Reggie Bush = Tony Mandarich Level Draft Bust?

Mike Freeman of CBS Sportsline has decided (here) we need to be talking about Reggie Bush being among the most overrated athletes ever and a huge draft bust in the vein of Tony Mandarich (so, historically big). Me? I think it’s a little too soon, and that’s a little extreme. But Mike segued his Bush column into a list of the top 10 most overrated athletes ever and a quick list of his top 10 underrated. The lists seem to have been compiled sort of off-the-cuff, but I’m going to make fun of them anyway.

10. Vince Carter –- His terrible shooting makes him one dimensional.

Okay – then what’s his one dimension? Passing? Vince Carter is overrated because he doesn’t, you know, TRY all the time, and he settles for jump shots way too much and is not close to being the defender he should be with this athleticism. He’s overrated because, despite his unbelievable talent, he fails to dominate games consistently the way an elite player should. But he’s not a bad shooter, never mind being terrible.

Career FG-3PFG %’s

Carter –.477 / .377
Kobe Bryant - .453/.337
Ray Allen - .446/.397
Tracy McGrady - .439/.332

Those are literally the first 3 guys I looked up. Measuring shooting ablity is obviously more complex than this (glancing at %’s), but c’mon, THAT’s the reason Carter makes your list?

9. Chris Webber –- Average NBA career but grand name recognition.

Overrated? Yes. But “average NBA career?” is ridiculous. One of the top 10 power forwards ever? Maybe. One of the best passing PF’s? Yes. Average NBA career? Huh? He was on an all-NBA team 5 times.

8. Jose Canseco -– Has had more of an impact on baseball post-career with his mouth than he ever did with his bat.

In fairness to Jose, he had more of an impact on baseball post-career with his mouth than most other sluggers did with their bats. Not many people put Jose’s playing career on a pedestal, so I’m not sure why it’s overrated. He was awesome for a couple of years though. I think even most moderate baseball fans have his career pretty well pegged.

7. John Daly –- Could easily be top three.

Golf schmolf.

6. Bo Jackson –- Both overrated and underrated. Overrated because his career was so short; underrated because he is one of the best athletes sports has ever witnessed.

Then don’t those two things offset each other, leaving him correctly “rated”. But very clever having him on both lists!

5. Reggie Bush –- This from former Denver offensive lineman and current analyst Mark Schlereth: "You look at Reggie Bush. Reggie Bush doesn't know how to run between the tackles right now. He's a guy that's an edge runner. He's a guy that right now is not fulfilling his part of this offense."

Bush was the subject of his column, but can we give this a little more time please? Number 5 ALL-TIME…out of every sport!

4. Joe Namath –- 220 interceptions, one championship and a lot of horrible seasons.

Ok. He’s a classic pick.

3. Michael Vick –- Good player but career shortened due to stupidity.

Number 3 most overrated athlete ever, because he was stupid? What if his career was cut short due to a freak injury, like Bo Jackson, then does he make both lists too?

2. Mike Tyson -- Devastating puncher and one trick fighter.

I suppose a good argument for Tyson being this high exists, but I really don’t think most sports fans rank him that high on their all-time heavyweight list. Like, because he lost to Holyfield twice, most people aren’t putting him ahead of Holyfield. ANYWAY. He was never the same after he fired Kevin Rooney and subsequently caught a crazy uppercut from Buster Douglas in Tokyo. He was probably overrated until about February of 1990 (based on how he panned out), when people were calling him the best boxer ever. In 2007, he’s considered a crazy flash in the pan who had some freakish good years against sub-par competition. And that’s about right.

1. David Beckham –- No one, but no one, comes even close.

Soccer, schmoccer.

(A quick top 10 most underrated ever: Marion Motley, Artis Gilmore, Justine Henin, Bo Jackson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Olympic star Rafer Johnson, Donovan McNabb (maybe the most under-appreciated player in NFL history), Don Hutson, Jim Rice, and Lenny Moore.)

I have no energy for this so I’ll just bullet out some observations:

- Bo Jackson is on both lists. That’s retarded.

- You have McNabb as the most underrated QB in history. I’m not an NFL guy but that strikes me as probably not being true and McNabb is possibly benefiting from a great game he played like 4 days ago.

- You have Jim Rice as the most underrated baseball player ever (ignoring Bo Jackson here). I have no idea where that is going, but given the healthy debate he’s involved in every year over his Hall of Fame candidacy, and the fact that he probably shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame, I disagree.

- Track and Field stars not named Carl Lewis are pretty much all underrated, because no one cares about Track and Field.

Gilmore is a pretty solid pick.

Red Sox – Yankees Games Are So Long…..

You: How long are they?

Scott Miller: So long I wrote over 850 words about it with a ton of jokes!

The Red Sox and Yankees play long games. There, that was easy. A little boring, yes, but easy. But the problem is that I’m not funny, so that wasn’t entertaining. Scott Miller at CBS Sportsline.com, now that guy is funny. Don’t believe me? Well read here how he tells you that the Red Sox and Yankees play long games. This is probably not safe for work or if you’re eating, because you’re riotous laughter will probably get you fired, or you may just choke to death (see, i'm not funny).

Weekend Buzz: You can catch Z's in ALCS if Yankees, Sox meet

Some excerpts:

Except, when they get together with the Yankees, "steaming" isn't quite the correct verb. "Plodding", maybe. "Walking." "Lollygagging."

So…the games are long. Okay.

During their 18-game series this summer, the average time of a Yankees-Red Sox game was 3 hours and 35 minutes. The average nine-inning AL game lasted 2:54.

A grand total of 17 of the 18 Red Sox-Yankees games lasted three hours or longer, seven of the 18 were 3½ hours or longer and two of the 17 took more than four hours to play.

Just one lasted fewer than three hours -- barely. New York's 8-3 win on May 23 checked in at 2:59.

Informative, nice work. Thanks. That’s a lot of info that is mildly interesting.

Zzzzz. ...

Ahahahaha….you “fell asleep”. Hi-larious.

Geez, no wonder Daisuke Matsuzaka (14-12, 4.41 ERA) hasn't been all that for the Red Sox this year. The guy threw 120 pitches on Friday and it only got him through 5 2/3 innings. Last laugh is on him regarding that supposedly luxurious six-year, $52 million contract. It works out to about 12 cents an hour in Yankees games.

The games are so long that…$8.5+ million/year = 12 cents….per hour…pretty funny! That’s funny because Daisuke makes a lot of money so the games must be real long for his hourly rate to be so diluted!

Not a good joke, but whatever we can’t all be as funny as Gene Wojciechowski (myself definitely included). The problem is that it doesn’t end there.

On Red Sox reliever Hideki Okajima's recent struggles:

Perhaps the "Okey-Dokey" wouldn't be fading in Fenway if the Red Sox and Yankees didn't play at hokey-pokey pace.

Please.

Stop.

The Yankees and Red Sox may have the game's two highest payrolls, but they continue to play like a couple of persnickety art collectors.

Wow, just wow. Because they are really detailed? I don’t get it.

Not that Friday night's game took forever, but after watching the first inning on television, I mowed my grass twice, washed my fleet of cars, shot a round of golf, cooked a six-course dinner ... and still caught the last three innings.

Right. Long. Gotcha.

On the prospect of another Yankees – Red Sox ALCS:

This happens again, then Fox should ask for 3 p.m. start times -- so that innings 6 through 9 can be played in prime time, rather than at 2 a.m. No-Doz can sponsor.

So, in this case, you could have thrown any one of those jokes in there and it merely would have been a bad joke following some informative data on game lengths. You have to just use your best joke and end it. I’ll use an example to show what I mean:

Me: Stu, did you see the Red Sox game last night.

Stuart Scott: A little, I was sort of half watching it.

Me: Oh right, because of your lazy eye. Well it was so long I think Roger Clemens retired in the 3rd and unretired in the 8th.

Stuart Scott: What did you say?

Me: It was so long I’m pretty sure I could have driven to Fenway from the Bronx in the fourth and made it by the 7th inning stretch.

Stuart Scott: About MY EYE?

Me: It was so long that Tim Wakefield changed his name to Tim Sleepfield and Philip Hughes to Philip SNOOZE!

Me: It was so long that I mowed my grass twice, washed my fleet of cars, shot a round of golf, cooked a six course dinner…and still caught the last three innings.

See how that got progressively worse? Don’t do that. One joke and end it.

Jemele Hill On The Juice

Jemele Hill’s latest and greatest is a defense, sort of, of OJ Simpson in his latest run in with 5-0. I’ll let you read it here, and decide what you want on her general point, but there were a couple of points that I thought warranted discussion.

For the record I agree that the whole thing is F’d up and the thought that OJ would have done this is sort of mind boggling (mostly because of how brazen it is), but if I thought OJ was innocent, I would not put forth some of the arguments that Jemele does, because they are retarded.

Las Vegas police aren't exactly known for their airtight police work.

Realize this is the same police department that still can't find out who murdered Tupac, WHO WAS KILLED RIGHT OFF THE STRIP. This is the same police department that can't find the assailant who paralyzed a man and endangered numerous lives when he shot up the strip club where Pacman Jones "made it rain."

Help me out here. Is there a PD in any decent size city in the US that doesn’t have piles of unsolved crimes and murders? Just because they are more high profile in Vegas, doesn’t mean their PD is worse. It could be, but give me more than 2 incidents if that’s what you’re hanging your hat on.

While Pacman wasn't immediately charged, he and his lengthy arrest record were allowed to leave town with no problem.

Okay, well he wasn’t charged.

Yet O.J. isn't allowed bail and is deemed a flight risk?

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM – Why in the name of A Fucking C would OJ Simpson ever be deemed a flight risk? HMMMMMMMMMMM?

Let's say you are among the 90th percentile that believes O.J. is a murderer. Considering the gruesome way his ex-wife and friend were murdered, would O.J. even need backup to get his stuff back?

Let’s walk through this logic.

In 1994, a 47 year-old OJ Simpson allegedly snuck up behind Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, late at night, and slit their throats and stabbed them. For some reason, he didn’t recruit help or tell many people.

THEREFORE, if you share Jemele Hill’s logic,….

In 2007, it is not reasonable to think that a 60 year-old OJ Simpson would recruit help to go into a hotel room to steal some merchandise that he insists was stolen from him. He should be a one man wrecking crew, based on how he committed double murder 13 years ago.

60 years old.

Read this again….

Considering the gruesome way his ex-wife and friend were murdered, would O.J. even need backup to get his stuff back?

That is one of the stupidest things she’s ever written.

Gregg Easterbrook Writes a Long-Ass Column

So I'm really tired and this post may be very sloppy and non-sensical.... but what the hell, right?
Gregg Easterbrook writes an incredibly long-winded column on ESPN page 2 called “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” where he explains why he’s so much smarter than you and everyone else. I just finished reading this week's edition and I’m too tired to type a better intro. For the record I don't hate the guy or think he's unintelligent. He often has many good points, particularly about NFL strategy. But he can get a little too righteous for my liking.

On the NBA point below, I’m not really saying he’s wrong, just responding. I don’t know. I’m really tired, just read it. I’m not even going to address his hyperbole when talking about the impact of the camera issue on the NFL - but feel free to check out his column for his (long) take on it (hint: it's catastrophic). Also, if you want a lot of comparisons of Bill Belichick and Richard Nixon, that link will suit you well.

Think the NFL can't decline? Fifteen years ago, the National Basketball Association was going up, up, up by every measure and was widely considered the gold-plated can't-miss "sport of the next century." Since then, NBA popularity and ratings have plummeted while NBA-based teams have floundered in international competition.

No, actually NBA popularity and ratings plummeted when Michael Jordan retired, which coincided with a lockout. There are dozens of other reasons, but I’d point to those two first. Also, losing in international competition is largely the result of much improved international competition.

I believe it was 1994 when Sports Illustrated had a cover story called something like “Why the NHL is hot, and the NBA is not”. Just saying.

Fifteen years ago, sports-marketing types would have said "impossible!" to the notion that only 11 percent of American households would watch the NBA Finals, which is what happened this June.

Look at the chart midway down on the left of this page. Notice anything? The ratings were high with Jordan or Los Angeles in the Finals, and pretty much lower any time the Spurs were involved. Also, this is a long time to be reviewing ratings. I think if you told the sports-marketing types about the rise in video games, and explained to them “the Internet”, TIVO/DVR, and cable packages with hundreds of channels and then told them the finals would be played between San Antonio and Cleveland, they would have thought of that notion as being very possible.

I also couldn’t quite follow Easterbrook’s train of thought when talking about the possibility of the Patriots cheating on Sunday night against the Chargers. Namely if they had used illegally obtained video from the January AFC playoff game (which he acknowledges had different coaching) to their advantage on Sunday night.

Was New England cheating again Sunday night, when the Patriots advanced the ball with such ease it seemed they knew what defense San Diego would be in?

He's asking that question for real. It's at the tail end of a paragraph where he explains exactly how the Patriots could have been cheating. Now let’s read some snippets of his analysis of the game from a different section of his column.

What in blazes was the story with the Chargers? Rarely has a quality team seemed so ill-prepared for a monster game, and rarely has a quality team seemed to give up the moment the going got tough.

He then goes through several plays where the Chargers should have known what was coming, but were ill-prepared. Based on AccuScore and (he seems to imply) common sense, the Chargers were not playing smart.

He concludes just by saying, “That's awful defense” after both long-winded detailed paragraphs explaining how the Chargers sucked.

But what was really awful about San Diego's performance was the coaching timidity.

He then goes into detail about how San Diego should have gone for it fourth-and-1 near midfield in the second quarter when they were already down 17 points and later in the quarter they punted again on 4th and 2.

When the coach quits on the game in the second quarter, it should come as no surprise that the players quit.

So first he questions if they were cheating because they advanced the ball easily and seemed to know what defense was coming.

Then we get:
- “ill-prepared”
- “awful defense”
- “awful defense”
- “coaching timidity”
- “coach quits”
- “players quit”
…to describe the Chargers.

Hmm, well….. I realize that those statements and the Patriots cheating aren’t mutually exclusive, but why would anyone who watched the game waste time putting a lot of thought into crediting their offensive output to the Patriots cheating, especially when that person has such disdain for the Chargers’ defensive execution, strategy, and effort?

Bill Simmons Would Like You to Focus On Important Stuff!

It is hugely ironic to me that Bill Simmons is so outraged at the level of coverage given to the Bill Belichick issue that he has decided to preach to us and the networks about how our news prioritization is fucked up. This is a guy who has written thousands of words about old, socially irrelevant television shows and running diaries on completely useless shit. I’ll let him take it away:

We live in a world in which global-warming activists charter private jets to take them from speech to speech, then tell people not to use so much toilet paper. We live in a world in which American kids are getting killed every day in the Middle East and nobody will mobilize a valid protest until the President finally decides, "We're having a draft lottery." We live in a world in which you can Google the female star of the most popular Disney TV movie ever and see her naked, and NBC runs a popular show in which they trap potential child predators and film the confrontations on TV. We live in a world in which high school kids can decide they don't like another high school kid, so they can build an anonymous slam page and libel the hell out of him, and even though this happens and keeps happening, we still don't have any set-in-stone Internet laws to prevent this. We live in a world in which Perez Hilton and TMZ.com get their own TV shows, but "Friday Night Lights" is two months away from getting canceled. We live in a world in which every home run record from the past 10 years has to be taken not just with a grain of salt, but an entire salt shaker.

So save me the moral indignation about CameraGate. The whole world is screwed up. We watch football every week because the games are entertaining, because it's something to do, because it gives us something to discuss with our friends, co-workers and family members. If you're searching for a football-related moral cause with some meat, watch this month's feature about Earl Campbell on "Costas Now." He's the Texas hero who got chewed up and spit out by professional football; now he suffers from crippling back and knee problems and needs a cane or a wheelchair to get around. The NFL makes roughly a kajillion dollars a year, only its player's union doesn't give two craps about a deteriorating ex-star like Campbell, one of the watershed stars of the '70s and someone who helped push the league to its current heights. They have a lame pension program and no disability benefits, and they have a union head (Gene Upshaw) who openly admits he's paid to worry about current players and not former ones ... even though he's a former player himself. Of course, that story isn't nearly as controversial as the current Patriots scandal because we can't slap a "Gate" behind it. Too bad.

We live in a world where Bill Simmons gets paid to write running diaries of the Scripps National Spelling Bee and Comedy Roasts; where he gets paid to write about his favorite YouTube clips; where he gets paid to write about Las Vegas once a month, name drop his buddies, reference archaic, meaningless shows like Beverly Hills 90210 and talk incessantly about TV and Movies in a sports column. He should be licking is chops to write about an actual news story involving the NFL…on the field.

Simmons’ point is mind-bogglingly stupid but his self-righteousness is in his way of seeing that. Bill, Iraq has been going on for YEARS, so has just about all the things you noted (or other similar things), which is why during the Patriots game, the first game since “Camera-gate”, THAT was the big story. Who cares if, in the grand scale of immoralities, it ranks below other highly questionable circumstances? On Sunday, during the only NFL game on at night, and with the Patriots playing, it WAS STILL the story. You can’t get mad because one commentator didn’t interrupt the other to say, “Can we talk about Earl Campbell’s knees for one sweet minute?” It's not like they didn't cover the game and just rambled about the issue for 3 hours.

Nothing in your rant changes what should have been the story in the specific context of the Patriots game. During the first game after the incident, the incident IS the story (even if racism and war exist in the world). If Tony Dungy was accused of what Belichick is accused of, then you would be talking about it 10 times as much and with 10 times the disdain. You would be demanding that the Patriots be allowed to play the Bears to re-do the Super Bowl without the cheatin’ Colts.

I understand that Bill’s point was not that Global Warming or the Iraq war should have been front and center stories on Sunday night NFL. I guess his point was the world is so screwed up, we should just focus on the product on the field and minimize off-the field news. Did he actually talk about steroids there? Now THAT is a story that has received more than its share of attention. We should ignore the camera story and talk about it even more, because it's had a greater impact on sports? For a sportswriter to be so dismissive of a sports issue because it is minor in a global context (or even a global sporting context) is laughable. Especially when that sportswriter is the king of writing about inconsequential bullshit that is trivial even to the professional sports “world”.

The crazy thing is that Bill had a lot of good observations about the actual game. It’s too bad he couldn’t do what he was asking of the commentators and stop harping on “camera-gate”. The column is more effective and a lot less maddening without the two paragraphs I cited above.

A Crackhead Alcoholic Watching Porn and the Cosby’s

Jemele Hill recently wrote a column about her being new to fantasy football. Sure. Anyway midway through the column she starts listing out random thoughts on fantasy football.

This was number 2.

2. Top-5 addictions: (1) crack, (2) fantasy football, (3) alcohol, (4) porn, (5) "Cosby Show" reruns.

Help me out here. Is she saying that these are HER top five addictions, or the top 5 addictions, generally (her guess of the top 5 addictions of the general population)? Assuming they are not hers, let’s review:

1. Crack is probably up there, although I don’t know a single person who has done crack and I can only name a couple famous one-time crackheads (Marion Barry, Richard Pryor).
2. Okay, that’s the point of the column.
3. Alcohol – Sure.
4. Porn – Okay
5. Cosby Show Reruns – okay, it’s a joke. Ha. But, see, this is where I get confused. I don’t know anyone who’s watched the Cosby Show in 10 years, so I think Jemele is just talking about herself, not the general public.

This explains a lot of Jemele’s writing. She’s on crack, watching porn and drinking booze whilst she writes.

Stop Asking Stuart Scott to Predict Things!

Okay, back from hiatus. I haven’t read a thing in two weeks. I jumped in with the Stuart Scott chat from 9/14. Along with 90 questions about the Patriots, all with the same answer, there is this question asking Stuart for his opinion on Greg Oden.

Mike(NY): Is Greg Oden the next Sam Bowie? This injury reminds me when KiJana Carter blew out his knee in training camp and effectively ending his career before it began.

Stuart Scott: (5:23 PM ET ) Mike-What do I look like Nostradamus? Asking me to predict future, I don't do that...I'll give my opinion...NO. Think he's more talented than Bowie was, and I'll be an optimist.

Um, Stu…I think Mike was asking for your opinion…is Greg Oden the next Sam Bowie? Don’t get all bent out of shape. You had no problem predicting that Prince Fielder and A-Rod would both hit 60 homeruns, it seems kind of weird to go Joe Morgan on Mike from NY.

Hiatus

The entire staff of GGAS (23 person office in White Bear Lake Minnesota - Go Bears!) is going to be on hiatus from now through about September 16th. We at GGAS measure our success just like a public company, quarterly, and in less than three months we’ve exceeded our stockholders’ expectations by so much that we are taking a well deserved vacation. That means we’ll come back ready to start a new quarter, and hopefully kick so much ass in the first month that we can take the second and third months off.

If I read something particularly egregious I will have to contain my excitement and post when I get back. If I can steal some internet time it will probably be to make updates to my fantasy team, since all bloggers are just fantasy dorks who live in their parents basements! Ha! LOL!

Because I know that the dozens of regularly readers (technically true!) will be going through withdrawals without my crazy commentary on Stuart Scott’s typos, here's some stuff you can read (in addition to regularly checking out the links on the right, of course). This isn't meant to be endorsed as all quality sportswriting or whatever, just some items that I remembered reading and being decent or interesting.

Baseball’s Most Impressive Records – The Baseball Crank.

Eleven Weeks to Irrelevance – Scoop Jackson. No Shit! This Scoop Jackson! …talking about Larry Doby.

Tom Verducci of SI wrote this decent column on Hank Aaron before Barry broke the record. Barry Bonds. The home run record! Remember that?

Here is an interesting comparison of Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez – Hardball Times.

Here is a crazy string of stories about the guy who sued Michael Vick for like 63 Billion dollars for using his dogs, then selling them to buy nukes from the Iranians. Something like that – at Dreadnaught.

Kobe Bryant’s blog. THE NBA ALL-STAR! Yeah, now that I have your attention….

If you’re new to GGAS, this is the most consistently read post from the archives of this site. This and other Jemele Hill related posts,actually – here.