Why Greed is Vital in Professional Sports

My buddy Shoe wrote on his blog a quick article about how blooming Cowboys receiver, Miles Austin deserves a raise: http://shoeler.blogspot.com/2010/04/miles-austin-deserves-raise.html

This got me to thinking... what if Austin takes the same salary?

By taking the smaller salary on purpose, he would allow the Cowboys more funds to bring more talent to their roster. Imagine if this caught on and attracted more and more pro-bowlers who all end up taking pay cuts and playing on the same team. This leads to a talent-stacked team that could win a championship with ease. Heck, the endorsements for this dream team might even be enough to cover the pay cut.

Not even just football, but basketball, baseball, hockey, and pretty much every team-sport is susceptible to this loophole.

At first this sounds like a good thing, but if we think about it a little further, a move like this could destroy professional sports as we know it. After all, it takes away one of the most entertaining aspects of professional sports: competition. This monopolistic team (*cough* U-Conn *cough*) would destroy all challengers with ease, which in turn would destroy all entertainment with ease.


(This team has been destroying what microscopic value of worth women's basketball had.)



It's critical that both players continue to seek out the highest contract possible and teams continue to give contracts that match their talent. Once someone realizes how simple it is to create a monopoly in professional sports, it's all downhill from there, and it's interesting to think about how the league will react to it.

Seeing the troubles of a monopolistic team may be obvious but the scary thing is even the "experts" can't see what's wrong with it: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&page=wojciechowski/100223&sportCat=nba

Fountainhead

I just finished Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, probably my favorite book that I've read so far. This book is required reading for life. Do yourself a favor and go read it.







The story of Fountainhead primarily follows the journey of Howard Roark, an architect who's blessed with an uncanny ability at architecture. He attends the most reknown architecture school in the land: Stanton. Roark soon runs into a dilemma: his school preaches the importance of using techniques of the ancients such as Roman themed buildings and French styles and such things as those, but Roark has other ideas. He believes that instead of just regurgitating the styles of the old, we should be developing our own style. We have more advanced minds, tools, and materials than back then, so why are we settling for their work? Disagreeing with the outdated methods of the school, the dean expels Roark from his university. On the flip side, Peter Keating, the school's top student who follows instructions to the letter, gets recruited to the top architectural firm in the country even though he often is forced to ask Roark for help on some of his assignments.



That's just the beginning of the novel, A LOT more happens and the ideas of the book are just spot on with my beliefs. Roark's financial struggles that he chooses over compromising his natural talents, his visions, and his work really open your eyes and allow you to put things into perspective.

Go read it.

Why the Nuggets are the best team in the NBA

As playoffs approach (this saturday! yuh!!)I thought it'd be a good idea to inform all of you that you better be ready to watch the Nuggets make their first championship run in franchise history:

1. Best starting 5 in the league:


















PG: Chauncey - a sage veteran, excellent leader and floor general. Ability to drive and draw fouls, and with a free throw percentage of 90+, it's pretty much automatic. Also an uncanny ability to make the clutchest shots.


































SG: Afflalo - SHUT DOWN DEFENDER, you can put him on any guard and afflalo will stop him. Also can hit the open 3 like it's nobody's business.






























SF: Carmelo Anthony - Enough said. He is the most dominant scorer in the league. He can score in every fashion. He can hit the jumper, hit the 3, post up, drive, draw fouls, and hit free throws. Pick your poison. And he's even more dangerous this season because he has turned into a willing passer, so your double team won't work anymore either.



















PF: Kenyon Martin - A walking double double and a criminally underrated defender. K-mart can honestly guard any position whether it be the 1 or 5 and he can guard them -well-.



















C: Nene - One of the quickest, if not THE quickest, centers in the league. This guy is automatic from the post with his quick speed and also leads all centers in steals. Nene is an all-star body with an unwilling mind for some reason, hopefully he wakes up soon.









2. Best bench in the league:













J.R. Smith - Once he gets started, you can't stop him. An athletic scoring machine with a hand that can get hot at any moment and unlimited range. This guy is just built to score in bunches, quickly.




















Ty Lawson - The Human Blur, possibly the fastest player in the NBA. Even the notoriously arrogant Allen Iverson said himself that Lawson was the fastest. A young, upsided point guard with the best possible mentor: Smooth himself, Chauncey Billups.



















Chris 'The Birdman' Anderson - Along with the previous two, he provides a spark off the bench with his explosive shot blocking ability and his knack to throw down alley oops when combined with Lawson. Last year he had the highest blocks per minute in the LEAGUE. Yes, even higher than Superman himself.













3. Passion:











After getting knocked out the first round of playoffs for the better part of a decade and finally having a taste of victory with last year's Western Conference Finals, you can bet that the Nuggets are hungry for that golden basketball. Combine that with some sketchy officiating by the NBA and the public media downplaying the Nuggets' talent and you sure get some fire in their bellies real quick. And to add on to that? Veterans like K-mart and CB1 trying to win a championship before they retire for good and a cancer stricken coach (get better soon, George)? This championship run would warrant a movie for sure.











Come playoff time, keep your eye on the Nugs because before you know it, they'll be killing Orlando in the Finals for the first championship in franchise history. I can already taste it.

Why is it so hard to go to school?

I wake up in the morning and I just think to myself what a better day it would be if I didn't have to go to school. The mental toll of just sitting in class until 3:50 everyday is exhausting and just makes you wonder why you're wasting your time when you could be doing something so much more productive.

I wonder, if you can legally finish your senior year at Turning Point* in like a month, what the hell are we doing in school for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week?

It's bullshit, and now that Coppell's really cracking down on the truancy laws, its even bullshittier. By focusing on truancies, they're only trying to fix the symptom instead of the disease. They should be targeting the reason why kids skip in the first place: it's a waste of time.

Have us do what we NEED to do and then let all the other classes be optional.

Don't make us stay at school for longer than we need to, it takes away the early ambition in kids. The ambition that is crucial to wanting to strive for something great or to do something original is replaced by this monotonous conditioning that strips us from our creativity and trains us to do a scheduled job for the rest of our lives just to earn the right to retire once we're worn and done.

Think about it, when someone wants to be something great like a basketball player or a musician, society tells us to just take the easy route and work hard in school to get a nice office job with steady pay, but that's bullshit! To me, that's a life worse than trying to make it doing what you like and failing.

It's a society in which is filled with mindless souls and the worst part is, it's already happening. It's common to find lives that just follow a routine and to me, that's inhumane. As a great man once said, "There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock".

So why is it so hard to go to school? Because it's a waste of time that could be spent either bettering ourselves or practicing for our future careers. It's a place where we just go just to say hey to some people and then put ourselves on auto-pilot throughout the day. It's obvious to see how mind numbing this is, and that is precisely how I feel at school; mindless.

**Turning Point, for those of you who don't live in Coppell, is an alternative school in which you can finish a year of school in nearly a month yet you get the same diploma as Coppell High School graduates

Introduction

This is an introduction not only into blog, but into mind.

This is a rare window into my thoughts, and if you've stumbled upon this, you are fortunate.

This is a place that will provoke your mind, whether through agreement, disagreement, or interest.

This is a place where I will not hesitate to say what needs to be said.

This is a place of complete honesty.

This is The Nguyenner's Circle.