'Hawks sign Trufant to multi-year deal!

According to ProFootballTalk.com the Seahawks have wrapped up franchise cornerback Marcus Trufant with a multi-year deal. The contract is reportedly for 6 years $50.2 mil with $28 mil of that coming over his first 3 years. Which is good cuz if he does revert to merely mediocre we don't have a ton of long term cash tied up in him and he can be moved if need be(here's hoping that scenario never need be).
All I can say is ...Hells to tha yeah! Within the span of a week sometimes maligned GM Tim Ruskell has managed to lock up two of our young top-end defensive talents to long term contracts for a reasonable value. This is a huge improvement over past Seahawks management who, as recently as 2006, have let big time players just walk out *cough*Hutch*cough*. We now have the core of this defense set for years to come as they grow into one of the elite squads in the NFC, if not the league.

I also like this deal because in the end Trufant ended up signing for less than he was originally attempting to command. Signing Lofa Tatupu to a long term deal that, tho paid him very well was not exorbitant, 2 years before his contract was up was a very savvy move. It appears this had to be a very large factor helping sway Tru to signing. The Tatupu signing shows a long term commitment to this defense, once a very weak spot for The 'Hawks. It shows that if you perform well you will be rewarded not just with cash but the signing and additions of other superior talents. It seems Trufant knew while he could get mo' money elsewhere his best option, financially and professionally, was to stay as an integral cog on a very solid defensive unit.

I'm so happy I can hardly speak right now. The prospect of this Defense having another like last year, or even better with a year of playing together under their belts, makes me as giddy as Dennis Hopper on nitrous oxide. Don't look at me!!!! Here's hoping next season looks a lot like this.

All I Know About Hockey I Learned From Blades of Steel

FIGHT! Now this is Hockey!!

It came to me all at once like a hard rubber puck to the side of the head. The Kelowna Rockets were up 3-0 on the hometown Seattle Thunderbirds; there hadn't been a fight in over 30 minutes; I had seen zero knuckle pucks, and the T-Birds' goalie had stepped off the ice.

It was at that moment I realized I know less about hockey than R.Kelly knows about statutory laws. My 8-bit education system had let me down.

Prior to this T-Birds game, my knowledge of hockey was severely limited. I was under the impression that only meathead Midwesterners, sub-human Canadians and crazy communist Ivans played hockey. Getting into fights as often as possible and violently slamming someone into the boards were the only good reasons for lacing up a pair of skates, near as I could tell. Terms like holding, roughing, holding the stick, spearing and slashing all sounded like something Gary Ridgeway would do with a working girl on a Saturday night. I was blissfully ignorant to the intricacies of hockey because everything I knew about the sport was gleaned from playing it on my Nintendo. That's right, everything I know about hockey I learned from the Konami classic "Blades of Steel."

Until recently, I thought there were only 8 teams in all of the NHL: four from Canada and four from the States. Imagine my surprise when I found out that fights don't just start after bumping into the opposing player three times in a row. I was baffled when a fight was broken up and BOTH players were sent to the penalty box, not just the loser. Reconciling these inaccuracies was just the start of my hockey reeducation.

When playing "Blades of Steel," icing occurs almost every other play due to the constant fighting in the game and thus the inability to track the puck down before someone gets a penalty. Not so much in real life.

I was also shocked to see that there almost never fights in "real" hockey. If fighting wasn't the purpose of the game then what exactly was?

I'm told you're supposed to score goals and, apparently, the game isn't as chaotic as my childhood game system had led me to believe. After gritting my teeth and trying to figure out what this game is really all about, I realized I'm completely unwilling to learn "real" hockey. I have neither the time nor the patience to understand why, seemingly, at random players come in and out of the game. The concept of the penalty box in beyond me even as an abstract. Why punish someone for breaking his stick over another's head? Isn't that the point of having a hockey stick in the first place?

Even in it's 3 period structure hockey is jarringly un-American. What kind of whacked out game goes with odd numbered periods? All good sports are in halves or quarters not some farce of a format like 3 periods. Everything about "real" hockey clashed with my rational mind. The stress and strain my brain had endured whilst attempting to grasp the rules had left it deflated like a post-coke bender Michael Irvin.

After the game I sat down and played a game of BOS, and beat down the Edmonton Oilers with my New York Islanders. But something was wrong. I noticed the discrepancies between my game and what I had witnessed earlier. Rules were glossed over, strategy thrown away, gameplay horribly altered. I kept thinking to myself "This isn't how 'real' hockey is played!"

Thanks, "real" hockey. You've ruined "Blades of Steel" for me. Forever.

I Was Just Asked To Join a Fantasy Baseball Team

Does Wade Boggs still play? Seriously, I haven't cared about baseball since I was 10. A friend keeps threatening to make me go to games this season.

I will be there for the drinking, the heckling and the hot dogs.

But not for the baseball.

When does football come back? Arena Football just isn't the same thing.

Save Whose Sonics?

Does it matter that ESPN's Page 2 column about the Sonics from a few weeks ago netted over 3,000 e-mail replies in only 24 hours? That those e-mails were heartfelt, well-written (mostly) and convincing about the tragedy that is the Oklahoma City Sonics? No goddamned way. Things like emotion and tragedy only matter to David Stern when they convert to dollar signs. New Orleans? Sure! Who cares that their NBA attendance is bordering on D-League numbers, that the hottest team in the league is playing for the few people who either stuck around and can afford season tickets, or who are willing to drive a zillion miles from Shreveport between shifts shoving dollar bills into tranny assholes at the Landing Strip? Gotta fucking KEEP basketball in NO, obviously. So Stern can pound out some "Where Katrina Happens" commercials just in time for the team's playoff run. But Seattle, no, nuh-uh. That city's sense of emotion and tragedy remains trapped only in their hearts, not in their wallets. They could have opened their taxes up to Stern's Okla-buddy, Clay Bennett, and approved the most lopsided NBA bond package ever, and those fools didn't? There's only one answer--and it doesn't come pre-packaged with sad, minority faces weeping about shit that isn't even tangentially related to basketball.

So here's an e-mail that ESPN didn't print to sum up my current thoughts, which I figure is a decent jumping-off point for Nobody Likes Soccer.

Dear Bill Simmons,

Fuck David Stern. Fuck his support of business interests over the grassroots love of a local basketball team. It's the city's love of a sports squad and its rises and falls over the years that makes the game relevant to people who could spend their hard-earned money on a lot of other entertainment options these days. By the way, I hope you enjoy convincing a bunch of star athletes to live in goddamned Oklahoma--especially once they find out about their bullshit 3.2 beer laws.

Sincerely,
Cuntinuation

This Is Nobody Likes Soccer

Welcome to Nobody Likes Soccer. We're here to talk about sports the same way you talk about sports when you've downed 11 PBR's and are screaming at the TV. We'll try to give some perspective on what's going on in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, WBA, NRA, CIA, NWA and, occasionally, TNN. Soccer and curling will only be discussed when we're drunk.

We're Seattle-based, so you'll hear us bitch about the 'Hawks, Mariners and—for the time being—Sonics more than we should.

We'll also cover ridiculous cultural crap from time to time (since we're all pathetically in love with comic books and Star Wars), and you'll probably hear about about how much Jockstrap cheats at Madden and how Willie Mays Haze totally wants to climb inside of Lauren Jackson.

We're a bunch of fucking communists, too. So, if you're interested in writing on here, shoot us an email. If you've never had a major head injury, you can probably write for us. And even if you have, you've got a 50/50 shot.

Again, welcome to our blog. Watch closely as we change the face of sports journalism by force. Like this:

Welcome to Nobody Likes Soccer. We're here to talk about sports the same way you talk about sports when you've downed 11 PBR's and are screaming at the TV. We'll try to give some perspective on what's going on in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, WBA, NRA, CIA, NWA and, occasionally, TNN. Soccer and curling will only be discussed when we're drunk.

We're Seattle-based, so you'll hear us bitch about the 'Hawks, Mariners and—for the time being—Sonics more than we should.

We'll also cover ridiculous cultural crap from time to time (since we're all pathetically in love with comic books and Star Wars), and you'll probably hear about about how much Jockstrap cheats at Madden and how WMH totally wants to climb inside of Lauren Jackson.

We're a bunch of fucking communists, too. So, if you're interested in writing on here, shoot us an email. If you've never had a major head injury, you can probably write for us. And even if you have, you've got a 50/50 shot.

Again, welcome to our blog. Watch closely as we change the face of sports journalism by force. Like this:



It's fucking on, Skip Bayliss.