I’m all in…for one year.

Welcome back friends to a brand new Teabag, where we honor none other than the King himself, LeBron James.

Wait, what?  LeBron just announced, in a well-written, well-thought out essay, that he’s returning to Cleveland, to bring a “trophy back to Northeast Ohio.”  The prodigal son is returning home, to lift up the collective spirits of Cleveland (sidenote:  that’s a lot of depressed souls), and deliver a championship to a championship-starved City.  And he’s going back for all the right reasons…family, love for his hometown, role model for the kids.  How big of him to set aside the fact that the entire City said good riddance to him 4 years ago, and Dan Gilbert (Cavs owner) wrote this letter, calling LeBron’s decision “heartless and callous” and an act of “cowardly betrayal”.  Seriously, read the whole letter…it’s crazy.

Yes, his decision to return to Cleveland has more feel good moments than the Hallmark Channel.  So why then, are you giving LeBron a Teabag?  All of Cleveland is smiling for the first time since the premiere of the Drew Carey Show.  LeBron made his decision the right way, without the need of the Boys & Girls Club and nationally televised audience.  Because, our bullshit-dar, much like our ability to shotgun beers, is impeccable, and it’s running at high alert.  The gullible, neive, desperate, clinging for life loyal residents of Cleveland don’t know it, but they’ve just been played.

Sure, some of what he said it probably true.  He probably does love his hometown (note: if you were revered like a God in your hometown, wouldn’t you?) and truly does want to bring a championship to Cleveland.  But the story doesn’t end there.  No sir.  Let’s cut through the bullshit and get to the real reason why he went to Cleveland, and let’s see how much love he really has for his hometown.

Cleveland’s better than Miami

Granted, this is probably the only time in the history of the world where that statement wasn’t made sarcastically, but it’s true.  Cleveland’s roster (thanks to 4 years of post-LeBron tanking) is front-loaded with young talent like Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters…plus this year’s first round pick Andrew Wiggans.  Also, sharpshooter Mike Miller just jumped on the bandwagon, and rumor has it that Kevin Love may soon join.  All this sets up perfectly for LeBron.  He doesn’t have to log 40+ minutes/game.  He can properly rest his body and be ready for the playoffs.  He’s still in the East…the Cavs are guaranteed a spot in the playoffs.

In Miami, the Heat have quickly turned into Florida retirees.  Ray Allen is 60 and D-Wade’s knees are 80.  LeBron would have a much heavier load to carry in Miami than with the Cavs.

Bottom line: he has a better supporting cast in Cleveland, so it makes sense to go back.  Do you honestly think LeBron would be back in Cleveland if Ramon Sessions and Alonzo Gee were still starters?  Hell no.

LeBron’s Contract Details

This is what really got us in LeBron Teabag mode.  He could have signed a 4 year max deal, worth $88 million.  Instead, he signed a 2 year deal for $42 million.  Why leave $46 million on the table?  There are true business reasons, including a higher cap and greater TV revenue starting in 2016.  This give LeBron the ability to sign a max deal in 2016, for a lot more than the current $88 million max deal.  However, for a guy that makes between $50 and $80 million a year in off-court endorsements, is he really that concerned about money?

But his contract isn’t really a two-year contract.  It’s really a one year contract, with a player option for a second year.  That’s right, LeBron can opt-out after next season and become a free agent all over again.  And if you don’t think he’ll leave Cleveland again…you’re fooling yourself.

His contract gives him the maximum flexibility.  Things don’t go well after year one?  He can bail.  No dramatic improvement in year 2?  He can bail (and finally join Melo in NYC).  If he really wanted to go all in, and show Cleveland he’s fully committed, he signs the max deal (and somehow learns to live with $88 million), or at least a true, two-year contract.  But a one year deal?  That’s not much love.

Cleveland = Titletown, USA?

“LeBron and Johnny Football in the same City?!?” exclaimed a Clevelander who, 4 years ago, burned his kid’s LeBron jersey in the driveway.  “Cleveland’s the new Titletown, USA!!!”

Ok, let’s knock this shit out right here.  Cleveland will never, ever…EVER, be confused with a winning City.  It will always smell like stale beer and regret.  This really doesn’t have anything to do with LeBron, just wanted to clear the air before the Northeast Ohio Chamber of Commerce mail bombs us all, touting their clean water and diverse economy.  In fact, don’t be fooled by their propaganda and, as a reminder of what Cleveland’s truly like, please watch our favorite Cleveland tourist videos.

To summarize:  Remember when your best friend went through that nasty breakup, it was the first time you saw him cry…he crashed on your couch for weeks, drank all your beer and vowed never to speak her name again?  And then remember when, awhile later over beers, he tells you, “hey, Becca and I are getting back together!”  You feign happiness for him…he’s happy the way a puppy that eats its own shit is happy…but you know that, sooner or later, that puppy realizes he’s eating shit (again), and your buddy realizes that Becca’s a whore (again).

If it was so obvious that going back to Cleveland was so magnanimous and altruistic, it wouldn’t take an essay to explain it.

Enjoy your teabag.

Do you even know what FIFA stands for?

Of course The Machine’s going to teabag the World Cup.  We’re Americans, which means, besides being awesome all the time, we hate soccer.  We have to.  It’s in our blood.  By age 14, every American is programmed to hate soccer.  The losers people who slip through either (a) got cut from the football team, or (b) are part French.

The real question is why do we hate soccer?  Soccer is the world’s most popular sport…literally, the entire world loves soccer except us.  The players are god-like, and are known in every living room from Argentina to Zimbabwe…yet Lionel Messi could walk anywhere in the U.S. and we’d say, “who’s the weird Mexican-looking dude in Umbros?”  Rounding out their rock star image, are their rock-star quality WAGs.

Hubba, hubba.

Even more puzzling…every kid in America grows up playing soccer.  It’s the first team sport we play, before baseball and football.  So why, then, if we start out playing and loving soccer, and if soccer players are international superstars, do we look down on it for the rest of our lives?  Well, here’s why:

It’s boring

We loved soccer when we were 6 for the same reason we ate Play-dough and boogers:  we didn’t know any better.  It was fun to run around and kick shit…but when we got older and sat down to watch a game, holy shit is this sport lame.

It’s 90 minutes long (plus stoppage time) and you’re lucky to see two goals.  Two!!!  A 2-1 game is considered a high scoring affair.  Sorry, but our fickle American minds need action.  We need three-pointers, home runs, and deep post routes…not quick bursts of action followed by extremely long periods of inactivity.  Sounds like Roid Rage’s sex life (boom!).

Case in point:  In the US/Ghana game on Monday, the US scored in the first minute of the game.  Ok, there’s some instant action.  Maybe we were wrong.  Maybe it is exciting to watch.  Eighty-one minutes later, the next goal was scored.  Yes, more than one hour elapsed until the next goal was scored.  Sorry, but that’s a lot of time of playing keep away.

You can tie

Huh?  Wait, you mean you can play an entire game and no one wins?  Sorry, but this is ‘Murica…we don’t play for participation trophies.  We play to win.  Ending a game in a 0-0 tie does not compute.

We’re not good

When’s the last time the US Men’s team won the World Cup?  Never.  The closest they got was third place (in 1930).  Shit, we didn’t even qualify for the World Cup for a remarkable 32 consecutive years (from 1954-1986).  What about Olympic medals?  None.  Wait, not even a fucking bronze???

Simply put, we’re not good at it (at least the Men), the rest of the world is far superior, and we are seen as the laughing-stock.  So, instead of hunkering down and showing that American Rocky IV-esque resolve to do better and beat the Russians…we’ll just take our ball and go home.  Instead, we’ll call our sport football (and spell it totally different) and we’ll give our trophies World names, like the World Series and World Champions (a/k/a Super Bowl Champions).  See, we are the best in the world (at sports we don’t let the rest of the world play).

US Women are better than the Men [put your chauvinist hat on]

The US Women’s soccer team is not just better than the Men’s, but they’re a lot better.  The US Women have consistently dominated the sport, winning the World Cup in ’99, and winning the Gold Medal in 4 of the past 5 Olympics.  Everybody knows names like Mia Hamm, Brandie Chastain, Hope Solo, and Amy Wambach…try naming 4 people on the men’s team.

Best. Post-goal celebration. Ever.

So is that really a reason American don’t embrace soccer?  Maybe…the most popular sports in America are NASCAR, which has one (1) female participant, and football, which—unless you count sideline reporters—has none.  Our male-dominated, Type A, beer chugging society simply won’t accept a sport where the women are better than the men.  It’s why tennis suffers here too.

No commercials [put your corporate conspiracy theory hat on]

Hear us out here for a minute.  The Machine thinks a big reason—perhaps the biggest reason—we as a society are turned off to soccer is because we’ve been programmed by corporate America to dislike it.  Soccer is not a made for TV sport.  It’s two 45 minutes halves of running time.  No timeouts, no mandatory commercial breaks for a word from our sponsors.  Yes, the lack of TV appeal has killed soccer, and will prevent it from ever becoming popular here.

Why do you think, in a college basketball game, which is only two 20 minute halves, each team has 5 timeouts, plus there are mandatory timeouts every four minutes, adding another 4 TOs per half.  That’s a total of 14 timeouts.  What about football.  Touchdown (commercial break), kickoff (commercial break)…there are plenty of opportunities for Budweiser and Ford to hack their (not made in the USA) products.  Baseball’s the same way.  Not so in soccer.

In soccer, sponsors are relegated to populating billboards around the field, and putting stickers on the glass thing on the sidelines.  Sorry, but doesn’t fly in the corporate boardroom.  They want ad time and commercials in primetime…not stickers.  Because of the lack of TV appeal, corporate America hasn’t fully embraced it (think oil companies funding alternative energy development) and therefore they won’t let us like it.

DON’T BLOCK THE BUDWEISER LOGO!!!

What does that say about our society that we are controlled and manipulated by corporations and their whorish need to advertise?  Not much, but it’s true.  Don’t believe us?  Think for a minute why your kid wants (no, NEEDS!) to go to Disney, when they would get just as much satisfaction from the county fair.  And think for a minute why you NEED to take them there.

Despite all these reasons, why then, does The Machine have a strange sense of pride, patriotism, and sudden interest in the World Cup?  After watching the men beat Ghana last night, The Machine is now all about Team America.  We’ve hung our (not made in the USA) American flag outside our house, ate an enormous amount of bacon, and taught our children the real American anthem:

How long will this interest last?  As long as Johnson & Johnson and the Ford Motor Company let it.  As soon as (read: when) the US Men’s team is bounced from the World Cup, we’ll go right back to apathy and TV timeouts.  Until then, we’ll feign acceptance and display an uncomfortable amount of patriotism.  USA! USA!

Go Yankees [wait, what are we cheering for?] Soccer?  Really?  Go USA!

Glad to see that comes in extra-medium.

Enjoy your teabag.

Welcome to Groundhog’s Day!

Wow, The Machine’s finally over our post-Draft hangover (and have just sobered up from our epic Draft Party) and we’re ready to start writing again.  Until it’s appropriate for us to start writing about football (next week) we’ll switch gears and focus on the NBA for a bit.

The Machine was ready to write an article at the beginning of this years’ playoffs (you know, like three months ago), but then we realized:  we already did, last year, when we broke down the 2013 playoffs and (correctly) called a Heat/Spurs Finals.  Seriously, everything we wrote last year is still true.  The playoffs are ridiculously long, and the outcome is predetermined.  Ok, so maybe we got carried away by comparing the Heat to the ’96 Bulls (our bad) but our predictions were not only spot on, but they hold the test of time.  In this case, two years running.

[sidenote:  The Machine just saw a commercial for Coors Light Summer Brew and our nipples are officially hard].

OMFG!!!

Anyway, that’s why the NBA gets a Teabag.  For all the talk about parity in the NBA (Pacers the new #1 seed in the East, the young guns of Golden State, the Clippers revival, blah, blah, blah) the end result is the same:  Heat v. Spurs.  And guess what: the end result of the Finals will be the same.  The Heat will win their third consecutive Championship.  And you were saying what about parity?  [note:  the Spurs winning game three last night does not change a thing, it just adds more “drama”].

The lack of parity is a big problem for the league, much bigger than Donald Sterling (but thanks for the distraction you crazy old codger).  We told you last year the playoffs weren’t worth watching, just tune in to the Finals to watch the Heat win.  Well the same thing holds true this year and, barring MJ returning to the Bulls, will likely hold true next year.  As much as the NBA wants you to believe that anyone can win, it’s just not true.

The gap between the have and the have-nots is the largest in all sports.  Does anyone really think the Milwaukee Bucks will ever be contenders?  To the contrary, the Milwaukee Brewers (who last year finished 23 games out of first place) are now in first place and hold one of the best records in baseball.  Worst to first is possible in baseball and football, it’s unheard of in the NBA (thank you, guaranteed contracts).

No one will give the Heat a run for their money until Phil Jackson brings Kevin Durant to the Knicks (hiring Derek Fisher = Smartest. Decision. Ever.).  Until then, no one will not want to admit it, but basketball is predictable and boring.

Enjoy your Teabag.