Jim Irsay: How Did His Problem Become This Severe?

By now, you’ve probably heard the story regarding Colts’ owner Jim Irsay’s arrest on Sunday night on charges of drug possession and driving under the influence. Irsay has since checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic and hopes to get clean much in the same way he did in 2002 when prescription painkillers took over his life.

Some of you might wonder how a problem this serious was able to fly under the hyper-maniacal feed that is the NFL news cycle. I personally believe that it has been able to do so due to two specific points:

1) Visibility of said celebrity

2) Our country’s attitude towards alcohol versus drug addiction

These two factors played a huge role in how Irsay’s problem became this severe.

What We Learned From Week 17 of the 2013 NFL Season: The Play-Off Preview Edition

By J-Dub and Meehan

As we promised in last week’s What We Learned piece, it is time for us here at Sports Blog Movement to breakdown this play-off season, because like we always say, there’s a ton of stuff you need to know that the usual suspects in the sports media will miss while they are busy lapping Peyton Manning’s spooge off a locker-room floor. Having said that, let’s break this down by conference.

AFC:

The Actual Conference Play-Off Power Rankings:

This has nothing to do with the seeding of the tournament; this has everything to do with who is playing the best football right now.

What We Learned From Week 11 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Up until now, we’ve been consulting our medical expert Dr. Kelly Brackett for his prognoses on NFL teams. But now that we are clearly in the homestretch, it’s time to shift our focus from the survivors and the casualties to an analysis of the survival of the fittest. That means we change our expert as well; rather than looking for overall health, this becomes an exercise in actuarials…or to make it sound less insurance-like..it’s time to look at the odds of each possible contender making the play-offs.  For that, we have invited legendary movie odds-maker Sam “Ace” Rothstein for his thoughts.

AFC:

1) Indianapolis Colts (7-3)

Remaining Games:

• @Arizona
• Tennessee
• @Cincinnati
• Houston
• @Kansas City
• Jacksonville

Odds of Making Play-offs:

Metaphysical certainty. Steal as much money as you can get your hands on, then bet twice that much that Indianapolis will be in the play-offs.

Key Facts:

With six games to go, the Colts have a three-game lead in the AFC South over their closest competitor, and they just beat them on the road with a dramatic comeback victory.The Colts will make the playoffs because no one else in the AFC South will step up and challenge them.  The Titans are in second place, and the other two teams might as well be Terri Schiavo two days after they yanked her feeding tube.  They’ve already beaten Seattle, San Francisco, and the Broncos, and by the time they get to the Kansas City Chiefs, both teams could be just resting up for January.

What We Learned From Week 8 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from concussion poster children like Merrill Hoge, you probably also didn’t know that tetherball originated as  ninth-century Tatar war ritual that involved chopping off the head of your dead enemy, tying it to a pole, and beating the shit out of it.

Think about that the next time you drive by an elementary school. Now let’s learn something about this week in the NFL. 

1) Your Official Dr. Kelly Brackett NFL Death Watch:

Philadelphia Eagles

• Cause of Death: Vick-Barkley Syndrome
• Autopsy Report with Bonus Comment:  For the record, Meehan accurately projected how the Eagles would start this game.  Ah yes…here it is…

“But after all that, really – it’s a 60% capacity Michael Vick versus Eli.  And after Vick leaves the game because he aggravates that hamstring yet again, it’ll be Matt Barkley in his place.”

What We Learned From Week 7 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from whichever fat-bag ex-player they’ve trotted out who makes a $1,500 suit look like a bursting sausage casing with buttons, you probably also didn’t know that kit-flying is a professional sport in Thailand.

Think about that the next time you want to tell us how much soccer sucks.

1) Your Official Dr. Kelly Brackett NFL Death Watch:

We started this bit a few weeks ago, and in addition to the death certificates we mailed out last week, there’s another autopsy report to share with you.

Minnesota Vikings:

• Cause of Death: Multiple Organ Failure
• Autopsy Report: This  death didn’t exactly have an obscure pathology. Taking a guy who got run out of town by the most dysfunctional franchise in the NFL (holy living fuck, for the first time this century that phrase is not being used in reference to the Oakland Raiders) and making him your starting quarterback is like taking a needle from the arm of an Ebola patient and using it to shoot 30 cc’s of battery acid into your eyeball. Make no mistake, this team is dead. If it wasn’t the fact that you saw the Giants spreading Josh Freeman all over the turf like he was 250 pounds of Jif Extra Creamy Peanut Butter, if it wasn’t the fact that Adrian Peterson couldn’t get anywhere with the ball, then the sight of Christian Ponder sitting on the sidelines knowing full well he will never see the field again had to tell Viking fans everywhere this team is done.  The part that is hard for us to understand is that Ponder was HUGE in the Vikes’ playoff run last season, so what happened? He suddenly didn’t get any more mediocre; he’s been amazingly consistent in his level of meh. The simple fact is the entire team got worse.

Did Anybody Happen To Notice Jim Irsay Was Right? P.S. Tony Dungy Has His Head Up His Ass

For all the media-generated bluster that has happened today over Indianapolis Colts’ owner Jim Irsay’s comments about his former quarterback, one thing that has bee largely forgotten is that everything Irsay said is true.  In case you missed it, here’s what he said in an interview with USA Today Sports. The context is Irsay is lamenting the fact the Colts had only one title to show for all their success with Peyton Manning.

“[Tom] Brady never had consistent numbers, but he has three of these [Super Bowl rings],” Irsay told USA Today. Pittsburgh had two, the Giants had two, Baltimore had two and we had one. That leaves you frustrated. You make the playoffs 11 times, and you’re out in the first round seven out of 11 times. You love to have the ‘Star Wars’ numbers from Peyton and Marvin [Harrison] and Reggie [Wayne]. Mostly, you love this ring.”

So, what Irsay is saying is a) the NFL is all about winning Super Bowls, and b) Peyton Manning is a horse-shit “big-game” quarterback.

Don’t even try to tell me that the first one isn’t true. Winning a Super Bowl is like becoming a Yokozuna in Sumo Wrestling. Once you have teh ring, you are always a grand champion and no matter what, they can never take it away from you. The fact that Tony Dungy has one is the only reason anybody bothers to listen to the crap spewing from that little bat-faced, moralizing asswipe. I’ll come back to him in a minute.

You can try to deny the second point is untrue; doing so is to ignore a few crushing facts.

• FACT: In three years at Tennessee, Peyton Manning never beat main rival Florida.
• FACT: Peyton Manning owns a 9-11 playoff record as a starting quarterback.
• FACT: In 8 of Manning’s 12 career playoff appearances, his team has failed to win a single game.
• FACT: Manning is tied with Brett Favre for the most playoff losses by a starting quarterback in NFL history

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Sports Blog Movement NFL Preview: AFC South

The AFC south was a one car race for over a decade. For 10 years the Indianapolis Colts dominated the division in record breaking fashion, posting more wins and division titles than any other team in NFL history over a ten year time period. Even more than their nemesis from the East, the Patriots. It was more lopsided than Tony Stewart on the Indianapolis speedway racing against a few dozen Asian women in Volkswagens.

The Jaguars were kinda-sorta good for a few years, if you consider good as getting into the playoffs as a wildcard team twice in the last 13 seasons. The Tennessee Titans won a Division title in the middle of the Colts epic run and then disappeared into anonymity faster than the 5th Kardashian sister. Both teams were little more than a temporary nuisance to the Colts. Neither team sustained any momentum and went back to being Indy’s doormat.

Then 2011 happened. Manning’s neck turned into a bent slinky and suddenly the Colts went into the wall in turn three. They finished the race only because the league forced them to actually play all 16 games. Someone had to take over the division, and the Houston Texans decided it was as good a time as any to start being competitive after 10 years in existence.

But the Colts went to the pits, drafted Andrew Luck, and got right back into the race.

2013 like any other year in the AFC south since it’s inception: there is one very good team, a borderline playoff team and two of the worst teams in the entire NFL. Barring some unexpected bad luck the results of this year’s race should surprise no one.

Signs We Are Near The End Of Civilization: The Indianapolis Colts Now Have Sensitivity Training Classes For Fans

Thanks to the Indianapolis Colts, we have yet another solid gold example of the further hypocritical pussification of America.

The following sentence gives us the “pussification” part.

The Colts pre-season starts this weekend. There are some new security policies in place but one thing remains the same. Behaving badly at Lucas Oil Stadium can get you booted and banned from returning.

That may be true, but it seems there is a wide gulf in the definition of “unruly behavior.”

It’s people who are unruly, yelling, screaming, standing up in front of you and getting obnoxious, the normal stuff that happens when people drink too much.

OK, football fans.. if I were to ask 10,000 of you which team has fans who get completely out of control, the number who said “the Colts”  would be somewhere between “zero” and “are you fucking kidding me?” This stupid-ass article even admits that.

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A Sports Blog Movement Exclusive: The Ex-Kicker’s Round Table on the NFL Draft – The “Manning Effect”

If you aren’t familiar with our Ex-Kicker’s Round Table, you can see their biographies here. The long story short is that here at Sports Blog Movement, we have retained this group of ex-Kickers as our own sporting version of the McLaughlin Group. With the NFL Draft approaching, we noticed that each member of our group just happens to be from a team who has some interesting choices to make when the draft rolls around in a few months.

As we said in the last installment of the Ex-Kicker’s Round Table,  SBM’s moderator of this group lives in Indiana where the Colts are easily the biggest story of all in this draft.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the Colts dropped a bomb (albeit an expected one) on the draft/free agency market when they released Peyton Manning this past week. While that story has been seriously over-covered, what is not being said is how this move effects almost every other team in the league.

Peyton Done in Indy — Destinations and Options Abound for 18 but the Classiest Man in Sport

Peyton Manning is no longer an Indianapolis Colt. As shocking and as weird as it is for my generation to consider, it’s actually happening. In the classiest thing that I have seen amongst big time professional athletes and sports media in the last 6 years, Peyton Manning shed real man tears in his farewell to Indianapolis, the franchise that drafted him number one overall from Tennessee in 1998. If you haven’t seen it in it’s entirety, bring your hankies and watch this: