Michael Phelps and the media effect

I go back and forth on this Michael Phelps pot story. One, I think the fact that all the media reports were a direct cause of the sponsors dropping out. I don’t think Kellogg was planning on tossing him within a few days of the photos coming out (rather, perhaps quietly not using him in the next campaign), but, when there’s an avalanche of “what companies who ‘value their image’ will drop Phelps” articles, they pulled the trigger. This is a particularly interesting story because it combines the question of legality of marijuana, the problems with privacy on the internet, sports and the almighty dollar.

I’m sure I could just look this up on the internet, but I never quite understand why it’s okay for someone to get photographed smoking weed, or go on Letterman and talk about smoking weed all the time, or how every interview with Lil’ Wayne mentions him smoking weed continuously throughout, and nobody ever gets prosecuted or questioned for that. Why are you allowed to admit breaking the law (if it’s weed, obviously you can’t go on Conan and be like “I killed somebody!”) on air. I think it has to do with the fact that marijuana is one of those “don’t get caught and you’re okay” laws. But anyway, he’s 23. He’s a kid months away from his competition and he’s at a party. GOD FORBID he uses weed every once in a while. He clearly isn’t a heavy smoker considering his athletic achievements. He owned up for it right away.

It’s also running into the equally fun topic of privacy in the facebook era. I haven’t cleaned up my facebook profile much and am friends with many of my coworkers and boss now that I’m in my first “real” office post-college job. I try to remove any photos where it looks like I’m having TOO much “fun”, but besides that, I didn’t try to change my profile information to make me look more professional (of course, it’s not like I ever had “Pineapple Express” in as a favorite movie, so maybe it’s me). I don’t think this is an area that’s going to be a problem long-term. Older people are going to have to remember back to their twenties and realize they were doing the EXACT same things (and, considering a lot of people’s bosses were coming up in the seventies, they were probably doing WORSE things, but there weren’t digital cameras and facebook to make it easy for everyone and their mom, literally, to know about them).

Anyway, like many of my posts, this doesn’t have a central theme. My final thought on this is that I am pleased how many editorial pieces have come out and said “Stop with this crap… he’s 23, this is minor, we need to sort out marijuana legislation across the country and settle this”. Hopefully all this stupidity about Phelps will help move us forward. There’s a lot more significant things to focus on.

Watching the guys grow up

I’m back living in Boston again, I came home to California for a few months and started my job but have moved back to work the same job out of an office out here – one bonus with that is being much closer to “good” pro sports teams. We’re in a pretty big drought in the Bay Area right now, so it’s nice to be in a town where people never expect to lose a game. That being said, this could be a very ugly rest of the season for the Patriots unless they turn something around – the offense looked bad but the defense looked bad and old – not a good combination.

Anyway, it was a fun day to watch football and reflect on all the people at Boston College I followed during my four years there and watch them make it into the big leagues. It’s an interesting school because it’s produced a pretty fair number of quarterbacks and linemen in the NFL, and it’s starting to have more success in the NBA as well, not to mention Hockey. What’s maddening to me is that if Tyrese Rice somehow gets drafted in the first round next summer, our basketball team my sophomore year would have been starting four first-round NBA draft picks (Rice, Sean Williams, Jared Dudley, and Craig Smith), and yet somehow we didn’t make it out of the Sweet Sixteen. Oh well. We’re not ever going to have a real stud in the NBA, but we’ll have some decent spot-starters.

The NFL is different – stars can come from anywhere. I’m not going to pretend for a second Matt Ryan is a sure-fire thing, but he’s sure played great so far. He threw an absolute bomb today seventy yards, and he’s on a team that was in complete disarray a year ago and now looks halfway decent. He’s actually got a pretty high potential as well – he’s not mobile, but he’s got an arm, he’s got guts and he’s smart with the ball. There’s going to be some more ups and downs this year – 2 and 1 looks great now but they’d be lucky to win seven games total. But hey, I bought a Matt Ryan Falcons jersey a few days after he got drafted, so I’m hoping for the best.

Sports are more fun when you’re actively pulling for the players because you have a school connection with them – I guess that goes for more than just athletics, people are always looking for fellow alumni during a job search, and people who see strangers in their school’s colors will often stop them to ask what their connection to the school is. I think there’s a good chance Matt Ryan / Mathias Kiwanuka / Mark Herzlich will be anchors of their respective NFL teams for years to come. Go Eagles.

Brett Farve needs to be stopped

As I write this Brett Farve is seeking his release from the Green Bay Packers. Depending on who you ask, he almost came back in March soon after his retirement ceremony but then changed his mind, and now can’t bear to be away from football, but the Packers are offering only a backup role. Good for them. As someone who never played football outside of middle school, I can’t speak on all the sports commentators who say “Nothing can replace that feeling on the field, nothing can replace football… nothing”…. Oh wait, I can speak on that. Shut. Up.

That’s the kind of inane statement that people make when they say college is the best four years of your life. Is it the most care free? Perhaps. Is it the least stressed time? Maybe? Is it great? Can be. Will it be the best four years of your life? That’s for YOU to decide. Football is like everything else is life: a diversion that takes place in between sleeping and eating. I’m sure it’s very exciting to have a lot of people screaming for you and to play well on sunday afternoons. It’s also very exciting to bowl a strike with your best friends in some quiet bowling alley on a tuesday night. Football is a game. It’s an exciting game, it’s a popular game, but, it’s a game. Life is a series of events and activities, and it’s progressive. If Brett Farve can’t live without football, he should evaluate the life he’s living. Playing one more year of football isn’t going to make him any happier or less indecisive next July. It’s not doing the Packers any good – the NFL’s career leader in interceptions tossed a nifty one to the Giants in these playoffs, are we supposed to believe he’s suddenly going to become more careful with the ball as he ages?

If I was the Packers I’d dump him off for some picks to some team. If that means he stays in the division, who cares? Force the fans to decide whether they’re loyal to the organization or to Brett Farve and move on. Play the Vikings a few times with Brett on the other team – you’ll have a hot ticket and give America a reason to care about Wisconsin for a few more hours a year. People get so uppity about loyalty, tradition, fanhood – if that brings you happiness, know that it’s fleeting.

Johnny Damon’s a Yankee. Michael Jordan’s a wizard. Roy Williams coaches at UNC. Elton Brand’s a 76er. Athletes don’t care. They don’t care about you. By the time they get old enough to grow out of that rock-star behavior: cars, houses, women, parties, they’re Brett Farve’s age. That’s when they start to really care about the game and their fans. OH WAIT. They don’t. Brett Farve’s willing to throw Aaron Rodgers under the bus, screw up the Packers a few more years and tarnish his own legacy because he has “the itch”. Enjoy sports as entertainment, because you can’t get too invested in them anymore or you’re going to get burned.

Why this is the best thing that’s ever happened to Pacman Jones

The NFL recently granted Pacman Jones limited reinstatement into the NFL and he’s been participating in practices with the Dallas Cowboys who acquired his services for a pittance. I was watching the ticker on ESPN yesterday to see it excitedly proclaim “Jones returned interception 80 yards for touchdown in practice”. Wow! An eighty-yard pick-six in a June practice? Can I vote for him for the Pro Bowl yet?

This suspension gained Pacman Jones the kind of attention and notoriety that most players dream and play for. He already clearly wanted attention, being known for walking around on weekends wearing his OWN jersey out to clubs, and the fateful night of the strip club shooting he decided to join the rapper on stage throwing his money out into the club in order to “make it rain” on the crowd.

But since this incident and his suspension for the entire 2007 season he’s received a wildly inordinate amount of attention to his playing career and ability. This is a guy who’s had four interceptions in two years in the league, has forced one fumble and has one sack. He’s returned a few touchdowns as the return man, but behind Brett Farve we haven’t heard more about any other player in this offseason.

In 2006, Pacman Jones finished the season with 62 tackles, four interceptions, a sack, a forced fumble, and no touchdowns.  

In 2006, Raiders Cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha finished the season with 50 tackles, eight interceptions, a sack, a forced fumble and one touchdown.

In 2007 Nnamdi Asomugha was so well regarded by opponents that opposing quarterbacks only threw the ball to his man 31 times ALL SEASON and only ten of those passes were caught. Pacman Jones didn’t set foot on the field because of his off-field problems.

So why are we all over Pacman Jones? The sports media creates so many awful self-perpetuating stories that never die. It’s pretty well documented that cornerbacks don’t make a defense anyway and that the current wave of large contracts for them is fruitless (this hurts me as a Bay Area fan to see Nate Clements here for the 49ers @ $80 million and DeAngelo Hall here for the Raiders @ $70 million). Who cares about this guy? The Cowboys are going to win games if they can eliminate their offensive mistakes, not if Jones can duplicate his 2006 year and create a a turnover once every four games and score one pick-six touchdown for the Cowboys who averaged more than 28 points a game. The performance of a great cornerback is negligible to the success of a team and Pacman Jones doesn’t stand apart on his own. It’d be nice if someone could reset the entire Sports media at once because I feel like everyone reports on stories like Pacman and random Brett Farve news simply because everyone else is doing it too. Let’s all move on.

Where Bad Advertising Happens

I think that the NBA’s “where amazing happens” campaign has been very well done, the music, “Everyday” by Carly Comando, that quite and emotional piano background really makes for a dramatic event. It’s certainly generated plenty of one-liners in commentary and in the newspapers, “Joakim Noah: Where Discontent Happens”, and so on, but I think that the current long ads across the scoring table are a mess. They have a countdown of the numbers 16-1, with an NBA trophy at the end (also serving as the number one). As time has gone on in the playoffs, the numbers have been crossed out, theoretically corresponding with the number of teams remaining….

Except that’s not the case, watching Game 4 of the Celtics-Pistons series there’s seven numbers remaining on the ad. What is that? There were seven teams left in the playoffs in between May 13th when the Magic were eliminated and the 16th when the Jazz were knocked out. Meanwhile it’s May 26th and it stays like that. It’s just one of those annoying background things that I know people notice and perhaps just wonder about (sort of like every person I’ve been sitting next to when an ad for the new Incredible Hulk movie comes on “Didn’t this come out already?” referring to the movie from years ago… that movies in for a grade-a tanking. The NBA: Where clever concepts in advertising are ruined by lousy execution.

Doc Rivers & The Celtics: The Worst Best Team Ever

I just finished watching the Celtics alternatively playing great and pathetic basketball in game three of the Eastern Conference Finals.  They are wildly frustrating to watch, as they alternate between great and awful seemingly at will throughout the year, playoffs, games, even in the span of two possessions. It’s classic for Boston fans – I believe that they’d much rather have a team as schizophrenic as the Celtics just in terms of being able to talk about them and obsess about them. A team like the Spurs wouldn’t be nearly so popular at this point in Boston – sure, they’re winning but where’s the excitement? In a town where the Sox are first, the Pats are second and the Celts third, just winning one title isn’t enough, they need to be interesting enough and agonizing enough that people follow them, and they’re certainly doing it right now. I wouldn’t be the least surprised if this series goes seven games again, and every extra game more fans tune in and watch.

Of course, this erratic style of play and wildly inconsistent effort falls on the coaching. I can’t believe the Celtics kept Doc Rivers as the coach after last season, because the only thing he seems to have going for him is that the players like him. I think the biggest problem that plagues Boston is the point guard play and that falls squarely on Rivers. Most of the playoffs Rajon Rondo has had wide open looks and dribbles around in and around the key uncontested but won’t shoot. His backup, Sam Cassell has the opposite problem because he doesn’t seem to understand that he doesn’t get credit for the assists as the point guard if the only pass on the entire play is from the guy inbounding the ball to him. Eddie House wasn’t the best ball handler, but he was more than capable as a distributor as Rondo’s backup until Cassell ended up in Boston. He is a more than suitable compromise between Rondo’s meek offensive presence and Cassell’s “big shot Sam”, because he would force the other team to guard him (where Detroit dares Rondo to shoot and doubles other the people, yet Rondo still won’t take the shot), or Cassell (who continues to play in the NBA only because people have such short attention spans and ignore 90% of his ball-hogging bad shot play for his once-in-a-while lucky three pointer).

I believe it’s mainly coaching more than anything else. Doc Rivers needs to get Rondo to have more confidence: after all, if Ray Allen can shoot as often as he does these playoffs and miss as frequently, why can’t he be an inspiration to Rondo? Rondo can’t possibly shoot worse than Allen who’s less than 39% from the field and 32% from the arc for the playoffs. I know they needed to get Allen in order for Garnett to agree to come to Boston, but I worry that he’s going to become more of a liability over the next few years. He can’t create his own shot and when he’s well defended he fires up off-balance threes without setting up. I can see Pierce or Garnett taking over games for years to come, but I can’t imagine Ray Allen lighting up anyone in the playoffs. 

Bad coaching is also the reason that Glen Davis gets blocked seemingly every time he gets the ball under the rim. I love the hustle, but the guy is shorter than most power forwards and centers he’s playing against and has the vertical leap of Tommy Heinsohn, and it’s hideous to watch him get blocked. He plays hard, and hopefully if he loses some more bulk he’ll be able to sneak his shots in around the defenders but this isn’t working thus far.

I think that Boston will get past Detroit, but I can’t imagine them doing anything against the Lakers. Fisher is a better offensive player than Cassell and a better point guard than Rondo. Kobe Bryant is much better than Pierce, Garnett is much better than Lamar Odom which might even things out, except Pau Gasol will run wild against Boston’s suspect interior defense and Ray Allen, barring him suddenly making his shots won’t force the Lakers to change their game plan.

Now, the Celtics can’t possibly fire a coach who wins 66 games and gets his team to the finals, so Doc Rivers will be back for another campaign next year, but the Celtics are in dire need of a better coach because this team as constructed will only be capable of winning a title for another two seasons.