A Punch Is A Punch

What am I missing?

Everyone loves a good hockey fight. It doesn't matter if your a hockey aficionado or a puck and stick virgin, when people start beating on each other, America stops and watches. MMA fights, middle school recess scuffles, Jerry Springer love triangles, you name it, if it's got faces gets kicked in we eat it up dig it and we dig it hard.

I mean say what you want about hockey, this is just fun to watch.

Announcers love it, fans love it, toothless Canadian players love it.

And who doesn't love a good baseball beat down? Hard slide, hit by a pitch, boredom, baseball fights have a lot of causes and go a long way to spicing up rivalry games and a brutally long season.

ESPN even celebrates them

Yes, fights are seemingly all good in sports. That is, unless it's the NBA.

Remeber the Nuggets-Knicks fight? Suspensions for everyone and condemnation by all.

And it wasn't even a fight so much as it was a slap and tickle

The announcers didn't seem to dig it very much.

Then there was the WNBA brawl from last season.

Now, maybe the NBA is trying to keep a clean image after the Artest situation

You never want your players fighting your fans. Any league would suspend their players until the cows come home right? No league would let player-fan fights slide...

Oh wait...

Do any of you even remeber this happening? I sure don't. Tie Domi wasn't publicly crucified that's for sure. Why is that?

Here's another fun one

Fan abuse is, I guess, cool in the almost all white NHL, but demonized in the primarily black NBA.

What I'm driving at is brawling is celebrated in most baseball and especially hockey. Prolific fighters are given names like "enforcer". In the NBA, if one punch is thrown, the player becomes a "thug" in the eyes of the sporting world. Carmelo? A thug? Did you see the fight? Go with your guy instinct on this next question. Do you think Artest is a thug? If so, why? Because he punched a fan who dumped beer on him? Wouldn't you do the same if someone did that to you?

Sports brawls are fun, but they stop being fun when you demonize players because of their race. The NBA wouldn't suspend players like 'Melo for 15 games (the sixth longest in NBA history) over a slap if they didn't think they had to for PR reasons. Why would the NBA have a bad image that needed protecting? Could it be that it's considered a league full of gang bangers by the weak minded and dim witted that make up a scarily heavy portion of the American population?

Maybe it's just me, but the double standard in public perception of sports brawls reaks of racism.

Discuss.

Cities That Make Me Feel Good About My Many Failures

The Worst Sports Cities Of The Moment

As of Monday, December 8th, 2008, the saddest sports cities, in my opinion...

Bad: Kansas City

Two teams, two worthless masses of wasted athlete. The Chiefs were once good, believe it or not. Now they exist only to make Tony Gonzalez cry into his pillow at night as he feverishly texts his agent to try and find a way out of Arrowhead for good.

And the Royals? God they're almost adorable. They try so hard and yet accomplish so very little. But hey, they just signed Coco Crisp so maybe they will see a spike in jersey sales. Maybe then they will have some extra dough to spend on someone who will actually make a difference.

Ugly Bad: The Entire Bay Area

I'm going to combine San Francisco and Oakland here because they are so close and suck so very, very much. The City by the Bay boasts the Giants and the 49ers. The Giants have one good player, Aaron Rowand, who likes to take himself out every other season by ramming his skull through the outfield wall. The 49ers have gone from a sexy sleeper pick a few years ago to a team that struggles to grab victory in the pathetic NFC West. As a side note, what were the football Gods thinking when they blessed the people of San Francisco with all those Superbowl victories? Those are the fans that get the hardware? Wouldn't those titles be better appreciated in a more blue collar city like Cleveland or Detroit or, I don't know, CHICAGO!

Then there is Oakland. Not only would I not want to live there, but I wouldn't want to attend any games. The A's aren't terrible, but they like to annoy they're fans by growing players and then selling them off at a rate only matched by the Minnesota Twins. And of course they're are the Raiders. Al Davis is Hell bent on killing the Raiders before nature kills him. Opposing teams are more scared of Oakland fans then they are of Oakland players.

I also have to include the team that represents both cities, the Golden State Warriors. They are pretty good but they just lost they're best player to a division rival now that Baron Davis is a Los Angeles Clipper.

Nickelback Bad: Detroit

I don't know what is being evacuated at a faster clip, Detroit's sports stadiums or the city itself. I know, the Pistons are almost always contenders but they are below .500 since trading Finals MVP Chauncey Billups to the Nuggets for Allen "We talkin' bout practice!" Iverson. The Red Wings really keep Detroit from being higher, or should I say lower, on the list. Any good the Pistons and the Red Wings have done has been off set by two of the most garbage feeding teams in their respective sports. I'm of course talking about the Tigers of the MLB and the Lions of the NFL.

The Tigers blew Yankee money on Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera from the Marlins, mix them with guys like Justin Verlander, Magglio Ordonez, and Curtis Granderson, and have them coached by Sam Elliot twin Jim Leyland, and what to they get? 74-88, 14.5 games out of first place. They actually finished behind the Royals!

But compare them to the Lions and they seem like the Durham Bulls after Tim Robbins started banging Susan Sarandon. I mean they are seriously going to go 0-16! How is this even possible? The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers went 0-13, and alums of that ill-fated squad have to be psyched. For so long they have been the worst team in NFL history, but I really think that's going to change. No one remembers the second crappiest team ever. What's odd to me is how possibly the worst team in NFL history may have the best reciever in the league in Calvin Johnson. But they are truly that bad. Want to hear a funny joke?

The Detroit Lions.

That's the punchline.

Jonas Brothers mixed with Nikelback bad: Lincolshire, specifically Stevenson High School.

Yeah David Jaffe, I said it. Stevenson sucks the hard one. Why? Here are a couple reasons.

1) Whenever we played them in football, we had to play on Thursday nights because Stevenson wouldn't play on Rosh Hashanah or Boxing Day or whatever. They got the Friday off, we didn't. You have no idea how bad that Friday sucked.

2) Their entire offensive line had such brutal acne that I almost vomited into my mouth guard every time they tried to double team me.

3) Stevenson head ball coach Bill Mitz was so sick of getting curb stomped by Libertyville in football that he joined his sons high schools coaching staff in a cute attempt to beat us. He failed though, and I ruined his day double style when I sprained his son's knee with a TOTAL cheap shot after he kicked a punt. My coaches were happy and my parents were ashamed.

AND...

Truly THE WORST SPORTS CITY IN AMERICA...

Seattle

The Mariners are a terrible collection of weakness. They need to ship out Ichiro and rebuild for the 2019 season.

The Seahawks are turning in one of their worst seasons in recent memory, in coach Mike Holmgren's final season. Once again, if you struggle to compete in the NFC West, I think you should be suspended, as a team, for a full year.

The worst thing though, is the brutal injustice that is the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Is there a more soul crushing turn of events for a fan then to have your team taken from you and repackaged into another team all together? As a Bulls fan, I remember the Bulls fighting tooth and nail against a Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp led Supersonics.

It's just sad, I don't even want to be a smart ass about it. I couldn't imagine what I would be feeling right now if one of my teams moved to Tulsa or something like that.

Look at the Thunder. Their name sounds like an AFL team and their uniforms scream NBA Europe.

Sonics fans were seriously sports raped.

My heart goes out to Seattle fans. You truly live in the worst sports town in America.

You Don't Mess With Jack Bauer's Daughter

Things in sports that have pissed me off as of late...

1. Weis, Charlie. WHY? He basically has the same record as Ty Willingham, who they drop kicked out of South Bend. He gets these amazing recruiting classes each year (correct me if I'm wrong but this past one was 8th overall?). He tells people that Notre Dame has a "strategic advantage" over every team in the country because of his big bad Patriots brain.

Remember when you hated Notre Dame because they were arrogant and GOOD?

It's not even fun to watch them fail anymore, because that's all they seem to do. He only won when he had Quinn and the rest of Ty Willingham's last recruiting class. He hasn't recruited winners and he hasn't coached with any sort of sucess. He got a 10 year extension because he almost beat USC.

As a proud member of the Irish American persuasion, I'm insulted that a team named after my people has turned into such a joke. Irish people stab you with a broken pool cue, they don't get slapped by Syracuse. Period. Fire his ass or change your name to the Fighting Welsh.

2. Sean Avery isn't allowed to speak. If you don't watch the NHL, allow me to bring you up to speed. The NHL's Dennis Rodman Sean Avery was suspended by the league for naughty things he said about his ex-girlfriend indefinitely.

What did he say about Elisha Cuthbert of 24 that got him benched with no end in site?

He said that Dion Phaneuf of Calgary was getting his "sloppy seconds" and that it was becoming a common thing for guys in the league to fall in love with his "sloppy seconds".

Oh Lord everyone grab your bibles and start saying the "Our Father" backwards.

Was it that bad? The Dallas Stars didn't suspend him, the frickin' league did. Hockey, where you can kick the crap out of eachother and get two minutes on the bench is telling a guy to stay home because he wasn't nice to his ex?

Why does everyone have to be Captain America these days? Whats wrong with having some bad guys floating around in our sports leagues? So an adult said somethig bad about another adult, who cares. And don't give me that crap about being a bad role model. You let your 7 year old watch hockey for christ sake. What is the NHL saying? Fighting? Good. Not being a gentleman? SUSPENSION!!!

Sean Avery isn't even that scary. The dude is an intern for Vogue Magazine in the off season. You want to suspend him over a comment he made? Suspend him for this one...

"You do suits and pants and that's about that. Women's clothes tell a story. That's what's interesting to me."

And on Elisha Cuthbert, to quote Tony Kornheiser of PTI and Mondy Night Football.

On Elisha Cuthbert...

"Everyone who was watching season one of 24 was rooting for the mountain lion to eat her."

3. Plaxi.....never mind I won't even touch that...

New 3. I can't stand Lebron James for a number of reasons. I think he's overrated, I think he's soft, and he's so full of himself that he actually thinks he's the second coming of Michael Jordan, something the someone as hated as Kobe Bryant won't even do.

But this New York crap is getting out of hand even for him. He told New York fans to wait because in two years it's "Gonna be a big day". What the Hell? Your on the Cavs you jackass! Your winning! Who cares where you play the goal should be winning a championship. You know, that big trophy thing they hand out at the end of the year for the best team in the NBA? You know, the thing Jordan held up 6 times.

The man, the round-mound-of-rebound himself Sir Charles Barkley said it best when Dan Patrick asked him about the New York-Lebron James relationship...

""If I was LeBron James, I would shut the hell up (...) I'm getting so annoyed he's talking about what he's going to do in two years. I think it's disrespectful to the game. I think it's disrespectful to the Cavaliers."

Amen brother.

Lebron then had the balls to call the Hall of Famer "stupid".

And in the words of Sir Charles, that's just "trrrrrrrrrrble"