Big second half runs key wins for Rhode Island, Britches

Hookers, Butchers fall after holding halftime leads

In bone-crunching Philly Rollergirls action at the 23rd Street Armory on Saturday, the vising Rhode Island Riveters used a 15-point second half jam to knock off the Heavy Metal Hookers, 82-73. In the second game of a doubleheader, the Philthy Britches went on a 24-point run to break open a close game, beating the Broad Street Butchers 119-112.

The Hookers (0-2) and the Riveters, the Providence Roller Derby all-star traveling team, played a tight, back-and-forth first half. The Hookers led most of the half until the Riveters (1-1) went up 28-24 late. But the Hookers went into halftime 34-28 after ringing up 10 points on the final jam of the half.

The Hookers pushed the lead up to 12 at 42-30, the Riveters needed only six minutes to regain the lead. With penalties against the Hookers jammers limiting their scoring opportunities, the Riveters went ahead 45-42, then delivered a backbreaking 15-point jam go up 60-42 with 14:10 to play.

The Hookers looked like they had a chance for a big run of their own after the Rhode Island jammer was sent to the Sin Bin, until Riveter blocker Hot Sauce was knocked unconscious after hitting her head on the floor. Momentum lost, the Hookers couldn't get closer than six and the game appeared all but over when the Riveters expanded their lead to 82-63 with 1:08 to play.

The Hookers got a break when the Rhode Island jammer was sent off and Ivana Rock went on a furious rally, but could only score 10 on the final jam before time expired.

In the second game, the three-time defending Warrior Cup champion Philthy Britches (2-0) survived a late run by the Broad Street Butchers (1-1) to remain undefeated on the season.

The Butchers were down 25-17 in the first half when a referee injured her right ankle, causing a 30 minute stoppage in play. When the game resumed, they roared back to take a 58-48 lead into half.

The Britches clawed their way back to hold a 69-66 lead, then erupted to score 24 unanswered points. The fat lady was warming up her chops by the time the Butchers scored again to make it 93-70.

But it's roller derby and everybody makes a late run in roller derby. The Butchers took advantage of a penalty against jammer Mo Pain to cut the lead to 12 at 107-95 on the strength of Persephone's 20-point jam. Persephone made it a two-point game at 114-112 with another big jam and the Britches faced the very real possibility of experiencing their first loss in PRG history.

But the Dread Queen of the Undead ran out of magic and Mo brought the Pain (ed. note: Wocka-wocka) with five insurance points on the final jam to end the match at 119-112.

Final tally: One serious concussion, one hospitalized referee, one face-plant apiece for Robin Drugstores and Mo Pain (self-induced), one jammer (Rhode Island) knocked into the crowd, several potentially felonious bodyblows by Wreckin' Eyes, innumerable contusions and cases of road rash and one damned fine night of roller derby.

And don't let the door hit you...

Posted by Tracer Bullet

Let me be the first to say it: Brian Dawkins can go to hell.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love me some Brian Dawkins. I’ve got his jersey hanging in my closet and I’ll soon have a second (gotta take advantage of those sales). He is probably the second greatest Eagle of all time behind only Concrete Charlie. When he’s elected to the Hall of Fame, and he damned well had better get elected, I’ll go to Canton and cheer like a fool.

But he can still go to hell.

I don’t begrudge the man for taking more money to go to Denver. Pro football is a mercenary business and if I was a 35-year-old safety with declining skills and somebody offered me that kind of coin, I’d sign so fast the pen would burst into flames.

But I don’t want to see him on the teevee with a snot bubble in his nose, blubbering about how hard it is to leave Philadelphia and how much he loves the fans and blah, blah, blah. Spare me.

He took the money to play for a rookie head coach on one of the worst defenses in the NFL. That was his choice. The Eagles offered him a contract. He didn’t take it. He took the Broncos and the cash. That’s all good; get paid, homie.

But he can’t pretend that he’s the injured party. He can’t drunk dial us at 3 a.m. whining about how much he misses us and he made a mistake and he’ll never love anyone like us and on and on. Dry your tears with that big-ass signing bonus, big boy, and lose my phone number. You walked out and I've moved on.

I can’t miss you until you leave, Dawk. So pack your shit and go.

One second to douchebaggery

As a thought exercise, I flipped on sports radio yesterday about 2:20 p.m. to see how long it would take before the seething cauldron of rage that is Philadelphia Fan would raise his ugly head. I knew the meatheads would use the most exciting ending to a Super Bowl that didn't involve Joe Montana as an excuse to bash the home squad and especially the much-put upon Donovan McNabb, but I wanted to see just how long it would take for the stupid to burn through my car speakers.

I first went to 610WIP, repository of all things mouth-breathing and anti-McNabb, but the show had gone to commercial. Then I flipped to ESPN950 and after listening for literally one second I heard the knuckle-dragging host complain that McNabb would never be able to lead a last-second drive like Roethlisberger and blah, blah, blah, yackity-schmackity. I'm sure the resident blather-monkey had poorly-thought out and generally stupid reasons for his "argument," but I had to flip on the CD player (I'm diggin' on Duffy these days) or slam into a telephone pole and kill myself. Anything to make it stop.

The local fishwrappers took their turns on the hate parade today, showing either remarkable restraint or a surprising lack of foresight in that they didn't have their anti-McNabb columns ready to run Monday no matter who won the game.

Look, I recognize that the man has his limitations, but goddamn, can't the sports media in this city write or talk about anything without ragging on #5? Is it simply impossible to enjoy a truly phenomenal football game without performing incredible mental gymnastics just to take a dump on the greatest QB in team history?

Bwah-ha-ha! Of course not. They call it "Negadelphia" for a reason.

The Five Tool Trial: The People vs. Kurt Warner

(Bailiff enters)

All rise!

(Judge enters)

Hear ye, hear ye, ladies and gentlemen of Blogfrica. Five Tool Court is now in session to determine the fate of Kurt Warner, quarterback of the Arizona Football Cardinals. Mr. Warner stands accused of the following crimes:

> Multiple counts of criminal abuse of a religious deity

> Multiple counts of fraud, from misrepresenting the excellence of his teammates as his own

> Multiple counts of animal husbandry, because there’s no way that, recent improvements to the contrary, Brenda Warner is human

> Multiple counts of giving aid and comfort to Red State Americans who should have neither aid nor comfort

If found guilty, Warner will be afflicted with a cancer to be determined by the prosecutor, and I think we all know where he's going to put it.

He will also take the position as the third member in FTT's Quarterback Phantom Zone, and will be eventually Photoshopped into a 3-way with Brett Favre and Tony Romo, and more likely than not, made to take the Sarah Douglass position, with the little bob haircut.

(collective gasp from the crowd)

If found innocent, Warner will remain free as an honorable combatant to Eagles Nation, with no greater scorn or malice than dozens, if not hundreds, of other NFL players.

Your votes in the comments shall decide Warner's fate. Choose wisely.

The prosecuting attorney is Tracer Bullet. He has the opening statement.

Thank you, your honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I do not envy you today. For today, you have to gaze into the very soul of a man – a man prone to inappropriate outbursts of religiosity, a man given to denigrating the hard work of his coaches and teammates by ascribing all success to his imaginary friend in the sky, a man whose self-aggrandizing pieties are so shocking, so naked, so base and profane that one wonders if he doth not protest too much – and you must judge him.

Is Kurt Warner, in fact, a Satanist? No. Probably. Is he an insufferable god-botherer who should take that Jesus schtick somewhere where men don’t spend their work hours trying to destroy each other and the off-hours trying to destroy themselves? That is for you to decide.

For today, you must look into the very soul of Kurt Warner, and you must judge him. Indeed, his story is impressive, going from the Arena League to now his second Super Bowl. Yes, he deserves praise for saving untold numbers of billy goats by marrying that wire-haired man-goblin he calls a wife and taking her from beneath that bridge where she’d lived for centuries. But does that absolve him from shoe-horning some tortured reference to Jebus into every conversation? That is for you to decide.

For today, you must look into the very soul of Kurt Warner, and you must judge him.

Does not the Bible, a book that, as we will prove, Kurt Warner has sex with on a regular basis, say in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter six, verse five: "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward."

Is a post-game interview anything but a street corner writ large? By that standard, by his own standard, I say YEA VERILY, Kurt Warner is but the basest and most foul of hypocrites. A man who feigns piety for his own glory.

And so, by that standard, by the standard of any reasonable man or woman, you must gaze into the soul of Kurt Warner and you must judge him. No, ladies and gentlemen of the jury I do not envy you, for you must sit in judgment of a man today. Yet, judge him you must and judge him you shall. You must name him for the beast that he his: A self-righteous ass-clown.

Good luck. I thank you for your often thankless service.

Warner's court-appointed defense attorney is DMtShooter. His rebuttal is as follows.

People of the jury, I am not here to defend all of the actions and choices of Jebus's Own Quarterback. I share neither the faith nor the inclination to defend all of the actions of a man who, like a child, should be seen and not heard. As an Eagles' fan, I deeply desired that his last game would have resembled "The Passion of the Christ", only with more gore.

But the simple fact is that Warner, while guilty of a fair number of crimes, is not worthy of banishment to the Phantom Zone, nor the prosecutor’s insistence on dick cancer. He is, simply, no worse than most of his NFL brethren. Consider the following.

1) He's not a Manning.

2) He doesn't pout on the field like Jay Cutler.

3) He doesn't drink with the underaged, like his back-up, Matt Leinart.

4) He hasn't made his coach think he's going to off himself like a bulimic teenager, a la Vince Young.

5) He doesn't impregnate models, run up the score, and make decent people spit, like Tom Brady.

I've just named five quarterbacks more worthy of banishment. Where is the prosecutor's dick cancer for them?

Warner's greatest crime for the prosecutor is that he beat the Eagles in a big playoff game. Which brings up the other matter: why Warner, more than Brad Johnson? Why him, more than the quarterback who has not only beaten the Eagles at home in a playoff game, but also gave the Cardinals safe passage to the game in which they defeated the Eagles?

And yet Jake Delhomme is free to walk the streets, admittedly drunk, homeless and in disguise, lest he suffer the same fate as Benito Mussolini. But a free man nonetheless.

No, Warner's biggest crime is simply his jersey. Had he been wearing the local laundry, and won a Super Bowl, we would not be here today. Instead, we would all be kneeling in his church, hopeful that our hero was about to take our team to the promised land once again.

The prosecutor would be on his knees, accepting Kurt's communion. And he would not be alone.

The defense rests.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what say you?

Eagles to the Super Bowl! Or a loss next week!

Posted by Tracer Bullet

Now that the greater Philadelphia area is celebrating a hard-fought win against the surprisingly game Minnesota Vikings, the Birds must do one of two things: Lose next week or win the Super Bowl.

Now, losing to the hated Giants would be a bitter pill to swallow and their hairy-backed, no-neck fans and their husbands would never shut up about it. But, the Giants are coming off a bye as the #1 seed in the NFC and teams win about two-thirds of the time coming off the bye in the playoffs, so this would be a tolerable loss. The WIP meatheads will still scream and demand that Reid and/or McNabb be drawn and quartered in Franklin Square, but they're going to do that anyway.

Losing to the Giants in that case would be painful but tolerable. Losing another NFC championship game, especially to a team named after a pissed-off housecat and whose fans would much rather talk about Talledaga than the Super Bowl would cause the meatheads to rage and sputter in a way they've not done since their last child support hearing. In that instance, some fool is SURE to argue that they should trade or cut (with hatchets) McNabb and sign Brett Favre (They love Favre. He's a gunslinger. And he's white). People, I live in this city and I'd be forced to shoot someone if that happened. The murder rate in this city is high enough (but down by 15%!) without me contributing to it.

And if they lost another Super Bowl? The resulting carnage will make New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina look like a city enjoying a soft summer rain shower. I'd rather not have to kill my way to the grocery store.

One might think that the Phillies winning the World Series would temper the city's championship bloodlust, but for football fans, that's like watching your best friend score with a model; you're happy that he's banging a hot chick but you still got dry balls.

A Super Bowl win? After beating the Giants on the road? After humiliating the Cowboys in the last game of the season? The resulting carnage will make New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina look like a city enjoying a soft summer rain shower. I'd love to have to kill my way to the grocery store.

One more piece of joy

Because, dammit, with the Eagles still technically alive for the playoffs, we could all use a stinky French frog to take us away from all this. Or, for that matter, a slow-thinking weapons expert, or some form of Ultimate Persuasion. (And if you are looking up Dyna Pink's skirt, you are special blogfriend Tracer Bullet. Qu'elle pain!)

I'M FULL OF GOOD IDEAS

by Tracer Bullet, Staff Writer

I'm probably just being a prick, but I really can't stand the NFL Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.

Make no mistake, I love all things pigskin-related and the Induction Ceremony is kind of the first event of the new season, so it is a good thing. But while I enjoy seeing old clips and hearing the speeches, I really don't need Chris Berman's Foghorn Leghorn act or Adam Schefter's oily charm to provide perspective.

Likewise, why the hell is there a studio team there to comment on the thing? It's old men giving speeches. That's the whole thing. NFLN could have save about $3 million if they'd just hired me.

It might be different if anybody ever had anything interesting to say. Steve Mariucci would struggle to find fault with Stalin, let alone dare to suggest that each inductee could possibly be something other than the greatest football player who ever drew breath, the finest patriot since Captain America and a combination of the best qualities of Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Seka.

I am sick and damn tired of all the Hall of Famers pretending to be the damned Brady Bunch. I realize that these guys were all great players (yes, I suppose we have to say this of Art Monk, too) but some of them hate each other and they've hated each other for decades. You can't get some tape of a curmudgeon like Chuck Bednarik saying foul things about Michael Irvin? What the hell is that huge production team good for then?

Nope, I want a bit of edge injected into the proceedings. I want someone to serve as Designated Bastard who'll say bad things about the inductees. I don't even care if he says anything fair or even accurate, so long as he's not boring. Lucky for you, I'm just the man for the job.

Fred Dean -- I always get you confused with Fred Dryer. Which means two things 1) you're career wasn't all that memorable and 2) I'd rather watch "Hunter" than watch you play football.

Darrell Green -- Playing 20 years at CB in the NFL is very impressive. But lots of guys work hard jobs for a really long time to make their child support payments too and nobody has built a Hall of Fame for them.

Art Monk -- A Hall of Famer because somebody in the selection meeting stood up and said, "Look, nobody wants this guy except those idiots from Washington and they'll keep ranting and screaming until we finally break down and let him in. So we can spend four hours debating this every year for the next 15 years, or we can just let him in now and go to lunch."

Emmitt Thomas -- Are you kidding? A 1-2 record as interim coach for on of the worst teams in modern history is hardly worthy of the Hall of Fame. Madden probably didn't deserve to go in as a coach either but at least he won a Super Bowl. Thomas has one more win as a head coach than I do and I spent the entire 2007 season on my couch and furthermore . . . What? One of the best CBs of his era? Feh. Dan Pastorini, Archie Manning and Dennis Shaw were starting quarterbacks during Thomas' career -- how hard could it have been?

Andre Tippett -- An integral member of the Patriots 1985-86 Super Bowl team -- the team that allowed the Bears to roll up 46 points in what was the most lopsided Super Bowl loss up to that point. Hey, Steve Grogan and Tony Eason were integral members of that team too and nobody is fitting them for an ugly sport coat stolen from a Century 21 office in Van Nuys. Nobody with the taint of that loss deserves to be in the HOF. Though I do think his 1971 record "Black Moses" is a masterpiece.

Gary Zimmerman -- Broncos partisans are convinced their team is underrepresented in the Hall, so maybe this will silence their incessant whining for a few years. In truth, unattractive white men with terrible moustaches really are underrepresented and his induction will help alleviate a big backlog.

Take a few deep, cleansing breaths

So, after months of speculation, countless mocks, gallons of petrochemicals sacrificed on the altar of Mel Kiper's hair and about 12 hours of the actual NFL Draft, what have we learned?

Not a damned thing.

Chances are, if your favorite team sucked Friday, it still sucks today. Or maybe they don't. Maybe they've picked up some unholy combination of Deacon Jones and Darryl Green who can run like the wind, bench press Cadillacs, eat iron and crap high-grade steel.

The fact is, nobody knows what, if anything, this weekend will mean for any team. Not yet, anyway. Any honest commentator will tell you a draft can't be judged for at least three years.

So all those "Grade the Draft" columns you're going to see this week? The insights of my cats are about as useful. You're better off downloading porn instead of worrying about what Peter King thinks about the draft.

Actually, that's probably always true. At least porn will get you off and King can't say that. (I hope. What kind of sick freaks are you people?)

Quiet as kept, most of the guys drafted this weekend will never be anything more than camp bodies who never get into an NFL stadium without a ticket. There is as much chance the highly-touted rookie you're so excited about will become an All-Pro as there is he'll become a bust so horrible his name is only mentioned as a cautionary tale or a sick joke.

So for those of you who think that first-rounder is just the guy to put your team over the top? Relax. He probably won't start this year and there is, at best, a 50-50 proposition he ever becomes a regular starter. Courtney Brown was once a can't-miss prospect.

For those of you who are convinced your team's entire front office is composed entirely of knuckle-dragging sub-morons who've doomed the franchise for years to come (i.e. Eagles fans every single year)? Relax. It's entirely possible that men who've watched so much college game tape in the past few months that they scream "Whoo, pig sooey" upon orgasm might know a bit more about football than you've been able to glean from the local sports radio meathead.

The draft is a crapshoot and the odds are terrible. Accept this now, and you'll live a much happier life.

Unless you're in Detroit. You should probably just become a hockey fan.

Your Opinion Means Nothing

(We make with the Shouting of the Out to Longtime FTT Contributor and Hall of Fame Commenter Tracer Bullet, who provoked this piece.)

Sports talk radio in the greater Philadelphia is among the Most Stupid in a particularly stupid industry, and has as much to do with any other factor for the area's bad reputation for athletes. This form of the media, more than any other, has been on the drumbeat for the forced evacuation of the best quarterback in the team's history, who would be Donovan McNabb.

With the team coming back to beat the vaunted Miami Dolphins at home with Number Five on the sidelines with a bad ankle, you can be sure that the siren call of Dump The Star will begin again, just as they have in the past for Allen Iverson, Charles Barkley, Von Hayes, Eric Lindros, Ricky Watters and countless others. When you have a Daily Broadcast of Hate, you always need a new Eurasia, after all.

Independent of the, um, merit of Dump Don is the following point... the Eagles sell out just about every game. While there were many empty seats at yesterday's game, there was no danger of it not being broadcast locally, and absent a Kotite-like decade of utter futility, that's going to continue to be the case. The stadium is too nice, the rowdy element has gone way down since the Vet days, and the waiting list for tickets, given the attrition rate and hyper-lucrative sell-up rate to out of town swells, is basically Your Lifetime. I know people who have tickets who rarely go to games; it's a simple money-making enterprise for them.

There is also this. The organization has shown innumerable times (short list off the top of my head: Trotter, Stallworth, Owens, Staley, Vincent, Taylor, Simon, Walker) that it will evaluate talent and make decisions on personnel regardless of the public popularity of the individual player. It also routinely operates well under the salary cap, which also causes the fan base to howl in agony routinely. (For the record, I kind of join in that, especially when I see them fail to cover punts or kickoffs. Gah.)

So... are the sports radio maroons just howling into the wind when they call for the ouster of any player, or do they actually have an impact in making a player Not Long For This Town?

If you ask one of the people who work in that industry (and if you have a conversation with them, by all means, please ask them what they first wanted to do in life, before they settled for this version of pornography)... they'll trot out the list of talented malcontents that have taken the express route out of town, and lo, there have been many. But malcontents get tossed from any town pretty quickly, especially if an organization is stable and long-term, which is the very definition of the Eagles under owner Jeff Lurie.

No, the more likely point is that the Eagles Will Do What The Eagles Will Do... and whether that means throwing the ball an unconscionable amount of times against the NFL's 30th-ranked run defense on a wet and miserable day until your Not Quite 100% From A Brutal Knee Injury QB gets hurt, or having the coach also be the GM, and having him continue in both capacities even after his family becomes a national embarrassment... or drafting a QB in the second round several years before your starter is quite ready to be moving on...

Well, here's the deal. You're watching it, you are buying the tickets, and if they somehow pull off the Utterly Impossible and win in New England next week, you are going to be doing the same thing for the playoffs. If they don't win, you are probably watching until they are eliminated, even though they are somehow going to need to win in Dallas, which is looking as likely as winning in New England.

Finally, there is this -- given their track record as Best Era in Franchise History, albeit with many recent patches of borderline painful and/or unwatchable football (I'm looking at you, Cowboys Loss At Home On SNF), maybe that's all for the best.

Because no matter how many athletes get ridden out of town on a rail by yammering media meatheads, the yammering media meatheads keep their jobs.

And maybe, just maybe, we'd be better off if they didn't.