CSN Bay Area

Today’s rational thinker is Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed, who is passing on the chance to hurl hundreds of millions in tax money at the Atlanta Braves for a new stadium to replace the 17-year-old Turner Field, at which the city hurled hundreds of millions in tax money. His logic? Atlanta doesn’t have either the money, or the interest.

 

 

Thus, the team is moving to nearby Cobb County, where the county commission is ramrodding a tax deal through without voter approval, thus making the Braves very unpopular right off the bat with the very customer they are trying to win. Somewhere, Mayor Reed is quietly and secretly laughing his keister right off.

 

Lessons learned for Ed Lee? Probably none.

 

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Steve Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, never mentioned Jeff Ireland, the general manager of the Miami Dolphins, during Monday's news conference. Which means if you want to be a general manager in the National Football League, you poor bastard, that’s the first place your resume should go.

 

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Lionel Messi’s turn hamstring swiftly spun into a debate about whether Messi’s best years are behind him at age 25. He is 15 years younger than Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs. I rest my case.

 

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By that logic, which is of course insane, Steven Stamkos’ broken tibia has reduced the Tampa Bay Lightning star to also-ran status at the even more absurd age of 23. We must really be in a hurry to bury the young.

 

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In the meantime, Sweden loves its elderly. 32-year-old Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the incandescent talent currently working at Paris St. Germain, is having a postage stamp issued in his native country, which makes him the equal of most of Sweden’s dead kings. That’s way better than being done at 25.

 

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And way, way better than being dead, which is what the Italian third division side Nocerina feared when it decided to completely tank its game at Salernitana. And by “tank,” we mean reduce itself to six players 21 minutes into the match, apparently on purpose because of alleged death threats by Salernitana fans.

 

The tipoffs came (a) when the match started 40 minutes because Nocerina players refused TO board its bus to the stadium; then because it used its three substitutes within the first two minutes of the game; then when five other players went off with “injuries.”

 

And if that isn’t tanking, then my name isn’t Arnold Rothstein.

 

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Urban Meyer continues to vote his Ohio States second in the coaches poll, which of course has at least one of his players, wide receiver Evan Spencer, scratching his head and saying things that will give Meyer agita.

 

“I’m a little biased, but I really think we’d wipe the field with both of them,” Spencer said of Alabama and Florida State, the two most likely BCS title game participants. He is, of course, wrong, because nobody is wiping the field with Alabama without being an NFL team, but he is entitled to politick all he wants.

 

If only he knew the voting has always been rigged, and if you don’t believe that, then YOUR name isn’t Arnold Rothstein.

 

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And finally, Tampa Bay and Miami nearly going to overtime is Roger Goodell’s middle finger to America. The NFL won’t say it, but the message was clear: “Mock us at your peril, America. We will give you unwatchable garbage until your eyes melt, and you will watch it because you are sheep, and we hate you enough to take your money while ignoring your entertainment needs. Obey your corporate overlords, or pay the price for your insolence, worms!”

 

 

God, it’s fun to quote people as though they are science fiction villains from the ‘30s.