New TV

[dangarion]

Originally published at Powered By Dan!. You can comment here or there.

We bought a new 27in LCD HDTV for our bedroom today.  Olevia 227v is an awesome TV for the price $449.99.  Very impressed by the picture of the TV.  Now I just need to get another one of those cheap HDMI cables online so I can connect my Xbox 360 from time to time in the bedroom

Comments

[offy]

For the amount of talent that the Chargers have on their team, they really suck. If they spent half of the time they did running their mouths watching game film instead, they might be a little more competitive. Instead they talk about how they should have beat teams and if they keep it up, that's all they'll ever do, talk.

You can't really judge a team by how they perform against the Pats though. It's really not fair. A team that's missing Rodney Harrison and Richard Seymour shouldn't be as good defensively as the Pats are, but Adalius Thomas and Rosie Colvin are top notch. The Pats offense managed just fine with no star WR, but Randy Moss has opened things up and besides his big numbers you've got Welker and Watson off to hot starts as well.

I'm hoping that Bonds fading into obscurity now means that no team will sign him next season and baseball will become a little more enjoyable. Don't forget to vote to have the record breaking ball branded with an asterisk and sent to the Hall of Fame.

I think Wakefield's already sore back has to be a lot more sore now from watching those shots from Thomas fly over the wall. The Sox sure picked a great time to have their pitching fall apart. Dice-K and Okajima are worn out, Wakefield isn't right and the sold bullpen has been uncharistically shaky. Leading wire-to-wire means nothing if you can't finish.

[dangarion]

Mike, I like the Pats, but I wouldn't go and said they are the greatest team in football yet. Not to mention the fact that they were caught cheating, and we aren't fully sure if there will be any more outcome from that.

I won't vote for Bonds ball to be branded with an asterick, just like I wouldn't vote for the Pats Super Bowl victories to branded with them either. Everyone pushes the rules, but sometimes they get caught, both the Pats and Barry Bonds are on the same level as far as I look at it.

[offy]

Breaking a rule isn't always equal to cheating. Part of Goodell's ruling stated that the Patriots didn't gain any competitive advantage in that game by taping the signals and people such as John Madden have backed up the fact that doing so doesn't gain you much.

Roger Goodell doesn't care if the Pats steal anyone else's signals. That's part of all sports. Between the coaches who have said that they also videotaped signals or stole signals, you've got a list of all of the successful coaches out there and none of them are ashamed to admit to doing it.

Now, if it turns out that the Patriots were either recording the Jets in-game radio broadcasts (to obtain their offensive plays) or were messing with their frequencies (or taping their audibles as the Dolphins did to the Patriots last season) then that would be cheating. Both of those are things that would have gained them an unfair competitive advantage.

I don't know about the Pats and Bonds being on the same level. I don't think anyone from the Patriots will be testifying for a Grand Jury any time soon and there's no risk of Bill Belichick going to jail for this. He didn't have to do anything illegal. The only thing that Belichick is guilty of is arrogance in thinking he could continue to do whatever he wanted to under Goodell's watch.

[dangarion]

There are many people that fell that what Barry Bonds did didn't give him much gain either.

The other problem is that Bonds really hasn't been caught. I don't see the MLB doing much about him. So right now it looks more to me that the Pats did something worse since they were caught. Bonds hasn't been convicted of anything so it's not like he's done anything illegal.

[offy]

It depends how you define caught. It's public knowledge that Bonds at the very least took steroids and who knows if there was also any HGH in the cream and clear that Bonds was smearing all over himself. He's been caught, but he hasn't been punished because Bud Sulig is the absolute worst Commissioner in the history of baseball. Baseball has become a joke under Selig due to steroids and HGH scandals, the ruination of the All-Star game and his general lack of doing anything about anything. Roger Goodell has done more in his short time in the NFL than Selig has done in his whole tenure as MLB Commish.

In each situation you can't get an accurate measurement of how much they were helped. Who knows, it could have all been mental for Bonds. That's doubtful though. I don't think it helped him to hit balls much further, but it did help to keep him healthy and assist his stamina. It's no coincidence that Bonds started playing less games and his knees started falling apart once he had to stop taking the cream and the clear.

Wow....

[freshtastic73]

...I don't even know what to say.

Come on Mike, the Patriots "cheated." You can say it, because it's true. I've heard tons of comments like, "There are a lot of other teams who have done the same thing..." Yeah, and I said that about other MLB plyers taking steroids, but nobody seemed to care about that.

Until "other" teams get caught with proof, I'm not going to "accuse." Just like I wouldn't accuse Big Papi, Manny or anyone else of "cheating" until they're caught.

...Until they're caught. The same SHOULD go for Barry, but I understand.

Re: Wow....

[offy]

The Patriots "cheated" in the same way that being offsides or tackling a player by a facemask is cheating. A rule was broken, there's a punishment and that's about it. I guess you haven't been watching all of the pregame shows and reading all of the articles about this where almost every current and former coach in the league says that it's no big deal and it didn't give the Patriots much if any competitive advantage. Roger Goodell said in his ruling that this gave the Patriots no competitive advantage. Yes, they broke a rule. Every team in the league breaks multiple rules every week. This only became an issue because Eric Mangini was involved. The same Eric Mangini who stole a laptop full of plays from the Patriots. The same Eric Mangini who drove the price on Deion Branch up. The same Eric Mangini who himself was accused of cheating in week 2. He's got it in for Belichick and vice versa.

The thing with taking steroids is that it continues to help you after you stop taking them if you continue to work out enough to maintain the level of muscle mass that was built while on the steroids. Even more so with Human Growth Hormone. Video taping defensive signals isn't going to help anyone performance three years down the line.

I have no problem admitting to what the Patriots did, but it's only the fans of teams who the Patriots have embarassed or those who hate the dynasties in sports that have built this up into something that it isn't.

Last season the Dolphins recorded the Patriots audibles in the first game and then destroyed them in the second meeting of the season. Did the Patriots rat out the Dolphins? If they did, it never made it out to the public. Most Pats fans just shrugged and figured that it was a part of the game. When a team sucks like the Dolphins, they aren't a target.

You don't have to look any further than the reps of the people involved to see the seriousness of each offense. Barry Bonds is a pariah and now that the Giants are done using him to make money they want nothing else to do with him. He'll be lucky if he can find someone to play for nextson. No one was interested other than the Giants this season. He may not have been caught red-handed (especially since HGH can't be found in any current tests), but he has testified to using steroids. There's no need to catch someone if it has already been established in court that they've done what people think they did.

On the other hand, Bill Belichick recently had his contract extended through 2013 and has had a lengthy list of current and former coaches come to his defense. Meanwhile, you can see that Eric Mangini is not very popular with the other coaches in the league.

I'm sure that knowing the other team's defensive plays is the reason why the Patriots have the best defense in the league and why the defense has carried them to most of their big victories. I'm sure that they always do worse in the second half of playoff games and Super Bowls because they learned so much from their videotapes. Teams can change signals to thwart and type of recording or signal stealing (and signal stealing is not against any rules), but there's nothing that a pitcher can do to instantly negate any effects that steroid use may have had on the performance of Barry Bonds.

Re: Wow....

[dangarion]

Yes they can, they can walk him or bean him. That will instantly negate the affects that steroid use may have had! ;)

Re: Wow....

[offy]

Yes, but both of those come with a consequence (and one might have a lot more than the other, it's risky hitting someone with Roid Rage). Changing signals in football doesn't hurt a team unless they've got someone on their team whose a little slow and can't get the new signals down.

I was really hoping that all of this would lead to the league deciding to go against the close vote and implement helmet headsets for defensive captains. There's no reason that they shouldn't have them and then no one has to worry about stealing signals unless they think a team might try to wire a defensive player's headset to do so.