Hex-A-GONE!

The United States Men's National Soccer team has final done the impossible; they've made me develop a strong opinion about something related to soccer. I don't particularly like the game and I find the non-stop theatrics and off-sides calls maddening as they always seem to short circuit the faintest sparkle of excitement. Combine that with the sports boxing-like tendencies towards incompetence and corruption and club soccer just isn't worth it.

I do however care about the national teams for the same reason I care about the Olympics. If our nation is going to bother to compete in something, they sure as hell better put up a good show and try and win the damn thing. Out of all the major sports, soccer has the lowest bar possible to be considered a success. Most people stop playing it when they are about 9 so nobody really expects us to win the World Cup and most of these various cups and qualifying tournaments are set-up in such a way that about 70% of the time a tie is considered a wildly positive outcome.

This is especially true of the CONCACAF hexagonal qualifying tournament. This stupid thing seems designed to all but guarantee that Mexico and the United States get to go to the World Cup, plus one or two other squads. Somehow, the U.S. managed to blow the layup this year. Most people will look to tonight's game against Trinidad and Tobago, where the Trinis treated the U.S. like Harvey Weinstein treats affirmative consent, and be shocked by the outcome and the definitive proof that change is needed.

The truth is clearer than that though. It is very clear that Sunil Gulati has no idea how to develop a program. The main proof is in how he treated the Jurgen Klinsmann. Klinsmann was fired after losses to Jamaica, Panama, Mexico and Costa Rica. Prior to that though, Klinsmann led the team to consective victories over the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Germany. Pretty impressive stuff but Klinsmann was always tinkering with the lineup to mostly negative results so they replaced him with Bruce Arena. Fine.

The Arena regime started out ok with a 6-0 win over Honduras but the rest of The Hex went; tie-Panama, Win-Trinidad, tie-Mexico, loss-Costa Rica, tie-Honduras, loss-Trinidad. The results under arena got progressively worse. Losing to Mexico is no big deal but they played Honduras, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Panama twice each and went 3-3-2. In two games against Costa Rica, they were shut out 4-0 and 2-0. That stuff is embarrassing. At least Klinsmann showed some ability to beat upper echelon European teams, Arena took an inconsistent but occasionally impressive team and made them consistently crap.

The real reason why this qualifying tourney was a disaster is because US Soccer in general is a disaster. At the youth level it is still and sport played primarily by wealthy suburban kids due to the insane cost of the leagues and the incessant travel. I have kids and there is no way I could afford to pay the fees to play year round or be able to take the time to travel all over the place to the various matches. That creates a youth league that severely restricts who can participate, that feeds into a college soccer system that doesn't seem to develop talent much and that ultimately feeds into MLS which is a sham of a league that is just a way station for over the hill Europeans looking to cash in one more time and a place for Americans to play who aren't good enough to get into a European league. If an American in their prime decides to take the MLS money to play closer to home, its guaranteed that his development will stop and regression will begin.

Despite all that though, US Soccer has been on the rise until recently, in spite of itself. In a country of 350 million people, many of whom are soccer loving Latinos, we should be able to find 20 or 30 people capable of beating T&T, Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras consistently. If we can't, and it seems we can't, then its the top level managements fault. The only plan left is to fire Gulati and his Art Shell-esque right hand Arena. Just cut them both out completely. Then what needs to be done is for US Soccer to load up a T-shirt cannon with money and just fire it at any Italian, English, French, Spanish, etc. soccer official who can build a program from the bottom up. Just keep firing the money cannon until they have to accept. 

Thats the whole answer. Play to our strenghts. We Americans don't do soccer. We do money though and there's no shame in paying an outsider to come clean our mess. No more shame than losing to Trinidad with the World Cup on the line.

(US Soccer, in better times.)

squawk . . . Squawk . . . SQUAWK!

Over the past few years it has been very fashionable to bash the 76ers and Sam Hinkie for "The Process", a system that tried to somehow quantify unrelenting suckage into something dignified.

It's strange that over the same period of time that almost nobody has realized that Orlando has been managed by a slightly retarded Myna bird. I swear Rob Hennigan is just 12 Mynas covered in a cheap suit that spent five minutes listening to Daryl Morey and can now repeat things like "collecting assets".

Sadly, giving Hennigan assets is like giving the aforementioned Myna an iPod. Although a bird randomly pecking at the screen might eventually download something useful, just by accident.

Orlando hasn't had a winning season since 2011 (strike shortened) and haven't made it out of the first round of the playoffs since 2009. It's baffling to look at the roster and see what years of ineptitude has wrought. Mostly boring players who can't shoot and would be lucky to be in a 7 man rotation on a title team. Confounding trades for Serge Ibaka, astonishing free agent signings of Jeff Green and Bismack Biyombo and horrible drafting of Hezonja and Payton leave the roster significantly worse than Philadelphia's. I would trade every player on them team for Saric and Embiid.

Making matters worse is that there is obviously no plan. A stupid photo of Patricio Garino signing a contract, (incidentally, if Garino signing a deal is tweet worthy then you should lock the doors and burn the building down) showed a whiteboard in the background with Squaking Rob's off-season master plan on it.

What is the genius plan you ask? Apparently it's to try and pursue any and everyone in the league who sucks. Seriously, check it out HERE.

Sweet Jesus, Danilo Galinari, Paul Millsap and Andre Iguadola are the best names on the board. Good god Luol Deng is on there, on a board for the future! That's like me trying to invest heavily in polio vaccinations. Worse even, at least polio vaccinations were useful at some point!

Two things should really shame everyone involved though. The board seems to imply that the team could get Rookie of the Year candidate Dario Saric for Aaron Gordon. Laughable. What on earth would the Sixers want with a  PF who can't shoot from the outside? The lane is already clogged up with Embiid and Okafor and Tiago Splitter. Saric fits because he can take it outside and create space, Gordon can't and that's why Orlando had to get rid of guys like Ibaka so Gordon could go from the 3 to the 4. Even Sam Hinkie wouldn't do that.

Finally, the big white board is just insulting our intelligence. There are 2 guys on it (Moe Harkless and Tobias Harris) that the team ALREADY HAD and traded away for a bunch of used jocks and a few gallons of poisonous Flint water. Making matters worse, by all the gods in heaven, Jeff Green is on the list, TWICE! The team has him now and he sucks! He sucked for Boston, he sucked for OKC when they had KD and Russ and he sucked for the Clippers next to Blake Griffin and whichever Paul brother doesn't sell insurance. Why would he get better now?

Nevermind the fact that the list also has Omri Casspi, Nikola Mirotic and Kelly "Scalabrine" Olynyk on it. How do any of the other moves help? They are all forwards with limited ability to score. No playmaking guards, no lights out 3 point shooters, no rim protectors.

This is just a feckless abuse of a fan base. I had more hope for the future after Nick Anderson missed his 11th free throw in 95. I saw more light in the tunnel watching Penny Hardaway's knee magically transform into a rusty hinge. Rashard Lewis getting busted for steroids was a ray of sunshine comparatively because it at least showed motivation to win. The only thing that would make this team truly sickening would be a boring defensive minded coach whose favorite player is Roy Hibbert. Oh, hi Frank. Didn't notice you.

All isn't lost though, it should be interesting to see if Orlando will win the lottery and take Jayson Tatum to round out the collection of forwards or fall to to the fifth spot and take Przemek Karnowski.

Either way, the Myna abides.

Alternative History

     Two weeks into the Trump era and depending on how a person chooses to look at things, it's been a pure debacle or its been an amazing spectacle of a politician actually doing the things he said he would do on the campaign trail. Its odd the amount of gnashing of teeth Trump has caused when you consider his actual moves are well within what any Republican president and most Democrats would do. A temporary travel/refugee ban on countries in a war zone has been a regular practice since at least 1979 and Obama himself did it in 2011 for longer than Trump will. The decision to apply it to legal, green card holding immigrants (if that was the intention, I've read conflicting things) and other people already approved to come to the U.S. is insanely cruel and certainly gives ammunition to people who just think it's racist. Aside from that element it's a perfectly mainstream order. The Supreme Court nomination, federal worker hiring freeze, regulation roll backs, threatening the UN and building a border fence are things that any Republican would claim to do. The border fence was actually approved back in 2007, I believe, it was just never funded.

     Its possible that any Republican would generate the same amount of anger from the left that Trump has, protesting being a liberals number one leisure time activity, but there is no way to know for sure. What the reaction has shown clearly though is that people have no sense of history beyond the currentness of their own lives and no sense of what role a President really has in the long term direction of the country.

     After all, when you look back on history, aren't almost all Presidents objectively failures or at best a non-entity in history? Lets examine!

     The first group of Presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe) were important as Presidents but the bulk of their fame comes from their role in the founding of the nation. Their presidential activities often don't measure up to their revolutionary achievements.

     The second group (Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Filmore, Pierce, Buchanan) is mostly forgettable. The notable exception is Andrew Jackson, whose terms are fascinating in many ways but whether he was good or not depends on if a person thinks the Trail of Tears was an abomination of cruelty or if it was an act that saved thousands of Native Americans from getting slaughtered by militia type groups in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc. Plenty of support for both sides of that argument. Hard to argue 4,000 dead natives was a smashing success.

     Then we come to Lincoln. Winner all around

     Fourth group (Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, Cleveland again, McKinley) are all post Civil War reconstruction presidents and aside from Grant being seen as a war hero and poor James Garfield getting assassinated, none of them were much to read about.

     Then we get to Teddy Roosevelt. By popular acclaim he seems to be viewed as a good President  and while I think you could argue a strict examination of his policies would make him less popular today than he is, he did begin in some ways the progression from a civil war era nation into what we see today. He goes on the good list.

     Now we are getting to a modern age of Presidents. Group Five (Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover) Taft was moderate but Wilson had overtly racist policies, was weak on WWI and was in charge for prohibition. Harding was caught up in bribery and affair scandals while generally being ineffective and died with a year left. Coolidge is well liked by Conservatives but dislike by Liberals and generally didn't make huge waves. Hoover supported prohibition and had shanties named after him. Three failures in this bunch.

     Now that we are in the very modern time, lets quickly categorize the rest:

FDR: While I personally find FDR destructive to the nation, he was successful in that he campaigned on a bunch of left wing stuff and successfully implemented it.
Truman: WW2, Marshall Plan, NATO. winner.
Eisenhower: even. nothing majorly good or bad. Korean war notwithstanding.
Kennedy: Died to soon to have a major accomplishment. Cuban Missile Crisis was partly his making.
Johnson: Failure. Vietnam and the war on poverty have been dismal and cancel out whatever good came from great society laws. Spied on MLK.
Nixon: Failure.
Ford. Even.
Carter: Failure
Reagan: Success, in the same way FDR was a success driving progressive liberalism, Reagan sparked a conservative resurgence.
Bush: even.
Clinton: even. Successful economy driven by a Republican Congress almost wiped out by sex scandals and the failures in Somalia and Rwanda.
Bush 2: Failure. Strong 9/11 response but having a Republican dominated Congress led to no noticeable conservative redirection of the government.
Obama: Failure: Obama gets a failing grade because so much of what he did that liberals love was implemented by executive order and have been wiped out in just a few days of a Trump presidency. FDR on the other hand was able to cement his leftist agenda in laws that have withstood the test of time. Obama is destined to go down in history like JFK, inspiring to millions but without much foot print legislatively.

    So what does it all mean? By my count we have 10 Presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Lincoln, Roosevelt, FDR, Truman and Reagan) who can be considered "good" or "effective". We have 7 (Wilson, Harding, Hoover, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Obama) that can be considered failures. That leaves 28 that either didn't do anything notable, died before they had time to shine or were just too mixed a bag to judge as good or not.

     That brings us back to liberal anguish. Ideologically speaking they view the government as a force that needs to be harnessed to compel the people into "just" and "decent" behavior. With a colossal narcissist/douche like Trump in the office they can only envision a future full of misery and injustice. They view every action as some sort of fascist plot (proving that they also don't know what fascism is) and they freak out. This reaction is in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. The United States has been a force for good since the day it was born. While not every moment of our history has been sparkling it has always been on an upward projection, despite 35 of 45 Presidents being do nothings or actively bad.

     What that should tell us the people of the US living their lives and participating in local government have far more impact on what kind of country this is than whatever suit lives in the White House. This is by design, the President was never meant to have a King-like impact on the day to day character of the United States, only the people can determine that. While the chief executive can do some inexplicable things, they are only temporary and are subject to correction by the voting public. If this wasn't the case, then the list of forgettable names and outright scumbags surely would've doomed this country long before Trump weaponized twitter.