Cleveland Browns will “look” into uniform changes, say no to cheerleaders
January 16, 2013WFNY Podcast – 2012-01-16 – Cleveland Comedian Bill Squire Talks Sports
January 16, 2013While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
“You’d think one playoff berth in 14 post-expansion seasons, five double-figure loss seasons in a row and nine such seasons over the last 10 years would have visited sufficient misery upon Browns fans. Apparently not, because given the plethora of conclusion-jumping about which dead-end street the Browns’ new management team is steering the franchise toward, fans have decided to invent more doomsday scenarios until some real ones arise.
Can we give Haslam and Banner a few days to hire the personnel man they promised they would add after a head coach was in place? Can we give that guy time to articulate how the Browns’ draft process will unfold? Can we give Chudzinski a week or so to announce his coaching staff before assuming it will be populated by Banner’s third cousins, twice-removed? Can we wait until Lombardi is hired before obsessing about the havoc he’ll inflict upon the franchise?” [Hooley/ESPN Cleveland]
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“Which brings us back to the original point. If you can secure free or heavily discounted tickets through either the team or ticket brokering sites, why not take in that night’s contest? Even if it is against the Sacramento Kings?
For a lot of us, the secondary costs get to be way too much. Personally speaking, my family of four cannot afford to take in an Indiana Pacers game this year, even if we grabbed a batch of heavily discounted seats high in the rafters. The hour-long drive, parking and costs that go beyond the price of the actual ticket are too high. Because I’m not going to be the dad that sneaks snacks into the arena for his kids to eat surreptitiously on the cheap — and I’m not going to make my wife sit through D.J. Augustin running sets off the bench without buying her a few beers to get through it. And YOU try saying “no” to your daughters when they want to buy another foam finger.” [Dwyer/Ball Don’t Lie]
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“I’m not going to worry too much about the outcome of this one. Or any other Cavs game this year, for that matter. The Cavs struggled down the stretch after clawing their way back into the game in the third quarter and came up short. It’s nothing to lose sleep over. But one troubling thing: we got a serious dose of Kyrie Irving isolations, and normally, I’m fine with Kyrie Irving isolations late in games because I like seeing him dart down the lane through a double team and around a looming big man, but in this particular game, Dion Waiters was playing terrifically, and I would have liked, if Byron Scott could have possibly been bothered to coach this team a little bit, if Waiters could have slid into the corner-three spot normally occupied by Alonzo Gee so that Irving would have a better option to pass to when he inevitably got double-teamed as he tried to dart into the lane. Instead nothing changed, Irving got stripped a couple of times driving to the bucket, easy lay-ins for the Kings, etc. Maybe Kyrie wouldn’t have passed the ball to Waiters either, but, y’know, maybe at least get the guy who had flames shooting out of his butt into a position where he might possibly touch the ball so that the defense has to think about him.” [McGowan/Cavs the Blog]
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“Right now, I think it’s pretty clear that Waiters is pressing and trying too hard to get going. Another thing this proved is that Waiters’ streakiness both helps and burns the Cavs (mostly burns them) depending on the moment. The Cavs can’t have him taking more shots than Irving most nights, especially when eight of them are absolutely terrible shots that no one should ever be taking in a game. He needs to learn that 20-23 footers are the least efficient shot in the NBA. If he’s going to take them, he should be taking a step back and making them threes (no really, I did the research. Taking threes instead of long twos correlates to a better offense). He has decreased the amount of threes he’s taken this season from 5.3 per game in November to 2.9 in January, but he also has increased the amount of long twos he’s taken from 3.3 in November to 4.4 in January. He needs to stop taking random contested jumpers with 14 seconds left on the shot clock. And he needs to start becoming better around the rim by drawing contact and getting to the foul line more often. Until he learns to do these things, we’re going to see the same inconsistent Dion Waiters we’ve seen this year.” [Vecenie/Fear the Sword]
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“But Boras doesn’t look solely to the new rules as the reason his three big free-agent clients are still unsigned. No, he says teams are just being stingy with their payroll. Too stingy, he says, in light of booming MLB revenues. According to Boras, most teams have lower payrolls heading into the 2013 season than the highest payroll those teams had from 2000-2012. “Only five teams have higher payrolls,” Boras told Murray Chass over the weekend. “Everybody else is below even though revenue is up 200 percent and franchise values are up 300, 400 percent. What we’re seeing is not many teams are spending on payrolls despite the fact that their profits are extraordinary. You’d expect teams to have their highest payrolls, but they don’t.” [Thurm/Fan Graphs]
16 Comments
Dear Scott Boras,
Shut up. Your clients make more in half a season than I’ll ever make in my life.
Sincerely,
Fans Everywhere.
I find “sky is falling” missives from people like Bruce Hooley to be a tad pretentious. It treats any criticism as irrational and impetuous until more time passes and more data is collected, and presumes a cool objective stance on behalf of the writer that is not shared by the teeming masses of over-emotive fans.
This is professional sports – it is a safe and ultimately inconsequential venue to invest emotions and harbor strong feelings, and need not be regarded like a stock option.
good Dwyer article. he hits on alot of the reasons that fans prefer to just stay home rather than go out to the game. he misses a few important points (like the fact that, if you stay at home, you can flip between several HD games all while getting bonus points with your wife for watching the kids while she goes out with her sister/friends, etc.).
While I don’t disagree that it’s pretentious, I feel like he is writing to the rest of KNR. They bring doom, gloom, and criticism to levels I have never experienced in Cleveland.
is it just me or is Dion Waiters improving? my eyes keep telling me that he’s been playing so much better lately than early on when he mostly sat behind the 3pt line and shot the ball anytime it got to his hands. but, people keep writing that he isn’t.
yes, the long-2’s are annoying especially when there’s plenty of time to continue the play. i think he’s learning though and knowing when to make another pass (or drive) will come. i feel like he has been getting better contact in the paint though and the numbers mostly back that up (lots more FTs – and he should have had more in the LAL game but wasn’t getting ANY calls).
i’ve been pleasantly surprised by Waiters this year. He has a ton of things to improve on, but he is a rookie. i don’t expect him to become an efficient scorer overnight and he’ll likely always be a hot-n-cold type of guy. but, he has shown a ton of promise, more than I thought he would. at least on offense.
now, his defense, well, that has a giant “under construction” sign attached to it.
Perhaps. But as annoying as those guys can be, they are allowed to emote about local sports – there is nothing fundamentally wrong with what they do. In fact, clearly something about that style connects emotionally with the fan base, or they would be out of jobs.
He’s definitely improving. His drives are more under control and he’s finishing more of them. If he could buy a whistle and also stop taking contested long 2-pointers, he’d clearly be the third best rookie.
disagree, I found this Hooley piece right on target, given the lack of facts behind so much of the criticism of the process and the few hires made to date. And the tone is close to hysterical. The radio guys look to draw listeners with premises that they know are iffy if not nonsensical, and then pretend to defuse by saying stuff like “I’m not saying that’s what happened … but what if it did? How would you react? C’mon, let me hear from you!” I was happy when 92.3 became all sports. Now I’m sorry. With a few exceptions, the radio guys’ shtick is often a lowest common denominator braying.
Reaction to this regime change, by media and fans, is a new low. Lots of heat, little light.
Yes, you have been beating this drum for a couple weeks. Before you, Craig carried the torch by withholding judgment during the Holmgren regime.
It just seems bizarre to me that you expect dialogue about sports to be thoroughgoing fact-based and rational. I am in medical science and I love sports because it is a blessed departure from rigorous intellectual activity. When people try to graft rationality onto the fan experience or criticize others for not being totally fact-based, or slightly over-emotive in their analysis, it is pretentious and completely misunderstands the reason we’re all so drawn to the drama and competition of sports.
Now, your statement above, when applied to political talking heads, is 100% accurate, because misinformation and manipulation of the facts have grave implications for our democracy. But as for sports, leave them alone, what did they ever do to you? 😉
I get this (though you way overstate my point – there is a diff between using known facts as a springboard for a fun discussion v. just making stuff up). I think you’re point is: it’s just meaningless sports, scream and shout all you like. That doesn’t do it for me, and maybe begs a larger conversation about why sites like WFNY attract readers like you. My desire for something other than low-brow hootin’ and hollerin’, ad hominem attacks, and discussion based on reason rather than competing anxieties is what leads me to hang out here.
But I hear your point. And wish I owned a drum.
Apparently, Philly waiting worked out for them. They get Chip:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8849699/chip-kelly-bolts-oregon-ducks-coach-philadelphia-eagles-sources
i’m not happy about this one. i still think Chip can be a very successful HC in the NFL.
So could Chud. Would that still leave you unhappy?
left my full thoughts in the other Chip threads 🙂
basically, i really wanted an innovator in the Paul Brown mold. hopefully, Chud is successful and we don’t care about Chip (who I readily admit is likely either a HR or SO hire with little in-between).
Agreed. If anyone’s freaking out about the Browns, it’s the media. For the most part, the rest of us seem to be unreasonably optimistic.
well, Chip Kelly and the Browns ‘sources’ made them report something that was incorrect. HOW DARE THEY!