Blog blast past: Balsillie boarded; the Phoenix Coyotes story few people read

As you know, the bond sale that would keep a NHL hockey team in Glendale, Ariz., has gone awry. Reading back to July 30, 2009, it's not surprising when you realize whose interests the NHL and most politicians are really representing these days.

The NHL really showed Wednesday how as a business, it is a game of TEGWAR, The Exciting Game Without Any Rules.

Jim Balsillie's camp smartly pointed out minutes after he was denied that this had nothing to do with his fitness to be an owner, and that the judge in Arizona said in June that the league would have to show he didn't have the cash. Of course, the nets had already been moved, like a group of kids moving their ball hockey game down the street (which might cheese the judge off, but that is neither here nor there). Bruce Arthur's National Post column pointed out, well, if it wasn't money, then it had be something else, but this is the league that let future felon Boots Del Biaggio into the fold.

Granted, being the person who waits for Canadians to wake up to what Gary Bettman's NHL stands for is like being sent out on a snipe hunt. Please, though, sometime between now and the next labour stoppage, clue in that denying Balsillie, again, really betrays that the NHL always represents its interests to the bitter end. It's just that those interests have nothing to do with the great game of hockey and everything to do with corporate malfeasance that could launch six Naomi Klein screeds and a couple Bruce Cockburn ditties. They won't care you could have three teams in Southern Ontario which would each draw more than the Phoenix Coyotes (with higher ticket prices) until the day when the U.S. economy is really up a creek.

The Coyotes are just a game piece in a scheme where, to quote an alternative weekly said the week Balsillie's bid for the Coyotes became public, a "broke" city is "also trying to line the pockets of some of the wealthiest investment groups in New York City, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi." (Phoenix New Times, May 14.)

The above link came via Make It Eight, Eh?. From the look of it, a Hamilton, Ont., insurance broker named Craig Ferguson, over the run of this sordid saga, has evolved from a thinking fan's case for the NHL to put more teams into Canada to advocacy for taxpayers in Arizona in the wake of a swindle/boondoggle which is going down in the American southwest. You really should, if you have time, read through it since Ferguson makes it clear why the hell Jerry Reinsdorf wants to own an unprofitable hockey team which has never been about hockey from the day it arrived in the desert.

"The attraction to the Coyotes hockey team has always been an issue of land development opportunites and great deals with government, and the profits that would go along with them. Nobody in their right mind would take this team with the clear math currently in place. As soon as (former owners Jerry) Moyes and (Steve) Ellman broke up the land from the ice, that’s when the 'Coyote' should have chased the Roadrunner out of town.

"Are we to believe, as mentioned by the Reinsdorf camp, and now even by the new Canadian/American mixed coalition represented by Daryl Jones (Research Edge LLC) that trying to share in a little bit of food and parking is going to cut the mustard? 'Little things add up' is the argument? Were we born yesterday? And, if I might add, if Daryl Jones and his group thinks they are going to break into this game with nickel and dime thinking, they had better think again. Like all politics, what would make sense from a genuine, honest angle usually doesn’t win the prize."

In other words: Cha-ching! Ferguson has flipped over a couple other rocks, noting two weeks ago that Jerry Reinsdorf's son is "is a director of a partnering firm, International Facilities Group (IFG), that has a hand in consulting the City of Glendale for the Jobing.com arena, and more."

It is not like this should shock anyone. For the most part this is the way of the world, at least up until Bear Stearns went nips-up last fall. (At this point, one should allow that maybe the NHL would like Balsillie to pay $350-400 million for an expansion team instead of $212.5M for an established team. At some point, though, these guys have to stop playing the Canada card.)

Most sports fans, regardless of background or intelligence, would be like, "Why should I care that the the city of Phoenix is going to hand over $100 million in subsidies in return for 200 public parking spaces at a time when it can't afford to open public pools? I just want to know if the team is going to relocate or not." Thankfully, no one needs a public pool in a desert during a time of high unemployment). That is just the nature of following a sport, nothing wrong or evil about it.

However, it does seem crazy how few in Canada have really gone to lengths to explain how the Duel in the Desert, so-called, was more than Gary Bettman and Bill Daly delivering a big screw-you to Jim Balsillie. In the grand scheme, this only reaffirms Canadians' Pavlovian slavishness to the NHL. Hockey is a wonderful sport, perhaps the best of the team games, and the NHL is more appealing to watch that it has been at pretty much any point in the Bettman era.

At the same time, to repeat Peter Gent's "every time I say it's a business you call it a game and every time I call it a game you say it's a business" corollary, let's have some clear eyes. At the end of the day, this league Canadians hold so near and dear is run by some not-too-nice people who are only to eager to be part of greater outrages. On a macro level, it does affect the competitive product.

It was nice to speculate for a couple days when that one bid group for the Coyotes talked about playing games in Halifax or Saskatoon and having an AHL team in Thunder Bay. Maybe that was akin to The Simpsons episode when Monty Burns ran for governor: "They're like seals. Toss 'em a couple fish and watch 'em jump."

Point being, smarten up. The next person who says Balsillie needs to learn to play by the NHL's rules should get two minutes for bein' stupid. (Outgoing Montreal Canadiens George Gillett actually accuse of him creating a "distraction" that caused the Habs' season to go downhill was a new low. (Mr. Gillett, I have with me a Mr. Jared Allen who has debunked the myth athletes can be distracted, and he's not above using physical force to make a point.)

Rules? The NHL has but one that it honours, realizing its place as a pipsqueak in the lumbering dinosaur of the American economy, 2009. Balsille, to borrow a line from those Ford ads which have been playing all summer, might "pulled off a game-changer" by moving the Coyotes to Southern Ontario, but there were other interests to defend.

Gary Bettman fits right in with the Boomer mentality where old-economy businesses hide that they are just going around in circles, slowly losing ground before realizing time has run out. The commish is a pipsqueak in the grand scheme of bankrupting America, but like any good CEO, he knows who he works for. That's why they pay him the big bucks.

As previously stated, "It would be silly to use the league's idiotic business practices to justify non-interest in what happens on the ice." However, this has been an exercise in the NHL as usual. It has no rules and when you have no rules, you have less of a game.

Related:
Balsillie vows to press on; BlackBerry billionaire given rough ride by NHL's board of governors as bid for troubled Coyotes rejected (Paul Waldie and David Shoalts, Globe & Mail)
NHL: Anybody but you, Balsillie (Bruce Arthur, National Post)

Blog blast past: Top 5; How I Met Your Mother's greatest sports episodes

The 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother airs tonight. It promises to have singing and dancing — despite Marshall's chronic case of dancer's hip! — the WWE's Stacy Keibler playing a bartender at MacLaren's. From May 18, 2009, here is the series' top five sports-related episodes (as the title likely implies).

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL (Season 2)

The gang has a tradition of getting together for Super Bowl Sunday. Ted and Marshall like it for the football, Robin and Lily enjoy the commercials and gambling addict Barney needs to keep track of his multiple wagers. However, their ritual is threatened after the owner of the bar where they hang out, MacLaren's, dies and his wake is at the same time as the game.

No one seems to have ever met the owner and Future Ted can't seem to remember his name in the retelling. Was it Mark or Mike? Carl, the bartender at MacLaren's whom Ted once believed was a vampire (because he always wear black and they only see him at night), guilts them into attending by saying they'll never be allowed back in the bar if they don't attend.

It turns out that memorial services are the one time when Barney does not "suit up." He tells everyone he plans on "going out of this world the same way I came in, buck naked; open bar for the fellas, open casket for the ladies." Unfortunately, they have to go a full 24 hours before they can get together to watch a Tivoed game, meaning they have to keep from learning the score while living in New York City, the media capital of the world.

This presents problems since (a) Robin is the media, as a news anchor at little-watched Metro News One; (b) Marshall is speaking to Lily's kindergarten class, and one of the scamps demands a bribe to keep silent about who won the game; (c) Ted has to go to a sports bar to pick up hot wings for the belated Super Bowl party and (d) Barney is a gambling addict.

Barney races around the city trying unsuccessfully to learn the score, even after bumping into Emmitt Smith. "The game was yesterday?" the NFL's all-time rushing leader says. "After you win two or three of them, you kind of stop paying attention."

Ted sets out to get the hot wings after using an old pair of sunglasses, headphones, a cereal box, duct tape and a hole punch to MacGyver up a device called the Sensory Deprivator 5000 that will prevent him from hearing or seeing the score of the game. Unfortunately, everyone's best-laid plans fail, and they all end up learning the score, but that doesn't stop them from having a good time.

LUCKY PENNY (Season 2)

Since HIMYM is a love story told in reverse, it's apropos to include an episode that is told entirely in flashbacks. Ted and Robin (at this point, they were dating) try to figure out who's at fault after he misses a flight to Chicago to interview for his dream job. They were late getting to the airport because Ted had to go to court to pay a ticket he got for hopping a turnstile at a subway station.

It turns out Ted jumped the turnstile because he was coming to the aid of Barney, who was stuck on the train after losing use of his arms and legs. It turns out that Barney, to win a bet with Marshall, ran the New York City Marathon without training, which comes back to haunt him only after he finishes the 26-mile, 385-yard race.

It turns out Barney ran the marathon after borrowing a bib from Marshall, who was injured and unable to compete. It turns out Marshall was given to rubbing petroleum jelly on his nipples to prevent chafing before going out on training runs. (Runners actually do this.) It turns out that Robin crashed at the apartment one night. In the morning, she opened the bathroom door, only to find Marshall, getting ready for his run, rubbing petroleum jelly on his nipples and repeating to himself in the mirror, "You are ... Marshall! You are ... Marshall!" to himself. Robin takes this to be a warmup ritual for another form of exercise and says, "Oh my god!" Startled, Marshall falls and breaks his toe.

It turns out Lily told Marshall about preventing chafing, so it's her fault.

INTERVENTION (Season 4)

Not a sports episode, but it addresses how HIMYM's Canada references are either uber-knowing or totally stereotypical.

Referring to a dirty Canadian sex act called an "Old King Clancy" is an example of the former. Robin Scherbatsky's TV demo reel including footage of her covering a bass fishing derby in the middle of a blizzard on a "snowy August first in Medicine Hat" is an example of the latter.

Marshall and Lily are moving out of the apartment they had shared with Ted and start discussing who should be responsible for what portion of their damage deposit. They point to the hole in the wall near the door, flashing back to the time when Robin got loaded on Molson and started acting really Canadian, re-enacting Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup final while wearing a Roberto Luongo sweater and goofing around with a stick and a puck. The obvious setup is that she put the hole in the wall with a shot. Marshall challenges her to shoot the puck through the open door, but when she does, Lily catches it. The two exchange words, with Robin chi, "I'll give you summer teeth, some are here and some are there." Ted separates them, causing Barney to yell, "Ted! You never break up a girlfight!" — and punch a hole in the wall.

(Bonus points to the writers for putting Cobie Smulders, who's from Vancouver, in the Canucks' old black sweaters instead of their current blue ones, since it was a flashback.)

In another episode, Robin dates the sports anchor at Metro News One, an ex-hockey player named Kurt "The Ironman" Irons, who takes her to a Canucks-Rangers game at Madison Square Garden. She comes back the next day all agog after her brush with Canadian celebrity.

Robin: "I met Mason Raymond ..."
Everyone: (stare blankly)
Robin: "... of the Vancouver Canucks!"
Barney: "What's the opposite of name-dropping?"

THE BRACKET (Season 3)

Throughout Season 3, Barney was plagued by a mystery woman who kept sabotaging his attempts to pick up women. This leads him to create The Bracket in the style of the NCAA basketball championship — "the top 64 women I've slept with, divided into four regions ... in order to figure out systematically which one has the most cause to hate my guts."

LITTLE MINNESOTA (Season 4)

Late fall is often a lonely time for Robin, the Canadian expat. (In the first season, stuck in New York over U.S. Thanksgiving, she and Ted try to fill the void by volunteering at a homeless shelter, but end up eating turkey dinner at a strip club with Barney.)

Marshall takes pity on Robin and invites her to a bar that is strictly for people from Minnesota, warning her that she'll be kicked out if they learn she's Canadian. Robin blends in extremely well, telling people she's from Bemidji and stealing Marshall's story about where he was when on Jan. 17, 1999, when Gary Anderson missed the field goal that would have sent the Vikings to the Super Bowl. (Whenever anyone in the bar is reminded of that day, they all say, "Damn!")

However, when she breaks Marshall's record on the fishing video game in the bar, that's the final straw.

Marshall: "She's Canadian! She's Canadian! She's not from Bemidji and she doesn't know anything about the Vikings."
Robin: "I do too."
Marshall: "Robin. In the 1999 NFC championship, which the Vikings lost ..."
Bar patrons: "Damn!"
Robin (a beat too late): "Damn!"
Marshall: "... who was the kicker who missed the field goal?
Robin: "... Rashad Tarkenton?"
Marshall: "Gary Anderson. Who is now retired and owns a fly-fishing business ... in Canada."

Robin sheepishly leaves, but not without defending Canada's honour (and ironically, this aired the day after the Bills in Toronto disaster).

"I'm proud to be Canadian. We may not have a fancy NFL team, or Prince, but we invented Trivial Pursuit — you're welcome, Earth. Plus, in Canada, you can go to an all-nude strip club and order alcohol. That's right. From Moose Jaw to the Bay of Fundy, you can suck down a 20-ounce Pilsner while watching some coal miner's daughter strip down to her pelt. Jealous?! In Canada, people don't care where you're from. As long as you're friendly and loan them a smoke or hand them a donut. I'm proud to be Canadian. I wish I was there right now."

Marshall then puts things right by taking Robin to a bar for Canadians called The Hoser Hut, where the patrons not only sport toques and hockey sweaters and act overly apologetic.

Marshall: "Wait, I bumped into him, and he apologized to me and gave me a donut?"

The episode ends with Marshall singing karaoke to Robin's early-'90s Canadian bubble-gum pop song, Let's Go To The Mall.

What most people don't know, and really no one born after 1976 should know, was this was not the first sitcom to satirize the Vikings' inability to win the Super Bowl. Apparently, a few days before the Super Bowl was played in 1975, there was Mary Tyler Moore episode where Lou Grant lost Ted Baxter's money after betting on the Pittsburgh Steelers to beat the Vikings.

Of course, the Steelers won that game and have gone on to become six-time Super Bowl champions. The Vikings remain stuck on zero.

And that, kids, is the story of why the Vikings are cursed. (Not really.)

(Here is the intro for the original piece.

Kids, back in 2009 there was a sitcom called How I Met Your Mother. Watching it was kind of a rear-guard action. The age where people watched a situation comedy on a broadcast network at a certain time every week had long become obsolete, but you still blocked out time for the season finale. It had relatable characters and the L.A. Times, a newspaper published in the now-underwater city of Los Angeles, called it the "most modern and consistently fresh traditional sitcom of the last few years." It also liked to weave in sports references, be it Ted Mosby saying the only thing he talked to his dad about was baseball, or your uncle Marshall playing "BaskIceBall," where he and the other males in his family of mayonnaise-guzzling Minnesota giants put on skates and pads and basically just whaled on each other. Sometimes, whole episodes even revolved around sports and as your Uncle Barney liked to say, it could be "legen, wait for it, dary!")

Damn Vikings ... a pretty nice little Sunday

It's hard to imagine a better first Sunday of the NFL season for a Minnesota Vikings fan.

• Adrian Peterson has a 180-yard day in an opening win over the Browns. A good friend who is a Chicago Bears fan immediately phoned after Peterson's 64-yard touchdown run where he broke six tackles and said, "Best running back I've seen since Barry Sanders. We'll talk later."
  
  
• Ol' Brett Favre mostly just stayed out of the way. OK, so it is not so clear the Vikes could win a game if they were unable to run well.
  
  
Neither the Bears or Green Bay Packers looked all-fired great during NBC's Sunday nighter, which NBC's Al Michaels did not call "the NFL's most storied rivalry between two teams which have losing records vs. the Vikings during the Super Bowl era."


• Jay Cutler's four interceptions on Sunday night were at least as hilarious as anything Jay Leno will do Monday night.
  
  
• The Bears lost Brian Urlacher for the season. A player being injured is not something to celebrate, but if the Bears end up bringing Derrick Brooks out of retirement, it means no one can razz the Vikings about Favre being older than dirt. Thirty-six in linebacker years is older than 40 in quarterback years.
  
• We can't wait to see what the alternative point spreads will be this Sunday for the Vikings' game vs. the Detroit Lions. The APS is the brain candy of sports betting lines. There is a double-digit spread on tonight's doubleheader, Bills-Patriots and Chargers-Raiders, but it would be much more fun it you took New England by 21½ instead a mere of 11.
  
  
• Percy Harvin gets his first NFL touchdown and does some damage as a runner, receiver and a returner like a latter-day Gale Sayers.
  
  There's a reason behind citing a Bears legend. Everything Harvin will do is karma for the Bears never doing much in the '60s when they had Sayers. For that matter, everyting Peterson does vs. the Bears is karma for using high picks on Curtis Enis and Cedric Benson and for Mike Ditka not finding a way to get the greatest football player of all time, Walter Payton, a touchdown during Super Bowl 20. Just saying
  
  
• And this happened, involving the Bears former quarterback:
  
  
  
  Of course, it was a total fluke play, but nevertheless.
  
• Last but not least, Queen's won and the Saskatchewan Roughriders "went out of their way" (Regina Leader-Post) to avoid scoring 60 points against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Banjo Bowl. Yeah, it was a pretty nice little Sunday.
  

Brett plays dirty, then how come our conscience is so clean?

The English language really does not have a word to express the state of "laughing while also being mortified," which pretty much describes the reaction to Brett Favre bringing back the long-outlawed crackback block. The general reaction (not like everyone did not wonder) is questioning what the fallout would be if Michael Vick pulled such a stunt.



Either way, Favre might be a self-aggrandizing spotlight-hogger who also plays dirty, but since he is on the Vikings now, he is my self-aggrandizing spotlight-hogger who also plays dirty. It is an easier transition since the high-minded Vikings fan never really hated Favre, but understood and respected his role in the melodrama. That is the nature of it with a bitter sports rivalry: After a while, you come to realize the people on the other side are not evil and wrong, but they just happen to be aligned with something which is evil and wrong, like that media darling franchise in Green Bay which was grandfathered in to the modern NFL.

Who knows, perhaps ol' Brett was doing a homage to North Dallas Forty. The 30th anniversary of its release passed several weeks ago and this was his first extended game action since then.

(Sorry for the irregular posting, but the aim was to show people that Favre signing with the Vikes had not led to some kind of mental breakdown, although that could change if the rumours about trading Tarvaris Jackson are true. Besides, cisblog.ca has been taking up a lot of time.)

The other 20 worst things to happen to the Vikings

Brett Favre's signing with the Minnesota Vikings is supposed to go down on Friday, July 3, according to the unimpeachable Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. Other oracles are chiming in. The production of No. 4 jerseys has already been green-lit (how unfortunate that phrase evokes the colours of a certain rival in Wisconsin). Some even wonder if this is the canary in the coal mine, that owner Zygi Wilf has resorted to a desperation play because he wants to unload the team since it has zero chance of getting a modern stadium.

The indispensable Daily Norseman has tried to counsel Minnesota Vikings fan through this. As it put it in a piece titled The Favre Stages Of Grief.

"As a group, we've been through way more than this, and we've been through way worse than this ... and we've managed to persevere for this long. To be honest, I'm not even sure if 'signing Brett Favre' would crack a list of the Top 20 most disappointing things to ever happen to the Minnesota Vikings."

Twenty most disappointing things to ever happen to the Vikings, eh? Consider that gauntlet picked up, even if the author is unaware it was even thrown down. If nothing else, it's way to build a a forcefield for Favregeddon, starting right after the jump.

First off, there need to be ground rules, which the author reserves the right to make up off the top of his head.

Randy Moss' mock-mooning at Lambeau Field during the 2004 playoffs does not count. It came in a game where the Vikings beat the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. Moss came off better in that fiasco than FOX Sports' Joe Buck did. Scratch perennial 1,000-yard running back Robert Smith retiring from football in 2001 when he still had a few good seasons left, since that was his personal decision. Mocking former running back Onterrio Smith for getting busted at the airport with something called an Original Whizzinator is also out since that incident was symptomatic with his problems with addiction (read this post by one of Smith's one-time teammates, NFL tight end George Wrighster, and then say Onterrio Smith is fair game).

The rest is in play, as far as anyone knows.

20. Starting quarterback, Spergon Wynn

Spergon Wynn III was hardly cut out to be a CFL quarterback, let alone a NFL quarterback. The epitaph for his career in Canada came courtesy of one-time B.C. Lions teammate, Carl Kidd, who once said, "Spergon can be a good quarterback at times." The rub is none of those times involved the two starts he made for the Vikings late in 2001. He went 48-for-98 for passing with one touchdown and six interceptions and never started another game. He is the answer to a great trivia question: Who started at QB in the Vikings' last game under Dennis Green and the first under Mike Tice?

19. Drafting Troy Williamson

He's open deep and ... oh, he can't hang on! There is another NFC North team which is synonymous with spending first-round draft choices on wide receivers whose 40-yard dash times turn out to be fool's gold, but Williamson's ignominy ranks with any of the approximately 72 receivers Matt Millen drafted when he was doing to the Lions what a bunch of dopes in suits did to the U.S. auto industry.

Williamson, the No. 7 pick in 2006, was expected to give the Vikings the deep threat they had lacked since Moss left. Three years later, his name is mostly a punchline and he's an entry in Worst Man Drafted tournaments. Some of his drops were so bad that the director of a cheesy football comedy wouldn't have even included them, for lack of believability.



18. Paul Ferraro's special teams unit (2008)

Seven return touchdowns allowed in one season, a NFL record. The crazy part is Ferraro moved up the coaching ladder after that showing, since he was hired by the St. Louis Rams to coach their linebackers. Granted, that means worrying about three players, not all 11 on the field at one time.

17. Tony Dorsett runs 99½ yards (Jan. 3, 1983)

Perhaps it was not disappointing in the classic sense. It's just that the NFL Network seems bound by policy to have to air the clip of Dorsett's dash at least once every 24 hours. No one remembers that the Vikings actually won that 1982 Monday nighter, no mean feat when you allow a running back to go 99 yards on a play when his team lined up with only 10 guys. True story.

16. Vikadontis Rex (1995-2000)

There is only room for one lame dinosaur mascot in the four major sports. The Toronto Raptors totally called this one. Vikadontis was introduced in the wake of the Jurassic Park phenomenon in the early '90s, probably as a way to appeal to the kids. Of course, the Vikings already had a mascot, Ragnar, played by a guy who holds the world record for shaving with an ax, so it just ended up muddying the brand.

15. Antonio Freeman's catch (Nov. 6, 2000)

A semi-legitimate sports journalist is conditioned to eschew using the word fluke. However, what happened on the night of Nov. 6, 2000 was nothing but a damn fluke. The Vikings and Packers never should have been in overtime in the first place, but in a driving rainstorm, the Vikings botched the hold on a last-second field goal try.

In OT, Freeman slipped on the wet field while running a deep route and Dishman appeared to bat it to turf. However, it hit Freeman, who managed to complete the catch, get to his feet without being tackled and cut inside a defender to score and give Green Bay an ill-gotten 26-20 win. It also cost the Vikings home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.



14. Dennis Green tries to sue the team (1997)

To be fair, you might call a lawyer too if you had coached a perennial playoff team and found out the highers-up tried to replace you with a rah-rah college coach like Lou Holtz who was a failure in his one shot in the NFL.

13. Randy Moss' long goodbye (about 2002 to '04)

There are reasons Randy Moss is great and wonderful beyond him being in the picture when people talk about the greatest pass receivers in NFL history (after Jerry Rice and somewhere in there with Marvin Harrison and Lance Alworth from the AFL and if you include Terrell Owens in there, you're asking to get punched in the balls).

Moss showed an outcast could make it in an American team sport. That point was generally lost amid the "I play when I want to play," the meter-maid bumping and leaving the field before the game was over. No one really got that at the time, except perhaps for Karl Taro Greenfeld, but he didn't profile Moss until after he been traded to the Oakland Raiders for next to nothing. Meantime, there was so much lost potential left back in Minnesota, even though it's hard to begrudge Moss on NFL Sundays when he's catching touchdown passes from Tom Brady and polishing his application to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

12. Daunte Culpepper's knee injury (2005)

When pro football historians (how do you get that job? Is there a test, like the foreign service exam?) talk about the great passing combos whose first names need not be mentioned, they'll talk about Montana-to-Rice, Manning-to-Harrison, Unitas-to-Berry, and Brady-to-Moss. It will ignore Culpepper, who threw to Moss during his prime years, from the time he was 23 until he was 27.

It went so well for long, then one day it did not anymore. Since '05, Culpepper has played for the Dolphins, Raiders and the Detroit Lions, so you could say the injury was career-ending.

11. Pass not intended for Darrin Nelson (Jan. 17, 1988)

Plenty of teams have seen their Super Bowl dreams dashed in the final minute of the conference championship game, just yards from a tying or winning touchdown. The killer is that the final play of the 1987 NFC championship vs. Washington, the underdog Vikings ended up with Anthony Carter and running back Darrin Nelson in the same area of the field. That made it easier for Hall of Famer Darrell Green, who was covering Carter, to break up the pass. It was intended for Nelson, but considering that Carter had set a playoff receiving record the week before, it's hard to perish the thought Wade Wilson was throwing for him.



In hindsight, the other kicker two decades later is the Vikings, as a blue state team, could have won on the field and on principle. That was the season when the NFL used scab players for three games during a players' strike. The fake Vikings went 0-3, but they still made the playoffs and were six yards from victory.

10. Super Bowl IV (January 11, 1970)

The first of the Vikings' four Super Bowl losses might not be well-remembered. The fact remains is they were 12-point favourites going in against the Kansas City Chiefs and lost by 16. No team ever favoured by such a large spread ever lost again until 1998, when a certain bunch of Cheeseheads, thanks to a couple key turnovers by a quarterback wearing No. 4, lost to Denver after being favoured by 13.



9. Smoot boat scandal (Oct. 6, 2005)

Easy enough to laugh this off now, but the general mood was less tolerant in 2005. Between Moss leaving and Culpepper suffering a thermonuclear knee injury, it was a rough few months.

8. Jim Marshall's wrong-way run (1964)

Marshall's record of playing in 282 consecutive games across 20 seasons basically makes him the NFL's answer to Cal Ripken Jr., except Ripken did not have to get cut-blocked or leg-whipped on a semi-regular basis. However, there's a belief the member of the Purple People Eaters is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame all because of one boner he pulled in 1964.



7. Nooooo! Nooooooo! (Dec. 28, 2003)

Six years later, the question how? remains unanswered. An 11-point fourth-quarter lead against the worst team in the NFL should have been safe. Somehow, the Arizona Cardinals, led by depth-chart fillers such as Josh McCown and Nathan Poole, scored two touchdowns inside of the two-minute warning, helping Favre and the Green Bay Packers get into the playoffs, keeping the Vikings out after they had started the season 6-0. It also inspired an epic rant. Of course, since the best a Vikings fan can usually hope for is justice delayed, several years later the NFL changed the so-called force-out rule, so Nathan Poole's end-zone catch would not count if they were playing the game today. Of course, they're not playing the game today, even if some of us are just replaying it over and over.

6. Metrodome opens (April 3, 1982)

Let's get this straight: You gave up the best home-field advantage in the NFL? How did that work out? Baseball's Twins, the NBA's Timberwolves and the University of Minnesota football team have each scored swankier digs, but only the Vikings remain unable to score a modern stadium.

5. Korey Stringer's death (Aug. 1, 2001)

As a fan, there is a lot you-don't-wanna-know when it comes to the sacrifices pro athletes have to make. Springer's death due to complications from heat stroke uncovered the dark side of the sport. Pushing someone that far was so needless, so unnecessary that it hardly seemed like a game.

4. 41-doughnut (Jan. 14, 2001)

Have you ever sat there as a sports fan after your team lost by a slim margin and wondered if it would have been easier to take if they had never been in the game? Losing 41-0 in the NFC championship game to the New York Giants, getting shut out by a defence which had Jason Sehorn on it, well, there's your answer.

3. Drew Pearson pushes off (Dec. 28, 1975)

Pass interference is like obscenity. There is no definition of it, but everyone knows it when they see it. Pearson's look of restrained jubilation after catching the Hail Mary pass from Roger Staubach to beat the Vikings in the '75 playoffs is all the proof one needs to know he pushed off on Hall of Fame defensive back Paul Krause, even if the replays are actually inconclusive.



2. Herschel Walker trade (Oct. 12, 1989)

The trade was so bad the temptation is to believe it was a conspiracy to restore the Dallas Cowboys to NFL prominence and help the league's TV ratings recover in the wake of the 1987 strike. It's easier to accept that

1. Almost perfect (Jan. 17, 1999)

All together now: Damn! One can finally laugh a little about it now that has been spoofed by an Emmy-nominated sitcom. It's a burn, not a serious one mind you since this is just football, to never know how Randall Cunningham and Cris Carter might have done in a Super Bowl. It is clear the Vikings might have been headed for a fall, having flown to close to the sun on the wings of bad song parodies.



(It was the end of the 20th century. You try to forget, but booze only helps so much.)

Of course, there was more to it than Gary Anderson (who, as Marshall Eriksen/Jason Segel has noted, is now retired and owns a fly-fishing business ... in Canada), missing a 38-yard field goal that would have wrapped up the NFC title when he had not missed all season. There was more to it than the irony that the Atlanta Falcons' winning field goal was also from 38 yards and it was kicked by Morten Andersen, a Dane, meaning the Vikings' fate was sealed by an actual Viking.

It was the aftermath. In this case, it meant having to go out afterward to cover a hockey game for The Queen's Journal while wearing a Moss jersey (going home to change was not an option) and being asked, "So, who won? Last I checked Minnesota was way ahead."

The point is the obvious. Vikings fans have been through much. After reading the magic words, "Top 20 most disappointing things," it took maybe forty-five seconds to come up with about 18 of the items on this list. Put all of it together and we're Brett-proofed. Bring him in, already.

Brett Favre: Creating the Cliff Clavin rule

Brett Favre is scheduled to be a guest on the premiere of "Joe Buck Live" tonight. Thank god satire was already dead.

When an good old-fashioned newsman breaks out the "yes comma," usually it means you better take heed, brother:

"Yes, this is it: If Favre is willing to sign a contract with an option that will determine his pay based on how he performs and how much he plays, the Wilf family will go all out to add Favre to the team. The contract will not be guaranteed. It could have some good incentive clauses that will pay Favre well if he can perform like he did in 2007, when he led the Packers to a 13-3 record ..." — Sid Hartman

Who knows, really. Speaking personally, friends have asked, "How can you be a Minnesota Vikings fan and not care if whether or not they get Brett Favre?" The response, after first pointing out that saying whether or not is a redundancy (yes comma, it is a dick move to correct someone's grammar, but it's an easily corrected mistake), is to say there's a higher power involved. Besides, the Vikings all-world defensive end Jared Allen told KFAN in Minneapolis, "The thing is I honestly don't care" about Favre. Please keep in mind this is someone who plays for the damn team.

The higher power could be called the Cliff Clavin Rule (here's an explanation), which is as follows: If only three people know the answer to something and none of them have ever been in your kitchen, it's a good idea drink a glass of shut-the-hell-up.

There are exceptions for those who can lend some particular background to the story or comedy you can lend, like Sports Pickle did when it put out a satirical piece that the Vikings had set a deadline for current quarterbacks Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels to stop sucking. It all comes back to trying to be among the first people to find out something instead of the millionth and third to chew over the latest speculation about whether the Biceps Tendon Heard 'Round The World will be healed enough for Ol' Brett to be able to air it out when Percy Harvin is open deep after leaving some poor cornerback spinning like a top.

The other principle, which has some application to the Jim Balsillie/Phoenix Coyotes story, comes from the essay Neal Pollack wrote for Slate (dude, I know) several years ago, The Cult Of The General Manager: "Excuse me for wanting baseball highlights."

The Balsillie story is more newsworthy than any given game in one of the four big ball-and-stick leagues, which is more than can be said about Favre. However, it is best left to the people who can do the mental stickhandling through a labyrinth of legalese. From the sad-but-true files, sports stories which do not involve people doing something sweat-intensive sooner rather than later get dry up faster. However, Pollack conceded, "As deathly dull as a general manager's machinations may be, there's obviously an audience for it." The rub is that sports fans are conditioned for action, damnit.

Now did you see what the Chicago Bears linebacker, Lance Briggs, said about ol' Brett: "We know he's going to throw us a few (interceptions). He's thrown me a few, but I've also dropped several that I should have caught. We'd love to see Favre go there to play. We'd welcome it."

That is big talk from a guy whose team gave up 75 points in two games vs. the Vikings last season. That post is worth clicking through just for the pic of Lance Briggs the Chicago Sun-Times used. Either it was taken at the Pro Bowl in Hawai'i, or Lance Briggs emcees weddings and proms while wearing his jersey (since his face is hidden under a helmet and facemask, how would people know it's really him).

Anyway, the Clavin rule: Now you know.



(P.S. Nice to see Posted Sports rip off the same line of thinking, except their response is to take a Favratorium, which is both derivative and self-aggrandizing. That's the Canadian media for you!

Damn Vikings: Gunslinger who won't go away

In the words of Déjà Voodoo, "I wanna miss you, but you never go away."

Favregeddon — thank you, Daily Norseman — seems l like it might could soon be on like the former republic of Azerbaijan. It's the ultimate fan dilemma. Vikings fans want a Super Bowl appearance in the worst way. Getting there with Brett Favre as the quarterback would be about the worst way, assuming a 40-year-old passer whose arm couldn't make it through last season is the answer to their intractable quarterback problem. Isn't it really kind of a give-up play, akin to calling a draw play on third-and-long, as Vikes coach Brad Childress is sometimes wont to do?

A not uncommon reaction among Vikings blogs is that most would give up quite a bit to not have to weigh in on the topic at all. The notion of the former Green Bay Packer in purple is that touchy a subject. In all honesty, speaking as a Vikings fan, it seemed best to be open-minded about this since early last August, even though Green goddamn Bay was never going to let Favre go to the Vikings as long as they could exercise control over where he played.

The kicker from a football standpoint is that the Vikings have done the least of any NFC North to address their quarterback situation (sorry for sounding like a NFL commentator), but it's not even clear how much Favre would help. He flat-out reeked over the final month of last season with the New York Jets. The ESPN.com report (and keep in mind the four-letter likes to make a lot out of very little sometimes) notes, "Favre has not been working out and declined to have surgery to repair the torn biceps tendon that plagued him the final month of last season."

The cynical response is the quarterback doesn't need that strong an arm in Childress' notoriously staid offence. How much of a gun does the QB need to dump it off to Adrian Peterson or Chester Taylor on a screen pass every time it's third down and 10?

That's for someone else to answer. It's best, on this end, to focus on whether you can cross the Rubicon, in the parlance of our time, on a player you have pure, flat-out loathed for the better part of two decades. If he can still play, fine, but if he's going to be the me-first Favre that sank the Packers and the New York Jets, no thanks. The odds of it being any other Favre are not good.

(It might be too early to take a sheepish victory lap for once opining, "Vikings fans are resigned to the deep-down suspicion that No. 4 is going to torment us until the end of time." That sentence was never written with the idea of Favre throwing touchdown passes to Vikings players instead of interceptions, which he has been known to do once in a while.)

Related:
Source, Favre, Vikes to discuss playing (ESPN.com)

Batter up: Colorado Rockies

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a baseball team who you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things that are tangentially about each team. At bat: The Colorado Rockies.

1. Rookie centrefielder Dexter Fowler (pictured) will make Rockies fans forget Juan Pierre and Willy Taveras.
   
   
2. First baseman Todd Helton had disk surgery in the off-season and was tearing off the cover off the ball during spring training. It's safe to assume he'll bat about .463 this season, then?
   
   
3. Tampa Bay right-hander Jeff Niemann would be a good pickup in a trade; he gets his fair share of ground balls, always a good thing at Coors Field.
   
   
4. It's arguable Huston Street got miscast as a major-league closer because he did it in college at the University of Texas. America has quite enough problems caused by legacy picks from Texas.
   
   
5. If you own a previously driven car, start calling it a Brad Hawpe: Reasonably priced, dependable and doesn't lose value on the road (only 20 points' difference in OPS, which is rare for a Rockies hitter).
   
   
6. Oh-nine should mark the first time shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and catcher Chris Iannetta both play at an all-star level. Tulowitzski was set back with injuries while Iannetta is among the majors' most improved players. Colorado will always have something so long as they have that pair.
   
   
7. Lefty Franklin Morales is poised for big things, maybe not until 2010, since he'll be turning 24 on Jan. 24. That makes it his lucky year.
   
   
8. They had one of the all-time evenouts in 2008: Swept Arizona in the '07 playoffs, then went 3-15 vs. the Diamondbacks the following season.
   
   
9. They must never be allowed to forget they traded Greg Reynolds (14 home runs allowed in 62 innings last season) ahead of Evan Longoria in the 2006 draft. It is Denver's version of Tulo-gate.
   
   
10. Ubaldo Jimenez, in the
    
    
11. Reynolds only struck out 22 in 62 innings last season, while Arizona's Mark Reynolds struck out 204 times. So what happens when they face each other?
    
    
12. Taylor Buchholz is an effective seventh- and eighth-inning reliever, but that .225 BABIP should raise eyebrows, since it's hard to stay that hit-lucky.
    
    
13. Manager Clint Hurdle is in the final season of his contract. Back-to-back losing seasons in the wake of a pennant in 2007 does not job security make. Baseball Prospectus 2009 calls him on of the "buntiest" managers in MLB.
    
    
14. He never played for the Rockies, but Luis Medina might still be the source of bitterness. He won the Triple-A home run title in 1988 with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, then got a September call-up to Cleveland and slammed six homers in 51 at-bats, which mean all sorts of 12- and 13-year-olds were snapping up his rookie card.
    
    If only someone had been there to explain about park effects, or that someone who didn't get to the majors until he was 26 really wasn't a serious prospect. Medina hit only four homers the rest of his career. He works for the Royals now, according to his Wiki.
    
    
15. Canadian left-hander Jeff Francis won't pitch this season. Obviously, one hopes he gets back and doesn't become the next Jason Dickson (another Canuck chucker who blossomed early, developed arm troubles and soon vanished).
    
    Francis' alma mater, the University of British Columbia, has a nice new baseball field.
    
    
16. The most popular athlete in Denver is probably the potential replacement for the replacement for Jay Cutler on the Broncos. That has nothing to do with the Rockies, but a Vikings fan has to have an outlet for unleash anger over Cutler ending up on the Chicago Bears.
    
    
17. The Beep says third baseman Garrett Atkins (.286/.328/.452 last season, with sketchy fielding at third base) "fills a gap ... but you are always looking for something better, like the girlfriend you had a few years ago." Don't worry, only a total twitbag would find that sexist and inappropriate (why are unflatting comparisons to women always a go-to in sportswriting?).
    
    
18. Toronto fans probably never heard about this, but the Jays could have drafted Troy Tulowitzki in 2005 instead of left-hander Ricky Romero.
    
    
19. The team's best prospect outside of Fowler, right-handed pitcher Jhoulys Chacin, has five pitches. If he learns one more, his catcher will have to take off his glove to put down the sign.
    
    
20. The best leadoff man who's not in the Hall of Fame, Tim Raines, played in Denver with the Triple-A Bears in 1980, when he was 20. He led the American Association in hitting (.354) and stolen bases (77, a league record; he would have had more except the Expos called him up for three weeks in the middle of the season).
    
    
21. The late Warren Zevon's Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead will be a required listen for Rockies fans around mid-July.
    
    
22. Larry Walker for the Hall of Fame induces some squeamishness. He was more than just a heavy-hitting corner outfielder, since he was a first-rate defender and a good baserunner. He also hit .348/.431/.637 at home, compared to .295/.370/.495 on the road. It would really take more research to establish if he was a Coors Field creation, but Hall of Fame voters will have a tough time sifting through the stats of Arena Baseball-era players.
    
    
23. People would support a constitutional amendment that would prevent any opposing team's announcer from mentioning that Todd Helton played quarterback for the Tennessee Volunteers at the same time as Peyton Manning. It's in the press notes. You have to fill time. We get it.
    
    
24. Iannetta would be backup catcher on the all-time team of major leaguers from Rhode Island behind Gabby Hartnett, the 1930s Chicago Cubs catcher. Wait, this isn't Batter's Box.
    
    
25. The Rockies' Double-A team is in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There will never be a better time to proudly note that the Tulsa University rowing team's recruiting class includes Meredith Papps from Ernestown Secondary School in Odessa, Ontario (my mom taught her!),
    
    The press release from Tulsa says ESS is in Bath. That's good enough for Oklahoma.

Rocky Mountain buh-bye...

When we rule the world, it will be mandated that every trade rumour story must have the coda "or not" tacked on to the end.

As in, "Jets might want Cutler — or not." Anything you read about the ex-Denver Broncos QB — or not — is is a function of the calendar. There isn't a ton of NFL news in mid-March. This is a league which has become as annoying as baseball (or hockey in Canada, thank you, TSN) for trying to make the season last 12 months. In a half-hour of research, give or take 28 minutes, you can find out that Jay Cutler's agent, Bus Cook, was in Buffalo yesterday, that Newsday's pot-stirrer par excellence Wallace Matthews says the J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets must get Cutler, since having another Cook-represented QB, Brett Favre, worked so well last season, until the games really started to matter. Point being, you should be prepared to let a lot of Cutler talk go in one ear and out the other, unless the journos who cover your favourite team are saying something such as, "we're guessing there will be another list very soon that will have Minnesota front and center. Just give it some time."

Really, you mean that? Those who would know say that ship already sailed unless the Vikes are willing to deal Denver a carload of draft choices. Never mind that the Vikings might have those earmarked for players who block, tackle, cover and rush the passer and make up the 53 finely meshed gears that make up a football team. That's all well and good, but it has nothing to do with playing quarterback, which as is our understanding, is about being in TV commercials or being romantically linked to a country-music cutie of the moment. (That might be a bit major media-inculcated.)

It's a little tough to buy any Cutler-to-Buffalo talk. The NFL might be so desperate to plug the Bills In Toronto series that they'll have Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts play there next season, but Cutler and Manning? Whoa.

Point being, there's a lot of treacle to cut through, and I wholeheartedly apologize for not having the willpower to resist commenting or adding anything original to the discussion. It would be awesome if Jay Cutler somehow ended up on the Vikings. As a fan, it's good to sort of have a framework for approaching this, which is a faux-erudite way of saying you should at least be consistent in which clichés you choose to monger. Some people would say that they wouldn't want Jay Cutler on their favourite NFL team, extrapolating that he would be a bad influence in the locker room, based on how it's gone sour in Denver. None of that is actually important. A NFL career is short, you gotta get what you can while you can, so you can't blame Cutler's agent for taking decisive action rather than have his client stuck with an organization that's leaking oil three lanes wide and has hired a newbie coach, Josh McDaniels, to turn around the loveboat.

So, yeah, get Cutler to Minnesota, pronto. He's been all about winning since he committed to play college football at Vanderbilt. By the way, did you hear this one: Cutler could go to the Dallas Cowboys in return for Tony Romo — or not.

Vick on the Vikes ... no not really

Chances are, your Saturday paper might pick up a wire story saying the Minnesota Vikings are a possible destination for Michael Vick if he is reinstated to the NFL. (Mike Florio has destroyed it, by the way.)

There is a theory Vick won't be reinstated by the judge and jury, NFL commish Roger Goodell, into he's too old to be much good to a NFL team. (Tough luck, there's always the Detroit Lions.) The NFL's rules against tampering also means teams have to hold their cards pretty close to their chests. The Vikings aren't saying much.

At the other end of spectrum, it's cliché to turn a convicted dogfighter into the people's choice, because who's got time for that? There seems to be a general consensus that people were quick to let the professional opportunists, namely the media whores at PETA, have the final word on Vick during the summer of 2007. Everything semi-sports related which has come after — Bernie Madoff, Alex Rodriguez, well, pretty much anything to do with the Yankees since the end of the 2008 baseball season — makes Vick seem like small beer.

Point being, let him back.

This is more amusing than anything else, but if you go to Google News for word on Vick, one link is to an article about a judge demanding the death by lethal injection of 127 does who belonged to an imprisoned dogfighter.

Led by Best Friends Animals Society, the coalition includes BAD RAP (Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pit Bulls), Animal Farm Foundation, Villalobos Rescue Center, and Downtown Dog Rescue.

Where's PETA on this? One hundred twenty-seven innocent animals being destroyed because their owner is a crook, you'd think they would be all over that. My point exactly.

Brett's cheap trick; No. 4 Minnesota is Favre from reality

That Wrangler-wearing gunslinger will never go away. It's time for what Daily Norseman calls Brett Favre's "annual 'Pay Attention to Me!' festival.

"... It's not beyond belief that he has provided the Jets the answer they wanted in hopes of getting a return favor (his release) in a few months.

"That would create an opportunity for him to land with the Vikings. This is what Favre wanted last summer but there was no way the Packers were going to let Favre wind up in the NFC North. However, if Favre wants an opportunity to spend a season in Minnesota the Jets almost certainly aren’t going to care." — Access Vikings

Toss in the fact that the Vikings are trying to drum up public funding for a new stadium and a new quarterback probably helps with selling hope, whether it's soon-to-be-40 Favre or 27-year-old Matt Cassel from the New England Patriots (dare to dream). Any Vikings fan worth his Gary Anderson voodoo doll (all together: "Damn!") is supposed to hate Favre, especially since in his dotage, he's fallen into the inevitable trap of yelling, "Hey, it's me again."

It happened with Joe Montana and Dan Marino during the 1990s. It probably went on in the 1970s with Joe Namath and Johnny Unitas. Who knows if Favre is finished as a player. He struggled badly in the last four games of the season with the New York Jets. He turns 40 on Oct. 10 (yes, I have memorized the bastard's birthday). He also ends to throw passes into coverage, since that's how you have fun on the football field.

As a Vikes diehard, it is best to document how one would feel about seeing Favre in the beloved Purple. If he's still got it, fine, but there are better, younger, less loathsome passers available. That said, it's build a season-ticket campaign around Sage Rosenfels.

(Incidentally, one builder this week is revealing plans for a reconstructed Metrodome. It fits in with the one hope that the Vikings could play at the University of Minnesota's new football stadium for a couple seasons while the Dome is modernized.)

Related:
Minnesota on Favre's mind? (Access Vikings)

A Vikings fan should have little to say about Super Sunday

That is ex-Minnesota Viking Mewelde Moore in the foreground as Santonio Holmes taps his toes to make the Super Bowl-winning touchdown official.

Talk about a symmetry. There was a replay review after Holmes' catch to see if he got both feet down in bounds before any of the three Arizona Cardinals defenders in the vicinity knocked him into the boundary. That was necessary since the NFL, a while back, changed the force-out role. That is the very same force-out rule which once conspired to deny the Vikings a playoff spot in a season finale against, wait for it, your older brother's Arizona Cardinals. ("Damn!")

None of you need any reminder it was an entertaining Super Bowl or that the Vikings, who will always have the distinction of being the Steelers' first Super victim ("No one denies this!"), will never know such joy, especially if there is anything to talk Brett Favre wants to come to Minnesota. There are some day after thoughts that just need to be shared.

(As an aside; For anyone wondering why CTV made that abrupt jump into its post-game programming, they were trying to get the drop on Global. It didn't work.)

• A gossip site is reporting that Patriots quarterback Matt Cassel was urinated upon during a Super Bowl party. You may take that as an omen of what awaits him in Kansas Cityor some other NFL backwater once Tom Brady retakes the job as New England's starting QB. That last sentence will self-destruct if he ends up with the Vikings.
• To err is... The real goofup the Cardinals committed before James Harrison's 100-yard pick-six at the end of the first half was using their final timeout with 18 seconds left, instead of spiking the ball to stop the clock. Not having a timeout meant the Steelers knew the next play would be a pass (a run risked having the clock run out). Harrison dropped into coverage and made the play of the game's first 52 minutes.
  
• Run-ning game? One nagging thought during Arizona's playoff run was that people still cling way too much to this idea a team needs a battering-ram running game in the playoffs, which is the Cardinals were counted out before every game. Stampede Blue blew that belief to bits:

  For all those who think a team simply MUST run the ball to win in the playoffs, you can kindly STFU now. The Steelers gained a stellar 58 yards rushing, averaging 2.2 a carry. The Cardinals gained 33 yards, averaging 2.8. In this league, you must throw to win. Running the football is important, but highly over-rated. And people who swear that running the ball is more important than great QB play know nothing about modern football.

• Another bit of outdated thinking is that there's a randomness to who wins the Super Bowl. The 2007 Giants upset New England, but that was about it.
  
  Counting back from Sunday, the Steelers, a historically solid team, have won twice. The Bill Belichick New England Patriots have won three times, the teams Tony Dungy assembled in Indianapolis and Tampa Bay each won once, the 2000 Ravens (one of the best defences ever) and 1999 Rams (one of the highest-scoring offences) each won.
  
  
• It was strange there was no replay review after the sack-fumble on Kurt Warner in the dying seconds. Good thing that fate didn't befall the New England Patriots (or, ahem, the Vikings), you would never hear the end of it. The Cardinals were just happy to be there.
• Irony: Holmes and Larry Fitzgerald, the best players on each team Sunday, have each had domestic violence arrests. Meantime, Michael Phelps is getting his peepee whacked by the media for being a midnight toker at a college party. No doubt, in newsrooms across North America, there were people pointing out this was not news, but they ran it anyways (guilty as charged). Why?
  
  It's even more ridiculous to hate on Phelps for a few bong hits on the biggest beer-drinking day on the sports calendar. Alcohol, to quote the late, great Bill Hicks, is only the No. 2 killer drug, while marijuana "kills no one, and let me put this in a historical timeframe, ever."
• Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is the third former Vikings coordinator to guide a team to a Super Bowl title since 2000. Damn.
• The Detroit Free Press noted that none of so-called analyst Matt Millen's patter made the quote sheet that NBC sent out after the game. No wonder a Detroit TV station ran a news scroll across the screen every time he was on: ""Matt Millen was president of the Lions for the worst eight-year run in the history of the NFL. Knowing his history with the team, is there a credibility issue as he now serves as an analyst for NBC Sports?"

Twenty-nine will be the Vikings' year. You betcha.

Related:
National Februuary League (Pacific Viking)
The QB Who Saved Pittsburgh (Slate)

Damn Vikings: Just pawn in game of life

Some people, bless them, can siphon out the emotion from rationalism when talks sprouts up of a major pro sports team lighting out for another city.

There is no scrambling away from the Minnesota Vikings/L.A. stadium talk. A not uncommon reaction over the past couple days, if you read the comments on the articles, is that it's a done deal, barring Vikes owner Zygi Wilf opting to pay the shot for a stadium in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region (and who gets rich spending his own money instead of OPM?). The Vikings will become the L.A. Stallions by 2012, surer than their namesakes did not have horns on their helmets. The mock-up for the stadium developer Ben Roski Jr. wants to build in Industry, Calif., even shows purple seats. That's about as subtle as Vikings coach Brad Childress' playcalling on some days. Adrian Peterson off left tackle, again?!

Introducing some bits of background seems to the best way to work through the fear. It's a good primer for what Toronto could be going through in the next 5-10 years with a certain baseball team. Granted, MLB hasn't gone 14 years without having a team in the second-largest U.S. city.

Minnesota politicians and voters have been on this merry-go-round for more than a decade over public funding for pro sports playgrounds, long before Lehman Brothers. Secondly, the standard reflex to moralize about governments subsidizing the sports industry is not as sound as most of us might believe, although you can't convince many people of such. Thirdly, it can argued that if one's favourite team relocates to another city, what it's to a fan of the team who has never visited that state?

Taking each point one by one:

1. Please keep in mind that Minnesota is one state that would draw a line in the sand (obvious Coen brothers reference intended) over spending on sports.
   
   This is the state which recently sent Al Franken, who's a wee bit left of centre by American standards, to the U.S. Senate. It goes beyond having an electorate which is a bit more lefty than other states.
   
   Steve Rushin, writing in Sports Illustrated eleven years ago, when it seemed like baseball's Twins were a goner and the Vikings' stadium snafu was in its embryonic stages, said Minnesota is "a proud and peculiar and perhaps enlightened state."
   
   Sports fans, especially the younger genarations, have grown comfortably numb with the notion of sky-high salaries and stadiums which cost a half-billion dollars. It would take something on the order of, wait for it, a global economic meltdown to change that mentality. Minnesotans, to use Rushin's sum-up, are different:
   

   "Minnesota, as I have written before in these pages, is the Don't Show Me State. The Norwest Center in downtown Minneapolis was designed to be a few feet shorter than the state's tallest building, the nearby IDS Center. Minnesota has 12,034 lakes, but it rounded the number down to 10,000 for the inscription on its license plates. In 1899 a Minnesota resident, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen, coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption," which aptly describes what Minnesotans find objectionable about so many exotic (which is to say non-Minnesotan) cultures."

   How Canadian of them.
   
   
2. It's an academic argument when unemployment in the U.S. is inching toward 8%, but while opposing public spending on sports stadium is a good convenient stance since it makes you feel socially consciousness, it is contestable. The Sports Law Professor, a few months ago, laid out an 11-part argument for why governments spending on new stadia is not objectionable.
   
   Team owners trot out self-serving nonsense when they're trolling for a new pleasure palace. It's easy enough to ignore. Fans get priced out, which sucks. There's usually some scandal over backroom shenanigans which usually results in some middle managers resigning or being sacked (see the VANOC debacle or the new Yankee Stadium). However, as TSLP put it, "Cities bid against cities, so presumptively the price/subsidy is a competitive one."
   
   It's beyond the pale if the Yankees reap the rewards of some fudged land assessments. It's apples-to-pears to make comparsions with the International Olympic Cartel. Once the Games are awarded, there is no competition. The hosts pay the shot, no matter what.
   
   The fact of the matter is that forking over the money is a necessary evil. The big ball-and-stick leagues see it as a way to limit competition. Bill James, about 20 years ago, wrote an essay arguing that North America could support at least 200 major-league baseball teams. There is probably enough talent to support half as many pro football teams. There is enough talent for about 60 NHL teams, which might mean Hamilton or Winnipeg would finally get a team.
   
   However, in reality, the public sets the bar with the NFL. Every few years, there is talk of a spring football league in the U.S., one that would trade on deeply held college rivalries. A team in Birmingham, for instance, would be stocked with former Alabama and Auburn players and so on.
   
   It would never work since fans are interested in watching athletes of that calibre when they are 18-22 years old. It's kind of the same as how no one wants to watch a 50-year-old Fonzie try to pick up girls. No one wants to see a 30-year-old Eric Crouch running the option. The leagues' TV partners also want teams in major cities and fans are conditioned to go along. People are already ticked off enough about a Pittsburgh-Arizona Super Bowl or the Tampa Bay Rays being in the World Series. The big small towns already have college basketball and football to themselves, anyways.
   
   
3. Then there is the emotional argument. Did it matter in the first place that the Vikings played in Minneapolis-St. Paul?
   
   It mattered more that they had Randall Cunningham and Randy Moss and that there were a historic, albeit hard-luck franchise. It was bandwagon to get on, the same as anyone else's fandom. A certain fatalism has become attached to rooting for the Vikes, but that's just me eggheading it up.
   
   In his book God Save The Fan, Will Leitch dedicated a chapter to his lifelong support of the St. Louis-Phoenix-Arizona Cardinals. His argument was that he is the loyal one for sticking by a team through relocation, saying, "they're just a corporation, but they're my corporation." He's been rewarded with his team making a Super Bowl appearance.
   
   In other words, if the Vikings moved and kept the nickname and colours, there would be no reason not to keep supporting them.
   

It's debatable how deep Wilf and the state ledge in Minny are into this game. Twenty-eleven, which is when the Vikings' lease on the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome ("It's a shame they named this place after a nice guy like HHH" -- Billy Martin), is coming up fast.

One sustaining hope is that the Vikings could play at the Minnesota Gophers stadium for two or three seasons while the 'Dome is converted to an outdoor stadium. The Chicago Bears and Seattle Seahawks, temporarily played at college stadiums. It would be a compromise, but it might be too penny-ante if Wilf wants to be in among the Top 5 NFL teams in revenue.

Related:
Vikings Loving L.A.? (Andrew Brandt, National Football Post)

For I am Costanza, lord of the idiots

It's a somewhat busy day with another writing gig, so posting might be light.

Anyway, this must be shared. A couple years ago, in the wake of the World Cup, I set himself to finding an English Premier League team. Aston Villa seemed like a good prospect, but it never took.

Creating a rooting interest out of whole cloth might appeal on some contrarian level, but people's sports-viewing habits tend to become entrenched after 20-plus years of wasting your life watching games. Footy fans also have to get up at ungodly hours, like before noon on Saturdays and Sundays. A Minnesota Vikings, Toronto Raptors and Kingston Frontenacs fan can only belong to so many championship-starved fanbases, ultimately.

Well, that was mid to late 2006. In between, good friend Neil Acharya, over a few Innis & Gunns, welcomed yours truly into the fold of Liverpool fans. Liverpool is neck-and-neck with Manchester United for the EPL title, which is awesome.

Meantime, Villa under Martin O'Neill is rocking the claret and blue all the way to a Champions League bid. Thing is, they're something of an underdog team, while Liverpool is "famous for being good," to quote the Colin Firth version of Fever Pitch, which when combined with the Nick Hornby book furnished 75% of my understanding of how to be a footy fan.

Liverpool winning would be good, but it's so mainstream. Then again, so is Hornby. Ultimately, maybe it was good to ignore the inital appeal to cheer for Villa and go with The Opposite, knowing you'll never walk alone.

Related:
Champions League football is Aston Villa's to lose (Stuart James, The Sport Blog)

NFL Playoffs: Deus ex McNabb ...

Please don't see that as a mistake. Sometimes errors reveal the larger truths.

Someone at TSN.ca was subtly commenting on the fear of a nine-win team representing the NFC in the Super Bowl. It even appeared almost 20 hours before the No. 1 seed in the NFC, the New York Giants, folded against the Philadephia Eagles in the early game today, which Football Outsiders correctly predicted.

It is not a bad thing if teams that didn't reach double digits in victories during the regular season reach the Super Bowl. Mediocrity is rewarded every day in our society, so why people would not tolerate that in pro football is beyond comprehension. I know, you're looking for escapism, not reality thrown back in your face like a bad punt into the wind in Buffalo.

No doubt a lot of media chatter about the Giants will dwell on Eli Manning's mental toughness as reflected by his team's inability to finish drives. The inference left unsaid it that it's proof of some huge character flaw. It was actually a matter of simple mechanics. Some passers can handle Giants Stadium's notorious January winds. It was obvious that Manning could not from the first series of the game, when Elisha had Steve Smith open deep and the ball was blown off-course and fell incomplete.

On the next Giants possession, Manning tried a play-action pass to the same side of the field, the right sideline. The ball sailed out of the receiver's reach and Philly's Asante Samuel returned the gift interception to New York's two-yard line, setting up the first touchdown. Talk about foreshadowing.

The Giants, as you remember, won the Super Bowl last season by winning games in Tampa Bay, Dallas, Green Bay (it was cold, but not windy) and Arizona, when Manning could throw effectively without worrying about the wind. Manning is now 0-2 at home in the playoffs. The Giants haven't scored a touchdown in either game. Sometimes, it is that simple, although hey, there's a huge media maw to feed where pro athletes are either heroes or choking freaking dogs.

It is quite possible that Fox's Troy Aikman might have mentioned that 2005 shutout loss, but the mute button was on most of the afternoon as a prevent defence against Joe Buck. Of course, in broadcaster cliche-speak, that was a different Eli Manning, since he was only in his second season in '05. He might be more mature and more savvy, but no amount of age and wisdom is going to make up for what kind of ball he throws.

Anyway, laying objectivity aside, seeing the Eagles advance at the Giants' expense was sweet. Drew Magary at Deadspin beat everyone to this last week, but Eagles defensive co-ordinator Jim Johnson is a football geek's favourite football lifer. His unit has been the best one on the field in both of Philly's playoff wins.

Johnson is 67 years old, which means he will never get a chance at running his own team. He's not even the best known Jim Johnson in pro football. The Eagles' identity has always been quarterback Donovan McNabb, even though they've always been a balanced team.

A NFL owner would rather have someone who projects renewal and youthful enthusiasm.One of his former assistants, John Harbaugh, has Baltimore in the AFC title game; another, the Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, is a candidate to run his own team. The Giants' defensive boss, Steve Spagnuolo, is also in the running for one of several vacancies, so in other words, the coordinators from the teams the Eagles eliminated are in line to move up the football food chain.

There's the vicarious joy for Jim Johnson, plus the Giants embody loathsomeness. No one wants New York teams to win too often. The topper today was a boneheaded challenge in the fourth quarter by their crabass coach, Tom Coughlin, after Derrick Ward, was obviously short on a third-down running play. Coughlin actually made a bigger blunder earlier, by forcing the Giants to go into the wind in the first quarter.

It was milquetoast. It was fourth-and-inches and the Giants, down by nine points, only had two precious timeouts remaining. Risking a timeout for the sake of two feet in field position was pound-foolish. A team which led the league in rushing ought to be able to get two feet. Naturally, after the refs' spot was upheld, Manning got stuffed on a quarterback sneak. It was brilliant.

Anyway, not to overdo do the here's-what-happened-in-sports-and-here's-what-I-think, but here's a couple other random thoughts.

Crime, punishment and Joe Buck: The Fox play-by-play man made a smug reference to Plaxico Burress "took himself out" of the picture, referring to how the Giants suspended him after his handgun charge. Pro Football Talk noted that in the second game today, San Diego's Vincent Jackson, who had a drunk-driving charge, scored the first touchdown of the game. The second TD of the game was scored by Santonio Holmes, who was charged with marijuana possession earlier this year. Neither player was benched by his team after being arrested.

Point being: The moral high ground is nice in the NFL. Winning is nicer. Don't count on hearing that from Joe Buck.

Best beauty use of the quick kick: It was mentioned a couple weeks ago that the quick kick, where the quarterback punts from a standard scrimmage formation, is a great underused gambit.

Early on in the San Diego-Pittsburgh game, the Steelers had fourth-and-8 on the 34-yard line. A 51-yard field-goal try was out, since no one has ever made a kick that long at Heinz Field, known to have the worst playing surface in the NFL. The Steelers lined up like they were going for it, but QB Ben Roethlisberger, backpedalled a few steps, took the snap and left-footed a punt that rolled dead at the nine-yard line, pinning San Diego. Pittsburgh forced a punt, and Holmes returned it 68 yards for a touchdown. That might not have happened if the Chargers had started with better field position.

Hidebound coaching, Fisher is King: There is a debate at Pro-football-reference over Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher opting for a tying field goal on a fourth-and-inches situation with 4:00 left Saturday. It is always schadenfreulicious when a team has the safe call backfire, as it did when the Baltimore Ravens moved downfield for the winning points, eliminating Tennessee.

That doesn't mean it was the wrong call. Coaches play for the tie or for overtime all the time. No one remembers the times it worked and Tennessee's defence had played well enough to give Fisher confidence that his team would get a meaningful chance to score again.

Oz right now: One subplot of the NFC title game between the Eagles (9-6-1) and Arizona Cardinals (9-7) is that it means a former Australian Rules Football player will play in the Super Bowl. How can you not be excited for the Aussies, choosing with punter to root for, Philly's Sav Rocca or 'Zona's Ben Graham?

He does do that: Pacifist Viking had an odd observation about Joe Buck: "Before a game on FOX, watch the intro with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. While Aikman talks, Buck watches Aikman, but every few seconds he turns to look at the camera with an ultra-serious expression, as if he's checking to make sure we're paying attention. It is a very unnatural, robotic movement -- he seems compelled to artificially turn his head toward the camera every few seconds."

Fun factoid: The NFC championship game will be the 114th meeting between the Cardinals and Eagles. The all-time series is tied at 54-54-5.