I don't have very much to say this afternoon. I hadn't intended to post, but something Bill Walton said at the end of the Bulls-Cavs game deserved notice. Before I begin, I must admit that I hate Walton. I never particularly like him, but I didn't have much animosity against him either until I saw him high fiving New Jersey Nets fans in the Meadowlands a few years ago as the team was in the process of closing the Celtics out of a playoff series. I know he wasn't a Celtic for very long, but that was still a beat thing to do.

But today, the Bulls were down two to the Cavs with 9 seconds remaining on the clock in overtime. The Cavs had just scored, and instead of taking a time out, the Bulls proceeded to inbound the ball and go for the last shot without drawing up a play. When the shot failed and the Cavs won the game, the other announcer asked Walton if he thought that the Bulls should have taken the time out instead of trying to score on the run.

Walton didn't take the chance to rip Scott Skiles or second guess him. I imagine the Chicago press will do just that tonight and tomorrow. I'm sure everybody's favorite blight om the city of Chicago, Jay Mariotti will spill plenty of ink on that topic. But I agree with Walton, these guys are paid to play basketball for a living. They've been doing it for their entire lives. If they don't know what they need to do to generate a quality shot to tie or win a game in nine seconds, it's probably time to contemplate a career change.

Skiles was right not to call that time out. After all, as Walton pointed out, when you try to score by pushing the ball down court the defense doesn't have a chance to set up, they have to react immediately. However, if you do take a time out in that situation you can move the ball up to the hashmark, as opposed to inbounding from under your own basket. But that also gives your opponent a chance to position his defense to counter your play.

After all, these teams have a lot of tape on the other team and plenty of experience playing against each other. The Cavs know how to defend the Bulls in a half court set, or at least they should. But late in the game, with fatigue a factor, it is a reasonable risk to take a chance that a player might be fatigued or surprised that there was no time out called and as a result find himself caught out of position. The odds of getting a good look at the tying or winning shot seem no worse in pushing the ball right away than they do in taking the time out to diagram the play.

So, the Final Four is upon us again. I have been very hesitant to report on Sedition in Red Sox Nation Bracket Challenge of late. Let us just say that I took a man sized beating. The only team I had in the Final Four which ended up making it was Ohio State. Texas, Kansas and Notre Dame were not the best picks, I guess. So I offer congratulations to the Daniel Bellott entry, which according to my calculations is so far ahead at this point that it cannot possibly lose.

If you have the time, and let's face facts if you're reading this you probably do, check out Bob Ryan's take on the Final Four. It's not half-bad. Of course, with the magnitude of the Final Four, you know that I have to offer my irrational and quite possibly insane prediction for the event's outcome.

Watching this tournament, I finally realized why I hate Joakim Noah. He's a giant tool who celebrates every little thing like he just cured cancer. It's not just that he celebrates a dunk, or a big shot or block or assist. But he emerged from one exchange against Butler where a guy four inches shorter than him pushed him as they battled for a loose ball pounding his chest and screaming.

It got me thinking what is he like off the court? Does Noah beat his chest and scream to celebrate waking up in time for class because he set his alarm clock correctly for daylight savings time? If he gets his whites whiter and his brights brighter in the laundry room does he take a victory lap and taunt his neighbors? He needs to take it down a notch, or 12.

I think UCLA will beat Florida this time out. I don't want to see either team win, but one of them has to. I don't think Humphries will be as hot as he was last game (or in last year's championship game, for that matter), and I don't think UCLA will be anywhere near as cold. Plus UCLA improved by leaps and bounds over last year's team. Never has addition by subtraction accomplished so much as it did when Jordan Farmar went pro.

I am not comfortable with either of the coaches in this matchup. Ben Howland is bald. My sources tell me that bald people have tremendous difficulty with idea retention, what with not having hair to keep the thoughts from wafting up through the top of their head and all. On a more serious note, I think the slow-down defense first style can choke all the life out of your offense if one or two of your players isn't hitting shots.

Then there's Billy Donovan. Outside of the fact that he's a Pitino disciple, and I hate Pitino (a vestige of my days as a Celtics fan), there's the fact that he looks like Matt Damon. And not so much Matt Damon the actor as Matt Damon the puppet doppelganger from Team America who couldn't say anything beyond shouting his own name. For some reason that's all I've been able to think about as Billy Donovan attempted to sidestep the Kentucky rumors this past week.

I simply do not like Georgetown. I was 6 when they last made a Final Four, so I don't remember the Ewing Sr. teams. I do remember the teams with Mourning and Dikembe Mutumbo who underachieved like crazy. But more than just the basketball team, I don't like the school.

If you're from the Northeast, it's reasonable to assume that you went to high school with a guy who ended up going to Georgetown or really wanted to. Think back on that guy, and what a tool he was. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that that guy was a sort of arrogant sycophant. When it couldn't possibly hurt him, he was a tough guy, but when there was a grade to be grubbed or a chance that he could catch a beating, then our Georgetown guy was not so formidable. I do know a few guys who attended Georgetown and were good guys, but they are the overwhelmingly small minority.

That sort of arrogant sycophant is a type that gravitates to the Catholic schools of the Northeast, and it not a phenomenon exclusive to Georgetown. BC is packed to the rafters with them. And Holy Cross has produced the two most visible, the dueling lizard kings of the arrogant sycophants in the CHB and Bill Simmons. If you don't believe me, think about the CHB's dust up with Jurassic Carl Everett. Or Bill Simmons full on retreat from Isiah Thomas.

To make a long story short, I see Ohio State beating Georgetown. Oden (provided that he stays out of foul trouble) can shut down the Georgetown's inside game. And I'm not buying a team with the son of Doc Rivers as a championship contender. To say nothing of how sickening the montages of John Thompson Jr/Patrick Ewing Sr. and their sons will be.

And I think Oden is strong enough to shut down the middle against UCLA too. I've heard roughly one billion times in the last five years that the NCAA tournament is all about guard play. So let's agree now to call this year the exception that proves the rule when Oden leads Ohio State to the title.

After the last 50+ years, I think the last thing the Boston Celtics should want to do, from an organizational standpoint, is make franchise history. After the 16 titles, 11 in a 13 year span and all the facts that you already know, it's almost impossible to break any of the positive records. Unfortunately, what will go down in history as the 3rd consecutive year Danny Ainge should have been fired (even the year they went to the playoffs should have cost him his job, nothing says I have no idea what I'm doing like reacquiring Antoine Walker) will have seen two milestones in Celtics history eclipsed.

The franchise record losing streak was bad enough. But these things happen. The worst thing about is that the Celtics are going to play the Sixers tonight without Paul Pierce. And at stake is the fifth 50 loss season in franchise history. But I'm the only guy who thinks Ainge is the problem...

It seems every so often someone has to come out with a list ranking something. God forbid anything stand on its own. Everything has to be ranked and compared and contrasted. It helps writers of columns and magazine/web content editors fill up space on short notice with a minimum of effort. The list that is bothering me at the moment is Moviefone's list of the top 25 sports movies of all time.

Among my many problems with this list is that I don't really consider Jerry Maguire (ranked number 15) a sports movie. Yeah, the title character is an agent, and Cuba Gooding would go on to win Best Supporting Actor playing a character who is a wide receiver. And there are somewhere on the order of 1 million athletes who make cameo appearances. But the movie is only peripherally concerned with sports, and at that it comments on the crass commercial aspects of the sports industry. It's more about the agent's personal growth set against the backdrop of professional turmoil than about sports.

My real problem with this list is the film at number 3. It's Bull Durham. I hate to be the one who breaks this to the American sports fan, but that film sucks. Before you cough and splutter and stutter "S-s-s-s-s-sucks" like Judge Smails from the underrated (based on this list which placed it at number 6) Caddyshack, that's right. I said Bull Durham sucks. And it gets worse with age.

Every person who defends the movie feels compelled to dismiss the fact that a three year old girl could play a can't miss minor league pitching prospect more plausibly than Tim Robbins at some point in the conversation. Even worse is the name the writer bestowed on him. Nuke LaLoosh? Why not name him Douchebag, Total Tool, Fist Magnet or some other similar name?

Then there is the famous Kevin Costner speech. If you are a Baby Boomer looking back on your life and realizing that you've done nothing worth doing, and might just as well not have existed in the first place, then that speech about baseball and the small of a woman's back is right up there with now is the winter of our discontent. But if you can, in fact, while away the hours talking with the flowers (an elaborate way to say you have a brain), then the speech rings hollow as it should.

This piece in Salon described the movie as a "pastoral vision for hipsters". That is most likely correct, and it's also what's wrong with the movie. Nobody talks like Kevin Costner in that sequence. When do you ever get a chance to get across a 3 paragraph pick up line? If it's going to work, that probably means that you were in to begin with, and the odds of getting a woman to change her mind by lecturing her have to somewhere in the millions to one against range.

I'm not, thank God, the only person who hates Bull Durham. Bob Halloran, whose work in the Metro has been criticized in this blog, wrote this surprisingly amusing and insightful piece on the awfulness of Bull Durham a few years ago. I'll have to keep that in mind when baseball season starts in earnest and it's time to rip the Red Sox just about every day. Maybe I'll have to be nicer the next time I write about a piece Halloran writes for the Metro.

More than any of the other deficiencies of this film, it's the Costner speech, or more precisely the manner in which it's quoted, that irritates me about Bull Durham. The movie came along at a time in the 1980s when the white collar fan took over sports. This new type of fan was college educated and felt the need to prove it. But how do you prove you're smart without proving you're a nerd in the process? The answer...quote movies.

I'm aware of the fact that I quote movies all the time in this space. I think the difference between me quoting a wide array of movies and the people who quote Bull Durham is that I usually quote movies that aren't widely quoted (how many people do you know who quote Die Hard or Miller's Crossing or Kelly's Heroes?) and they're much better than Bull Durham. In his second essay on Rudyard Kipling, Orwell ripped the imperialist faction because they "set Kipling on a pedestal, and some of his more sententious poems, such as 'If,' were given almost Biblical status."

That's what these fans have done with Bull Durham. It's become the Bible for the 40+ year old washed up never-was when they talk about baseball. I don't believe in the hanging curve. I don't care when you open your damn Christmas presents. Baseball isn't a metaphor for life. Baseball isn't even a metaphor for for baseball. It's just a sport, and a half-assed hipster movie about it is no better than any other half-assed hipster movie from that time period.

The number two was a strange choice, or at least I thought so. It was Raging Bull. For some reason, I just don't think of Raging Bull as a sports movie. I think it was a great cinematic achievement. But whether it's the black and white cinematography or the fact that it seems more influenced by European films of the 50s and 60s than American sports movies or the fact that its production values are so different from the other movies on the list, I just don't think of Raging Bull as a boxing movie.

Rocky was the number one sports movie of all time, according to the list, and I have no problem with that. But when I discussed this topic with a friend of mine tonight, he pointed out that Rocky's non-boxing life, and, in particular, his relationship with Adrian take up much more of the movie than the fight with Creed. That is true, but that doesn't bother me as far as classifying Rocky as a sports movie is concerned (even though I objected to Jerry Maguire on the basis that it was much more about peripheral issues than it was about sports).

Above all, Rocky is about a guy who becomes something much more than he was when the story began. And in a sense, that's what all good sports movies are about the Bad News Bears (#18) become more than an island of misfit toys. Roy Hobbs (#5) goes from being a never-was to the best there ever was for a year. The Hickory Huskers (#4) go from hicktown losers to David killing Goliath. And so on.

Courting Adrian is a part of Rocky's transformation from two bit legbreaker and loser to the guy who inspires a nation. Their relationship parallels the fight with Creed. He starts off a little slow, but he keeps going until the end. Winning her heart is one of the things which elevate Rocky from that dockyard thug that tried to fight Gazzo's driver.

Tonight, I find that I don't have one single topic to fill a post. I guess after last night's long rant on the upcoming Oden-Hibbert matchup, I'm tapped out. There are a few things that I've been meaning to say, and none of them inspires me enough to write a standard length post. So tonight is a sort of moveable feast of negativity.

First, I don't really know why I think this, but I am going to go out on a limb and predict an impressive season for Carl Pavano, the Yankees likely opening day starter. I think he's going to win 18 games, and more to the point, I think he's going to win more games than Schilling and Matsuzaka. Yes, Pavano has only won 18 in a season once and he's lost more than he's won in his career, but I believe in him. He has a forgiving lineup to support him (much more balanced than the Red Sox hitters, who only scare me if they're named Ramirez or Ortiz).

The Yankees defense behind him should be much better since they added Mientkiewicz to fill in for Jason "Oh My God, Please Let This Infield Throw Be Right On The Money Or We're Looking At An Advancing Runner Instead Of An Out" Giambi at first (I'm aware that his offense numbers from this spring need to increase dramatically for them to be considered pathetic in the regular season). I just have a sense that Pavano will win 18, and I'm usually wrong, but get ready for the I Told You So from me when it happens.

As I guy who loves fantasy football, so much so that I blog about it and drive my readership down in the football season and bore my friends who don't care about it so much that they want to smash a chair over my hear like as though it were pro wrestling, it might surprise you but I hate fantasy baseball. And it's not a hypocritical stance, on my part. I have no problem with the giant waste of time that all fantasy sports are. It does bother me when people talk to me about it, but it bothers me when most people talk to me about most things.

What really irritates me about fantasy baseball is that it is the fantasy sports equivalent of writing blank verse poetry, not that I write blank verse poetry, and I damn sure don't want to read any more blank verse poetry than I have to. Robert Frost described it as playing tennis without a net. That's what fantasy baseball is. For instance, Mike Piazza can be counted as a catcher in most leagues despite the fact that he won't be playing catcher for the As this season.

By that rationale, any player should be able to be classified at any position. For instance, Ichiro catches balls in right field, so he is on some level a catcher. Or he hits a number of singles, so he spends a fair bit of time at first base. If you need a first baseman, Ichiro should count. Or even better, he beats out a lot of ground balls for infield hits, so he ought to be considered for any of the infield positions.

Maybe this trend could carry over to the other fantasy sports. Terrell Owens lines up in the slot in certain formations and situations, tight ends like Dallas Clark line up in the slot in certain formations and situations. Therefore I ought to be able to classify him as a tight end if I need help there. While that sounds completely ridiculous, I just don't see how it is more ridiculous than letting a DH be considered a catcher because he played the position at some point within the last X number of games.

Tonight, due to a lack of interesting viewing options, I came across one of Mel Gibson's early films. It's called Tim, and according to digital cable it's about a May-December romance. I couldn't tell if it were an Australian movie with an American actress or an American movie with an Australian actor. The one thing I could tell from the few minutes I watched, is that is was dreadful. I bet Mel goes bananas like he did in the South Park Passion parody when he sees that it's on TV. I don't know how to adequately describe how awful it is save to say that it's like they took the basic elements of porn (bad lighting, bad sets, bad wardrobe, horrific script and dreadful acting) to make this film, but left out the eroticism.

One more thing I have to complain about tonight is the commercial for the lost pet lojack service. I don't know if you've caught it. I happened to be watching Most Extreme Ancestors on Animal Planet when I saw it. There is a hideously, horrendously awful cover of the Peaches and Herb song Reunited. I understand that this wouldn't bother most people, but it bothers me.

I like a lot of 1970s soul and R&B. I usually try not to talk about it much, because most single, straight guys don't make a habit of admitting that they've listened to a track by Peaches and Herb lately. But I like the song, and I'm not afraid to admit it. And after all, it's not like I'm listening to WHAM or Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

But as far as I know, Peaches and Herb aren't in a financial position to turn people away when they come calling to use the song in a commercial. After all, while there's only been one Herb, he's on Peaches number 5, I think. So the pet locator service people probably didn't save much money when they went with the cover version that sounds like a sickening blend of Up With People and Muzak. I'm not in marketing, nor am I acquainted with the demographic audience of Animal Planet (I am, however, willing to bet that the average Animal Planet viewer isn't all that cool), but there's no way that you'll ever convince me that the commercial wouldn't have more impact with the real version of the song in it.

And I realize that I admitted to watching Animal Planet and went out on a limb and offered my opinion that the average viewer of said network probably isn't cool. That said, I'm not an average viewer of Animal Planet. Or at least the network better hope I'm not, as I only tune in when there is a dire programming emergency.

Finally, there is the rumored trade which could have sent Lance Briggs and the 31st pick in the first round to the Redskins in exchange for the sixth overall pick. This might not be a bad deal for the Bears, since the Redskins love to butcher the draft and that's probably as much value as the Bears will get from this nightmare. That said, I also don't blame the Bears for putting the kibosh on it after either the Redskins or Rosehnaus released the details before formal negotiations had even begun.

Briggs is building up a hell of a lot of bad karma in this situation. If he sits 10 games as he's threatening now, and comes back for the last six, I don't think the situation will work out the way he wants. His timing will be off, he'll disrupt the team and he just might hurt his value going forward. If the bridges can be repaired and he goes to Washington, he's tempting fate there too. Yes, he'll get paid by Dan Snyder, but Washington is the NFL's place where careers go to die.

No one who signs big deals with the Redskins ever plays up to the potential they showed before they got there. I guess it's possible that you could throw Portis and Santana Moss in my face on this one, and I'd have to give you Moss. But Portis has more 1,500 yard seasons in Denver than Washington. To be fair, I must concede that his career is hardly over. But going to Washington is much better for the wallet than the Hall of Fame resume. I guess it comes down to what Briggs really wants, and if the Bears suddenly undergo a transformation like Scrooge experienced in A Christmas Carol and become forgiving enough to deal him.

In the May 22, 1974 issue of Rolling Stone, Jon Landau famously wrote: "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen." We haven't seen the future of the NBA yet, but we will this weekend. It really doesn't matter, either, who ends up winning this year's NCAA championship. What does matter, for the future of the NBA, is that we'll see if Roy Hibbert can be the rival Greg Oden needs to save the NBA on Saturday.

Make no mistake about it. The NBA needs salvation desperately. Ratings peaked in 1998, and they show no signs of getting back to that level any time soon. There is even a great deal of consternation in some circles that Major League Baseball has scheduled a game between the Red Sox and the Yankees up against an opening round playoff basketball game. Can you imagine the NFL fearing to schedule a playoff game against another sport's regular season game?

Anybody who tells you that the NBA's ratings are falling because of the hip hop culture or mainstream white Americans turning away from it are full of sanctimony and not correct. At the end of the day, people want one thing, and one thing only from sports. It isn't cultural commentary or the world of yesteryear. People could care less about how long the player's shorts are, what kind of music they listen to or what they wear. They want to see good basketball and nothing more.

The ratings are falling because basketball is not being played the way it was intended by Dr. Naismith. Basketball is not being played the way the Russell era Celtics played it. Basketball is not being played the way the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s played it. And it's not really being played the way Jordan played it.

In a sense, it's Jordan's fault that the ratings are falling. And not because he retired and came back and retired again. The NBA Finals which enjoyed the highest rating of all time was the 1998 series which featured the Jordan Bulls against the Utah Jazz. Jordan won the series with the famous, iconic isolation play (where he may or may not have fouled Byron Russell). And since that play, that has become the core of most team's offense in crunch time.

Look at the end of the Laker game against the Warriors. Kobe Bryant dribbled and dribbled through the defense until he had an opening to take the winning shot. Yes, he made it and the Lakers won their fifth straight game. But that's not basketball. Maybe his teammates aren't very good. But a professional basketball player ought to be given a chance to make the last shot.

Who really wants to see four grown men who are extremely well paid stand around and watch one guy dribble through a crowd? That's not worth the price of admission. That's junior high basketball. Or worse, the one bigger kid playing on the playground with his little brother and his friends.

Oden can save the NBA because he'll give a team a dimension no team has had in a long time, not even Miami - a true center. Shaq doesn't really count any more, as age and his bulk have limited his minutes and his effectiveness over the last few years of his career. He can only play with full on intensity for a few minutes at a time. And Duncan, Garnett and the rest of the big men in the NBA these days seem more comfortable away from the basket than in the post, or they might just as well be sold for spare parts (Dampier, Djiop, Kendrick Perkins, et al.) as paid to play basketball.

Oden has a combination of size and athletic ability that is inordinately rare, even in professional basketball where inordinate size and athletic ability are the rule rather than the exception. He can control the glass on both ends of the court. He can run with the break, which is almost funny, since no NBA team can really run a break anymore.

But what he really needs is a rival. That's the one thing that kept Shaq from being the best center of all time. He never had to work day in and day out to hone his skills to beat that one opponent worth beating. Am I the only one who stops to wonder what Bill Russell would have been like without Wilt Chamberlain? Or Chamberlain without Russell? Even Kareem had Cowens and Walton and Willis Reed and Wes Unseld among others hanging around when he was young. The only guy on the horizon that can be that rival for Oden is Hibbert, as I see it. His offense needs a bit of work, but he is a very good defender.

A player like Oden will give a team a low post option that opponents must respect, he'll draw double teams which will open space on the floor for shooters. Not that that's necessarily a good thing, what with the fact that even "good" shooters seem to have difficulty hitting the floor upon falling out of bed two days out of three these days. At least, with any luck, that might bring an end to the 1 one 5 superstar suicide charge that is the NBA equivalent of the four minute offense from NFL endgames.

For his sake, and for selfish reasons, I hope Oden doesn't come to the Celtics. Since this ownership group has steadfastly refused to terminate Ainge's employment, Oden could prolong his tenure in Boston indefinitely. For obvious reasons I don't want that to happen. But it won't be good for Oden, either.

Let him go to a team that isn't crippled by salary cap woes. Let him play for a team that doesn't have Brian "The Great Brain" Scalabrine as it's fifth highest paid player. After all, won't drafting Oden cast aspersions on the $4.48 million due to be paid to Kendrick Perkins. And above all, let him go to a team that isn't crippled with a superstar who is a selfish, petulant boy emperor who can't play a team sport with a team.

In the immortal words of Detective John McLane: "If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Quit being part of the problem." Paul Pierce isn't part of the solution. He can't share the spotlight. He couldn't with Ricky Davis, he couldn't with Antoine Walker. How in the world could Paul Pierce, the face of the Celtics, share the spotlight with a projected savior of the franchise. Pierce may or may not be one of the brightest minds in professional basketball, I wouldn't know, but he has to see that if the franchise has to be saved, in a sense, it has to be him from whom the team must be saved.

But it's all academic if the game within the game between Oden and Hibbert doesn't deliver. Any one of a million things could go wrong, one or both could get into foul trouble. Oden could eat Hibbert alive (metaphorically speaking, I hope), or vice-versa, which is infinitely less likely than the former. Or God forbid, one or the other could get hurt.

If this game doesn't live up to the hype, I think the NBA is in trouble. Then the future of the league is in the hands of Kevin Durant and OJ Mayo. And will those players make a team better. And I don't just mean wins and losses. Because what will the difference of 10 or 12 wins to the Celtics mean for next season? Will it make them a playoff team? More importantly, will it make them a worthy playoff team?

Whatever flaws it had (and it had a few), that 2001-2002 Eastern Conference Finalist had an energy and a chemistry that made it fun to watch. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a sporting event more than I enjoyed that monster comeback against New Jersey. Now put Oden or Durant on this Celtics team and tell me they'd be capable of something like that. I don't see it. It might make them a lower seed in the first round, and maybe they could be dangerous. But since the NBA went to a seven game format in round one, miracles have been outlawed.

Let Oden or Durant go to a team that can build around them from jump street. Let the Celtics take Joakim Noah and sink with the spare parts. Get rid of Ainge. Sell the team to an ownership group that won't preside over a poorly managed but expensive tax dodge, but actually try to build a champion. FYI, no one trying to build a champion would sign Brian Scalabrine to any kind of deal.

PS - Durant ought to come out for economic reasons, but he's less NBA ready than Oden. He's way to skinny to survive the NBA right now. He'll be knocked around until he can bulk up to withstand the punishment. Staying in school would help, since college teams aren't allowed to turn basketball into rugby as often as NBA teams do it. I think he's two years away at least from really contributing, maybe three if he has the misfortune to get hurt.

I don't know if you happened to see this past week's episode of South Park. It was highly entertaining and strangely thought-provoking. The episode title is Lice Capades, and the plot revolves around an outbreak of lice in South Park Elementary. There is a parallel story from the perspective of the lice on one student's head where one louse tries to convince the others that the world has become aware of their impact and is trying to destroy them. No one listens, and tragedy ensues.

That one lone louse who tries to convince the community that they're wrong and he's right reminds me of me as spring training winds down. I know it's not a very flattering comparison, but it seems very appropriate since I am about as significant as a louse, writing an anti-Red Sox blog against a vast tide of material embracing the team. And it seems like I am the only one who has even considered the possibility that Daisuke Matsuzaka will not take the world of North American professional baseball by storm.

After watching a couple of spring training starts, Bill Simmons sees a young Pedro Martinez in him. Matsuzaka has a comparable array of impressive off-speed pitches, apparently, even though he isn't quite the intimidator that Pedro was. No word yet on whether the Baltimore game when two guys from the minor league squad took the fearsome Matsuzaka deep was one of the games Simmons happened to see.

I find myself wondering from time to time when I read something about sports if I am the last person who remembers minor, trivial details. But there is this little chestnut about Pedro. It happened about ten years ago, long past the point at which the statute of limitations on memory which enable the mental gymnastics that make a Red Sox fan a Red Sox fan expires.

The real difference between Pedro and Daisuke is that Pedro proved himself against real, honest-to-goodness major league batters before he came to Boston. Pedro even won a Cy Young before he came to Boston. Until Daisuke proves that he can handle a long season in a tough town, I think people would do well to give him a chance to fail before they canonize him. The way it stands now, if Daisuke has a bad run, it's on for him. I hope he can handle it. Personally, I am looking forward to the day this offseason's panic signings blowup in the face of the Nation.

Sports Illustrated has just come out and celebrated the arrival of Daisuke Matsuzaka in a cover that is sure to warm the cockles of Red Sox Nation's collective heart. Even if you don't believe in the alleged SI Cover Jinx (I don't, but anything that works against the Red Sox is good for me), it must stick in the throats of Red Sox fans to see Matsuzaka's picture with the tag line "Fever Pitch."

So many Red Sox fans must resent that movie so much. I just can't imagine it myself, not suffering from the curious mental deficiency that makes a person a Red Sox fan, but I wonder how it must hurt Red Sox Nation. After 86 years of heartbreak, how many of them must have wished they could have run onto that field in Saint Louis to celebrate with the team. And then to find out that the new celebrity poster child for Red Sox Nation, Jimmy Fallon, and Drew Barrymore were among the first to join the players celebrating that most improbable of events. Oh, the humanity.

Daisuke Matsuzaka is pitching in a foreign country, against teams with incredible resources for scouting their opponents, against some (if not all) of the best players in the world. And this time it's for real. It's not some bogus exhibition with a fancy title. This is how these guys earn a living. And on top of that, he is going to pitch every fifth day instead of every sixth day.

And then there's the fact that he's going to have to do a considerable amount of travelling this season. Much more traveling and more often than he ever had to do in Japan. I don't know if you've noticed (and if you're a Red Sox fan, odds are you haven't), but America is a big country. Much, much, much, much bigger than Japan. There are at least two or three more 3,000 mile flights in store for Daisuke than there were last year.

But I'm crazy, right? I'm just pointing this stuff out because I'm a bad person who wants the Red Sox fans to be as miserable as I am, right? As much as there is a grain or truth or two in the first statement, the second one isn't true. I want the Red Sox fans to be infinitely more miserable than I am. But even more than that, I want just once for fans and media people to wait until there is an event and a story before they cover it to death.

After all, should August 1 roll around and the heat of summer and the fatigue of the shorter rotation take its toll on Matsuzaka, I'm going to be writing this blog for my 7 readers saying I told you so. But the fans and the media will be saying and writing that we should have seen this coming with no mention of the fact that they created the hype that failed. And that's going to make me sick to my stomach and even more bitter than I am now.

I'm not as depressed as you might think today. Based on last season (which was the single greatest season in the history of modern relief pitching, at least by the standards that made the late not-so great Dick Radatz a regional media icon) and the title of this site, you might think that the local authorities had to talk me down from the ledge this afternoon. Jonathan Papelbon has returned to the bullpen for the Boston Red Sox, and the American League East is clinched with only 162 games remaining.

I bet those of you who read this space on a regular basis are expecting me to provide a cynical take on this move, to harsh the proverbial buzz of Red Sox Nation. I was fully prepared to do so, until I read this piece in the Washington Post. Jonathan Papelbon and Terry Francona were losing sleep over the turmoil in the bullpen. Can you imagine? The horror, the horror. I don't think I can summon up the energy to go about my daily activities until I find out with absolute certainty that the two of them are no longer running for the shelter of their mother's little helpers.

If you read the Boston Herald (and you do so at your own risk), you will find inspired analyses like this, praising Papelbon as a lights out closer and celebrating his new old role. On ESPN, there was some speculation that this could cause consternation in the Bronx. Somehow, I can't help but think that if Big Stein and Joe Torre are soiling their union suits, it has more to do with general issues of incontinence and less to do with the dazzling return of the greatest closer of all time after 102 career innings.

Looking at Papelbon's career stats, he had a very good season in terms of numbers last year. But he also blew six saves. At the end of the day, I am not too worried about his impressive WHIP or .OPS allowed. Maybe I'm just a casual observer and not a hard core baseball man. Or maybe I'm the world's oldest 27 year old. But I don't dig on stats as the measure of a baseball player. At the end of the day, all that matters is who wins it all. And as much as I hate the little hustling overachiever David Eckstein, I have a lot more regard for him than I do for Papelbon because he submitted a clutch performance in a World Series.

I am not the only person who isn't getting their hopes up for the return of Papelbon. Ken Rosenthal on FOX Sports does a nice job presenting all the questions swirling around this move. It is a fair point to speculate that the Red Sox are making a panic move here, because none of the stop gap solutions they imported this offseason showed any sign of panning out. After all, if they went into the season with Papelbon in the rotation and a gaping hole at the end of the game, Epstein would be running for his life from the fans and the media.

It can't be very encouraging for a Red Sox fan to consider all of the precautions the team plans to take with Papelbon. They're going to limit him to one inning appearances and keep him out of back to back games as much as they can. They aren't going to warm him up without putting him in the game. This is a long list designed to safeguard the arm health of a 26 year old entering his second major league season (the 17 appearances from 2005 don't count).

Hearing about these plans got me thinking about Mark Prior. He was another can't miss pitcher who burst onto the scene, but developed arm problems and for lack of a better term missed (at least to this point). Papelbon was supposed to be the future of the Red Sox rotation. Only 26 years old, with just over 100 innings pitched to this point and supposedly electric stuff, he was a bright beacon of hope to all the tools in the Nation.

His career is by no means over, as of today. But he's a 26 year old pitcher with a shoulder problem. So many things could go wrong. Either the joint isn't properly healed. Or he may develop a mental block, so he never unlocks his full potential. I wouldn't worry too much about the latter scenario, since it seems that his somewhat less than formidable intellect lacks the capacity to construct a mental block. But it's possible.

I think that this move to the pen and the talk about the precautions being taken is something of a smokescreen. After all, I'm not buying that closing is tougher on Pepelbon's shoulder than starting would be. As a closer he'll throw maybe 80 innings. As a starter, he'd throw somewhere in the vicinity of 200 innings. There are those who would place more emphasis on the stress of pitching the 80 innings while trying to hold a lead, but I'm not convinced. With proper warmup and the fact that Papelbon is not sufficiently intelligent to comprehend stress, it shouldn't be an issue.

Remember, Papelbon wasn't exactly dominant in his first spring training start. On the plus side, from the team's point of view, this calls a lot of attention away from the fact that every fifth game, the Boston Red Sox are going to be relying on Julian Tavarez to hold the fort. Between that and the fact that this team is relying on contributions from primetime players like Julio Lugo and JD Drew, I get the feeling that this is going to be a good year for Sedition in Red Sox Nation. Of course, I have been wrong before.

In other matters, I think Texas A and M got boned by the officials tonight. According to NCAA rules, as long as there is more than 4/10 of a second left on the clock, a team can catch and shoot off an inbounds pass. But one guy touching the ball on an inbounds pass 3 inches from the sideline managed to take 1.1 seconds off the clock. At that point, the officials might just as well have ended the game there, maybe buffed Coach Cal's no polish manicure. That would have been about as fair.

I must say that Memphis impressed me. I assumed that they were ripe to be upset even before the Sweet 16 when I saw the bracket. After all, who is left in Conference USA now, outside of a few branches of DeVry, ITT Tech and a University of Phoenix campus in suburban Kansas City (Kansas, not Missouri)? So, like almost every other observer, I laughed at Memphis. Plus, when has a Coach Cal team not underachieved in the tournament? I was amazed they were that close to Texas A and M down the stretch. I just wish the game could have ended without the controversy.

Also, I have to extend some sort of congratulations to Miami-Dade Community College. Their chess team recently upset Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Northwestern. Up until today, I didn't even know that there were formal intercollegiate chess competitions. I wonder what the nerds on the Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth or Northwestern chess team will experience when they return to their nerderies after losing to a community college. I bet they have to hand over their pocket protectors in shame.

When I started the tool of note segment (of course all the way back then, it was the tool of the week segment, but laziness intruded), it was designed to recognize the achievements of the garden variety American tool. Famous people were not supposed to be included in the ranks of the tools of note. Unfortunately, as I've come to discover famous people are often even bigger tools than average people.

Jerramy Stevens is truly a prince among tools. Thanks to a reader named Eric, I can bring you one of the most disgusting stories I've heard in quite a while. Apparently, Jerramy Stevens and his friends are not fit to associate with human beings, or at least with the other tenants at the ritzy condo complex he calls home (for the time being). All I can say is what a tool.

I've never liked Stevens. I've always thought of him as a dirty player, full of sound and fury but delivering very little when it came time to step onto the playing field. The war of words with Joey Porter prior to Super Bowl XL was a perfect encapsulation of his career. He talked and talked, but he dropped passes, committed penalties and did nothing else.

Stevens is a big, athletic tight end who plays smaller than his height (6-7), slower than his 40 time and dumber than dirt. He has all the parts that you would desire a tight end in the NFL to have, but for reasons of character and desire the parts have not produced the expected result.

Apparently, professional football players, as a rule, do not make very good neighbors. But Jerramy Stevens is shockingly bad. He and his friends or guests are allegedly responsible for littering the condo complex with vomit and used condoms, among other things. It is also alleged that Stevens' neighbors have found his friends/guests availing themselves of other resident's patio furniture. By far the least of these accusations is that Stevens parks his car in such a way he occupies multiple spots in the building lot, none of which belong to him.

If the allegations pertaining to used condoms and vomit contain even the smallest grain of truth, this story blows away the bizarrely homoerotic hazing ritual of Greg Maddox as the most disgusting story I've heard about a sports figure in a long time. Normal human beings simply do not live like this. This strange, quasi-feral, disgustingly childish behavior is just another in a long list of reasons not to like Jerramy Stevens. And it makes him a tool of note.

I'm still not convinced that he's a bigger tool, when it's all said and done, than the guy who inspired the tool of note segment (from way back when I was young and strong and in my natural prime, and the segment was still called tool of the week). I decided to throw the link back up on a post, because I got to thinking about what he was up to, and if his page had changed at all. Alas, he changed his profile setting to private, so you can only judge by the picture and the quote.

Lately, I've been rising and sleeping under some vague, undefinable feeling of security, as if a cosmic injustice were about to be righted. Then late last week, I learned with the rest of America that the most dangerous threat to the safety and stability of Second City since Al Capone walked the streets of the South Side is soon to enter a correctional facility. Finally, it's safe to walk the streets of America. Terry "Tank" Johnson's going to jail for four months.

I must say, I don't really know why I spend so much of my time in this blog defending people whose actions seem indefensible. Maybe it's a ghost in my machine, or maybe the majority of the people kicking Tank Johnson could do us all a favor and wait to inveigh against him in the full force of righteous indignation. After all, Tank Johnson is going to prison for violating his probation, not having killed some one.

I am not saying that Tank Johnson should not be subject to due process of the law, tried, sentenced and sent to prison for probation violations. For what he has done, it seems like he deserves some jail time. It makes sense that the prison officials are going to keep him out of general population. The amount of attention and trouble he would attract would not be good for any one. And in the long run, depriving him of a chance to work out will be as big a punishment as any.

As a big, athletic defensive tackle Tank Johnson could command a lot of money on the open market, even with a red flag in the character area. For the record, Johnson is signed through the end of the 2008 season, but productivity in the upcoming season is the key to positioning himself for a big contract year. It will be hard to produce at a high level in the NFL with 4 months away from the weight room and proper speed and agility training. He better do a hell of a lot of push ups and crunches.

Yes, Tank Johnson has a history of legal trouble. But a few weapons possession charges are disturbing, but not as serious as a history of DUIs. And in one of the incidents, he was arrested after a night club valet informed the authorities that Tank had a handgun concealed in his glove compartment. This, to me is as troubling for the manner in which the crime was discovered as it is in the nature of the crime.

First of all, when did America's night club valets as a body become a sort of posse comitatus empowered to police American society? More importantly, why was the valet looking around under in patron's car? It seems to me that there is an implied trust in handing over your car to a parking attendant that should give you the right to throw a hellacious beating on said parking attendant if they invade your privacy. Those of you who read this space occasionally will know that I abhor violence, but even more than that, I hate people who mind my business and touch my stuff without permission.

Reading Jay Mariotti's diatribe in praise of Tank's incarceration got me more than a little bit upset. I hate Mariotti. He brings nothing more than bitter, small minded barbs to his column and television appearances. Worse than that, as a person who enjoys good writing (whether it's within my grasp is not for me to decide) and tries to be funny and at least occasionally fair and honest, he gets paid good money to write while I (and better men than I am) operate on the fringe of the writing business pro bono.

It's bad enough that Jay accuses Urlacher and Lovie Smith of rallying around Johnson to perpetuate the jockocracy. It is far worse that he uses these inelegant epithets to do it: "he of the mega-popular No. 54 jersey" and "he of the freshly minted contract and stoic manner." Homer wishes he could have come up with epithets like that on the poem-writing-est day of his life. Or he/she/it would have had Homer the person existed, instead of a name given to a multi-generational oral tradition.

And far be it for me to parse his words, since I'm sure as little thought went into their composition, but I think Jay meant the defense asked Lovie Smith to vouch for Tank, not vow for him (since I don't think you can vow for a person, place or thing in the King's English). And Tank isn't rehabilitated yet. The prison term and concomitant counseling are supposed to do that. Or didn't they teach that at Ohio University? But it's a grand job they do in the editing department of the Sun Times, or is Jay God on the throne over there and, as such, untouchable. At least I'm a one man show (not entirely, but my budget only covers a good friend who labels my posts and monitors my traffic patterns pro bono).

Also, it is somewhat irresponsible to commend the prosecution and the judge for their adroit handling of this case without providing examples of how these type of cases are handled when the defendant is just a man off the street with a public defender and not a professional athlete. Since I don't know, and don't have the time (and, to be perfectly frank, the inclination) I can only be so critical of Jay on this point.

What offends me most in this piece of poorly written drivel is this paragraph and the rehashing of a Super Bowl week column I already shredded that follows it:

Maybe Propes wouldn't have felt so wronged had she been standing beside me weeks earlier at Dolphin Stadium. On Media Day at the Super Bowl, Johnson was given a wonderful opportunity to show remorse, apologize and prove himself worthy of a court-arranged release from home confinement to make a business trip in Miami. Surrounded by cameras and reporters, all he had to say were the things he tried to convey Friday in the courtroom, that he never should have had guns in his house and that he has learned from his errors. Instead, Johnson went full-blown attitude on us, blaming his problems on racial stereotypes.

The fundamental dishonesty of that passage sickens me. Any reader even slightly familiar with Mariotti and his modus operandi could tell you, that criticism is a poorly veiled gambit (the chess move where a player entices his opponent into a trap by offering up a piece as sacrificial lamb in hopes of snaring a more powerful piece in return, not the tool from the X Men). This is a neat trick, and one which requires very little effort to churn out as many columns as the writer desires.

Since Tank did not avail himself of the opportunity to apologize at the media circus that is the Super Bowl, he does not show sufficient contrition to merit compassion. However, had Tank apologized, then Jay would have had the perfect opportunity to rail against another celebrity making an insincere, stage-managed apology to hoodwink a naive public into welcoming them back into the fold. Sometimes, I wish I were that kind of writer. I wonder, though, whether the financial remuneration would be adequate compensation for the permanent damage it would do it my soul.

Tank Johnson needs to understand that this is his last chance. The compassion people like me feel for him in the wake of his friend's tragic death will not last much longer if he keeps getting himself arrested. At a certain point, you cease no longer a decent guy in the wrong place at the wrong time and you become a blight on society. I hope Tank takes stock of his life and the chance he has to be a great defensive tackle in the greatest professional sport known to man.

I wish him well, and I think the overwhelming majority of Bears fans do too. For my part, it's not because he can rush the passer and stop the run. I like to see people get their lives together and succeed in spite of past mistakes. And I'd like to believe that most people feel that way too. I hope Tank can do it.

Well, the first weekend of the NCAA tournament is over. And the bracket challenge disaster I predicted in the last post of last week not only happened, but happened twice over. I know I shouldn't do it, after the last 15 years of doing it, but I choose teams based on hatred or lack thereof and it kicks my brackets ass all the time. I picked Texas Tach to go to the Elite Eight because I hate BC and Georgetown. I picked Notre Dame to go to the Final Four because I hate Florida, Wisconsin and Oregon. And now my bracket needs teams from the NBA to lose, three of the original cast of MASH to die and four or five country wonders to occur for me to win.

For the record, I didn't really think that ND could win. I thought they were the first team that had a snowball's chance in the infernal region of beating Florida that I didn't hate. And even then I didn't like that pick. I love ND as a football school, but I've never been a big fan of their basketball team. I don't know why. But I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Mike Bray looks like a bad lounge singer with the slicked back hair and the mock turtleneck with the blazer. I just can't get behind the lounge lizard coaching the team. But I picked them, and they killed me.

And all of that was before Texas lost. That was a defensible pick, though. With the best single player in the tournament and a point guard that could play, they had a chance to get hot. Unfortunately, they didn't. But I'm not at the point in my life where I'm willing to forsake my hatred for the sake of a NCAA tournament bracket sheet. I am a sad, small, bitter, bitter man, but I'm fine with it, which makes me a good person.

One of the surprising stories of the tournament so far was the lack of an upset in the 5-12 matchup. Personally, I think there was an upset. When the officials swallowed the whistle as Virginia Tech played what resembled rugby more than basketball, that was an upset. Illinois got jobbed, and America's least coherent and honest columnist took entirely too much satisfaction in the defeat of his new mortal enemy Bruce Weber. By the way, can an Illini team that didn't deserve to be there in the first place actually choke? These are questions that trouble responsible writers, but not Jay the total fraud.

To be fair, Illinois could have been more aggressive offensively down the stretch. I understand that there is a natural impulse to go to your strong suit when you need to close out a game. Illinois played good defense, so they tried to take the air out of the ball, milk the clock and hope the 13 point lead was sufficient. And maybe it was a good thing for Brian Randle that the final foul was ignored. If he missed two more freethrows that would have tied the game, I shudder to think what the poor kid would have done to himself or the community at large.

At some point, it is probably as effective to sprint down the court and fire up a bad shot as it is to walk the ball up, run 25 screens, rotate the ball from side to side for 34 seconds and then take a bad shot. If you aren't scoring, you aren't scoring. Might as well be interesting while you're doing it. As far as the 9 turnovers VT forced, Brian Urlacher doesn't hack half as much to force a fumble in the NFL (a contact sport, for the record) than the VT press did. That loser the Grizzly Man experienced less contact in being mauled to death by a grizzly bear than the Illinois guards did in bringing the ball up court.

I was rooting for Illinois. I thought they deserved to win. I wish the refs called fouls on some of the VT contact, but that's life. But it got me thinking about something. And the Southern Illinois game vs. Holy Cross got me thinking too. Based on the score, the Holy Cross game was closer than the Virginia Tech game. Now does that mean Holy Cross was a better team and could have beaten Virginia Tech? The obvious answer is, hell no.

However, Southern Illinois likes to play tight defense and make the most of their opportunities on offense. That's how Holy Cross likes to play, which led to the tight game. Virginia Tech didn't play that way, Southern Illinois stifled VT and crushed them handily. But on the Southern Illinois-HC game, it was clear as day that SIU was much, much, much more athletic than Holy Cross. If they ran, the cross between Tarantino, Boo Radley and the Missing Link would have been gasping for air and out of the game.

So my question is, is it better to stick to your style or adapt and exploit the opponent's weaknesses? I think it's better to adapt, but SIU could have easily adopted a run and gun approach, lost discipline and fallen apart. Plus the first two paragraphs of this post are all about what an idiot I am and the shambles that once was a proud bracket challenge entry. Take that with my record for picking games (I have to count the SIU-HC game as a loss, since I predicted a bigger victory and the humiliation of double zero, neither of which happened).

By the way, I found out that Danny Ainge's birthday is March 17. I would wish him many happy returns, but I hate him. But what kind of Mormon is born on the biggest drinking day of the year? You know there's no way the stars were smiling on him. That's why he's mad such a shambles of the Celtics. He was born unlucky.

PS - I may seem insensitive in ridiculing the Grizzly Man, but he got what he deserved. It may be bad karma, and tempting fate, but that's how I feel. If grizzly bears are going to maul me, they're going to have to come to my apartment and maul me here. I'm sure as hell not going to go out and hang out with apex predators like they were my buddies.

PPS - I appreciate the Anti-Jay people for reading me and commenting on these posts. But I must ask the question, what has Boise done to you? I've never been to Boise, and God willing, I never will. But I'm pretty sure that the good people of Boise don't deserve him. He needs to go. Chicago is the best city in the world not named Boston, and he is a blight on its landscape. How about banishing him to Siberia? Or a research station in the Antarctic? While we're dreaming, let's dream big.

Well, after the first day of the tournament, my bracket isn't quite the smoking ruin I feared it would be at this point. I lost a few games, but only one of my Elite Eight was eliminated. It served me right for picking Texas Tech, but what can I say? I like Bob Knight, and I'd rather have my bracket die than pick BC over any team of his.

Bob Ryan had a good piece on Knight in the Globe to get the readers ready for the BC-TT game. Every now and then he almost makes me forget that he called Antoine Walker a punk when Ainge traded him to Dallas. I like Bob Knight because he is honest. He might be a mean old man who doesn't waste his time working the media, but he says what he feels. That's why the media doesn't like him. Not because he threw chairs or choked a player, but because he doesn't make tearful apologies and he doesn't show any deference to the press.

I didn't have enough confidence in VCU to pick them over Duke in one of my brackets, and I'm too lazy to check the other right now. I was rooting for them big time, and I'm thrilled that they won. I hate Duke almost as much as I hate BC. Duke well may be the Harvard of the South, but what exactly does that mean? Do they play Dueling Banjos with a chamber orchestra?

I hate Duke basketball because they're frauds. Every Duke player flops with far too much frequency to suit me. They work the officials, they whine and that's not how the game is meant to be played. Just about every questionable call seems to go their way. Three quarters of the national media fawn over them. And the limited success enjoyed by Duke players on the next level goes to show that their skills don't translate to the pro game. The best NBA players from Duke are invariably the ones who leave early. Look at Elton Brand and Deng.

I get so sick of people praising Shane Battier. He's not a great defender. He is a master of clutching and grabbing and flopping. The US National team had no business taking him to the World Champions over Gilbert Arenas. But when you hear the national television commentators discuss him, you'd think he was one of the 50 greatest players of all time. He isn't even one of the 50 best players in the NBA right now.

But then, I have problems with the cottage industry of basketball experts. I haven't criticized Ric Bucher in a while, I've had other things on my mind. But last week, he said Shaq ranked below Kareem on the list of all time centers because Shaq played with superstars like Kobe and D Wade on his championship teams. This is an excellent point, because it is a little known fact that not only did Kareem never play so much as a second of basketball with another star on his team, but the NBA insisted that his teams always play with 4 players rather than the standard 5 because Kareem was so amazingly talented. Give me a break. Kareem played with Magic, Worthy and the Big O (the real Big O, not Glen Ordway). What are they? Chopped liver?

I should have more to say after the rest of the first round games are played. I have a bad feeling that something terrible is going to happen to my brackets this weekend. And by that I mean something worse than the death of an Elite Eight team on the first day.

We have a slight delay before we can get to the tool of note segment. Bill Simmons shamelessly picked Holy Cross to defeat Southern Illinois. Perhaps it comes from living under the blanket of smog which, according to Ray Bones in Get Shorty is the reason for the beautiful sunsets in LA. Or maybe it comes from attending a school starved for any athletic achievement since Tommy Heinshon tore it up on Mt. St. James back in the 1950s.

I have seen Southern Illinois play. And Holy Cross has more chance of winning the BCS national championship than they have of winning this game. Watching the Holy Cross game against Bucknell, I got a reasonable idea of the strengths and weaknesses of Tim Clifford. In my stream of consciousness post on Friday last, I described him as a cross between Quentin Tarantino, Boo Radley and the Missing Link. I stand by that. There is no way he can handle Randal Falker on the SIU front line.

Falker gave Patrick O'Bryant a tough time in last year's MVC Championship game. O'Bryant was a lottery pick in last season's NBA draft. Tim Clifford won't be a lottery pick, unless of course you mean the state lottery. Or Ainge is even worst than I think and overreacts when the Cs lose out in the lottery. And the idea that the RA can handle Jamaal Tatum is totally preposterous.

People can sell the MVC short all they want, and against the power conferences you might be right. But Holy Cross comes from the Patriot League. So Bucknell caught Kansas by surprise a couple of years ago, and statistically speaking the odds of lightning striking the same place twice are no worse than the odds of it striking at all. Nevertheless, if HC loses this game by less than 15, I will regard it as a minor miracle.

But enough about Holy Cross, it's time for the tool of the note. I hadn't really expected to do this, but this mess has gone on too long. I am sick to death of Lance Briggs. At first, I thought it was going to be a big loss for the Bears when he demanded to be traded or else. Now I'm not so sure.

First of all, how do you whine about $7.2 million for one year's work and expect the fans to sympathize with you? Maybe you would command a lot more guaranteed money on the open market, but most of the fans would play for the Bears for $7.20. And yes, you could get hurt and risk losing the $20 or $25 million in guaranteed money, but you could also slip in the shower or hurt yourself working out or fall on some ice while you're holding out.

I liked Lance Briggs before this situation developed. I was on his side as far as the franchise tag was concerned, but after he came out in the ESPN interview and started talking about taking out loans to sustain him through the holdout, I'm out. I'm sure Lance won't lose much sleep over losing my support. It is his right, and his choice, but there are a lot worse things than playing out a season on a one year deal worth the average of the top five salaries at your position.

Yes, he led the Bears in solo tackles this past season and went to his second consecutive Pro Bowl. But none of that justifies the massive ego he shows the world on his website and in his recent interviews. The highlight montage is depressingly narcissistic. And ordinarily I don't have a problem with massive egos (just look at my continual defense of Terrell Owens). But I usually like to see a little bit more to justify that ego than what Lance Briggs has turned in to date.

His numbers are good, but I can't remember a single defining postseason moment, and I watched every minute of the Bears loss to Carolina last year and the Super Bowl run this year. Terrell Owens, whose massive ego is undeniable and whom I have defended so often that a friend joked that I would probably defend him even if he came to the door and kicked me in the groin, has two major defining postseason moments. First, there is the huge TD catch that beat the Packers when he was with the 49ers (which also redeemed him from several big drops that day). The other is the day he totally outplayed Super Bowl MVP Deion Branch when Philly lost to NE.

I think the real villain in the Lance Briggs saga is his agent and well known archtool, Drew Rosenhaus. For the record, I am aware that Rosenhaus is also TO's agent, and Rosenhaus has an extremely well-publicized record of getting big deals for his clients through (or in spite of) this type of saber rattling. It's just that I find myself wondering whether he could get his clients good contracts without getting his face on TV so often.

And in the interest of fairness, I had to go to TO's website. I know those of you who read this probably won't believe this, but it's my first visit. I have to say, as much as I love to watch him play football, TO sucks as a rapper. But then, I'm not the best judge of music. I think it might be good thing that BIG and Tupac died young. Make no mistake, the manner in which they departed was deplorable, and I do not condone violence in any way, shape or form. I just think that people who look at what might have been and say why not (with apologies to the late Robert Kennedy) are a little bit optimistic for my taste.

Listen to any track off The Chronic (especially Deep Cover, my personal favorite) and tell me it doesn't kick ass on Dre's later work. And can you tell me that asking a little mama to show you what she's got in ever so slightly different ways over and over is an artistic achievement on par with Hard Knock Life, but I must thank Shawn Carter for not murdering everything moving since his subsequent material (only part of his situation) did not improve on that particular track. Very, very, very few people keep getting better with age in any profession.

The list of people who lose whatever fleeting, ephemeral quality that makes them phenomena is a mile long. Dennis Leary was the first to bring this trend to my attention in No Cure For Cancer, and it applies to him too. What has he done that was as funny (but he does great things for fallen firefighters and their families)?
But I digress. After all, no one comes to Sedition in Red Sox Nation for their perspective on the history of hip hop, or at least I hope they read me for other reasons like my gentle sarcasm and kind words for tools.

PS - In case you care, my response to the Owens kicking me in the groin joke was that I would, and I'd assume I had done something to deserve it. Unfortunately, I can't promise that I would be as eloquent as George C. Scott in Man Getting Hit By Football from one of the all time great Simpsons episodes. And I'm sorry if I misspelled the name of Torey Thomas (HC point guard and RA) in last Friday's post. I would wish I had a better excuse than laziness if it were more important to me that I knew his name in the first place.

It's been a little while now since I last posted on a baseball related topic. Like virtually every other sports fan in America, I have been devoting most of my attention to college basketball of late. For instance, I filled out my second bracket sheet today on boston.com. I hadn't intended to enter their bracket challenge until I saw that I could compete against Brian Scalabrine. The way I see it, between my total lack of athletic ability and Dann Ainge's penchant for brain typing, if I beat Scalabrine in this competition, I should get a million dollar deal with the Cs.

I simply could not let this article in the New York Times pass by without comment. Because Philadelphia fans booed Mike Schmidt and Yankee fans boo ARod, the two situations must be somehow related. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will already know that Mike Schmidt was my favorite player as a kid. I even wrote a post using him as a foil when I addressed the revisionist claim that Jim Rice was the most feared hitter in baseball when he was in his prime. Thanks to the magic of labelled posts, you can navigate to it with relative ease by clicking the Mike Schmidt label in the right hand column.

Mike Schmidt and Alex Rodriguez are not as similar as a comparison of their career numbers would lead one to believe. A Rod broke in at a younger age, 19 as opposed to 22 for Schmidt, so he has much better numbers at age 30 than Schmidt did. But Mike Schmidt played in an era with fewer teams. He also played his entire career in the National League. Even though they're both third basemen, it's still relevant because NL lineups all have that glaring hole in the 9 spot because the pitcher bats. For a guy like Schmidt that had to be cost him 5-10 RBI over a full season.

Schmidt also played in an era of massive ball parks that were nowhere near as conducive to great power numbers as the stadiums of this generation. Think about The Vet, Riverfront in Cincinnati, The Astrodome, Three Rivers, Old Busch Stadium (when it was the ghastly monstrosity with astroturf in the 1980s before the renovation in the 90s) and Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta to name a few. And even without steroids, HGH or any of the rest of the illicit performance enhancing substances we suspect today's power hitters to have used at some point (if they aren't still cheating on the sly), current players have a massive advantage over their predecessors of even 20 years ago because of the advances in nutrition and strength and conditioning programs.

But A Rod and Mike Schmidt are different in more ways than just numbers. A Rod has better postseason stats than Schmidt, but Schmidt was World Series MVP and champion in 1980. And Schmidt's surprising low postseason stats (.236 with 4 HR and 16 RBI in 36 games) are in large part due to a disastrous World Series in 1983 (1 for 20 over five games, .050 average with no walks, no RBI and six strikeouts). But even the Mariner teams A Rod took to the playoffs had better lineups than the Phillies teams of the 70s and 80s. It seems impossible to believe, but Mike Schmidt hit 48 HR for the eventual World Series Champions in 1980. The other seven regular position players combined to hit 58 home runs.

Mike Schmidt's relationship with the fans and media weren't perfect because Philly is Thunderdome. A Rod's trouble in New York is largely his own fault. I don't blame Yankee fans for disliking him. To come out and suggest that his difficulties in connecting to the fans were the result of being good looking, rich and biracial is absolutely insane. After all, what is Jeter? He is all of those things, plus he comes up big in big moments and he bust his ass every game.

I've heard more than a few people say that Red will be looking down on the Cs and working the lottery in their favor. I don't believe that for a second. Karma hasn't deserted the Celtics. Karma beat the Celtics half to death and left the team bleeding in a ditch. If you don't believe me, consider this. The Celtics lost to the Bulls tonight in the United Center. When the Bulls wore GREEN jerseys. I don't give a damn if it is the only home game of St Patrick's Day week. You simply don't wear green against the Cs.

Can you imagine wearing green jerseys against the Celtics with Russell, Heinshon, Cousy, Hondo, Cowens, Bird, DJ, Parrish or McHale on the floor? When the Cs lose out in the lottery, and I'm predicting now that even if they had all but 3 ping pong balls in the draft, the universe would find a way to stick them with that 4th pick. So Celtics fans might want to brace themselves for Joakim Noah or Big Baby Davis. When they miss out on Oden/Durant they're going to take one or the other of last year's models. And next year, we'll see Pagliuca come out and say: "If Delonte becomes Bibby and Al Jefferson becomes Karl Malone, I'd say Danny has done pretty well." And who knows, maybe I won't be the only one who finds that preposterous.

At least Wyc has his red Ferrari with the Celtics plate to console him as Banner 17 runs the last vestiges of Celtics pride into the ground. Either he thinks he's Magnum, or he's overcompensating for something. But it doesn't change the fact that the team has gotten worse and not better since Banner 17 took the reins. And Tyrus Thomas wearing a green jersey had a career night against the Boston Celtics.

And congratulations to all the pundits who lamented the fact that Drexel were not granted an at-large bid in the NCAA tournament. They did one hell of a lot of damage in the the NIT. They really made the committee look foolish.

There is nothing short of personal tragedy or getting puddled like a day of watching ESPN and looking for sports stories on the web to turn a good mood into a bad mood quickly. I was happy, or at least as happy as I get when nothing bad has happened to a person I dislike, when I woke up. I am not happy now. But I guess I get what I deserve, in the end, because no one made me watch ESPN or surf the web.

Against my better judgement, I made my way over to the Chicago Sun Times site. Sometimes it pays to keep an eye on what the enemy is doing. Today, one of our favorite bullies has finally found a nice easy target for his aggressions. Finding Ozzie Guillen, Jerry Reinsdorff and even Hawk Harrelson too difficult to push around and being disappointed in his efforts to convince any responsible authorities to fight his battles for him, Jay Mariotti has taken it upon himself to crush the single greatest threat to American sports currently working in Illinois, U of I basketball coach Bruce Weber.

I am tired of the media criticising certain coaches for succeeding with a group of players recruited by his predecessor. Whatever merit the charge may possess is undercut by the selectivity with which reporters use it. I said it this fall when a piece on Page 2 knocked Charlie Weis for taking a team recruited by Ty Willingham to a BCS bowl. I found it all too convenient that the piece failed to mention that Willingham had his best season in South Bend in his first year, with players recruited by Bob Davie. Also, not enough was made of the fact that 22 of the 24 starters on Florida's national championship team were recruited by Ron Zook.

Bruce Weber should be able to draw the best of the best recruits to Champaign. What with the beautiful beaches, perfect climate, vibrant night life and proximity to major cities (Indianapolis is only 120 miles away), it might as well be paradise on Earth. Who doesn't want to live in East Central Illinois? The Orange Crush provides a great home court advantage, but the facilities aren't overwhelmingly better than any of their chief competitors. And while the school has a nice tradition, it doesn't have the basketball pedigree of an Indiana, Kansas or Kentucky (or even Ohio State or Michigan, for that matter). So why is Illinois supposed to surpass the rest of the Big 10?

In the end, if Jay were honest (and that is a monumental if), he'd tell you why Bruce Weber deserves to be picked on by this particular knight of the keyboard. Quite simply, Bruce Weber is a nice, mild-mannered quiet guy. He won't fight back the way Ozzie Guillen did. After all, what fun is there in bullying a person who will stand up to you? Especially when Bud Selig won't step in and fight for the noble newspaper man against the big bad Venezuelan.

The attack on Weber and the Illini is not surprising. Any one who read this piece, written just two days before the attack on Weber, would wonder what happened in the meantime if they didn't know Mariotti. Only he could pronounce a team in the tournament then shred them so viciously when the team hadn't played another game.

Emerson once said that foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of little minds. Of course there's no guarantee that he had ever met a mind as little as Mariotti's when he said that. I doubt that even Emerson would see a mind large enough to harbor a hobgoblin should he ever meet Jay the Joke through the miracle of time travel. Even the CHB would have had more shame than to drop that once, twice, three times a lady reference from the second piece linked above.

The other story that has me steamed is this one. Apparently, Terrell Owens did not know his playbook. As his last defender, I spend entirely too much of my time responding to stories like this. But I still do it.

Covering football isn't exactly breaking the Watergate story. So whenever I see a piece like this, I don't take it too seriously. An investigative journalist needs to protect his or her sources because these are often matters of life and death. A sports columnist protects his sources so he can get better quotes. Not naming a source makes me think that the player who said TO didn't know the playbook had a particular axe to grind with TO.

Now it could be that the axe is resentment against TO for all the drops. Or it could be a little bit of jealousy. Say you were a wide receiver on the Cowboys who had once been an NFL number one pick, but you hadn't lived up to that potential since your rookie season. Imagine then, that you had little to fall back on after football, since you attended a school notorious for allowing athletes to coast through an academic program that was something short of rigorous.

On top of that, a much more talented receiver with a lot of negative image issues came to town and stole your thunder. Would that make you angry enough to whisper a comment or two to a reporter, knowing that just about every person who knows anything about football will believe the worst about that particular player? It's the preferred weapon of the high school gossip, and just maybe a certain product of the Ohio State University.

I simply can't see how TO could have ended up with 85 catches and 13 TDs in a season if he didn't know at least some of the plays. After all the drama with Jeff Garcia, Greg Knapp, Donovan McNabb, Brad Childress and Andy Reid, almost every fan is automatically going to believe the worst of TO. If some story emerged from Dallas that had TO entering hospitals in the dead of night and juggling newborn babies while the staff looked on in horror, I think people would believe it.

Just once, I'd like to see TO help himself (and me) out by going one week without becoming national news. I don't think it's going to happen, but I can hope.

There is a massive event about to take place, one so large that it will consume the attention of the American people for the rest of this month. And believe it or not, it's not the release of the Mark Wahlberg opus Shooter on March 23. It is the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship.

As you may have noticed if you read this space once in a while, I like to predict the outcome of games. You may have noticed that I am wrong frequently and spectacularly. But those of you who think that I would be humbled by the wildly inaccurate Bears by two touchdowns Super Bowl pick and I would retire from the prognostication business are only half right.

I like Kansas to win it all. I think they have more depth in more positions than any other team in the field. If a team can find a way to contain Durant (extremely unlikely, but possible) or better yet shut down Augustin, Texas is eminently beatable. Throw Oden and Conley in for those two and the same goes for Ohio State. If UCLA were really ready for prime time, they wouldn't have stumbled so visibly against markedly inferior teams in Washington and Cal.

Florida is still out there, and they're still the champs. But I don't like them this season. They haven't been as hungry this year. I don't like the SEC (maybe you ought to pick them, since I said the same thing about SEC football before the BCS championship game). They did demolish Ohio State, but that was a very long time ago now, and Oden was just coming back from his injury. But I think it all comes down to the fact that Joakim Noah is almost, except for the height difference, a perfect doppelganger to a woman with whom I went to school.

I hate Bo Ryan and Wisconsin, so I can't rationally evaluate their chances, but if I could I think I'd short sell them. Memphis hasn't played any one. And I'm not crazy about NC. They seem to be able to do as many different things on the floor as Kansas does, but not quite as well. As for Georgetown, I can't get past the history of underperforming in the tourney under John Thompson Jr.

Obviously, with 65 teams and my chronic laziness, I can't break down every team in the field. I'll just say this about why I think Kansas wins. In the film The Ghost and the Darkness, Michael Douglas' character says that in prize fighting, every one has a plan until they get hit. The two recent wins against Texas show that Kansas can take a hit and come back hard. They can survive incredible runs by the best player in the game. They don't lose their cool, they don't try to get the game back in one possession. That's why I think they'll win it all.

I was surprised that Syracuse was not included, with the 22 wins over all and 10 in conference. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that Jim Boeheim spoke out in favor of expanding the field. The coach from Clemson was also in favor of the proposal, and they didn't make the cut. Having said that though, I had enough of Boeheim whining today. And Dickie V could have cut his rant on Drexel down to about 20 minutes.

I was surprised that Illinois and Arkansas were seeded. Illinois had a decent record in the Big 10, and they're one of the few teams I don't hate. But they lost to Ohio State and Wisconsin. Purdue blew them out, and to face facts, the Illini are lucky to score 50 points most days. I noticed a commercial during the Illinois-Wisconsin game that one of the fans featured in the CBS or CSTV "Fan's Journey" segments they're going to broadcast during the tournament coverage that one of the people involved is an Illinois fan. I really hope that the Illini are bringing more to the table than that. But we'll see.

As for Arkansas, they were below .500 in the SEC. I really think the SEC is overrated. Florida has had an excellent season, and they're the defending champs. But LSU fell of the map this season. Alabama was a disappointment. I hate Bruce Pearl, and Tennessee isn't going to do much damage in the tournament. Kentucky seems to want to get Tubby Smith fired. But I should stop ripping on the SEC before they put three teams in the Final Four.

I should say this right now. I have never won a bracket challenge. Every year I fill a sheet, and every year my brackets look like they got hit by the Andromeda Strain by the end of the first weekend. I try to pick based on rational analysis of the teams and their strengths and weaknesses. But I am a bitter, bitter man. So I usually end up taking the teams I hate (and there are so many - Duke, BC, Wisconsin, UCLA are only a few of them) and finding the first matchup I can foresee them losing and I go with it.

But as I thought about the years of embarrassing futility and my spectacularly bad history of picking games in any sport over the last 11 months of blogging, I had an idea. I want to know how many of my readers are smarter, or at least more rational, than I am. So I set up a group on CBS Sportsline so that you all can compete against me.

This link should take you to the site. My entry is the Lancey Howard Bracket, so you can see it before it becomes a smoking ruin by this time next week. If you want in, make sure you sign up by Wednesday. The password is s3dition. Only one entry is allowed per contestant, because it is not cool to submit multiple entries to the same pool. Either you like your picks or you don't. Feel free to ask your friends to enter, provided you have friends. I look forward to the competition and to defeating all comers.

Why are Bucknell and Holy Cross playing for an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament? These teams are horrible. I've watched better high school teams. I think Holy Cross combs the refuse of the worst parties in the known universe (on Caro St.) to get players 4-12 for every game. And somehow Bucknell is worse. I hate to break this to HC fans, but if Keith Simmons were any good (as opposed to the best player in the Patriot League and future third best player in the suburban Boston over-40 They Call Me Rubberneck League), he'd be playing in a better conference, like the MAAC or the NESCAC.

Meanwhile, Bucknell started a guard who cultivated an Ed Grimley look. I don't know if he lost a bet, but I hope to God that he isn't doing this because he thinks it's a good look. It tells you something about the quality of the team involved that the announcers just wondered how you get the vernacular pronunciation out of Worcester. And one of them just said "Pahk the cah in the pahking lot." Good. Make light of the accent, jackass. It's not my fault the game sucks and the teams suck. Drop dead.

If you haven't had a chance to watch any of this game, the paint is currently being dominated by a guy who looks like a cross between Mungo from Blazing Saddles and the Golem of Prague with as little athletic ability as you could imagine a college basketball player possessing. He flows to the ball like Randy from My Name is Earl doing the robot while Mr. Roboto plays in the strobe-lit room, only in real time and under normal lighting conditions. I'm only exaggerating slightly when I say that 00 for Holy Cross looks like a cross between Quentin Tarantino, Boo Radley and the Missing Link.

Then there is the festival of uggos that these schools parade out as cheerleaders. I think my watch stopped when ESPN2 showed the Bucknell group. I understand that these schools aren't drawing from the same talent pool that a USC or Florida has available, but even still...yikes. I wouldn't want to run into them in a dark alley. To say nothing of the line of but-her-faces in belly shirts with "Beat Bucknell" spelled across their beer guts.

I'm guessing at least one of these girls will be rejected with the six simple words: "I'm not gay, but I'll learn" at some point in her life. With apologies to Sir John Gielgud, the butler from Arthur, but you'd think you'd have to frequent bowling alleys to meet women of the same quality as the type haunting the Hart Center tonight. I almost feel sorry for the third-tier Congressmen who will make these young ladies their third-rate mistresses in the next decade.

Holy Cross point guard Torry Thomas is a resident advisor on his floor. Can you imagine Magic Johnson, Oscar Robinson, Pete Maravich, Larry Bird or any legitimately great college basketball player being an RA? Maybe I'm biased because my college RAs included a girl so nice that her administration was ironically referred to as a reign of terror (what can I say? I rolled with a dangerous crowd), a hippie that was one more story about Phish tour away from a grim death, an Asian girl who was afraid of her own shadow and the girl who is forever remembered as the woman who dated Bed Head, whose nickname ought to be self-explanatory. I don't know how I ended up with so many female RAs, maybe the school figured I was less likely to burn the dorm down that way.

I have to sign off here, as the announcer just informed me that a rebound was manly. If I hear Linda Cohn ask if Bob Knight is as talkative as he was last night in her best coy manner one more time I am going to storm the set in Bristol like Maximus busting out of the tunnel in the Spanish arena. Instead of shouting "Are you not entertained," I'll be shouting "You're With Me, Leather."

Before I go, I have this to say to the Bucknell coach: "I'm not buying any goddamn Bushmills I don't need Flannery." I'm sorry, but the guy looks like he was scared out of his wits one day and never quite recovered. By the way, that is a quote from State of Grace, a movie every man in America should see, especially with St. Pat's coming in a week and a day.

Ladies and gentlemen, I didn't realise until a moment ago that this is the 100th post in the history of Sedition in Red Sox Nation. I was hoping that some interesting would emerge from spring training in Fort Myers, but no such luck. I don't want to be the guy who writes about split squad games until people want to track him down and beat him with a bag full of oranges because of the citrus metaphors in the column.

Thankfully, there have been a few moves of note in the NFL free agency period. I'm not sure how the Joey Porter signing will work for the Dolphins. Based on his past performance, the amount of money involved and his age, this will either be a huge coup or a catastrophic mistake.

Personally, I think it's not going to work. I don't like the idea of switching Jason Taylor from defensive end in the 4-3 to OLB in the new 3-4 scheme. Then there is the performance history of linebackers who have left the Steelers. For every Mike Vrabel there is a Kevin Greene, Chad Brown, Greg Lloyd or Jason Gildon who did not live up to their past performance when they signed the big free agent contract.

Then there is Rich McKay, Atlanta Falcons GM and the man who frantically searches the main streets and back roads of Tampa for the mojo he left behind when he came over from the Bucs. I think it was his signing of Joe Horn that made the Bears panic and deal Thomas Jones. Pairing Ron Mexico with a 35 year old wide receiver makes the Falcons the prohibitive favorites in the NFC next season.

If I were smarter, I wouldn't do this. Joe Horn is overrated. He has done excellent things, as the face of the Saints in their year in exile and in the triumphant return this season. Unfortunately, the NFL is a business where an aging, but media savvy player is a luxury few teams can afford at the rate of $3.3 million per year. I don't think this was as personal a matter as Horn has claimed. It seems like a wise business decision to cut him.

Looking at his career statistics, Joe Horn is a particularly expensive commodity at $3.3 million. He played only 10 games last season, and caught 37 passes. In 2005, Horn caught 49 passes over 13 games. On average, he's caught about 50 passes and 5 TDs a season over his 11 year career. That really isn't #1 receiver production, in spite of his pay. Horn's best season as a pro came back in 2004 (94 catches, 11 TDs), but he's coming back from a serious groin injury and he's 35.

When it comes to pro athletes advancing in years, I tend to think along the same lines as Marsellus Wallace (the Ving Rhames character from Pulp Fiction). Athletes do not age like wine, in the sense that they improve with age. Athletes age like wine in the sense that they grow bitter and turn into vinegar. At age 35, a wide receiver is more like champale than Dom Perignon. Yeah, Jerry Rice played into his 40s, but if you're honest with yourself, you'll admit that he was just a shadow of his former self.

In spite of all of this, and the fact that Ron Mexico seems to continually regress rather than progress personally and professionally, we are expected to take the Falcons seriously as contenders? At the risk of using the editorial we, let me just say...we are not amused. Horn may solidify a shaky receiving corps, provided that he's healthy enough to stay on the field and contribute, or he may not. But the Falcons still cannot protect the passer very well, and their defense has holes galore. So I will short the Falcons until they prove me wrong.

For those of you who are new to this blog, you might not know it, but I spent much of the last season navigating the trials and tribulations of the Bears bandwagon as though I were the Ringo Kid from the John Ford classic Stagecoach. During that process, I became emotionally invested in the team. Even though this offseason has been a nightmare so far, I am not ready to give up on the Bears for next season.

I have tried not to let the Thomas Jones trade bother me too terribly. Make no mistake about it, I am sorry to see him go. I like him as a running back, and he's a proven commodity. But the team put a lot of money and a high draft pick into the development of Cedric Benson, and that was never going to come to fruition with Thomas Jones on the team.

One of my problems is that I am a football fan with a very long memory. I can remember the 1999 NFL draft. The Arizona Cardinals drafted a running back from Virginia with the 7th pick of the 1st round. He didn't develop into the player they had hoped he would, so the team traded him to Tampa Bay for Marquise Walker. Even though providing the link in this paragraph kills what little drama was building, I'll pretend it's still a surprising revelation. That running back was the same Thomas Jones.

That paragraph points to two possible interpretations. First, the Cardinals and the Bucs regret letting Jones go, so will the Bears. That is the line this blogger takes. The other, the Cardinals made a mistake choosing an older back of a younger one (they signed Emmet Smith before they dealt Jones) who had shown promise but not produced to the desired extent. That's the way feel about this situation.

Running backs in the NFL burn out at a younger age than other athletes, except for boxers (maybe). Most running backs hit 30 and fall off a cliff. Thomas Jones might be one of the rare exceptions, but then again he might not. It makes more sense to go with the younger back with fewer miles on him than it does to give Jones a long term extension. With no long term deal, Jones would be leaving town as soon as his deal ends. It makes sense to get what you can for him before he's gone.

And then there's the fact that I know several of the other owners in my fantasy league read this blog. And they know I know this. And I know they know I know this. So there's a chance that I could be talking Benson up so that they fall all over themselves to draft him early, thus allowing me to swoop in and draft some other player they should be looking at.