I was just sitting down reading a story from a web-site yesterday only to find that there was somone in Ohio who wanted to ban all star games. Normally I don't react to what somone is saying, but this really bugged the hell out of me.
Here is the link to the article if anyone wants to see for themselves. In this article he is talking about kids younger than 10 years old.
If you dont have time to read it, let me give you the coles notes version. Bascially what is being said is that the writer of the letter wants to ban the all-star game because it shatters a person self-confidence and can bruise the kids ego.
Then he compares it to school and says that if a kid is learning numbers and letters quicker, do we call then "special" or "gifted". Then he compared the all-star game to taking a vegetarian to a fancy steakhouse and or a person on a strick diet to a buffet.
Next he says all these games do is reward the kids who have developed quicker, then he got rediculous and said that all-star games with children at a young age can lead to injuries with extra games and practices. I'll use a direct quote and he says "They take a toll on young bodies and lead to an avalanche of overuse injuries."
Then he goes on from there talking about how you should take a stand and help in the fight to ban all-star games in general, or something along those lines.
I don't know what to say after something like this. This was written by the guy who wanted the great institution of the "Participant" trophy installed at every youth sports league in North America. Whenever someone wants their child not to feel upset by belittleing other accomplishment bugs me to no end.
This letter was probably written by a parent who thinks their son or daughter when they are signed up for sports is going on to better things even though they can't tie their own shoes yet. Then when their child got passed over for an all-star team, they are just so upset and they use the old addage of if I can't have it no one can.
Then he proceeds to damage his stance on the issue further saying that it can lead to a bruised ego when a child is passed over for an all-star team. If your kids who is younger than 10 years old knows what an all-star team is unless he is watching the peofessionals, you have missed the point. A 10 year old isn't going to be drafted tomorrow so whether or not he makes an all-star team should be irrelevant.
Next we have the overuse injuries comment. You know what else provides overuse injuries to kids, playing video games for hours on end and eating bag after bag after bag of chips. That also adds to the kids being severely overweight and less interested in sports.
At least when kids are playing sports like baseball, basketball and football, they have a goal to strive for in being a great player, who is better -yes some kids are going to be better and it is not based solely on whether or not they have developed some are more skilled than others- than other players on their team.
Why should somones accomplishments be torn down to make other feel better about themselves?
I say that all-star teams are great because the ones who are passed over will try harder and they will try to become a better player. Being dissappointed builds character in a person and isn't that more important in raising a productive member of society. When kids get dissappointed at a young age, they learn how to persevere and get beyond road blocks.
If you don't teach a kid dissappointment at a young age what is going to happen when s/he hits middle age and goes off sulking when he didn't get a big account at the law firm s/he may work at. It motivates them to become better at what they are doing and gets them working harder to achieve that goal.
Nobody celebrates mediocraty and by banning the all-star game, that is exactly what you are doing. You saying that everyone is equal, which in many cases, like sports and life, they are not. If you say to a kid that everyone gets a trophy for participating, the kid will be conditioned to think that way their entire life.
Listen to a lot of recruiting stories for big college programs. Not everyone can go to USC, so when teams play USC, there is a little extra motivation to try and beat them to show them what the missed. Ian Johnson, runningback at Boise State was passed over at UCLA, and has gone on to become one of the best runningbacks in college football. What may have motivated him to this level, somone telling him he was not good enough. Johnson was passed over on an all-star team and went on to great things in spite of his situation.
If you remove the all-star game you will be a lot more harm than good, by raising a nation of soft people, like the ones on American Idol who think they are excellent even though they are probably the worst on the planet, everyones great accomplishments will be downgraded and belittled to make everyone appear equal. No one is equal or we would all be playing professionally.
I learned this concept when I was playing minor hockey and was passed over for an all-star team. It motivated me to become a better player and then I kept moving up in levels. When I got to my highgest level that gave me an incredible sense of accomplishment and I felt good about my self.
If there was no all-star game, maybe I wouldn't have gotten as high up as I did. An All-Star game made me a better person, and I wasn't even apart of the game. The team I was passed over for gave me motivation to get better, it taught me to peresevere and be a driven person and to work hard for everything I got.
By removing the All-Star game and start giving trophys to everyone, you create a culture of entitlement and then when somone doesn't receive a "good job" or an "atta boy" thats when it hurts the kids development.
When these people realize that they are hurting the kids rather than helping them, we will get a better kids and better professionals, because somone didn't say to them, "Congratulations Participant"
With the NHL Draft taking place in Ottawa this weekend, every hockey fan is wondering who is their team going to pick, what trade day deals are going to happen and how is their teams chances at the Cup going to look after the weekends completes.
Being the good person that I am I thought I would shine some light on a few things.
Steven Stamkos will be the first overall pick, no questions asked. I think that Tampa Bay's problems are not concerned with offence and they should be focusing on defense, but a prospect like Stamkos only comes along every so often.
Watching Stamkos at the World Junior Championships this past Christmas was a treat because I finally got to see what eveyone was talking about how good this kid is. He will be an instant impact player in the NHL and will slide right into the Lightning line-up replacing the departed Brad Richards. Their powerplay will be incredibly good with Lecavalier, St. Louis and Stamkos.
Teams are going to shy away from taking European players who are signed with club teams and playing professionally in Europe because of the disintegration of the IIHF Transfer agreement between the NHL and all other professionaly leagues around the world.
Players like Nikita Filatov who is projected to be the Number 5 overall pick according to TSN, will get passed over simply for the degree of difficulty of getting players away from their European team without being caught in a legal battle like Evgeni Malkin was when he left Russia for the Penguins.
In the NHL, especially with the Draft, you can't expect to be good overnight unless you get a prospect that is a 100% can't miss like Stamkos. Most of the time when you get a player who is 18 years old, he takes time to develop physically, when the player is a lot smaller than his future NHL colleagues.
The mental aspect is not that big a deal because the players in the CHL are used to playing a ton of games, including three games in as many nights. Also, in the CHL they play with the rules they are going to play with in the NHL which is another reason that the turnover is going to be a lot faster than a sport like baseball and or to a lesser extent football.
A draft in any sport-except baseball-is always exciting and the upcoming NHL one will be no exception.
Finally the NHL caught a break with the American public. They have the Finals they wanted, their most marketable star playing one of the most storied franchises in the games history. All they have to do is schedule the games.
How come the NHL manages to screw everything up?
They have their dream final, they have a perfect matchup to sell as the new game. They can use this awesome final to make their triumphant return to becoming one of the four major sports again.
But they still manage to to fan on the tap-in goal.
When thier final conference championship ends on Monday, when would the next logical tiem to schedule a game. Wednesday? Thursday? Maybe even Friday?
But No, they choose to begin their Championship round on Saturday night on Memorial Day Weekend.
What person would choose a weekend of hard partying and a lot of drinking for a night with a television and Hockey in 30 or 90 degree weather?
Some people I have talked to say that they are marketing to the Canadian audience that is already in love with the game. They are trying to sell the game to the purists is another thing someone said.
But Mr. Bettman has made it clear that he wants to sell the game to the average American guy or girl, but he continues to make poor decision after poor decision. First he leaves ESPN for the new network NBC, where I have heard they make next to nothing from that television deal. Now start the best thing that has happened to the league on Saturday night at 8 PM.
The finals should have been started on Thursday at the latest to give the best option of going up against the competition of the NBA conference finals or the fact that most baseball games will be held in the afternoon.
Why not strike when the iron is hot and shove your product to their throats? But instead theu choose to go after an audience they already have.
Another bad move by the game that I want to see succeed and that has squandered every opportunity to make themselves relevant.
The decision for the outdoor games and ones to come are excellent but they have just wiffed on too many other ideas. I would love to see them move back into one of the four major sports in North America, but they aren't helping themselves with decisions like this.
Now to pick the cup finals: Detroit may be an excellent team with experience but I think that the Penguins have to much talent to get beat by an older and experienced team. I will take talent of experience any day of the week. The Pittsburgh Penguins win the series in 6 games
Baseball season making headway into May, and the NBA and NHL Playoffs are getting closer and closer to a champion, all we are seeing is great team after great team playing, that I know I sometimes forget about the terrible franchises in professional sports.
There are a lot of teams that are or have been in disarray for a long time in professional sports, so I am going to give you all the teams that are as the french say "Le Garbage"
NFL Washington Redskins Two words, Daniel Snyder. The owner of the Six Flags franchise proves he can run an amusement park, but not when it is the most valuable sports franchise in the world. When you start trading away draft picks for cheese sandwich's, a ride on Superman and player who past their prime ages before they arrive at the Redskins. Mark Burnell was the quarterback even though they had Jason Campbell waiting in the wings, and there are questions around him. That was their first round pick a few years ago. Then this past draft he was willing to part with more picks to acquire Bengal hater Chad Johnson.
I love Ocho Cinco, he makes the league fun, but when he can't produce with a A-list quarterback like Carson Palmer, what chance does he have with Campbell.
Miami Dolphins 1-15, need I say more? Now we have your star player dancing the night away to "DUH-DUH-DUH-DUNNNNNNN" Then he attempts to extend the olive branch to the coahc who shuns him. I know they had a great draft with Michigan south by drafting Jake Long and Chad Henne, but as of right now, not such a good franchise.
NHL Toronto Maple Leafs The Leafs run thier franchise the way they do because no Leaf fan questions what they are going to do. With a packed building every night, regardless of what kind of team they are fielding or icing, but I digress. Now they fired a coach who was put in a no win situation with players who would be hard pressed to make the second line on most other N HL teams. This team is run like a business, which is the way it should be done, but it is an unsuccessful business in terms of W-L, not $ and sense. 41 years since a championship proves it all.
And the Grand Prize winner is.............
The New York Knicks When you hire Larry Brown, one of the best coaches in NBA history, and replace him with a person with limited coaching experience. Then you make that coach the GM or the other waya around who makes questionable deals as general manager and let him run your team, while he sexually harasses employees of your organization. Then the Knicks fire said person as preident and GM, but continue to allow him to coach a losing team rather than letting your next coach come in and attempt to fix the situation so there are no growing pains for next year.
But then you tell that previously employed coach that he still has a job, but he has no title and no responosibility and can not talk to any of his current players. Where do I sign up for that job, being kept on the payroll while doing nothing, sounds like a good deal, does it come with benefits?
That doesn't even cover the players on the team. Starbury selling shoes while babbling about nothing on a certain video, and the other bunch of overpaid stiffs they have playing for the Knicks right now.
What organizations do you think are in complete disarray and why. Post it in the comments
I didn't get to see the Rangers vs Devils game on Sunday, but watching the highlights Monday morning I saw Sean Avery set a screen on Martin Brodeur, he was using his stick as a little bit of an extra screen.
All I heard from different analysts was that what Avery was doing was not illegal, but it was not "kosher" and that is was unsportsmanlike. I have seen a bunch of different highlights of this and I have found nothing wrong with what Avery is doing. Avery is being a pest to goalies, that is waht he gets paid to do.
Aside from the analysts saying that Avery was wrong, it is mostly goalies who are poo pooing his actions. Dallas goalie Marty Turco was one to say that what Avery did was wrong.
I like Turco, but he is not the most objective source to go for to an opinion on an issue like this. All goalies look out for other goalies. If every goalie had a say on what was allowed in front of them, they would want to make setting screens illegal.
Avery was just trying to level the playing field between he and Brodeur. He was trying to make it more difficult for Brodeur to make a stop. He was trying to heklp his team win the game.
I notice that when I see the talking heads on TSN and Sportsnet saying that Avery was unsportsmanlike, they look over the nice shot to the groin that Brodeur and most goalies give to the players setting the screens. Nobody came to Avery's defense and said that Brodeur was wrong.
Maybe they say that Avery was wrong because there has been some questionable decisions made in the past. This is sort of the same talk I heard when Chris Simon stomped on Ruutu's leg, and one analyst said that "It's Ruutu!"
Nobody likes the pest. Everyone will stick up for the guy who is being bothered by the pest. Everyone is going to protect the stars like Brodeur and crucify guys like Avery.
If it was another player like Darcy Tucker, people would be calling him an innovator, saying why don't more players use their sticks like that.
Take your opinion of Avery out of the equation, then look at the highlight again. Then make your decision and see what's wrong.
The NCAA tournament is wrapping up tonight after a great run that will actually produce a pure champion. I love seeing the Cinderella stories every year, but when you get the best four teams playing in one city over three days, I do a little ####.
I couldn't believe that Kansas and Memphis screwed my bracket and forced me into second behind my friend who doesn't know how to spell UCLA or UNC. Gotta love college basketball, but is digress.
Every team this past weekend would have run Davidson out of the gym and steamrolled them, just like Geroge Mason a few years ago. Kansas vs Memphis will be awesome to watch and we will get a true champion. Ummm, Hello! BCS are we paying attention?
Baseball season is just getting underway, and I could not be happier for a couple of months. I love baseball, in April and May and in September and October. In June, July (except for the All-Star Game) and August, I find baseball boring.
Nothing against baseball, but those Orioles vs Rays or Pirates vs Giants just don't get me to the TV. I love the great teams, and will make time for Yankees vs Red Sox, but that pretty much it.
The NHL playoffs are begining this Wednesday and this is the most excited I have been for the hockey playoffs since the lockout. With the down to the wire races for a playoff push with the Capitals winning their division, and also having Sid the Kid and Ovechkin finally in the playoffs together, I will make time to watch as much playoff hockey as possible.
Who could forget the Masters is coming up this weekend. I don't watch as much golf as my family does, but when you get great story lines and great scenery, watching four golf events a year, I enjoy this one the most because it means a lot of things are happening. what I mentioned above, a couple of other things.
NFL pro days are complete and now we are just counting down the days until the Dolphins are no longer on the clock. I love listening to draft talk up to and including draft day, it makes me pine for the best time of the year.
Finally, the NBA has drawn me in as a fan. I actually watched NBA games this past season after the Big Diesel becamse the Big Cactus and the West became more stacked than Keeley Hazell. I had fallen out of love with the NBA, but the Celtics this season and the Suns playing the best defense is a good offense. Finally scoring in the NBA brought me back and is getting me interested.
This time of year to me is not the best time, but second ain't terrible.
