The Inaugural Your Face is a Sports Blog Fan Fest is this Saturday in Phoenix

You heard right: due to popular demand, Your Face is a Sports Blog will be holding our first-ever Fan Fest this Saturday at Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix in conjunction with that night's sprint car racing. Both myself and fknmclane will be there, signing autographs and taking questions from the fans. We'll have prizes to give away* and there may even be some special guests.

Make sure you look for us at the Your Face is a Sports Blog booth at the parking lot outside of the track before the races. We'll be the ones covered in empty MGD cans!

*there are no prizes.

So yeah, I'm flying out to Phoenix this weekend to go to the sprint car races with fknmclane. He's never been, and I think he's pretty pumped about it. I hope that it's a good night of racing, and not a complete mess. The fact that I was told be the racetrack over the phone last night that racing had been cancelled, sending me into a downward spiral of depression, only to have fknmclane be told that no, racing was on this Saturday, doesn't bode well. But whatever - we're going to have a wild time, get into a lot of trouble, and have blog posts for weeks about it.

Note: Since I'm writing about the trip, it's now a business expense. Suck on it, IRS!

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 10:00 AM 2 comments  

The Greatest Sports Highlight Video Ever Created

We've all seen ESPN's Ultimate Highlight at some point in our lives, and while the editing is crisp and the plays are spectacular, the songs used are consistently awful. This is how it's done:



Catchy as all hell song + goofy highlights + 80's fashion = WINNER

UPDATE: The Duke has his panties in a bunch because "Centerfield > Walk of Life." I would agree wholeheartedly that the song and video are indeed better but Centerfield is all baseball and more of a look back at the golden age of the sport. As such...ah, fuck it, here's our President's favorite song, Centerfield, by John Fogerty:

Posted by McLane at 8:54 AM 2 comments  

Earthquake!!!

And no, not this guy. We just had a pretty decent jolt here in Southern California - a 5.8, centered about 45 miles away from downtown in Chino Hills. I'm on the 25th floor of a building on "rollers" - basically, it's designed to sway pretty significantly in order to minimize any structural damage. And it did sway - picture being in the cabin of a boat during a really bad storm, and that's about what it was like. Some girl at my friend Michael's office threw up because it was her first earthquake, and also because she is a girl.

Also, BLAARGHFHGH!!!

But seriously, I'm hearing sirens around my neighborhood, and while a 5.8 is big, it you wouldn't think that it would cause more than some minor structural damages. Still, I hope everyone out closer to the epicenter is OK.

And before anyone asks, no, this wasn't caused by Andruw Jones doing jumping jacks. There is no way his fat ass could even get off the ground.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 12:07 PM 1 comments  

Favre ready to send in reinstatement letter as soon as he can find a damned stamp

GULFPORT, MISSISSIPPI - At a hastily-called press conference outside of his home, Brett Favre today announced that he had signed his letter asking the NFL for reinstatement, and that he planned on mailing it in as soon as he could find a stamp.

"I've turned this damned place upside down looking for a stamp, and I ain't got anything," Favre said. "Maybe if you reporters had one, maybe in your wallets or purses, that would be a big help."

Favre said he looked in every place in his house for stamps, as well as the glove compartments of his family cars. Although he was unsuccessful in finding stamps, Favre did find a Super Bowl in his kitchen junk drawer.

"I wonder which one this is?," Favre asked. "I bet it's the one against Atlanta - to tell you the truth, that win didn't mean all that much."

Favre said that he had even gone on the US Postal Service Web site, after his friend Bucky told him that you could buy postage there. However, after 45 minutes, Favre abandoned the attempt.

"It was pretty confusing - you had to feed the envelope into the printer a certain way for it to print the postage on, and I'm no good with that sort of thing," he said. "What if they print up the wrong postage, and it gets sent back to me. It's better if I can just find a stamp."

Hopes had been raised in the Favre household earlier in the morning when a stamp booklet was found in a bedroom dresser drawer. However, those hopes were quickly dashed when it was discovered that the booklet was empty.

Later in the afternoon, ESPN's Chris Mortensen reported that Favre had found a mostly full booklet of 29 cent stamps, but was unsure if using two of those stamps would cause the post office not to deliver it because of "over-postaging it." There were also unconfirmed reports that Favre had attempted to remove a stamp from a received envelope with steam.

Favre said that as a last resort he would go into town to buy a stamp at the post office. However, he was relucant to do so, as this would likely lead to his wife "having me run errands and do a bunch of shopping and stuff. Nag, nag, nag - why do you think I'm so desperate to come back?"

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 10:16 AM 0 comments  

How to best spend $9 at Chase Field

I give you, the Big Dogs.

Pretty little maids all in a row

From left to right, here are the gory details:

Chicago Dog: Served Chicago-style with a cucumber and pickle spears, tomato wedges, green relish, mustard, white onion, sport peppers and celery salt.

Wisconsin Dog?: note - this is a new one, and I'm not familiar with it, but it looks to have sauerkraut and fries on it.

Cincinnati Dog: Served with diced onions, jalapeño cheese, spicy chili and green jalapeños.

Arizona Dog: Served with nacho cheese sauce, chorizo sausage, and fresh corn tortilla strips.

Texas Dog: (TOP) Served with cheddar cheese, chopped bacon, signature barbeque sauce and crispy onion rings.

You might be saying to yourself, I ain't payin' no nine dollars for no hot dog, but really, when compared to the $8 paid for a 20oz. beer, a Big Dog is an absolute steal.

It's a whole lot of weenie. So much, a fork and knife are necessary.

Being that it's covered with your choice of unhealthy goodness, it's the most bang for you buck at Chase Field. I can't speak for the Arizona, Cincy, Wisconsin or Chicago dogs, but trust me when I say the Texas Dog is the real deal. Dare I say it shouldn't be messed with?

Drenched with both BBQ and cheese sauce and then topped with bacon (BACON!) and at least four giant onion rings, it's all I could ever ask for and more from an artery clogging casing of various meats.

If you're ever at Chase Field, be sure and make your way over to the Big Dog stand in the main concourse. It'll be the best $9 you'll ever spend at a ball game. You won't regret it.

That part comes later.

Posted by McLane at 9:24 AM 3 comments  

Albert Belle approves of this brawl

• Tickets for you, your wife and two kids to a minor-league baseball game: $40.
• Hot dogs, soda and popcorn for family: $35.
• Getting drilled with a baseball thrown at 90 mph by a pissed off pitcher trying to chuck it into the other team's dugout during a brawl: Thousands of dollars of medical bills
• Getting drilled with a baseball thrown at 90 mph by a pissed off pitcher trying to chuck it into the other team's dugout during a brawl: A six-figure settlement on your lawsuit just waiting to happen.
• Getting drilled with a baseball thrown at 90 mph by a pissed off pitcher trying to chuck it into the other team's dugout during a brawl: Priceless.

If you didn't see it on SportsCenter or your local news last night, that's the souvenir that a lucky fan walked away from a game featuring a wild brawl between Dayton and Peoria thanks to Peoria pitcher Julio Castillo. And when I say "walked away from", I mean "was taken on a stretcher to the hospital from" which explains why Castillo got to spend the night in jail.

Here's a fan video of the brawl, complete with Castillo going nhuts for several minutes after the fight is over, and a bunch of mouthy, idiot fans who probably wouldn't be so loud if there wasn't a big screen separating them and the large, irate professional athlete. (Note: the fan is not only a loudmouth but also swears a lot, so NSFW if you are using speakers in the open:



Throwing a baseball at a fan should get you kicked out for life. Unless you are Albert Belle and a really good hitter, then maybe it should get you a few games supension.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 9:46 AM 0 comments  

Philadelphia anchors continue to put the Action in Action News

You might remember former Alycia Lane. She's the former anchor for KYW-TV in Philadelphia who was...ahem...exposed to have sent (apparently unwanted) revealing pictures of herself in a bikini to NFL Network anchor Rich Eisen - which were intercepted by his wife, ABC sideline reporter Suzy Shuster. I use the term "former" since she was fired last December after getting into a punch-up with an off-duty cop in New York.

She's back in the news, but this time it appears that she's the victim rather than the protagonist. At the time the "bikini photos" story broke, no one really knew who leaked the story. Same goes for the details of her arrest. Turns out that it was none other than her co-anchor Larry Mendte, trying to ruin her career after become enraged and jealous that she was making more money than him and becoming a bigger local star. So he hacked into her e-mail account well over 500 times in a five month span and fed the information to a local reporter.

At this point, I'm half-expecting to find out that he Photoshopped some pictures and sent them around to the local media to prove that Lane was a smelly, pirate hooker. Of course, I'm not sure that Mendte has the common sense to correctly use Photoshop, based on how he was caught - another worker found her Yahoo e-mail account open one day at a work computer, despite the fact that she had been fired six weeks earlier. All of which triggered an investigation that eventually got the FBI involved.

But here's the question I have out of all of this: who the hell is running the HR department at KYW-TV? Apparently having a complete lack of morals, shame or interest in others is not a problem for working your way up the Philadelphia TV news field. All you need to do is be able to show up for work a couple of hours a day, lie through your teeth, and put up with living in Philadelphia in order to make the big bucks, even if you have to screw a lot of people over in the process.

All of which explains why Elton Brand is a such a good fit in Philadelphia. (I'll be here all night, folks!) I don't know who they've hired to replace these two anchors, but I'd start checking the coffee mugs and silverware in the commissary for cyanide.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 1:27 PM 1 comments  

What got into the drinking water in Ohio this weekend?

To recap:

- Carson Palmer went on a Los Angeles radio show and basically ripped into Ohio St. ahead of the Buckeye's game against the Trojans this season, saying among other things that he "cannot stand the Buckeyes" and that he "just can't wait for two years from now when SC comes to the 'Shoe and hopefully we'll have a home game that weekend and I can go up there and watch us pound on them in their own turf." Now, I'm all for school spirit and adding a little bit of healthy bravado into a rivalry. Except for the small fact that Palmer plays professional football in Ohio, and not only are Ohio St. fans pretty, um, rabid, but they are tends to be a lot of overlap between Bengals fans and Buckeyes fans.

I've made a Venn diagram to help explain things:
























I hope this helps to clear up any confusion.

Assuming that Carson Palmer knows that in 2008, radio interviews in Los Angeles might make their way back to Cincinnati (and let's not totally assume this - after all, he apparently thought this ad was a good idea), this is not just a stupid interview; it's downright suicidal. It almost feels like he's so sick of playing with an underachieving bunch of felons and thugs in a place he hates, that he's decided to do whatever he can to make himself so hated that the Bengals have no choice but to trade him. And in Ohio, ripping the Buckeyes is a better way to ensure that you are hated than running a sack full of puppies through a wood chipper.

- Danica Patrick and Milka Duno got into a "catfight" at the Mid-Ohio track during a practice session before this weekend's IndyCar race. And by "cat fight" I of course mean "lots of finger wagging, yelling and then someone threw a towel at someone's face." There was no hair-pulling, clothes ripping of any kind, or even a remote hint of scissoring. Which is OK for me - Danica Patrick is kind of a two-face (sometimes looks great, sometimes looks like an angry little man), and Milka Duno looks like if you took Cesar Romero as The Joker from the old Batman TV series and put a set of huge fake cans on him.

Here's the video, if you are into that sort of thing. The set-up is during a practice session, Duno was driving with her usual complete lack of speed. Patrick was behind her and going much faster (and if Danica Patrick is that much faster than you on a road course, you are a terrible driver and should pretty much lose your racing license on the spot), and kept trying to pass her, except that Duno kept cutting her off.



Note the complete lack of interest by the all-male Citgo crew to do anything to stop the escalating tension, other than to make sure they were out of the way of the cameras. These are smart men.

- And finally...about 100 Columbus Crew fans rumbled with a dozen supporters of mid-level English Premier League team West Ham during an exhibition game on Sunday after the West Ham fans came over to the main Crew supporters' section. And who says that America can't embrace "the beautiful game" the way that they do in Europe. First we get Beckham, and now we have thuggish hooligans. Next we need rampant match fixing and corruption, and we'll be right there.

It should be noted that Carson Palmer is already furiously backpedaling from his anti-Ohio State comments. I imagine that he saw highlights of the soccer match and realized that the violent mob was likely heading for him next.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 9:31 AM 0 comments  

Your 1990 Fantasy Football Preview

A few months ago, I was cruising the Compton Public Library (because that's how I roll), when I purchased a couple of literary gems for 25 cents each from their book sale. I'll get to the second one at another time, but for now I want to take you back to 1990, when fantasy football was scoffed at by most respectable people and left to the hardcore sports nerds. And if you wanted to get information to prepare you for your upcoming fantasy season, there was Internet for you to turn to with their pages of Big Boards, and you sure as shooting couldn't just head down to your local magazine rack to find a half-dozen in-depth preview magazines.

No, you had to track down books written by the early fantasy experts. These men were no Matthew Berry come latelies. These were the Wild West days of fantasy sports prognostication. The people who did devote themselves full-time to these endeavors were rugged individualists, blazing a new trail for lonely, obsessed sports fans everywhere. With nothing but steely determination, a bottle of rye and a stack of statistics the size of the US budget, these men lived rough lives, all in order to bring a very small percentage of the population their fantasy sports news. These were groundbreaking, risk-taking men. Men like...Cliff Charpentier.



Yup. Your "leading" fantasy football expert in 1990 was, in all likelihood, some sort of French-Canadian. As my partner McLane noted, that would explain the New Orleans Saint on the cover - he probably had a requirement to place a Saint on the cover every year, because of the deep, ethnic ties between the Quebecois and the Cajuns. (Alternate 1990 cover boy: Bobby Hebert!) You have every right to be skeptical of any fantasy football guide written by Cliff Charpentier, unless it's a CFL guide. I bet Cliff Charpentier was all over the Montreal Alouettes in 1990.

The first thing you'll notice is the cover boy, the "1989 Fantasy Player of the Year" - Saints RB Dalton Hilliard. Which blew me away - he was the 1989 version of Ladanlian Tomlinson? It seems ludicrous. But looking at his 1989 numbers, and they are pretty amazing: 1,776 total rushing and receiving yards and 18 total touchdowns. That's pretty impressive stuff, especially for someone on the freakin' Saints in 1989.

The back cover promises to answer many burning questions that fantasy players will have heading into the 1990 NFL season, including "Can Hilliard repeat his Saintly 1989 performance?" Allow me to answer that one for you: no. How does 409 total yards and one lousy touchdown strike you. All this for some that the esteemed Mr. Charpentier ranked as the No. 4 RB available in 1990.

Or No. 7, depending on which list you believe. Because way back in 1990 (a time when people still listened to, if you can believe this, cassette tapes!), there wasn't one method of scoring fantasy sports like we have now. Instead, French Charpentier listed rankings for the three most popular methods:

• The Basic Scoring Method: players earn points for how many points they score during a game (six for a TD, three for a field goal, etc.) with no consideration for yardage gained.
• The Performance Point Method: players earn points for yardage gained (one point for 20 yards rushing/receiving or 50 yards passing) with no consideration for points scored.
• The Distance Scoring Method: some sort of Byzantine method of scoring which involves calculating points based on the yardage gained by each player for each scoring play. Even mathematicians at MIT are stumped by this method.

What we use today is a basic combination of the first two methods (the third one clearly having been created by French-Canadians set on secretly introducing the Metric system to unsuspecting NFL fans). Again, it blows my mind that even though it was all the way back in 1990 (when people only had 30 or 35 different cable channels - imagine!) no one had thought to combine the two methods. Or, that at least no one had informed Charpentier if they did. I honestly don't know - I was 14 at the time, and the only fantasy anything I did involved me locking myself in the bathroom with a stolen copy of my brother's Hustler magazines.

So how did the missing Fabulous Rougeau do with his 1990 selections. Let's take a look with the help of hindsight (and Pro Football Reference). I've averaged the rankings he had for the Basic Scoring and Performance Point Methods to get a sense of where he would rank them in today's, modern scoring method.

Top 5 Running Backs:

1. Neal Anderson, Chicago Bears: After having gained 1,051, 1,477 and 1,709 yards over the past three seasons, Charpentier sees this climb "continuing as he remains the Bears' primary offensive weapon." And he had a very good year: 1,562 total yards and 13 TDs, both in the Top 5 in the NFL. Which makes you wonder if the Bears could convince Neal Anderson to come out of retirement - even today he'd be an upgrade over the slabs of meat they have running the ball.
2. Barry Sanders, Detroit Lions: He was the 1989 Fantasy Rookie of the Year, and Charpentier boldy predicted that there was "no lid for his 1990 fantasy potential". No kidding. How about 1784 yards from scrimmage and an NFL-leading 16 touchdowns? Not bad for a second-year player.
   
3. Eric Dickerson, Indianapolis Colts: Charpentier was willing to bet that Dickerson would rebound from the hamstring injury that "limited" him to 1,522 yards and eight touchdowns in 1989. Big mistake. Injuries weren't the problem in 1990 - it was attitude. He and the Colts engaged in a drawn-out, stupid feud that would led to him missing the first seven games and essentially killing his career. 769 yards and four TDs equals Frenchy Fuqua's first major gaffe.
4. Dalton Hilliard, New Orleans Saints: As mentioned earlier, flame out city. Reuben Mays returned healthy in 1990 from the injuries that cost him the previous season, and Dalton HIlliard went back to being a reserve.
5. Christian Okoye, Kansas City Chiefs: The "Nigerian Nightmare" was a nightmare for fantasy owners, with knee injuries limited his production in 1990 to 828 yards and seven TDs, down from 1,492 yards and 12 TDs a year before. This was also the season that Steve Atwater destroyed him on a Monday Night game with a hit that basically made Atwater's reputation as the game's pre-eminent heavy hitter and drove Okoye all the way to whatever the hell that Pirate Master TV show he did a few years ago.

Also of note: The leader in yards from scrimmage in 1990 was Thurman Thomas of the Bills, who also scored 13 TDs. Where did Charpentier rank him? Eighth, right behind Greg Bell and his 151 yards and one TD. Some fantasy owner made that call in the first round to take Bell over Thomas and was royally pissed.

Next time, we'll see how well our French friend did picking the QBs. Hint: Don Majkowski is in the Top 5. This is not a good sign.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 5:17 PM 1 comments  

Meet the new Shark, same as the old Shark

Was there anything in sports this year as anti-climactic, yet as thoroughly expected as seeing Greg Norman throw up all over himself, bogey the first three holes of the final round of the British Open, and then fall gently into the night as Padraig Harrington took control by actually - gasp - shooting one-under for the round as everyone else was imploding left and right. It's almost as if he made some sort of deal with the Devil:

"Sure, you want one more chance to compete at the majors, just like you did 15 years ago? No problem, Greg. It will be just like it was for you at the majors back then. I promise..."

And just like it was in 1996 at the Masters, Greg Norman...well, I hate to use the word "choke", since maybe it's honestly asking too much to expect a 53 year-old to not fall apart after four brutal days of competition. But the collapse in the first few holes weren't just missed shots - they were complete mental breakdowns. It's one thing to decide "what the hell, I'm not even supposed to be near this leaderboard - might as well play loose and have fun." It's another thing to continue to spray the ball all over the rough with your driver when there's no damned good reason for it. Tom Watson (who knows something about working your way around links courses) sounded like he was about ready to come down from the ABC tower and wrap that fucking driver around Norman's neck every time he made an ill-advised choice to play driver when a long iron would have done just fine.

Still, lost in all of this is, you know, the guy who won the tournament? The same guy who won it last year? The same guy who didn't know until Thursday morning if his injured wrist would let him grip the club at all, much less play at a championship level? Yeah, Padraig Harrington. If Tiger Woods won a major dealing with a potential serious injury, wouldn't the media be making a much bigger deal out it than they did with Harrington's wi...

Never mind.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 12:51 AM 2 comments