Jerk Out

So I'm talking to the Shooter Mom tonight, and she's been keeping track of the possible Eagles free agent signings... and yes, she's heard the Larry Fitzpatrick and Assante Samuel rumors, and she's pumped. And all I can think is... with the massive and wonderful exception of the Owens/Kearse year (which you have to admit, worked well in the very short term), that's just not how they operate.

But, um, Andy? It'd be OK with us all if, for once, you take that lovely cap space that you are so proud of having and, you know, USE IT TO MAKE YOUR TEAM BETTER. Even if it doesn't work out, we'll still feel better knowing that you are, like, TRYING. Even if it's true that the teams that make the big free agent signings (hello, Little Danny Snyder! What shiny new toy did you buy for yourself this year, you saucy little boy!) rarely hoist the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the year. Even if the Patriots didn't benefit from having Randy Moss in the end. We'll still feel like, you know, we haven't seen how the movie ends before it begins.

We now return you to the real world of the Eagles, where they have just... wait for it... I hope you are sitting down... made offers to.... Joselio Hanson and JR Reed! Woo Freaking Hoo!

Master of the Jerk Out, indeed. (And for anyone who is reading this and thinking that I'm pulling off a Masstermind-level double reverse jinx move? Well, this denial of that level of mental gyrations makes your double reverse move zero times infinity, and I do hope I just BLEW YOUR MIND.)

Public Space

Maybe this is just something that I missed in the 7 years that I spent on the West Coast, where you live in your car and don't really have as much contact with people in the population-dense trains, stations and streets... but, um, since when did the world decide there was no such thing as public space?

Yesterday on the train, as the commuters enjoy the peace and quiet that you find on the newer double-deckers.. and yup, it's a cell phone conversation that we all got to listen to, as the frankly bitchy manager-commuter expressed her disappointment as her subordinate called in sick. I'm pretty sure that I speak for all of the other people on the train when I fervently hoped that the person on the other end of the line was interviewing somewhere else, and reaming her manager. Actually, I'm pretty sure we were all rooting for in that job interview. Or for that person to not Mind The Gap while getting off the train later...

And then again in the evening, listening to a douchebag recount every single detail in his life and his commute and his financial transactions... well, in a few years when you read how a short bitter sports blogger went haywrire and left a string of corpses on the train, you'll know why. But I'm so glad that your house closing went well, Ferret Faced Princeton Junction Guy. And the entire 40 minute conversation was riveting, especially the five to ten lulls where you said, "Uhhh.... anything else..." That was magical.

(The obvious solution, of course, is just to whip out my own cell phone and have a loud and imaginary conversation where I talk about how I'm surrounded by jerks on the train, and that I'll have to call that person back, because I'm in a public space and don't want my fellow passengers to think I'm a complete asswipe... but in this as in many things, I don't have the stones.)

I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the plight of the person taking an urgent call. I've been that person, usually for consulting gigs. But, um, when that happens, you cup your hand over the receiver, you hunker down to block the sound, and you try to end the call, you know, quickly.

Or, even better yet, train your contacts to IM you, and text them back. Either is vastly preferable to treating the rest of us to your sad little life, of which We Don't Care. Since when did casual rudeness become acceptable, just because you've got technology and an inflated sense of your own self-importance?

Malicious Drop: Who's Going To Win The NBA Finals

The good Don over at our favorite Pacific Rim sports blog (With Malice) asked who we thought was going to win the NBA Finals, so we spent some brain cells on the question. You can see the results here, but the short answer is that I'm glad I didn't pick the Rockets, even though it was pre-Ming Tragedy...

Epic Drop: Top 11 Reasons Why Wrigley Field Can't Change It's Name

Your list is here, and yes, it is a little gift to longtime FTT contributor The Truth. Though I'm not sure that I'd call viewing this video a gift...

Cubs Fans Are A Bunch Of ….

Well, I think you can figure out the ending to that title. One of the nice things about living in Chicago as a Cardinals fan is watching the pure misery that is Cubs fan. But sometimes it’s less comical and extremely annoying. Examples include “Wait til next year.” For what? Another crappy team? Or “The Cubs are cursed.” I don’t believe in curses, just stupid people who talk about them. But what I’ve determined to be the most annoying thing about Cubs fans is this. They care more about the field where they play than they do about the team itself.

Which brings me to the latest “fall on the ground and kick and scream like a little girl” moment from Cubs nation. The possibility that the naming rights to Wrigley Field might be sold this season. Heaven forbid you call Wrigley Field anything other than that. I think they should go for a descriptive name like “Old Urinal Cake Excuse For A Ballpark Where College Kids Will Ultimately Get Drunk And Puke Next To You Field While Paying $50 For A Bleacher Seat Field.”

Instead of pointing out to Cubs fans why this is a non-topic and nothing to get excited about, I’d like to propose 4 companies the Cubs should target for naming rights. Let the voting begin!

Viagra Field – it’s about time the Cubs had something to get excited about. Nothing pumps up Cubs fan like Viagra Field. Promotional giveaway night – hookers in right field (which would only be different from any other game because they moved them from left field).

Nati Light Field – Old Style doesn’t have the coin to pay $25 million for twenty years, so AB steps to the plate with a beer that is fitting of Wrigley – smells like piss and leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you’re done. Promotional tie in - Larry Eustacy sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame with Mizzou coeds.

Preparation H Field – If you’re going to a ballpark that feels like a giant hemorrhoid, you might as well name the cure after it. Promotional tie in – Cubs Wallet Schedule. Being a Cubs fan is like having hemorrhoids. You don’t want anybody to know and it hurts like hell. So hide that schedule in your wallet so nobody knows.

Drinkin’ Mate Field – Not sure if these guys can come up with the cash for this, but they are a perfect tie in. Going out for a night of heavy drinking? Take Drinkin’ Mate before you start drinking to ward off any potential hangover. Potential tie in – 2 tickets for every fan to a White Sox game. Prevent that Cubs hangover by going to see a team that has actually won a World Series in the past 100 years.

The Best News I've Heard All Day

H/t to With Leather -- the news is that yes, SLAMBALL IS COMING BACK. Pat Croce's going to fulfill his lifelong destiny to be the commish. The fact that no one's died while playing this game is, to my eyes, something of an upset.

The Sean Salisbury Brand Moves On

Sean Salisbury and his famous member are leaving ESPN after 12 years. (Yes, 12 years. It's kind of like Bush being President for the past 7 years, only, like, 5 more.) Let's hear straight from the horse's cell phone camera's trouser snake...

"I'd grown tired of being punished for not being an NFL superstar. Analysts who don't work as hard as me, don't prepare as hard as me, and don't have my resume were making more than me just because of their ability to throw or catch a football. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated the opportunity ESPN gave me, but they had capped my ceiling. There was only so far I could go there. I'd done nothing wrong, and if you hear otherwise, it's not true. I did everything that was asked of me. I have created a brand and it's time to expand into other opportunities in TV, radio, Internet, publishing, movies and public speaking, among others. My resume speaks for itself."

Now, far be it for me to drop a Davenport on a guy's efforts at Establishing His Brand... but he does know that he'll be remembered as much for this...



as he will for his staged yammer-fests, right?

Just in case you were wondering...

Yes, the sports blogs with titty get more traffic. But they don't have tags like this.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Signs That You Are A Little Too Eager For Baseball To Start

Your link is here, and yes, I did use to play Strat-O, but more hockey than baseball. I had a totally bitching half-elven fighter-thief with a +4 vorpal blade that completely rocked the 20-sider and hit for power in platoon situations. (And yes, I have had sex. With girls.)

Brain Versus Eyes

Twenty years ago, I'm pretty sure that I was reading the Bill James Baseball Abstract in preparation for a fantasy draft, devouring as much of his faintly patronizing but obviously persuasive arguments with zeal. And just like any number of baseball geeks, I was convinced I was in on the first whispers of a Revolution.

While the game was obviously still stuck in hidebound traditions with bonehead management, eventually the free market of better offensive and defensive players would win out, and the sabermetric virtues -- patient hitting for power, with a studied indifference, if not contempt for little-ball sacrifice strategies, and avoiding defensive errors while having provably good range -- would prevail. We'd enter a glorious new age where swing at anything meatheads would be recognized for the production holes they were, and the game would make more sense on every level.

Well, that's more or less what happened. The Red Sox hired James, and he's been in their organizations for both championships. The Yankees signed Jason Giambi to a monstrous deal for his hyperactive on base percentage, and at the time, no one thought that was a bad idea. Guys like Matt Starks and Scott Hatteberg have managed to have long careers, despite not looking like the kind of people that would keep finding at-bats in their old age. People think Adam Dunn and Bobby Abreu are worthy of big contracts, rather than cowards who were too selfish to swing the bat in a clutch situation. When a flashy player with questionable strike zone judgment (I'm looking at you, Jeff Francouer) comes up, people talk about how he needs to work on that, and shy away from really embracing him as a new star. Bad on base percentage, which was ignored by people who voted for Andre Dawson as an MVP in the '80s, is cited as the main reason why he's not in the Hall of Fame now. By the glacial standards of baseball -- a sport that after thirty five years, still hasn't figured out how to resolve the fact that it's two leagues play a fundamentally different game with the DH -- that's positively breakneck.

And yet, I can't help but feel that when we get to our final destination, the game is going to be, well, tough on the eyes and buttocks. Imagine if every hitter were judged on the telling statistic of how many pitches he used per at-bat... and that his compensation was directly linked to it. Somehow, I'm not thinking that his every at-bat will be captivating. For a game that's still the worse for wear thanks to the one-batter late-inning strategies of Tony LaRussa, this is not good. (And don't get me started on the death of casual base stealing. The days of heady but not fast players swiping 10 to 15 bags a year, just because that's what base runners should do, rather than just standing there and waiting for a home run? Gone baby gone. Welcome to Lardass City.)

There is, actually, something to the idea of what the scout's eyes tell him about a player. The name of this site aside, five tool players are actually fun to watch, and fun to watch is a player that's memorable... and given that only fans of MLB+ teams seem to be enjoying this era, it's kind of important to find enjoyment anywhere we can.

Which brings me to a late and lamented farewell to Jeremy Brown, the unexpected star of Michael Lewis's "Moneyball." Brown was, for those who haven't had the pleasure of reading the book, a college catcher who was the A's ideal of an undervalued talent -- cheap to sign, but a percentage monster with power and plate discipline. Like the vast majority of first round picks, he didn't set the world on fire, and he announced his surprising retirement a few weeks ago, a footnote to a good book, but nothing much as a player. (I also can't help but think that he's the end note to the Billy Beane Era of genius, too. I love the man and what he has accomplished in Oakland, but when you punt on a year before it even begins, you make me wonder why I'm rooting for the team at all.)

So give me wild-eyed Vlad Guerrero wannabees, and rifle-armed shortstops who try to make every play, no matter how many balls wind up in the stands. Give me relief pitchers with quirky deliveries who actually get a little bent when the manager comes to take them out after one hitter. In short, give me baseball, a game played by emotional and short-sighted man-childs, rather than an exercise in percentages played by guys who seem to have been cross-bred with chartered accountants. Or robots.

Because the five tool player can be honed and taught to play the percentages, but the percentage player will never be anything but a percentage player. And if the game matters to you beyond the numbers, how the player plays it is actually kind of important. (And who knows, maybe if that catches on, enough MLB+ teams will go back to making bad personnel decisions and free agent signing based on tools, and we'll regain some semblance of competitive balance. Also, while I'm wishing, I'd like a pony that craps money.)

Epic Drop: Top 10 Reasons Why MLB Is Restricting Access

Your link is here, and I'd say more, but I got nuthin'. Maybe more tomorrow...

Hockey Wheelin' and Dealin'

GMGM gets going! Action for Les Capitaux at the trade deadline!

Picked up Cristobal Huet from the Canadiens for a second-round pick in '09. Huet was the #1 but is a free agent at the end of the season; it looks like the Habs decided that 20-year-old Carey Price is the future, and the future is now. Kolzig was in net tonight and saved 34/35 in a win over the Wild, but the future for Olie the Goalie now looks to be out of town.

Also traded the rights to Notre Dame freshman Ted Ruth (Our Lady has hockey? Who knew?) for Sergei Fedorov (He was playing in Columbus--who knew?!). The hope is that Fedorov will strengthen the second line; at any rate, he adds veteran experience and can talk to Ovechkin in his native tongue.

And in the Disappointing Matt Exchange department, they sent Pettinger to Vancouver for Cooke.

Carolina pulled out an OT win over the Devils keeping the Caps five points out of the Southeast division lead and three seed, though the Canes have played two more games. Three points and two teams still sit between the Caps and the eight seed; the division is likely the easier target.

Legacy

(H/t Deadspin.) With each passing day, more of your brain -- and the brains of younger people -- knows Isiah Thomas for one thing, and one thing alone: he coaches this team.

At some point, if you are him, don't you just want to, you know, get as far away from this as possible, and have any sense of decency?

Re(i)d Queen Effect

"It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." -- Lewis Carroll, "(Alice) Through the Looking Glass"

Red Queen Effect comes from evolutionary genetics, and it uses the Lewis Carroll quote above to describe the phenomenon of maintenance in the face of an unrelenting enemy -- mostly about parasitic diseases versus the organism that host them.

In it, everything is done simply to maintain the status quo; even a positive mutation will simply gain you a leg up, as it were, for a small amount of time, before the parasite adapts as well. (In a fun aside, this also explains why, evolutionarily, we have sex and genders -- it's all to thwart parasites. Evolutionary geneticists are sexy, sexy beasts.)

If you are like me, as always, you have my apologies. But you've faced Red Queen Effect in the business end of a bench press, on a bicycle, at work and, in this off-season at least and most likely many more, in your football team. Especially if you are an Eagles fan.

Speculation around my part of the world and blogosphere has been fixated on who (or, since this is football and the pre-draft speculation makes us all combine-ish surveyors of meat, what) the Eagles will draft with the 19th pick.

Since the team has proven itself incapable of drafting a WR high since the Tragedy of Freddie Mitchell, despite the fact that, well, they seem to have good years when they have a plus wideout and bad years when they don't... well, let's just move on from that, shall we.

The only positions that we're (pretty sure) they won't draft are RB, QB, TE, PK and P. Everything else, given the stopgap nature of last year's frustrating 8-8 team, is up for grabs.

(Note: They'd certainly be welcome to draft a top-drawer TE, but after slapping the franchise tag on LJ Smith and being reasonably encouraged by Brent Celek last year, they won't. Besides, a top-drawer TE is too close to a WR for comfort. As the Owens Debacle proved, we just can't have them. Bad things happen.)

Offensive line is probably not likely, even though Job Runyon is getting old in the tooth, and the little that the world saw of Winston Justice made us all, Justice included, assume the fetal position. Some would note that putting a de facto rookie against the NFC's best DE in 2007 on an island in a MNF game was, um, Remarkably Stupid Coaching, too.

But it's not like the Reid Era to cut bait that quickly, and given Justice's pedigree (USC) and draft position (2nd round in 2006), he probably gets another year to show if he's learned anything. The team likes Jamal Jackson at center, and so do I; he's athletic and nasty. But even if he wasn't, drafting an interior lineman in the first round just isn't something they would do. You'd take a tackle and move him in if he couldn't handle the most meaningful role, kind of how they rarely draft a safety very high, preferring to go for the higher upside at corner.

On the defensive side of the ball, the CB class is said to be good, while the safeties are weak. Again, this plays right into the general school of thought anyway, which is you can always slide a slow corner to safety, but you can't do anything with a safety that's having trouble, other than cut him. Unfortunately, drafting at the 19 spot probably means reaching for a corner, so this isn't where they are going to go, either.

With the Eagles, linebacker is to the defense as wide receiver is to the offense -- an absolutely critical position that they just have a blind spot about. The perfect Eagles LB for the Reid Era is a guy that's good in coverage and... that's about it. It's one of the biggest problems of the regime, in that the fan base years (pines, really) for the next Seth Joyner, otherwise known as the linebacker from a little place called Rage. But the team winds up going for Big Thinkers like Dhani Jones and Mark Simoneau. It's maddening, but it is what it is.

So that leaves us with a defensive lineman, and specifically a defensive end, to replace the cursed Jevon Kearse and to buttress the team's best defensive player last year, Trent Cole. Now, the Giants showed that two plus pass rushers on the defensive line can do a lot of damage... but excuse me for just thinking that the draft pick, if and when it goes here, is just chasing the ineffecive free agent signings of Kearse and Darren Howard.

Meanwhile, of course, the secondary is a serious problem with the ghost of Brian Dawkins, the erratic play of Lito Sheppard, and nickel back Will James (nee Peterson) playing so badly that most Eagle fans were happier to see street meat like Joselio Hanson and JR Reed in coverage. (At least they seemed interested in hitting someone.) And that's where Re(i)d Queen Effect comes in, because if either the Howard or Kearse signings had worked out, you could spend this pick in the defensive backfield and addressed your most glaring need.

You know, that you can actually draft, given that only Pinkos and Hottentots draft or sign game-breaking wide receivers.

And with that, I think it's Drink Me Time...

Epic Drop: Top 10 Reasons Barry Bonds Might Play In Japan

Your link is here, and the video clip at the end of the post is from one of my great joys in life, an incredible little ball of cheese movie called "InfraMan." Princess Dragon Mom, the head villainess, is a cute Asian chick with blonde hair (sure, it's probably a wig), a whip, and the ability to turn into a flying rubber monster. She leads her army of weirdly swaying dudes in rubber suits, along with hundreds of remarkably disposable guys in black unitards, against Our Hero, who Science has given a super suit complete with on board nuclear reactor.



And it all makes more sense -- much more, really -- than Barry Bonds going to play baseball over there...

I'm Gonna Eat My Cheese Doodles

I can not support the mission of the Stephen A. Smith Society of Heckling Gentlemen enough, really. (And if you don't know what the story is with this... I can't begin to do it justice, really. Just play the clip. I post YouTube videos when I'm stressed. And yes, it's disgraceful.)

Epic Drop: Top 10 Future PGA Tour Tactics To Stop Tiger Woods

Your list is here, and he does know that he's allowed to lose every once in a while, right? Seriously, the guy towers over his sport more than any athlete ever has. It's a surprise now when he loses, which has never been the case in golf for the proceeding 100 years. It's absolutely absurd.

Compounding the Sin

I know, you've waited 48+ hours to get the FTT take on this and all, but here goes...

The Cleveland Cavaliers acquired former defensive player of the year Ben Wallace and swingman Joe Smith from the Chicago Bulls in an 11-player, three-team blockbuster deal on Thursday.

Cleveland also got forward Wally Szczerbiak and guard Delonte West from the Seattle SuperSonics, general manager Danny Ferry announced Thursday.

In exchange, the Cavaliers sent Larry Hughes, Drew Gooden, Cedric Simmons and Shannon Brown to the Bulls and Ira Newble and Donyell Marshall to Seattle.

Cleveland also received Chicago's 2009 second round draft selection and Seattle acquired Adrian Griffin from the Bulls.

In any Monster Deal, there's an awful lot of dross to sort through. The remarkable thing about this deal is that almost all of it left one team -- the Cavs.

When the dust settled, Cleveland now gets to start Wallace, Ilgauskas, Sczerbiak and West with LeBron, and bring Gibson, Varaejo and Smith off the bench. (And the starters may be wrong and all, but that's their top eight, and all will get time.)

Here's what that does for them. It means that they won't be wondering where Hughes and Gooden are when the chips are down. It means they won't have a 37% shooter who isn't a point guard... playing point guard. It should mean a whole lot less of Eric Snow, since with Wallace on the floor, you can only have one guy who absolutely can't score playing. It gives them a very good spot-up shooter in the Zerb, and a reasonable defensive presence in Wallace that can cover for the fact that Wally can't defend anyone. It also makes them, IMO, a much more dangerous team in the East, and might make them the favorites over the big three of Detroit, Boston and Orlando in a second-round playoff matchup... because it gives LeBron all of the proof he needs that his GM is watching the same games he's been playing in.

Now, that doesn't mean the Cavs are a shoo-in to make it back to the Finals as the Team That Should Lose, because they've only got 30 games to figure out how to play with each other, and that's probably not enough time. But it sure makes them a hell of a lot more interesting than they were on Wednesday, and for next year as well.

Seattle, on the other hand, cleared cap space from a guy that did them no good (Wally) and a reasonable guard that was in a logjam for minutes with Ridnour and Watson (West). It also probably gives them some nice wiggle room with expiring contracts, since no one in their right mind wants Donyell Marshall for the long run on their roster. The only problem with this plan is that freeing up cap space for a team that's moving to Oklahoma City is kind of like putting in a really nice wet bar in a bomb shelter; you're still not going to be attracting the really high-class snatch. But on principle at least, it's the right move, and it gives Seattle's front office personnel something nice to put on their resumes later, when they want to go to a real NBA franchise.

Now, what did Chicago get, other than clearing minutes for Ty Thomas and Yannick Noah? The previously mentioned 37% non-point point guard in Hughes. A power forward that has been part of every trade rumor for the past five years in the league -- I'm guessing there are reasons for that behind the boneheaded play on the court. (This assumes, of course, that they are actually going to play the guys they dealt for, rather than just bench them and completely poison the atmosphere around this team.)

How exactly does this fix the Bulls' problems -- which is to say, questionable low post presence and point guard play on offense, and worrisome team chemistry? Gooden and Hughes have been on a million teams in their time in the league. Those are the guys that you want to bring into a team of young and previously unselfish hustle players? I know that Big Ben wasn't working out for you, but was this really the price you had to pay to get rid of him?

For many years, the Bulls appeared to have A Plan. They were going to stockpile hustle guys, pressure teams into mistakes, and hope that one of their young players -- Deng or Gordon, primarily -- became the kind of guy that could carry them in crunch time in a playoff. It might not have been the most feasible way to a championship, but at least it made for entertaining ball, and made them the constant source of speculation whenever a team had a game-changing superstar that was thinking of forcing a trade.

Now? I have no idea what they are, or what they are trying to accomplish. And neither do they.

Two of three teams won this trade, and one of them did so by a lot. The last destroyed the team to rid themselves of one player and contract. But that's life in the NBA -- the bad signings destroy you.

The Golf Conversation

A story in the New York Times last week has been slowly making the rounds in the blogosphere, and I thought I'd add in my two cents. It concerns how the rate of people playing golf has been dropping steadily since the turn of the century, and efforts on the part of course owners and the like to reverse that tide.

The trend, of course, goes a bit against the grain of The Greatness of the Tiger... but I'm wondering if golf is going to see the same thing with Woods as the NBA did with Jordan, which is to say that the public's fascination with the individual is going to wind up making the sport seem anti-climactic once He is gone.

(The NBA is, pound for pound, the most competitive professional league in the world, with a global talent base, relentless competitiveness, spectacular talents, and yet, the public seems to just be blase about it. Maybe it's just that people don't want to watch hoop in the wake of 24/7/365 football, or the Unlikeable Stars Era did long-term damage that the general public isn't coming back from, but hell... it's not like MLB or NFL have a bunch of people you want to drink beers with. Anyway, golf.)

Here's my individual take on it. For a 3 to 4 year period in the late '90s, I was the target consumer that the golf industry dreams of -- low 30s, a weekend hacker who also got in some rounds for work. I'd play alone or with friends, and got good enough to enjoy myself, but not much more than that.

Once the Shooter Wife produced the Shooter Kid, golf took a back seat... and shortly after that, there was a lot of job movement, because I'm in online advertising and it was the dot-com bust. When you're not entirely sure how certain your paychecks are going to be, greens fees are not high on the priority list against groceries. I had also moved to a part of the world (Northern California) that routinely charged 2x what I was used to paying in other parts of the world.

Eighteen months ago, we moved back to the East Coast and bought our first home. We've since spent our money on home improvements. Between commute and office hours, my Monday to Friday is spent, which means that any time for golf would come on the weekend, and

So I've gone from playing 15 to 20 times a year to not playing at all in the past... five years. And the next time I pick them up is going to be ugly. The dirty little secret of golf is the same as any other recreational sport: if you go away from it long enough, you don't really want to start from near zero to shake all the rust off. It took me years to shave those first 20 to 30 strokes off my game; going out and having them all be back would be like playing a video game without saving your progress.

My clubs are in the garage, in a travel case. I've resisted the urge to sell or give them away, because they don't take up that much room, and who knows -- I might need them someday. Who knows, once the kids are bigger and convinced that time spent with Dad is time spent losing any sense of style.

So it's not a matter of four hours for a round being too much time spent away from my family (heck, I'm a writer -- hours spent away from my family is an occupational hazard), or not wanting to do things outside, which are the two points the golf industry keeps bringing up.

(And I am sure that, like any other addict, I'm one good hit away from being right back in it.)

Oh, and a quick little aside to everyone out there who wants to get their politics in by hating on golf and golfers... yes, yes, by all means, what a horrible thing for people to do, to actually devote some space to a fairly earth-friendly endeavor, to dress in a goofy way, and to take their essentially meaningless pastime seriously. I can see how this causes immense problems in your life, as they go to some place that you never go, and perform some activity that you don't.

Now that you've established your bona fides as a politically aware person, please go back to your television and computer that's almost certainly constructed by Chinese slave labor, and put on the game that's played by people who will make more in a year than most of us will in a lifetime. Oh, and the games and the stadia are also being supported by corporate welfare, and many of the top players have political stances that start at glibertarian or worse, and the owners make them look like tree huggers.

In other words, he who is without sin can go find my ball in the woods. The rest of us will play golf, or increasingly, not. (For now.) Or just go for something that's really more fun, and also just Wrong Wrong Wrong...

Redefining Self-Importance In Our Lifetime

"It's almost as if what we would fight against as a country -- the Soviets spying -- it's almost like that's what everyone is doing. What's said in the huddle, which is what I did, should be in the huddle. I'm disappointed people would think I'm not really good with the people I work with, which couldn't be further from the truth. Do I wish I didn't say a few things nine years ago? Yes. But if that's the worst thing I ever did, I can live with it." - Chris Berman, on the videos that have been unearthed recently

Um, Chris? You read scripts off a teleprompter about sports. You are, honestly, not analogous to the fate of the Free World versus a repressive regime in any way, shape, or form. Honest.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Reasons The NFL Network Got Dropped

Your link is here, and please post, in the comments, what you'll miss the most about the NFL Network. (You know, under the theory that anyone actually gets this thing.)

Japan Is A Confusing Country

(Just to make sure no one's taking this place too seriously after that Ground Zero thing.)

Oh, dear.

Say this for the Andy Reid Era... they've never done this. Or allowed the kicker to rap. It's four minutes that only seem like 90! (And I'd hat tip this, but the people who spread the word on this should not be thanked. I want my childhood back.)

Ground Zero

As I was scurrying home last night from the Sports Blogger Semi-Circle Jerk, my commute took me through the World TradeCenter PATH station. It was the first time I'd been there in well over a decade, and the place has had some renovations. You might have heard about them, I think the President has mentioned them once or twice.

Anyway... it's a big temporary feeling place, bare concrete and constant construction sounds and, for last night at least, cold as the morgue because, well, it is one. Outside of the station, you can see workmen pushing dirt around for some unknown purpose, and the crush of commuters on their way to Hoboken and Newark all have the look and feel of people, well, on their way to those places -- which is to say, not the most inviting or interesting places that you've ever been to. You more or less put your head down and find your train.

But there's this otherworldly creepiness about the place, like it's a big movie set with the cameras missing, and it stays with you. The only feeling that I've ever had that was remotely like it was waiting for a train in Frankfurt, Germany, knowing that something similarly awful happened here before, and that I was standing in the space of murder. The flight instinct takes hold, and you feel like prey, like a gazelle at a watering hole, even when there's no one near you.

Oh, and a word for the powers-that-be that haven't quite figured out what to do with the place, well over 2000 days later... congratulations. It still feels, to me, like an open wound. You must be very proud.

A year ago, my relatives came to Manhattan for a day, and I took them out to lunch. Guiding them through the crowds, my sister remarked how I had picked it all up so fast, like being in the city was such a daunting and impossible task. I thought at the time that she just needed to get out of her part of the world more often, but now I'm starting to realize that people become New Yorkers through the casual repetition of things that people from other parts of the country find remarkable.

The speed in a shop, the crush in a subway, the disarming candor of people in a hurry, the single-minded pursuits of things that don't seem important or necessary, but happen nonetheless, because they are part of your routine -- well, you pick them up pretty quickly, and within a week or a month or so, you no longer have that tourist look of staring up at big buildings and not knowing where the subways go.

But walking through a place where thousands were horribly killed as part of your mundane commute? That's taking it up a notch, really. And the fact that people do it, and still (for the most part) don't vote for 9uli11ani any more, or for the party that speaks to that fear as a security blanket... well, it makes for a little sense of pride. Or awe, or fearful respect. From one gazelle to another, to the one that just walks though, drinks and leaves. Either something is wrong with them, or you, but in the meantime...

Drink.

Go.

And try, very hard, not to wonder what it was like for the other gazelles.

My Night as a Talking Head

So last night was spent in 90+ minutes of pretty good conver- sation about sports, that just happened to be filmed for a Web site. You'll see it linked here as soon as it's available, and I'm going to try to steer clear from the navel-gazing about my own performance to talk to something that might be more interesting.

The actual experience was strangely comfortable, for a situation where you are being filmed in a professional 3-camera shoot, and pretending like you've known the people you are talking with for more than five minutes. We sat in a semi-circle at a table, the host (Jeff Johnson) went through some topics he'd prepared in advance, and boom goes the dynamite. Nerves went away pretty quickly, really.

It's a common thing in the sports blogosphere to rail against ESPN, aka the World Wide Leader, known in these here parts as the World Wide Lemur, because I'm just kind of obsessed with those creatures, and just like the sound of the word. (Whenever the word "leader" or "believer" comes up in popular music, my mind substitutes "Lemur" and "Big Lemur." Try it for yourself. "Then I saw her face / Now I'm a Big Lemur..." See? Yes, I have issues. Moving on...)

The Lemur films their talking head shows, and it's all braying jackassery, lowest common denominator dumbness, frat boys with the fake laughter, and if you are anything like me, you get The Cringing, and then the Spinal Issues, because your body is in open revolt at having anything in common with these lemurs. They're clearly mammals, bipeds, vertebrates and most likely chordates, and all of that is far more in common with your own damn self for comfort.

But since all of the stuff on the tee vee is like that, there just seems to be an inevitability to it, really. That must be what people like, since that's what's served up. You must really be an outlier, freak, weird monkey, to think this is all horrific and banal and terrible, and long for something better. Please stop thinking so much about whatever it is that you were thinking about -- sports and politics for me, but I'm sure many people feel the same way about cooking shows or women's issues or movie reviews or whatever else gets chatted over, on camera, at length.

And then Jeff Johnson comes along, with his VBS crew, and invites four (five if you count me, not that I'm saying you should) smart and snarky and well-read bloggers to go through the points he's selected in advance, and it's not like that at all, really. I found myself laughing genuinely, and so did the crew, at a lot of stuff. The time passed quickly, so much so that after Jeff's cards were up, we all just pretty much kept going, both on and off camera. No one felt the need to scream, pick a transparent fight, plug their site or selves or pull any other kind of dick move. None of us were even morbidly obese, constantly referencing our own days back when we were athletes (as if), or wearing a bad rug on our head. It went against all the rules, really.

Whether or not it was entertaining for other people is for other people to judge, of course... but it sure felt like a good product to me, like something I'd set the DVR for. And more importantly, it gave me hope that not only might there be an audience for people who think about sports, but that there are others who actually do it. That the braying jackasses aren't inevitable. That the Lemur and Fox and all of the other mouth jobs don't have a monopoly any more, not with the web, and that entering that form of media doesn't have to mean checking your brain and integrity at the door.

So thanks, Jeff and VBS, for inviting me, and thanks to my fellow panelists for being, well, really good. I'd gladly do it again, and only hope I was up to your standards. (And if not, well, I'm just glad that I had one more platform to crack on Kevin Everett and Sean Taylor's Ghost. A man's got to stand up for what he believes in.)

Epic Drop: Top 10 Radical Environmental Plans To Make Sports More Earth-Friendly

The link is here, and the real number one way would, of course, be the systematic eradication of every man, woman and child on the earth, because as Mr. Smith in the Matrix says, we are a virus with shoes. Damn good shoes, too!

Oh, and a special shout out to my man CMJ Dad, who has probably already commented on this one to tell me that global warming is, I don't know, brought to us by the Easter Rabbit or something. I think he blames the whole thing on Al Gore, and I'm with him on that, since the son of a bitch didn't win. Have at it, Earth Hater!

On Second Thought, The Lions Need To Keep Millen

He's what the fan base deserves. (Another H/T to KSK, who have been really bringing the vids this off-season.)

FTT Sells Out To Big Tobacco

Because, well, it's time to enter Flavor Country. Population: Dead People. (H/t KSK)

Oh, and on the off chance that anyone reading this doesn't think that Washington Redskins is a breathtakingly awful name for a team? Watch the promo again.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Reasons You Do Not Need To Care About the NFL Draft

Your link is here, and reason number eleven is that it makes people who watch college football feel like they haven't wasted their lives. Screw those people.

Mail Bag Day

Hey folks, it's just been ages since I sat back on my chucklebutt and let you people do the work. Let's open up the good old mail bag!

Dear FTT -- I've been without a fantasy sports team for nearly two months now, and baseball doesn't start for another six weeks. How do I keep from feeling a vague sense of dread that I may be getting a life? -- A. Builder, Chester PA

Dear Builder -- You see, this is why you need the NBA in your life. Did you know that right now, three teams in the Western Conference -- Phoenix, Los Angeles and Dallas -- have all pulled off ridiculously big trades (for Pau Gasol, Shaquille O'Neal and Jason Kidd, respectively), and that the game has never been better for a fantasy player... because very few teams are really tanking, so there are not too many places where the minutes are incredibly up in the air, and...

Oh, what the hell. You're probably already ranking players for your fantasy baseball draft.

Dear FTT -- Who do you like as sleepers in your fantasy draft? -- Gangsta Mook, Berkeley, CA

Dear G-Mook -- Normally I'd avoid identifying these players until after my own draft was over, for fear of tipping my hand. But since the only league I'm likely to be in right now is an auction with not enough people in it, I'll let 'em loose in a classic double-bluff. Go hard for Francisco Liriano in the classic Rich Harden tease role. While you're at it, go for Rich Harden, too. Brett Myers might be a cheap source of strikeouts and abject stupidity, and Matt Cain has to be better now that the Giants aren't playing ancient monoliths in their outfield.

As for who I'm shying away from, Josh Beckett is a historic injury risk, threw a ton of innings last year, and came to spring training wearing David Wells' stomach. Avoid. CC Sabathia is also fat and overworked, which is rarely a good combination (and it's killing me not to make any number of catty celebrity jokes here, but it's not that kind of blog). Johan Santana will cost the world and probably be the best SP in MLB, but you rarely win with that; you win with the guy that overdelivers on value. This year in New York, that's Pedro Martinez.

On offense, Daric Barton will take the first step towards a lucrative non-A's contract, Grady Sizemore may yet have another gear to access, and Melky Cabrera will be as quiet of a bargain as you can get in the Bronx. I also think Andruw Jones is the kind of guy who does better with no pressure, and there's something about Khalil Greene that makes me keep thinking he'll make a push.

Avoid post-contract Torii Hunter and Ichiro Suzuki, don't overpay for the potentially roid-empty David Ortiz, and there's no way that Jimmy Rollins can do that again.

More later, as we get closer to the season.

Dear FTT -- Do you still have T-Shirts to sell, and if so, in what size? -- A. Shill, Philadelphia, PA

Dear Shill -- The Garment of Greatness is available in Medium, Large, Extra Large and Why Won't You People Buy These, My Children Need Shoes. E-mail us at dmtshooter@gmail.com for details. Makes a great gift!

Dear FTT -- Why don't you ever comment on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition? It's not like there is anything else going on at this time of year. - A. Wanker, Dayton, OH

Dear Wanker -- Seriously, this is still a story? I'll admit that I used to look forward to getting the only home-delivered porn that you didn't have to explain away as a teenager, but that was pre-Internet, when your options were extraordinarily limited, assuming you didn't have the ability to just say screw it and go give a bored magazine seller cash and see what would happen. Now, with 24-7-365 people doing all kinds of things to all kinds of things, am I really supposed to get hot and bothered by airbrushed supermodels wearing dental floss? Come back when there's fluids involved. On second thought, don't, because wankery and sports already are way too mixed together -- witness 98% of the World Wide Lemur's non-live event programming.

Dear FTT -- What random link of causality is rattling inside your head today, that I'm going to have to put up with when you get home? - A. Wife, Hamilton, NJ

Dear Wife -- Glad you asked! There's a story in the NY Times today (I'd link to it, but I don't want to be indirectly responsible for a tragedy) about an epidemic of mid-life suicides. It seems that people in their 40s and 50s are offing themselves in dramatically increasing numbers, for reasons that, of course, no one can really talk about, since the people who are doing it are dead and all.

Now, you can wonder if this has something to do with economic stress, or the shaking stress that a society goes through as it transitions from one that depends on religion for all of the answers, to a more secular state where fewer and fewer people face their demise with the knowledge that it's all going to be paradise so long as they don't commit the naughty move of checking out early. You might even position it to technology creating a distance among those of a certain age, who have never cottoned to, say, expressing themselves meaningfully in an e-mail or IM window, and hence, feel left behind from the clicking crowds.

Or, like me, you can wonder if there's some way to blame the World Wide Lemur for the whole thing, because honestly, if you are beyond the age of 30, watching "Who's Next" and not wanting to go Lewinsky on a .38... well, I'm inclined to think that maybe you *should* go Lewsinsky on a .38.

Thanks for reading, writing, and helping me fill the bloghole for yet another day. Remember, all FTT letter writers receive a Garment of Greatness! (Note: We said nothing about free.)

Dammit, Testy, You're Better Than That

A week after Mike Bibby and his overrated but still competent self was sent out of town for a big pile of nothing...

Ron Artest has gone back on his claim from earlier this month that the Kings "would be better if I wasn't on the team."

Testy is making $7.4 million a year, which seems like a bargain -- hell, that's Bobby Sura money. Unfortunately, he's wildly overrated, a bad percentage shooter, a below-average rebounder despite his (likely roid-addled) physique and a team poison that could murder everyone on the team in their sleep, with no one in the media or NBA fandom doing much more than saying "Damn, I had April in the pool."

So what's he saying now? Hold on to your hats. Sactown, despite being clearly lottery-bound, is getting a parade!

"I am anxious to see what my future holds, [but] I like Sac," Artest wrote in an e-mail. "My entire focus is with Sac and winning a championship this year."

Well, far be it from me to cast aspersions on the Tru Warier's commitment. He's given up rap, disappointing thousands of fans of unintentional comedy. He hasn't beaten his chest like King Kong, prompting an ejection, for, like, days. He's got the back of his coach, former sitcom star Reggie Theus, who calls him the go-to guy on the team. (That sound you just heard was Kevin Martin calling his agent, looking for a trade.) Everything is coming up Testy!

Except for the fact that... the Kings are 23-28, 5 games under .500, and 8.5 games out of the last playoff spot in the West. That's currently a 3-way dance between the 32-20 Warriors, Rockets and Nuggets -- three teams with vastly superior talent, coaches and fan bases, given that Testy in Sactown is a Fish Out of Water script that Disney would reject as being too unrealistic to grunt out a movie from. That massive home-court advantage the Kings used to enjoy? Not so much now.

They'd also have to finish above Portland, who actually have team chemistry, let alone talented young players. And, well... Sactown just traded their starting point guard in an obvious give-up move for the future, and they've made no indication that they want more of Testy after this year. Given that the team has made no real move forward since he came there, you can hardly blame the Maloofs for not exactly rolling out the Chris Webber contract for the Warier.

If this were any NBA player other than Testy, I'd think he was just saying the right thing to help grease the wheels for the next trade. But this is the biggest heel in the Association we're talking about here, a guy who Dennis Rodman thinks is unhinged. You aren't going to deal for him under the idea that he's turned over a new leaf. You'd pull the trigger for him if you are getting killed defensively at small forward, have nothing to lose, and have a tried-and-true clubhouse that might stand a chance of keeping him in line. You know, the way the Bulls (and not the Mavs or Spurs) won with Rodman. Under those criteria, maybe the Spurs go for him in the Stephen Jackson Memorial Role, but only if they think Bruce Bowen is ready for the glue farm. Maybe the Pistons could also pull him off, except for the fact that Tayshaun Prince is the same player, but better.

The point is that no one is buying the Nice Testy act. He might as well keep his rep alive and show up to practice with a suicide bomb belt and a timer clock until the trade deadline.

Besides, at the end of the day, we all know there is only one place for Testy to be -- the same place that was rumored last March. New York, for David Lee, so that both teams could have More of the Same.

The Incredibly Irrelevant New York Knicks would become Must Destroy Your TV watching with Testy. Watching him try to take shots away from the rest of these me-first maniacs, seeing his reactions to Isiah's bizarro-land coaching decisions, having him get in the grill of no-defense big men like Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph in his occasional bouts of caring about winning and losing...

Well, it'd be entertaining, in the way that a train wreck becomes infinitely more captivating when, after the bodies have stopped twitching and the moaning has subsided, smoke and fire start to appear, and you know Big Explosions are going to happen. One of the few always-true points about life is that so long as it's present, it can get worse... and Testy in his hometown, with that roster, fan base and coach, is almost like a science experiment of awful. Come on Isiah, ignore Testy's not-completely bloated salary and the sense of self-preservation that fills most people when they are in the presence of homicidal nutbags. Get it done!

Vin and Tonic

H/t Deadspin for finding the You Been Blinded story... Vin and Tonic is having his restaurant foreclosed, which is also going to put his parents on the hook for 400 large.

Now, I don't much care what happens to Baker, and I'm sure that his folks have had more than a few opportunities to squirrel away some cash over the years. According to his page on Baseball Reference, his lifetime salary data gets you to over $112 million; if you someone go broke on that, including five straight years of going from $10.1 to $13.5 million (and yes, Isiah Thomas *did* bring him to New York!)... well, far be it from me to shed a tear for him.

But that's exactly the point to make here. The true Vinsanity has now been to six different teams, and the Celtics and Rockets have even brought him back more than once. He hasn't made an All-Star Game since he was 26; that was a decade ago. He hasn't broken ten points a game since 2003-04 with the Celtics.

He's been a pretty terrible player for a long time now, and yet, he still keeps getting work. I have no idea how, and you probably don't either, other than maybe being really impressed by his agent.

If I were running an NBA team, Vin Baker would be the last guy I'd want on my roster, and that's even with the idea that the only wat you bring him in at all is if your previous half dozen big men have hit the shelf. It's an even money bet as to who the strike hit worse -- him or Shawn Kemp.

Oh, and then there's this. He seems to like not only being drunk, but driving that way as well. Is the appeal of having Eddie Griffin II on your roster really worth it?

Who Will Be The First Out?

By the numbers, there are well over 1,000 professional athletes in the three major US sporting leagues -- MLB, NBA and NFL.

If you believe the old adage of 1 in 10, or even a dramatically smaller idea of 1 in 100... well, that makes anywhere from 10 to 100 men who are, not to put too fine a point on it, gay.

It also strains the point of credibility to imagine that of all of the people who have played in the past, there has only been a handful -- John Amaechi is the only one that comes to mind -- that have had That Persuasion in the past.

Clearly, the last great closet in the US is sports. And it's going to go away, not just in our lifetimes, but probably in the next 5 to 10 years.

Here's why.

1) Same-sex marriage is an idea whose acceptance is growing rapidly, if you look at the polling numbers and the states that are becoming more accepting of it. What looked like a 20-year slam dunk for conservatives to run against just a few years back has lost a lot of steam.

2) Once it's accepted, you will have an athlete's spouse that will want the security of a long-term relationship -- both from a commitment standpoint, as well as from a financial one. To wit, alimony is a powerful force.

3) Independent of the likelihood of a state-sanctioned relationship for a gay athlete, there's also this -- endorsement dollars. For gay-friendly businesses, a player will be a natural choice for their courage in being the first out. Jackie Robinson may have put up with a lot, but so did Monte Irvin -- and Robinson, if such a role was happening today, would have had a much better deal from the sponsors.

4) The book deal. If Amaechi can get paid for being an unknown NBA center, what are the dynamics for a player who's active, known, and dare we say it, promiscuous?

Now, having said that, there are roles that won't work for a pioneer. (Note that I'm not saying that they can't do it, I'm just saying it's not the role for the first over the breech.)

1) Line play. Way too many opportunities for sudden and exceptional violence from a homophobe.

2) Quarterback or Running Back. Too much scrutiny and screening in earlier levels. Plus, the dirty little secret of both roles is that, unless you've got really exceptional physical gifts, you're pretty replaceable... and if your fullback doesn't want you to live, you won't.

3) Closer. A job in a fishbowl gets even more intense... and once again, it's a very replaceable job.

4) Power forward. Kind of the basketball equivalent of line play, and adding to the fun is that the point guard can freeze you out. They'd stay quiet.

5) Shortstop or Center Field. Usually the best athlete coming up in high school and college, and the role that's most likely to interact strongly with teammates -- second base for the former, the other outfielders for the latter. This position has had eyes on the money prize for a long time, and would do little to jeopardize the payday.

Now, the five roles were I could see a pioneer breaking out of the closet...

1) Punter or kicker. More or less on an island already, and while they might know they are disposable, they also have a certain amount of job security from just having numbers.

2) Wide receiver. The role already has a wide latitude in behavior, and if you've got numbers, you'll keep the gig.

3) Left field. Historically, the position with some of the greatest iconoclasts in the game, as well as the place where you'll find some of the biggest numbers. To wit, if Manny Ramirez came out tomorrow for the Red Sox, they'd probably think that was a win, because it wouldn't be another trade request.

4) Point guard. If you're good, your teammates love you no matter what... and if they don't, you can freeze them out and directly destroy their numbers. If you're a pass-first type in today's NBA, your big man will stand up for you if you were Al-Qaeda, let alone gay.

5) Left-handed reliever. Heck, you don't even have to be good to keep the gig. You get people out, the world will beat a path to your door -- even if that door's in a certain part of town.

Add your wild speculation in the comments...

Epic Drop: Top 10 Reasons Andy Pettittee Chose To Play in 2008

The list is here, and far be it for me to not point out that while Clemens deserves anything he gets, that doesn't make Pettitte any less of a slime for ratting him out. A pending post will get more into this, albeit obliquely, if you catch my drift...

Epic Drop: Top 10 False Signs of Spring

Your link is here, and the astute reader will notice that I'm treading on Truth's turf in smacking around Mark Prior, but let's face it... the man will spend the rest of his time in MLB answering questions about his physical condition, no matter what else went on that day. He could strike out 20 guys in a Series win, and the question will be how the elbow feels...

FTT Goes Video

As a further sign of the Apocalyse, I've been invited to a sports blogger round-robin session next week in New York. This will give you all a chance to see just how short and old I am (and yes, there's shortness and oldness a plenty here).

My only regret prior to the taping is that I still have hair, and am not hopelessly overweight. Because if television is any indication, punditry is a fat bald man's game. (At least I've got the White Male thing happening.)

The proceedings will be taped and later shown on the Internets. I'll be sure to link and/or post it here, because I'm assuming that it goes something like this, only with more mentions of the World Wide Lemur.

WHY? BECAUSE I'M NOT GOING TO LEAVE YOU ALONE.



It'll all be worth it if it gets me some of that old-time Faye Dunaway snatch. Mmm, moral-free '70s cynicism snatch...

Bibbylicious Trade Analysis

Sacramento has thrown in the towel for this year, and the Hawks have locked up that first-round playoff loss (because, um, he's not getting them out of a first-round matchup against Boston, Detroit, or even Orlando)... because here's the dirty little not-so-secret about this 29-year-old "point guard."

He hasn't had more than 6.8 assists per game since he was a Vancouver Grizzly.

He hasn't shot 45% from the floor since 2003-04.

He gives you a little more than 3 boards a game, despite logging pretty heavy minutes. And it's not like there hasn't been a lot of loose balls to be had in King Land the last few years, or a dominant big man that's been grabbing up all the boards.

He makes, gulp, $12.5 million a year, is coming off a serious injury...

and is, um, a defensive sieve who hasn't won a playoff series since, again, 2003.

If I had to list a top 10 most overrated players in the NBA, he's the point guard, really.

Now, he can shoot some 3's, has been hot in the playoffs in the past, and is the first player in a Hawks uniform that has actually been through some meaningful games. They didn't give up anything all that meaningful to get him, assuming the deal goes through as originally reported.

But he's just, well, not that good... and that's today, at 29. In the long term in the Eastern Conference, this does nothing to swing the world down Atlanta way.

Top Eight Untried Dunk Ideas

(Why 8 and not 10? Cause when I don't give 10 to the Carnival, Scrap beats me with his bad hand, the one with the scars. He's a mean, mean, mean pimp.)

Dwight Howard won the dunk contest tonight shortly after donning a Superman cape. In the post-event interview, the talking head asked him if he'd defend his title, and the Orlando man-child greased his exit by saying that he didn't think he'd have any more dunks to do. (Instead of the real answer, that he's going to be be too big of a star to do this nonsense again.)

Now, I'm fine with Howard if he just doesn't want to do this anymore. That's fine. But that there is no more dunks to do? Please. You are 6'-10" and can jump through the ceiling. Try any of these, if you are feeling blocked.

1) Break the ball. Breaking the backboard is old hat. How about bursting the ball as you throw it down?

2) Shoe Fu. Anybody in the NBA can dunk in sneakers. But can you dunk in heels? Fabulous!

3) Electric Boogaloo. If you can do the Worm or a 360 head spin on your way to the rim, I think that's got to wow the judges. Pop and lock, Big Man, pop and lock!

4) The OG. In this one, the dunker pours a 40 at the half court ground for the dunkers that ain't around, then throws down a one-hand dunk while downing a shot. It might not win you the contest, but it's going to do wonders for your jersey sales.

5) Crazy Ass Dunk. Throw down while wearing a straight jacket by cradling the ball between your neck and chest. You won't just fly over the cuckoo's nest, you'll also serve it a facial!

6) Fab Five. A natural tie-in with the current cell phone marketing. Just video yourself in your off hand with a cell phone. If you can upload it to YouTube before your next dunk, you win an endorsement deal from your ISP.

7) The Euro. On this one, the dunker smokes a clove cigarette while chatting up women in the first row, and looks annoyed to be disturbed before throwing down. The actual dunk is soft, but wildly overrated by NBA experts.

8) D-League Tribute. Here, the dunker turns off the television cameras and lights, and throws down for a mostly theoretical audience. It's in there like swimwear, ready like spaghetti, and my transparent opportunity to give Too Much Rod Benson some love.

Epic Drop: Top 11 Ineffective Baseball Entrance Songs

Your list is here, and if you think this is all just an excuse to get Tupac up on the board, you're absolutely right. (Video is NSFW, Kids, or Peace. I hit 'em up!)

Epic Drop: Top 13 Reasons Why Pitchers Will Eventually Be Replaced By Robots

Your list is here, and hey, who doesn't love robots? Especially more than pitchers? Me, I'm waiting on pitchers to join together and form an even bigger robot...

Insert Your Own Brady Quinn Joke Here

Because, well, both situations strike me as kinda bullcrap.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Bad Sports Date Ideas for Valentine's Day

Your link is here, and it's something I'm actually pretty proud of. Go and spread the love. Just use protection.

Has Gil Thorp Lost Control Of His Team?

All signs point to yes! (Bold emphasis mine, h/t to the Comics Curmudgeon.)

CINCINNATI — Police in southwest Ohio said three members of a freshman high school boys basketball team are expected to be charged Monday with gross sexual imposition after an alleged assault on a teammate.

Miami Township Police Chief Steven Bailey said the alleged attack took place Thursday afternoon at Milford High School.

A police officer wrote in a report that the alleged victim said a teammate made him have sexual contact with another teammate.

Bailey would not discuss the exact nature of the alleged attack.

He said the three juveniles are facing at least three criminal charges apiece in Clermont County Juvenile Court on Monday.

Damn, Marty Moon is going to have a field day with this!

The 2002 Pats Can Also Kiss My Ass

This is probably fake, but it's fun anyway.



When everyone loves something, I get twitchy.

This usually pops most in movies and television. I've never seen "Titanic", missed "Forest Gump" in the theaters, took a big miss on "Indiana Jones", "Jaws", "E.T.", most of the recent "Star Wars" movies, etc., etc. I've never watched "American Idol" or "Survivor" or "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "CSI", "Law and Order", and all of those other Must See Shows.

If something reaches a certain critical weight of acceptance, I get uncomfortable with the idea of liking it Just Like Everybody Else.

In politics, I'm one of the 10% that always opposed the current President, even when he was riding high after 9/11. I never liked or trusted the guy, always wondered how a guy in a cave could really have pulled it off without help or breathtaking incompetence, and knew that in the long run, we were probably in greater danger from oil companies than we were from suicidal extremists. The oil companies just seemed, you know, more persistent and professional about the whole thing. I always opposed the war in Iraq, and even questioned how effective a war with Afghanistan would be. It seemed like we were escalating criminals to martyrs, creating the next batch with our presence, and turning what could have been a police matter into an excuse for Eternal War, rather then getting the hell off oil so that we could wash our hands of the whole cursed area.

Clearly, I am not a Patriot.

So when Patriot Fan, in his never-ending quest to make everything in the NFL be about His Struggle, pulls out the You Liked Us In 2002 And You Only Hate Us Now Because You're Jealous card...

Um, well, Sadly No.

The 2002 Patriots got to the Super Bowl on a gift, a play that, regardless of the rule book, had never been called that way before, especially not in the final minutes of a playoff game. And if the play had been reversed, and if it were Rich Gannon shaking off the apparent fumble to lead the Raiders to a last-minute win, I'm pretty sure that it would have gone into the NFL history books for what it was -- as an epic screw job. But since the Patriots were a feel-good story and the Oakland Raiders are the closest thing the NFL has to a Designated Heel, no one really seemed to mind.

At the time of Tuckgate, I was living in Northern California, having been out there for a couple of years after a move from Philadelphia. I didn't know that many Raiders fans -- the area is full of transplants, so everyone you meet is originally from somewhere else -- but having moved out of the Philly area before the Iverson/McNabb Resurrection, I hadn't been in an area in Playoff Fever for a while. I was pulling for the Raiders, maybe only about 55-45, but after Tuckgate, it became more like 70-30.

The Pats then continued to pull off wins where they really weren't demonstrably better than their opponent, building a bandwagon of support. Meanwhile, one of the best teams of the era, the St. Louis Rams, a team that you could really enjoy just watching if you only ignored the existence of Brenda Warner and Georgia Frontiere, defeated my Eagles at home in a game where the Eagles played really well. Just like in the Super Bowl loss to the Patriots, the Eagles took away everything but the ground game, McNabb played at a high level, and afterwards, there was a feeling that while my team didn't win, at least I knew they had fallen to greatness.

And then the Super Bowl happened, and the Patriots won and the US invaded and my television was filled with Happy War and the Heroes of 9/11 and Those Oh So Wonderful Patriots Who Refused To Be Introduced As Individuals.

And all of it struck me as complete bullcrap then, and complete bullcrap now.

So no, Pats Fan, everyone didn't love you in 2002. But while we're continuing to talk about you, your favorite and only subject...

Look, here's a dirty little secret about sports fans that only fantasy sports and betting tends to alleviate; if my team doesn't win the championship, on some level, I don't really give a damn who does. I have no back-up team that I root for. I only have individuals that I root against, and if enough of them are on one team, that swells to critical mass level and we've got a whole team to hate.

In my life as a football fan, Pittsburgh, Denver, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington and the Giants have won multiple Super Bowls. The Cowboys employed showboats and druggies. The Giants come with Giants Fan, who's about as much fun to be near as root canal. Denver had John Elway, his never-ending teeth, and their leg-whipping offensive linemen. Washington's fans are likely employed by the government and hate on the three parts of the District that aren't safe and white.

I hated all of those teams, dully, because they were not My Team and they got to experience multiple years of joy, whereas my team always ended the year with a loss. (To be sure, I was always soft on the Niners for beating the Cowboys and just being fun to watch. But I digress.)

Only New England, sweet, precious, can't stop looking in its own navel and insisting that everyone else come look and confirm that it's an innie or an outie New England...

Only New England, with its constant puling that they've been oppressed while being, on any objective level, ridiculously blessed when it comes to Hall of Fame players and stadiums to watch them in...

Only this area, this cauldron of media wanking, this bastion of pants-wetting Lite Brite Phobes and spoiled children... only you, really, have reached This Level Of Ire. (And yes, I know, it's all because the Internet makes the eternal bleatings of New England Fan a click away at any moment. The sports blogosphere has become one huge bad tooth.)

And no, it doesn't stop just because you've spit the bit in this epic and wonderful fashion, and have become the Manning Family Bitch.

The Patriots could lose every game next year, and I wouldn't feel an ounce of sympathy for their fans.

They could have their Hall of Fame coach, cheat and adulterer gunned down in a lover's spat in a bar, and the only thing that would pass through my consciousness is a vague dread of hearing the week's worth of eulogies.

Their baseball team could go 80-plus years without a championship. and that'd be Just Peachy, really.

Their basketball team could have its first round picks die of drug overdoses while shooting each other, and I'd consider that all to be Karmic Payback.

And maybe then, just maybe, New England Fan would... drum roll, please...

SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT THEIR COLLECTIVE FAN EXPERIENCE.

Because, um, the rest of us

DO NOT CARE, WILL NOT CARE, AND HAVE OUR OWN CRAP TO DEAL WITH, THANK YOU.

Thank you, and good night.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Head Games For Your Fantasy Baseball Draft or Auction

Plus, it rocks!

New Uniform, Same Prior

Hat tip to Nick Pietruszkiewicz of the Northwest Herald. It looks like a change of scenery and uniform for Mark Prior doesn't make much of a difference. He's already showing the Padres why he's one of baseball's biggest pains in the ass.

The Padres knew that it would probably be June or July before Prior was ready to pitch this year. However, they recently heard that Prior is ahead of schedule and throwing of a mound. This led the Padres GM Kevin Towers to mention that maybe Prior would be ready in May. But what the Padres front office and trainers don't know is that they do not know what is best for Mark Prior. Only Prior and his agent know what's best.

“I think he’s progressing very well. But I have stood fast and strong on his encouraging rehab schedule not to expedite something that shouldn’t be expedited. Let’s give him the time he needs." Prior’s agent, John Boggs, said. “You’re going to get value from Mark Prior if you follow the time line and don’t try to expedite.”

Nice to see things in San Diego are off to a good start for Mr. Softie himself. Odds are 3-1 he won't pitch until September.

The Angriest Place On Earth

Even as the controversy surrounding Roger Clemens intensifies, the pitcher plans to attend an ESPN sponsored event at Disney World later this month. Representatives for Clemens late last week informed ESPN that he will stick to his scheduled promotional appearance over the weekend of Feb. 29-March 2.

Clemens was scheduled to serve as a top draw at "ESPN The Weekend" before the Mitchell Report was released in December that alleged he had used steroids multiple times--and the network began running an on-air spot promoting it. But the day the report came out, ESPN pulled the humorous ad, citing Clemens' role in a controversial news story. -- Media Post

I have this image in my head of the Rocket going from ride to ride as people clear out of lines, rather than meet His Terrible Gaze. Finally, he goes to the carnival prize games and forlornly pumps fastball after fastball into the milk jug game, but his command is off, so he "pulls a hamstring" and limps off as that ominous music from "There Will Be Blood" plays in the background. The carnie apologizes frantically, sobbing, trying to give the Rocket the biggest prize, but he refuses to take it. A week later, four bodies are found.

3rd and Lebensraum

Far be it for me to look this gift horse video in the mouth. But it could have gone so much farther. Where's the turn by Wade Philiips as Sergeant Schultz? The Goebbels-like big lies of ex-Cowboy announcers on Fox? The twisted experiments to get Jimmy Johnson's hair to look like that? The goose-step touchdown celebrations for Mssrs. Owens Et Al?

You know, folks, in the wake of Masshole Puling, we've forgotten all about the Cowboys year. 13-3, and yet all they will be remembered for is the following.



(This would be your cue to wave your lighter in the air, though I suspect it's all cell phones now. Sway a little, too.)



And forgetting the Cowboys epic choke job and loss at home would be... wait for it... wait for it... just not fair!

Epic Drop: Top 11 Hacky Sports Blogger Topics For This Week

Nothing like starting the week off with a fresh load of hate, says I. Blame the Pro Bowl.

But on the bright side, at least I haven't resorted to covering American Gladiators... yet.

Meet The Super Bowl's Biggest Idiot

I feel great joy for them because I know in a lot of ways I helped a lot of guys on that team. I know Brandon (Jacobs) was someone who benefited from me being there; even criticizing someone is a way of getting them to think about themselves. -- Tiki Barber, on his reaction to the Giants winning

No, seriously.

Coming up next in the Greatest Sports Shadenfraude Story Ever Told... Tiki is fired from his vital omelette-making and NFL chuckle-dick work, then loses all of his other assets in divorce and child support payments. Turning to the public for help, he's pelted with rocks and garbage, then turns to drugs and the bottle.

Two years later, he's beaten to death in a bum fight with fellow hobo Jeremy Shockey. The team, after many months of consideration, puts a split number memorial on their jerseys, but pulls them off after the subsequent four-game losing streak. Giants Fan refuses to admit that he ever owned the jersey of either of them. Three years after that, his life story is depicted in a slapstick comedy starring Chris Tucker and Dane Cook, which furthers the legend of Football's Biggest Loser Ever by bombing. Ronde renounces his twinship, gets busted on a child predator hidden camera show, and dies in prison. "Pulling a Tiki" becomes cultural shorthand for any boneheaded and completely disastrous decision, and male haircutters all over the world refuse to identify themslves as "Barbers" anymore.

After that, it gets bad.

One Final Note from Patriot Nation

Golf clap (and a h/t to KSK).

I like him more and more

Honestly, the World Wide Lemur needs to release more of Chris Berman's blue period. Another dozen or so of these, and I'll be ready to forgive him for the Home Run Derby. (And in the words of the great man himself, I F'ing Lied.)

This Just In: Roger Clemens Makes Decent People Spit

H/t, Epic Carnival, tipping SI, who found this on Debbie Clemens' Web site...

Roger came to me one day and told me that we had been asked to do a photo shoot for Sports Illustrated. I had major anxiety! I was a 39-year-old mother of 4! Once I realized that this WAS going to be a reality, I decided I had to give it everything I had. My mind was set. I am not a risk taker, but have since learned that with great risk, sometimes comes great reward. The responses from that experience have been wonderful and I feel it was a turning point in my life. It's nice to have a goal for yourself and to see it through. The goal kept me motivated and focused. Using common sense and my ability to balance my life, I achieved that goal.

Let's leave alone the idea that achieving your goal means being masturbation fodder, because if that's your goal, well OK then. I suppose we should all be thankful you didn't go into music or literature.

But as for the common sense and achievement... Sure you did, sweetheart. And as anyone with a functioning cerebrum and eyesight can tell, the HGH that was ALLEGEDLY shot into your freaking thighs, that we can more or less make out in this photo, all so that your husband could not only get into the magazine that more teenage boys have wanked to than any other, with his wife and the mother of his kids looking like she had Barbaro-esque leg tendons? All to the good! And I'm sure, entirely your idea!

Let me break this down for the non-procreating among us. If and when you get to see the woman that loves you enough to bear your child actually produce it, it changes you -- or at least, IT FREAKING SHOULD.

Maybe this makes me King High Wuss and All, but having a kid is a profound sacrifice, one that can be life-threatening, and will most certainly be life-altering, even if you're a braindead celeb who is just going to hand the kid off to a nanny and go work tirelessly to get Your Old Body back.

In my case, after having kids, I started to get the long-overdue realization that maybe my rutting may not be the only, or even the most important thing, in the history of the universe. (Crap, I just lost all of the self-players who found the site from that photo. Oh Well.)

Maybe, horror of horrors, you even become a little more tolerant of physical imperfections, since they really don't matter a whole hell of a lot in the face of what this woman has done for and with you. (Don't mind me. I'm also the freak that thinks that women with preposterous implants aren't sexy.)

But no, no, no... in this, as in so many other things, Roger Clemens is just BETTER than you and me! He doesn't tolerate his wife and the mother of his four kids not having a hardbody at 39! Not when he's still out there in the public eye, being the best damn pitcher that ever lived! He got where he is by not just having a right arm on loan from a higher plain, he got there by having the mental toughness to bear down and get potentially dangerous and mind-numbingly unnecessary drugs shot into his wife, like she's a prize hog at the State Fair.

Of course, on some level, Debbie Clemens knew what she was getting into; it's not like one lies down with a guy like Clemens without being, well, a girl like Clemens. Pimping for a cell phone is, clearly, not the last time this woman went for the degradation. So at best, they are equal partners in awfulness.

There are times in your life when you realize that these athletic heroes aren't just like you and me.

They're actually much, much worse.

9 Under, Almost In, And Completely Invisible

After tonight's 21-point shellacking of the return to historical form Los Angeles Clippers, your Philadelphia 76ers have climbed to within 9 games of the .500 mark... and more amazingly, a half game out of the final playoff spot in the East.

For the 14 people left in the Philadelphia area that kind of care about the franchise, the encouraging thing is that they seem, in the games when Sam Dalembert is earning his paycheck, to be a good defensive team. Combine that the double Andre backcourt of Miller and Iguodala, the instant offense of Louis Williams, the more than occasional bursts from Willie Green and the promise of rookie and new starter Thaddeus Young... well, it's a team that really would probably be in the top 8 if they had kept Kyle Korver, rather than send him to Utah for cap relief. (Or if I hadn't written about them the last time they seemed like they were on the edge of relevance.)

And while no one is really expecting them to beat Dallas at home on Monday, the next few games on the schedule does include Memphis, New York and Minnesota, otherwise known as No Longer Trying, The World's Saddest Circus and Home Court Advantage, and A Team That Starts Sebastian Telfair and Marko Jaric, While Stressing Defense.

Right now, it looks like there are five teams -- Atlanta, New Jersey, Indy, Philly and Chicago -- for the last two spots in the East, and the privilege of getting rolled like a wino by the Celtics and Pistons. (Though the idea of an 8 seed Sixers team upsetting the top-seeded Celts as New England Fan cries himself to death does keep a man warm in the winter. Very, very warm.)

Of those five teams, I suspect it's Atlanta and Chicago on actual talent, but it's not like we're talking about worldbeaters here... and the job gets easier if and when the Nets trade Jason Kidd for squat.

The team that I really don't get in the East is Charlotte. You throw out Jason Richardson, Emeka Okafor, Raymond Felton and Gerald Wallace out there, they all stay more or less healthy, and you've got... a below .500 record at home and the third-worst record in the conference, ahead of only the colossal stink jobs in Miami and New York? Someone needs to let these guys know that, at some point, expansion teams are allowed to win some freaking games. Especially when they've got some, you know, actual talent. (Then again, they have given starting minutes to Nazr Mohammend and Jeff McInnis. Ye gads. Was, um, anyone else not available?)

But getting back to the Hometown Heroes... it's thoroughly possible for the franchise to be above .500 in February. And isn't that what slow progress towards glorious semi-relevance is all about? March, when they get Phoenix twice, the Vengeance of Iverson at home for the only game this year that will get media coverage, the Spurs and Pistons, and two games with the Celtics? Not so pretty. But if they are alive in April, there will be back-to-back games with the Hawks that could actually be relevant. Be still, my barely-beating heart!

Countdown to the Second Worst Day of the Year in Sports

(And no, the video has little to do with this, but it's still kind of amazing... if only for the feat of training to get a dog to do that, and the fact that a woman is applauded for dancing like that, and spreading her legs for, a dog. In public.)

That would be Monday, where your usual midwinter lull of regular season basketball and hockey will be broken up by the Pro Bowl recap... and the opening of the Westminster Dog Show.

Now, I've got nothing against dogs. Except for my first year of college, I haven't lived without one in my house for the last 25 years. I still can't look at a keeshond, which was the breed of my longest living dog, without going into hard nostalgia. I've brought home strays. I speak Dog. I just found this video on YouTube, and damn. Those are my boys!



I suppose that the Dog Show is still better than NASCAR or televised poker for pure viewing pleasure, if only for the sake of hey, dogs. But this is, um... Not Sports with the highest possible Notness. And anyone that goes to compete in this thing is only slightly higher on the evolutionary scale than a Furry, and probably needs to be force-viewed "Best In Show", Clockwork Orange-style, until they get that their life has been sadly wasted. (And this comes from a guy that's written over 700 blog posts about sports in the last year...)

Roids From Column A, Veterinary Drugs From Column B

The United States Olympic Committee will ship over 25,000 pounds of lean protein to China, rather than feed its athletes from entirely local sources, under the rationale of preventing its members from testing positive for steroids from eating contaminated food from the locals. The USOC is also concerned that local food is subject to high concentration of insecticides and illegal veterinary drugs.

There's a million questions that arise from this one, really, but I'll stick with four...

1) Doesn't this just make you even more interested in China for the Games? Wait, the dollar isn't as worth as much, either. Go book your travel plans now!

2) Assuming this isn't just some PR ploy, how do the Chinese athletes avoid testing for steroids at every instance?

3) Between the contaminated food, the rampant pollution, and the fact that the regime is planning on firing freaking rockets in the air to stop rain... not to mention Tibet and Falun Gong and Tiannemen Square... can we just rethink ever having an event in China again? (Besides, the site traffic from our Yao Ming post was crap.)

4) Seriously, the athletes are supposed to go to China for several weeks and not eat Chinese food?

Wash Someone's Face Like A Patriot

This is a new one on me. The practice from the NHL is to get your gloves as rank as possible, then shove your hand in your opponent's face, so that they flip out and draw a penalty. The article gets into the mechanics of how it's done, as well as how the NHL has no penalty for it, beyond of course, the generic unsportsmanlike conduct.

Now, lest you think that this kind of disgusting practice is dependent only on the Canadians and Others that make up the NHL... when I was in the Bay Area, a friend of a friend covered the Golden State Warriors. He also had the misfortune of getting close to Adonal Foyle, the Warriors' undersized and undertalented center. Let's just say that Foyle didn't, well, stress personal hygiene on game day, as part of his effort to make sure that he could get better positioning for rebounds. It's also common knowledge that many NBA players will file their fingernails into sharp points, once again to get any possible edge. Take a close look at any power forward, you'll see marks all over the place. It ain't pretty.

Finally, of course, there's the ultimate story of Art Donovan, the Colts' defensive lineman and author. He had a great anecdote of playing against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds in New York, the week after the circus had been to town... and discovering large clumps of elephant crap on the field. So he and his defensive line cohorts spent the better part of the day shoveling handfuls of ele-poo into their opponent's faces before the snap, and laughing their asses off. They also got beat, of course, because playing defense against enraged linemen while laughing is not easy.

Which is all a very roundabout way of letting you know that the dear Massterminds have started an online petition to look into the awful and tragic events of the last 100 seconds of the Super Bowl. No, seriously.

Far be it for this blog to recommend going over and signing the petition with the equivalent of a face wash, or a Foyle Ploy, or the Donovan Toss. That would be, you know, less than sporting, really. And if the aftermath of this NFL season has taught us anything, it's that returning acts of sportsmanship in full and equal measure isn't just the right thing to do... it's the only thing to do.

MLB: All In Or Fold

The other day, I caught a radio interview with Harry Kalas, the voice of the Phillies for my entire life. You've probably heard Harry at some point thanks to his work on NFL Films, those NFL Network TV ads (he's the voice at the end), even some movies. He's got the kind of voice that you could listen to all day, and along with Richie Ashburn and Bill King, he will be the defining sports broadcaster voice of my life. If you can't be at the game, baseball is best on the radio, with a voice that's like a friend taking you through things; it makes everything slow down in a way that's just pleasant.

Anyway, hearing Kalas, and some of his great play by play calls over the years (Harry isn't over the top, but when he gets excited, you know it), along with the unseasonably warm weather this week.... well, hell. Am I really going to give MLB more of my time?

Every few years, it seems, my interest in the game comes to a low ebb. Either my team (the A's since the late '90s, the Phillies from the late '70s to the mid '90s) has no shot, or the MLB+ness of the game just grinds me down. There has to be more to being a baseball fan than habit or a good announcer, right?

I don't have this ambivalence with football or basketball, for the clear and simple purpose that when your favorite football or basketball team has a good player, you don't have to spend your time waiting for him to be sold to some other team. Or, I imagine, feeling the trace amount of guilt at rooting for the fruits of some other team's labor, that you just happened to be able to root for because your team has more money.

(This is a whole 'nother post, but I'm convinced that part of the reason that fans of MLB+ teams are so unpleasant to deal with for the rest of us is that because they know, on some level, that they are thieves by association. Witness how the Yankee fans love Jeter and tolerate A-Rod, despite the fact that the latter is a better player most of the time. You grew Jeter, so you love him like a son. A-Rod is a Hessian mercenary, nothing more, and you will cast him aside as soon as he would you. Good times!)

There's also this... fantasy sports are getting a bit tired. You play with the same people and rules long enough -- and to be fair, it's not all of the same people, it's just the ones that never talk trash or add much to it. If I stay in these leagues long enough, I'm going to become one of the latter. It's like being in a poker game that never ends.

So here's the deal. I could, of course , stop watching the games, the way I did in the mid-90s when the strike happened, the Phillies stopped trying, I didn't follow the A's yet and the world was owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the Yankees and Braves. (A grand era to skip, by the way.) I'm feeling like a Royals or Pirates fan here -- I've got a crap hand, no chips, and the other side not only has more bankroll, it's making its own cards.

Fold. Leave. With speed.

Problem with that is that one suspects this blog would get pretty sparse pretty quickly, and it just means you've got nothing to watch for months on end. It makes the NFL way too important, really.

So Door Number Two... is to go all in, for a game of your own making.

Here's what I want -- a new fantasy game that's not all soulless and sparkless online randomness. A live draft, or maybe even an auction, where nearly all of the owners are in the same room together, to give each other maximum trash for their picks. Heck, maybe even an auction, seeing how I've never done one of those before, and will probably suck at it. Have some keepers from year to year, so that people don't make silly trades or moves for the moment. mild keeper action, maybe even drafting minor league players for your farm system, even though that's the ultimate in Dork. Buy some insulting trophy and/or wrestling-style championship belt for the winner to wear. In any event, Do Something Different.

And if I can't get that, sit out a year. See what MLB looks like when I'm not smoking the fantasy crack pipe. Hell, maybe I'll write another book.

So if you're local to anywhere in the Philadelphia to New York region, or want to go Huge Dork and fly in for a draft and prevent the world from suffering through another of my books, ping me at dmt shooter at gmail dot com.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled timewaste. Go A's! Maybe we can avoid losing 100 games!

Epic Drop: Top 10 MLB Stories That Make Haters Smile

Your link is here, and really, it could have been all Clemens. When the guy who's accusing you has been collecting your bloody gauze? Dude, you're screwed. Hard. Go cry yourself to sleep on your bed of uncountable money.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Reasons The Eric Bedard Trade Has Taken So Long... and some Shaq Musings

Your link is here, and no, I have no real idea why these teams have taken so long to seal what seems like, in the wake of the ludicrously low price for Johan Santana, a simple and equitable exchange of Ace for Cheap Talent. There's been shorter wars than this freaking trade.

And speaking of trades, I know that I'm required by blogger law to write something about Shaq going from the Heat to the Suns, so here goes. Shawn Marion is a better player right now, but his value will go into the toilet without Nash feeding him, and as a 30-year-old energy player, he's going to be a bad contract in the future. A motivated Shaq is a wonderful thing, but he fits in with the up-tempo Suns like a stripper in church, and his promises of not letting them down notwithstanding, it's hard to see how they are better today then they were yesterday... unless, of course, this is finally the thing that gets Fat Boris Diaw out of his 2-year-old funk.

For the Heat, Marion makes them better, but he's going to be a 15 points per game kind of guy without a point guard -- and no, White Chocolate does not count. But with both teams feeling they needed to Do Something, one can see how What The Hell, Let's Deal happened. Besides, with both contracts coming off the boards fairly soon, the deal really can't be analyzed until we see who the teams sign later.

We've Found The Worst Thing Ever

In some way, I'm relieved. A Cowboys-Patriots Super Bowl, a 5-year reign as World Champions for Dashing Eli, the continued Boston-New Yorkization of all sports, the Hope-Free Auto Loss Season for two out of my three teams? Fah. Water off this duck's back.

I have seen the face of hell, and it is being trapped, for eternity, with these people. While they play the same song over and over, because it is all they know, being soulless mongoloids.

And speaking of people who deserve a fiery eternity, what the hell is wrong with you, people of Great Britain? You *invented* punk, for heaven's sake, and yet when this sort of thing happens in front of you, you laugh, applaud, and maybe even sing along. Not one of you threw a chair, hit someone with a broken bottle, or rushed the stage to tear these people limb from limb. Wankers!

In Which We Praise Yao

The Economist
The number of Internet users in China grew an astonishing 50 percent in 2007, ending the year at 210 million users, according to the Chinese government. And there's still a long, long way to grow, as 210 million represents just 16 percent of the Chinese population.

More than 70 percent of China's Internet population is under 30. As such, "there is enormous pent-up demand for entertainment, amusement and social interaction," says Richard Ji, an analyst at Morgan Stanley. Chinese Internet companies have seen their share prices rise sharply; their collective market cap is now above $50 billion, having doubled just about every year since 2003, according to the Economist.

Welcome, Chinese readers who know enough English to do a Google search for Yao Ming! We're sure that you'll find lots to like here at FTT, including lots of text mentions of Yao Ming, because we're sure you all love that Yao Ming nearly as much as you like the image we found for you.

Yao's on my fantasy team, so I like him too!

(Goes to check Web logs to see if there's anything. Nothing. Not even a Chinese cricket, or an insulting SalesGenie ad search.)

Screw you people. Your cheap electronics and sweatshop labor practices have done more to ruin the economy and ecology than Hummer and Haliburton combined. The upcoming Olympics are going to make Munich '36 look like Light N' Easy Propaganda. You are firing freaking *rockets* in the air to stop the horror of rain. And your new love for inflation is going to be the death blow for the American economy, and ensure that my kids will grow up in squalor and deprivation, regardless of my bad gambling picks. Yao's gutless, too. 7'-6" and he can't play defense. I wash my hands of you. Fah.

(Sudden realization that the time zone difference could be the cause of lack of traffic...) Hey, did you know that Yao's up to 2.2 blocked shots per game now? That's a career high!

Epic Drop: Top 10 Fan Bases That Are Delighting In New England Fan's Misery

Here's the link, and for all of you who are thinking that I'm going to the well of Patriot Sorrows too long... no.

We're going to savor their tears like fine wine, so that they keep me from the horror of Champion Eli Et Al. And the more we think about their tears, the less we think about the idea that the biggest win in NFL history is going to a team that I normally want to see dead, dead, dead. Consider it a survival mechanism.

Hey NOBGF, Screw Your Parade

NOBGF: New Outer Borough Giants Fan.

In case you were wondering who would win the pool of when the bloom would come off the bitter, thorny rose that is a Giants Super Bowl win, it came for me at 7:15am this morning at my morning train station.

Admittedly, this was probably My Fault for voting, and getting lost on the way to the polling booth, which made me miss my earlier train... but what do I see on the platform but over a dozen different Giants fans, all in those suspiciously new Manning and Burress jerseys (the Eli jerserys were especially mint). They are all taking the train, don'tcha know, to get into Manhattan to see The Parade. (Mind you, I live in the more or less midpoint of Philadelphia and New York, and the area was showing a lot more Eagle Green a few months ago. Are you getting my Bandwagon Drift yet?)

Now, a quick word about parades. I don't get the thrill. You stand. They walk or drive by. You clap or yell. They point their fingers at you and wave. At no point does anyone tackle anyone. There is no sport here.

So unless you're there to try to hook up -- and hey, if that's the case, knock yourself out, I understand Eli really likes it on top when he pees on you while calling you Tiki -- what, exactly, is the point? Do you need to compound the vice / timewaste that is watching sports with the even more dubious vice / timewaste of staring at people who play sports?

And if the answer is "We just wanted to thank them for all they did", um, fine and all, but don't they already get a paycheck that's probably at least 16 times what average NOBGF makes, along with the adoration at their home games?

Oh, right, these are the Giants, a team you could only beat at home. My bad. And no, to answer the inevitable hater question, if the Eagles/Sixers/A's were holding a parade, I wouldn't go either. I've been to one parade, for the Philadelphia Stars when I was 12. It's fine if you're 12, I suppose. Or a groupie, or a groupie wannabe.

So my train is now filled not with the politely semi-conscious drones, but with grunty men and their appalling women discussing their kitchens and basements and who saw who at the mall and for heaven's sake it's a public place and you're not even drunk, along with an awful hour of the morning in the fog and drizzle that has been, for the most part, Weather for the past three months. I understand that you mongoloids need to congregate to make the experience seem real to you, since you were all a first-round loss to Tampa away from firing everyone involved with the Blue Snow G Men... but can't you please, pretty please, accept this one with the small good grace, that, to be fair, most of the actual team displayed?

With the grace of an occasionally kind Supreme Being, the train is not delayed, and we pull into Newark, which is where I disembark... and now NOBGF has to deal with the automated ticket turnstiles. With the PATH train, you have to buy a ticket from a machine, and periodically recharge it, to get through... but NOBGF doesn't know that, and is convinced that if he just jams in a buck or his drivers license or, I don't know, his new Giants SuperBowl MasterCard, he'll get through.

Over 1,000 people go from that train to the PATH, and most of us are trying to get to work on time; if you dick around with the machine, other people are going to try to get by, seeing as there are maybe 20 turnstiles for the entire length of the train. But oh, no no no, not with NOBGF on the case! "What are you, SOME KIND OF TOOL? IT'S BROKEN!" he screams, followed by the inevitable F-bombs. He's bellowing, oblivious to (a) the fact that people are cutting around him like he's a glob of rancid fat in an artery, or that (b) the guy that he wanted to throw down with for daring to, um, get on with his freaking day is already through the turnstile and on the PATH train.

Now, I'm sure that this will all go away soon, along with the vague sense that I've entered Bizarro World when the Citizen watch ad comes on and talks about Unstoppable Eli Manning. But until then, I think I need to work from home. Before I start carrying razor blades...

Epic Drop: Top 12 Things To Look Forward to in the Winter Sports Lull

Your list is here, and for all of the FTT Trivia Fans out there, this is Post Number 800, and nearly that many readers. That perfect SAT score is ours!

Masstermind Round-Up: The Day After

I've been up all night, Nation, trying to figure out how We lost that game. Here's the best that I can come up with.

Coach Belichick made us lose. On purpose. Because He's A Genius.

Hear me out on this, my fellow so close to Perfectriots. (Luckily, I still have patent on that, and I think my bid for the URL is going to be accepted now. It will all pay off in the long run.)

Coach knew that no matter what, this year was going to be defined by Spygate. He also knew that if the team finished off the 19-0 year, he'd have no way to motivate them next year, and Coach is all about planning for the future. Finally, he had to teach all of us -- the Patriot Nation -- a bitter, bitter lesson. We were not worthy.

And by We, of course, I mostly mean You.

We didn't do enough. We weren't big enough homers. We didn't embrace the non-darkies on the team enough. We allowed ESPN to occasionally cover other teams in the league. We didn't have Gregg Easterbrook killed -- something that I'm certain most other fanbases would have also supported. When the Patriots were running up the score earlier in the year like the biggest heel wrestlers ever, we didn't enjoy it enough. Some part of Us wondered if we weren't just being, you know, irredeemable assholes that the rest of the world would delight in our defeat. We were weak.

Well, no more. Now, with this resolve-testing loss on all of our heads, we'll be.... we'll be.... we'll be....

WWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN'T DO IT! I CAN'T DO IT! THE PATRIOTS LOST! TO THE FREAKING GIANTS! WWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOMEBODY HOLD ME! I'M SO COLD AND LONELY AND SAD AND NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE ME AGAIN AND I'M GOING TO DIE COLD AND ALONE AND UNLOVED WITHOUT THE PATRIOTS EVER EVER EVER EVER GOING 19-0 AND WINNING EVERY GAME AND COVERING EVERY SPREAD! IT'S BEEN YEARS, YES, PLURAL, YEARS SINCE THE PATRIOTS WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP AND ALL WE HAVE NOW IS OUR DEFENDING CHAMPION BASEBALL TEAM AND OUR CONTENDING CHAMPION BASKETBALL TEAM AND OUR LOADED 18-1 FOOTBALL TEAM THAT HAS THE 7TH PICK IN THE DRAFT AND ALL OF IT IS MEANINGLESS BECAUSE THE PATRIOTS LOST! TO THE FREAKING GIANTS! WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(breaths, gulps, repeats)

I'm OK. Just, um, got a little emotional there. That's OK, right? It doesn't make me less of a professional in Coach's eyes, does it? It's OK, we'll just take it out in the edit. Like the final game of the DVD of the season. Though that pre-game show where Terry Bradshaw went down on Brady was kind of awesome. I mean, we would have all done it, but it was nice of Brady to let an old bald guy have a turn, too.

So, anyway. Coach made us lose to make sure we'd be better next year, just as he made us lose Deion Branch so that he could get Randy Moss, just as all of the other Patriot championships are completely valid 3-point domination wins, and this is a completely invalid 3-point fluke loss.

I feel better now. Now, if you don't mind, I'm off to take a week-long bubble bath, and drink myself to poisoning levels on five different kinds of schnapps. Oh, schnapps. You're always perfect. You'll never fail me...

Final Super Thoughts

The Patriots finally lost a close Super Bowl.

That's about it, really. If Eli Manning doesn't escape from a sack in a way that he has probably never done before, and if David Tyree doesn't keep a hold on a ball by pressing it against his freaking helmet, the Giants don't win tonight. If Ahmad Bradshaw doesn't recover a fumble when he is outnumbered 4 to 1 in a pile, the Giants probably don't win this game. They were the best team on the field tonight, but in the NFL, that does not really mean that much; every game turns on a half dozen plays. As much as the Giants held the ball tonight, they only won the time of possession by a minute. As well as the Giants defense played tonight, they outgained the Pats by all of about 60 yards.

I might be alone in this, but I don't think that this win makes Eli Manning a great quarterback, any more than the idea that Bret Favre has been a great quarterback for the past five years, because he won a Super Bowl way back when. His team scored 17 points tonight against a defense that hasn't been that great; he led them to three points in a first half when they more or less controlled the game.

What happened tonight was that the Giants' defensive line controlled the game for most of the first 50 minutes, and when the offense got the ball back with one chance to win the game, they did it. Everything after that is story, and come next September, worth as much as the Patriots first 18 wins.

Oh, and hats off from this Eagles fan to the Giants for taking out the two most annoying teams in the playoffs. The fact that you were the third most annoying team... well, oh well.

Epic Drop: Top 13 Consolations for Patriots Fans

Your list is here, and I'm so sorry for the New England fans, really. No, seriously. Very unfortunate. Just awful, really.

The Super Quasi Live Blog, Fourth Quarter: Giants-Patriots

Giants start at their 20 following a Hanson failed punt. Frank Caliendo starts us off by looking asleep. Yes sir! Manning hits Boss in stride from a clean pocket, and he runs away from Rodney Harrison for 30 yards -- BECAUSE THE TIGHT END IS ALWAYS OPEN AGAINST THE PATRIOTS -- for 45. Bradshaw for 3 hard yards. Aikman disagrees that the Giants are better without Shockey, because of all of the playoff wins they had with... well, because Troy Aikman Is A Dumb Ass. Three more for Jacobs, and it's 3rd and 4 from the 30. Huge play, and Manning from the shotgun has all day to throw and an open Steve Smith to throw to. He makes the catch, and Blue is at the Patriots 12.

Bradshaw from the shotgun draw gets 7, and we are five yards away from the Giants having the lead again. Play action, and the ball is perfect to David Tyree.. and voila, there's the lead. Tynes hits the PAT, and it's 10-7 Giants. Wow, wow, wow. Patriots with the over is also looking like a DOA bet.

Maroney with a good return... but ref Mike Carey has a holding call, and the Pats will start at their 10, instead of the 33. There's 11 minutes left in this game, and if Blue can keep playing defense like this, Some Serious Interest, Really.

Moss makes his second catch of the day, this one for 17, on play action that's a high throw, but a good one. The Welker screen is anticipated, but the WR makes a man miss as always, and gets 3. Brady overthrows Moss, who didn't look all that perturbed at the idea of going for it, shall we say. 3rd and 7 is another monstrous play... and Brady ducks traffic, but then misses Welker, and the Patriots will punt. On the play, Umenyiora is hit in the head, and Madison closed beautifully to get the stop. McQuarters fields the punt, stays in bounds, and gets 10 hidden but important yards. For the fourth straight playoff game, the Giants are making the other team's QB play his worst game of the year.

9:20 left when the Giants stat the drive, and Jacobs gets a yard. A long drive and points here is what Blue is dreaming of, and given the time of possession advantage, well within the possibilities. Manning spins away from a sack, then misses Burress, who was wide open in the flat. That's the kind of play that loses football games. Wow. On 3rd and 9, from the gun, Toomer is a yard shy of the first down... and the Patriots are very, very lucky to get the three and out. Even if Manning runs instead of throwing to Burress, they get the first and keep the ball. Big, big break for the Pats. Welker calls for a fair catch just inside his 20, and with just under 8 minutes left, the Pats have the ball.

Will the Blue defense do it again? From first, it's shotgun for Brady, who finds Welker for 5. It really looks like Brady doesn't want to hold the ball for any longer than necessary. Moss runs a Welker route for 9, and the Pats have a first down. Maroney for 9 and out of bounds, and the Pats look a little better right now. Six minutes left. Welker to the Giants 43, he now has 10 catches for 93 yards, and it's another first down. First drive all night where Brady has looked like Brady. Faulk gets 4 on an out route. Welker's 11th catch is for 10 more yards, and the Pats are in theoretical field goal range with 4:15 left. The first incompletion of the drive is to Stallworth, and again, it's a quick out route. Brady is now 26 of 40 for 237 yards. Play action to Moss gets another first down and the Pats are in the red zone. The Giants pass rush has picked a bad time to disappear. Faulk for 12 over the middle, and Giant defenders are dropping like flies; this time it's Robbins, previously it was Tuck and Umenyiora. Bad moment for Blue, who have had time of possession, to also run out of gas.

First and goal from the 7. 3:12 left. Both teams have all of their timeouts. Fake handoff, pump fake right to Gaffney, then Brady misses a wide-open Moss to the left. Second down is a blitz where Brady throws behind Welker, who gets hammered to boot. James Butler for the Giants is down, and it's merely the biggest play of the season right now. Aikman gives the mouth job to Brady, as if he didn't just miss Moss on first down for the go-ahead touchdown. Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to get an NFL announcing job with Fox?

The biggest play of the game and season is from the gun. Brady to Moss, touchdown, as Webster los his feet. Gostkowski hits the PAT, and it's 14-10 Patriots, with 2:49 left. The perfect season is 2:42 away, assuming the Patriots defense can get it done.

Hixson goes down hard after a 14 yard return, so the Giants will have to go long distance to win this game. First and ten from their 17. First down is a good ball to Toomer, for 11 and the first. The Giants don't hurry. Manning takes a low snap and misses Burress in traffic. Burress has one catch for 14 yards, in his bid to be the new Freddie Mitchell. Under pressure, Manning throws high and away to Burress, and we're at the two minute warning.

3rd and 10, and Aikman is already talking about punting, Manning finds Toomer, who is marked just short of the first. Toomer could have rolled after the catch, but didn't, and with 1:40 left, the Giants are going for it. Aikman admits this is the right decision. No, you think?

AGAIN, HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO GET A JOB WITH FOX?

Jacobs just makes it on fourth and short. 1:22 left, and Blue keeps it. They still have all three timeouts, and are now 73 yards away. Manning scrambles for five, and was down before the ball comes loose. Blue calls time, and it's second and five with 80 seconds left, but this drive is not exactly inspiring confidence right now.

57 yards away. Manning airmails a ball to Tyree, and Samuel doesn't make the pick; Manning is bent at his WR. 3rd and 5, 1:15 left... and Manning makes the play of his life. Shaking off pressure from several players, he throws a jump ball to Tyree, who also makes the play of his life, holding off Harrison and keeping the ball, with one hand, off his freaking HELMET. Unreal. Giants call time, 59 seconds left, ball on the Patriots 25, and what was a terrible game is having a HUGE finish.

1st and 10 on the 24. Manning gets dragged down by Thomas, and Blue uses its last time out with 50 seconds left on the clock. That Could Be Important. Blue needs to protect its QB better. From the gun, its a flutter that Tyree almost catches on the deflection. 3rd and 11 with 45 seconds left. I'd think about a draw, but Manning finds Smith in the flat, who gets the first down and stops the clock. Huge play.

First and 10 on the 14. Patriots with a sell out blitz, and Manning finds Burress all alone in the corner for the go-ahead touchdown with 35 seconds left. Wow, wow, wow. Tynes sneaks the extra point through, and it's 17-14 Giants with 35 seconds left.

Heck of a time for Burress to finally make a play in this game. He's officially overtaken Freddie Mitchell. And for that, I have no higher praise.

A big return makes overtime very possible, as the Pats still have all of their timeouts, but Maroney won't get it, as he's wrapped up at the 25. 29 seconds left, first and 10 from the 25. The Giants blitz on first, and Brady misses downfield. 25 seconds left. On second down, Jay Alford, a rookie, blows up Brady on a sack, 19 seconds left, the Patriots take a timeout. It's 3rd and 20. Wow.

From the gun, Brady tries Moss from 60 yards away, and Webster knocks it away. 10 seconds left. The ball was there, but the DB made a great play. And on the last play of the NFL season, Brady can't connect. Embarrassingly for the NFL, there is still a second left on the clock, and it's a mess to close, but close they do.

Giants 17, Patriots 14. Much, much more later. (My inner Masstermind is just CRUSHED.)

The Super Quasi Live Blog, Third Quarter: Giants-Patriots

The Pats had 81 yards in the first half on offense -- or, to say, one of their usual drives. But the Pats have been fantastic on second half coaching adjustments, whether they've done it legitimately or not. If the Pats can take the kickoff and do damage immediately, the first 30 minutes will be forgotten by everyone who didn't take the over.

Pats will get the ball to start the second half, and Maroney gets it to the 21. You know, for a team that's down by 4, the Giants sure seem happy with themselves. Brady from the gun gets time and finds Welker for 15. Maroney on a counter for 7, running well. Strahan knocks down a screen to Faulk on second down, showing veteran awareness. On third, it's Faulk again, as Brady just gets rid of it. If teams had hit Brady like this all year, there is no way the Pats would be 18-0.

Maroney loses two, as Umenyiora is making his presence felt. Patriot OL Steve Neal won't return; telling. 2nd and 12 is from the gun, and it's Welker again, this time for 7 and some pain. 3rd and 5 is another big play... and Brady adjust to Faulk, who can't make Pierce miss. On fourth and 3, the Patriots are punting, and that's telling, too... as the Pats almost always went for it in this down and distance earlier in the year. Blue will start inside their 15.

But what's this? Belichick challenges the idea that there are 12 men on the field, thanks to his good friend Troy Aikman calling it out during the break. It looks like.. it is...

IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

Patriots get the flag, keep the ball, and I have to think that if there wasn't a big commercial break, there's no way that happens. Dirty Davey chimes in with "It's always nice to see major turning points that display a high level of football skill." Crowd seemed into it, so maybe it's not a Giants crowd after all.

Maroney for 4 on a screen. Light jumps, and it's 2nd and 11. Screen to Welker gets a loss, and Blue is a play away from a huge stop. 3rd and 13... and Kevin Faulk, as he has done all post-season, makes a huge play, making a man miss for 14 yards and the first -- and gets carried the last few yards by the guy who missed him in the first place. Immense. Maroney for little, Brady for little. Pats look like the first half Giants here -- a lot of time, very little yards. 3rd and 7 with half of the quarter gone is shotgun to ground, as Strahan gets the sack from rushing 4. Wow, the Giants DL has just been huge. A loss of six sets up fourth and 13, and the Pats go for it, rather than try a 50 yard figgie... and after a couple of pump fakes, Brady throws it out of the end zone. Faulk may have also blown a hammy.

We Officially Have A Ball Game, Folks.

To not trust your kicker from 50 is the kind of move that a bad coach makes. It's the same move that the Chargers did against the Patriots a year ago, when Schottenheimer then had to have Kaeding try from 55 at the gun. It's remarkable, really. Here I am, remarking on it.

Jacobs for 4. Patience is all Blue. Toomer, in severe traffic with good accuracy, almost goes long, but makes the first. Blue at their 45. Bradshaw for 2. Blue runs huge clock, and Toomer gets a ball that could have easily been picked; Eli looks fixated on him right now. It's a measurement, and a first. First down on the Pats 45.

Play action, Manning tries Burress in triple coverage, who can't bring it down. Toomer was wide open 20 yards downfield. Hmm. Crowd gets on Burress, of course. Bradshaw carries Harrison for four. On 3rd and 6, Burress can't make the play -- again -- and it's Feagles time. Plex is making Freddie Mitchell look good right about now. The Pats will start at their 10, after a lame spot by the ref.

With three minutes left in the quarter, the Pats start with a false start call on Watson. First and 15 gets us in Safety Territory, and Brady from the gun almost takes it from a middle blitz before getting it away. Wow. Surprising the refs didn't call a head panelty on the rusher. Welker tears down a 16 yard completion for the first, just a huge play. Maroney follows it with a nine yard run, and gets the first down to the left. The over is a stone-cold lock now. Welker pulls away for 19, and maybe he's the MVP, beating Aaron Ross like a mule. That puts the Pats into Blue territory, and Brady follows it up by throwing to a wide open Welker... provided Welker was 30 feet tall. Just another very bad ball from the QB. Brady is pissed, Aikman feels he is annoyed by a bad route... but what route calls for the ball to be thrown 20 yards out of bounds? Pats take another false start penalty, and then Brady misses Moss downfield. Once again, the QB does not look good. This time, Brady's body language looks like hell. 3rd and 15 is the last plaey of the quarter, and it's short of the first down to Stallworth. Patriots 7, Giants 3, in a game that would be deadly dull if not for what's on the line.

Halftime Notes

Fat white people run to see senior citizen Tom Petty's vaguely phallic light display. I'm not saying he's old. I'm saying he's ancient. In HD, he's already dead. But at least he's playing "American Girl" to start off, which, let's face it, has never been the same since "Silence of the Lambs."

He follows up with oxygen and "I Won't Back Down." Fox cuts to some 20-somethings whose parents taught them this song, enjoying themselves. One hopes they show us some nip before Tom does...

You have to give it up for his roadies, who are somehow even older than Petty. He slows it down with "Free Fallin'" as the crowd waves the lights that someone had to give them. Pity poor Mike Campbell, who has to go to one of those double-neck dork guitars, which can't be easy to lift at his age. Why, oh why, can't the NFL ever give this gig to a band that's anywhere close to their prime?

Dirty Davey wonders "are the people massed on the fields those who were earlier in the stands, or are they a separate population without game tickets and only admitted to the stadium for the halftime show?" Excellent point, in that the people on the field appear young and enthused, which wouldn't describe any of the Pats or Giants fans right now, really...

Petty kicks this party up to Upping The Dosage Stage with "Runnin' Down A Dream" -- proving, as always, that there is a CONSPIRACY against the Black Man (Prince only got three). However, it should be noted that all of Petty's songs can be reduced to a two minute essence, so they just more or less feel that long anyway.

Show wraps up, and all kidding aside, Tom Petty Is Really Old. Even older than Paul McCartney, and the Rolling Stones... and Mike Campbell deserves better. Thanks for the lack of wardrobe malfunction, though.

Super Bowl Commercial Notes

McDonalds thinks I will eat more of their "food" if I know they are charitable. How about I just give money to charity, and avoid the obesity?

Aikman shows off his rings, and tells us that it's what the NFL is all about. Here I was thinking it was violence. Is this really the one game that no one forgets? Perhaps, but then there was that Ravens-Giants game... who won it again?

Ford swings a truck around with a centrifuge, and tells us not to try this at home. Well, hell, I've got the centrifuge all lined up... and I'm not supposed to use it?

Bud Light lets you breath fire. Funny, for me, it's usually another orifice...

Ah, a Godfather joke that is supposed to make me want to buy an Audi. Um, creepy and wrong. Yuck. Thanks for the $2.2 million!

Diet Pepsi Max makes us all dance like douchebags. Gimme some!

SalesGenie spends 2.2 million on ad time, but can't afford live actors. Lame!

GoDaddy thinks everyone will leave the SB to see Danica Patrick's tits. They may be right. This game's been dullsville. Same for the ads.

Tide thinks a talking stain will sell products. It's in the wrong place, really.

Using CareerBuilder could make your heart leap out of your chest. Drinking Sobe Life Water causes you to dance with disturbing lizards, while rehabilitating Michael Jackson.

Owning the Yukon Hybird from GMC will make you feel like Sisyphus. Carlos Mencia is not funny, which is why you should drink Bud Light.

Planters makes frighteningly ugly women attractive. Pepsi causes Justin Timberlake to feel pain. Doritos attracts huge vermin. I got to say... I'm drinking a Pepsi product right now. The others are getting a miss.

Cars.com likes to have salesmen get hurt, preferably permanently. SalesGenie enjoys giving pandas wildly insulting Chinese accents. Vitamin Water makes you so delusional, you think 350-pound NBA players can be jockeys. I'm sure that was all worth $6.6 million.

Bridgestone Tires fail to kill Richard Simmons -- and I'm still supposed to buy them? Career Builder ups the ante from heart ripping out to animated douchebaggery. Once again, I find myself unmoved towards purchase.

Coca-Cola is desired by large balloons, and makes partisan douchebags get all chummy, because the differences between political parties is nothing compared to the desire to just get along. Yay, we're staying in Iraq 4 Ever! Have a Coke!

The future of Under Armour... looks all kinds of roided up, really. Isn't that the present? Bud Light, at the three hour mark, gets the first quasi smirk from me, with Will Ferrell saying "Bud Light. Suck one." Congrats, advertisers of the world -- it only took most of the game!

Victoria's Secret, with two minutes left, reminds us that sex exists. Amp energry drink makes us look at a fat man putting jumper cables on his nipples. Ben Rothlisberger will whore himself out to American Idol. Yay, Ben! Your participation will finally make the show popular!

The Super Quasi Live Blog, Second Quarter: Giants-Patriots

Maroney starts the second quarter with a touchdown to the right side. I CALLED IT! HE'S THE MVP! MVP! MVP! MVME! Patriots 7, Giants 3.

The first quarter had the fewest possessions in SB history. FTT commenter Dirty Davey wisely points out that the sample size of 42 games is too small to care about most records. I think he's right.

Gostkowski puts it out of bounds, and the Giants will start at the 40. Fox shows Brady's poon is drinking wine in a box. Pats Fan would never drink wine from a box. Dreamboat has to do better.

Bradshaw for 3. No Siragusa in this game -- thank God. Manning makes a man miss and hits Burress, who then backs up his pre-game prediction by dropping it. That would have been a first down, Mouth. Big Pats blitz gets absolutely nowhere, and Manning heaves it 40 yards to Toomer, who smacks the DB away, then uses the sideline and puts them in the red zone. Big push off, great play to get away with it. IT'S A CONSPIRACY! (To keep the game close enough to throw off the scent.)

Jacobs for 4. G-Men pick up their ritual delay call to give them second and 11, and Coughlin is Rassing and Frassing. IT'S A CONSPIRACY! Tyree for 5, and it's third and five. Without the penalty, that's a first down.... and then the game's biggest play, in a tipped ball INT to Steve Smith. Smith has to make the play, he doesn't, and Hobbs is off with it. Huge, huge play -- it's hard to be a ball-control team when you don't get touchdowns in the red zone.

Maroney for 8. HE'S THE MVP! GIVE IT TO HIM! Pats have it at their own 40 now. Maroney again on second, and Blue stops it. This is a big drive right here, in that if the Giants can get off the field, they can stop this from feeling like an avalanche... and on 3rd and 1, the defense smells run and crushes it. Very, very conservative playcalling by the Pats. They'll punt, McQuarters has a good return to the 36. We still have a ballgame, twenty minutes in.

The first sack of the game goes to the Pats, who cover Burress like he made a bad idea prediction. It's a short loss, but troubling nonetheless. 2nd and 13, and it's a very near turnover on an exchange to Bradshaw. How Bradshaw got this back, no idea. 3rd and a furlong is a fake screen to the left and a throwaway to the right, and that might have been the ugliest drive of the playoffs. 3 and out, and after the Feagles punt, the Patriots will start at their own 29.

Will Brady get untracked? Not after a 1 yard gain to Maroney. Remind me again -- do the Patriots have an explosive offense? 2nd and 9, it's a sack to Strahan. That over bet is not looking good. 3rd and 17, and some noise happens as Justin Tuck puts Brady on the ground for the second straight play. Steve Neal, a Patriot OL, limps off, and it's been a long time since the Pats have looked this ordinary on offense. After a punt and a non-call on an out of bounds hit by the Pats - IT'S A CONSPIRACY! - Blue will start at their 40.

The graphic shows no throws to Moss, and yup, that's what he does in the playoffs! Jacobs for a couple. Bradshaw for 13, and you have to think, if Blue's going to win this game, that he's going to make more plays like this. Will they stay with him? No, Jacobs for 4. Another first down puts them in figgie range... and Jacobs gets it with 8 on the left side. Honestly, Blue's been the better team so far tonight.

4:08 left, and the ball on the Pats 31. Bradshaw on a throwback underneath route for 3. 15 runs, 14 passes for Blue so far, and man, are they running clock. Bradshaw again on the ground, and it's 3rd and 4. Manning gets sacked, fumbles, and in a wild scramble, Smith covers it for an apparent first down... but there's a flag on the play, as Bradshaw batted it forward illegally, which costs them 10. Wild sequence. Now it's 3rd and 18 with 2:21 left, and the ball on the Patriots 39. I smell underneath pass to get Tynes closer... and instead, it's a terrible ball that Gay should have picked, but doesn't. The two minute warning sounds, and one expects a Feagles punt here. He doesn't disappoint, and the Pats will start at their 11.

Can the Pats' shake off 28 minutes of ordinary play to make this a 2-score game? They start with Brady getting leveled on a long ball to Moss, the first time they've thrown his way today. Moss wasn't open, anyway. Maroney for a three-yard loss, and it's Blue with the timeout. If you hadn't watched these teams all year, you would have no idea that the Patriots had a good offense. On 3rd and 13, with the crowd into it for Blue, it's an absolutle back-breaker of a play on a fake handoff, then toss to Stallworth, for the first. Brady tries Moss again, and gets nailed again. I haven't seen a team abuse Dreamboat this much all year.

With 1:05 left, it's Faulk for a big run up the middle, but this should come back on a hold, and it does. Fox shows a graphic of how the Pats have the second fewest yards in a Super Bowl, only outperforming... themselves, in the Bears game. 2nd and 12 with 59 seconds left. Brady is 5 for 11 for 49 yards right now -- wow. Another screen, this one to Welker, and it's not a good throw, but the WR redeems it. Clock runs on 3rd and 4, and Faulk converts it, but now there are only 28 seconds left. (It was 25, but the refs put three seconds back on. IT'S A CONSPIRACY!)

Brady steps up, looking good for the first time tonight, and hits Moss (ditto) to get them to Blue 45. Moss was down in bounds, but they call it out because... IT'S A CONSPIRACY! Next play is a sack and fumble, and amazingly, not a Tuck Play. Giants recover, Justin Tuck is owning the world, and with 10 second left, it's Blue Ball with 2 timeouts on the NE 49. Brady has been knocked down 6 times on 17 attempts. Wow.

A blitz doesn't get there, and Smith drops another one. Ouch. Giants send everyone out wide for a Hail Mary, which almost works, but Smith doesn't react... and that's your half. Patriots 7, Giants 3, and you can officially kiss the Over bet goodbye. Classic Patriots. They're leading, but they're not much better than the opponent -- as the 19 to 11 time of possession shows. Anyway, back soon.

The Super Quasi Live Blog, First Quarter: Giants-Patriots

Jason Taylor wins the Payton award, proving that the year wasn't a total loss. Or maybe they gave it to him so that he wouldn't kill himself.

Bill Walsh is dead, so his spawn get to flip the coin with some Niner greats. Not pictured; Joe Montana, who wants nothing to do with these people.

Mike Carey, aka The Black Ref, flips it, and the Giants win the toss and will take the ball. The roof is closed tonight, like there was any chance that the swells in attendance were going to be exposed to weather.

Hixon to the 23, and it looked to me like he was face masked down. First no-call for the Pats! IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

Manning looks shaky on pre-snap, so he gives to Jacobs, who runs through backfield contact for 3. He gets a yard on second, and it's 3rd and 6 for Eli for a very quiet crowd. so far, this is the most boring SB ever... but Manning gets time on 3rd thanks to Bradshaw picking up the blitzer, and it's Burress for the first. He throws again on the next down to Hedgecock the FB, who can't escape Seau. 2nd and 7 is a lot of pre-snap, and Jacobs gets a yard as the Giants snap it at 0. They've held the ball a while so far, but it's 3rd and 6 again. Manning with a good ball into tight coverage to Smith for the first, and again, the Patriots blitz does not get close. Our first stoppage is for two injured Pats - Gay and Harrison, who both walked off. Jacobs hurts a DB for 7 to the left, and this is looking just like the Giants blueprint so far. Bradshaw nearly gets the first on 2nd and 3, and we're already six minutes into the game. On 3rd and inches, they should sneak, but give to Bradshaw instead, who carries Ty Warren for five yards. Impressive. The tenth play of the drive is play action to Boss, who drops it, not that he'd have gotten much. We're in the outer ranges of Lawrence Tynes, not that they are thinking about that. Harrison blitzes, Jacobs runs away from it for 3 -- interesting that the Pats are sending blitzers so much, this early, and not getting there. 3rd and 7 is another big down for Eli, and he avoids pressure to convert another one. Wow. Smith again, for the first, and Big Blue is in the red zone.

Randall Gay may not return for the Patriots. Ellis Hobbs almost makes the pick on a post to Burress; Eli threw into double coverage and missed, and got lucky not to be picked. A bad looking shotgun draw to Jacobs, who gets nothing. The fourth third down of the drive will be 3rd and 10, and the Patriot defense looks gassed... but Manning goes short on third down, and it's figgie time. Tynes from 32 is good, and it's a nine-minute drive to a 3-point lead. Giants 3, Patriots 0.

Maroney makes the first play of what will win him the MVP today, with a 43-yard kickoff return. First play from scrimmage is trickery that almost gets Brady sacked; not a big sign of confidence. Maroney for eight eliminates the mistake, and he gets five more on third to convert. Brady misses badly on a first and ten; not sure what he wanted there, but it wasn't good. Second and ten is an empty backfield short one to Stallworth, more of a Welker route, for 7. 3rd and 3 is at least a three-point play, and it's Welker for the conversion. Evans for two, and Fox is now talking up the Brady ankle issue. If you have the Patriots and the over right now, it's not good times.

Faulk for 7, and that throws is easy; the spot is generous for the first. IT'S A CONSPIRACY! Brady misses Watson high on a bad decision, and it's interesting to see that Moss hasn't been involved on the drive. Faulk alligators a 2nd down pass, and it looked like Moss was open deep; pressure didn't get there. Big third down here to see if the Patriots take the lead... and Watson gets the PI call from a face-guarding Antonio Pierce. IT'S A CONSPIRACY... to make the right call. Maroney doesn't get in on first, ruining my pick of him for MVP. The quarter ends with the Giants up 3, but the Patriots knocking on the door.

Even More Pre-Game Notes

Joe Buck says this would be the second perfect season in NFL history. Wrong... becuase, believe it or not, NFL history does extend back beyond the Super Bowl era. (Says a fan of the three-time champion Philadelphia Eagles.)

The Giants enter with house music. That's intimidating! The crowd has a lot of Bright Big Blue in it, though... since one suspects that most Patriot Fans are too busy

Fox decides to go from some odd political aspect for the pre-game hype. Because heaven knows, NFL fans want to mix politics with their football!

The Patriots enter to boos and "Crazy Train." I think that confirms it; this is a Giants crowd, or as much as a Giants crowd that can exist at a Super Bowl.

This is when you know you are old: you have no idea who the anthem singer is. Jordin Sparks, who looks more worried than any performer should, will do the honors after the Burst Of Commerce. She honors America as a native and "American Idol" winner should, which is to say, with tiny nose pins, in a too-tight dress, looking like she's reading the words off a teleprompter as she's strafed by F-14s. Is it any wonder the rest of the world hates us?

Pre-Game Notes

Video's words are NSFW... but that don't matter, just don't bite it. Consider it a tribute to Terry Bradshaw's piece with Tom Brady.

Breaking longstanding sanity and tradition, I tune in 45 minutes early and learn...

1) There's a special episode of "House" on after the game. It's the one where a onetime "Black Adder" character actor overacts, and people nearly die! (Note: I have never watched "House", but I'm pretty sure I just summarized all of them.)

2) The Fox robot is carrying the SB trophy. Woo, topical!

3) In pre-game, Tom Brady was a dick to Eli Manning. I am shocked, shocked, to discover a Patriots player behaving with less than perfect sportsmanship.

4) Terry Bradshaw loves him some Tom Brady. The phrase "mouth job" doesn't even begin to describe that experience. But Brady's bastard son won't be at the game, because he hates him. (OK, I made that last part up. No, really.)

5) If Brady wins tonight, it's just him, Bradshaw and Montana with four rings. And, um, not to be an old mean person and all... but you give me a choice of those three guys, I take Montana every time, and I win 7 out of 10 games. Because while Brady's been good in the SB, he hasn't been great... and here's the proof. Adam Vinateri.

Why We're Here

Back when I lived in NoCal, I'd take my eldest to about 20 Oakland A's games a year. We'd sit up high in the cheap seats, pack food, bring coloring books and other timewasters, and when the Kids' Club was open, we'd go there for a few innings, so she could exhaust herself in the bounce tent. When she was little, she'd fall asleep and I'd be able to watch the end of the game. When she was bigger, she was mostly there for the bribery.

While I tried various forms of encouragement to get her to actually like baseball, and she certainly liked going to the park, the actual game never really grabbed her. (To be fair, we left the area when she was six.) Maybe it would have if we had stayed, but that's water under the bridge now. We live too far away from any MLB team to make going a routine habit, and I've got no emotional investment in any of the teams. Maybe we'll go to a Phillies or Yankees game once a year, but that's about it.

So... why am I telling you this? Because it turns out that this is actually how history is made. Small desires and moments -- I want to eat that, I want to live there, I want to do that. If she grows up to like baseball, she'll have this background as a reason. If not, oh well.

Today's Super Bowl is a media experience that will overwhelm the senses and sense. Companies will spend $90,000 per second to try to sell us their goods and services. Announcers will extol the virtues of the coaches and players, as if they've done something particularly unique or heroic to make it to this stage (and yes, I'm still trying to wash the taste of the Bad Tooth's Friday column in which he broke down the Patriots' secret formula, one that no other team sought to emulate, of paying just the most talented players and not bringing in any head cases).

And the hype is 99.99% crap.

The reason why we are here is that we like to watch football. We want to see who the best team is. We want to know how the story of the season ends.

That's about it.

So, media, NFL, Giants Fans and Patriots Fans... please remember this.

The vast majority of the people watching today's game would be watching if it were Jaguars-Buccaneers. You're just not that special. You're just the last two teams playing.

The people who are only watching because it's the Patriots or Giants or both are not football fans. They are rubberneckers. They may be why you're making so much money selling the ad time, but they won't be there in the stadiums, or the training camps, buying the merch, and doing all of the other things that real fans do.

We understand that this game is more for them than us. We put up with them every year around this time. We just would like it, please, if you didn't make it harder than it has to be, by feeding us quite so much utter bullshit.

Game on.

Dupe Me

Recently read... the idea that between Photoshop, selective news, a fragmented media culture and our general willingness to be deceived for comfort (diets, karaoke, cheat codes, cosmetic surgery, scams, etc., etc.)... that this may be the most deceived, both in ease and in number, generation in human history.

Now, the usual bloggy thing to do is to rail against this tendency, disagree violently while casting aspersions on the person who wrote it (and no, I'm not remembering the source right now, and that's besides the point anyway), or just go "maybe they are right" and finish off the post with a little bit of snark. (Precious snark. You'll never leave me!)

But I'm not going there. Instead, I recommend that we all, in the words of the Church of the SubGenius, pull the wool over our own eyes, before someone else does.

So how does this relate to sports? Simple. I'd like someone -- anyone, really -- to whip me up a better Super Bowl than this one. We've got the digital technology, we've all seen the Gatorade ads, and we're all convinced now that Sports = Entertainment, and Athletes = Public Figures... so this game is, simply, an entertainment product. One that is overwhelmingly likely to piss me off, unless there's an epoch-defying referee screw job on the Giants, so that Patriot Fan will spend the rest of their lives sounding more and more unhinged about the valor of their Perfectriots.

Instead, I'd like to dial up... Packers-Chargers. That'd give me two QBs that could do anything at any moment, and a nice gift to the Shooter Brother, who is a football bigamist by virtue of his decades in SoCal. (Yes, yes, I'd really prefer the Eagles getting in, but let's keep the fiction close to reality now, shall we.) That'd give me a game where I could be happy for either team on some level, and a betting line that would be more than Gosh, I Hope They Cover.

We've still got nearly two days to get this done, and I'm looking at you, NFL Films. Dust off that John Facenda emulator, and give America a "B" Game that, like the Moon Landing, we can take pride in. (Oh, and I like the Chargers in that game, because we all know that in a close game, Favre will blow it. Ask Brian Dawkins. Or some Cowboys DB in the '90s. Or the Broncos. Yeah, that's the whole list. Nothing more to see here, move along...)

The Super Bowl Of Flatulent Hand Noises

Watching this gives me the same kind of queasy, greasy feeling as I get from the average pre-game show. But with remarkably fewer people!

Can't Everybody Stop...

and wonder how much someone at the World Wide Lemur hates the guy to let this leak? (Caution: NSFW dialogue.)

Memo to Advertisers and the NFL: People Really, Really Hate You

H/t, Wayne Friedman and MediaPost, emphasis mine:

KFC wants to give a big $260,000 donation to a charity if a New York Giants or New England Patriots pass receiver who scores a touchdown does the chicken dance -- one where the football player will flap his arms -- for at least three seconds in the end zone... The NFL is already pissed KFC is considering this ambush marketing without its approval, and is considering fines if any player even so much as lifts a elbow.

So, Dear Reader... who would you find more loathsome. The NFL player that's focused on pimping himself out (for charity, of course, for charity!), the "restaurant" chain that thinks that roided'up freaks doing a lame dance moves product for them, or the league that will fine the athlete into the fires of Hell for finding a way to whore themselves out without paying them first? You're both right!

Personally, I'm hoping that the Patriots and Giants all do the chicken dance before the opening kickoff, in a show of solidarity in whoredom. Then, light themselves on fire, to show that the chicken is, in fact, flame-broiled, and not fried. That'd move some product!

Anger Sells Meat

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Burger King's "Whopper Freakout" campaign drove sales of the big burger up double digits, the company told investors Thursday.

We touched on this previously on FTT, but what the hell, numbers are numbers, so I'm hoping BK or a competitor just ups the ante. Couldn't we have someone going on a "Pulp Fiction" style killing spree when someone denies them a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity? Perhaps a "Lord of the Flies"-esque montage of children storming the counter for Happy Meals? Fundamentalist religious-style self-flaggelation for the sudden and tragic demise of the KFC Famous Bowl?

I, for one, welcome our Violent Fast Food Overlords. Now, GIVE ME MY GODDAMN WHOPPER OR I WILL KILL EVERYONE!