I’m getting excited about Oscar vs. Floyd! As with most sporting events of this magnitude that I end up looking forward to for a long time, I’ve made a point to ignore all press/hype/predictions/etc…with boxing especially, the whole ‘there’s bad blood between the two camps’ narrative doesn’t interest me anymore. I fully understand the business necessity of doing it like that, to get the hoopleheads interested, hopefully a bunch of them that don’t even like boxing. The epitome of this, as far as my lifetime is concerned, was Holmes-Cooney, when the Rappaport brothers did and said everything they could to draw out every possible wallet owned by a racist they could. It worked. Though reality took over shortly after the bell rung, with Holmes at the top of his game, doing his thing…years later he remarked on the whole thing in depth, though my all time favorite quote wasn’t about how his one fight with a white challenger yada yada, but this: “Once that bell rings, all that bullshit goes out the window. It’s just you and me, you can’t call the cops.”
I’m getting carried away here, as this was supposed to be a quick hit in the midst of a school break and my brain definitely preferred writing about boxing as opposed to the software testing paper I’ve got to get back to work on…the real reason I wanted to set-up by mentioning Oscar and Floyd, was because it’s on HBO. Here are some of my other favorite fights from that channel. Let me know which one you think is the best one. I’m partial to this first one, but my namesake’s role in all of it probably has something to do with it: Read More
I think what it all came down to was one in-depth expose too few for Ladainian Tomlinson this past week. He’s got the Walter Peyton hill in his back yard and had the entire NFL color squad from coast to coast (minus the Boston area) shouting out the kind of thoughtful endorsements that would prompt even Deion Sanders to turn the volume down on his television prior to gameday. But of course it’s not about the quality of the first expose or whether the ego remains chubby by the last one. Shawn Merriman’s shriveled testes could absolutely agree with the notion that in the end, the San Diego Chargers simply could not garner enough praise leading up to this game, and for my money the blame for their losing falls squarely on the shoulders of Boomer Esiason. One commentator had the audacity to suggest that the Chargers wouldn’t win this one going away, and once word that everyone in the entire sporting press wasn’t backing them made its way into the huddle prior to kickoff, in my mind their collective psyche was rattled. 
I cannot understand what it is about coaches in this league sometimes, how they figure to surprise their opposition by playing away from the defined strengths and
weaknesses of the two teams on the field, making haste with calls that need not be made, and ultimately directing a team that could run the ball for most of the second half (being down by no more than 6-9 points throughout most of it) to instead take to the air like their namesake and attempt to peck out the eyes of the hayseed stampede down below, rather than simply punching out their teeth the old fashioned way. Billick comes out of halftime and on the first posession it’s three and out, all three plays are passes. They get the ball back and again he’s telling McNair and the offense to do what they’re not good at doing, and for some reason not realizing that every time you drop back to pass, you voluntarily play to the Colts strength on defense. 
During a game the football field isn’t occupied by 22 players who all have the chance to cash in on statistics quite like the two or three corners who are out there on a given play. Besides the left tackle position and worthy quarterbacks, first-string veteran cornerbacks earn more per year than most players on any team. There are plenty of them going here or there each offseason, but the “shut-down” cornerbacks in this league are few and far between. What results of course is maximum 7 year contracts with signing bonus cash entering the player’s bank account in 5 million dollar chunks or more on the first day of training camp. Asante Samuel has his eyes on just that heading into the divisional round of the playoffs.
