Article:The LA Sports Blog: ArmchairGM Burns 4/10/08

ArmchairGM Burns 4/10/08
By: Nate Gordon

ArmchairGM Burns correspondent Amar Diwaker reports this morning from our London offices: “I’ve been able to survive while in London off of the English Premiership, Cricket, UEFA Champions League and some NBA/MLB action of BBC2. Otherwise I party in Amsterdam all weekend and gamble in London during the week.”

Nate: Ya, but what about the assignment I asked you to cover for Armchair? You know,  getting English perspective on American sports?

Amar: Arm-what?

Nate: (sigh) Call me when you have something.

I have a fire burning inside me to just unleash and go off for like 2000 words on something I find completely absurd and like usual, irresponsible. However I promised to refrain and I shall, because I like being a man of my word; it gives me something other then my balls to rely on. So we’ll take a look at some pre-writing protocol, the Hottest Sports Wife Tournament and a couple of articles that I find to be important contributions to AGM (not that contributions not mentioned are unimportant).

You’re Voting For The Women, Not The Picture
Now I know this may be hard for some of you to grasp (unlike your "lower horn") but the pictures of the women in the Hottest Sports Wife Tournament are representative of real women! Women who are made of flesh and can be touched and can grow and change. Although so, so many of you are only familiar with pictures representing women that you fawn over all day at your computer – women who aren’t your mom are real. So why is everyone voting for the picture representation? A picture of Anna Benson from 2003 has propelled her to the third round of the tournament – a five year old picture. People, do a little research, your vote is indicative of your taste. When you vote for a chick with an airbrushed picture or a chick pushing her breast together to make them look 2 sizes bigger then they are – you are representing who you would find more attractive in person. I’m not going to get into who has poor taste in women and who doesn’t and blah blah all that jazz; but I will say that many of my fellow AGMers either aren’t familiar with females when it comes to personal contact. So get familiar and stop grabbing your wangs you wankers!!!

State of the Blog
Our friends over at Sport Crack have been working on a really interesting series of articles called "State Of The Franchise". He started off (as far as I can tell) with the Oakland Raiders and is currently featuring the Cleveland Browns. Sport Crack does a good job of breaking down where the franchise is as of the end of 2007, where it is coming from, and where he expects them to head in the future. They are well written, fairly concise articles that always leave me feeling like I am a more knowledgeable sports fan at the end of the piece. So keep up the good work guys because there are many more franchises I want insight on before the start of the season – and you folks are the ones for that information here at Armchair.

In Which Nate’s Head Implodes
Okay since I want so desperately to pick on a few opinions I have to do something. I couldn’t help myself so I will make a public cry to the general population: Please people, when writing sports opinion take a few steps before hitting the publish button:


 * Do your research: It takes less then 5 minutes (unless your dealing with stats) to fact check your information. If your opinion is based on false information, it goes down the toilet before it ever gets started.


 * Think about it: If your friends or co-workers would rail you for this thought, then we are definitely going to lay into you ruthlessly. Once you’ve gathered your facts and have formed an opinion, is that opinion legitimate? Or is it a ‘’’“Skip Bayless Opinion”’’’ (a stated opinion that is extremely abrasive to get a reaction out of another person; or a kneejerk reaction to breaking events/news.)


 * Expect harsh rebuttals: The more ‘’“out there”’’ or extreme your viewpoint is, the more extreme the rebuttal will be. If you want to cut a soccer field in half and put signage around it and call it a new game – expect a soccer fan to call you an idiot for trying to reinvent indoor soccer, then call you a jerk for not knowing what your talking about.


 * Expect to defend your opinion and your writing: You can’t just write an opinion, put it out there and assume that is the end of it. How did you come to this opinion? What factors brought you to your conclusion? Why did you say that if you meant something else? If you write it, your responsible for it. If you write it, it’s fair game to be picked apart. If you use your profession as basis for being an expert, expect to have it challenged. These are the rules of the game – if you don’t like it, Go sit on your thumb.

The Third Degree: English Golf Terms
In honor of The Masters (cue piano and Mike Tirico asking us to “return to the majesty”) I’m going to take a deep breath today and instead ask you to enjoy some English golf terms over here. If your backswing is anything like Big Pup’s then you’ll be getting familiar with a few of these terms.

Cartoon Quotes

 * Brian Griffin : Hey Bartender! Whose leg do I have to hump to get a dry martini around here?


 * Tom Tucker : And now, here's Ollie Williams, with the Black Weather Forecast. Ollie! Ollie Williams : IT'S GON' RAIN! Tom Tucker : Thanks, Ollie.


 * Stewie Griffin : Hey, Brian, remember me? I'm the guy you left standing at the counter at McDonald's with a bag full of burgers. You know it's funny, I tried to walk home and, um, a lot of hungry deer walking around at this hour of the night and, um, oh here's where the story gets fun, uh, you may have noticed I'm missing an ear. Managed to, uh, pull it out of the deer's mouth and put it in some ice I got at a 7-Eleven. So when you are ready to apologize, just talk into this cup.