How nervous are you right about now???  I bet you are shaking in your boots!  It would really suck to go from PowerHouse to Mediocrity!!!  HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Sucks to be you!

Seriously how much are you guys gonna cry when he leaves?  I bet a lot!

Who: J. Tucker

What: Oakland A's Fan

Where: The Bay Area

When: Tues 12:15 p.m. PST

RE:  The A's attempting to sign Adrian Beltre

He is the 2nd FA to turn down more money from the A's to sign with the Red Sox.  Screw Boston, Screw Epstein, Screw Big Papi and his roided out freakishly large melon.  I hope the whole city gets H1N1.
  

More photos » Lori Shepler - AP

Lebron and Mo look terrified by the foam fingers flying on to the court. (AP Photo/Lori Shepler)

Browse more photos »

The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the greatest franchises in all of sports and have won 16 championships in their history, including four in this decade and their most recent coming in last year's NBA Finals.  Since being founded in 1946, the Lakers have missed the playoffs only five times in their entire history. Legendary players like Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, George Mikan, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant among others have donned the purple and gold.  In the history of basketball there are the Celtics and the Lakers and then there is everyone else.  

Usually I write this article on Wednesdays, but I couldn't wait any longer after witnessing the pathetic display put out by Lakers fans on Christmas.

With all the history and success that the Lakers have been a part of, you would think that their fans would have some patience with their team.  Even I was under that until Christmas.  The Lakers hosted the Cavaliers in what was billed as a showdown between the Black Mamba and King James.  The Cavaliers turned in a dominating performance however and were up by double figures for the majority of the second half.  

Heading into the game the Lakers were 23-4.  At halftime they were down by 11 and there were some Lakers fans that actually started booing the team.  The chorus of boos became even louder during the end of the game when it became clear the Lakers would lose.  

Did the Lakers play under par?  Definitely, but how do you boo a team attempting to repeat as champions, that has lost a grand total of five games more than a quarter of the way through the season?  

That wasn't even the worst part.  With the Lakers down 19 with 4:04 left in the fourth quarter and the game all but done, the Staples Center crowd was so pissed by the officials not calling what they felt were fouls that they started throwing foam fingers out on to the court.  Granted the referees definitely missed some calls in this particular game, but how many times do the Lakers get the benefit of every bullshit, ticky tack foul going their way?

You stay classy Los Angeles.

Now before we delve into how throwing foam fingers on to the court for all of forty seconds is the most pussy ass reaction you could have, are you Lakers fans actually complaining about not getting calls?  Give me a break.  This is team that won a championship in 2002 because the referees decided to hand them their Western Conference Finals series against the Kings.  

Now back to the foam fingers.  If you're going to throw a hissy fit over your precious championship-caliber team dropping a game in December and the officials not bailing them out for once, do something a little bit more outrageous than throwing foam onto the court.  If this was in Philly you would see chairs flying from courtside onto the floor and beer pouring down from the rafters.  That would be an actual reaction meriting some kind of attention.  

Continue reading this post »

To be honest I haven't met too many Gators fans and the ones I have met seemed nice enough.  I know a few people that went down to Orlando for the Capital One Bowl a couple of years ago for the Michigan-Florida match-up and said they had a great time and that for the most part Gators fans treated them well.  

The reason most college sports fans hate the Florida Gators has little to do with their fans and more about the combination of their amazing recent success in football and men's basketball and two of the most nauseatingly hyped up college athletes in recent memory; Tim Tebow and Joakim Noah.

I respect that Tebow's a great guy and is one of the great college players of all-time, but I could have done without the close-ups of him during every game followed up by announcers inevitably spending 25 minutes talking about how he's such a winner, how intense he is and how there's never been a leader like him.  Then he had that speech after Ole Miss ran the Gators at the Swamp last year and that was probably the most overplayed segment in the history of sports.  To sum it up imagine every single reason you hate hearing about Brett Favre (i.e. he's a kid out there, he just loves playing, he's a gunslinger etc.) and now you understand why everybody but Gators fans were ecstatic when Alabama stomped on you in this year's SEC Championship and we got to see Tebow cry.  

While I think most of the vitriol towards the Gators related to Tebow stems from the non-stop media coverage of the guy more than anything he ever did, Joakim Noah is a completely different case.  Noah's middle-school antics, the fact that we had to hear about his energy and hustle non-stop during two national championship runs when he wasn't even the best player his team was more than I could bare.  

This guy was an absolute clown what made it worse was how ESPN and the media ate this shit up.  It was as if we were witnessing the de-evolution of mankind in front of our eyes and it was being celebrated and praised as if it was something we should all strive for.  It was bad enough that Florida won back-to-back national championships , but couldn't they have had Al Horford or somebody more human and likeable receive the accolades and attention?  

There's unbridled joy and raw emotion, like Mark Ingram's Heisman speech and then there's that.  The fact that he looks like Sideshow Bob is bad enough, but when you combine it with behavior more often found in our relatives in the ape family it becomes unbearable.  I mean when you can't respond normally during interviews it really makes it hard for anybody to be able to relate to you.

Gators fans take heart in the fact that almost every other college wishes they could duplicate the success you've had in the latter part of this decade in capturing a pair of national titles in football and men's basketball.  I can tell you that my sporting experience is no match for that, but please don't chalk up the hate for your school to plain, old jealousy.  We wish we could win like you guys did, but that's not the main reason we hate you.  You have Tebow, Noah and the media that transformed them into cult figures to thank for that.

I hate the Cowboys.  As a Bills fan that grew up watching two Super Bowl beat downs at the hands of Big D it's hard to not to hate them.  Not only that, but growing up an hour north of New York City, I grew up on a steady diet of Giants and Jets games.  I was too young to even remember that the Giants beat us in a Super Bowl and with the Jets being a division rival I developed a strong affinity to the Giants as my second favorite team.  

Side Note: I was 3 when they lost to the Giants so I have no recollection of that Super Bowl, but during the losses to the Cowboys I was 5 and 6.  I became a Bills fan because I felt bad for them that they got beaten so badly both times by Dallas.

Neither my support for the Bills or the Giants however is the reason why I get such pleasure out of rooting for the Cowboys' misfortune.  What really gets me going on that account is the way Cowboys fans just have a way of exaggerating anything and everything related to their team.

Tony Romo is an all-time great.  The Cowboys are going to win the Super Bowl this year.  Every year we have to hear some bullshit excuses when your team fails to live up to your bloated expectations.  This is then followed up with the usual talk about how next year is going to be different, which it hasn't been for 14 years now.  

Romo is an above average quarterback.  Forget top-5 in the league, the guy is the third best quarterback in his division behind Eli Manning and Donovan McNabb.  

You're team is not a Super Bowl contender and hasn't been since your last playoff win in 1996, so don't act like the Cowboys are the shit.  If they make it to the playoffs this year, which would be surprising, don't make the mistake of hyping them up as some kind of dark horse.  When you have the same exact players and Wade Phillips as your head coach for three years, without adding much significant talent, the results are not going to change.

Also, please stop talking about the tradition that is the Dallas Cowboys.  You're starting sound like an NFL version of Notre Dame fans.  Nobody cares anymore that you won three Super Bowls in the early 90's and we really don't want to hear about those unforgettable teams from the 70's.  

I know how it is to support a perpetually underwhelming team with the fan allegiances.  So for your own sake, just stop being shocked by your team's continued failure, because nobody else is.

via cache.gawker.com

View full size photo »

"Pete Carroll doesn't believe in running up scores he's too good of a person to do that."

 "I suggest your analysis needs to be adjusted because Pete Carroll is one of the greatest people I have ever been lucky enough to even see in my life. How many college coaches can you say spend time with inner city kids mentoring them every month? Are you aware Pete is spearheading "ABetterLA" a charity to help disadvantaged kids?"

"You are an asshole for even suggesting that Pete would stoop low enough to run up the score on a team.  Maybe I should question your credentials as a writer for trying to humiliate such a great man.  You suck asshole. "

Continue reading this post »

Mirror Lake

View full size photo »

Every year, the Thursday night before the Michigan-Ohio State game thousands of students from The Ohio State University (officially the most annoying personalized announcement of what university a player attended given during the Sunday and Monday night football games) jump into Mirror Lake.  Since this tradition takes place in mid-November and it's cold around then many of them drink themselves into a stupor before jumping in.

Well one of the many side affects alcohol has is creating an urgent need to piss every five minutes.  Jumping into a lake after case races and keg stands does not prevent this.  According to a study done by students in the College of Earth Sciences they noted a three degree increase in the temperature of the water over the night and a spike in ammonia levels around 1 AM.  

Sounds like an awesome tradition that I would want to be a part of.  Jumping into a lake with hundreds of other half naked guys relieving themselves of excess Natty Light into a little lake.  Here are some other interesting facts about The Ohio State University.

OH-IO

For those who don't know one of the ways for OSU fans to show their allegiance to their school is for one group of fans to scream OH, followed by another group responding with IO.  This lets us know where they're from in case you didn't know that Ohio State students reside in Ohio.

We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan

They don't care at all about the entire state of Michigan and to show everybody how much they hate Michigan they actually came up with a lyrically imaginative song about it.  

This song has also produced some imaginative covers like the one performed by a group of OSU fans at the 2007 NCAA Championship game.  

Mirror Lake Jump

This actually seemed pretty cool to me until the whole pissing thing came to light.  

Ohio Stadium's rotunda is painted Maize and Blue 

That's right.  In 1922 before the UM-OSU game, Michigan head coach Fielding Yost noticed the tiles in their rotunda were not painted.  He made a bet with then Ohio state coach John W. Wilce, that whoever won that game would have their school's colors painted on the tiles in the rotunda.  Michigan won 19-0 and they are now pained Maize and Blue.  So every Saturday thousands of OSU fans, football players and their marching band walk past this tribute to Michigan.  

The Script Ohio formation performed by the Ohio State Marching Band was actually created by the Michigan Marching Band in 1922.

That's right.  The same year we got to paint their rotunda with our colors we also created the script Ohio formation which they still perform.

Sure Ohio State has won five in row against us, but at least we don't jump into our own piss and call it a tradition.