Revisionist History, Marty Schottenheimer was a Hall of Fame Coach.

The San Diego Chargers won 14 games last year behind a coach who has a .613 winning percentage. According to reports after week 3 of this season Schottenheimer was apparently a hall of fame coach whose accomplishments made it ridiculous that he should be fired. Unfortunately for Marty that was not the case. After the playoffs last year in which they secured a bye in the wild card round and then lost in the divisional round to the Patriots Marty was fired. Some seem to think the only reason he was fired because he couldn't get along with GM A.J. Smith and that Smith, despite being the one to bring in all the talent on the roster, is now on the hook if Norv Turner doesn't work out.

Now I'm not trying to say hiring Norv Turner was a good idea, he hasn't been a good head coach anywhere so there is/was no reason to believe he would be in San Diego.However lets not let the Chargers poor start blur reality.These same people who think it's all Smiths fault and he never should have fired Marty seem to forget the fact that part if not most of reason for Schottenheimer's departure was that he hasn't won a playoff game in a decade... never mind in his tenure with the Chargers.

You play to win the game! and that game is the Super Bowl. If you're not trying to win the Super Bowl you might as well be playing for the number one draft pick. Sticking with Schottenheimer meant sticking with a coach whose career record is 5-13 in his career in the postseason or slightly under 28 percent. Thats not good, you might in fact say its awful. Moving away from the numbers I'm pretty sure if you ask any fan of the Chiefs or Chargers and they'll tell you every big game Marty ever coached they'd be close games and sooner or later Marty would do something to choke away the game. Basically you were not winning the super bowl with this guy... you would have been lucky to even make it there considering he never did.

So Smith rolled the dice, he took a chance and it may not work out, but a chance needed to be taken. So i don't want to hear any more about Marty Schottenheimer and his 14-2 record last year. He won the exact same thing Norv's won this year... nothing.

UFC 73 The Fix Was In!

I was lucky enough to catch Saturday's UFC 73, and there's only one thing i can think about the Matt Hamill versus Mike Bisping match: the fix was in. For those of you who don't know alot about UFC and admittedly i'm one of them, let me give some background. Both fighters were on the Ultimate Fighter 3, the UFC's version of the contender (i believe it came first though). Hamill would have faced Bisping in the final of the show, but received a concussion the fight before (and won anyway), and was not able to compete in the final. Hamill finally got his chance to face Bisping on Saturday in London. Hamill an American came out to Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' while the Englishmen Bisping came out to 'London is Calling'. Basically it was a great setup for this fight. Something boxing could learn from.

The fight was a pretty good fight, not the most vicious or technically impressive, but entertaining nonetheless. In the first round Hamill hit Bisping with a few nice punches to the face and bloodied him. he controlled that round and the second round as well. In the third it looked like Bisping won the round, but at no time did he really control the fight or look the better of the two competitors. The fight went the full 3 rounds (5 minutes a round) without a knockout however, so the decision was left up to the judges. Bisping was ruled as the winner by split decision. Hamill (who's deaf by the way) was gracious in defeat, while Bisping told Hamill a former amateur wrestler, to "go back to wrestling."

Now let me preface this by saying i know nothing about how UFC is scored, but to me if you bloody a guy and control the fight... you win. However the Englishmen in London got the victory, leaving one to ask... was the fix in?

Either way it was a great night of fights and i hope they telecast more on cable rather than pay-per-view as i would like to get more into the UFC and have no interest in pay-per-views.

You Wanted Eli to Play on That Last Drive? Ridiculous!

Eli Manning threw for 312 yards with 4 td's and only 1 int last night. By all accounts he had a great game, the only downside of which was that he got hurt. However some people were upset by the fact that he didn't try to make a "Jack Youngblood playing on a broken leg" type effort and play in the 4th with his bruised shoulder. They feel he could have shut up those who felt he wasn't a leader and instead passed up the opportunity. Some of these people include Skip Bayless (a world renowned idiot) and one of the Stewart brothers from 2 live Stews (as bad if not worse than Bayless). Now if it were just these two who held this belief it wouldn't be a problem, but I'm sure there are others out there who feel the same and I think that is ridiculous.

Lets recap the situation:

Eli appeared to have injured his shoulder on a failed 2 point conversion with 7:20 to go in the game. The Giants were down 10 at that point with plenty of time to go. The Giants manage to get the ball back and Eli with his bruised shoulder comes out and leads the Giants for a score to cut the lead to three with 4 minutes to go. If the Giants made a stop Eli could have came back on and been the hero, but they didn't. They allowed a 51 yard touchdown to put the Cowboys back up 10 with 3 minutes to go. The game was certainly not over, the Giants could have scored in a minute or minute and a half and still had 2 or 1 1/2 minutes left. However, playing against a prevent type d they were not going to be making long receptions so scoring quick would have been tough. Additionally they would then have had to do an onside kick, and lets be honest how often do onside kicks work when the other team knows its coming? not often if my memory serves me right.

So you wanted to see Eli tough it out and play on the chance that the Giants could MAYBE score and score quickly and then still have to recover an onside kick? Then i guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I would think the fans and the team would rather Eli sit it out and be healthy for next week since they have no shot of winning with an out of shape linebacker, i mean Jared Lorenzen at quarterback.

Why US Soccer Doesn't Suck

Some people don’t respect US soccer, some think it quite frankly sucks. I feel this is ridiculous and I’m going to try to list some reasons why US soccer doesn’t suck. This article is not to argue that US soccer is a powerhouse like Brazil or Argentina, but simply to say US soccer deserves respect. If I say we or us it’s because I’m an American and they are my team.

1) We own Mexico - We’ve won the last two gold cups beating everyone’s favorite North American soccer team, Mexico, to win it. Yes the Gold Cup has been in the US, but there are almost as many Mexicans in the US as Mexico (exaggeration) so I don’t know that you could really call it homefield advantage. We simply don’t lose to Mexico, except maybe at the Azteca , but I would suspect not too many teams do too well there; hard to play a mile above sea level and having things thrown at you all game. (Not speaking Spanish made finding Mexico’s record at the Azteca hard to find) At home or on a neutral field we own them. We consistently beat them in world cup qualifiers and we beat them in the 2002 world cup knocking them out. They basically fired their coach because he couldn’t beat us in any meaningful games… their new coach hasn’t either.

2) We consistently qualify for the world cup- this doesn’t say a whole lot since there aren’t a whole lot of great teams in CONACAF, but nonetheless it is not meaningless. It means we are the best team on the continent… there are only 7 in the world. We win the games we need to, to get where we want to go… the world cup.

3) Players- We have talented players. No we don’t have Kaka or Ronaldinho, or a player as talented as Cristiano Ronaldo, but we have talent. Let’s start at the back, I don’t think there are many better goalkeepers than Friedal or Keller, and I think Tim Howard is becoming one of the better keepers in the world. At the very least I don’t think he gives the other team goals, like say Jens Lehmann http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFs1nqErUjY DeMarcus Beasley after having looked extremely dangerous in champions league matches for PSV was never really given a chance there, he eventually found a home starting for Rangers who sit atop the Scottish tables.

Brian Mcbride scored double digits for an awful Fulham team last year. I can’t imagine it was through the talents of his teammates he scored all those goals. Clint Dempsey scored the biggest goal all season for them last year to help them avoid relegation. This year he has 2 goals and an assist in 2 starts and 3 substitutions. Depsite playing for a bad team he will no doubt have a solid season. Landon Donovan despite his lack of desire to play in Europe is a consistent top scorer for his teams and has won multiple MLS cups, with both San Jose and LA. The talent pool is also growing as Freddy Adu and Josy Altidore as well as others showed in the U-20’s world cup.

4) The 2006 world cup was the fluke- Some might say that 2002 was the fluke; that beating Mexico who we always beat, tieing Korea who is not all that good and beating Portugal were all flukes. However I would say 2006 was the fluke. Despite having been clearly the better team the US was not given the 8^th number one slot which was instead given to Mexico. Because of this Mexico got to face Angola, Portugal and Iran, or essentially Portugal. The US meanwhile had to face Italy, The Czech Republic and Ghana. Italy won the whole thing, and the US tied them. The Czechs had a disappointing performance overall and still killed the US team, however it was in the only match they played with their top players, including their top striker Koller who scored the Czechs first goal, and did not play after that. Even the Ghana team was a quality opponent.

Despite the tremendous odds they faced, I have little doubt if they were not so poorly coached they would have advanced. Arena after having been a “maverick” in 2002 and starting a bunch of youngsters like Donovan and Beasley decided he had to be a genius again. So he played Beasley and Donovan out of position, left Dempsey out of the squad till the final game, despite the fact Dempsey had clearly proven he should be starting. How can I say I have such little doubt? Well in the final game who scored the US’ goal? None other than Beasley in his proper leftsided position passing it off to Dempsey for the finish.

Yes they did poorly in 1998, but had a good showing in 1994 and having only been getting stronger since.

5) Their recent record isn’t too much worse than other top teams- look at the records of other teams in the last two world cups. Spain for instance, knocked out in the 1^st knockout round in 2006 after making it out of an awful group. In 2002 they won a penalty shootout with Ireland (not exactly a world power) and then lost to Korea in the ¼ finals also on PK’s. This is the same Korea team, playing at home, which the US also played to a tie. Argentina unquestionably one of the world soccer powers didn’t even make it out of the group stages in 2002. I’m not arguing Spain and Argentina don’t have better players, or aren’t better teams but at least the last two world cups their records haven’t been any more impressive than the US.

Yes the US has struggled lately; they’ve even lost 4 in a row, including getting destroyed at the Copa America. However, Copa America was the Americans 3^rd string team against some of the best teams in the world. Is the US as good as Brazil, Argentina or England? No, no, and no but that doesn’t mean the US team isn’t good or that it doesn’t deserve respect... Is the MLS as good a league as the EPL or La Liga? again clearly not, but for a league that's been around a little more than tens years it's not doing bad.

Biggest Upset Ever?

No, Appalachian States upset of Michigan today is not the biggest upset in team sports ever; it is the second biggest. For purposes of this discussion I'm only including team sports, so boxing, tennis, wrestling etc are out. I'm also only referring to American sports competitions. So the FA Cup and Cricket are also out.

That being said the biggest upset in modern team sports has to be the "miracle on ice" 1980 win by the US team over Russia in the Olympics. The US team was a bunch of amateurs, college students to be more precise facing a well trained well oiled group of professionals. The Russians had recently crushed the US prior to this game and for the US to find a way to pull out the victory has to be the greatest upset in team sports.

The second greatest upset just happened today. The preseason #5 team in the nation, with a returning senior QB and a star running back, where beaten in one of the most imposing places to play in front of 100,000+ fans, by a 1AA team. No matter how good of a 1AA team Appalachian state may be they are still a 1AA team. You can say that this was only the first game on the season, but you really think Michigan is getting a national title this year? After being ranked 5th in the nation they could very likely drop out of the top 25 and will have to win every game the rest of the way and potentially do so in impressive fashion to even have a shot at a BCS game. All that being said unlike the miracle on ice today's game was amateurs versus amateurs, thus i give the edge to the miracle on ice.

Others that deserve consideration would be the "Miracle Mets" of 1969, the Super Bowl 3 Jets, or Villanova over Georgetown in 1985. The Red Sox coming back from 3 games down against the yankees also has to rank up there, but it's a series rather than one game, so it's an apples to oranges comparison. Why i rank today's game and the miracle on ice over games like the Mets and Jets is because it was professional teams playing against each other. Similarly the Villanova Georgetown game was two big east schools playing against each other. a team might be figuratively "not in their league" but if you are literally not in the same league that makes the upset at least twice as impressive.

A comparison to todays game would be if a AAA baseball team came up and played a playoff series against a major league team and knocked that team out of the playoffs. the importance of this game despite were it is in the season is nearly of playoff importance. the disparity in facilities, attendance, ability to attract talent is also as wide as that between AAA and the majors.

Quite a day for sports, congratulations to Appalachian State for pulling off the second greatest upset of all time.