Chaswick.net

For such a stinker of a game (no surprise there, really, except that the Browns really are that bad).  I feel for my Cleveland kin, whose voices I hear in the back of my head lamenting another poor performance by a Cleveland sports team.  But, a standout performance by Mike, Jaws, and John.  I rarely even acknowledge the presence of announcers not named Madden or Costas or Thorne, but in this case I believe a trophy should be awarded for a ‘clutch’ performance.  In the face of unrelenting horribleness, they made the second half of that game immensely entertaining with their unvarnished opinions, discussion of SNF, back and for between Jaws and John, retro highlight reels, and above all highlighting the fact that a quarterback is having a terrible night when he can’t hit the football field with a throw.  Hats off to you guys, great job!  And keep it up John, work on your polish and you may be the replacement for Madden that we are all hoping and waiting for.  My favorite (paraphrased) quote of the night:

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Ok, I have had enough.  If a score is a game winning score (at least!) the call on the field should stand regardless.  If it turns out the the scorer is an alien from the planet mars and is packing a ray gun with plans to kill everyone in the arena after the game, the score should still stand.  I am sick and tired of getting excited at seeing a score, seeing it ruled a score, and seeing that ruling overturned.  I hate it, it is wrong, and the fans are the ones who suffer.  Fix it now.  And I am talking to you, NFL, NCAA, MLB, NHL, Olympics, etc.  Fix it or I swear to you I will stop watching or caring or buying your crappy products.  I want enjoyment in my recreation.  Who cares which team wins or loses, half the time I could care less.  What I really care about is being able to know for sure that what I see is what I get.  I get enough false starts and overturned rulings at work, I DON”T NEED IT ON MY DAYS OFF!

Now the boys are starting to roll. Here’s hoping we have left .500 in the dust, where it belongs, for the last time. All I want is an interesting September, the AL East should be a dogfight to the end.

Did anybody notice Evan running a little funny since his return from the pulled hammy?  I wonder if he is not quite as fast as he was earlier this season, or if he has some other problem we don’t know about yet.

Gotta love the Zo-rilla, continuing to come across the plate like a machine.  And, maybe, just maybe, he is PED-free!  His physique certainly seems more like Jeter’s than A-Rod’s at this stage, anyway.

As we could see though, pitching is still the area of most concern.  Niemann was plenty good enough last night, and the bullpen shut it down, but I wonder how long we can keep that up?

To wrap it up, get out there and support your local baseball team!  These are the dog days of summer, after all.  Don Henley would approve.

So next year’s NFL schedule has been released.  Below you can find the information on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 2009 NFL schedule.  I’ll update this post as I have time to analyze it, but it looks like a very tough road to hoe this year, competition-wise.   The NFC East and AFC east, combined with the NFC south represent the most competitive three divisions in football, hands down.  Coach Morris has his work cut out for him.  Also apparent is that almost all games are 1:00 pm starts, and our division play is densely packed at the end of the season.  And, we once again have a favorable bye week.  Week 1 is September 13th, 2009.

Week 1  Dallas at Tampa
Week 2  Tampa at Buffalo
Week 3  NY Giants at Tampa
Week 4  Tampa at Washington
Week 5  Tampa at Philadelphia
Week 6  Carolina at Tampa
Week 7  New England at Tampa
Week 8  Bye
Week 9  Green Bay at Tampa
Week 10  Tampa at Miami
Week 11  New Orleans at Tampa
Week 12  Tampa at Atlanta
Week 13  Tampa at Carolina
Week 14  NY Jets at Tampa
Week 15  Tampa at Seattle
Week 16  Tampa at New Orleans
Week 17  Atlanta at Tampa

I have a new scoring system that I believe could be applied across sports leagues to improve the “watchability” (I must have seen too many bud light commercials recently).  I am calling it the “plus one” system.  Essentially, it rewards teams that score first for scoring first.  My idea is that by rewarding teams that score first over teams that score second, a more aggressive attitude (which I believe fans in all sports like to see) is rewarded over a more defensive attitude.  This is accomplished through the “plus one” mechanic.

To illustrate the mechanic, take your favorite sport, and imagine a situation where the two competing teams are tied, but the score is non-zero.  In all sports I can think of, this tie is treated equally.  My idea is to add an invisible “plus one” to the score of the team which was the first to reach that number.  This rewards them for achieving the score first, and forces the other (losing) team to respond in a more aggressive manner than if the two teams were literally drawn.  And the “plus one” system works without altering the scoring, tactics, or play making of any game to which it is applied.

The system would affect the philosophy and attitude of the games, but in my opinion only to the benefit of the spectators, which are really the consumer of and fuel behind the sport anyway. And such a change in philosophies would most certainly affect the tactics and structure in the long run, but professional sports are dynamic anyways, and this would be no different in my opinion.  This is dynamism which the sport’s fans can really get behind.