Winners keep winning!

First off, we here at No Fair Weather Fans want to thank all of you who participated. With that being said it looks like Dan Frost is our champion of a contest run by a different media entity. Even though his name isn’t on top, because Josh Deceuster pulled a magic trick, we promise you he won. This overcoming all odds win comes with a first place prize pack of a pitcher of beer at any bar in Seattle and an appearance on our podcast.

Dan had a good amount of confidence in his bracket. He even made the following claim via his Facebook page.

Beer shower!

Referencing one of the better quotes in NFL history, “Can’t Wait!” – Bart Scott. We are really looking forward to both the drinking and sports chatter on the podcast. If you watch the entire Bart Scott interview, it pretty much sums up how Dan felt going into The Dance. No one gave him a chance, now look at him. He is on top of the world.

Both prizes should be paid up soon. We will keep you posted on when the Dan Frost episode of the podcast will be available. The beer shower info will be available soon, too. I am sure a few people will want to see Dan covering himself in beer. So, we will let you know when it happens to put more pressure on him to go through with it. Thanks again to all those who participated and thanks for the support.

This is what makes sports fun!

Dear Vancouver Fans,

As some of you may know, I am a pretty big Sharks fan. With the Sharks coming fresh off a first round sweep of the Vancouver Canucks, I am feeling pretty good. Living in the greater Seattle area, I come across a lot of Canucks fans. This has generated a good amount of friendly rivalries with people I know and a bunch I don’t know. Whether it’s watching the games between the two teams here on TV or watching them live in Vancouver, I can always find a Canucks’ fan close by. Let’s all be honest, nothing is better in sports than some good ol’ fashion trash talking between fans. Not the trash talking that escalates into someone getting in a fight, but the kind where you drink beers together despite one team getting swept out of the playoffs. I have never come across a mean Canadian (except on Xbox Live, but who isn’t a total dick on there?). So, getting together with Canucks fans is always a good time, especially when the Sharks are beating the crap out of them.

This year’s series was pretty much the opposite of the last time these teams met in the postseason. That time, I am sure most Canucks’ fans remember well, was an “everything is going Vancouver’s way” type of series. What made it even worse for us Sharks fans, was it was in the Western Conference Finals. Every bounce, call and save went Vancouver’s way. This year it was time for the karma train to pull into the San Jose station. With a late goal in game two and two overtime victories, you couldn’t feel better as a Sharks’ fan and worse as Canucks’ fan. I have to admit, that makes me smile.

I have to admit, I will miss the beers and the constant back and forth of that I have shared with Canuck’s fans this year. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed San Jose advancing, but there is a part of me that wishes it was at another teams expense. Now, you might as well root for the Sharks. I mean, it could be worse, Calgary, Edmonton, Chicago or Detroit didn’t sweep you. Needless to say, it’s been fun. Good luck next season, I know the Sharks will be waiting in the playoffs for you again.

When I sat down to write you this letter, I was going to just have it filled with nothing but trash talk. The truth is, rivalries make sports fun and I enjoyed another season hitting the bars, texting you after the Canucks lost and teaming up to make Red Wings fans feel terrible. I’m looking forward to doing it again next season. Make sure you head down to San Jose to get a look at the Stanley Cup sometime soon.

Love,

The guy who likes the better team:

Ben Kelley

Ok – so the relocation committee is going to recommend against the Hansen/Ballmer/Nordstrom (HBN) group moving the Kings upon them purchasing the team?

It’s now time for the good guy to become the bad guy.  If he wants to play the NBA way, I am going to lay out the steps below and possible outcomes from the chain of events.

• Immediately raise purchase price of controlling interest of the Kings another $120 million dollars.
  • There are theories floating out there that while the HBN offer was more than Sacramento’s in terms of straight up dollars for dollars (then accounting for debts held by the Maloofs that needed to be paid back to the city or something to that effect brought the two offers to basically dead even), it’s now time for Steve Ballmer to open the checkbook again and make the offer basically too good for the Maloofs to refuse.  This would immediately make the offers not even in the same territory.  Other owners will see this and basically can’t refuse someone who wants to pay that much for a franchise. (Not even 100% of a franchise, I might add)
• Drop the relocation bid, but keep purchase in play.
  • This sounds counter-intuitive, but it is time for some dirty poker.  Keep the land use permit application going, but change it to a large outdoor mall in the footprint of the purchased land.  Draw up the sketches and put them in the press.  It is going to take time to knock down these buildings anyways to clear room, so “work” can technically start.
• Immediately draw up plans for a $600+ million dollar publicly funded arena in the Railyards location in Sacramento.
  • This is an immediate flash-bang (COD style) right in the middle of Sacramento.  The city is debating the location of the arena in their plan (still) and there are supporters for the downtown Sac site, as well as the railyards which has come up a few times.
  • The dollar amount immediately launches this into the “can’t or won’t” get done territory.  It doesn’t matter, HBN is going through the motions anyways and can recant all of the Sonics arena talk that they have had going so far.  The leaked OKC emails didn’t stop this from happening  so a flagrant website and movement for 2+ years can be easily forgotten in the eyes on the owners.
  • 100% publicly funded – that’s what the owners like, right?
• Appeal to the state of California for this arena funding, and try to get a state tax to pay for the Sacramento arena.
  • This is such an insane non-starter, but it takes a page out of the Bennett playbook, who went to Olympia with Stern and wonder why they got shot down.  Plus, I am sure LA voters and SF voters would love paying for a stadium for an opposing team.  But hey, they are trying, right?
• This plays into the first, but since larger investments were made in team acquisition, no private funds from HBN can be used.
  • HBN is already tied up in several real estate deals in the Pacific Northwest, and with the large purchase price of the team, this is the only way that they can stay competitive in the market is to get a publicly funded stadium only.
• Immediately not honor any progress made by the former competing ownership group with regards to the Sacramento Downtown Arena
  • HBN wants to enter their own agreements, and “explore” other taxable revenue streams that they think are more sustainable than a parking tax.
    • This isn’t true, but it again puts the public at odds with regards to financing and tax revenues to be used.
• Wait

I think the above is tenable for probably a year.  The Kings will be playing a known lame-duck season in Sactown (at least in the eyes of the fans, but HBN is “trying”) in which attendance drops, team support withers which makes all of the above that much harder to get anything done.  Soon, HBN won’t be able to run their franchise the way they would like and relocation will have to be done to save the franchise.

If you haven’t noticed, this blueprint was used in Seattle in 2008.  Is it fair?  No.  Does Sacramento take it in the ass? Yeah.  Does Seattle/HBN do what they said they wouldn’t?  Yes.

Pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?

Stern, if your meddling is going to block this move, approve expansion.  Now.  Your legacy means so much to you, this is how you save it.

There have recently been reports of both Auburn University and the University of Oregon having major violations with their football teams.  This allows us to revisit the punishment of vacated wins and scholarships being lost for sports programs, due to that being the most likely disciplinary action that will be taken with these schools. Both vacated wins and loss of scholarships  are the most ridiculous punishments possible. Vacating wins doesn’t do anything, but put an asterisk next to a season in the record books. Let’s take the 2005 National Championship Game for example. USC beat the crap out of Oklahoma 55-19. Now, technically no one won that game. The problem is we all remember that game. To say no one won that game is crazy. Vacated wins does nothing except take a trophy out of a case. All the players, coaches, fans and media know who won.

As for loss of scholarship, all this does is hurt a bunch of kids who had nothing to do with any of the violations. It also creates a trickle down effect that affects a few kids at the bottom of the scholarship offers pool, not the kids that have the talent to play at a Oregon or Auburn. It affects kids who probably wouldn’t even have a chance to play at the large school receiving sanctions. Let’s take a look at that USC example again.

USC lost ten scholarships per year for three years for the violations of the 2004-2005 season. That is ten kids that could have played at the top program in the country. Now, they have to go to elsewhere. That takes ten spots from ten other schools at the same level or just a step down from USC, for example: Texas, Oklahoma, Florida State and others.

Those ten spots continue to trickle down and take roster spots for kids who would have ended up at schools like Memphis, UAB, and Central Michigan.  This effect will work its way down to the Montanas and Portland States of the world. Moving through all teams, regardless of division, that can offer a full football scholarship.

There is a finite amount of scholarships that can be offered throughout college football. There are under 7,000 scholarships to the 225 FBS and FCS schools and there are over one million high school football players trying to earn that potential financial aid for education. You take ten scholarships away you aren’t taking them from the Andrew Luck and RGIII’s of the world, players of that caliber will receive a scholarship no matter what. This type of punishment is taking a scholarship from the kid who starred at a 2A high school and was going to go to Portland State. His spot was filled by the falling talent that got bumped off the better team and fell to the next best team.

The NCAA says they are punishing the school, but realistically they are punishing future kids. Even with the bowl bans, they are just taking away opportunity for kids that had nothing to do with the violations. If a kid cheated on a test in his first period class, you wouldn’t take it out on the second period class. You need to punish the one responsible. Make players pay back scholarships. Fine coaches, even if they have already left the school. Make the school pay back money. The schools and coaches are the ones who made the millions off the success of the team, not the student-athletes.

The easiest way to deal with these situations is to fine the school large amounts. Let them play in bowls still, but don’t let them collect the bowl money. Take their cut and spread it out to other schools in their conference or across the country. This doesn’t take away kids’ educations and opportunity to have the same fortunes as other football players. The fine will also take away the pointless vacating wins thing (which by the way, they should vacate losses too). It will also be determined by how much the school benefited financially off those wins. Money is the main reason these violations happen. Attacking the deep pockets of these programs would definitely get the attention of those in charge.

Start taking away the money and change will happen.

I am sure most of you have heard of The Dance, formally The Bigger Dance, on KJR 950. If you haven’t, it is an NCAA basketball style bracket with the most relevant and beautiful women in the world. We have have started a pool.

Feel free to join the No Fair Weather Fans pool and see how you stack up against the readers of our blog. The prize for first, as always, is a pitcher of beer at any Seattle bar on us and a spot on the podcast (if you plan on winning, you better download Skype). Plus, you can win even better prizes through KJR. The tournament starts at 8:50 am on Thursday, April 18th. So fill out your brackets before then.

No Fair Weather Fans Pool

Pool #: 657

Password: nfwf

Attacking this show like these Bombay Sapphire martinis straight up, two olives.

Brad and I will be dominating the AM radio waves with a 50,000 watt stick. We will be hosting KRKO 1380′s The Locker Room on Saturday from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. Our good friend Maury Eskenazi can’t do his regular hosting duties, so he was kind enough to let us turn his show into a zoo. We will be attacking all kinds of topics and having a few guests as well.

You can tune in on the regular radio dial at 1380 AM or tune in on the fancy internet.

Topics:

• Fantasy baseball with Andy Greenberg from Arizona 620 in Phoenix and Fan Ball Weekly. You can find his podcast at ArizonaSports.com, facebook.com/FanBallWeekly, the Podcast Twitter: @FanBallWeekly, iTunes (search Fantasy Baseball Weekly) or his personal twitter: @AndyTheG
• NFL Draft with Josh Deceuster from Draft Breakdown and @DB_JoshD on Twitter
• Entertainment with guitarist Mischa Kianne from the band Witchburn

Other topics that are going to get ran through are Sounders, players committing to the NBA draft, Mariners, Brady Quinn, Peyton Siva, Emerald Downs and the fast food review.

Also, Dimitri Sandeman will be keepin’ real with us the whole show. You can always check out The Locker Room on Facebook.

How about that

Not that this is some sort of conclusion that results in me being right about this, I am going to go with a lot of evidence is pointing that way.

Every post on Instagram from my original post linked above as well as the tweets they came rolling in on have been deleted by our esteemed, upstanding pornographic movie star.

In the meantime, check out my book marks – I got some good ones up there.  I highly recommend The Verge.

Hrm.

After the National Title game tonight, a porn star named Jenna Shea (apparently she hasn’t gotten around to launching her website) started tweeting out how Peyton Siva was hitting her up via text, saying how he wanted her & things of that nature.  You can see the twitter posts here, which are screen shots from her Android phone (gross) which she posted to Instagram (key for later)

More from peypeysiva thankin his girlfriend but hitting me up LOL instagram.com/p/X3tqrKMWbn/

— jenna shea (@iamjennashea) April 9, 2013

Ok peypeysiva instagram.com/p/X3tguhsWbh/

— jenna shea (@iamjennashea) April 9, 2013

Wait peypeysiva @charlie2kool has a girlfriend but he calling and texting me??? instagram.com/p/X3tUfNsWbV/

— jenna shea (@iamjennashea) April 9, 2013

So naturally, as most would – I clicked to links to see what he had allegedly said to her.

The first thing that threw me off on this is that Peyton (at least in his media side) is very devout and always talks about his girlfriend.  Could that be just a media persona?  Sure.  I am just speculating really based on what has been published and what is going on up here.

But a lot of this really doesn’t add up.

• First off – the contact name and phone number.

The first thing I checked was the area code, which yes – that is a Louisville area code.  That would seem to be pretty straight forward.  However, I have had my phone since high school and I haven’t changed my area code to 206, as I stay loyal to the 253.  That aside (who knows, he could have changed it) it is ridiculously easy to just change a contact name to what you need it to be for screen shot purposes.

For example:

Apparently Peyton Siva hit me up tonight too.

I added the hearts for effect, but you really can change anyone’s name here to what you want it to be and just have that person text you.  I did this from my wife’s phone (I changed her name back, but I thought about leaving it as Peypey <3 <3 to mess with people)

• The pictures & the convo

Considering Peyton is a heavy user of Instagram and also a super popular athlete, I decided to give the old Google Search a try with “Peyton Siva Shirt Off”.  Here are the results if you don’t want to do it yourself.

Interesting, one of these photos looks pretty familiar

Unless Siva’s camera roll on his phone just happens to be something that is near the top of Google Image searches of him, something tells me that this photo is on the internet somewhere, and lo and behold, it is in 2 places.

First off, and the one I am going to go with where she didn’t find this image (but looks like there are plenty others if she wants to continue to extort college seniors) is here on KSRcollege.com (wut) and then the most probable and obvious place she would find Peyton Siva selfies…his own Instagram.

So there’s that

The image that took me a little longer to find was the one of him heavily filtered, hunched over showing off that six-pack.  I had to dig through the depths of his Instagram, but I found that one too.

He also is a selective cropper

He clearly didn’t want that pr0n star going after the wrong dude, so he made a few edits.  Also, again – pretty easy to edit around on a phone (hell, a crop tool is built into iOS, and while I haven’t used Android in a while, I am going to bet large sums of money that it either exists or you can get an app to crop) to make this what you need it to be for a little attention-grabbing spotlight.

So with all of that being said, check out what Peyton sent to me tonight!  This scoundrel!

I went Lennay on him

I snagged another selfie that Jenna didn’t choose and decided to send that to myself.   Either way, there are some things I can’t straight away explain (the phone number, it is a Louisville area code, but with Google Voice, I could have an area code of pretty much any place I wanted, again, NOT HARD) and the times the texts were sent.

A few of them would coincide with times he would have been on the court cutting down the nets tonight, but it is just as probable that these texts weren’t sent today or tonight.  I did some quick research on the Galaxy S3′s text window if it displays back dates like iOS does when you look at older convos (it will time stamp with the date as well) but I really didn’t want to get that deep into it, because I think what I got so far makes it pretty obviously fake.

So Peyton, I don’t know if it is even worth addressing, but you might want to make your social media accounts private.

Man, poop has hit the fan in Piscataway, New Jersey. Head basketball coach, Mike Rice, took his coaching a little to serious and his actions reached the “inappropriate” level (here is the video). Did you watch the video? Good, I don’t want to explain what he did. I want to get into the real reason he was fired. It is really simple math. Here are the numbers .463 and zero. That is his win percentage and a zero representing many things: winning seasons at Rutgers, national titles and NCAA tournament appearances. Those numbers are the real reason Rice got the axe.

We have seen a coach go about things very similarly and he got to keep his job. I am sure you all remember some guy named Bobby Knight. His numbers are a little better. Just looking at his time at Indiana, he had a .731 win percentage, three national titles. The only zero he had was the losses his team had in 1975-76. Yes, Knight eventually got canned, but it wasn’t the chair throwing, the player choking, the fan pushing, the cop punching, the lack of sensitivity toward rape, the cussing at Big Ten commissioners, the shooting of hunting partners or the grabbing of students. It was the losing.

Bobby Knight had quite a few more incidents over a longer period of time and got to keep his job. Why? It’s simple, he won. Winning cures all problems. Mike Rice no longer has a job, because he didn’t win. Losing creates problems that may not even exist, so when the problem does exist, it makes it exponentially worse. The point is when you win, you can get away with murder. My suggestion to everyone is just win a bunch and then go crazy. You’ve earned it!

The headline seems a little confusing doesn’t it? Well, let me clear it up for you. Today is the first game of the 2013 Mariners baseball season. They are playing against the Athletics in Oakland at 7:05p to start the season (weird). The good news is the game will be played on the brand new giant 1080p HD video display above the center field bleachers.

The screen is 201.5 feet long and 56.7 feet tall. That is 2,182 42-inch television screens. You will be able to see pitch, hit, chew spit, cup adjustment, and blade of grass as clear as day.

There is free parking down by Safeco Field starting at 4:00p and doors open at 6:00p. Edgar’s Cantina and other concessions will be open. Oh hey! The fences were moved in! Homers galore!  It’s like a whole new Safeco and No Fair Weather Fans will be down there. Come down, have a few beers and talk some sports with us. BYOB to the conversations.

The Contest

We will also are having a contest. Guess the number of games the Mariners will win this season. The tie-breaker is give us the total number of dongs they hit. The tie-breaker of the tie-breaker is to tell us tonight, in person at the game and you have an extra leg up. The prize will be a free pitcher of beer at your choice of any Seattle bar and you get to spit hot fire on our podcast.

Look forward to seeing you down there. Happy Felix Day!