Washingtonpost.com Sports Mobile: You Suck

(another bitch session by dinoterp)

I'm on my blackberry about 20 of the 24 available hours of the day. I have a top 5-6 sites that I hit on a regular basis and one of those is Sports section of the Washington Post mobile site (for reference: http://mobile.washingtonpost.com/item.jsp?key=sp). Although I appreciate being able to read some local articles on my phone, I'm going to call them out on the things about the site that suck in the hopes that somebody from the staff accidentally types the wrong URL for a legitimate site and ends up here. Also - don't confuse this blog with a referendum on the Post or the regular version of washingtonpost.com... I've got more and different gripes with those to be explored in later blogs. Let's start our spiral into bitching and complaining about the mobile site.

First of all, the content is updated about as frequently as the Skins make a smart front office move (bah dum ching!). Things are usually updated in the morning and maybe an article or two once during the day if something groundbreaking happens, and even then it's way after all of the major news outlets have thrown 400 writers on it. Worse, there's a bunch of content that's relatively static. There's been an article titled "Horton Working to Build on Rookie Season" in the Redskins section for about 5 weeks. I didn't want to read some crappy introspective piece on Horton then and I still don't want to read it now.

Second, there's no way to figure out who wrote the article before clicking on them. The only few sections where you can figure it out from the main page are Steinberg and any of the Insiders.  Can't I get a simple "Boswell: " intro on the headline? There's articles I only happen to click on, only to find that Wilbon is the writer and it's a genius column. Seems to me like that should be a selling point for that article, right? And this weekend we had a filly win the Preakness for the first time in 85 years, which was not only a juicy national storyline, but a LOCAL storyline... yet logging on to the mobile site on Sunday morning, I couldn't find a Beyer column. Seriously? Shouldn't his column be the ONLY thing on the site?

Next, every decent article is broken up into multiple pages. I understand the Post makes some money off of this, but for those who have experienced the mobile web, it is slow and sometimes spotty. Clicking on a headline with minimal guarantee of a good article, then having to click to the next pages or "read full article" is frustrating as hell. I know I read less articles because of this, which can't be what they are hoping for. I'm also now a metro rider and I've got a long haul trip. Verizon works on the metro, but the web is shaky and I don't have the luxury of clicking a thousand links and waiting for them to successfully load.

Finally, there's the text alerts.  Let me start by saying that in theory, this is a great service and there is some good information that comes from it.  But two things leave me scratching my head constantly.  The first is that they always make it seem like they have some scoop on the site.  But as stated in the first complaint above, the content is never updated.  The second is one that gets consistently mocked by me and my friends - the in-game and post game scoring alerts during Redskins season.  At halftime, I always get a text saying something like "Halftime.  Redskins losing to the Eagles 14-10".  Really?  No shit?  Wow, I can't wait until I get the next text at the end of the game letting me know the final score!  Are they fucking serious?  What Skins fan is going through the trouble to get real time text alerts on any Skins related sent to their phone... and isn't watching the game to know the score?  It's ridiculous.  I also can't tell you how many times I've suffered through a heart wrenching loss, only to get a text 10 minutes later that reminds me of the final score.  Thanks a ton.

Anyway, to wrap things up, I guess I can't complain since I pound that piece of shit site like 14 times a day.  Just seems like some easy improvements would make the whole thing a thousand times better and more useful.

Coming to Grips: Is DC a Sports Town?

This is a topic that has plagued me as a DC sports fan for many years. I'm finally letting go, coming to grips and owning up to it: Washington DC is NOT a sports town in any way, shape or form.

I'm an intensely competitive person and nowhere else in life does this manifest itself more in one area than in my following of local sports teams. I think at the root of it, I would never admit that anyone is better than me at something I felt I had some level of control over. This is probably why I lose sleep over fantasy football losses.

So what's the point? I hate when our local team lose on many levels, but it's especially tough to deal with losing to hated rivals. It kills me more than anything to think that the same meathead, jerkoff Eagles fan can drive down to DC, get a cheap ticket to a Skins game, mouth off in the stadium, pick fights, then ultimately say "I told you so" when the Skins lose in disasterous fashion yet again. This situation will be broken down in many blogs. But this one focuses on the inferiority of DC sports in one glaring way.

I've been to the "classic" sports towns such as Boston or Chicago. I've always hated our sports scene and the fact that out of town writers and radio hosts can come here and say things like "DC isn't a sports town." Over time, I've moved from denial towards acceptance, but never more than after game 6 of the Caps/Penguins series. I was stuck in a work function in Chinatown until the end of the 2nd period. With it not being all that late and the Caps on the brink of either bowing out to a hated rival or bringing the series back to DC for a knock down drag out game 7, I figured I'd have a hard time even getting into a bar.

What I found on 7th St was a ghost town. Heading from the Convention Center towards the Verizon Center, I first went into RFD, which was alomst completely empty besides a handful of Caps fans and a couple Penguins fans. Same thing at Fado. Same at Matchbox. Same at Clydes. I finally gave up and watched the end of the game next to a guy that let me sit at the empty barstool next to him with all the friendliness as if I asked if I could kick him in the crotch. And that was the scene. Now, my first thought was to take a step back and say "this is hockey after all". But I quickly shunned that. The Caps are ALL that we have right now. They are playing their biggest playoff rival. It's the clash of two superstars. It's win or go home. And I was in the best part of town, 20 FEET FROM THE ARENA that Game 7 would be played in.

Then it hit me: DC is not a sports town. If this was Chicago in the same circumstance, every bar would be jam packed, there would be people on the streets, and the guy I sat next to would not only have given me that barstool, he'd have bought me a drink, given me a high five, and now that I think about it - he wouldn't even be sitting!

So maybe acceptance is the right place to be. I'm not sure what difference it makes. It angers me because of the competitiveness. It angers me because people in the media say stupid shit like "DC is a transient town", completely dismiss a massive local fan base, and are somehow right. It angers me that I'm part of the problem. For example, I shake my head at the Nats attendance numbers and TV ratings, yet I'm not doing anything to change it.

The only way I can really wrap up this pathetic rant is to introduce what I'm calling the "Suicide Scale" and assign this fact a number. Loose values are something like:

1 = Breaking up with your high school girlfriend
2 = Losing your job
3 = Fashioning a noose while working as a bag boy after getting out of Shawshank after a multiple decade-long prison sentence
4 = Putting a shotgun in your mouth and closing your eyes
5 = #4, but after the Skins lose in OT of a playoff game after a botched gimme FG hold is run back for a TD, your car breaks down in the FedEx Field parking lot, and you come home to find Coach K banging your wife

I put this Coming to Grips at a 1.5.  It pains me, but in the scheme of things to want to kill myself over in the DC sports scene, it's not so bad.

Crosby is a B!tch

Posted by dinoterp:

Standing in the crease while Caps defenders refuse to push you out and waving your stick around until you score doesn't make you a great player.  It could just mean that you're a good player going up against a lazy/soft/mediocre defense.  Celebrating a goal after you score is great - assuming you aren't still down 1 in the playoffs with 30 seconds left in the game.  Complaining to the refs that fans are celebrating a hat trick from a superior player is a bitch move:

After the first wave of hats came a second wave, prompting Crosby to speak to the referee about the long delay. "People kept throwing hats," Crosby said. "And I was just asking if he could make an announcement to ask them to stop."

Should we be surprised?  Crosby was prematurely annointed the savior of the NHL and ran with it.  Little did he know, a gritty, likeable, "guy's guy" from Russia would come along shortly thereafter... that oh-by-the-way is more talented... and take his crown.

Let's look at some more facts about Crosby and Ovechkin.  Maybe typing their names into Google images is the way to go (try it for yourself, let me know which one is a giant douche)?  

Let's start with Crosby:

1. He has the facial hair of a pre-pubescent gang member:

2. He's had more than his fair share of homoerotic photos taken of him:

3. He's a loser

4. He plays in Pittsburgh - where evil is smelt and men leave, reside in the DC area, and go to away games at FedEx field - presumably to get away from the horrific women of that awful city.

5. The NHL has gone out of their way to make his picture not look like he's a zero:

6. That picture looks eerily familiar to another huge bitch - JJ Reddick:

The fact remains that we're dealing with a primadonna that is getting his panties in a bundle that there's a better all around human being playing for his rivals.  And the implosion of over time will be fun to watch.  But not as fun as the career of one Alex Ovechkin.

Here's all you need to know about #8:

Case closed.  Enjoy the show.