The Tino Standard

I've been leaning toward getting a DVR for the last year... Looks like I'll have a fine reason to do it come January '05.

Are you surprised he is on Smackdown? Touche'.

His look just screams "indy gimmick."

I apologize for going off-topic here, but a six-sided ring? WTF?

Not exactly "Old School" but for me, nothing beats JR and Heyman at SummerSlam 01 right after the WWF title match... Austin just got himself disqualified to save his title, and they show the announcers after the match. JR is just RAVING about what a chickenshit Austin was for doing that and he's about ready to turn blue in the face. He finishes with something like "And, Paul, Austin knows he can't beat Angle! I dare you to deny that!!!!" (I'm paraphrasing here) Heyman just gives him a blank look and then turns to the camera and is like "Hey fans, beginning this coming Saturday night, the WWF is going to have a brand new show called "Excess!"" JR just sits there fuming.

If the rumors are true that Survivor Series will be in Cleveland this year, I love your idea.

Can somebody explain why during the match, they only used the ringside cameras? It got really obnoxious to watch and looked bush league.

Wrigley Field. End of story. I took a baseball history class a couple years ago, and our professor (a respected baseball historian) said about Wrigley: "If they ever decide to tear it down, I'm grabbing every shotgun and pitchfork I can find, I'm starting a militia and I'm going to defend that place until I die. Feel free to join me." I'd be right there with him.

I said in a "money match" thread on here a month or so ago: Within a few years, Orton-Cena will be THE feud that defines this generation of the company. I'm sticking by that.

When and why was Lanny Poffo arrested?!

Considering that Austin had a cinder block smashed over one knee, only to show up on Raw the following week with tape on the OTHER knee (and yes, just tape... for a cinder block getting smashed over his knee), I'd say it's not below them to take shortcuts with Kurt Angle's leg cast.

I think that the Cardinal is the type of tree found on that Stanford logo, but I could be wrong. And hope this doesn't affect the men's basketball uniforms too much... I thought those were pretty nice.

No more Starcade?

And then there was his other gem during the Gimmick Battle Royal... "Here comes the Iron Sheik... By the time he gets to the ring, it will be Wrestlemania 38!"

... and hello Madden cover boy jinx.

During his abysmal tenure with the Boston Celtics, Pitino finally broke down in front of the media one day and delivered a speech saying "Larry Bird isn't walking through that door... Kevin McHale and Robert Parish aren't walking through that door..." and basically just told the media to get over the fact that it wasn't that era anymore. This all would've been well and good had he been able to build a new winning dynasty, but his team imploded, his players hated him and fans stayed away in droves. He was on thin ice in Boston to begin with, and that just completely alienated him from Celtics diehards. As for this case, I don't blame him for being pissed. You roll the dice when you recruit a guy like Telfair because he has very legitimate reasons for going pro right out of high school. But when a juco guy decides to make the jump without giving any indication he'd been considering it, and he'll be a second-rounder AT BEST, yeah, Pitino has a right to be salty about the whole ordeal.

That's the price you pay when your show has a really unique quirk, like 24's "real time" format.

I wouldn't hand the Bungles anything yet. They still haven't had a winning season in God knows how long, plus they're starting a quarterback (Palmer) this year with no in-game experience. It would be as easy for them to go 5-11 this year as it would be 11-5.

Pose as a campus website reporter? Fuck that. I AM a staff writer for the sports dept. of the city paper. And trust me, I've already been working on my angle for scoring an interview for a story.

Which begs the question: If you're going for a more realistic approach and a punch does so much damage, why are guys wasting time with chops?

They do that mid-match commercial now to keep viewers. The theory is that if people start watching a match and they think it's good, they'll want to stick around to the end. If you put the commercial at the end, people can watch a whole match, be satisfied, then leave to watch something else. It took me a long time to come around on the new WWE style, but there are still things I don't like. For instance, WAY too many chops. I know it's a nice little spot to get the crowd to go "Woooo!" but they really have no impact on the match and are used in transitions way too often. The chop now is what the punch was in the Austin era.

The guy that owns the team is Bob Johnson, just think about that for a second. BOB..cats Anyway, the rumor was that the Magic were exposing Grant Hill to the expansion draft although no one thinks they'll pick him up due to his injuries, but its at least a possibility. That would be as bad a move as the Texans using their first expansion pick on Tony Boselli. Then again, considering the franchise is in Charlotte and Grant Hill played at Duke, it might be tempting. Oh, anybody with a problem over the team name "Bobcats," here's a nice big F-U from a proud Ohio University Bobcat, thank you very much.

They can probably have a fifth guy be a spot starter for road games, so it wouldn't really be a true four-man rotation. If they go with a true four-man, their pitchers will be torched by August.

OK, I'm down to my final weeks at Ohio University before graduation and things are shaping up to be a hell of a lot of fun. Already announced was that on May 19, Dennis Haskins (Mr. Belding) is coming to give a lecture. Today, I find out that on May 13, THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR is being brought in as well. The Ultimate Warrior and Mr. Belding on campus within a week of each other!

"For Real" is probably for Benoit t-shirts or something... If you took a drink for every time JR and King said "Benoit is for real" then you'd be a bit tipsy by the end of the show.