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Showing posts from January, 2006
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NBA Needs to Turn Down the Noise

I made it to a Sixers game this week and noticed a disturbing trend. No, it wasn’t the total lack of a team concept prevalent in the NBA. I noticed that years ago. Going to the game hilighted a much more bothersome tendency — the presumption that the public is stupid. The Sixers play a movie clip of happy, jubilent people after every single basket by the home team. The not-so-subtle message seems to be that fans need visual cues to cheer. The fact that the team they’ve paid good money to watch has just scored is apparently no longer sufficient. It’s bad enough you have to scream to have a conversation with the person sitting next to you. Leaving the game with your ears ringing because there’s not a moment of silence from the time you enter the arena til you leave is no longer the only insult the NBA inflicts on its patrons. Now they call you stupid about 50 times a game. The argument, no doubt, is that this is what must be done to entertain the younger generation with an ever decreasin

Sixers vs. Flyers

The question came from a reporter at the Baltimore Sun. He wanted my opinion on why Phialdelphia has enthusiastically re-embraced the Flyers while sort of turning on the Sixers. So, here's what I told him. The Flyers have a hard-core fan base. They like hockey no matter what, and seem to not care about other sports. The rest of us jump on the bandwagon around playoff time because we’re starved for a winner, but we don't know half the rules and don't really care. I personally love the Sixers, but generally it's a football town. After the Eagles rip our hearts out every year, nothing else gets much attention until about March. By then the Sixers are generally not deemed serious contenders, and the Eagles' free agency period is the focus. I couldn’t figure out why he was asking me, but, hey, we all need an ego boost now and then. Of course, he was just sampling fan opinion, and I guess blogs make that job easier than ever. But I even got a follow-up: Any thoughts on w

Manning No Longer Ideal QB

Remember when the name Manning awed quarterback-starved NFL franchises? Anyone else wondering why today? According to www.peytonmanning18.com Archie never took a team above .500. Elie looked like a deer in headlights at the end of the season. And while Peyton Manning will still be a first-round pick in fantasy drafts next August, it’s now abundantly clear he can’t get it done when the NFL playoffs roll around. Worse than his on-field perforrmance were his post-game comments. Manning became a whiner yesterday, throwing blame on his offensive line. Worst of all, he did it with full acknowledgement of his desire to hold on to his Golden Boy image. "I'm trying to be a good teammate here," Manning said. "I'll give Pittsburgh credit for the blitzes and their rush. Those guys rushed. But we did have some protection problems." He topped it off by excusing Mike Vanderjagt, the only guy who choked worse than he did yesterday when the kicker badly missed what would’ve

Cataldi TV Show Ends...was it THAT good?

I caught most of the re-airing of the final Angelo Cataldi Show on Comcast, and I’m curious what I missed over the last 7-8 years. Watching it, you would’ve thought the next Johnny Carson was ending some miraculous run. Cataldi needs to be loved more than anyone I’ve ever heard in my life. He threatened to leave that show more than he did anything else on the show, and every contract dispute he’s had with WIP gets out in one way or another. Ever since he made his TV and radio show — and website — more about himself than anything, he’s become a caricature of what used to be a damn good sports commentator. His TV show became little more than the mouthpiece of every overly reactionary South Philly Eagles fan, with interludes of Cataldi attempting to kiss the ass of local semi-celebs and showing semi-hot women. He’s one of those guys at a party that starts telling the world how something no one has ever heard or cared about is such a rich part of the fabric of our city, mostly so he can