The Finger Wag – Athletes using Twitter and Social Media to their Disadvantage

Santonio Holmes to the Jets for a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

So the Steelers traded their Superbowl MVP Santonio Holmes for a fifth round pick.

The question is why?

A contract year for a player who has been suspended (and according to @ADAM_SCHEFTER will be suspended yet again) for drugs and is currently battling an assault case will be the excuse. They don’t want to bring him back next year due to all this and might as well get something for him now.

Could this be a message to Big Ben?

No comment on twitter from Santonio yet but when he does break the silence we will be there to make fun of him.

As for the Jets, all I can say is this.

I can’t wait to watch Hard Knocks.

NBA/NHL Playoffs

J.E. Skeets (@jeskeets) is one of my favorite bloggers to follow on twitter, guy is hilarious. He is also a Raptors fan. I am a huge Chicago Bulls fan so for the next few days we are on opposite sides of this story.

So the East is all setup except for one spot. The Bulls now have a lead on the Raptors but the “magic number” to “mathematically eliminate” the Raptors is still at 2 because they own the tiebreaker over the Bulls.

With the way the Bulls shit the bed versus the Nets on Friday night and Vinnie Del Negro refusing to play Noah even though he is the main hustle guy on the team I wouldn’t count out the Raptors just yet.

The West is still a mess, we know the 8 teams going in but the rankings are still up for grabs. It should be an entertaining few days.

In the NHL the playoffs are now set. There was a defacto play-in game last night between the Rangers and Flyers, an excellent game by all accounts. That is, except for the ending. The game ended at 2-1 when Claude Giroux scored a goal in an OT shootout to clinch the playoff spot.

The question is though, is that how the playoffs should be decided? This is a relatively new way of ending hockey games and I won’t type here pretending I am a purist for the game; truth is I barely watch until the playoffs. I can’t help but feel like this is ending an NBA game with a free throw contest or a game of horse. I don’t think you should change the game for overtime. I’m looking at you college football.

Phil Mickelson Wins the Masters

The weekend started with Tiger and his story of coming back to golf after his self imposed hiatus and it ended with Phil kissing his wife whom herself was making her return to the golf course after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

From my point of view, both were pretty amazing. I want to be one of those guys who says Tiger’s personal life doesn’t matter to me but I can’t say that in one breath and then talk about what a great story Phil’s personal life is. It would be hypercritical for me to do both. So I will leave it at this, both men hit some amazing shots (Tiger’s shot at 9 on Thursday was probably the best shot I ever seen) and I look forward to these two battling for the coming years.

There also was some good showing by young guys (and older guys – Tom Watson still amazes me). Checking out Twitter this morning I was reminded while even though I make fun of athletes and their use of it, it can be a great medium for reaching out to fans (and vice versa).

Here we have Ian Poulter who by all accounts had a great masters tweeting out to his fans and showing his disappointment. You could never have this type of closeness with ESPN or a CBS interview.

Thanks for the good show and reminding us how great golf can be.

Welcome back to another fun filled Monday morning.  It was a fairly big weekend in sports so here are some bullet point highlights of what
went down.

Donovan McNabb to the Eagles

Yes I have to agree trading McNabb within the division is probably not a smart move but take a second and look at the Eagles draft picks for this year:

- 1st Round
- 2nd Round (Skins)
- 2nd Round
- 3rd Round (Seahawks)
- 3rd Round
- 4th Round
- 4th Round (Browns)
- 5th Round (Browns)
- 7th Round (Comp Pick)
- 7th Round (Comp Pick)

If Kevin Kolb is anything near a serviceable quarterback in 2 years
time the Eagles should be stacked for a long run of playoff
appearances.

As for the Redskins, I had this to say last night via @TheFingerWag

The Golden Girls of running backs plus an aging Quarterback behind a high school football teams offensive line does not seem to add up to a deep playoff run.

NCAA Tournament

This weekend we had the Final Four games with Butler and Duke
advancing.  The Butler game had 2 entertaining minutes while the Duke game bested them with 0 minutes of watchable hoops.

I plan on doing a post later today or tomorrow on the 96 game
expansion (everyone else did, why not ScottiePP7?) and in it I will
explain why I can’t respect college sports.

For now though, I am going with Butler +7.5.  Just saying.

NBA Playoff Push

So while I was watching the Duke game I ended up switching over to an entertaining Bulls and Bobcats game in Chicago.  The Bulls ended up winning with a late game comeback and are now just 1 game back from Toronto who chocked away a game with Golden State in OT despite Bosh’s 42 points.

The Milwaukee Bucks who were also looking to position themselves for the playoffs saw their dreams shattered along with Andrew Bogut’s arm on a gruesome injury that occurred when Bogut landed on his arm after a dunk (and a slight push from Amare Stoudemire

Amare has this to say…

Well ok then, all is well I guess.

Coach K

Amid his NCAA Title push and the playoffs approaching for the NBA rumors are circulating that Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov is willing to pay Coach Krzyzewski up to 15 million a year to coach the New Jersey Nets.

Yes Jeremy, damn those rich Russians.  The country that made bread lines famous.