Piss on politicians: A tale of two stadiums

A story started circulating in the last week or so that has me seriously thinking about getting into politics. Because if the buffoons who are responsible for this can be in positions of power, a stupid schmuck like me can do it too.

Apparently, officials from Washington, D.C. are talking about trying to woo the Washington Redskins to relocate back into the city. For those who don't realize it, the Redskins play at FedEx Field in Landover, Md. Been there for 10 years after leaving behind the miserable hell hole known as RFK Stadium. FedEx is one of the jewels of the NFL -- the largest stadium in the league at just under 92,000 seats, more than 200 luxury boxes. But the fact that seemingly has eluded the good mayor of Washington and some of his cronies on the city council is that the Redskins' tyrannical owner, Daniel Snyder owns FedEx Field. So even if the city somehow induced him to move back into town, he'd have to unload the stadium he's already got. And nobody is going to buy a 92,000 seat stadium that has no tenant. The mayor of D.C., by the way, is the same guy who repeatedly opposed funding of the new Nationals' stadium while he was on the city council.

Maybe if Starfleet Command called the starship Enterprise back into Earth orbit, they could beam FedEx Field into the District. Even then, you're looking at myriad problems with the utilities and infrastructure ... you know, sometimes even the easy solution can't work.

I don't live in D.C., so maybe I'm not permitted to comment on things like this -- I'm part of the country that taxes those poor people without representation, after all. But if I did live there, I would be disgusted that anyone in power thinks trying to lure the Redskins back to town is a good use of time. You mean you've got nothing better to do? How about focusing on the development of the area around the new Nationals' stadium? How about doing something about the crime that runs rampant and spills over into the surrounding counties?

The Redskins left. It happened. You had the chance to keep them there, but it didn't occur to you to do anything about the hell hole you had them playing in. And now, a decade later, you want to try to fix it. Too late. Move on. Be lucky you have a baseball team. They play literally 10 times more home games every year than the Redskins. That means if you create the right kind of neighborhood around that ballpark -- retail, dining, clubs -- you're going to have a major boom for the city's economy. Focus on that. Don't just make it good. Make it the best ballpark neighborhood in the nation.

Do that and you'll all have plenty of cash to bankroll a few luxury suites at FedEx.

Tech notes

So I've lost one of the outlets for my witless ramblings about sports media and tech. Things change. What are you going to do? So I guess I'll try to start using this space to do what I'd been doing elsewhere. And I'll be using more words here. Because it's my blog, and I can.

• XM and Sirius are trying to merge. Tell me you didn't see this coming. I remain addicted to satellite radio. I listen on the way to work, which fortunately doesn't take as long as it used to -- nothing like the office moving closer to your house. I listen all day at work. I listen as I'm falling asleep. There's always something on worth hearing. So I'm looking forward to what happens when the two systems come together. Mel Karmazin, the head of Sirius, claims they're not going to raise the subscription price for the new company. I'll believe that when I see it. Actually, I'll sort of believe this whole merger when I see it. I think it's still 50-50 whether it gets regulatory approval. I like what I've seen from the Sirius music channels. Every time I've been in Best Buy and messed around with a Sirius radio, they always seem to have multiple channels playing music I like. And I love the idea of having access to all the sports broadcasts. But it sounds a lot like they're going to create different programming tiers and charge more money to get the sports content. That sucks. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised with the new lineups and prices, but I'm preparing to pay a few bucks more per month.

• NBA Street Homecourt came out a couple weeks ago. I messed around with the demo and it seemed pretty good. The tricks weren't impossible to learn, which was refreshing. There's nothing worse than being unable to really play the game the way it's supposed to be played because you can't master the button mashing. I had a chance to talk to Sue Bird, the former UConn star now with the Seattle Storm of the WNBA. She's one of six WNBA players included in the game, which marks a first for women's basketball players. There wasn't room for me to use most of what I talked to her about, but it was an interesting conversation. She's got the hottie factor going for her. One Web site I saw referred to her as the Anna Kournikova of the WNBA, which I'm not sure is really a compliment, considering how infrequently Kournikova wins. Bird seems to take her off-court celebrity in stride. She doesn't seem to mind the idea that her appearance may bring guys to WNBA games, saying that the quality of the game will make an impression, even if that's not what brought someone in the door to begin with. And she understands that people either appreciate the women's game or they don't. But she was a little frustrated by the fact that there's a double standard when it comes to endorsements. She pointed out that a good-looking male athlete won't get those opportunities unless he achieves something on the field. And, of course, it didn't work that way for Kournikova. The really interesting part of the conversation, to me, was that she still hasn't had a chance to actually see herself in the video game. I figured at some point EA Sports would have given her a demo to check out. No such luck. She spends the winter playing in Moscow (which must be great fun, because that's where I want to be in the dead of winter). She came back to the U.S. to attend the NBA Street launch party in Las Vegas, a couple days before the NBA All-Star game. But there was a snow storm that week and she got stuck in New York and never made it. And she had to turn around and head back to Moscow because her team had a game. It must be a strange experience to see yourself in a video game. And even stranger when the game is out there and people are playing as you and you haven't had a chance to see it yet.
  
  
• SportsLine is gearing up for lots more of its live coverage of big events. Their March Madness on Demand set records last year as the most-viewed live event in Internet history. And they're going to be showing live coverage from the Masters on the Web too. I think this is a model other sports could follow. The reason this stuff works is because it's during the work day, when millions of office drones are tethered to their desks -- the perfect captive audience. The idea of playing sports events during the day is from a bygone era. For years, everything has been at night because that's when the TV networks can get their best audiences. But is the same thing going to happen for Internet broadcasts? The time to maximize the audience for a Web cast is in the middle of the work day. Now, it's true that the NCAA Tournament and the Masters are marquee events, and perhaps much of the interest is the result of their importance in the sports world. Would a routine regular season game draw an audience the same way? Probably not. But isn't that what everyone said about Monday Night Football at the beginning? It became a must-see event because it was packaged properly. And the same thing could be done on the Web.

DJ

When Dennis Johnson's life was cut short by a heart attack last week, the scribes and pundits all came gushing forth with the predictable response: Dennis Johnson, Mr. Under-appreciated.

He was only under-apprecaited by people who didn't watch him play. It's easy to make that interpretation if you only know him by his stat line. He was never the highest profile player on his teams, and so it comes as something of a shock when you see how much he scored -- especially in the playoffs. You don't average 17.3 points per game in the postseason without being a hell of a player.

What you remember about him if you watched those Celtics teams of the 1980s was how great he was in the clutch. You remember how relentless he could be. You remember him shutting down Magic Johnson in the 1984 Finals. Larry Bird called him the best he'd ever played with. He was the perfect point guard for those Celtics teams. He understood his role on a team with Larry Bird was to make sure Bird had the ball. How many other point guards wouldn't have been able to assimilate into that Celtics lineup and make such a critical contribution?

It's unfortunate that he's not been recognized for his achievements. He belongs in the Hall of Fame. And at some point he'll be inducted. And more people who didn't appreciate his game until after he died will write about how great he was.

Some of us knew it all along.