Things better left unsaid ?

Good work so far with the video game breakdown by the Diddy Kasem - countin' 'em down till we reach the top.

Anyway, I'm here for a quick sports related post:

Okay, as you may or may not have noticed over the course of this summer, I’ve been relatively quiet about my beloved Columbus Crew the last few months. To make a long story short, they’re horrible and approaching league records for futility. They’re an uber-dismal 4-11-8 and have scored a grand total of 17 goals in those 23 games. They’ve scored more than once in a game on just one occasion. To say the Crew’s been tough to watch is putting it mildly. A lot has to do with injuries. At one point this year all 4 of our goalies were hurt. (Sound familiar Browns fans? Spinal Tap drummer, anyone?) A lot doesn’t have to do with injuries though. The whole lack of talent thing is kinda important too.

Amazingly we aren’t much worse than we were last year, because we were atrocious in 2005 too. That’s why we hired a new coach in the offseason - Sigi Schmid. Personally, I love him. He’s got a great pedigree - won championships in college and a title when he coached the Galaxy. (He was actually fired midseason by the Galaxy a couple years ago while his team was in first place.) He cleaned house this off-season and brought in a lot of guys I liked while shipping out guys I was more than okay parting with. And I love his candor. He never sugarcoats things with the media or his players.

Anyway, this candor kinda came to a head after last night’s game, which bordered on the must-win variety if we had any chance of making the postseason. Needless to say, we lost, blowing a lead, and going down 2-1 after a 90th minute goal. Take a look at some of the things a dejected Sigi said @ the post-game press conference (courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch). Imagine the coach/manager of your favorite team, regardless of sport, saying stuff like this:

"I really don’t know what to say. I feel sorry for the fans. I’ve never felt this way. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I need to step away. Maybe I need to resign. Maybe (the Crew needs) somebody else because obviously I’m not getting it out of (the players) right now. I’ve never had that feeling with any team I’ve ever coached. That’s something I’ve got to wrestle with over the next day or two. I’m just not getting it out of them. It can’t be 31 guys; maybe it’s me."

"There are (Crew players) out there that I still believe in, but the one constant besides injuries for us is that there is always one or two guys that come up with an awful game. It seems like we can never get eight, nine, 10 guys to have a good game at the same time."

"I want the fans to know that I am not happy. If they think the season has been frustrating for them, it’s been triply frustrating for me. I used to sleep pretty well, but I can’t tell you the last time I was able to sleep eight hours without waking up and thinking about what else I can do."

On the Crew's playoff chances: "We might still be in the hunt at the last game, but if I were going to Vegas I wouldn’t bet on us.”

Ouch.