March Blandness

With the biggest Viking news of the last week being the Vikings' quizzical choices to retain the services of Naufahu Tahi and give Cedric Griffin bajillions of dollars in a multi-year deal (which I think is not actually that bad a deal since they don't seem to have much else to do with their cap money), I haven't exactly been inspired to make the next great blog post lately. So, in lieu of actual good writing, research, and journalistic integrity, I'm just going to make fun of people.

It could be worse. I could tell you about my fantasy baseball team again.

* First Gus Frerotte said he would have won the Vikings' playoff game against the Eagles, and now 41-year-old Jeff George says he would have led the Vikings to the Super Bowl. I'm not the world's biggest Tarvaris Jackson fan, but what does it mean when quarterbacks 15 years older than you say they're better than you? Other than the fact that senelity is setting in early for Mr. George.

This just in: Fran Tarkenton, Tommy Kramer, and Joe Kapp have all announced that they could have led the Vikings to the Super Bowl last year. Wade Wilson could not be reached for comment.

* Ray Edwards' $221,322 bonus actually breaks down like this:

+$421,322 for playing time
+$50,000 for that crushing hit on Jeff Garcia
-$250,000 for his ridiculous claim that he would break Michael Strahan's sack record

* So I've been spending some of my days counting autograph cards for Press Pass Inc. (as outlined before). In addition to the normal signatures, players are encouraged to include a few "inscriptions," or signatures with added messages, like "Go (insert team name)" or a nickname or, in one guy's case, a Bible verse.

I counted BJ Raji's cards last week. Raji played for the Boston College Eagles and is projected to be a top 10 pick. But either he should have spent more time in the classroom and less time on the practice field, or the Eagles have an in-joke among their players because his inscription was:

"Sore Eagles"

A comment on this blog post says Raji scored an 8 (out of a possible 50) on his Wonderlic test. If true, I agree with the commenter that I'd love to see him drafted by the Packers.

* I like hockey. Really, I do. But these ratings are poo. I remember reading an article in Sports Illustrated back in 1993 about how hockey was surpassing basketball as the nation's #3 team sport, behind football and baseball. Yeah, about that...

* Ow. Ow ow ow. If that were Shaq, though, he probably would have shattered the entire backboard.

* Not really making fun of this guy, except in a kinda "How on earth do you do that?" way, but I saw pro bowler Jason Belmonte this weekend on TV. He uses two hands. And apparently it works for him.

More places to waste time

Since I'm still not seeing much happening out of training camp (other than Tarvaris Jackson looking shaky, which isn't news at all), I've decided instead to take another look 'round the blog-o-sphere (with Smell-o-Vision!) and see what everyone else is talking about, as well as adding a few new sites to my link list:

* MVN.com has a host of blogs for all kinds of sports teams out there, and the Vikings War Cry part of the site can be found here. Or, if you're feeling brave, you can see how the other side lives.

* In the "Girls like to blog, too" category, there are two very pink sites, one touting the Minnesota Vikings and another displaying a near-unhealthy love of the Minnesota Wild. I'm not intimidated by the estrogen-laced competition, but I do fear the day my mom gets a blog. I nearly had a heart attack when she first e-mailed me.

* As long as you remember that I'm your favorite Jason, feel free to check out another Jason's Minnesota Vikings Thoughts.

* Finally, I might have to change my layout soon, because fanofred's Nachos Grande just looks too cool.

Polls show NFL still #1; NBA falling

Firstly, check out Luft Krigare's post regarding the Jared Allen-to-the-Vikings deal and why it may not happen. The source may be a touch questionable, but it makes it look like a deal is now rather unlikely. I really can't get behind the "nuclear option" of giving up two first-round picks, but a first and a second wouldn't trouble me too greatly. With all the free agents the team has signed, and figuring that Allen would at least be as good as any first-rounder we might get, then the team would essentially only be "losing" a second-round pick, for which the additions of Bernard Berrian, Madieu Williams, and Thomas Tapeh, I think, serve as fair compensation.

Anyway, on to what I actually planned to write about. I recently referenced an old post that itself referenced a Harris Interactive poll that laid out the most popular NFL teams in a 2007 poll. Harris Interactive now has several 2008 polls available for perusing, and while many are interesting (and not sports-related), I thought I'd bring up the February 5 poll about which sport is the most popular among Americans and its interesting findings.

Not surprisingly, pro football ranks #1 overall, with a wide margin over the #2 sport, pro baseball. Despite taking its lumps from the strike, steroids, and competitive imbalance, baseball still remains high in the public rankings, though other sports have certainly narrowed the gap. For 2008, college football ranks third and just behind that is auto racing, which presumably encompasses both NASCAR and open-wheel sports.

After those four, it's not even close. Auto racing is listed as the favorite sport of 10% of poll respondents; next up is, perhaps suprisingly, hockey at 5%, followed by men's pro basketball, college basketball, and golf, each at 4%. Keep in mind that the poll was conducted online, meaning that Internet access was required. It could be theorized that inner-city blacks, who would be far more likely to vote for basketball over hockey or golf, were underrepresented, and therefore basketball should be higher than its perceived ranking.

Regardless, basketball has definitely taken a precipitous tumble since the mid-'90s, when Michael Jordan ruled. The sport was a solid third, behind the NFL and MLB, until 2004. Jordan retired after the 2003 season, and the new crop of Lebron James and Dwyane Wade haven't done enough to return the sport to its glory days. Considering that basketball wasn't much better in 1985 (6%) and 1989 (7%) might mean that Jordan and other stars of the '90s produced more of an aberration in the rankings than what should be perceived as the norm.

Another supposedly transcendental athlete, Tiger Woods, hasn't appeared to do much to boost men's golf in the rankings. Since he turned pro in 1996, the rankings for golf (starting in 1997) have been 6%, 4%, 4%, 5%, 4%, 4%, 4%, and 4%. And, for all its troubles, hockey seems to be doing surprisingly well, even if the poll data is slightly skewed, as mentioned above. Soccer, at 2%, is as dead as it ever was, while boxing, whom really, really old people like Bert Sugar, seem to think is still relevant, checks in at 1% -- lower than bowling. If I had any one suggestion for future polls, it would be for Harris to include mixed martial arts among its response choices, if it's not already present.

Below the main charts, you can find subcharts detailing how the top four sports rate with individual demographics. Most are fairly easy to understand: Auto racing is popular with conservative Southerners (and unpopular with Hispanics and college grads), while college football rates well with college grads and Southerners. Some of the data are unusual, though, and deserve comment:

* College football rates poorly with African Americans. There's no lack of blacks on college-football teams, so this might be the financial divide that prevents many African Americans from entering college in the first place.

* Conversely, while college grads like college football, they're not so keen on pro football, and neither are post-grad students.

* Baseball, thought to be the most conservative and resistant to change of all the major sports, looks to have its chart flip-flopped. Among its proponents: Easterners, the relatively young (30-39), and Democrats, most of whom could fall under the blanket of "liberals." It's detractors: Southerners, Republicans, and senior citizens (65 and older), which generally fit the bill of "conservative." I guess rock themes in ballparks and endless Yanks-Sox coverage has finally had an effect.

Of course, any survey can be made to say practically anything, but these numbers still paint an interesting picture of American's preferences when it comes to sports. And the next time your buddy tries to tell you that MLS is catching on, tell him that it's on equal footing with horse racing and bowling. Hopefully, that'll shut him up.

No argument

I've always been mystified by the different ways the four major sports leagues (and, for the moment, I'll include the NHL) handle arguments with their officials. In one sport, there's virtually no consequence. In another, it can get you a penalty. And in one of the four sports, the officials themselves conduct themselves in a very unofficial way when faced with a boisterous arguer.

That sport, of course, is baseball, where roaring, screaming confrontations between managers, players, and umpires are, if not altogether commonplace, accepted and tolerated. It is also, interestingly, the only of the four sports where an ejection does not include any kind of in-game penalty, apart from the removal of the player or manager. In hockey, an ejection usually includes penalty minutes, in basketball technical fouls, and in football a 15-yard penalty. Yet perhaps it's simply the ubiquity of the ejection in baseball and its acceptance that precludes any other foul being levied against the ejected person's team.

At this point, proponents of Bobby Cox will come up (probably out of the dugout, screaming) with the notion that a good manager will get himself ejected rather than let one of his players argue to the point of being ejected. This, to me, smacks of a "can't leave the bench" kind of excuse. You might remember Game 4 of the Suns-Spurs series a few years ago when Robert Horry decked Steve Nash and several players were suspended for Game 5 for leaving the bench. Many of the talking heads the next day were griping that the penalty shouldn't have been so harsh, that the players "couldn't help themselves" for leaving the bench.

Of course, in hockey, leaving the bench for a fight now results in a heavy fine and likely suspension, which is why you don't see full-ice brawls any more. Somehow, hockey players are able to contain themselves while basketball players, at least in this one instance, were not. Go figure. If, say, a baseball manager of player faced a 10-game suspension for being ejected, I'd imagine they'd find a way to hold their tongues.

My point in all this is to question why baseball players are unable to avoid ejection to the point that their manager needs to fall on the ejection grenade and get himself tossed rather than let his star player go. On the one hand, baseball has probably more "unwritten rules" than any other sport, and players always believe themselves to be in the right. ("We never throw at the other guys, but you better believe that guy was throwing at our guy.") Umpire-manager arguments are a way of life in baseball, an indelible part of its history (and histrionics) and, while they do serve a purpose, maybe a manager would be better off telling his players to shut up once in a while.

Then again, I also think the umpires, trained by years of thinking themselves invulnerable and immune to criticism and possessing a remarkable ego, welcome such confrontations, knowing that they have the full authority in the situation. While players in the other three sports usually limit their beefs with officials to the occasional dirty glare or eye roll, the coaches definitely pick up the slack. The vision of Mike Ditka, or any other NFL coach, screaming at a side judge who stoically tunes him out, is as easy to visualize as Lou Piniella getting tossed after his calming drink of bottled water.

So why is it that the non-baseball officials don't fight back? Sure, they'll talk back to the coach sometimes, perhaps even argue their point or try to forcefully explain their decision, but you never get into anything like the classic chest-bumping, dirt-kicking, verbal war you get in baseball (and certainly nothing like this). Why do baseball umpires lower themselves to the level of their foes? Years of zero accountability probably have something to do with it, and, like fighting in hockey, it's probably just one of baseball's little eccentricities that will never be changed.