Nils and I have been waiting for this yawner A-Rod story to disappear before cranking it back up here at The Theorem. But, my goodness, people just WON'T stop pontificating about this. I feel compelled to mock *one* story, if only to avoid accumulating too much rust. (Deep breath) Here goes.
Rick Reilly (ugh, am I really going to do this?) wants to take the recent MVP awards and give them to their "rightful" recipients.
It's been tougher than a $4.99 steak. Got chased by Dobermans eight times. Had to hire five different sticky-fingered third-graders. Broke into the wrong house twice. But it's finally done. I've been able to retrieve every single MVP award that was wrongfully won by every single suspected 'roid ranger over the last 20 years.
[Hey, did you know that Reilly reportedly makes $3.4 MILLION per year to write stuff like this?]
[H]ere's yours from 2001, Luis Gonzalez, after you finished behind The Barry Bonds Pharmacy. We won't even mention the home run title you would've won that year.
[Well at least Reilly isn't accusing guys who saw random statistical spikes (in this case, Luis Gonzalez) but have never admitted using PEDs or been linked to usage. Maybe I was wrong about Reilly. He deserves credit for that much.]
You already have two MVPs, Albert [Pujols], and you're about to get three more, since Barry Bonds ripped you off worse than Bernie Madoff to win the award from 2002 to 2004. You hit .335 and averaged 41 bombs those years and yet you finished second behind the clearly creaming Bonds in '02 and '03 and third behind Bonds and Adrian Beltre in '04. We're throwing out Beltre since, while he denies ever using PEDs, he fell off the face of the planet once baseball put in stricter steroid suspensions in 2005. If he wasn't cheating, I'm the Queen Mother.
[Honestly, it's my own fault for even bothering to read a Reilly article. It really is.]
Showing posts with label rick reilly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rick reilly. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
One more, then this story is dead to me. Honest.
As Nils has pointed out in previous episodes, Rick Reilly is a touch out-of-touch. His article on Larry Fitzgerald both reiterates that notion and serves as a perfect representation of the media's looking-the-other-way love affair with the star WR.
Obama is a football freak, so he'll be watching next Sunday when the world finally gets a load of Fitzgerald's son—the anti-T.O.—a receiver who catches everything and brags about nothing, who climbs his own invisible staircase to get to footballs, who dresses and speaks impeccably and travels the world alone in the off-season, taking in museums.
[Insert your own "must stay 200 feet away" joke with respect to the "travels the world alone" compliment.]
"He looks so much like his mother," says Larry Sr. "He has her humility, her smile and her stubbornness."
[I bet T.O. looks *nothing* like his mother.]
No wonder Junior still carries his mom's driver's license in his wallet. No wonder he wears his hair in long dreads—as she did—to honor her. And now this Samson comes into the Big Bowl as one of the main pillars the Steelers have to topple.
[This story is officially dead to me. Although, the following Wikipedia passage on Samson is a bit eerie:
--
Obama is a football freak, so he'll be watching next Sunday when the world finally gets a load of Fitzgerald's son—the anti-T.O.—a receiver who catches everything and brags about nothing, who climbs his own invisible staircase to get to footballs, who dresses and speaks impeccably and travels the world alone in the off-season, taking in museums.
[Insert your own "must stay 200 feet away" joke with respect to the "travels the world alone" compliment.]
"He looks so much like his mother," says Larry Sr. "He has her humility, her smile and her stubbornness."
[I bet T.O. looks *nothing* like his mother.]
No wonder Junior still carries his mom's driver's license in his wallet. No wonder he wears his hair in long dreads—as she did—to honor her. And now this Samson comes into the Big Bowl as one of the main pillars the Steelers have to topple.
[This story is officially dead to me. Although, the following Wikipedia passage on Samson is a bit eerie:
--
On the way to ask for the woman's hand in marriage, Samson is attacked by an Asiatic Lion and simply grabs it and rips it apart, as the Spirit of God moves upon him, divinely empowering him. This so profoundly affects Samson that he just keeps it to himself as a secret.--
Monday, January 12, 2009
Back to the BCS
More BCS madness, this time courtesy of Rick Reilly:
Some gifts people give are pointless: Styling mousse to Dick Vitale. An all-you-can-eat card to Kate Moss. The BCS Championship given to Oklahoma or Florida.
One these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same…
Dick Vitale doesn’t want styling mousse. Though unfunny, I get the joke that Reilly is making about the very thin Kate Moss not wanting an all-you-can-eat card, whatever that is. Oklahoma and Florida though both very much want(ed) the BCS “national championship.”
Logic fail.
It means nothing because the BCS has no credibility.
Rick Reilly, however, has all the credibility. He’s practically made of credibility. In fact, when he writes his columns, he sits in a little cave on a mountain of credibility, a sportswriter Swami whose turban, incidentally, is woven out of credibility.
Florida? Oklahoma? Who cares? Utah is the national champion.
Because Rick Reilly gets to decide these things.
The End. Roll credits.
And when he makes a decision, goddamn it, it’s final.
Argue with this, please. I beg you.
No need to beg.
Find me anybody else that went undefeated. Thirteen-and-zero.
This is probably the best argument in Utah’s favor…except that the nature of college football means that not all teams can play each other, making an obvious indicator like record less useful than it is in, say, baseball. Also, the vagaries of strength of schedule play a factor, meaning that games like those Utah played against Michigan and Wyoming are more like scrimmages than actual competitive contests. Finally, because there is no playoff, the current system relies on voters going with their gut.
Reilly is going with his gut on this one, decrying a system based on going on the gut of so-called experts because his gut disagrees.
Airtight case, this one.
Beat four ranked teams.
You know who else beat four ranked teams this year?
Florida. They defeated #5 Oklahoma, #6 Alabama, #10 Georgia, and #23 Florida State.
USC. They utterly destroyed #8 Penn State, #9 Oregon, #11 Ohio State, and #25 California.
Texas. They beat #5 Oklahoma, #11 Ohio State, #16 Missouri, and #18 Oklahoma State.
In fact, one team even beat five ranked opponents.
Oklahoma. The Sooners rang up victories against #7 TCU, #12 Texas Tech, #16 Missouri, #17 Cincinnati and #18 Oklahoma State.
Other than that, good point.
Went to the Deep South and seal-clubbed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
What Rick actually meant was: went to a neutral site where the fans were split evenly between the two teams and seal-clubbed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
The same Alabama that was ranked No. 1 for five weeks.
As anyone who watched the Tide this season knows, the Utes put the hurt on a team with real quality.
The same Alabama that went undefeated in the regular season.
We get it, Alabama was a good football team.
The same Alabama that Florida beat in order to get INTO the BCS Championship game in the first place.
Florida > Alabama. Utah > Alabama. Though there is an argument, if we consider only these two results and finely weight on the relative margins of victory, that this could equal Utah > Florida, a sensible person clearly can’t consider only those two games.
In fact, a sensible person would likely have to do some pretty sophisticated mathematics, maybe even involving the Perron-Frobenius Theorem, to correctly weigh the relative strength of the teams that have an argument for the national title based on the results of the games that they played this season.
All the games. Not just two.
And not just for Utah and Florida either, but for everybody in Division 1 (especially teams like USC and Texas who negotiated a demanding schedule with some success). After all, the point is to determine the best team in the country. Let’s leave no stone unturned.
Or, instead of trying to use statistics to find out the true relative ability of the Division 1 football teams, you could just say that 13-0 Utah is the best because they lost no games and beat Alabama.
That way does take less math.
Some gifts people give are pointless: Styling mousse to Dick Vitale. An all-you-can-eat card to Kate Moss. The BCS Championship given to Oklahoma or Florida.
One these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same…
Dick Vitale doesn’t want styling mousse. Though unfunny, I get the joke that Reilly is making about the very thin Kate Moss not wanting an all-you-can-eat card, whatever that is. Oklahoma and Florida though both very much want(ed) the BCS “national championship.”
Logic fail.
It means nothing because the BCS has no credibility.
Rick Reilly, however, has all the credibility. He’s practically made of credibility. In fact, when he writes his columns, he sits in a little cave on a mountain of credibility, a sportswriter Swami whose turban, incidentally, is woven out of credibility.
Florida? Oklahoma? Who cares? Utah is the national champion.
Because Rick Reilly gets to decide these things.
The End. Roll credits.
And when he makes a decision, goddamn it, it’s final.
Argue with this, please. I beg you.
No need to beg.
Find me anybody else that went undefeated. Thirteen-and-zero.
This is probably the best argument in Utah’s favor…except that the nature of college football means that not all teams can play each other, making an obvious indicator like record less useful than it is in, say, baseball. Also, the vagaries of strength of schedule play a factor, meaning that games like those Utah played against Michigan and Wyoming are more like scrimmages than actual competitive contests. Finally, because there is no playoff, the current system relies on voters going with their gut.
Reilly is going with his gut on this one, decrying a system based on going on the gut of so-called experts because his gut disagrees.
Airtight case, this one.
Beat four ranked teams.
You know who else beat four ranked teams this year?
Florida. They defeated #5 Oklahoma, #6 Alabama, #10 Georgia, and #23 Florida State.
USC. They utterly destroyed #8 Penn State, #9 Oregon, #11 Ohio State, and #25 California.
Texas. They beat #5 Oklahoma, #11 Ohio State, #16 Missouri, and #18 Oklahoma State.
In fact, one team even beat five ranked opponents.
Oklahoma. The Sooners rang up victories against #7 TCU, #12 Texas Tech, #16 Missouri, #17 Cincinnati and #18 Oklahoma State.
Other than that, good point.
Went to the Deep South and seal-clubbed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
What Rick actually meant was: went to a neutral site where the fans were split evenly between the two teams and seal-clubbed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
The same Alabama that was ranked No. 1 for five weeks.
As anyone who watched the Tide this season knows, the Utes put the hurt on a team with real quality.
The same Alabama that went undefeated in the regular season.
We get it, Alabama was a good football team.
The same Alabama that Florida beat in order to get INTO the BCS Championship game in the first place.
Florida > Alabama. Utah > Alabama. Though there is an argument, if we consider only these two results and finely weight on the relative margins of victory, that this could equal Utah > Florida, a sensible person clearly can’t consider only those two games.
In fact, a sensible person would likely have to do some pretty sophisticated mathematics, maybe even involving the Perron-Frobenius Theorem, to correctly weigh the relative strength of the teams that have an argument for the national title based on the results of the games that they played this season.
All the games. Not just two.
And not just for Utah and Florida either, but for everybody in Division 1 (especially teams like USC and Texas who negotiated a demanding schedule with some success). After all, the point is to determine the best team in the country. Let’s leave no stone unturned.
Or, instead of trying to use statistics to find out the true relative ability of the Division 1 football teams, you could just say that 13-0 Utah is the best because they lost no games and beat Alabama.
That way does take less math.
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