The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Well, although we didn’t have Corey Dillon, Ty Law or Tyrone Poole, we (The Patriots) still looked like crap against a smart Pittsburgh team. They obviously wanted this win and let’s face it: streaks are meant to be broken. It was a great ride, and I’m looking forward to starting a new streak when the Pats come home to Buffalo (let’s face it the Rams are tough too). And I will be at the Buffalo game. The last time I went to a Pats game, they started a streak. So you never know. LOL.

My other team, the Revolution (that’s Major League Soccer) won their series today, drawing 1-1 with Columbus. You see in soccer, a playoff is on aggregate goals, so since they won 1-0 in game 1, they win on goals. Yay. Next up: DC United. The Revs always suck with DC, so here’s hoping they can come back again. Of course, the MLS issue to me is how does a team with a crappy losing record even make the playoffs? (Revs were 8-13-9 this year).

So, the Pats lost, but I won my league and the Revs won. Not bad. I’ll take it. PIT will start booking their Super Bowl rooms now, just like in 2001, and we all know how that went :).

This article over at CBS Sportsline is rather funny. I guess Curt Schilling has recorded a message for phone banks for Bush. In the message he says, “These past couple of weeks, Sox fans … trusted me when it was my turn on the mound. Now you can trust me on this: President Bush is the right leader for our country.”

On the other hand, the owners of the Red Sox were supporting Kerry today in NH. The Kerry team responded…

“Kerry spokesman David Wade reminded baseball-crazed voters that when George W. Bush was owner of the Texas Rangers he voted against creation of the wild card. The Red Sox qualified for the playoffs through the wild card.

“When legions of Sox fans go to the polls on Tuesday, they’ll remember that if George Bush had his way the Red Sox wouldn’t have ever won the World Series,” Wade said in a statement. ”

Yeah, that and the fact that he also traded Sammy Sosa. At least he can’t say he signed A-Rod. LOL

I have a confession to make. I am quite addicted to the online Madden minigame, Rushing Attack. It’s 3 on 3 football action and of course on offense, you need to get as many rushing TDs within 1 minute as possible. When you’re on defense, you have to not let the offense get a TD. It is just way too addictive. And difficult, especially when you suck at it like I do. Ugh.

As Bill mentioned, I did win my first game this week, now going to 1-4 on the season. This game was a very close one and the only reason I won was because of a missed 43 yard FG with 1:56 left. I then got the ball and kicked the decisive field goal with :07 left. Nerve racking stuff for me — not as nerve racking as politics, but still a lot of fun.

We’ve received a few complaints about the political stuff — and I’ll be honest, talking about sports games is a lot more fun than politics. I watched the Sunday morning shows and the inherent bias on these people — one way or another — is just too much. If candidate A has a poll lead over candidate B, they said “A has opened up a lead.” If candidate B is ahead, it’s “just barely or a dead heat.” Whatever. You’d think that any of these networks would learn from these polls that they are WRONG period. Most polls in 2000 had Bush ahead by 4 points on the DAY BEFORE voting. As you recall, Bush didn’t win the popular vote. So, it goes to show you that not only were the polls NOT within the margin of error, they were just flat out jokes. On the Daily Show, John Zogby said that in order to get those poll samples of 852 likely voters, they sometimes have to call more than 10,000 people! I’m one of those 9,200 that just ignore the call thanks to caller id and call intercept. I’ll make my voice known on Tuesday and I suggest you do the same.

Speaking of politics, anyone watch SNL last night? I thought the first skit was borderline offensive. The whole “I’d like to beat Teresa Kerry” thing was unfunny and offensive to me. (And yes, if they did the same thing about Laura Bush I’d say the same thing). Eminem did that anti-Bush song “Mosh,” but sang to a backing vocal (after SNL made fun of itself last week) and used a TelePromTer! I don’t know if he was just making light of the situation (he does seem to be a smart guy) or really didn’t know the words — just looked weird.

Johnny Damon on SNL was a surprise — pretty funny too, that was about it for funny on that show however…..

Okay, I’m going to play some more Rushing Attack now. BTW, time is running out on the EA Sports Buy 2 Get 1 Free offer. I was thinking about getting Tiger & FIFA but since I already have Madden and NCAA, there really isn’t another game I want for free. I hear horrible things about NHL and NBA…although the NASCAR game might be fun. If only Tiger let more than 2 players play online. Oh yeah, I’m talking about Xbox here — I already have FIFA for PC.

The Breeders’ Cup was truly bizarre. It was the usual parade of favorites and complete unknowns that took home trophies. Funny Cide ran 10th, Birdstone not much better and I saw one of the fastest 4 year old colts I have seen in a LONG time in Classic winner Ghostzapper. This is a truly special thoroughbred. He toyed with last year’c Classic winner Pleasantly Perfect and I didn’t think that was possible. Anyway, I know you probably missed it, but it was high drama for a racing fan. (But who was that horse that won the Juvenile!? American Breeders should be hiding their heads in the sand for not winning that race.) In all, a great day of racing but please get the Cup back to Kentucky where it belongs! …Mainly so I can drive to see it.

In other news…

• Dan won a game in the ESPN league! He’s off the schneid! A 13-10 thriller over Carolina. Well done, Dan.

• All three Florida teams lost yesterday for the first time since the invention of the Chia Pet. The FSU game wasn’t a surprise. That team is vastly overrated. Florida has a lame duck coach so anything they do now can’t be a shock. But Miami? North Carolina? Huh? How do you lose to North Carolina?
• Ohio State won in its usual fashion–a 21-10 win over Penn State. OSU passed 8 times mainly due to 35 MPH winds. Hard to complain though, after losing three straight earlier this year, a win is a win.
• Maybe losing to Northwestern, as OSU did earlier this year, isn’t all that bad after all? Did you see the Purdue game? Good lord…Purdue has totally collapsed.
• Way to go Michigan State. Really. Good job. Up 17 with 9 minutes to play and lose to Michigan. Kudos. Really. Golf clap.
  

Getting off sports for a moment:

As most of you know, I live in a Battleground state. During an election year this is like living in the 5th circle of Hell. That’s it. I’m moving to Montana where people apparantly don’t live.

Now that Madden’s Premium Pass Leagues are up and running, who’s interested in a League? I have setup the “BloggerLeague.” It’s 16 teams, 2 conferences and 2 divisions with each conference, total of six teams make the playoffs (4 conference leaders + 2 wild cards total). All Fair Play rules are in effect and the one house rule is no fatigue bug advantage.

Check it out here — keep in mind you do need to sign up for Premium Pass. It is free.

Oh yeah, this is Madden for Xbox.

My review of Microsoft/Sega’s OutRun 2 is up over at GameRankings, which you can view here. It’s a fun $19.99 game, but it’s now selling for $39.99. So there you go.

I did of course play GTA: San Andreas, I think I mentioned this earlier in the week but I forget. I’m very enthralled by the game. You definitely do NOT want your 3 year old near this game — not so much for the violence (hey, he’s played Call of Duty), but because of the language. Nothing more heartwarming than having the 3 year old throwing out f bombs. Makes the house very happy.

Just to follow up on Bill’s posts from a while back: I have played NBA2K5, but haven’t played NBA Live. I really like the game, but I’m not as into the NBA as I am with other sports - so it’s tough to give it a formal review. The 24/7 mode sure is fun though.

Colin McCrae Rally is still sitting here, I hope to have some quality time with that over the weekend.

FIFA 2005 PC is growing on me somewhat. I’m still pissed they don’t include the advantage rule (this isn’t hard to do folks), but the gameplay has definitely improved from the last time I played it. I’m still not sure it’s up to WE (WE has all kinds of awesome mods, I haven’t seen that from the community yet for FIFA ‘05). That being said, if you buy the 2 EA PC games you get one free, so that may make it worthwhile for you.

Oh yeah, and I’m still trying to dum…er sell Madden and NCAA for Xbox. Email me your offers. LOL.

We get a fair amount of email. Some in the form of questions, some in the form of pornography, but mostly questions. Oddly enough I get a lot of email sent directly to me home email address and not the sportsgamer Hotmail address. How you people pull that off mystifies me, but hey..I figured I’d do a global reply to some of the recent questions sent my way.

To group some of the questions: I fully realize that we have not talked at all about the NBA games that are currently out. And I also know that we didn’t talk much about the NHL games. And, yes, I know that this is still a sports gamer’s blog….technically.

The reason That I haven’t discussed NBA Live is because I’m going to review the PC version for CGM, and they have yet to send it to me. So I’m not gonna buy the Xbox version when I’ll get the PC version for free. Makes sense to me. When I get it, I’ll talk about it.

I haven’t talked about ESPN NBA 2K5 because I haven’t played it. My free game time is nil right now and I just need to get the time to play the thing. So, I guess that’s my bad.

I did talk about NHL 2005–and it sucks. It sucks more than any EA Sports hockey game in the past ten years. What more do you want me to say?

I WILL be talking a lot of ESPN College Hoops because we’re holding the Big Blog 64 Team Tourney (still time to sign up for that btw).

OK, ESPN Hockey..ya got me. I have the game. I’ve played it about ten times, and with hockey being on hiatus and the NFL in full swing as well as college football…I’m just not into the game and that’s really not the game’s fault. It’s very good. I’m just not in hockey mode, I guess.

FIFA 2005. Again, reviewing that for GSpy and I’m still waiting for a late review copy. So I’m sitting on my thumbs for that one for another week. EA has been SO slow of late sending out review copies of PC games.

My workload this fall has been broad in terms of games, so that has limited my free gam,e time with sports ga,es. I’m currently worjing on Armies of Exigo, Eastside Hockey Manager (superb game) , and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. When I get loaded down like that, sports talk on the ol’ blog suffers.

I’m sure the sports talk will get back on track in the next few weeks when I actually get time to play some sports games. I’m willing to bet serious cash that we’ll be talking ESPN College sliders to death…doesn’t that sound fun?

I know this is off the radar for most of you, but it’s the Super Bowl for horse racing fans. Make sure to at least tune in for the BC Classic tomorrow when Pleasantly Perfect, last year’s winner, faces off against Belmont winner Birdstone and last year’s Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide. If the Bird wins, I’m gonna make some cash.

Last night was “Beggar’s Night” here in Columbus. When I was a kid, almost every house took part in handing out candy. Last night I would guess that 1 out of every 5 houses were giving out treats. I took my daughter around two blocks and we came back with a paltry amount of goodies. She’s only 4, so she wasn’t that upset but I can only imagine how ticked off a 9 nine year would be.

I also noticed a TON of 14-18 year olds, walking around, without a costume, wanting candy. I got back to the house with about 30 minutes left in the 2 hour window we had for Trick or Treat. Mary went in to sort the candy with Ashley so I’m sitting there and these 4 kids come up in street clothes and with their school backpacks. The following exchange is not paraphrased:

Teen: Trick or Treat

Me: You’re kidding, right?

Teen: Naw man. Trick or Treat

Me: Where’s your costume?

Teen: Don’t have one, I’m too broke (all teens laugh)

Me: Do you have a baseball cap at home?

Teen: Uh, yeah

Me: A bat?

Teen: Sure

Me: Go home, grab a cap, a bat, and a needle

Teen: A needle?

Me: Yeah, put the cap on, sling the bat over your shoulder and tie the needle around your arm and you can be Barry Bonds. Until then, no candy. (no laughs. I thought that joke killed)

Teen: Seriously?

Me: Kid look, I love Halloween. But when you come up here without a costume it’s just me giving you candy for the hell of it.

The group walked away. They didn’t come back in the Bonds costume. But I do fear a drive by egging in my future..

I dunno about you guys, but I’m just about campaigned out. I know a lot of you can’t wait for it to end as well and I promise–once this is over the blog will be removing a lot of the political shit. It’s impossible not to talk about it now seeing as how we’re 4 days from go time. But after that, the political stuff will be toned down. This is a sports blog, after all.

I cannot wait for the election to be over and done with. This is the first time that I actually paid attention, not to the election because I always vote, but to the daily talking point grind. I fully understand now why so many people do not pay attention to the elections until October. Why bother? Trying to get a shred of honesty out of either camp is like asking a fly to eat an elephant.

And the 24 Hour News shows are the epitome of evil. Jon Stewart is right–they are hurting America. I promised myself that I would try to watch a lot of the shows at night before going to bed. I wanted to stay “in tune” to all of the political goings on. After 4 months of this, my brain hurts and it’s made me a even more grumpy than I was before. It’s not healthy. Between Dennis Miller, Crossfire, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Maher, and Aaron Brown–I can’t take it anymore. This little personal experiment has totally backfired. Instead of being an informed voter I’m a pissed off registered voter. In 2008, I SWEAR…it’s back to SportsCenter before bed. The saving grace in all of this is The Daily Show. Monday through Thursday at 11PM ET Stewart’s show is like a flashlight in a dark house. No yelling, no screaming, no finger pointing, no talking points. It just shows this entire process for what it is.

Reknown pollster John Zogby was on last night. Zogby was the lone pollster whom in 2000, predicted that Bush would win the election and lose the popular vote, which of course turned out to be the case. Zogby stated last night that he thought Kerry would win the election because (and I’m paraphrasing here) “The President’s polling numbers are low for an encumbant. He’s hit a ceiling of 48% which is in the danger zone for most Presidents. Combine that with the fact that most undecided voters break for the challenger in the final week, (as much as 2-1 in past elections) it makes Kerry’s position stronger..”

I’d also argue that the current news cycle, something else that I learned that is extremely important in all of this, is leaning against Bush. The stolen weapons, the video of said weapons, the Halliburton whistle blower, and the announced total of over 100,000 Iraq civilians dead. That’s double the number of dead at Gettysburg and almost double of the US dead in Vietnam. And these aren’t combatants. These are civilians we’re talking about. The news cycle is vicious. The Swift Boat vets had Kerry in a tailspin news cycle back in August and now the Bush camp is on its heels over all of this stuff. The problem for the President is that this is happening in late October, and not August.

I always wondered why the Swift Boat Vets started their campaign against Kerry so early. Another Zogby poll shows that the Swift Attacks are nowhere near as effective as they were in August because a lot of people know more about that group. Why not wait until October to launch that attack? I don’t get that.

Anyway, there are about a dozen polls out there and some have Bush’s approval rating as low as 43% or as high as 53%. Who to believe? Me? I don’t believe any of them. This is a major lesson I have learned from my little experiment–polls are useless to the common voter. 100% totally useless. The camps use the polls to know what to focus on when on the stump, but to you and me, they’re meaningless. Just vote for who you want and let the chips fall where they may.

Zogby’s comments are certainly reason for a Democrat or an Anti-Bush voter (and there is a difference between the two) to get excited, but in the long run what Zogby said is meaningless, as well. This race is so close that a prediction is just that–a prediction. Nothing more.

Anyway I sure can’t wait until all of this is over.

Well, come on, with less than one week to go, you know what I’m going to talk about.

On the Today show this morning, Paul Bremer, the US Administrator in Iraq, is talking about the missing explosives. Despite actual, verifiable proof from an independent news camera that the chemicals were there this guy is saying they weren’t there and that we should wait for the facts. You’ve got to be kidding me! Only people that are friends of W would, when presented with actual physical evidence, say it’s not true. He just said “it’s quite plausible that they were gone before we even got there” but they were there! How f’n stupid can you be?

This is the issue I have withthe current administration. Just keep ignoring the facts guys. Hey, guess who’s coming to town today. Yup, W. Unfortunately, even if I wanted to go, I can’t get tickets because I have to be a registered Republican and/or pledge my support to President Bush. What a great way to court those undecided voters!

Rudy G was on the Today show yesterday blaming the troops! The same guy that says Kerry is undermining the troops has sent out his cronies to blame the troops.

Oh well Bush can defend us from baby wolves, so I guess that’s one in his favor.

The Springsteen/Kerry tour continues and today in this battleground state, Bush does have a HUGE asset up his sleeve — Curt Schilling will be introducing President Bush today — after Schilling endorsed Bush yesterday on Good Morning America. It’s a huge coup for Bush. Of course, if my contract gave me an immediate $2,000,000 raise for just winning the World Series, I think I’d vote for the guy who’d cut my taxes and not raise them also :)…then again, if I wasn’t playing baseball, who would work on my ankle if I didn’t have health insurance….

UPDATE: According to MSNBC doctors have advised Mr. Schilling not to make the public appearance today due to his ailing foot. So, all those fans wanting to see Curt will now be upset he wasn’t there and will be so mad they will vote for John Kerry. LOL.

Hey, what a great day for New England. Now we can direct our attention to more pressing matters, like the fact it’s been 21 years since my Orioles last won a World Series. LOL Seriously though, if you live in New England, you have to at least be a passive Red Sox fan, and more power to them, they did the unthinkable.

So this year the Patriots won the NFL and the Red Sox won MLB. I’m surprised more people don’t hate us. Just think how it’s going to be when a New England guy wins the Presidency. LOL.

So, you’ve gotta check out the Sports Guy’s diary. I love the McCarver comments, especially the ‘ground ball out of the park’ one.

Game 4 of the World Series. I am AFK. I just cannot wait to hear more words of wisdom from Mr. McCarver. He rules. And I mean that in the “George Bush is a great leader” way. Ie Sarcasm.

I just picked up GTA: SA. Well, I have to say, it’s pretty impressive. I mean I thought it would be same old same old, but they really added some interesting RPG like elements — heck you even have to eat now and then. Although, whenever I play GTA, I still remember that Chapelle’s Show skit about him being in GTA. Now that’s funny.

So, is it worth $100 for a color ipod? I’m going to say no. Although the U2 Ipod idea is neat, but I think I’m going to pass as well.

Six more days until the election. Being in a battleground state, I am extremely thankful I have TiVo. The local news broadcast is 21 minutes of news with 9 minutes of political ads. All ads are pretty much complete BS. How about that wolves ad? I wonder if wolves could guard the weapons in Iraq, because they are so good in commercials. It’s a real shame that this will all be over soon. Well actually it won’t be because the 2008 election is only four years away!

Hey, here’s a new Eminem video. Didn’t expect him to get so political, but pretty darn interesting.