Incredibly Novel Concepts, Vol. VI
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by user J Cunningham
Before I dispense with the latest round of sports knowledge, I have a few demands that need to be met. If these aren't satisfied, I will no longer write this piece. I must be given the following:
-A private jet to come and go as I please whenever it's not my day to write. I have a family to see and celebrity golf tournaments to play in.
-Even though I'm coming in midway through baseball season, I want to be paid for the full campaign. Something around $700,000 an article is a nice starting point.
-I must have a prominent starring role in any future ArmchairGM commercials by Manny Stiles. And a weekly guest spot on WEEI (with salary) is a must.
Agreed? Excellent ... time now for Volume Six of ...
INCREDIBLY NOVEL CONCEPTS!!!
INC #1: Don't you just love how a week after blasting the media for inaccurate reporting, Boston pitcher/drama queen Curt Schilling does the exact same thing? In his weekly appearance on a WEEI radio show, Schilling flat-out stated that Barry Bonds admitted to taking steroids, cheating on his wife and his taxes.
Never mind that Bonds only said he unknowingly took steroids in leaked Grand Jury testimony, and the allegations of infidelity and tax fraud come from others, not Bonds himself.
I hope Gary Thorne's having a self-satisfied chuckle right now.
I'm not gonna sit here and tell Schilling to zip his yap -- what on Earth would the Boston media talk about if he did that? I won't tell manager Terry Francona to put a leash on Schilling. Oh, no ... I have a much better idea.
Make Schilling one of us for a week. Make Schilling spend a week as a member of the sports media.
I've got it all planned out: he'll start off by taking a basic Introduction to Journalism course (taught by none other than Dr. Joe Cosco, my first journalism professor at Old Dominion). Then he must spend a week as a beat writer for one of the newspapers up in New England. And I'm not talking some comfy job as Red Sox beat writer or columnist ... oh, no.
Put Schilling on the high school sports beat.
This isn't a slight against high school sports reporting; I report on high school sports for a living. But when compared to college and professional sports reporting, high school sports reporting seems hard. In college and the pros, the teams and schools in question have entire departments dedicated to providing reporters with everything they need: rosters, media guides, statistics, historical trends, records, timely interviews ... you name it, a PR guy or an SID can get it to you in less time than it takes Jose Reyes to steal second base.
But high schools? For the most part, team rosters aren't easily accessible over the internet. Statistics are, more often than not, kept by the reporters themselves. Athletic directors and coaches are really good about interviews and things like that, but the ease of information access is not what it is in college and professional sports.
in my mind, anyone who can be a successful high school reporter -- where it's always on you to be accurate -- you can be a reporter just about anywhere ... and you'll really have an appreciation for what being a sports journalist can be like.
Have fun, Curt. Email me if you have any questions.
INC #2: So Michael Vick swears up and down he has no knowledge of the dogfighting allegations at the home he owns in Surry Co., Va. Oh, really now ... so let me ask you this:
Why did you reportedly sell your house today? For half its market vaule, in fact?
Sammy Sosa thinks you look guilty. At least, that's what I think he said: my grip on the Spanish language isn't what it used to be. Selling off that house when he did just casts an even bigger cloud of suspicion over Vick, and considering the hot water he's already in -- what with flipping off the fans and the mysterious water bottle and the underwhelming 53.8 passing percentage -- he doesn't need any more suspicion.
The NFL's cracking down on bad player behavior, so Vick is one more screw-up away from joining the Pacman in an Atlanta strip club. Sure, he'll be able to make it rain if he wants, but something tells me Vick wants to stay on the football field.
Some might argue he sold the house in an effort to distance himself from the scandal. And that's possible, but with SI.com reporting two sources close to Vick saying he knew about the dogfighting, and with hardly anyone believing his "I'll change" speech at the NFL Draft, this just doesn't look good at all.
So here's what you do, Vickie ... point to the camera and swear vehemently that you never took part in dogfighting. Such stern denials have worked before ...
... right, Rafael Palmeiro?
INC #3: Which is the bigger waste of time: boxing or horse racing?
I ask because last Saturday I was subjected to one of the worst days in sports, what with the running of the umpteen thousandth Kentucky Derby and the Floyd Mayweather-Oscar de la Hoya "fight." If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now: I despise horse racing and boxing.
Always have, always will.
Let's examine horse racing first: Sure, there's the amazing physical specimin that is the race horse. But these races last, what? Two minutes, two and a half at the most? So you're gonna sit here and build a horse race up for nearly two weeks on end, and it's over faster than most men are during sex?
I'm sorry, but I need my races to run a bit longer than two minutes. I realize the horses would collapse and die if they ran for too long, but one of the reasons I love auto racing is how long the races last ... they're not over in two freakin' minutes.
Find a way to get the horses to run 500 laps, and I might watch.
Now ... boxing. What we have here is two men, in their shiny boxer shorts, beating each other with padded fists. What is this, a metrosexualized brawl? I'm sorry, but if I want to see two guys duking it out with their fists, I'll go back to high school. At least there the guys aren't in their underwear and they're not wearing those wimpy little gloves.
Wrestling (real wrestling) is perhaps the most homoerotic sport ever, but sometimes I wonder if boxing isn't a close second.
INC #4: Ricky Williams told ESPN Radio's Dan Patrick a month ago that he hasn't used marijuana in "a few years."
On Friday, ESPN's Chris Mortenson reported that Williams, looking to be reinstated by the NFL, tested positive last month. What for? Marijuana.
Jason Mewes thinks this guy's pathetic. Snoogans ...
In my mind, Ricky Williams is becoming a lot like Pete Rose. By that, I mean ... whenever Pete Rose says something anymore, I take the opposite of what he said and believe that, because I know eventually the truth's going to come out. Rose says he never bet on baseball, then fesses up years later. He swears he never bet on the Reds when he was their manager, only to admit -- also on Dan Patrick's radio show -- that he did indeed bet on his Reds.
And now Williams ... every time he says he's off the chronic, we find out a few months later that he's still smoking it. So from now on, whenever Williams claims to be clean, I'll believe otherwise.
And I guarantee NFL teams and commissioner Roger Goodell will feel the same way.
