House of Lies

I like to think of myself as a logical person. Most likely because of this, I also tend to like procedural shows, or at least shows with some kind of crime solving element (Castle, Veronica Mars, Murder She Wrote, etc). My favorite part is always inevitably the end, where the heroes figure out or stumble upon a key fact or piece of evidence, maybe something they overlooked before, that leads them to the truth and ties everything together. Once they have all the right information, everything is put in its proper perspective and the crime is solved.

Nothing about this Manti Te'o thing makes a lick of sense. Sports scandals, even the most bizarre ones, usually have an explanation. Sometimes they're crazy, but you can at least go, "Okay, I see how that makes sense." For example when Tiger Woods somehow had a massive accident backing out of his driveway, it seemed weird at the time. Then it came out that he had a mistress (then multiple mistresses) and his wife chased him with a golf club, which makes a lot more sense that he somehow backed into a fire hydrant or whatever.

But now two days out from the big reveal that not did Te'o's girlfriend not die, she never even existed, I'm just as confused as I was the first day, if not more. With every fact, interview, or statement, things seem to make less and less sense. Everything we think we know seems to bring up more questions. Let's have at it.

News breaks from Deadspin: Te'o's girlfriend Lennay Kekua doesn't exist. Her death was a hoax. The girl in the picture was a friend (or acquaintance) of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.

This is the only point in time I thought I understood what was going on. Tuiasosopo and Te'o perpetuated this hoax in order to generate publicity. People have done strange things and told lies to boost their fame in the past.

Then the denials and the statements.

Manti has repeatedly said he wasn't faking it and was "never" in on the hoax.

Notre Dame came out in support of Te'o, including a teary statement from AD Jack Swarbrick who claimed Te'o was deceived and had told the school, who launched an investigation.

Reagan Maui'a of the Arizona Cardinals came out and said that not only did Kekua exist, but he's met her and were "good friends." As far as I could tell, he was the only person who claimed to have met her.

Today, a friend of Tuiasosopo came out and said that he admitted to the hoax and that Te'o had no involvement. It appears that two people from California had a cousin who was also fooled by Tuiasosopo in a similar ruse.

Other than Maui'a, these statements seem pretty straightforward. Te'o was the victim of a strange prank by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. But if we assume these things are true, there are still things that don't add up and questions that need to be answered. Namely:

How is it possible Te'o and Kekua never met?
Te'o's father Brian told the story of how Manti and Lennay met and locked eyes after a football game. That doesn't take place online. He also talked about how Lennay has visited them in Hawaii. Why wouldn't Manti correct him or deny that fact? There's nothing to be gained from that lie (unless it's to keep the hoax alive). Manti's a popular college athlete. His family doesn't seem to be poor. Both he and Kekua have ties to Hawaii. In the 3 years that they knew each other, how is it possible that they weren't interested enough to actually meet up if in fact they were so in love?

Why didn't he visit her after her car crash or when she was on the brink of death with leukemia? Why didn't he attend her funeral?
This seems particularly heartless and confusing. I know if someone I care about was in such a dire situation, I wouldn't hesitate to fly across the country. But Te'o couldn't/wouldn't do that for the love of his life? The time frame between the accident and her death is shaky, but it was at least several months, more than enough time for him to go visit. And not showing up to her funeral? After carrying out a relationship where you unfortunately never met? You're not going to take that one last opportunity to finally see her in real life before she goes into the ground? According to Te'o, Kekua told him that it was more important to play in the game. But as Chuck Klosterman rightly points out, that's the stuff that belongs in movies.

"In real life, the dying sometimes say things like that. But in real life, we ignore that kind of advance directive once the dying person is actually dead. The reason we go to the funeral of someone who said "I don't want you to miss a game for my funeral" is that we are so moved by that kind of selflessness that going to the funeral becomes even more important. It's only in the fake world of sports that the heroic move is to take that kind of statement at face value."

How atrocious of a human being do you have to be to ignore someone you claim to love and care about who's gone through not one, but two life threatening situations?

Why was Notre Dame so quick to come out in such strong support of Te'o (but so slow to reveal their knowledge of the situation)?
I see three reasons why they would so adamantly back Te'o.
1. They believe his side of the story and trust his character.
2. They know the truth based on what their investigators uncovered.
3. They are trying to protect the program for a reason that remains unknown.

I say unknown because if it was as simple as just keeping the Notre Dame name clean, they could have distanced themselves until more facts came out. Te'o is NFL-bound and not part of their program. Staying as far away as possible would be the surest way to keep themselves out of it. By coming to his defense like they have, it indicates that they either believe his story or are trying to protect themselves.

Why did Te'o keep the hoax going (and then lie about it to Jeremy Schaap)?
In an interview with Schaap tonight, he claims to "never" have been part of the hoax or faking it. The problem is, Swarbrick had claimed that Te'o found out about the hoax on Dec. 6th via a phone call. During interviews in the coming days and weeks leading up to college football awards and bowl season, Te'o didn't reveal what he knew, but continued to talk about his girlfriend and her death. I'm not sure how anyone can spin that as not participating in the hoax. He knew he'd been duped and went on about his interviews like nothing had changed.

If Te'o is not involved, what is Tuiasosopo's end game?
People don't do things for no reason. If Te'o was in on it, it seems reasonable that the goal was to pump up his popularity and get his name and story out there. But if it was just Tuiasosopo on his own (or possibly with a few cronies), what's the point? There didn't seem to be any attempts at extortion. If the goal was humiliation, wouldn't it have been better to keep Kekua alive and have a big reveal on your own terms? What does killing her off do other than turn the person you're trying to embarrass into a sympathetic figure? Was it just for fun? After that long, when does it stop being fun and start being boring or borderline sadistic? It just doesn't make sense.

Other questions we don't know:
Who was Manti talking to on the phone?
How come no one caught that the dates of Kekua's car accident and death were inconsistent?
Why did Manti and Notre Dame sit on this for over a month?
Manti said he said things to suggest he met Kekua because he thought it would sound crazy that he hadn't (oh the irony). In the age of Facebook and Twitter, did he really feel like that was a stigma?
What's up with people who say they knew Kekua or knew Te'o and Kekua as a couple?

We're getting to the point where the most logical explanation that I've seen so far is a newspaper report claiming that Kekua told Te'o she faked her death to avoid drug dealers. That's the kind of territory we're in with this thing now.

I don't know what that one piece will be that's going to bring this all together, but I'm as anxious as anyone who's not involved to find out because this crap is making my head hurt.

Hall of Shame

A few weeks ago, my brother had to travel to Cooperstown for a work trip. I made the three hour drive up to visit and we went to go see the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I had never been to a hall of fame before, and to be honest, my interest in baseball dropped off pretty rapidly as soon as I stopped playing Little League. Still, I was struck by the sense of history in that building. I guess I was expecting a celebration of the individual, but in fact we didn't even get to the actual hall where all the players' plaques are hung until the very end of our visit. Instead, the majority of the hall is devoted to the sport of baseball as a whole which, thinking back, makes a whole lot more sense that the single-player focused museum I had in mind. There were floors and large areas dedicated to things like the origins of the sport, stadium history, or race in baseball, and the sections specifically about records and individual players (again, what I thought would be the bulk of the hall's focus) were just stops along the way.

It was incredible seeing pictures of true pioneers of the game, whether it was the first few baseball clubs or the first women in professional baseball. Some of the displays hardly resembled modern day baseball, but seeing pictures and items from a hundred years ago just added to the mystique. I felt a much greater appreciation for the national pastime.

Today, the results of the Hall of Fame ballots of the voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America's were revealed and, perhaps not so surprisingly, no one was voted in. There are several great pieces (written by people much smarter and knowledgeable about the game than I am) about why this is a slippery slope and quite frankly, idiotic, but I wanted to take this opportunity to hate on one of my favorite targets of all time, Barry Bonds.

In his playing days, I hated Barry. As a Dodger fan, it burned to see a player on a rival team ripping up the league. His (at the time) suspected 'roid use made him an easy target, and the fact that he was by many accounts arrogant and not at all pleasant to deal with conveniently took away any guilt in drinking the haterade. I loved watching him and the rest of the Giants fail in the World Series against the Angels. Despite the fact that he was a perennial MVP contender, I wondered aloud during a game whether or not a hypothetical situation where he signed with the Dodgers would make me renounce my fandom (the decision: yes it would, and this Mexican fan who overheard turned around with a big grin on his face and high fived me). Of my entire college experience, one of my least favorite aspects was the fact that I'm an alum of the same school that he's from.

And yet. Barry was the best player I've seen play the game in my lifetime. I'm not old enough to have seen legends like Babe, Mays, Mantle, or Ty Cobb although you could reasonably argue that Bonds, with his total package, was better than many of those players. Barry was the ultimate five-tool player, and you'd have to look pretty hard to find a weakness in his game.

There's no question that Barry should be an easy first ballot entrant on the basis of his statistics. The power numbers are obvious, and to some, the most dubious, but before the 1999 season (which is when his steroid use is suspected to have started) Bonds already had 411 home runs and 445 stolen bases. To this day, he is still the ONLY member of the 400/400 club, and he achieved it in his first 12 (essentially undisputed untainted) years in the league. He was an eight time All-Star and Gold Glover, as well as a seven time Silver Slugger and three time MVP. And perhaps the most strange to me, during his unreal 2004 season, he led the league in on-base percentage by .140, which is the same gap between Todd Helton who finished 2nd and Jermaine Dye, who was 128th. Not only that, he could have finished the season with 0 hits in his 373 at bats, and still would have had a .376 OBP, good for 35th and ahead of players such as Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira.

The only thing keeping him out is the steroid thing, the undeniable mammoth in the room. It seems unfair and overly self-righteous to apply a double standard to these players, whether they are admitted or suspected users. It's impossible to fairly or accurately assess the impact of steroid use on their performance and statistics (look at this list. Not exactly packed with sluggers and flamethrowers right?) Many baseball writers made a name (and a nice living) for themselves writing about the exploits of these players in that era. Now they want to apply what Buster Olney calls "retroactive morality" and try to pretend like those times never happened. They, and really, the game of baseball itself, had no problem turning a blind eye to what these players as it was happening (as I mentioned before, it was obvious enough to make these players prime targets for jokes even at the time) and reap the benefits of the excitement these guys were bringing to the game.

There are plenty of players already in the hall who used substances to enhance their performance, players who were morally questionable (or even bankrupt) off the field. And yet NOW we decide that it's not just okay, but even reasonable to deny access to both the greatest hitter and pitcher (Roger Clemens) the league has had in decades.

The steroid era happened. Baseball has moved on. Voting for these players would not be a celebration of whatever abuses they had, just an acknowledgement that in their time, they set themselves apart from their peers. With these players, baseball has the chance to take steroids head on, recognizing its ugly past. By trying to scrub it from its history, it looks like baseball is just trying to ignore the problem, just like it did in the 90s and early 2000s.

To me, the Hall of Fame is a celebration of baseball's greatest talent and its best memorial to its history. Denying Bonds, Clemens, and other deserving players entry is a disservice to both aspects of the Hall.

...or is this just Fantasy (football)?

Happy week 1 of fantasy football everybody. It's a joyous time of the year where we get to sit around, watch football, then brag about how our team crushed everyone...or make excuses for why this week went so poorly and we'll turn it around soon.

But it's not all fun and games, and one of the things that sucks most about fantasy is also one of the worst parts about the real NFL: injuries.

Sure, sure, in real life it's about a man's health and livelihood, but in the realm of fantasy, owners are plagued by who to start, not knowing who's going to play or how much someone's going to play even if they get on the field.

I have the great fortune to be in this quandary already at the beginning of the season, not knowing whether to go with players who will play but may be limited (Trent Richardson, Jamaal Charles) or capable backups who could get the lion's share of playing time today or just as easily take a backseat (Toby Gerhart, Rashad Jennings).

I could tweak lineups forever, but whenever I start feeling a little stressed, I think about my two favorite fantasy anecdotes. (Here and here)

The first is a story about Matt Hasselbeck from a few years ago when he was still with the Seahawks. I'll let Matthew Berry take it away.

It should shock no one that Matt went QB-heavy with his team, drafting not only himself but also his former real-life Packers teammate, Brett Favre. 

Like many people I meet, it's Matt's first-year playing fantasy. But he showed the objectivity of a wily veteran when, in Week 5, he decided to bench himself for the ol' gunslinger. It made sense. Favre was coming off a red-hot dismantling of Green Bay on "Monday Night Football," had seven scores in his past three games and was facing the Rams, among the worst pass defenses in the league. 

I'll save you the trouble of looking it up. Brett threw for 232 yards, only one score (plus a pick) and finished with 11 fantasy points in ESPN standard scoring. Sixteen different quarterbacks finished with more points than Brett that week, including such names as Josh Johnson, Chad Henne and Daunte Culpepper (against the Steelers!).

And sitting on Matt Hasselbeck's bench was, well, Matt Hasselbeck, who threw for four scores against the Jaguars and finished with 27 fantasy points. More than Tom Brady,Peyton Manning or any other quarterback that week. 

Think about that. He knew the game plan, he had as much control over an NFL game as any fantasy player could ever have, he wound up as the highest-scoring player at his position in the league … 

… AND HE WAS SITTING ON HIS OWN BENCH

The second story is somewhat similar, coming from Washington Redskins tight end Chris Cooley.

“The game [Roy] Helu started, San Francisco, I walked up to [Ryan] Torain in the locker room and said Dude you’re starting on my fantasy team this week and I’m hoping for a big week, I’m playing my wife,”Cooley said on the Junkies Friday morning. 

“And he’s like,Oh, cool man, yeah, I’ll see what I can do,” Cooley continued. “I went out to the field, and Helu starts. I’m in the LOCKER ROOM and I don’t know who’s starting. So it’s kind of a mix-up, and I’m not exactly sure what we’re doing or who’s going in.” 

Moral of the story? Don't worry so much about it because EVEN THE PLAYERS don't always know what's going on. All we can do is do our best and hope the Shivas of fantasy football look upon us favorably.  Hopefully I can actually take my own advice.

Old Habits Die Hard

With one more (at least I think only one) fantasy football draft to go, I was thinking about players one last time, and when I was looking at how I rated/tiered players, I realize that even though it's a different year, I fall into the same habits.

Do I have a good reason for this? No, not at all. I've pretty rarely been successful at fantasy football so it's not like I trust in my instincts to help me win since it hasn't worked out that way before. Am I even doing this on purpose? Not really, although I think my laziness has something to do with it.

But somehow I inevitably start thinking of players in the same way year after year, always getting sucked into the same traps. Let me show you what I mean.

The Jacoby Jones

I first started playing fantasy football a few years ago, and of course, I wanted to prepare myself by looking up all the best sleepers that no one else would know (this before I realized everyone reads similar stuff and therefore like similar players). I read about this guy, Jacoby Jones, WR Houston Texans. What could go wrong? He was a burner playing across Andre Johnson (actually that was Kevin Walter, but I KNEW Jones would take over) in a high powered offense and ready for a breakout (it was his 3rd year in the league). I thought he had the talent and the opportunity.

Flash forward to 2012 and Jones has just about over 100 receptions...for his career. Safe to say that didn't pan out, and it's been the running game that's taken over the show in Houston.

What did I learn here? Just because someone is fast and black and playing with a competent quarterback doesn't spell fantasy success. Does this stop me from picking up these WR hoping they'll break a 70 yard TD every game? Not at all. I'm the Al Davis of fantasy.

My 2012 Jacoby Jones: Alshon Jeffery (I actually still really like this guy. He's apparently big and got great hands, which could easily lead the Bears to feature him in red zone situations. Still, playing opposite Brandon Marshall and with a big armed QB may not matter if Matt Forte runs everything in.)

On the other hand...

The Denarius Moore

Last year I played in like a 20 something team NFL.com league. It was DEEP. And therefore I had to read up on much deeper sleepers than usual (at the end of the year I had guys like Jackie Battle, Preston Parker, and Dezmon Briscoe on my team. 10 points if you can name where they play this year...or last year).

I heard about this Denarius Moore kid in training camp and was immediately skeptical. He was playing for the Raiders, a team known for young players who flameout and Darius Heyward-Bey's name wasn't far from anyone thinking of picking a Raiders' WR. It was pretty clear that Darren McFadden would be the focal point, and even though Moore was looking good in camp, he still had to contend with incumbents Heyward-Bey, Chaz Schilens, and Jacoby Ford.

Then the season started, the guys in front of him got hurt, Moore got on the field and started doing things like this. Turns out he wasn't the usual Al Davis type who just flies down the field. Moore's big and has great hands as well, and injuries opened up opportunity for him.

It's easy to write off under the radar rookie WR as most of them don't do so well in the NFL. But as late round picks they can have really good value, especially ones who go late in the real NFL draft or even sign as undrafted free agents. Although it's a high profile position, WR is a relatively easy position to fill cheaply in the league, which can lead to people emerging out of nowhere after a fortuitous camp invite (see: Victor Cruz).

My 2012 Denarius Moore: Rod Streater (It's too obvious. He's the rookie WR in Oakland who's going to get playing time with Moore and Ford hurt. He's versatile and catches everything.)

The Cam Newton

Rookie quarterbacks never do anything right? They have to adjust to the speed of the game, the complexity of NFL defenses, and learning how to take command of an NFL huddle.

Cam threw all that out the window and had a monster fantasy year last season. Turns out the tools he used in college translated just fine to the big leagues. His huge frame and tremendous speed which blew college defenders away still got the job done in the pros. He added a disciplined regimen to learn the offense and surpassed most people's expectations as a passer, reviving Steve Smith's career in the process.

I still generally try to avoid rookies, but man, after a year like that, you have to consider the possibility that someone can repeat that.

My 2012 Cam Newton: Andrew Luck (RGIII is the easiest comparison, but I think he might be getting a little overdrafted. Luck is often available late, and since the Colts will probably be pretty bad again, he's going to get to throw a lot. He's smart and an excellent passer already. These qualities translate to the next level, it's just a matter of getting that game experience and feel for how defenses will play him. Who knows, maybe he can resurrect Reggie Wayne's career after a down season.)

One more, and it will be...

The Shonn Greene

Shonn Greene has the dubious distinction of fooling me several years in a row. One of the reasons RBs are so highly valued in fantasy football is consistency. Back in the day when teams had a featured back, you could count on even lower tiered backs for a solid 8-15 points a game just based on sheer volume. If you were getting 20 carries and resembled an NFL starter, you could probably manage 60-70 yards on the ground and maybe another 10 in the air at minimum. And if you could fall into the end zone once or twice, that's a bonus.

Greene was going to be the ultimate volume back. Sure he didn't look like he was going to be a worldbeater, but what were the Jets going to do? Throw it?

Greene's backups over the past couple years have been guys like Joe McKnight and an older Thomas Jones. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that he could take over the lead back role and flourish as an RB1 option. Unfortunately, he fell into that 8-15 point scorer category. Not catastrophic, but when your team wants to play smash mouth and your QB is Mark Sanchez, you'd think you'd have enough opportunity to break 100 yards more than 3 times in 2 years.

Still, what made Greene attractive basically applies today. He's got the job (Bilal Powell is his backup and likely 3rd down back) and will get carries. Just don't do anything cute and draft him for more than what he is: a low RB2/flex player.

My 2012 Shonn Greene: Doug Martin (There are certainly differences. Martin is much more of a playmaker than Greene and can actually play on 3rd downs. But like Greene, it's kind of assumed that he'll get 20+ carries a game even with the presence of LeGarrette Blount, who was a starting caliber RB last year. Not saying he won't, but even with Blount fading fast in the past few weeks, the fact that he's been in the league and done work before gives me pause before I take Martin as a clear RB1).


As always, the lesson is: never listen to me when I'm talking about fantasy sports. I'll probably just end up giving you bad advice.

McKayla Maroney's other talent

With the 2012 summer games winding down I thought it would be a good time to talk about one of my Olympic crushes (checks age...) one of America's sweethearts McKayla Maroney, one of the Fab Five gymnastics team. She's known for being a vault specialist (despite finishing second in the vault finals, leading to one of the greatest pictures/reactions of the Games), but there's one other thing she's better than her other, more hyped teammates: doing the Dougie.

She's definitely better than Gabby Douglas which is surprising

since her last name is Douglas. What, you thought I was going to say because she's black? ...well, that too.