Sports

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The American Fan’s Guide to Picking a Soccer Team

When I first started following (or trying to follow) international football back in the 90s, there was no Fox Soccer Channel or Gol TV or ESPN Champions League coverage or Wayne Rooney highlights on Sportscenter. Those were the dark days, when identifying as an American soccer fan got you labeled a communist or a faggot…. or a communist faggot.

Those days are long gone now. You can wear your fancy Shaktar Donetsk shirt to spring break in some sunburned hick town like Myrtle Beach and (mostly) be left alone, if not downright embraced by your fellow like-minded football junkies. But that still leaves one glaring question:

Who the fuck do I root for?

We’re working off a few basic assumptions here:

1. You’re an American who wasn’t born/raised in some obviously inferior third-world soccer-mad country like Turkey or Colombia or the United Kingdom. So you don’t have a geographic reason to support, say, the local club from the third-largest city in Belarus.

2. You’re already at least willing to casually support your own country’s national team. Because, really people, don’t be a cunt. Support your own national team. I know Italy always has nifty bright blue Puma jerseys, but that team is a bunch of raging assholes. Your ancestors probably left their homeland for a perfectly good reason (earthquake, famine, terrible pop music, Nazis).

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s find you a team based on our fancy proprietary process of elimination!

Rule 1: No front-runners

Who this rules out:

Manchester United
Man United is basically the New York Yankees/Dallas Cowboys/Duke University of soccer. Their fans people who show up to home matches are usually described as “prawn sandwich eaters” by all other fans. Does that sound like a delicious sandwich that should be involved with sports in any way? FUCK AND NO. Lame yuppie-ish front-runner fans are the worst, and Man U already has a huge American fanbase full of these cunty assholes. Steer clear.

FC Barcelona
There’s a lot to love about Barcelona. They’re almost militantly devoted to playing an attacking style of soccer that emphasizes goal scoring and beautiful passing. They’re also the liberal, globalized and open-minded nemesis of Real Madrid. The only problem is that they’re too good. They’re stocked with too much talent and money and managers who wear $3,000 designer suits. They’re for people who like shiny things and they make winning look a little too easy.

Bayern Munich
They seem to be the one German club that spends money like the big Spanish, Italian and English teams, so they inevitably dominate. They currently have a great squad, but I dunno. Munich…. Germany…… hmmmm. I really enjoyed Inglorious Basterds and feel like this team might have some sort of “Natzy” connections, which brings us to…

Rule 2: No connections to 20th-century fascist dictators and/or war criminals

Who this rules out:

Real Madrid
Not only does Real have the whole front-runner problem in Spain, but becoming a Real fan means you to learn the entire post-war history of Spain. See, Spain’s approach to football is to basically live out the past 70 years of political and ideological conflict. It turns out Real Madrid was for many years the unofficial team of the Franco supporters. So unless you’re a fascist, this might not be too appealing.

Lazio
This Rome-based club was the favorite club of the fascist elite during the rule of Il Duce. European soccer is fucking crazy sometimes.

Just about any team from Eastern Europe or the  Balkans
I hate to generalize, but do you really want to try to figure out which team from Belgrade was connected to the genocidal paramilitary leaders and which one wasn’t? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Rule 3: The team’s owner should be at least somewhat non-creepy

Who this rules out:

Chelsea
This is perhaps one of the most unlikeable soccer teams of all time. It starts at the top with an owner straight out of Bond villain central casting.  Their best players, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard, are more or less impossible to cheer for. Maybe you can swing being a Chelsea fan if you’re the kind of guy who drives around in your BMW M3 and cuts off old ladies. For the rest of us… pass!

AC Milan
Bunga bunga. Yep, that perverted old man you keep reading about in the tabloids… he’s the owner.

Rule 4: The team must not make you want to jump off a bridge every season

Who this rules out:

Newcastle United
Normally I like an underdog, but being a Newcastle fan is not something I’d wish on my worst enemy. First of all, they basically crush your will to live each and every season. They seem to have turned disappointment into an art form. Plus their fans are probably the most insane and provincial supporters in England. You and your nice straight, white teeth won’t ever fit in.

So who should I root for?

The beautiful thing about soccer is that even if you’re a mid-table team (that’s Limey-speak for “contender”), there’s always a lot to play for: The Champions League, the UEFA Europa League (which used to be called the UEFA Cup), domestic cups and the chance to send your arch-rival down to the second division next year with a late-season victory.

For our purposes today, let’s assume that while we love underdogs, we’re not going to bother cheering for the absolute dregs. (Sorry Swindon Town!) Let’s narrow down our potential teams to those clubs that have a legitimate shot at playing in the Champions League most seasons and can generally have a chance to pick up a win against the Barcelonas and Man Uniteds of the world.

Everton
Everton is the oldest club in England and they have lots of great history. They’re the second team of Liverpool, so they have lots of local fans and are known for having a very knowledgeable and passionate fan base. Plus they have an American goalkeeper (Tim Howard) , Australian midfielder (Tim Cahill) and the player with the greatest hairdo in the world right now. They’re a generally lovable  bunch of underdogs.

AS Roma
They score a metric shit-ton of goals. Their fans are known for turning their stadium into a giant, Burning Man-esque bonfire party. Their rival is Lazio, which has one of the most right-wing fanbases in Europe. Their team crest prominently features wolf nipples.

Manchester City
Are you a fan of the Mets? Or the White Sox? Or any Philadelphia team? Is your shoulder mostly made up of one giant, permanent chip? If so, this is the team for you! Man City is the perennial step-sister to the hot, popular sister that is Manchester United. Poor Man City, all they really have going for them is their reputation for getting most of their support from Manchester itself, unlike United’s globalized, corporate fanbase. Of course, even Man City is now owned by a group of fatcats from Abu Dhabi who are putting their money into buying up all sorts of talent. Get on board now before they turn into the next Chelsea!

Olympique Lyonnais
Lyon has been a mainstay of the Champions League for much of the last decade. They’re usually very fun to watch and have produced a lot of great players (especially African-born players from former French colonies) over the last few years. Plus Lyon is the home of French gastronomy. If you’re a coq au vin-loving foodie geek, this is the team for you.

Werder Bremen
Werder Bremen is always a team to watch out for in the Champions League. Even though they no longer have Miroslav Klose, they’re usually pretty tough to beat. And German fans are known for bringing a great atmosphere to the games. I love this description on the team’s Wikipedia page: “Werder Bremen is also known for its level-headed environment. In contrast to many other cities, where the local sides are often subject to intense media attention, players and trainers here are usually left in relative peace. Bremen’s reputation is that of a sensible, respected and financially healthy club.” So if you’re turned on by respectful disagreement and balancing your checkbook, this is the team for you!

Ajax
It’s pronounced “I-yax” not like the stuff you use to clean your toilet bowl. Also they’re from Amsterdam, so like…. WEED DUDE. YEAHHHHHH. Ajax is one of the most successful clubs in the sport’s history (though has struggled a bit in recent years) and has produced a metric fuck-ton of legendary players. Their fans do seem to have a Jew-fetish that could possibly be much more creepy than it is endearing… I’ll let you decide! (Gawd Europeans get into some weird shit. I mean, really.)

Arsenal
A London-based team coached by a stern, brilliant Frenchman, and stocked with a mix of awesome French-African players and Euro prodigies. This team plays very exciting football that’s sometimes a bit too fucking cute for its own good. But they have a cool name and are the favorite team of Nick Hornby. They have legit shot at winning the Premiership in any given year and yet somehow manage not be complete fuckos like Man U and Chelsea.

Villarreal
I fucking love these guys even though the only Spanish words I know are “tacos al pastor.” They’re nicknamed “El Submarino Amarillo,” which even my stupid ass can figure out means “The Yellow Submarine,” which is just a fantastic sports nickname. WE WILL SINK YOUR BATTLESHIP, FUCKFACE. I love it. They come from the tiny city of Vila-Real and yet regularly compete with the much bigger Spanish clubs like Real and Barca. They always play a very attacking style, too. Bonus: They currently own the rights to American Jozy Altidore (though he’s out on loan to a Turkish team this season).

Olympique Marseille
Marseille is not your typical baguette-munching French pussy-ville. Marseille is a true shit-kicker town. It’s the Oakland or Philadelphia of France. It’s where they shot “The French Connection.” Marseille’s former team president is Bernard Tapie, a lovable rogue improbably described by Wikipedia as “a French businessman, politician and occasional actor, singer, and TV host.” Tapie was forced to resign after being indicted for tax evasion. When I was a student in France, he was appearing in rap videos as a mafia don. Anyway, OM has one of the most passionate local fanbases in the sport and Stade Velodrome is supposed to be one of the best places on Earth to watch a home match. Plus I love their club’s motto, which is sewn right into their jerseys: “Droit au but.” Straight to the goal.

Ballin’ at the MIT Sloan Sports Conference

Right now, some of the brightest minds in Boston aren’t meeting to discuss nuclear research or an exit strategy for Afghanistan, but rather the concept of a “hot” shooter in basketball, whether there is such a thing as team chemistry, and how LeBron James will impact future labor negotiations.

Since 2007, the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference has attempted to bring the most innovative and thoughtful personalities in sports to discuss a wide range of topics. It has grown in popularity each year, mostly thanks to the attention given by perhaps the most famous sportswriter in the country, Bill Simmons. The conference attacks issues present in each sport, but I’m going to focus solely on basketball and some of the more interesting topics brought up.

At this time, the typical NBA fan looks at the box score on ESPN and sees the standard statistical measurements:  Points, rebounds, assists. But anyone who’s watched or played basketball for a long time knows that games are often won not just on big buckets, but on key defensive stops, proper spacing to run plays, or battling for loose balls. If you watch a telecast the announcers will most likely call all these things “intangibles” or “Team A wants it more than Team B.” Of course players are humans, and humans are prone to emotions such as laziness, or an intense desire to compete. But what if teams could quantify effort? What if they could measure how hard a player worked?

We’ll likely never achieve that Holy Grail of analysis but advancements like Adjusted Plus/Minus have shed new light on how lineups are constructed in the NBA and how we measure the effectiveness of so-called “specialists” like Shane Battier or Bruce Bowen. Instead of looking at numbers in a vacuum, we’re now seeing more teams embracing context This sounds rather simplistic, but both the people who run the sports teams and those who write about them for a living are notoriously slow to adapt.

Another interesting debate rose out of Malcolm Gladwell’s famous “10,000 hours” theory in relation to falling star Tracy McGrady, who at one time was one of the most dynamic players the league had ever seen. His former coach Jeff Van Gundy suggested that McGrady was somehow too skilled for his own good, which led to a decrease in practice time. In contrast, the practice habits of Ray Allen were brought up. The all-time leader in 3-point field goals made obviously spends a lot of time practicing jumpshots. But did you know that Allen practices so much that he’s capable of taking 1,000 jumpers at the exact same release point?

The most exciting (I use that term loosely) development for me was a presentation made by Sandy Weil. A number of NBA teams have enlisted the services of a company called STATS, LLC. They install a number of high-tech, 3D cameras in various arenas, which are then capable of capturing every movement on the basketball court and the exact location of each player. Spacing is key in basketball, whether it’s getting enough separation from a defender to take a jumpshot or creating passing lanes for cutters. This obviously affects the percentages of shot attempts, and not surprisingly the less space a player has to operate the less efficient he will be.

Another interesting find with these cameras is that the efficiency of catch-and-shoot (the bread8and-butter play of guys like Ray Allen and Reggie Miller) is much higher than almost every other shot. So while isolation-heavy guys like Carmelo Anthony earn a ton of superstar accolades, he isn’t necessarily an elite player because the bulk of his scoring comes in less than ideal situations (obviously he’s still really damn good). Also, shot attempts earlier in the shot clock go in at a higher percentage than those that come later. This correlates well with teams that force a lot of turnovers or play at a fast pace (Boston, Golden State, Phoenix).

The potential of this technology is vast. Teams could start charting shot percentages for their players in every situation and tailoring plays that maximize their strengths. For example, Warriors guard Monta Ellis is primarily thought of as a high-volume scorer who lacks traditional point guard skills. But shot attempts off his passes have a 60% success rate, so while he may not have great vision he is capable of breaking down defenses and creating good looks for his teammates. This is obviously just the surface of what was covered, but obviously without attending it’s hard to fully grasp the complexity of a lot of the topics. But it’s an exciting time for sports, or at the very least sports nerds.

Sex, Honor, and Basketball at BYU

BYU’s Brandon Davies, a 6’9″ 235-lb starting forward for the top five-ranked Cougars has been suspended for the remainder of the season for violating BYU’s strict Honor Code. Davies admitted to Brigham Young University officials that he and his girlfriend engaged in pre-marital sex. The suspension, announced Wednesday, will include the post-season conference and NCAA tournaments.

Davies had been averaging 11.2 points and 6.1 rebounds this year this for the Cougars and was a major force behind their 27-2 record and possible number-one seed in the tournament as well as a potential run to the Final Four. All that is in jeopardy now.

Thursday night, New Mexico dismantled the Cougars, 84-62, a possible sign of trouble to come for the suddenly undermanned BYU squad. Live by the Honor Code, die by the Honor Code.

“This is who we are, and most people that come to this school, hopefully all, understand that it is one of the reasons they come to BYU,” said Tom Holmoe, BYU’s Athletic Director, at a news conference following the suspension. “We understand that people across the country might think this is foreign to them, and might be shocked or surprised. But we deal with this quite often.”

The BYU Honor Code is a forbidding list of restrictions that every BYU student agrees to upon becoming a student. The Code applies to both Mormon and non-Mormon students.

“We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men,” the Code states. “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things, the Honor Code states. It continues:

    • Be honest
    • Live a chaste and virtuous life
    • Obey the law and all campus policies
    • Use clean language, respect others
    • Abstain from alcoholic beverages, tobacco, tea, coffee, and substance abuse
    • Participate regularly in church services
    • Observe the dress and grooming standards
    • Encourage others in their commitment to comply with the Honor Code

      Although it may seem Draconian, at least one observer of college ethics supports BYU’s handling of the situation. “I give the school credit,” Donald McCabe was quoted as saying in The Salt Lake City Tribune. McCabe is a professor of business and writer on issues affecting higher education. “They laid out their rules, they were violated and they stuck to their guns. The student was forewarned and he knew what the penalty would be, and he took his chances.”

      While no definitive reports have yet surfaced as to how Davies was turned in to authorities, or even if he turned himself in, a variety of sources on Friday released the name of his girlfriend, Danica Mendivil, a volleyball player at Arizona State University, and like Davies, a native of Utah.  Early reports indicated Mendivil might be pregnant, which her family has since denied.

      Davies is part of a very small African-American contingent of blacks in the LDS church. As recently as 1978 the last formal bans were lifted against African-Americans who wanted to serve as bishops or in other LDS church leadership positions. Davies was born in Philadelphia and adopted by a white Mormon family who raised him in Provo as a member in good-standing of the LDS church.

      While no hard data is available, church observers have said African-Americans comprise less than one percent of LDS church membership.

      Image here.

      Whether Davies’ punishment was more severe because of the interracial nature of his and Mendivil’s relationship will remain speculative, but this is the second major Honor Code violation in two years to rock BYU athletics.

      In 2010, the Cougars’ all-time leading rusher Harvey Unga was kicked off the football team and withdrew from school for having a sexual relationship with Keilani Moeaki, a BYU women’s basketball player.

      Is this the world’s best boxer?

      Meet Nonito Donaire. He’s currently the WBO and WBC bantamweight world champion and is a rare fighter who’s won titles in three different weight classes. He may also be the greatest pound-for-pound fighter alive right now and you should root for him.

      First of all, his name is fun to say (it’s pronounced doe-nye-ree). Also, he’s an American. Well, actually he was born in the Philippines but moved to the Bay Area as a kid and has lived there ever since. I suggest we can claim him as our own. After all, I can’t even remember the last great American to fight in the 118-pound weight class. (Yeah, seriously. This dude is 118 pounds and has a serious knockout punch.)

      Here’s his KO of Fernando Montiel two weeks ago. I love it. Montiel looks like he’s about to wake up, Inception-style.

      According to Ring Magazine, Donaire is now the third best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. He’s behind only Pacquiao and Mayweather. I know, I thought Mayweather retired years ago, too. (Shrug.)

      It now looks like the Filipino Flash (not the greatest nickname ever, but it’ll do) will fight Anselmo Moreno, the WBA bantweight champ sometime in May on HBO. The consensus is that this would be a very good fight.

      Here’s a great video of Flash Donaire toying with former IBF Flyweight champion Vic Darchinyan.

      So if you’re a casual fan, keep an eye on Flash Donaire. You can follow him on Twitter here.

      Are You Smarter Than a Football Player?

      I have spent much of the past two days in front of the television watching sturdy and well-formed young men run around an empty stadium in Indianapolis dressed in nothing but skin-tight biker shorts and muscle shirts. I haven”t seen so many bulges since that morning at the Provincetown Pride Parade. But that’s a story for another day. No, I’m not watching Spring Break on the Logo Channel, it’s the NFL Network. That can only mean one thing, America. It’s Combine Week in the NFL.

      The NFL Combine is basically an audition for hundreds of prospective NFL football players. These are incoming players, eligible for the draft for the first time. They run, throw, block, hop, skip, jump and do everything but sing show tunes in front of scouts and coaches from all 32 NFL teams and a national television audience. Off the field, players are examined by doctors, interviewed by general managers and taken apart mentally by staff psychologists. Last year in a notorious Combine moment, wide receiver Dez Bryant of Oklahoma State was asked by Miami Dolphins General Manager Jeff Ireland if it was, in fact, true that his mother was a prostitute. Ireland, who later apologized, was either looking for a quick lay after the session ended or just wanted to see how Bryant reacted to sudden stress.

      For the average football fan who is not actually going to make any selections in the upcoming draft , the Combine is at once as dull as watching articial turf grow and as fascinating as brain surgery. Hour after hour, day after day, 300-lb linemen defy several laws of physics and run 40 in 5 seconds, 200-lb running backs lift twice their weight 18 consecutive times and quarterbacks throw perfect spirals all the way to Chicago.

      But the most intriguing part of the Combine is, sadly, not on television. The good stuff takes place behind the scenes in closely guarded classrooms, where players are given a raw intelligence test called the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test, written, scored and evaluated by the Wonderlic Corporation of Vernon Hills, IL.

      In today’s ultra-competitive business environment, thousands of employees in a variety of professions have at some point taken a Wonderlic-type test as a condition of employment. It makes sense if the applicant is a CPA or a HVAC repair-person. A business wants to know it’s not hiring Paris Hilton. But what does an IQ-style test have to do with the physical ability and the commensurate willingness to remove a quarterback’s head from his shoulders in the hopes of gaining a Wild Card berth or gain one extra yard only to have James Harrison drive his rocket-fuel-propelled body into your chest, sending you hurtling into the club seats. The heart and motivation to sacrifice self for team cannot be measured on a 50 item multiple-choice test.

      Indeed, a major academic study completed at the University of North Carolina in 2007 concluded there was no correlation between high Wonderlic scores and success in the NFL. So why take this test at all? Who knows–why take the SAT? Perhaps the problem is that football is just asking the wrong types of intelligence questions. The Wonderlic’s questions are fairly straightforward, by-the-book IQ type questions, such as:

      • A train travels 20 feet in 1/5 second. At this same speed, how many feet will it travel in three seconds?
      • When rope is selling at $.10 a foot, how many feet can you buy for sixty cents?
      • The ninth month of the year is…

      You can take an entire sample test here.

      Despite its reputation as a Neanderthal ThugFest, football at its highest levels is by far our brainiest and most intellectual game. It’s true that baseball players are frequently required to both scratch their balls and spit tobacco at the same time. And then guess curveball. But that’s pure hand-eye coordination–as is having the innate ability to consistently miss your shoe with your spit.

      Basketball and hockey are mostly athleticism, grit and instinct. And yes, the very best players see the game as it will be three seconds from now not as it is in our reality. That is more than raw intelligence for a sport–it is a gift of timing, intuition and physical creativity. Kinisthetic and athletic geniuses like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Kobe Bryant literally play a different game than we do.

      But football is on a whole other level when it comes to complexity.  A typical play call on offfense might be:

      • “Scatter-Two Bunch Right-Zip-Fire Right-273-Pivot-F Flat.”
      • “Duece Right 19 Slot on 1 and Dice Right Ice Cream Alert 654 Jose”
      • “Trips Right 255 X Block Slant H Disco Alert 12 Trap”

      If you are a quarterback, a position which only a kind of football savant can play, not only do you have to know your play and know where all your backs, linemen and wideouts will be and when they will be there, but you also must determine what the defense is doing. And this despite the defense doing everything it can to disguise its intentions.

      And the incoming and data must be processed and communicated to ten co-workers in less than 30 seconds, again and again, under extreme physical and mental pressure in a setting where the decibel level is often as high as at a Clash concert. All this and it suddenly seems a 50 question IQ test is not enough. If you’re going to be my quarterback, I’m going to want transcripts, letters of recommendation from your sophomore English professor and that research paper you did on the Civil War. Oh, and I’ll need your Calc final.

      Most of all, I’m gonna want to see how you react when I ask if it’s true you’re sister’s a whore while we’re both standing on train tracks at high noon with the Acela bearing down from the east, Ray Lewis coming from the west, and Larry Fitzgerald open down the road for six easy points. And right now you’re down to four seconds to figure out how long ago the Acela left Detroit. Do all that correctly and a hundred million dollar, seven-year deal is yours. And I’ll tell you I was just kidding about your sister.

      Photo here.

      Our National Nightmare is Over – Carmelo Now One of Three Remaining Knicks

      Praise LeBron. The story that refused to go away, sort of like Brett Favre but with players that weren’t washed up and likely to thwart their team’s best Super Bowl run in 12 years, is now over.

      Dikembe and the Technicolor Dreamjersey will look great on Lady Mutombo.

      Carmelo Anthony, whose wooing of and by the New York Knicks has been the center of attention all season in the NBA, is finally with his beloved team. His time with the Denver Nuggets was nearing an end anyway, so trading him made perfect sense for George Karl and co. Even considering the Knicks got a top 10 talent in ‘Melo, it seems like they gave up an awful lot to get him. Consider the concessions the Knicks had to make to get the deal done:

      • Parting with six players – Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, Timofey “Opulence, I has it” Mozgov, Anthony Randolph’s rap sheet, and the ghost of Eddy Curry
      • Shipping three draft picks and $6 million
      • Forcing Spike Lee to wear a Nuggets hat whenever Denver plays in New York
      • Knitting a huge throwback Nuggets jersey for the Statue of Liberty Statue of Mutombo complete with Dikembe’s voice repeating “WHO WANTS TO SEX MUTOMBO?” on a loudspeaker
      • 33rd St renamed Colfax Avenue and only hybrids and 4x4s are aloud to drive on it
      • Mark Sanchez now has to name his first born son with that 17 year old girl John Elway Denver Sanchez
      Stan, one of the other Knicks under contract in 2012.

      Assuming Carmelo signs a max extension, the Knicks currently have exactly four players under contract after next season – Carmelo and Amar’e Stoudemire (each making around $20 million), and two guys from the Bronx named Stan (making approximately $15/hr). Much like the NFL’s current labor troubles explained excellently by my colleague here, Stop Crying, There Will Be an NFL Season (Maybe),” the NBA is about to have a labor showdown of their own. The result will most likely be a much lower salary cap and much less flexibility for teams with multiple high-earners.

      Will it work out? Eh, maybe. It makes the Knicks completely relevant again (at least for the rest of this season and maybe next) but the window is short. Gambles like this almost always work out better for the superstar’s new home than their old one, but this may be the one case where the Nuggets got the better end of the deal.

      DUI Stops Tiger in His Tracks

      24 comments

      Three days after his epic DUI arrest, hard-drinking slugger Miguel Cabrera was a no-show as the Detroit Tigers opened spring training workouts for the entire club today. It’s unclear when, or even if, Cabrera will join his teammates this spring in Lakeland, FL, according to The Detroit Free Press and a number of other sources. Cabrera is expected to enter an alcohol rehabilitation center within the next several days, which could keep him away from baseball until just before the start of the regular season in early April. But Tigers management and Cabrera’s teammates were more concerned about Cabrera the person than Cabrera the ballplayer and today and universally voiced support and concern for their missing teammate.

      “He’s going to be welcomed here with open arms by his teammates,” Tigers skipper Jim Leyland said to reporters. “And they’re going to want to see him hit that ball over the right-centerfield fence with two men on, and he’s going to do that.”

      Cabrera, a native of Venezeula, was arrested on suspicion of DUI in Fort Pierce, FL late Wednesday night as he was making his way to spring training from his winter home in Boca Raton. Cabrera, driving a black 2005 Range Rover–a definite undercar for a guy who signed a $153 million contract in 2008–was pulled over by a St Lucie County deputy who saw the SUV swerving through traffic. Arresting officer Deputy Peter Lamborghini–yes, that’s his name– wrote in his arrest report that Cabrera not only declined a breathalyzer test, wandered frequently onto the road and refused several requests to get in the back seat of the officer’s car, but at one point Cabrera also reached into his own car and “picked up a bottle of James Buchanan’s scotch whiskey and started drinking it.” Well, why not? It’s not like he was going to be driving anymore that night.

      Cabrera, notes the police report, also pulled the Fame Card and and at one point said to Deputy Lamborghini, “Fuck you…do you know who I am.” While no audio has yet been released of the arrest, almost certainly the exchange sounded more like “Faaaaa uuuuu, nooooo who ayemm?” Excellent work by the deputy translating Drunk English into Standard English so quickly.

      In October 2009, Cabrera was arrested, but never charged, on a domestic disturbance report at his home in suburban Detroit. His blood alcohol content was .26 when measured by police after being taken into custody. Cabrera reportedly went through an alcohol counseling outpatient program following the 2009 season. No off-the-field incidents involving Cabrera occured in 2010, a season in which he hit .328 with 38 home runs. The Tigers still owe Cabrera over $100 million.

      Photo: Flickr

      Stop Crying, There Will Be an NFL Season (maybe)

      11 comments

      Since labor troubles in 1987 cancelled one game and saw replacement players in NFL uniforms, labor issues have been minor compared to the other major American sports leagues. The NBA, NHL, and Major League Baseball have all seen seasons cut short (or cancelled altogether) as a result of labor strife. Now the NFL is facing a real possibility of losing games in 2011.

      Cigars and brandy, NFL Owners' second biggest expense after player salaries

      The main issue in labor talks is how to split up the reported $9 billion in revenue the league and its teams take in each year. Under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the first $1 billion off the top belongs to the team owners. Of the remaining revenue, 60% goes toward player salaries while the balance goes to the owners and team expenses. The owners claim that rising costs are directing most of the profits toward the players, and that they should receive a bigger portion of the $9 billion. Some of their proposals involve increasing their primary allocation from $1 billion to $2 billion and reducing the 60% of the excess revenue that goes to the players. Their position is that they no longer want to pay the players as much as they are.

      There is a key bargaining difference between “not wanting to pay” and being “unable to pay”, and that’s a main sticking point for the NFL Players Association. If the owners came to the bargaining table and claimed they could not afford to pay the players, the NFLPA would have a legal to right to examine owners’ financials. NFL owners, however, have claimed that general economic difficulties are resulting in an overall strain on profits. Essentially, they’re saying “We can pay you that much, we just don’t want to.” Under established labor law, the NFLPA has no rights to see team financial statements if this is the case. Players do have audit rights, but owners are only obligated to show them team revenues and not expenses.

      So what happens now?

      Many expect that an agreement will not be reached before the current CBA expires on March 3rd, and the owners will lock out the players shortly thereafter. This will affect the off-season in a number of ways until a deal is reached:

      Some owners have even sent their kids in to negotiate with players.
      • The NFL draft will still happen in late April, but teams will not be able to sign their draft picks, trade draft picks that involve a current NFL player, or sign undrafted rookies. The teams will essentially pick their guy and then wait until a new CBA is hashed out.
      • Free agents are out of luck. Players whose contracts have expired cannot sign with another NFL team while players are locked out. They could go play for a team in another league like the CFL or UFL.
      • Players under contract will not be paid, and (most likely) could not play for another league. Teams could not bar a player from working at all, but could possibly bring legal action if a player participated in another football league. During the NHL’s cancelled 2004-05 season, many players went to Europe and played professionally there, and owners had no issues. NFL owners have already stated they might.
      • Head coaches will most likely be paid during a lockout, but their assistants most likely will not be. Coaches’ contracts are written differently from those of players and assistants, and most will continue to receive full salaries even if no football is played.

      The implications become much greater if a deal still hasn’t been reached in August, when teams are ramping up for the regular season. A shortened pre-season or regular season would be the most innocuous result. Replacement players have and can be used if the owners want to stage the games.

      Players are preparing for the lockout. Tom Brady replaced his dog's bed of hundred dollar bills with twenties.

      The worst possible scenario is one where a deal still hasn’t been reached well into the fall which results in a cancelled season and no Super Bowl.

      In any labor negotiation, both sides want to feel like they stood up for their constituents and fought as hard as they could. This is the main reason why a deal most likely won’t be done before August. Any conclusion before then will make it look like one side gave in and let the other side win. I wouldn’t expect a deal before August or September with the most likely effect being a shortened season. In the end, I think the billionaires will win out over the millionaires, owners will get their concessions, and the game will go on.

      In the meantime, most fans (yours truly included) will continue to freak out about the possiblity of no NFL in 2011. I don’t even want to think about all the time I spend watching NFL network in the summer hearing about how my favorite players have been arrested or showed up to camp overweight. The thought of having to work after 2pm on Fridays and Tuesdays, key times for fantasy football owners, frightens me more than birds do. (And I REALLY hate birds.) But most devastatingly, the thought of spending Sundays at home instead of at a bar watching the Vikings sends chills down my spine. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but COME ON.

      Let’s all just hope that this gets worked out and such fears aren’t realized. If August is on our calendars and labor issues remain, we’ll circle back and figure out what the hell to do with our lives.

      Your College Rivalry is a Cotillion Compared to Auburn-Alabama

      108 comments

      Are you one of those people who leaves a football game in the fourth quarter if it’s raining, or if your team is up by four touchdowns, or you want to beat the traffic, or you’re just generally kind of feeling like a pansy that day? If so, you are not qualified to be a University of Alabama fan. In fact, I hope you never meet any Alabama fans, because they would sense the pansy in you and eat you for lunch. Perhaps literally.

      Yesterday, Auburn University announced that the two giant oak trees at historic Toomer’s Corner have been poisoned and will likely not survive, which comes two weeks after an Alabama fan who identified himself only as “Al from Dadeville” called in to Paul Finebaum’s radio show (which is a whole different circus of insanity that I encourage you to explore on your own time) and claimed to have administered a lethal dose of herbicide to the trees following the Crimson Tide’s defeat in the Iron Bowl. Since Al from Dadeville is an Alabama fan, he obviously didn’t claim responsibility by using such big words, but you get the idea.

      Trees might not seem like a big deal to the uninitiated, but they’re central to the most Auburn-y of Auburn football traditions: Rolling Toomer’s Corner with toilet paper after a victory. Killing the trees at Toomer’s Corner is akin to a Michigan fan blowing up The Horseshoe and then pissing on the rubble or an Oklahoma fan shooting Bevo in the head and butchering him for steaks. Not only is it a drastic act of crazed fandom (and, it must be noted, sore-loserdom), but it’s also at least vaguely illegal; the FBI has opened an investigation because the poison used to kill the trees may have seeped into Auburn’s groundwater. Al from Dadeville potentially succeeded into sorta-poisoning not just the trees but the whole town, the prospect of which I can only imagine would make him nothing less than sexually excited.

      The Great Toomer’s Tree Tragedy marks the second time in the past six months that an FBI investigation has rubbed up against the Auburn-Alabama football rivalry (the first involved dog track impresario and Auburn booster Milton McGregor and his possible financial involvement with some guy named Cameron Newton, a young man of whom I have certainly never heard and on whom I would cast nary an aspersion), clearly setting some sort of asinine fan-scandal record for American sports. We all have a lot of catching up to do in order to be the kinds of fans who commit not just regular felonies, but federal offenses for our teams of choice.

      As a Georgia fan and somewhat impartial third party, I’m not really sure where I stand. My first thought was, “Sounds like something an Auburn fan would do,” which is perhaps even more telling when you consider the fact that my sainted mother is an Auburn alumna. And really, the only way that an Alabama fan could have cut further to the core of the Auburn fanbase would have been to hide Cam Newton’s Crest WhiteStrips. Killing the trees could have been an act of vicious brilliance if Al from Dadeville had only found it within himself to let them die silently, but like the moron he most surely is, he had to call in and claim ownership for the Crimson Tide. If a redneck sports fan does something rash and doesn’t document it on sports talk radio, does it still count? Of course not.

      Which means that the real endgame of this whole debacle is not that the historic trees are about to be actual history, but that Auburn has a free shot at Alabama, one which surely no one will begrudge them, and Auburn fans can take that shot on as grand a scale as they see fit. Mostly because Alabama deserves it, but also partly because they’re already Auburn, the Dick Cheney of modern college football, so no one will be surprised when they retaliate. If I were them, I’d start trying to figure out some way to sell Nick Saban into white slavery immediately.

      UPDATED: The man arrested this morning for the tree murders, Harvey Almorn Updyke, has children named Crimson and Bear. You cannot make this shit up. He was also never an Alabama student and has never been a season ticket holder.

      Earlier: Trees at Toomer’s Corner poisoned via ESPN.com