College players don't play any harder than pros, you fool

I get that some folks like college sports more because of this myth that college students play harder.  I don't know where it came from, but it had to have been started by someone who doesn't understand football. It's a really stupid argument that NFL players aren't playing hard all the time, because you will be killed if you play football at half-speed while everyone else isn't.  You could try to argue that teams collectively decide to slack off, but we've seen that before, too.  It's called the Pro Bowl, and the Pro Bowl sucks.

People really push this idea when it comes to basketball, though.  Personally, I don't buy the fact that pro players don't play hard, because there is no other sensible reason for Kobe Bryant to sweat that much.  If Kobe is sweating like that and not playing hard, I suggest that he see a doctor.  I mean, besides the one about to cut open his shoulder.

Now, if you told me that pro players didn't play hard every night, you might have an argument, and even then, I don't blame the players.  The players aren't slacking off because they're overpaid fat-cats that can't be bothered to entertain the fans.  The players are slacking off because they have to play the Knicks six times.

The NBA season is already an 82 game grind, and you expect these players to bring the same fire that they'd give to Chicago to the Philadelphia 76ers?  The good teams get more of a challenge playing themselves in practice.  Playing the Sixers multiple times is like the morning conference call of basketball games.  It has to be done to make the boss happy, but you're not about to pretend like it's truly necessary.

It's only an expectation because it's believed that Michael Jordan did it.  Oh, Jordan never took a game off.  And he probably didn't, because Michael Jordan is a lunatic.  You saw from his Hall of Fame speech how much trouble he's having adjusting to civilized society, where every perceived slight isn't grounds for some form of revenge.  When regular people do that, they usually need to seek some form of counseling, because making the other person keep shooting half-court shots for two hours until you win (this actually happened) isn't a realistic option.  But let's make Michael Jordan's rare psychosis the standard for NBA players.  Kobe shares this affliction, but you hate Kobe, and right now, he's trying to figure out how to tape up his rotator cuff so he can play next week.  This isn't healthy behavior.

Besides, the NBA season is four times as long as a college season.  Who can't bring it for twenty games?  True, being browbeaten by some redass college coach could be exhausting, but if you're any good, you're only gonna be there for a year or two, anyway.  When you're a 19 year old college player who has agents secretly telling him that he's going in the lottery, and girls sneaking in and out of your dorm room, you're not listening to the coach, anyway.  Play defense? Defense is for suckers.  Carmelo didn't play defense at Syracuse (and it was a zone defense, at that), and he has a $124 million dollar deal.

And that's what it's all about, anyway.  They're not doing this for some mythical love of the game.  This is their audition for the same millions that Carmelo gets.  They don't love the game any more than the pros do.  They just don't have to keep up the illusion as long.

But let these kids have to go on a six game road trip in the middle of a forty game season, through flyover country, against a bunch of schools that even Digger Phelps would struggle to recognize, and see how much effort you get.  John Calipari could offer his players cash bribes on top of their secret signing bonuses and Kentucky still wouldn't show up against Kennesaw State.  Hell, if they did show up against Kennesaw State and beat them by 70, these same folks would complain that Kentucky ran up the score.

So I don't mind if players take a few games off because who cares, they're playing Charlotte.  If Golden State really brought it for four quarters against Charlotte, Charlotte would lose by 200 points and Michael Jordan's anger would make him try to suit up again.

And you shouldn't care, either, because it's not like those games get aired by anyone except NBA TV.

On Marcus Smart, Jeff Orr, and Acting An Ass At Basketball Games

If you taunt, berate, out belittle athletes in games, it says a lot about how you view them. To you, they're not people. They're chattel. Hired entertainment. Dancing monkeys. They don't become real until they come onto the stands. Like Mos Def said, "The hardheaded always gotta feel it to believe it." 

A thorough, well-earned, ass-whooping will end a lot of this. The average fan really doesn't wanna risk the possibility that security will get there before they eat that two-piece.  It's all fun and games until that ass is getting tenderized. I think we all understand that most fans are pussy, even in this shit-talking, rude, and insulting environment we call "America in 2014."  Everybody talks, but almost nobody really wants to back it up, which is part of the reason why gun sales are up.  The threat of backing up shit-talk without a gun would eliminate all but the most "bout that life" fans from getting disrespectful. The people who want to fight would just have to become the hazard of doing business, I guess.

Still, we can't have that. Letting players to go after pieces of shit in the stands is a horrible business plan, because unlicensed dentistry in a public place isn't really a selling point.  No matter how right the player may be (I still think that Dikembe should have been allowed to punch that dude for calling him a monkey), that kind of stuff has to be deterred. Otherwise, players will think that it's normal to run in the stands and people will stop coming to games.  This isn't wrestling, where the fight coming into the stands is a good thing.  Patting the participants on the back will just make you part of the fight.  And the first time a totally innocent fan gets hit by a player, that fan will suddenly own a piece of the team and start making all the stupid trades that you and your friends talk about during flag football.  So what's the solution, then?

There isn't one. I think we all understand that human beings are terrible creatures, most of which don't deserve the basic decency that they think they're entitled to. I work in a field where all I do is deal with entitled, shitty, people who think they're better than me because I have on work boots.  I see it all the time.  You're condescending, arrogant, and rude.  Just look at how you act when you go to a restaurant, or heaven forbid, Wal-Mart.  You don't deserve any kindness, especially after you answered your phone in the movie theater.  Dear People of America: Generally speaking, you're pieces of shit.  Okay, you might not set car bombs, kick puppies, or use the n-word, but those aren't the only things you can do to be considered a terrible person. 

So expecting the paying customer to improve his own behavior is a fool's errand.  The leagues still need to get something in place to deal with this, because it's gotten ridiculous. Basically, the leagues (Really, just the NBA and college basketball, because it's no coincidence that the leagues where the players have weapons also have barriers between players and fans) need to empower players to get fans ejected.

Tell the players that if someone is getting out of line, they can pull a ref to the side, point the person out, the ref will eject the fan, and security will throw him out on his ass.  It should be that simple. I doubt the players would lie on fans, because they've got out things going on, like the game happening around them.  They don't have time to pick out fans to eject so you can confirm your victimization bias.  Truth is, do you know how big of an asshole you have to be to get the attention of someone on the court, let alone make them try to come after you?  And while the players run the risk of identifying the wrong person, after throwing down $1,000 on courtside tickets, the fans standing around the right person will make sure that they stand out.  Watching everybody turn into snitches will be part of the fun of a program like this.

And to get an athlete in the middle of a game so upset that they want to put their hands on you is hard to do.  I know, because I've tried, and I assure you, it takes more than effort and a big mouth.  When I was in college, my friend Mike and I used to sit courtside at our team's basketball games and go in on people.  To us, it was all in fun, but we were assholes, plain and simple.  It got to the point where it was secondary to the game.  We just wanted to insult people.  We felt like we were creating the homecourt advantage that Jackson State desperately needed (because we weren't getting better players any time soon).  And to show how stupid our asses were, we yelled at the referees more than anyone else.  The same referees that could have put us out at any time, and here we are, making fun of their shoes and pants. To their credit, they never reacted, and I know they heard us. 

They should have put us out. I would have. If it had been me, i would have tried to get is banned from the building. What we did was uncalled for.  Fun at the time, because we were stupid 20 year olds, but uncalled for.

So I get why people do it when they're young.  I wouldn't do that now, because I'm mentally well-adjusted.  You're supposed to grow out of this kind of shit, but the people who seem to wind up in these incidents now are all 40 and 50 year old men.  I guess it's empowering to feel like you can yell at these people and they can't do shit, but how emasculated do you have to be in your personal life to think that insulting rich athletes is a healthy outlet?  Who told you your dick was small, Jeff Orr?

Because it isn't about the money that they paid for tickets that makes people feel empowered to act like that.  Hell, we got in free to our games and we were practically standing on the court.  I think that making it about the money paid just gives them an excuse.  No, they're just shitty people.  I bet they treat wait staff at restaurants the same way.  It has nothing to do with the tickets.  There are hundreds of other people in that same section who paid just as much who didn't incite a player to jeopardize his paycheck, scholarship, or legal freedom just for the chance to crack them across the jaw. 

Knowing that, I won't blame Marcus Smart for shoving that asshole, because I've been that asshole. Jeff Orr had that coming, and probably more, just like i did. We can't keep going through life thinking that, just because someone is doing something for us, be it entertaining us or working on our behalf, rich or poor, that we can just treat them with disrespect.  You might think you're above them in that instance, but a fist to the face will put you on the same level real quick.  

Corporate Logos: The Next Big Thing

I can't believe that I'm actually writing about the WNBA. But it's also the first time they've ever been newsworthy.

The WNBA's Phoenix Mercury have decided to replace their team name on their jersey in favor of the team's official sponsor, LifeLock. LifeLock paid $1 million for the right to turn some of basketball's least watched players into moving billboards for identity theft protection. WNBA President Donna Orender called this "an innovation." Because it's not like we haven't seen rampant advertising in America before.

Just like that, some are predicting this to be the next trend for American pro sports. I think that's getting a little ahead of ourselves. The fact of the matter is, more people would watch the D-League over the WNBA if it had a TV deal. The NHL has a greater national profile than the WNBA and the NHL are airing their playoffs on Versus. Everyone knows that the WNBA is in financial trouble and has been since it came out, and will probably continue to be until women start dunking on the regular.

So this "innovative" move really isn't that big of a shocker. It is very likely to catch on in a league where the team that won it's first four titles just folded. And it's only innovative in the sense that it's the first televised professional basketball league in America to do this. Major League Soccer has been doing this since it's inception just to get off the ground, and all European sports do this.

So why wouldn't it catch on here? We already have ads in our video games and sell naming rights to our stadiums, so why wouldn't we just go all the way and have Nike and L23 logos all over our Cleveland Cavaliers jerseys?

First thing I'd say is that no one would buy a basketball jersey that said "Duracell" across the front instead of "Knicks." But it wasn't that long ago when everyone was buying those NASCAR jackets that had corporate logos all over them. Nelly has made a career on rapping about his shoes. And I don't know how well it caught on, but down here in the South, there was/is a trend where people are covering their cars with corporate logos, without any prompting from the companies, presumably because they get off on humiliating their race.

So it would appear that our sports leagues are already prepared for such a transition. Despite being in relatively good financial shape, our leagues will do anything to make a dollar, even making us sit through an Ashlee Simpson halftime show, in a desperate attempt to draw in a more varied audience. Claiming that their teams need a new stadium to fight off competition, when there's only one football team in the state. Really, there is nothing that is beneath a sports team. Logic would dictate that it's a matter of time before "Baby Ruth" replaces "Yankees" on baseball jerseys.

For God's sake, one baseball team let Sony promote "Spider-Man" by putting the logo on its' bases. They have no shame. The only thing stopping this from taking the sports world by storm is that, unlike the WNBA or MLS teams, the team names for NFL, NBA, and MLB teams actually have value.

Corporate ownership, despite the fact that they would eat babies live on the air, if it was profitable for them, value image above all else. And they know that something in Boston is going to burn if they remove the name "Celtics" from their jerseys in favor of the "Sam Adams" logo. I know they bent over and took it when they had to buy tickets to the FleetCenter (now TD Banknorth Garden), but the Celtics have never changed their jerseys. Never.

Conventional numbers can't calculate the PR hit that a team like the White Sox would take for doing something like this. You'd need Pythagoras to come back before you could figure it out.

There's no way that the Knicks or the Bulls or the Browns or the Cowboys would go for it. The leagues didn't start this way, unlike in Europe, where they always had Porsche or Heineken plastered all over them. There isn't a deeply engrained history of outside sponsorship for American teams. Almost all of them were started by rich businessmen and private investors. There was no need to ask GM to sponsor the NBA or NFL or MLB, because the owners made their fortunes by investing in GM to begin with. Or in meatpacking plants. Candy sales. Whatever.

As a result, our sports franchises are brands unto themselves. Realistically, they could sponsor someone else's products. The American pro sports logo just as recognizable, if not more, than any product that's looking to replace it. How many cricket teams do you know that could do that?

Not only that, they'd have to be afraid to lose jersey sales. That's a huge revenue stream for teams. Every year, people shell out up to $300 for authentic jerseys like the ones the players wear, but how quickly are you going to rush out to buy a Kobe jersey that says "Staples"across the front? The best that they can hope for is a small logo off to the side, but making some corporate logo the centerpiece? Not going to happen.

Or at least it shouldn't. If nothing else, it just looks cheap. Just because it's good for Europe doesn't mean it's good for us. Just look at the Reliant Robin.