Fired Up Friday

It's Friday and needless to say I'm once again fired up.  Before I get into why I'm fired up, I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas.  Be sure to enjoy the time you get to spend with your family and friends.  But now let's get to this week's list.

College Football

If you have been keeping up with college football this season, you have heard about Cecil Newton selling his son's services to different college football programs.  You've heard about Terrelle Pryor selling his sportsmanship award and Noah Herron trading an autograph for some tattoos.  And you've heard about the NCAA suspending each of these players for their respective bowl games......Wait a second.  You didn't hear about that last part.

How have these players not been suspended for their bowl games this year?  It is safe to assume that viewers aren't going to be too excited about watching the Buckeyes attempt to beat Arkansas without their star quarterback Pryor, their leading rusher Dan Herron, their second best wide receiver DeVier Posey, and All-Big Ten offensive tackle Mike Adams.  Since viewers aren't going to be interested in watching a bunch of second stringers, the NCAA decided they should just wait until next season to suspend the players.  Heaven forbid the NCAA would do the right thing and lose money.  They'll just manipulate the situation and make some money off the players they are suspending for attempting to do the same thing.

The Cam Newton situation might be even worse.  Everyone knows that the only way to beat Auburn is to stop Newton and the NCAA could have done it.  The most ridiculous part of the Newton story is that the NCAA investigated the situation and found that his father had been asking schools for money.  They proved that all of these were facts.  They then asked Cam Newton if he knew about his father's actions and he claimed that he did not.  Am I really supposed to believe that? 

How do you think Reggie Bush would have reacted if I had used a Delorean to go back in time and tell him that the best way to avoid giving his Heisman back would have been to tell investigators that his father made the negotiations and he didn't know about it?  (That was a long hypothetical.  I hope you enjoyed it.)  Would he have laughed at me? Or just looked at me like I am crazy?

Blake Griffin's Nickname

I'm fired up about Blake Griffin's nickname because he doesn't have one.  How is this possible?!?!  He singlehandedly makes the Clippers watchable.  That's saying something.  When is the last time you were glued to your television when the Clippers were playing?  On any given play you can see the most amazing highlight you've ever seen.  Maybe it's an alley-oop.  Maybe it's a tip dunk.  You just never know what you're going to see next with Blake Griffin, but you do know that you've never seen anything like it before.

Here are some of the suggestions so far:  The Reel Deal, The Poster Child, The Vanilla Gorilla, The Dunk Tank, Blake the Quake, An Injury Waiting to Happen, Bam Bam Griffin, Earthblake, Blakezilla, Cyborg, Poster Prodigy, Fresh Air, UFO, G-Force, Richter 32.0, The Hairless Chewbacca, Master Blaster, The Statement, Quake Gryphon, The Thriller

We need to find one that sticks.  Blake Griffin HAS to have a nickname.  I like Richter 32.0 and the Poster Prodigy.  Let me know what you guys think or if you have any suggestions.

Women's Basketball

I know.  I was surprised I'm talking about women's basketball too, but two things have really fired me up in the last week.  I am tired of hearing about the 89 game winning streak of UConn women's basketball team.  This streak does not compare to the 88 game win streak of John Wooden and his UCLA bruins.  There is simply not as much competition in women's basketball right now as there was in men's basketball in the early 1970s, thus making their streak not as impressive.  There is simply no reason that the #1 team in the country should beat the #12 team in the country by 31 points and that's exactly what happened earlier this week in UConn's game against Stanford.

Eight of the twelve players on UConn women's team were McDonald's All-Americans and the other four were players of the year in their respective states.  With as little women's basketball talent as there is in the world, that is a significant amount of talent to be placed on one team.  As one of the best basketball players in the nation, how can you go from being the best player on your team to not even getting off the bench as a member of the UConn Huskies?  I just don't understand how, as a competitor, you could bring yourself to just be a bench player on UConn.  Why not go to a different team to win a national championship somewhere else and actually challenge yourself?  The NBA equivalent of this would have been Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson, Rudy Gay, and Dirk Nowitzki all going to the same team in a NBA composed of over 50 teams.

Another thing I'm fired up about concerning women's basketball is Diana Taurasi.  Taurasi was recently busted in the Turkish league she plays in during the WNBA offseason (Who knew?) for modafinil, a drug that has been involved in several major doping cases.  I've never seen a highlight of Taurasi doing anything physically imposing or anything else that would suggest she has ever taken a performance enhancing drug.  If Taurasi is taking PEDs, then I have to believe that just about every professional athlete in the world is taking PEDs.

Eric Nehm

I just spent three paragraphs discussing women's basketball.  Nothing more needs to be said.