This is the definition of bad marketing

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Hat tip to Awful Announcing, Image Credit to magnus on This Board Rocks.

How to build a franchise QB

I'm going to singlehandedly set bloggers back a few years by making unsubstantiated claims without any credibility or accountability about my sources. Oh well, here goes.

I have a friend, who for legal reasons will remain unnamed, who is working as a pharmacist at CVS. I'm not sure if everyone knows this, but everyone who picks up prescriptions at CVS has their outstanding Rx's recorded in the system, which is available to view for all of the working pharmacists (for medical reasons).

So last night, after a couple drinks, I asked him if he knew of any big names who got their scripts at CVS. He responded that not only did he see this guy in the system, but he had actually personally filled a prescription for none other than the Golden Boy, Tom Brady.

My interest piqued, I inquired further, what kind of meds was Tommy Boy getting? The first group was pretty obvious, a whole bunch of pain killers. I guess at the end of the day, that red practice jersey only gets you so far.

Next up in his group of prescriptions was Propecia. I hadn't noticed before, but is the pretty boy losing his hair?

I guess the hairline might be receding a little bit, but it's nothing to write home about. I guess when your face makes millions, you're better safe than sorry when it comes to your hair.

The final prescription he had? Lots and lots of Adderall. I'm not going to be crying foul over this, but Adderall, while commonly known as the study-drug, is basically just a bunch of amphetamines. "Greenies" aren't banned in the NFL, but they are in the MLB, so there must be some performance enhancing aspect to them. But who knows, maybe Tommy just has ADH...hey a red car!

Tony Gonzalez saves lives

Last week, Tony Gonzalez was having a nice family dinner with his wife and daughter when someone at the next table, in what was clearly a failed feat of manliness, tried to swallow a too-large piece of the probably not too well prepared Filet Mignon and started choking. Lest he be publicly maligned for watching a man die, Tony Gonzalez felt obligated to at least attempt to help him, saying, "I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing."

When Gonzalez realized nobody was doing anything to help him, he jumped up and rushed over to the man and performed the Heimlich Maneuver.

Somehow, this sounds like an overly elaborate marketing ploy for the upcoming movie, Choke (If you haven't already, read the book).

[Kansas City Chiefs]

Cue the Conspiracy Theorists

Videos are starting to come out noting how the Patriots were robbed of the Superbowl and their historic season.

Now, I'm a Patriots fan myself, having lived my entire life in New England, but personally I think that we should accept the loss with dignity and not cry about alterior motives. I know it happens all the time (See the Seahawks two years ago), but it shouldn't. The fact is that the New York Giants outplayed us that night; their pass-rushers demolished our offensive line. We, as fans, should be able to to suck it up, shake hands, and give congratulations.

Miami: My Anti-Boston

The sports world is abuzz about how great it is to be a sports fan in Boston right now, and by all means it certainly is. The Red Sox won the World Series and took home the ROY and Cy Young awards (oh wait...) while the Celtics and Patriots look unbeatable right now. Heck even the Revolution are in the MLS finals and the Bruins don't look half bad.

However, no one seems to be paying attention to another similar story: How much it must suck to be a sports fan in Miami.

Think about the major sports teams in Miami... Are any of them good right now? Are any of them... decent right now?

Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins are probably as bad as the Patriots are good, as they are still winless through 9 games. Their schedule doesn't let up very much from here on out either, with the only 2 or 3 more winnable games on their docket. Surprisingly, the Dolphins own a halfway decent point differential (read: not embarrassingly bad) because of 4 losses by only 3 points. To have a chance in a lot of games, but win none of them is almost worse for a fan. It gets your hopes up and then slams you down.

Miami Heat
From Basketbawful: "Just when you think they've finally hit rock bottom, the Heat find new and inventive ways to suck. Last night, they got blown out by the Bobcats, 91-76 -- and Miami had to outscore Charlotte 29-20 in the fourth quarter just to get that close. Did these guys really win the 2006 NBA title? There were plenty of culprits: Penny Hardaway scored zero points in 19 minutes of action, Ricky Davis and Jason Williams combined to shoot 5-21, and Smush Parker was just there. Shaq, on the other hand, had one of his best games of the season: 17 points (7-14), 6 rebounds, zero assists. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

How bad have things gotten for the Heat? Pat Riley not only thinks he could do better than most of his players, he's saying it out loud. To the press. 'I guarantee you I should suit up," Riley said. "I'd play better than some of them right now. I guarantee it. I swear to God. With an old hip and 62 years old and I can't see, I'll play better than some of my guys tonight. Come on, they were pretty bad.'"

Florida Marlins
The Marlins were another one of those tantalizing teams for the city of Miami. Despite great years from Hanley Ramirez (.332 AVG, 29 HR, 51 SB) and Miguel Cabrera (.320 AVG, 34 HR, 119 RBI), the Marlins still finished last in the NL East and tied for second to last in the NL with a 71-91 record. Rumor has it that Miguel Cabrera is on the block, which would take away one of the few remaining reasons to watch the Fish, though history says that they'll bounce back in a couple years. One bright spot was that not too many Floridians were present to watch the Marlins lose, as they were last in the league in home attendance.

Florida Panthers
Raise your hand if you knew the Florida Panthers existed (I'm gone). Keep it up if you know what city they play in. If you can name a player on the team...Alright, hockey is boring.

The Panthers play in Fort Lauderdale, which isn't exactly Miami, but is pretty close. They currently are tied for 2nd to last in the Eastern Conference, but no one cares anyway.

Miami Hurricanes Football
The once mighty Canes are now only 5-5 (In college football, that's bad). In the ACC, not by any means a power conference, they are 2-4, better than only UNC and Duke (great football programs there).

Miami soccer
Oh wait, I forgot that Cubans don't play soccer. (I think.)

In other words, I'm glad I live in Beantown.

Ronstoppable

First and foremost, take a look at my posts over the past week and guess what my favorite sport is.

Yesterday afternoon, the Patriots silenced all of their remaining doubters with a 24-20 win over the Colts.

The only question that remains in their season is "16-0?" Actually I'll take that back. The real question that remains is if they will go 19-0 and storm through the playoffs (I assume they get the bye).

Let's see if they can pull it out.

As a sidenote, I think I may have been the only sports fan in Boston that watched the entirety Celtics-Raptors game, but not the Pats-Colts game. Does that make me a bad sports fan?

Like a bug

Photo by Flickr user Morphomir used under a Creative Commons license.

Last time we checked in on the Pats here on PP, they were 2-0 and fresh off of a 38-17 shellacking (I'm running out of synonyms for crush) of the Chargers.

Let's take a look at what they have done since then:

Week 3 vs Bills: 38-7

Week 4 @ Bengals: 34-13

Week 5 vs Browns: 34-17

Week 6 @ Cowboys: 48-27

Week 7 @ Dolphins: 49-28

Week 8 vs Redskins: 52-7

They have scored 149 points in their last 3 games. Tom Brady is now on pace to certifiably crush the single season TD record with 30 (not including 2 rushing) through 8 games.

But none of ths matters until next week against the also-unbeaten Colts, the last and only real test for the Pats for the regular season. Prediction: Pats win 72-12 (Knock on wood).

Total Domination

After yesterday’s drumming of the Chargers, there seems to be only 2 questions left about the Patriots’ regular season: whether they will go undefeated and how badly they will beat everyone along the way.

Consider this. In week 1, the Pats beat up upon the lowly Jets, 38-14. However, lowly is hardly the right adjective to use (as I just did), since many experts were pegging them to be about 10-6, only because their schedule is so hard. This week, they pounded the Bolts (also 38-14), who are by no means cupcakes themselves. Barring a week 9 match up with the Colts, this was probably the hardest game that the Patriots have on their slate, and they handled it well to say the least, completely shutting down LT and running passing drills all over the vaunted Chargers D.

In 2004, the Patriots turned heads by winning 16 straight games (including the postseason). This year, they have an easier schedule and instead of Deion Branch and David Givens, the Golden Boy has Randy Moss, Wes Welker, and Donte Stallworth as his targets.

Maybe they’ll be at a slight disadvantage since they can’t cheat anymore, but I wouldn’t be betting against them.

Digging for sports

I noted yesterday that one of the most dugg stories on Digg was a Fox News Report covering the Jonathan Lee Riches lawsuit of Michael Vick.

I'm not going to go into the low level of journalism exhibited in the article. 100% Injury Rate does that well enough.

This is going to be about the general ineptitude of the Digg community when it comes to sports.

I recognize that the Digg community and perusers of sports blogs are probably very disparate groups. I also might be biased because I usually take issue with a lot of things said on Digg. However, this story was barely news three weeks ago when every sports blogger alive (including me) posted about it.

The title of the Digg story is "Michael Vick outed as Al Qaeda operative, sued for 63 zillion dollars," which means that he (I can only assume) missed the inherent humor in someone being sued for 63,000,000,000.00 billion dollars. Nevertheless, the diggers ate the story up, propelling it to its current mark of 2354 diggs.

I would have dugg this story had it been submitted on the July 27 even with that gaff, but is it even news now?

This wouldn't be too bad if it didn't happen so often though.

Three weeks ago, there was a story listing the "Top 50 Basketball Players of All-Time", which garnered almost 500 diggs despite listing Lebron and D-Wade at 29 and 30 respectively and Dirk at 26 while greats like Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, James Worthy, and Bill Walton went unranked.

When Bonds broke the record, TIME had a slideshow of Barry through the years, which was dugg 844 times. Almost 12 hours and 40 comments passed by before anyone pointed out (I was the first to) the bogus stat that TIME calls "Runs per at bat." His rookie year, Barold apparently scored 25.8 runs per at-bat, a record for sure as I don't know anyone else who has scored more than 1. I clarified that they probably meant "At bats per home run," which isn't an honest mistake by any means and I can't believe that slipped by the editors, and I was dugg down at first.

I realize that a good number of legitimate sports bloggers frequent Digg. I assume that Hank Worrell of WTB does by the "Digg This!" button on some of his posts. I assume that WCK at 100% Injury Rate is as well, since sometimes (not often) his posts mirror stories that are in the most dugg section for the day. Let me say that I have nothing but the utmost respect for these two as they represent what I am striving to become. However, it pains me that the majority of the Digg public is that clueless about things.

Alright, I'm done ranting for the night. I feel like this is the type of post that doesn't lend itself to comments, but maybe if you feel like you'd like to share similar experiences, by all means do so.

As a little sidenote, Google Analytics tells me that someone actually came to my site after googling "barold lamarcus bonds." I don't know why or how this happened. Maybe it actually is his real name. Or maybe they particularly enjoyed those two posts of mine. I'm hoping for the latter.