We Ain't Ready to See a White Power Forward?

Wow, it's been a long time. This semester's been rough. Once school gets out, I can get back to writing a little more.

For now, I just wanted to throw up a link and my two cents on LZ Granderson's piece Who Says White Men Can't Jump? over at ESPN.com's Page 2. Normally I skip the obviously-racially-charged columns on Page 2 because they're usually written by Jemele Hill and Scoop Jackson, and their commentary on society is about as insightful as "Play That Funky Music, White Boy." I was suckered into reading this one because of my love of Woody Harrelson and my hatred of Tyler Hansbrough.

I'm really glad I read it - it was one of the first race-based Page 2 columns I've ever agreed with. I remember watching the NFL draft last year and hearing all my buddies comparing JaMarcus Russell to Mike Vick, and I was like, "Guys, I mean, come on, he's more like a Ben Roethlisburger, isn't he? Tall, enough speed to do damage on a scramble but his arm is his first weapon?" loooong pause. "I mean, I know it's breaking that rule about comparing white guys and black guys, but come on."

Of course, what's not mentioned here nor anywhere else nearly enough is that Hansbrough isn't "a 19-year-old kid" as LZ says; he did junior college before UNC and he turns 23 in November. What you see is what you're gonna get with Hansbrough - he's peaking as a player right now and not going to get a whole lot better than this - and what you see right now is not NBA caliber. Also, Tyler travels. Every time.

While you're at it, if you haven't already, go ahead and listen to Barack's A More Perfect Union speech - that shit is marvelous. I had forgotten what a hypnotizingly good speaker that man is - I still have his 2004 DNC speech on my iPod. After that speech, I had said to myself, "Wow. That man is going to be President in 2016. Maybe even 2012." Never did I think he'd be running at this point, and his inexperience is still a bit of a concern... blah blah politics rabble rabble rabble.

GTHC

An excellent win by the Blue Devils last night in Chapel Hill. Here's an AP column courtesy of GoDuke.com (quite the headline, that) and here's the ESPN postgame report with highlights.

More importantly, here's a video of the impromptu bonfire on the quad. The Chronicle details the story here, but here's basically what went down. The school had obtained a bonfire permit for Monday night, in the event that the women's team beat UNC at home (which was not even close to happening). We traditionally have bonfires for national championships or for HOME wins over UNC, so there was no permit for Wednesday night. But, because it had been so long since the last men's win over UNC, there was a lot of pent up excitement.

So the game ends and everybody rushes to the quad, where you can still see the painted circle where Monday's fire would have been. People start celebrating for the TV cameras... and there's a helicopter circling too, and we cheer for the helicopter (somebody told me the local post-game show said that "we're receiving word Duke doesn't have a permit for a bonfire tonight, but we're keeping an eye out for further developments." They were WAITING for us to do it.) After cheering gets old, everybody's just standing around complaining about the lack of a fire (very similar to the crowd this fall gathering and waiting in Wally Wade for 20 minutes before we mustered up the courage to tear down the goalposts).

Then somebody lights a Coors Light box on fire and walks it through the crowd.

Then somebody starts a fire with a stack of newspaper. Then a group of about thirty people place the Few Quad bench on top of the little fire and it starts to become a big fire.

I saw two standing nearby, a Durham cop and a Duke cop, and the Durham cop made a motion to yell at the students, but ultimately he just shook his head and muttered "stupid kids." Later, about thirty people dragged the only other "independent bench," which used to be Beta Theta Pi's bench back when they could get people to join their frat.

And then they turn the firehose on us. Here's a YouTube video that condenses the festivities into 2 minutes. Some people took to mudwrestling in response to the fire department's actions, but for the most part students lost interest and went to the parking lot to greet the players getting off the team bus. Hero worship is less destructive than arson.

It sounds like right now, The Man is only looking to bring down the ones who started this fire. Hopefully, The Man won't bring us all down, and we can do it up right on March 8th after round two, on our court. Larry Moneta makes it sound like that party is still a go.

GTHC! Let's Go Duke!

Super Bowl Sunday and Toboggans

Tonight is the Big Game! (Thank goodness that phrase isn't trademarked) The Pats are on the verge of completing the perfect season. There's more than enough words on the internet written about the Super Bowl because everyone in sports feels its their duty to write about it. So I'll be quick with my predictions - Giants score first, Pats dominate but never pull away, and somebody not named Eli makes a bonehead mistake in the third quarter that makes Giants fans scream obscenities but follow it up with "that's okay, but there's still time left." (My guess is it'll be Amani Toomer - I want it to be Plexiglass Burress, but he's won a Super Bowl before and I'm not expecting mistakes out of him... of course, it could still be Eli. It could always be Eli. Hide your heart, girls.) The Pats will win but won't cover - and that's the stance I took in the bet with my Jersey roommate - he wins if the Giants win OR if the Pats blow them out... I need the Pats to win by 12 or less. I still think I got the best window.

My favorite soccer blog site threw up a post today with XI Reasons Football (with the feet) is Better Than Football (with the hands). A couple good zingers in there, but I love both sports. I love the strategy and specialized athleticism of gridiron football, and I love the action, the style, and the spirit of soccer. I don't expect the world's soccer fans to embrace the NFL - despite the shared name, the two games are fundamentally different from a spectator level. An NFL game is an event - a 3 hour chunk of your day, and often a lot longer if you include the pregame show and tailgating. And there isn't a whole lot of action - theres a lot of downtime which leads to more conversation, either about the game or just general discussion. A lot like going to a baseball game - and that's why the pigskin is the new American Pastime. Soccer, meanwhile, is non-stop action (the untrained American eye will say that nothing's going on, but nobody will deny that the clock is always running). In this way, soccer flows more like a basketball game, and that (as well as the smartest global marketing team in sports) is why the NBA is catching on overseas. The NHL could translate, too, but it needs to focus on keeping an audience here before grabbing fans in London.

But naturally, TheOffside's post lead to a debate in the comments over the word "soccer." Sammy wrote:

I think the term “soccer” should be eliminated from this website. When I think of “soccer” I think of kids doing laps around a park district and eating oranges. When I think of “football” I think of the beautiful game. We won’t offend any American Football fans here.

I want to share a little anecdote about this - I'm from Massachusetts, and the first winter that I was down here in North Carolina, as soon as it started getting cold one of my Southern friends started looking for his "toboggan". I said, "What on earth do you need a toboggan for? There's no snow on the ground, so we can't very well go sledding." He didn't know what on earth I was talking about, so as usual we let Wikipedia settle our dispute.

Up north, "toboggan" means a sled. In "Southern American English," it apparently means what I would call a ski cap (or, if I was making a joke about Canada or talking about hockey, what I would call a tuque). My gut reaction was that he must be wrong - that the South must be wrong! How can they take a word that doesn't belong to them and apply it to the wrong thing? Surely North Carolinians shouldn't get to decide names for wintery things! But when you settle down, you realize that it's just another part of southern culture that's different from the culture I come from - just like calling a rotary a "traffic circle," listening to country music or deep frying an Oreo.

And this toboggan incident led me to be a lot more neutral in the "football v. soccer" debate. What's in a name? Often the Americans who demand that we call the beautiful game "football" are the Eurosnob fans who don't give the MLS a chance in the first place. For starters, here's a quick history lesson on the term "soccer." We're not the only society who uses the word this way - and even if we were, would that be so wrong? Once you get to the World Cup, most of the time, the players aren't speaking the same language anyway! I think the community of American soccer fans would do well to drop this debate and accept the fact that, over here, we call it soccer. That's just our culture. It's no less right than football.

One last Super Bowl point - the media has been so focused on revamping the SpyGate investigation that nobody has highlighted the biggest surprise of the AFC Championship - Belichick didn't keep trying to score in the fourth quarter! Why stop now? What happened to playing 60 minutes of football? The only mention I saw of this was one little paragraph in Tuesday Morning Quarterback the week after the game, and Easterbrook left it at a "What's up with that?" (Probably because he hasn't acknowledged the Pat's relentless 4th quarter effort as a source of their wins in close games this year.)

MLS v. Twellman... to Transfer or Not to Transfer?

So we've reached February, and for better or for worse, Taylor Twellman is still a Rev.

For better or for worse?, you say. How could it possibly be worse?

Well, a couple of ways. First, he'd arguably develop better as a player overseas. While the MLS continues to improve, and the Revs have some of the best staff in the States, conventional wisdom is that the big fish in this pond needs to head over to the Big Leagues (even Big League Championship) to grow as a player, which is good for the National Team.

Secondly, Twellman wants to go. Badly. That means he doesn't want to keep playing here (espcially now that his boy Noonan is gone). Yes, Twellman is an exceptional player - but that's when he's happy. Now he's not happy. How will Twellman respond - by raising his play to the next echelon to draw an offer the league can't refuse? or by becoming a cancer in the locker room for the whole year?

But we know these reasons aren't what the MLS is listening to... with the MLS, the bottom line is always the bottom line. Money. The league has been ultra-conservative since day one to build a firm base that wouldn't repeat the NASL's failures, and in this goal it has succeeded admirably. The league has built local followings in most of its cities, only having to contract two teams and expanding from 8 to 14 with 2 more on the way (DuNord says Bigsoccer.com says MLS registered the domain "mlsinphilly.com"...). Thanks to the league-owned salaries and the low salary cap, teams are losing less money every year and some teams are even profitable now. More people want teams than the league can support, and the expansion fee keeps rising.

Okay, so now the league is established. That was Phase One. Sadly, Phase Two for the league seems to be a period of export. The MLS has been building its talent pool for a decade, and the world has noticed and wants a piece. And because the leagues overseas are so much more profitable (and free-market), they can offer big money to cherrypick our talent. And the Revs have been getting the worst of it.

Like a certain other New England team, the Revs have been the best in the league at assembling a team of stars. It may never have felt that way at the Revs like it did with this year's Pats, but consider Dempsey and Dorman's transfer fees and the ongoing interest in Joseph and Twellman. Who's next, Parkhurst? SuperDraft selection Michael Videira? It's going to get worse before it gets better. It's funny because, for as much as it looks like the Revs have been changing this winter, a lot of the Rev's practices have stayed the same.

Frank Dell'Apa, the Boston Globe staff writer who wrote the Twellman piece above, also wrote this analysis of the MLS's current status in the world transfer market. Here are the key facts - since the league owns the contracts with all the players, they are involved in all transfer negotiations and take a cut of every transfer fee and distribute it among the other teams. The team losing the player gets 2/3 of the fee, and can only use $500,000 on an allocation for a player's salary. The market values Twellman at a $1 million salary and will pay us $3 million for him, but the Revs would get $2 million from the transfer and be able to hire a replacement for $500,000 a year. And this is why the Revs say no - they can't justify letting Twellman go because $2 million (not $3 million) isn't worth getting a striker who's worth half what Twellman is worth.

Teams are effectively punished for developing good players, caught in a cycle of cultivating talent and shipping it out. But because teams get a raw deal in the transfer market, they block transfers, and the players play out their contracts and jump overseas on a free transfer. Then everybody misses out. Clearly there's a problem with this system.

I don't think the transfer fee split is the issue - maybe its the NFL fan in me, but I like the small market teams getting a cut. The issue here, as it always is, is the salary cap. The allocation needs to be a closer to the value of the player departing. Also, I'm not entirely clear on how allocations work - do they alleviate salary cap pressure at all, or is it just money to be used for the salary/transfer fee of the new player?

Of course, if the cap went up a bit, maybe we could pay Twellman the salary he's earned anyway. Or we could give the developmental players a respectable salary so they don't have to work second jobs at WalMart. Maybe that's the most important thing and the soccer-specific stadiums can wait?

Two More Blue Devils to the MLS (Maybe)

Last week's MLS Supplemental Draft, the less-than-Super cousin of the SuperDraft, doesn't get a glitzy page on MLSnet because it tends to be an afterthought. Instead of having an 8-round draft, MLS effectively splits it in two - the teams are given an additional 4 rounds a few days later to fill out their developmental rosters with more college talent. Considering that many 4th round picks don't pan out on the pro roster, there's not a lot of chance these guys will make an impact next year. Still, you never know unless you give them a shot - which begs the question, why didn't Toronto give anyone a shot?

The Blue Devils once again made a strong showing, with Zach Pope and Tim Jepson being selected 40th and 43rd, respectively, by Chicago and San Jose, respectively. I guess they can't all be Revs. Here's the Duke Athletics release, and the campus newspaper report.

Zach Pope was always a fan favorite. Blistering speed on the outside wing. Fun to watch. He kicks a pretty nice cross and got a fair number of assists at Duke but he'll need to make some big plays for the developmental side to impress his way into the big time.

Tim Jepson missed a lot of this year with a muscle pull which could be why he fell this low. He'll be a rookie on his next team, but this four year senior captain is a leader through and through. He's a tall-ish central defender who doesn't make mistakes. I have higher hopes for him than for Pope - a lot can happen on an expansion team, so there's a shot Jepson could get some minutes for the Quakes next year. That pulled muscle kept taking longer than announced to heal, and I felt like he was a half-step slow the whole rest of the year even once he was back - he'll need to get back to where he was before plus a little more, but if he can make the leap skillwise then I'm confident his leadership will translate.

So that makes 5 Dukies in this year's draft... throw in Joshua Medcalf (grad student from Vanderbilt who's eligibility is up), Paul Dudley (imagine Peter Crouch with less ballskill - tall guy who was intimidating and a scorer but unfortunately inexplicably bad on the headers), Justin Papadakis (excellent goaltender), Tomek Charowski (took the corners, and what a fun name to say!), the backup keeper and three depth midfielders. Those are the 13 seniors leaving the team. Throw in a new coach and you've got the definition of a "rebuilding year." Upside - we've still got Mike Grella and last year's #1 recruiting class... we'll have to see but for now I'm gonna say that a winning ACC season next year would transcend even the Ewing Theory.

Stealing from Wal-Mart Makes You a Target

Time for a break from soccer - on Monday night, the #2 Tennessee Lady Volunteers take on the #10 Duke Blue Devils (we, unlike the cutesy Lady Vols, don't need a diminutive form of our nickname to denote gender - we are all Blue Devils) in the never-friendly confines of Cameron Indoor Stadium. Cameron is sold out, and I will be among the Cameron Crazies welcoming Tennessee into our house the only way we know how - jumping and screaming the entire game. The Crazies are the best and most creative college basketball fans in the country, and the closest thing in America to the soccer hooligans abroad. We've earned a reputation over the years as the most creative have earned their reputation primarily at Men's basketball games, but we pack the house for the big Women's games, too.

Pat Summitt, the coach of the Lady Vols, knows how loud we are, and she's afraid that somebody's feelings are going to be hurt. She's threatening to pull the series with the Blue Devils if the fans aren't nicer to her players. Backstory - Alexis Hornbuckle, now a senior at Tennessee, was arrested for shoplifting from Walmart back when she was in highschool. Two years ago, when Tennessee last played in Cameron, the Crazies came equipped with WalMart shopping bags, and chanted "WAAAAAL-MAAAART" while she was at the free throw line. A little heckling to try and rattle the other team's point guard, and it worked - she went 0-4 from the free throw line, and then-#2 Duke beat then-#1 Tennessee handily, holding the Lady Vols to a season-low 53 points.

Duke has won the last three meetings and leads the all-time series 5-4... what does Pat Summitt think of the series?

"This series has been a great series," Summitt said, "but I was very disappointed the last time I was there with the behavior, in particular of the students toward Alexis. They stepped way over the line on that one. Hopefully we’ve moved on... I wouldn’t be in favor of continuing the series if we’re going to go in a gym and they’re going to take personal shots at one of our players... Why would you subject a student-athlete to that type of harassment?"

There are three important points here, and the first one is that making fun of somebody's high school shoplifting charge is certainly not "crossing the line." Last year, the week before the Duke men's team played BC, two of their players were kicked out of school for marijuana, and we certainly could have heckled them to death for that, but you didn't hear so much as a "WHERE'S SEAN" chant. For the last two years, the men's team has opened the season against our neighbors NC Central University (the stripper who filed the false rape accusations in a big court case you may or may not of heard of... she was an NCCU student), and we are always on our best behavior (screaming loud, but leaving out the stripper jokes). Some things are too serious. Shoplifting is not too serious. If you want a lesson in crossing the line, follow the Duke lacrosse team on the road. Especially to the University of Maryland, where class and tact go to die.

The second point is that as college students, these girls are adults and can handle themselves - they don't need Mama Pat looking out for them. That's a message that someone needs to pass along to Ms Summitt, who earlier this season benched Candice Parker for missing curfew before a game in her hometown. Parker, who was the first and so far only girl to win the slam dunk contest at the McDonalds High School All-American game (and is probably one of the top five women's basketball players in terms of name recognition because of that feat alone), had 60 friends and family members in attendance. Mama Pat is opposed to other people embarrassing her players, but has no problem doing it herself. We were teaching Alexis a lesson too, Pat - don't steal from WalMart! Set a good example for all the young girls watching you! You're a public figure now, being on a nationally-ranked basketball team - and that means that sportswriters, talk radio, and fans of both your team and the other team are going to talk about you. Get used to it.

The third point is that Pat Summitt would be making a huge mistake for her team and her school by canceling the Duke series. Earlier in the year, she made a similar stink with UConn and mysteriously canceled her series with the Huskies. Duke and UConn, of course, are two of the only schools with winning records against Pat Summitt, and she appears determined to find any excuse to not have to play these teams in the future. Say goodbye to your RPI and strength of schedule, Tennessee! And say goodbye to your recruits - for the best players in the country, the chance to prove themselves against the other best players in the country will outweigh the draw of the best coach in the nation. I'm not denying that she's a great coach (though it's never really noted that she inherited a 25-2 team back in '74...), but her recent antics have to make you wonder how much longer she'll be on top.

As a final note, you don't see any men's teams complaining about the Crazies not being nice to their players. Pat Summitt's complaint is one giant leap against Title IX. The girls can take it. Let them play. Way to go, Pat.

The Exciting Thing About Soccer Is...

...that sometimes it's not exciting at all. Sydney-Queensland was a 0-0 draw. The teams take Australia Day off and the first game of the Major Semi is Sunday night (their night, our morning) in the brilliantly named EnergyAustralia Stadium.

Here's a recap, box score, and highlight reel from the game.