Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category

Five Reasons Why Tom Brady is Superior to Michael Jordan as the Sports Goat

Posted: September 9, 2021 by datechguy in nba, nfl, Sports
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There was a bit of a fuss on TV over Michael Irvin & Stephen A Smith over who is the overall Goat Jordan vs Brady.

In my opinion there is no debate at all. The nod is to Brady for these reasons

  1. Brady won championships and made finals all through his career Jordan did not

Michael Jordan career spans from 1984 at age 21 to 2003 at age 39 with one year off for baseball and three years off for retirement before returning with the wizards. Jordan won six championships during that period at ages 27-29 & 32-34.

Tom Brady’s career spans from 2001 at age 24 (in 2000 he appeared in one game and threw 3 passes completing one for six yards) and continues in 2021 at age 44. During this period he has won seven championships at ages 24,26,27, 37, 39, 41 and 43. He also made the finals three other times at ages 30, 33 and 40. Which is far superior to Jordan

  1. Brady won championships in a sport where it is harder to win a championship

In basketball playoffs it is very easy for the cream to rise to the top. Series are best of five or best of seven. So a single off game or hot game from your opponent or freak play might cost you a game but is unlikely to cost you a series.

In football it’s one and done. One bad throw, one off game, one supreme effort by an opponent or one freak catch off the top of Helmut can be the difference between a title and an also ran. Jordan had a margin of error, Brady does not.

Furthermore Football weighs a schedule based on your finish thus when he was regularly winning AFC East titles he was doing so when constantly playing a 1st place schedule. He succeeded against a system designed to make him fail.

  1. Brady has won championships with different lineups on different teams with different systems

Jordan won six titles in Chicago under Phil Jackson with a fairly consistent lineup around him. Tom Brady has not only won titles with two different teams with two different systems but even when he was with the Patriots over twenty years he managed to win titles and get to titles with a completely different cast of characters around him. None of the teammates from his first three titles played with him in his last two.

  1. Brady has taken a sub .500 team to a title not once but twice.

Michael Jordan’s did take a Chicago team with a losing record to the playoffs then later to the conference semis, then the conference finals and then at age 27 to the finals where he established the Bulls Dynasty. But while he was able to make a horrible Wizards team 20 games better then they were he was unable to get them even to the 1st round of the playoffs

When Tom Brady at age 25 started for the injured Drew Bledsoe in game 3 of the 2001-2002 season the Patriots’ were coming off a 5-11 last place season and were 0-2. He would lead them to their first superbowl victory. When he came in as the new QB for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at age 43, he took over a 3rd place team with a 7-9 record and took them to their first superbowl in almost twenty years.

  1. At age 44 Brady is favored to make it to the Superbowl AGAIN!

All of these previous points would, in my opinion be enough to close the case here, but if that wasn’t enough the icing on the cake is that at age 44 nobody is picking Brady and the Bucks to do any worse than the NFC title game and many are picking him to win yet another Superbowl. It’s true that both Aaron Rogers and Patrick Mahomes will likely be standing in his way with a big chips on their shoulders and nobody would be shocked if either Rogers kept Brady from another superbowl appearance or Mahomes kept him from his eighth ring.

But the fact that we are even having this conversation makes my point for me.

In conclusion with all due respect to Stephen A Smith there is no debate to have here. Brady is over Jordan. WAY over.

Full Disclosure: I don’t rate Michael Jordan as the GOAT of the NBA or LeBron, I give that to Bill Russell who in 13 years in the NBA made the finals every year but one and won the title every year but two and won two of those titles as a player coach.

He is the person Brady should be compared to and points 2-5 count in Brady’s favor, however Russell gets points for

  1. 2 titles as player coach (and as the 1st black coach in the NBA)
  2. Coming up in an era of segregation and STILL ruling the roost.
  3. playing in a smaller NBA where the talent was more concentrated

To me it’s a tough call, but if Brady goes to another Superbowl then I’d have to give it to Tom.

Five Cam Newton Release Mac Jones Thoughts

Posted: September 1, 2021 by datechguy in nfl, Sports
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I don’t watch football anymore except for Tom Brady, but the release of Cam Newton is such an interesting story that it deserves a blog post:

  1. This caught a lot of people by surprise in the sense that since Mac Jones was drafted the question has been Cam or Mac, Mac or Cam. This has been the conversation every single day on Boston sports radio and a lot of the consensus has been that it was Cam’s job to lose. Right up until the story broke nobody saw it coming.

  1. There is some speculation that Newton was released as a favor to him once he had lost the QB competition to Jones (which wasn’t clear to the public two days ago) because being released now gives him a chance at a starting position in another organization. Any other season this would not likely be possible but with two weeks before opening day this is something that a team could actually consider.

  1. The release of Newton brings two different conflicting woke dynamics into play here. Cam was the first black “starting” quarterback in the history of the Boston/New England Patriots franchise (Jacoby Brissette started two games during Tom Brady’s “Deflategate” suspension). So you would think that there might be a bit of the race card pushback on this move, particular as it’s a “Boston” Team. However Cam was also “unvaccinated” and right now among those who are woke the decision not to get the COVID vaccine by a very public figure who has a large fanbase is considered almost as beyond the pale as voting Trump. It’s no accident that I’ve heard sports folk talk about Cam’s vaccinated status concerning this move but I’ve not heard a word concerning race although in fairness there is not an “ineligible” list based on race.

  1. While Cam’s shortcomings were a standard feature of sports talk radio last year locally, nationally there was little or no such discussion concerning Cam Newton’s performance or lack thereof. There was further (and listening to the radio yesterday) still a whole plethora of people who all had excuses for his leading the Patriots to their 1st losing season since before Tom Brady took over the team. The speed at which a team decides to pick up Newton or if he is picked up at all will tell us if this was just pundits being pundits or if front offices and GM’s around the league were part of that willful blindness that seems to engulf folks on the subject of Newton and the Patriots

  1. It would seem to me that one of the deciding factors here would be Jones similarity to the Brady style which is the offense that the Patriots Josh McDaniels has had success with. Expect to see a lot of this over the next decades as a generation of kids who watched Tom Brady play and pretended to be him or dreamed of being him over the last twenty years reach the college and pro-level. It remains to be seen of any of said kids can come anywhere close to being him but it’s worth noting what Newton’s departure means in terms of age and experience among AFC East starting QB’s

Usa Culpa, Post Christian Indifference, Mets Math, Milo in the Breech and Generating Site Revenue Under the Fedora

Posted: August 31, 2021 by datechguy in baseball, blogs, catholic, culture, education, elections, Sports
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We tend to get the government we deserve. This week a lot of people were wondering what they did to deserve this. The answer is simple: When the last election was stolen you went along with it.

So enjoy the $5 gas, the debacle in Afghanistan, the open borders, the crime and the terror attacks to come because all of these things we collectively as Americans have richly earned.

A lot of people are wondering how the people responsible for Afghanistan live with themselves. That’s easy. When you become a post Christian society then loving your neighbor as yourself is no longer a priority, nor is truth, nor is the common good.

All of these thing were stressed in Christianity and it amazes me that folks are shocked that without it they disappear.

Speaking of shocks I’d like to say I was shocked by the behavior of Mets players going after the fans for daring to boo them after their 3 1/2 game lead became a 7 game deficit in a month.

While ownership is unhappy the players have figured out that even if they lose a percentage of the fans it won’t be enough to keep them from making a nice enough living so they will never have to live like the fans they despise unless they do something stupid with their cash.

Milo Yiannopoulos is very sick with COIVD and is using Ivermectin to counter it. He may or may not make it. If he doesn’t it will delight a lot of his enemies but will disgust the great enemy as he has already moved away from his clutches. If he does make his enemies on the left will be upset and the great enemy will still have hope, but the way things are going it seems to me much more likely that if he makes it he’ll help grab a lot of souls out of his clutches.

I wish him the best either way.

Finally you’ve likely noticed a few odd posts here. That’s because I’ve decided it’s better to have the occasional sponsored post to generate revenue that ads or banners that slow down the site. In the end the hosting and the writers need to be paid for and if people are willing to pay for a post (as long as it doesn’t violate my basic guidelines) I’m going to take their money.

What does the White House staff and the media know about Biden’s cognitive decline?

Posted: August 22, 2021 by John Ruberry in baseball, economy, media, News/opinion, politics, Sports, Uncomfortable Truths
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Connie Mack in 1938. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

By John Ruberry

The United States’ worst week in my lifetime was the prior one. 9/11 was a horrific tragedy but after that attack Americans were united in a way, albeit briefly, that it probably hasn’t been since World War II and sadly, we probably won’t see such unity again.

While our leaving South Vietnam in 1975 after years of fighting there was a major blow to our psyche–the South Vietnamese military still hung on for over two years after America’s combat role ended. 

Afghanistan fell to our enemy, the Taliban, last week, nearly a month before President Joe Biden’s withdrawal date, September 11–which was later changed to August 31. Americans, friendly Afghans, and our allies who want to leave Afghanistan are unable get to the Kabul Airport. And people at the airport are being killed by the Taliban.

The Soviet puppet state in Afghanistan managed to maintain power for three years after the USSR returned home.

The situation in Afghanistan is so awful that the mainstream media, CNN and the New York Times for instance, have slowly turned again Biden. They’re not as hostile as they were with Donald J. Trump. but it’s a start. I suspect they are holding Biden accountable only to protect what remaining credibility they have with the ten-percent of Americans who whole-heartedly believe their spin and lies.  

When Biden began his third presidential run two years ago something was very evident. Let’s just say the spin was off of his fastball, that it appeared that “Good ole Joe” wasn’t “all there” anymore, even as he squinted at his teleprompter reading remarks written by someone else. 

I’ll be returning to baseball a bit later.

Last week Biden, or more likely the president’s protectors among his family and this staff, chose the most sympathetic interviewer they know, former Bill Clinton senior staffer–and donor to the tainted Clinton Foundation–ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, to give the president the opportunity to explain why the Afghanistan defeat is not a debacle.

Notice that I didn’t call Stephanopoulos a journalist.

Even Biden’s dwindling number of apologists admit the ABC interview went poorly for him..

But the worst part of the ABC interview ended up on the cutting room floor, as Tucker Carlson pointed out on his show. When Stephanopolous questioned the chaotic nature of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden replied.

Look, that’s like askin’ my deceased son Beau, who spent six months in Kosovo and a year in Iraq as a Navy captain and then major– I mean, as an Army major. And, you know, I’m sure h– he had regrets comin’ out of Afganista– I mean, out of Iraq.

Amazing. Biden can’t immediately keep straight where his son served and with which branch. Beau Biden never served in Kosovo or Afghanistan. And Beau was in the Army. Not the Navy. Had Trump expressed such confusion some Democratic blowhard, probably Sen. Chuck Schumer, would be calling for the president to take a mental acuity test and suggest enacting the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. 

What else is on the cutting room floor of other Biden interviews, both as a candidate running from inside his “basement bunker” or as president? As a resident of the White House there isn’t much Biden material to work with. Since being sworn in as president Biden conducted only nine sit-down interviews. At the same point in their presidencies Barack Obama had done 113 and Trump 50. Someone is afraid of the media, a media that until this month was quite friendly to Biden.

In the sad later years of Connie Mack’s unprecedented 50-year tenure as manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, he often couldn’t remember the names of his current players but he’d call for substitutions with players who hadn’t played for the A’s in decades. Imagine Chicago White Sox manager Tony LaRussa, who used to manage the Athletics, calling for pinch hitting Jose Abreu with Mark McGwire.

Are there moments like that with Biden? Does the media know? Do they have videotape of it? Stephanopolous of course has the recording of Biden confusing his son’s miltary service. What about prior Stephanopolous interviews of Biden? Those should be made public in their entirety immediately by ABC News.

Mack owned the Athletics so firing him was problematic–but he was eventually forced out by his sons in 1950 when he was 87.

If we have not just a confused but also a senile man as president then removing him from office is the duty of Congress. And the rest of media, if they have evidence of Biden’s cognitive decline, then they need to cough it up now.

And that goes for Biden’s staff as well. When Mack made his non-sensical calls as manager of the Athletics, his coaches would calmly overrule “the Grand Old Man of Baseball.” Is Biden’s staff stepping in and overruling their old man?

Who is in charge? Or as Chris Wallace this morning asked of Biden’s secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, “Does the president not know what’s going on?” Note how Blinken doesn’t answer Wallace’s question in this clip.

Mack ran the Athletics into the ground after many great years at the helm, leading his team to nine American League pennants. Biden never had any great years. Mack’s A’s were just a baseball team. America of course is so much more–not just here at home but to the rest of the world.

Afghanistan is not the only failure of the Biden presidency. There is the border crisis and his inconsistent policy on COVID-19. Are these flops the work of a man who is mentally adrift?

And has Biden’s open borders policy with Mexico made the COVID resurgence worse? Failure seems to be piling upon failure–and we are just seven months into Biden’s term.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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