for the rest of the series. The remainder of Game 3 may as well have come from the movie "Slap Shot", as the Bruins looked to pummel Burrows in every way possible; the refs likely ejected him for his own safety. Then, the Bruins fans (who rallied around their fallen star and helped turn the series in Boston's favor) responded to the sight of Vancouver's Mason Raymond being carted off in a stretcher in Game 6 by cheering and chanting, "Let's Go Bruins."
Despite holier-than-thou sportswriters telling us that such things are the reason why "nobody watches hockey", the ratings show otherwise, particularly for Game 7, and by then, the nastiness had subsided. However, if this style of play were to continue and the NHL were to revert back to a Broad Street Bullies-era style, it would spell disaster for hockey. Hopefully, next season, with more eyes on the sport (especially if the NBA is locked out), the league will be more conscious about restoring order to the game. The thing that gets me about that Boston-Vancouver series was that with all the chippy play, there were NO fights. Dropping the gloves and solving things that way might have prevented a lot of what happened in that series. Might they have been discouraged from doing that because of the NBC cameras and the enhanced microscope on hockey during the Finals? I certainly hope not. Two players leaving on stretchers is a lot worse than a couple guys throwing down.
And speaking of throwing down... the riot in Vancouver after Game 7 was a damn shame, and it gave jingoistic flag-waving types the chance to belittle the entire nation of Canada, and gave Boston fans a chance to yell, "See, their fans are just as bad as their team!" The post-mortem of the riot shows that it was unruly mobs of troublemakers who were only looking to use the occasion of the game as an excuse to cause mayhem. The same result would have happened if the Canucks won. The worst part about this is we'll probably end up seeing some Citizens Review public forum a year from now, in which we'll be told that the greatest travesty about this riot was not the riot itself, but how the police treated everyone... just like what has happened in Toronto recently in the aftermath of last year's G-20 summit riots. The revisionist history in that forum, absolving destructive anarchist rioters and putting all blame on the police because innocent journalists and bystanders got rounded up with the rioters, was sickening.
In short, the month of June has been enough to make you shake your head incredulously. And there's lots of summer left...
posted by Dave | 3:08 PM
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