The Smarmy Carny

Full-Court Shot, Part One

Allow me to use a fitting cliche here: I really dropped the ball on this one.

Back on February 2, I posted about an amazing 87-foot (full-court) shot made at the end of a high school game to give Guilford the lead over Randolph-Macon. The following day, Jordan Snipes appeared on local television (WFMY) news program. He was given a rack of 16 basketballs to try and repeat his performance. Not only does he sink a basket, several of his earlier attempts come amazingly close. I swear that this guy is more accurate from 87 feet than I am from the three-point line.

I know, I know . . . I can talk about it all I want, but you really just want to see the footage. Check it out.

Anyway, that was the following day. It only took me four months to post it.

Buzzer Beater

Here's yet another exciting end-of-game video from a men's basketball game between Chicago State University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. As the clip begins, CSU is down by 3 points with 10.3 seconds remaining and they are inbounding the ball.

This is some suprising stuff from a team that went 9-19. The shots were made by David Inabnit and Kevin Jones, Jr. You can read this PDF file for a bit more information.

Oh, and just for the record, that was a 55-foot shot. Distance-wise, that's nothing compared to the 87-foot buzzer beater, but the culmination of events still builds an undeniable excitement.

I'm not sure what it is about basketball, but it certainly is one of the best sports as far as culminating in exciting endings. I would have to guess that's the case because it's relatively easy to score points, unlike hockey, American football, and European football. Not a whole lot of buzzer-beating slap shots out there in the NHL, especially this season.

NHL CBA

I realize I'm late on the NHL season being cancelled, but I've been lazy. Those of you who don't already know that the 2004-2005 NHL season has officially been cancelled probably don't care anyway.

As with any professional sports organization, I scoff when the players strike. $8M??? Heck no, we want $10M a season! Yes, I understand that their "working career" is shorter than the rest of us. I know that star players bring in millions of dollars in ticket sales and other various revenues. I don't care.

I make no secret about my thoughts and feelings toward most unions. The goal of most unions seem to be to get the most money for the least amount of work. This is not why unions were formed in the first place. Unions were originally created to uphold workers' rights, not to push to make excessively high salaries even more excessively high. Working excruciating hours, dangerous working conditions, being paid in coupons instead of money — these are the issues that unions were created to stop and/or avoid. From what I could find, here are some of the various leagues' minimum salaries:

• NHL: $200,000 with a proposed increase to $300,000 (so far)
• NFL: $225,000
• MLB: $300,000
• NBA: $385,277
• WNBA: Maximum salary capped at $174,000. I just threw that in to annoy people.

I don't know about you, but the lowest figure mentioned ($174k) would be a substantial pay raise for me. As I mentioned, these players are not exactly in dire straits financially. Unions need not push for more money for the players. They have been out of work for months . . . have you seen any players begging on the street?

I really need to demand that my employer pay me higher wages. After all, I'm only working until I'm 67.5 . . .

Just in case anyone is thinking this, I want to mention that yes, I do realize that the NHL is in a lockout phase, which is more of a reverse strike. I am well aware that, technically, it is the owners/league that has prevented the players from playing this season. I hope you're not so naive as to believe that players' and unions' demands in previous years are not to blame.

Of course, if you really miss hockey, you can watch "highlights" over at hockeyfights.com. For additional clips, check out their video clips forum thread.

Burt = Celebrity

I simply have to weigh in on my favorite Super Bowl commercials from tonight. Overall, there were a few great commercials and plenty of fodder. I would have to say that this year's selection did not live up to many of the past years' ads. I can remember years where most of these top five selections wouldn't have even made it to the Honorable Mention section! Still, you take what you can get. If the ad title has a link, you can click it to watch the video. You may also view many ads at USA Today by clicking on the AdMeter tab. (The page doesn't work in Firefox, blame USA Today!) Thanks to The Irish Trojan's Blog for that extra link.

Here are the five best commercials in my opinion. I'll start with my favorite of favorites and work from there:

1. FedEx / Kinko's, 10 Keys to the Best Super Bowl Commercial (2nd link): From celebrities to animals to attractive girls, FedEx really does a great job of poking fun at the stereotypical Super Bowl advertisement.
2. Ameriquest, Don't Judge: You're Being Robbed (2nd link): These silly hands-free cellphone kits cause problems for an unsuspecting convenience store shopper.
3. Bud Light, Parachuting (2nd link): This typical comic Bud Light ad does not disappoint. Bud ads like this are great because they can easily be talked about around the water cooler the next day, and they usually are.
4. Anheuser-Busch, Thanks (2nd and 3rd links): Everyone in an airport terminal stand and applaud American soldiers arriving back in the States. Very simple, very classy, very touching.
5. Olympus, New Groove Machine (2nd link): Some interesting CGI in this commercial has people dancing in a weird fashion. Not exactly Monkey-Matrix moves, but just as cool. I haven't seen any CGI this much fun since the recent HP Photo commercials.

Five more commercials earning honorable mention (in no particular order, this time):

• McDonald's, Lincoln Fry (2nd link): This commercial pokes fun at all those people who find objects of food that look like things or people.
• Anheuser Busch, While You Were Out (2nd link): Another good Bud Light commercial. Two guys use their cameraphone to try to harass a buddy who had turned down tickets for the big game.
• Emerald of California, The Truth: A father lies to his daughter about Santa and the Easter Bunny (being fake) so he can avoid sharing his food.
• Ameriquest, Don't Judge: Cat (2nd link): Another Ameriquest "Don't Judge" commercial. This time the confusion comes from a pesky cat bothering a husband's dinner preparations.
• GoDaddy.com, FCC Panel: A buxom girl in a skimpy shirt tries to pass her commercial by the FCC decency panel. Here is a link for the slightly different banned version. In fact, here's two minutes of the full hearing coverage.

Dishonorable mention grand prize goes out to Cosentino USA's "I am Diana Pearl" spot featuring Ditka, Rodman, Perry, and McMahon. I'll never get that 30 seconds back again. As if the commercial wasn't sad and boring enough, not only did we have to hear celebrities repeating "I am Diana Pearl," but you only hear three of them repeating it over and over and over. Runners-up are all of Fox's promos for 24, The Simple Life, and whatever else. We know you have other shows. We don't care. We want you to rake in the additional money and give us more content! If nothing else, at least make the promos worthy of the Super Bowl, and not the exact same clips that we see at 2 am. Second runner-up dishonorable mention goes to Cialis. Yes, I really needed to hear about yet another erectile disfunction product. The commercial was made interesting only by the phrase "Erections lasting longer than four hours, though rare . . . "

Full-Court Shot

0.6 seconds, 87 feet, 3 points. That basically sums up the end of the Guilford vs. Randolph-Macon game one week ago tonight.

Even if you're not interested in basketball at all, you really must watch the video footage of this game-winning full-court shot.

Details: With the game tied and nearing the final buzzer, Randolph-Macon's Adam Krovic was fouled with 0.6 seconds left in the game. Krovic hit the first shot to give his team a one point lead. Standard coaching strategy dictates that in this situation, you intentionally miss your second shot so that the other team cannot throw a long pass and make a quick basket to tie or win the game. This way, even if the team gets the rebound, they only have 0.6 seconds to somehow get the ball down the court and into the basket, thus ensuring you the win. Unfortunately, this strategy does not account for Guilford College's Jordan Snipes. Snipes grabbed the rebound and immediately chucked the ball all the way down the court. I have seen NBA pros throw up airballs from half court. Snipes missed the rim, but got all net. His team won by two.

As I said before, you really must watch the video, and if you're interested, you can read the article about the game.

Update: For your convenience, here is another link to the video and a link directly to a video file, though this one is edited slightly.