Weekly Sporties

-When the Red Sox made last weekend's massive, salary-dumping trade in an effort to hit the franchise equivalent of a reset button, I had hoped it would signal the change of more than just a few players. I had kind of hoped that the smear campaigns of people leaving the organization which had been a staple over the last couple of years were also heading out the door. And for a couple days we looked in the clear, as there were no stories in the Herald about how awful Nick Punto was to the clubhouse staff. But a couple days later there was an extensive article in, of all place, "Forbes" magazine, detailing how over-rated former general manager Theo Epstein really was. The article pointed out that Theo won the first World Series with a lot of inherited players, the second World Series was keyed by Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell (two players acquired the first time Theo quit for a couple weeks) and now he should not be blameless for the current state of the Red Sox. Much this offseason's Boston Globe article ripping Terry Francona to shreds, the only thing missing was a picture of the bullet points on "From the Desk of the Boston Red Sox" stationary. (At least Sox management is changing up their preferred media outlets.) Look, I'm not saying Epstein in blameless in the current Red Sox situation and if I was Sox ownership I would me pissed at him as well. But, airing your grievances in this manner is not going to help right the ship - it's just going to make the team look petty in the eyes of potential free agents. Not saying they won't come here, just saying it's going to cost the team more to convince them (baseball players are nothing if not whores). But if we start seeing articles about Adrian Gonzalez in "National Geographic" than no amount of money is going to convince them to come to Boston, so the organization needs to knock this stuff off.

-Ironically, while the only team I pay attention to in the American League is having its worse season in a decade, the only team I follow in the National League is having its best season ever. The Washington Nationals are running away with their division, and unlike the last time this happened when they were still the Montreal Expos, there is no looming strike to take it away from them. However, that does not mean it will be smooth sailing into the postseason. Less than a full season removed from Tommy John surgery, ace Stephen Strasburg is on an innings limit because the team doesn't want to over-extend his arm and get him hurt again. The problem is that Stasburg is rapidly running out of innings. He will only be able to make 2 or 3 more starts before the doctors plan to shut him down for the remainder of the year, which means he won't pitch at all in the playoffs. Reportedly, Strasburg isn't happy and neither are his teammates but team management is holding firm, saying they are not risking Strasburg's long-term potential for one year, confident they will come back next year and be even better. In some ways, the Nationals ownership saying they want to protect Stephen from himself is kind of admirable. However, there is no guarantee they will be in this position ever again. Sure, the Nationals look like a team built for many years of success, but you can never tell when injuries might come into play. Hell, in baseball everyone can be healthy and the season can still go to hell (see: the 2011 Red Sox). You need to take advantage of these opportunities when they happen. I know Washington has a lot of money riding on the kid, but at some point you just have to say damn the torpedoes. I think for the Nationals, that time is now.

-In an interview which ran early in the week, former Notre Dame player and current Fighting Irish radio host Allen Pinkett contended that the way for the program to get back to competing for National Championships was to lower it's standards a little. Specifically, Pinkett said Notre Dame "needs more criminals" on their roster. Now, football is a violent sport which is not exactly filled with nice people, so you can kind of understand where Pinkett is coming from. Nice guys may not always finish last, but they certainly aren't playing in BCS bowl games come January. However, the university is never going to lower its standards just for football. I remain convinced there are people in the administration who will be perfectly happy if the team churns out 8 or 9 win seasons and goes to fairly major bowl but never again contends for a National Championship because that will keep them from being branded as a 'football school'. They simply want to think they hold themselves to a higher standard than everyone else. (You can debate about how true it is some other time.) That "higher standard" lead to Pinkett being suspended for this morning's game against Navy and he was not allowed to travel with the team to Dublin. If it makes him feel any better, he is the fourth person suspended and left at home - one player for team rules and two more who were arrested for under-age drinking and running from police. Something tells me those weren't the kind of criminal acts Pinkett was talking about, but I guess you could consider them a start.

-If you want to dispute Pinkett's "criminals make better football players" argument you probably don't have to look much further than Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant. Bryant has had a couple run-ins with the police since being drafted and was recently charged with assaulting his mom, though she doesn't want to press charges. In response, the Cowboys have hit Bryant with a few rules: specifically no alcohol, no strip clubs and he has a curfew. To make sure he follows these rules the Cowboys have hired a three-man security team to follow Bryant around at all times. Look, I admire what the Cowboys are trying to do here: they think this kid could be great and they don't want him to squander his talent. (Let's never get this twisted though - this is for the Cowboys benefit more than for Bryant's. The kid helps them win games. If he was a bench warmer he would have been cut months ago, so let's not ever pretend that the Cowboys are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts.) Still, I think it is a waste of time by Dallas. The simple truth is that Bryant needs to learn to stand on his own two feet or he will never succeed. He is one good season away from a massive contract which would set him and several generations up for life. If that fact can't motivate him to get to bed at a reasonable hour and stop breaking the law than nothing will. The fact that the Cowboys have imposed such stiff rules show they think he is too unreliable to trust and you can't win with unreliable players, no matter how talented they may be.

-Still, even with the legal issues hanging over Bryant's head, it looks like he will play more football this year than the Jacksonville Jaguars' Maurice Jones-Drew. Jones-Drew is looking for a new contract from the team and if the Jaguars aren't going to give it to him, he wants to be traded to a team which will. In the mean time he has stayed away from Jacksonville. The Jags say they have no intention of giving MJD a new deal because he has two years left on his current contract and they also have no intentions of trading him, so the holdout looks like it will drag into the regular season. Now, the Jags have a new owner and I understand he is probably hesitant to cave to a player's demands because that will make every player think they can get their way if they just hold out. However, in this case I would consider trading Jones-Drew if I were them. I know he is the Jaguars most popular player, but that really isn't saying much. Also, he is a running back, which may be the most easily-replaced position in football. If anything that should motivate them to strike while the iron is hot, before some random player picked in the 6th round runs for 1,200 yards and reminds people that the era of the stud runner is over. Lastly, it is not like Jones-Drew is going to lead them to the promise land. They haven't been winning with him, I'm sure they can continue not-winning without him, only then they may have some high draft picks to use in the future. Stubborn can be good, but only to a point and the Jags may be at that point. If they don't believe me, they can call just south to the Orlando Magic and see how well getting into a staring contest with their disgruntled star worked out for them.

-Late Thursday afternoon, "SportsCenter" came with the breaking news that tennis player Andy Roddick will be retiring as soon as he is eliminated from this year's US Open. Now, you'll have to count me among those who never really understood the attention heaped on Roddick. Part of that comes from just not being a large tennis fan. But I do know he was the highest-ranked American tennis player and that has to count for something. However, he only won a single major in his career - a number which leads him far down on the list of greatest tennis players (so far down he's not even in the discussion, really). Honestly, he may have been more famous for the constant string of beautiful women he dated instead of his actual playing ability. In that respect I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he announced his retirement while he was still playing - a move which will make sure he gets all sorts of fanfare when he eventually loses to some unknown player two round earlier than he should. Why else make an announcement like that unless you want some sympathy applause? You can make the case that Roddick just had the bad luck of coming up in the same era as all-time greats Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Well, if it was just a case of bad timing than Roddick was at least consistent, as he announced his retirement the same day that college football was set to return, which means ESPN was only going to care for about an hour and then the games were going to start. In my opinion that was more tennis coverage than I cared for anyway.

-Last week I told you about how Virginia Beach was trying to position itself as the future landing site for the current Sacramento Kings, who are having issues with their stadium and the city. When all the Kings relocation rumors started about two years ago I remember being kind of shocked, because when the Kings were on their run in the early 2000s, their home-court advantage was as good as any stadium in the league. The fans would show up early and be loud the entire game, so I was bummed that anyone would want to take their 'beloved' Kings away from them. However, there was a story this week which made me realize that maybe they weren't so beloved after all. Apparently, the company the team had hired to run its online store had gone out of business suddenly and without warning. That left the Kings in the unusual position of not having an online store and they haven't replaced it since the middle of June. While that's bad, the worse part is that no one really noticed until now. To be fair, Kings fans could still get their merchandise through the official NBA store, but in this day and age of online marketing and hyper-awareness concerning a company's online presence it is unbelievable to think they could go this long and not have anyone bring it up before now. Virginia Beach said one of its best selling points was that the Kings would have the town to themselves. Well, they have Sacramento to themselves now and that hasn't stopped them from fading to near-irrelevance. It just goes to show you: it doesn't really matter where you play, it is how you play that determines how packed your building is.