I was unable to watch the Strikeforce event live last night, but I was delighted to see the results.  Fedor Emelianenko, one of the most over hyped fighters of all time finally lost a fight.  Fabricio Werdum caught him with a combination of a triangle choke and an arm bar.  As a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fan I always like to see BJJ used successfully.

The important thing though is that Fedor, the unbeatable Russian fighting robot,  lost to a guy who was dropped by the UFC.  Fedor had only one loss on his record, which everyone discounted because it was stopped due to a cut and it was also avenged in the rematch.  On the other hand, most of his wins did not come against top level fighters.  It was thought for some time that the guys fighting for the PRIDE organization in Japan were far superior to the heavyweights in the UFC.  For a time, that may have been true, but the new crop of heavyweights in the UFC have shown that the PRIDE fighters are not on top anymore.  Fedor’s most notable wins in PRIDE were against Mirko Cro Cop and Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira.  Cro Cop was expected to come in and clean up the UFC heavyweight division, but has instead been mostly an embarrassment.  He’s lost multiple fights and even his wins were unimpressive.  Nogueira has faired better, but was stopped by Frank Mir and Cain Valasquez despite having never been never lost by TKO in PRIDE.  While Fedor’s old resume highlights were getting tarnished in the UFC, he stayed outside fighting UFC rejects.

Somehow people still saw his nearly perfect record and decided he was unbeatable.  This is a ridiculous leap to make, both because of his habit of ducking top competition and because there are too many facets or as some say “too many ways to lose” in MMA.  Fedor actually seems like a nice guy and he is a good fighter, but I’m inclined to root against anyone labeled as “invincible.”  Guys who can’t lose have lost too many times in MMA.  Other fans and “experts” will scoff at the idea of certain fighters losing, and anyone who suggests a vulnerability is derided as not understanding the sport.  B.J. Penn has been hailed as one of the top pound for pound fighters in the world.  People (including B.J. himself) seemed to think that there were no lightweights who could really compete with him.  It didn’t take that long before Frankie Edgar came in and boxed his way to B.J.’s belt.  Lyoto Machida was untouchable and had never lost around.  He was supposed to hold the light heavyweight belt for years.  Almost immediately Shogun took it from him.  GSP has already been clobbered by Matt Serra.

I hope that with the fall of “The Last Emperor” we can see him as “the last unbeatable fighter.”  Nobody is unbeatable and to call anyone unbeatable is stupid.  Anderson Silva looks pretty tough now, but it isn’t hard to imagine someone beating him with wrestling and taking his belt.  If he continues to fight he will lose.  GSP will lose.  Brock Lesnar will lose.

–Blarg!

So apparently the Pac 10 is adding Colorado and that’s it. I guess that’s less extreme than turning into the Pac 16. I do think it’s funny that the Big Ten (11) now has 12 teams and the Big 12 now has 10 teams. Do they trade names? Do they keep the same old names for maximum confusion? Are they working on new names? Should the old Big Ten maintain tradition by changing their name to the Big Eleven and find a way to work a ’12′ into the logo? I’m not confident that the conference apocalypse is shelved for good, so maybe they’ll just all pile into two super conferences, the Nike Conference and the Adidas Conference or something like that.

– Blarg!

Recent talk about Pac 10 conference expansion has made me evaluate my interest in college sports.  Once I started attending ASU I became attached to Sun Devil athletics and I’ve been much more of a college sports fan than a professional sports fan.  I like the pageantry, the marching bands, the mascots, the cheerleaders, the rivalries, the traditions, storming the field, rushing the court, throwing tortillas, singing fight songs, the frantic unpredictable action of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, the huge stadiums packed for football games and the finality of seniors who know they won’t be competing professionally giving everything they have because they love their sport.

My feelings towards college sports have been taking a beating lately.  There have always been lingering issues that I’ve been able to mostly look past.  It’s always been messed up that NCAA football and basketball are huge money generating activities based on the efforts of kids who are forbidden from seeing any of that profit.  It’s a bad deal for a lot of them, but some have been especially screwed when they were declared ineligible to play due to really asinine interpretations of the rules.  I’ve heard enough about “student athletes” being an oxymoron or a myth.  The highest paid people at these “institutions of higher learning” are not top shelf researchers or the premier educators, but football coaches.  That seems off.  I know there are separate budgets and sports draw in their own donations, but it was strange to see ASU add new, fancy, multimillion dollar scoreboards to Sun Devil Stadium and Wells Fargo Arena when at the same time they had to eliminate programs, lay off instructors, and let other support staff go.  All that said, I’ve put all of that aside because of the things listed in the top paragraph.  I’ve had so much fun as a fan that I rationalized my way around the less appealing aspects.

Now the bullshit outside of the games is starting to spill too far into the games themselves that it’s getting harder to ignore.  I’ll start by mentioning the BCS.  I won’t say much about the BCS because that’s been covered enough.  It’s not fair.  Polls are not fair.  Nobody ever says about their sport, “I like watching teams compete directly with rules to objectively determine the winner, but it’d be better if they just had some judges to pick who is the best, like in figure skating.  Hell, they could probably judge teams that haven’t even played each other!”  Along with not really determining the best team each season, the football post season gets worse every year as they continue to add bowl games that nobody needs to see.  Yes, now every kid gets to play in a bowl game, but playing in a bowl game doesn’t mean anything anymore.  It only counts to make the BCS bowl games, and if the system doesn’t like you (Boise State, Utah…), you’re not invited no matter what you do.  At least the regular season is still really fun right?  Well, not as much.  They’re trying to ban that.  The really touchy “celebration” penalties were bad enough the past couple of seasons.  Washington got totally hosed against USC because Locker had the audacity to flip the football over his shoulder when he scored a late touchdown.  Apparently they’re ramping it up further this season so that if a player appears too happy on his way into the endzone, they can actually take his touchdown away.

Still, up through this much, I still feel like a fan.  I’m still excited for the next season…  And then there’s the talk about expanding the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  In my mind, the tournament, composed of 64 teams is perfection.  It’s my favorite event in sports.  Yeah, they added the 65th team, which was confusing and stupid, but not a huge deal.  A few 15 seeds have won games (including one against #2 Arizona, haha suck it Wildcats!), but no 16 seeds have.  To me that means they have exactly the right number.  They’re bringing in a few more teams than have a shot to win any games.  Any teams that haven’t made a convincing case to be one of the 64 best, don’t belong anyway.  We can say with certainty that the best teams (and them some) get invited.  They want to ruin the perfection because the NCAA doesn’t give a shit about kids or about sports.  They want to squeeze more money out of it.  I have always said college football needed to be more like college basketball when it comes to the post season, but instead it’s going the other way.  To me the NCAA is saying “Fuck sports, give us more money.”  With both of my favorite sports having their post seasons corrupted into nonsense, I’m feeling kinda down about it.

Then comes the conference expansion talk.  Apparently the Pac 10 wants to add a whole bunch of teams.  This is clearly part of a systematic plan to ruin sports for me.  They’re going down the list.  “Ruin the championship competitions?  Check.  Get rid of actual cheerleaders (ASU’s fault)? Check.  Get rid of the traditions?  Check.”  Throwing tortillas got banned already, they’ve tried to stop students from rushing the field before, and our stadium doesn’t fill up very well these days.  Looking back up at my list, it seems like I can cross a bunch of things off while the case against being a fan continues to grow.  I don’t see any legitimate reason for the formation of a super conference.  To me it’s the same money grabbing BS as the rest of it.

As someone who has spent a lot of time and money being a sports fan, it really bums me out to think that maybe its time to just walk away from it.  Wouldn’t I be better off doing something productive rather than watching other people physically exert themselves?  Isn’t it silly to keep spending money to watch “amateur” athletics?  As a Green person, how stupid is the whole production from a sustainability perspective?

It was a lot of fun and I don’t really want to be done, but I feel like I might be getting close.

– Blarg!