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So this is my favorite draft ever and GNR’s classic Appetite for Destruction might be my favorite album ever. It is top to bottom solid with a few of the deeper cuts you could even view as “sleepers”. Time will tell on my draft but we already know this album is rad so hopefully Spud McKenzie’s Party Animals do it justice… 

1. Welcome To The Jungle-With the first pick I took Joseph Addai. He has had one season that got everyone really excited about this guy but still kind of unproven. It is kind of like hearing the Hollywood Rose demos and hearing promise and then the opening shred of this anthem…hopefully Addai pans out half as well.
   

2. It’s So Easy-Kinda sleazy and not really one of the better cuts but some classic lines. Well lets hope the Raiders D hits you and you fall down…suh!
   

3. Nightrain-Maybe the best song on the record and easily my favorite. The crash and burn part reminds me of Marques Colston who sadly I think is a flash in the pan. I think he is on the nightrain. I think he loves that stuff. I am not sure if he can get enough…
   

4. Out Ta Get Me-I don’t think Vick is innocent and I would not advise anyone to suck him as he has the shanks. I do think Vick’s troubles (and the fact that Dunn is 45) will help my man Jerious Norwood. Take that one to heart…
   

5. Mr. Brownstone-Again…under-appreciated along side the sexier picks so this one has to go to my man Marc Bulger. He puts up numbers just south of Manning, Palmer, Brady but does not get the run. Well on Sundays I wont get up on time but ill be watching Bulger put up huge numbers and I’ll be sipping a drink and feeling fine.

6. Paradise City-Crazy coked out song reminds me of a crazy coked out city and their drugged up D. I grabbed the Chargers D in hopes that they would eat more horse roids and do more cool dances when they hurt people.

7. My Michelle-Sleeper jam for a sleeper pick. I grabbed Selvin Young who is somewhere on the Broncos RB depth chart but Shannahan might decide he wants to play QB in week 1 so who knows. You never can tell…

8. Think About You-I kind of hate this song and I am only happy when it comes on if I have been subjected to a flurry of sweet Nickelback songs, songs about loving a bar, or maybe something from that He/She Fergie . That is kind of how I feel about Braylon Edwards.

9. Sweet Child O’ Mine-Ahh the power ballad…you had to hear that record and know it was a hit. This is basically the same as Adam Vinateri as I am 100% sure what I am getting here.

10. You’re Crazy-The most punk song on the record goes to the most punk player on my team and that is Chris Cooley. The dude has a white guy afro and I hope is not in the NFL’s substance abuse program. He also admitted to having six fantasy teams. Even as I sit here writing a blog comparing my fantasy football team to GNR I think that is crazy.

11. Anything Goes- I don’t love this song and I certainly did not love this pick. Cadillac Williams could be great again or could suck. Anything goes I guess…

12. Rocket Queen-I absolutely love this song and I absolutely love these two picks. I grabbed both Brandon Marshall and Patrick Crayton towards the end of my draft. These guys are both young WRs in systems that are aging but have gunslinger QBs.

 Written by Andy Georgin

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There are only 2 possible opinions one can hold of the commissioner and of the media during the steroids era. You can either believe that (1) Bud Selig and all the beat writers in the entire country were so horrific at their jobs (I’m talking Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 bad) that they had absolutely no idea that the players were taking steroids or you can believe that they understood what was going on in the locker rooms and saw it as a necessary evil to get the game back on its feet at the cost of a few broken records and swollen stats.

The amusing thing here is that Bud Selig would prefer you believe option #1. When it comes down to it, he would rather be seen as a complete professional failure before he is seen as the slightest bit responsible for the steroids era. Of course, anyone in their right mind knows that this is false, the level of incompetents needed to fail so entirely at one’s job is damn near impossible.

There really is only one logical explanation. After the 1994 player’s strike forced the cancellation of the ’94 World Series, a clinically depressed and (in my head) smash-face-drunk Bud Selig shook hands with the Devil, offering up a few “minor” records in exchange for the game’s return to success. And it’s no wonder Selig had no interest in watching Bonds blast number 756 out of the park. Each swing can only remind him of that fateful day when he gave in to the big man in red, trading away the integrity of 100+ years of professional baseball for a stadium full of obnoxious half-fans wearing pink Red Sox jerseys. Sure, the money’s good, but the game just doesn’t feel quite the same.

So remember kids, like your friends at Veggie Tales tell you, be true to yourself, don’t do drugs, and never make a deal with the Devil.

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Much to the chagrin of Bud Selig, baseball purists, and sports writers all across America, Barry Bonds has now hit over 755 homeruns. Like it or not, Bonds is now the caretaker of sport’s most sacred record. The more I think about this, however, the less Barry Bonds seems like a sports hero and the more he seems like the poster-boy for the new American way. Meanwhile, watching Bud Selig’s plight and the swell of media attention feels like watching one of those God-awful, Veggie Tale cartoons where a bunch of poorly computer-animated vegetables tell me why making a deal with the Devil may be nice at first, but will always come to bite me in the tokus.

Part 1:

Barry Bonds and the Why Nice Guys Finish Last

            In 22 major league seasons, Barry Bonds has made an extremely strong case to be the greatest hitter ever to play the game.  He’s smashed records in walks, on base percentage, intentional walks, homeruns hit in a single season and, now, the most homeruns hit during a major league career.  And how did he do this?  The same way nearly every “successful” American businessman, politician, athlete, or what-have-you has done it for the past 50 years: with a combination of talent, hard work, and a “whatever it takes” attitude.

            There’s no point in arguing whether or not Barry Bonds has talent.  His numbers speak for themselves.  Even assuming that he, knowingly or unknowingly, too some kind of performance enhancing drugs, I’m pretty sure that if we pumped Barbaro’s share of steroids into someone like Brad Paisley, we wouldn’t be looking at the new homerun king.  Why not?  No talent.  And when it comes down to it, Bond’s blast to left/center field isn’t really what interests me.  Don’t get me wrong, I flipped over to ESPN for every Bonds at bat until I finally saw number 756.  But that swing wasn’t about baseball.  It wasn’t about sports, or race, or even personal greatness.  No, to me, that swing was about America’s new creed: “Whatever it takes.”

            The phrase pretty much sums up every major American scandal over the past 50 years: Enron, Watergate, Valerie Plame, Lloyd Flandis (Lance Armstrong?), Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and so-on.  You can pretty much plug the words “whatever it takes” to every guilty defendant of these scandals and you would pretty much be getting the full story.  For every one guy who did it the “right” way, every one success story, there are at least a hundred different guys who have been more successful doing it the “wrong” way.  And the problem is that this new and growing mentality stands little chance of being stopped.

            Great historian, Howard Zinn, will be the first to tell you that the people of this country suffer for the simple reason that the people who make the rules are the ones that benefit from them.  But now, we’ve stepped into a world where breaking the rules is not only okay (so long as there’s no concrete evidence of it), but so wide spread that to not break the rules is to set yourself at a significant disadvantage. 

What the media has completely missed about this whole thing is that shortcuts like steroids aren’t banned to protect the individuals who want to use them.  These shortcuts have been discouraged so that they don’t become common practice.  But until the people in charge of enforcing the rules start suffering as a result of those breaking them, Barry Bonds will make $15.5 million a year, Kevin Youkilis will make $424K, and nice guys will finish last.

Written by Tarek

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