The Afternoon After: Sainz of underlying sexism

I started writing some weekly thoughts on football last year, so I’m going to give that a shot again, probably sometime on Monday or Tuesday whenever I get up, which is usually around 1 p.m. The Jay-Z/Eminem concert at Yankee Stadium on Monday pushed this back a bit. I’ll also preface this, as usual, by saying I don’t really know an enormous amount about football relative to other sports, but I enjoy looking at it from a social and cultural standpoint.

From Monday Night's game

I’m sure everyone’s sick of this situation with TV Azteca reporter Ines Sainz getting heckled by the Jets – that’s the nature of things now, Twitter makes you sick of things the moment you hear about them. And this sort of thing comes up every couple years and eventually just goes away without any real change affected, so I’d imagine this will probably be about the same, though maybe Roger Goodell does something here. I can’t think of what it would be.

But to those saying Sainz “brought it on herself” by wearing revealing outfits, that reeks of jealousy and latent sexism. Whatever the Jets said to her, I’ve much likely heard far worse spewing from people who blame her for being harassed.

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Get with The Program: Cushing epitomizes steroids double-standard

Looking like Puck from Glee
The least shocking sports news in recent memory came across the other day, when NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year Brian Cushing was suspended after testing positive for hCG, which is a female fertility drug that’s often used post-cycle to stimulate testosterone levels. It’s the same one Manny Ramirez tested positive for.

This was unsurprising for a lot of reasons, but primarily because I’ve heard explicit stories about Cushing’s proclivity for using steroids for quite some time.

Five years, to be exact.

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Saints remind us why it’s eternally worth it to be a fan

Priorities I happen to like Peyton Manning, so I wasn’t rooting for the Saints on Sunday. But watching them celebrate on the field, watching the fans celebrate back in New Orleans, it became apparent how much they mean to so many people. And I started to think about what their victory means to me.

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Hit me with your best shot: SportsAngle’s uninformed Super Bowl pick

Neither one of these guys could hold a candle to the great Daniel Constantine Marino
I wanted to write something about the Super Bowl because, well, it’s the Super Bowl. I was thinking some predictions and whatnot, maybe a little analysis thrown in for good measure. But I’ve immediately hit a brick wall.

The problem is that this can tend to sort of be a niche site, and football isn’t really a part of my niche. If this were the Super Bowl of horror movies, or the Super Bowl of high school basketball – which, uh, I’m actually going to next week – then I wouldn’t have a problem. But it’s not. It’s the Super Bowl of football.

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ATL, stand up: Sojourn to the south reveals unique sports culture

We were up somewhere way past that glowing Hawks sign Let it be known that I love it here in New Jersey. North Jersey to me is like Mississippi to Faulkner. It’s a part of the fabric of my life, woven into everything I do.

I’ll almost certainly never leave Bergen County, but if I did, the only other places I’ve considered living are Miami, Durham and Las Vegas, though in recent years I have cultivated a fascination with Los Angeles despite never having been there.

That said, after my second visit this weekend, I came away with real respect for the city of Atlanta. I’m not convinced it makes my short list, but much as I feel about all things Jersey, Atlanta has a manner and rich heritage all its own that give it a fascinating cultural identity, and a refreshing perspective and passion for sports.

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The Afternoon After: Low frequency, high quality – NFL on radio a treat

Here are some reactions to this weekend’s football action, a little belated because of a rare vacation to the Jersey Shore, where I didn’t actually have Internet access. As such, I missed out on a lot of people complaining about the Mets’ inability to sign Jon Garland, of all people. It was bliss.

Black Sunshine

I’ve always been a radio guy, dating back to my high school days of calling the WFAN overnight shows, which actually provided a distinct preview of my sleeping habits later on. I later had the privilege of hosting my own sports and heavy-metal music shows – I was far better with sports given that I actually know very little about heavy-metal music.

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Something to believe in: Finding inspiration in rival fans’ celebration

A sea of green

New York City definitely isn’t the most comfortable place for a Dolphins fan these days, as I witnessed first-hand when I made a rare sojourn to Times Square to hit up Foot Locker today and found myself smack dab in the middle of a massive Jets playoff pep rally.

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The Afternoon After: Rex in effect – Jets proving smashmouth still works

Thomas Jones wins it for the Jets in a no-brainer call by Rex If there’s one thing Sunday’s games reminded me, it’s that I’m not a gambler. (Remember: I offer a disclaimer every week with this where I don’t actually claim to know anything about the game itself, I just like writing about it)

I missed – badly – on every single one of the games I picked, not just against the spread, but the results straight-up. I got caught up too much in the premise of the “hot team,” and forgot that some teams were just flat-out better, and those teams were playing at home.

The one road team to win was the Jets, in what was an upset to everyone but their coach. I have no love lost for the Jets personally as a Dolphins fan, but I respect the style they’re winning with in that they’re spitting in the face of the current football convention.

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The Afternoon After: Specter of pain remains a constant presence

Here are my weekly football thoughts. No LT sightings this week.

Feeling his pain

Pain is such a part of life that we take for granted the times when we don’t feel it. Never again will I do that after a year in which much of it was spent dealing with injuries of various sorts, and mine were brought on solely by running, the repetitive stress of pounding your lower body against the pavement again and again.

Football pain is on a whole other plane. And in a sport predicated on sheer physicality and enormous husks crashing into each other haphazardly, something catastrophic can happen in an instant. Other sports have injuries, obviously – I have a colleague who acutely observes that all pitchers are injured by sheer definition of what they have to do to play the game – but it’s nothing like what we see in football.

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