COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY (X-RATED) - MIKE IN DA - MARCH 7, 2011

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY (X-RATED)

Written by: Mike in DA
Date posted: 3/7/2011

TOO MUCH "GUY TALK" ON SPORTSRADIO 610: WTF!

If you’ve been listening to SR610 recently, you must have noticed the abundance of “guy talk” and conversely the big decrease in “sports talk” on the station. If I wanted real good "guy talk", I’d listen to Howard Stern, but I don’t want no stinkin’ guy talk. I want sports talk.



Maybe the reason there is so much "guy talk" on SR610 is that the local sports talk hosts aren’t capable of talking sports interestingly and knowledgeably enough for a full show and consequently management knowingly lets them go off on non-sports junk from Josh Innes getting laid to Mike Meltser dancing with a girl at a club to N.D. Kalu wanting to take kids hunting animals, so that they don't shoot people.

And speaking of N.D. (Ndukwe Dike for the acronym-challenged), whose idea was it to put one of the more likeable, intelligent, credible, and eloquent SR610 sports talkers on that station's version of the "Blue Light Cemetery Show" on Fridays and Saturday nights from 11 PM - 1 AM. That sounds more like a position for clowns like Josh Innes and Brien Straw.

Luckily for SR610, they have a following of sheepish listeners who wouldn't know good radio from crap radio, even if it was sitting in their collective laps.

SOME MORE ATHLETE/CELEBRITY TWINS SEPARATED AT BIRTH!

Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay Packers) and B.J. Novack ("The Office")

Tony Sporano (Miami Dolphins coach) and Sgt. Slaughter (WWE)

Jim Fassel (football coach) and actor Robin Williams

Adam Dunn (Chicago White Sox) and actor Will Ferrell

Jeff Fisher (former Tennessee Titans coach) and Jimmy Hart (WWE "Mouth of the South")

WHY SPORTS TALK IS SO BIG

Watching sports can often get boring. However, talking and speculating about sports attracts attention. That’s why 24-hour sports talk radio and/or TV was invented.

Surely the amount of attention and energy focused on some of the non-game aspects of sports, such as the entire saga of the Carmelo Anthony situation in Denver and the NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement talks are just two examples that it is more interesting than many of the sporting events available to us at this time of the year. Compared to watching the recent NBA All-Star Game, many would much rather engage in a discussion about up and coming players who might be playing at the All-Star level in a couple of years.

The idea here is why does this state of affairs exist. At first, I thought that sports radio was one of the causes here, but it did not take me long to decide that sports radio exists only because the precondition to want to talk about sports already existed in the listening audience.

No such pre-existing condition is widespread in the radio listening audience for subjects like history or science. “Brad from Spring Branch” is not likely to call KHIS, a hypothetical station focused on history-talk radio to comment on the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty. Such a conversation would require knowledge to bolster any speculation that Brad might make and the odds are that Brad does not know about the Eastern Han dynasty.

However, “Larry from Stafford” can call SportsRadio610 here in Houston and offer his speculations or “takes” on the Houston Texans need to draft a defensive back. You get the idea. “Larry from Stafford” can explain that kind of thing and others like “Ochotexto” will actually take it seriously and build on his speculation when no one has any way to know if there is a factual basis for the discussion in the first place.


We can absolve ESPN also even though it devotes a large part of its airtime to sports talk and not to sports themselves. Even though ESPN and most ESPN Radio shows do not take many calls from "Richie from Richmond" or "Bernie from Birmingham", what ESPN does is talk about “sports issues” that only touch lightly on actual games and game events. Nevertheless, ESPN is just reacting to that the same pre-existing condition of people wanting to talk about sports.

I think that the basis for this lies in the leagues and the sports themselves. I think watching sports is less interesting than talking about sports for many simply because there are far too many opportunities to watch sporting events that are basically uninteresting. Watching sports requires the fan to separate the good from the bad. Moreover, at this time of the year, that situation seems to be at its peak.

What sports can we watch now? College basketball, my favorite sport to watch and wager on, is getting to the point where we will shortly know the 68 teams that make up the brackets for March Madness. I happen to think that the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament taken as a whole is still the single most spectacular sporting competition of the year, though it is not as spectacular as it was a quarter of a century or so ago. I think it is better than the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the World Cup, the Breeders’ Cup, the Stanley Cup, etc. However, by this point as the college basketball “regular season” has just ended, I am satiated with it; I need a break, so I can devote renewed attention to the games in the Tournament. Why am I satiated?

On any given Saturday in the Houston area in January and February and without having any of the premium sports packages on my cable system, I can watch at least 20 different games on TV and sometimes as many as 28. That is on any random Saturday during the basketball conference season. While a January contest between Northern Iowa and Creighton might be a nail-biter that goes back and forth for 40 minutes, the much more likely situation is that I will have given up finding a game that is of any importance on that day before I find the Northern Iowa/Creighton game. On weeknights here in Houston, it is common to have between 6 and 12 college basketball games available. 


College basketball is as overexposed as Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton combined.

There is no baseball to watch now and – truth be told – except for Opening Day, there is not likely to be a compelling baseball game or series to watch until about sometime between Mothers’ Day and Memorial Day. After that, there can be interesting stories and hot teams to follow, but the fate of teams like the Astros, Pirates, Royals and Nationals was already known before the first Spring Training game happened. The players and coaches on those teams will be at home once October rolls around.

The fact that MLB has the smallest percentage of its teams making the post-season makes for some interesting races through to the end of the season; that is the good news. Here is the bad news: a game between the Indians and the Orioles no matter what the date, is never going to be meaningful except to the players on the field and their immediate families and perhaps those who may wager on it.

The NBA season is three quarters over. However, the NBA season is sort of like a regular season NBA game. Most of the time all you really want to do is watch the last four to five minutes because if there is going to be any full-time intensity from both teams, that is when it will happen. Four minutes is one-twelfth of a basketball game; by analogy, the interesting time of the year to watch NBA games is when teams have seven to ten games left to play. Even then, you will have to be selective because by that time, 33% of the teams will be “out of it” and sleepwalking through their games while another 20% of the teams will have their playoff slots locked down and will be sleepwalking through their games, too.


The problem with watching the NBA is that there are far too many games in a season that have zero impact on anything. The players know it and it does not take long for the fans watching the game to realize that the players know that this game does not mean a damned thing. In addition, there are far too many NBA teams whose ultimate fate for the season is known before the season starts. Did anyone doubt that the San Antonio Spurs, LA Lakers, Boston Celtics, or Miami Heat would make the playoffs back in October? Did anyone think the NJ Nets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Sacramento Kings, or Toronto Raptors would have home court advantage in a playoff series? For the average fan, watching the NBA regular season is not real exciting, unless you're wagering on it.

The NHL has the same problem the NBA has, but with an extra twist. In addition to too many irrelevant games and too many teams who are either so good you know they will make the playoffs or really bad, the NHL has teams in cities where even the local fans do not give a shit. So, when you tune into a game or drop some big cash to get decent seats to one of the games, you can find yourself watching a game that the locals barely care about. That does not add to the watching experience in any meaningful way.

Since the NHL is firm in keeping teams in the Sun Belt playing to half-empty arenas, I have some free advice to NHL Commissioner,  Gary Bettman. If you want teams in places like Phoenix, Tampa, and Atlanta to draw crowds, have them play a game other than ice hockey. People in those parts of the country might actually show up if it was for a game that they actually liked and played themselves.

We have started that time of the year when there is a NASCAR race every weekend with supplementary NASCAR events on weeknights. Minor-league NASCAR, pickup truck racing, big-league NASCAR, and any other vehicle racing in that format leaves much to be desired from a watching point of view. A 500-mile race on a 1-mile oval means there are 2000 left turns; after the 43 cars have all made about 50 of the left turns, you have seen the sum and substance of the variety of what will happen for the next 490 miles or so.

Soccer is an acquired taste in terms of watching. I enjoy watching the World Cup,  but other than that, that's the limit of my watching soccer. I understand that the majority of US sports fans do not like soccer and likely will never like soccer. For them, here is another sport where watching is not a fulfilling experience.

The only sport where watching approaches talking in terms of interest and excitement is football, both college and NFL football. I think the reason is that there are only a few games in a season for each team and there is a relatively constant and predictable gap between those games. Therefore, the season develops a rhythm and a flow and the games become "events". So, what does the U.S. sports fan have staring him in the face now? A potential NFL work stoppage.

You can bet that there will be a lot of interest in talking about that and about how to bring it to an end. This talk will either be around the water cooler, at a sports bar, and/or when “Brad from Spring Branch” or “Larry from Stafford” picks up the phone and calls into his favorite sports radio show.

SHEEPISH NFL FANS AKA "SUCKERS"

As the NFL and the NFLPA are preparing to turn off their $9B money spigot, the New York Jets, the ones who will win the Super Bowl next year according to Coach Rex Ryan, have recently announced an increase in ticket prices. The average increase is a small one, about 2.5%, but this is gouging of a high order. The Jets have not been able to sell out their PSLs (Permanent Seating Licenses for the acronym-challenged) meaning that the fans who purchased them are unlikely to be able to sell theirs to anyone else without taking a financial loss. Remember that PSLs for the Jets are not three easy payments of $39.95. Therefore, the PSL holders are sort of trapped. They have to buy their season tickets at whatever price the Jets set or they get shut out for the season tickets and just eat the money they spent on the PSLs.

This plays against the potential for a shortened NFL season or perhaps no NFL season next year. Nonetheless, payment in full is due in the Spring. It will be interesting to see if there is even a hint of a fan revolt there or if the Jets’ fans will simply act like the muthafuckin’ sheep that they are and send in their checks on time.

And speaking of PSLs, any New York Giants PSL holders who want to sell or transfer their PSLs, even to a family member, are charged a $200 “transfer fee.” This shit never stops, but the suckers out there are the proverbially "dime a dozen" and "born every minute".

COOLEST SPORTS NICKNAMES: “BEAR”



Today’s sports nicknames are terrible, such as Gonzo, I-Rod, and L.T. They are nothing more than a combination of a player’s first and last name. But nicknames haven’t always been so bad.


Here is another cool one from the past: “Bear”.

Back when men were men, you didn’t just get a nickname. You had to earn it. Just ask legendary Alabama football coach "Bear" Bryant. He wasn’t called “Bear” because he was ferocious. He was called “Bear” because when he was just 13-years-old he wrestled a bear in a carnival promotion to earn $1. One Dollar! The bear bit Bryant’s ear during the fight, but young Paul got a lifelong nickname. Of course, after wrestling a bear he could also have nicknamed himself, Paul “Everyone Else is a Muthafuckin' Pussy Next to Me” Bryant and nobody would have argued. While Bryant wrestled a bear, here he is being interviewed by a "cougar":



CRIER’S CORNER



BASKETBALL ACTION


The Crier closed out the regular College Hoops season on his longest non-losing streak of the season, as he has not had a losing record over the last nine days. Will it continue tonight or will shit happen? Stay tuned!

Date: W-L
2/26: 12-3
2/27: 5-1
2/28: 1-1
3/1: 6-2
3/2: 6-3
3/3: 4-1
3/4: 5-4
3/5: 10-5
3/6: 3-2
Total: 52-22


Yesterday’s Record ATS: 3-2
W - LOS ANGELES LAKERS (+2.5) over SAN ANTONIO*
W - NEW ORLEANS (-6) over CLEVELAND*
L - OKLAHOMA CITY* (-5.5) over PHOENIX
L - TENNESSEE* (+1) over KENTUCKY
W - PENN STATE (+5) over MINNESOTA*


Cumulative Season Record ATS (excludes “pushes”): 455-289


Today’s Action (for reading purposes only):

NBA

OKLAHOMA CITY (+2) over MEMPHIS*
The Thunder could catch the Grizzlies napping tonight. The Grizz have had four difficult games in a row and had to fly in from Dallas last night. The gamble in trading for Kendrick Perkins for the Thunder is his health, but if he can get close to 100% by playoff time, that will put the Thunder in a very solid position. OKLAHOMA, 108 – 99

COLLEGE HOOPS

COLONIAL ATHLETIC CONFERENCE – CHAMPIONSHIP GAME (Richmond Coliseum, Richmond, VA)


VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH (+4.5) over OLD DOMINION 
Interesting call, especially since VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University for the acronym-challenged) was handed a potential golden ticket when George Mason decided to mail it in yesterday and await the inevitable page from The Committee with their invite to an 8-9 game - a likely conduit to a quick exit. Thought Old Dome would win this title, going in. They’ve been more consistent than VCU, whose most impressive recent effort was their BracketBuster win over Wichita State which has been largely-tarnished by Missouri Valley’s broad underperformance, this season. But it’s clear cut that VCU needs this to play on, Old Dome’s probably “in”, either way, and the Monarchs’ putrid free-throw shooting could loom as a huge factor at crunch time. VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH, 67-64


SUN BELT CONFERENCE – SEMI-FINAL ROUND (Summit Arena, Hot Springs, AR)


NORTH TEXAS (-1) over WESTERN KENTUCKY
The Hilltoppers won the earlier meeting in their home lair, but that was four weeks ago, before the Mean Green kicked into their late-season Kansas State-esque power drive for a possible "Big Dance" bid. With internal and injury issues largely alleviated, North Texas is very live, with a nose for the rim and a steady determination to outscore the other guys, who in this case are playing a back-to-backer while deploying a decidedly-shallow rotation. Onward and upward. NORTH TEXAS, 82-76


WEST COAST CONFERENCE – CHAMPIONSHIP GAME (Orleans Arena, Las Vegas, NV)


GONZAGA (-1) over ST. MARY’S CA
Maybe the Gaels will still “get in”, even if they lose this. Their full body of work suggests it. But part of the evaluation process by The Committee involves how a team finishes, and Mary has staggered home like a prop plane that’s almost out of gas. Then, we have the pedigreed item, which is NOT a vintage ‘Zaga edition, and which took its own sweet time reaching peak form as their diverse band of imports took time getting to know each other. But they’re in solid form, now, they took out the Dons with speed in reserve and they should be at peak for this – though we wouldn’t be happy laying any more than a deuce. GONZAGA, 75-70




MIKE IN DA

HMW

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