Weekly Sporties

-They may have cut it close, but early Sunday morning the NHL players and owners reached an agreement to save the hockey season. Annoyingly, the deal they agreed to is essentially the one all the experts told them they would reach back in August, making the three months of lost games feel even more pointless. But, at least they weren't stupid enough to totally kill the season, which should be seen as progress. The deal should be ratified shortly and after a quick training camp the season will get started with each team playing 48 games - something I kind of think is an improvement. (Honestly, both the NHL and NBA could stand to lose a few regular season games.) Now they have to figure out a way to get the fans to come back as well. A lot of hockey experts have been on TV all week, lamenting how hockey is never going to get back many of the fans they lost during their third lockout in less than 20 years, but I have to disagree. I actually don't think it will be very hard to get back to pre-lockout levels because the diehards are just going to be happy to have hockey back (that is what makes them diehards) and the league won't lose many casual fans because the season will be coming back at roughly the same time as the NFL season will be ending, which is pretty much when casual fans start paying attention to hockey anyway. The really casual fans won't even know the difference. As long as the players are back into form by the time the playoffs start (because playoff hockey is the best thing ever), they'll do just fine. Still, the better news may be that this labor agreement is for at least 7 years, so this will be the last lockout for a while. After the NFL and NBA dealt with them last year even the casual fans are sick of lockouts.

-If you have read this blog before you know that I get rather annoyed at the pious way baseball's Hall of Fame voters take their election process so seriously. No one has asked them to be the guardians of the gate, yet they implement all sorts of rules that they made up to add an unwarranted level of importance to the whole affair. That is why in a year in which suspected steroid users Barry Bonds', Roger Clemens' and Sammy Sosa's names came up on the ballot for the first time it was hardly a shock that no one was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame for the first time since 1996. Former Houston Astros infielder Craig Biggio came the closest, falling 39 votes short of enshrinement, mostly because it was also his first year on the ballot and while most people think he is worthy of the Hall, many baseball writers didn't feel he was a first-ballot Hall of Famer (again, a distinction which is only important in their minds). I think the most annoying part of this story is that it is not going away, because it is not like the next crop of players eligible for the Hall are going to be a bunch of saints. Thanks to a decade of turning a blind eye to inflated power numbers, MLB is reaping what it sowed and this issue is going to continue for many years to come (it probably wasn't a coincidence that just one day after no one was elected to the Hall MLB announced they had reached an agreement with the players union to begin random blood tests for HGH). That same blind eye style of reporting is why I think the best idea I heard all week was the one which suggested that certain baseball writers should be banned from voting as well, considering all this cheating was going on underneath their noses and it was never reported. After all, if baseball writers want to treat this place as a cathedral instead of a museum than the people in charge of allowing membership should be held to the same standard as the players they are judging. Let's see how righteous those members are when their voting rights get threatened. Suddenly I bet those standards will get a lot looser.

-Last Monday's BCS Championship (the result of which we will not be discussing) was the next-to-last of its kind. What I mean by that is starting with the 2014 season college football will adopt a (sort of) playoff system, with four teams playing for the title over two weeks. The only thing which will remain of the BCS system is that they will use a computer to pick the teams and rotate the bowls through various sites. Currently, reports have the leader in the clubhouse to get the first crack at college football's version of the Super Bowl as the Cotton Bowl, played at Jerry Jones' mammoth stadium in Dallas. Normally this wouldn't be worthy of a mention, except I find it interesting because the Cotton Bowl wasn't in the BCS Bowl rotation, which has only included the Sugar, Orange, Rose and Fiesta Bowls, with one of those sites holding the National Championship game a week after hosting their regular bowl. The BCS had always said the number of bowls eligible to hold quarterfinal games would expand once the playoffs were in place but I just assumed they would keep it in the family, so to speak, at least for the first game. Jerry Jones had previously tried to buy the Cotton Bowl a place at the table, especially when Fiesta Bowl officials got into some trouble a couple of years back, but had been unsuccessful. I guess he finally named the right price. I have to say, I think this is kind of refreshing. Honestly, the whole thing is a money grab by BCS officials who saw that there was more money to be had in a playoff that with the current system, so why not completely tear the cover off by selling the Championship Game to the highest bidder, which I think we all knew was going to be Jerry Jones? I think we're one step closer to the NCAA finally being exposed as the money-grabbing enterprise we all know it really is. It may forever destroy the idea of amateur student-athletes, but at least we'll get a good game out of it.

-The only good part about Monday's disappointing game was that a very entertaining game between the Knicks and Celtics was going on as a distraction. As so often happens, Celtic forward Kevin Garnett got into a heated conversation with a player on the opposing team, in this case Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony. Reportedly, during the exchange KG said something about Carmelo's wife. Now, I happen to think moms, wives and kids should be left out of trash talk, so this is one of those moments which makes KG occasionally hard to root for. But, since the Celtics won and Carmelo was ineffective down the stretch of the game as whatever KG said got into his head, you can't really argue with Garnett's methods. 95% of the time this sort of talk is forgotten after the final buzzer. However, apparently Carmelo wasn't done talking and went to go confront Kevin, first in the Celtics locker room and then by the team bus, where he was eventually restrained by Madison Square Garden security and NYPD. A couple days later Melo was suspended for a game. I have to say if I were a Knicks fan this would have me worried. Like I said, this is KG's move and it is not exactly a new one - he's been doing this since he got into the league - and Carmelo is hardly a rookie. He has been in the league long enough that by now he should be able to ignore anything any player says, yet this is not the first time he has appeared to have been discombobulated by some trash talk. After their rookie year a lot of people were wondering if Carmelo wouldn't end up having a better career than LeBron James. You'll notice no one wonders that now. The Knicks got off to a hot start this season but have really cooled as of late and this kind of reactionary behavior makes me question whether or not Carmelo will be able to keep the Knicks together. Even the biggest Anthony supporter has to admit that it is hard to lead a team from the bench in street clothes.

-After months of flirting with Virginia Beach and any other place which appeared willing to offer them a new stadium, this week a story surfaced that the Sacramento Kings are on the verge of being sold to a group of investors who will move the team to Seattle to replace the departed SuperSonics. Since Seattle is one of my favorite cities I was pleased at this news, but couldn't be too pleased because the franchise is being stolen from Sacramento the same way the Sonics were stolen from Seattle and two wrongs don't make a right. In fact, given that Seattle still had the Mariners and Seahawks while the Kings are the only professional team in Sacramento, this theft actually feels worse (I know the Kings came from Kansas City, but that happened when I was 5 so my sympathy can only go back so far and extend to so many cities.) The fact that the Maloof family will be selling the franchise has to sting even more for Kings fans. Every NBA fan knew the Maloofs ran out of money several years ago and the product on the court suffered as a result. For Kings fans finding out they had finally agreed to stop killing the franchise by selling, but had sold it to a group who is planning to move the team is like quitting your job the same day you find out the terrible boss who made you hate it so much was getting fired. I would have loved to see what owners who were willing to spend could have done with such a loyal fanbase, because I think they could have gotten the Kings back to being relevant. Now those Sacramento fans may be forced to watch their team come together in another city, which is tortuous for any sports fan. Still, I guess it could be worse - they could root for the Charlotte Bobcats.

-Last week I mentioned Black Monday, during which 7 NFL head coaches and 2 General Managers were fired. I neglected to mention the the Jaguars had fired their General Manager as well, but that was because it technically happened before Black Monday. But what was even more confusing about the Jaguars situation was that while they were cleaning out the front office, they kept the head coach who had been picked by all the people just deemed to be horrible at their jobs. It seems logical that any new GM was going to want to hire his own coach, so keeping the current guy felt like a waste of time. Turns out I was right about that one, because just a couple days after the Jaguars hired David Caldwell to be their new GM, he fired head coach Mike Mularkey. Mularkey had gone 2-14 in his first season and you could easily argue he inherited a bad team and never got the chance to turn it around. However, it is also possible that ownership had seen enough to feel like he was never going to turn it around and if you know a situation is broken there is no need to let it linger. The far more stunning revelation was when Caldwell said there was no way he could see Tim Tebow on the Jaguars next year. This is in stark contrast to a few weeks ago when everyone thought Tim was a lock to return to Florida. Personally, I feel like Caldwell needs to rethink this position. Everyone knows the Jaguars stink and are not going to get any better for a few years. Adding Tebow at least makes them interesting and considering the shaky fanbase in that area, they need all the help they can get. I've said this before, but some moves you make to win games and some moves you make to win fans. When you haven't had a winning record in 5 years, you need to do anything which will bring eyeballs to your team. Tebow would have the highest-selling jersey in the NFL even if he never sees the field. If you're the Jacksonville Jaguars that may be the best victory you are going to have next season.

-You won't find many people who are willing to admit this, but last weekend's slate of NFL games were largely boring. The matchups either featured teams with slim hopes for championships, backup quarterbacks or overwhelmed rookies. Even the game most people were looking forward to, featuring dynamic rookies Russell Wilson of Seattle and Robert Griffin III, was slightly deflated early when Griffin appeared to tweak his already injured knee before having all the air escape the balloon when his knee gave out on him completely late in the contest. Now, a lot of people are question whether Redskins coach Mike Shanahan should have allowed Griffin to play as long as he did, leading to the old "hurt vs injured" debate that football people have all the time. (Hurt you can tough it out, injured you can not.) A lot of people are giving their opinions despite not knowing all the facts, which is nothing new in Washington, DC. Most of those opinions appear to side with Shanahan, saying you should leave it in the hands of the players because they know best. I say the exact opposite. Players are always going to want to be out there, regardless of how hurt they are and sometimes they feel like they have to say they want to be out there, even when they don't. Watching the game I couldn't help but compare Shanahan to Grady Little, who famously left Pedro Martinez in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS even though the whole world could see he was cooked. Legend has it that Martinez told Little he could still go but did it while vigorously shaking his head no. Sometimes being a coach means being partly psychic and Shanahan got this one wrong in the worst possible way, because it looks like Griffin is going to miss a chunk of next season. Now, I'm not saying Shanahan needs to lose his job over this like Little did, but maybe he should spend his offseason taking a couple classes on reading body language.