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Onwards to Vick-tory!

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Jonathan Lee Riches is my new hero. Oh, wait, sorry, I meant Jonathan Lee Riches©. Nothing warms my heart like a seriously disturbed pro se litigant suing a dog-fighting, herpes-passing, ganja-toting NFL player in federal court.

He’s done what none of us non-Federal-inmates have had the stones to do, and sued Michael Vick. The allegations seem to ‘focus’ -if that word is even close to appropriate- on Vick’s penchant for stealing this guy’s dogs and “using his copyrights.” This last the nefarious Vick accomplished by “selling T-shirts, Jonathan Lee Riches mugs.” Funny, I didn’t know Vick used another alias.  Mr Riches© seeks 63 BILLION dollars in damages.  I mean, the poor QB’s already got PETA, the FBI, the IRS, the NFL, and I think Baskin-Robbins gunning for him; does he need to get hit with a crazy suit right now?  (Yes, of course it will be tossed from court; Michael Vick is not a federal agent open to a Bivens action… at least, I don’t think he is.)

Nutty lawsuits, even those handwritten from prison but dressed in the expected formalities, are nothing new. But there’s something special about this guy; this isn’t the first time he’s done this.  Jonathan Lee Riches is the Mozart of deranged lawsuits. There’s Riches v. Bush et al., a suit filed last year in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania which named Chris Berman, Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, the Ming Dynasty, eBay, and the Statue of Liberty as defendants. Also Malcom X, Vanna White, and Michelangelo. And Waffle House. Also the Hubble Telescope, Expedia, and Emeka Okafor.  Depositions must have been a gas- gotta feel for the paralegal who was dispatched to find Jimmy Hoffa.

I can’t say he’s entirely in the wrong. He did sue the drafters of the Uniform Commercial Code.  Can’t wait to see what he does next.

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The Core Stories of Sports

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From an audience perspective, sport is all about narrative. A game between two competitive teams can be exciting; a game between age-old rivals gets people on their feet. The ability of a fan, or a writer or a commentator, to slot the players into existing tropes and assemble a story makes the game worth remembering.

Read enough Sports Illustrated and, over time, you’ll find three recurring stories that drag out the hoariest cliches but still continue to inspire us. Today, I’m going to put my English degree to use and run down these Core Sports Stories. I’ll also point out some real and fictional examples of each Story so you can follow along at home.

The Underdog Makes Good

Tagline: Nobody believed in them – until they believed in themselves.

What It Is: A team that no one expects to amount to anything suddenly goes on a winning tear. Alternatively: a team that’s pretty good playing against a grievously favored opponent. They’re outmassed and outclassed in every way possible but they still go on to win.

Why It Works: We all feel like losers sometimes. We all have obstacles in our life that are bigger, tougher and more established than we are. It’s invigorating to know that those obstacles can still be knocked down.

Real-World Examples: The 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey “Miracle on Ice”

Fictional Examples: Rocky, Rudy, David and Goliath

Sport As Redemption

Tagline: He’d lost it all … then he found hope.

What It Is: A loser, a crook or a villain is loudly and universally ostracized by the fans and press. He then goes on to win and all is forgiven.

Why It Works: If the last two thousand years of western civilization are any indicator, we’re all looking for redemption. I’m not sure that a 40-HR season is what the Scripture had in mind, but it’s much more entertaining.

Real-World Examples: David Beckham (several times), Ray Lewis, Kobe Bryant.

Fictional Examples: Hoosiers, Rocky III, The Longest Yard

The Birth of Something Beautiful

Tagline: He was the greatest they’d ever seen.

What It Is: A rookie comes out of nowhere and goes on to be the greatest.

Why It Works: Bragging rights. By telling this story, you get the right to say “I knew him back when.” You catch the train at the first station and you ride it all the way to its end.

Real-World Examples: LeBron James, Tom Brady.

Fictional Examples: The Natural

Honorable Mention: Money Ruins Everything (1919 Chicago White Sox); All Glory is Fleeting (Mohammed Ali).

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The NerdsOnSports Mailbag: Fun With a PR Agent

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Part of the fun of blogging is opening your material up to the world and seeing what the world makes of it. Actually, I suppose that’s all the fun of blogging, unless you’re in that .0001% who are making money off this type of thing. So, like pretty much any editor of any neophyte blog, I get somewhat excited when e-mail from complete strangers arrives in our inbox. The other day, we got a message from a major media outlet, KTVT in Dallas:Mailbag

Saw that you picked up the story of our interview with Tom Hicks where he talked
about Juando and steroids. If you want to see that part of the original
interview, it’s online at http://cbs11tv.com/video/?id=19196@ktvt.dayport.com .

Ok, so I suppose that’s not that exciting; he’s just monitoring incoming links. But then this comes in, and this is what makes internet life worth living:

(oh, come on, you know you have to click through.) Read More

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The Blogo-icosahedron is a large and hilarious place

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CheerleadersA friend of mine has started a sports trivia site, ChuckSports.com, check it out – it should only take you about 2 games to catch up to me on the overall leaderboard. It’s still a bit early in the development and he is coding everything himself, but it’s already fun.

Aside from trivia, there’s a lot going on out there in the world, and here are some on the things I found funny and interesting:

Kobe is possibly looking to be traded. I wonder where he is asking to go?

Curtis Granderson wrote in his blog about everyone wanting to marry him.

Elijah Dukes calls a radio station, and talks about the price of crack in the hood.

I’m always a big fan of crazy injuries sustained by athletes, so a salad injury is hilarious.

The Extrapolater does some research on the first Japanese player in the Major League.

We’ve talked about X-treme Baseball before, but Blumpkins For All (what a great name for a blog) went to a game.

Kissing Suzy Kolber has created a guide to American football for the English to help them prepare for the game next year.

With all those great links, I don’t know if you’ll have time, but here are some videos: Read More

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David Wells Is Indistinguishable From A Zombie At Distances Over 20 Yards

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Is anyone watching the White Sox / Phillies game?

Juan Uribe just charged Kyle Kendrick (if you can call that shambling of a gait a “charge”) and attempted to gnaw open his skull.

Every Sox player has been thrown out attempting to steal second. Even the normally peppy Darin Erstad got caught with this dazed look on his face.

And every single batter has tried bunting at least twice.

More updates from your NerdsOnSports team as the situation develops.

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Can’t Post; Reading Blogs

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University of Arizona Softball TeamI’ve been browsing the sports blogo-icosahedron, and I do this all the time now that I have my own blog. It has to be done; blogging is a team sport, and when a teammate does well you have to pat him or her on the ass. Plus, if I think of anything good to say (highly doubtful), posting a comment elsewhere usually creates a nice pretty link back to here.

Of course I find the hot women of University of Arizona Softball. I find a sports blog post about video games that someone here didn’t write. I also learn of the record breaking ratings for the NHL playoffs this year, but most of my time has been clogged up with the Hot Blogger Brackets of the Ladies…

Why is this affecting me so? Because I never knew how many freaking sports blogs were out there. Damn. I’m trying to read bits and pieces of all of them to see which ones are good enough to be added to my RSS reader. This is causing me to open a mega-ton of Firefox tabs. So much so that now when I do Ctrl+Alt+Del I can see that my firefox.exe process is using 395,744 K.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to get back to Calvin Johnson’s contract before my computer crashes and I lose ev%#¬yk thî^ng^&^§¬¬

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Let’s Make A Sport

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User-generated content day at Nerds on Sports.
Calvinball
Today’s game: Let’s Invent A Sport.

The procedure:

(1) You add a rule by posting a comment to this entry.

(2) The rules don’t need to be in any kind of sequential or procedural order. So if everybody else is talking about how to resolve fouls and you want to set the rules for overtime, just write it down.

(3) Don’t contradict anything that anybody else wrote already, unless you want it to be a special exception or a rules loophole.

(4) Don’t waste comments asking, “Hey, what do you mean when you say ‘x’ in comment #202?” Tell me what I meant by adding it to the rules.

I’ll start us off.

Scoring: Players score by either advancing the ball into their opponent’s First Zone and then passing the ball to a teammate in the opponent’s Primary Zone, or by advancing the ball into the opponent’s Primary Zone and then passing it to a teammate in the opponent’s First Zone.

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Women — Can’t bang random chicks with ’em; Can’t bang random women if they don’t exist

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Allison Stokke - Hot High School Pole VaulterI’m like most guys — I like sports and women and never the twain shall meet. Though, if the internet and blogo-icosahedron (yes blogs are a 20-sided die) have any say the 2 shall never part. The picture on the left is of Allison Stokke, a high school pole vaulter from California. Do a Google search for her and you get over 185,000 results. About a pole vaulter. In High School. Now do a search for Rudy Ruettiger. Half the results. The Internet has spoken, and it wants you to know about women and sports.

So I listened. And I heard some crazy stories. Like a female golfer from Dubai who had a terrible sexual escapade and related that story with puns. The Philadelphia Cheerleaders have a blog. Who cares that Brad Penny is 5-1 with a 2.54 ERA, he’s doing Eliza Dushku. And very recently I came across an elimination battle of hot wives and girlfriends.

After the crazy sexy women stuff, it started to get weird. Read More

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