Same stuff, different year
I do this every year at both BCS time and NCAA Tournament time. That is, I call bs on all of us who beef about how the NCAA handles its championship selections in both football and basketball, because for all our beefing we still watch the freaking games. And even better, we watch the big names schools we rail against but tune out when our beloved mid majors make it a long way. The proof is in the ratings, folks. Let's keep it real, now. If Michigan were to make the final four, a whole lot more people would tune than if Utah St. got there. We saw this in 2006 when George Mason made their run of all runs, only to draw a smaller than usual television audience once they played in the semifinals. Even a big name school like Florida doesn't necessarily equal big ratings since they're not a historical basketball power. We might say we don't want UNC vs. UConn in the Final but we're all lying.
Peter King = Jim Cramer
The Jon Stewart smackdown of Jim Cramer and CNBC last week reminded me of just how awful so many 'experts' in the sports media are at their respective jobs. How many times are we given bad information by self-proclaimed gurus who then later on try to weasel their way out by saying, 'hey, i'm no psychic here, give me a break?' Whether it's in print, on television, or the internet, as soon as one of these guys says 'I talked to (insert name here), and based on what I've heard, you can take (insert completely wrong prediction here) to the bank', you can guarantee that the opposite is going to happen.
I'm being totally serious here. Like Cramer and a lot of other cable table personalities, King relies on his rolodex and makes a serious a bad predictions. He's also easily swayed by whoever he talks to last, as long as they're someone 'in the know', i.e., a player he likes, a coach, or a G.M. Whether it's free agency, the draft, the Hall of Fame, or what Brett Favre is going to do next, King can always be counted on to name drop somebody he talked to and offer up a conclusion based on that conversation. This is a guy who talked some former New York Giants and decided Art Monk wasn't a Hall of Famer, only to change his mind after talking to Monk's former coach Joe Gibbs later on. Imagine that for a minute; something like the Hall of Fame rests in the hands of a guy who makes decisions based on the information he gets from people who are known for being blatantly dishonest (coaches and GMs) or cliched to the extreme (players) when dealing with the media. Yep, just like our intrepid political/business media who live to cozy up next to the powerful and famous in business and government and rarely challenge anything they say. Nice job everyone! It's not the wrongness that gets, me; it's the holding yourself up as the expert of experts before you get it wrong. Right now you can have your dog make picks that every bit as on point as Peter King (or Jim Cramer for that matter).
Peter King is awful
screw u