PRINCE....WTF???

Listen to this song first...




So I know what you are thinking....WTF was that i just listened to??? Yeah, me too! Its like a mixture of a church hymn that didn't make the cut, and....ummm well thats about it, a bad bad church hymn! Prince wants this to be the anthem of the Vikings...Nothing says lets go play some hard nosed, raw, brutal game of football than "Purple and Gold". This claim by prince is almost as weird as hearing that Mark "Sanchize" Sanchez listens to James Taylor for his personal pregame pump-up routine. Prince is a weird dude, we all know this, but he is, errrrr, was once one of the most influential musicians on the planet, and this is what he releases for his favorite football team. Wait...don't you think its weird this guy even likes football? or even sports for that matter. Prince, to me, seems like the last place he would ever want to be is in the metrodome watching such a grueling game. Prince, needs to keep doing what he has always done lately, just lay low, stay out of the publics eye, go paint another house purple, go make Eddie and Charlie Murphy pancakes after whooping their asses in a pick up game! To all of you people who listened to that song or have heard it before, I think we all need to go purify our minds by submerging ourselves in the cool waters of Lake Minnetonka!


What a freaking weirdo! GO VIKES!!!

Non-Surprising Truth Littered With Lies

Look, anyone that has any common sense and anyone who has followed baseball, whether it be casually or a die hard fan, knows that something was beefing up baseball, but what was it, specifically??? NO ONE KNOWS, not even Mark Mcgwire. Although admitting to using steroids for a better part of his career, he could not remember what it was he was taking....seriously??? He is a professional athlete, his body is his money maker, you think someone who relies on his body to support his family doesn't know what he is putting into it?...yeah right!
Before I get into all of this lying that he somehow thought would make his admittance to peformance enhancing drugs(PED's) go over smoothly. I want to thank Mark for actually coming out, on his own terms, and saying he took them, saying he was sorry to the Maris family for taking Roger out of the record books with the help of a substance. Its hard to apologize, even for a regular person apologizing is uncomfortable for the person who has done wrong, and also the person that was wronged. Now, Mark had to apologize on an interview with Bob Costas, in front of a camera(so pretty much the whole world can watch it), but to all of the people that have ever played the sport of baseball, whether you are in Little League,high school, college, semi pro, pro, and even members of the Hall of Fame. He apologized on his own terms. He wasnt forced. He is still the only former MLb'er that we all suspected of doing roids to come out and admit it.
Now on to his actual interview...He said that when he went in front of congress that he "was not there to talk about the past", but Mark thats exactly why you were chosen to go to the congressional hearing on the matter. They didn't have Randy Johnson or Orel Hershiser there for a reason, those guys weren't ever involved in talks of PED's, ever!
Another thing that really irritates me is all of the excuses he made about why he made the decision to take the drugs. He said he "wishes he never would have played baseball in the Steroid Era", MARK-YOU WERE THE REASON WE CALL IT THE STEROID ERA! You played on the Oakland Athletics with Jose Canseco, you two might/are the reason PED's are so overwhelming in professional baseball. He also stated that he was given a god-given gift to play ball. This is very true. He also stated that "he did not take steroids to get any gain for any strenth purposes, I have always had bat speed". That might not have been the reason why you started to take them, Mark, but when you realized that a, what would be, normal lazy fly ball to the outfield was suddently flying lazily over the wall, it was addicting. Numbers of home runs=more number of 0's on the end of your paycheck. So steroids do not improve your hand-eye coordination, right! But like I said before, they do give you power, balls that aren't supposed to go over the left field wall are, and balls that are already going to be a home run are suddenly turning into 500 ft. moon shots.
I commend Mark for what he said, I am sure it was hard to do, and who knows this might hurt his future of hall of fame status, or it might help. All I know is that an apology with excuses is not an apology. An apology with excuses is a squirmy way of trying to get people to look past what you reallly did, and feel sorry for you. I wish he would have just said "I took Steroids, I cheated the game of baseball, I made the decision to stick the needle in my ass, and for that I am sorry!" Don't blame an era, don't blame the media, don't blame anyone but yourself. No one made you take them! Man up for your decision!
Hopefully Marks half-ass apology will spark something in some other players to come out and discuss how they have cheated the best game on earth!

Stunning results from yesterday

Wow, I really hope no one took my picks yesterday, I think today I will wait until after the games to do my picks so I don't look quite so completely hopeless.  These will just be quick picks to see if I can salvage a little self respect.  Let's go with Baltimore to win outright, I think they are +3 and I'll go with the Packers on a pick.  So that's three underdog picks (two on the road) and an even pick, genius.  If you still want to read this crap after my stunning football insight I'll be doing a round up of all the games tonight and maybe I'll put up one of my world class essays that's supposed to be on sports, but really isn't about anything.

Wild Card Saturday

So Wild Card Saturday is upon us, you can tell that it's Wild Card Saturday because I got up at 10:30 and had two warm beers in the shower to kick off an afternoon of NFL football.  After 17 weeks of having to watch crappy college football on Saturday, I finally get the real thing.  And since Uj and Ron never got back to me, I'll be doing the all the game run downs, today I'll do today's games, and tomorrow maybe the same.  There is a chance that I'll get to tomorrow's games after I get home from the bar tonight in which case you can look forward to insane spelling errors and tangential rants about girls that ended up going home with someone else.

4:30 PM AFC Game:  The Jets +2 1/2 at The Bengals
In case you are wondering, I'm going with the oddsmaker.com lines, since they are the first ones that come up on yahoo.com and that's good enough for me.  Looks like you can get -3 and even money on the Bengals some places if you are in to that thing.  Anyway, I'm going to take the Bengals and give the points, if this game is close it's going to be a Cinci choke job, so if the Bengals are going to win it will be by at least a touch down.  I'm thinking a rookie quarterback first time in the play off, can't put hot sauce on his burrito situation from Sanchez.  I also think that Cinci is going give it Benson and pound it up the middle, making the Jets front 7 feel just like your mom.

One of our readers says this is not Tony Romo

8:00 PM NFC Game:  The Eagles +3 1/2 at The Cowboys
So somehow after loosing consistently in December and January all throughout the Circle Circles (my awesome new name for the last decade) they are now 1/2 point favs on a neutral field over the Eagles, who are 7-0 in first round games under Reid, or maybe not, but I think I heard that someplace.  First off, I hate the Cowboys, Wade is a Joke, Romo always chokes and I can't imagine that Cowboy's Stadium is a real home field advantage; this goes against Andy Reid being the worst clock manager ever, so let's go with Eagles for the outright win (that's +160 on the money-line for you degenerates out there).  Also, if the Reid-McNabb combo don't get it done this year, I think that this is the end for them.  Although I've always thought that a great after football career for those two would a tough West Phillie cop drama called McNabb, where Donovan is somehow partnered with his mom and Andy Reid is there hard nosed but lovable Lt.  Someone get me NBC on the phone, they are desperate for a 10 pm filler.

Upcoming on DNP-CD

Wanted to let you know what to expect over the next couple of day on DNP-CD.  Tomorrow I should have my rundown of the AFC wild card match-ups, including my completely unreliable picks that should not take to the bank, or be your locks of the week or your shoe-ins or any other stereotyped sports gambling metaphor used on the classic Simpson's episode "Lisa the Greek."  This also will give me a chance to bitch non stop about my Steelers not making the play offs and that all I can go out on for this season is a win against Miami that contained my favorite call of the season.  Dierdorf in one of his classic moments saying, "Woodley finishes by exploding all of Henne here."  This covers my complete spectrum of perfect humor, totally out of context, unknowing, gay porn reference.  Classic, and I'm surprised no one except for Mike Kurtz over at footballoutsiders.com noticed it.
Hopefully Uj will be doing the same thing for the NFC wild card games, if not, you will be getting a completely half assed one from me, since I have almost no interest in the NFC at all.  One of these days you should be getting an article from Ron, at least just him saying hi, maybe.  Also maybe someone will write about the BCS Championship game tonight, I'm 100% sure that, that will not be me, but someone else might.  In a fit of post Jersey Shore watching tonight mixed with just a swig of Simmonism tomorrow I will be posting a lengthy write up of why the most perfect pop culture reference to Kobe Bryant is The Situation, so get ready for that.

DNP-CD From Around the Web

Yesterday I was looking around for some interesting dnp-cd stats to give the blog some foundational ideas and characters, like if there was some NBA player that had 200 dnp-cd over 4 years and was still in the league or something.  Sergio "DNPCD" Rodriguez would be a fine example.

 But as it turns out I found something much better, something has secured my belief that the dnp-cd is not only my favorite box score, but the most essential box score in any sports re-cap.  Since I may be the only person that has plowed through both Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 and Simmon's The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy the post modern Gibbon's and close to the same size.  I've come to the conclusion that the dnp-cd is the ultimate representation of a team understanding "the secret" and player not understanding.  Therefor the 08-09 Nicks.  D'Antoni coming to the worst "secret" team ever, which is a great irony since it was Isiah Thomas that told Simmons about "The Secret" and a coach trying to instill it upon his team.

The First website that pops up when you google (I guess I've given up and started using google as a verb, although I'm happy to see that it still comes up as not a real work on spell check. (double parentheses time; I have the exact same feelings about Avatar, when I went to see it as I was walking out my friend Erika tells me she was disappointed because she really wanted to hate it more and kinda liked it alright, which was my exact reaction too.) ) was this site from some silly local conglomeration site called examiner.com.  They had an article about How to read an NBA box score written by this guy:

And low and behold, the very first thing listed is the titular (I love that word, since it both makes me sound smart and reminds me of the awesome Dan Aykroyd sleezy art historian sketch from SNL) dnp-cd.  Followed by some other dnps that I would like to compare it too.

When a player does not play, his name is usually followed by the notation DNP (Did Not Play) with a reason for why he did not play. The most common is DNP-CD, which means Did Not Play-Coaches Decision. Other DNPs are:
DNP-Suspended (if the player has been suspended by the team or league)
DNP-NWT (if the player is not with the team)
DNP-DND (if the player did not dress for the game)
DNP-Flu (if the player sat out with the flu; this can also be Knee, Ankle, or whatever ailment prevented the player from playing.)

Now I've gone over DNP-CD and you all know what I think about it.  The next is dash Suspended.  This one is almost opposite in every way, since usually you get suspended in David Stern's NBA for doing something that your team would love you fore, like punching some flopping, kiss-ass Euro in the fucking face.  Of course, you can no longer play basket ball like it means anything to you personally anymore, so this is out.

The next is the mysterious dash NWT.  This can be almost anything, like a sick family member out of the area (in the case of eastern Euro players this means owing money to the Russian mob and having to rescue a family member before their hands are cut off to secure your debt) or a "Family Situation" aka your wife found out about one of your girlfriends back in Atlanta.

There really is nothing to say about DND, since that should be covered by one of the other ones, you just happen to have gotten some new digs that everyone who watches TNT has got to see.  So we will skip to DNP-Flu.  Here is the most interesting one, since it goes even above David Stern's head straight to God (Although David my not agree that is above his head).  God has given you the flu for one reason and one reason only, to see if you are Micheal Jordan or a complete pussy.  If you decide to play one of the greatest play off games ever and rip the hearts out of the Utah Jazz and all their collective fans as well as cement your legacy as being competitive to the point of people thinking you are bat shit insane, you are in fact not like Mike, you are Mike.  If you went home to have a lie down and missed the game, you are just another multi-millionaire athlete, so don't feel too bad about it.

I was hoping to have some clever way to wrap this post up, but frankly I have nothing.  Uji should have something a little later today about The Big Unit, the second greatest porn sounding sports name ever and his retirement.  It would be way to easy to make a gay joke about Nick right now, so I'll let you guys do that in the comments section.  Also, later this week I'll be doing my picks for the AFC Wildcard games and Uj will do the NFC and I'm hoping we can get Ron to do a rundown of all 16 teams in the playoffs, maybe.

No Hiding from this "Big Unit"!!!

Randy Johnson announced this morning that he will be hanging up his glove and cleats and will be retiring from professional baseball. Now I am not going to bore you with his accomplishments throughout the twenty-two year career of this legend, honestly, that could take all day maybe week! I will quickly run the numbers just so you can get a feel for how great this 6 ft. 10 in. pitcher really was! I was once a pitcher, and the only stats i really cared about were wins and strikeouts(i would have cared about Cy Young awards but you have to get drafted to win one of those)! The Big Unit was 1st in the history of MLB in strikeouts per 9 innings averaging a little more than ten and a half. He was second in all time strikeouts in the league as a pitcher with a whopping 4,875 k's! wow! He won 5 Cy Young awards 4 of these awards came back to back to back to back with the Arizona Diamondbacks(1999-2002). He ranks second all time in most Cy Young awards ever won by an individual. Okay Okay, enough with the stats...lets get to the real reason why, in my opinion, this monster of a man was so dominant on the mound...
Randy took the mound with a certain kind of swagger that most pitchers don't have...where did it come from??? not his height, not his skinny frame(obviously)! It was his Tennessee Top-Hat, you know, his 1090(10% in front, 90% in back, his business up front party in the back! HIS MULLET!!!! That thing would be swaying in the wind hiding behind the pockmarked face redneck, there is not one hitter in this world that would not be intimidated by that! Oh and lets not forget that porn-stash he was rocking for the better half of his career! Dude looked like the creepy guy that pumps your gas in the middle of the desert in Nevada, although Randy threw gas instead of pumped it, still had the creepy thing going in his favor!
With all of that said, jokes aside, I want to say congrats on a wonderful career! The MLB will miss your redneck, mullet wearing, 100 MPH throwing, bird exploding, bat slipping out of your hand swinging, way you played baseball! Hats off to the Big Unit!

Lina Kleiza Girlfriend

While I was looking for a picture to go with Uj's post, I noticed that the second most common google search for Kleiza was of course, linas kleiza girlfriend.  This makes total sense, since I spent most of the '08 season calling him 'Face Kleiza' which Beav and I thought was hilarious, so obviously he is some kind of Greek heart throb.
As it turns out there is an entire website, made by his faithful Greek fanbase dedicated to whether or not he is currently seeing anyone.  For those of you interested in that sort of thing, head over to: Linas Kleiza's Girlfriend
And for those of you not into that thing, you should be, it's comedy gold all around. 

Career day getting to be cliche at E.S.A.???

Last night during the first half of the jazz game I was contemplating what to write for my first post on DNP-CD, I was going to use this first piece of writing to introduce myself as a sports fanatic! As the game progressed, I noticed, while flipping back and forth from the TCU v. BSU game, Devin Brown was about to reach his career high against his former Utah team. Look, we all know the Jazz are soft on the inside, and although play above average help-side defense, we seem to lose track of a player who isn't really a "threat" on the opposing offensive end. BIG MISTAKE!!! I just don't understand how so many players, both good and bad and some really really bad, put up career numbers against the jazz? I just want to show you a couple examples...I will start with the big names, that might not be surprising and probably could have happened to any team in the league considering their talent. First, the silky smooth southpaw Michael Redd drops 57 points on the Jazz in 2006. Second, Ray Allen rains down on the Jazz with the former Seattle Supersonics for a cool 54 points back in 2007. Now here is where some of the players are hardly recognizable, unless you are an NBA/NCAA basketball junkie! Jonny Flynn of the Minnestoa T-Wolves hurries to a quick 28 points and two of those points being the game winner in 2009, oh and did I mention he was/is a rookie in the league this year. Another rookie that I had to wikipedia just to make sure he actually played in the NBA was Toney Douglas from the NY knickerbockers, who???-exactly!!! Douglas came off the bench to record his career high of 21 points, this was in 2009 and he also is a rookie! Now being from Utah I have watched Chase Budinger down in AZ and knew who he was, but for all of you who don't he was the tall, awkward, ginger that had his face stomped on by an opposing player in the NCAA tournament last year. Although he didn't score more than 30 or even 20 for that matter, he hardly plays, he scored 17 points this year against the jazz, oh and did I also mention it is his first year in the National Basketball Association as well. Now this last guy I am gonna mention ripped my heart out and most of the jazz nation, his name is Linas Kleiza.  Kleiza who onced played for the division rival Denver Nuggets scored an unbelievably awkward, ugly, unathletic 41 points!!! I can't quite grasp this concept, a very consistent,Jerry Sloan coached team, highly respected around the league for being very physical and relentless, and these rookies are coming into the ESA like it was there own backyard. This is beginning to become a very bad habit for the Utah Jazz and now when the Boston Celtics come into town, we don't need to worry about Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, or even Sheed.....we need to worry about Brian Scalabrine!!!!!

Fiesta Bowl

This will be an unusually short post, but my initial perception of the Fiesta Bowl is that Boise and TCU have by far the ugliest uniforms in college football.  They are a stunning combination of looking extremely dated in a that modern way that Nike has mastered over the last couple of years.

Specifically TCU has attempted to create a modeled, almost metallic texture to their helmets and pants that already is starting to look like that metallic finish that home stereos were given in the late 70s.  While the Broncos uniforms have the same aesthetic as the t-shirts on Jersey Shore, timelessly dated in every way.
While I was writing this the Broncos got a pick 6, so if you had any questions about what kind of sports blog this is, it's the kind that drinks Scotch and misses big plays while complaining about uniforms and making references to Jersey Shore and thinking the Culture Club reference in that Fed Ex commercial was strangely perfect.
Maybe Uj and Ron will be more to your liking.

Post #1

So here we are on the 1st Monday of 2010 and the first post of DNP-CD.  After years of enjoying that line at the bottom of NBA box scores in the sports section of the Deseret News I've decided to dedicate an entire blog to the NBA's version of the Mendoza line.  There just seemed to be something perversely satisfying to see that in a game that only dresses 12 people for 48 minutes of high intensity activity that there would always be 2 or 3 guys that just never played because their coach felt a tired #7 guy was still better than they are for even 1 or 2 garbage time minutes.
2010 seemed like the perfect time in second way, as New York Knickerbockers's coach Mike D'Antoni has used the power of the did not play - coaches decision to reinvent being a GM from the bench.  After successfully DNPing Starbury out of the league last year, in the greatest DNP-CD of all time it looked like he was back at it again with Nate Robinson this year.  Only, he had transcended the obvious and used the long term DNP-CD as a powerful multinational tool, bringing Nate off the bench for a career high 41 point explosion and then cutting his minutes drastically the next in what seems like a return to the last spot on the bench and another stretch of DNP-CD box scores for Nate in the near future.
This could be just a new tactic to create a trade chit out of Nate, a reinvention of the original Stephon DNP-CD of last year, a DNP-CD 2.0 so to speak.  This is one we will just have to ride out, but either a new era is a upon us and this blog is dedicated to it.
In a much less metaphorical way we will be talking about local Salt Lake sports, and then the specific team interests outside of the local arena that each one of us enjoys.  I think we will all have something to say routinely on the Jazz, the main focus of the blog.  I hope to talk about the limbo that find themselves in, a perpetual middle of the pack western team that seems to be stuck between the slowdown philosophy of the 1990's and the up tempo, inside outside, but not so much give and go transitional NBA of today.  Uj, goes to the games and will probably just talk about drinking 6 beers at half time and having Steven Jackson threaten to kill him during a game and Ron will discuss his hatred of Carlos Boozer, the one constant in his NBA life, that is if Ron ever gets back to me about writing.
As far as other sports go, I think there should be some U of U action during football season, and maybe some Rugby updates too, as well as other MWC info, possibly some college basketball.  I will mention my Steelers, Pens and Yankees as much as possible, Uj will go with the Vikes, Flyers and Red Sox, and Ron will be a Chicago guy all around, Cubs specifically on the baseball, so there should be lots of shit talking going on there do some serious division over laps.
Sometime soon we are also hoping to start a podcast, hopefully once a week to begin with.  Also, I think there will be lots of bad spelling, mildly racist jokes and the 'F' 'S' and 'Scrotum Sucking Cunt-Bag' words.  Also, we may talk about other blogs that have anything to do with ours, there are probably even some other Jazz-centric blogs out there, but I haven't read them so I'll assume they kinda suck.  So get ready, because there is a lot of chatter at the end of the bench for those of us who Did Not Play - Coaches Decision.