Comments (0) So I wrote this post that pissed of a bunch of Penguins fans and they annoyed me. But this one is hands down the best response. First he tries to join Lighthouse Hockey under a troll name and gets banned immediately. So he decides to email me and mock me:
So with the Islanders getting closer and closer to a playoff birth, I thought it might be interesting to look around the web and see where the Isles were predicted to finish at the start of the season.
ESPN Season Starting Power Rank has them in 27th, behind Calgary and Edmonton.
SBN Season Preview the Atlantic Preview written by some hack had them in last.
CBS Sports Season Preview had the Islanders finishing dead last in the East
The Hockey News had them in dead last in the East
Puck Daddy Atlantic Preview had them in Last
NBC Pro Hockey Talk had some great quotes about the Isles:
2. Which team will finish last overall?
JB: New York Islanders. Glaring weaknesses in all areas.
MH: Columbus Blue Jackets. The Central Division is loaded; they’re going to get slaughtered.
RD: Columbus Blue Jackets. I hate being predictable, but I can’t think of anyone even remotely close to CBJ.
JY: New York Islanders. The rest of their division is a meat grinder and they’re ridiculously young.
JOB: Columbus Blue Jackets. On paper, it doesn’t get much worse.
Sports Illustrated Atlantic preview had them finishing last
And their first power rankings of the season had them in 28th
Looking back at this, the greatest irony for me is how many people mentioned Rick DiPietro’s injuries while ignoring that Nabokov is on the roster. Also they felt fine predicting a big season for the Flyers despite Bryz’s insanity.
So back in the day my dad was at the arcade near my house constantly. He used to brag about having long lines waiting to play the Indiana Jones game he used to play all the time. Of course what they were probably complaining about is a late 20s guy taking over the arcade booth for hours on end because he had a disposable income. Either way, he considered himself the master when it came to video games. He kept his household title for a bit, until Legend of Zelda just about broke him.
It’s a level I’m never going to forget. The 5th underworld/dungeon or whatever you want to call it in the original Zelda. It had a secret area you had to navigate,which to get into and through was surrounded by a bunch of stronger darknuts. For those not familiar with the game, darknuts were knights who you couldn’t hit from the front and you had to hit from the sides and back. Their spastic movements made this really tough, especially in these rooms considering blocks made it tough to maneuver. Oh yea, hits from these darknuts would take off 3 hearts at a time, which was pretty big.
For my dad this was too much. For two nights he stayed up cursing and screaming at the TV all night. He told my mom it took him something like 12 hours to finish the two rooms. Since he knew I was right behind him in the game, that I would be doing that level soon. So he couldn’t wait to find out how long it would take me to do it. When I got to the area I breezed through it, and a few days later my mom asked me and I told her I had finished it.
That weekend my dad found out from my mom, and he didn’t believe me at all that I had finished the level in under half a hour. He actually made me go back and play the level again so he could watch me beat it. Apparently he never thought of using bombs on the darknuts. He also complained that I cheated by using bombs, but that has more to do with his ocd. Thankfully my mom defnded me and said I didn’t cheat and he stormed off.
After that he never really played the NES that much. At one point he bought a joystick controller because he complained that the directional pad was screwing him up. That lasted for one day before he threw the controller into the wall. His ocd continued though. He used to claim we were cheating at games if we didn’t beat everything on screen. Don’t forget these were the days of the NES in which enemies would respawn if you moved offscreen. There were games that took me days to beat instead of hours cause I would try killing everything instead of running past it.
Now while there’s a lot of people who bitch about everytime they change something at Youtube, I’d like to say that the recent changes are part of a bigger overall problem. Not long after youtube started, everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, including google with their google video. In the end though, google bought out youtube and eventually closed down their video service.
But it seems like instead of letting the customization which youtube allowed to continue, google has slowly but surely been removing such options. Now though, youtube all looks relatively the same (even worse, most youtube producers do their videos in an identical manner) no matter what page your on. The bigger problem though is the newest site design, which basically makes youtube look like google video did.
It’s bigger though then just google making youtube look like a google site. The whole internet has a tendency to look the same currently. Go to any video game site, sports blogging site, etc… and they seem to have all the personality removed and the same design in. Just the other day I was checking out wrestlecrap.com and they’ve switched their site design. Sure they needed an update, but the old style had heart and personality. Now it’s just cold.
The reason that most of these sites seem to use the same design? Usually because someone comes up with a design that gets the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and gets the best results from google searches. Since traffic from google is so important, everyone wants to capture it. So not only is google turning seemingly everything it touches into google clones, but then it forces websites to change to stay alive.
Back in the day, you had a website because you were passionate about something and you wanted to share that with everyone else. That’s how it always starts. But as soon as people start making money, everything changes. It’s no longer about the passion or wanting to share with the world. A website that has personality should get more hits then the same design over and over, but it doesn’t work that way. So you can go to any website builder, pay such and such amount and get the same design.
Money in the end robs the passion out of everything. It’s the unfiltered passion for things that is half the fun of the internet. But when you find yourself forcing that passion, or even worse just doing something for the money it’s never going to work.
Hopefully in the next few years we’ll see a change. We’ll look back at this time at the internet and SEO and moneyfying everything and be like “Jez, that wasn’t any fun”. But the reality is that as the internet becomes a way to make more money, more big corporations are going to be investing in it and their sites. Those sites will have name recognition and get traffic just from that, but there won’t be anything interesting about them. They’ll be soulless husks who exist simply because traffic makes money.
The internet is slowly ending its time as the Wild West of the Computer Era. There is unfortunately no turning back because there is no way to turn off the money. These heartless sites that are all clones of each other are most likely going to slowly beat down everything else in their way. We are witness to the slow but sure strangulation of the internet. And by we I mean the 3 people that will actually read this post.
And I’m sure I’m not alone. The Tebow maniacs quickly descended upon Jets fans once the trade was made, leaving the carcass of the Bronco’s alone. It shouldn’t be too surprising that a team like the Bronco’s is dominating the league right now after upgrading from Tebow to a psychically limited Peyton Manning. Last season as they won 7 of 9 games from October 20th on, they needed 3 OTs and only won one game by more then 1 TD (against the hapless Raiders). With a real QB, they have been pretty dominant for the season.
First off, there’s the hype machine. I’ve seen QBs win a ton of games and then just disappear when it came to the pros, Danny Wuerffel, Eric Couch, Colt McCoy, the list goes on. Sure some of them get a chance in the NFL, but most of them just disappear after a few seasons. I saw the great Charlie Ward decide on basketball instead of football, despite being one of the best QB’s I’ve ever seen, all because he was too short. There were people arguing that Ward might not even be drafted if he went into the NFL draft.
So what’s the difference? Well Tebow reeks of the great white hope. An outspoken christian playing for a southern team. Also don’t forget that following Tebow’s winning of the Heisman as a Sophmore (first ever) ESPN agreed to a new TV contract with the SEC. So it’s in ESPN’s best interest to hype up SEC schools as much as possible for their ratings. Other then Tom Brady, I’ve never seen someone so overhyped by the talking heads at ESPN. All for the almighty dollar and the ratings.
When Tebow doesn’t play, all you hear are excuses, excuses and more excuses. In Denver the only reason Tebow got a chance over the 2nd string Brady Quinn was because Elway was sick of his obnoxious fans. John Fox got things to work just right for them to back into the playoffs and beat a reeling Steelers team. Even after spending a first round pick on him, Tebow was never the future for the team, and nothing made it more obvious then how hard the Broncos went after Manning.
Now he’s in New York, and was really nothing more then a publicity stunt. Yet Tebow still thinks he deserves to play, because you know, he’s Tebow. Here’s a shocker for you Tebow, I’ve seen far better QBs, you know ones that could actually read an NFL Defense, never get a chance to play. Just ask Jeff Blake how that worked out for him? It also isn’t surprising your being skipped over, given your poor performances in practice.
The funny thing is, I’ve seen plenty of players on the Jets work their ass off and work their way up the depth chart. One of the most famous Jets ever, Wayne Chrebet, started training camp 12th on the Jets Depth chart. But when you show up time and time again to practice and fall to show any improvement, why do you deserve a shot to play? Because the Broncos were willing to change their whole offense last year to make up for your faults? That’s not something that’s common in the NFL.
With Tebow seemingly out of the picture, I can’t wait for him to be gone and his clueless dittoheadESPN fans to be gone too. The guy was never as good as ESPN tried to paint him as. He will never be as good as the hype. If you find yourself more a fan of Tebow then watching football, then I’m willing to bet you’ve never watched football before. The Tebow led Broncos were one of the most boring teams for 90% of the game, and then Tebow would scramble in the 4th quarter and do just enough for them to win.
It also doesn’t help that since the Jets were unwilling to play Tebow, ESPN and a lot of other talking heads who just follow suit have been mocking the team. Guess what ESPN, no matter how much you want to pressure the Jets, call them losers, mock them as a circus, you can’t tell them who to play. I’m glad the Jets stuck with Sanchez, if for no other reason then because ESPN has been screaming for him to be benched since game 4.
I hope Tebow disappears after this season. I hope he ends up in the CFL, which given how much ESPN covers the CFL it might as well be Siberia. The great irony would be if Tim Tebow goes to the CFL and ESPN starts showing highlights from CFL games. At that point you have to admit ESPN is insanely desperate to make Tebow into something bigger, and find a way to force people to think it was the coaches and not ESPN that was wrong about Tebow.
New York Jets, Sports
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Broncos, Elway, Failure, Fox, Jets, Manning, McElroy, New York Jets, Sanchez, Tebow, Tim Tebow Sucks
