Archive for January 2008

Shannon Brown Could Be Cavs Next Big Loss

By on January 11, 2008

According to reports, Shannon Brown has requested to join the Cavaliers’ development league team due to a lack of playing time on the pro roster. You will remember that Shannon Brown was the Cavs’ first round draft pick (number 25 overall) in the 2006 NBA draft. Put him on the long list of Cavs draft picks that have been shuttered off into the abyss.

The Cavs have already stated that they won’t pick up the option for Brown’s third year on his rookie contract. That means that unless the Cavs change their minds, Brown will be an unrestricted free agent and could be signed by anybody league wide.

Now, I am not willing to jump in front of a train for Shannon Brown. We don’t know exactly what he has to offer as a player at the professional level. What I do know is that Brown has gotten inconsistent chances, at best. He has been inconsistent overall, but at the same time the whole situation just stinks of mismanagement of talent by the Cavs. Mike Brown has an affinity for veterans and throughout Brown’s two years in Cleveland those veterans have gotten the nod for playing time. This includes Larry Hughes, Eric Snow, Damon Jones, David Wesley, and the younger guys who are more like Brown’s peers, Daniel Gibson and Sasha Pavlovic.

That list makes me want to tear my hair out. You are telling me that Shannon Brown, who had a pretty damn good college career at Michigan State wouldn’t be able to contribute more consistently than any of those guys? We know he is a hell of a lot more athletic than any of them other than Daniel Gibson.

Add to this the fact that the Cavs have been MISERABLE at developing talent in the past, and I just cringe at the thought of what some other coaching staff might be able to do with Shannon Brown next season when he gets more of an opportunity. Look at Jason Kapono. The Cavs let him get away in the expansion draft because they didn’t feel he was worth protecting. For comparison’s sake, the Cavs protected Dajuan Wagner, Jeff McInnis, Desegana Diop, and Kedrick Brown as they let Kapono leave for Charlotte. Kapono has gone on to become a VERY solid contributor with Miami and now Toronto. Dajuan Wagner recently signed a deal with a POLISH TEAM CALLED PROKOM TREFL SOPOT.

All the Cavs had to do was evaluate their own talent better and they would solve a lot of their own problems. While I don’t know for sure about Shannon Brown, I would hate to see another player who is capable of contributing to this talent-starved team disappear.



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This Is Unfair – Kenny George is 7 foot 8

By on January 11, 2008

This dude is super humanly tall. He hardly has to jump to dunk the ball. Check out these four dunks.

Dunk 1



Dunk 2



Dunk 3



Dunk 4



This entry is filed under Blog. | 4 Comments

Progressive Field in Cleveland?

By on January 11, 2008

I know we live in modern times, but why on earth do we need a corporate name on our beloved Jake?  It appears that the Indians have sold the naming rights to their 40,000 + seat stadium to the ginormous insurance company based out of Mayfield-Village Ohio.  I understand why this makes sense, especially in the Cleveland market where revenue streams that can be had should be had whenever possible, but it doesn’t mean I have to love it.

Come to think of it, the renaming of the Cavaliers’ basketball arena from Gund Arena to Quicken Loans Arena has worked out pretty well.  The whole Gund Arena thing seemed like a decent idea until you had people slurring the words together.  Gund Arena.  GunnArena.  Gonorrhea.  Ew.  And trust me when I tell you that I heard that joke before, so there is no need to say it again now that the Cavs’ arena has the tidy little nickname, “The Q.”

So what in the world are we going to call the field formerly know as Jacobs’ for short?  Is it going to be the Prog?  Are we going to have the phaser sounds and the opening drum beats of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” greeting every entrant to the new Prog field?  (Get it?  Prog music at Prog Field?)

Are we going to change the word Field to Park so that we have the alliteration of Progressive Park instead of the slightly awkward Progressive Field?

I don’t know how many people outside of the Cleveland area know about Peter B. Lewis, Chairman of the Board and former CEO of Progressive Insurance, but he is something of a corporate maverick.  He donated $3,000,000 to the Marijuana Policy Project in 2007.  Can we somehow create a special section in the Prog where fans can light up doobs to their hearts’ content?

Anyway, I hope the Indians got a lot of money for the naming rights so they can go out and sign a couple free agents or make a trade for someone with a larger salary.  I am not panicking because the Indians have a lot of talented players coming back, but it is a little bit offputting that they haven’t made a single move of note this off-season.  If revenue was an issue, hopefully the Progressive money will throw the Indians over the top.

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Configuring Slingbox Is Not For the Faint of Heart

By on January 8, 2008

The Slingbox might be one of the coolest gadgets that I own. When I originally bought it, Jen wondered why I needed to spend the money on such a device. “Need” is probably a strong word for the situation, but she has finally seen the light as it has given us greater flexibility in our travels over the last year. I haven’t had to go out of my way to find a sports bar or anything like that. All I had to do was get my laptop in reach of a wifi connection and I could watch whatever sporting event I needed to see. Again, “need” is a strong word, but I digress.

The only problem with the Slingbox is getting it set up. I am not sure exactly how I did it the first time, except that it wasn’t working even though I thought I had all the settings done correctly. Then all of a sudden, my friend who was acting as off-site tester, told me that it magically started working. And it worked perfectly from that point on.

That is until I decided to buy a new, faster router; the D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router. Sure, it sounds like a code-named hate group from some earlier time, but it is a heck of a lot faster than the router I was using before. For one, it is a gigabit router for all the computers that are physically connected to it. This means it is 10 times faster than the 10/100 router that I was using before. On top of that, it uses a new protocol on the wireless side to boost up connections that have compatible wireless network cards capable of running the draft-N protocol.

(NOTE: If you hate complicated network-y geek conversation, you will want to tune out now)

What this really meant was a re-install of all the complex internet setup and routing that goes on in my network, including, but not limited to my Slingbox.

The Slingbox is particularly difficult to get routed to the outside world for whatever reason. To make things even more difficult, the d-Link software which is used to administer features and security on the router is more complex than the software I was used to on my old Linksys. D-Link has “enhanced” their menus in an attempt to make things more user-friendly and as a result I find it much more difficult to navigate through the menus to figure out what I want to do. It has four main menu categories; Setup, Advanced, Tools, Status, and Support. Depending on which item you click, there will be some options in the main window and then different sub-menus down the left-hand side. The result is a multi-layer maze of options, some of which are seemingly redundant at first glance. Instead of just having “port-forwarding” options, the D-Link also has a “virtual server” option which has a menu that looks identical to port forwarding, even if they do slightly different things. Hell, they may do drastically different things, but I just don’t know anything about virtual servers.

Anyway, I got to port forwarding and realized that I hadn’t set a static internal IP address for my Slingbox yet.

Apparently that is under Setup and Network Settings. Once there, it was quite easy to select the Slingbox and have the MAC address associated with a static IP. But that isn’t where the process ends.

Back over to the Advanced Tab and the Port Forwarding option. I know where it is now, but is there any reason that port forwarding couldn’t be considered part of setup or some of the things in setup couldn’t be considered Advanced?

Anyway, back over there to select the special port number that will be mapped directly to the new static IP address that I assigned to the Slingbox.

Now time to test the Slingbox. Should be all good. Unfortunately, the only testing you can do from inside the house is on the same local area network that the Slingbox is on. Even if the streaming of content works there, it doesn’t mean that it is going to work once you try to load up the player from some other outside location.

Today, I tested it when I got to work and no dice. I log into GoToMyPC to check things out and play with it for a little while. Still nothing. Then I finally figure out that I had to go into the Slingbox setup itself to make sure that the Slingbox knows it is mapped to this new IP address on the network. Sure enough, I had it mapped to the old address and as soon as I matched it up with the static IP that I had the MAC assigned to, it worked.

So the Slingbox is back up and running until the next time I change routers, or this one breaks. Of course my one friend who was using it out in another part of the world will have to call me to get the new settings, but those are the breaks, I guess. Still, it is great to have the option to load up the Slingbox whenever I can’t make it to a location showing blacked out sporting events or local broadcasts that are unavailable nationally.

Now, we will see if I can somehow justify the HD Slingbox to Jen.

This entry is filed under Sports, Technology and tagged , , , , , , , , , . | 16 Comments

Pat Forde is an Ignorant Hack (Notes on Ohio State)

By on January 8, 2008

Pat Forde “covered” the BCS National Championship game for ESPN.com with this article.

In that article, Forde basically lambasted the Ohio State Buckeyes for losing to LSU in the national championship game.

An example of Forde’s “journalism” can be seen in this quote.

If you’ve ever seen lions maul a water buffalo, you’ve seen the last two title games. You’ve seen a fierce pair of SEC teams — Florida last year, LSU this year — blow the vulnerable Buckeyes back to the Bratwurst Belt by a combined 41 points. You’ve seen the best of one league flex, and the best of an inferior league collapse.

Now, let me explain something.  Ohio State was beaten by a superior team last night in Louisiana.  That much is true.  What I don’t understand is the venom with which people are discussing Ohio State this season.  Ohio State was supposed to be on the outside looking in when it came to the national championship this year.  They lost a huge amount of talent to the NFL after last season.  They didn’t schedule a particularly difficult roster of opponents like they have in years past when they put Texas on the non-conference schedule.  This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Buckeyes.

They were picked to finish third in the Big 10 behind Michigan and Wisconsin.  They weren’t at the top of any of the polls until all these other teams started to fail miserably.  Ohio State fans root like crazy, even in rebuilding years.  After Ohio State lost to Illinois there were no cries of unfairness as Ohio State dropped out of the number one slot.  They weren’t supposed to get a sniff of the number one slot to begin with this season.

So, where does all the hatred come from?

Ohio State didn’t have any Heisman finalists.  Ohio State lost many players to the draft in 2007.  Todd Boeckman was a first time starter and questionable at QB.  Yet, the national media spent all this time slamming Ohio State like they were loaded with Troy Smith, Ted Ginn, and Anthony Gonzalez all over again to try and beat the SEC.

This was supposed to be a rebuilding year.

Can someone please tell the media that they missed the point of this story?  Ohio State being a perennial failure doesn’t wash.  They should be considered an over-achiever at best or proof that the BCS system didn’t work THIS YEAR at worst.

The fact is that Ohio State didn’t unfairly lobby their way into the game.  They didn’t walk into the game with the cocky attitude that earned them an embarrassing defeat last year against Florida.  All they did was show up when they were asked to play.  So if you want to toss some venom around, these media members like Pat Forde should probably reserve it for the BCS, Mizzou, WVU or someone else who failed miserably this season.

I would say Ohio State did quite well considering this was their rebuilding year.

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Video: You Shouldn’t Taunt LeBron James

By on January 8, 2008

So, when LeBron and the Cavs are playing horribly through three quarters and they appear to be on the brink of losing to the Toronto Raptors, just sit and enjoy it. If you taunt LeBron, he might just come back almost single-handedly and score 24 points in the fourth quarter to steal the game. It will be even more embarrassing for you if you happen to be Chris Bosh’s girlfriend. It must have been an awkward dinner later that night with Chris and his girlfriend.

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God Hates the Ohio State Buckeyes

By on January 7, 2008

The Ohio State Buckeyes scored 10 points and then gave up 24 unanswered points to finish out the first half of the BCS National Championship game.

There is no other explanation for two straight national championship losses and then a first half collapse like that.

We will see if God thinks Ohio has suffered enough after the first half.

Either that, or Jim Tressell will have to figure out a way to stop LSU.

This entry is filed under Sports. | 3 Comments

NFL Playoff Notes

By on January 7, 2008

Just a couple notes from the football I watched this weekend.

  • There is going to be criticism for Jeff Garcia and Joey Galloway after the seemingly dismal performance they put together against the Giants yesterday, but Garcia and Galloway weren’t the problem.  They were just the problem indicator. The real problem was the line of scrimmage, where the Giants only had to rush their four d-linemen for most of the game.  When they don’t have to use extra personnel to blitz and they are still rushing the QB, the QB and his receivers will have bad games.
  • Eli Manning will still never be his brother.  He did a nice job of managing the game and not making mistakes, but that means he is just like every other QB in the NFL.  He won’t win you a game except by not losing it for you.
  • The Steelers are not a good team offensively without Willie Parker.  Davenport is an effective runner and the Steelers offensive line is good enough that they can get anyone some yards, but without that speed and elusiveness that Parker brings to the game, the Steelers lose a SERIOUS home run threat.  The Steelers should consider adding some depth, even in the late rounds of the draft, with someone who has similar athletic ability to Willie Parker.
  • The 6 sacks that Pittsburgh gave up are a reflection of Willie Parker’s absence more than Pittsburgh’s offensive line.  The Jags didn’t have to respect the run and they blitzed like crazy.  No offensive line can withstand a blitzing defense that feels it doesn’t have to respect the run.

On to this weekend’s upcoming games

  • San Diego is going to have a tough time against Indy in the dome without Antonio Gates if he can’t play.  The Chargers beat the Colts earlier in the season on a fluke when Adam Vinatieri missed a field goal from not much further than an extra point.
  • If Marvin Harrison can be even remotely effective, the Colts will be tough to stop on offense.  Due to Harrison’s injury, Anthony Gonzalez has gotten a lot of playing time and will prove to be an even better option on offense when he drops to a less talented defender.  Now Peyton Manning’s reads will go from Harrison to Wayne to Clark to Gonzalez / Addai out of the backfield in passing situations.
  • I am not making guarantees, but I can’t think of a situation where I thought two teams had less of a chance than the Giants and the Seahawks.  Anything can happen, but it just feels relatively inevitable that the Cowboys and Packers will play in the NFC Championship.

My worthless prediction right now is a Jags Packers Superbowl.  I honestly think that the Jags can be dangerous against the Pats.  They are a team built for New England because of their strong running attack.  Between MoJo Drew, Fred Taylor and Garrard running the emergency QB draw, I feel like they can actually beat New England.  That isn’t to say that they are a favorite, because they aren’t.

Anyway, I called it the worthless prediction because I have no confidence behind it.

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Cleveland Sports Curse Podcast 2008-01-05

By on January 5, 2008

This is the first podcast of 2008.  There were three participants today.  Wood from WKNR2, Antonio Castro and yours truly did about a half hour today on the Browns, Cavaliers and looking ahead to the BCS National Championship on Monday night between Ohio State and LSU down in Louisiana.

This is our last show before we go live next Saturday.  That show will be available for streaming on the web and you can call in and contribute if the feeling strikes you.  I will be sure to post more info on that later this week.

For now, check out this show.

Cleveland Sports Curse Podcast 2008-01-05 [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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Chudzinski on Ravens’ Radar

By on January 4, 2008

Word has it that the Baltimore Ravens are going to interview breakout offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski for their recently vacated head coaching position.  Let me get this straight.  The Browns might have to pay the price of success in having a coordinator poached, while technically as an outsider looking in with a 10-6 record they didn’t get to feel any of that supposed success?  Sounds like just another day in the life of Cleveland Browns fans.

While everyone else has been crowning Romeo Crennel for his newfound genius in coaching, there are a lot of us who see that the only real differences between this season and last are the offensive linemen and new offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski.  One of Romeo’s biggest mistakes as a head coach was sticking by the woeful Maurice Carthon who reportedly had his offensive line schemes pass-blocking on EVERY SINGLE DOWN INCLUDING RUNNING PLAYS.  I have beaten all this stuff into the ground before.

The point is that it is my suspicion that Chudzinski had more to do with the Browns much improved record this year than probably anything else that happened in the organization.  This includes any kind of supposed coaching epiphany that Romeo Crennel could have had that took him from being the world’s biggest goat in 2006 to everyone thinking he is the coach of the year the following season.  I think it had to be Chud.  He did a great job of highlighting the talented players on the squad.  Evidence of this can be seen with three players – Kellen Winslow, Braylon Edwards, and Jamal Lewis – who all went over 1000 yards in production this season.

To think that the Browns could lose Chud after a single season to a division rival AFTER missing the playoffs by mere inches is disgusting.  At least when the Pats lost their coordinators they had some success in the bank first.  In the Browns’ case, they might lose their new superstar coordinator without even a trip to the playoffs to show for it.

Needless to say, I and many other Browns fans are hoping that Chud comes back to Cleveland for at least one more year.  I would like to see him earn his first head coaching job with a little bit of success in Cleveland first, and I think he is a guy who is capable of helping the Browns be successful.  If he left now, it would be way too soon.

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