Which New York sports nemesis would make the best comedy bad guy?

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To me, Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore was the perfect comedy bad guy. Talented, lame, pompous, enviable and manipulative, Christopher MacDonald’s character made an ideal nemesis for Adam Sandler’s goofy, immature, capricious hockey-goon-turned-golfer.

MacDonald also played a classic comedy bad-guy part in Dirty Work, for what it’s worth, but he’s hardly the only actor who does it well. The EPA guy in Ghostbusters, Ted Knight’s judge in Caddyshack, Biff Tannen in Back to the Future, the local police chief in Super Troopers, basically the entire jock fraternity in Revenge of the Nerds, Craig Kilborn’s character in Old School, I could go on. It’s a cliched archetype: usually good-looking, always entitled and generally snively.

I’ve been thinking about comedy bad guys a lot lately because of how Bill Belichick and Tom Brady seem such perfect foils for the brazen, obnoxious, fat, freaky Rex Ryan. Brady, handsome star quarterback that clearly takes himself too seriously, could easily be cast as the bad guy in every single 80s teen movie.

But I have previously compared A-Rod to Shooter McGavin, specifically after the way he dismissed Dallas Braden in basically every sense after their mound incident and Braden’s perfect game.

So I’m wondering now which New York sports nemesis would make for the best comedy bad guy. I’ve included A-Rod on the list because even though he plays for a New York team, he seems to count as a nemesis for both Mets fans and a large portion of Yankees fans alike. Same thing for Sean Avery.

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Your move, James Franco

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This reached a nadir when Ms. Young, some 85 minutes into the show, failed to defecate on cue, despite having given an advance interview advertising her ability to do so. She invited audience members to help her find ways of achieving her goal, and most obliged. They gave her cigarettes, Coca-Cola and practical advice about manipulation. They loosened her frock; she was wearing a full-length hooped dress with petticoat. They offered manual assistance. They encouraged her when she relocated to a chair after squatting over a bowl.

This went on for more than 10 minutes. Finally Ms. Young — claiming she must be nervous and admitting the show was running considerably over time — departed to complete her defecation in a restroom nearby. I was one of several (but too few) people who left at this point. I left partly because of the show’s sheer inefficiency. Principally, however, I felt that to remain would indicate that I shared the audience’s far-from-tacit consensus that Ms. Young deserved encouragement, and that this was fun or rewarding.

– Alastair Macauley, N.Y. Times.

Excuse me for waxing scatalogical, but what if the intention of Ann Liv Young’s performance-art piece (here reviewed by Macauley in hilarious fashion) was not to poop in front of a live audience, but to try and fail to poop in front of an audience? Maybe it was a massive failure, or maybe it was a bold meditation on performance anxiety, unmet expectations, and constipation.

I really need to get into performance art. It’s a great way to get people to praise you for behaving bizarrely.

I may have mentioned this here before (though I can’t find it if I have), but I launched a fake student-government campaign for my TV show in college that culminated in me and some friends unleashing thousands of bouncy balls in a crowded campus square while I shouted “Balls!” into a megaphone.

While we were doing it, a couple of grad-student types walked by and I heard one woman say, “must be some sort of performance art.”

Well, it wasn’t intended to be, ma’am. But if you want to call it that, I won’t disagree.

I don’t think it works that way

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But Cromartie guaranteed Brady will be picking on him by telling the Daily News on Tuesday that he hates Brady and that he’s “an ass—-.”…

“I try to just throw where the guys are open,” Brady said Wednesday. “I don’t think I pick out players.”

Cromartie didn’t back off his comments, and Brady is not going to back off throwing at him….

Three years ago, during the Patriots’ undefeated regular season, Steelers safety Anthony Smith guaranteed Pittsburgh would beat New England. That didn’t work out so well. The Patriots won, 34-13, and Brady burned Smith for two touchdowns.

“Those plays just kind of came up as they did,” Brady said. “I don’t think there were plays on the call sheet to go after a particular player. That’s the way the reads went, and he happened to be there in those situations.”

Sure. Just like Brady’s reads will take him right to Cromartie on Sunday.

– Gary Myers, N.Y. Daily News.

That’s more than I usually like to excerpt from any one article, but Myers kept coming back to the same point. He seems to really think Tom Brady will now try to “pick on” or “throw at” Antonio Cromartie more than he would have if Cromartie didn’t call him an ass—- in public.

How can that be?

Does anyone really think Tom Brady — remarkable competitor, obvious ass—- and one of the best quarterbacks of all time — is going to change his game plan because of something someone said about him? Can it possibly work like that?

Of course Brady is going to throw Cromartie’s direction sometimes, but it’s going to have a lot more to do with Cromartie’s open man than Cromartie’s running mouth.

It seems almost insulting to Brady — and I’m all for insulting Brady, mind you — to suggest otherwise. He’s going to put aside doing everything he can to win a playoff football game to seek some petty vengeance? Tom Brady’s going to do that? Really?

As I suggested yesterday, I suspect that this type of thing is fun for fans and great for filling papers, but utterly meaningless in terms of the actual game on the field. These men are professional football players, even if some of them happen to wear man-UGGs.

Cromartie himself said, “They can have all the (bulletin-board) material that they want. It’s about what you do in between those white lines. They don’t care what we say in the media.”

In the interest of fairness — even though I have no interest in fairness — I present our man Mark Weinstein’s column for MSG.com. Mark, a Giants fan, has no patience for the Jets’ antics, though he stops far short of insinuating that they have any impact on the actual game. And he presents a pretty hilarious chart.

Nick Young tests the hot hand theory

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At the Times, Rob Mahoney examines the so-called hot-hand fallacy after Nick Young’s 14-of-22 night. I struggle with it in terms of basketball. I believe, obviously, that there’s no such thing as a hot hand in a dice game. And I could be convinced that there’s no such thing as a hot hand in free-throw shooting. But given all the variables to field-goal shooting in a competitive basketball game — as Mahoney details — it feels like something that’s impossible to figure one way or the other.

Also, though I recognize it’s easy to be fooled by randomness, it’s really difficult to explain away the way my Georgetown Hoyas have been shooting lately as a function of random fluctuation.

Hell yeah bro

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I got my money on my team, bro.

– Angel Pagan.

Hey, maybe not the world’s safest bet, but good for Pagan for expressing confidence in the Mets.

Truth is — though it will be difficult to unseat Philadelphia — the Mets appear apt to be a lot better than most people think. Remember the post from the other day about how the Mets committed 1633 plate appearances to dudes with sub-.300 on-base percentages? All the main culprits — Jeff Francoeur, Rod Barajas and Alex Cora — are gone.

Assuming some combination of Daniel Murphy, Brad Emaus and Justin Turner emerges from Spring Training with the second-base job and Josh Thole and Ronny Paulino make for a suitable catching platoon, the 2011 Mets may actually field a lineup without any major holes in it. That’s a big, big change from the last couple years, and I think fans might be surprised by how much a team can benefit from not giving away outs.

And better yet, for once the Mets appear to have viable in-house Major League ready depth at most spots on the field.

The problem, obviously, is the pitching. How big of a problem depends on if R.A. Dickey, Jon Niese and Mike Pelfrey can build on successful 2010s and if Sandy Alderson can concoct a legit back end of a rotation out of reclamation projects and rookies.

The Phillies will be good. The Braves, too, will be good. But it’s silly to count out the Mets before the season even starts, especially now that they appear to be in good hands.