Remianen

So I missed a few columns but Matt Bowen has another 'X's and O's' type column up at NFP. Complex Blitz Schemes As a tape junkie and coach, this series is freakin' nirvana.

Mine: 01: Hell's Kitchen ("RAW, RAW, RAW!") 02: House Hunters International 03: Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives 04: Lie to Me 05: Burn Notice 06: Psych 07: For Rent 08: Man Caves 09: HGTV Design Star / The Next Food Network Star 10: Billy the Exterminator 11: Bones 12: Garage Mahal 13: Food Jammers 14: NFL Total Access 15: Inside the Playbook

I did not know that. I kinda zoned out due to an overdose of Michael Cole (who is like arsenic to me) and the abuse of the iPhone text message sound to denote incoming email messages every couple minutes.

That would actually be Russo-riffic. It would be new, sure, but I think the point of the matches is to promote and push the people involved in the matches. Besides, who would run in and actually be a plausible choice to do that? All the people who might be options are already booked.....or are having visa problems. It shouldn't take three weeks to get a new visa though so I guess Barrett or McIntyre could be possibilities.

You make a good point. I got that impression when their merch started filtering out. Kinda makes it easy to sell to the kiddies when you have the face of one of the prettiest/most attractive line of dogs on the planet front and center (the husky, for those not up on it). Showtime, the Cottonwood is a tree and McGillicutty is funny, I suppose.

PA is my stomping ground. I hang out there a lot. Lancaster, King of Prussia, Tannersville, Philly, etc. Gawd, please don't tell me you live in....DELAWARE. GO MUD HENS? WTH IS A MUD HEN?!? Oh and Sonic wins! Especially when you're high on sugar!

Everything Steve said, word for word. Except I'm not going to mug an old lady. That's old school. I'm going to divert her social security check to a numbered account I control. I'll use the baseball bat on her 42 cats though! Go wash your mouth out with soap. RIGHT NOW! Filthy blasphemer!

So does mine...and the Amiga 500...and the Atari ST. Haven't booted the Amiga 1000 in like a decade but I'm sure it still works too. YES! OH MY GOD, YES! About the only Asian style game that I can stand is Lineage II (and that's only because they made even the male characters/models look so effeminate, they might as well give 'em boobs). Look. Ahh but Daggerfall was just like it. The whole Elder Scrolls series (with the exception of Arena, the first game) was freeform. I think the problem with Morrowind vs Oblivion was that there wasn't enough time between the games for people to develop a hankering. Also, since Morrowind was so open and had more current graphics (which made it stand out MAJORLY from Daggerfall), there wasn't much for folks to look forward to in Oblivion. Coupled with the modability of Morrowind and you could literally play the game indefinitely and always have new stuff to do and see. Does no one remember the Jaguar? The only reason I have one is because I worked in Electronics Boutique (now known as EBGames) so I got it for free. Wasn't like anyone was going to stop me though. The damn system wasn't being bought by anyone anyway. Did you walk it dry too? Yup, not enough time between games for folks to develop a real hankering for it. This differs from something like Mass Effect where the story keeps people coming back. ME is a lot more linear than the Elder Scrolls so there's a finality to each game that only makes you want the next one to see where the story goes. Fable I think was very similar.

Um, WWECW wasn't ECW. It was WWE with lesser talent using the ECW logo. Don't get me wrong, it was decent at first, then they flushed it down the toilet like an overripe turd. It's good for them but I think you might need to slow your roll, so to speak. Holding a show in New York City is not the same as holding one in Detroit or St. Louis or Indianapolis. I'd agree with "they need to hold more shows in New York" but not "on the road" in general. NYC isn't the typical or average market, after all.

I'm a PC gamer but I do own consoles (every one released in the US from Intellivision on, except for the ColecoVision that got stolen when I was 10). For the most part, if a console-exclusive (or based) game comes out that I (or my nieces/nephews) like, I'll get it, even though I'd rarely play it (Fable being the exception). I tend to have get-togethers fairly frequently so having the hot games is useful. I can understand Wrestling Century's point of view though I probably could never go that route. In gaming circles, games have a relatively short shelf life. People talk about/critique/deconstruct them when they're new then move on to the next one. So waiting a year or two to get a game would make me clueless in those conversations. "Ohhhh, now I see what you all were talking about." "What?" "Oh, Oblivion. I just got it." "Dude, that was how many years ago???" Oh and I'm not a fan of Final Fantasy anything.

Finishing the basement probably cost more than assembling the games. The most expensive cabinet I had was the OutRun one and it cost a shade under 4k. I got it (relatively) cheap because few people wanted it because it has a huge footprint (it was the big arse one with side by side positions). The rise of the console made it so I could get rid of them (gave them to my conspiracy theorist friend in Elmira ) but I am definitely getting one of those custom jobs. Astil, I'd be hesitant to state unequivocally what I'll "never" have. I've found that this world isn't nearly as cut & dried as people like to think it is.

Ahhh, but you can still have that ol' skool flavor up in the crib. Look here. I got up on them watching Garage Mahal (Goldberg's show) and it pissed me off. I used to troll the bankruptcy sales in the area back when arcades were going under regularly (late 90s) and at one time had five full sized games in the basement (sit down versions of Spy Hunter and OutRun, tabletop/****tail version of Ms Pac-Man, Street Fighter 2, and X-Men: Children of the Atom) and I paid a lot more than that for them. Now I'm scheming on a way to get one of these. Friend of mine bought one with his income tax refund and he has to play it after midnight because his kids monopolize the damn thing. We have some awesome games today but it's not the same. As you mentioned, it's not the same experience. Plus, back in the day, developers could specify hardware in those big cabinet models so many games we played in arcades were customized for that particular game. They moved away from that (going with the more standard system that used DVDs or cartridges or something with only the panels on the cabinet being swapped out) but that was when they started to suck. Oh, that and some games going up to a freakin' DOLLAR for one play!

I don't get this at all. I'm not anywhere as large as WWE and I can get visas cleared inside of two weeks! Did they somehow forget they were foreigners and needed to keep their papers in order? Angelina Love's bit baffled me but this is like, jeez!

Maybe. But championships sell and you can't get those without good D. So it becomes a case of do you want to be sexy losers or boring champions? I'm not saying I think they should return to the days of Pat Riley's Knicks (who would bruise you to death). But actually putting effort into defense would improve the game exponentially as it would lead to more highlight reel quality finishes (dunking over Manute Bol was always a highlight, wasn't it? And what happens when the post gets real crowded? Hello more 3's and dunks on follows!). I see what you're saying and agree with it, I just don't think it's necessary. I'll give you baseball though (the plays at the wall and deep in the hole stops notwithstanding) but hockey I haven't cared about since I was 12 so I have no idea what would work for them. With so many teams bleeding money, they need to do something.

MLT, it's somewhat of a generalization. I said the same thing when Menudo was big. And New Kids on the Block. And the Backstreet Boys. And N'SYNC. Of course, it's patently false because it's usually the "pretty" teenage girls who go for the okey doke in these cases. No one really pays attention or cares about what the ugly ones want. And as a person who was an 'ugly' teenage boy, I found ways to take advantage of that. Girls may not have that advantage but to quote The Waitresses, they have what boys like, they have what guys want. Don't sweat it. It's not like people don't judge folks that way every minute of every day. I've beaten my head bloody against that particular wall. It might be better to pick a battle you can win. Logan, two words for you: http://cache.jalopnik.com/cars/assets/resources/2006/10/Colbert-Report-Chevy-Silver.jpg I heard that story too. Everyone seemed to think Biden would take the Secretary of State job (given his foreign policy experience) but he threw them a curveball. Besides, with Biden (and his temper) as Secretary of State, oh boy! BHK, we here in New York love us some names. Electing a nobody that no one's ever heard of to the Senate doesn't happen very often. Kirsten Hillenbrand (who? EXACTLY!) is toast if a 'name' candidate runs against her. Plus, she was appointed by perhaps the least popular/most disliked/most incompetent governor of New York in at least 30 years. When the guy who gave you your job is being run out on rails, that doesn't typically make you safe. Although, she is kind of attractive, in that suburban/middle America kind of way so the serious candidate is going to have to be able to overcome that. Anyway, Hillary was elected for the same reasons Bobby was elected: she was the biggest "name" on the ballot. She also drew ridiculous amounts of women (duh?) and was running against freakin' Rick Lazio (who? again, EXACTLY!). You have to maintain a high profile if you hold national office in New York. Mark Green, Alan Hevesi (before he got popped), and how many of you knew who Michael Bloomberg was before he bought his current office? That's how we tend to work. If we don't know who you are, you'd better spend the time (and money) telling us who you are or we're not electing you (ask Bloomberg). Can't have some nobody going to DC reppin' us! Do you know who we are? Of course you do!

errr, we obviously have WIDELY varying ideas of what's attractive. Either that or you're not up on the tour. Seriously, almost half of the top twenty right now is hot. Sure, Serena is an acquired taste (not everyone likes thighs like that and her guns put many guys to shame) but Marion Bartoli doesn't look like a man. Maria Sharapova is actually middle of the road nowadays. I think you're thinking more of an Anna Kournikova type (all look, no game) or Lindsay Davenport (who, at her best, looked very much like a dude). MLT, you can go back to when Jordan was playing (90s) and the shorts were still crazy long. The rules say shorts can't extend more than an inch below the knee....and most players sit right on the boundary. I'll give you some criticisms of the NBA (it's more 'streetball' than basketball with all the isolation plays teams run, defense is often secondary in talent evaluation...until the playoffs, etc) but short shorts haven't been in play since the late 80s/early 90s.

Srsly! PREACH! Yeah, just nod sagely and smile courteously when people talk about futbol. I don't see how you can hate tennis. It's probably the last refuge of tall, athletic women who dress in very little and run short distances and bounce...uhh, nevermind. And the Olympics? Come on! What exactly do you have against people who play non-revenue generating sports? You think you're too good to play badminton or table tennis??? Um, short shorts? When was the last time you watched a game? 1974? If the shorts got any longer, they'd be PANTS!

Does it? I thought we were speaking of terms used largely in 'folklore and fantasy fiction' (and the vehicles that derive from such).

Ah but the exceptions outnumber the rule nowadays. Mario Lopez, Mark Paul Gosselaar, Neil Patrick Harris (even if he is gay), Justin Timberlake, Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg, and so on. Nowadays, it's the male teen idols who have a better chance of sticking than the female ones. /disagree! I concur. Though I have to say that I'm a bit surprised that possibly the best vampire of all time (at least in literature), Lestat d'Lioncourt, hasn't been mentioned. Also Jaysin, werewolves are not the same as wolfmen. You're referring to a wolfman. The 'were' part indicates 'can change into', not 'becomes'. If anyone is familiar with Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series, it's largely explained in detail in almost every book (Mercy is a shapeshifter. She can change into a coyote. The werewolves maintain their human personas and keep 'the wolf' at bay, as much as possible).

There is a reason that I rarely fly in coach. I will burn frequent flyer miles in a second to avoid this! One reason why no matter how much I like flying JetBlue and Virgin America (not to mention Southwest), I have to do it sparingly. Um, I don't understand? The faceless corporate entity that doesn't have a clue about the actual mechanical workings of their trade and resembles the Keystone Kops when something goes wrong, grinds your gears? How do you have gears left after the debacle with banks the last couple years? What grinds my gears are people forced to eat crow who don't like the taste. You made it! You should've built some flavor into it. I coached several pee wee teams for 'at risk' kids (whatever the hell that means) here several years ago. We won six championships over that time span (four football, two basketball) but I was fired for 'unsportsmanlike conduct'. My crime? Supposedly, I ran up the score in all our games. I disagreed. I don't like hypocrisy and wouldn't engage in it. When I taught my players to 'leave their hearts on the field' and give 100% from the beginning until the clock hits 0:00, I'd be a hypocrite if I pulled them out with half the game remaining. Also, who am I supposed to pull? My bench players are only slightly less good than my starters. Do I tell my quarterback to kneel down 3 times so I can send in the punter, just because we're up by 3 scores? Do I ditch the run & shoot we used and switch to the Wing-T because the other team can't cover us? Or stop full court pressing and switch to a half court rotational offense (Go PRINCETON!) because it's 69-30 in the third quarter. I refused to do any of that so they canned me. Lo & behold Thursday, the commissioner calls me and asks if I'd be interested in returning. Apparently, the fact that every kid on my teams excelled (one just got into Purdue's school of aeronautics, last year) and did well (which was supposedly the point of the entire sports program), not to mention the fact that even back then, I paid for our uniforms (new and laundering and replacing them, when necessary) and our equipment out of my own pocket, has led to them "reaching out" to their alumni since budget cuts threaten the program. Take your budget cuts, shine 'em up real nice, turn them sideways.... I told him to go [copulate with] a duck. He's looking for people to defray costs to protect his job. You made your bed (after my firing, a lot of the parents questioned the program's direction given the results we were getting), lay in it, fleas, ticks, mites and all. I found out on Friday that they were planning a big fundraising drive but that many of the alumni who could contribute, refused to unless I asked them to (which they knew I wouldn't). Then someone calls my mother and tries to get her to lean on me to reconsider. BIG mistake. I am very much my mother's child in this regard and she gave that woman an earful. Without outside support, the program could cease to exist by next year, if not sooner. So? What happens if I return and win some more, produce "startling" academic turnarounds....and another coach from Ozone Park, butthurt over his team being demolished (hello? 5-2 defense doesn't work against the Run & Shoot), starts whining? You'll eat that crow and you'll LIKE IT!

Especially when 'Erik' is so much better of a spelling. So much sexier, masculine, and indicative of virility!

The same thing was said about Toni Kukoc but as it turns out, being able to play 4 positions is a far cry from being able to play 4 positions decently, much less 'well'. Nemanja is soft (which, to be fair, is the case for most players from Europe) so you don't want him banging as he'll get eaten alive. Put him in the post with a Dwight Howard and you might as well call him 'mulch'. You also don't want him on an elite 2 who will break his ankles or otherwise make him look silly. So, despite the fact that on paper he can play four positions, in reality, he's a 3. Nothing more, nothing less. I think Minnesota went with the most cost effective method of adding players. Nothing wrong with that, but let's not put too much lipstick on this pig. They didn't really make themselves competitive but on the bright side, if any of those players don't pan out, they're not out much money. And, given the relative quality of their existing roster, these rookies are bound to get lots of playing time, which should accelerate their growth.

So wait, you're judging a market by what they did for a few months? OKC was a basketball wasteland. Even with its own team, it doesn't produce revenue that would make it notable amongst the other league teams. Perhaps if franchises "lived" in cities for a couple seasons at a time that might be valid but they don't so IMO, it's not. Sports leagues judge prospective markets by population and per capita income. If the average ticket price for your games is $60, it would be daft to put a team in a city whose PCI and area population would not support that amount. Umm Stennick? Might wanna do a little search before you say that. Las Vegas had quite the population boom from the late 90s to the mid 2000s. Anyone in the construction industry could tell you about that. Clark County (which comprises the Las Vegas metropolitan area) went from a population of about 750k in 1990 to 2.3 mil in 2010. Tripling your population in two decades? That's generally considered to be a population explosion. Yes, Vegas is a resort city but so is Miami (and New Orleans, to a degree) and there have to be people there to work at all those resorts (and the businesses that support the resorts and the tourism industry as a whole). So yeah, there are people who live in Las Vegas. Sure, it's no New York but neither is New Orleans or OKC or Milwaukee or Indianapolis or Portland or Sacramento or...well, you get the picture. Basically, Vegas is one of the last truly lucrative markets for a franchise (with the exception of LA for the NFL) but ancillary issues prevent them from landing one. Well, that plus the issues the players had when the NBA put the All-Star Game there. And GatorBait, forget what you heard. Money talks. No owner cares about what St. Pete did with that dude over there if they're offering the right incentives. CQI13, let's be real here. If an owner paid to build his/her own stadium, they'd be entitled to ALL the proceeds from said stadium. No civil jurisdiction is going to let the potential profit that a new stadium would generate go so it's worth it to them to OWN the thing and LEASE it to the team. That allows them to rent it out when it's otherwise not being used. How much money did the city of Denver make off of Barack Obama accepting the Democratic nomination for President? If Pat Bowlen owned that stadium, guess how much they would've made? Big difference between the two numbers. Besides, who wants to be the mayor/local authority who LOST the city's franchise (along with all the jobs attached or related to it) because he wanted to prove a point?

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="GatorBait19" data-cite="GatorBait19" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="26724" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I'm guessing that sports league is basketball?</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> DING DING DING!</p><p> </p><p> There are a couple NBA franchises who could be enticed to move if the deal was right. I mean, most recently, a team moved from Seattle (a major city) to freakin' Oklahoma City (not a major city and probably best known for a federal building being bombed). St. Pete is a bigger city/area than OKC so if OKC got a team, St. Pete could get one.</p><p> </p><p> Of course that wouldn't happen because Tampa's the sexier option so the team would name itself 'Tampa' or 'Tampa Bay'. But St. Pete would reap the benefits if the arena's in the city limits!</p>

I don't see the issue. Why's St. Pete being demonized because they want their own identity as a city? Speaking from a travel perspective (business travel in particular), people don't consider St. Pete a city in and of itself. It's perceived as a suburb of Tampa. They want to remove that perception and it's not an easy thing to do. While sometimes it's good to be associated with a particular city (just look at how many cities in New Jersey and Connecticut promote themselves as 'close to New York City'), there are limits to that when it comes to both representation, reputation, and perception. All that said, St. Pete doesn't have what it takes to be a freestanding sports city of its own. They don't have the infrastructure (and they can't easily create it), they're too close to a city that does have the infrastructure, and the perception is working against them. Yes, it's stupid what they're doing but every journey begins with the first step. They're trying to flex their muscles (that they don't really have) and get some respect, in some small way. The best thing that they could do now is chill, leech off Tampa's amenities and infrastructure while they work behind the scenes to get a franchise of some kind. There's one major sports league in America that does not have a franchise in that area. Two are close, but none are there. Remember what Indianapolis did to get the Colts?