Felger and Mazz - Creating False Naratives one day at a time
- Thread starter HomeBrew1901
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Does Felger's crapping on Seguin's playoff performance seem any more reasonable considering he got shipped out after said performance? I haven't listened to the show but is he saying 'I told ya so' at all?
He will be saying "I told you so" the next time he is on the air. After the draft, he kept insisting that Seguin was going to get dealt.ifmanis5 said:
NortheasternPJ said:
How was it today? Wish I'd known -- this has the chance to be a great week for the show. And who was on the flash?
I really liked it. Felger spewing his normal shit and actually being called out is nice for a change.
Lot of the dialog was
Felger: Patriots should have known he was a problem and taken the appropriate steps / not drafted / etc.
Beetle: So they should have known he was going to murder someone?
Felger: No, that crazy, but they should have known he'd be a problem!
Beetle: Outside of murdering someone, who else has been kicked out of the NFL?
Felger: But that's not the point, he could have been suspended!
Beetle: OK for a few games he may get suspended, but no one outside of murderingsomeone has been kicked out of the league so what's your point?
Felger: He's a bad guy who hangs out with bad people
Beetle: So, they need to avoid 25% of the players in the league now?
Lot of the dialog was
Felger: Patriots should have known he was a problem and taken the appropriate steps / not drafted / etc.
Beetle: So they should have known he was going to murder someone?
Felger: No, that crazy, but they should have known he'd be a problem!
Beetle: Outside of murdering someone, who else has been kicked out of the NFL?
Felger: But that's not the point, he could have been suspended!
Beetle: OK for a few games he may get suspended, but no one outside of murderingsomeone has been kicked out of the league so what's your point?
Felger: He's a bad guy who hangs out with bad people
Beetle: So, they need to avoid 25% of the players in the league now?
Felger also made the brilliant argument that Brad Stevens should not have expressed any excitement about coaching Rajon Rondo in his introductory press conference. He said Stevens should have said "I haven't met him yet and I will reserve comment." His argument was basically that Stevens should have purposely distanced himself from the Celtics's highest paid, marquee star because Felger thinks Rondo is moody. It was a fine bit of stupidity.
Funny you mention this because Steve Buckley was on Comcast last night, said he was driving into the show listening to Felger state this point and Buckley agreed with everything that Felger said about it.mandro ramtinez said:
So you are saying there is alot of stupid people in the Boston media? Who knew??HomeBrew1901 said:
In the NBA, it's career suicide to start off by alienating your only all-star on a rebuilding team. Brad doesn't have to personally like Rondo at all. He only has to get Rondo to play well, raise his stock as high as possible, and either get great value from him in a trade, or have Rondo enjoy the team so much that he wants the Celtic's to be built around him. Starting out the relationship by being a hard ass towards him in his first press conference is dumb. Felger and Steve are both stupid.
You guys have to remember that this is Mike "Blood and Guts" Felger we're talking about here. There is no way that he wouldn't be a tough guy to someone he doesn't know, but doesn't like. Remember that hard-hitting, incredibly tense interview he did with Mike Cameron?
Holy cow, I mean I've never heard two people discuss the weather in Wisconsin that way before. The tension was so thick that I thought that they were reenacting a scene from "Resevoir Dogs", talk about your must-listen radio.
Holy cow, I mean I've never heard two people discuss the weather in Wisconsin that way before. The tension was so thick that I thought that they were reenacting a scene from "Resevoir Dogs", talk about your must-listen radio.
I am so sick of the narrative going around about how the Patriots are some how at fault for the Hernandez stuff and owe us all some type of apology or explanation. I guess I missed all Tom Curran's articles that warned about how AH was a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. It's a shame that the Pats ignored all the media's investigative pieces on him and his affiliations. Oh wait there weren't any? Shocking.
NickEsasky said:
I'll go you one better. Google Tom E. Curran and Dez Bryant -- then hope your head is on a swivel.
Borges has weighed in this morning as one would expect. Curran is beating his chest proudly.
This is part of absolution-by-abject-prostration-before-media, an essential chapter of every sports team owner's manual.
The NFL is chock full of assholes, many of whom have violent pasts. It's the nature of the beast. The Pats just got really unlucky that one of their assholes actually took part in a murder. I have no idea what the media expects them to have done differently. Say some other team drafted Hernandez and he had the numbers he did, how many articles would we have read and how many hours would have been spent on the radio about how the Pats missed a chance to draft Hernandez because of "the Patriot Way" and Kraft's devotion to Myra only wanting good guys on the team. The media is full of clowns who love nothing more than revising history to fit the agenda they want to go with that week.
John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
I can't disagree with any of this. The revisionist history stuff is bullshit and why I had to turn him off last week, Felger has always been a "Weed is OK guy" and never had an issue with AH prior to all of this. Wish I had heard Beetle take him on yesterday, like Blacken said he hasn't done that in close to a year, must be a new spot opening up soon on TSH.NickEsasky said:
Last night on the same Comcast segment both Bob Ryan and Buckley backed up what Kraft said, that everyone was duped by how he acted in the locker room. It also explains why Bedard (I think it was him) thought he was a great guy that got caught up with the wrong people, AH fooled a lot of very smart people.
I'm not a big Celtics fan and even when I followed them I didn't like Rondo and knowing that Felger is not a Rondo guy I wouldn't have put much credence into what Felger said about Stevens comments.lostjumper said:
Buckley on the other hand I have a lot of respect for and stupid is not usually a word that's associated with him. There doesn't appear to be a lot of love between the two considering how Buckley (deservedly) treated Felger when he came out, so when Buckley agrees and gives credit to Felger's point... that Stevens hurt his position a bit by appearing to cow-tow to Rondo's ego rather than make Rondo earn the new coach's respect, I tend to think it is more a valid opinion than them being "stupid" because you don't agree with that same opinion.
To take this further, I was listening to D&C this morning (T&R were on a break) and they had a mouth-breather screaming that it wasn't bad that the Pats drafted Hernandez, it was that they gave him the extension. You see once the Patriots knew that Hernandez' palls were dirtbags, they should have released him on the spot. The caller is not the first person I've heard suggesting this and it wouldn't surprise me if other media members pick up this gauntlet (if they haven't done so already).
But let's walk through this scenario: Hernandez has done nothing wrong and for 12 months, the media is clamoring for NE to sign him "He's kept his nose clean! He's earned their trust!" but instead of doing that, the Pats let him go. Why? The Patriots don't offer any concrete reasons but leaks have suggested NE didn't like the crowd Hernandez was running with and didn't want an incident to happen.
If this scenario occurred, the media explosion would be enormous. Felger would mock "the Patriot Way" for months saying that "they can't have Boy Scouts and expect to win Super Bowls. What's going on over there in Foxboro?" Borges would dredge up the old Oakland Raiders and talk about how these people are "football playing men, who play a violent game and character can't be dictated." Curran would probably write some passive-aggressive column accusing Belichick of being a racist and wonder why there's a double-standard for Hernandez and not Gronkowski. Someone would end up writing, "Hernandez just smokes a little weed, it's not like he killed a guy." And it would go on and on and on and on for weeks and would compound especially if the Pats' offense sputtered or Hernandez caught 12 touchdowns for the Jets or the Eagles or someteams that "cares about winning".
The thing is, they wouldn't be wrong. We'd destroy the Patriots if they released or didn't sign Hernandez because of something he may do in the future. This isn't Orwell's "1984", we don't have Thought Police yet. This whole incident wasn't something that the Patriots could have been proactive about, they had to be reactive and they did a pretty good job, I'd say. However ripping Kraft for being honest, I'm sorry but Fuck You Felger. You ripped him last week when they sent out a press release, you rip him this week when he meets face-to-face with the beat writers. What do you expect him to do?
And furthermore what do you expect the Patriots to do in this situation. Aside from Rae Caruth, has this ever happened in professional sports. The Pats are kind of flying blind here and it's a no-win situation because they either look like naive morons or people who knowingly drafted a guy capable of murder. You take a chance on someone and they can supremely disappoint you, it happens in life. The media of Boston are the biggest collection of hypocritical babies in America. They always want everything both ways. It's infuriating.
I actually like Buckley alot, and believe he's one of the better media/journalists in Boston. But on this point he's being stupid. Because as we all know, playing hardball with your NBA stars works extremely well...HomeBrew1901 said:
I think this is the best portrayal of the conundrum the Pats are in. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. And the media have been terrible on this.John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
RedOctober3829 said:
Yeah, that was outstanding. He had an irrefutable counter-point to every single condescendingly stupid sentence from Felger's mouth.
Felger even went to the always great "I was there and you weren't because you were too young" defense. That was the one thing that sent it over the top for me.mabrowndog said:
Beetle has been great. Which is really a reminder that this can make for great radio. I've been plenty critical of Felger, and I think he's been off-base on much of this story, but the problem isn't his opinion, but only when it's expressed in a vacuum. And when Tony is the co-host, a vacuum is all we seem to get.
The back-and-forth is pretty good, even when it's a bit infuriating.
The back-and-forth is pretty good, even when it's a bit infuriating.
RedOctober3829 said:
Felger as Bobby Knight (interview with Jeremy Schaap). What great company he's fallen into!
I am listening to yesterday's show, and this is fantastic radio. Two guys with opinions and a great back-and-forth, arguing and heated but not shouting over each other, which is a trick The Big Show never learned. 45 minutes in, Beetle is wiping the floor with Felger (and Felger doesn't even realize it), but when there is someone to call Felger on his nonsense it is a pretty much exactly what I'm looking for out of sports talk radio.
I would listen to a Mazz-less Felger and Beetle discuss Division III Ultimate Frisbee if the quality was always or almost always like this.
I would listen to a Mazz-less Felger and Beetle discuss Division III Ultimate Frisbee if the quality was always or almost always like this.
Couldn't agree more, it's also what used to give me the sense that Felger really believed in what he was saying, so agree with him or not at least it I got the impression that his opinions were genuine and not contrived for the purpose of the show. In my mind, for him to argue for as long and vociferously as he has I think deep down he has to believe it otherwise it's going to come off as phony, just like when he admitted that he had to reverse course on his "Just weed" opinion and the Honey Badger.SidelineCameras said:
It's refreshing because I haven't gotten that impression from him for a long time because Mazz never presses or challenges him on anything anymore so he doesn't have to defend his own opinions so as far as the show went his opinions became reality.
I'm not a big Mazz detractor but he brings zero to the show and the show is 10x better when Beetle is in the B Chair. Monday is going to be painful if Mazz is back then. Beetle's said a couple times he checks this site out now and again. I hope he realizes that being more of a yes man in the 3rd chair and not doing what he's doing this week isn't good for the show or his career. Not saying he's Tony "You're Right Mike" Mazz but when he's in the 3rd chair lately he's not what he's been doing this week.
I love Bertrand & Gasper on the weekends and told him it was a better show in front of F&M when they were at Hurricane's. Felger & Beetle really bring out the best in each other.
I love Bertrand & Gasper on the weekends and told him it was a better show in front of F&M when they were at Hurricane's. Felger & Beetle really bring out the best in each other.
This is spot on. I love Bertrand and Gasper on Saturdays while I am out running errands or whatever. We need more of this Beetle and less of sycophant Beetle.NortheasternPJ said:
As everyone seems to agree, yesterday and Monday the show was very good with Beetle filling in for Mazz. So I turned it on a few minutes after 2:00 today....and they have Wiggy analyzing the Bruins trade.
*click*
*click*
I've been on a call since 2 so i haven't tuned in. Wiggy? ugh. It's Wednesday I thought we avoided him. He was on TSH all weekend as well.
So in the latest ratings Felger and Mazz CRUSHED the Salk and Holey show. I guess people aren't getting as tired of Felgers schtick as many thought.
I'm just curious because I really don't know and not really sure where to find past ratings... Have F&M been trending up? Or did they crush S&H as a function of that show just being even worse?Rocco Graziosa said:
So, with the Dennard arrest, who wants to set the over/under on Felger's use of the word "knucklehead" today?
Beetle:
don't think the Patriots should feel compelled to cut Alfonzo Dennard. And yes, Felger will be insufferable today.
don't think the Patriots should feel compelled to cut Alfonzo Dennard. And yes, Felger will be insufferable today.
Rocco Graziosa said:
People were complaining for years that the Big Show was awful but it took until a competitor finally came up with a formula that worked for the ratings to reflect how horrible that show was. It is like any other business, if you are the market leader and you get complacent and assume that your current formula does not need improvement, eventually someone else will end up kicking your ass and taking your market share.
I am not saying F&M are in danger of that yet, but if you don't think Felger's schtick has changed since they debuted a few years ago I don't know what to tell you. And I am a Felger guy. The show to me is not nearly as enjoyable as when it debuted and I tend to agree that Mazz's inability or unwillingness to challenge Felger on anything is a big part of it.
Ralphwiggum said:
Just got around to this post. I must say I kinda disagree. Felger and Mazz HAVE competition. Holley and Salk are well paid and WELL respected sports journalists. I happen to think they suck, but this is absolutely not the same thing as EEI rolling out Fred Smerlas, Larry Johnson, and Diosssee because they enjoyed eating steak with the host. They could only do that because they literally didn't have any competition. Check out EEI's balance sheet and signal strength.......they are as powerful a sports radio station as your going to find in the entire country.
You, and others, keep saying Felger has changed. I just don't see it. And the ratings are the same as they were last year and the year before that. People like listening to him. They tune in to hear what he has to say. Lots and lots of people don't AGREE with what he says, but they sure as shit want to hear him say it.
ForKeeps said:
Jesus, ain't that the truth. BTW, you also forgot "They gotta get rid of Garnett!"
Although I will say that at least he doesn't do a complete 180 and crab that the team needs guys like the ones that they just traded away. That's an old sportsradio move.
So do you disagree with him? I get Felger is a douche about a lot of stuff but:
Seguin - Gone
Moss - Gone (not recently, but when he was beating his drum)
Beckett - Gone
Lackey - Everyone wanted him gone until 2 weeks ago
Rondo - A large group of people want him gone for a number of reasons.
Seguin - Gone
Moss - Gone (not recently, but when he was beating his drum)
Beckett - Gone
Lackey - Everyone wanted him gone until 2 weeks ago
Rondo - A large group of people want him gone for a number of reasons.
Some of these guys don't need to be gone: Seguin, Rondo and Moss.
Felger has had a stick up his ass about Moss since he did the fake moon thing at Lambeau. Randy Moss was probably the best wide receiver that the New England Patriots ever had, there was no need to call for his trade literally years before he was ultimately dealt. And he always lumps Moss in with Ochocinco and Haynesworth as "bad guys" who didn't work out as a Patriot.
And that's complete crap.
Rondo doesn't need to be traded (unless you want to completely blow this thing up) and I really think that the Seguin deal is going to bite the B's in the ass, much like the Joe Thornton trade did.
He was right about Beckett, I'm on the fence about Lackey.
Well, you may think the Seguin trade will bit them but it's possible that he will be proven "right" on that one. As for Rondo, i think your parentheses sum up many people's sentiment. Of course Felger wants to ship him out of town because he's a selfish "me first" guy. It's essentially the same treatment he gave to Moss... "he cares about his stats"... "He pouts when he doesn't get the ball"... "he takes plays off"John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
The Moss situation set up perfectly for him since the Patriots essentially didn't miss a beat and Moss was back out of MN within a year.
The Rondo situation sets up well too. If they trade him, the rebuild is fully underway so the team sucking is fully expected and "embraced" by everyone.
But trading Rondo to blow it up and trading Rondo because he's a "me first" guy are two totally different things. Felger bitched about Rondo giving assists last year, assists. As in giving up a shot in order to give one to his teammate.
When Felger goes on these little rants he sounds like his callers, bitching about the best players on the team and how they should be traded because they don't live up to some set of standards that another star has. Moss isn't Brady, Rondo isn't Pierce, Seguin isn't Bergeron, Beckett isn't I don't know maybe Ortiz or Robin Yount, it seems that Felger doesn't like too many baseball players unless they've seen Gorman Thomas naked.
Brady, Pierce and Bergeron are unique players both in terms of skill and drive, expecting everyone to be like them isn't right.
When Felger goes on these little rants he sounds like his callers, bitching about the best players on the team and how they should be traded because they don't live up to some set of standards that another star has. Moss isn't Brady, Rondo isn't Pierce, Seguin isn't Bergeron, Beckett isn't I don't know maybe Ortiz or Robin Yount, it seems that Felger doesn't like too many baseball players unless they've seen Gorman Thomas naked.
Brady, Pierce and Bergeron are unique players both in terms of skill and drive, expecting everyone to be like them isn't right.