Seahawks – Jeff Carl.com

The Inaccurate Reception

By Jeffrey Carl

Bloggers To Be Named Later, September 26 2012

Bloggers To Be Named Later was Paul Caputo’s fabulous sports-blogging empire of the mid-2010s. My role in the enterprise was to promise to write humor articles and then not do that, or at least not remotely on time. Ultimately, after a flirtation with viral Internets fame, the site basically turned into an excuse for Paul to get free baseball tickets, which is actually about the only good reason to run a blog of any sort. After the BTBNL site wound down, I realized that I hadn’t kept local copies of most of the stories I had written, so I ended up scouring through The Internet Archive to find as many as I could in order to prevent a tragic loss to the world’s cultural canon of blog posts complaining about the Seattle Mariners. You’re welcome.

Unlike other sports blogs, only BTBNL has the courage to a.) take on hot topics like the controversial call that gave the Seahawks a victory over the Packers Monday night, and b.) do it after everyone else has stopped caring and moved on to other topics. That’s the kind of quality journalism that explains why we have gotten fewer hits in the site’s entire history than pictures of Pokemons drawn as sexy Anime girls or Overly Attached Girlfriend got in the last 10 minutes.

The Fail Mary — Touchdown! Or maybe not.

It’s important to send a message not to bow to peer pressure, like everyone else in the country thinking you were wrong about it being a touchdown.

BTBNL set up an exclusive live chat session to answer questions from its literally hundreds of avid readers who do not technically exist. BTBNL Grand Poobah Paul Caputo decided that the best person to give a reasoned, unbiased response to all these reader questions was the site’s lone Seattle blogger resident/sportsfan, me. Which should tell you all you need to know about Paul Caputo’s editorial judgement.

BTBNL Blogger Jeff from Seattle: Hi everyone! Looking forward to answering your questions about the exciting Seahawks win from last night. Here we go!

BTBNL Reader Neil from Chalfont, PA: What should the NFL do after such a terrible call ruined the game by giving the Seahawks an undeserved win on an purported Hail Mary touchdown from Russell Wilson to Golden Tate that was really an interception by M.D. Jennings?

Jeff: Assface says what?

Neil: What???!?

Jeff: Exactly. Next question?

After further review, the runner did not touch second base — Look, they are working as hard as they can, so BACK OFF. Okay?

BTBNL Reader Amy from Baltimore, MD: Should Golden Tate be fined for his egregious pass interference that wasn’t called on the final play of the game?

Jeff: Only if by “egregious pass interference” you mean “unbelievable awesomeness.”

Amy: No, I don’t mean that at all.

Jeff: I’m pretty sure you do. And he shouldn’t be fined for it, he should be awarded this nation’s highest honor, the Congressional Not Being Arrested For Stealing Donuts Medal. Next question?

BTBNL Reader Branden from Atlanta, GA: We all saw the replays, and the facts are very clear about what happened. Let’s be fair and put our team affiliations aside here to discuss the issue rationally like adults. Can’t we just logically agree to the obvious statement that this call was incorrect and the Seahawks didn’t really deserve to win?

Jeff: What color is the sky on your planet? Is it green? That seems lovely.

In the spirit of compromise, I will agree that you blow goats during your free time when you are not actively assisting Al-Qaeda and/or selling crystal meth at preschools.

BTBNL Reader Greer from Mobile, AL: Shouldn’t we all be boycotting NFL games with these terrible scab replacement referees?

Jeff: I think these replacement referees are just fine.

Greer: But it was revealed recently that some of these referees actually got fired for not being good enough for the Lingerie Football League. Not that this is any kind of linkbait to get people to read this article due to a question on the LFL.

Jeff: First, I am going to say “shame on you,” and link to the Lingerie Football League website as an apology. Second, I am not going to dignify your slurs on the Lingerie Football League. That would be almost as bad as casting aspersions on the Canadian Football League cheerleaders of the British Columbia Lions. Third, I have forgotten what the original point was.

BC Lions cheerleaders — The CFL British Columbia Felions being cheerful. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that.

Also, we have a picture of the CFL British Columbia Lions “BC Felions” here, which is somehow related to something in this post about the Seahawks/Packers game. It has nothing to do with driving hits and trying to make this website profitable. Just saying.

That’s all the time we have for tonight – join us again next week when we answer nobody’s actual questions about the Philadelphia Phillies or the Washington Nationals!

Seattle Sports Insecurity and Why the NBA Is Dead To Me

By Jeffrey Carl

Bloggers To Be Named Later, February 1 2012

Seattle Skyline — Oh, your city doesn’t look like this at night? Suck it, Cleveland.

Sometimes I will tell a friend how February and March are my least favorite months of the year because there are no professional sports to watch. They will say, “but what about the NHL?” And we will both laugh and laugh and laugh.

After a few minutes of convulsive laughter, though, we pick ourselves up off the floor and they will follow up:

Friend: Seriously, what about professional basketball?

Me: I don’t think the WNBA season starts until September. Or maybe that’s the Curling Premier League.

Friend: No, I mean men’s professional basketball.

Me: I don’t know what cable package you have, but mine definitely doesn’t include the Italian-Serbian All Stars League.

Friend: No, the NBA.

Me: Who?

That’s right, the NBA has been on the official Jeff Carl Dead To Me List since July 2nd 2008 when the Seattle Supersonics officially left town to become the Oklahoma City Ford F-250 With Optional Towing Packages or the Oklahoma City Trailer Park Tornado Debris Scavengers or whatever they are now.

Please understand that this was not an ill-considered or capricious decision to add the League Who Must Not Be Named to my highly select Dead To Me List. After spending 10 years in Washington DC subjected to the “basketball” practiced by the Washington Wizards, I was already pretty disposed to stop caring about the NBA. To me, NBA players seemed like little more than a horde of spoiled prima donnas and feckless thugs who starred in terrible genie-themed movies and occasionally had NRA-sponsored gun shows in the locker room.

But the factor that pushed me over the edge to permanently “un-friend” the NBA was an issue that I call Seattle Sports Insecurity Syndrome.

Seattle sports fans have a chronic insecurity problem. Despite the facts that Seattle is the 13th largest media market in the country, a thriving technology industry growth area and inarguably the most naturally beautiful major city in the nation, its sports teams seem to be perpetual also-rans or transplant candidates.

This is due to a variety of factors. Sure, Seattle does have some disadvantages in attracting sports teams: we have one rain shower a year (it starts on November 15th and ends in late May); the looming threat of multiple nearby volcanoes seems to turn off a few timid souls; and some people get jittery after their 14th cup of coffee in the afternoon. I have even heard a local sports radio host suggest that Seattle fans don’t have the same rabid sports interest seen in other cities because “people in Seattle have actual things to do besides watching sports.” (I think he was talking about you, Cleveland.) But none of these can adequately explain how Seattle and its teams are forever outside the “cool kids club” of the professional sports world.

This first hit home for me when I was watching a Fox NFL pre-game show in 2005 and Jimmy Johnson was discussing why the Seahawks’ running back Shaun Alexander wasn’t a national media star despite the fact that he was on pace for a 2,000-yard rushing season. “I think,” said Mr. Bob’s Big Boy Hair, “that it has something to do with the fact that he plays in Southeast Alaska.” TRUE FACT.*

Bob's Big Boy — Jimmy Johnson before he lost all the weight

In fact, Seattle sports teams have an unfortunate history of frequently being on the brink of moving out of town. The first major league sports franchise in Seattle, the MLB Seattle Pilots, left town after one season in 1969 to become the Milwaukee Brewers. Their replacement, the Seattle Mariners, were almost moved to St. Petersburg Florida in 1993, before the team was sold to a Japanese ownership group led by Super Mario, the chick from Metroid and Godzilla. The Seattle Seahawks were almost moved to Los Angeles in 1996 (just like every other team in the NFL that has wanted a new stadium).

That was bad enough to give Seattle sports fans a permanent case of the relocation jitters. But then, to top it all off, in 2006 the SuperSonics were sold to an ownership group led by Tom Joad or whoever the hell lives in Oklahoma. This was especially galling since the Sonics were Seattle’s only championship-winning team.** (The city came close twice when the Mariners lost the 2001 ALCS to the Yankees and the Seahawks lost Super Bowl XL in 2006 to the referees.)

The city of Seattle had a strong case against the NBA and the Sonics’ new carpetbagger ownership for breaking their lease. But Seattle’s doofus elected officials fumbled the trial strategy, and ultimately let the team go for a $45 million lease termination payment and a vague promise from NBA commissioner David Stern that Seattle might get a team again someday once they had filled up all the long-time proven basketball markets. You know, like Toronto and Charlotte.

Mayor McCheese — Seattle’s then-mayor, Greg Nickels

Seriously, the team left for Oklahoma City. I’m sure it’s lovely there and crap like that, but… really? Oklahoma City? That’s a little like having the following conversation with your girlfriend:

Girlfriend: We have to break up, I’m leaving you for another guy.

You: What? Is it the tall blond jet fighter pilot I saw you talking with earlier?

Now Ex-Girlfriend: No… it was the guy next to him.

You: The brilliant wealthy neurosurgeon?

Ex-Girlfriend: No… the guy on the other side.

You: The little kid with a backpack?

Ex-Girlfriend: He’s not a little kid, he’s 4’2″. And that’s not a backpack, it’s a hump.

The point of all this being that until such time as the “Why Does Anyone Care What Team Juwan Howard Wants To Play For?” league returns to Seattle, they are on the official Jeff Carl Dead To Me list. Until then, I will know Kobe Bryant only as “that guy who’s in the commercials with Tom from Parks and Recreation” and February/March will be the Months Without Professional Sports.

Except for the NHL.

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* P.S. Screw you, Jimmy Johnson.

** Yes, Seattle has an actual championship-winning pro sports team, the WNBA Seattle Storm. They are awesome and deserve mad props and lots of fans, but it ruins the narrative of my rant. Go Storm.

The Belichick Inverse Likability Theorem, Part 1

By Jeffrey Carl

Bloggers To Be Named Later, January 20 2012

Bill Belichick — Pretending to make human smile DOES NOT COMPUTE

Statistics are essential to modern sports. Football coaches have situational analysis tables to help them justify “punt it on 4th and inches” calls more frequently.

Baseball has “sabermetrics,” which is an intricate mathematical system for determining results that is calculated by nerdy people who don’t have a big enough group of friends to play “Dungeons & Dragons” with.

Worldwide, soccer has all sorts of crazy crap that they do in metric units like “KiloBeckhams” or “Injury Time per Hectare.”

David Beckham — 1 GigaBeckham (938 Imperial MegaBeckhams)

Yet the NFL has always lacked a true benchmark statistic (like WAR in baseball or Remaining Teeth divided by Penalty Minutes in hockey) that can accurately predict a team’s future success.

That is why we are proud to introduce a solid, mathematically proven theory that finally takes the guesswork out of NFL success. The Belichick Inverse Likability Theorem simply states:

Not convinced? We’ll prove this theorem by examining prominent NFL coaches and their unlikability. Let’s start by looking at the 2011 NFL postseason conference championship coaches:

Tom Coughlin, New York Giants: Famous for doing things like fining players for not being five minutes early to meetings; losing the confidence of his locker room; and looking like The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns except less healthy.
Jim Harbaugh, San Francisco 49ers: Got into a fight with Pete Carroll onfield when he was with Stanford. Got into a fight with Lions coach Jim Schwartz onfield when he was with the Niners. Got into a fight with a crippled nun onfield when she asked for his autograph.
Bill Belichick, New England Patriots: Each year, sends Christmas cards to every single reporter covering the NFL that just say “F**k You.” Writes bad checks for Girl Scout Cookies and then poops on the Girl Scouts’ lawns when asked to return them. Once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
John Harbaugh, Baltimore Ravens: He actually seems like a pretty decent guy, but he gets a gratuitous +.100 unlikability added for coaching in Baltimore, and +.200 for being Jim Harbaugh’s brother.

Now let’s see where the four remaining playoff coaches stand according to the theorem:

The theorem is derived from the inverse of a well-known sports mathematical axiom, Sir Leo Durocher’s proof that “nice guys finish last.” It’s that simple – the bigger an obvious d-bag your team’s coach is, the better their record will be within a certain margin of error.

This is actual math, people! I can say this with absolute certainty since nobody’s going to bother with checking my calculations because math is boring.

But you may be saying, “but how does this theorem hold true for coaches outside the final four NFL playoff teams?” Okay, let’s flesh this out with some other carefully chosen examples based on the coach’s general likability as a person:

At this point, some of you may be saying, “why do Steve Spagnuolo and Tony Sparano get such high ratings for being likable?” Well, “Tony Sparano” sounds a lot like “Tony Soprano,” and saying bad things about him always seemed to get people killed. And the Rams performed so poorly in 2011 largely because Steve Spagnuolo was always being called away for missions as part of the SEAL Team Six that killed Osama bin Laden. But he couldn’t tell anyone about it or he would have had to kill them. True fact.

Navy SEALs — Spagnuolo is 3rd from left, next to Chuck Norris

In summary, the Belichick Inverse Likability Theorem provides us with the definitive mathematical formula for determining NFL team success or failure, replacing such irrational and illogical methods as astrology, or listening to Trent Dilfer. Next week we will apply the theorem to historical coaches to demonstrate further just how right I am.

I am not sure whether the NFL is technically qualified to just hand out Nobel Prizes for Awesome Math-Based Stuff, but I’m pretty sure they are, and if so I expect one.