Panthers quarterback Cam Newton sulked through a post-Stuper Bowl news conference, offering one-word answers and non-answers for about three minutes before walking out.
He hasn't hired me to help with his PR, but if he did, I would offer these reasons why he should apologize and consider a different approach:
1. That just wasn't very nice.
2. You can't claim to be "a kid" anymore. Time to act like an adult.
3. The word for people who celebrate wins and sulk over losses is: juvenile.
4. Didn't your mother teach you good manners?
5. These reporters may be annoying and ask stupid questions, but they are a big part of the reason you earn tens of millions of dollars and are idolized by people across the nation. Without media coverage there is no National Football League.
6. Do you not understand that the TV cameras were on? You didn't just walk out on a gaggle of idiot reporters; you walked out on America.
7. You embarrassed your team.
8. You're supposed to be a leader. Leaders aren't juvenile. (See #3.)
9. YouTube lives forever.
10. What he said.
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
08 February 2016
03 February 2015
Super Bowl Musings You're Not Seeing Elsewhere
Super Bowl Moral
Seattle Seahawks: Live by the miracle, die by the miracle.
Critique of Seattle's Final Play
What I would have done: The same thing you would have. I would have guided the Seahawks to a 3-13 record, eliminating any need for a goal-line decision.
Tom Brady's Legacy
Myth 1: Tom Brady has won four Super Bowls.
Truth: Tom Brady's team has won four Super Bowls. He's been the most important player on that team, but not the only one.
Myth 2: Winning a fourth Super Bowl solidifies Tom Brady's legacy.
Truth: A great quarterback plays 150-200 games. It's not possible that one game in which the QB may or may not have played well makes the difference.
Myth 3: Joe Montana is a greater QB than Tom Brady because he didn't lose any Super Bowls and Brady lost two.
Truth 3: Translation: It's more impressive to miss the playoffs altogether than earn a berth in the championship and lose it.
Myth 4: Losing this game would have hurt Brady's legacy.
Truth 4: Translation: Tom Brady's legacy depended on a fluke play that occurred while he was on the sideline.
Worst Shame of Super Bowl XLIX
The amazing, acrobatic, game-changing catch that set up the goal line play at the end will be lost to history.
Best Thing About the Super Bowl
Pitchers and catchers report in two weeks.
Seattle Seahawks: Live by the miracle, die by the miracle.
Critique of Seattle's Final Play
What I would have done: The same thing you would have. I would have guided the Seahawks to a 3-13 record, eliminating any need for a goal-line decision.
Tom Brady's Legacy
Myth 1: Tom Brady has won four Super Bowls.
Truth: Tom Brady's team has won four Super Bowls. He's been the most important player on that team, but not the only one.
Myth 2: Winning a fourth Super Bowl solidifies Tom Brady's legacy.
Truth: A great quarterback plays 150-200 games. It's not possible that one game in which the QB may or may not have played well makes the difference.
Myth 3: Joe Montana is a greater QB than Tom Brady because he didn't lose any Super Bowls and Brady lost two.
Truth 3: Translation: It's more impressive to miss the playoffs altogether than earn a berth in the championship and lose it.
Myth 4: Losing this game would have hurt Brady's legacy.
Truth 4: Translation: Tom Brady's legacy depended on a fluke play that occurred while he was on the sideline.
Worst Shame of Super Bowl XLIX
The amazing, acrobatic, game-changing catch that set up the goal line play at the end will be lost to history.
Best Thing About the Super Bowl
Pitchers and catchers report in two weeks.
24 January 2015
My Incredible Super Bowl Prediction
Of all the many many stupid predictions constantly demanded in life, the Super Bowl winner is the Super Bowl winner of stupid predictions.
There are only two teams. They play one game. One of them is going to win. Consequently, there is no "Bad" or "Dumb" prediction, the way predicting the Atlanta Braves are going to win the 2015 World Series would be.
All anyone has to know to make a prediction is the names of the two cities vying for the crown. (In this case, to choose one of the contestants, you need to know a region of the country, not a city. So perhaps people who are self-aware of their football-ignorance will be choosing the city.)
Whichever side they choose, they will have as allies roughly half the cognoscenti.
This year in particular, when the game is such a predictive toss-up, there is no silly answer. Consequently, there is no surprising answer either. No one is going to be vindicated for prognosticating an unexpected victor with the opportunity to brag about their insight later, the way one would with a Braves 2015 World Series championship.
In other words, you're being asked to choose whether the next toss of a coin will be heads or tails. The question isn't interesting and the answer requires no knowledge.
So when people ask me, I tell them that I have some expertise on this matter and can say with some certainty that the team going to Disney World will be the Seattle Seahawks ... or the New England Patriots.
But no one else.
There are only two teams. They play one game. One of them is going to win. Consequently, there is no "Bad" or "Dumb" prediction, the way predicting the Atlanta Braves are going to win the 2015 World Series would be.
All anyone has to know to make a prediction is the names of the two cities vying for the crown. (In this case, to choose one of the contestants, you need to know a region of the country, not a city. So perhaps people who are self-aware of their football-ignorance will be choosing the city.)
Whichever side they choose, they will have as allies roughly half the cognoscenti.
This year in particular, when the game is such a predictive toss-up, there is no silly answer. Consequently, there is no surprising answer either. No one is going to be vindicated for prognosticating an unexpected victor with the opportunity to brag about their insight later, the way one would with a Braves 2015 World Series championship.
In other words, you're being asked to choose whether the next toss of a coin will be heads or tails. The question isn't interesting and the answer requires no knowledge.
So when people ask me, I tell them that I have some expertise on this matter and can say with some certainty that the team going to Disney World will be the Seattle Seahawks ... or the New England Patriots.
But no one else.
08 February 2014
We Haven't Learned A Thing
If there's one lesson we should all have learned from the Super Bowl it is that we don't learn any lessons in sports.
Consider this: the world of football analysts, which bubbles over like soup in an uncovered blender, spent 24 hours-a-day for two full weeks analyzing a single contest. They scrutinized each player and coach down to the mitochondria in his left elbow hair follicles. They tracked the weather with the ferocity of a meteorologist in the path of a hurricane. They investigated the emotional state of the competitors like Karl Jung on amphetamines. They compared and contrasted as profoundly as a comparative literature dissertation. They considered every possible variable in this upcoming game, discussed them interminably, examined months of tape and then boldly predicted absolutely nothing like the ultimate outcome.
Seriously, I am not aware of a single "expert" who suggested before the Super Bowl that Denver didn't belong on the field with Seattle. (Perhaps there was one or two, but they were they outlyingest outliers, and probably reside in the Pacific Northwest.) Although many picked Seattle to win, they were still wrong, because none of them proposed a blowout unworthy of your viewing time.
Football analysts aren't stupid, lazy or naive. They are simply guilty of reckless disregard of an obvious truth -- that anything can happen in one game that makes analysis of past games utterly irrelevant. And the consuming public of this analysis -- i.e., sports fans -- join them in that negligence. We all conspire to ignore a fact proven repeatedly, that tiny advantages, even if piled up high, even if all accruing to one contestant and not the other, even if beyond debate, convey only tiny advantage, which can be completely overwhelmed in the heat of battle.
Think about baseball playoffs. We see the same kinds of analysis built on houses of sand and fog -- one team has home field advantage (a 55% edge in one game if and only if the teams are tied after six); one team's top two starters are superior (over the course of the season, though perhaps not over the next two starts); one team has more experience (which has been demonstrated repeatedly not to matter one iota of a scintilla of a bit); or any other matter of considerations that reasonable people could agree amount to an amoeba on a whale's back.
We go through this annually with clock-like regularity, as if stuck in an endless loop we can't escape. No one ever reminds the ESPN host that he's ignoring history and wasting his breath.
If the games were predictable they would be . . . the early rounds of the NBA playoffs. A big yawnfest. Thankfully, they're full of surprises.
When asked, in the weeks leading up, who would win the Super Bowl, the only correct answer was, "the team that scores more points." Any other answer was, well, pointless.
Consider this: the world of football analysts, which bubbles over like soup in an uncovered blender, spent 24 hours-a-day for two full weeks analyzing a single contest. They scrutinized each player and coach down to the mitochondria in his left elbow hair follicles. They tracked the weather with the ferocity of a meteorologist in the path of a hurricane. They investigated the emotional state of the competitors like Karl Jung on amphetamines. They compared and contrasted as profoundly as a comparative literature dissertation. They considered every possible variable in this upcoming game, discussed them interminably, examined months of tape and then boldly predicted absolutely nothing like the ultimate outcome.
Seriously, I am not aware of a single "expert" who suggested before the Super Bowl that Denver didn't belong on the field with Seattle. (Perhaps there was one or two, but they were they outlyingest outliers, and probably reside in the Pacific Northwest.) Although many picked Seattle to win, they were still wrong, because none of them proposed a blowout unworthy of your viewing time.
Football analysts aren't stupid, lazy or naive. They are simply guilty of reckless disregard of an obvious truth -- that anything can happen in one game that makes analysis of past games utterly irrelevant. And the consuming public of this analysis -- i.e., sports fans -- join them in that negligence. We all conspire to ignore a fact proven repeatedly, that tiny advantages, even if piled up high, even if all accruing to one contestant and not the other, even if beyond debate, convey only tiny advantage, which can be completely overwhelmed in the heat of battle.
Think about baseball playoffs. We see the same kinds of analysis built on houses of sand and fog -- one team has home field advantage (a 55% edge in one game if and only if the teams are tied after six); one team's top two starters are superior (over the course of the season, though perhaps not over the next two starts); one team has more experience (which has been demonstrated repeatedly not to matter one iota of a scintilla of a bit); or any other matter of considerations that reasonable people could agree amount to an amoeba on a whale's back.
We go through this annually with clock-like regularity, as if stuck in an endless loop we can't escape. No one ever reminds the ESPN host that he's ignoring history and wasting his breath.
If the games were predictable they would be . . . the early rounds of the NBA playoffs. A big yawnfest. Thankfully, they're full of surprises.
When asked, in the weeks leading up, who would win the Super Bowl, the only correct answer was, "the team that scores more points." Any other answer was, well, pointless.
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