Seattle Sportsnet

Admit it, you’re struggling for ideas.

You need to come up with a killer poster to kick off the college football season, but your brain is still on summer vacation. Lucky for you, that’s where we come in.

Here at Seattle Sportsnet we’ve come up with 11 wonderful ideas for your hobby of sign-making. You’ve got the artistic talent, and we’ve got the homemade slogans tailor-made for the University of Washington’s inaugural opponent in 2009, LSU.

So get out your Sharpie and tagboard and start scribbling those bubble letters. Together, we can make this happen.

11. START YOUR AIRBOAT

Read more…

You might think that running a just-for-fun website makes it easier to wake up on Monday mornings, but you’re wrong, I still feel like ass.

Don’t know about the rest of the you, but every bad decision (or in some cases good decision) that you’ve made in the past 48 hours seems to hit you with brute force on Monday. If you’ve so much as sniffed alcohol, you wake up on Monday dehydrated with a stuffed up nose and cloudy eyes and a headache that kinda, sorta resembles a hangover.

If you decided to partake in physical activity, chances are your entire body is sore on Monday morning.

And if you’re like me, you get roped out of bed on Mondays under the harshest of circumstances. Today, my dog found it in his heart to cry for an hour before I was able to unpeel myself from the sheets and rescue him. At the same time, the out of control neighbor kids with the single mom who stopped trying a few years ago were outside screaming their heads off while the rest of the neighborhood was searching for the phone number for child services, I’m sure. How they got out of bed earlier than most of us is beyond me.

Anyways, long story short I give you this post devoted to fun and exciting links from around the sports world this morning, simply because I’m a lazy ass. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it, but I can understand if you don’t, and frankly I don’t care right now. I’ll care on Tuesday.

• The Top 25 Seattle Mariners Prospects, from Pro Ball NW
• Now Pitching, Josh Wilson, from Larry Stone
• Official 2009 NFL Predictions, from Dave Krieg’s Strike Beard
• Fantasy NCAA Basketball, from Montlake Madness

Disclaimer: This list is straight propaganda. If you’re a University of Oregon fan, you will absolutely hate it. If you’re an anti-Duck, it will probably bring a smile to your face. You’ve been warned.

Kick ‘em while they’re up, that’s what I say. Just make sure if you’re gonna do it, you aim right for the testes.

No college athletics program is more up right now than the University of Oregon.

Their football team is everyone’s sexy pick to oust USC and win the Pac-10.

Their basketball team went as far as the Elite Eight just a few short years ago.

Their track program is one of the best in the nation.

And on top of all that, they just added a baseball team after more than two decades without one.

Yeah, I’d say the Ducks are flying high, which is why it’s time we bring them down a bit.

That’s why we’ve devoted an entire Top 11 to the pro sports busts who have emerged from the UO. It’s an impressive list, and one worthy of your time. If you hate Oregon, you’ll love this.

(For each entry, we have listed the player’s name, the league he was a part of, and the year he turned pro.)

11. Samie Parker, NFL, 2004

Read more…

Good news, fake sports fans!

Seattle Sportsnet is debuting a free fantasy football league for loyal readers who think they have the potential to be champions.

We are now accepting applications for the 12 coveted spots in our league. You can apply by sending us an email, or simply contacting us via Facebook.

In order to garner admission to the league, we will need three pieces of information:

1. Your contact info: First and last name, and email address.

2. Your experience (in years, months, weeks, or days) playing fantasy football.

3. Your favorite NFL player.

At the end of the season, the winning franchise will be garnered an automatic slot in next year’s league and be given the glory of a post on this site devoted to his or her achievements. There may also be a yet-to-be-determined prize. This is entirely pending, however.

Finally, we will have a live, online draft which will take place at some point next week at a date and time that works for the league members.

The one thing we can take away from all this is just because a woman has big boobs and is throwing herself at you, it doesn’t mean you should feel obligated to have sexual relations with her, married or not.

For one thing, she might be crazy.

For another, she might be crazy enough to play the “I’m pregnant with your baby” game when you try to leave her.

And for a third, she might be so freakin’ crazy that she attempts to extort $10 million from your ass when all else fails.

Read more…

Interestingly enough, Miguel has yielded zero earned runs in night games to teams that play their home games in cities that start with the letter “Q.”

Imagine that.

Thanks to loyal reader Brent for sending this our way.

A video clip from the Little League World Series. This is a Mercer Island player asking if a) he can hit the batter with a pitch and then b) not play anymore. Neither of his requests is granted by an all-too-patient coach.

Word is that kid got his revenge in the team dorms when he donkey punched the batter in the halls, short-sheeted his bed, and did the whole shaving cream and feather routine when dude was sleeping. Cold.

Often times in journalism we tend to settle for objectivity when passion is more apt for the situation.

So when we hear the realists and the fact-mongers going off about Ken Griffey, Jr. and his all-but-sealed fate — retirement — it can sting those of us who lack the objective nature to evaluate a passionate situation through a gray lens.

If you grew up in the late-’80s and early-’90s in Seattle, chances are you formed a bond with Ken Griffey, Jr. that cannot be evaluated by any statistic or rational explanation. We all know that Junior has a special relationship with the people of this region, but none moreso than with the children who idolized him during a period of mutual growth.

While we were in elementary school and junior high, The Kid was a babyfaced teenager roaming the Astroturf outfield of the Kingdome. As we evolved, so did he. And together we endured life on separate plains, albeit in close proximity to one another.

He was a superstar, a millionaire, a budding legend. He had his own shoe, a video game, even a candy bar. He hit home runs, won MVP awards, and struck fear into men twice his age.

Read more…

The situation must be bad when an entire city can get excited about a 31-year-old running back coming off a season in which he lost his starting job to a guy who will probably lose his starting job to a rookie this year.

The Edgerrin James the Seahawks have reportedly signed for the 2009 season does not in any way resemble the young man who had his own footwear line (designed by Reebok) at the beginning of the decade. That Edgerrin James was an Indianapolis Colt, a big name back, and had a supporting cast of all-stars to help raise his game.

This older, wiser, and humbler James is trying to rebound from a shaky ’08 campaign in which he was booted from the Arizona Cardinals’ starting lineup in favor of rookie Tim Hightower. Hightower, in turn, is the Cardinal living on the hot seat these days with first-year player and highly touted draft pick Chris “Beanie” Wells carrying the ball in the desert.

So the Edge the Hawks have signed is, in theory, a guy who lost his job to a guy who will probably lose his job. Kind of like the assistant to the assistant.

Read more…

*Please click on the headline or the “read more” button to view the video.

In all seriousness, that headline is not a joke.

Below is a video sent to us by loyal reader Chris Jeter who uncovered the secret life of Jim Traber, aka the crazy Oklahoma City radio host who bitched out Nick Collison for liking Seattle last week (that post, along with the podcast, can be found here).

Traber, a former Baltimore Oriole first baseman, spent some time barnstorming in the Japanese leagues after his major league career came to an abrupt end. Apparently, he gets along with the Japanese about as well as he does with Collison.

Read more…

Ken Griffey, Jr. is batting .220 and I don’t care.

You shouldn’t care either.

Who really gives a damn what Junior hits? The dude is playing and he’s playing in a Mariners uniform and that’s all that really matters.

Yeah, I guess it’d be nice if he was hitting a little better, but even six months after we brought the guy back, all I care about is that he’s still here.

Whether you’ve been out to Safeco Field twenty times, ten times, or even just once, seeing Junior in an M’s jersey is still a surreal moment.

If you grew up on Junior’s heroics in the Dome, you appreciate the man simply for playing the game in front of you once again.

Read more…

If you need another excuse to hate people who hate you, just go ahead and read this.

This is a writeup by a reader of the sports satire site Deadspin.com explaining why the Seattle Seahawks — and our entire city, for that matter — sucks.

The author goes by the name “Kevin K.” and is apparently from Canada. Hmm. I thought they were a passive people.

Anyways, the guy pulls no punches in his criticism of our fair city, and even goes so far as to point out Seattle’s “superiority complex.” What, like being better than you should go unrecognized or something?

Read more…

Over the past few months, we’ve taken our shots at Miguel Batista.

First, we chastised Miggy’s awkwardly out-of-place facial hair.

Then, a couple weeks ago, we simply let the guy have it based on his continuing bout with ineffectiveness.

Now it’s gotten to the point where we need to start questioning management as to why Batista is still on the roster. Because let’s face it, there’s no good reason for the guy to still be in a Mariners uniform.

There are, however, a number of reasons why Miguel should have already seen his way out of town.

One, you have the fact that he sucks.

Read more…

Derrick Rose doesn’t have to play by the rules.

The former University of Memphis point guard never took the Scholastic Aptitude Test, instead having a friend sweat through the exam under Rose’s name.

The results of the SAT were then sent to the NCAA clearinghouse and the qualifying score resulted in Rose being admitted to Memphis. From there, the talented freshman helped lead the Tigers basketball team to a 38-win season and an appearance in the national title game.

Memphis ended up losing in the championship to Kansas, but now must forfeit (or “vacate,” as the pundits like to say) all 38 of their victories from that fateful 2007-2008 season.

All because Derrick Rose cheated. Knowingly cheated. And did so with zero regard for the consequences his former university now faces.

Read more…

You likely didn’t see the game anyways, since it started at 10:00 AM Pacific time this morning.

But even if you started watching the slugfest, you were probably gone by the bottom of the sixth inning, following a rain delay that forced FSN to broadcast all the garbage they usually show during the middle of the weekday.

And then as soon as they got back to playing again, the Mariners decided they had had enough. They promptly allowed the Tigers to score three runs in the sixth, then gave them two more in the bottom of the ninth.

All told, Detroit racked up seven runs, including five after the soggy intermission.

The M’s tallied six behind four longballs (off the bats of Jose Lopez, Kenji Johjima, Russell Branyan, and Mike Sweeney), all coming before the delay.

Read more…