Any long-time readers of 12 Seahawks Street should recognize the image to the left as the Magic Hat, and should infer that this means it's time for the Alba family to go on vacation, which it is.
I leave the blog in the sweaty but capable hands of Heir Bloof, and hope that no real good stories break while I'm away so he has to scramble to come up with content.
Knowing him, he'll just post a bunch of crap next to a picture of some scantily clad vixen, and none of our over-hormoned, under-sexed, NFL-starved readers will really give a shit. Just like you don't give a flying fuck in a rolling donut that I'll be at the beach for a week.
But, as a lovely parting gift, click the link or the Magic Hat above, and relive a truly unbelievable story from last year's trip to the beach, complete with a picture of an well endowed anonymous beach goer who appears to be constipated.
Call me a throwback; a crumudgeon; a bona fide, old school, pain in the ass. From my very first glance of the Who's Now segment on ESPN's SportCenter, I greeted it with a filthy abhorrence.
Granted, it's a completely harmless and benign exercise of fan preference. Nobody dies or gets hurt. But deep down, the sports fan in me wants to tell the folks at ESPN to stop altering the goddamn fundamentals of sport.
Throughout July, "SportsCenter" will air "Who's Now," a daily series in which viewers will help ESPN determine the ultimate sports star by considering both on-field success and off-field buzz. Based on fan nominations, ESPN Research selected 32 finalists to square off in a single-elimination bracket. The winner of each matchup will advance based upon fan voting (70 percent) and ESPN's three-person panel (30 percent).
This is flat wrong. Sports are, and always have been, about winning. At the sacred fundament of sports is the novel concept that at end of a contest, you are the winner if your score is better that the others. Peceived Greatness and fame in sports comes from doing it repeatedly and against worthy opponents.
Winning the game is the whole purpose of any sport. Popularity, respect, and pussy are all secondary during the contest.
Now I can understand if you're thinking, "Now wait a minute. When I played, it was all about the poon. When I won, I got laid. When I lost, I played the pity card and still got laid. That's what it's all about."
I totally respect that, BUT--I don't know about you, but I was going to get mine anyway. With or without sports, I was determined to hit the love bucket, and not my own speedbag. Sports had nothing to do with it, and it doesn't for anyone else. I firmly believe Wilt Chamberlain would have been a porn star if it weren't for basketball, and he still would have scored penetrated 100 on that fateful night in Hershey, Pennsylvania, just in a different way.
What is ESPN accomplishing with this load of crap, other than turn good athletes into the Paris Hiltons of Sports? Some of their nominees haven't done shit, i.e., Matt Leinart, and yet they are being vaunted as an icon, and attempting to comare him with the likes of Tiger Woods.
This is deplorable. In the same vein as the ESPy's, ESPN is whoring sports into a mindless, empty hype; where given honors are determined, not on the field, but by the number of headlines they can milk from it.
Bottom line: "Off-field buzz" has nothing to do with a player's greatness. Get it the fuck out.
Any long-time readers of 12 Seahawks Street should recognize the image to the left as the Magic Hat, and should infer that this means it's time for the Alba family to go on vacation, which it is.
