The Blog for the Sports Gamer

1. Okay, our league of pre-selected teams is filling up. Can you tell me how to add friends in NFL2k5 without actually entering their gamertag? Can you just select a name in the league and add them as a friend, or is that just stupid?

2. NHL2K5 is impressive through one game. Graphics aren’t as perfect as I hoped, but play by play is awesome and gameplay is better. I scored 2 goals in my first game, so perfect goalies are not in this game this year, well based on one game at least.

3. Can someone tell the reviewer at IGN that Papryus did not make NASCAR Heat? Thanks.

Time to go watch scrubs.

As mentioned in the comments section, I totally forgot about the hockey World Cup which is on ESPN 2 tonight. Thanks for the comment post, I totally missed it. Like, totally.

Especially since this is probably the only time you’ll see NHL caliber hockey, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Here in New England, hockey is quite the pasttime, probably running second to Canada. Even our “AAA” league hockey teams are quite the draws in attendance. In addition to AAA hockey, we also have NCAA College Hockey, which probably runs with such ferver as NCAA football does in South Carolina or Ohio.

Hey, that reminds me, why can’t we get a college hockey videogame? Hello??

Speaking of more hockey,. I now have ESPN NHL 2K5. You knew I was going to get it. I haven’t opened the shrinkwrap yet, but I’ll be sure and post my thoughts. Just be forewarned, when it comes to my forte on reviewing sports videogames, hockey is probably at the bottom of the games I’m familiar with. In fact, let’s go over Dan’s sports list now in order of videogame preference:

1. Soccer

2. Golf

3. Baseball

4. Football

5. NASCAR or other Racing games, excluding F1

6. Hockey

7. Wrestling

8. EXTREME RACING GAMES!

7. Basketball

There. I think that’ s all of the genres that actually count.

Tonight is the season premiere of Scrubs, by far the best comedy on network TV. Check this one out at 9:25:02 PM Eastern Time. (Damn NBC. Schedule it on the half-hour).

*** Warning: Post may contain politics-like substance ***

At 10PM tonight the Republican Convention is on the networks. I strongly encourage everyone to check it out, just to be able to make a more informed decision. I mean, you guys already know my slant, but I still check out what the ‘other team’ is doing. Sometimes, you might even agree. Most of the time, my blood boils, but whatever.

One of the best places to watch the conventions is C-SPAN. While I love The Daily Show and Fox News for the great comedic talking heads they provide, C-SPAN is totally unadulterated and what you see at MSG is what you get. Highly recommended.

*** End of Politics Like Substance **

OK guys we have all 32 teams and we’re ready to go. I emailed those that left addresses but if you did not receive an email from me about the league setup, please drop me a line at

sportsgamer@hotmail.com

I specifically need to hear from:

Shamrock: Cincy

scasmflop: SF

Jayhawker: Lions

Sean: Oakland

League Rules will be posted shortly.

Thanks for all your comments in the online game rentals. I have chosen another online rental place closer to home while keeping my GameFly account open. I’ll let you know how it goes, and if I do like it (or dislike it) I will be sure and let you know!

As Bill mentioned, we are very close to setting this league up. I’m crossing my fingers that it will go a little smoother this time around. I have dissolved the original league, because we’re starting this new one.

In other news, the Mrs. is a grade one teacher. She’s back to work this week — school starts for kids tomorrow (Wed). Needless to say, she’s just a tad stressed. Of course, in our city, these teachers do not have a contract and the city is out of money, but we’ll save that for my political rant. In addition to her stress level, my daughter is going to first grade this year (not the same class, of course) and although she’s getting up early all summer, this week she has yet to wake up in the morning before 7 AM. Of course, she won’t go to bed until 10pm, and last night all the kids (2 of them) hopped into bed with us. Funny how that works. Heh. Heh.

*** Political Rants *** (move on if you’re not a fan)

Well, day one of the convention is over. Let’s party like it’s 2001, because this group can’t seem to get their mindset out of it. I really felt bad for John McCain — you could see him talk up there, but the words were just not delivered with the same emotion that I’ve come to expect.

I wil be the first to admit, watching this convention makes me cringe. My local TV station had their own interview with President Bush. The Fox news like bias showed their head as the anchor asked the President about all the ‘personal attacks’ on him. Of course, with that degree in journalism, we forgot all about asking questions about Swift Boats. Whatever.

I have received some email saying when the election is over, what’s going to happen to my rants. Well, one of two things: I will either be really pissed off — but if I am, I hope that a true majority has voted for you know who. Or #2, I will be happy that one guy got laid off as is deservedly so, but I will wonder what the hell will happen with that guy. So either way, I’m still going to be bitchy. Aren’t you excited?

** End of Rant **

**Arizona is the last team available!**



Come on there HAS to be a Cards fan out there…somewhere.

Yep we’re gonna try again and this time you can get a chance to play me…so how can you possibly turn down that chance? You can tell your grandkids that you destroyed Abner in a video game! And with me playing with Cleveland…that’s more than a likely scenario.

OK, seriously, we’re gonna try again and I think this league will have a few more players. If you signed up for the earlier league, please let us know if you want to play again either by emailing us or by commenting on this thread. I want to try to make sure that those that were in the old league that folded will get a team in this one. I can’t set up the league right now because ESPN videogames is down, so the league setup section isn’t working. But we’ll get it going ASAP.

You will be required to play one game per WEEK so if you can’t handle that schedule, don’t sign up.

If your team of choice is gone, tough..I’m using the BROWNS for crying out loud. Suck it up!

In an earlier post, I mentioned my venom because the game gave a victory to a team that’s owner had dropped out of the league.

Apparently when server maintenance is done at night, the game checks this out, says WTF and then fixes it. This morning when I checked the league, the “nouser” teams now both had a loss which was different than what happened when I hit ‘determine winner’ in the league. So I take that back about ESPN — it does do this right.

Anyone watch MTV last night and the Video Music Awards? What a freak show. I think I am now officially ‘too old for MTV’.

Well, it’s Monday. I did quite a bit of what I wanted to do over the weekend, which is good. I could have always done more. LOL.

Our current NFL2K5 league fizzled out..I’m still trying to finish it, but we’re not sure what’s going on. We may try a new league. I tried awarding wins to the people who didn’t drop out, but apparently the game assigns a winner. One guy actually lost to a guy that’s not in the league anymore. Bizarre.

I’m warning you right now. This week is the Republican convention. I will likely explode about many things, and I’m going to vent right here. Like they do with Olympic results on the news, I will warn you ahead of time. If you hate the rants, move on…otherwise, enjoy.

***POLITICAL RANT***

The President, interviewed in TIME magazine, called Iraq a “Catastrophic Success.” I just saw the President on the Today show. He was in Ohio. I think he went over to Bill’s place. Just kidding.

The funniest thing I heard on the news was John Edwards coming out and saying “Like most Americans, I have no idea what the President means” in regards to the ‘catastrophic success’ line. By far it was the funniest thing I have ever seen in this election so far. I think Edwards was trying not to laugh — either at the quote or the question. I’m sure pro-Bush people will make him come across as smug and condescending and people will be mad. No one seems to be mad that our current President is a complete idiot when it comes to the English language. No one seems to be mad that under a ‘conservative’ we have filled up our credit cards to the tune of $477,000,000,000 and counting and we will have to pay this off some time — either through higher taxes or less services. Oh yeah, and for all that hatred of Clinton, what was the deficit at the end of his term? Zero.

** End of Political rant ***

Today is the league deadline for week 1 games. Right now 4 teams have yet to play their games. I have one guy who hasn’t even added someone to the friends list. I need to hear from the 4 guys yet to play to see what is up. If I don’t hear from you by Monday, you will be dropped and forfeit. Thanks for playing!

I’m an Ohio State fan and alumni. I bleed scarlet and gray and really could care less about every other college team on the planet. But I watched every single play of the USC/VTech game last night like it was the National Title game. I thought USC did what they had to do to win–and in football the best team always wins, but hoo boy that PI call sure was a momentum changer, wasn’t it?

MAN…it’s good to have college football back. The Bucks play UC on Saturday and I will be there, and for every other OSU home game this year, so if weekly Buckeye ramblings really annoy you, well, I suggest not reading the blog on Saturday or Sunday this fall. I’m so pumped and excited that I can hardly stand it. USUALLY I’m able to relieve some if this anxiety by playing NCAA 200x, but, well, this year is the exception. I expect a 9-3 season for OSU this year, so we’ll see how it pans out. I’d really like to switch schedules with West Virginia, though.

Is that allowed?

I live an die with OSU on Saturday, and then I torture myself on Sunday with the Browns. No one, and I mean no one thinks Cleveland will win more than 6 games in 2004, but I’m surprisingly optimistic about our chances for a winning season. If you have watched or at least paid attention to the Browns preseason games, you’ll note that they can do one thing that they have not been able to do since returning to the league in 1999:

The Browns can run the football.

I haven’t seen this in Cleveland since the glory days of Mack and Byner. Lee Suggs and William Green have combined to average 8.1 yards per carry in the preseason. Yes, 8.1 per carry. Last night Green raced 42 yards down the sideline on the 1st string KC defense and on the next play Suggs went 28 yards for a TD. Lee Suggs isn’t a fluke, folks. He went in the 4th round because of injury concerns but I’d hope everyone remembers just how good he was at VTech. Suggs can flat out play and Willie Green is finally looking like the back we drafted in the first round. So if you can run the ball, you have a chance to win. If Garcia stays toegther, and we keep running like this, combined with Winslow opening up the middle of the field…who knows? If the Browns defense picks it up..the AFC North isn’t a very tough division..so you just never know.

That said, Sunday night and maybe into Monday will be Browns ramblings. Just a warning. Of course with all of the sports games being released this fall, there will be plenty of things to talk about; I don’t want to give you guys the impression this is turning into a Buckeye/Browns/Dan’s Politics blog. But the blog will be theraputic to me during the football season, especially when and if we lose.

Just in case you didn’t know, Blockbuster now does video rentals online. I wish they’d do video games. My biggest complaint about GameFly is that since they are on the West Coast and I’m on the East Coast, it seems to take about a week to get the game. I never had any luck with Red Octane. I like GameFly because they have very good availability and a wide selection of games. Do you use an online rental service for games or movies? Which one(s), why do you use them and what’s your opinion?

Just finished watching Meet The Press. You know what? I bet Republicans and Democrats could probably agree — Hillary Clinton would be a better candidate for President. Republicans would say yes, becuase they’d figure they’d trash her, and Democrats would be happy becuase she seems to be able to articulate. Right now we have John Kerry, a guy who takes 30 minutes to give a one word answer and then George Bush, who doesn’t even remember the question 3 seconds after it was asked. I don’t agree with all of Hillary’s positions, but you have to say, at least she made a case for it and wasn’t wishy washy.

In other news, as I type this I’m listening to my Ipod through my Altec Lansing InMotion speakers. You won’t mistake it for a Bose waveradio, but still it’s pretty awesome for such a small package. I was wondering why the price had dropped over $50 on this unit in the past month — it turns out Altec has made newer speakers now with a remote control. Nice idea, but aside from pause and volume, I think it might be tough to see what song you’ll be playing from across the room.

I see that Madden 2005 for the PC has been pushed back. No idea why, or what the deal is. I hope the graphics will look good on a GeForce 6800. .

I just did my GameFly GameQ update as I often do on Sunday mornings (I go through the paper, look at all the game releases and Netflix DVD movie releases and add them to my queue). The big new releases show up in September – December. In my queue alone, there are 10 games that are releasing between 9/1 and 9/10. That will keep some people busy!

After watching Kill Bill Vol 1 (thanks NetFlix), I then flipped to the end of the Patriots-Panthers game. Adam V missed a 56 yard field goal, so Carolina won, 20-17. Boy, the fans were going so crazy, you’d think it meant something. Give me a Super Bowl ring over a meaningless preseason game any day.

However, I’m worried. Pats are 1-2 right now in the preseason. Granted, it doesn’t really matter, it doesn’t count. I remember the Pats went 4-0 one time, and then went 1-15 or something back in the early 90s.

Meanwhile, the Orioles have lost their umpteenth game in a row. Talk about sad. I think I now know what the Oriole way is: have Angelos sell the team to someone who cares, since all he seems to care about is who’s moving from Montreal to Virginia.

Okay, I’m going to bed.

ESPN 2 is showing “ESPN College Football Behind the Scenes.” Wow. I had no idea how much work went into a game. They are using multiple cameras and showing multiple screens — one game is always what you are seeing on ESPN 1. One is the director and the screens change throughout. You can see the sideline reporter going around, you see what the commentators do when they aren’ actually on camera. Cool stuff. Watch it now!