New U.S. Strategy?

Chelsea have confirmed that Ashley Cole will be sidelined for three months after fracturing his ankle, meaning the England international may miss the rest of the season in the build-up to the World Cup finals in South Africa.

Ashley Cole sustained the injury in a tackle with Landon Donovan

Cole sustained the injury after 57 minutes of Chelsea's 2-1 defeat at the hands of Everton on Wednesday night when he was involved in a challenge with Landon Donovan - who represents United States, England's first opponents in South Africa.

Scoop. Only one complaint though. Hit ‘em harder next time Landon. He’s only out for 3 months. The World Cup is in 4. We gotta even out these injuries. Davies, Dempsey, and Onyewu are all hurt. I like Landon’s style. Let’s level the playing field for the matchup against England in June. Someone go after Wayne Rooney next.

-AFG

WHO DAT: Super Bowl Recap

Can you figure out who this graph is comparing? (Probably, if you use some simple logic and realize that this comparison is coming 2 days after the Super Bowl). Obviously, this graph is comparing Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. But can you tell which player is which by his stats? How about if I tell you that Player A has a career playoff record of 9-9 while Player B’s career playoff record is 4-2?

That’s right. Player A is Peyton Manning and Player B is Drew Brees. Peyton Manning, one of the best quarterbacks of all time in the regular season, but no better than Trent Dilfer (5-1, 1 Super Bowl ring) or Brad Johnson (4-3, 1 Super Bowl ring) in the playoffs. Anybody can win 1 Super Bowl. There have been some random QBs who have pulled that off. If Peyton wants to go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, he needs to sack up and perform in the playoffs. As far as I’m concerned, the Brady-Manning debate is over. The new debate should be: Who is the second-best QB going right now, Manning or Brees? As you can see from the numbers, it is a pretty close call over the past 4 seasons.

Other observations from the Super Bowl:

-Déjà vu for Tracy Porter. He makes the pick on the inevitable Brett Favre brain fart in the NFC Championship game, and then he essentially ends the Super Bowl picking off a very Favre-like throw from Peyton Manning and taking it to the house. Well done. You saved Favre-haters and Patriots fans everywhere from incredible anguish.

-Boy, I sure wish I was in New Orleans for the after-party. I guess I still have time. The party is scheduled to go on until August 2013.

-Rumor has it that Bill Polian will petition the NFL to ban onside kicks until the 4th quarter of games.

-Can we stop with the question: “Did Team X win the game, or did Team Y lose it?” Every time I turn on First and Ten, or Around the Horn, etc, I hear this question. Why do we have to debate who was more responsible for the outcome of the game? One team was better than the other, as evidenced by the score. The Saints won and the Colts lost. End of story.

-Despite the fact that I was rooting whole-heartedly for the Saints, I was curious to see, had the Colts won, if Jim Caldwell has a pulse.

-Does any sports figure mean more to his city than Drew Brees right now? I think the man is literally a Saint.

-Sean Payton sure has balls. The game-changing onsides kick was pure genius. But was it only genius because it worked? I don’t think so. Payton has made those types of decisions ever since he took over the Saints. He plays to win, not to not lose. Much like Bill Belichick does. Belichick got killed for the whole 4th and 2 fiasco because it didn’t work. If it had, he would have been praised and his legend would have continued to grow. If the onsides kick didn’t work out, would Sean Payton have been killed in a similar fashion? Luckily for him, we’ll never know.

-AFG

Same old story, Bruins fail to address issues

It has been reported the Atlanta Thrashers have traded Illya Kovalchuk to the New Jersey Devils after he turned down a deal that approached $100 million.

As a Boston fan, this is disappointing news. Kovalchuk would have brought excitement to Boston. He would have represented hope. He would have given us someone who could have at least scored on occasion.

He would have made Marc Savard the player we signed him to be.

The fact that the Bruins could not find a way to make this deal is pathetic. They entered this season after trading their leading goal scorer without replacing him and are paying for it.

Yet again, the Devils strike another deal. They constantly make bold decisions year after year.

And that is the exact reason why they are always in contention like Detroit. They recognize a problem and address it. They realize when they have an opportunity and they go get a player to put them over the top. This is exactly what the Bruins do not do. They never go after it. They never change their philosophy. They continue to live in the past and look for the next Bobby Orr or Cam Neely.

It's time to change philosophies. Go get players with skill and speed. Go get goal scorers, pure goal scorers. I'm sick of looking for the next Neely or Orr. They are one in a life time generation players.

Go get the guys who actual have an impact in this NHL.

So yet again, the Bruins fail to make an impact move. Some may question whether or not this would have helped them this season. That will never be answered now, but it would have helped them in the future.

So yet again, I'll sit here and think of what could of been. I'll listen to Jack Edwards discuss Kovalchuk and the impact he'll have on the Devils and not the Bruins.

Dunleavy Fires Himself

The Los Angeles Clippers have decided to make a coaching change with just 32 games left in the season, relieving Mike Dunleavy of his duties, the team announced on Thursday.

The Clippers have named assistant Kim Hughes as interim coach.

Dunleavy, who has been serving as the Clippers coach/general manager since Elgin Baylor left the club early last season, will retain his front-office title.

"I've had several conversations with our owner [Donald T. Sterling] concerning what we think is best for the team overall," Dunleavy said in a press realease. "We have discussed the possibility of my concentrating only on basketball operations. That option has always been available to me.

"I've come to the conclusion that this is the ideal time for me to direct my efforts toward the many personnel opportunities that lie before us, such as the trade market, the draft and the free-agent process. We fully expect to be active and productive on all those fronts."

The Clippers began play Thursday with the 12th-best record in the Western Conference, seven games out of a playoff spot at 21-28.

Hughes has worked as a Clippers assistant for seven seasons after serving the previous five years with the Denver Nuggets.

-Marc Stein and J.A. Adande (ESPN.com)

So, it finally happened. Mike Dunleavy is out as Los Angeles Clippers head coach. Bill Simmons can die in peace (again). Under normal circumstances, this firing shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It should have happened years ago. The Clippers have been the punch line of jokes for years. They are a cursed franchise (just ask Blake Griffin), and they just truly suck.

However, these are not normal circumstances. In addition to being the (former) coach, Mike Dunleavy is also the general manager of the Clippers. This means he essentially just canned his own ass! He realized he wasn’t good enough, so he let himself go. Dunleavy says he wants to focus all his efforts on the trade market, draft, etc. It's understandable. He wants to focus on basketball operations, so he can screw those up with his full attention.

Firing yourself is an interesting development, however. Can this sort of thing work both ways? Can I hire myself for a job that I’m not qualified for? As a 23 year old unemployed college graduate, this would be excellent news.

No?

Ah, well.

-AFG

Beebe Downs Lett

After making a great strip sack, Lett makes one of the dumbest decisions a professional athlete could have made. Celebrating before you actually score a touchdown is never a good idea. Especially when the touchdown could very well be the deciding score in a Super Bowl victory.

Thank God for Lett, the Cowboys still won the Super Bowl thanks to the Bills inability to win a championship.

-MJR

Beasley's Car Gets Torched

United States midfielder DaMarcus Beasley's BMW car has been set on fire outside his home in Glasgow.

Police in the Scottish city are continuing to investigate Monday night's incident, which it describes as "willful fire-raising."

"Someone blew up my car," Beasley wrote Wednesday on Twitter. "I'm doin ok, just glad no one got hurt."

-Associated Press

DaMarcus Beasley is a former US National Team standout who currently plays club ball for Rangers of Glasgow, Scotland. He has remained surprisingly calm for someone that just had his $80,000 vehicle torched. Beasley recently tweeted:

“Thanks again for ALL the messages and kind words.. But yea I'm doin ok and in the market for a new car! Lol..Gotta try to find some humor.”

Police are still searching for information on the fire-wielding pricks who did this, but it was most likely done by lunatic fans of Celtic, Rangers’ fiercest rival. If this is in fact the case, picture a Yankees fan setting fire to Terry Francona’s Escalade, and that’s about what you have going on here. The startling thing is that this is not an isolated incident. Beasley has been targeted before. In 2008, several Rangers players, including Beasley, were targeted and had their cars broken into. Beasley has also been the target of racial taunting, along with teammate Maurice Edu.

This incident is part of a disturbing trend of violence against international soccer players that has been going on for seemingly forever. The “willful fire-raising” (love that term) of DaMarcus Beasley’s BMW is just one of many violent attacks on soccer players in recent weeks. Last week, Paraguay’s top player, Salvador Cabanas, was shot in the head outside a Mexico City nightclub. Miraculously, he survived, but his status for the World Cup this summer remains in question. Cabanas was expected to be the leader and star of the Paraguayan National Team this June in soccer’s biggest tournament. In another violent attack, the Togo national team bus was attacked by gunmen upon entering Angola for the African Cup of Nations tournament last month. “We were machine-gunned like dogs,” said Togo player Thomas Dossevi. The bus driver, team doctor, and an assistant coach were all killed in the attack, while several players were injured. But violence against international soccer players is not just a recent trend.

Perhaps the most famous attack against a soccer player was the shocking murder of Andres Escobar in July 1994. Escobar was a defender for the Colombian national team during the 1994 World Cup. In a match against the United States, Escobar scored an own goal that gave the U.S. a 2-1 victory and eliminated Colombia from the World Cup. Upon return to his native Medellin, Colombia, Escobar was shot and killed outside a local bar. The murderer reportedly yelled “Goal!” after each of the twelve shots fired at Escobar. It is unclear if the killer was just an angry fan or if he was tied to a gambling syndicate that lost money on the game.

While brutal violence does occur against athletes in America (see Steve McNair and Sean Taylor), it is much more common in other parts of the world. Outside of the U.S., soccer is easily the world’s most popular sport. Fans follow their national and club teams religiously, with an unprecedented passion and loyalty. They live and die with every game to an extent that we Americans do not fully understand. (Green Street Hooligans is a great movie to illustrate this point. Highly recommend it. Even if you’re not a soccer fan).

It is absolutely crazy what some of these players go through on a regular basis. Racism is common, but all players can do is just try to block it out. On corner kicks, the visiting team often has to dodge flying batteries and bottles of piss. Violence among fans is all too common, with injuries and deaths pilling up at a much too consistent rate. Players receive death threats and have to fear for their own safety as well as the safety of their families. All for a game.

Every time an incident with fans occurs in American sports, the talk show hosts rattle on about how fans need to behave themselves and respect the players and each other. But in comparison to European/South American/African soccer fans, we do a damn good job.

-AFG

Rex Ryan: Emotional Wreck

New York Jet's coach Rex Ryan was fined $50,000 by the New York Jets yesterday for flipping the bird at fans at a MMA event.

Is Rex Ryan one of the most emotional coaches on the planet? Yes, I give him credit he has done a tremendous job turning around the New York Jets entire organization. He signed critical free agents, drafted extremely well, and motivated his team in an aspiring way.

He took over a team that was destroyed by Brett Favre last year and made them forget about the up and down season they experienced by rallying around a rookie quarter back in Mark Sanchez.

But come on. Settle down dude. You're going to be dead before you even get halfway through the contract you signed.

You beat the mighty New England Patriots in the second game of the season and treated it like the super bowl.

You cried at a team practice because you "loved" your team so much.

You spoke to early and declared your team dead and out of the playoffs before they were actually eliminated.

You got lucky to make the playoffs and then had the audacity to say you'd be surprised if you didn't win the Super Bowl, yet a month earlier you said to the media you'd be surprised if you even made the playoffs!

This guy has rallied the troops, made his team relevant again, yadda yadda yadda, but by the time he actually gets enough experience and Mark Sanchez ready the guy is going to have a heart attack.

Settle down, take it game by game, and see what happens. Stop with your predictions. Stop with your crying and absolutely stop trying to be the center of attention. You truly are starting to reach the level of Brett Favre with a lot of people around the world.

You had a solid year at 9-7, let's see you take the next step forward this year. Win the division and finish with one of the best records in the AFC. See if you can have multiple successful seasons like the organizations in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, New England, and Philadelphia before you put yourself in the same category as them.

Enough is enough already.

-MJR