Denver Broncos Receivers of the John Elway Era

So, Warren? What do you do at work? I get this a lot. This is what I do. Excuse the prose, I didn't put the effort into making this really readable. Just the facts:

Steve Watson was the leading receiver in Elway's first three seasons 83-85. He remained a factor in the offense through 86. Mark Jackson was the leading receiver in 1986 and remained solid through 1992. Vance Johnson led the Broncos in receiving from 1987-89. Mark Jackson led again in 1990. Mike Young had only 600 yards in 1991 but that somehow led Denver even though they went 12-4 and made the AFC Championship Game. Gaston Green had 1000 yards that year rushing but even that isn't that impressive. Weird year. Mark Jackson took a bow in 1992 leading in receiving in his last year for the Broncos before playing for the Giants the next year. Then he embarked on a successful NBA career running the point for the Knicks and Pacers among other teams (not really). In 1993 Shannon Sharpe was Elway's best target from the TE position. He would lead the team again in 1996. In 1994 and 1995 Denver was led in receiving by Anthony Miller. I have no recollection of this guy but his career numbers are pretty impressive: 5 Pro Bowls, almost 10000 yards, and 63 TDs. That's hall of fame stuff. Then in 1997 Rod Smith showed up and has led the Broncos in receiving ever since.

Elway 1000 Yard Receivers:
1983 Steve Watson
1984 Steve Watson
1989 Vance Johnson
1994 Anthony Miller
1994 Shannon Sharpe
1995 Anthony Miller
1996 Shannon Sharpe
1997 Shannon Sharpe
1997 Rod Smith
1998 Rod Smith

Aimless, so aimless

Now that I've solved the mystery of the one game playoff (by discovering there is no good answer to my question), I have no idea what to write about. I have time to kill right now though so I'll just muck up the information superhighway with literally pointless writing, which is good because now I will have a lot more in common with most of the other blogs I come across. Usually when I write I am steering something towards a joke. Not right now. Stop. Wait. NEW SEGMENT: I Review Your Blog!!

Basis: I go to my profile page and click on one of my interests. From that list of blogs I pick one that looks like I'll be able to make fun of it. Then....I will make fun of it.

For the pilot of this segment I clicked on an interest of mine that will surely lead to a weird place: "pot". That brought me to a blogger from East Jakarta (is there any other), Indonesia. Her blogger name is starlight-starbright. She lists her interests as K-Pop, music, fanfiction, POT, Han Gul, Mandarin, Japanese, English, languages. I don't know what K-Pop or Han Gul is/are, and I think that her interest in POT may be an acronym for something else. Or maybe she just really likes it. Maybe her blog will have the answers.
http://un-touch-able.blogspot.com/
Upon viewing this site, I notice she chose the same background as me. I also notice she uses blue font for her post. Only one post ever on this blog and it's from August 15, 2004. The one post blog definitely hints at pot use. The writing is absolutely unintelligible. Sample: I also love to romanize many korean songs How does one go about (a) romanizing a song, and (b) romanizing a korean one. The poster loves to write fan fiction but isn't too consistent. I love to write and read fanfics. So far...I have already written 4 fanfics. The first was finished and I'm working on my 3rd and 4th ones. My problem is that she says she has written four and then admits in the next sentence that she's working on numbers three and four. I give this blog a 0.4 out of 10 with points marked off not being recently updated, poor english, and generally being retarded. This is the type of blog that makes me wonder why I review blogs in the first place.

In the words of starlight-starbright: Ummm...I think that's all from me...LaterZz xp...!!!

King Kaufman and Rob Neyer weigh in

I thought my baseball question was a good one so I fired it off to the criminally underread King Kaufman of Salon.com. To my surprise he replied pretty quickly:

It's a good question. I don't know. It actually makes sense to me, but I can't really articulate a rule. I asked Rob Neyer if knew why the 163rd game doesn't seem to count against the loser in this scenario. Here's what he said:

"Yeah, it's sort of a weird situation. I think everybody just sort of decided that while that 163rd game "counts," it's not relevant vis a vis the Wild Card standings. Which seems fair to me. I've never seen an official explanation either, though. -r"

Thanks for writing.

king

What did we learn from this matter? That baseball has a silly little loophole that they didn't seem to be ready to exercise in 2000 for the Mariners or A's, but were more than ready to employ for the Red Sox or Yankees this season. Baseball is gay, but we already knew that. Also, we learned that the thirty bucks a year for my Salon.com subscription is more than worth it. Most importantly we learned that ESPN's Rob Neyer signs his emails "-r". So that's that.
-w

www.salon.com (pay site but you can view it for 24 hours if you watch a short ad)
www.robneyer.com

Re: Baseball question for Andrew

So I reached out across oceans to Winner and he had nothing to offer. I then decided to cater to my inner Encyclopedia Brown.

The scenario is this: In the event of a three way tie at the end of the season, MLB scheduled a one game playoff between the Yankees and Red Sox with the loser playing the Indians for the Wild Card spot.

From my September 29th post:

Why in this scenario should Cleveland have to play their way into the playoffs against a team with a worse regular season record (on account of the one game playoff)?

Some incriminating material from mlb.com:

"If a Monday playoff game is needed...MLB counts that as a 163rd regular season game for all teams involved."

http://mlbplayers.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/pa/news/article.jsp?ymd=20050926&content_id=1224631&vkey=mlbpa_news&fext=.jsp

How about Jayson Stark talking about this issue concerning the 2000 AL Wild Card Race?

So suppose Seattle, Oakland and Cleveland all finish the season with records of, say, 92-70. Then suppose the Mariners beat the A's in their AL West playoff game. That game would count in the standings, so Oakland's record would drop to 92-71, a half-game worse than Cleveland's record. Hence, the Indians would be in, the A's out.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stark/grumblings/767892.html

That's what I thought. How come these rules don't apply to the Yankees and Red Sox?

And in conclusion: Baseball sucks.

Football and the street

Football recap: Huskies lost a game they should have won. Seahawks lost a game they should have won. I lost in both of my fantasy leagues. I still love football though. I'm going to call this past weekend a deposit in the First National Bank of Football Karma.

Sociology update: I was watching "Virginia Tech: The Season" on the worldwide leader over the weekend and they had a sequence where one of the senior's had a videocamera and was interviewing underclassmen. One of them he introduced as a "Freddy Adu lookalike". If that's not funny to you then just leave right now. A couple of years ago I was sitting in front of the UW football guys at an early season basketball game. One of the athletes remarked that a player on the opposing team looked like NBA forward Dale Davis. This drew hearty guffaws from the rest of the football guys seated directly behind me. Then one of the football guys pointed out the resemblance of a different player on the other team to WWE wrestler Mankind. Again, big laughs.

My hypothesis is this: African-American athletes love to point out when someone looks like a person of relative celebrity. This is very funny to them (and me).

Keep an eye out for more examples of this phenomenon.

In rap: I like the dirty version of David Banner's "Play", but that doesn't make me dirty. I'm totally fine with the fact that it's a ripoff of The Whisper Song. It's still great/hilarious. Another song that I hear all the f-ing time is "Your Body" by Pretty Ricky. Pretty Ricky isn't one dude, but four guys who are related. I don't get it either. Maybe it's a Voltron thing.

Sample lyrics:
[Chorus]
I got new shoes on the ride (yes sir)
Rollin' down 95 (yes sir)
And you can see in my eyes (yes sir)
That I'm lookin for a cutiepie (yes sir)
And we ain't gotta make love (yes sir)
And we can just cuddle up (yes sir)
But if she want me to beat it up (yes sir)
Then dammit, I'll beat it up (yes sir)
My body, your body (it's burnin' up)
My body, your body (it's burnin' up)
My body, your body (it's burnin' up)
My body, your body (it's burnin' up)

[Baby Blue]
I don't know why, but the ladies call ol' baby blue the sticker
They take me and rape me and make me they victim
I lick em and freak 'em if they married I sneak 'em
If they look like wifey material, then I keep 'em
Stuntin' through the city tryin' to find a lady who
Beautiful, but she gotta have booty too
Baby blue gonna let you do what you wanna do
You can feel on it if you really want to
Get a taste of the salami
knock knock knock knock you down like a tsunami

Yep, it really says "get a taste of the salami". Apparently these young men work part time at the butcher's. The earlier "gotta have booty too" is emboldened because of how it is delivered. Imagine Thumb-sucking Fred from Making the Band 2 delivering that line in his whiny yell. That's what it sounds like. It's worth downloading just for that lyric.

If somebody is ever stressing out about bills you should tell them, "You need to stop moralizing your debts, man."