The Vikings are clueless

The NFL has a problem. They seem to be completely unable to have consistency in how they punish players who commit crimes while employed by the league. After the entire Ray Rice domestic abuse scandal just over a week ago, the NFL had to think that the worst was behind them but then came the story, bubbling under the surface for months, that Adrian Peterson (Minnesota Vikings running  back) had beaten his four year-old son in the Houston area.

We know that the Minnesota Vikings knew about this months before it became public on Friday. We know that the Vikings have disciplined offenders in the past and have done so rather swiftly by cutting them from the team without batting an eye. But this is Adrian Peterson. He is arguably the face of the Minnesota Vikings and is one of the biggest stars in the entire NFL.

There in lies their conundrum. How does the NFL and the Minnesota Vikings discipline one of their greatest stars and best players? Obviously, the Minnesota Vikings waffle on their stance and take a wait-and-see approach rather than doing the right thing in making a quick decision as they have done in the past and sever ties before the shit hits the fan.

But the Minnesota Vikings did let the shit hit the fan with the child abuse allegations surrounding Adrian Peterson. They deactivated Peterson for the team's week two game versus the New England Patriots but reactivated him for the week three game against the New Orleans Saints. But in the wee hours of this morning, the Minnesota Vikings placed Adrian Peterson on some bullshit exempt list where he exists without being activated or deactivated.

Adrian Peterson is truly a player in limbo when, if the Minnesota Vikings followed the precedent they had set with prior cases of abuse or law breaking, he would have had his contract terminated and been shown the door. Instead, the Minnesota Vikings come off looking like they are not just willing to but totally fine with looking the other way when a millionaire who plays a child's game beats one of his many children for something extremely trivial because "that's how he was raised".

The NFL comes into the third week of the 2014 season with a black eye. They are a league with a very clear discipline problem and a very pervasive history of sweeping misbehavior under the rug and looking the other way when their stars commit crimes. They are willing to defend their superstars when the commit crimes which would land average citizens in jail for at least a brief stint. The NFL, like the NBA, is full of spoiled man-children whose inappropriate behavior is overlooked in favor of sponsorship deals and television ratings.

The fans, the sponsors and the owners are all to blame just as much as the players.

It's time for the NFL to lay down the law and have some consistent guidelines for punishment - especially when it comes to spousal and child abuse.

NFL Playoff picture

If enough people search for it, it ends up in Google's Trending Searches algorithm and I'll be damned if yesterday, the final weekend of the 2013 NFL season, didn't bring out the term "NFL Playoff Picture" as one of the most-searched on Google.

I guess that with the final weekend of the NFL season, millions of rabid NFL fans seemingly forgot the existence of actual sources for playoffs news such as Fox Sports, ESPN, NBC, CBS (networks which are the home to a litany of NFL games) and other sources like any major metropolitan city's newspaper website, sports blogs like SBNation.com, Twitter, Facebook and millions of other, lesser websites.

So, in my effort to help people out, below is the up-to-date NFL Playoff Picture. Enjoy.

The Madonna Superbowl halftime show

To summarize the Madonna Superbowl halftime show in one word is easy: bland. Madonna's career has now spanned four decades and the best she could do was put on a Superbowl halftime show which left me reaching for my remote and actually asking my wife to flip back to the Lifetime movie which I had pried her away from. And how in the holy hell did the hacks who make up schlock-rap due LMFAO get a spot alongside Madonna. It was a contrast of polar opposites. On one hand there's Madonna who is a legitimate performer with 30 years of experience and on the other hand there's LMFAO who are relative flashes in the pan. They've had two pop hits in the past calendar year and will likely be forgotten in five, hell, two years but they get to duet with Madonna for a few seconds because they guest on a track on Madonna's new CD? I could make my hair look entirely stupid and wear spandex too but I don't have a spot during the Superbowl halftime show with Madonna, do I?

All told, a Superbowl show featuring a recording artist who has a storied and deep career is the norm. We'll never see a Superbowl halftime show in my lifetime featuring a hot and now artist or a rising star in the music world. Instead we're subjected to an artist or band with a deep catalog of tracks because the Superbowl is about mass appeal. If it were anything else it would have all the popularity of the Puppy Bowl.

By the way, anyone know who won the Puppy Bowl? I was working.

Kelly Clarkson National Anthem Super Bowl 2012

Kelly Clarkson puts her own slight twist on the National Anthem prior to Superbowl XLVI. A damn good performance of the National Anthem at the Superbowl compared to some prior performances and Kelly Clarkson is a much more seasoned and talented performer than some who have belted out the National Anthem at the Superbowl.



As you can see, Kelly Clarkson is a much more suitable singer for the National Anthem at the Superbowl that someone like Jewel or Cher and especially Christina Aguilera who, in my opinion, ruined any chance of a comeback she had.

Donovan McNabb to bring Campbell's Chunky to Minnesota

For whatever reason, there is plenty of talk centering around whether or not Washington Redskins quarterback and Campbell's Chunky soup spokesman Donovan McNabb will land the starting QB spot with the floundering Minnesota Vikings football team.

While it would be great for the Minnesota Vikings to land a journeyman player of Donovan McNabb's caliber, it is typical. Think about the recent history regarding the Minnesota Vikings quarterback position: Brett Favre, Warren Moon, Rich Gannon, Brad Johnson, Randall Cunningham...

These are all names who were in the final throes of their NFL careers. Sure, Brett Favre thinks he can return to the National Football League but that concussion on the cement-like turf at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium last December was probably the final on-filed action that Mr. Penis Photo Texter will see.

Donovan McNabb might have two or three years left in him but the big problem with bringing in a veteran quarterback is that the up-and-comer (in this case Christian Ponder and to a lesser extent Joe Webb) isn't going to see much in the way of playing time. The entire purpose of the NFL season is to win games and if Donovan McNabb puts the Minnesota Vikings within reach of a win during any game he will stay in the game because he's a proven player and a proven player always wins out over an unproven prospect.

That the way of the Minnesota Vikings. They are 100% unable to groom a rookie quarterback because they are always chasing some old-timer graybush quarterback in hopes of making yet another failed Superbowl run.

To make this arrangement work, Christian Ponder needs to play approximately 75% of the time during the pre-season and play at least 15 minutes of each regular season game. Let's face it, the Minnesota Vikings are not a Superbowl caliber football team and have absolutely nothing to lose.

Oh, and everybody can shut the fuck up about the Minnesota Vikings stadium debate because someway, somehow, yet another stadium will get built. It will fuck over taxpayers somewhere and the state legislature will be dumb enough to fuck over their constituents yet again but it will happen because the drunken mouthbreathers among us think that football is the be-all, end-all and supporting millionaires and billionaires is totally acceptable.

So bring on the Campbell's Chunky soup and get ready for the Minnesota Vikings to run up a 9-7 record and miss the playoffs again this year.

What happened over the weekend?

FOX has postponed their sci-fi drama epic "Terra Nova" ... again. Originally scheduled to premiere right about this time of year, it was then moved to premiere after the American Idol finale this spring it has now moved to a fall 2011 premiere. While it's been hyped beyond belief I have my doubts now if it will ever make it to the air and if it does I can see it lasting just a hair longer than "Lonestar" did during the fall 2010 season (2 episodes).

Greedy NFL owners have locked out overpaid NFL players. It happened just after the late local news on Friday night which means that nobody actually found out until this morning anyway. Way to bury a huge story about the country's most successful business possibly losing the 2011 season.

There's still hope that new TV shows can be good. Check out "Nick's Big Show" and then imagine the main character in a possible new NBC sitcom this fall entitled "I Hate That I Love You".

Mark Sanchez sexes up 17 year-old?

I fail to understand how it's news that a young NFL quarterback (Mark Sanchez of the New York Jets) who is a good looking kind of guy ended up bedding an attractive, albeit illegal young lady on or around New Year's Eve.

That, though, is exactly the kind of scandal that keeps a site like Deadspin in the news. They, somehow, break what turns out to be rather scandalous sports scandals and the very fact that the nearly 25 year-old Mark Sanchez ended up taking a 17 year-old Eliza Kruger (notice her breaking a law herself by smoking a cigarette in this photo from her Facebook page) back to his home on a golf course in Jersey and throwing for a between-the-sheets touchdown with his jailbait piece of ass for the evening.

But back to why this is news. Athletes are notorious, no matter how clean-cut they appear, for being shady. The athletic landscape is full of scandals -- plenty of which have surfaced recently. Tiger Woods liked himself some porn stars, hookers and generally just liked having sex -- with anyone but his wife. Michael Jordan is alleged to have gambled on NBA games which is supposedly why he retired for just over one NBA season to try his hand at playing baseball. Half of the players in Major League Baseball have allegedly used some sort of steroids. Ben Roethlisberger was suspended for a portion of the NFL season for sexual assualt and we all know that it was actually rape. And who could forget our very own (for two years) Brett Favre who apparently likes texting photos of his good ole' Mississippi dong to former New York Jets massage therapists. So is anyone shocked that a guy who is famous, flush with cash and living a bachelor's life in the greater New York City area would have women, or in this case 17 year-old socialites, throwing themselves at him?

I know I'm not and I doubt that this story breaking nationally will do anything to truly change Sanchez's behavior nor will it do anything to the parents of Eliza Kruger who let their 17 year-old daughter smoke cigarettes and hang out in a club where she'd then be able to nail a professional athlete.

I don't know whose side to take in this story and I'm not sure that either party is anywhere close to innocent. In fact I'm pretty sure both of them is guilty but this will do nothing to tarnish Mark Sanchez's image and I'm sure it will do nothing to change the behavior of Eliza Kruger because something tells me that this isn't the first time either has done something or considered doing something along these lines.

The unwatchable halftime show

Are The Black Eyed Peas actually that bad or are the acoustics of Cowboy Stadium just not up to par for a concert-like setting. Either way, the performance of The Black Eyed Peas during tonight's Super Bowl 45 halftime show was the perfect display of how autotune has taken over popular music. From what I witnessed, none of the four-person group could carry a note, much less a tune.

While it was refreshing to see the NFL take a step back from the worn-out has-beens they've been subjecting fans to ever since Janet Jackson pulled out her crusty old nipple a few years ago, The Black Eyed Peas are a sorry excuse for what passes as music in today's culture. They are the epitome of everything that's wrong with the music industry, radio and the concert business. If I had paid money to see the Black Eyed Peas in concert, I would have demanded a refund of double the original ticket price. That display of talentless nobodies made famous by technology makes me almost yearn for the barely-alive presence of The Who from last year's Super Bowl halftime show.

$854 Million?!?

It's old news that the Minnesota Vikings want a new stadium. It's also old news that the Metrodome - where the Vikings currently play - is stale and outdated. So it makes sense that with a somewhat useable building already in place the Vikes make use of the Dome. But the newest plan, costing $854 million, is downright nauseating.

At least this newest stadium proposal makes use of the current Metrodome site in eastern downtown Minneapolis but that price tag is hard to fathom. That number alone is close to what the current budget deficit is for the state of Minnesota and the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission wants to erect a building with that sort of price tag. That is what's wrong with professional sports.

Now I don't expect the Vikings to play on a glorified high school football field complete with portable metal bleachers but let's get real here. The Metrodome cost a mere $68 million to build in the early 1980s and to expect tax payers to foot the bill for a stadium costing around 15 times as much as the one currently occupying the space doesn't add up. Have your wages increased 15-fold in the past 28 years? Has the minimum wage increased at that same rate in the past 28 years?

Maybe the Vikings need to take a different approach here. If the Vikings are such a Minnesota treasure that we couldn't bear to go on with our lives without them in Minnesota than maybe it's time for the Vikings to become a publicly owned and traded company. Take the model used in Green Bay by the Packers and use it here. The fans there own the team. The stadium underwent a massive overhaul recently and they play in a historical venue. Maybe now is the time to make that change and allow those with the interest and passion for the team to foot the bill for their stadium. Maybe even some sort of reverse revenue sharing. Maybe Zygi Wilf could still somehow maintain a majority share of ownership and make his dream of developing all around a Vikings stadium a reality. Maybe it would actually work or maybe my idea is so off base that I should be locked away forever. Thoughts?

Or maybe you should just head over to MinnPics as I begin looking back on the year that was.

A stadium conundrum

I don't normally write about sports here because my audience, for whatever reason, is mainly females and the remainder are drive-bys searching for nipples, boobs and camel toe photos. But despite my rather obvious obsession with the female form I do at least casually follow sports and find myself almost infatuated with the role that stadiums play in professional and collegiate sports in America. Most every major metropolitan area has one huge stadium. It could be for college football, an NFL team or Major League Baseball but they are definitely a cornerstone of sorts in their respective city.

What amazes me is the cost of these stadiums. Locally, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (The Dome) was built in the first years of the 1980s for what is now the paltry sum of $30 million. It has been the home of major league baseball's Minnesota Twins, the NFL's Minnesota Vikings and, up until last year, was also the home of the University of Minnesota's Golden Gopher football team. Yep, three teams occupied The Dome for the bulk of dates for eight months every year. It was also host to monster truck rallies, concerts, trade shows, the Super Bowl, the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves for a year and the NCAA Final Four college basketball tournament. This ass-ugly but functional stadium has stood for nearly thirty years and could still very well be used for many more years with a substantial overhaul.

And that's about the only way I see The Metrodome as being functional beyond the next couple of years. It is hopelessly outdated. The concourses are dark and can become very crowded. The concession stands are set up poorly which leads to insanely long lines and the restrooms (the the troughs guys have to piss in) are too small and there are too few to serve the crowds during a Vikings game.

But the pricetag, coupled with a rather shitty location (eastern downtown Minneapolis) of the Metrodome, to remodel the domed stadium is lofty at best but a complete overhaul is still cheaper than building a completely new, single tenant stadium for $900 million which could sit on the same spot as The Metrodome or as far out as Blaine. The Vikes want amenities like luxury suites, parking revenue and money from concessions. As it stands right now they are merely tenants at The Dome. They lease the place and are now the sole tenant in the rat infested Dome.

But why do they need their own stadium? If The Dome won't suit your needs and you want amenities and the money from those the Vikings should have been forced a few years ago to team up with the Gophers when they built their new open air football stadium on the University of Minnesota campus. But the shortsighted fools begging for cash never though that two football teams could share a stadium - especially one where one team plays on Saturday and the other on Sunday. No, that kind of shared solution would have actually made sense and when it comes to politics and money that just doesn't register.

So now we're stuck with a college football stadium that was built to suit a college team. It isn't chock full of the amenities that an NFL team wants and needs and retrofitting a brand new stadium is actually stupid. So we're back to remodeling The Metrodome and unless hell freezes over shortly that will never happen and I don't see tax payers willing to pony up any more in the way of additional sales tax to fund another playground for millionaires. So the two unlikely scenarios remain - the Vikings owner Zygi Wilf performs a drastic overhaul of The Metrodome and builds the surrounding area into a year around venue as MinnPost suggests or the Vikings pay for some crazy-spendy overhauls to the new Gophers stadium and still compromise alot in the process.

Or the Vikings move to that eventual stadium in Los Angeles. It is designed with purple seats and it wouldn't be the first time a Minnesota team relocated to Los Angeles. Oh well, I've never been to a Vikings game anyway but I do hear that the nearly vacant Brookdale Center could be had on the cheap. Think it over Zygi.

Or Zygi Wilf could check out MinnPics. Hey, if Zygi is loving the stunning photos of Minnesota you should check them out too!

A mathematical (word) equation to ponder

Michael Vick minus one NFL starting quarterback position with the Atlanta Falcons plus a potential 18 month jail sentence minus his anal virginity (maybe) divided by the chance that he'll be someone's bitch in the clink multiplied by the fact that his dog fighting buddies sold him out and threw him under the bus equals pure hilarity.

This marks post number 1600 and I think that this was my first mention of "anal virginity". I will be spending the rest of the day patting myself on the back.