City of Pain

Having to “root” for the Celtics or the Lakers is sort of like rooting for Clay Aiken or Adam Lambert to see who takes your little brother’s anal virginity. It’s painful. Having ABC bleep out every other word because some scary black men are cursing during the heat of battle is totally un-American. And continuing to deep throat Kobe by giving him, and not Pau Gasol, the Finals MVP just shows how disgraceful the NBA really is. If I were Kobe’s wife tonight, I’d crazy glue my butt cheeks together so that psychopath doesn’t turn my anus into a manhole. And the biggest loser in all of this is me not taking the Celtics +7 tonight, which may have been the most obvious sports bet in the history of time. Fuck my life.

But like all things in this world there is a silver lining. Yes America, Adam Morrison finally got his ring. He can proudly display his championship ring right next to his streak-stained gym shorts and beard trimmer. Thousands of hours in the gym working on his NBA game finally paid off. Too bad none of his teammates wanted to hug him during the celebration because they would have gotten a nose full of fecal particles emanating from his diarrhea stache.

Kill me now.

Ghost writer Dr. Matthew Brukman submitted a rare college football piece for City of Pain. It certainly is relevant considering the completely comical state of re-alignment unfolding right now.

******************************************************************************************************************
Hi everyone, and thanks to our kind proprietors for letting me guest post.

The recent development of Nebraska moving to the increasingly misnamed Big Ten provides a choice opportunity to discuss the current college football system, how conference expansion is getting out of hand, and what (radical) structural changes might make a good remedy.

(Ironically, as a Wisconsin man, I’ve long hoped for a regular series matching Bucky and the Huskers. Unfortunately, this coming to pass is actually an omen of a major conference being stripped for parts by other leagues in their quest for TV dollars.)

It’s obvious that conferences today are too big and too unwieldy. The SEC and Big 12 are making a decent go of it, but the conference schedules are unbalanced, which is more of a problem for basketball than football. The ACC expanded both for the money and try to become a football conference. I don’t think it has been a success at the latter, while its basketball prestige has suffered. Conference USA is a joke, full stop. The Big East is too damn big to hold a proper basketball tournament. Big Ten’s expansion made sense, but now its schedules are unbalanced. The Pac 10 desperately wants to ruin a good thing.

It is not enough to halt conference expansion — the leagues must be broken into smaller pieces. The ideal size is 8 or 9 schools. Both formats allow a round-robin schedule in football (home-and-home for hoops, too) while the former offers a clean 3 round basketball tournament and a football season with no byes. The 9-school league gives each team equal numbers of home and away games and an extra game (or two) that might provide better gate revenue than a non-conference patsy opponent.

Here are some ground rules for the re-alignment process:

-Conferences must be a geographically compact as possible.

-Rivalries shall be maintained when feasible.

-All schools are in the same conference for both football and basketball if they field an FB team. If they don’t have a football team, then they are not in a conference with other basketball-only schools.

-No independents.

Onto the schedule. Each team gets 11 regularly scheduled games, meaning 3 or 4 non-league games. They can be used to keep rivalries going, play cupcakes, or a glamour game. I’d impose a rule that there cannot 2+ more home non-conference games than road games.

God intended football to be played on Thanksgiving weekend, so there will be games pitting conference champions against each other (not on neutral sites) as mini-bowl games. (Actual bowl games and the so-called National Championship is a whole other story.) There are 82 days between the first Saturday in Sept and the 4th Thursday in November. This allows starting labor day weekend, playing 11 games, taking an weekend off , and then playing while the rest of the nation sleeps off its turkey hangover.

Here is my proposed re-alingment (121 teams listed to account for S. Alabama becoming I-A in 2013).

Hating Sean Avery is no longer an option for me. Nope. The guy is officially my idol now. I can’t believe the NHL suspended him for what he said. I’m calling for a presidential pardon immediately, followed by every team in the NHL retiring his number like baseball did to Jackie Robinson. Sean, I just want to personally apologize for never liking you all of these years. You’re a little pesky bastard, the shit you pulled against Broduer in last year’s playoffs was amateur on your part, and that ESPN 360 show about you loving fashion and dressing Barbie Dolls when you were younger was…..questionable. But honestly man, you have been absolved of all of this in my eyes. Thank you. Thank you for giving me a good laugh yesterday and realizing what a true genius you really are.

I especially want to highlight the following reasons why you are officially my hero:

1. You’re already known as the most hated player in the league. That’s hard to do in the NHL considering the amount of goons and enforcers that exist on a regular basis. Some players are hated because they’re good (like Sidney Crosby, who has sex with men just like you do) and some players are hated because their annoying little fucks. I admire that.

2. You had a rule named after you (the “Avery Rule“). Not many players can say that.

3. You managed to get the Dallas Stars to somehow sign you to a 15 million dollar deal this off-season, even though they were completely aware that you are not that skilled as a player, and have major baggage. Genius. Whoever your agent is, please have him call me.

4. You are constantly in the spotlight saying and doing commendable shit. Some of my personal favorites are these that I found on Wikipedia today:

-Denis Gauthier of the Phoenix Coyotes body checked Kings forward Jeremy Roenick in a 2005 preseason game, giving Roenick a concussion. Avery’s response was “I think it was typical of most French guys in our league with a visor on, running around and playing tough and not back anything up,” generating much controversy with the French-Canadian public.

-Avery made news during the regular season when Georges Laraque of the Edmonton Oilers, a Black Canadian, claimed that Avery called him a monkey during an contest between the two teams. The incident was never proven and Avery adamantly denies it ever occurred.

-Avery and Anaheim Mighty Ducks broadcaster and former Montreal Canadiens goaltender Brian Hayward had a heated discussion in the Kings dressing room on April 7, 2006, over Hayward’s on air comments during the April 4 Kings vs Ducks game, in which he accused Avery of avoiding a fight with Ducks’ forward Todd Fedoruk. Avery began the argument by uttering that Hayward was an “embarrassment”, a “(terrible) announcer”, and was a “(terrible) player”. Hayward responded by saying “How would you know? When I played, you were in your third year of eighth grade.”

-Colin Campbell and the NHL fined Avery, Darcy Tucker, the Rangers, and the Toronto Maple Leafs for pre-game actions during warm ups before their November 10 meeting. Howard Berger of Toronto radio station CJCL The Fan 590 alleged that the reason for the altercation was a remark made by Avery concerning Jason Blake’s diagnosis with a rare form of Leukemia. However Avery denied making the comments.

Finally Sean, what you said yesterday about sloppy seconds was on a level of genius comparable to Einstein, Beethoven, and Bunny the Tap Dancer. You managed to completely call another guy out for banging your ex, you completely disparaged her in the process by making her look like some whore who has sex with hockey players, and you deflected a lot of this attention onto those two, in addition to yourself. I’m speechless. If you want to get back at an ex, there’s nothing more degrading then calling her out for being someone else’s sloppy seconds. Sean, I need more from you please. Looking at your track record I’m sure you won’t disappoint me. Don’t let me down, and thank you.

dear brett,

go away. no really. just go back to mississippi. retire. do commercials. haunt us every football game selling aftershave or bbq sauce or coors light or vicodin. because after all this bullshit, i’ve had enough of you.

as an eagles fan, this is probably a good thing because it hurts the packers no matter who the quarterback ends up being this year. you’re old and fading. aaron rodgers is young and awful. if the reid kids’ anger and heroin hadn’t distracted him from finding a punt returner last year, the eagles would have won that game, it would have changed the makeup of your entire season, and you wouldn’t have had the honor of throwing a game ending interception as the last play of your career. even then, you didn’t have to retire. just make up your mind and stick with it.

and this is also a big giant fuck you to the media. from espn to profootballtalk to cheeseheadhomos.blogspot.com, this has been the ultimate non-event. oh, he got on a plane. oh oh, he got a plane. fucking hell. there’s a war, an election, a pennant race, and $4 gas. there are actual stories in actual training camps but who cares? a washed up quarterback can’t stand being at home with his wife and kids.  but you know what? even i’m writing about it now. some members of the media have had enough of brett’s antics like don banks on si.com. and i thank them for that. only you can prevent these egomaniacs from thinking they’re special. 

so enjoy tampa or your retirement or sitting on the bench, you ass. you’ve earned every ounce of hatred from packers fan and the general sports following public. and i hope the people who can pay you money in the next phase of your life realize this. we don’t want any more brett farve.

fuck off, 

dj robbie

#1 are these two dudes.

#2 is pittsburgh vs. detroit in the stanley cup. while it should be a rather skilled affair compared to some years past, i am bitter and couldn’t be bothered. plus, i have to listen to those two assclowns who called the flyers series on versus one more time, i will eat my own hand. i’m going with pittsburgh in six because theo fleury has made an exceptional transition to a goalie as a 45 year old man.

#3 is the nba playoffs. i know david stern is one happy bastard, but seriously, the celtics, lakers, pistons and spurs is like rooting for cancer, aids, ebola, and kobe bryant…everyone loses. the hornets would have solved my problems. even the jazz for god’s sake, if only so we can mock their owner’s faith and see kyle korver again just one last time. i’m going lakers/pistons, with the lakers winning in five.

oh, and my predication for #1 is the guy sitting down.