The Sports Bizzo Podcast 09.21.08

Toph and Jon strongly support chicks with braces and Hooters.

This week the guys discuss week 3 of the NFL, their fantasy battle, Jon’s date with Drew Barrymore and Ellen Paige and Toph’s time in Vegas. They also do not talk about they Yankees… not yet, at least.

As always…

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By Ted…

If Aaron Rodgers thought a big win over Minnesota this week would free him from Brett Favre’s lingering shadow, he is sorely mistaken. Give it a few years and maybe people will stop giving the Packers QB a double-take when he’s not wearing a number four on his jersey. Let’s face it he’s the first new starting quarterback for Green Bay since Sept. 20^th, 1992. Oddly enough that seemingly everlasting career began with a Monday night game facing the hated Vikings. The pressure to perform was evident.

However, Aaron Rodgers is not an untried player or an unknown quantity. He’s been with the Packers, training and filling in on rare occasion for Favre, for three seasons. He’s been prepping for this moment ever since the first time Brett retired. It’s too early to tell if he’s going to take the Packers to the next level after last year’s phenomenal turn around. But I think Rodgers is essentially the second coming.

Hear me out; he’s got the defense Favre was waiting for over the last six years, he’s got a strong running game to get him out of sticky situations and he came out on Monday night with 18 completions out of 22 (whereas as Favre would have probably had one of his 45 of 60 games) plus a touchdown he snuck in on foot. He’s got a usable team and a much more cautious strategy than Uncle Brett’s. He’s not going to have any of the risky sixty yard passes from their end-zone, and we haven’t seen if he can pull the miracle two minute game winners like Favre, but Rodgers has game. He’s not the martyred, resurrect me one more time QB, he’s the come back on the cloud of glory, judging the quick and the dead, separating goats and sheep QB. Plus he’s only twenty-four, which is just plain obnoxious. And with Crosby kicking field-goals, Rodgers doesn’t always have to be Favre all the time; he just has to be sixty yards of Favre.

This season will be one to look forward to as a Packer fan. I still doubt they have the reach to make it to the Super Bowl. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility either, especially with Rodgers taking up the mantle of Favre… literally, he wears the same jersey, you can see where they painted over the four.

By Toph…

I really didn’t expect this to happen after week one, but here we are sporting massive friggin’ Romoboners. Honestly, with my wife, Diabla, out of town till Wednesday, I’m trying to stop myself from beating my Romoboner into submission.

The Cowboys looked so good on Sunday I kind of stopped paying attention. The best part of it all? I thought they kind of played terribly. Guess what?! That’s where we’re at now! Welcome to 2008!! (Count on many more exclamation points throughout this post!!!) It’s almost too hard not to rub out another Romoboner while sitting here at work. I’m trying not to be too gleeful, because remember what I said last week, “This could all end in a blink of an eye.”

That point was made pretty damn clear when we saw Tom Brady go down for the year, followed by Romo grimacing on the field as 600 pounds of man crushed him. My Romoboner quickly became a Romosemi for about 12 seconds. Thankfully, Romo gets up and things quickly go North (for both my pants, and the team).

The Cowboys could have played better. They could have thrown the ball to Patrick Crayton more, which would have helped my fantasy team. They could have not thrown that interception in endzone, which also would have helped my fantasy team. Adam Jones was rusty, Barber got hurt, the Defense couldn’t get to the Quarterback and they committed a lot of dumb penalties. Yet, everyone was all smiles leaving The Final Final, because despite all of that the Cowboys became the team to beat in the NFL. They completely dismantled a contender in the AFC. Although, most teams in the AFC were completely dismantled.

This week, life becomes even better for the NFC East. (This is the point where I try and become a non-biased writer who was assigned the NFC East… down Romoboner… down!) There’s nothing better than watching a good Eagles – Cowboys game on Monday Night. Despite what you think about the Eagles win over the Rams, you know you’re excited that both teams are relevant this year. Mike Ditka said it best last night during the Broncos – Raiders game (of course, I’m paraphrasing): when I played for the Cowboys, our rival was who ever was good, which at the time was the Redskins.

This year, the Eagles are good again, which means it’s going to be exciting in Texas Stadium on Monday. Don’t forget, this is the last time the Eagles (playoffs possibly withstanding) will play in Texas Stadium on Monday Night, and, really, ever. If that’s not enough to set the tone for an unbelievable game, then go watch tennis.

The Giants looked awfully impressive against the Redskins, but I think the F-Bombs of Texas Wesleyan University Intramurals could have looked good against the Redskins. Despite losing Strahan and Osi, the Giants Defense dominated the Redskins, but I’m still shocked the Giants couldn’t do more. I mean, really? They couldn’t score after halftime, and couldn’t get into the endzone after the 1st quarter? Why is no one talking about this? They stopped a weak offense in the Redskins, and couldn’t put drives together against a terrible defense. Yet, we’re supposed to think this team has a chance to repeat? They’re ranked 5th in the ESPN Power Poll, but I have a hard time believing they deserve it. How are the Packers, after their convincing win, not a bigger part of this discussion?

But, really, who’s paying attention to the Giants right now? They get the Rams, and we get what now looks like the best Monday Night game of the year. Seriously, look at the schedule.

Now… back to my Romoboner…

Shay’s preview of the AFC East

A cheater, a rat, a tuna, a living legend, a’brickashaw. Welcome to the circus. And like a circus, the AFC East could be considered the best time in the league. A division that has produced an AFC championship game team 5 times in 8 years. A division that has produced the Super Bowl Champion more than any other division in football this decade. But don’t forget the sideshow tent where the bearded lady happens. A division that gave us the first chance at a winless team since ’76. This is no mediocre division. This is feast or famine. This is the AFC East.

New England Patriots – Record: 13-3 – AFC East Division Champs

How do you recover from an undefeated season that ends in a loss because a receiver learns to catch a pass with his helmet? Let’s start by having a QB and receiver, both of which could be the best in the league at their position. Maybe they’re not stealing signals this season, but the Patriots will still have one of the strongest offenses in the league. However, they didn’t seem to make any major addition in the offseason to improve the team and some key losses on defense could make a difference.

Other than not cheating this season, it looks like the Patriots will go into this season the same way they’ve gone into seasons past: people talking about how some part of their team is too old, wondering if this is the year that Brady gets hurt, trying to find some way to talk about the Patriots formula that will make it new and exciting. But it’s not exciting. We all know that the Patriots will do well this season, just like they do most seasons.

Important additions: Easy schedule.

Important losses: Asante Samuel, Randall Gay, play signal tapes.

Prediction: 13-3*. The Pats have been to four superbowls in the decade and have won each Superbowl in which they did not go in undefeated. Time to take up losing games again.

Buffalo Bills – Record: 8-8 – 2^nd Place

There have been fundamental flaws within the Buffalo Bills organization for quite a few years. How could you ever run a guy at quarterback whose name is even phonetically similar to loss-man? Luckily, the Bills have chosen to go with second year quarterback Trent Edwards. Bold move. But this is a team that for a long time hasn’t made enough moves and hasn’t done enough to have a chance. Sure it’s tough when the Patriots are in your division. But the highlight of last season was when we realized that the guy who almost died and would definitely be crippled for the rest of his life for your mediocre team, wouldn’t be nearly as crippled as we all thought. That’s rough.

They do have some bright spots with a lot of reasonably talented youth on the offense. Marshawn Lynch looked good last year. They’re looking at a decent receiving core and have added college’s most explosive return man in Leodis McKelvin. And they did make a few moves to add some veterans to the defense. But did you know Dick Jauron has had only one season in which the team he was coaching for had a winning season since making his debut as coach in 1999? I didn’t either. In fact, the only reason I do know that is because I had to look up who actually coached the Bills. Maybe that means I’m not qualified to write this article, but if you ask me, I think it means Dick Jauron might not be qualified to be an NFL head coach.

Important additions: rookie James Hardy, Marcus Stroud, Kawika Mitchell, rookie return man Leodis McKelvin

Important losses: It’s the Bills.

Prediction: 8-8*. The Jets don’t give up the wins as easily this season and the Patriots aren’t planning on giving any away either.

New York Jets – Record: 7-9 – 3^rd Place

I thought New York City had finally managed to get it right by shipping one white guy football player who was way to full of himself to New Orleans, but leave it up to the Jets to bring a new one in. The problem with being a living legend is that by the time you get that designation, you’re usually not any good anymore. Brett Favre hasn’t had a good QB in his division since Daunte Culpepper had knees and now he’ll be dealing with Brady twice a season. I’m sure all the of the Jet’s big wigs saw the Boston Celtics make a few key additions of old, but good veterans and have a championship brought to their doorstep. But Minnesota never thought that KG shouldn’t be a starter anymore and, until Brett Favre becomes a shut down corner and proves he’s not washed up like Green Bay obviously thinks he is, the Jets may be in for an unhappy outcome.

On the plus side, it looks like the Jets have made strong moves to keep the re-animated corpse of the NFL’s all-time interception leader up on its feet. They have a solid line put together with Ferguson, Faneca, Mangold, and newcomer Damien Woody. It’s too bad Thomas Jones is the best they’ve got at RB. Defensively, I’m sure they’re hoping that Gholston starts making a lot of progress quickly to give them an actual defensive playmaker.

All in all, this is a team that last season had all of 4 wins. And two of those wins came against the Dolphins. It’s a lot of sports writers’ and fans’ belief that Favre is going to make a huge difference and give his team a playoff shot. Did any of these people see the Jets last season?

Important additions: Brett Favre, Bubba Franks, Alan Faneca

Important losses: 3rd or 4th round draft pick to the Packers.

Prediction: 7-9*. I’m not even putting this one on the Madden Curse, I just don’t think they’ll be that good.

Miami Dolphins – Record: 4-12 – Last Place

Can Bill Parcells get out of the first round with an owner that’s not willing to spend money as opposed to his set up with Jerry Jones? Or will this season for the Dolphins be Isaiah Thomas-esque with a mere four wins garnering contract extensions for GM’s, coaches, and players alike? I feel deep down that the Dolphins are set to have more wins this season than they did last season.

But who on this team is going to Dance with the Stars? Jason Taylor was the one player on the team that you would of thought about convincing Madden ‘09’s AI to trade you. Now the Dolphins are left with surgically repaired arms of Chad Pennington and the blackened lungs of Ricky Williams. I’d like to put in a formal request that every season or two the Dolphins take a quarterback who, after a surgery or two, is let go by the team that knows they don’t have it anymore. If a coach would walk out on his contract as well, that would be fantastic.

I could spend some time talking about how the Dolphins are slowly putting the pieces together with a bunch of young, athletic players who have real potential or some crap like that, but I’ll have the decency to restrain myself. Instead I’ll leave you with a simple reminder: should someone try to convince you to bet on this team, just walk away from that person.

Important additions: Chad Pennington

Important losses: Jason Taylor

Prediction: A respectable 4-12* season. I’d give them six wins if they got to play themselves twice a year. They managed to take themselves out of games enough times last season to be pretty good at it by now.

* all teams records inflated by playing the NFC West.

The Sports Bizzo Podcast 07.17.08

Beer Pong Tourney Photos

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By Toph…

I’m on another flight, which is good for the Bizzo. This time I’m headed from San Francisco to Philadelphia all the name of a party. It’s been a grueling morning, waking up at 3:45am, for a, let’s just call it canceled, flight. So, why is it good for the Bizzo? Well, you might say that I sometimes overextend myself when it comes to sports, and covering them. (If you consider what we do covering sports. I maintain that we’re not a blog, because I, and all of the Bizzo crew, make a strong attempt at writing columns.) As you know, I also run another blog, as well as the thing I go to everyday that actually pays for my life. Believe it or not, that Adidas ad over to your right is there for looks, and not connected with an affiliate I.D., although at some point we should do that. Now, in my newsreader I am subscribed to 22 different sports feeds. Sure, some of the feeds only update once in a blue moon (I’m talking about you, Phil Hughes), but others update 20+ times a day. As you could imagine, living the high life (Get it? My last name is Miller? No?) I sometimes fall way back on my sports coverage. When this happens, I implore my fellow Bizzoist to write something fresh and new so I don’t have to. (This is going somewhere, I promise.) However, when I am stuck on a cross-country flight with 8 layovers I have time to catch up on the things that are important (sports, women and pop culture). The next things I do are shell out 5 – 10 blogs for all my two sites, and then post them when warranted. The moral of the story is this – I’m about to write about Brett Favre.

At some point there comes a time in every athletes life when he/she must stop playing the game. Look, no one ever wants to quit sports. Sports are the greatest things in the world. Think I’m wrong? HA! We’ve all at some point in our lives have had to quit a sport. I’ll walk you through my sports quitting history now. When I was 5 I played soccer. OK, you can hardly call it playing. I did like to pick the grass. We scored 2 goals all year. The first goal was on accident when the ball squeezed out of the goaltenders hand. The other was as I was sitting picking daisies and a ball ricocheted off my head. I, of course, have no recollection of any of this. No, the story is generally passed around at Thanksgiving. This may explain why Diabla and I aren’t returning home for Thanksgiving, again. I had to quit soccer. The next sport I was forced to quit was baseball. This was easily the most gut-wrenching thing I have ever done. I talk bad about baseball most of the time, but it’s only because I love it. It’s like how you can talk badly about a sibling, but when some one does you kick their ass. I played baseball from about 11 years old till high school. I was no superstar, but I was a pretty slick in Center, 2nd and on 1st. As much as I refused to admit, Center was my position. I made a few PBI (Texas Pony League All-Star Teams), and we had a phenomenal Yankees team. Few league championships, and playoffs every year (once we got good). I love baseball. Especially, when Ray and I were on the same team. When high school tryouts came around, stop me if you’ve heard this, I had a 103 temperature. I was abysmal to say the least, and wasn’t at all surprised when I didn’t make the team. I spoke with the coach, asked for another shot, others spoke to the coach, but I got the whole “tryout next year” routine. I played one more year, and gave it up. The reason I gave it up was because I was actually becoming a pretty decent track runner. I was doing well in the 400 and 200, so I didn’t mind too much. Plus, there are chicks in track. Of course, being from Texas I played football. Giving that up was easy. “Coach, let’s be honest with each other. I can run, I can catch, but I’m not too keen on getting drilled. We’re a running offense, so I never get the ball anyways.” He told me that I had no chance of becoming successful in life. But, as Jon and Ray like to point out, he lived with his mom. Then came my final sport to quit. Like I said, I was getting pretty good at track. So, I moved from football into cross-country. I hated cross-country, but it was good for track, so I did it. The next year, I started doing, wait for it, theatre. I finished track season my Senior year, and left cross-country to act. It worked out for the best, because I got a scholarship, and eventually co-founded The Sports Bizzo with Jon, my roommate and fellow “thespian”.

What’s my point in this second drawn out paragraph? You got to know when it’s time to move on. I never looked back and thought, “I’m going back to cross-country.” Wait, that’s not entirely true. My first year of college I tried out for cross-country, made the team and had to turn it down due to scholarship rules. The point is, I moved on. It’s like when you date a girl. When you break up, you got to move on. Oh, that’s actually not true either. Diabla and I broke up over 15 times, and eventually got married.

This might be acceptable behavior for people like me, but for people like Brett Favre it’s a shame. This time last year I received a phone call from Jon. I was in Santa Barbara for a conference, and he called to talk football. He told me that Ted made him a $5 bet (hahaha… Jon said it was out of principle, and he didn’t plan to pay him anyways) that Brett Favre wasn’t washed up. Both Jon and I laughed like Frenchmen at the thought of Favre being close to decent during the year. Turns out, he took the Packers to the NFC Championship, and honestly, should have won that game. We really hate when Ted is right, which seems to happening a lot.

There really are only 4 ways in which you should retire. Only one of them is excusable to come back into the league.

1. Completely washed up sitting around praying a team will sign you, and when they don’t just retiring. This is actually happening a lot this year. We could call this the Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza, Kenny Lofton, Sammy Sosa, Juwan Howard, Chris Webber, etc etc etc… It’s when you’re old, but you can’t let go. It makes fans hate you. Have you not made enough in your career? There’s no way you’ll ever spend all of that money, just go and enjoy your time off. (Sorry Evander Holyfield.)
2. Be forced into retirement, try another sport (because David Stern forced you as a punishment for the gambling), then come back and dominate under the number 45. The Michael Jordan. This can only happen to one man.
3. Go out a winner. The John Elway. I’m sure there are more, but he’s the only one I can think of without any sources or internet. I hate the Broncos, but winning a Super Bowl and retiring is amazing.
4. Be forced into retirement due to age, or injury. Hey, Brett Favre, here’s you! Nolan Ryan was old, and was still a great pitcher, but he knew when to call it quits. Steve Young, Terrell Davis and Troy Aikman allowed their injuries to tell them when to head up to the booth. Emmitt Smith, wait, never mind.
What more does Favre need to prove? He proved Jon (who we’ll consider “the critics”) wrong by playing well last year. He thrilled Ted (who we’ll call “the fans”) by taking the Packers deep in the playoffs. And, lastly, he showed me (the group known as Packer haters) that he’d never win in Texas Stadium. Isn’t that what you want in a career?

Now go, Brett. Give up the tundra and cheese, and get back to nature. Go fishin’ and play with your kids. We’ll see you in the booth next year.