The dumbest stories in sports (Part 2)

The NFL schedule for next season was released tonight, and apparently that is cause for much rejoicing.

The NFL Schedule will be released tonight. Block off your Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays accordingly.
— ESPN (@espn) April 23, 2014

So that got Mrs. Last Honest and I to thinking ... what sporting events would happen between tonight (April 23) and the first game of the NFL season Sept. 4? Here's what we came up with:

• The remainder of the NBA and NHL playoffs.
• More than four months of the Major League Baseball season, including the All-Star Game.
• The College World Series.
• The Little League World Series.
• The Baseball Hall of Fame induction.
• The NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL drafts.
• The World Cup.
• The end of this Premier League season ... and the start of the next one.
• The French Open, Wimbledon and most of the U.S. Open.
• The British Open, the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship.
• The Indianapolis 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Grand Prix of Monaco ... all on the same day.
• The WNBA regular season. 
• The Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont.
• The opening of the Canadian Football League season (by the way, they announced their schedule in February).
• The Tour de France.
• The Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana fight.

But by all means, let's obsess over the NFL schedule.

It's over. It's really over.

The Stanley Cup Finals were not supposed to end this way.

I don't mean they weren't supposed to end with the Chicago Blackhawks winning, or even winning the way they did, a way that left Boston Bruins supporters to stare numbly, curse or both. The Blackhawks are fine and worthy champions, and as Michael Hurley noted, it was about the hockey, without a lot of other garbage.

"It was evident when, minutes after seeing their team suffer the most stunning of defeats, a healthy majority of the fans in attendance stayed in their seats to applaud the effort displayed on the ice. They didn't hurl cups and rags onto the ice but instead gave a rousing ovation before doing the work of any good hockey fan base and booing Gary Bettman."

No, they were supposed to end in Game 7, winner-take-all ... or even better, in overtime of Game 7, next goal wins the Stanley Cup, like when you're playing in the yard as a kid and your parents call you in for supper and you say, "Next score wins."

It was the only way the series could end. This was a series where neither team had a three-goal lead, and the only two-goal leads were as follows:

* Game 1 -- Boston from 51 seconds to 3:08 of the second period and 6:09 to eight minutes of the third period.

* Game 3 -- Boston from 14:05 of the second period to the end of the game.

* Game 4 -- Chicago from 8:41 to 14:43 and 15:32 to 17:22 of the second period.

* Game 5 -- Chicago from 5:13 of the second period to 3:40 of the third period and the last 14 seconds of the game after an empty-net goal.

The entire rest of the series was a one-goal margin or tied, and three games went to overtime.

It was thrilling stuff, between two outstanding teams in cities that are passionate about hockey, and the ratings, relatively speaking, were high.

There's only one problem ... next season won't consist of nothing but the Bruins and Blackhawks leaving their guts on the ice. Not only will there be untold nameless, faceless matchups (Columbus versus Florida in February, anyone?), but playoff hockey may be more different from regular-season hockey than any other sport's regular season compared to its playoffs.

It has to be. Not only are the teams better during the playoffs, players go out there basically every other night for two months putting their bodies through such punishment (Exhibit A, Patrice Bergeron) that if they tried it during the regular season, there wouldn't be any players left for the playoffs.

So savor what you just saw, everyone, enjoy next season where you can and get ready for another playoff ride.

 

The reason you hate Sidney Crosby

I was listening to Felger and Mazz today, and with the Bruins-Penguins series starting tomorrow, they were talking about Sidney Crosby, particularly that they see him as being easy to hate.

He dives. He whines. He's a little dirty at times. He wants all the calls, just like LeBron James. Etc, etc.

People hating Crosby is nothing new. I've seen him called "Cindy" lots of times (because if we want to insult a guy, there's no better way than by calling him a woman, right?), and the great FakeWIPCaller calls for him to be crippled every time the Penguins play the Flyers.

I just hope that all the people who hate Crosby understand that they do it not just because he's a great player, and not just because he's a brat ...

... but also because he doesn't play for their team.

If Sidney Crosby played in Chicago, they'd love him in Chicago. If he played in Philadelphia, FakeWIPCaller (and the real ones he parodies) would love him. If he played in Boston, where they love the ... let's just say sometimes chippy ... Brad Marchand, they'd love him here.

And he's be a no-good, piece-of-crap little punk in Pittsburgh.

I don't condemn this. After all, we are all hypocrites. For example, Mrs. Last Honest and I get practically apoplectic at the sight of Skylar Diggins strutting, preening and acting like she gets fouled if you look at her with both eyes at the same time, but if she played for a team we liked, we'd love her spunk and her competitive fire.

So I understand it. Just be honest about it.

The NHL's labor woes, explained

Stu Hackel wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated's website on Gary Bettman's 20 years as NHL commissioner, the gist of which seemed to be that there are some things he has done well and other things he hasn't done so well.

But there was one passage that jumped out at me.

It's in labor relations that Bettman's best and worst qualities come to the fore. He was primarily hired, after all, to bring an NBA-type salary cap to the NHL and to represent the owners in their dealings with the players, the league having lost the cozy relationship it previously enjoyed with the NHLPA during Alan Eagleson's tenure.

That's one way of putting it. Another way is to say that certain owners, such as the guy who is considered by some to have led the owners during the lockout, miss the days when Eagleson repeatedly, and criminally, sold out his players.

Is there any wonder why the owners can't stand a union leader who actually battles with them?

Tim Thomas doesn't want to talk right now

So, Tim Thomas treated us all to his thoughts on politics on the Facebook machine again. I won't get into the details of what he wrote -- standing with the Catholics ... "In Germany, first they came ..." ... etc., etc. -- but in the locker room, he set clear lines about what he saw as appropriate questions about his stances. (The quote is from the article linked above.)

"That's my personal life that has nothing to do with the Bruins or hockey and I'm going to remain silent," he said.

Tim Thomas is an intelligent man, a college graduate, so doubtless he knows that as a well-known, multimillionaire athlete who is willing to make his political views known in a day and age when not a lot of athletes do, people may be interested in his thoughts behind those views and how he came to have them.

And since he deems the workplace an unacceptable forum for queries about those views, surely ... again, intelligent man that he is ... he would have no problem with reporters asking about them as he's walking to his car after practice, eating at a restaurant with his family or outside the front door of his home ... you know, during that "personal life that has nothing to do with the Bruins or hockey."

Because if he didn't, someone far more cynical than I am might come to the conclusion that what he really wants to do is be able to spout his thoughts on politics without anyone ever questioning them or challenging them.

The Boston tea partier

I don't agree with Tim Thomas' politics, but his politics are his own to have, and I'm free to disagree with them. It's a big country.

But regardless of whatever rightward leanings he may have, he should have gone to the White House, because when the president invites you, you should go, although Thomas isn't the first to skip the trip.

(Until I found the story linked at the start of this post, I also hadn't realized that Theo Epstein didn't go to the Bush White House, which is also wrong. Although the article doesn't say it was for political reasons, Epstein did campaign for John Kerry in 2004, so it's not a huge stretch to think so.)

And Thomas' excuse was pretty weak. I'd be curious to know if he was concerned that "the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People" before Jan. 20, 2009.

But I'll be honest, since after all, that's in this here blog's name. I don't like what Thomas did, and I think less of him for it, but if the Bruins are in a tough spot, and the opponents get a scoring chance, I'm going to want to hear Jack Edwards yell (as only he can) ... "SAVE BY THOMAS!"

Athletes you don't like are people, too

Growing up without cable, I didn't get to watch much hockey, so I kind of fell into following the Edmonton Oilers because they were the team I heard the most about, those being the Gretzky/Kurri/Anderson/Messier/Coffey/Fuhr days.

Being the better part of a continent away with little opportunity to see the team isn't exactly the recipe for long-term, passionate fandom, and I mostly follow the Bruins now, but I'll always want them to do well, and I was therefore excited when they made the Stanley Cup Finals in 2006, even though they lost to Carolina. (They also had the most awesome national anthem singer ever, slightly better than Mullet Guy in Vancouver. It starts about 1:18 in.)



And then Chris Pronger crapped all over it.

For years after that, I dubbed Oct. 9 "International Chris Pronger Must Die Day," although after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, I decided to tone down my casual use of wanting-people-dead language, even in jest, plus I found out that his birthday is actually Oct. 10.

But I was always OK with him being injured (again, mostly in jest) ... or so I thought until I saw last night that he's going to be out for the rest of the season and the playoffs due to post-concussion syndrome. To declare in December that a guy will be out for the season that may not end until June, it must be bad.

And even though I obviously had nothing to do with it, I have to admit, I felt a little guilty.

Welcome to my world

So you've found your way here. Good. So what can you expect?

Well, basically, it's anything in sports that gets my attention ... whether it's funny, ticks me off or just gets me to thinking. I hope you'll agree with my opinions. If not, tell me why I'm wrong, but be prepared to back it up.

As for the name, it's just a wee bit sarcastic, but it's partly based on my belief that we don't have a lot of honest discussion in sports (or in life, for that matter), because we refuse to acknowledge one basic fact.

We are all hypocrites.

I'm not saying that as a criticism, because for the most part, I don't think it's a character flaw. It's human nature. For example, I'm a fan of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and can't stand Kyle Busch. (The only reason Kurt Busch isn't the biggest tool in NASCAR is because his parents decided to have more children.) If Kyle spins someone out to win a race, I'm probably yelling at my TV how that dirty little #@*!! punk wrecked someone again, but if Dale does it, I'd be cheering like a madman.

Since we all bring our biases, let me give you mine. I'm a fan of the Yankees (which can be rough, since I live in New England) , the Chargers, Syracuse University, UConn and the University of Wisconsin (by marriage), Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, the Bruins, the Celtics and Liverpool. You can probably figure out who I don't like based on that list.

So that's a little bit about me. Thanks for coming to my sandbox. Let's play.