Even if you've been living under a rock lately, you have likely heard that the NFL is preparing to implement a three strikes personal conduct policy for its players. Many people have been wondering exactly what will count as a strike under the terms of this policy, which is still very much in the preliminary stages of development. Unlike most of the disciplinary reforms in the NBA and MLB (dress code and new drug policies), this new conduct reform initiative was not suggested by the league office, but by a group of players.

Even though a panel of NFL players presented the idea to the league, I think it's a bad idea. It bothers me because it seems like an artificial reaction. I'm not convinced that these players particularly care about standards of behavior as much as they care about getting press exposure. I also think that they're overreacting to the problem, just like the NBA overreacted to the Artest incident in Detroit. For the life of me, I don't see how a new dress code for a group of overpaid athletes is going to change the culture of the NBA.

The panel of players include such luminaries as TJ Houshmanzadeh, Troy Vincent, Steve Smith, LenDale White, DeAngelo Hall, Jeff Saturday, Ernie Conwell, Jason Witten, Ken Hamlin and Kevin Carter. That doesn't exactly read like who's who of people to trust with anything of importance. LenDale White fell to the second round of last season's draft because scouts were concerned he gained too much weight and used a trumped up hamstring injury to avoid the predraft workouts.

Then there's DeAngelo Hall. As TO's last fan, I can't stand Hall. He is a shameless fraud of a cornerback who's reputation is built on the back of two high profile games. First, on the Monday Night Football opener in 2005 he held TO to 112 yards receiving and kept him out of the end zone. Earlier this season, Hall shut down Chad Johnson. And his wikipedia page reads like a bad middle school book report.

But I think we'll remember Hall as the man who took a courageous stand against TO for the infamous spitting incident this season. A lesser man would have gone after TO on the field, incurring a 15 yard penalty at the least and probably an ejection. A smarter man would have confronted TO after the fact to kick his ass (make no mistake about it, spitting in somebody's face merits a whooping). But it takes a true tough guy to cry and whine to new commissioner Roger Goddell. Unfortunately for Hall, and the country as a whole, the league refused to step in to fight this battle.

As for the heart of the issue, I am not convinced that a one size fits all personal conduct policy is the answer to the league's problem. The Bengals off field issues were an embarrassment to the team and to the league, but were they the worst thing that has ever happened to the Queen City? 9 professional football players were arrested over the course of a year. It's not like they were part of a COBRA plot to conquer Cincinnati by selling poisoned milk to school children.

What worries me is the fact that this policy is reactive rather than proactive. The league is slightly embarrassed. Columnists and talking heads across the country can bury us with the woe is the sports world routine, and God knows they have. Which brings us to this point. These situations ought to be handled on a case by case basis. The NFL has survived for over 80 years without a personal conduct policy. I think this will end up doing more harm than good, especially if they rush it into effect.

In the end, what do the arrests and incidents mean for the overall health of the league? Everybody has been told to be afraid lest the NFL lose fans because a small handful of its players are out of control. Maybe I'm a bad person, but if 9 or 90 Cincinnati Bengals or Seattle Seahawks or Barcelona Dragons run afoul of the law, I'll still watch all the football I can. I doubt very highly that the average fan will leave the league either.

If you don't believe me, just look at the disaster area that is the sports world at the moment. NFL Live still holds the 4:00 time slot on ESPN. The entire NBA season might just have gone up in smoke with the injury to D-Wade. A possible second half run by the Miami Heat was the second biggest story of All Star Weekend, right behind Barkley vs. Bavetta. We're so starved for sports that Daisuke Matsuzaka bedazzling some Red Sox farmhands was a national story. So the NFL isn't losing any prestige over this situation.

They ought to reconsider the 3 strikes policy. I don't see why the new commissioner simply can't review the roster for the Pro Bowl and postseason awards and say player X was suspended for offense Y, QED he's not eligible for the honors in question. Or if we can't trust one man with this grave responsibility, I'm sure an ad hoc committee of coaches or GMs could do it. If we want everything to be decided to the most exacting standard of probity with a minimum of personal rancour and self aggrandisement, I'm sure Jay Mariotti or Dan Shaughnessy could be coaxed from the ivory tower.

On another note, America is not rallying around the underdog the way it ought. Barry Bonds is receiving death threats again. At this point, I just don't care anymore. He's almost certainly going to break the home run record with the least amount of class and dignity conceivable. No one believes the this is legitimate except Barry. No one seems to like him except Barry. And it's his fault. It seems like every time he had a chance to do something nice, or cool, or human he's gone the other way. So he'll get no sympathy from me, which is strange since I usually regard widespread dislike as a credit to a person rather than a demerit.

First, I'm sorry about that last post. It just wasn't funny. Between that and the extended rant on the Country Music Television 100 Greatest Duets of All Time Countdown, my readership has dropped significantly. Part of the problem is that I'm a bad blogger. I just don't want to post as often as I should to draw enough traffic to this site consistently. I also don't want to be that guy that writes one or two original sentences and then blogs about what every other blog is blogging.

The rest of the problem is that I've been in a bad mood lately. Baseball season is starting up again and the optimism of Red Sox Nation has been aggravating me. Not that you haven't heard 10,000 times at this point, but Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched a near flawless round of batting practice the other day. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again, but enough already. JA Adande was absolutely right on Around the Horn today. Until he pitches and wins in a game that counts, who cares?

The answer to that not entirely rhetorical question is apparently 2 million Red Sox fans who hibernate until spring training starts. I think it was growing up with this phenomenon every time football season ended that turned me into the bitter enemy of Red Sox Nation that writes this blog in my darksome lair. Actually, it's only dark because I don't feel like getting up and turning on the light. Plus, when does anyone ever get a chance to use a word like darksome in this day and age. But back to the matter at hand...

Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell assures us that Matsuzaka is as advertised. Leaving aside for a moment the question of how serious were Red Sox hitters taking a batting practice session this early in the training program, the real question is what did we expect the pitching coach to say? Could it be lost on Mr. Farrell that he got the job because the pitching coach was one of those purged in the race to play the blame game after last season's collapse? Is it not present in the back of his mind that Francona probably won't survive another season if they don't make the playoffs?

I would be much more convinced that he's giving the media his honest opinion had he come out and said that Matsuzaka had this, that and the other thing to work on going forward. I didn't really expect him to come out and say that Matsuzaka sucked, but I just want to see one other person in New England who isn't out to praise or bury Caesar until some results are in. I guess that isn't entirely honest, since I'm hoping like crazy that Daisuke comes in and falls flat. But at least I'm waiting for it to happen before I start shooting off my mouth. Of course having to climb out of the burning wreckage of the Bears bandwagon a few weeks ago has tempered my eagerness to predict any outcomes for a while.

One thing I resent about this story is that for as much ESPN coverage as I watched over the weekend, I had to wade through half of that article in USA Today before I found out that the hitters Matsuzaka faced were minor leaguers. Even if he faced Ortiz, I would not have put much stock in the performance at this stage (considering pitchers and catchers have already been in camp for a week, and should be somewhat less rusty than position players). But to get all kinds of crazy over pitching to four minor leaguers on February 24th? That seems insanely optimistic, even for Red Sox Nation.

I have some concerns about the proposed three strike conduct policy being bandied about NFL circles these days, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow (on the off chance that you care what I have to say). The rest of today's post will be devoted to a disturbing trend that is creeping me out this week. I've had enough of people shaving their heads. First it was Britney Spears. Now it's Sean Salisbury.

I know that's not a link to a story on his shaved head. I'm not sure any stories exist on it at the moment. It's only an hour since I saw it on Sportscenter. But I found that site and had to link it. Join his online team at your own risk. I just think it's gone too far. He looks horrible, even though he wasn't exactly a looker in the first place. Britney looks terrible, but she wasn't better for the alleged drinking and drug use. So no more head shaving. Of course if I find out that he has cancer, I'll be looking to crawl into a hole and die of shame, but what would this blog be if I didn't have to come out and apologize for a statement that made me look like a giant tool every couple of weeks or so?

At the risk of being a giant hypocrite, you have to read Deadspin today. There are so many things worth noting. First, Rome is Burning will/might be preempted next fall for an NFL Live style show on college football with the Gameday crew. This is great news, even though I hate Lee Corso and Chris Fowler because I hate Jim Rome much more than the two of them combined. And the tool from Kentucky would have been perfect for a tool of interest segment if they hadn't beaten me to it.

Also there is the camouflaged Bible. I never realized how many defenseless animals go unshot because unwitting hunters scare them off with the Good Book. Now, if this were one of those fake Bibles hollowed out to hold booze bottles, I could see a market for it. Who knows, maybe I'm on the road to being a good blogger? Today, blogging about other blogs...two days from now...daily posts.

At the risk of anticipating too much, I wonder whether the lead-in to tomorrow afternoon's Jim Rome is Burning will sound a little something like this:

Welcome.

What is up?

Here's what I'm burning on...

Memo to the Daddy, just because you've won four titles and a couple of MVPs doesn't mean you have the right to say the last two awards are tainted. You have your hands full trying to keep Miami from melting in the heat since Flash went down with the dislocated shoulder. Until you start playing like Superman, don't go running your mouth about Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki. After all, they know that I, Jim Rome, run the show and that there's never been a man so tough when two or three time zones separate us. So start showing me the proper respect, stop smearing Nash and Nowitzki and remember that Jim Rome is super awesome.

I went a long way to say this. But Shaq came out the other day and said that Steve Nash's two MVP awards are tainted. I think it was a little excessive, but I agree with him in principle. At the end of the day, all that matters in sports is that you've done everything you can to help your team win. I don't know that you can say that about Dirk Nowitzki or Steve Nash. You can say that about Shaq, as he has three rings. And I think you can say it about 2004, when the Lakers lost to the Pistons. Shaq played very well in the series, the rest of the Lakers didn't show up.

There is going to be a hellstorm of anti-Shaq commentary all over the World Wide Leader tomorrow. First, the media has to rally behind the MVP procedure since they vote on the award. Second, what compelling sports stories unfolded this weekend? Ohio State beat Wisconsin, and another Bronco tragically died. But that's only 10 minutes of commentary, tops. So Shaq is going to be hunted into hiding, since Steve Nash deserves more than two MVPs and no titles.

There is one other story of interest to me. If, as the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss then Jonathan Papelbon is most assuredly one of the happiest people on the face of the Earth. With apologies to the eminent historian Edward Gibbon, it would require the pen of Steve Buckley to relate a story like this. I really hope this is a joke.

There is no way that Papelbon is serious. He'd have to be some sort of Frankenmoron built in a lab from a series of garden-variety morons. I don't have as much of a problem with the ca-drillion dollar turn of phrase as I do with most of his business plan. First off, it seems like he's about 10 years late to the party when it comes to investing in the internet.

Second, at what point will the online community market be saturated? Myspace, friendster, facebook and the rest are already in place. I don't see a need for another of these sites. I don't see how they can make any money off an idea like this, but then I can't for the life of me figure out why some idiots pay for dog yoga.

Maybe it's a bigger attraction than I can foresee. I don't really understand myspace and the other sites like it. I am a bad user. I don't have a single myspace friend that wasn't my friend in the real world (as opposed to cyberspace) to begin with. I'm not looking to meet a lot of people on myspace, partly because I'm not entirely sure which of the total strangers that view my page are trustworthy and which are trying to hack my page in some half-assed plot to take over the world through spamming myspace users.

I am not one of those people who hits up famous people on myspace to be my cyber-friend. After all, it's not like I'm going to be going out for a beer with celebrity X. I can't think of any celebrity that needs me to post a comment telling them how awesome they are and thanking them for the add. But I guess that makes some people feel connected, so I suppose I should ease up on them. If people want to join this site to be friends with Papelbon or UnderArmour or the unnamed NFL players from the article. Good luck to them.

I will not be one of the legion who joins this new site. I can see a large number of lemmings from Red Sox Nation flocking to this community in a vain effort to attach themselves to the monster that is Papelbon, until he falls short of expectations in his first season as a starter. I have it on not so reliable authority that he has starter stuff. Whether or not he has starter endurance is another story. So if he's out of gas and on the DL in July after falling short of such lofty expectations, don't say I didn't warn you as you drop him from your friends.

At least Red Sox fans will be able to much their blues away with the products of Wise Foods, Inc - the official Potato Chip and Cheez Curl of the Boston Red Sox. On a lighter note, Matt Kenseth won the Wow, I didn't Realize That There Was A NASCAR Race This Week 500 in some loser town in California. This is significant because it marks the first victory of the stock car season for the newly formed Roush Fenway racing conglomerate. Today this race, tomorrow the world series, three weeks five days and two hours after that ...the world.

I don't know if I can finish tonight's post. I might just be so scandalized by so many things that I might explode. The least of them is CMT (Country Music Television) is currently rebroadcasting it's countdown of the 100 Greatest Duets. I am watching it because Miami is being slaughtered in Dallas. Much as I complained about the Blender Magazine countdown of the 50 Worst Things to Happen to Music (if you might want to see it, please use the tags), I must complain about this. If Reggie Miller gets to sing a bar or two of Kumbaya without being beaten savagely, I can rant about whatever I want.

George Jones and Tammy Wynette came in at 16 with Golden Ring. Seven Spanish Angels came in at 15. I love both songs. They should have been 3-4, behind Roy Orbison and KD Lang singing Cryin' and Roy Orbison and Emmylou Harris with That Lovin' You Feelin' Again. That's the way it should have been. I know Mitt Romney just came out and said Roy was his favorite music, but I can't hold that against Roy. I'm not coming out against Mitt, just don't attach much weight to his opinion as arbiter of music.

As it was, Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss came in ahead of the four songs mentioned above with Whiskey Lullaby. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill was 13 with a terrible song. I won't go through them all, but Marty Stewart and Travis Tritt came in at number 12 with The Whiskey Ain't Workin' Any More. Roy Orbison singing Oooby Dooby alone is a better duet, despite the fact that it's not a duet and, as much as I love Roy Orbison's music, Ooby Dooby blows.

Before I get to the real heart of this post, I do have to say this. You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma came in at 6. Personally, I rank it at number 5. Not so much because it's a great song (it's average), but because it is one of the great mysteries of all time. Is it tongue-in-cheek, or are they serious? It baffles me. I will admit that I don't know much about Oklahoma, beyond the fact that True Grit was set there (I'm not sure where it was shot, but I love the movie). But three is no way that's a compliment. After all, it's not one of those iconic places that come to mind when one thinks about great natural beauty like Hawaii. To me, it sounds like the song's subtext is basically: "You're very average and I'm OK with it."

In case you care, the top duet in Country Music history, as judged by the CMT brain trust was Islands in the Stream, the Kenny Rodgers-Dolly Parton crime against humanity. The Roy Orbison duet with KD Lang came in at 26, and That Lovin' You Feelin' Again somehow placed 41st. Perhaps it was due to a series of clerical errors, a bizarre offshoot of the anti-Mark Cuban conspiracy or the fact that every one but me and, of course, my readers (unless you're reading this to monitor me for one of my many enemies) is a moron. But, for the record, sucks. But I should move on, while I still have a reader left.

Among the other things that scandalize me at the moment, and do not relate to the sports world: VH1's Celebreality. I know it's hard to get famous, and it's hard to stay famous. But the people they drag in for show's like the Surreal Life Fame Games probably never should have been famous in the first place. There's the guy from Poison who wasn't Brett Michaels. And who the F--- is this New York that I'm supposed to love? Has any person done less to be famous? God help us.

But into the sports world. Miami might be down by 26 with 2:40 to go in the third, and it seems like it would take a miracle for them to win. But I am shocked and appalled that the officials have not called all of the fouls that the Heat have committed. They must have taken pity on the people who paid to see the game, because there is no other explanation for why all 12 Heat players didn't foul out 20 minutes ago. I would have documented all their abuses, but I'm busy waiting for Mark Cuban to admit that Dallas has been the beneficiary of even one bad call.

You know it must have happened. The law of averages commands it. Furthermore, if David Stern is even 1/3 as intelligent as Bill Simmons makes him out to be, he'd at least try to cover his tracks. Maybe it's just so hard to conceal anything from Mark Cuban that he's given up trying to hide the machinations that deprive the Mavs of title after title. One would have to get up very early in the late afternoon to outfox the Benefactor.

I salute Antoine Walker for his foul on Dirk Nowitski. Toine hit him hard, harder than necessary. It was a flagrant foul, but he didn't try to put Dirk out of the game. What happened to the day when one could send a message with a hard foul without Stu Jackson banishing the offender to the island prison from the Ray Liotta film No Escape? And if poor Dirk is traumatized, he can just cry like a little girl and Mark Cuban will make it all better.

I can't decide what scandalizes me more, so here are the two top contenders in no particular order. I don't know if you saw on PTI or read in the Globe, but the Boston Red Sox announced that Wise Food Inc. is now the Official Potato Chip and Cheez Doodle Sponsor of the local professional baseball concern. There are so many things about this that upset me, I hardly know where to begin.

First, does the "cute" misspelling of cheese open the door for the Red Sox to create partnerships with any number of companies that produce said product and employ any conceivable permutations of cheese and doodle in their logos? Second, is it that much of a stretch to make ends meet at Fenway that they need to do this? Third, why Wise? When I told a friend about this story, he mentioned Vincent's or Boyd's because I had forgotten for a moment the name of the company involved. His rationale was that those are both local companies. John Henry is always willing to go the extra mile to forge connections with the local business community. After all, Wise is almost a local company. The company's headquarters is about 15 minutes away (by SR-71) in Berwick, PA.

This brings me to the other of my main sources of irritation on the evening. When I heard this story, I immediately thought of a line from the the movie Miller's Crossing. Gabriel Byrne's character tells one of the other characters "if there was a market for little old ladies, you'd have Grandma Bernbaum first in line." That sums up the John Henry business model. Any way to squeeze a red cent out of this team, its properties, its trademarks and its fans is acceptable.

It bothers me, not that they have an official snack food company, but that they narrow it down to that extent. I await the day when they sign a deal with Pringles, since I'm sure the tube based potato crisp falls outside the rubrics of their agreement with Wise. But I'm also irritated by the fact that I could swear I used that Miller's Crossing reference before, but I couldn't find it by googling the blog or checking the tags. I suppose I could look some more, but I'm tired. It's time to sign off.

P.S. If I end up in the trunk of a car in the weeds three weeks from now, you'll know that I might have one more reader than I think I have at this point. I'm not saying I told someone that she was the reason God made Oklahoma when I was intoxicated, but I might have. All I can say is, I'm sorry. Nothing I say when I'm drunk can be held against me. Just look through the back numbers of this blog to find the "this will make us all soldiers" that very nearly makes me sick to my stomach with confusion and shame when I think about it. But I'm not admitting anything.

And another thing - the simple fact that I'm paranoid doesn't mean that I'm wrong. After all, Richard Nixon was paranoid. But people were out to get him. They must have been, because they got him in the end.

In my spare time, I've been looking around for a new tool of the week segment. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a tool who stood head and shoulders above the run of the mill tools that make up a good 3/4 of the American population. Since it's been well over a week without a tool, I'm giving up for the time being and renaming it the tool of interest segment, or maybe the tool of note segment. I have some time to decide, since I don't need to run one for a while.

To fill the tool void, one need go no further than boston.com, where one can discover strong evidence that the tools among us haven't gone to sleep just yet. There is, after all, Dan Shaughnessy and his never-ending stock of shallow premises, faithful obedience to John Henry and half-assed attempts to be hip.

I know I spend a lot of time attacking Dan Shaughnessy in this blog. To be fair, however, he is a terrible writer with no redeeming vices. He's lazy, opportunistic, a shameless puppet of Red Sox ownership and for some reason has been waging a one man war against Manny Ramirez for some time now. In case you're interested, a redeeming vice would be a good sense of humor, the knack for incorporating an interesting or relevant external reference into his work once in a while or evidence of some effort expended to earn his paycheck.

In this recent effort, he dragged down the 1960s band Procul Harum by dragging their song into this piece of sycophancy (not really a word in common use, but it should be) directed at John Henry. It might seem, for an instant, that the CHB isn't giving his real boss a back rub. But when you look at all his tough talk, it's directed at Henry's partner in his racing endeavor, Jack Roush.

A legitimate columnist would have devoted more than three sentences to the fact that the Red Sox have the highest ticket prices in the land. It's small matter that they could charge more. Just because you can do something, that isn't moral justification for it. But John Henry is one sharp cookie, he reads about commodities and investments at 4 AM. I bet Warren Buffett is cowering in terror in his Omaha empire, just waiting for the day that John Henry becomes America's most renowned investor.

One would think that his status as Henry's mouthpiece would make him less likely to wage a crusade against Manny Ramirez. But then one must remember that Henry's regime has been characterized by a number of hints and hopes that Manny would continue being Manny in some other uniform. Rumors of trades and demands for trades have been floated so often, one no longer pays them much attention. It does seem clear that this team has been trying to make Manny expendable. Why else did they bring in JD Drew?

Consider it for a moment. JD Drew has come to a team at great expense to play the outfield. The team already has Manny Ramirez, Coco Crisp and Wily Mo Pena manning the outfield positions. Depth is an excellent thing to have, but is it a commodity to be purchased at the rate of $70 million over the next five years. One thing is clear, the Red Sox could never dare move Manny without a big name to fill the hole in the lineup and in the fan's hearts.

The real problem with Manny as a baseball player and a man isn't that he's eccentric. Rather, it is that he hasn't shown the proper veneration for Dan Shaughnessy, baseball expert, genius, writer and man. Instead of genuflecting and kissing the CHB's ring as though he were the Pope, Manny hustled even less after the CHB upbraided him for not hustling enough. I'm sure legislators the world over will finally get off their asses and make that a capital crime any day now, but until them, maybe the CHB will learn how to live with disappointment.

This article is a representative sample of the campaign against Manny. It begs the question, what does Manny Ramirez owe to the team, the fans and the media? He is paid to hit, and he does. If he lives in his own world, but produces big offensive numbers he doesn't need to live the way the CHB thinks he ought to. Ironically, a Red Sox outfielder who produced fantastic numbers but enjoyed a stormy relationship with the Boston media was the subject of a vast number of puff pieces written by our fickle friend the CHB.

Manny Ramirez isn't Ted Williams. He's not the player Ted was, not the patriot that Ted was and not the philanthropist that Ted was. But he shows up and hits for power and average, and he drives in runs. Beyond that there is no obligation he must meet. The CHB conveniently mentions that the rest of the team is furious with Manny, but doesn't dare criticize him. Without a player on record, either the CHB is making it all up, or the team is full of gutless frauds. Either way works for me, since a team full of gutless frauds won't win it all and I hate the CHB.

It's amazing to me that he can criticize Manny for shutting it down early last season while signing the return of JD Drew with bated breath. Apparently, Red Sox Nation is dumb enough to believe that this leopard will change his spots. JD Drew is selfish, injury prone fraud and he'll be inserted in the line up on Opening Day. Just wait until Red Sox Nation wakes up to find out that it missed Trot Nixon when Drew plays 100 games and has an even more mysterious injury than the one that felled Manny late last season.

It is entirely possible that this was part of the deal to net Matsuzaka, as many have speculated. And we all know that Daisuke Matsuzaka has already been engraved on the CY Young Award for the American League for the next 12 years. So it's win-win, even if Drew flops in Boston, as illogical as that seems to the man who isn't enamored of the Red Sox. Even if Drew never gets a hit, the Red Sox win twice because Matsuzaka will be the greatest thing ever to come to America.

Perhaps the optimism that surrounds a pitcher that has yet to throw so much as a pitch in North American professional baseball is so shocking to me because I was born a pessimist. Or maybe my hatred of the Red Sox has clouded my capacity for rational thought. Or it's possible that I'm right. Who knows. All I know it that the CHB is own way probably jinxed Matsuzaka in a misguided effort to be cute and folksy by calling him "Elvis Matsuzaka."

And Shaughnessy had to go and ruin one of my predictions. He ran a deathwatch column on a Red Sox alumnus and it wasn't Carl Yastremski. In my post where I introduced the idea, I predicted it would be Carl Yastremski because the only other Red Sox alumnus I could think of who might reasonably stir enough fan interest to excuse the laziness on the part of the CHB was Johnny Pesky. And if it weren't for the pole in right field and the fact that he hangs around the team day in and day out, who would even know him?

Of course, if I even thought about him, I would have immediately gone with Dom DiMaggio. Not so much because he was a star (he was good in center field, but not great), but because of the massive celebrity of his brother Joe. Knowing the CHB and his vanilla writing style and complete lack of creativity, I should have seen this sentence coming:

There were nine kids in the home of the Sicilian immigrants at 2047 Taylor St. in the North Beach section of San Francisco. Dad Giuseppe was a fisherman, mom Rosalie a former schoolteacher, and three of the five boys would become major league baseball players -- one of them rising to the level of American icon, celebrated in literature by Ernest Hemingway and in song by Paul Simon.

Wow, how cool is that. Not only did he have an intern look into DiMaggio's vital records, but he listened to Mrs. Robinson and might have perused The Old Man and the Sea. God help us all.

Just so you know, there will be no links tonight because I'm feeling particularly lazy. But I have somethings to say. It's just another post with an ESPN theme. Obviously they spent a lot of time on the Daytona 500, today and the breaking story was the bizarre episode of All My Morons that has been the 2006 San Diego Chargers. There was the linebacker shot by an off-duty cop. There was the safety arrested by Federal authorities for allegedly selling codeine. Then there was the waiting until the offensive and defensive coordinators accepted head coaching positions with other teams. Now they hire Norv Turner, who was once chased from a blackjack table in Las Vegas by Bill Simmons and one of his super-cool friends.

But there was a substantial amount of coverage dedicated to the All Star Weekend. First, on Mike and Mike in the Morning, Greenie made the pronouncement that no one puts on a show like David Stern. Meanwhile, he admitted later that he gained a renewed appreciation for Bono as he watched Mary J. Blige flounder her way through the classic U2 song "One."

And then there was Wayne Newton. It took me 2 days to come to terms with his presence. He was terrible. Actually, he was far, far, far, far worse than terrible. First, as Mike Wilbon would say on PTI, he looked like he'd escaped from the wax museum. Whatever they did to lift his face and Botox away his wrinkles made him look like a 2 week old sandwich in Saran Wrap. And there was his "tan." I don't know how to describe it, save to say that it made him look like one of those oranges that have those rough brown patches that the growers call wind scars.

Then there was his hair. It looked like his hair had been dyed with the black paint they use to rustproof metal benches and chairs. I don't know that it can be fairly called hair, but it sits on his head and it's not a hat, so we'll call it hair. It looked to me as though some drunken hair restoration technician had sewn the hair on somewhat imperfectly.

And there was his singing. I don't know much about octaves and that sort of thing, but I know he was nowhere near the high notes that made up the falsetto that made the song unique in the first place. His version of Viva Las Vegas was an insult even to people who aren't Elvis fans (I, however am an Elvis fan). Basically he looked and sounded like a bad impersonator. I get the feeling that Englebert Humperdink sat up somewhere in Branson, Missouri or wherever old lounge singers go to die and called his agent wondering why he couldn't get a gig with the NBA.

Then there was the triumphant return of Around the Horn. Because the show had been bumped all last week for NASCAR Now, they hadn't had a chance to excoriate Tim Hardaway. Everybody's conscience, Jay Mariotti, was in top form. He commended David Stern for the swift and fair response in banishing the homophobe from All Star Weekend. The voice of the voiceless went on to lament that certain other commissioners (Bud Selig, by name) do not act with such probity.

It was truly inspired, or at least it was, before I translated it from Mariotti-speak into English. Basically, Jackass Jay said: "Whah, Whah! Big Bad Ozzie Guillen was mean to me, please fight my battles for me, Mr. Commissioner." I've had enough of Mariotti. He's a total tool. And of the off chance that one of his minions monitors my site, feel free to tell him this. Jay Mariotti is a middle aged guy just coming off an angioplasty. The actuarial tables are in my favor on this one. He's going to die before I do, and I'm going to find his grave and take a leak on it. A little harsh, and totally lacking in my customary good humor, but I am so sick of phony tough and crazy brave reporters.

Speaking of people monitoring my site, I've been setting traffic records lately. It got me thinking. For those of you who are new to this site, Catch 22 is one of my favorite books. In the novel, the protagonist was forced to censor letters written by enlisted prisoners while he stayed in the officer's ward at the military hospital. Since it was boring duty, he got creative and started censoring all the modifiers, then all the romance words, then everything but the salutation while he rewrote the letter's body and finally he censored the envelopes. When he censored the letters, he signed Washington Irving's name.

Once he censored the envelopes, the military bureaucracy sprang into action. The Army sent a man from the the Criminal Investigations Division to the hospital to catch Washington Irving. This triggered an entire series of misadventures which ended up with the first CID man getting sick. The Army then sent a second CID man. Eventually, the two CID men spent all their time investigating each other.

I went through that long aside to say something, believe it or not. The other day, I joked with one of my friends that my spike in traffic was due to a number of people monitoring me for Mariotti, the CHB, the Red Sox, the Pats, NASCAR, Ainge and the other targets of this blog. After keeping an eye in this site for a while, I imagined that they would eventually use this site as a means to monitor one another. It seemed like a funny image.

Can you picture it? Across the country, recent college graduates who always wanted to be athletes, but lacked the size, speed, strength, talent or any/all of them to make it became jock sniffs and gave up their dreams to enter the world of sports journalism. Now they sit in their cubicles, dividing their time between monitoring my site and mooning over the hot receptionist who is hopelessly out of their collective league. And I bet they're questioning their career choice as they try to remember whether Mr. Mariotti takes his coffee with cream and sugar and wonder if Jay will release his pent up aggressions on the lowly intern after Ozzie or Hawk Harrelson disses him again.

I had a hard time coming to terms with this year's Daytona 500. For the life of me, I could not figure out how the partnership between Roush Racing and the Red Sox owners did not produce a victory. After all the race should logically have ended up in a four way tie between Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Jamie McMurray and Carl Edwards. That was the slate of drivers the team entered in the Great American Race.

It was an amazing finish. That's about all I watched of the race, I caught maybe the last half hour and a few moments here and there as looked around for something to watch. One segment I happened to catch showed me that NASCAR (and racing in general) is not a very good TV sport. With no TV timeouts, there is no logical place for commercials. So you run the risk of missing something important every time the network needs to show you a slate of "that thing got a hemi?" ads.

Today, the two leaders crashed (Stewart and Kurt Busch) during a break and all of a sudden you're back and the wreckers are towing two of the highest profile drivers who just happened to be running one two down the home stretch of the sport's marquee event all of a sudden fell out of the running while you were watching a promo for Stacey Keach's earth-shattering performance in the upcoming episode of Prison Break. That's no way to broadcast sports. But there is no way to help that, networks have bills to pay, just like the rest of us.

But Red Sox fans can take solace in the fact that no organization has ever won the World Series and the Daytona 500 in the same season, so Red Sox Nation dodged a bullet with the defeat of Roush Fenway Racing. I ought to clarify that sentence, that is, as far as I know it's never happened. It's late and I'm tired, so I'm not going to do my due diligence. I'd rather print an apology that try to hunt that trivia down at the moment. A very lazy attitude, but what can you expect from a guy who does this for free?

The road to the City Hall victory celebration has already begun for the pitchers and catchers. Soon, the position players will report. Early rumors from the Yankee organization have the team so traumatized by the mighty Red Sox lineup that they're going to give up baseball and take up the art of scrimshaw. Given that whales are protected species and obtaining the teeth in flagrant violation of US and international law, it is, apparently, still preferable to the humiliation they would endure at the hands of the new look Red Sox, who are eager to erase the atypical end of the 2006 season from their collective memory. Only time will tell about the Red Sox this season, whether or not they're as good as the fans think they are, or whether I'm right.

The NBA All Star Weekend is now over. Dwayne Wade won the skills challenge, Jason Kapono won the Three Point Shooting Contest, Detroit won the team shooting contest and Gerald Green redeemed one of the worst seasons in franchise history by winning the dunk contest. I must concede that I will be telling my grandchildren about that Dee Brown dunk over defending champ and amazingly good sport Nate Robinson, all while wearing a Dee Brown throwback jersey. It was the greatest moment of all time. Bar none. BAR NONE.

I assume Ainge is satisfied with a job well done. There was a time when making the playoffs and winning championships mattered more than accumulating lottery ping pong balls and winning frivolous All Star Weekend sideshows. That time has past. Now, the TNT commentators were talking about this "triumph" as a bright spot for the Celtics franchise amid all this gloom. When you set franchise records for the Boston Celtics, and those records are for futility, winning the Dunk Contest is no consolation. It's an insult to the fans.

If you don't believe me, think back to Dee Brown. I still can't believe that the people whom TNT pays to discuss basketball weren't a little bit more subdued as they talked about this dunk contest. It's a nice achievement, but when you reach back into the Boston Celtics past and pluck Dee Brown from the hat like some half-assed magician pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, you are reaching into one of the only eras of a celebrated franchise that isn't worth celebrating.

It was, strangely enough, an era very much like this one. A lot of young players with potential put together in a combination that choked potential rather than allowed it to grow. But this is just one more reminder that Ainge has to go. If he stays around, remember when it happens that you heard it here first. The Celtics will either waste a second round pick on undersized Northwestern forward Tim Doyle. He's too small to be an NBA forward and too slow to be an off guard, but I'm willing to be that he has one humdinger of a brain type, that and he has an immaculate head of hair at all times. That ought to be worth Brian Scalabrine money, at least, under Aingonomics.

And I hate to do this, I really do. Believe me. But the temptation is too strong. Read this story. Our little championship is all growed up now. It's not outside the realm of possibility that Tom Brady has knocked up his ex on his way out the door. And don't make any plans for next Saturday. If you have plans, cancel them. Sarah Silverman hosts the Spirit Awards (for independent films, in case you care). It could be the least funny awards show of all time.

But far and away the most interesting event of the All Star Weekend (far better than the Western Conference's laugher over the East) was the Barkley vs. Bavetta race. As you read here, Barkley won big. Bavetta gave it his all, including a dramatic dive as Barkley channeled the hare from The Tortoise and the Hare and backpedaled across the line. All in all, Sir Charles looked very good for an overweight guy who wears his bulk well (like me), until he tripped over an invisible obstacle and fell on his ass after he crossed the line. It's good to be right, once in a while. But I wish Barkley hadn't taunted the old bag of bones. As Dr. Kelso said after Dr. Cox coldcocked him: "At a certain point, you're just beating up an old man."

I know you might have a hard time believing this, but I do in fact have friends. And from time to time, these friends talk to me. Occasionally, they talk to me about this blog. Today, a friend of mine reminded me that this blog is entitled Sedition in Red Sox Nation, and yet I haven't blogged about the Red Sox in quite some time. Rest assured that will change over the next several months. Spring training is just around the corner, now. So I will be renewing my attacks on Red Sox fans and the Olde Towne Team in earnest. But don't worry, there will be plenty of time to rip on Ainge, Jim Rome and Mark Cuban as the basketball season limps to its end.

First up, today is the single most important day if you are a washed up baby boomer who masquerades as a lifelong Red Sox fan. Even the movements of the truck that carries the Red Sox equipment from Boston to Fort Myers becomes an occasion to wax very nearly, but not quite, poetic. I had no idea the trials and tribulations of a van full of stuff could make for such a ripping good yarn. So when do the Red Sox owners decide to slap a GPS tracking device on there to allow the faithful to track the station to station movements of Theo's guitar and Julio Lugo's unmentionables? Knowing them, I'm sure Red Sox Nation will be taxed for the privilege.

For those of you who are determined to venture to Fort Myers to get an early glimpse of the 2007 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox, you simply must read this. Who better than the experts at the Globe to help the Red Sox fans navigate the urban jungle in Fort Myers. Even better, is this little introduction to the Fort Myers that only Gordon Edes knows. Truly it is a movable feast, or it would be if it were Paris and Gordon Edes were Hemingway.

I guess I'm just not the kind of guy who draws the strength to gut it through the rest of an unpleasant winter from the hope born from the knowledge that the pitchers and catchers have reported. I also don't believe that a fat rodent can accurately predict the coming of spring by seeing his shadow. But then again, baseball season in Boston is the worst time of year for me.

Larry Lucchino's mouthpiece is all fired up for Dice K. He thinks 16-18 wins are likely, given the Red Sox lineup and provided he stays healthy. I think we all know that's the floor for him. The ceiling...34-0 0.10 ERA 1,000 Ks 3 BBs 5 terminal illness cured and the solution to the war on terror. There is no way he could disappoint. After all, Julio Lugo and JD Drew might deliver. Then again, they might handle Boston in much the same fashion as Edgar Renteria. Only time will tell.

Of course, it's no big deal for the CHB if his prediction on Dice K is off a bit, or all the way for that matter. Outside of myself and a few other lone gunmen in the blogosphere most people will simply forget that he even made it. Then the CHB can revert to his favorite hobby - attacking Theo Epstein for not showing him the proper respect.

I have another friend who is a Cubs fan. He's been complaining about Carlos Zambrano. Since he follows the team more closely than I do, I take his word for things like that. He is unimpressed with the 16 win season Zambrano turned in last year. According to him, most of Zambrano's wins came when the Cubs were well out of the playoff hunt, and, for that matter, out of the fourth place in the NL Central race.

I can see where he wants to get paid. Doesn't everyone? But does he have the leverage he thinks he has? Yeah, Ted Lilly got paid, Gill Meche got paid. But are the Cubs wrong to wait and see with Big Z (on another note, what guy refers to himself in the 3rd person as Big Z? Off the top of my head the only one I can think of is Zap Brannigan from the animated series Futurama. Probably time for a new nickname, if that's the other example)? Plus Carlos called Barry Zito a great pitcher. With judgement like that, I don't see him getting $15 million per year from the Cubs. Sorry about that dreadful rhyme a couple of sentences ago, but I'm too lazy to fix it.

The Cubs have pitching woes. The next couple of seasons might be a total loss, based on what's available in the free agent market, the geometrically growing going rate for bad pitchers and the depletion of pitching prospects thanks to Dusty Baker's management. I know Sweet Lou is no spring chicken, but it might be time to tie down what you can, build up an offense and hope that the organization and Jeff Samardzija have made wise choices. I wish them luck.

It's amazing how much has happened in the sports world since the last time I posted. I have so many to attack for so much. First, how elated we all are that the Celtics franchise record losing streak has been halted before it reached NBA record levels. While some are inclined to accentuate the positive (consider this slide show on Boston.com which tried to find one positive aspect of each of the 18 straight losses and highlight it), I choose to focus on the negative because I'm good like that.

While it's nice to get a win, and always good to get ESPN to stop beating the record losing streak angle to death, I think it does one good to remember the axiom of Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction and wait a bit before giving one another the gift of oral gratification. Let us not forget that not only are the Bucks a bad team, but they were also short handed. Michael Redd and Charlie Villeneuva were not in the lineup. You might not be tremendously impressed by either of those players, it is still a significant loss for a team with only 19 wins.

While I'm on the topic of the Celtics, I might as well attack the team's promotional "Guys Night Out/Girls Night Out" ticket packages. For $99 you and three friends/acquaintances can enjoy a Guys Night Out at the Celtics game where you will receive 4 hot dogs, 4 sodas and 4 autographed pictures of the Celtics dancers to go along with the chance to see the worst team in the worst conference of the NBA. Apparently women need even more inducement to see these "games." Their $99 gets them the same 4 hot dogs and sodas, but they also get 4 15% off coupons at the TD Bank North arena Pro Shop and free admission and line privileges to the Greatest Bar on Portland St. after the game.

That $99 package gets you seats in the balcony (if you want the four tickets in the loge section, it will set you back $149) for the following opponents: New York, Atlanta, Charlotte, Toronto and Orlando. If you want a higher class opponent, you can shell out $119 for balcony/$179 for loge to get one of these amazing four seat packages for Houston, Seattle, Philadelphia, Milwaukee or Detroit. It's a good deal, I guess, if you really want to see the Celtics. What I really resent is the patronizing gift of 4 hot dogs and 4 sodas to a party of 4 which probably represents a cost of $0.25 incurred by the concession people. Maybe throw in a bag of peanuts or two, or another round of soda, or even a second hot dog a piece to take a little of the sting out of the price.

The trouble with the Celtics as a team is that they are basically a poor man's version of the LA Lakers. Pierce is a slower, slightly less competetive, slightly whinier Kobe. Al Jefferson is a poor man's Lamar Odom. Perkins and the other spare parts at the 5 need to work a bit before we can consider them to be a poor man's Bynum/Kwame Brown/Brian Cook combo. But you get the general idea.

Then there is my hero, and yours, Jim Rome. Lately, he's been hammering Joe Torre for his handling of the A Rod situation in NYC. Now, there is probably some room for improvement in the way he dealt with A Rod, but I think Rome might want to step off his high horse before criticizing Torre for dropping A Rod in the batting order in the playoffs. It's not as though Torre sat in his office one day while he was bored and said "What can I do to Alex to make him fail and hurt this team?"

The fact of the matter is that A Rod was dropped to 8th in the order because he was underperforming by the standards of a player who was payed 1/25 of A Rod's salary. When I think back on Torre's decision, I am inevitably reminded of the scene in Patton when the General, as played by George C. Scott, slapped an enlisted man and said in his apology that his intention was to remind the young man of his obligations, both as a man and as a soldier.

Perhaps Torre thought that the gentle approach had brought little success, so maybe a sterner approach might work. And as for Jeter running the town and extending no welcome to A Rod, what should Jeter do? It was his town, and it is his town. Until some other player comes in and leads the Yankees to four rings, it will always be Jeter's town.

What we really need, as sports fans and as a nation, is a primer from the media on how all people ought to react to any given situation. Some commandments would be nice, but if there isn't a burning bush handy, some guidelines would be really help. Then we'd know what to do, and we wouldn't antagonize the reporters, talking heads and writers who, after all, only have our best interests at heart.

This brings us to the Tim Hardaway situation. The real issue isn't necessarily what he said. It would have been nice if he kept his motuh shut. He certainly hurt himself with his incredibly insensitive remarks. But some of the fault lies with Dan LeBatard, too. Until he put his foot into his mouth, no one in the whole wide world really needed to know, or cared to know, Tim Hardaway's position on homosexuals in the locker room. Or in the world at large, for that matter.

LeBatard said today on OTL that he asked all of his guests that question lately. That's a lame defense. If a gay athlete comes out then he should be treated like a human being. If he elects to remain in the closet, that's his business. It certainly isn't my business. Or Dan LeBatard's. Or LeBron James' business. Or Tim Hardaway's business. No one waits with bated breath to hear what Athlete X thinks about a given situation. Or at least they shouldn't.

Amaechi was right to an extent to shift focus away from Hardaway per se and direct his concern to what others who might be inspired to harm homosexuals because of his words. However, I think that Tim Hardaway bears no responsibility for any act committed against homosexuals. Unless he commits said acts. People have to be responsible for their own acts.

Almost as bad as the general insenstivity is when insensitivity masquerades as sensitivity. I thought Mark Cuban's response was as shallow as shallow gets. Perhaps there are more concerns than just the bottom line. And this writer from San Francisco who took a Utah columnist to task for mentioning that Amaechi was one of the worst players in Jazz history immediately after the announcement. But the thing about that is who even thought about Amaechi before he revealed he was gay? There is nothing particularly homophobic in saying that John Amaechi was one of the worst playes in Utah history if the stats support the argument. And if the piece had been written out of the clear blue sky, would we attack the writer for being mean-spirited.

In the end, there is very little any writer, TV reporter, politician, religious figure or athlete can do to stop homophobia. You can discourage it, punish it, ridicule it, but if we want to live in a free society people have the right to be ignorant. But I believe that in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: "My right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." People have the right to be homophobes, but they don't have the right to harm homosexuals physically or verbally. So Tim Hardaway shouldn't be punished beyond what the NBA has done so far, and maybe we should stop looking to our athletes for social commentary.

But I really hope I haven't ended up sounding like this guy. It's certainly not my intention. I certainly didn't want to go to the other extreme and imply that Hardaway's reaction might bear some similarities to Ted Haggard's. All I can say is that it's a very good thing for pro basketball that the Lakers Cavs game is going down to the wire as I write this. I am interested to hear Barkley's take on this whole mess, so I will stay up, edit this a bit and watch.

I will leave you with Charles Barkley's last words of the evening: "Ain't no 67 year old man in the entire world gonna outrun me." Amen Charles, Amen. I'm tempted not to do this, but I'm picking you in your footrace with Dick Bavetta this weekend. It's the one thing I'm looking forward to at the All Star Weekend.

This morning I happened to catch a little bit of Cold Pizza, which is almost always a bad idea. Shira Springer was on to talk about the Celtics. The talk managed to work its way around to the possibility that the Celtics will acquire the number one overall pick. As the talking head asked Ms. Springer which of the two top prospects would be the likely choice in the event the Cs should win the lottery, she said something that surprised me.

Shira talked about the Celtics personnel department doing their homework under their intrepid leader, and she mentioned something that I had forgotten for a time. Danny Ainge will bring in his ace in the hole, the brain typing guru Jonathan P. Niednagel. I'm not much in the way of a scientist, but this seems like this century's phrenology. Particularly if this charlatan's analysis of Erik Ainge is a representative sample of his work.

One need not waste much time surveying the wreckage of the Boston Celtics season to conclude that the Danny Ainge and Niednagel have not whiled away many hours talking with the flowers, as they lack the requisite grey matter. This critique of Ainge's fixation on brain typing may lack subtlety, but it is quite amusing. This article is perhaps the most horrifying and damning evidence that Ainge is a horrible GM, and the people who hired him should lose their NBA franchise privileges in much the same way as Butch (Bruce Willis) had his LA privileges revoked by Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction.

Danny Ainge signed Brian Scalabrine to a deal worth $5mill per over three years because a guy who lucked out of real estate at the right time in California told him that Scalabrine shared a brain type with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird? You must be joking. For all I know (I will be brain typed over my dead body), I might share the same brain type. But I am a horrible basketball player. Hell, Mark Cuban might have the same brain type, but it doesn't change the fact that he's a frustrated jock sniff who can't play a lick of basketball.

Then there is the list of Niednagel's clients given in that piece from the New York Sun: Kevin McHale, Terry Donahue, who was probably the best college football coach at UCLA except for Dick Vermeil, Karl Dorrel, John McKay (even though he suffered from the sizable handicap of never having coached the Bruins and in fact having coached their arch rival USC) and me (another guy who never coached UCLA) and a bad GM for the 49ers, Kiki Vandeweghe and John Gabriel. That is a dreadful list, especially when you consider that outside of McHale, none of the others are employed as general managers at the moment.

And there is the fact that the author of the Sun piece quoted Ainge as having said: "You can take Red Auerbach, Jerry West ... all those guys that judge talent. I'd take Jon Niednagel." Personally, I think I'd take Red or West, or even someone who had only won one championship over a snake oil salesman. But this man will run the Celtics until they have 12 swingmen, no playoff appearances and hell freezes over. Or at least until an owner who no longer needs yearn for that happy day when his testicles descend into their proper position. I trust you will forgive me for the vulgarity.

For her sake, I hope Shira was joking. But it's hard to tell with her, since she was tragically born without a personality. I will say this and move on. If she brought brain typing into the conversation, and it wasn't a joke, she is either the third dumbest person in the world (behind Ainge and his guru) or she's on the team's payroll. To tell you the truth, I don't really care. Just so long as Danny Ainge and the brain typing boys make sure they buy the bridges I have for sale down in NYC before the door closes on their careers with the Celtics.

I haven't really been watching too much basketball lately. It's not easy to watch anymore. I have been watching a lot of the 31 days of Oscar on Turner Classic Movies. Ordinarily, I would leave the specifics of these evenings out of the blog because I recognize that most people don't share my interest in classic cinema. But tonight I saw Cactus Rose for the first time, and I'm still trying to figure out what I think about it.

It was very funny. But there was something inherently depressing about it. And it's not the 27 year old single straight guy dreading a winter storm warning and watching a 38 year old movie alone the night before Valentine's Day. OK, maybe it is that, but there was something else, too. Ingrid Bergman's character was in a night club doing late 60s dance moves. As a fan of Casablanca and Notorious, I was deeply disappointed to see that. It was beat. 25 years after starring opposite Bogart and Grant, there she was doing the damn mash potato. What a world.

The Pro Bowl has come and gone, and very little remains for the football fan until the draft. Baseball hasn't started spring training. The Celtics are frustratingly bad because they come oh so close to ending their losing streak only to drop games by 2 points or 4 points. And no one can watch college hockey because of the vicious injustices which occur each and every night.

Can you imagine that another Beanpot has just concluded and against all probability Boston College was on the outside looking in. You just knew it had to be their year. After all, it hasn't been a very good year for BC athletics. Another middle of the pack football season led to an appearance in the Feel Sorry For Us Bowl, and their coach headed to greener pastures at NC State. Then there's the basketball team and their recent legal troubles.

It must be getting tough for the sweatstains in their cute, little yellow superfan shirts to carry around the burden of athletic disappointment along with their room temperature IQs and bizarrely inflated egos. It's not easy being the Greater Boston area's premier Catholic institution of higher learning, but if they don't pull it together, Regis is just waiting in the wings. But there are more important things in this world than BC, believe it or not. So Jerry York can retire to his lair and dream of that 3rd Beanpot championship and rest his troubled soul with the knowledge that he has been cheated out of his just due. Like Mark Cuban, but with a measure of dignity since he is a good coach and not a total douche.

I was stunned that Marty Schottenheimer was fired today. I guess I'm a little less surprised, having read this piece by John Clayton. I noticed that Manusky had signed to be the 49ers defensive coordinator. I remember being surprised when I saw that on the ticker on ESPN, mostly because I thought Mike Singletary was already filling the position. I guess there is a semantic difference between assistant head coach/defense and defensive coordinator that I'm missing.

Yeah, Marty has a terrible playoff record, but at least he gets teams to the big games. It's not like his teams have gotten worse in each season since he's been there like Danny Ainge or Jon Gruden. I'm having a hard time accepting the coach of a 14-2 team losing his job. It's also amazing to think that grown-ass men (to borrow a phrase from Charles Barkley) working dream jobs in professional sports can't put petty squabbles aside and work together. Actually, it's not that odd, I'm sure that if I were a coach or GM I would allow personal rancor to ruin all kinds of relationships because I'm rude, ill-tempered, sarcastic and difficult to get along with under the best of circumstances. But I try to be a better person once a week, for about an hour at a time.

I'm interested to see where the Chargers go from here. The obvious favorites have to be Ron Rivera and Caldwell from Indy. I wonder whether the Chargers will try to sign Singletary as payback for Manusky. But there has to be a big problem filling their vacancies, since it's come out that AJ Smith wanted to prevent his assistant coaches from interviewing for other positions. Will other teams let the Chargers talk to prospective offensive and defensive coordinator candidates? I also wonder if the AJ Smith-Schottenheimer relationship fell apart because Marty might have wanted to bring in his son Brian from the Jets to be his offensive coordinator.

But away from the mess unfolding in San Diego, where my friend will have so much trouble that even his man crush on Marcus McNeill might not sustain him through a cold winter (figuratively speaking) in paradise. As I sat watching the Pro Bowl, a friend of mine as disappointed in the outcome of the Super Bowl as I was suggested that Peyton Manning bears an uncanny resemblance to Ted Haggard, the disgraced evangelist from Colorado. You be the judge:

Peyton vs. Ted









That remark made me laugh like hell, and it got me thinking that Merle Haggard must be pissed whenever the story about that cat and his man-whoring and meth escapades comes across a news ticker. I apologize for the formatting, still learning some of these things, even 10 months into the blog's history. Now you see why I never post pictures.

Watching the Pro Bowl brought out one of my less impressive moments as sports fan this year. I went on a mini-tirade on how terrible the NFC wide receivers were. How they should have had TO on the team. And then Anquan Boldin made that amazing play to score the final TD of the game and Steve Smith got the two point conversion to tie the score briefly on a great individual effort. There is nothing quite like being wrong (and spectacularly so most of the time) 90% of the time to wound the ego. Bad times.

I am glad Duke fell out of the top 25 for the first time in almost a decade today. I hate Duke. I hate Coach K. I hate the Cameron Indoor Stadium. I hate the Cameron Crazies. Coach K deserves all that he's reaping this season. In my mind, he forfeited whatever claim to legitimacy he had as a basketball coach when he brought in Shane Battier to play for the US National team.

I know the argument that the team needed his toughness and his defense. Alas, the TSA must have confiscated them before he left the country, since they weren't evident in the tournament.
No matter how you slice it, there is no way that he would have been picked for the team if he hadn't raised the flop to an art form in college. If he didn't play for Duke, a better basketball player would have been on the team. It might have made a difference, but not likely. At least it would have been a more entertaining disappointment.

I really don't like posting twice in one night, especially when it's a Friday and I reveal the extent to which I lack a social life. But I came across the Blender list of the 50 worst things to happen to music. And there are several major problems with it. First, who writes for Blender? Where do they assume they have the credibility to determine what are the 50 worst things to happen to music. And while they included lists that reduce music to little more than a series of lists at 22 and attempted to appreciate the irony, they did not include Blender magazine.

But my real problem with the list resides with their choice at number three. It is America's national anthem. Here is what the mental giants at Blender had to say about it:

3. “The Star-spangled banner”
Here’s an idea: Let’s have the theme song for the world’s biggest and most diverse democracy be: 1) boring; 2) violently militaristic; and 3) next to impossible to sing. Not enough? OK, now let’s bring in Roseanne Barr to perform. She’s too busy? Get me William Hung!

I have made it a point to stay away from any form of political commentary on this site. Every moron with a blog seems to have all of the answers to all of the pressing issues of local, state and national import, so this moron has decided to leave politics out of this blog. But now I think I'm straying into a dangerous area, but I do so with my eyes open and if I offend, I aplologize in advance.

Having offered that disclaimer, I must now address their folly. First, I didn't realize that the degree of difficulty was paramount in selecting a national anthem. And in that vein, the Star Spangled Banner is set to the tune of a British drinking society's theme song. Maybe that's an admission of our society's literary debasement that an 18th century drinking melody is now too difficult for the pop stars of today to gasp out at a sporting event.

I imagine that if time travel were possible, and some intrepid time voyager brought this article to Francis Scott Key's attention, he surely would endeavor to make this song more interesting to the geniuses over at Blender. I understand most people find national anthems to be agonizingly interesting. For my part, I find it hard to get through any day where I don't read the lyrics of O Canada at least three times and give it a listen at least twice.

And finally, there is the idea that the Star Spangled Banner is violently militaristic. The original title of the composition is The Defense of Fort McHenry. So the song celebrates American troops protecting an American fort which in turn protected an American harbor. How militaristic can you get? Apparently the people who write for Blender think the British had a proprietary right to the city of Baltimore. Otherwise there is no way America could be in the wrong defending its sovereign territory against a foreign power and then celebrating said defense in a national anthem.

Just so the intellectual titans at Blender realize, the French national anthem was originally entitled the Marching Song of the Rhine Army. So we don't have market cornered on barbaric, militaristic national anthems. And it might be nice, once in a while, to remember that America was once a nation of something more than bloggers, couch potatoes, stock brokers, lawyers and yoga instructors. Then again, the nation that gave the world dog yoga and the crissandwich doesn't deserve the Star Spangled Banner.

You will have to bear with me tonight as I write this post. I am so torn by emotion that I am having trouble resisting the impulse to throw my monitor off of each and every wall in my apartment. The particular emotions which are tearing apart the fabric of my universe are rage and disappointment. And I am having trouble finding out who is responsible for these conflicting emotions.

The most obvious target is Dwayne Wade. But there are others who are very nearly as responsible for what just might be the final nail in the coffin of civilization as we know it. The NBA bears responsibility for allowing Wade to talk about things he cannot know. The management of the Miami Heat also bear responsibility for not silencing their star. And all right thinking Americans bear some of the burden for allowing this greatest of travesties to take place.

In case you haven't heard, Dwayne Wade dared question the leadership qualities of the single greatest basketball player in recorded history. In case you might not be as well educated about the NBA as you should be, the best thing that ever happened to basketball is Dirk Nowitzki. And he must never be questioned. Ever. Unless of course you want to make the most powerful of enemies.

Mark Cuban laid what would be the smackdown on Mr. Wade, provided of course that a jock sniff and a fraud could lay down the smackdown on anyone. Of course, one would expect this from the guy who owns the team for which Nowitzki plays. And one would expect it to be as eloquent as all get out considering its author once wrote an impressive evaluation of a recent cinematic classic (believe it or not, he called Happy Gilmore a classic).

Among the many problems with Cuban's defense of his player is the fact that he dismissed Wade's criticism first and foremost because Wade's commercials are boring. Outside of the incredibly, unfathomably, indescribably brilliant ads that feature the PC vs. Mac debate, how many TV commercials aren't boring? I must say that those PC vs. Mac ads are so awesome that I hereby volunteer my services as a free-range organ bank on the off chance that Steve Jobs should ever need a transplant. A man that wonderful and with that much to offer mankind must live forever, and the rest of my life is small price to pay as means to that end.

Of course there is no way that Wade could know Dirk's leadership skills. It's not as though Wade took over the series himself and brought the ring to Miami. To think that Wade did more to win the championship than Dirk did would mean you would have to believe that Wade scored nearly 60 points more than Dirk over the last four games of the series. Oh, wait...

I have tried to be one of the people who doesn't link to his own past posts during the history of this blog. Tonight, I have to link to this post from two days after the Mavs lost the finals. It has a few of my favorite elements in it. For instance, there is the Orwell quote. I am also partial to my little pun on the Nowitzness shirts that Dallas fans wore to answer the Witness ad campaigns featuring D-Wade. I still love that Nowitzless line, and it's funny because it's true.

In Life, The Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams describes the home world of the mattresses. The mattresses live in swamps and flollop around. According to the author, flollop is not a common word because it's a thing only live mattresses can do. Of course, Douglas Adams probably never saw Mark Cuban, as he passed away in May of 2001 (Adams, unfortunately, Cuban will be with us always). Even though I don't know what flollop means, I imagine it's the only word that can concisely describe Cuban's petulant 4 year old act as he sits in the stands.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to Cuban. Maybe he has virtues that I have missed in the infrequent attacks on him in this space. He has done great things to benefit the families of those who have lost their lives in America's military operations overseas. But in my defense, he is also a douche and I hate him.

But more on Nowitzki. He is one of the best players in the NBA and a measure of my sarcasm is probably undeserved. He did score 29 points in the deciding game of the 2006 Finals. He is an excellent player, until the final quarter of the biggest games. He went 0 for the field in the fourth quarter as Miami closed out the series. He passed up an open look to pass to Erik Dampier in the last minute. And most damning, in my view, Jason Terry took the final shot for a Mavericks team down by 3 in the decisive game of an NBA finals.

Imagine this as a scenario. It's the mid-1980s. The Celtics are in a series deciding game. Replace Dirk in the preceding paragraph with Larry Bird. Could you imagine Bird allowing that sequence to occur? Wade had every right to call out the most overrated German athlete since those clowns that Jesse Owens dusted in the Berlin Olympics of 1936. There is no such thing as an almost champion, and second place is a fancy word for king of the losers. Nowitzki didn't play badly, but when a Gatorade container feels your wrath more than the opponent in the NBA Finals, maybe you do need to work a little on the leadership skills.

I did enjoy Mark Cuban's subtle dig at the NBA officials and commissioner, hinting that he would be fined again if he mentioned the secret of Wade's success in the finals and saying that he loved watching him shoot free throws. Mark Cuban would do well to remember the Boy Who Cried Wolf, or at least take an oral tradition class. Then maybe he'd stop whining about the officiating after every game, or at least point out one instance where Dallas benefited from a missed call (I pointed one out in last years' playoffs and I'd link to it if I hadn't already linked to myself tonight).

I don't feel like so much of a dork bringing up fables and oral tradition, since Cuban questioned whether D Wade had taken business classes at Marquette. Of course, I should have realized that the business schools are the new cradles of leadership. After all, look at how the courageous MBAs contributed to the great deeds of Enron and TYCO. And we all know that Patton attributed his ability to inspire troops to feats of greatness to the business seminars he took at the academy.

Running a crap corporation and tricking Yahoo into buying it doesn't qualify you to speak out on leadership. Carrying a basketball team to a title probably doesn't, either, but it's still better than the former. Mark Cuban should remember the one thing that separated broadcast.com from the rest of the dot com busts was good timing. And he should remember to shut his face once in a while, and if it's not too much trouble, any time he feels up to it, he can drop dead.

That final sentiment might be a little harsh, but Cuban reminds me of Ethel Merman's character from it's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The film happened to be on this afternoon, during the 31 Days of Oscar on Turner Classic Movies (which almost makes me forget the NFL season is over when they show some of the greatest movies of all time). And I love the scene where Buddy Hackett suggests that Ethel Merman drop dead.

I am sorry that I haven't posted in a few days. I've been busy preparing my apartment for the inevitable collapse of the establishment. It's only a matter of time now. After all, the Sarah Silverman Program and the Naked Trucker and T Bones have been on for long enough to have caused the impeachment of the current administration. That must be there objective, after all why else would they be on Comedy Central despite the notable handicap of not being remotely funny.

There are many things in this world which baffle me, the fact that Sarah Silverman is on the air is only one of them. The fact that Danny Ainge is still employed in his capacity as general manager of the Celtics has been at the top of the list for a long time now. As the historic losing streak continues, now there is talk of tanking the rest of the season in hopes of landing one of the top two picks in the NBA lottery this summer.

What I don't understand is that people aren't calling for Ainge to go. I have been convinced, based on a lifetime of observation, that Boston fans are maybe 1/4 as intelligent and perceptive as they believe themselves to be. But this is beyond belief. This was a playoff team when he took it over. Now it's a disaster area. It's a matter of little importance to set a franchise record for a losing streak if you're the Memphis Grizzlies or even the Milwaukee Bucks. But when you manage one of the most storied teams in any sport to a record setting level of futility, there is no excuse for that.

If Celtics fans want to watch a good team, or even want to deserve to watch a good team they have to divest themselves of some illusions. First, there is no way this team can win a championship with Paul Pierce as its best player. Pierce is a very talented scorer, but if he were going to make the players around him better he'd have done it by now. And there's no getting around the fact that there are at least 10 players that play the same type of game as Pierce, only better. Is he really in the same class as Wade, James, Anthony, Bryant and others. If Celtics fans were honest with themselves, they'd admit that Pierce is a poor man's Ray Allen, and that's nothing to write home about.

Second, Ainge has stocked the roster with young players and expiring contracts, which is great if fans want a losing team. The trouble is in the level of expectation it breeds. Fans think that one more piece like Greg Odom or Kevin Durant will turn this team into a contender. I suppose it's possible, I wouldn't be much of a person if I denied the existence of miracles, but my faith in the Celtics isn't very strong.

This miracle can only happen if the players on the team now improve as the rookie savior develops. But what if it's Durant? What position will he play? He's not a center. The team is overcrowded at forward, with Jefferson, Gomes, Pierce and Wally. Maybe with stellar guards like Rondo, Telfair and West the plan is to play nothing but forwards. Or maybe there aren't enough minutes to go around. Or maybe we've seen the ceiling for Ryan Gomes and Al Jefferson. Maybe this is as good as it gets for them. Would drafting Odom admit that Perkins is a waste of oxygen?

Maybe Odom and Durant aren't sure things, either. Maybe the Celtics draft one of them and he gets hurt, or he's a product of the lackluster college competition. Maybe this draft pick will be snakebitten like Len Bias or Reggie Lewis. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. Maybe I'm a jerk for bringing it up, but that's the king of person I am.

The Celtics don't deserve to win. As I look at the Ainge era I see three tangible achievements. First, there are the Walker trades. Danny Ainge never liked his game, and maybe he isn't hungry this year since he won the ring, but he won the ring. Second, this team has gotten worse and not better since Ainge took over. Every season they've done a little worse, except when they reacquired Walker for the playoff run two years ago. Third, the team now has a cheerleading squad. If that resume isn't impressive, I don't know what is.

Now I might be being unfair. Maybe if Pierce didn't get hurt this team would have gone on a legendary winning streak. Maybe Allen wouldn't have been hurt while endeavoring to look like a jackass. I guess you'd have to be a Red Sox fan to believe that these things were likely or even more than remotely possible. Even without the injuries this team would not be very good. Even in the East they wouldn't be a playoff contender. With a healthy Paul Pierce, they aren't as good as Toronto or New Jersey.

Maybe I'm wrong about Ainge. As I've been writing this, I've been thinking. Celtics fans deserve Ainge. Celtics fans don't deserve to watch a winner. I had always expected to come back to the team when ownership had lost enough money to sell the team and a new GM came in who knew how to build a good basketball team came to town. But now the Celtics are dead to me. And it was the fans that finished them.

Once the Celtics fans cheered Kobe and chanted MVP as he shredded the Olde Towne team, that was it. There are times when it's OK to cheer for an impressive performance by a visiting player. It is OK to have grudging respect and admiration for an opponent. It is never acceptable to chant MVP at a player who is killing your team. Once you do that you deserve Ainge and Rivers and Wyc and getting worse year in an year out.

In another note, I never thought I'd ever defend a woman beater, but I think I have to now. The other day on Around the Horn, Jackie MacMullan called on the Philies pitcher who is accused of assaulting his wife in Boston this past season to donate $5 million of the $25 million dollar extension he recently signed to a battered women's shelter. I think he should be punished to the extent the law and a jury requires and he should donate money to said charity on general principle.

I do, however, have a problem with Jackie demanding 1/5 of his money. I know the media has taken the responsibility to direct every aspect of morality, law, justice, truth and the American way away from the courts, the government and the people. But Ms. MacMullin might do well to remember that the churches and religious organizations are content to wet their beaks in a person's pocket only to the extent of 10%. I know the organizations which expect their members to tithe expect that tithe to come before Uncle gets his, but you'd think Jackie might let him off at donating 20% after taxes and not before.

I must admit that there is something very unpleasant about having to eat my words. I don't enjoy the taste. The Bears let me down and the Colts were better than I thought. And I had to do it, why I don't know, but I ripped Bob Sanders to shreds the other day, and damned if the Bears didn't make him look like he was the evolutionary hybrid of the great defensive backs of the past that I sarcastically made him out to be. Good thing I didn't throw Night Train Lane in the mix, otherwise Sanders would likely have scored three TDs on his own.

But I promised my own version of the Paper Lace song The Night Chicago Died. I know I've promised them for a while now, but now I guess it's finally time to deliver. I must warn you, it's not very good and certainly uninspired. But you have to bear with me. Like Marvin the Paranoid Android, I'm feeling very depressed right now. So here goes:

Lovie was a coach on the north side of Chicago,
Went down to FLA, had a bad, bad day
In the rain on a Sunday night, in the southeast's crown jewel
The team from Chicago choked, and I looked like a fool
The night Chicago died.
When a man named Peyton Manning tried to make the trophy his own
And he called his fake audibles and some coverages were blown

I heard my neighbor curse and storm and swear the night Chicago died
Brother what a game it really wasn't, in fact it really sucked.
I heard my neighbor curse and storm and swear the night Chicago died
Brother what a game it really wasn't, in fact it really sucked.
God help us.

The crowd of Colts fans did roar as Rex kept falling down
And the Bears came very close to competing for the crown
Until the went 25 minutes of 3 and outs
All in all, not one of their better bouts

I heard my neighbor curse and storm and swear the night Chicago died
Brother what a game it really wasn't, in fact it really sucked.
I heard my neighbor curse and storm and swear the night Chicago died
Brother what a game it really wasn't, in fact it really sucked.
God help us.

Then there was no sound at all, since I shot my TV set
So I didn't have to see the accolades Peyton'd get
Now Junior Simple heads to Disney World, and how it does reek
And I'm not going to watch ESPN for at least a week.

The night Chicago died.

I know it's not great. Meter isn't exactly my strong suit as a poet. In point of fact, poetry isn't my strong suit as a poet. But I said I do it, and now it's done. If it kills my readership before it even gets off the ground, so be it. But the depressing end to an otherwise good season has me wondering what to do about next year.

Just so you know, I didn't shoot my television. How could I, when it gives so much and asks so little? I just threw it in there because Elvis, according to legend, used to shoot his TVs when Robert Goulet came on screen. Seeing Goulet in the Emerald Nuts commercial and loathing Peyton Manning as much as I do, the connection fell into place.

In the process of contributing to the construction of the Bears bandwagon and rebuilding it after the near disaster in Arizona and honest to goodness disasters at home against Miami and Green Bay and on the road in New England, I have become emotionally invested in the Bears. But the loser of the Super Bowl had not made the playoffs since the Titans in 2000 until Seattle did this season. And even the Seahawks submitted a lackluster performance in a very weak division this season.

Questions remain for the Bears; actually they hang over the team like the sword of Damocles. Among the big ones: Will Rex Grossman actually develop any measure of consistency? Are his health concerns behind him? How badly hurt is Cedric Benson? If he comes back healthy, how long can he coexist with Thomas Jones? How long can the team afford two high-priced tailbacks without losing players like Desmond Clark or Bernard Berrian? Will Charles Tillman be a Bear next season? Will the defense stay as healthy, or will there be another Tommy Harris injury and some other key player as well? Will Devin Hester play more defense and less special teams? Will they lose coaches in the offseason?

Based on the defensive performance, or lack thereof, tonight, I am more hopeful of Ron Rivera staying on for at least one more year. If he's not going to be a head coach, I think one more year of a great defense in Chicago will be better for him than a lateral move to Dallas or another team. I don't see Lovie leaving, either. That would be too dumb for words on the part of Bears' management. I like him as a coach. He has a quiet strength and consistency about him, his persona radiates confidence. I don't want to see him go.

I'm not sure what effect the talk about Smith and Rivera as candidates in Dallas had on the team's preparation. But I don't think it helped. And that's part of the larger problem that is the Super Bowl now. It's not just a game anymore, it's a cultural event. It's a monstrosity. And it's too bad. It's hard now, just to watch the game. Now you need to see the ads so you can talk about them, blog about them and rate them until someone like me who just wants to watch the game for its own sake loses his temper and smashes a chair over your head. For the record, I abhor violence if I can get caught in the act or it happens to me.

And then, every channel but the network carrying the game has to glom onto the game's popularity and try to come up with an alternative lineup to catch the non-fan. For instance, TBS ran a My Boys marathon, and no one called for an investigation into that crime against humanity (or at least good taste). Animal Planet ran a Puppy Bowl, which was footage of a set built to look kind of like a football field while puppies frolicked about. It was heartwarming, or it would have been if I had been lobotomized recently or if I didn't believe WC Fields was right on the money when he said anyone who hates kids and dogs can't be all bad.

But today wasn't all bad. A friend told me about Michael Vick's alter ego "Ron Mexico." I know I'm late to the party on this one, Deadspin and the Smoking Gun reported it a long time ago. I guess I live under a rock, but I figured I'd throw it out there because I laughed like hell when I read the story. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's a must read.

I guess I'm not really surprised that Michael Vick has VD. It happens. Sometimes people think they're bulletproof. What really surprises me is his almighty poor choice of an alter ego. Ron Mexico? Why not Ron Smith? Ron Mexico is a really half-assed choice. There is no subtlety there. Ron Mexico sticks out like a sore thumb. An alter ego should help you blend. It's not as though any reasonable person would look at Ron Mexico and ask "Are you related to Dave Mexico from Memphis?" Might as well print out business cards that say Michael Vick, I have herpes.

But there is this site that delights in the Michael Vick/Ron Mexico saga. It's a riot. I wasted a few minutes on the name generator. The Cincinnati Kid's Ron Mexico name is Franc Ecuador. It's a nice touch, Franc with a C instead of a K. Makes it sound more exotic.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Super Bowl. I've been trying to determine whether I think the Bears are going to win because of rational or emotional reasoning. I haven't come to a conclusion on that point yet, but I figured I'd go with this post anyway. Plus, I'm under the gun since 2/3 of my 8 readers visit my blog because they're killing time at work, and the work week realistically ended 10 minutes ago, this being Friday of Super Bowl week and all.

You might not know this, if you've come to this blog recently, but in November just before the Colts were about to utterly devastate the Cowboys in Texas Stadium, I suggested that the reigning kings of the uncalled holding penalty (Tarik Glenn and Ryan Diem) would have an incredible amount of difficulty handling DeMarcus Ware in pass protection. My track record on predictions in the history of this site has not been very good, but I was right about that. Maybe Adawale Ogunleye, Alex Brown and Mark Thompson as individuals aren't as talented as Ware, but in a package, I see them having a field day.

There are those who are foolish enough to think that the Indianapolis run defense might have been reborn in the playoffs because their competition had fatal flaws rather than any new schemes or the return of Bob Sanders. Kansas City couldn't pass, Baltimore's offense was schizophrenic and New England refused to run the ball when they really needed to in the final moments of the game. Chicago's wide receivers can stretch the field, they have two running backs who can carry the load. Things could get ugly for Indy, even though Bob Sanders is an evolutionary mixture of Jack Tatum, Mel Blount (not Bugs Bunny, but the NFL Hall of Famer), Jack Lambert, Mel Blount (this time the man of 1,000 voices), Dick Butkis, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and the miracle ingredient X-247.

The Bears do have their X factor, and it isn't Rex Grossman. It's Ron Turner. Will Ron be patient with the run if it doesn't yield instant gratification? If he is patient, there is no reason (not even Booger McFarlane, the 14th best defensive tackle in NFL history to come out of LSU after 4 years) the Bears can't get somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 yards on the ground this week.

I do love the talk about Rex Grossman being the worst quarterback ever to play in the Super Bowl. I have made a habit of deploring the knowledge of NFL history displayed by the average NFL fan every time a statement like this gains credence. Grossman might turn out to be the worst QB ever to play in a Super Bowl, but at least give him a chance to play in the game. What if he throws for 300 yards and 3 TDs?

While you're pondering the question of what QB is the worst to ever play on the biggest stage, you might want to Google Craig Morton. Or Vince Ferragamo. Or Kerry Collins. Or Stan Humphries. Or Craig Morton, again, since he played in two Super Bowls and submitted two ghastly performances. And what will happen if Peyton Manning wilts under the pressure? How ridiculous will every moron who said Rex was the worst Super Bowl QB ever look then. Hell, even if he is awful I won't look too bad because if you do Google those names, you'll see that he isn't the worst.

I think Rex will play well. There is absolutely no pressure on him right now. The expectations for him are so low that he'd have to take the snap, kick Jones or Benson in the groin and run out of the back of the end zone screaming and waving his arms like the orangutan from Every Which Way But Loose to disappoint. If he doesn't turn the ball over, takes 2 or fewer sacks and throws for 150 yards and 1 TD, the Bears will win the game.

The Bears defense is much better than the Colts D. Yes, it will be incredibly hard for John Tait to handle Freeny (I'm being very optimistic here), and I'm not too confident that Fred Miller will contain Robert Matthis. But I think the Bears with a mix of short drop/quick throws and max protection can beat the pass rush of the Colts. And if you can beat the Colts pass rush, the rest of their defense is as easily dismissed as the Ukraine in the epic Risk game between Kramer and Newman. Unfortunately without Nick Harper, I don't see any linebacker or defensive back for the Colts to play the role of the large Ukrainian man who stepped up to blow up the board.

I see the Bears winning this game by 14. Maybe 21, since I just saw ESPN footage of the tool from the Subway commercials wandering around Radio Row at the Super Bowl Media Center rocking a Jeff Saturday shirt. You don't wear colors like that. You don't even sport them. You rock a Jeff Saturday shirt. That has torn knee ligaments written all over it for the Colts center. Plus you just know Mariotti and the CHB are picking the Colts to win big.

On another note, I am thrilled that Farve is coming back. More than any other individual, he embodied the NFL of the 1990s. I am just not ready to see him go. Now that every quarterback is required to play with no audacity, Favre is the last guy out there who isn't a cyborg. He's the last of the old school QBs, like Sammy Baugh, Sonny Jurgenson, Charlie Connerly, Frank Skeffington or Terry Bradshaw. I'm sure all the real NFL fans who know what's what will recognize the name I made up in there.