chuckywang

Were the Magic already over the cap? Let's say they were, say, $4 million under the cap before they matched. Then they would only be paying $10 mlilion more for Redick.

Barkley said it best. After a year or two out of the league, you start to feel better but you don't get better.

So Len asks Julianne Hough about how to get her partners to dance and she responds with a 30 second spiel promoting her new single and album.

I have no problem with a gimmicky overtime in a long regular season, because the best teams will shine through over the long haul anyways. So have your 4v4 and shootouts in the NHL regular season. However, in the playoffs, hockey gets serious and plays real 5v5 sudden death hockey. Even the NFL is getting with the program and have now instituted a new overtime rule that may allow both teams to touch the ball (a very important point with the relatively high-scoring, possession-driven game of football). And while college FB overtime is a bit of a gimmick, it still resembles the game of football. I agree PKs are not ideal. However, you can't say that and just accept it due to the fact that other sports have gimmicky overtimes too. At least the overtimes in other sports resembles the actual game. PKs do not resemble soccer in the slightest. It is only slightly more fair than a coin toss.

http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79259 It's discussed there. Personally, I prefer a longer period of extra time before the pk's. It seems to me that golden goals eliminate the need for PKs in some situations. And anything that eliminates PKs is a good thing.

That's not my point. I agree it's not ideal. My point is, what's a better idea? Golden goal/sudden death is not. It's been tried, there's a reason they changed. What is the problem with the golden goal/silver goal? And why is it not a better idea than PK?

Can we all at least just agree that this World Cup didn't present soccer in the best light to people who are making an effort to get into the game?

That's why basketball has the And-1 play. You are rewarded for trying to play through the foul if you can get a shot off and make it. So what do you want? The player to get to have his shot at goal plus a penalty kick/free kick? The And-1 works in basketball because there are tons of points scored every game. It doesn't work in soccer. Yes, I think it would be more fair to play through the advantage and, if unsuccessful, to get the PK/free kick. However, I think refs should call real fouls even when a player doesn't go down. Now, I understand soccer as a sport probably values continuity of play more than other sports, so there can be some tradeoffs to maintain that continuity. I guess this is one of those tradeoffs. I understand this is probably a rare situation to be in. It just sucks that a lot of these fringe situations that don't happen often all of a sudden show up in the World Cup when everyone is watching. I don't just mean Robben's breakaway. There is also Suarez's handball and Koman Coulibaly's phantom foul call. Americans new to the sport won't understand them and are left wondering why soccer does things this way.

That's why basketball has the And-1 play. You are rewarded for trying to play through the foul if you can get a shot off and make it.

This scenario still is unfair. You should get both the advantage and the free kick (if the advantage turns out for naught). You can, to an extent. Because the game is fluid and doesn't have clearly defined possessions like basketball, and other players can easily touch the ball unlike hockey, you can't really have a delayed penalty. But if a referee decides to play an advantage and the play quickly turns bad for the one playing the advantage, you'll see refs blow the foul they were originally disregarding. Maybe I just haven't watched enough soccer but I don't ever remember something like that happening. My point is that I have never seen a player that stays on his feet get a foul call. It seems like all the fouls are gven to players that go down. This is not to say every time a player goes down, a foul is given. Just that fouls are only given when a player goes down. I know in the official rules of the game, fouls can occur anytime, but that doesn't seem to be the case in practice. Now if that's the case, what incentive does a player have to fight through a foul? Suppose a player is fouled in the box, why should that player fight through it for the advantage when he can just go down and get a penalty kick? Since it is always better to see a goal in the run of play rather than through a PK, this kind of practice negatively affects the game.

Yes, I understand that PKs are a necessity since you can't have players running around for 4 hours waiting for a goal. But if PKs are your best option, then the game itself is flawed. This scenario still is unfair. You should get both the advantage and the free kick (if the advantage turns out for naught).

After watching this World Cup, it seems to me like the game of soccer is flawed in a few ways. 1) Stoppage Time. This is a dumb idea. There is no reason why the clock can't stop after a dead ball and start up again when play resumes and for each half to end precisely at 45 min and 90 min. 2) Low scoring games. Now, I have no problem with low scoring games in general. In fact (biased as I am), the most tension filled game I have ever seen is the Duke/Butler national championship game that ended in the relatively low score of 61-59. However, in soccer, I feel like it is much easier for an inferior team to hold on and hope for a fluke goal against a much superior team. I know in a long regular season (like the Champions League), the cream of the crop rises to the top like it always does, but the World Cup is only 3 games. I have seen games end 0-0 where there was obviously a superior team, and by all accounts should have won since they dominated the ball. 3) Penalty Kicks. This is the stupidest way to determine the outcome of a game that I have ever seen. Penalty kicks is not soccer! To think that PKs could determine the champion of the most important soccer game in 4 years (as it did in 2006 and we were only a few minutes away from the same in 2010) is insane. Imagine if Game 7 of the NBA Finals came down to a free throw shooting contest. 4) Fouls/Refs. I remember a play in the World Cup Final where Robben of the Netherlands had a breakaway shot at the goal. However, he was fouled from behind on the breakaway. He fought through the foul and stayed on his feet and had a good shot at the goal, but the goalie made a good save. Afterwards, the announcers said if he had gone down, the foul would have been given and the Netherlands would have a penalty. This is a serious problem with the game. In basketball there is the And-1, in hockey there is the delayed penalty, in football you have the option of declining a penalty since you play on after a flag. All these rules promote playing through an infraction and being rewarded for doing that. The announcer basically said Robben should have fallen and taken a whistle rather than trying to score in spite of the foul. You can't criticize players for diving if there is an incentive to go down on a play rather than fighting through a foul.

I think Valverde ejaculates a little bit after every K.

This game is like a Cubs fan's wet dream.

Fake rally?

We have now reached the annual "we want you to feel crappy about your life" part of the game.

You see the problem with non-guaranteed contracts in the NFL. It creates a culture of players wanting as much money right now as they can get, and rightfully so.

And $90k of it was for his use of Comic Sans.

Horrible last 24 hours for the Yankees. Reminds me of when Johnny Red Kerr and Norm Van Lier died on the same day.

The Magic are jerks for dragging this out for so long.

That article is very confusing and doesn't make it clear. The last four automatic qualifiers will be playing each other. The last four at large bids will be playing each other. The automatic qualifiers won't be playing the at larges.

Dragging the man's family into it. Stay classy, Cleveland. And you wonder why nobody wants to come to your armpit of a city. I'm pretty sure that's not even close to a reason why nobody wants to go to Cleveland. And whose website is that? Is he even from Cleveland?

Been lurking for awhile, and I do agree that RedFlash is definately a homer. But I do believe if he comes down off his high horse once in awhile he could see that there is fault in his logic. LOL when even newbies realize this and come out to comment on it, you know it's bad.

Anybody have a link to Gary Ablett's 1994 mark that was dubbed The Mark of the Century? I've looked everywhere but can't find it. BTW, if you don't appreciate what footy players do, just take a look at this video:

Cause if there wasn't one, the Knicks would have the big 3 at $25 mil per.