simplicity

Back to baseball season, Manny is in town!

Ugh, really don’t have much to say. It was a great game up until the fourth, both teams played their butts off on defense. It was heart-breaking to see the Cs offense flutter in the fourth. I blame that partially on the refs.. They let the players play for three quarters then they decide to gift wrap it for the lakers by putting Boston in the penalty with seven minutes to go. Cs could never get into a partial rhythm..

I’ve got the World Cup and the US Open to drown my sorrows in.. Oh and the Sox are only 2 games back and Manny is in town

Sucked..  That is all…

Not a lot to say about game five that probably hasn’t been said. Thought the C’s played team basketball. There were a few moments, especially towards the end of the game where I thought they could have potentially blown it but they continued to pull the right strings. I was impressed with Pierce, KG, and Rondo. Thought the three of them showed up and played great basketball.

I thought the C’s played great defense even though Kobe went off in the third quarter. But where I thought the C’s really shined was in that 3rd quarter: for every basket Kobe made the C’s had an answer on the offensive end. They weren’t being complacent or getting down on themselves after Kobe continued hitting one after another of the most ridiculous/contested shots.

Refs, can’t really complain about them. They did make some awful calls, but that’s expected. However, for a second straight game the refs were letting the players play, which was great.

Cs need to ride this momentum into game six and just put their foot on the throat of the Lakers…

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft sat in his office recently and reflected on his teams accomplishments to begin the millennium.”At the risk of sounding immodest,” he said, “I believe we are the team of the decade.”

via NFLs franchise of the decade? 3 Super wins give it to Patriots – USATODAY.com.

Ran across the “Recession or no recession, many NFL, NBA and Major League article” article on SI.com courtesy of an article on stretchdollar.com. I’m not surprised that even though these athletes are making millions of dollars that they are losing a good portion of their money. What does surprise me though is how many of these athletes it’s happening to. I guess when you start making that much money the fear of losing it all is the furthest thing on your mind. Some of the great notes from the article

� By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.

� Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

Wow, seventy-eight and sixty percent respectively. Read that again so it soaks in. I want them to break it down by divorce, child support payments, etc… That would help to make sense of this, cause I can see that becoming a major cause of the money hemmoraging.

� Numerous retired MLB players have been similarly ruined, and the current economic crisis is taking a toll on some active players as well. Last month 10 current and former big leaguers-including outfielders Johnny Damon of the Yankees and Jacoby Ellsbury of the Red Sox and pitchers Mike Pelfrey of the Mets and Scott Eyre of the Phillies-discovered that at least some of their money is tied up in the $8 billion fraud allegedly perpetrated by Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford. Pelfrey told the New York Post that 99% of his fortune is frozen; Eyre admitted last month that he was broke, and the team quickly agreed to advance a portion of his $2 million salary.

Say it ain’t so Jacob, say it so!

The following seems to make sense, obviously there is a different level of intelligence and workload -

“There’s a far shorter peak earnings period [in sports] than in any other profession, and in many cases they lack the time and desire to understand and monitor their investments.”

[...]

“Chronic overallocation into real estate and bad private equity is the Number 1 problem [for athletes] in terms of a financial meltdown,” Butowsky says. “And I’ve never seen more people come to me about raising money for those kinds of deals than athletes.”

And now we get further explanation. It’s all making sense!

SALARY ASIDE, the closest analogue to a pro athlete is not a white-collar executive. It’s a lottery winner-who’s often in his early twenties. “With athletes, there’s an extraordinary metamorphosis of financial challenge,” says agent Leigh Steinberg, who has represented the NFL’s No. 1 pick a record eight times. “Coming off college scholarships, they probably haven’t even learned the basics of budgeting or keeping receipts.” Which then triggers two fatal mistakes: hiring the wrong people as advisers, and trusting them far too much.

One of the best items from the article though is the amount of money associated to Shaq’s spending

Perhaps the upper limit on spending was set by the famously profligate Shaquille O’Neal, who-according to a document obtained by the Palm Beach Post during O’Neal’s canceled divorce filing in January 2008-spends a total of $875,015 each month, including $26,500 for child care, $24,300 for gas and $17,220 for clothing. But O’Neal, who also has been known to fund charities anonymously and cover medical bills for complete strangers, has the wherewithal to remain solvent.

Wow, impressive. That’s insane. I can’t wrap my head around the amount of money they earn, let alone spend to become bankrupt. I don’t have the mental capacity to understand the amount. But generally, I think they fall into the same category as a good portion of the public, a lot of people in general just don’t try to understand their finances and how to effectively prepare for retirement.

Saw this on Barstool Sports today thought it was pretty hilarious. I love how they black it out for a little bit before coming back. I bet the producer is like ‘Shit, what do we do now?’.

80 foot bomb from his own foul line. Is anyone else as excited as I am about watching him in this years NCAA tournament?

SI.com – Tom Verducci: Restocking a Rivalry

Ouch. The games yesterday weren’t so nice to my bracket. I’m a little disappointed, but what can you do? Instead of going for so many upsets in the first round I should have stuck with the top seeds, oh well. The biggest loss yesterday was USC, because I had them getting to the elite 8. The game itself was pretty lopsided, USC made a run at the start of the 2nd-half but it didn’t hold up that long. Hopefully today won’t be as bad as yesterday was to my bracket.

But how about Belmont? It would have been amazing to see them beat Duke last night, even though it would have hurt not only my bracket but everyone elses bracket too. Did I mention I’m part of the large contingent of college basketball fans who hate Duke? No? Well now you know, and folks knowing is half the battle.

It’s that time of the year again. The NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament is about to get underway in a little less then 2 hours. Sixty-four teams will be vying for that championship trophy. Last year I took a few days off, because I was in-between projects, to watch all the games, I do not have that luxury this year. Though I’m quite glad that I’ll be able to watch the USC/Kansas St. game tonight. Like many Americans I did fill-out a bracket but unlike many, I ended up only filling out one. I don’t think I have too many shockers in my picks but I’m very comfortable with my bracket. Even though I was a little hesitant at picking UCLA over Kansas in the championship. Kansas was my pre-season pick, but I’m not so sure about them now. At any rate it should be an entertaining tournament.