This past week was a study in contrasts for Houston sports fans: the Texans were idle but the Rockets played host to the most-watched basketball game in the world; the Astros made a trade that ended the Houston career of one of our biggest anti-heroes while the Dynamo set the stage for what may be Houston's first championship dynasty since the Rockets' run in the 90's. Let's take a look at what the blogs were saying this week:
- Clutch Fans has a rundown of the Yao-Yi clash of the titans. Er, one titan and one raw rookie. Buried within is a short, pithy analysis of the artist formerly known as Stevie Franchise.
- Phil Rogers at ESPN is grossly misinformed, and shows an almost laughable ignorance of the Astros' offseason goals. Quickly:
1) Brad Ausmus (though resigned) will not be the starting catcher this year. J.R. Towles will.
2) The 'stros would sooner move back to the Astrodome and have Hannah Montana sing the national anthem every night than trade Roy Oswalt
3) Carlos Lee won more than "a handful" of games for the team in 2007.
4) No mention of new acquisition Michael Bourn is just sloppy.
Perhaps if the team were renamed the Hou-York Red Sox we might get some decent coverage at the national level.
- The Offside has a very perfunctory preview of the MLS Cup. Does anyone out there know of a decent Dynamo blog? Surely there's something better than this.
- The perfect link for a slow week. Clutch, the Rockets' anthropomorphic koala mascot has a blog. Seriously. Did you know s/he is a 2006 Mascot Hall of Fame inductee? Also, the irony of a mascot who doesn't talk, with hands obviously incapable of typing, having a blog entitled "Clutch Speaks" is almost enough to rend time and space.
- Since it's the Texans' bye week, why not check out this fantastic YouTube collection of the high points of the season so far. If the high points aren't enough to keep you from crippling depression, there's also video of the Texans' cheerleaders.
- Astros sign Clemens....to a personal services contract! Interesting that this occurs the same week as this report. We're not saying, but we're just saying...
- The Texans are so injury-prone this season that they're looking at their training practices to see if they're doing anything wrong. If it's anything like high school P.E., it'll play out like this: "Running? Check. Lift the weight of a small car? Check. Practice tackling? Check. Throw darts at David Carr dartboard? Check. Dammit, we forgot stretching, didn't we?" Never forget to stretch folks. Houstonist: for your health!
Now that we've successfully perpetuated at least one nasty rumor, our work here is done. Check in every week for the roundup!
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