Super Bowl Buzz Kill: Raiders

Do you think your team is going to the Super Bowl? Ha. Your team sucks. Why put yourself through the aggravation every year? The Hater Nation is here to bring you back to reality with the award-winning series, The Super Bowl Buzz Kill.

Why your team won’t win the Super Bowl: Oakland Raiders.


You're analog players in a digital world. – Roman Nagel (Eddie Izzard), Ocean’s 13.

Nothing seems to describe the Raiders better than that. Al Davis continues to run the Raiders like he’s competing for Super Bowl 3, instead of Super Bowl 43. Some great football minds such as Joe Gibbs and Bill Parcells had to admit that they could no longer compete in the modern NFL. Davis is defiant, insisting that things can be done the Raiders way. You almost can envision Davis, sitting in a bathrobe, hunched over his Commodore 64, trying to figure out how log on to the internet.

Of course, that cord is plugged into a banana instead of the outlet in the wall. And much like that outdated computer, the Raiders don’t have much hope of working, either.

The Raiders way is no longer commitment to excellence. It's a commitment to the 1970s. If the Raiders were a Simpsons character, they would be Disco Stu. And Disco Stu says only four wins for you. But when compared to the Raiders most recent records, four wins is a high-point.

The most amazing thing about the Raiders is this: there are annually bad teams in the league. The Lions. The Cardinals. The Bengals.

None of them seem to care. Mike Brown probably doesn't care if the Bengals ever make the Super Bowl again. Hell, given that their two attempts ended so badly, he probably doesn’t want to experience that again.

Even the fans of the Bengals don’t care. They just don’t want their players to get arrested or change their names anymore. If the Lions or Cardinals had fans, they probably wouldn’t care either.

Raiders fans care. They are delusional, too. Raiders fans made their predictions here. Most picked a winning season. Some predicted a losing season. Only one person predicted a realistic 3-13 mark, but he was going for the reverse jinx.

But nobody wants to win more than Davis. Winning consumes him. The Raiders long streak of futility in the wake of Super Bowl 37 has to be killing him. Among other things.

Davis has now gone on tilt. Davis won a number of championships serving as a halfway house of near-do-wells and other trouble makers in the NFL. The only problem was, guys like Ted Hendricks and Lyle Alzado were immensely talented and committed to winning.

Do you think Javon Walker is committed to winning? Is DeAngelo Hall committed to anything other than running his mouth? Walker nearly retired during the summer, but Davis had to convince him to stay. (Does anybody wonder how that conversation went?) Hall is one of the most overrated cornerbacks in the NFL. Opposing quarterbacks are going to be picking on him, thanks to Nnamdi Asomugha being lined up on the opposite side. Sorry DeAngelo, you can’t line up against Steve Smith every week.

But let’s pretend – like Raiders fans tend to do – that Walker and Hall have great seasons. Maybe JaMarcus Russell gets it. Maybe Darren McFadden is the second coming of Tom Cable. And hell, maybe the defense is as impressive as it was two years ago.

That’s a lot of ifs. Much like the number of cons that the Ocean 11’s had to pull off to win. Even if everything goes well for the Raiders, there’s Lane Kiffin standing on the sidelines.

The only reason he still has a job is that he didn’t want to walk away from his guaranteed contract. He’s just a place holder until they can get Dennis Green in there.

Watching the Raiders extend it’s playoff boycott may not be funny to you, but it sure as hell ain’t sad.


THE GOODELL SCALE
(The odds of your team winning the Super Bowl, based on 1-to-5 Goodells. One being worst, five being best.)



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Monday's Links

I'm here late after being at the office all day. I've been also dealing with the phone company which has been very unresponsive to my requests to correct the problem. In fact, I'll out the company, Broadview Networks. This company plays games, drops your phone call and does not call back after it makes promises to do so. After restoring my phone service, it actually crossed my fax line into my main phone line and pushed my main phone line into line #2. And I have no idea where line #2 is. This is just tremendous work by Broadview Networks. Don't ever use this company.

Now, onto the links for this Monday.

Let's start with a bunch of stuff from the great Sports Business Journal.

John Ourand chronicles how the Big Ten Network managed to make deals with Time Warner Cable, Mediacom and Charter Communications this season.

Terry Lefton says Bank of America has apparently won the rights for sponsorship at the new Yankee Stadium.

Terry writes that T-Mobile has re-upped with the NBA as a sponsor for three more years.

Terry also writes that NFL Commish Roger Goodell is worried about reduced revenues for the league.

Eric Fisher says AOL Sports will undergo a site redesign to highlight its FanHouse blog.

Jon Show writes that the PGA Tour is in its second of year of adding parties and other peripheral events to its Fall Series tournaments in an attempt to attract more fans.

My thanks to the SBJ for opening up links to its site every week. It's much appreciated.

USA Today's Michael Hiestand says Brett Favre's debut with the New York Jets could not have gone any better for CBS.

Paul J. Gough of the Hollywood Reporter says Sunday Night Football won the night for NBC.

CBS says the overnight ratings for its regional NFL action yesterday highlighted by Jets-Dolphins were the highest since the network returned to the league in 1999.

The New York Post's Phil Mushnick goes after CBS for not showing both US Open men's semifinals live on Saturday even though they were being played simultaneously.

The Sports Media Watch says ratings for the U.S. Open's women's finals were up over last year. The SMW says ratings for Fox NFL Sunday and NBC's Football Night in America were down from last year. And the blog has a look at the ratings for the three NFL Sunday networks.

CNBC's Darren Rovell applauds the changes that the Women's Tennis Association will undertake for the offseason. Darren tells us why you probably won't see a "Chad Ocho Cinco" jersey this season. And Darren says despite Tom Brady being lost for the entire season, Las Vegas still gives the Patriots good odds at winning the Super Bowl.

Pete Dougherty of the Albany Times Union lists the college football games that will be seen in the New York Capital Region this weekend.

Ray Frager of the Baltimore Sun notices that CBS' Kevin Harlan gives credit to offensive linemen for their blocks. And Ray liked one addition to the NBC Sunday Night Football scoreline.

Christopher Byrne of the Eye on Sports Media blog wonders why ESPN did not bother to show "The Hurdle" from Saturday's Central Michigan-Georgia game. Here it is, by the way:



Tom Jones of the St. Petersburg Times looks back at the weekend in TV sports.

Jeffrey Flanagan of the Kansas City Star talked with CBS' Dan Dierdorf before yesterday's Chiefs-Pats game.

Dusty Saunders of the Rocky Mountain News hopes ESPN will practice what it has preached about this season of.

R. Thomas Umstead of Multichannel News says DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket PPV package has several improvements including more games in HD.

Tom Hoffarth of the Los Angeles Daily News gives his Top 10 Moments in LA Dodger history.

John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable says MASN has picked up some carriage deals in Virginia and North Carolina, but none of them with Time Warner Cable.

Ben Grossman of Broadcasting & Cable says reports of Lance Armstrong returning to the Tour de France next year could be a boost for Versus.

Jon Lafayette from TV Week says Versus has hired a new executive to be in charge of digital media.

Multichannel News says to celebrate its 10th anniversary, NBA TV will allow the fans to vote for what games they want to watch on Tuesday nights. I like this idea.

Being a big Beatles fan, this comes as good news to me and anyone who has Sirius Satellite Radio. Ryan Saghir of the Orbitcast blog says Sirius will begin airing the excellent "Breakfast with the Beatles" program starting this weekend.

That will do it for tonight. I hope my phone issues are over by tomorrow.
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Talk Talk: Michael Phelps, Neil Patrick Harris, Ne-Yo

Filed under: Late Night, TV Royalty, Programming, Celebrities, Talk Show, Reality-Free

Here's who's on the late night talk shows tonight.

• Charlie Rose: a discussion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• The Daily Show: Senator Evan Bayh (repeat)
• The Colbert Report: Doris Kearns Goodwin and Susan Eisenhower (repeat)
• The Late Show with David Letterman: Keira Knightley and Thomas L. Friedman
  
• Jay Leno: Michael Phelps, J.B. Smoove, Akon, and Kardinal Offishall
  
• Jimmy Kimmel Live: Don Cheadle, Emma Stone, and (repeat)
  
• Tavis Smiley: President Jimmy Carter and Ne-Yo
  
• Late Night with Conan O'Brien: Howie Mandel, Nastia Liukin, and Bon Iver
  
• The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Neil Patrick Harris and Sophia Myles
  
• Last Call with Carson Daly: Penn & Teller and Katy Perry (repeat)

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Lost Local Angles

It happens sometimes. Things fall through the cracks.

Especially when staffs are being downsized as such an extreme rate. So the version of the daily TV Eye column meant to be sent to other papers on the wire (can you imagine? Other papers use it) was the one run in the Courant, which is meant to point out more of the local references.

Today there were a half dozen of them; half were about where you could see new daytime shows, which local stations put on without any promotion or certainly any notice to the press; the others were of more local interest.

Such as the three guys from Connecticut - Rob Lavasseur from East Hartford, Dan Olowski from Woodbridge and Nick Manciero from Bethany who got to hang out with "American Idol" runner-up turned country star Kellie Pickler, who was one of three hosts of tonight's: Country's Night to Rock" on ABC.

We also noticed that the Oscar-nominated documentary about a beauty pageant in a Colombian women's prison, "La Corona," premiering on HBO Latino tonight, is from a Wesleyan grad, Isabel Vega.

Finally, there was a regional shout-out, too, to Rachal Maddow, the Northamptonite turned talk show host turned newest star of primetime MSNBC. Let's hope things work better there than they do sometimes here.

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Evan Tanner’s Body Found Dead in the Palo Verde Desert

According to a close friend of Evan Tanner, who spoke exclusively with MMAJunkie.com, the body that was found at a Palo Verde Desert camp site this week is in fact that of 37 year old UFC veteran Evan Tanner.

ivpressonline.com had released details of Tanner’s possible death earlier in the day.

“Authorities have not confirmed if the body is that of missing mixed martial arts fighter, Evan Tanner, who had fought in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Tanner, 37, has been missing since last weekend. Tanner’s friends from Oceanside, where Tanner resides, had been texting him without reply since Wednesday before they reported him missing on Friday. On Sunday, a campsite was discovered in the Clapp Springs area of the Palo Verde mountains. Tanner’s motorcycle was found at the campsite. A body was found today when a sheriffs deputy was flying around the general location of the campsite. The Imperial County deputy coroner is being flown in to retrieve and identify body.”

Ironically Tanner’s own words came back to haunt him. These are the words of Evan on August 18, 2008, before his excursion into the Palo Verde desert.

“I plan on going so deep into the desert, that any failure of my equipment, could cost me my life.”

Tanner, an avid hiker and thrill seeker, has been very open in the past with his adventures, chronicling the good and the bad on his personal blog. Evan recently made a return to the octagon after a serious battle with alcohol that consumed a good part of his life.

After a long and lustrious career in the UFC, Tanner’s return in March of 2008 brought him disappointment in the form of two back to back losses to Yushin Okami and most recently Kendall Grove at The TUF Finale in June.

After his loss in June, Tanner decided to take some time off and nurse some injuries that had been plaguing him for the past few years. He obviously returned to the desert for another one of his trademark excursions that was intended to be somewhat of a spiritual journey.

In the end it was a spiritual journey that carried one of MMA’s elite up to the heavens. Rest in peace Evan Tanner.

Stay tuned for more details as they become available.

Related Posts

• Evan Tanner vs Kendall Grove at TUF7 Finale

Everyone Knows this is Nowhere/God is not a Walnut

Tomorrow the world ends. Tomorrow the CERN Large Hadron Collider fires up and in man's insane and greedy quest to find the hadron, or "God Particle" he will unleash the very forces of a furious subatomic hellstorm and create, at first, tiny black holes but they will soon, in less time than the flutter of a biolectrical spark ennervating a heartbeat, coalesce into a giant black hole that will suck the world as we know it into a vast and cold dead nothingness.

One moment you will be sitting at your desk typing some email to someone else you work with and the next moment there will only be a frigid black sky full of stars and space dust where you once sat.

I don't know if anyone's made one but I'd like a CERN clock on my computer so I can count the seconds until my doom. I'm unsure why I want this, because in some ways events as horrible as the end of the earth as we know it are best delivered by surprise. Sometimes I think, while driving fast across the state, that if I'm going to die in a thudding explosive crash with a semi, I totally don't want to see it coming.

But the Collider is different. Man is committing global suicide by trying to further science when, in fact, there may very well be a reason the Hadron is a God Particle and has never been seen. And to try to muscle God can bring no good results. God is not a walnut.

Would you use a Collider doomsday countdown clock on your home or work computer or do you prefer not to know when the CERN Large Hadron Collider kills us all? Should we just all phone in sick tomorrow and hug our loved ones close in the last moments of earth and just skip those work meetings or dentist appointments?

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