Arreliuos Benn, Or Playing Smallball With Big People

Younger, faster, bigger, cheaper

In one of those minor moves that can easily fly under the radar because the guy is not now, nor very likely ever to be, fantasy relevant outside of stupidly large leagues, the Eagles picked up 24-year-old WR Arrelious Benn from Tampa for the basic equivalent of nothing (moving down 16 spots in the draft in the sixth round). Benn, a washout of a second-round pick from Illinois in the 2010 draft, has a mess of starts and now very many catches or scores to his credit. He's also been pretty awful on running plays, and didn't do much to endear himself to the Buc faithful with a three-year combined line that wouldn't have been all that amazing in a single year.

So why did the Eagles want him? Well, he's had some moments and bad luck -- a torn ACL in 2011 can't have helped the learning curve -- and the QB situation in Tampa hasn't exactly been consistent or ideal. The price here is as close as you are going to get to nothing (at least, right now: Benn might have been cut in camp, after all), and the dude will be 25, with a reasonable catch rate, in September.

I've liked Jason Avant, for the most part, during his time in the laundry; he's been a dependable 3rd/4th WR, and while his hands aren't exactly airtight, they've been the best of a bad group (with the exception of post-contract DeSean Jackson, who didn't drop a single ball in 2012). He's not done yet, not by a long shot, and has the kind of skills that might play at 35 as well as they do at 30. But Benn is five years younger, two inches taller, and ten pounds heavier than he is, and Avant doesn't stay in the screen with Benn's 4.42 combine time in the 40. And those nice moments in the dog days last year with Nick Foles don't really matter to a coach that didn't draft him or live and die with those moments. Avant is also, if you really want to get mean about it, a million and a half dollars a year cheaper in 2013. And that always matters, and quite frankly, should.

So no, Benn's not a game-changer or a sure-fire bet, and if he's out of football in a year, I won't notice and neither will you. (The same might be true of Avant, of course. It's football; everyone's on their potential last play ever.)

But if coach Chip Kelly can get something out of him, something close to a second round pick?

That is how good football teams are built, with hidden value and sweating the reserves. And that's also why I kind of love what this team has done so far in the 2013 off-season, where they make smart bet after smart bet, while not putting too much into any single pot. With the way the NFL is right now, it looks like the winning play to me, and a solid way to get better. Or, at the very least, younger, faster, bigger and cheaper...

Top 10 takeaways from Greg Raymer's soliciting a prostitute arrest

OK, I can see why he's paying for it

Raymer, in case you don't watch televised poker, is the 2004 World Series of Poker main event winner. He was also known as "Fossil Man' for his choice of novelty eyewear when he's in a hand, but now he's going to be famous for the snarkiest New York Daily News lede ("Clearly, he was not happy with his hand") ever. That, and these ten other points...

10) No pimps or whores were arrested, which tells you where the priorities of the Wake Forest, NC police are in re stopping the crime

9) Earlier reports that the sex was homosexual in nature were wrong, which means the lazy comedy nature of this story is now mostly limited to poker

8) Between this, the 2012 elections and the existence of Duke and UNC, you are excused for giving the entire state a big miss

7) No word on whether Raymer was in the big or small blind, if you catch our drift

6) This brings a whole new sad meaning to the desire to see the flop

5) Given the amount of money he's made in his poker career, not to mention his weight, the most telling point about this is that Raymer's kind of a nit when it comes to paying for his entertainment

4) Clearly, this is never going to come up at the table for Raymer for more than, well, the rest of his life

3) Raymer is, or was, married with child, so this could get very expensive very quickly

2) This probably wasn't the kind of bust out that he was looking to achieve

1) We are shocked, shocked, to find professional poker players engaged in something sordid

FTT Off-Topic: For $12 a Bag, It Better Come With Girl On Girl Delivery

No, I Am Not Making This Up

As always with FTT O-T, not sports and not sorry. Even with a thimble full of pride.

Today in Slate, there's a story about Sexcereal -- no, seriously -- a unholy mess o granola that comes in his and hers mixes, and more or less promises to be packed with aphrodisiacs and healthy stuff to make you more in the mood for motion. Or something. It comes from Canada, it might be the dumbest thing ever marketed, and if it doesn't make money, I'll be amazed. But what the hey, if you can't get things going your way with boner pills, maybe a little Spanish Fly at the breakfast table will do the trick. And if that doesn't work, there's always roofies in the OKJ, amirite, guys? (No, no, no, I am not right. I am, in fact, kidding. People who use roofies should have the same thing happen to them, if you catch my Tenderloin drift, and I think you do.

Now, far be it from me to throw stones at silly products. I am, after all, in advertising, and I've put food on the table pushing stuff with less of a value proposition than that.

But a small point to the manufacturers. Perhaps you could put your special ingredients in a food product that people eat at an hour of the day that, well, they actually might want to have sex?

Sing me out, novelty band from the '80s who will cash checks from  morning zoo radio stations for the rest of their lives!

The Poker Diaries: Where I Need The Needle

Stabby Stabby

Here's what happens when I'm tight with money and trying to play poker: anything. But what happened a day ago was new, in 6+ years of live action. So, well, I'm going to write about it.

The setting is the home game, where we had 20 players for a mixed game. The periods switch from hold'em to Omaha high. Rebuys can happen in the first four periods, and I wind up getting into some major dumbness that leads to using that feature twice. Which means that I now have to finish third or better to even make money from the event. Not good. And the room knows it, with several friends that I've known for years taking a little too much enjoyment in my bleed.

One of the things that we do at the home game is take 10% of the pot and set it aside for a Player of the Year pot. So we need to list out the order of finish, on the room's white board, so that I can track the points later. And my good friends decide to predict my next explosion by... listing me in the first out slot.

Golf clap, gentlemen, golf clap. Extremely effective needle. One that they did not give up, even when knocks out started, by just adding my name in the next available slot. After the first six players who were not me exited, they moved the joke up to 11th place... but by then, I had used it to change gears, tighten up and knuckle down. Instead of trying to win with position and pressure against players that weren't very experienced (especially in Omaha), I used the non-ante format to stay patient, wait for hands, and push only when I could isolate against players I felt strong about.

It kept me alive, but not terribly prosperous. And at final table, the move still didn't happen, beyond blinds steals, until the bubble had nearly burst. I was also able to come back from having a flush draw hit against my top two pair after the flop in Omaha. But finally the patience was borne out, with aces in the big blind (maybe my second pair of the night) against A-J off driving a timely triple up against the chip leader. From there, I was able to grind and chisel it down, and after 6 hours of play, the big pot, and a totally unexpected but extremely welcome payday, was mine. I'm also now the points leader for the player of the year standings now, not that this is terribly relevant this early in the year, but still, better than *not* being the points leader.

And I owe it all to the needle. Which, I am told by both of the guys who did it, won't happen again. Pity, really. Sing me out, Neil...

The Knicks Fall Down And Can't Get Up: With Age Coms Age

Somehow younger than the current Knicks

In the first two months of the NBA season, it was very clear that the New York Knicks had made a fine bet on loading up on Old Guys Who Can Play. They took three of four from the upstart Brooklyn Nets, ran away from the middling Celtics and Sixers, and even beat the Heat a few times. It wasn't as if anyone was taking them too seriously as NBA title contenders -- the first few months of any regular season are for position only, as Boston has proven for many years -- but they were being talked about in the role as Team That Could Test The Heat, especially if they kept draining threes like they were playing Pop A Shot.

Then, of course, what happens to all old teams that aren't the Celtics happened -- a relentlessly stream of injuries that remind everyone just why all of these Old Guys Who Can Play were available in the first place. Jason Kidd went from 25-30 great minutes a night to less and not so much. Tyson Chandler and Carmelo Anthony missed time, and Amar'e Stoudamire's return from injury stalled. Rasheed Wallace suffered a season (career?) ending injury. They started a game the other day with Kurt Thomas (yes, the same Kurt Thomas that was last relevant to fantasy basketball about a decade ago, has played for 9 different franchises and has left and is 40 freaking years of age), and Kenyon Martin (35, 4) with Marcus Camby (38, 6) as the backup. They have one player -- one! -- under age 27 on the roster, and 5 over 35. I think I just aged a week just from writing all of that.

They are 38-25 as I write this, the third seed in the East, but just a game ahead of Brooklyn and three ahead of Boston in Atlantic. I think they might still make the playoffs with a home-court advantage in the playoffs, but no one is talking about them as a threat to anyone anymore, and when the Nuggets turned them into a speed bump the other day, you could be forgiven for thinking them DOA against any team that pushes the tempo. If Brooklyn hadn't somehow lost to Philly this last week, the Nets would have already caught them, and anyone who thinks they can beat the Clippers in LA tomorrow, on national television, may be sniffing glue. Not after losing their last three games by a combined 67 points.

So what, really, to make of all this? The following.

1) This team is well and truly hosed by the Amar'e deal. Especially in a post-amnesty world. No team is going to want to take on this toxic deal, and with his knees, I'd sooner predict retirement than a return to strong hoop.

2) Playing Kidd for too many minutes in the first half of the year was always going to betray them, but it's not as if they could really get away from it.

3) Anyone that whines about their lack of luck on any of these injuries does not understand how the world works. Youth will be served, especially with an 82-game regular season. The Knicks approached this season like it was a big money poker tournament that they had to win in the first hour.

4) As well as Anthony has played this year. he looked exceptionally compromised in his game against Denver last week, and has missed four of the last seven games with fluid issues in the knee. Which leads to the final telling point...

5) If your hopes are pinned on a beaten-down roster of the old, being led by a superstar who has lost in the first round in seven of his eight trips to the playoffs... you probably shouldn't have an awful lot of hope.

Even in the East.

Oh, and there's also this.

If the reason ended today, it'd be Knicks-Celtics.

Anyone want to guess how that's going to go?