Sports

Tebow-mania is out of hand at Mile High

Jeromey Balderrama

What a fantastic Broncos game today. The team came through and really rewarded the fans that suffered through the beat-down by the Raiders three weeks ago, by inflicting their own beating on the Chiefs.  Of course we’ll see what happens when the play the Chargers on Monday night.

I don’t mean to complain, but there is one thing that’s happening at Mile High that just drives me crazy – how nuts people go about Tebow.

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I realize that many Tebow fans have probably never been to an NFL game, or even watched football – so let me offer a tip: When the home team is on offense, you shut up! The minute he steps onto the field people start cheering as if we scored a touchdown and don’t stop until the play is over.  I was fine with giving a pass in the Jets game when Tebow took the home field for the first time in a regular season game, but the crowd goes bonkers every freaking time!  What’s going to happen when Tebow comes in for more than one play – start defensive cheers?

Tebow fans: calm down. He knows you love him, but there’s no need to make his job harder for him.

Mark Schlereth is a stud

Jeromey Balderrama

As a biased Broncos fan, I’ve always loved Mark Schlereth, and love his contributions on ESPN.  However today he took it to a completely different level today, addressing the recent crackdown by the NFL against players who are violently hitting: a complex issue, no doubt, but Schlereth makes some excellent arguments. This video is definitely worth watching.

Mark’s right, the NFL is being very hypocritical, sitting on Mt. Pius and leveling hefty fines against players and now threatening suspension.  It was surprising to me that Schlereth has more an issue with the fines than he does with the suspensions, especially considering that NFL player fines are donated to charity.  Also, when a player is suspended, do they not receive a game check for that week – so you’re they’re still getting money taken away from them. I wish Schlereth would clarify that point.  I also think that there’s some built up reprehension in his statement for the mistreatment of retired players suffering health conditions (and rightfully so).

I’m pretty much lock-step with Mark here, but the only issue I take is that he’s rallying behind James Harrison. Please Mark, rally behind anyone but Harrison, who called his incoming fines “travesties” and then went on to say that he’s out to hurt players.  He goes on to explain the different between “hurt” and “injured”, except he said this right after two players he tried to “hurt” could no longer play because they’re “injured” – Harrison has a pretty crappy sense of timing and when to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  And to cap all of this, Harrison is now threatening to take his ball and go home, not exactly the most mature way to participate in this debate.  It’s not like this is a momentary lapse in judgment for Harrison, as two years ago he justified bailing on the Super Bowl White House trip because Obama’s not a Steelers fan.  Politics aside, if you won the championship in your sport, you go meet the President – that’s just the way it is.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting week, with many more NFL legends weighing in the current state of professional football.  Remember this was all started by Rodney Harrison calling the kettle “black” on Sunday Night Football. Stay tuned.

Orange Sunday

Jeromey Balderrama

Sorry for posting a few days late.  I’ve definitely failed on the “once per day” posting for October, but I guess it’s the thought that counts, and I have a few thoughts on the Broncos game on Sunday.

All last week the Broncos org was pushing “Orange Sunday”, as the Broncos wore their alternate orange jerseys, and thus wanted all of the fans to wear orange as well.  They actually had a rally on Larimer Square on the Friday before the game.

I’m all for promoting home team enthusiasm, but I have a problem with “Orange Sunday”: that the Broncos need to christen a special event to wear orange and encourage their fans to do the same.  In still bothers me to this day that the ditched the orange jerseys in 1997.  I hate that they had a distinguishing color that really looks striking when a stadium full of fans, and decided to chuck it all away because some marketing guy thought blue would match more clothes.

Why can’t every home game Sunday be “Orange Sunday”?  If the Broncos themselves are so unwilling to do that, the fans should step up and don the orange – especially because you can get away with donning hunter orange.  I am now so envious of a team like the Chiefs, where the stands are a sea of red – that used to be Denver, and it should be again.

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Also a note to all the Tebow fans at Mile High: I’m happy to see him come into the games as you are, but can you please shut up when he enters the game?!?  For crying out loud, we’re still on offense at home. Mark Sanchez had to deal with less noise.

Lastly, even though we’re down 2-4, after going toe-to-toe with the Jets and outplaying them – I like the Broncos chances, especially when you consider that they still have 6 games against AFC West opponents.

LeBron-pocalypse

Jeromey Balderrama

We knew it was bound to happen. While the romantic in me was hoping that LeBron would stay with Cleveland, the team didn’t do him any favors by not getting him the right help to win a championship. I’m not quite sure I see the appeal in going to Miami.  There is the innocent “I’m going to play with my friends” aspect which I can definitely understand.  However, LeBron has always been very self-aware of his image and understands his potential legacy – and it baffles me that the part of him didn’t consider that now he’ll be looked on as a glorified Scottie Pippen to Dwayne Wade’s MJ.  Wade is now always going to have one more ring than LeBron, and it doesn’t help add to LeBron’s legacy of not being able to win one on his own – that stigma followed Kobe around until last year. Now LeBron’s just prolonged his tarnished branding.

It’s still funny to see this build-up reprehension against LeBron. Not longer than a few hours after the announcement, owner Dan Gilbert tarred LeBron in a letter on the front page of their web site – using the  Comic Sans font! For those without a designer’s eye, Comic Sans is the web equivalent of crayon.

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Crayon-writing aside, the letter is definitely worth a read. Gilbert likes to put words like “King” and “motivation” in quotations, many of them very unnecessarily so.

However nothing tops the front page of The Plain Dealer out of Cleveland.  The best part is the little arrows pointing to his ring-less hand.

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p align=”left”>So we’ll see where all of this goes. It seems like overnight three superstars 2 superstars and 1 gravy-train have seemingly changed the landscape of professional basketball, forming a Yankee-like evil empire.  We’ll see how long it’ll be before they win any championships.  Any predictions?

Awesome Nike Ad (from a guy who hates Soccer)

Jeromey Balderrama

If you’ve talked sports with me, you probably know that I hate soccer. However, this Nike commercial about the World Cup makes even soccer look cool.  It’s more of a "mini-movie" than a commercial, but pretty awesome nonetheless.

Apparently there were a lot of big soccer stars in this video, but all I could say was "Hey that’s Kobe Bryant & Homer Simpson!". Go check out this write up though to get all the details on this awesome video.

Update: Looks like Vimeo somehow took down the video, so I found the replacement on YouTube.