Phillip Daniels ist ein 12 Jahr NFL Veteran. In taking reps (well, one, anyway) yesterday with the ‘Skins, he was preparing for a season opener more than 45 days away. What in the world are the Redskins — and the rest of the NFL — doing scheduling such stress and duress?

I’m not the only one wondering about this madness.

Indicting the sport most might be its collegiate counterpart: without a single “preseason” game the NCAA pigskinners seem to open up with high-value heart-stoppers each and every Labor Day weekend. Consider too that unlike the collegians, NFLers have no limit on the amount of hours they can put in in a week training, studying film, and participating in offseason “mini-camps” and “voluntary workouts,” which of course are voluntary in name only. I think the Redskins have about a half dozen of those throughout the calendar now. By virtue of the commitment NFLers make around the calendar to their profession, there’s just no defense for the prolonged training camps of today.

One of the reasons the camp injuries are as dire as they annually are is because the camps are contested in extreme conditions — high heat and humidity. You also now have hundreds of three-hundred-plus-pounders competing in them, and you don’t have to be a cardiologist to know that those folks generally don’t prosper exercising in extreme heat. With their heads encased in oven-like shells.

Once upon a time, the NFL started training camps in August, conducted its season, which ended in January, and then spent late winter and spring and early summer healing up. And the football played then was rather good; some, like me, thought it better than today’s.

Today there is no offseason, in the NFL or really in any other sport, so why start the head-bashing, knee-destroying, and tendon-rupturing while embers from the 4th of July are still aglow?

All teams play a minimum of four preseason games, and starters are expected to play nearly a half of each game because . . . teams charge regular season prices for the ghoulish meat grinder-slaughterfests. I don’t doubt that a healthy majority of NFL clubs have lobbied the league office over the years to try and get the preseason shortened — motivated by a basic sense of survival. But now we’re getting to the heart of the matter: season tickets owners in Washington don’t have the option of not spending hundreds more on the meaningless slate of exhibitions. And the hundreds more on parking.

And always the games are atrocious to watch. Even if you hate baseball you should watch it instead of the NFL’s July and August dreck.

I’m not ignorant about football players needing their “reps.” And I realize that a handful of rookies need to be evaluated in game-like situations. But given the gazillions the NFL spends evaluating college players year-round, and in combines and such, you can’t make the argument that teams need half a summer to evaluate their new personnel. Or that grizzled vets need months’ worth of reps in triple-digit temps.

The NHL with its preseason has actually taken an alternative strategy with that of the NFL, and shortened it in recent years. Teams will commence camp in mid-September and have just three weeks of training and exhibitions before the arrival of opening week. Talk to any NHL manager and he’ll tell you that his players will show up in mid-September in shape and ready to skate. We can quibble over whether the preseason should extend more than 5 games, but it’s clear that the NHL, unlike the NFL, isn’t motivated by negligent and malicious greed, for hardly anyone attends NHL exhibition games. And by virtue of having a viable feeder development league in the ‘A,’ with annual promotions for virtually every club from it, hockey’s exhibitions are defensible events as auditions of the up-and coming.

Moreover, hockey clubs aren’t obligated to dress their stars — Ovechkin might skate two of the September games, for instance.

It’s really striking when you consider how relatively blessed the NHL is when it comes to being able to dress, durably, its stars from opening night on through the postseason. It’s a fierce and rugged sport to be sure, but it’s managed by men who care about the welfare of their charges and enact training schedules to protect them.

Filed in Football, Morning cup-a-joe, Other Sports, Prospects, Redskins, Training Camp, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (7)

Morning Cup-a-Spirit: This Bigotry Against Babes, I Won’t Stand for It!

By pucksandbooks
Monday, July 14, 2008

To read the reactions left only here related to the Caps’ plans, announced over the weekend, to introduce SpiritBabes to the team’s home games next season, you’d think management announced that Verizon Center was hosting 41 brothels next winter.

It’s too warm in there for brothels anyway.

Would that the peasants took up pitchforks and torches in these numbers when the league bleep-canned hockey jerseys for Reebok’s tuxedo vests a year ago.

Count me among those with a more inclusive spirit — one who will approach the scheme with an open mind. I take the owner at his word (”I am a family man with a wife and daughter“).

I was all prepared to write about my first one-on-one chat with Hershey Bears’ head coach Bob Woods on Saturday when this fracas broke out later that day. No wonder Washington is consistently regarded as a sex-appeal-less city.

In reality, though, all the NHL is doing is catching up — modestly, I might add — with football’s spirited sidelines. Or Fox News. In a culture of seriously foxy FoxNews, is this really anything to get all that worked up about?

But by late yesterday we’d received pointed clarification from the Capitals on the matter: “The squad won’t be ice girls in the traditional sense . . . It’s also not a dance squad, a la the NBA. It’s more of an evolution of the entertainment team we have had in the past” [the one that most in the stands thought was remarkably annoying -- I'm all for evolving that].

Still, I found it riotously funny to learn that Bruce Cassidy had contacted the team’s sales department Sunday seeking a full plan for next season. And Smoken Al Koken — has he been revived since Saturday’s news?

Actually, you can make a compelling argument I think that hockey, particularly in markets like Washington, is much more in need of some sultry spirit than is the NFL. Mr. Leonsis, in defending the move on Sunday, noted that it was with new revenue in mind that the team pursued the idea. In case you hadn’t noticed, television ain’t exactly throwing mad dough at the NHL’s 30 clubs these days. Meanwhile, the league’s salary cap has mushroom-clouded by more than $15 million in just the three seasons since the lockout.

It’s swell that we’re all in love with this rockin’ garage band called hockey, but the band still has to be paid, and if Hooters-Lite (not Hustler) wants to underwrite the Friday night jam session, I think the beer will still taste cold. Count me as one who wants a hockey team’s practices, scrimmages, and camps to remain free and open to the public, year round.

Anyone remember the millions the NHL spent on its post-lockout relaunch television advertisements — you remember the ones, the “My NHL” spots featuring the hockey locker room beefcake, rather shirtless, massage-motivated by a Fox News anchor in the pre-game? I remember thinking the first time I watched it, ‘My, how shirtless this hockey player is, and my, how little I now want lunch.’ Now that was profane, and brought to you by Bettman & Co. I’m confident that Ted doesn’t have quite that in mind.

I’m not sure what revenue the Washington Redskins’ cheerleaders bring in to the team, but whenever they make community appearances you seldom hear of Puritanical protests accompanying them or of anyone having a real lousy time at them. In fact, once in a while, the tight end marries the babe. Maybe the SpiritBabe will marry the bachelor blogger.

The Capitals, and hockey in Washington, need increased exposure (if you’ll pardon my word choice). If the Caps’ SpiritBabes are going to be out and about town during and after seasons hence, perhaps toting along a few congenial players with them, it’s bound to improve the team’s visibility, as well as that of the sport.

And in our recessionary times, where is the acknowledgment of the idea’s job creation ???

There’s been all manner of hyperbole associated with this past weekend’s high-pitched hue and cry reaction. For instance, some have alleged that the aisle ladies in their shimmer and shake will distract from the play on the ice. On nights when the Caps lay an egg, I agree — and let’s hope so. On those nights especially I’ll be glad for Verizon Center’s new state-of-the-art, high-rise, high definition, center ice scoreboard. But really, if the Alexanders are barreling down the ice on a two-on-one scoring chance, how many men’s and women’s eyes will be fixated on tight fannies in the stands?

And what of the selectivity of outrage in this instance? When it’s Mites on Ice, all are quiet, despite the fact that with that exhibition the laughter is generated at the expense of really, really short people. But raise the specter of pretty girls prettying up the District’s rink, and all hell breaks loose.

The only genuine harm that can come from this scheme is if, to quote the wit of one of the few in this town with a sense of humor, who imparted it in the maelstrom of message board madness yesterday, “they come down to the Johnny Walker Club after the game and are attracted to out-of-shape middle-aged men.”

When Messrs. Vogel, Parker, Rucki and I were taking in the World Championships in Moscow in the spring of 2007, we had no shortage of aisle-jiggling accompanying our blogging endeavors (see photo above). I think I can speak for the four of us in saying that we got our work done just dandy. In point of fact, the real distraction in terms of Moscow hotties diverting our gaze came with the middle-of-the-night trollop parade through our hotel’s lobby (where we were blog drafting), aided and abetted by bellhops on the cash take.

Baltic beauties in boas and hip-high black boots. Naughty, naughty Nikitas! Sorry, that was the indulgence of reverie.

Anyway, over in Moscow, we learned that NHL scouts were in favor of off-ice girls.

!

Perhaps since Alexander Ovechkin has to spend the next 13 seasons skating here we should let him be the arbiter in the matter.

Filed in Football, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey Art, Hockey Rituals, Ice Girls, Mike Vogel, OFB in Russia, Other Sports, Puck Bunnies, Redskins, Spike Parker, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (22)

The Ashburn Diaries, Winter 2008

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Morning Cup-A-JoeLike the Capitals recently, the Redskins find themselves in search of a successor coach. Any and all similarity of operations ends there. What is ensuing now in the Great Search is, predictably, high burlesque, a lavish local sports soap opera.  

The Capitals had both a qualified general manager and an appropriately removed-from-hockey-decisions owner involved in their search. The Redskins have neither. There is no foundation for believing that a genuinely gifted hockey mind available on the market wouldn’t have entertained an overture from George McPhee to guide the bench of the young and gifted Caps. But the Capitals’ coaching search was efficient and painless and apparently successful precisely because there was in place a plan of succession. Such planning is the byproduct of business competence. There is abundant reason to believe that Tier I coaching choices won’t return Daniel Synder’s telephone calls. Snyder, like a pornographer, runs a successful business by the barometer of profitability margins.     

The general manager’s role in contemporary professional sports, I’ve written before, has evolved remarkably in the past 15 or 20 years, with law schools today clogged with aspiring pro sports executives. We in Washington this past summer, with the Michael Nylander Edmonton-D.C. dust-up, saw first-hand the value of having an executive law trained in a matter of contracts and negotiations. What is it about Daniel Snyder that innoculates him from local press criticism for failing to staff the Redskins with this most basic and increasingly important business role? Clearly, Joe Gibbs’ rerun on the sidelines purchased the owner some years of deferred scrutiny on this front, but with his dismissal of Charlie Casserly years prior, it became standard operating procedure for the boy owner to seat himself in the role of talent evaluator and contract negotiator. The results speak for themselves.

I got a good chuckle from the early replacement speculation stories with their inclusion of Bill Cower’s name. As if such an accomplished coach would deign work for our egomaniacal, control freak tyrant. Notice his name hasn’t been uttered since. Caller ID no doubt ended that courtship. The linear chronology of the search is a bit sketchy, and my suspicion is that this is premised on the Skins’ themselves floating out star quality falsehoods. The architect of the collegiate dynasty out West, Pete Carroll, allegedly surfaced not long after Cower. Yeah, right.

Here’s a list of plausible replacements for the Cerrato-Synder two-(empty)-headed monster to cull from:

Tyronne Willingham;

Wayne Fontes;

NFL interns;

Whoever’s coaching DeMatha — maybe.

The latest, if you believe local press accounts, involves the Mooch, Steve Mariucci. At least he has late ’90s compentency on his CV. His more recent run with the Lions went such that no one’s bothered to ask him to coach since. Now we’re back in plausibility.

The discrepancy in paychecks notwithstanding, one wonders if WaPost’s Jason LaConfora these days pines for the integrity and veracity associated with his old Caps’ beat.

At least in the blogosphere, Snyder is on the receiving end of enough criticism that some of it borders on unfair. He is not, for instance, singularly responsible for Metro’s malfeasance. But at a time when all major college football programs are voraciously recruiting wide receivers 6 ‘2 or taller, the Redskins of recent seasons have insisted on signing smurfs. As with his coaching nostalgia, Snyder is still living in the ’80s. In an Era of the Tall, guess who thinks it’s wise to go small?

Another relic of the ’80s is Danny’s right-hand Yes Man, Vinny Cerrato. His most notable accomplishment prior to arriving in Ashburn? Coordinating the recruiting of 17- and 18-year-olds for Lou Holtz’s Fighting Irish . . . in the ’80s.  

This spring, as college juniors and seniors audition at NFL combines in front of scores of talent evaluators who’ve paid their dues, and are held accountable for their decision-making, it’s necessarily the case that Snyder and Cerrato will be perched hard by the likes of Bill Belichick. That’s a fair showdown of pigskin wits.

In this winter of mild Mid-Atlantic temps, and with his Good Shepherd returned to his NASCAR flock, Daniel Snyder is, perhaps at last, dangerously exposed. He’s the Oz in front of the Burgundy curtain. And an in-kind fraud. 

  

Filed in Bruce Boudreau, Daniel Snyder, Football, Front Office, George McPhee, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, Print, Redskins, TV, Ted Leonsis, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (3)

Training Camp for Washington Sports Editors

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Morning Cup-A-JoeNear 8:00 this past Saturday night, Washington’s mainstream sports editors confronted an annual dilemma: the end of another Redskins’ season. Joe Gibbs’ second retirement from football offered our local press horde a brief stay of execution from the Burgundy and Gold beat, but today the harsh reality sets in.

Their dilemma is existential: what now?

To the disappointment of Wizards’ fans, and the horror of Dan Steinberg, Agent Zero recently hinted at the likelihood of shutting it down this season to recover fully from his knee injury. Nats’ pitchers and catchers don’t report south for weeks. We’re many months away from Tiger’s return to town.

Customarily, this season in the D.C. sports calendar dictates that sports editors assign their staff the research and drafting of obituaries for American sports legends solidly on life’s back nine. Long lunches. And vacations.

We at OFB, however, think that with the arrival of Redskin-free Januaries, henceforth and inaugurating with this one, the region’s hockey bloggers, in a joint endeavor with the Washington Capitals, ought to conduct a training camp for MSM sports editors.

To introduce them to the sport of hockey.

In a very real sense, it’d be analogous to the fantasy camps the well-heeled, middle-aged, and portly participate in across all sports. Making no judgment on the physical well being of our MSM editors, it’s abundantly clear that their cognitive acumen with respect to hockey is, shall we say, under exercised. As such, the heart of our camp would feature a fully developed Capitals University for the editors. JoeB is particularly busy at this time of year, but given the claims of this cause, I’d anticipate some creative schedule juggling on his part and ultimately his cooperation.

Orientation would have to start with the most basic of basics: a Mapquest route from WaPost and the various network broadcast studios in the District to Kettler Capitals. Initially, the editors would be picked up and led to the facility by various Caps’ players in a caravan, but as part of a camp final exam, the editors would have to demonstrate their ability to navigate their own way to the Capitals’ new home.

Early on, too, it would imperative to dispel some false assumptions long held by the editors. For instance, on Day One of camp we’d have one of the region’s meteorologists present Dopler data conforming that no reporters covering Caps’ games actually freeze from the experience. Indeed, at Verizon Center, there’s the greater likelihood of visitors suffering heat stroke. It is simply not true that the Caps travel to Saskatchewan to contest their games outdoors December through March.

As part of camp, the editors would be taken on field trips to the region’s rinks — Reston, Ft. Dupont, Columbia and Cabin John — where they would be asked to view the thousands of youths, male and female, clogging the weekend clocks morning, noon, and night with the playing of hockey. They would be asked to sit in the rinks’ stands among players’ parents and interview them about families’ devotion — in finances, time, and travel — to the sport of ice hockey. The tongues the hockey families would speak in would be foreign to the editors, and so bloggers and Caps’ communications professionals like Mike Vogel would be strategically stationed in the stands to facilitate translation.

Back at camp, VIP speakers would address the editors. An emissary from the Canadian Embassy would allege that his home is not in fact a 51st American state or territory, but instead a sovereign nation which celebrates the awe-inspiring playgrounds that nature etches across his home’s landscape for half the calendar year. Executives from cable television providers would arrive and testify to the fact that indeed thousands of Washingtonian households spiritedly subscribe to NHL CenterIce and the NHL Network.

High priests of puck like Don Cherry and Barry Melrose would lunch and cocktail hour with the campers and lead chalkboard Xs and Os and endearing narratives of the sport’s legacy. Melrose would even suggest that here in Washington there is a viable Jack Adams candidate.

Craigh Laughlin and Joe Reekie would lead a discussion of conflict resolution in hockey, and how the United Nations Security Council is not involved.

A professor of comparative literature and linguistics from the University of Maryland would attend and identify the sliver of contemporary professional athletes who commonly speak to the press in complete sentences, often thoughtfully. He will introduce the editors to the concepts of humility and modesty that commonly lace these orations.

The District’s Chief of Police would brief the editors on the needlessness of bringing along weapons of self defense into the players’ rooms during interviews.

Necessarily, camp would conclude with a screening of ‘Slapshot,’ and accompanying consumption of beer would be mandatory.

To prepare for camp, we who conduct it might want to view the film ‘300,’ for in this quest we face the same odds for victory as the Spartans.

Filed in Barry Melrose, Don Cherry, Hockey Movies, Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Lisa Hillary, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, Other Sports, Redskins, Washington Capitals, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (9)

Is He Really Retired This Time, and Will WaPost Still Cover the New Hampshire Primary Today?

By The OFB Team
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Rocky Balboa / Joe Gibbs
Is Joe Gibbs really retired for good, and will hockey fans in this town read anything beyond game coverage on the Caps in the Post this month?
View Results
Filed in Football, Other Sports, Redskins| Permalink| Comments (7)

All This City-Wide Sports Misery, Its Birthyear was 1993

By pucksandbooks
Monday, December 10, 2007

Cup'pa Joe

Early Sunday evening, keeping an eye on the New England Patriots’ further encroachment on the history books, I thought about being a sports fan in D.C. during a reign of general competent management by a majority of the area’s sports teams, accompanied by general on-field/court/rink winning. Nothing dynastic, mind you, just a generally consistent, healthy dose of winning boasted by most of the teams in town.

These were, necessarily, hypothetical thoughts I was having.

Now consider what the good folks in Boston are enjoying these days. In October the Red Sox won their second World Series in the past four years. The remarkably rebuilt Celtics are serious contenders for the NBA title this season. And the Patriots? Perhaps a perfect season, and heavy favorites to win what would be their fourth Super Bowl title this decade. The Bruins are Beantown’s weak sister, but even they’re five games above .500 this season. It’s an embarassment of sports riches in Beantown.

Meanwhile, here, we have Daniel Synder, the no-name Nats, and really bad ice.

At least we’re getting a nice new stadium next spring.

My Sunday evening thoughts, prompted by envy of New England, centered on this query: precisely when was the arrival of the present sports downturn in D.C., and is there any probable hope for better times in the foreseeable future?

Let’s first stipulate that by virture of the Unholy Trinity of the Hardwood — Abe Pollin, Susan O’Malley, and Wes Unseld — there was no competency to be achieved there, post ‘79. So unlike Boston, we in D.C. couldn’t have all the major sports teams firing on all cylinders. The Bullets-Wiz of the ’80s and ’90s remained Hechingers while the rest of the NBA went Home Depot. But D.C. in the ’80s had the Super Bowl Skins and a couple of 100-pt. Caps’ clubs (who also always made the playoffs). Title-winning Georgetown hoops, too, was quite strong then.

(Being baseball-less until recently, we Washingtonians who sought summer sport had to borrow the O’s, and they, too, won a title in the ’80s (their last), and showcased the superstar shortstop, Cal. Then Peter Angelos arrived and we all had to stop liking them.)

I thought about Joe Gibbs’ sudden, shocking retirement in March 1993, (he pulled a Vermeil) (without the incessant sobbing), and wondered if I might not mark that as the anchor for D.C.’s lodging in the Bermuda Triangle of sports hell. Turns out, 1993 was an infamous year for us here. While Gibbs departed then, leaving the ill-prepared Skins staggering in a leadership void and launching them into 15 years of lousy-to-mediocre coaches, and mostly lousy seasons, one Peter Angelos arrived (via an ambulance he chased) as majority owner of the Orioles. Likely we didn’t realize it at the time, but the descent was on.

March 9, 1998, was a particularly bleak day for D.C. sports: Washington Post Caps’ beat reporter Bob Fachet passed. A legend was lost and soon thereafter hockey, institutionally, incurred nominal — but not professional — coverage by the paper.

Nineteen ninety six was no peach of a year, either. That year the Redskins bid farewell to the NFL’s most charming stadium, RFK — also one of the most intimidating for visiting teams — and took up residence in a place called Raljon (really), an immense, aesthetic-free mausoleum breeding nightmare Beltway traffic, seat licenses, and, eventually, the arrests of spectators who’d dare try and enter Raljon without ponying up an American Express number for parking fees. It was like replacing Jackie Onasis with Britney Spears.

(It would be most interesting to poll Redskin season ticket holders today and ask which they’d have preferred seeing 12 years ago: millions spent adding 20,000 seats and luxury boxes to RFK, as part of D.C. bid for a future summer Olympics hosting, or the super-sized sinkhole in PG County.)

But as malignancies against winning go, we in D.C. were just getting started. Continue reading ›

Filed in Baseball, Basketball, Daniel Snyder, Football, Morning cup-a-joe, Other Sports, Redskins, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (12)

Roadside Refuse in New England

By The OFB Team
Sunday, October 28, 2007
And a single tear rolls down his cheek
Filed in Redskins, Schadenfreude| Permalink| Comments (1)

Gimme Shelter (in the Rink)

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Cup'pa JoeJust a hunch, but after what we saw Monday in court in Richmond, I suspect we won’t much hear the Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” played over the NFL’s loudspeakers beginning the Sunday after next. (Like I knew who the Baha Men were; ah, Google.) Call this the Knee-jerks of an increasingly disaffected contemporary sports fan.

  • An ESPN Radio personality took to Fox News last night and reported that since the year 2000, more than 300 NFLers have been arrested. More than three hundred. This ESPN personality referred to this state of affairs as the league’s “climate of criminality.” Ya think?
  • Will we need an additional CourtTV channel merely to cover the criminal jurisprudence of the modern, non-hockey-playing pro athlete?
  • It would be interesting to go back in time, to ESPN’s founding year of 1979, and compare a week’s worth of SportsCenter stories then as they related to athlete criminality versus that of about 25 years later.
  • Mark Twain is alleged to have famously said that he wanted to be in Cincinnati on the day the world ended, figuring it would end there considerably later. But what if Twain could have been introduced to the contemporary Cincinnati Bengals, who own their fair share of the more than 300 perp walks? “I want to be in Newark on the day the world ends” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
  • In the current climate of sports criminality, we can really admit any further discussion of closing Gitmo?
  • On relativity: I’m going to be in the Midwest this Labor Day weekend, keeping an eye on my beloved Fighting Irish footballers. Years back, the then perceived ruffian Miami Hurricanes visited Notre Dame Stadium, and ND students t-shirt marketed the matchup as “Catholics vs. Convicts.” Steve Walsh I believe was the ‘Canes QB then. But beyond being a bit boorish for the times, did the ‘Canes of ‘90 really have anything on the gridiron grossness of today?
  • I have it on reasonably good authority that the NFL’s Security Office employs no small number of successfully recruited, or retired-from-but-still-in-their-prime, FBI personnel. Apparently they are very, very busy in the leadup to the NFL draft. A pro league might do well to hire a Bureau vet to head up its security office, but a veritable army of them?
  • He’d never admit it, but if anyone in America is grateful (in muted fashion) for the current mess in Atlanta and Virginia, it’s David Stern. Doesn’t the Pacers-Pistons brawl of 2004, and all of the talking head tongue wringing it ocassioned, seem like a calamity of about 22 years ago?
  • A generation or so ago pro tennis was plagued by bad actors on its courts, and today it’s known for the comparatively quiet and respectful demeanor of its athletes. I get mildly optimistic thinking about this example. But then I think: there’s a world of difference between Ille Nastase screaming obscenities at a linesman and say a QB electrocuting or hanging canines.
Filed in Basketball, Football, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, Other Sports, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (11)

Only God Can Save Baseball in Baltimore

By The OFB Team
Thursday, August 23, 2007

History — of the lurid, malicious, nauseating, revolting, and unfathomable kind — was made at Camden Yards Wednesday afternoon.

Photo by Nick Wass/AP

According to ESPN, Texas’ 30 runs, 27-run victory represent the great smackdown in baseball since 1897. That’s the nineteenth century — two centuries ago. To put the Rangers’ 30 runs in a single game in perspective, if you had Paris Hilton passed out in a frat house of 30 on a Saturday night immediately following mid-term exams, only 29 brothers would score (one or two on average would be gay). Lest you think we’re making up this sordid number, here’s the boxscore.

Just to be clear: it wasn’t the ‘27 Yankees who demolished O’s pitching Wednesday; it was 54-70 Texas.

This will be the Orioles’ 10th consecutive losing season under Peter the Ungreat.

Peter Angelos

Success or failure in a professional sports organization begins at the top; in this regard, Caps’ fans are quite lucky. And with this in mind, Skins’ fans shouldn’t chuckle too vociferously at the O’s mess Wednesday; their band leader is every bit as bad, and likely worse, than the Inner Harbor’s trial lawyer who should himself be on trial.

Filed in Baseball, Daniel Snyder, MLB, Other Sports, Redskins, Schadenfreude| Permalink| Comments (13)

Morning cup-a-joe (1/9/07)

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, January 9, 2007

cupajoe.jpegFresh proof that there are slices of Heaven on Earth: if you’re an Ontario resident and hockey fan, you have access to LeafsTV, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week, 365-days-a-year broadcast outlet covering the local NHL team and its sport. No Argonauts. No Blue Jays. No Raptors. All Leafs, All the Time. Imagine. Don’t take my word for it; check out the station’s weekly broadcast schedule, which is rife with morning skates, pre-game fare, player profiles from the past, the AHL affiliate Marlies, and just about anything you can imagine having to do with pro hockey in a hockey-mad metropolis.

In Washington, we have five such outlets devoted to the Redskins, but on a mid-week morning in the middle of a winter-less winter, I think it might be fun to imagine a Washington world with its sports media hierarchy turned upside down, say five years from now, with media savvy owner Leonsis the ascendant entertainment leader in town (the Redskins still having failed to qualify for the postseason, with billion-dollar payrolls). To showcase better his Hart Trophy winnings Russians (all three of them), and his sublime Swede, and generally to improve Washington’s laughingstock MSM coverage of hockey, Mr. Leonsis partners with Comcast and purchases a startup cable channel to take Capitals’ coverage into his own hands.

As his first order of business he wisely appoints a Caps’ blogger the new outlet’s Director of Programming.

What might this channel be called? And what might a day’s worth of programming on it include? Let’s make these questions the subject of ongoing OFB reader input. Share with us your suggested name for the new outlet, and assume we’re looking for a moniker somewhat distinctive from “LeafsTV,” with flair and 21st-century multi-media pizzaz. And with your comments share as well suggestions for specific programming to help fill 24 hours. Be creative, imaginative, and presume that the owner and the station’s general manager have appropriated a generous budget to include the development and production of original programming. Let’s see if we can come up with a day’s worth of Caps’ and hockey programming on the new channel that repeats only a thrice-daily, 30-minute, SportsCenter-like roundup show, airing early morning, early evening, and lastly at 11:00, that’s all things pucks.

I’ll save my suggested channel name for later, but here are some programming ideas I have:

The Hockey Reporters [a roundtable of impassioned hockey erudition, featuring Mike Vogel, JoeB and Craig, your cordial host, and the region's Queen of Sports]”

Gr8TV: All AO, in motion, on and off the ice

ClassicCaps [the most memorable games, with Ron Weber audio provided from WTOP archives]

Morning skate and post-game pressers with Coach Hanlon, in full

Chit-Chat from Chocolatetown [A weekly Bears' progress report with John Walton]

The outdoor skate at Chevy Chase Country Club

The games themselves

The CapsReport [the weekly studio program is broadcast on TV as well]

And last but by far not least, for after-hours insomniacs, Youngblood.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Hershey Bears, Lindsay Czarniak, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, Redskins, Ron Weber, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (9)

On Microwave Rebuilds and Managing with Monopoly Money

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, January 2, 2007

nhl.gifAs the losses mount and the Mendoza line of below-.500-hockey is breached, passionate fan reaction — and that of Capitals’ Cassandras in particular — can be expected in predictable take-to-the-skyscraper-ledge fashion. Message boards couldn’t exist without it. What’s more surprising is that one MSM beat reporter would lead the pilgrimage to the wailing wall. In typical Washington fashion, Tarik last week suggested that the Caps throw millions in money to stem the losing hemorrhaging. It was a renewal of his preseason lament, when in a WaPost online chat he claimed that the Caps roster was littered with holes and indecipherably improved upon from a year ago.

Sometimes, during postgame interviews following a loss, I can tell a player or coach just wants to say to me, “Yes, Tarik, we struggled. But there’s a very good reason. Did you look at their lineup?”

First, what kind of journalism is this? No Caps’ player suggested as much to Tarik, either on the record or on background, nor did any team official. And with his insider access he chooses instead to impute the sentiment to them? I might as well just opine “Erin Andrews is looking through the TV camera at me and thinking, ‘Meet me after the Cotton Bowl for cocktails.’” Perhaps the reason he has to resort to such lazy journalism is that he knows this group of hockey players to be too proud and too confident in their abilities to resort to such sophistry.

Tarik’s citation of the $43 million Buffalo Sabres as rationale for congressional appropriators reworking the Caps’ books conveniently overlooks the determinative role salary arbitrators played in bloating the Sabre’s payroll by $15 million this past summer. Last season’s 100-plus-point, Eastern Conference finalist Buffalo club seemed to get it done darned ok on a $28 million budget. What about the Stanley Cup champion Hurricanes? $35 million. Aberrations? Nashville and San Jose had nifty seasons in their own right last year, on $31 million payrolls. The Canucks were a top-three club in payroll last season and were among the first to the first tee in April. And how about this season’s big-spending Flyers — how are things going up on Broad Street?

If we’ve learned anything from NHL payrolls the past 10 years, it’s this: the correlation between spending and winning isn’t merely tenuous, often victory is achieved in inverse relation to owner profligacy. So much so that it bred 2004’s lockout.

But it’s more important to get past the numbers game — a fruitless distraction: another millionaire in Bauers puts not a single additional fanny in Verizon Center’s cavernous emptiness — and at long last embrace The Blueprint. On this count, Tarik is doubly damned, as he’s presumeably attended all the pressers and heard Ted et al trumpet the new company line the past three years, ad infinitum: on UFAs and high-priced outsiders, been there, done that; and it’s long past time to emulate the durable, organic roster formations that are only assembled with savvy drafting and patience.

Hockey teams are built in the offseason. They’re tinkered with in-season. Young, rebuilding teams like the Caps not only are expected to endure growing pains like the present but need them. Call it Ted’s Tough Love.

Herewith, a five-point plan for fans and beat writers to adhere to during The Rebuild, and thereby maintain their dignity. Continue reading ›

Filed in American Hockey League, Daniel Snyder, Entry Draft, Hershey Bears, Mathieu Perreault, Media, Pittsburgh Penguins, Redskins, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Tarik El-Bashir, Ted Leonsis, Washington Capitals, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (6)

Sunday Skins Schadenfreude

By pucksandbooks
Sunday, October 15, 2006

I have a new revenue stream idea for Daniel Snyder: an express lane into FedEx Field that opens the second a Redskins’ loss at home becomes official, to be used by the region’s Caps’ fans and others who’ve been bullied and bludgeoned into hating the football team by the all-consuming media orgy engufing it. We’d park our cars, take a seat in the emptied stadium, be able to purchase grossly overpriced draft beer there for 90 minutes following the game, and simply sit there and revel in Mr. Snyder’s agony as the sun sets. It’d be even better if the JumboTron replayed key plays in the Skins’ demise that day as we sipped our beer. A win-win arrangement, no?

It’s $25 to park your car there for a Skins’ game, but for the post-game anti-Skins reveling, I’d be willing to pay $10. Given a month to organize — and in another four weeks the Skins will be mathematically eliminated from playoff contention — I might be able to recruit 1,000 such revelers. That’s $100,000 just in parking fees for He Who Reminds No One of Jack Kent Cooke.

Most of us would be outfitted in Caps’ gear; indeed, it might be a fine idea under such an arrangement for the Caps to lease souvenir space to sell clothing badges of honor to the revelers.

Filed in Daniel Snyder, Redskins, Schadenfreude, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (2)