WHAT ABOUT RIGHT NOW!

As the 2008 NFL season gets underway today, I've decided to do some live coverage of the Detroit Lions-Atlanta Falcons game. Being a longtime Lions "fan", I have already prepared myself for a season of mediocrity at best. Live from Atlanta , with your commentators, two guys I've never heard of . Fox definitely sent the Z team to cover this one.

1st quarter

Color guy is already hyping up the improved speed of the Lions secondary....
Michael Turner gets his first carry as a Falcon for a nice 9 yard gain. Turner gets it again on second down for the first down.

Holy fucking shit!.....Matt Ryan just threw his first NFL pass for a touchdown.....62 yard TD strike to Michael Jenkins who out runs the new and "improved" Lions secondary. It's already time to bust out the whiskey. Atlanta 7 Detroit 0

On a side note, when and why in the fuck did Jason Elam leave Denver.

A replay of the touchdown pass shows that the Lions secondary....fucking blows


The Lions stall out on their first drive I really don't feel like talking about it they just didn't do anything of note.

Falcons get the ball back and start at their own 20 yard line. Matt Ryan makes a nice playfake and throws a nice pass to the full back setting up a third and five. Another Ryan strike to Roddy White ensures that the Detroit Lions stay on the field....and then Michael Turner uncorks a 66 yard run, breaking about 56 tackles and the Falcons are up 14-0 , seven minutes into the first quarter. The "What About Right Now" slogan is looking like a great choice as the Lions just discovered that the Falcons are now shitting in their cornflakes. So far, the Lions have made the Falcons look like the 1998 Minnesota Vikings on HGH. Matt Ryan looks like fucking Dan Marino and Michael Turner is averaging 43 yards a carry right now. I have decided to put away the whiskey just because I have shit to do later and this could get sloppy.

The Lions have another 4 play drive and I have decided I am giving them one more series before I switch to the Packe....Jets-Dolphins game on CBS.

Fuck this.......I'm going to the bar until the Browns play... the Lions can't cover OR tackle.... and they get a facemask tacked onto a long Turner run, after missing like 9 tackle attempts... Another touchdown for Atlanta and its 21-0 Falcons.... Congrats to all those who had Michael Turner this week in fantasy football, he has about 20 fantasy points and its not even the second quarter yet.....
I'll be back with my thoughts after I watch two real teams play

I Can Feel It Comin...

So, college football season is once again about to descend on us. And it will be my last "normal" season for awhile. I'm off to Korea in November and will have to take time out of my drinking in Seoul to watch football til the asscrack of dawn once I get there. Unfortunately, I'm not in Ann Arbor. I'm in Texas. And about Texas, let me just say...at least it isn't Ohio. So, what am I going to do now that I can't sit in the Big House and drunkenly scream for the opposing coach's/qb's/cheerleader's head? Will I sit and drown my sorrows in Rum, and Whiskey, and Beer from beneath the Mason Dixon line, one time zone over from my Mecca? Yes. Yes I will. But I'll do it all over Texas. And once I finish up here, all over the country. That's right, roadtrips baby...

Aug. 30th Florida Atlantic at Texas
Sept. 13th Arkansas at Texas
Sept. 20th Miami at Texas A&M
Oct. 11th Nebraska at Texas Tech
Oct. 18th Missouri at Texas
or Texas Tech at Texas A&M
Oct. 25th MSU at Michigan
and finally, time permitting
Nov. 6th Maryland at Va. Tech (Thursday night game)

If you know anyone that can help me out at Texas, TTech, or A&M, or if you think you'd like to join me during one of these trips, let me know.

Well That Can't Feel Good.... At All

The Aryan Goes Home

The Aryan Goes Home

I hereby swear that I have recounted this story with as much accuracy as possible. I have gotten the input from multiple people involved and have pieced it together thusly:

As you might have guessed from my name my family comes from the bratwurst-loving, beer-swilling, occasionally ornery nation of Germany (sidenote: Hitler was a huge UGA fan). We still have lots of family over there and I occasionally visit them. I went over after I graduated from U of M to spend a few weeks traveling around and getting hammered in various regions of Europe. One of my main stops was the University of Hamburg. I have two cousins who attend U of H: one cousin is a legitimately nice human being who goes out of her way to do whatever she can to help people (GoodCousin); the other is a complete shit-bag degenerate alcoholic loser (BadCousin). Naturally, I spent all my time there with him. I was spending a few days crashing with BadCousin and the people he lived with. We had been drinking since basically the moment I arrived (in fact when BadCousin and Co. met me at the train stop BadCousin was visibly swaying and leaning on his friend for support…it’s obvious we’re related.

While hanging out with BadCousin I was introduced to all of the German college drinking games and traditions. They aren’t that different than the American ones, speed and quantity of consumption are always the keys to success. There was one tradition that I found hilarious and will briefly share here. It’s called “Nassmachen” which literally translates to “wetting”. Essentially, when someone is passing out or passed out from alcohol consumption these kids literally will piss on them in the crotch region and then slap them awake and accuse them of pissing themselves. The disoriented and incredibly intoxicated victim often assumes this must be the case and runs off while everyone laughs. BadCousin had a friend, Freddy, who was regarded by all as the most creative “Nassmachen” participant. Freddy promised to put on a good show for me and he certainly delivered. One of their roommates was teetering on the brink of blackout for quite a while (I should add that these kids definitely impressed me with their drinking capacity as a group), and he finally stumbled up the stairs and went into his room and passed out. At this moment Freddy told me and some of the other people that were still (barely) forming memories at that point to follow him upstairs for the show. Freddy then proceeded to break into the kids room using his student ID, he pissed all over the kid while he was sleeping in his bed, he then came back to the door, closed it, locked it, and climbed out the kids window and down the fire escape. The kid woke up the next morning in his room covered in piss but with the door locked from the inside. He never knew what hit him. I almost passed out from how hard I was laughing. It seriously felt like I was going to cough up a lung or something.

On what was supposed to be my last night in Hamburg BadCousin, Freddy, and Co. decided they were going to take me to the Reeperbahn which is the Hamburg’s red light district, home of the St. Pauli girls, and affectionately referred to as “the sinful mile”. This area of the city is basically all bars and brothels which made me question why we hadn’t spent more time there. BadCousin laughed and told me that more than one day there and I may never leave. We get there at around 10 in the evening. There are neon lights as far as the eye can see, drunks spilling out of every bar drinking in the street, and whores EVERYWHERE. Like Hookers are literally standing around drinking with the locals, playing drinking games, and then taking money to fuck. I was on sensory overload (and I was also already trashed). The next several hours were a blur. One of the clear memories I have was that it was Lucky’s (one of BadCousin’s friends) birthday and his girlfriend was haggling the price for him to get a blowjob from a stripper. We were also at a bar where they actually had Das Boot glasses. I had always assumed this was some Americanized image of Germany that doesn’t really exist. Over the next several hours I screamed “Das Boot” and drank a whole boot closet full of them…this lead me directly into my blackout…

…I woke up completely disoriented. I looked around and saw BadCousin, a prostitute, Lucky, Freddy, their girlfriends, and the girl I had hooked up with the first night I was in Hamburg. I was the only one awake. We were on a moving train. I shook BadCousin awake and he looked around and started laughing. I asked him very politely where the fuck we were, and he gave me a funny look and said “we’re on our way to Amsterdam”.

I sat back. Obviously there was no way I was going to make it back in Hamburg in time to catch my early afternoon train to Munich so I just sat back and went with it. To this day I have absolutely no recollection of leaving the Reeperbahn, taking the local train to the main train station, purchasing a ticket at the main train station to take the last train to Amsterdam, or getting on board that train. This was apparently the general theme among everybody in our party. People were all generally surprised and amused by what happened. Except Freddy’s girlfriend. She was not amused. She was furious. She was supposed to pick her grandmother up from the doctor’s office the next morning. Guess granny will have to wait.

We got off the train in Amsterdam and, because of Freddy’s girlfriend, we immediately sought out the ticket counter to get tickets for the earliest train back to Hamburg (which was 2 hours away). This is when our big problem popped up. Because of the nature of the Reeperbahn as being a crime-ridden area (it is a red light district after all), BadCousin and Co. had advised me to only bring cash, and leave my wallet behind so if I got mugged it wouldn’t be the end of the world. They had all followed suit, and between the 8 of us we had approximately enough money to buy three and a half tickets back. BadCousin stood up, asked for all of our cash, and said he was going to go get help. He came back 15 minutes later with 2 cases of beer. I couldn’t help but laugh. Freddy’s girlfriend looked like she was going to cry.

It actually turned out that BadCousin didn’t completely shirk off his responsibilities as the S.O.S. party. He called GoodCousin and had her buy us all tickets online. GoodCousin really might be too nice of a person. If BadCousin ever called me and asked me to buy him something online I’d tell him to go fuck himself. We proceeded to sit in the train station for 2 hours and get hammered again. I never set foot outside.

-The Aryan

New Years Eve 2006

New Years Eve 2006

I hereby swear that I have recounted this story with as much accuracy as possible. I have gotten the input from multiple people involved and have pieced it together thusly:

It was December 31^st, 2006. New Years Eve. I was still in Ann Arbor which was relatively dead since most people were back home. Since I lived relatively close by I was obviously going to spend New Years Eve partying with college buddies. During the day me and Captain T went to the Pistons game. We had ridiculously good seats for what turned out to be a less than competitive game. Chauncey Billups was out for the Pistons, and at that time his number one back up was Bobby Brown body double Flip Murray. Flip actually played a decent game but the Pistons still were beaten pretty soundly.

When the game ends we hurry to the parking lot with anticipation of all the drinking in store for us that evening. As soon as we walk outside we discover that it’s absolutely pouring with rain. I’m talking that sheet rain that makes you feel like you’re wading through a lake. It’s still late afternoon/early evening, but we are still dismayed because it looks like the rain is going to delay us from our drinking. As soon as I get on the highway I begin driving like a maniac. Captain T actually leaned the passenger seat back in attempt to sleep through the whole ordeal. I have visibility to about my front bumper and I’m weaving through traffic and doing a little over the speed limit (this was quite a feat as most people were going 15+ under the speed limit). I’m not a man to be bothered by rain when there is holiday scale drinking in store. I make ridiculous time back to Ann Arbor, and since it’s raining I just park at Captain T’s house which at that time was about 5 blocks away from where I lived.

Myself, Captain T, The Silo, Uncle Burgundy, and other assorted awful human beings congregate at Captain T’s house and begin to drink heavily. To our best guess this begins about 8:00 p.m. I am practically guzzling Monster House (For those who don’t know, this is a combination of Monster Energy Drink and Canada House Whiskey. Every time you take a sip a part of your soul dies along with your liver). This trend continues until approximately 10:45 when we decide it’s now time to go to the bar. Due to the seriously reduced numbers in town, only one of the bars on the main college drag is open so the choice is simple. We go in, meet other people we know there, and end up with a group of about 20 people. We get there, everybody buys the biggest drinks they can get in both beer and liquor and bring them back to the table. One of my last few memories before the Monster House completely set in was seeing Captain T sitting at our groups table with approximately 8-10 pitchers of beer and 4-5 bowls of mixed drink. Despite all the beverage on the table and the coats littering the chairs around the table Captain T is sitting alone punishing beverage. He seems quite happy about this so I leave him be.

It was right around this time that I realized SweaterBazookas was at the bar. The very last memory I have of that night is attempting to dance with her right before midnight…

…I wake up the next day in my room. SB obviously had come back with me although I don’t recall walking back at all. It’s already noon the next day and so I jump out of bed and rush over to Captain T’s house to watch the Rose Bowl. As I’m approaching T’s house I stop completely dead in my tracks. My car is no longer parked in front of his house. I’m still relatively drunk at this point so the only conceivable thing it could be in my head is that it was stolen. Of course I’d left my phone at my place and nobody was answering my knocks at the door so I had to go back to my place. As I’m walking up to my door I freeze in my tracks again. There’s my car, sitting in the parking lot next to the building where I always park (and perfectly straight between the lines). I walk inside, and get my phone. I have a voicemail from Uncle Burgundy which is along the lines of “Aryan, its like 12:30 and nobody knows where you went”.

I get back to Captain T’s house (driving of course), I walk in and tell people about my car and ask if they know how it got from point A to point B. Unfortunately not a single person I went to the bar with saw me leave or who I left with. I went upstairs to the bathroom and vomited and came down and resumed drinking and watching football…

…several days later I managed to get in touch with SB who confirmed that we left the bar and walked all the way back to Captain T’s house to get my car (despite the fact that I lived closer to the bar than he did). I then proceeded to drive what was according to her “about 5 miles an hour” the 5 blocks back to my house. Thank Christ there weren’t any police in that general area at the time, I couldn’t afford a DUI then, or ever.

Another interesting aside: we got white castle later that day and it made me ill for a week.

-The Aryan

How To Hit .295 On The 3rd Best Offense In Baseball And Still Be A Completely Useless Douche

How To Hit .295 On The 3rd Best Offense In Baseball And Still Be A Completely Useless Douche

Shortly before the 2008 MLB trade deadline the Detroit Tigers sent Catcher Ivan Rodriguez to the New York Yankees for Relief Pitcher Kyle Farnsworth. Idiots around baseball marveled that the Tigers would give up the first ballot hall-of-famer for an unremarkable pitcher like Farnsworth. Yes, Pudge is one of the greatest Catchers of all time and is a no-doubt first ballot hall-of-famer. However, based solely on the 2008 season, he possesses one of the most deceiving stat lines I have seen in a long time. Below is his stat line during his 2008 season with the Tigers.

GP AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI AVG

Rodriguez 82 302 89 16 3 5 33 32 .295

What may be the first thing to pop out at you, and was certainly the first thing that popped out to a majority of baseball fans and analysts alike, was the Pudge is hitting a very respectable .295 as an every day Catcher. That is certainly a luxury many teams do not have from their Catchers. However, closer examination reveals how ludicrously ineffective his .295 really is…

First, consider the team offense as a whole: At the time of the trade the Tigers were the 3^rd highest scoring offense in the major leagues with approximately 550 runs scored (only the Rangers and Cubs had scored more runs).

Now, consider Pudge’s individual ranks on the team:

-Excluding Ramon Santiago who had only 57 at bats at the time of the trade, Rodriguez ranked 4^th on the team in average (Behind Ordonez, Granderson, and Polonco)

-Pudge ranks 8^th among Tigers players in both Runs and RBI…

These are very peculiar numbers for an every day player that hits for average on a loaded offense regardless of the fact that he typically bats 7^th. An even deeper analysis is clearly needed; the following are Pudge’s situational stats so far this season:

AB H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG

Bases Empty 174 56 10 1 4 4 .322
Runners On 131 34 6 2 1 28 .260
RISP 75 18 4 2 1 26 .240
RISP w/ 2 Outs 37 8 2 0 1 12 .216
Bases Loaded 10 1 0 0 0 5 .100

These situational stats tell the real story of Pudge Rodriguez in 2008. His batting average goes down noticeably with the increase of opportunity to bring in runs. Amazingly, he has only one less RBI on the season with the bases EMPTY than he does with the bases LOADED (although there is a 164 at bat difference here that explains that as well). 15 of Pudge’s 24 extra base hits have come with the bases empty, and overall 63% of his 89 hits are with nobody on. As the stats show above, 4 of his 5 home runs on the season were solo home runs (the 5^th one was a 2-run home run).

Now lets talk about defense…

Pudge was once feared throughout the league as the stingiest catcher in the game. He has noticeably declined in this department in the last two years. In 2008 for the Tigers he had thrown out only 18 out of 50 base runners (36%). Coming into this season he had thrown out 579 of 1218 base runners in his career (47.5%).

So yes, if you don’t want to look underneath the surface then the Yankees got a 12 time gold glove Catcher that is hitting just below .300 on the season. If you do want to look behind the numbers you will see that Mr. Rodriguez is merely inflating his batting average when the situations aren’t critical, and doing a below average job stopping base runners. The Tigers should be more than happy to get rid of Pudge’s 12 million dollar salary. That’s approximately 1 million dollars for every 4.5 RBI he was on pace to hit (extrapolating his numbers for the rest of the season). As for Farnsworth, he’s ok. The Tigers certainly needed bullpen help, and while their backup Catcher, Brandon Inge, doesn’t hit for anywhere near the average Pudge did, he still manages to rack up similar RBI (31) and Run (25) totals with far fewer At Bats (181). It's not all bad though, Pudge has a lot more of this to look forward to in his future.

-The Aryan

Idiots Guide To Intangibles

Idiots Guide To Intangibles

Without question my favorite word in the common sports analyst’s diction is ‘intangible’.

Intangible, adj.

1. Incapable of being perceived by the senses.
2. Incapable of being realized or defined.
3. Incorporeal.

In sports, intangibles are generally used to describe an athlete’s contribution to their team that isn’t reflected in the box score (Thus, mostly falling under definition #2 from above), and primarily only applied when referencing mediocre players in an effort to make them sound more appealing. e.g. “This ball club really succeeds because of the intangibles that this guy brings to the table”. This of course is a contradictory sentence because by definition #3 intangibles are literally not tangible and thus nobody can bring them anywhere.

Baseball

The term is probably used in baseball more often than any of the other 4 major American sports. Since baseball is such a stats-driven sport it is actually interesting to attribute a player with something that manages not to show up in a box score. Baseball intangibles include: taking out defenders to prevent double-plays, knocking down wild pitches, and getting a free pass to first base by being hit by a pitch. The last one is critical; every time a player is hit by a pitch the broadcaster will say something along the lines of “those are the little things that this guy does that don’t show up in the box score”. Since being hit by pitches appears to be such a vital part of this elusive set of qualities it’s no surprise that most players deemed to possess ‘intangibles’ are injury prone and often slightly retarded. The one clear exception here is Chase Utley a.k.a. Mr. Intangibles (seen here wearing his intangibles on his sleeves). Chase manages to fill the box score and exhibit a wide array of intangibles. I’d like to describe these in further detail but by definition #1 they are incapable of being perceived by the senses. If you watch him play, however, you know they’re there. In a related aside: there are players that possess no intangibles at all, in fact they are much worse than what is reflected in the box score. (See the article “How To Hit .295 On The 3rd Best Offense In Baseball And Still Be A Completely Useless Douche”).

Basketball

In basketball intangibles are almost exclusively mentioned when talking about defense. A fantastic example of a player exhibiting ‘defensive intangibles’ is former president of the NBA players union and current Detroit Pistons coach Michael Curry. It is rare that anyone talks about Michael Curry’s playing career. It is even rarer that someone talks about Michael Curry’s playing career without the first words out of their mouth being ‘He had defensive intangibles’. It is evident that whatever Mr. Curry did on defense certainly did not show up in the box score. His career high steals per game for a season was .8 and career high blocks per game for a season was .2 and as these are the two main defensive stat categories, it is safe to say that his defensive presence was certainly not tangible. He did however show up literally every day (much to the dismay of his local fans), playing in all 82 regular season games in the 1997-1998 season and all 50 regular season games in the strike-shortened 1998-1999 season. Blue collar work ethic = Intangibles.

Football

Due to the extreme specialization of position responsibilities in football there is a long list of things that could possibly qualify as intangibles: the ability to recognize quickly whether a play is a run or pass, getting off your block quickly, selling the play-action, etc. My favorite football intangible that you hear at least once during every football game is ‘escapability’. I find this one particularly amusing because ‘escapability’ isn’t even a real word. Of course it is supposed to mean that the player possesses the ability to escape, but that was apparently too much of a mouthful to say so it was shortened.

Escapability, -n.

1. The quality of not being able to be tackled because you aren’t tangible.

Players who exhibited the intangible of ‘escapability’ include Donovan McNabb, Barry Sanders, and Bobby Douglass (who set a QB rushing record of 968 yards on the season in 1972 which stood for over 30 years until Michael Vick broke it). Vick was also once heralded for his ‘escapability’. Unforunately, “Ookie” got sacked by a very tangible 5 year prison sentence for illegal dog-fighting and general douchery. He will immediately spring back to the top of the list if his ‘escapability’ can break him out of the joint.

Hockey

Intangibles are by their very nature difficult to gauge. This is not evident in any sport more than Hockey. Since there is very little of interest you can put into a box score in hockey outside of goals, assists, and goalie stats, it is hard to come up with qualities to gauge for this attribute (for Christ sake they include individual penalties in minutes, and individual +/- to box scores). From the definitions laid out above it would then appear that everyone in the NHL either does nothing at all or they all bring intangibles to the game. Since it is a professional sport I’d like to think that the latter is true and thus the whole league is made out of water vapor as per definition #3. The only player that springs to mind when ‘intangibles’ and hockey appear in the same sentence is Nicklaus Lidstrom (I love this picture because the implication is that you better be in or Nick is going to hurt you and you'll deserve it). Lidstrom, the ageless wonder who has been honored as the leagues top defender since the beginning of time, continues to be considered by hockey experts the best player on the ice nearly every time he skates despite the fact he doesn’t score or even shoot much. Our hats are off to you sir.

Practical Application

Since ‘intangibles’ have such a glorifying effect on professional athletes I have begun applying the word in my own life for self-promotion. Here are some suggestions on how to improve your own intangibles and use them to your advantage in every day life:

1. Every day come up with something you want to get done and see if you can make it happen without actually doing it yourself (e.g. take out the trash or clean up your own vomit off the floor of your bathroom). This is the best way to exercise intangibles and lose all your friends/roommates. As a bonus exercise if you make your friends/roommates so mad at you that they resort to physical violence you can also practice your ‘escapability’ here.

2. When picking up a guy/girl at a bar/sports card convention/public bathroom just casually work into the conversation that you do in fact possess a rather impressive set of intangibles. (e.g. “Hey, my name is The Aryan, I’m not tangible. What’s your name?”). They will be intrigued and probably take interest in you immediately. This additionally hedges your bets in case you are a huge disappointment (which, lets face it, you probably are). You can tell them they are expecting you to stuff the (very loosely) metaphorical stat sheet when you told them up front you contribute in other ways.

3. When people catch you not doing anything at work tell them that it’s true you aren’t presently contributing to the box score but your intangibles are still helping the team reach the bottom line. Let them puzzle that one out.

4. On your next job interview tell them that you bring “leadership, determination, and other intangibles” to the workplace with you on a daily basis (Along with bringing a Chase Utley and/or Nick Lidstrom card in your wallet/purse). Not only will you get hired but you will in all likelihood get a sizable signing bonus and immediately be scouted by the Yankees and Red Sox.

So go out there and break up a double play, rotate quickly on defense, and errrr….play hockey. People will be calling you Mr. Intangibles in no time.

-The Aryan