Tag Archives: Todd Haley: Huge Asshole

Better Know a Chiefs Draft Pick: Eric Berry

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Posted by Bellwether Johnson on 04/23/2010 – 10:30am
Filed under Kansas City Chiefs

In which we tell you about your newest Kansas City Chiefs by breaking down each of their picks over the next three days of the NFL Draft.  Today: Tennessee Safety, Eric Berry

 Pros: Freakish Athlete.  Great Instincts.  Legit talent.  Of course, immediately following the draft, everybody says these things.  Ryan Sims, Glenn Dorsey, Tom Bahali [sic].  But this time, you actually get the feeling that they mean it.  This guy can play (unless, you know…he can’t).

Cons: Coming out of commercial, ESPN will show you one of the draft picks talking on the phone and smiling, but will always have commentary running over them so that you can’t heat the conversation they’re having with the coach on the other line.  This way, Berman and the other idiots can continue to speculate on who the next team could possibly be picking, even though we all pretty much know…OR DO WE?!?!  They could, after all, just be pulling a McGahee.

Well, when they came back and shot Eric Berry talking on the phone, there were some technical difficulties, so we got to see Eric pump his fist in the air, and very clearly say, “I’M GONNA BE A CHIEF!!!!!,” only to get two more minutes of Steve Young telling us how great an O-Line pick would be for us.  So anti-climactic.

Also, this pick ain’t gonna fix the defense.  Until we get a legitimite pass rush, Berry’s going to have too much on his plate to turn things around on his own; one player does not a great defense make.  I’t still going to take another couple of years.  I just hope Chiefs fans will keep this in mind when we have the #27 defense next year.  I’m looking at you Kevin Kietzman.

Cursing John Gruden’s Take: “This guy Eric Berry.  He’s a fucking football player.  The first time I saw this guy play, I got a boner.  I’m serious, guys.  A huge fucking rod.  I’m talking diamond in an ice storm hard.  I wanted to kill my mother-in-law with it.  I’m serious, guys.  Just fucking murder her with my dick.  This guy Eric Berry.  He’s gonna be a fucking football player in the National Fucking Football League.”

Jason Whitlock’s Take: “In the moments after the Chiefs made the Tennessee saftey the No. 5 pick in Thursday’s draft, I read Berry’s full resume…”

As opposed to, you know before the fucking draft.  Heaven forbid you do any research on the guy the Chiefs were going to fucking draft all along.  Jesus, man.  You didn’t even read his resume before the draft??  Could you not take yourself away from sucking Dez Bryant’s ballsac for two freaking seconds to put together an actual informed thought about who the Chiefs might actually select??  Who pays this guy??

Pick as Overplayed Advertisement: Dr. Quinn’s Open Hearts Collection.  Kay Jewlers.

God, I hate this ad.  “My muthha towwt me to oowlways keep yoow haaht owpuun.”  Just shut up.  You want me to believe that you, Jane Seymour, thespian extrordinaire, designed something that ugly, and that you truly believe that it would become an international symbol for love.  Nope…just, no.  It looks like a retarded lizard’s poop.  It’s a cheap peice of junk that poor white trash people buy to make believe they can actually afford diamonds.

Oh, and I love how the ad changes for every holiday.  Really, Jane??  I thought your open hearts collection was supposed to become a symbol for last Valentines Day…or last Christmas.  Now, you want it to be for Mother’s Day??  Also, the real Jane Seymour was one of the wives killed by Henry VIII.  If that dont’ say love I don’t know what does.

So what does Eric Berry have to do with this??  Well every Sunday during football season is like a holiday.  So, we hope that just like the damn commercial annoys the piss out of us every time a holiday rolls around, Eric Berry will be the one to annoy the piss out of opposing defenses every Sunday.  You see what I did there??

Sorry.  I know it’s kind of a stretch.  I just really hate that commercial.

Jane Seymour was totally bangable in Wedding Crashers, though.

LaceDarius Dunn Will Not Let The College Basketball Season Die

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Posted by Bellwether Johnson on 04/16/2010 – 12:47pm
Filed under Local College

I was done.  Done thinking about it, done worrying about it, done obsessing…done.  And the “it” of which I am referring is College Basketball.  I was finally content and happy to put it in my back pocket for the next nine months, and let the rest of the shitty world of sports in Kansas City run its course until the Jayhawks suited up again.

This is the reason there hasn’t been a lot of chatter around here with regard to Cole and X going pro.  No commentary on Brandon Knight signing with the Kentucky.  No remarks on Ben Jacobson getting a 10 year extension simply for beating Kansas.**  

 

** Though, what does that say about the stature of Basketball at Kansas, where you can get millions upon millions of dollars by beating one team one time.

 

The trip to STL for the Midwest Regional was still fun sans KU.  HP, Logg and I got to get drunk, sell our Sunday tix for beer money, get drunk, watch me puss out on getting an attractive girls phone number at the pre-game bar, get drunk, listen to DREAM, get drunk, catch a free bus rider from a skeevy looking dude who then fed us beer out of a lukewark cooler and drove us to the stadium along streets whose names you only hear on the news, get drunk, watch Michigan state do to UNI in the second half what KU should have done, get drunk, and…oh, yeah…get drunk.  Not what I had envisioned as the end of this year’s season, but fitting none-the-less.

 

What comes next.  We’ve got a whole summer of bullpen implosions to look forward to.  We have a new coaching staff full of assholes to draft disappointing defensive linemen.  We have hockey playoffs (just kidding…nobody cares about hockey playoffs).

 

So, sure.  Not the most exciting stuff to look forward to, but I’ll pay attention because I’m a dude.  But…just when I thought it was over…out of the deep blue sea comes this:

 

FUCK

 

This fucking asshole again??  Goddammnit, how old is this guy anyways??  He’s been on the team, what, like eight years?? 

 

Here are, completely of the top of my head – with no discernable research – my three least-favorite LaceDarius Dunn memories*:

 

02/14/2004

An 18 year old LaceDarius torches an unsuspecting Senior-laden KU team to the tune of 27 and 16, performing three windmill dunks, and then, to top it off, sees your girlfriend out a bar in Waco afterwords, and bangs the shit out of her.

 

01/26/2005

LaceDarius Dunn, in the midst of his second Sophomore season hits 16 three-pointers, and lifts Baylor to their first ever victory in Allen Field House.  On top of that, to punctuate his twelfth three, he spies Jeff Boschee, himself in his fourth senior season, and punches him square in the face.  In Dunn’s defense, Boschee did kind of deserve it, being Jeff Boschee and all…

 

02/20/2010

After dropping a school record 42 on Kansas, Dunn, not content with continually hitting contested shots against the Jayhawks, performs lazer tattoo removal on this chick at halftime. 

 

* The validity of these stories has not been confirmed. 

 

Point is, LaceDarius Dunn is an asshole.

 

It’s that earlier this season, when he was dropping ridiculous 30-footers with a hand in his face, I said to myself, “Fuck, I thought that asshole graduated…he’s been around for-fucking-ever.”

 

Well, looks like he’s sticking around to stick it in our craw a few more times before flying the coop.

I will now make like the Royals bullpen, and set myself on fire.

Frank Martin Makes Me Want To Pee My Pants

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Posted by Bellwether Johnson on 01/20/2010 – 12:45pm
Filed under Local College

“What does this win mean to me??  It means we won a game on January 18th.  Look, these guys should be proud of the effort they showed tonight, but on Wednesday, they’d better come ready to compete with the same intensity or I WILL DESTROY THEM in practice.”

-Frank Martin after K-State’s win over Texas

Christ, he’s terrifying.

We practice a lot of homerism here in this site.  But we can.  It’s not like we’re journalists or anything.  And other than Asian Schwab, we all pretty much follow the straight path of what I believe is the plurality of  KC Sports fans.  That is, we follow and root HARD for the Royals, Chiefs, and Jayhawks Basketball.  I don’t think we need to apologize for it, but that doesn’t mean that I have to look at KC sports thru any prism other than what a specific sporting event will mean to the teams listed above.

So, with that said, I can say without trepidation that I am completely and utterly horrified of this K-State team.  They are big, they are brash, and they don’t give a FUCK.  They’re like a hockey team out there, and if there were boards on the court, rest assured they’d pull a Sutton/Dupuis any chance they could.

Not to say they’re dirty.  No, they simply play with an attitude that they are going to be more physical than you in every single aspect of the game.  They committed 32 fouls against Missouri.  They committed the same against Colorado, and the Buffs retaliated with 36 of their own, making it the most heavily foul-called basketball game in Big XII history.

While that many fouls might not mean smart basketball, it certainly does mean that K-State is playing a brute style that might not be the most pleasant to play against; at least it wasn’t to Texas on Monday, and certainly won’t be for Kansas in the upcoming Big XII season.   And that’s a reflection on their coach.

Picture this: a young, under qualified coach comes into a head coaching position with almost no relevant experience.  He his thrust into this position mostly for who he knows more than what he can do, and is probably more a product of the players he coached than they of him.  On top of that, he’s a hothead.  He constantly yells at, berates and belittles his players, often times on the playing field.  He’s ornery with the media, and lackluster when he doesn’t have superior players at every position.  Oh, and Jason Whitlock hates him.

Sounds familiar, huh??   But it’s not Todd Haley I’m talking about.  Noooooo.  I happen to be talking about Frank Martin.  Remember this??

“The Wildcats are being swallowed by the enmity, paranoia and feeling of victimization that permeates the K-State fan base and fuels…Frank Martin’s coaching style.”

Or this gem??

“All the game-day, over-the-top negative energy/vulgarity directed at the refs, the opposition…is undermining the Wildcats’ growth.”

And now this:

“[Martin] has a chance to be the Latino/Brown/Cuban John Thompson, college basketball’s groundbreaking Hispanic coaching star.”

Excuse me?? 

Those first two quotes were from columns that Whitlock wrote in Martin’s first season in Manhattan (since deleted from kansascity.com…nice archive, guys).  The last was from today’s paper, imploring new K-State AD John Currie to sign Martin to an extension.

So what’s the difference??

Winning.  That’s it, plain and simple.  It doesn’t really matter what type of coach you are, as long as you win, nobody cares what you do.  Hell, you could shit in a towel as long as you’re tallying points in the “W” column. 

When looking at coaches, it’s important not to look at the reasons why a coach might not be successful, but rather to look at why he is successful.

In the case of both Martin and Haley, Whitlock as focused so intensely on the first that he has forgotten about the latter.  Martin yells and screams, but he relates to his players.  Haley yells and screams, but has a great eye for talent, and knows exactly what he needs out of his players.  There is a reason why these guys were hired.  They know how to coach.

Trust me, the tide will turn for Haley when he gets legitimate talent to work with.  In the mean time might I suggest the beard??

Hell, it seems to be working for RobertoClementeVinceLombarti Martin.  And like I said before…terrifying.

Now Let’s All Irrationally Raise our Hopes for the 2010 Kansas City Chiefs

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Posted by Bellwether Johnson on 01/04/2010 – 12:40pm
Filed under Kansas City Chiefs

Got this text from poscast contributor Daniel at 6:24 last night:

“So we lose a spot or 2 in the draft but spank the donkeys @ mile high & crush their hopes of making the playoffs.  I’ll take it.”

I concur, with several “fuck”s and “yeah”s sprinkled in, though I my mass “Horray Chiefs!” text would have gone something like:

“So we lose a spot or 2 in the draft but avoid Whitlock whining about Scott Pioli and Todd Haley for at least another week.  I’ll take it.”*

* In fact, if you were following @BWetherJohnson or @KCSportsPodcast on Twitter (plug!!), you would have gotten it

And so ends the 50th season of Kansas City Chiefs football, a season that will be known primarily for three things:

1.) The Chiefs sucking
2.) Todd Haley being an asshole
3.) The Chiefs sucking

The reason for pointing out the texts/tweets at the beginning of the column is that it does feel good to go out a winner.  Even if it was against a Denver team that was decidedly more putrid than what their record after six weeks looked like.

Looking at the analysis of the game from a Chiefs perspective at first put a damper on the good feelings that I had acquired while watching the game. 

Final nine weeks:

BRONCOS:
Record: 2-7
Off yards: 330
Def yards: 339

CHIEFS:
Record 3-6
Off yards: 392
Def Yards: 341

At first glance, I thought, “Oh…well, that’s not so impressive.  The Broncos were at least as bad, if not worse than us.  We should have won the game.”

Then…well, wait a minute…did I just say??

That’s right, we should have won the game.  In this historically awful season of retartedly putrid football, the Chiefs were actually (or at least should have been) favored to win a game…and they actually pulled together and did.   

Early in the season, we were (well, me in particular) resigned to downplaying any significance of the Chief’s play due to the fact that they were playing with Carl Peterson and Herm Edwards’ collection of shit boxes.  There wasn’t, I contended, any real way to determine the improvement of the players on this particular team due to the fact that most of them would be replaced by better players before the team turned the corner and actually started winning again.

Well, it looks like maybe the improvement was there after all, and there are some legitimate pieces to build on.  That, coupled with a full slate of draft picks and an entire year of scouting under their belt, I would say what looked impossible for Haley and Pioli a few scant weeks ago might actually transpire: the Chiefs might actually compete before 2015.

Of course, feel free to bookmark this and send it to me after Haley is fired after starting next season 0-5 and Jack Harry is reporting he knifed a hobo under the Paseo Bridge.

There are no magical ways for a bad football team to get better overnight.  The Chiefs still have a long, long road ahead of them, but if you would have asked me to pick any Chiefs team in the past nine years to go into Invesco Field (which opened in 2001) and beat a Broncos team that was playing for their playoff lives, this team would have been on the bottom of my list.  And this team is the only Chiefs team to do that.

That, as they say, is why they play the games.  And that, as they say, is why when you start using Chris Berman schtick, it’s time to end the column.

Jason Whitlock is fat!!  Byesers!!

Week In Review Grab Bag

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Posted by Bellwether Johnson on 12/19/2009 – 12:00pm
Filed under Local College

– Programming Note:

For those that follow our Twitter Feed @KCSportsPodcast we plan to be much more active, so, you know…tweet us (??)  Logg and myself have joined the fray as well. 

Follow us:

@BWetherJohnson
@LWoodKellogg

Time for a Week in Review Grab Bag!!  Let’s see what we find!!  (I hope it’s a Zhu Zhu Pet!!)

Nebraska + Iowa = Kansas

Looks like Lew Perkins was resigned to take his third choice thrilled to hire former Nebraska QB and Buffalo head coach Turner Gill.  Gill has been listed as one of the “Neat’o Awesome Up-And-Coming Coaches” (official title) for the past couple of years.  He’s had some moderate success at a place where nobody expects even moderate success, and took Buffalo to their first bowl game ever.

These are all (yawn) good things, but what most people are talking about is the crack staff of assistant coaches that Gill has assembled to serve on his staff.*  These names include such also-rans as Carl Torbush and former Iowa QB Chuck Long.  

* ”Serve on his staff”…This sounds a lot dirtier than it should…

Many are hoping that the recruiting trail will open up a little wider* with both on board, because, you know, nothing says Kansas Football like former Iowa and Nebraska Quarterbacks!!  Still, from experience, people in Iowa are fucking crazy.  Chuck Long’s name still holds a shit ton of water down here, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to convince a corn-fed half-ton youngster to take the trek to Lawrence, KS than it is to get him to go to either Buffalo or San Diego.

* “The recruiting trail will open up a little wider” …This also sounds a lot dirtier than it should…

Oh, and I’d be remised if I didn’t mention Whitlock’s take.

If you’re scoring at home:

Turner Gill: “I’ll give [him] two years before offering a strong opinion.”
Todd Haley: “Fuck that guy”
Trey Hillman: “Who??”

My advice, Turner??  Invite Ole’ Whitty over for a nice all-you-can-eat buffet before the season so that you can butter him up.  You don’t want to face the wrath of a Whitty scorned.  And if that fails??  I’m sure Charles Barkley will be more than willing to take you up on your offer.

High Powered Recruits + Overmatched Opponents = Kansas

It’s that time of year again!!  Snow on the ground??  Check.  Fifty point victories??  Check.  Sherron Collins trying to shed the last few pound of off-season McDonalds weight??  Check and mate. 

It’s College Basketball Season!!  Yeeay!!

It’s a little hard to tell about these Jayhawks.  They are absolutely rolling right now, and if not for a single renegade Texas vote, they’d be a unanimous #1.  Now, traditionally, there’s not much to be said for CBB before January, and KU’s pre-Big XII season in the past hasn’t been filled with heavy-hitters either, but this season is particularly void of nearly any competition.

Really, the only time KU has struggled this year was against Memphis, and boy was that scary.  As down as Memphis is talent-wise this year, they’re still the most formidable opponent they’ve faced this year, and they just barely squeaked it out.

Still, with as bad as their pre-conference schedule is this year, the Big XII itself is looking better and better.  Mizzou is always a tough out and only two years removed from an Elite Eight run.  K-State is no longer an afterthought, and back in the Top 25.  Texas Tech is finally buying into Knight Jr.-ball.  Even Iowa State is improved; returning their top scorer for the first time in five years.  Looks like the conference is bound to give the KU steamroller some speed bumps this winter…and that’s not necessarily a bad thing…

Also, is this a bad time to mention that I had a dream last night that KU was beaten by Wisconsin in the second round of the tourney in a game in which Cole Aldrich scored only five points??  Also (in real life) I already have tickets to go with HP to the Midwest Regional Final in St. Louis in March. 

OK…I’ll shut up now…

Mizzou + Big Ten = Cash Cow

The Big Ten, as they do every couple of years, has made some noise this week by stating that they will be looking at the possibility of adding a twelfth team to the conference, or as I like to call it, “Shit, we’re insignificant after Thanksgiving…let’s stir the pot.”

The usual names of Pitt and Notre Dame, of course came up, but one, Missouri, might sound surprising.  Missouri, after all, is not viewed as a traditional Big Ten school.  But take this into consideration.

Plus for Mizzou: The Big Ten Network has been a financial boon for the conference, with the proceeds split between all conference members.  The Big XII TV Contract with FSN is heavily geared toward the southern half of the conference.  Also, they already have a natural Big Ten rival in Illinois.  Not quite the Border War, but an established rivalry none-the-less.

Plus for the Big Eleven:  Despite gaining another team for the purposes of hosting a conference championship game, the Big Ten would figure to expand their reach to not one but two metropolitan areas; St Louis and Kansas City.  Oh, sorry…that’s $t. Loui$ and Kan$a$ City.

But, it being college athletics and all, it probably makes WAY too much sense for anybody to actually go for it.

Steel-ing a Victory (It’s a Pun, Get it!?!?)

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Posted by Bellwether Johnson on 11/23/2009 – 12:22pm
Filed under Kansas City Chiefs

I spent yesterday furniture shopping.  That’s right.  A Sunday in the middle of November walking the vast aisles of cherry wood and leather that is the new Homemakers Furniture Super Center in Urbandale Iowa.  I forwent NFL week 11 to look for dining room tables and area rugs for my new place, and help my roommate find a new mattress*

* Which led to the inevitable “two straight guys lying in the same bed on a showroom making sexual position jokes” which led to the inevitable, “two straight guys nearly getting kicked out of the new Homemakers Furniture Super Center for lying in the same bed on a showroom making sexual position jokes.”

I was not watching football, no sir.  I was lost in the intoxicating madness of zero-percent interest for 24 months and pre-holiday shopping madness.  I didn’t even realize that football was going on until I walked past the HDTV department and saw Brett Favre laughing on the sidelines at the end of the Vikings game (he’s like a kid out there!!), at which point, I decided to open up my cell phone, and see how hard the Chiefs got spanked.

The next two minutes went like this: “Wait…what??  That’s gotta be a misprint.  Overtime?!?!”  I called my dad and he regaled me with like play-by-play beginning with Jovan Belcher’s tackle of Mendenhall on third down.  I shrieked so excitedly when Succop kicked the game-winner, that I got more stares than when I was demonstrating the superiority of the Sealy Posturepedic to the Simmons Beautyrest re: the doggystyle position.

So what’s there to say??  How can I possibly analyze a game that I didn’t even have a vested enough interest in to watch??  Well I can’t…really.  Alls I know is from looking at highlights and statistics, which tell the story of a team that got lucky to the tune of a 97-yard kickoff return and a 94-yard interception return.  But, they still won the game.

I like to view sports thru a statistical lens.  Don’t tell me how much “poise” a QB has, or how much “heart” a defense plays with.  Those are made-up things that manifest themselves by way of sportswriters who can’t think of anything better to write.  Give me something concrete that I can sink my teeth into. 

By that rationale, it doesn’t seem like the Chiefs are getting any better.  Sure they won, but statistically they got their asses handed to them.  They can’t win week-in, week-out with the group of flunkies they keep trotting out.  We already know this.  The stats say so.

But, there was one thing that I saw in the highlights this week that made me go, “Hmmm.”  It was something that was beyond the boxscore, beyond the statistics, and something that I think the Chiefs can truly build on.    At the end of the game, Succop’s field goal sailed thru the uprights, about a dozen Chief’s players immediately went to Todd Haley to give him a bearhug.

So much as been said about Haley being an asshole*, and most of it is probably true.  Thing is, when the Chiefs do succeed, it seems as if they gravitate toward him.  And it doesn’t seem as if it is being done in a sarcastic, “we won despite you being a jackass,” sort of a way.  It seems as if it’s being done in a, “I know you drive us hard, but man, that makes the payoff that much more sweet,” sort of way.  And on top of that, it looked like he actually enjoyed it!!  When Dwayne Bowe dropped a bucket of Gatorade on his dome after his first win in DC, he looked like Haley was about to rip his head off.. .

* Seriously.  Googlefish ‘Todd Haley is.’  The only thing that pre-populates is ‘a jerk.’

And I hate writing stuff like that, because it is not statistical.  It’s not concrete.  There is no smile/frown ratio to reference when making that point.

Still, if a miracle win against a team that thoroughly destroyed you in every was is what is needed for a team to trust their hard-driving head coach, than so be it. 

Hell, he’s even got Jason Whitlock convinced…though I don’t know if that’s just because Whitty’s too exhausted from writing three whole columns in the past week to write anything else…too bad there’s not a stat for that.