Skip Bayless Update: Yup, Still Hates LeBron

Skip had this to tweet today:

First of all, Reggie Bush has been on the Dolphins for all of one day. I know it's not in you operating manual, but cut the guy some slack.

Second, I don't know if LeBron is the best basketball player in the world, but it's definitely not certain that he isn't. Anyway, do you think that Skip provides any sort of argument based on statistics other than number of championships to bolster his claim?

Of course not.

Pete Priscoe Presents: The Car Wash Murder Mystery

Pats will wash stink away

Pete Priscoe

Hey, Pete, do you happen to know the hours for the car wash around here?

The car wash is open.

Oh, it is? Great. Thanks for the tip!

That's what I say whenever the New England Patriots acquire a talent that has all kinds of issues.

What's that? No, no. Just wanted to know about the car wash. Gotta go, thanks!

There has to be a car wash outside the Patriots facility because the stink is always washed away.

Yeah ... I know where the car wash is...

Corey Dillon? Stink washed away.  

Pete, really, I've got to go.

Randy Moss? Stink washed away -- for the most part. 

For the most part? ... What's that supposed to mean?

Listen, I'm going to the car wash, Pete, the car wash. These are people you're talking about. Human beings.

On and on it goes.

Really? There's more? Shouldn't the union hear about this?

Now it's time to do the same with Albert Haynesworth.

You're starting to sound a little crazy, Pete. You can't be putting all these players through car washes. It's nuts.

"It won't hurt," said one coach when asked if he thought Belichik would help. "I think he will be fired up for at least one year."

It won't hurt? You're taking about putting players in car washes, Pete. That's got to hurt. I'm going to go tell someone about this. This can't continue.

The car wash is open.

Pete, why do you have that crazy look in your eye?

The car wash is open.

And what are you doing with that rope?

The car wash is open.

Get back! I mean it! STEP AWAY!

The car wash is open.

Pete? Pete!? OH DEAR GOD NO!!!

Want to bet the stink gets washed away?

AHHHHHHH!!!!

That Time King Solomon Was a Texans Fan

The way I come up with material to post is by scouring the web for sports articles which I find to be of particularly poor quality. Most of the time, I actually have to read the article to do this, but, every so often, you can just tell that what you're about to read will be a steaming pile of verbosity (SAT-Word Burn!) just by the title of the blog. Like this, for example:

I understand the wordplay here, but you have to be some kind of asshole to name your blog after King Solomon, right? At least you're staying humble, though...

Oh, wise King Solomon what wisdom do you have for your feeble-minded readers today? Though we be not worthy of your words, please, grace us with your infinite knowledge so that we may understand but one word of your intellect. What do you have to say?

Relax, Texans will get their man at cornerback

Ah, yes. Football. One of King Solomon's favorite topics of discussion.

We just don’t know who that man will be.

My God! Even you don't know? Then who does? Who can? A puzzle to allude the greatest of intellects? Astonishing!

Look, they are going all-out to get Nnamdi Asomugha, which is what any smart team in their position would do.

Mistake one: Assuming the Texans are smart. This the team that drafted David Carr!

You can’t have a position of desperate need and ignore the best player on the board at that position.

Counterpoint: The Redskins.

The Texans are legitimate players in this one. Today might be decision day.

Could be. May be. Who knows? This guy must be reading from the Peter King Playbook.

And relax with the panic, fans. Players can’t sign until Friday evening, and they can’t suit up at practice until next Thursday. Let it play out, see what happens, then react. 

What wise words! Finally, the King Solomon I've been waiting for! The King is right -- everyone just relax. Don't get all up in arms about it something that hasn't even happened yet. Sit down and enjoy a book. Leave the pointless ponrification to me, King Solomon, the greatest genius that ever lived.

If your credit isn’t good enough to buy that Ferarri, you can’t go down the street and pick up a Mustang on the way home. And anything would be better than that beat-up Pinto you drove around last season.

And now I've lost you. Why couldn't you just pick up the Mustang, a much cheaper car than a Ferrari? ... Your wisdom is too much for me! I'm blind compared to your vision!

Don’t be like the jokers who all offseason said the Texans have no chance of landing a top cornerback.

You heathen jokers! How dare you joke in front of the King! I'll kill you!

If the Texans didn’t make a good faith attempt to sign Asomugha, they would be doing a disservice to their fans. If you accept that (and based on ticket sales since the franchise began, apparently many of you do), then fine.

Good. Great. Fine. Give up on your team, you jerks. You didn't deserve to be fans of the great franchise that is the Houston Texans anyway. 

You know I’m as honest about these things as anyone in town. 

Didn't realize King Solomon was a used-car salesman, but all right.

It would be shocking if the Texans don’t get one of the top three corners. They should get one of the top two, but I’m not going to put that heat on them, or slam them for not getting it done, until they actually don’t get it done.

Consider this a patented King Solomon pre-slam warning.

As for [Nate Clements], I’m not a huge fan.

That said, he would be an upgrade on what the Texans had before, but in a way, so would Chris Bosh. With the NBA lockout, can’t believe Rick Smith hasn’t sent a caravan of Texans fans to Bosh’s house to see if the 6-9 forward wanted to moonlight as a 6-9 shutdown corner. 

There you go, Nate Clements. You would be about as much as an upgrade to the Texan's secondary as Chris Bosh. That's got to be the biggest insult given to a cornerback in history.

The King has spoken.

Schooling Skip: Optical Illusions

As the Pirates-Braves blown call from last night is the biggest sports story of the day (already written about in the previous post), of course Skip Bayless has an opinion on it.

This is an optical illusion:

This is the play at the plate:

One is "characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality." [Wikipedia]

The other is objective reality.

Just because you can't tell what the outcome of an event was, does not mean that the event was an optical illusion.

[Photo via The Big Lead via Getty]

Replay in Baseball? Might as Well Just Play it with Snails!

The arguments against using instant-replay to overturn calls in baseball are dumb. We have the technology, and in a sport like Baseball, where the action isn't fluid, it wouldn't that difficult to integrate it into the game. Pete Gratoff disagrees. Let's find out why:

On Wednesday morning, umpire Jerry Meals called the Braves’ Julio Lugo safe at the plate although he appeared to be tagged out by Pittsburgh’s Michael McKenry in the bottom of the 19th inning as Atlanta won 4-3.

Pretty atrocious call. (Here's a link if you haven't seen it.)

The play looked a lot like Leslie Nielsen’s umpiring in “The Naked Gun.”

I see that you agree. (Here's a link for that too.)

Not surprisingly, there has been a push for more replay in baseball in the wake of that game, which started Tuesday night.

That's a good idea, right?

That’s a bad idea.

Oh.

Not sure why, but I'm sure you provide solid reasons to back-up your claim, and, even if I disagree, I'll still be able to see your side of the argument, and we'll laugh and laugh about how we were arguing over something so trivial, and we'll go see a movie or something because we really don't hang out enough anymore, you know?

Baseball fans love to wax poetically (yawn)

No? You're just going to make fun of baseball fans? All right, then.

about how the game has no time limit, and while that’s true, it’s what makes the game so inaccessible to fans today.

How will they know when the game's going to end? HOW WILL THEY KNOW?

Football and basketball have surpassed baseball as the national pastimes in this country, because the action is quick, there’s usually a lot of scoring and you know there will be a winner in the time you’ve allotted to watch the game.

What does that even mean? "In the time you've allotted to watch the game?"

Football games have a one-hour-long clock, yet the games take three hours to play.

Basketball games have a 48-minute clock, yet the games take two-and-half hours to play.

Clearly, the fact that these sports have clocks itself does not allow you to allot a certain amount of time to watch the games. You just have to know how long the games usually take. Something that you can easily do in baseball even though it does not use a clock. (By the way, baseball games, on average, also last around three-hours.)

Not so for baseball, as we saw early Wednesday as the Pirates and Braves traded zeroes through extra innings.

Extra innings. Overtime. Football and basketball have these too.

If there had been replay, how long would it have taken to correct the call and continue the game?

I don't know -- probably just as long as it took the Pirates' Manager to go out and argue the call with the umpire.

Even another five minutes added to a baseball game is too much.

Wow. It seems to me that you really don't like baseball that much.

Baseball has replay to make sure home-run calls are correct. That’s enough. Baseball is too long and slow to add even more replay to the mix. 

Home-run calls: OK.

Making sure calls at home-plate are correct, calls that are equally as important as home-run calls: Don't you guys understand that baseball is already too long and boring! AHHH!

Here's what I think. You obviously don't enjoy baseball games. So stop watching them, and stop writing about them. That way, everybody will be happy.

Brett Favre: Football Player or Back-Stabbing, Football-Playing Chef!?

Skip hasn't tweeted in eight hours, and since I am not going to watch 1st & 10 for fear of head-explosion (probably shouldn't haven't watched Raiders of the Lost Ark last night... damn you Indiana Jones and your amazing adventures!), I have no idea what's on his mind right now. So, in lieu of that, I'll shift my focus to his oft partner-in-crime, Jemele Hill (a person who this blog could've easily been named after) who just recently turned in this column: 

Michael Vick making a mistake

Oh god he’s killing dogs again!!!

Never let Brett Favre cook in your kitchen.

He gets cake-batter EVERYWHERE.

I don't mean that literally, of course.

Oh. Well he still gets cake-batter everywhere.

It's just my own play on a phrase I heard in one of those my-man-did-me-wrong love songs.

Man. Those songs always seem to be about Brett Favre, don’t they? Get over it ladies. He’s a gun-slinger; you can’t control him. You can only hope to get as much love as you can out of him before he gallops off into the sunset like a kid playing football in a pair of crisp, durable Wrangler-Jeans.

But that phrase is the first thing that came to mind after hearing the reports that the Philadelphia Eagles are interested in signing Favre as a backup to Michael Vick.

The first thing that came to my mind? Fuck Brett Favre.

It's not a good idea to let a competitor invade a sacred part of your home. So here's some free advice for Vick: Don't invite Favre in.

“Sacred part?” What’s Vick got in his house? A chapel? Is the kitchen “sacred” now? Are any other rooms sacred? Is the bathroom sacred? It’s like I heard in one of those my-man-did-me-wrong love songs: “Don’t let Brett Favre shit in your toilet. He gets cake-batter EVERYWHERE.”

"I would be honored to have Brett Farve as a backup. That will be amazing Learning how to toy with defenses the way he did his whole career," Vick tweeted Sunday.

Vick later deleted the tweet. It's unclear why, but his post indicated that he has no clue what he's welcoming.

An Absolute Shit-storm of Cake-Batter.

Put Favre in a city that still worships Rocky and is known for its impatient fan base, and after a couple of bad outings Vick could go from being the flavor of the month to stale leftovers.

Jemele Hill Burn Notice! Boom!

Besides, does anyone really think that Favre and his enormous ego will be satisfied playing behind Vick?

How far out is Hill going to play this scenario? Will Favre be satisfied being a back-up? What about when Vick throws two interceptions in Week 3 against the Giants? Will Eagles Nation be clamoring for Favre after Vick sprains his left elbow in a freak gardening-accident? How will Vick react when Favre leads the Eagles to the NFC Championship Game only to throw seven pick-sixes?

It hasn’t happened yet! Why are you talking about “a couple of bad outings” for Vick and Favre being a back-up? YOU HAVE A GIGANTIC ESPN PLATFORM! WRITE SOMETHING THAT MATTERS!

If the Eagles get Favre, he's not coming to Philadelphia to play the dutiful houseguest. He's headed straight for the kitchen.

I can already see Jemele Hill salivating at the idea of Favre actually coming back and playing for the Eagles:

Brett Favre Cooking Up Nothing But Trouble in Philly
Brett Favre Cooking Win Soufflé
Brett Favre Slicing and Dicing Defenses for the Eagles
Chef Brett’s Winning Recipe
Brett Favre Dies in Cake-Batter Catastrophe

Pulitzer Prize here we come!

Terry Foster: Lawrence Frank is a Loser Who Couldn't Command Respect from an Infant

Terry Foster doesn't like that the Pistons hired Lawrence Frank instead of Bill Laimbeer to be their new head coach. He even wrote a column about it! Let's dissect it.

I've had time to think this through

That's good. You did write a column on it.

If the coaching search was down to Mike Woodson and Frank, the Pistons should have shocked the world …

... and hired a coach that will last longer than two years?

And hired Bill Laimbeer.

Oh Snap! I see what you did there! That wasn't even one of the choices! World Shocker!

While Laimbeer lacks NBA head coaching experience, he at least can command respect in the locker room. He's underrated as a tactical guy, and a better choice than Frank. 

While Laimbeer lacks any experience commanding respect in an NBA locker room, at least he can command respect in an NBA locker room. Unlike Frank, who, as we all know, has never commanded an ounce of respect in his entire life. Especially not when he lead the Nets to the playoffs four straight years. I hear that he used to have to call Jason Kidd, Sir, and that his assistant coaches made him shine their shoes before every game. You think Laimbeer would let that fly? No f'n way!

  

Frank is passionate, and knows his stuff. 

Both great coaching qualities.  

But will players believe in him? 

No.

Will you give any reaons for this?

 

No.

 

Will you write a paragraph longer than one line?

No.

But I'm not here to simply rip a decision by an organization that put their faith in Michael Curry, Flip Saunders and Kuester. Here is a solution that will make this hire work: Clean house.

Listen. I'm not here to simply rip this decision. I'm also here to point out these other equally horrible decisions you made.

Former Pistons player and coach Ray Scott said Dumars doesn't believe in tearing down and building up.

But Dumars must remember this: 

If it is old and sullen, get rid of it. If it is young and coachable, keep it. 

Yeah! Unless we're talking about coaches. Then, switch it.