How Will Joe Buck Top His Debut Show?

For those of you who don't know, Joe Buck has a new talk show on HBO. Buck didn't want some generic sports show where he only talked to boring athletes about very little, so he took a chance and grabbed some comedians for his first show.

Joining Buck on his debut show were actor Paul Rudd, comedian (and Tony Siragusa look alike) Artie Lange from the Howard Stern show, and Saturday Night Live player Jason Sudeikis. I admire Joe Buck for attempting to go out of the box with his guest list and I'm guessing Buck thinks he's pop culture enough to hang with any cutting edge types.

Lange proved this theory incorrect as he launched into a performance that left Buck with anything but a salutary feeling. Buck attempted to laugh off a few of Lange's bad taste comments, but he clearly looked less than comfortable and at one point even asked Michael Irvin for help. Yes, Joe Buck was looking to Michael Irvin for some help on a talk show. That's where this thing went.

If you haven't seen it, check it out:



So now that Buck has set the bar at "scorched earth" for his show, I wonder what other guests he could have on to make him even more uncomfortable.

Here are some ideas:

Bobby Clarke and Eric Lindros:
It was an ugly ending in Philadelphia between G.M. Bobby Clarke (a former star player) and star center Eric Lindros. Reeeealll ugly. The Flyers gave up a ton to land Lindros from the Quebec Nordiques. He was going to be the evolution of hockey players and Lindros did have other-worldly talent. He was also a diva and that didn't sit well with a former grinder like Clarke.

Lindros was the top player for the Flyers when he was on the ice. Unfortunately, he was often injured. Clarke didn't think Lindros was willing to play through pain and his frustration boiled over as he watched the Nordiques move to Colorado and win Stanley Cups while his Flyers only had one Finals appearance where they were swept away by the Detroit Red Wings.

The situation came to a head one night when Lindros was found cold and pale while laying in a bathtub. The team ordered him to get on a plane back to Philly. Lindros first went to a nearby hospital and they found he had a collapsed lung. Lindros' father (one of those over-active parents which further angered Clarke) sent a letter to the Flyers stating that Lindros would have died had he done what the Flyers ordered.

The final seasons in Philadelphia saw Lindros stripped of his captaincy, his refusal to resign with the Flyers, and Clarks's refusal to allow Lindros to shop himself to other teams. Lindros ended the final year of Flyers contract sitting out an entire season because he refused to play for Clarke while Clarke refused to trade Lindros out of spite. Did I mention Colorado won some Stanley Cups with the players traded to them for Lindros?

Jose Canseco and Raul Ibanez:
Ibanez would start out denying any steroid accusations. He would offer to pee in a cup right there on set for a drug test. Meanwhile, Canseco would be sitting in the other chair shooting himself full of 'roids. He would keep waving the needle in front of Ibanez saying "don't you want to reach 40 homers this year? You could be the next big thing. Now buy my book."

The show would end when Canseco's testicles physically dropped out of his pants and Rafael Palmiero ran in to declare his innocence again.

Al Davis and George Steinbrenner:
The two deathbed owners would be wheeled in to discuss superficial things like whose franchise has the cooler uniforms (silver and black or pinstripes?), but the conversation would quickly deteriorate into which one is more overbearing and who was going to die first.

As an added bonus, Buck could introduce the reanimated corpse of Billy Martin into the mix. Martin may then go full zombie and begin looking for brains to eat. The entire episode would be analyzed and broadcast by former Raider John Madden with help from Emmitt Smith and Shannon Sharpe.

John: "See look at that right there, Emmitt. Boom! Martin bites the key grip. Now the grip is a zombie. "See, the thing I like about zombies is that even though there legs are dead, they're legs are alive."

Emmitt: "Exactly, see he be by the key grip and then he turn his head magnanimously to pontificate the values of the tooths."

Shannon: "Bibbidy Bobbidy Boo!"

John: "I going to marry Brett Favre."

Emmitt: " I have some diamonds. But they're surrounded by cow poo-poo."

Shannon: "Boody Boo! Boody Boo!"

And then Billy Martin zombie bites them and that's the end of that. While you're at it Billy Martin zombie, could you just bite Brett Favre so we don't have to go through that crap anymore?

Do People Still Like The NBA?

The Lakers won. Yawn. They were the favorites from the beginning of the season, they were big favorites once Kevin Garnett went down and HUGE favorites when LeBron sulked out of the playoffs.

So there you go. Lakers fans rejoice and go about your day in a state of effulgence. Other fans complain about the Pau Gasol trade or any other signings/transactions that always seem to favor L.A. It's just the way it is.

Most of you reading probably already know my feelings on the subject and know my fruitless attempts to introduce people to the greatness of the NHL. So I'm taking myself out of this discussion all together and will simply go by straight television ratings. (Which means very little if you know how they measure T.V. ratings).

What we know:
Of the four traditional pro sports played in America (football, basketball, baseball, hockey), we know that football is going to dominate the others. The NFL is a machine that simply chews up any program that dares to oppose it. NFL regular season games can often draw more viewers than the playoff games in other sports. And when you get to the Super Bowl, ratings go into another stratosphere, usually tripling or quadrupling the championship ratings from any of the other major sports.

We also know that hockey will barely show up on the radar. This year Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals actually helped NBC win the time slot on Friday night....with a 3 share. That's still only half of the viewers that baseball or basketball brings in during the playoffs.

Now for the middle ground:
The MLB and NBA are constantly hovering in the middle ground as the two sports try to gain popularity during the television era.

Baseball, of course, was once the most popular sport in America and television ratings for the World Series used to be solid and consistent throughout the 1970's and 80's.

Then the strike happened.

Since 1994, television ratings have been dropping steadily for the MLB. This decade, the World Series has averaged about 10 million fewer viewers than it used to.

Meanwhile, as the MLB was tearing itself apart in the 1990's, the NBA was riding a wave of Michael Jordan popularity. The NBA ratings hit the apex in 1998 (Jordan's last game with the Bulls), when 29 million viewers tuned in to see the NBA Finals.

Since then, the NBA Finals have averaged about half of what it did during the Jordan era. When the Spurs play, the ratings dip even further. The low point came when only nine million people tuned in to watch the Spurs sweep the Cavs a few years ago.

Even college basketball has been outdrawing the NBA this decade.

Is this just a lull until LeBron properly takes over, or are people really tired of watching the same teams win the NBA title and having the same superstars shoved down our throats by the NBA marketing department?

The future isn't set for the NBA, but it isn't secure either.

And Another Network Television Show's Life Ends Too Early....

This evening one of the only television shows I enjoy will air it's final episode despite widespread critical acclaim and a rabid base of fans. If you liked the movie Princess Bride, then you would have liked the show Pushing Daisies. It has the same fairy tale atmosphere mixed with quirky characters and a great sense of humor. And here it is, playing out the final episode of it's shortened run on a Saturday night in the summer which is basically the morgue for television shows.

Have you ever had a television show you really enjoyed suddenly get canceled despite great reviews and award nominations? Of course you have. And it sucks.

From Jericho to Arrested Development to Firefly, fans have had to sit back and watch the corporate suits axe their favorite show prematurely in order to put up yet another CSI crime drama or some new reality show where a foreign woman picks an American gay best friend to marry for a green card.

As usual, money plays the big role in these decisions. Why spend money on the sets and cast of a good show when they can spend next to nothing and put up another stupid reality show that becomes your girlfriend's next "guilty pleasure"? Occasionally, a producer or fan base uses some prestidigitation to save the show for another season, but usually fans have to accept the fate and hope for a movie to get made.

So I would like to give my salute to Pushing Daisies. You had a good (albeit short) run filled with Emmy nominations and good reviews all around. Unfortunately, America is apparently not ready for a quirky show with subtle humor and wonderful characters. Maybe I'll just read a book. I hear that's cool and stuff.

Palin Versus Letterman...The Rivalry Heats Up

Lakers/Celtics, Cowboys/Redskins, Michigan/Ohio State, Griffindor/Slytherin, Red Sox/Yankees (is it still a rivalry when one team gets dominated?) Now we have.....PALIN VS. LETTERMAN-THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL.

Palin, of course, has been a favorite target for the megrims of late night comedians ever since she was introduced at the Republican National Convention. And unlike the safe, baby-food like, generic comedy of Jay Leno, David Letterman's jokes can actually cut you a little.

This sets the stage for Palin's recent trip to New York City. Letterman, of course, couldn't let Palin's trip go without comment, so he threw a few things out there on his late night talk show. And that's when the cage match began....


Letterman fired the opening volley in his opening monologue:



Letterman also had his top 10 list dedicated to the NYC visit. Number two on the list is what got Palin riled up:



Funny? Meh.
In poor taste? Probably.
Worth the uproar? Doubtful.

Dave is a comedian on late night television. He'll have his hits and misses.

Palin obviously thought a few of his jokes were misses because she reacted with a statement that read: "Laughter incited by sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is... disgusting."

She also was asked about the Letterman encounter on John Ziegler's conservative talk radio show:




Dave apologized to Palin during his show the following night, well a tongue in cheek apology with a few zingers mixed in:



Now we have a full fledged party warfare. Just google the Sarah Palin/David Letterman feud and you'll find articles about how the leftist Dave Letterman supports rape and that he has no respect for women. On the other side, Sarah Palin is being called the most humorless politician around. It's turning into a vicious rivalry that everyone feels the need to get involved in. Just listen to how testy John Ziegler gets with MSNBC:



Letterman vs. Palin: Rivalry Renewed! Just wait until the playoffs begin.

It's Like A Coach Cal Who's Actually In Cali!

If you read my post about the NCAA's inability to punish John Calipari and other coaches who cheat, you know that I don't like it when college basketball coaches blatantly cheat to land the top players. But I understand why they would do it since the NCAA rarely punishes the person who cheats and often just makes some ceremonial act like striking accomplishments from the record book and hoping fans forget about how good that team was.

Meanwhile, the head coach, who was the figurehead of a program that went awry, often gets to disappear from the radar and sometimes even moves on to another school where he can flaunt his redivius program in front of everyone.

The latest man to join the flimflam coaches club is Tim Floyd of USC who just resigned amid accusations that he paid big money to his players, most notably O.J. Mayo of the Memphis Grizzlies who somehow chose to attend USC even though he grew up in West Virginia.

Now comes the fun part: Floyd turned around the USC basketball program with these players and managed to the team into the NCAA tournament multiple times. So even though Floyd leaves in disgrace today, he'll probably show up on the sidelines for another school in the future. Floyd may not have the pedigree of a coach Calipari, but some school will be desperate enough to hire him in the future. Remember, it's all about winning and Floyd did that enought at USC to warrent consideration.

Meanwhile, USC gets to deal with the after effects of the scandal. This basketball corruption coupled with the Reggie Bush football scandal a few years back (Bush's family somehow ended up in a beautiful house when Bush chose to be a Trojan) makes USC ground zero for NCAA investigations this decade.

Maybe Floyd can wave at the school when he resurfaces in the future. Maybe he'll even resurface as his former program is dragged under by NCAA sanctions. Won't that be ironic?

Somewhere in Kentucky, coach Calipari is smiling.

The MLB Draft: I Wanna Do What The Other Kids Are Doing!

I love sports drafts. I find them an exciting way to disport myself during an off-season.

While some people see a bunch of kids in suits asking for a truckload of money before they've even played one game, I see the potential for a different future. I think to myself that three years down the road, someone in this draft is going to change the balance of power in a sport.

At least that's how I feel about the NFL and NBA drafts.

Now baseball has seen what kind of events the other two sports have made of the draft so it decided to follow suit. There's one problem with that though:

The MLB Draft is much different than the NFL or NBA draft.

It's similar in that the worst team picks first and the best team picks last. That part doesn't change, but the MLB Draft has some major issues standing in the way of it being interesting to watch:

1. The Draft is 30 Rounds:
Very few people watch past the first round of any draft, but while the NFL Draft is seven rounds and the NBA Draft is only two rounds, the MLB is just a marathon. And you never know what round future All-Stars might come out of (pitchers are especially hard to gauge.) It just makes things less fun when you're trying to keep track of 30 rounds of incoming players.

2. Players come from different stages of life:
The NFL has a huge advantage in that all of the eligible players spent time in a major college. Fans got to see them play on Saturdays and many tune into the draft just to see where their college hero will land. Baseball teams draft high school kids whom no one has really seen on a regular basis. This makes them less exciting.

3. Foreign players are signed as free-agents and not drafted:
All of the Japanese, Latino, and other ball players? Not draft eligible. This both hurts the draft and further widens the gap between big market and small market teams because incoming foreign players are basically free-agents to be bid on. Come on in Yankees!

4. Teams aren't allowed to trade:
How can you have a draft where teams aren't allowed to trade their picks? I know the prospect of trading draft picks in a 30 round draft sounds like a headache waiting to happen, but it gives teams a chance to build in different ways. Plus, if foreign players were ever made part of the draft, it would make things very interesting.

5. It takes baseball players years to get to the major leagues:
The NFL and NBA drafts are like sports Christmas. Teams pick out their new toy and we get to see what they can do immediately. Baseball players usually take years to develop the right skill set for the major leagues. So by the time the player is ready, fans who don't follow the minor leagues religiously have already forgotten about them.

6. The baseball draft is completely convoluted:
Drafts are usually pretty straight forward. If a team sucks, it picks early; the team with the best record picks last etc. If a team trades its draft picks to another team, then that team picks. It's all basic logic, except in baseball.

Baseball teams get different compensatory picks for when certain players leave the team as a free-agent. This system in itself is a whole pile of spreadsheets worth of work because you have to rank the free-agents leaving. Class A free agents are players who are considered to be in the top 20% of their position. A team that signs this type of free agent give its top draft pick to the former team, plus the former team receives a supplemental pick between rounds. There are class A and class B free agents who cost different types of draft picks. Clear as mud? Good, because there's another reason for teams to get a compensatory pick and that leads me to my next point....

7. Some draft picks don't even sign with the team that drafts them:
It drives every baseball fan crazy. Talented players drop in the draft because Scott Boras or someone similar is the agent. The team is worried that it may not be able to sign the draft pick which just kills interest in the draft. You can't expect us to get excited about our team when it passes on the best player available strictly for financial reasons.

Other drafts have a slotting system that is basically a guide to how much a certain draft pick should get. A pitcher drafted in the top five is going to make x amount of money. It makes things much easier One Yahoo baseball blogger summed it best when he wrote: "it beyond irks me that the absence of a slotting system opens our draft predictions to guesswork based on the amount of money a player and his agent are said to be requesting. Look, I'd like to make up a mock draft based on talent and team need, not how easy the player might be bamboozled. I don't want to memorize the agent of each and every player."

8. Bud Selig has the charisma of a doorknob.
Sports commissioners aren't expected to be wild and edgy, but Selig just kills me. He looks like a frumpy royal and speaks like he has just woken up from an anesthesia induced sleep. For a sports league that's considered old and resistant to change, this is not the man you want to be the face of it all.

The MLB has a lot to work on to make it's draft remotely interesting, but I must applaud the MLB network for doing it's best to make the first round of yesterday's draft sound almost like an interesting sports endeavor. Almost.

The Most Underrated Athlete In Sports?

First of all, I admit that I'm using the dreaded "underrated" word in this post. No other description can vault an athlete from obscurity to over-exposure as quickly. The only exception to this rule was the great New York Jets running back Curtis Martin who, despite playing in New York, managed to become one of the top five leading rushers in NFL history without much fanfare.

Today, the most underrated athlete may exist on the tennis courts, which is exactly why Roger Federer is underrated. Any tennis follower will sing his praises, so it's not like he's under-appreciated in his sport. It's just that tennis is....well, it's tennis.

Growing up, I would watch Wimbledon because it was in the summer, which meant no school and it was on while I was eating breakfast or lunch. But during the 1990's, men's tennis consisted of the following: big serve, possible return, kill shot. Sometimes there was no return, which is just oodles of fun to watch. I often travel to tennis courts to watch people practice their serves because it's just so entertaining. And by entertaining, I mean life-suckingly boring.

So while most people know Roger Federer's name and understand he and Rafael Nadal are the top two players today, I don't think many of us get Federer's historical greatness.

He very well may be the best tennis player of all time.

If you aren't a hockey fan, you still know the name Wayne Gretzky. Soccer isn't big here, but everyone has heard of Pele. Yet, mention tennis and I bet you get names like Bjorn Borg, Pete Sampras, or John McEnroe.

Federer has passed them all. His tennis game is a paragon that is effective on any playing surface in any part of the world.

Don't take my word for it, just look at the numbers: Federer is tied with Pete Sampras with the most majors titles (14). But Sampras never won at the French Open. Federer now has, which makes him only the sixth player in tennis history to have a career grand slam (winning Wimbledon, the French, U.S., and Australian opens.) He's only the second player in the modern era to do it, the other being Andre Agassi.

Critics point out that Federer didn't beat Rafa Nadal to win the French Open, but it's not Federer's fault that Nadal got upset earlier. That's part of Federer's greatness, he's always around. He can be beat, but he rarely beats himself, just like Iceman from "Top Gun."

So I'm officially giving Roger Federer his due. The greatest tennis player that I've ever seen play. I only saw him play once though, it's still tennis and it's still boring.