Fire Ryan Poles | Fire Matt Eberflus

Enjoy the Labor Day weekend folks.

This is more of a rant (Which article I write ISN’T a rant?) but I am very ANGRY at the fact that EA Sports no longer features Gus Johnson in it’s Madden game. I read a few months back that the always awesome Jim Nantz Underpants and Phil Simms would take over for Gus Johnson and Cris Collinsworth. It’s enough Gus Johnson doesn’t do any more games in the NFL nor NCAA since being let go by CBS and now, he is not in even in the game. He took a job as Fox’s college football announcer so that’s what we, as fans have been reduced to.

Gus Johnson is one of the most entertaining announcers I have heard. If you search his name in YouTube, you’ll get many exciting calls from college basketball over the years and even some from the NFL. It’s a travesty that he doesn’t call more games. In the new Madden game, I have already been annoyed by Nantz and Simms. To make matters worse, there already seems to be a glitch in the game where Simms repeats the same damn sentence numerous times in one drive that I had playing the game the other night. It’s annoying to say the least and I already feel like shutting off the volume on the announcers part of the game.

In a perfect world, Gus Johnson should be calling every hockey, basketball and football game. If any of you know how intense this guy gets, can you imagine him being an MC at a wedding? I can’t imagine him calling the toss of the boutique by the bride or announcing the people who are walking down the aisle. I would pay him to call my wedding.

Note to Fox: Give this guy more games to call. Sundays will suck when I am forced to listen to morons like Kenny Albert, Thom Brenneman and the kiss of death to Chicago sports, Dick Stockton. Sam Rosen is awesome but it’s just not enough. WE WANT GUS DAMNIT.

thanks again to Jimmy D. …it is not easy to give a shit! All thoughts on Cubs are welcomed here.

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Hey All, Just an observation…but, why can’t we (the Cubs) develop some pitching (or some discipline at the plate)? 9th inning, Rafael Betancourt gets us 3 up, 3 down on 7 pitches (6 strikes, 1 ball). Earlier, Rex Brothers records 4 outs on 9 pitches (no double plays); I didn’t see the game live, so I can’t say whether or not one of those outs was on a caught stealing, but c’mon…let the reliever try to work himself into a bit of a jam for crying out loud. That doesn’t happen when you go up the plate “free swinging”….especially when you don’t have a real threat on offense. I don’t know why I give a shit anymore, but I still would like to see strides in the right direction. Shit, is that asking too much? – Jimmy D.

I’ll try to keep this short but first, the game Saturday was exciting even though it was preseason. For the first time in a long time, the Bears have receivers who can actually run a route correctly and catch the ball. So far, it looks like Emery has nailed it with picking up Brandon Marshall on Alshon Jeffrey. There was one slant I believe in that game that Jeffrey ran to perfection and nearly scored a touchdown on it. Michael Bush (by cracky) also looked pretty good running the ball.

For the game Friday, I think most of us will be paying attention to the offensive line and how they react to quite possibly, the best defense in the NFL. Their front four is scary and has been for quite a while. That is one of the main reasons why they have won two Super Bowls in the last five years. All around, the defense is spectacular. I only pray that the Bears cornerbacks and safeties take notes. On the offensive side, we have to pray that Cutler doesn’t get killed. I thought the line looked much better against the Redskins on Saturday but this is a much different story. The starters are expected to play into the third quarter.

Discuss.

Special Thanks to jimmyd for the heads up…so now Prior and Wood, once considered  “the future of the Cubs” — was it so long ago (?) — are done.

ALL thoughts on this are welcome…BATTER UP!

jimmyd Says:

August 18, 2012 at 4:50 pm

Hi All,

How is it possible that I’m the one “breaking” this story; I figured there would have been a thread started last night for this topic. Anyway, here goes (no surprise here):

Mark Prior’s bid to return to the major leagues with the Red Sox has come to an end.
The former Chicago Cubs star was given his release by Triple-A Pawtucket to make room for Pedro Beato, the right-handed pitcher the Sox acquired from the New York Mets in the Kelly Shoppach deal.
Prior, 31, made 19 appearances for the PawSox this season, going 1-0 with a 3.96 ERA. But he walked 23 batters in 25 innings, compared to 38 strikeouts.

Later,
Jimmy D.

http://espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/8271423/chicago-cubs-fire-vice-president-player-personnel-oneri-fleita

The housecleaning continues…it’s about time.

We are just one preseason game into the year and Lovie Smith has already tried to feed the fans bullshit. Last week, he says Brian Urlacher misses practice for “personal reasons”. Everyone knew that Urlacher was probably going from doctor to doctor to find out what is wrong with this knee. Then, the news the breaks on Tuesday that he ended up getting his knee cleaned out.

Reports say that he should be ready go by the season opener but let’s be honest, I don’t believe anything that comes out of Lovie’s mouth or anyone else on that team. I understand why the players would have to say that crap but the fact that Lovie Smith, has continuously insulted the paying customers by lying, is unnecessary. I’ll speak for myself as well as the guys at Fire Ron Turner, that we’re the guys who put money into that franchise by going to nearly every home game every season. If I shoved bullshit down every customer at my business like Lovie Smith does, I wouldn’t have enough to make ends meet.

Along with the consistent lying, the guy is also an idiot for playing Urlacher in the final regular season game which was meaningless to begin with. Being that it’s the Bears, fans always have a feeling that something bad is going to happen anyway, so prevent it when you can. In all these years he has been the coach, he has mismanaged his players and put some of them (Hester at wide receiver) in a position to fail. Instead of playing some of these players to their strengths, he plays them to their weaknesses because he “thinks they can help the team”.

I remember a game against the Seahawks in 2007 where the Bears were just trying to stay in the wild card race. Cedric Benson on his first run, goes 50 or 60 yards for a touchdown and the Bears are up early. The rest of the game, he hardly had the chance to touch the ball and the Bears insisted on passing the rest. The Bears promptly lose the game and the season is in turmoil if it already wasn’t. I remember it as if it were yesterday when Lovie took the podium after the game. Someone asked about Cedric Benson not getting many carries after that. Lovie replied with something along the lines of, “Well, if you keep doing that, they’ll eventually stop that”. That’s stupidity at it’s finest.

I’ll be glad when Lovie Smith is shown the door shortly after the New Year because even with the vast improvements of the team, if Urlacher isn’t healthy which he won’t be, they are screwed before it even begins. I’ll be shocked and I am sure most will agree if he is healthy. The defense sucks even more without him. In addition, after seeing J’Marcus Webb in the game against the Broncos last week, we need to pick a week when Cutler will have his season-ending injury. Look on the bright side though, at least Johnny Knox won’t cause it by slipping and forcing Jay to run 50 yards down the field to prevent the other team from scoring.

No worries though ladies and gentleman. We have the shitty combo of Jason Campbell and Josh McCown ready to go and if anything happens to those guys, Todd Collins is only one call away.

…news from Wrigley Stadium:

Samardzija struck out a career high-tying 11 in seven innings, and the Chicago Cubs beat the Houston Astros 7-1 on Monday night.

Chicago won for just the second time in 13 games. The Astros have lost 25 of their past 27 road games.

The crowd of 31,452 was the smallest of the season at Wrigley Field.

Your thoughts on the Bears opening up the preseason this Thursday against the Broncos and anything else that is on your mind.

Enjoy the week folks.

It was August 1st, 2008. This site picked up where the old one left off. If I thought this place would last longer than a year, I would have probably be called insane. But that seems to be the case. There have been fun moments on here as well as some that weren’t all that great. We’ve spent a total of six-seven years as a group.

This is a site where all of you can write just about what you want, when you want. Anything is up for discussion even if it’s not sports. As every year goes by, I cannot thank all of you guys enough. First off, thanks to Scott and Keith for contributing their own articles on this site. Keith, if you’re reading this, get better my friend and we’ll see you back on here soon.

In the last year, the hits have been up and while we’ve lost some old-timers, we’ve gained many new readers and that is an awesome thing. I know I provide this place for you guys, but all of you keep it running. Some of us has disagreed on some stuff but we keep it friendly and that’s how it always should be. One thing we can all agree on, Chucky’s rants are always the best even if he is a lunatic but he’s OUR lunatic.

Here’s to four more.