Morning Dump

Happy Thursday, everyone. First of all, our thoughts and condolences go out to everyone in Minneapolis.

Barry Bonds still stuck at 754. At this point, it's getting a little out of hand. ESPN is cutting in live to every one of his at bats. It seems like they have been doing this for years now. He's gonna break the record. Great. Honestly, does it matter all that much? Most fans and pretty much everyone in the media hates the guy. He's an asshole, we get it. Isn't A-Rod going to break Bonds' record in a few years anyway?

Randy Moss got hurt at practice. Sweet! Dolphins fans rejoice. Let's just hope it's of the season ending variety. Nothing personal Randy, but fuck the Patriots. (cnnsi.com)


Other NFL stuff:

Vince Young got in a fight at practice and punched a guy in the helmet with his throwing hand. Genius.

Michael Strahan feels "betrayed" by the Giants. Get over it, Strahan. You are 35 years old and a huge injury risk. How you can expect a new contract at your age and diminshed skill level is beyond anyone with a shred of common sense. We know your wife is cleaning you out with the divorce, but that is not the Giants' fault. $ 4 million is more than fair for your sorry ass.

Daunte Culpepper is a Raider. As a life long Dolphins fan, its hard for me to comment objectively on this one. Of course we all had high hopes for Daunte last year--hopes that were ruthlessly crushed. I blame it on Saban for rushing Culpepper back from his knee injury. He just wasn't ready to come back and play behind a shitty O-Line. I'll admit that the Fins did not handle Daunte's release well either. No hard feelings, C-Pepp. You busted your ass rehabbing your mangled knee. That's all anyone could have asked for. I don't think you will enjoy your time behind the Raiders O-Line, since it's even worse than the Dolphins', but good luck.

Finally, it seems that the Russians are trying to stake a claim on the ocean floor below the North Pole. Assholes. You can put all the flags you want on the seabed, comrades. It doesn't mean the land/resources down there now belong to you. If you don't watch your shit, we are gonna send Jack Ryan to get all Hunt For Red October on your asses. You've been warned. (cnn.com)

Big Ten? Big Twelve? Big WTF.

With the arrival of the new Big Ten Network, the conference is once again bringing up the discussion about adding another school to the football conference. This creates some interesting questions, but unfortunately only a few half-solutions at best. There are limited options in where you get the team from, and a few criteria need to be met:

1) The additional team is Notre Dame. Done and done.

2) It makes reasonable sense geographically.

3) It’s a good school.

4) The school could realistically compete (at least by the standards of shitty Big Ten football teams) and has a good fan base for TV ratings.

Let’s consider the first point. This is the easiest and best solution. Even the most ardent Notre Dame haters (me) can agree to this. Tons of money, tons of fans, tons of tradition. Metrosexual quarterbacking doesn’t hurt ND in this situation.

Now for #2. I’ve seen some people suggest Eastern Carolina or something like Texas A&M. All other arguments aside, these schools aren’t close enough to the other Big Ten schools. Personally I think the biggest stretch would be Rutgers or Syracuse. Either of those are at least within nuclear bomb range of Penn State. MAC teams fit this consideration, and teams like Miami OH, Toledo, and Bowling Green are usually good enough to hang with and beat Big Ten bottom feeders.

The third consideration. I don’t know a ton about ECU but I’m just going to venture a guess that it doesn’t have the quality undergraduate program or the research facilities/graduate programs of a Michigan, Northwestern, or even Ohio State. In fact, if you’re not on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_american_universities or this one: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=63&search_flag=true&ref=748&start=782&basic2005=15&submit.x=40&submit.y=15&class_displaycount=10000&class_start=1 you’re probably not going to be considered by the Big Ten unless you’re Notre Dame or you’re a great geographical fit.

The fourth point from the list above. Okay, Johns Hopkins may fit both academic and geographic requirements but they’d obviously get demolished at the start, and who’s to say they’d ever get up to snuff with other D-1A schools?

Now there are two REALISTIC situations that could happen (sorry, Nebraska isn’t joining the Big Ten).

1) Draft a team from the Big East, throw a fuckton of money at them and leave it up to Big East people to decide how to fill the vacancy.

2) Draft a team from a lower conference that fits the last 3 considerations from above.

Stealing a Big East team

Syracuse – They’re on the first of the lists above but have been a remarkably horrible football team since McNabb left (and I don’t recall that they were anything spectacular with him). While they may have a lot of graduates and a big fanbase, I just don’t think it would work. Also, the Carrier Dome seems to be a total shithole. Hilariously, though sponsored by an air conditioning manufacturer, the CD isn’t air conditioned. As if Greg Robinson needs another reason to sweat it out on the sideline.

Pitt – This makes a lot of sense. Pitt makes both of the academic standard lists and is actually more geographically sensible than Penn State. They put out fairly competitive teams and have a nice, big main campus.

Rutgers – It came as a surprise to me that the de fact state university of New Jersey made the academic lists, but it did. Rutgers has been a pretty damn good team recently and it stands to reason that they probably have a ton of fans…somewhere. The NY/NJ area has a lot of football fans in general and Rutgers spits out a lot of alums. The questions here are whether or not they’d garner a big enough TV following and if they’re just too far out of the way.

Louisville – Geographically awesome, but doesn’t make either of the academic lists. Outstanding football program with lots of die hard fans and a nice stadium. Takes a bit of a hit because it’s a big commuter school and CFB Saturdays just don’t create much of an atmosphere on UL’s campus.

Cincinnati – Geographically awesome. Cincinnati is a gigantic metro area. However, normally shitty football team and not much interest in the program from the fans. Dark, craptacular stadium in “beautiful” Clifton in downtown Cincy.

Absorbing a team from a smaller conference

Toledo ­– I would say perfect geographic location, but Toledo is about 40 minutes (28 if you’ve got balls) from Ann Arbor. Cleveland sends a lot of kids to Toledo so there’s a good chance for displaced alums to tune in on TV. But honestly the Toledo area is about 50/50 between Michigan and Ohio State supporters. A 3^rd large conference team might be overkill. Good engineering school, good football team.

Bowling Green – Only about 20 minutes south of Toledo, so many of the same things apply. Lots of Cleveland people and lots of UM/OSU fans. A pretty good football team as of late.

Miami OH – Makes more sense than Cincinnati in my opinion. A better school, very small commuting student population. Vibrant on-campus life. They’re usually at least competitive in the MAC but have taken a dive since Big Ben left. Would draw TV ratings from the Cincinnati Metro area.

The I-75 corridor has some quality prospects but I just don’t think another team in that area is logical. It’d just be too many teams and would create needless “rivalries” when we already have the best rivalry in college football in this conference.

Out of those, my pick is Pitt. It just makes the most sense as far as location, academics, and football prowess. Natural geographic rivalry with Penn State, fairly close to Columbus.

But now another issue arises. Let’s ignore the MAC for now, but obviously the Big East would lose a school should Pitt or whoever accept the Big Ten’s invite.

Big East replacement

Villanova – A decent 1-AA team, produced Bryan Westbrook not too long ago. Good location and school. Not sure about stadium capacity and whatnot. They have to be better than Temple at the very least.

Georgetown – Imagine having to meet a dress code to be admitted to the stadium. Imagine people spending a Saturday afternoon on their sailboat catching the G’town game on DirecTV. Any opportunity to see Georgetown teams lose works for me.

Buffalo – Not going to lie, Buffalo is routinely one of the worst D-1A teams there is. But the MAC has tons of teams already so they probably wouldn’t be missed, and assuming the law of averages they can’t be terrible forever. And besides, the Big East has a team like TEMPLE, I think they can stomach the Bulls.

Any other shitty team - The Big East could just absorb another doormat like Temple that doesn't have to specifically be Buffalo or Nova. Whatever.

I don’t know, the Big Ten is fine to me, even with 11 teams. If they can’t add Notre Dame or Pitt, I say fuck it. Not worth it. I'm not that in love with conference championship games to begin with.

Superliga proves vastly entertaining in inaugural tournament

Let me start off by saying I'm not trying to cram soccer down anyone's throat. However this deserves mention.

As with all sports you have some high scoring games and some low scoring games. But this is something else entirely.

This game was on one of my nearly 6,000,000 local Spanish cable channels (hyperbole, but I swear Cox has got like 50 channels of this shit and Telefutura has the best music by far). As with my nightly television watching I started out by firing up the guide and hitting 2, the lowest channel, which happens to be TF. I see "futbol" is on. I laugh to myself at this brilliant description (I'm dead serious, Cox requires you to hit the info button just to see who is playing) and decide to check it out.

My initial reaction: WHAT THE FUCK? It's 4-0 LA...and only 18 minutes have passed. I figure nevermind this, 4-0 in the first half of a soccer game is equivalent to a 31-7 halftime lead in any type of American football.

I turn back later, half hoping it's something absurd like 8-0, but it's progressed in rather pedestrian fashion. It's 4-1 and I'm about to switch when LA passes a ball directly to an FCD striker, and he dinks it to All-Star Juan Toja for a fairly routine tap-in past keeper Joe Cannon.

Eh, I think. Interesting, but since my ears are nearly bleeding from the Telefutura announcer screaming "gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol" I decide to pass and went back to my room to watch some BBC shows I downloaded (cheerio, great TV across the pond).

This morning I'm doing the usual checking of scores and news when I stumble upon this scoreline.

Again, WHAT THE FUCK? Not only did LA need a 6th goal to win, Dallas scored on a bicycle kick...only to have it disallowed because Carlos Ruiz was offside.

Donovan also had a great run to score on LA's 5th goal. It's too bad he plays like such a bitch on the national team. He really should be in Europe anyway.

Fans at Pizza Hut Park in Dallas sure as shit go their money's worth last night, even if David Beckham was still sidelined.

Cheers to the tons of assholes who showed up with anti-Beckham signs. He didn't play, you looked like a bunch of dicks, AND you got a 6 spot put up on you by arguably the 2nd or 3rd worst team in the league.

I've caught a few games from this Superliga (MLS vs. Mexican club teams) and it's been worth watching.

Too bad ESPN would rather fucking show their audience retarded 3 year old poker tournaments and Mother's Auto Shows than actual sports. More on E!SPN's mentally retarded approach to sports coverage some other time.

Good for KG

Well, it's official. The Boston Celtics have acquired Kevin Garnett in a huge 8 player deal. Boston GM Danny Ainge gave up a lot of young talent to free The Big Ticket from the basketball purgatory that is the Minnesota Timberwolves.

This is a great deal for both sides. The T-Wolves get to continue to suck ass, only now they can legitimately claim they are rebuilding. The Celtics, of course, get one of the NBA's best power forwards and are widely hailed as a top 2 or 3 team in the East next year.

We'll be interested to see what the Celtics accomplish. They have their new "Big 3" locked up for a few more years, and while they are all aging, these are solid vets who all know how to win--and are desperate to. They should be a very fun team to watch. It's also nice to see one of the Western Conference's best players in the East. One player is not going to bring balance to the lopsided NBA, but hey, it's a start.

So congratulations, KG. You have busted your ass night in and night out since coming to the NBA. Most players coast through the regular season with an eye towards the playoffs. Not you. As Simmons so often points out, your heart and intensity are second to none. Now, you are playing for one of the all time great NBA franchises. You get to play where Basketball Jesus used to dominate, and with Jesus Shuttlesworth. Pre Game Dump is glad to have you in the Eastern Conference, and we'll be at the Verizon Center when you come visit the Wiz next season.

Also, we really hate this guy:

On the right, that's Brady Quinn, ex-Notre Dame QB, future Brown (whenever he ends his stupid fucking holdout) and general asswipe, grabbing a another guys junk. Nice. Notice how he and his buddies are all dressed exactly the same. Douchebags.

For the record, I know these pics are old and all the major sports blogs had a field day with this shit. But we really, really don't like Quinn, and want to make that perfectly clear on our first day. We'll try to be a bit more current from now on.

Much Adu about Europe

American soccer "prodigy" Freddy Adu is finally getting his...uh, due. After riding the bench quite often at D.C. United and being traded to pitiful Real Salt Lake this past off-season, the 20 year old phenom is poised to make the jump to Europe. After fielding attention from Celtic of the Scottish league and Tottenham of the English, Portuguese power Benfica have come calling with about $2 million for the midfielder (seen here working absolute magic against the Brazil U-20 team a month ago).

This is precisely what Freddy needs. The Portuguese league is not one of the big boys so to speak, but it's a great place for a young player to develop. There are enough poor teams in the Portuguese league that Adu won't be pummeled by ruthless defenders and large holding midfielders.

He'll get a chance to learn from some quality attacking players in winger Simao and central midfielder Rui Costa. Adu would be served well to develop in the mold of Simao.

Also joining him if he makes the move (and it's all but certain now) are Argentine youngsters Di Maria and Alvarez, who along with Adu both tore up the U-20 World Cup this past month in Canada.

For those unfamiliar (most of you, no doubt), the Portuguese league has 3 top teams. Benfica, FC Porto, and Sporting Lisbon.

Porto actually won the 2004 Champions League under then coach Jose Mourinho.

Hopefully Adu can see some significant playing time in both domestic league play and across Europe in UEFA competition.

Welcome...please disregard the smell

Welcome to PGD. The title for this thing came about from a...er, "meeting of minds". Basically JB and I were talking about names for our blog, fresh off the stink of a discussion about shitting. I was catharthisizing (this is not a word, instincts and Firefox 2.0 tell me so) about my need for a venue to vent about all the idiots/retards/D.C motorists I'm exposed to each day. Realizing that much of our discussion revolves around sports and more recently how to sooth the blueballing resulting from enhanced College Football coverage with no actual CFB to watch, we settled on a semi-sports themed blog.

But as with all good blogs written by people with the correct balance of chromosomes, we can't just limit ourselves to sports, even though we're two of the biggest sports fans we know. And frankly there are just too fucking many stupid people out there that I need to touch upon that ostensibly have nothing to do with sports (though most of them nearly hitting me with their cars on Florida Ave. are likely Redskins fans).

The title really reflects a few things:

1) Guys talk about poop (more on my fecal theories to come).
2) Pre-game rituals are universal and loosely ties into a semi-sports theme.
3) Though we've no aversion to reporting things that are awesome, anybody with the slightest clue knows this: the world fucking sucks, people are stupid, and E!SPN is clueless. Therefore we will be commenting on quite a few shitty things, verbally dumping on people, etc.

That being said there's really nothing off limits here: Sports (obviously), TV, movies, pop culture, video games, personal life accounts (I'm sure you're thrilled), bitching about work, bitching about traffic, bitching about RFK Stadium, chronicling my morbidly hilarious attempts to find a girlfriend. You get the idea.

This will be updated fairly often and expect it to pick up momentum once football (America, European, Australian alike) season kicks into gear.