Hotdog & Friends

Hotdog

At the end of the day, it was a Liverpool man who ruled the day at Euro 2008. A thrilling, wholly entertaining tournament came to a close with the pride of Merseyside holding the European Champion’s trophy aloft while the streets of his native Spain erupted.

His armband proved he was a Red, Torres, Torres!! You’ll never walk alone it said, Torres, Torres!!!!

Fernando Torres celebrates with his Spanish teammates.

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Sager Bombs

OK, so I know bashing ESPN is not exactly blazing a new trail, and I’m all for making wishes come true. HOWEVUH, ESPN insists on placing non-news into the one show that is supposed to be focused on actually reporting sports news. That’s right, it’s time for the return of My Wish, ESPN’s series where the hook up disabled kids with sports stars to grant their wildest dreams.

Is this really cool for the kids? Sure. Is it so cool that it might be deserving of its own show? PLEASE. Here are the things I want on Sportscenter: sports news, sports highlights, in depth coverage of bigger stories, and if it’s Sunday, a Sunday Conversation. Nothing else. Here are things I don’t want, ever: Who’s Now, Titletown USA, Ultimate Highlight, My Wish, and anything relating to Dancing With The Stars (No really. Don’t even say those four fucking words ever again). Not only are these segments a little awkward in between baseball analysis and two talking heads screaming at each other, they kind of smack of ESPN wanting to remind us just how great they are. The whole My Wish concept is the most egregious example of program filler that isn’t called “Who’s Now”. And worse, while it makes me happy for the kids, a lot of times the segments come off as manipulative of the audience and feel a bit greasy.

So how can this be fixed? Turns out ESPN has a daily show that relates to sporting issues that would be considered a little on the fringe for Sportscenter. Hell, you could even say they cover things that are “Outside The Lines”. Oh yeah, it’s called Outside The Lines. Segments like My Wish would be perfect there. Placing them inside Sportscenter makes me (a) change the channel, and (b) get angry at disabled people for screwing up my Sportscenter. And that’s something neither of us want. So please, for the love of god, just stop. It’s well intentioned, but absolutely fucking horrible.

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy seeing a kid get hurt every once in awhile.

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Fig Jam

I tried to think of the nicest term I could to describe the Sonics selection of big men over the past few seasons.  “Grossly incompetent” is the best I can do.  So it was no surprise to me that with the #4 pick yesterday the Sonics skirted the center position, despite the availability of Kevin Love, to take his teammate Russell Westbrook.  I guess I don’t really have a problem with the Westbrook selection.  I know Mr. Echelon called for this a while back.  However, if you are a team that is desperately in need of a center, and you have available to you the best center in college last season, why wouldn’t you take him?  As a true freshman this past season, in an absolutely loaded PAC 10 conference, Love was the best player.   He was a first team All American. What further player analysis do you need? 

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or… “I Knew I Always Hated Google Ads”

Sager Bombs

If you’re like us, when you think of the internet you probably don’t think of pornography at all.  But for one glorious night these two vastly different worlds came together when the good folks at Yardbarker sponsored Fight Night at the Playboy Mansion.  And for some reason they brought me along.  If this night was any indication, there really might be potential in the idea of putting naked women on the internet.  We’ll tell you how it all went down and answer some of your questions after the break…

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Thanks for reading.

xoxo,

Constable Echelon

Fig Jam

I really enjoy the Olympics.  I think one reason is all the obscure events that I could envision myself, under the right set of circumstances, being a  world class competitor in.  In the more mainstream sports, I have been forced to accept the limits of my own mortality, and have come to understand that I really couldn’t, under any set of circumstances, expect to live (actually survive) through one game.  There would be that sickening moment where I suffered some variety of gruesome injury and then sheets would be held up around me as  I was euthanized. 

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Manny Faces

Why the hell would you swing at this pitch?

Manny Faces

This is just a prime example of Shaq being who he is. Shaq is an entertainer first and foremost and he does what it takes to rock the crowd. There has been kind of an uproar over him calling out Kobe in this freestyle session, when all he was doing was entertaining. Why haven’t they talked about Shaq’s impact on Patrick Ewing and Kareem? Perhaps because they were not specifically asked to tell Shaq how his ass tastes. How. Ever. The best freestyles have as many punchlines packed into them as possible. As many “ooooooooh’s” you can get from the crowd the better. Kobe should be insulted, but the only response he can issue is in rap form. The media is just taking this opportunity to stir up some controversy so they have something else to talk about besides baseball and the WNBA. I guess that’s fine with me since any time Shaq is on camera is guaranteed gold.

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Fig Jam

Felix Hernandez, the phenom young pitcher and de facto ace of the Mariners pitching staff, has just gone yard, grand slam style, against Johan Santana. Oh and he’s no hit the Mets through 3 innings thus far. I hope when he got back to the dugout he slammed his batting helmet on the ground and let forth a tirade of obsenities to the effect of “It’s not that damn hard.”

and thus with one swing of the bat Hernandez compiled almost one quarter the RBI’s that Richie Sexson has gotten in 211 Ab’s (23 RBI’s). More than one quarter of Ichiro’s (19 RBI’s in 312 ab’s).