All the Bounty of the Saints

You nearly murdered that guy! Pound it!

You might be surprised, but I'm completely OK with this bounty program Gregg Williams has seemingly had wherever he's coached. Mainly because I know that this kind of thing is just a part of sports and has been for a long time. Yes, putting up as much as $50,000 in a season is a lucrative amount of compensation, but players in every sport in the world have been encouraged to injure opposing players since the beginning of time.

For the uninitiated: An NFL investigation found that New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and 22-27 defensive players contributed to a bounty program rewarding the injuring of opposition players. Sometimes specific players, often quarterbacks, were targeted. "Knock outs" paid out at $1000 each, while "cart-offs" paid out at $1500.

Why The Ultimate Fighter is the most significant reality series ever

"You're gonna get hit!/You're gonna get knocked
out!/You're gonna feel it/This is the ultimate!"
- actual lyrics to the theme song

There are a few things you should know about me if we were going to hang out and be friends, or even if you were going to enter into a business relationship with me. One of those things is that I'll really enjoy being your friend or working with you. Another one of those things is that I HATE REALITY TELEVISION AND WANT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH IT WHATSO-FUCKING-EVER.

That is not to say that there aren't some reality shows I've watched in the past. I watched the first season of Survivor (Gervis got robbed!) back when the entire genre was still a novelty. I watched the first season of Jersey Shore to see what all the fuss was about, only to find the fuss as actually about other peoples' fuss in New Jersey. And as the title of the post indicates, I watch The Ultimate Fighter (hereafter referred to as TUF). As a genre, though, I think Reality is slightly below the average youtube video in terms of artistic merit.

Despite this, I was watching a rerun of TUF and was thinking "man, I actually still watch this show, dozens of seasons in (they do two a year, like Survivor)." Does that make it the greatest reality show in TV history by default? Absolutely, yes. But here are some other reasons it's the best and/or most significant reality show ever.

Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down That Fourth Wall

This is where talking to the camera gets you. Everywhere.

Is it just me, or have characters on TV noticed that we're watching them (usually without pants on)? I'm talking about the fourth wall, and I'm talking about how the modern sitcom seems to have done away with it entirely.

Full disclosure: for the purposes of this post I will be using the TVTropes entry on Breaking the Fourth Wall for my definition of the device.

Rich People Who Need Drivers: Another DUI Story

I picked this picture of McDonald only because I think terezowens.com is the 

funniest thing ever. 

After an unforgettable season for the San Francisco 49ers' defense, the off-season thus far has been one that the organization would likely rather forget. On Jan. 28, rookie Pro-Bowl  defensive end/linebacker Aldon Smith finished up his record-setting season by getting arrested on suspicion of driving while under the influence. Yesterday (Wednesday, Feb. 9), Smith's defensive line-mate was arrested after a traffic stop on a warrant connected to his 2010 DUI arrest.

There is more to the story than the SF Chronicle reported, according to SBNation. They reported McDonald had been arrested due to confusion within the DA's office. That 2010 DUI arrest has already been handled, with McDonald convicted and made to complete a mandatory first-offenders class. The warrant that got McDonald arrested on Wednesday morning was issued in August of 2011 because had not provided proof that he had completed the class. After a few hours at a police station in Sunnyvale, McDonald appears to have worked this out, telling CSN Bay Area's Matt Maiocco that he had completed the class and submitted proof.

It appears to be a clerical error.

That does not mean that the story didn't out. It did, and splash headlines across the internet and in local print media read something like "49ers McDonald Arrested on DUI Warrant." Those headlines weren't false, just missing some bits of the story. Most outlets have issued updates to include the more detailed info about the warrant.

With one notable exception: the San Francisco Chronicle, the Bay Area's leading daily newspaper, does not appear to have published anything with the new information. That's not the only reason the 49ers PR department should be scrambling right now.

Google Ray McDonald. Here, I did it for you. A quick glance at the headlines?

The class? Mentioned twice. The mistake behind the warrant: Mentioned never.

Not only is the apparently erroneous nature of the warrant not mentioned, but the far more exciting (and infinitely more misleading) "Another San Francisco 49ers Defensive Player Arrested" is written in multiple forms.

You can practically hear the pants tightening around the giant erections that the local media is getting from this story. It's really no big story, but they can splash those kind of headlines across their site/paper and get hits/sell ads without committing libel. By doing this, they have created a feeling of "Oh shit, here we go again" among 49ers fans when they see the headlines. The newspapers feel the same way about it as fans, except with a different inflection. It's more like...

Oh shit! Here we go again! Yaaay!

And since most people only read the headlines or the first paragraph of what pops up on their RSS feeds (I don't know how people get news now. Projected onto their eyelids? Either way they don't pay attention after a few seconds of any given story.), what do you think the topic of discussion around the water coolers of San Francisco is? Certainly not the inherent issues presented by a legal system that can accidentally issue an arrest warrant. 

In Defense of Josh Hamilton: From One Addict to Another

This is how I imagined I looked when I played ball as a kid.

The sporting world's collective imagination was captured in a way only sports truly can capture it. Here was a former crackhead, heroine-addict and alcoholic, now on national TV on one of the biggest stages in baseball, absolutely tearing it up. Even people who didn't care about sports tuned in by the end of it, as the story that couldn't have been better if it were scripted entered its second act. Here was the sweetest and most effortless swing I'd seen since Ken Griffey Jr. was in his prime. Here was Josh Hamilton, hitting 28 of the 38 balls he swung at out of the yard at the 2008 Home Run Derby at the old Yankee Stadium. Here was the best story in sports.

Josh Hamilton was the best story in sports, but today, I think you'd find many people are unimpressed with Josh Hamilton. In fact, many are worried this is the end of his story. And here I am, to tell those people to shut up and leave him the fuck alone.

NFL Hall of Fame Snubs

I may be biased when it comes to Tim Brown, my favorite
Raider ever but I believe his numbers speak for themselves. 

Nothing gets the discussion going quite like the Hall of Fame virtues of active or recently retired players. Besides winning a championship, the ultimate individual goal in ANY sport is to be inducted into that sport's Hall of Fame. Recently the NFL inducted 6 players into the Hall of Fame, and as I was looking down the list, I realized two things. First, this was the first class of inductees that featured exclusively players I'd watched as a kid and second, the guys who got in were, with a few exceptions, not really superstars. So I looked into it further to see who the finalists were for this year's class and was horrified to find who the selection committee had left off.

Here is a list of all of the finalists, with the bolded names representing those who actually got in.

Eli Is the Best Manning

Suck it, big bro.

People straight up chuckled last off-season when Eli Manning said he thought he was an elite quarterback. The discussion wasn't "who are the elite quarterback's in the NFL," it was "Isn't that Eli so cute? He thinks he's as good as his brother and Tom Brady." Well, guys, he is. In fact, Eli is already a more successful NFL quarterback than his brother, the better-than-great Peyton Manning. And he's only 31.

Look, no one is going to tell you that Eli is more gifted than Peyton. Peyton possesses arguably the greatest football mind of all time, and one of the best arms of the modern era. But this is the NFL, where success is measured in wins, and more importantly Super Bowl wins, and Eli has gone two-for-two.

Dan Marino is without a doubt one of the five most gifted quarterbacks of all time, but he never won a Super Bowl, so he's not in that best quarterback of all time discussion. That discussion is Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Otto Graham and John Elway. Why? Because Montana has four rings, Brady three, Graham won 8 NFL championships (pre-Super Bowl era) and Elway won two and lead his team to five in his career. Even Brett Favre tends to get left out of that discussion despite holding most of the records a quarterback can, because he only won the big game once.  I don't neccessarily think that's how it should be, because a football game is won or lost by the team, not by one guy, even if that guy is a quarterback.

Peyton has some of the best personal career stats that any quarterback can call his own, and Eli's stats simply don't compare. Peyton, however, has won one Super Bowl in his 13 seasons, while Eli has two in his first 9. So Eli has his older brother, who has cast a shadow over Eli's entire life, beaten in the only statistical category that matters.

The scary part?

Eli is entering his prime. Most quarterbacks have their best years from 30-34, and he's on pace to throw for more than 50,000 yards in his career (assuming he plays for another 8 seasons). That would put him fifth in NFL history, behind only Brett Favre, Peyton, Dan Marino and John Elway. He has thrown for 4,000 yards in each of his last three seasons, and seems to only be getting better.

The goofy looking Eli, the overshadowed younger brother of one of the best ever, played his way into the NFL Hall of Fame today in Indianapolis. But more importantly, he beat his big brother.

John Luther: If Stringer Bell Was McNulty

Those of you who know me know that I can be incredibly hard to please when it comes to film and television. I can count on one hand the number of shows on the air right now that I consider halfway decent, and only Parks and Recreation really draws the TV obsessed side of me out anymore. Shows like Community, 30 Rock and Modern Family were shows that seemed brilliant to me, but the more I watch any given show, the more I am able to anticipate what will happen, and the less interested I am. I still watch all of the above shows, but it's not the same. My working theory right now is that any TV series concept has a shelf-life of two season, or roughly 30-40 episodes. Pay cable has shorter seasons, so those shows don't start boring me until season three (the Sopranos), four (Oz) or five (The Wire).

Occupy Drunk Driving: A Football Article

Aldon Smith, Occupiers take top headlines as Superweek starts

Pretty mediocre mugshot. Pretty incredible ears.

Maybe it's because I'm in the Bay Area right now, but all that anyone seems to want to talk about regarding football is the Occupy movement's appearance in Indianapolis. And if they don't want to talk about that, they want to talk about 49er defensive end and likely NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Aldon Smith's DUI arrest in Miami Sunday morning. For all intents and purposes, it looks like Mr. Smith had an intense Saturday night. I had my first shift at a local grocery store yesterday, bagging groceries. I quickly found this was one of those jobs (like bus driver, taxi driver, therapist) where people think it's OK to talk to you about whatever the hell they feel like. Most of the time, people wanted to talk about the gluten-free soy sauce substitute that contains no sodium that they just bought. But those who wanted to talk sports to the guy getting paper cuts so they can carry their food home wanted to tell me about how Aldon Smith is just a young kid making mistakes. I wholeheartedly agree (but also, I don't agree at all). I'll get to that in a second.

UFC on Fox 2: What's Next?

What do the results of tonight's UFC on Fox 2 mean for the main card participants? 

Chael Sonnen won a dubious decision over Michael Bisping. Pic via CagePotato

Rashad Evans: He certainly didn't set the world on fire, but he did win, and he was promised a title shot if he did so. He will fight Jon Jones for the belt on April 21 at UFC 145. I like Jones in that one, but Evans is crafty. You can't count him out. It will be a fight that the UFC will market the hell out of, and Evans really knows how to hype a fight. Expect to hear a lot about this in the coming months, as the UFC sees the Light Heavyweight division as their marquee weight class.

Phil Davis: Davis will be a better fighter for this loss. He waded out into the deep water and didn't drown. He went five hard-fought rounds with a former champion and didn't appear flustered. His strikes were loopy and slow, and Evans was able to beat him to the punch. Davis needs to improve his striking before he's a true challenger to what is, for now, Jon Jones' belt.

Chael Sonnen: Sonnen took home a split decision win against Michael Bisping in what is surely going to be a much debated judges' decision. Sonnen will get Anderson Silva in a rematch of their amazing title fight at UFC 117. The date isn't set as far as I know, but Sonnen better take 100% of the time he has to work on his submission defense. He followed the fight with a braggadocio-filled rant that was equal parts Muhammad Ali and Macho Man Randy Savage.

Michael Bisping: Did very well on short notice. I thought he won, which could have given him a title shot. UFC brass is usually good about rewarding guys who look great in defeat, so I could see him getting a fight against Vitor Belfort, who fought just two weeks ago. The timing works there. They could also put The Count up against Yushin Okami, a perennial contender in the middleweight division or the terrifying Rousimar Palhares. If Mark Munoz heals soon, they could match Bisping and Munoz and market it as a #1 contender fight.

Chris Weidman: Squeaked out a win over Demian Maia. It was a HUGE step up for Weidman, and a terrible fight to watch. They're not going to throw Weidman right up the top of the division because he didn't dominate or even look like championship material. But he beat an established name. He might find himself against another established gatekeeper like a Chris Leben or a Tim Boetsch. He got some good exposure, but wasn't a thrilling guy to watch.

Demian Maia: A definite step back for Maia with the loss. His cardio didn't look good, and his striking was still stiff and predictable. He's lost two of his last three and has been a .500 fighter over his last 8 fights. He could be on the chopping block during his next fight. UFC matchmaker Joe Silva could pair him with Chris Camozzi, who was victorious in tonight's opening fight. It would be a win-win for the UFC marketing department. Camozzi wins and they've got a former Ultimate Fighter contestant with a win over a big name. If Maia is able to bring the electrifying ju-jitsu that made him a minor star in the UFC, he should be able to impress against Camozzi, who is an inferior fighter on the mat.

UFC on Fox 2: Live

Here you can see my moment-by-moment thoughts on all the fights from tonight's UFC on Fox 2: Evans vs. Davis fight card. To read the full post, click "read more." If you don't want the results spoiled, don't click "read more."

In addition to this, check back later as I run down the results of the fights and the implications of whatever may happen tonight.

UFC on Fox: Evans vs. Davis Live Blog Later

Evans (left) and Davis get close at the weigh-ins. Pic from Sherdog.com

Join me later today as I launch Painting the Corners with a live blog of tonight's UFC card on Fox. Rashad Evans will square off against undefeated former Penn State wrestling star Phil Davis in the main event. The preliminary card starts at 5est/2pst on FuelTV, with the three-fight main event starting on Fox at 8est/5pst. All times PM, because who fights in the morning?

I haven't live blogged anything before, unless you count my coverage of Canadian Parliamentary candidate (and eventual winner) Elizabeth May's election hq for the Canadian University Press wire with Kailey Willetts. Which I don't. So it'll be a fun and educational experience for both you and me.

Why should you read the live blog? Who the fuck is this guy? Why should I care what he says about anything?

Well, imaginary reader, those are all legitimate questions. In this case, you should check out my live blog of UFC on Fox: Evans vs. Davis because I have been a ring/cage-side reporter for both MMA and Muay Thai events for two years, I've been watching the sport since day one and sometimes I'm even funny.

So join me at 2 pm on the West Coast for some hopefully hard-hitting MMA action.