Thursday, November 29, 2012

Harbaugh Picks Kaepernick & Other Sports Thoughts

Hello,

Jim Harbaugh announced this past Wednesday that he had decided to go with Colin Kaepernick as the 49ers starting quarterback for this week's game. Of course the 49ers are playing the Rams, so for this game the starting quarterback doesn't really matter. The 49ers would easily win that game with either qb playing. But how will this play out going forward? I understand what Harbaugh is doing. But he's taking a big chance with this high risk, high reward decision. What happens if Kaepernick gets injured, has not starting destroyed Alex Smith's confidence? Is there a division in the locker room about who should start?

We won't know if this is the right decision or not until the end of this season. But Harbaugh had better hope this works. Choosing the player with potential is pretty much how Jerry Jones runs the Cowboys. How has that worked out for him? Of course this is a much different situation and probably either quarterback will do well enough. But if Kaepernick bombs will that decision take some of the shine off of Harbaugh? With this decision he leaves himself open to people questioning him. Also how far does Kaepernick have to lead the 49ers for people to consider this experiment to be successful?

Alex Smith has been a solid quarterback all season and did get the 49ers to the NFC Championship game last season. Remember Smith is only out of the lineup because he was injured.

Smith did lead the 49ers on this very big drive:



Smith also looks pretty good here:



Smith had a good, but not great NFC Championship Game, he did his share for the 49ers to win. And if Kyle Williams doesn't have those two very bad plays in the NFC Championship Game, who knows what happens? For the most part Williams has been a good player for the 49ers. He's been injured and is out for the rest of this season. He will be missed.

I hope Harbaugh is making the right decision. I would love to have a team to cheer for in the Super Bowl once again.

The Honey Badger has announced that he's declaring for the NFL Draft, which is bad news for the Dallas Cowboys. Why do I consider that bad news for the Cowboys? Because Jerry Jones is an idiot. He long has decided to draft flash and potential over common sense when picking players. He picks that over high class and durable players. That's why the Cowboys have more than their share of head cases and injury prone players. Sometimes some of Jerry's picks are both head cases and injury prone.

It almost seems inevitable that the Badger will end up with Dallas, almost as certain as Josh Hamilton ending up with the Yankees.

Jerry you also need to hire Sean Payton for your pathetic team. It's time to end the mediocre Jason Garrett era.

Gene Chizik has been fired by Auburn University as their head football coach. Karma is now coming after those people who perpetuated one of the biggest scams in NCAA history, the 2010 National Championship Football title. Karma is catching up with Scam Newton, look how bad the team that he now plays for is.  Insert your own joke about the Tigers having a bigger payroll than the Panthers. Scam had a decent game in his last game, but that was against the injury depleted and the quitting on the season Eagles.

One more quick NFL note, tonight's game between the Saints and the Falcons look like it will be a good game. I should cheer for Atlanta to win, as a Saints loss will increase the Cowboys chance of making the playoffs. However I just can't do it.

Congrats to the Wizards for finally winning their first game of the season. My condolences to the Trail Blazers for being the team that the Wizards broke through against.

Happy Birthday to Vin Scully, 85 years young. Quite simply, he's one of the greatest baseball announcers ever. He's truly the gold standard!

The Atlanta Braves signed B.J. Upton to a 5 year- $75 dollar contract. I'm not sure how I feel about that. He's always been a decent player, but I'm not quite sure if he deserves that much money. I wonder how things will be different for the Braves with Chipper Jones retiring?

Out of all the magazines I read the best writing is found in two magazines. Those magazines are Sports Illustrated and Esquire. The July 9th and 16th combined issue of SI was full of great writing. It's the Where Are They Now issue which has Earl Campbell on the cover. I remember watching Campbell play when I was a kid. I mostly remember his massive thighs. Football players also seemed to be a lot tougher back then.



Anyway the article about Earl Campbell by Lee Jenkins is a great article. Those big hits did eventually catch up with Campbell. However he seems to be doing about the best he can do now. He still looks like he can knock most men on their butt.

Other great articles in that issue include L. Jon Wertheim's article about Shawn Kemp and Chris Nashawaty's article about "Bull Durham". (I would love to see a WATN article about either "Field of Dreams" or "The Natural".) This is one of the greatest scenes in any movie ever:



Just like the ending scene in "Where The Red Fern Grows", the above scene gets me every time.

Other great articles in the SI Where Are They Now? issue:

1) Ted Keith's article about John Paciorek.
2) David Epstein's article about the amazing Ben Helfgott, what a remarkable man.
3) Rebecca Shore's article about Greg Louganis.
4) Phil Taylor's article about Reggie Jackson is also a great article. Jackson is a very interesting person. I always have had a great amount of respect for him, although he killed my Dodgers so many times.

Thanks SI for another interesting issue.

themusicaddict


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