I thought the debate over TO being Hall of Fame worthy would be interesting, albeit inconsequential.  I’m shocked, however, by this unanimous outcry over his rejection.  It’s unreal tbqh.

Listen, I know he’s one of the most talented players of all time.  I know his stats are transcendental.  However, I also remember him canceling out all that production by being literally the worst teammate in the history of professional sports!  He played for five teams in his career (six if you count the Seahawks), and all five (six*) ended up booting him out the door as quickly as possible.  Hall of Famers are supposed to be invaluable pieces to their franchises, yet someone who got canned by half a dozen teams is supposed to be a shoo-in?  Fuck that.

Look at the QBs he played for – Steve Young, Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb, Drew Bledsoe, Tony Romo, Carson Palmer.  They’re all Pro Bowlers.  Some are even legends.  They all hated him!  That’s insane.

It feels weird seeming alone in this viewpoint, because I was one of his biggest fans.  He was a troller’s dream.  Nothing was better than the 07 season when you could show up to bars on Sundays with his jersey on and trigger everyone without saying a single word.  One time, I wore his jersey to a Mavs-Hornets playoff game in New Orleans and got shit thrown at me.  It was awesome!

Even then, though, I knew he had to go.  He dropped a shit load of passes (especially in big moments) and was a malignant fucken tumor to that locker room.  Jerry Jones is arguably the greatest troll of all time and even he ran out of patience with TO’s shit.

I guess it’s common to romanticize the past, but lets chill out with the hysteria over his annual ‘snubbing’.  Besides, if you think about it, this is actually working out perfectly for TO.  Now, for a couple weeks every election season, he’s relevant enough again to partake in his favorite pastime – whining to the media.  It also helps him get interviews and shit so he can try to be less broke.

*seven teams if you count the Ravens trading for him and then saying ‘never the fuck mind on that’ after his subsequent bitch fest

PS – yes, this is a moot point if McNabb didn’t throw up during the Super Bowl. The Eagles also wouldn’t be ringless anymore. Oh well!!  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As some of y’all may know, I’m a fucken savant when it comes to betting on soccer tournaments.  Having a job again has made me less tapped in to soccer, but I’m still confident I’m gonna make some extra stacks this spring and you can too if you follow my pick.

Underdogs never win in this tournament, so lets take a look at the top seven favorites…

Barcelona +300 – They still have the MSN offense and I wouldn’t blame anybody snapping up this line, but I’m shying away.  Messi’s been in a funk (relative to his standards) since choking away the Copa America, their midfield is getting too old, and their defense leaves a lot to be desired.  The Vidal injury is a final deal breaker for me as well.

Bayern Munich +400 – The team is loaded as always, but they’re getting way too old for me to trust.  They were lucky as fuck to beat Juventus in the first round last year (more on this later), and now for the first time in years they have competition in the Bundesliga keeping them busy.

Real Madrid +450 – I said last year that Madrid was the Cavs and what Madrid had in Zidane was what the Cavs were pretending to have in Tyronn Lue.  I still stand by that – the Cavs got lucky while Madrid actually got their shit together.  Madrid is even better now and I think this is a great bet.

Atletico Madrid +800 – Nice juicy odds on Atletico if you feel like getting your heart ripped out from you in a few months.

Manchester Shitty +1000 – I don’t think this team sucks as much as everyone else thinks, but there’s no way they win.  Swiss cheese defense and intense domestic competition will due them in.

Borussia Dortmund +1200 – Not in the same league as these other teams.  I’m only listing them to get to the next.

Juventus +1200 – I’m shocked by these odds.  Two years ago they were in the final.  Last year, they were up 2 at Bayern with 10 minutes to go.  They had major injuries, a bullshit offsides call, and several other near misses to allow Bayern even a chance at a miracle comeback.  Juventus has always had a great defense, and now they all of a sudden have a dope offense with Allegri’s new tactics and Higuain at striker.  They’re also the only team with their domestic league locked up and able to fully focus on UCL.  I don’t think they’re better than Madrid, but they’re pretty damn close and at three times the odds you can’t pass this shit up.

The Bruins fired Claude Julien this week, and all the rage right now is to harangue the front office for scapegoating a legend after building a piss poor roster.  It’s true that Claude Julien was and is a top tier coach who is better at his craft than anybody Boston could replace him with.  It’s also true that collective performance of current GM Cam Neely and his predecessor (Peter Chiarelli) has been an abomination since the 2011 title.  However, as counterintuitive as it may seem, several metrics indicate that this coaching move could actually be just what the Bruins need to kickstart a resurgence.

Right now, Boston leads the NHL by a healthy margin in two popular stats amongst hockey sabermetricians: PDO and FenClose.  Allow me to briefly explain both for those of you who don’t speak hockey nerd…

PDO – is simply shooting percentage + save percentage during 5v5 situations.  This stat usually regresses to 1.00 over long periods of time, and the theory behind it is that players who shoot with a high percentage are often taking risks that result in defensive liabilities. If you have a low PDO, it can indicate that you’ve been suffered bad ‘puck luck’ more often than not.  At .967, Boston has the lowest PDO in the league and most other teams are not even close.

#	Team	Sh%	Sv%	PDO
1	Boston	6.00	90.68	0.967
2	Colorado	6.44	90.59	0.970
3	Philadelphia	6.60	91.04	0.976
4	Carolina	7.51	90.40	0.979
5	Los Angeles	6.41	91.92	0.983

Obviously, as is the clear case with Colorado at #2, there are instances where PDO is less an indicator of luck and more an indication of that you just plain suck at both offense and defense.  To determine which of those two buckets a team falls into, hockey nerds like to pair this stat with a shot volume metric, with my favorite being FenClose…

FenClose – is a derivative of Fenwick, which in itself is a derivative of Corsi.  Corsi is a shot differential metric calculated as a percent of shots on goal + shots missed + shots blocked + goals vs those same shots that you concede during 5v5 situations (so a Corsi of 50% means that you’ve shot a puck towards the goal the exact same number of times that your opponent has).  Fenwick is the same as Corsi, except it excludes the ‘shots blocked’ tally because a blocked shot is generally a result of good defense.  Finally, FenClose is the same as Fenwick, but only counting shot totals in situations where the score is within one goal.  The idea is to control for factors where teams are more or less aggressive on offense in blowout situations.  Again, Boston is the league leader in FenClose, and this time it’s by a wide margin.

#	Team	FenClose	Points
1	Boston	55.6	58
2	Los Angeles	54.0	58
3	San Jose	52.8	70
4	Edmonton	51.9	66
5	Pittsburgh	51.9	72

As you can see, Boston finds themselves in much better company this time around, and now you can make a clear case that the Bruins record might not be a true reflection of the talent on the ice.  It could be bad luck, but it could also be a case where Julien’s long tenure has run its course and a fresh voice could get Boston’s mojo running again.

A great individual example on the roster is David Backes, the former five year captain for a very good St. Louis team who is now serving the first year of a heavily criticized five year $30M contract.  Throughout this decade, he’s consistently produced about 20+ goals  and 50+ points per year, but is projected to fall short of 20 in both goals and assists this year.  Might part of his problems be due to a peculiar and temporary shooting % drop? (see 2012 Ryan Getzlaf)

These stats could all be bullshit, but if you’re a believer then the Bruins might not be a bad buy at 40:1 future odds right now.  It’s also worth noting that Boston has the #2 penalty kill right now, huuuggee for the playoffs.  They’d only have to win one round before you could lock in a profit with hedges.  If they get in as the wild card, they draw the choke artist Caps.  Otherwise, they’d get division rivals Toronto, Ottawa, or Florida.  Seems pretty doable to me.

P.S. these same stats say to watch out for the Kings, especially when they get Quick back.  25:1 to win the cup and 11:1 to win the West, not bad…