Where's the Hype?

Did you even remember that the Superbowl is this week?  Who's having a party?  Are you sure what you're doing yet?  We at Gus Johnson's Whisper feel like we are not alone in this awkward feeling of this boring Superbowl week.  There's no hype.  The best we get are dumb articles by chooches like Peter King where he's all: 'that's not the only connection between these two franchises.  Turns out that Byron Rando, the former equipment manager with the Steelers, was lured away when Ken Wisenhunt took the job in Arizona.  This game means a lot to him.'

Seriously, check it: 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/peter_king/01/25/walkup/index.html

Weird.  How is that possible?  Oh, you mean in a small league where there is a personnel carousel, a former coach or player could go up against his former team in the Superbowl?  So the league with no imagination that only hires from a selective and exhaustive pool has some overlap?  I don't believe you sir!

Anyway, we feel like this matchup, for the biggest prize in American pro sport, has no buzz.  Let's look at some other matchups for the big prize that had as little (or less) hype.

-Super Bowl XL: This 2006 symphony of boredom featured Pittsburgh beating Seattle in one of the 37 most untight games ever played.  It was like watching 4 estranged brothers play pee-knuckle.  Pittsburgh won but we all lost.

-2002 World Series:

 

Hard to live up to the drama of the 2001 Fall Classic.  So, in a smart move, the 2002 Series went the opposite extreme and no one in the entire world cared at all.  Who played in it?  Can you remember without looking it up?  We could because we're dorks.  San Francisco lost to the Anaheim Angles in 7.  It was actually a good series.  Tens of people on the west coast were riveted.  

1994 World Cup USA vs Brazil in Round 2: The US made it through group play for the first time since John Adams was president.  In 1990, the squad had a great showing when it went 0-3, we didn't qualify for the WC in 1986, before that... we're not talking about before that.  This was huge for US soccer.  Huge.  The game was played on JULY 4th in America!  Somehow, no one cared.  We were so hyped for this and no one else we knew even watched it on tv.  There were like 19 Americans in the stands... which was a nice break from the 30,000 Brazilians.  Even after some punk got a red card for elbowing Tab Ramos' head, it was a boring 1-0 game.  Weird.

1988 Presidential Election: We did a whole thing on this in school.  We were all so excited for this thing to be a nail-biter.  Neck and neck, they traded barbs like slap-boxers at recess.  The night of, we assembled at the home of one of the parents and watched in horror as the tv men calmly explained to us that it was already over and Dukakis was sipping soup broth by 5PM.  We thought it was this epic battle.  It was really close... until they started counting the votes.  426-111 in electoral votes.  Great talk.

-Every boxing match since Mike Tyson lost to Lennox Lewis in 2002: Who is the heavyweaight champ?  How many different boxing organizations are there?  Since the Victorian Freak Show lost to Lewis and had that bizarre post-fight gratefulness episode, boxing has been creeping along on its way to a lonely grave. 

   UFC, no charismatic heavyweights, perceived corruption/chaos with the myriad boxing organizations, and the unwillingness to change the 'pay-per-view' model have all led to boxing's demise.  Championship bouts now get less attention than new episodes of CBS sitcoms.  

-2004 Sugar Bowl: LSU beat Oklahoma.  This game was all awkward because USC should have been in the game and everyone knew it.  It was hyped but every time it was hyped it was like, 'but also USC... so...'.  It was like you have Lucy Pinder at a photoshoot next door to a photoshoot of Keeley Hazel but are only allowed to hype the Lucy Pinder shoot.  Is it not like that?  Whatever.

                                                   

Don't Believe The Hype

On the Today Show... today, they had a political expert on who said that if Obama is elected president, he'll have to spend a good deal of time and effort managing the enormous expectations that his candidacy has created.  Basically, he'll have to say 'relax bruh' to America.  We've seen this kind of hype before... in sports.  How about some of these:

-Harold Miner: The next Jordan/Baby Jordan.  Blah blah blah.

Remember that time when Harold Miner was out of the league after 4 years?  We do.  He may not have played defense, but at least he couldn't shoot.

-Ben McDonald: unless you grew up an Orioles fan (which we did), you can't possibly know the extent of the hype this guy got.  This was to be the Orioles' answer to Roger Clemens.  A workhorse who would win 20 games a year, strike out 300, pitch for 15 years, retire and open a restaurant in the area that everyone would go to and remember the time he pitched in the World Series and struck out 46 batters in 9 innings.  That's not quite how it turned out.

-Todd Van Poppel: we couldn't find a picture of him because A's fans deleted them all from the internet.  

-Brian Bosworth and Tony Mandarich: they are always on these kinds of lists.  Everyone knows about them and they should know about them.  What do they have in common?  Mullets in their primes.  Let that be a lesson to you kids, you can do steroids all day and twice on Sundays but you cannot get away with having a mullet.  

-Joe Smith: While he's still in the NBA and has carved out a nice career for himself, the dude went #1 over all.  Everyone, yes everyone, thought he was going to be a monster.  11 and 7 for your career is not a monster... unless it's the dreaded 11 and 7 monster that is always threatening peaceful villages and stealing chickens from the coop.  Is it coop or coup?  Anyone know?

-Akili Smith: Ha!  Right in your mouthpiece Bengal fans.

-The Sega Dreamcast: No one made games for it.  They thought it would beat the Playstation and change the world.  It did except for the exact opposite.

-Lamb: It's like this super gourmet meat that is really expensive and it's supposed to be really exciting when it's on the menu.  1) No where near as good as steak  2) Weird texture to the meat  3) You've always got to deal with so much bone.  Why is their so much bone?

-Peter Warrick: People don't tend to think of him when they... well they just don't think of him.  We saw him in college so many times and anointed him the next greatest thing in the NFL.  Still, to this day, Gus Johnson's Whisper has no idea how that guy isn't a unique NFL weapon.

-Foreign NBA players not named Dirk Nowitzki or Pau: Think about this collection of dudes that were drafted high and are just guys on a roster: Bargnani, Ji, Darko, Danilo, Primoz Brezec, a dude named Tsakalides and more.

-Herschel Walker bobsledding: Do not tell me how many push ups and sit ups a guy does per day and finish out of the medals.  7th place does not butter the biscuit.

Also, why does no one talk about how weird it is that a super-jacked balck dude has the same name as the yiddish guy that runs the incredible deli around the corner from my apartment?