We Have Opinions

            For the last three months, this blog hasn’t produced anything without “10 Awesome Things”, “NBA”, or “Picks” in the title. To kick-start a summer of (hopefully) writing about other things, we’d like to post some thoughts on a variety of topics.

We left Landon Donovan off the World Cup team? Really?

            I get it if you’re a country like Brazil or Spain that when a superstar player ages, he’s no longer good enough to stay on the team. Those countries are trying to win a championship, so it makes sense to bring the best roster you can. The United States should have no such aspirations, so leaving the most famous American soccer player off the roster is asinine. At least we’ll always have this goal against Algeria, which happened to occur on the day my son was born.

 

            The fact that the greatest moment in American soccer history came against Algeria reinforces my point that the United States is going nowhere in the World Cup. Donovan should be on this team.

Mark Cuban isn’t a racist

            He’s just a clumsy public speaker, who due to some poor phrasing marred a legitimate point. For example…

This person is more likely to beat you up

 

than this person

Teams will rue the day they didn’t draft Johnny Fucking Football

            Sure his ceiling is a more athletic version of Tony Romo, but there are at least 16 teams in THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE that would take that. We’re predicting that Manziel (who’s not an idiot) won’t run around as much as he did at Texas A&M, and within three years, will guide Cleveland to playoff contention.

Instead of letting Alex Ovechkin return to Russia, let’s trade him to another team

            For better or worse, there isn’t another player like Ovechkin in the NHL. With rumors that he’s considering staying in Russia and playing in the KHL next year, No Credentials feels that a change of scenery is necessary to keep Ovechkin in the United States. Here are our top 5 favorite potential destinations for the goal scoring extraordinaire.

1. Los Angeles Kings – we’re guessing he’d be excited to play out west.
2. Pittsburgh Penguins – Pittsburgh needs to shake things up a bit (that’s already happened in their front office), so why not swap Evgeni Malkin for Ovechkin? That will never happen, but if it did the Internet would explode in Canada.
3. Boston Bruins – Boston needs an elite goal scorer, and we’re guessing Claude “the Vacuum Salesman” Julien would be able to rein him in.
4. St. Louis Blues – Another deep team that lacks an elite goal scorer, Ovechkin could put them over the top.
5. Toronto Maple Leafs – A blockbuster acquisition of Ovechkin by Toronto would be destined to fail, which would be awesome to watch.

There isn’t a better movie idea than a film where Tom Cruise dies 1,573 times
            It’s an incredible premise. If there were such a thing as “Bible Thumper Movie Awards”, we’re guessing a film featuring the most (in)famous Scientologist dying over and over would slaughter the competition.

Babies are awesome, until they become mobile

            Enjoy the time you have while you’re able to plop your newborn into a bouncer or swing like a potato, because it’s all downhill once they start rolling.

No Credentials New Theory For MLB Starting Pitchers = Use Them While You Have Them

            We’ve seen pitchers who were coddled, with innings limits strictly imposed, end up needing Tommy John surgery (Stephen Strasburg). We’ve seen pitchers that were rushed to the major leagues, with minimal restrictions, end up needing Tommy John surgery (Jose Fernandez). The bottom line is, there’s really no way to predict when or if a pitcher will blow out his elbow. We aren’t advocating to have pitchers throw 130+ pitches per start, but if I’m running a MLB team, I’m using my best pitchers as often and as much as possible until they breakdown.     

Joey Logano is NASCAR’s first post-hype sleeper

            For non-fantasy baseball nerds, post-hype sleeper is a phrase given to a player that was hyped when he initially made it to the big leagues, then “under performed” for a few years, before breaking out well after most people assumed that player would ever reach his predicted ceiling (long sentence, but hopefully it made sense). Joey Logano fits the bill, which is stupid when you remember that he just turned 24 on Saturday.
            Sometime back in the mid-2000s, Mark Martin blessed Joey Logano with the nickname “Sliced Bread”, anointing him the next big thing in NASCAR. All of the major teams made overtures to ink him to a development deal, with Joe Gibbs Racing ultimately signing him. Logano debuted in Nationwide after he turned 18 and became the youngest winner in the history of the series. When Tony Stewart left to build his own team with Gene Haas, Logano was rushed into Sprint Cup in 2009. Logano won a couple of races during his time with Gibbs, but was ultimately let go to make room for Matt Kenseth. Ignorant fans (in other words, the vast majority of NASCAR viewers) figured Logano was finished even though he was only 22 years old. Roger Penske wisely scooped up him up to fill the seat vacated by A.J. Allmendinger, and the rest is history.
            Logano was a victim of the end of the “rush young drivers to the top-tier series” era launched by the success of Jeff Gordon (which never made sense, because Gordon spent a few years in the then Busch Series before his rookie year). Auto racing is a sport where drivers typically peak in their early to mid-30s, so for everyone to give up on Logano was preposterous. The vast majority of drivers didn’t get the chance to deliver after they initially flopped (click here to read about Casey Atwood, who’s arguably the best example of a young driver owners gave up on too early), but we’re happy Logano got the chance. There’s a good chance he’ll be battling with Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott for the next two decades.          

There is no such thing as “new” Michael Jackson songs

            All of the songs featured on Jackson’s second posthumous album were originally recorded between 1983 and 2002, so lets stop calling this new material.

I like super heroes as much as anyone, but holy shit let’s give them a rest on the big screen

            Ever since the extraordinary success of the Christopher Nolan Batman series, it seems movie studios want to revisit the complete stories of every comic book character ever invented. The problem is compounded by the studios that own the rights to the X-Men and Spiderman, who have to produce original movies every two years or else Disney (which now owns Marvel Comics) gains the rights to them. At some point enough of these films will bomb (we predict tough sledding for Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy”, which is a comic with a fan base of roughly 602) that Hollywood will move on to beating some other genre into the ground.