Written by Brian McPeek

---

We’ll hit a little bit of everything in this week’s edition of The Weekend Wrap. We’ll start with Godzilla vs. Mothra and then work our way down to the Cavs, Tribe and Buckeyes. But the story that dominated the news last week was the NFL owners and the NFL players finally reaching an agreement….. an agreement to wait another week before really doing vicious battle over a $10billion pot of gold.

 

It’s hard to root for either the owners or the players in this disgusting and greedy battle over billions of dollars when I’m busy arranging car pools for my kids and considering siphoning gas from lawnmowers that the neighbors leave unattended.

I’m sick of the ‘Billionaires vs. Millionaires’ shit too. Like I need to be reminded of that as we head toward $4/gallon for gas and $3/gallon for milk.

No, you’d almost like to see each side embarrassed by a mediator that decides to have each side pick a contestant for a steel cage match to decide the matter. Unfortunately the players would have a decided advantage in a physical contest. Unless of course the mediator decides that the contestants have to be over 65 years old. If that’s the case the owners will win by virtue of a forfeit given nearly all ex-players are dead before that age due to injuries they sustained and the squalid benefits they received for their time.

I get both sides. I feel for the players. Rather, I feel for the ex-players who didn’t benefit from $10million signing bonuses or veteran minimums in the $400k range.

But here’s the thing for me (and it makes me feel really, really disgusting): I want the owners to prevail in this matter.

It’s not because I have two nickels to rub together or because I light my $20 cigar with a $10 bill. That’s not it at all. I want the owners to prevail because, perhaps mistakenly, I believe the NFL is the only league where a mid-market team in a city such as Cleveland is offered any realistic chance to compete for a championship.

Maybe I’m projecting and that’s just bullshit too, but it seems like 5-11 to 10-6 and a playoff spot happens regularly in the NFL.

Major League Baseball has clearly forsaken the smaller markets. The Yankees pay guys like Carl Pavano tens of millions of dollars to not pitch for them. If they sign a guy like Pavano as they did a few years back and Pavano gets hurt and can’t pitch, the Yankees just go out at the trade deadline and buy a different star. A team like the Indians can’t afford one or two of those players and if they do sign one who gets hurt or whose performance falls off the table like a Bert Blyleven curveball the organization is screwed for as long as the contract lasts.

You need look no further than Travis Hafner than to see this in play for the Tribe. There is no margin for error in a small market. If you fail to draft and develop excellence that matures in the same two or three year window you can’t compete.

The NBA is even worse. There will be a reckoning come next year when their collective bargain agreement expires and there will be blood. Every year there are maybe six teams with a legitimate chance to win the NBA title. And those six teams are increasingly spreading like Mercury to towns on either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. If you don’t have a beach a ring’s out of reach anymore in the NBA. You can call LeBron’s move to Miami free will or you can, like I do, call it premeditated collusion that occurred well before last summer, but whatever you call it David Stern doesn’t like it.

He understands that although you need anchors and dynasties on both oceans that the guys in the middle of the country have to have a fighting chance to compete. I have no doubt in my mind that LeBron and his generation are selfish enough to not give a shit what happens when they’re gone. These guys grew up in a disposable society. Microwaves, clothing, electronics and lives are disposable to LeBron’s generation. He and his buddies aren’t going to care where the NBA is in 20 years while they’re teaming up with Jay Z Jr. to produce records and films.

But David Stern damn well better be concerned. The owners paid huge dollars for their franchises. If the ‘Me’ generation led by LeBron and ‘Melo continue to leave franchises like Cleveland and Denver wrecked in their wake Stern is going to have some really pissed off, powerful men at his throat who want an explanation why they’re only getting dimes on their dollars as far as return on investment goes.

That’s why I want the NFL owners to prevail. I can’t stand to see them get rolled and bent over in these negotiations and have the NFL turned into the NBA or MLB. Not here in this town where our beachfront is uninhabitable for eight months a year and undeveloped the other four. There is no club scene in Cleveland and the movie industry here is slightly less prevalent than it is in L.A.

I don’t care if the parity they’re selling me is only a creation. I watched the team with the #1 pick in the draft play a game to go to the playoffs in the season finale this year. I’ve seen perennially bad teams in Atlanta and Tampa Bay resurrected because the system allows you to do so.

The only reason it hasn’t happened here in Cleveland is because ownership and the front office haven’t been able to get out of their own way. Clowns and snake oil salesman like Carmen Policy, Butch Davis, Phil Savage and George Kokinis have retarded the team, not the NFL’s system.

By all means, take care of your wounded. Show some class and empathy and make sure the guys that allowed your franchises and bank accounts to flourish are protected by a reasonable medical plan and that their legacies and memories aren’t all we have left ten years after they retire. If you can’t look at the Dave Duerson or Mike Webster situations and understand that you owe these guys at least that then I want no part of you or your product regardless of how much fairer I perceive it to be.

No man gets left behind used to mean something. Now all it means is LeBron will do his best to make sure he gets Zydrunas Ilgauskas down to Miami with whatever money he and his two BFF’s leave for the other nine guys.

Fix that issue and then don’t air your dirty laundry. It’s shameful to watch guys interviewed in front of their private planes or garage full of Bentley’s and bitch about anything much less money.

But make no mistake, when it’s all said and done and the guys who played the game are taken care of for all eternity then I want to see the players destroyed. It’s not like they’ll be destitute and wandering the streets Katrina-style. They’re well-paid now and they should have a useful pension and benefits going forward. But don’t give them a damn thing more than that. The system works fine. The product is great. People love it and the guys that play benefit from that love.

That’s good enough for anyone and far better than most of us have it.

Just a Few Words on the Cavs

You know it’s a bad year for the basketball you follow when you’re literally shocked and stunned when your phone alarm tells you the team has beaten the Knicks.

That’s how it was Friday night when I was partaking in the world’s oldest profession: Making Beer.

Yep, me and some friends were brewing 5 gallons or so of an American Pale Ale and another 5 gallons of an Irish Stout because no man should be forced to drink Black & Tans on St. Patrick’s Day that he didn’t make himself.

That’s what I told my wife anyway. Truth is you drink a few pints while you make the next batch of brew and you talk about things like parity in the NFL, the outlandish shit owners and players say and the stunning news that the Cavs actually beat the Knicks in New York.

So there was that. And the last couple paragraphs were my few words on the Cavs. That’s because they’re still God-awful and they resumed their losing ways Sunday at home against the Hornets to make everything right again in the world.

And Cleveland sports will be even more tolerable when the wort becomes beer and the CO2 system force carbonates it so it can be enjoyed not in 4-6 weeks but in 7-10 days.

A Few Words on the Tribe

The Chad Durbin furor has died down and that’s good and bad. It’s good because anytime the words ‘Chad Durbin’ and ‘furor’ are paired together you were dealing with stone cold idiots to begin with and it’s bad because I love talking about the idiots I deal with. I could regale you for hours with tales of the people I work with but that would likely leave you empty and bored and me jobless so talking about people who really were furious over Chad Durbin fills the void.

I’m not sure what the issue will be this week. Maybe something like speculation that Grady Sizemore is being moved to left field or about how someone misses the quiet, steady, mediocre performance of a guy like Casey Blake at 3b after they’ve watched a spring-full of Jayson Nix.

It’s hard to say really. You’d think that spring training would be a time where the idiots were just honing their thoughts and opinions and that they would also be ready for major league discussion when the real games began.

Nope. They just become major league idiots. No better subject matter and no better thought process.

As to the actual team, hell, you don’t want to know that from me. You can get details from Adam Burke, Nino Colla and Paul Cousineau of you want actual facts and some statistical analysis. I pretty much just break it down into discussion points and give you an unadulterated view of what one sarcastic life- long fan with a license to write thinks. I mix in a few numbers if they suit me or my argument but I’m going to give you an opinion based on what I actually see with my two eyes.

Between that and the great coverage you’ll get from Burke, Colla and Cousineau I don’t really know what else you need. Can the old, tired and lazy beat reporters come right out and tell you that Justin Masterson looked like shit on Sunday afternoon? Well, he did and they can’t.

We’ll have the Tribe covered and we’ll have Al Cam..Camiac…Al Eye Chart all over the minor league stuff for you well. Because if nothing else we here at The Cleveland Fan understand that once the reality of another shitty season sets in that people not only want that detailed and broken down but they also want to bask in the ‘potential’ of the kids they’re sure will one day bring glory to the North Coast and deliver them from evil. So yeah, the minor leagues are kind of a big deal once the major league club is bust-o and sells off any salvageable parts.

That was a lot more than a few words on the Tribe. I'm winded.

Dear Mephistopheles

I know you’re busy running your Yankees and Ravens franchises but can you please tell me that the due date for Jon Diebler’s deal with you is after April 5^th of this year? I was kind of hoping to bask in the glory of an Ohio State national championship victory and it’d break my heart if you don’t at least leave Diebler and his soul here on earth until then.

Thanks.

Seriously, is watching a guy like that heat up about the most beautiful and inspiring feat in sports? I’m not talking about a guy knocking down a game winner from an improbable angle or hitting a few shots in a row. I’m talking about a guy that is just been disgustingly hot over the last week or so and can’t miss. I’m honestly not sure if I’ve seen anything like that in my time watching college or NBA hoops.

And I’ll say it if you won’t: I love watching a guy take his man, beat him down the lane and then throw down a dunk over top of a bigger defender coming over to help. That’s beautiful and it’s powerful.

But watching a guy like Diebler come off a screen or work himself open off a teammate’s drive-penetration, catching a pass in rhythm and hitting nothing but cord is gorgeous. It’s just a thing of beauty to see it happen once. But to see a guy like Diebler do it almost 20 times the span of two games is, well, I don’t know how to describe other than as inspiring. I mean, it was inconceivable.

And by the way, thank you to CBS Sports for giving Gus Johnson a couple warm-up games before the NCAA tournament starts. To have Gus calling the Diebler 'Three for All' in a blowout win of a stunned Wisconsin team took the excitement level up exponentially. Gus Johnson could make household chores sound like the 7^th game of the NBA Finals and I really thought someone might have to bring him a change of clothes after Diebler’s 7^th triple of the day.

More on the tournament next week when conference tournaments are the books and seeds have been determined. Speaking of which, I’ll be headed down to the MAC tourney this week at The Q. I’m not doing game stories but I hope to bring you some of the flavor of the games. Unless my home-brew beer is finished fermenting by then. If the beer is beer I’ll probably watch the games from my buddy Keith’s ‘Gold Top Lounge’ (actually his basement that features an all-45s jukebox) and where we’ll drink our own Black & Tans and play some competitive Wii golf with the other two brew-masters Jason and John.

I love tournament time.