Coming Up On The Show « Ferrall Radio

FRIDAY MAY 18TH

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker

Spurs dominate the Clippers again…Kings Beat the Coyotes again…Heat get schooled by the Pacers in Inday

Kerry Wood is set to retire

Ohio State self reports a ton of violations

Parise’s dad says he would fit in with the Rangers…the division rival he is playing in the Eastern Conference Finals

All that, plus your calls at 888-STERN-101, on “The Ferrall Show” tonight starting at 8PM East, 5PM West on Howard 101

Mafia Mouths Off

The Computers Failed Us but It’s the Humans to Blame!!

The BCS made the announcement yesterday that surprised few but should enrage many. That Alabama and LSU will be playing each other in the National Title game in a rematch of their game earlier in the year. This is ridiculous bias towards the SEC and shows the system is flawed. Now I’ve been a big proponent of people calling for a short playoff system to be installed to determine the true champion but that is not what this blog post will be about. Instead, I’ll focus on why I think Oklahoma State deserved to be the team playing LSU for the Crystal Ball and how I blame the human’s involved with the system for it failing to give us the proper matchup.

You probably want to know why I think Oklahoma State deserved the shot because everyone has their opinions and reasons. I tend to cite a combination of many people’s arguments as the perfect proof. Look at the teams resume next to each other like you would if you were doing the NCAA Basketball tourney and trying to decide which team deserved to get in more. Obviously they have an equal record of 11-1 so that is a wash. They didn’t play any common opponents so you can’t factor that in at all either.

Look at their strength of schedule as the next factor. Now Alabama had 5 teams on their schedule that were ranked at the time that they played them and Oklahoma State only had 4. But, if you look at where those teams are now, only 3 of the teams Alabama played are ranked in the final poll (Penn State, Arkansas and Auburn) while 2 opponents of Oklahoma State’s stayed ranked but 1 became ranked so they also have 3 (Baylor, Kansas State and Oklahoma). Now, all 3 of Oklahoma State’s still ranked opponents came in their last 5 games while only 1 of Alabama’s did and that was 4 games ago. Not to mention, that for all peoples talk about how great the SEC is, Alabama’s opponents they played in conference finished with a 60-49 combined record (.55 winning percentage) while Oklahoma State’s Big 12 conference opponents finished with a 61-47 combined record (.56 winning percentage). In the last week, Oklahoma State won the 2^nd best conference in College Football by blowing out in-state rival Oklahoma, who was pre-season #1 and one of the many teams that people thought could be in the title game a few weeks ago, badly in the conference title game while Alabama was off because they weren’t even in their conference’s title game.

If you still aren’t convinced that Oklahoma State deserves this chance then look at their losses. Yes, Alabama’s loss was to a better team in LSU as opposed to Oklahoma State’s loss to Iowa State, but you have to factor in everything involved in the losses. Alabama had LSU at home in prime time on a Saturday night. They played better the whole game, had more scoring chances and still couldn’t get the win because they didn’t convert on 3 different field goal opportunities. They had their shot at LSU and upsetting them, I don’t care if it was a conference game or not, they had their shot and blew it.

Oklahoma State lost on the road in a short week turnaround, the same day that they found out members of their athletic department died in a plane crash. They didn’t work with the football program but it’s a smaller school where people in different departments still interact with each other and you never know, some of the players may be dating women’s basketball players and have interacted with those coaches. Even if they aren’t, when someone in your group passes away it makes you question your own mortality, makes you wonder if it could be you, especially when it’s unnatural circumstances like a plane crash when you have to have to take a trip like that home yourself after that game, if you don’t think that affected their focus you are out of your mind. So to me, you have to give them some bit of reprieve from counting that loss too hard against them.

Now obviously a computer isn’t going to let any emotion or other non-statistical things factor into their rankings, so the place where this is going to come in big and factor into the standings is the human element, the polls. While plenty of people will say that the polls don’t factor in all that much, when push comes to shove, if Oklahoma State had gotten ranked above Alabama where they belonged they would be in the Championship Game. Instead, you have guys like Saban helping his own cause by not even ranking Oklahoma State at 3 but putting them at 4 and Pinkell at Missouri give his middle finger to the conference he’s leaving and sucking up to his future conference by doing the same.

The BCS got it wrong once again and just favored the popular team in the popular conference. People can claim all they want that the computers can’t favor one team over another but since they also use human rankings, where there is plenty of bias in the people voting in it, that’s not the case. Alabama had their shot and blew it and didn’t deserve another. Sure, Oklahoma State had a loss that most people consider worse, but you have to factor in everything that was going on around that game and give them the shot they deserve.

——————————————————————————————

Follow me on Twitter at @OnAirMafia if you want to hear my thoughts on things a lot more often and in the moment.

Check Out The Blog
Mafia Mouths Off

“Pretty Boy” Put Out a Real Ugly Face!!

Last weekend I went to my first title fight in Vegas and couldn’t have been more excited for it! I had never been in Vegas before on any kind of trip (besides a layover at their airport) let alone for a title fight and had heard how electric the energy of the city is on fight night and how much fun it is to be around. It lived up to everything I had heard. The energy was huge, from the giant banner running down the MGM to the ads on every taxi to the guys selling cheap versions of the events t-shirt on the street to the packed casino for the weigh-in the day before, fight the night of and gambling the rest of the weekend. The only thing that did not even come close to living up to the hype was the fight itself!!

The fight failed to live up to the hype not because it wasn’t the Mayweather / Pacqiao fight everyone has been waiting to see for two years or because it was an early Mayweather victory that was over just after it got exciting. It is because Floyd Mayweather tarnished his flawless record, tarnished his great boxing legacy and tarnished the sport of boxing itself by winning with a cheap-shot, sucker-punch Knockout and with his in-ring interview afterwards!!

Now I don’t but all the blame for the cheap knockout on Floyd so let me get that out there to start. Joe Cortez is a hall-of-fame referee in the sport, one of the best there has been, but he dropped the ball in that fight severely and didn’t do right by the fighters to let it end that way. The job of the referee is to keep things clean and protect the fighters from cheap shots and sometimes themselves by stepping in and stopping things. Cortez did immediately just that when he broke them up after Ortiz head butted Mayweather and immediately took a point away from him but after that he did an awful job and gets a lot of the blame for what ensued. The ref is supposed to be the one with the best view, to see what the ringside judges and everyone else can’t at times because of the angle we are viewing things from and yet as he tells the fighters to continue the bout he inexplicably turns his head to look to the judges ringside and takes his view off the action. In doing that he completely misses that Ortiz is coming in to apologize again and not protecting himself in doing so and doesn’t do what he should here, which is step in, tell them to get the apologies back out of the way and send them back into their corners and start the action again when he sees they are both back into fighting mode. The most amazing part of this aspect of things is that Cortez was aware of Floyd allegedly fighting dirty and warned him about using his elbow for striking even before Ortiz’ trainer brought it up to him, so how do you take your eyes of a guy that you’ve already had to warn about cheap shots before the fight even started?!?!

I’ve heard what happened next explained multiple ways from Mayweather apologists in the last few days and aren’t buying the rhetoric that any of them are selling. First, people have claimed that it didn’t matter how Floyd won because he was dominating the fight anyway so Ortiz had no chance of winning. I don’t know if these people were watching the same fight as I was or were just seeing the fight in their head they have seen him fight over and over because that’s not what I saw at all (You can check my Twitter @OnAirMafia to see what I was tweeting live from ringside). Mayweather barely threw any punches in the first round as he was feeling Ortiz out and trying to get Victor’s rhythm down, and while Ortiz wasn’t the most active guy himself in that round, he did at least try to engage a few times and was pushing forward so I completely gave him that round. The second had more back and forth tentativeness which both men pushing and being pushed and throwing and being thrown at during different points of the round, was tough to judge and could go either way but I thought went to Ortiz again. Now the third round was definitely Floyds and looked like most fights you see out of him where he had great counters for everything that Ortiz threw at him and was connecting more than Victor, I gave him that round without hesitation. The decisive 4^th round was back and forth again, but I had the edge going to Ortiz before his illegal headbutt and point penalty because he had two big multiple punch combinations with some nice power to Floyd’s one combination, although Floyd had more effect on Victor with his then Ortiz had on Floyd. If you go by my observations that’s 38-37 Ortiz if that 4^th Round ends before the sucker-punch or at least 38-37 Floyd if you gave him that 2^nd round I gave to Ortiz, hardly dominating at all, especially when Ortiz was starting to put some of his own power combinations together.

The second most used excuse is that Ortiz wronged him first so Floyd getting the knockout the way he did is eye for an eye or proper justice. This is the worst of all the excuses in my opinion and makes those who use it sound completely ignorant. This is a sanctioned, regulated sport, not a street fight, so “tit for tat” thinking is bull and doesn’t apply. I won’t try to defend Ortiz for his headbutt at all, it was clear that he did it and who knows what was going through his head when he decided to give his little bunny-hop head strike, but the fight was stopped and he immediately lost a point in the round for that. Ortiz didn’t get away with it, he didn’t get by with just a warning, he lost a point in a round that he very well could have won without that lapse in judgment to make it an even scoring round or put himself in a bigger hole to dig out of if you think Floyd was winning that round. If Ortiz got away with his illegal move and Floyd got him back with the same thing then I couldn’t blame him, but Ortiz was punished for his cheap shot that didn’t come even close to ending the fight and Floyd wasn’t punished for his cheap shot which did end things.

The biggest excuse people give was that “You have to protect yourself at all times.” Yes they were in a fight and you have to protect yourself, but this was a boxing ring, not the street. In a highly paid sport when you are apologizing for something wrong you did, letting the guy know that you messed up and am sorry, you expect him to back up and restart, not clock you out of nowhere. Was it technically legal, if you really want to stretch things then yes, but in what’s supposed to be a “Gentleman’s sport” and “The Sweet Science,” that’s as Bush League as you can get. Don’t give me the bull Floyd did that Ortiz stepped back so he thought he was going to come at him because it doesn’t matter if it’s Boxing or MMA, the etiquette after coming together where you aren’t fighting is to both back up, put up your guard and then both come back in ready to fight, not just let the fists fly after they say their piece or touch gloves or whatever they are doing in the break in action. All these boxing fans that don’t like MMA will say how MMA fighters are “thugs,” well what do you think Mayweather was in doing what he did? I can practically guarantee that if that happened in the UFC, Dana White would be all over that fighter, maybe cut him and at the very least bury him much lower on the card the next time around, but Boxing will pay Floyd another $40 Million to fight some guy that has no chance against him or even more to fight Manny Pacquiao.

Don’t write off what he did after the fight either. While I’m not a fan of Larry Merchant’s interviews by any means, he didn’t do anything wrong in the beginning of that interview before Floyd started flipping out and saying he didn’t know shit and should be fired. Merchant didn’t say that he thought Floyd threw a cheap shot, he said the crowd felt that way, which was obvious from the fact that the venue was rocking with boos. After Floyd avoided answering the question by thanking God for all he is able to do, Merchant had him break down the video, asking the question that wasn’t answered again in a different way and Floyd once again avoided it with some self-promoting rhetoric so Merchant asked it a third time and Floyd flipped out and got in the face of an 80 year-old man like he was going to sucker punch him as well. If he just answered the question instead of avoiding it, it wouldn’t have been asked again and again and pissed him off. It doesn’t matter if you like Merchant or not, he didn’t do anything that deserved that kind of response, he didn’t ask him about ducking Manny or about all his legal troubles or anything that wasn’t fair of him to ask in the situation they were in. Merchant asked him about what just happened and he didn’t answer so he continued to ask because everyone wanted to know how he’d defend it and it was his journalistic duty to get the answer even if Floyd didn’t want to talk about it.

People can make all the excuses they want for him, I find everything that happened that night as classless and shitty and an awful representation of a guy that is the face of the sport right now.

Check Out The Blog
Mafia Mouths Off

Get Rich Quick: Go to Hollywood and Copy Off Someone Else’s Idea!!

Being that the show is off for the week (only in us talking about sports, not all of us just being off since Lou and I split up board and phone duties on the fill-ins this week) and I wanted to start to get in a grove of doing this blog more often so you guys something new to read each week, I decided to focus on a topic a little different than usual. I know I gave a lot of people shit last week for being completely unoriginal and just reciting “experts” opinions like they are your own, even to the point of pushing them like they are cold hard facts. Watching TV this week and seeing trailers for movies that are out and coming out I realized being unoriginal has more than taken over even some of the people that are supposed to be the creative ones in our society.

I don’t know about you guys, but I couldn’t be sicker of seeing trailers for sequels, prequels, books and comics brought to the big screen and remakes!! Don’t get me wrong, there are some that fit in this grouping that I am excited to see or can understand them making. After what they did with the first movie, I can’t wait to see what Guy Ritchie, Jude Law and Downey Jr. do with the 2nd film and how can you not be excited to see where the mind of Jason Segel takes “The Muppets” after the work he did in creating “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” I can even see the hype of everyone being excited for the final Harry Potter movie, not cause I’m a huge fan of the books or movies, but because it has been a well done franchise, plus I’m also still sick of a new one sending a million people to the movie theaters each year and making me late for whatever movie I want to see.

What I can’t stand is them making tons and tons of movies off originals that sucked in the first place or ruining films that were actually good. While there is more than ample ammo to fire off in this blog (a BoxOfficeMojo.com article in the beginning of the year had a list of 27 movies that were sequels, prequels and spinoffs, a fifth of the scheduled lineup at that time, which doesn’t even count remakes!) I’ll keep myself focused on just a few that really annoy me (you’re welcome Big Momma’s House 2, Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, Spy Kids 4, and Puss in Boots).

First, the one that has been shoved down our throats so much recently that I wish I had been on the plane in the first movie so I’d never have even seen trailers for the other 4, “Final Destination”. Are you really pushing another of these movies?!?! Everyone involved with creating and distributing this should be arrested on false advertising claims at the very least since the 4^th movie in this franchise was titled “The Final Destination”. Now I’m not always great with grammer, but to me that means we will be subjected to no more of this stupidity after that. The first movie was mediocre, the second one was bad and I quit watching after that for good reason. We can only hope that anyone thinking of making another movie in this franchise is next on death’s list!!

Next up is the remake of “Fright Night” where they aren’t just recycling a story but an actor that barely matters anymore. Putting Colin Farrell in the leading role of a movie lately is like playing Russian roulette where you leave only one chamber open instead of only one loaded, the odds are that you’re going to have it kill you. This guy started out pretty good in “American Outlaws,” “Hart’s War,” and “Minority Report”. Hell I’ll even concede that “The Recruit” and the “S.W.A.T.” remake weren’t bad movies. But, I was praying from 15 minutes in that he’d hang up in “Phone Booth,” “Daredevil” was a movie Jennifer Garner’s hotness couldn’t even save and even the former Soviet satellite countries rejected “Miami Vice” when it finally got to them (“Eurotrip” reference for those of you that missed that). Now he’s a vampire that lives next door in “Fright Night” and will be in a “Total Recall” remake next year. Really Hollywood?!?!

Then there is yet another “Twilight” movie coming out later this year. I don’t care how good the books were for all you ladies that read them, I watched the first movie one day just to see if it was as bad as it looked and it was even worse! I don’t think there has been a worse collection of unemotional robots that call themselves actors ever assembled in film. I also can’t understand how girls from 12 to 32 can be so obsessed with Robert Pattinson, he’s pale, scrawny and constantly looks like he is going to cry. That’s not even mentioning that they have ruined Muse for us fans who liked them before all these preteen girls started listening to them, buying up tickets to their concerts and definitely before the band started making songs for the soundtrack. Just because you make a movie from a book it doesn’t mean that you have to make every book in that series into a shitty movie, even if a bunch of tweens would sell crack to buy tickets to it if they had to.

Last on my shit list in this blog is one which I just saw a commercial for today, “Marley & Me: The Puppy Years”. Although the producers of this were smart enough to put this straight to DVD and never even attempt to get people in the theaters for this crap. I never saw the original movie or read the book but heard that both were great. Now, they have this prequel coming out on DVD where you have talking animals. How do you take a movie which had none of that stupid fake CGI talking animal crap and then make a prequel where you do have it? Didn’t we get enough of that torture with all these other talking animal movies they’ve made in the last 5 years?! “Beverly Hills Chiwawa” and the “Cats and Dogs” movies weren’t bad enough?!?!

OK, like Ferrall in his interviews, I lied and have one more now that I thought about all the CGI. There is a new “Spiderman” movie coming out that tells the same basic story that we saw in the first Toby Maguire version with a whole new cast. I don’t know if you’ve seen the trailer but the CGI in this one looks so bad that you can’t even trick your brain into believing it and it feels like you’re watching a cheap video game. We need to put some sort of waiting period out on remaking movies that have just been made cause they’ve barely cleaned up the sand from Thomas Haden Church’s character in the last movie in that franchise and they already have this crap coming out. We need at least a decade between, think “Batman” and “Batman Begins” and how well that worked out. You need to skip a generation so that the young movie going demographic doesn’t remember the last one, not put one so quick that kids who saw the first movie while in high school haven’t even graduated college yet.

P.S. I’m twice as annoyed at all these stupid TV spin-off and remakes off old TV shows and movies. While the “Hawaii Five-O” reboot did well, “90210” flopped and how do you make a series out of a mediocre movie in “Teen Wolf”?!?!

As always you can send your comments and topics you want to hear me go off on to mafia@ferrallradio.com or hit my up on Twitter on @OnAirMafia.

Check Out The Blog
Mafia Mouths Off

Don’t Be Stupid and Form Your Own Opinions!!

I have a very short fuse at times. It’s a genetic temper that I’ve been working for years to control and have done pretty well at, with the exception of a few different things. The thing that really just sets me off and makes it hard to keep the inner rage from releasing is stupidity. Just pure idiocy and ignorance can set me off like nothing else in the world. Whether it’s the idiot that blocks me from turning cause he’s in the middle of the intersection so he didn’t get caught at the red light, just to be stuck in line for the next one, or the borderline legally retarded people we put on reality TV and pay millions of dollars to watch even though we wouldn’t walk around the block to hang out with them in real life if they weren’t made famous by MTV or whatever other crappy network that puts them on. One of the triggers that sets me off the quickest though is people regurgitating things they’ve heard from someone else’s mouth and just reciting it as fact and thinking they are informed. I was once driving around with a buddy who during the McCain/Obama election told me that if I wanted my sister, a U.S. Marine, home and not abroad at war I would vote for Obama because McCain was in the army so he wouldn’t want them there. I nearly smacked him for the utterly uninformed opinion he tried to state as fact since I knew from reading things that McCain wanted them home just as bad, if not worse since he himself was a P.O.W. and knew the horrors of war, not to mention that he had stated his own plan to bring home the troops. By the way, last I checked 3 years later we’re still in Afghanistan and Iraq, with my sister being in the Middle East serving our country as I write this.

Politics is far from the only topic that people tend to just take what some talking head on some cable channel or in some interview gives them and later assert it as fact instead of opinion. That’s becoming more and more prevalent in sports these days. Someone on ESPN or some website tells you something and you idiots just eat it up like a baby bird, then you fly from the nest to spew the same bullshit to others and infect everyone you can talk to about it.

Take for instance the fall from the undefeated ranks of Fedor Emelianenko in MMA. This guy was undefeated for almost a decade, something no one else can claim in this sport, but now that he’s lost 3 fights in a row I hear people going “See he was overrated” or “He fought no one before he came to the U.S. and now he can’t hack it.” If that has come through your lips at any point in the last year, please return any academic diploma you have ever received and if you have kids, sign them up to be wards of the state because you are so stupid and unfit to raise them that I’m even surprised your brain can remember to breathe on its own! The problem is too many MMA fans only know and believe two things, 1) anything that isn’t the UFC isn’t any good and doesn’t matter and 2) anything Dana White says is the gospel truth. Both of those are absolutely wrong so relax with the brainwashed answers and do some research.

Ask someone who has been into MMA for a lot longer than you and doesn’t just know it by what goes on in events put on in the U.S. In fact, for many years Pride, where Fedor fought much of his career, was considered to be the better promotion and fighters would come from around the world to fight in it. Don’t believe me? Well go back into the books and look how even the UFC sent some of their champs over to Japan to compete in some of the Pride Grand Prix’s to show how well they matched-up, like Chuck Lidell who didn’t win in his appearance. Or check the past records of some of your favorite UFC fighters and see where they all fought before the UFC blew up and became the MMA Monopoly. That’s right, Pride! Guys like “Rampage” Jackson, Dan Henderson, Both ‘Nogs, Shogun Rua, Mirko “Cro Cop”. There were Wrestling and MMA future Hall-Of-Famers all up and down their roster for a while.

Now once you have realized there was MMA before the UFC look at Fedor’s record again. See any familiar names that he beat before he came to the U.S. and was shown to be “overrated”? Ronato Sobral, Heath Herring (who was 20-7 and only had one TKO loss in his career at that point), Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera (two wins and 1 no contest), Mirko “Cro Cop”, Mark Coleman (when he was a badass, not an unretired tin can), plus half a dozen other names that have been or are in the UFC now!! Not to mention that a handful of these fights were in some of Pride’s Grand Prix tourneys where you fought multiple times in a night to win the belt, not just once every 3 or 4 months with time off and a full training camp in-between to prepare for that guy specifically.

If you’re still not convinced it’s because you are too brainwashed by Dana to say or believe anything other than what he tells you. While I am a huge fan of the UFC, I am a bigger fan of MMA in general and can think outside of their Octagon. No one can deny that Dana White and the Fertita Brothers have done incredible things for the sport of MMA since taking over the UFC. Hell they took it from human cockfighting to regulated in almost every state in the U.S., they took it from niche sport to readily accepted by popular culture, they took it from local brawls to worldwide events. But you can’t forget that first and foremost, Dana White is a fight promoter and businessman. Just like any fight promoter that came before him, whether it be Arum, King, De La Hoya or the Samuel L. Jackson character in “The Great White Hype,” one of the most basic things every promoter does is to sell up his guy and make him sound like the king of the world. The easiest way of doing that is by making anyone who isn’t under your banner sound like they are garbage because they aren’t with you. It happens all the time in every business! Pepsi and Coke have been doing it for decades! You can probably go through past interviews and find dozens of examples of Dana talking about how awful and overrated someone is when they weren’t in the UFC and then talking about how great they are once they are signed under his banner. Hell he went from bashing Dan Henderson, to talking about how great he was when he joined the UFC, to bashing him again when he left for Strikeforce and I’m sure would give him high praises again now that Zuffa owns Strikeforce and Hendo is winning again. It’s just the way it is. Nobody is going to claim someone else’s girlfriend is hotter, someone else’s product does the job better or that someone else’s fighter is tougher. If Fedor had continued to never lose by the time that they owned Strikeforce then Dana would be saying how great it is to have the greatest heavyweight in the history of the world under the Zuffa banner. But, he’s lost 3 in a row (1 I think was stopped too early and 1 many others feel was) and Strikeforce cut him, so of course he’ll talk about how overrated he always was and that’s why he never paid the cash or co-promoted with M-1 to bring him to the UFC.

Yes it has been sad to see Fedor go from best in the world and unbeatable to back to back to back losses but don’t forget that a Hendo was nearly taken out himself before he pulled that great comeback or that “Bigfoot” Silva was dead in-between rounds when the doctor stopped that fight or that Werdum was in trouble on his back before catching Fedor in that triangle choke. We could easily be seeing him in the same light we always did if just one or two things go his way in those fights. I can’t completely argue that after a long and storied career Fedor may be done, may be washed up and may even continue to lose if he keeps fighting but being a potential has-been doesn’t mean you were a never-was. Most of the guys he fought were bigger than him and some were future hall-of-famers in the sport, but he still beat them and did it so many different ways. Don’t just regurgitate what others tell you and forget all that. Do the research, get your own opinion and don’t sound so stupid!

Check Out The Blog
Mafia Mouths Off

It’s The Time Of Year We All Gamble Illegally!!

Welcome to the time of year lovingly referred to as “March Madness.” Now it’s not just given that name for the crazy things that happen on the court during this time of year, the last second buzzer beaters for the win, the far lower seed upsetting an overrated power conference team or the Cinderella’s advancing into the Sweet 16 or beyond. It’s also March Madness because of how nuts people get following all the action. You have 4 different TV networks playing games so you and view whichever one you want in its entirety, you have people spending hours online at work checking scores or watching internet feeds and fretting over every hit their bracket takes, you even have people that will plan trips out to Las Vegas, the land of legal sports gambling, around the first weekend of the NCAA Tourney so that they can put money on the games. I love it and say welcome into the degenerate world many of us live in regularly and you all visit this time of year.

Confused by me lumping you and your bracket pool in with those of us who regularly bet, legally or illegally, on sports? Well you shouldn’t be, because we all are one in the same this time of year. While you’re getting all defensive and rambling on about how you have no idea what I’m talking about because you don’t bet money on sports, take a second to look at that NCAA Tourney bracket you filled out and posted right next to your computer monitor and are checking after every game, or maybe 2 to 5 of them around your cubicle if you are really crazy. Guess what folks, if you put money into a till from which the person with the most correct picks on his bracket in that group takes all or most of with him at the end of the tournament, you have officially gambled on March Madness and unless you are in Las Vegas, have done so illegally. You can deny it all you want, but just like the Box Pool you get into around the Super Bowl or Run Pool you get into during baseball season, it is illegal gambling as defined by the law.

Now relax, I’m not trying to paint you as some scumbag career criminal just from some harmless action that makes the games more interesting for you. In fact I applaud you for it. What I’m trying to do is show you how much you have in common at times like this with us regular gamblers that many of you look down upon and scowl at. It feels good doesn’t it? The rush of hitting an upset like Morehead State beating Louisville, VCU beating Georgetown or Butler taking Pitt down early. Just imagine how much crazier it can feel when you have 100 down on UConn laying 3 ½ and Cincy is holding though throughout the game, until the Huskies pull away at the end and you hit. I’m not necessarily trying to recruit you all to the dark side of illegal sports gambling and hooking you up with some underground bookie, just giving you some food for thought that we’re not all that different when it comes down to certain sporting events and we can all have some fun risking cash on a game every now and then. Hell who knows, if it was legal all around the country and run by the government and taxed, maybe we can clean it up and get the crime world connotation off of it, much like what happened to liquor when Prohibition was ended, and maybe even cut into that defecit considering how much gets bet offshore at times like the Super Bowl and March Madness.

Good Luck with your brackets or your spreads, whichever is your cup of tea and embrace the Madness that is this time of year in whatever way you deem appropriate!!

Check Out The Blog
Mafia Mouths Off

Am I Watching Sports or Crappy “Reality” TV?!?!

I know it’s been months since I wrote my first post for the site and for that I apologize to those of you with little enough going on in your lives to actually read my chain-of-thought ramblings. Holidays, births in the family and job uncertainty can really distract a person from their duties at times (not to mention the Xbox Kinect I got like a month ago, complete with the Netflix hookup to indulge my shitty movie watching). Anyway, like I’ve said before, if you guys have things you want to hear my opinions on or just have any questions about the show and things to do with it, hit me up on mafia@ferrallradio.com.

Could there be any more drama going on in sports in the last week and a half or so?!?! There was big drama going on in each of the Big 4 in pro sports and even in MMA. I’m a guy that HATES most reality TV, I think it’s usually just the parading around of the most pathetic and scummy people in our country and wish we could use it as a way to classify people to deport out of the country permanently (except for “The Ultimate Fighter” because that actually has fighting involved), and it just seems like an episode of one of these awful television franchises with the bullshit going on in sports the last week.

We’ll start with the “Real World” of sports dramas (because it’s the longest running and most pathetic at this point), also known as the labor dispute in the NFL. I’ve always sided with the players in this dispute because while the owners do have some valid concerns, like the absolutely ridiculous sums of money being given to draft picks that have never played a down of NFL football, they have tried to play bully of the block and push the players union around, all while crying poverty and hoping to get public sympathy for billionaires. In the latest drama in the last week you have the owners walking out of a meeting after getting a proposal from the players and cancelling the other sessions they had planned and Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson insulting the intelligence of some of the best players in the game.

Now I’ve never negotiated a multi-billion dollar labor deal, but it would seem to me the best way to get things done is to communicate with the other side and not to sling mud and make them hate me. It’s all about proposals and counter proposals, not saying, “No your idea is stupid and I don’t want to talk to you anymore even though we’ll have a labor stoppage in a month if this isn’t dealt with.” How about taking the golden stick out of your ass owners and giving what you think is a fair proposal and you guys can try and meet in the middle. The players union’s proposal already gave a bunch of money back to the owners (50% of all revenue, which is 10% less than they are making now) but that’s not enough, they want more of the pie, despite making billions of dollars off the players every year, and want to make the rookie scale lock a guy in until he’s in the 5^th year of his career. Half the players don’t make it past 5 years cause of all the punishment and injuries they suffer playing this game!!

A deal definitely isn’t going to get done without any mutual respect, which you’re not going to get with Jerry Richardson leading the way for the owners. How many people that don’t live in the Carolina area, where that is your closest team, can count on more than 2 or 3 fingers how many Panther games they watched this season? If you want to talk about someone being stupid, how about you look at your organization first my friend! You are the team that wasted a 2^nd round pick on Dwayne Jarrett and the 13^th overall pick this year on Jimmy Clausen. That’s not even counting the giant contract extension your team gave Jake Delhomme after he single-handedly lost the only playoff game you’ve seen in the last 5 years. Let’s also not forget to mention that you got rid of John Fox, who Denver scooped up so quick that the ink wasn’t even dry on his good-bye cards yet, and replaced him with a coordinator in Ron Rivera who has defenses that rank high and then shit the bed in the big game (by the way, your offense is probably the bigger problem despite having two beasts of running backs). Not to mention the fact that you targeted two of the most cerebral players in the game. Sure, they might not know a spreadsheet as well as you because you’re a businessman and they aren’t, but do you want them to explain to you how to read a defensive coverage scheme and call the right audible, because I’m sure you (or any quarterback you’ve had in the last decade) couldn’t do that to save your life.

Speaking of deals that just can’t get done, the deadline of Wednesday at noon passed in the Albert Pujols / St. Louis Cardinals extension drama with a deal being done and he reported to camp Thursday morning without a new deal. I’ll call this one the “Jersey Shore” of sports drama because it keeps getting consistent, big numbers and there are people on steroids all around it (not Albert, but still much of baseball, including his new hitting coach). This would be a quick and easy note of how stupid the Cardinals are being for not just giving this guy exactly what he wants since he is probably the best player in the game except Tony La Russa had to go and open his mouth a day before the deadline. It’s ridiculous that they don’t just give this guy his money!! Forget that he isn’t making even Top-10 money in the MLB, but he’s not even going to be the highest paid player on his own team with his current deal!! This is a guy that’s had 30 homers all of his first 10 years, is a Gold Glove and Silver Slugging winning first baseman and has not only won the MVP 3 times but he’s been in the Top 3 of the voting just about each of the last 5 years!! The only thing worse in this situation than the Cardinals not getting the deal done and his looming free agency hanging over them for the whole season is Tony La Russa making things worse earlier this week. The Cardinals asked that the deadline be extended from Tuesday to Wednesday because Stan Musial was receiving the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award given, on Tuesday and they didn’t want to distract from that. Pujols did the classy thing and agreed to that, but then the teams manager goes and spouts off on Tuesday making claims that they players union was screwing things up and pressuring Albert to sign the biggest deal ever to set a new bar for future players and puts all the attention back on this drama. Tony La Russa is one of the most dedicated and respected managers in all of baseball, and for him to go and pull the attention back on this drama and ruin the Cardinals plan of letting Musial have his day uninterrupted was just incredibly stupid! Not to mention that it takes the chance of putting a rift in between Pujols, the rest of the players and La Russa, which the team certainly doesn’t need with camp opening up. Come on Tony, be smarter than that!

Smarts aren’t something that James Dolan has been credited with a lot as owner of the Knicks, but fans of the team are hoping that he actually uses some sense and doesn’t follow the advice of his moronic confidant, Isiah Thomas who says get Carmelo Anthony at any cost according to reports. This one has been the “Big Brother” or “Survivor” of sports drama because it’s a contest that has gone on way too long and needs a huge story for someone to pay attention to it at this point. The Nuggets have been trying to bend anyone who wants ‘Melo over a barrel and take everything they have to offer, in order to make a deal and it’s a week away from biting them in the ass. They got too greedy with the Nets and wanted every chip in the bag and drove them off (although there are reports of the Nuggets calling them again trying to get the deal they offered months ago), they made up fake rumors about the Lakers being up for a swap of Anthony for Bynum even though everyone said the Lakers would never trade him and now they are reportedly asking for 4 out of the Knicks top 6 players to make the deal happen. If they don’t stop their bull they are going to end up with no deal and lose him for nothing in the offseason because the Knicks (as well as just about everyone in the world of basketball) know that he wants to come to New York and play with Amar’e, hence everyone else not being willing to give away half their team for a guy that won’t stay and the Knicks not being willing to get rid of every role player they have. I think most people would believe that the package of a 1^st round pick, Eddie Curry’s 13 million dollar expiring contract and a pick two combination of Felton, Galinari and Chandler would be pretty good for Carmelo and an aging Chauncey Billups but the Nuggets keep trying to up the ante and if they don’t watch out, they’re going to be left desperate to get anything for him and get a deal their fans won’t forgive them for!

A team that definitely needs to make a deal but may not be able to is the Pittsburgh Penguins. With Crosby still not playing since the New Year and Malkin lost for the season, they are reeling and may not have enough to make a decent playoff run unless they pull something off. But that’s not why they get into the blog this week since this is all about drama in sports lately. The reason they are the “Real Housewives of (fill in any major city around the country at this point)” is because it’s all a bunch of drama and people get bored with it rather quickly. You saw an old school, grudge match hockey game between the Pens and the Islanders last Friday night where there were so many fights that the benches were practically empty in the last 2 minutes of the game because of guys getting thrown out. I love a great hockey fight but even I can admit that it’s not good for the game to go back to the image of the 70’s where people said you went to a fight and a hockey game broke out. That being said, Mario Lemieux coming out on Sunday and talking about not wanting to be part of the game if that’s the image it is going to have is just ridiculous. First off, it was one game Super Mario, relax. Second of all, if you are so insulted by that kind of shenanigans being in the NHL, then how about you start by worrying about the team you own who, as of the beginning of the week, led the NHL in major penalties (which are almost always fights) and overall penalty minutes, not to mention the fact that you currently employ probably the dirtiest player in all of hockey in Matt Cooke and Brent Johnson is the only goalie I know who wanted a fight so bad that he threw down with regular skater. It takes two to tango Mario, so if you have a problem with fighting being in the league then talk to your team about not dropping the gloves and then dissect the rest of the league. Don’t complain about what happened when the NHL came down twice as hard on the Islanders, including giving only them a six-figure fine. You’re one of the greatest players to ever grace the ice and have been one of the best owners as well, saving the team from bankruptcy and moving and turning them into a consistent cup contender, don’t ruin your image with statements like that because you are better than that.

One place people weren’t complaining about too many fights was at the Strikeforce event last week at the IZOD Center in New Jersey on Saturday. Big thanks go out to our buddies at Showtime that hooked us up with incredible tickets cageside amongst all the big boys and inviting us to their great prefight party (you know how much the members of our show love a good open bar). I thought it was a pretty good night of fights despite a lot of people being disappointed because of all the fights on the main card ending so quickly. That’s what is going to happen when you make a card of heavyweights that like to square up and beat down on each other until someones lights are put out. My beef with the card (and where all the drama is coming from) was with that ridiculous stoppage by the ringside doctor for the NJ Boxing Commission in the main event between the 2^nd and 3^rd round. I know Fedor’s right eye was so swollen to the point that he was close to being a double for Sloth from “The Goonies” but he was defending himself the whole 2^nd round and avoiding the bigger shots that Silva was throwing and even almost got a leg lock before the round ended so he could see enough to know what was going on and fight back. Plus, it was just a swollen eye; there were no cuts around the eyes that may have dripped into his eyes to hurt his vision further. We were sitting behind Silva’s corner and he was gassed. I was telling our boy The Mad Hatter who was sitting next to me that Fedor was taking the fight in the 3^rd because Silva had nothing left and then the doctor calls it. When they took the seat away Silva was leaning on the fence and his trainer and was even checking the clock in the 2^nd round when he was in the mount, he had nothing left to give in that fight and was about to get it stolen from him when the stupid doctor ruined it. Showtime and Strikeforce can’t be happy because that clown took away the top guy in the tournament and one of the best fighters in the history of the sport. It took what should have been a great event and tournament and legitimized it, you don’t do that in a fight like that unless you absolutely have to!!

Check Out The Blog
Mafia Mouths Off

Accusations, Misquotations and Legalization!!

Welcome into the inner thoughts of Mafia of “The Ferrall Show.” The show is all about Scott’s opinions so this blog is where I’ll throw out some of my thoughts on the biggest things going on in sports, the world and life in general. I’ll try to keep the topics on the broader end of things so that they are relevant and interesting to everyone. If there is anything you would like to know my opinion on feel free to email me at mafia@ferrallradio.com and I’ll try to address as many of your topics as I can. If you want to email me to talk about agreeing with me or compliments on the blog, feel free to as well. If you want to email me to bitch and moan and tell me you don’t like what I said or am an idiot for me views, save yourself the time and shut the hell up cause I don’t give a damn!

Auburn needs to sack up on this Cam Newton issue!! Ever since these pay to commit allegations started coming out at the beginning of last week they’ve gone with bullshit “no comments” on his playing status for upcoming games. First of all, they are off this week and don’t play until after Thanksgiving so any comments on his playing status made now would be moot until next week.   Also, if he is not injured why would there be any reason for him not to play every game the rest of the year. Do people really think there is a chance Auburn would sit their star player at any point, let alone this late in the season, because of allegations that might have the NCAA coming down on him later on?!?! If he is found to be ineligible because of his dad being a greedy douche, you are going to be losing this whole season anyway, might as well let him carry you to a possible SEC and NCAA Championship. It’d be a whole lot better to get titles and have them stripped later than to try and have some kind of moral high ground where you sit the guy that is the sole reason you are where you are, lose prematurely, and wonder “what if.” We all think Reggie Bush is a dick for taking bullshit payments for his family (even though he still denies it, despite giving his Heisman back) but no one will argue that he wasn’t one of the greatest college players to ever come along or that USC had some of the most talented teams in the last 20 years with him on it. People will understand if you win and have to give it back, they won’t if you lose to feel better about yourself and get the whole season flushed down the toilet anyway.

Not to mention that we can’t forget that not only are all these allegations so far Kenny Rogers and “sources” word against the Newtons’, but that all these allegations are that his father asked for money for him to sign with Mississippi State, but that it wasn’t given to him and he went somewhere else. I have yet to hear one report of him getting money from anyone, let alone Auburn where he actually went.   Now I’m the first to call for some kind of punishment of players that get things they aren’t supposed to while in college because at this point only the school gets punished while the players go off to make millions upon millions in the pros. But with that being said, unless this kid actually got money from somewhere why the hell should he be considered ineligible?!?! I’ve always heard that it was illegal to be given money and gifts and things like that, never that it was illegal to ask for them, or in this case for your father to ask for them without your knowledge and not receive them. Not to mention that it is still only one guy and a bunch of unnamed sources so far saying that Cam’s father asked for the money, which I find it hard to tar and feather someone over. Until these “sources” have the balls to put their name on the line while trying to ruin Newton’s, I’m not listening, and until I get allegations AND proof that Cam’s father not only asked for money, but received it and did so with Cam knowing, I’m not agreeing with any thoughts to take the kid off the field and ruin his and all his teammates season, which has so far been perfect!

Next, someone needs to teach these athletes to not only think before they open their mouth, but also before they let their fingers fly and type some of the dumb things they do on twitter and other social networking sites. Just because you didn’t think of how things would be taken before you opened your mouth or hit the post button on your laptop doesn’t mean the media is not understanding you correctly, or misquoting you and out to get you, it means you’re an idiot. Now we all have our slips of the tongue or thoughts that we think are great or hilarious until we immediately realize our mistake as that last syllable leaves our lips, God knows I’ve said some dumb things on the air every now and then some people refuse to let me live down, but when it continually happens over and over, it’s your fault, not everyone else’s.

Now I’m not talking about a comment like DeSean Jackson’s after last night’s Monday Night Football where he said a pregame shoving match made them “like pit bulls ready to get out of the cage,” when the guy that throws him the ball served two years in prison for dog fighting and animal cruelty. While it was a dumb comparison to make, it was a slip of the tongue I’m sure and not something an allusion he’ll make again. But that happens all the time when people compare sports to war or animal’s fighting for their life or gladiators in a ring, when it is really just a game in the end. What I’m talking about are guys like LeBron and T.O.

We talked about it on the show a little on Monday, about LeBron first claiming after a win that the big 3 in Miami are competitors and would love to play every minute of the game, and then after a loss recently he threw his coach under the buss by saying he plays his star players too much (LeBron is only 16^th in the NBA in average minutes played and Wade is only 38^th). But this isn’t the first time this has happened since this guy decided to switch teams to South Beach. Remember when he said race was involved in people not liking him anymore or how he told GQ there was nothing he would change about how he handled his decision in July and has since backtracked like crazy. He has been nothing but a moron since switching teams, saying someone one and claiming his words were misinterpreted a day or two later when his quotes make tidal waves in the news and amongst talking heads on TV.

Another one of these guys that repeatedly says stupid things is T.O. His antics can be entertaining at times and he has played much better than anyone expected in Cincy this year, but that doesn’t give you a right to open your mouth about everything, all the time. If it’s not bad enough that this guy had an awful reality show on VH1 this summer and that him and Ocho Stinko have one of the shows in the history of sports on Versus, but he just keeps popping off at the mouth about things that need to just be buried in his past. He tweeted Monday night about McNabb’s new deal, asking how the Redskins could justify the deal with that kind of performance on the Monday Night game. Really?!?! Have you looked at your team Terrell? As bad as the Redskins looked on Monday, and God was it awful, you can’t put all the blame on Donovan, the same way that no one is completely blaming you for the fact that your team, with two of the so called best receivers in the NFL, has half the wins that the Redskins do so far this year. This guy just won’t shut up about his former QB! It’s been almost 5 years since you played with him (and went to your only Super Bowl), get over it and move on!! Stop having such a hard-on for him and commenting on everything that happens in his career, no one is listening anymore!

Lastly, I couldn’t be more disappointed in the state of California than I am after the failure to pass Prop 19 on Election Day this year.   I know I’m late in talking about this but it’s still recent enough to be relevant, and I’m still mad enough about it to want to vent a little. Seriously, what is wrong with you lazy ass bastards on the West Coast?!?! I’ve always been a lover of my cross country brethren and out in some of Ferrall’s old haunts would be some of the only places I’d be excited to live other than my hometown, New York. The year round gorgeous weather and beautiful beach babes are incredibly enticing. I’ve always loved a lot of the music out of Cali as well, Sublime, Red Hot Chili Peppers….I just did your overall vibe out there. But you guys seriously dropped the ball this time!!

You had the chance to make marijuana legal for recreational use and get the ball rolling for the rest of us around the country to follow. Now I know it’s pathetically easy to get scripts for it out there anyway, but just think about how even easier it would have been had you gotten your lazy asses to the voting booth and passed that shit! You would have never had to worry again about cops hassling you when you lit up a joint in the park or on the beach! Now, if you don’t have the paperwork Johnny Law wants, you’ll get put in a cell with Bubba at County and praying to God that he hasn’t been in long enough to want to pound you in your sweet virgin ass!

You guys are pathetic for not getting Prop 19 passed. In the interest of full disclosure I didn’t vote this election year, but I just changed my voter registration area in the last year and only things up for me to get my voice in on are bullshit local things. I guarantee you that I would have gotten my ass to the voting booth bright and early though if I could have made weed legal for recreational use in Jersey. Shit, I would have done things “Gangs of New York” style if that was on the ballot in the Garden State. I would have rented a damn school bus and given rides to anyone who needed them to the polls if they voted yes on that. I would have picked up random homeless people and gotten them in to vote yes in exchange for an egg mcmuffin or 6-pack. Then, I would have brought them to my apartment, gotten them shaved and buzzed their heads, given them a new cheap outfit and tried to get them through the polls again somewhere else. I would have committed all the voter fraud I could get away with to get that passed in my state.

But I couldn’t because it wasn’t in our hands out here on the East Coast. If you guys had passed it, it would have eaten chunks out of the state debt and quick. That would have made every other states government take notice, as well as the liars in Washington, and it would have gotten legalized nationwide. But you didn’t, so now I have to continue to buy under the table while looking over my shoulder for the cops and my dealer is a whole lot more sketchy and creepy than James Franco in “Pineapple Express” or that guy in “The Wackness,” so thanks a ton California!!

Check Out The Blog
Mafia Mouths Off

Mafia is here!

Mafia is here to show you how to run a tight crew!

Check Out The Blog