NFL & other stuff

The big news in the NFL offseason was that the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) has expired, and with no extension, it's an uncapped year. That means no salary cap for 2010. I had someone ask me if that means Dallas or Washington will do like the Yankees and buy a Super Bowl championship. The idea being that they sign a bunch of top free agents to huge one year contracts. Will that happen? In a word, no. To begin with, it doesn't void all the contracts that a team has. So Washington and Dallas already have large amounts of money owed to their players (with some guaranteed). Do they cut them and pay them not to play for them to get a better free agent? Even Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder aren't going to blow huge chunks of money on a one year upgrade because what happens the year after? They won't have any players. This is why Jones is already budgeting.

This must be why I'm a UL fan.

Of course, the main reason that the Cowboys and Redskins won't be able buy up free agents is because there aren't any. Dallas isn't the only team with players under contract. The lack of a CBA does not mean Drew Brees is suddenly available. Look at the list of top free agents. The top free agent quarterback is always injured Chad Pennington. I don't think Tony Romo is a very good quarterback, but Pennington wouldn't be an upgrade. That list is littered with backups and over-the-hill players. Plus, the expired CBA had a nice kicker in it. Players used to need only four or five years to be unrestricted free agents. This year? It's six. Unless a team wants to give up a bunch of draft picks, they aren't going after a lot of restricted free agents.

"Dogs Are Happy, Cats Are Evil." Glad to see I'm not the only one to recognize it.

Long term, I'm sure the big spending NFL teams could dominate, but that still depends on a lot of things. Namely talent evaluation. Back in the late 80s/early 90s (right before a salary cap was instituted), the top two teams were the Cowboys and 49ers who were the big spenders. However, while those teams would pick up the occasional Deion Sanders, they stayed good because they were able to retain their own players. Dallas could keep Emmitt Smith and the top O-line in the NFL. San Francisco could keep let Joe Montana go because they were able to keep an NFL Hall of Famer, Steve Young, as a backup for four years. Well, Dallas and Washington have been the big spenders in recent years even with the cap. And two playoff wins combined this century. That's because they sign big contracts to players that don't fit in with their team.

A Cuban dissident dies on a hunger strike? No way. Isn't that a Marxist paradise?

But they do need to get the salary cap back, but not just for the ceiling. Baseball's problem isn't just the Yankees. It's the Royals and the Pirates and such. Not only did the NFL have a cap on salaries, they had a floor. So cheap asses like Cincinnati could pay almost nothing on players to enhance profits. Which could have meant zero winning seasons in the salary cap era as opposed to the two they got. But one uncapped year isn't going to start a feeding frenzy by big dollar teams. But what it will do is allow teams who screwed up their cap before get healthy. For example, most people thought the Panthers would keep Jake Delhomme no matter how bad he was last year because he was owed $20 million guaranteed. In the past, they'd keep a player like that because they prorated that guaranteed money over the life of the contract so it wouldn't count as much against the yearly cap. Cut him now and and everything comes due when you don't have to worry. Based on how crappy he was last year, they have to pay him anyway, but now they won't have to worry about him getting on the field.

Awesome. Some people are up in arms over black Barbie being sold for a couple of bucks less than the same white version. Yeah, okay. The reason is the black version isn't selling well so they discounted it. But a simple answer is never a good excuse. People with too much time on their hands are making a big deal about it and saying Walmart should be sensitive and leave the price the same whether or not they can sell at that price. They even dredged up an old 1940s study that found most black children wanted white dolls. Of course, the article runs three pages without realizing the answers why the black doll isn't selling are right in the story. Mattel came out with a new line of black dolls that are selling well. Gee, is that how sales work? You come out with a new product that is selling while an old product isn't, and some idiots expect you to keep selling the new one at a price which means it won't sell? No wonder they're in academia. They couldn't survive the real world.

Speaking of idiots, there was an incident at a Washington DC mosque where some Muslim women had the cops sicced on them. Why? They tried to pray in the men's area of the place. Now I'm all for allowing religions to make their own worship rules so I'll leave that part alone. No, the real idiot of the story is the woman leading the charge. She converted to Islam back in the '90s. What a friggin' genius. That was around the time I visited a mosque for a history class. Want to know a little secret? They didn't allow women in the men's area then either. Why would you convert to a religion that doesn't allow the genders to worship together if that is something you feel strongly about? Oh, unless you are a complete idiot who just wants attention.

I mentioned before that a Cuban dissident died on a hunger strike in a Cuban prison. I wondered how Fidel Castro's idiot Hollywood morons would deal with that story. Then I realized they would ignore it. After all, they are morons for a reason. They don't have the intelligence gene. Well, I have a feeling how one of his buttboys would react. Sean Penn would go in full retard mode and declare the dissident deserved it. Hell, he'd probably say it was a shame that he wasn't killed to begin with. Why would I think this? Oh, because Penn actually said he hoped his critics died of ass cancer and followed that up with a belief that people should be jailed for calling Hugo Chavez of Venezuela a dictator. I guess shutting down opposition media and beating down opposition to his power grab isn't something common to dictators. I could point out the fact that Penn seems immune to the irony of him defending a "dictator" thru the use of dictatorial powers, namely locking up reporters for disagreeing with him. But irony is often lost on the stupid.

Haven't I warned people about the animals waging war against us? Now, you have an otter attacking some geriatric on a walk. When will you people realize they are after us?

Some dude got busted for stealing shredded cheese and got over seven years in jail. Man, that better be good cheese. Actually, it seems silly to lock a man up that long for putting cheese in his pants, but he is a lifelong criminal so I don't care. Plus, even if he is bipolar, so what. If someone like that can't keep from committing crimes due to their mental problems and they won't keep them locked up in the mental ward, prison may be the best option to protect the public from them.

Here's a dirty story. A woman was in a car wreck in Florida. Because she was shaving. Down there. Even better, her ex-husband was in the car. And she was driving to meet her boyfriend. I would say that's a dysfunctional relationship, but I suspect ex-husband is a euphemism for pimp and boyfriend is a euphemism for client.

And finally because you know you want it, the obligatory porn story. In England some woman is running for Parliament despite a long career in porn. Of course, I immediately checked out the story and was surprised that I didn't think she was very attractive. Then I read that she just produces them and never acts. Strangely enough, I lost interest.