i guess the theme for the day is sports. not really sure why, just thought i should throw out an opinion on sports.

cuz of the big news, baseball is the first to come to mind.

baseball
yes, a-rod is going to the yankees. should we really be all that surprised? it's just ridiculous though if you look at the yank's probable starting lineup for this season. i can't remember a season in any sport where i can't imagine that team not winning the championship.

i am a baseball fan, i follow it during the regular season more than the average guy, but from like march till august i'm not really that into it. but usually i'm into it enough so that i know who's gonna make the playoffs and such. playoff baseball is actually really thrilling in my opinion, division series, LCS, and world series. the format's good enough, i don't think they should fuck with it at all cuz it works out pretty well the way it is.

sure, i think the yankees have way too high of a payroll and it makes it so much harder for other teams to win consistently, but i'm not so opposed to it that i can't enjoy the sport at all. it's just that as cool as the yankees are, i'm usually rooting against them just to prove a point.

basketball
i'm a relatively new basketball fan, within about the last 2-3 years. alayna's pretty into it so that helps me get into it some. since like the mid-90's i've always watched the finals, but not much more than that. nowadays i still don't take in a helluva lot of regular season basketball, but since the mavs are pretty good these days i'll watch them when they're on, same for the spurs. i understand the game better these days, and i watch enough to have favorite players and teams.

unfortunately a lot of things really kinda plague the nba these days. obviously the kobe case and all the other criminal cases of players. the west is considerably better than the east in my opinion, and almost always more fun to watch. at any given point in the season, i'd put money on the lakers, spurs, mavericks or kings to win it all. too much emphasis is placed on the damn lakers, and that obviously gets old pretty quick. this year i don't think they'll win it all, and i'll be glad when they don't (except maybe if the goddamn kings win). i'd just prefer if next season payton and malone piss off and do something else, shaq stays, kobe signs with somebody else (maybe the clippers or nuggets), hopefully leaving bill walton's son to run the team, haha. i don't even hafta mention how bill walton can singlehandedly ruin a televised game.

like the rest of sports, nba is most worth watching at playoffs time. it's not nearly as competitive as playoff baseball or hockey to me, but still entertaining. and btw, am i the only one that kinda wants kobe to be guilty? i mean if he didn't do it, fine, move on, but if he did, it'd really be great to just see a supposedly nice guy get completely nailed. he'd kick ass in the prison basketball pickup games for years to come, and it'd be the biggest sports story in years.

football
ever since prolly about 1992 when the cowboys won super bowl XXVII, i've been a pretty big football fan. it's america's sport, and i don't have any problem with that. an hourlong highlights segment at the end of a sunday is always thoroughly enjoyable. sometimes moreso than other sports, a 70-yard bomb or a huge pick can be extremely exciting and makes the entire game worth watching. i'm more of an nfl fan than an ncaa guy, but both leagues are fun to watch for somewhat different reasons.

lately though football's leaving a bad taste in my mouth, especially the nfl. the ncaa's got their own problems with the BCS system, but the nfl has been worse lately. the super bowl in general, the "boob" incident, a decent decline in quality of play, play stoppage, huge fines, ridiculous celebrations, tv rights, etc... they're just all adding up to make the nfl look like a bunch of assholes.

football in general, at least to me, has a horrible format. i understand why they do it, but playing all the league's games on one day (with the exception of monday night football) is just sorta shaky. on any given sunday, there's like 14 or so games going on, mostly all at the same time, and you have to rely on the highlights to get any kinda feel for how the game went. since the nfl is such a whore, i'm surprised they haven't adopted some system where at least some team played a game every night of the week.

as stupid as it sounds, i think the XFL had it right by showing games on saturdays. i know the entire country would revolt if we took football away from sunday, but doesn't saturday just make more sense? if you're going to insist on having all the games on one day, why not pick a day where we don't have to do shit the next day? plus you could even have some games start at like 9pm or something, for some good late night football watching parties. the games-all-in-one-day system is what ruins playoff football to me, not to mention it's a single-elimination format. to me, a 7 game series alternating home sites is way more compelling than 1 60-minute game, which is why i say of the 4 top sports, football comes in last when it comes to the playoffs. even the super bowl itself, it's more of a big party and holiday-type event than an actual football game. sure it's fun, but is it *really* a championship game?

the thing i like about the nfl is some of the players. sure, you have to put up with assholes like warren sapp and keyshawn johnson, but you have some awesome players like mike vick, terrell owens and ricky williams. i really like the guys with a little bit of attitude and some decent personality. to me, vick is better than favre only because he's more fun to watch, not cuz he's actually a better player. i think more than the other major sports, football is about entertainment. so if it's about entertainment, then entertain me. some of these young guys 3 years out of college are the best at that, and that's really what makes competitive nfl games good for me.

hockey
hockey is my sport. doesn't matter how much better financially the other sports are, hockey is my favorite sport, no matter what. to me, hockey combines the toughness of football with the finesse of the nba perfectly. unfortunately, hockey just isn't appreciated in the states nearly as much as it should be. it's pretty ridiculous how looked over the sport gets across the country. somewhat surprisingly, dallas has really developed a strong fanbase for the stars, people have really become diehards, including myself. not really sure how it happened, but unless people just don't follow hockey for no good reason at all, the nhl did a few things along the way that prolly hurt its chances...

• somehow, tight defense became king. hell, even dallas contributed to this. teams like dallas and new jersey were really defensive-minded, and won all their games either 2-0 or 2-1. pretty damn simple, less goals = less interest. even i felt this one. i see too many games with less than 5 total goals and i lose interest pretty quick.
  
• goalies got better. remember seeing clips from like the 80's when gretzky could breathe on the puck and it'd go in? i bet if he started playing today he'd only have 1/3 of the goals he scored in his days. with better equipment and training, goalies stop twice as much as they used to, which is forcing the other players to try harder (and so far, fail) to score.
  
• too many goddamn teams. hey, don't get me wrong, i like league expansion and moving teams from humdrum markets to more exciting areas (minnesota to dallas in '93), but 30 teams is just too much for this league. i've heard if there's a lockout and they come back in a few years, they just might come back with 16 teams. this wouldn't be the worst thing ever. i'd like to see about 24 teams the most, that'd be a good amount to me. but nowadays there's just too many areas with semi-dead hockey teams that could easily be eliminated. places like pittsburgh and washington don't do much for the league anymore, and even some of the newer teams in columbus and carolina don't seem to stir up much emotion. i'm not sure how it should be decided, but sure, go ahead, slash the 5 or 10 or 14 teams from the league, we'll try it out for a while. my only requirement is ya keep the fuckin stars. :)
  
• it gets shafted on tv. yeah, the nhl just has some problems as soon as it's put on tv, mostly just due to the deals it made with networks for the rights. ESPN/ABC sports obviously have deals with certain teams, so they get a lot more face-time than other teams. like on ESPN, waaaay too many damn games of the bruins, red wings and flyers. sure, those are great teams right now, but in like 10 games on ESPN you're like to have the flyers in half of them. it just gets old. i'm not a fan of the flyers. i'm a fan of the stars, that's why i'd wanna watch all their games. ESPN usually has semi-decent coverage of the games, good analysis and features, but i don't like the whole saturday afternoon games ABC does. sure it's kinda festive, but i wonder how many people are actually sitting down at 2pm on a saturday wanting to watch hockey, especially two teams they don't know much about. ESPN was on the right track delegating thursday nights every week as hockey night, but uh... why thursday? the one day of the week that i have a whole slew of other things i'd like to watch.
  
• too many pointless games. i've heard they'll prolly cut the 82 game schedule down closer to 70 to speed things along. it'd be a good idea. especially when you have too many ties to begin with, you gotta eliminate all the pointless games played out between non-rivals somehow. i mean sure, trim 12 games off of the avs' schedule if it means they won't play florida at all this year, but a higher percentage of their games are played against vicious rival detroit.
  

i love the nhl, but i'm afraid there's a big possibility they might not be back next year, which is just awful. hopefully they can work things out, but if not, we might not have a major league in this country for half a decade, which would be so damn wrong for us hockey fans.

auto racing
not really sure if i should call this a sport, but it kinda is. i'll just come right out and say it -- nascar fuckin blows. i'm a big racing fan, but i still think nascar just sucks. it's southern, rednecky, not exciting, and silly. it's just not for me at all. i'm not even totally sure why we bother with serious racing in this country, we really fuck it up compared to europe and F1 style. formula one racing overseas is fantastic, it's exciting and extremely competitive, with way more road courses than oval tracks. CART and IRL over here are usually pretty good, but financially troubled. they should prolly just merge and get it over with. and as much of a racing purist as i am, i still love a good non-injury/fatality wreck, man.

i think that's why i don't have proper time for other things, like dvd's, anime and video games, cuz i'm such a sports fanatic in general. in any playoff season i'm pretty much all over it as much as i can be, and that tends to take up a lot of my time. makes me miss playing sports tho. within the next couple years there's a good chance i could start training for hockey again and join a league. my current kick is racquetball (getting better every month, might play tournaments and such in the near future) but i'd love to get back to roller hockey sometime soon.

thus ends my big sports opinion for no reason post.

cheers,
justin