Back in the saddle: A hodge-podge of things.

So I took a little time off from the sports blogging.  Not that I haven't been watching, I have, I just haven't felt the need to write about it much.  A lot of things have happened however since I last wrote about anything on February 11th.

Let's take a look.

March Madness: Believe it or not, the University of Houston is squarely on the bubble. If you would have asked me if they could be after the horrible loss to Grand Canyon I would have laughed.  But Kelvin Sampson is a heck of a coach and has the team playing pretty good basketball right now.  A deep run in the AAC tournament and they might not want to tune-out on Selection Sunday.

Speaking of, LSU with Ben Simmons is a candidate for the team that wasted a generational talent (again). Not only are they clearly in danger of missing the Tournament but this will most-likely be Simmons one and done year with the team.

Maryland is probably the most talented team in the country.  However, they also are the worst coached, and worst mental team in the country.  Because of that I see them falling out of the tournament in the first two rounds.

The SEC is a 3-bid league but they're going to get more because of who they are.

Don't talk to me about how good the Big XII is.  Until someone can beat Kansas for the conference title then they are the Big One and the Little Nine.

Saw this yesterday and it's a good question:  So far this year Jim Nantz has not been on the call for one college basketball game.  Despite this he's going to be CBS' lead announcer for the Tournament.

Houston Rockets: Finally gave up on Ty Lawson, the team is still not very good. I will say this again. If you're a Rockets fan then you want them to miss the playoffs.  Also, it's time to start asking the tough questions of Daryl Morey.

Houston Texans:  I saw today that Robert Griffin III was released by the Redskins.  There will be a call to bring him to Houston.  There's also a call to sign Brock Osweiler. If I had my druthers I'd take RG III over Osweiler.  People forget that RGIII was pretty good before he got caught up in injuries and the Gruden mess.  Better yet, you can probably get him for cheap so sign Osweiler, sign RGIII and let the two of them compete in camp.  That would free up a draft pick (that GM Rick Smith would waste by overreaching into a weak QB class anyway) to shore up the many, many other holes in the Texans roster.

Of course, they're not going to do this so welcome to Houston Christian Hackenberg.

On that note: Houston Chronicle NFL writer John McClain has the Texans taking Paxton Lynch with the 22nd pick in the 1st round. (Texans beat-writer Aaron Wilson has them taking Emmanuel Ogbah, DE-OSU at that slot.) Typically McClain's first mock draft is a thinly veiled attempt to troll Texans fans.  This time however I think he might have opened up with what will be his final prediction.  I've seen Lynch go all over the board however and I don't think he'll be available at 22.  Wilson's pick is just bizarre.  Even after a strong combine Ogbah is considered a late 2nd/early 3rd round prospect who has little explosiveness, and a questionable motor.

I haven't put my first round mock draft together but it's sure as heck not going to include the Texans taking Ogbah.


Houston Dynamo: I haven't watched many Dynamo games.  In fact, I don't watch much M(inor) League Soccer at all.  When you're used to watching the International leagues the pace of play is glacial, the skill is sub-par and the tactics are basic.  I don't care what US apologists like Alexi Lalas and Taylor Twellman say, the product is poor.  I feel that the closed league system that the MLS employs leads to that.  While promotion/relegation isn't a be all/end all fix for US Soccer it is one step in the right direction.

That said, after watching the opener vs. the New England Revolution on Sunday I won't be wasting much more time watching this team.  Horrible defense, shoddy goal keeping and uninspired mid-field and offensive play?  I'll watch the BPL, La Liqa and Serie A thank you very much.


UFC: I'm finding this fight promotion to be more and more unwatchable every event.  The staged fights at the press conferences/weigh-ins are getting stale and the entire event feels more like a side-show than a serious combat sports event.  This makes sense when you realize that UFC President Dana White is nothing more than a glorified carnival barker.

And it's not just the trash talk, I like it as much as the next guy, it's the predictability of the run-up to the fights now.  Also, McGregor jumped up two weight classes to fight a mid-range guy at 170. It's a loss that he never should have had to take.

Now that Holm has lost to Miesha Tate White has already come out and said that Rousey gets the first shot at Tate.  Why?  Let's have Rousey/Holm II and the winner of that gets Tate for the belt. Just another example of Dana White playing favorites and politics with the championships.

I'm done with them.  Back to boxing, which has it's flaws but which owns them, and doesn't try to act like they don't exist.


And finally......

Houston Astros: Big hopes this year.  Early on the pitching is struggling a little bit but the bats appear to be better than last year.  Like most in Houston I'm hoping to get a full year of Correa/Sprinter/Altuve healthy and just ripping the cover off of the ball.

For fighting Berto, Mayweather should pay the viewer.

Ah boxing. Not only is it among the worst ran sports in the world (I'm looking at you FIFA) but it's also got the biggest star who has the biggest set of negatives.  Fighting a diminished Andre Berto is not going to remedy this.

I realize that Floyd Mayweather thinks that, by offering this fight on broadcast TV, he can rehabilitate his image with the "fans" (read: PPV buying public) but he's dead wrong. Having a fight on PBC only will serve to bring his shortcomings to an even larger audience.

What Floyd is: A very good (great) fighter who succeeds because his style is boring to the casual fan. Sure, to the purist, he's amazing to watch. The subtleties in his defense are among the best of all time and he can, when pushed, turn street and unleash power that is not world-beating, but which can hurt an opponent and knock him out.

Unfortunately, Floyd Mayweather is on of the most unlikeable people walking the planet. He's a convicted domestic abuser, he's arrogant and not afraid to tell you so, he's also allegedly a liar when it comes to matters of betting/money, and he has an outsized opinion in regards to his legacy.

This fight with Andre Berto is going to do absolutely nothing to change public perception, as Berto is now a shell of his former self and nearing the end of his career. He's a shop-worn fighter who's looking much older in the ring than his actual age.  Coming up I was an Andre Berto fan, I still am. But even I have to admit that he's closer to the end of his career than he is to his prime. Fighting Floyd Mayweather is not the way to turn things around.

Contrary to what he says, this will not be Floyd's last fight. He sees the money and he sees the legacy that he thinks 50-0 will grant him. In other words, he sees a rematch with either Pacquiao or Cotto.

None of those three fights would I want to see.

I would like to see Mayweather potentially get in the ring with either Kell Brook or Timothy Bradley, I think the former has the power and speed to potentially hurt him and I think Bradley's awkward style has the ability to out-point him.

That we'll never see either of those two fights is why Mayweather's "TBE" talk is just so much background noise.

Time to move on to more interesting fights, and fighters as boxing enjoys a good run after the MayPac debacle. Let's no go back to that time, let's move forward to whatever is next. (pssst....Andre Ward and Ganady Golovkin battling it out for best pound for pound.)

The Biggest Sports Weekend (EVER!) that was.

If you're a fan of sports, then waking up on Monday might feel like somewhat of a downer after Saturday. There's obviously a LOT to cover but let's give it the once-over shall we?

1. Draft "grades" are stupid. Mainly because you're attempting to grade something without knowing whether or not any of the players drafted are going to play or not.  What we should be doing, right now, is grading the 2011 drafts of the teams. Those are the drafts whose rookie contracts are getting ready to roll off and we have a good idea how the teams did.

2. American Pharoah is now the only horse to have a shot at the Triple Crown. That said, were I his owners I'd run him in the Preakness, and then give him some time off to rest for the Fall card, including the season-ending Breeder's Cup.  With all of the big races later in the season running a 3 year old a mile and a half (a distance it's probably never going to run again) on the heels of two tough races does more to damage a horse in the long-run than help it. Oh, and the Woodford Reserve Turf Stakes was one of the better horse races you'll ever see.

3. MayPac was, unsurprisingly, not the super-fight of the Century that it was hyped to be. Mayweather is a smart man. He waited until Pacquiao was incapable of doing the things he needed to do in order to win the fight, before he agreed to fight him. Instead of two of the best pound-for-pound fighters slugging it out, we got a typical Mayweather dance that was overpriced, and left people with a bad taste in their mouths.

I do think that this could signal the beginning of the end of the pay-per-view era of professional boxing.  And good riddance.  As Al Hayman's Premier Boxing Champions series continues to prove: the best boxing matches could, and should, be fought on Network TV.  Also given that Showtime boxing has elevated its status to become a true challenger to HBO and you have several outlets where the biggest fights can occur, on free TV or tiered cable.  Charging $100 (or even more ridiculously, $30/head time capacity at a bar) effectively priced a large percentage of the population out of the watching the fight live. I refused to buy the PPV, and my local bar (which typically carries all of the fights) elected to not pay the exorbitant fees.  As such, I followed the fight on Twitter. I'll DVR it when either HBO or Showtime airs it on their networks and feel like I haven't missed out on anything.

4. Clippers vs. Spurs - Game 7 What was initially threatened to be overshadowed by the "other" events of the weekend ultimately turned out to be the best event of them all. This was a classic basketball game with two teams throwing haymakers at the end, and with Chris Paul, limping around on one hamstring, ultimately sinking a beautiful shot to clinch the win for the LA team.

It was also a heroic last stand for what was one of the greatest NBA runs of all time for the Spurs, who will undoubtedly have to consider finally admitting that Duncan and Ginobli are aging players and will begin the process of drastically altering their roster going forward. If you missed this game to watch the horrid undercard for MayPac, you really lost out.

All of that and I still haven't mentioned the Stanley Cup Playoffs or the fact that the Houston Astros are currently playing out of their minds. I also didn't mention that Rory McIlroy is pretty good.

All in all it was a great weekend to be a sports fan. One of the better ones in recent memory.

The fight of the decade (Maybe?)

Oh boy.....

The Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao fight is turning into a debacle. Tony Manfred, Yahoo.com

While the two camps agreed to the fight in February, they've yet to sign the contract, ESPN's Darren Rovell reports.

As a result, tickets to both the fight at the MGM Grand and the closed-circuit viewings at MGM properties around Las Vegas haven't been released for sale.

Ticket sales are expected to generate $72 million, but a week and a half before the fight, no one has a ticket. The two sides reportedly made progress on Tuesday, but the contract remains unsigned as of Wednesday morning.

Pacquiao's promoter, Top Rank, is blaming Mayweather Promotions, and vice versa. 

For all of the progress boxing has made in 2015, due in large part to the success of Al Haymon's Premier Boxing Championships and some other good fights, any time there is a Superfight (even one that's 5 years too late) coming up we're reminded just how little business sense the promoters in the game actually have.

Yes, they're good at making money in short bursts, but if you look at the boxing landscape over the past few years the only truly bankable fighters in the game are Mayweather and Pacquiao.  Everyone else near their weight has just been positioning themselves for the big payout by losing to these two. (OK, except Juan Manuel Marquez)

That said, I still think this fight is going to go off. It's ugly and it's starting to border on high comedy (with Arum and Haymon involved, how could it not?) but there's been too much push and too much publicity for this for either side to absorb.

Still, it's yet another black eye for boxing that's self induced. As a boxing fan it's getting hard to support a group that seemingly has no sense of self preservation.