Posted on September 30th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
The good news for Bo Porter: He landed one of only 30, highly coveted big-league managerial jobs.
The bad news for Bo Porter: He landed with the Houston Astros, arguably the majors’ worst managerial job.
Porter, the Washington Nationals’ third-base coach through the end this season, wasn’t in a position to be choosy. At least not if he wanted to manage as soon as possible. Patience might have netted him the Nationals’ job whenever Davey Johnson retires, perhaps in a year or three, but there were no guarantees.
Long considered a prime managerial candidate, Porter previously had interviewed to skipper the Florida Marlins and Pittsburgh Pirates. When the Astros offered him the job last week, selecting him from an initial list of 49 candidates, Porter concluded there’s no time like the present.
It’s easy to suggest that Porter should have waited for a better opportunity than Houston, which has the worst record in baseball and one of the weakest farm systems to boot. But the lure of managing at home was pretty powerful. His emotions didn’t start to waver until he told his wife the news.
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Posted on September 25th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Headed into Week 4 of the NFL season, the national conversation is all wrong. Our football discourse is out of sorts and off course.
We should be talking about major surprises like the 3-0 Arizona Cardinals and the 0-3 New Orleans Saints. We should be discussing amazing games like Sunday’s Lions-Titans overtime thriller. We should be relishing outstanding performances like Kansas City’s Jamaal Charles rushing for 233 yards one week after the Giants’ Eli Manning passed for 510 yards.
But there’s only one topic on everyone’s mind and it has nothing to do with individual teams, players or games. It’s a subject that can’t be avoided, no matter where you are or which way you turn. It’s the NFL’s idiotic decision to inflict replacement officials on us and defile its own product.
The only thing more sickening than continuing to talk about them is continuing to watch them.
If the league doesn’t realize this is a crisis situation, it’s even dumber than we thought in letting the situation get this far. Monday night’s game brought us to a breaking point.
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Posted on September 24th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
The good news for the Washington Redskins is their newfound scoring punch, largely due to Robert Griffin III’s impact as franchise quarterback and savior. Washington has scored at least 28 points in each of its three games this season.
The bad news for the Washington Redskins is their newfound leaky defense, largely due to a secondary that couldn’t cover a baby in a high chair at times. After yielding 32 and 31 points in its two games entering Sunday’s home opener against Cincinnati, Washington again let the opposition light up the scoreboard in a 38-31 loss.
As exciting as shootouts might be, they highlight a defense’s weaknesses more than an offense’s strength. At this rate, RG3 is going to be tuckered out before the Week 10 bye. The Redskins had the ball at the end for the second consecutive game with a chance to either win or tie the game but couldn’t come through.
“I thought we’d be a better unit than this and I know we will be,” inside linebacker London Fletcher said. “But we haven’t performed at our level, especially the last two games. The offense gave us more than enough points to win.”
(Actually, the defense opened the scoring in the last two games, with linebacker Rob Jackson’s interception in the end zone Sunday and defensive back Josh Wilson’s fumble return against St. Louis. “Maybe we need to stop scoring first,” Wilson cracked.).
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Posted on September 21st, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
HBO’s Emmy-winning newsmagazine, “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” returned Tuesday night to open its 18th season. The lead story was a feature on Magic Johnson, the NBA great-turned-businessman whose net worth is estimated at $750 million. His famous smile was bigger and brighter than ever in the piece.
But earlier that day, we heard a tale regarding athletes and money that unfortunately is much more familiar. An attorney for former NFL quarterback Vince Young said his client “needs a job.” Young apparently has hit hard times, despite being the No. 3 overall draft pick in 2006.
That can’t make him too happy, and the situation becoming national news doesn’t help. He used Twitter on Wednesday to concur with his attorney, tweeting: “Yes, I need a job, who doesn’t.”
Most folks need jobs. But most folks didn’t earn $26 million over six years from the Tennessee Titans and bank another $4 million last year from the Philadelphia Eagles.
Young’s case, and others like it, can produce a wide array of emotions, including anger, pity, contempt, sorrow and disgust. The warped among us even might experience joy or contentment, believing that athletes don’t deserve their riches anyway and it’s funny when their wealth is squandered.
I find it sad that so many athletes go through piles of money like they’re wearing leaf blowers. I wish more players would learn from the horror stories of those who preceded them. Better yet, more should study examples like Johnson or Junior Bridgeman, the former NBA star who owns more than 260 Wendy’s and Chili’s combined.
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Posted on September 18th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Friends, football fans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to praise the NFL’s replacement officials, not bury them. I compliment them for accepting the challenge and allowing the games to continue. I congratulate them for reaching the pinnacle of football officiating, notwithstanding the unfortunate route. I commend them for doing their absolute best in an exceedingly difficult and trying situation.
Let’s hear it for the replacement refs: Hip hip now go away!
I thank them for their service, but here’s hoping we never see them again. At least not until they’ve improved to the point where they’re actually ready for the NFL under non-lockout circumstances.
They clearly are overwhelmed with their task, understandably so. Even with years of experience at lower levels of football, they’re ill-prepared to handle the world’s biggest, strongest and fastest players on national TV. There’s a reason these refs weren’t in the NFL, and it shows.
It’s one thing to slide a rookie ref in with veteran officials, who can nurture and shepherd the newbie. That’s the way to break-in first-timers.
But when the entire crew is composed of greenhorns, the refs are like sheep trying to police dueling wolf packs. It’s not going to be pretty, as evidenced by Week 2.
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Posted on September 16th, 2012
SAM CASSELL JR.
By DERON SNYDER
What do Ebenezer Scrooge, the Grinch and torturers of small animals have in common?
They all have more heart than the NCAA.
Remarkably, college athletics’ governing board has lowered the bar yet again, a feat that seemed morally impossible. For no other reason than because it can, the NCAA has dashed the aspirations of two more student-athletes, innocent bystanders-turned-victims Sam Cassell Jr. and Myles Davis.
Cassell and Davis graduated from Notre Dame Prep (Fitchburg, Mass) last spring and accepted basketball scholarships from Maryland and Xavier, respectively. Everything was fine until the NCAA decided — in mid-August! — that Cassell and Davis are ineligible to play in 2012-2013 based on some “core classes” they took in 2010-2011.
This isn’t to suggest that the NCAA should accept and any and all coursework done at prep schools, some of which have been dubbed “diploma mills.” Questionable schools, especially those with athletic prowess and academic rigor at opposite ends of the spectrum, are placed on a “Watch List” and their graduates can lose credit for some classes they passed.
Fine. But don’t wait until mid-August to make that determination, just weeks before college begins. And don’t penalize 20 percent of the players while the other 80 percent continue on their merry way.
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Posted on September 14th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
In the NFL, lasting impressions have a seven-day shelf life. Seasons can soar and swoon from week to week, careening through the levels of ecstasy to the stages of grief. We know we shouldn’t put too much stock into any given Sunday, but we do it anyway.
That’s part of being a football fan, dreaming about continued success or extended failure based on what happened last game. But for most teams outside of the elite, the truth resides somewhere in between. They miraculously pull out games they should lose and inexplicably drop games they should win.
The roller coaster can be emotionally draining. But when you catch it at the top, there’s nothing else like it. One week into the season, that’s where we are with Washington Redskins rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III.
We’re in love and all shook up.
“Let’s not get carried away with all this,” coach Mike Shanahan said.
Too late.
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Posted on September 14th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
NEW YORK — Pitcher John Lannan entered Citi Field’s visitors clubhouse at 4:30 p.m., wearing a dress shirt and slacks. He went to his cubicle, washed down a couple of pills and began unbuttoning his shirt.
Looking at him from the other corner of the back row, with no one standing between them, was pitcher Stephen Strasburg. He was almost finished putting on his uniform and the surreal moment didn’t go unnoticed. They exchanged some light-hearted banter and chuckled.
The Washington Nationals played game No. 143 Wednesday night, a 2-0 victory against the New York Mets that basically was like any other game for all but two of Washington’s players — Strasburg, the phenom whose season was shut down last week, and Lannan, the one-time rotation stalwart now filling the gap.
Strasburg was missing the first of however many more starts he would have made this season, a decision you might have heard about. Lannan was starting his third game for the Nationals this season, but the first in which he wasn’t hopping a flight back to Syracuse afterward.
For those two, the season made a hairpin curve.
For their teammates, not so much.
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Posted on September 12th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Running quarterbacks were oxymorons in the NFL, as curious a term as “blocking offensive linemen.” Running was the nature of each back in the backfield — whether he was a quarter, half or full — until a metamorphism began about 75 years ago.
In 1936, Green Bay’s Arnie Herber became the league’s first passing leader with more than 1,000 yards. The 3,000-yard standard was reached in 1960 by Baltimore’s Johnny Unitas and Denver’s Frank Tripucka; Miami’s Dan Marino took it past 5,000 in 1984.
Along the way, the league still had quarterbacks who could run, but teams didn’t build offenses around them. If your guy could scramble and extend plays like Fran Tarkenton and Roger Staubach, or Randall Cunningham and Steve Young, great. But aside from some bootlegs, few plays are designed to take advantage of that skill set.
Coach Mike Shanahan appears to be wiser than that, based on the Washington Redskins‘ season opener at New Orleans.
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Posted on September 6th, 2012
By DERON SNYDER
Letters from team management can mean bad news for Major League Baseball fans.
Pittsburgh included some good news last month in its correspondence, instructing season-ticket holders on how to buy tickets for what would be the Pirates’ first postseason games since 1992. But the missive also mentioned, by the way, a price increase for 2013 tickets.
The Pirates need another 10 wins to assure their first winning season in two decades and they were 11/2 games out of a wild card berth entering Thursday, but at least their fans have reason to cheer.
They could be in Houston, supporting the majors’ worst team by far, which might be on the verge of signing 50-year-old Roger Clemens to pitch in a game/delay his Hall of Fame eligibility.
The Astros are so horrid (91/2 games behind the next-to-worst Chicago Cubs), Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow was led to write a long letter to season-ticket holders last month, outlining the team’s plan to return to respectability.
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