Interesting stuff from Game 6 between the Hawks and the Bucks

Lots of crazy goings on around the ESPN broadcast area at the Bradley Center:

1. A 50-year old woman dancing for the camera at an NBA playoff game? Well, this is Wisconsin, where people don cheesehead hats in public. What compels people from the Badger State to so willingly humiliate themselves?

2. Is there anything douchier than a white dude with a stubble beard wearing a basketball jersey and a backwards baseball cap? No, there isn’t.

3. Hubie Brown is still one of the sharpest analysts in the business. And his liver spots remind us that he’s still getting it done at the age of 76. SEVENTY-SIX.

Is this Notre Dame promotional video…

…making Knute Rockne spin in his grave so fast that you could hook a turbine to the coffin and light all of South Bend?:

As if this gem wasn’t good enough, Freakbass has also shown his love for the Cincinnati Reds:

Notre Dame and Cincinnati definitely have one thing in common other than Freakbass’s undying love: neither’s been relevant in years.

And to think Auburn got heat for its Tiger Prowl recruiting tour being tacky (well, that heat mostly came from Bammers). Compared to what Freakbass is putting out, Tiger Prowl is FARRRRRR from being tacky.

Is “Furry Vengeance” the new worst thing ever?

If you’ll allow me to digress for a few moments, I promise that after this rant, I’ll get back to searching for fake college basketball coaches on Facebook.

As a father of a six-month old girl, I’m very much aware that I’m on the verge of having to watch stuff that I would ordinarily avoid. I’ll have no problem with “Sesame Street,” because after all, is there any supporting cast member in the history of time better than the Count?

But there are grown men out there who turned to singing kids songs when their dreams of being the next Bono fell apart. And those men have shows that my little angel might want me to watch with her. As a Brando channeling J. Peterman said after seeing the Urban Sombrero on the cover of his catalog: “The horror….the horror…”

My wife and I don’t plan to sit her in front of the TV and leave her there, not by a long shot. But I know in coming years she’ll get wind of stuff from time to time that’ll be beyond bad, and she’ll BEG us to see it.

Which leads me right into a movie trailer I saw the other day for a family flick called “Furry Vengeance.” Little kids across the country have seen the same preview and are at this very moment begging their parents to take them. In case you missed it, your luck has run out, here it is:

If you laughed at anything you just saw, then you’re beyond reaching. As if images of Brendan Fraser splashing coffee on his face and spraying himself in the crotch with a sprinkler weren’t enough, you’re given the following gem of dialogue: “Dad, you’re building on a nature preserve…and nature’s ticked off!” Oy vey.

Not surprisingly, this movie (which opens today) is being universally panned by critics everywhere. For proof, here’s the Tomatometer:

There’s nothing funnier than reading a pissed off critic review a movie that he or she hated, so here’s a sampling of the overwhelming negative reaction to “Furry Vengeance”:

“Even calling it a family flick is to run the risk of guiding families toward it by mistake.” - Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

“Director Roger Kumble began his big-screen career with a clever Dangerous Liaisons set in high school, Cruel Intentions, and worked his way down to College Road Trip and now this.” - Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

“Normally, I try to find something good to say about each movie I review. Dear readers, I am speechless.” - Nell Minow, Beliefnet

Brendan Fraser’s never been a particularly talented actor in my opinion, and his ‘tard clap didn’t do any favors for his rep:

Fraser’s taken a page from the Rock and steered his career toward more family-oriented fare. Translation: he’s starring in one steaming pile of crap after the other. “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “Inkheart,” “Extraordinary Measures”….IMDB says he had an uncredited role in that “G.I. Joe” movie. As if I needed another excuse to avoid seeing that train wreck.

It’s not like the dude is forcing people at gunpoint to go to the multiplex and see his crapfests. No, he’s got an even better way to get men to part with their cash: get their kids or wives to coerce them. That’s a pretty slick plan right there, a plan that’s hitting a little too close to home. Don’t let the clap fool you, Brendan Fraser’s one smart dude.

Beware of fake head coaches on Facebook

High profile high school recruits are on Facebook.  Fans of the schools recruiting these kids are on Facebook.  See where this is leading?

Before the interweb became a part of our everyday lives, the slippery slope presented by social networking web sites was something that coaches and the NCAA could never have foreseen.

Let’s say a fan of State U. finds a recruit on Facebook.  The fan in question can then send the kid a friend request, just like he would to a co-worker or a chick he’s stalking.  If the fan’s request is accepted then he’s got a direct online connection to the kid.  He’s then free to beg the kid to come to his favorite school.

If you think grown men are above doing this, thing again.  The debate rages on school-specific message boards between fans who think this practice is almost as creepy as pedophilia and the fans who have no problem friending Johnny Quarterback.

But a new twist has emerged in this, one that’s both equal parts funny (well, to Kentucky fans it’s not) and creepy.

Marquis Teague’s is the hotshot junior point guard out of Indianapolis.  He narrowed his college choices down to Louisville and Kentucky, and a few weeks ago announced that he’d be attending Kentucky (well, for a year or two, anyway).

Like most teenagers today, he’s got a Facebook account.  At some point he accepted a friend request from someone who he thought was Kentucky coach John Calipari.  This exchange between the two happened about a week ago:

Yeah, that’s Teague telling who he thinks is John Calipari that he’ll gonna keep his mouth shut.  About what, who knows, but it probably involves stuff that would make Jesus Shuttlesworth blush.

That’s funny on its own, but it gets funnier.  It turns out Fake Calipari is…you guessed it…a Louisville fan.  The dude taking credit provided the following proof on Scout.com’s Louisville message board:

It seems that the culprit, who goes by the handle “2NC7FF,” was tired of having his fandom questioned and figured this would be a good way to show how much he loves his Cardinals:

I don’t think for one second that this will lead to Calipari (the real one, not 2NC7FF) or Kentucky getting into any hot water.  But it will probably serve to ratchet up the bitterness factor between two rivals that already hated each other.

The NFL needs to require that all pre-draft interviews…

….between teams and prospective players be videotaped and put on YouTube.  Where else can you get gems like Miami Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland asking wide receiver Dez Bryant whether or not the player’s mother is a prostitute?  Bryant’s answer was an emphatic “No,” but the fact that the question was even asked eventually sent Ireland backtracking:

“My job is to find out as much information as possible about a player that I’m considering drafting,” Ireland said in a statement. “Sometimes that leads to asking in-depth questions.

“Having said that, I talked to Dez Bryant and told him I used poor judgment in one of the questions I asked him. I certainly meant no disrespect and apologized to him.

“I appreciate his acceptance of that apology and I told him I wished him well as he embarks on his NFL career.” (Miami Herald)

The contracts have gotten bigger, but so have the number of draft busts.  That means NFL teams are nosier than ever in hopes of ensuring they don’t get stuck with the next first round dud.

Out here in the real world, the reality is that not everything is an employer’s business.  But there’s nothing real world about the NFL, not by a longshot.

I dug around and found nothing in regard to the NFL having guidelines regarding what can and can’t be asked during this type of interview.  So it appears to be perfectly acceptable for the Patriots to ask a player something along the lines of, “Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and your mother are inside a burning house.  You only have time to save two of them.  Which two do you save?”

It’s a crazy question, but no more crazy a question than asking where or not a dude’s mom is selling tail.  But while the invasiveness is alarming, the nature of the questions also reveals a lot bout the biases of the folks asking them.  Take the case of running back Toby Gerhart.

He ran for 1,871 yards and 27 touchdowns in a BCS conference last season.  I don’t care if it was the Pac-10 or not, 27 touchdowns is still 27 friggin’ touchdowns.  At the Combine he posted a 4.53 in the 40, which is faster than Emmitt Smith ran back when he participated in the NFL’s cattle call.

But Toby Gerhart happens to be white.  Some scouts and GM’s tried to downplay his talents by calling his running style too upright and writing him off as another T.J. Duckett.  That’s all well and good, but Duckett (who as any NFL fan knows happens to be black) was the 18th pick of the draft by the Falcons back in 2002.

If the two are so comparable, why did Gerhart last until the 51st pick of the draft that just concluded?  I realize no two drafts are the same, there are different trends and team needs that dictate where players are selected.  But did race play a factor in Gerhart dropping that low?

Thankfully, we’ve got a pre-draft interview to confirm that race was very much on the mind of some NFL teams when assessing Gerhart.

“One team I interviewed with asked me about being a white running back,” Gerhart says. “They asked if it made me feel entitled, or like I felt I was a poster child for white running backs. I said, ‘No, I’m just out there playing ball. I don’t think about that.’ I didn’t really know what to say.” (Yahoo! Sports)

In a Fortune 500 company, a manager would lose his or her job for asking a white interviewee if he or she felt “entitled” by their race.  But questions like that appear to be par for the course in the League.

It actually gets better, because there’s also the case of Myron Rolle.  He’s the Florida State defensive back who graduated in light speed and then skipped his senior season to become a Rhodes Scholar.  I’ll let Clay Travis of NFL Fanhouse explain how some NFL teams viewed Rolle’s actions:

Welcome to the 21st century NFL, where your commitment to the game doesn’t get questioned if you fail multiple drug tests, drive drunk or rape a woman. But woe unto you if you have the audacity to graduate early from college and take a year off to pursue a Rhodes Scholarship. Then you’re a smart guy, the NFL’s own version of the untouchable caste in India. That’s why the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, including head coach Raheem Morris, could ask Rolle at the Senior Bowl how it felt to desert his teammates for his senior season.

Wow, just wow.  Rumors about your family can throw up a red flag.  Your skin color can throw up a red flag.  And it would appear that being too smart will do the same thing.

After being labeled a deserter, Rolle dropped all the way to the 6th round before the Titans scooped him up.  I hope the guy doesn’t ever appear on a celebrity edition of “Jeopardy” during his playing career, the NFL might just flat out blackball him over it.

Roger Goddell seems hellbent on making examples out of players who embarrass the league, and for that he can be commended.  But what about teams that don’t hesitate to humiliate the players they intend to draft?  I guess they get a free pass.

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