StumpTownSports

It’s only Tuesday, so maybe we’ll get two updates this week….probably not,…but hey, I can dream. Here’s the day’s random collection of sports thoughts: 1. I believe last night’s performance by Rex Grossman may very well have been the worst ever by a fantasy QB starting for his team. In my fantasy league’s format, Rex’s 6 turnovers combined with other horrible stats netted him -5 points. By contrast, my QB Matt Hassleback got me 33 points. Good job Rex. 2. Guys, have you ever been holding something and dropped it and gone to catch it just as the object falls below your waist and you catch it by inadvertently slamming it into…well…yourself? Uhmmm, me neither, but if I had that feeling as you double over in pain while contemplating your own stupidity is how the Arizona Cardinals and their fans all feel right now. What an embarrassment. At least Leinert looked great. Pretty cold comfort I’m guessing. 3. Remember how I said Edge was ...

I had high hopes that I would post something, maybe just something short, to this blog every day or at least 5 times a week. Well, it has turned into a once a week thing, but I’m not giving up my dream just yet. Instead, I would rather delude myself into thinking I am mysteriously going to get an extra hour a day for the rest of my life. Here’s what’s on my mind in the world of sports: 1. I hope the Yankees trade A-Rod. I like A-Rod. I think he gets unfair treatment by fans and the media. He is, as far as I can tell, a good guy as athletes go and he came up in the NW for Seattle and he is if not the best player in baseball, at least in the conversation. I love the guys who make their living being clutch since that’s a huge part of sports and to date in his career I will concede that A-Rod hasn’t exactly been Larry Bird in that department, though as Bonds proved a few years ago that can change. But A-Rod takes way too much heat for this just as the others get too...

Here are my quick hit sports thoughts for the moment: 1. This weekend’s game against the Raiders is a huge game for the Niners. I thought KC last week was going to be the game where the Niners established themselves as a team moving in the right direction and not to be taken lightly. Instead, they went out and got killed. After a couple days, I’ve had sufficient time to fully rationalize the loss. First, KC is better than it played in the first couple weeks and had a bye to fully plan and remotivate itself. It was still a bad loss, but not quite as bad as it first seemed. That said, the Raiders are that bad. They aren’t as bad as they looked in the first 2 weeks against 2 of the best Ds in the league, but they are still really, really, really bad. That is a game the Niners have to win. If they don’t it is going to be hard to see how they have made any progress from last year. Gore has to hold onto the ball and the defense has to show up. I’m predicting an ugly game as bo...

I don't have time this week to do a recap of last weekend and it is almost the next weekend anyway, so I'll just toss a few things out there: 1. Are people fired up about the baseball playoffs? Are there any compelling stories? Howard with the Phils I guess, maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'm just still bitter about the Giants, but I can't get into it. 2. Speaking of the Giants, why is no one talking about the fact that in September, with his knee finally recovered, Barry is hitting balls out like he was when he was allegedly juicing. Doesn't that cast even more doubt on the whether we should care if these guys are roiding? I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all, but maybe the reasons it matters have nothing at all to do with stats or performance...at least with Bonds. 3. More great NFL matchups this weekend. I'm really looking forward to Chicago and Seattle on Sunday night. Can the Seahawks win with Hasslebeck throwing 45 times? I think we ...

It’s time for another weekend recap. One of the really nice things about football season is that almost all meaningful sports happenings take place on the weekend, so it makes it easy to keep track of it all. You just put in the intense time over the weekend and you have almost a full week to digest and recap. Of course now that we have college football on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and Pro football on Monday and later on Thursday and Saturday, it is becoming harder and harder, but it’s still mostly a weekend sports world right now. When the NBA season starts I may just have to give up sleeping all together. Anyway, here are my thoughts about the weekend: 1. Friday was a great day for sports because I got to play basketball for the first time in longer than I care to admit. I would play basketball every day for as long as my body could take if I could find a way to make it work, so the fact that I haven’t played regularly in a while really bothers me. But Frid...

I know it’s Thursday and you’ve probably already taken more time than you should to digest what happened in the first full weekend of football of the year, but I have to throw out some of my thoughts before this weekend rolls around. 1. Going back a full week, nice performance by the Beavers on the smurf turf of Boise St. Apparently the traveling secretary (who George Costanza thinks does a bad job), left in their playbook for the last time these two teams met and forgot to put in the new gameplan. How else can you explain the Beavers going up by two tds AGAIN early in the game and then getting absolutely shamed for the rest of the game. There are beatdowns, then there are humiliating blowouts and then there is what Boise did to OSU. Nice work Beavers, way to represent the conference. I guess being a baseball school was good enough. 2. 3 great college games last weekend in terms of significance (to me) and I have to say something about all 3. First, th...

Here's a few random thoughts after last night's game: 1. My 6 year old son loved the Pink intro. Me not as much. Is that the new intro? Really? To every game or just that one? How did they decide on Pink? I mean what says football more than an already past her prime female pop-"star" with the name "Pink?" Ugh. Maybe next week, we'll get Fiona Apple. 2. Why did they let Andrea Kramer come on after a 4 day bender? What happened to her? I gasped in shock when she first appeared on my screen. Sometimes, it doesn't pay to have a big TV. Yikes. Maybe, stop letting todlers cut your hair. I know that's mean, but something had to be said. I'm sorry it had to be me. Let's just let her gracefully exit and give her job to the great Peter King. 3. Culpepper looked as bad as a big time QB has looked since any of Bret Favre's games from the last 2 years. Just throw to your own team for crying out loud. Dolphin fan should be ver...

With the season kicking off tonight, every where you look in the paper, on TV or on line people are making their predictions. Well, I’ve read enough, so now I need to share with you what’s really going to happen. These aren’t predictions, this just simple fact. Here are some of the things that will happen in football before Tuesday morning: 1. Deuce McAllister will post better numbers than Reggie Bush this week, but Bush will do something that will remind us all of Sanders and Vick. I see one of those 6 yard runs that takes 2 minutes where about 8 guys miss tackles. 2. The Niners will not be as bad as everyone predicts and the game against the Cardinals will be close 3. TO will have a big game and everyone will act like nothing ever happened and the Cowboys (especially the Tuna) are geniuses for signing him. In 3 weeks when he really melts down, the media will forget everything they said and act like Dallas is the stupidest franch...

Turns out that “giant sucking sound” is not NAFTA afterall, but rather the sound my fantasy team is most likely to make. After weeks of anticipation, we had my fantasy football draft last night for the Boyz Near the Hood fantasy league that I run with a college buddy of mine. I’m sure you are all busting to find out what happened and so for that reason and for the therapeutic benefit that it might have I’m going to purge my inner doubts and fears and tell you what happened last night and why I did what I did. Enjoy. After having spent most of the day at the office getting absolutely nothing work related accomplished, I decided to leave early. It’s not that I didn’t have work to do or that I didn’t want to do it, it is just that I couldn’t really think of anything not related to football and that just doesn’t allow one the sort of concentration one needs to do legal work. I got home about 5 and spent the next hour rearranging my man room, hooking up the computer to my projector, ch...

Team USA and Fantasy Football One day until my fantasy football draft and it can’t get here soon enough. Unlike many of my buddies who share my love for football and fantasy, I only play in one football league. Every year it seems I get invited to play in others, but to this point I have turned them down. I’ve gone the multi-league route and it has some good points but in the end what I love most about fantasy is the “gives you something to root for” quality it brings to the season. In multiple leagues it inevitably works out where you have a guy in one league and you play against him in the other and then who to root for just becomes too complicated. I like to keep my sports rooting simple. So the league I run, Boyz Near the Hood (a link to which is at your right) is the only league I do and the draft is tomorrow. I have the 5th overall pick in a keeper league. Last year I drafted Deuce McAlister in the first round thinking he was going to have a big year and would also make an ...

Tiger I just noticed that Tiger is leading at the WGC Invitational and I wonder if Phil Mickleson got Clyde Drexlered. As a Blazer fan, I remember all too well the SI cover and article that came out calling Clyde the second best player in the NBA and making all kinds of comparisons to MJ and even suggested that there were some aspects of the game where Clyde was better. Anyone who knows anything about the MJ era in the NBA already knows what happened next. This was right before the Blazers met the Bulls in the NBA finals and reporters were just trying to make a story. Instead, they made MJ feel like he had something to prove and he spent the remaining games before taking home the title, demolishing Clyde and the Blazers. A few short months ago there was all this talk about a Mickleslam and Lefty catching up and maybe even passing Tiger as top player in the world. Then Tiger's Dad died and Tiger went away and then missed the cut at the Open and the people talked Phil up even mo...

Team USA and Football I am a bona fide NBA junkie. I follow it closer than any sane person should. I read out of market papers I watch replays of old games, I can tell you off the top of my head that the NBA channel is 601 on Directv and don’t get me started on how much I love/need my NBA league pass. So, that may make it easier to understand that I have watched ever minute of every game that has been televised anywhere that the current Team USA has played. Frankly, I don’t get why this competition isn’t a bigger deal over here. Here’s what you get with the FIBA World Championships: 1. An NBA all-star team playing games that really matter. We all love the NBA all-star weekend in spite of Stern’s ridiculous refusal to incorporate a huge game of H-O-R-S-E into the weekend. We love watching all those great players on the same court together. We watch our favorite start on their own teams all the time wondering, what would it be like if D Wade was finishing that sweet dish from LB...