
The person’s name is Incompetentia, so anything said under this byline matters. The work in question is a staggering achievement of work through crippling boredom. And every team in every sport should have one just like it.
One what, you say? Incompetentia, which indeed is the Latin for “incompetent,” ranked all 163 Cleveland Browns losses since the team was formed from dust in 1999. I think it is fair to speculate, then, that Incontinentia could well be known in the neighborhood as Qui Sine Humano Consortio Significanter.
He Who Is Without Meaningful Human Companionship.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers are claiming that the manager they no longer wanted, Don Mattingly, was tampered with by the team that does want him, the Miami Marlins. Knowing the two ownership groups, I hope for happy resolution where the Marlins are found guilty of tampering, the Dodgers are found guilty of being weenies, and both teams are fined $5 million for being tedious jackholes.
I think that’s the fairest solution, as I know you do.
[RELATED: AP sources: Marlins hire Mattingly as manager]
News
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New York Jet Brandon Marshall, who can speak to the issue of Greg Hardy better than almost anyone since he has gone down a portion of the same dark corridor, told Showtime’s Inside The NFL that Hardy “doesn’t get it.” But he also adds that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who has defended Hardy and even praised him through his scrapes with players, coaches and the law gets it even less.
“Right now Jerry’s only focusing on the player,” Marshall said. “It’s time for us to start talking about the person. It’s time for us to start dealing with the person. If we want the product on the field to be great, if we want to protect the shield, then we have to approach both the same.”
Because Marshall does get it, we needn’t tell him that Jones is telling you he doesn’t want to get it. Hardy is just another wrench in the tool belt, nothing more, and while he deserves nothing but shame (and frankly, oodles of jail time) for his actions, using him in this way and giving him carte blanche to maintain his showy insanities, Jones is saying how little he cares about Hardy. Or, by extension, any other player he would ever employ.
[RELATED: NFL reduces Greg Hardy's suspension by six games]
At some point, the players will do something with this knowledge and force some corrective action. Like telling their kids (and before then, their union reps) that this is no way to go through life.
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Adama Traore of Aston Villa is a 19-year-old with a dream. And at least part of that dream -– to be the highest-paid player on his team –- may well be realized within weeks.
Seems Traore, who makes about $61,250 a week despite starting once so far and appearing in only five of Villa’s first 10 Premier League games, is only five appearances from doubling that to about $115,000 a week, by the reckoning of The Telegraph.
Now, I’m no math major, but I’ll bet he’s either going to have a hard time getting that last game, or one club accountant is going to stab another club accountant at a staff meeting immediately thereafter.
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Michael Weinreb of Vice wrote this under the headline “Stanford, Washington State and the Battle for the Pac-12's Deeply Weird Soul:"
“No team in the Pac-12 has thrown fewer passes than Stanford; through seven games of the season, the Cardinal are averaging 23.7 pass attempts per contest. Washington State, which leads the Pac-12, is throwing 56.3 times per game. And this is why Washington State-Stanford, no matter the result, feels a little bit like a referendum on the Pac-12's identity in this moment of flux. It is the Air Raid versus the eight-man front; it is retroactiveness versus futurism, and it is the Pac-12's experimental ethos at its best.
“If Stanford loses, of course, the temptation will be to proclaim this a disaster for the Pac-12, since it will almost certainly miss out on the playoff this season. But when it comes to the larger question of sheer entertainment, the Pac-12 can't really lose here: I mean, really, has there been a better single moment in college football this season than when a Washington State assistant coach implored Mike Leach to go for two points in the final seconds of a game against Oregon, and Leach pondered the vast and unsolvable mysteries of the universe before kicking the extra point (and eventually winning in overtime)? What makes the Pac-12 interesting is when it feels like an experiment, and if nothing else, Stanford-Washington State unquestionably fits that bill.”
In other words, what Weinreb is saying is that you should watch this game while stinking drunk.
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And finally, Austin Rivers of the Los Angeles Heels got dunned $25K for throwing a seat cushion and inadvertently hitting a fan in Sacramento Wednesday night, and well done to him. A villain can never take a night off -- ask any pro wrestler -- and this $25K is the start of what we hope will be the first team in sports history to be fined after every game for some silly thing or other.
[RELATED: Clippers' Rivers fined $25K for drilling Kings fan with seat cushion]
Maybe they’ll take the floor wearing lucha libre masks Sunday against the Kings in LA. I mean, with their weak new uniforms, they’ll need some extra haberdashery to pull off the mood they’re trying to convey. It would surely go a long way to jump-starting their journey as Bad Boys 2.0.
Fight the power of the league office, men. Rage against the machine of good behavior.