The Sports Curmudgeon

Let me start with college football today. I’ve read is several places that Tim Tebow isn’t likely to win the Heisman Trophy because his team has lost three games this season. Let’s ignore the obvious logical disconnect here between the fact that the Heisman is an individual award and the record of the Florida football team as a whole for this season. Let’s look for precedent.

In the late 1950s, the Heisman Trophy went to a gentleman named Paul Hornung. You may have heard of him; he went on to have a Hall of Fame career in the NFL. His Notre Dame team in his Heisman winning year went 2-7. I believe Florida is 9-3 this season. Therefore, precedent would not keep Tebow from winning the Heisman.

Kansas fell prey to the curse of being #2 in the BCS polls last weekend. At least they lost to a ranked team; most of the #2 teams that have fallen before them this year have lost to unranked teams.

Given all of the hype that ESPN devotes to “Rivalry Weekend(s)”, don’t you think that the Army/Navy game would be on at least one of those weekends? After all, that is the most intense rivalry in college football. Oh, you say that ESPN doesn’t have the rights to the Army/Navy game and so they pretend it isn’t there? They wouldn’t do that, would they? Oh, I forgot that ESPN actually stands for the Eternally Self-Promoting Network…

Nick Saban and his Alabama gladiators lost again this weekend to archrival Auburn. When Alabama spirited him out of Miami and made him the highest paid coach in college football, the expectation was that he would win a national championship, win the SEC and beat Auburn. So far, his performance appraisal report would have to be “not fully satisfactory”.

In the baseball world, the White Sox traded Jon Garland to the Angels for shortstop Orlando Cabrera. I don’t want to make Garland out to be the next coming of Christy Mathewson, but I don’t understand why the Sox made him available. Garland is the type of starting pitcher that most teams go looking for – a guy who will give you more than 200 innings a year with a decent earned run average. The White Sox had one of them and decided to trade him away. I guess now they’ll go looking for a pitcher to put in the rotation who can replace Garland…

One such free agent pitcher is Carlos Silva. He started 33 games last year and pitched 202 innings with an ERA around 4.20. The Minneapolis press says the Twins have offered Silva a three-year deal worth around $21M but that Silva wants four years and might command a salary in the $9M per year range. That tells me that an “inning-eating middle-of-the-rotation starter” is a valuable commodity. So, I really don’t understand the White Sox eagerness to make their deal.

People are speculating about what kind of moves the Cubs will make in the off-season. After all the Cubbies were in the playoffs last year and that gives their fans reason to believe that the team is on the verge of the World Series. Here in Curmudgeon Central, one significant responsibility is to acknowledge reality in the face of fandom; the Cubs may not be as close to glory as it might seem at first. Here is the Cliffs Notes version of the NL Playoffs this year:

Cubs lost in a sweep to the Diamondbacks
Diamondbacks lost in a sweep to the Rockies
Rockies lost in a sweep to the Red Sox.

I want to make one comment about the Alex Rodriguez contract mating dance with the Yankees. Remember, he has already earned about $170M on his previous contract originally signed with the Rangers; the man is not nearly destitute. Now he has a deal “outlined” where he will make $275M over the next ten years PLUS incentives. Can someone explain to me in the context of $275M or in the context of a total compensation for playing baseball of more than $400M how an incentive clause for even $1M to be named MVP is even marginally important?

The Ravens/Chargers game yesterday was ugly; it was like watching a hit and run accident. By this time of the season, most of the teams in the NFL are pretty well defined by their records and both of these teams would politely fall into the category of “severely disappointing” and/or “monumentally underachieving”. The Chargers were 14-2 last year; they didn’t lose a boatload of players; they are now 6-5. The Ravens were 13-3 last year; they didn’t lose a boatload of players – but their aging offensive line did get a year older; they are now 4-7 having lost 5 games in a row and they are 0-5 in their division. Sic transit gloria mundi…

Folks, start to pay attention to the Cleveland Browns. You are probably going to see them playing in January. The Browns are 7-4 at the moment; ahead on their schedule are the Cardinals, the Jets, the Bills, the Bengals and the Niners. Those five upcoming Browns’ opponents share a common characteristic at the moment; all of them are below .500 as of this morning.

The Bay Area has not been a home to top-shelf football for more than a decade now. Nevertheless, both the Raiders and the Niners won football games yesterday. The Raiders broke a 17-game losing streak within their division; the Niners won a game so improbably that the scenario was rejected for the football version of the Bad News Bears. The Niners’ game against the Cardinals was in OT when the Cards lined up for a chip-shot field goal, which was good. But the Cards did not get the snap off in time and so they had to attempt a “chip-shot + 5-yards” field goal on the next play. They missed that one. Later in the OT with the Cards backed up on their own one-yard line, Kurt Warner went back to pass; dilly-dallied around looking for an open receiver; took a shot in the back and fumbled in the end zone to have the ball recovered by a Niners’ lineman who was there only because he had been blocked so effectively that he wasn’t part of the meaningful aspects of the play.

The Rams lost yesterday when Gus Frerotte fumbled the snap from center of fourth down inside the Seattle one-yard line with less than a minute to play. Gus Frerotte is probably a very nice man who doesn’t abuse household pets: but in terms of NFL quarterbacking, he puts the “rot” in Frerotte.

Finally, Greg Cote had this comment in the Miami Herald regarding the Alex Rodriguez free agency:

“I read where the Marlins have dropped out of the running to sign highly sought free agent Alex Rodriguez. That reminds me. I have decided to drop out of the running to win boxing’s heavyweight championship.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…