It was awfully big of the people responsible for Adult Swim to apologize for their amazingly insensitive publicity stunt before their lineup of animated programming went on the air this evening. For the life of me, I cannot imagine why people would be sensitive to suspicious packages and officials would not have a sense of humor about a gimmick like this is the post 9-11 world. More importantly, however, I still wait for the people at Adult Swim to apologize to me for their generally terrible programming.

Between Assy McGee, Squidbillies, Morel Orel, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (which is now a pale shadow of what it was when it was a pale shadow of its former glory) and the hit or miss Robot Chicken, it's getting very hard for a moderately intelligent well-adjusted grown man to watch a night of animated programs each week. If it weren't for the Venture Brothers, I'd flag animated programming altogether.

But on the off chance that the boys at Williams Street are included in the 14 or so masochists that find their way to this little waste of time, remember this: satire is no longer satire when it's not funny. Once the laughter is gone, you're left with a half hour of claptrap indulging the impulse to be a douche to every one who bullied you or simply didn't get you in high school. And maybe, just maybe, if the shows were a bit better, a major city would not have to be paralyzed in a childish effort to generate buzz for said programming.

You might be wondering at this point where this relates to any of the sports topics I tend to pursue in this space. After long absence, America's moral compass is back. Too often we lose sight of things in this country, and we need to be awakened to the shocking, agonizing, crippling injustice that is the Tank Johnson saga. Instead of being deported (despite being an American citizen) or broken on the rack or put in the stocks in the public square or forced to wear a scarlet handgun on his jersey, the Bears defensive tackle will play in Sunday's Super Bowl.

It takes the acid keyboard of a writer like Jay Mariotti to punish Tank Johnson for his transgressions. Jay Mariotti doesn't like the fact that Tank Johnson thinks his many critics (overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, of the middle-aged, Caucasian variety) might be racist. How dare he talk about race. After all, since when did that become the prerogative of an African American? With keen insight and bizarrely insensitive hypersensitivity, perhaps Mariotti could be a party standard bearer in 2008.

Among Tank's many sins: he mentioned race (I loathe the expression race card and avoid it where possible), he had 10 unregistered firearms in his house where he also had two daughters and he did not avail himself of "a chance to paint a remorseful self-portrait on a global stage." It's quite convenient to attack a guy for not busting out the tearful apology when the journalist in question would rip into him in equal measure had Tank come out with the remorseful self-portrait.

Even before Mariotti's piece, I thought Tank had every right to play in the Super Bowl. It's not because I am rooting for the Bears (even though I am, as the guy who kept the bandwagon rolling through some rough patches earlier in the year). Yes, he was arrested for the unregistered guns in his home and if he were Terry Johnson, defendant instead of Tank Johnson, defensive lineman, he wouldn't be allowed to leave the state. However, the system favors the wealthy and influential and this isn't the case that's going to restore liberty, equality and fraternity to human affairs. On top of that, not only did the judge approve, but the prosecutor raised no objections. What more do the guardians of all we hold sacred in the media need?

What would Mariotti have written or said had those guns actually been used in the commission of a crime. I imagine Jay would have found his backbone and been the first to volunteer to serve as executioner in a scene reminiscent of the killing of William Wallace in Braveheart. For the record, I don't know if one can deprive Tank of his life but not his freedom and I'm not comparing him to William Wallace. All I'm saying is that had Tank so much as fired one of these unregistered firearms and been caught in the act, the same people who are incensed that the guy is playing in the Super Bowl would probably demand that the authorities hang, draw and quarter this menace to society.

In addition to disagreeing with Mariotti's opinion on Tank Johnson's lack of contrition and status for Sunday's game, I find it shockingly reprehensible that Jay should criticize a black man for "playing the race card." It's almost as though some other Jay Mariotti wrote this piece a scant four days ago to exult in the first Super Bowl teams coached by African Americans. Why did no one bother to alert me that race could only be discussed by Mariotti in Mariotti-approved contexts? It would have made things ever so simple. I needn't think for myself at all any more.

It is an excellent thing that Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy have led teams to the Super Bowl. And I realize that it is a hard thing indeed to have to justify one's trip to Miami on an employer's dime with a daily column. Poor Jay, having to tear himself from fun in the sun, and having to work around Around the Horn's schedule to boot. It's too much to expect that hypocrisy, coin of the realm in Jay world, not rule the day.

But back to the original point (such as it was). Jay Mariotti is an unprincipled bully. I sincerely doubt that he honestly cares one way or another about the future of Tank Johnson, beyond his existence as fodder for a quick column. But it's a chance to lash out at a bigger, faster, stronger man who in the ordinary run of things could crush the average sports columnist like a bug. So for every bigger, faster, stronger kid that didn't tremble in his den at Jay's approach, now it's Tank Johnson's turn to feel his wrath. Take a run at Tank if you must, but at least leave a portion of the righteous indignation at home until there is a real crime to condemn.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the most wonderful time of the year is upon us again. And it's not the Super Bowl, even though it is the world's biggest sporting event. Of far more importance is the Winter X Games. These last ten years have been the best in recorded human history because snowboarders and extreme skiers have joined skateboarders and BMX bikers as our greatest athletes. For too long, football players and baseball players and basketball players have been celebrated at the expense of our true sports heroes.

After all, what courage does it require to go deep over the middle or carry the ball into the middle of the defensive line? It is far more impressive to ride a street luge or take on a half pipe. And for my money, once you throw sno and ice into the mix you truly have an appropriate test of one's mettle. After all, for those of you young enough to be in Gen X, think back to your high school days. Outside of the roving gang of lacrosse players, who was tougher than the skater posse. Hell any group of four of them could throw one amazing beating on the average band geek. Just because they weren't very impressive one on one didn't mean they weren't tough.

The best thing about this Winter X games is that the favorites didn't sweep the awards. As some ESPN commentator whose name wasn't worth noting as I've never seen him before just told us, it's time to turn off our brainwashers, because Shawn White isn't as dominant as we'd been led to believe. And like that, my world view shattered.

How right said commentator was, for the wrong reasons. The Flying Tomato is a tool. The energy drink consuming, teen angst music devouring perpetual teenager who makes up the core constituency for snowboarding/skateboaring events is not a cultural arbiter. Mr. White is only a cultural icon because our nation of sports fans have the attention span of goldfish and were swept away by the novelty of these insipid events in the recent Winter Olympics. In about ten years, the NFL will still be king, and the X games will have peaked. I look forward to their demise.

From time to time, when my frustration with the developments in the sports world pushes me, I like to dig up some quote from one of my favoirte authors to amplify my point. Tonight, I go to Joseph Heller, who said this in Catch 22: "Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies all they signified was the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else." To me that sums up the X games, winter and summer, perfectly.

It is not my intention to start an epistemological argument that will finally prove or disprove the inherent value of any sport, or sport in general. But football, baseball, basketball and hockey all have defined objectives, specific purposes that are achieved for all to see by the players on the field. Yes, there is replay in a number of sports to see whether a particular play should stand or be overturned. But there isn't some judge sitting somewhere watching and scoring to see whether or not a trick deserves what points to what decimal degree.

But Heller's words ring true, nonetheless. Thomas Jones running the Power O behind Ruben Brown might not end man's inhumanity to man, but it has a comforting feeling of tradition. But there is a certain desperate effort to find a new attention grabbing pastime inherent in hoping the Flying Tomato or the Archtool or Aquaman lands the frontside fakie 1080 cleanly in the super pipe. When we watch baseball we know a base hit is a base hit, when we watch basketball we know a dunk is a dunk, but at what point does air transcend its mortal self and become big air?

Thankfully, I do not know the answer to that question. The sentence about the fakie 1080 is entirely too close to the lingua franca of the snowboarder for my taste. I wouldn't exactly say I missed the WInter X games this year. Betwen channel surfing, features on Sportscenter and the crippling lack of programming to fill the void left by the NFL's bye week I caught about 20 minutes of snowboarding and extreme skiing and commentary. I think I am the worse for it. I wish it would go away. But tools seem to like it, and programers and sponsors seem to like tools. To update the old saying, the tool and his money are, apparently, soon parted.

But back to Heller, Roger Federer won yet another tennis tournament. I guess I should point out that it was not just another tournament, but the Australian Open. But anyway, Federer can win the next 20 Grand Slams (or every one until the Sun burns out, for that matter). It won't change the fact that men's tennis is a dead genre. There really hasn't been a compelling personality since McEnroe walked the Earth. Women's tennis will be with us always, because so many of us (myself included) are shallow, pathetic, emotionally stunted shildren masquerading as grown men. We like to see tall, leggy, athletic young women in tastefully short garments play a game of grace mixed with power. But men's tennis is beat.

Up until now, I haven't written much about NASCAR. But with the added attention given to the NASCAR offseason because Toyota is coming to the circuit and every body in motor sports seems to be in a panic and the sport's growing popularity, I figured I'd say something about it. Don't worry, though, this isn't a shameless attempt to generate more readership for this site. I think the rest of the post will bear that out.

I am glad Toyota is coming to NASCAR. I am not very interested in globalization or the diversification of the whitest sport on the planet. Those are issues for people who are less self-involved than I. I am hoping that Toyota will bring the same magic to the NASCAR circuit that it's brought to the other racing formats it has entered in the past.

A lot of attention was paid to the owner of the Rousch Racing team whining about what Toyota might do to the current paradise on Earth that is the NASCAR circuit. Apparently, Toyota frightens NASCAR fans who feel that the corporation has had a history of entering a racing circuit and outspending the competition until they dominate, then leaving the circuit high and dry.

Could you imagine a world where NASCAR is dominated by Toyota in five years, then in ten years it's a ghost town like Tombstone (minus the colorful characters and valuable icons like Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp)? That is easily the worst thing that could happen to American professional sports. NASCAR is more than a professional sport. It is a public trust and must be protected.

I wake at night in a cold sweat thinking Dale Jr. might leave DEI. I am delighted that a racing league calling itself the National Association of Stock Car Racing no longer drives stock cars in the original sense of the term. I think Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart are probably our two best athletes. After all, sitting in a chair and banking left from time to time is much harder than rushing off the edge like Dwight Freeny, going across the middle like TO or taking it to the hole like King James.

As, I hope, you have inferred from my tone, the preceding paragraphs have been sarcastic. I hope Toyota does come in and spend NASCAR into oblivion. If the circuit lies in ruins in ten years, I won't shed a tear. If Jimmie Johnson should fall off the roof of a moving golf cart ten years hence with NASCAR exploited and left for dead by Toyota, would any one hear?

America's ever-increasing obsession with NASCAR is just one of the things that continually amaze me. Car racing is boring to me. They could drive 200 mph, 300 mph or the speed of light (if the physics of light speed had been worked out) around the track and I still wouldn't care. I am not ghoulish enough to look forward to crashes. And where is the surprise? Maybe if there were a little more to this racing thing than following one defined course with four left banks, I would want to watch.

I know that there is a strategy to NASCAR racing. Making pit stops, managing fuel consumption, whether to pass high or low, bump drafting and all the rest require conscious and rational thought. So does cricket. And I'm sure advocates of lawn darts or horseshoes could make the same claim. It just doesn't do it for me.

What's worse is that I can't see why now of all times it should become more popular. I think, in part, it has to do with the demise of boxing and hockey as major television sports. Golf hasn't quite grabbed the spotlight as well as NASCAR because golf is boring as a spectator sport and whispering announcers waxing poetic don't enhance the experience. Baseball and basketball are slowly strangling themselves by mismanaging their labor pools and constructing crushingly counter-intuitive economic structures (every team eventually suffers when only 6 or 7 teams are any good).

If we are that bored as a society,maybe people should look into reading, or writing half-assed blogs when they can't sleep or are intoxicated. Maybe Americans could start a letter writing campaign directed at David Stern so that he stops torturing Mark Cuban who is the most intelligent person in recorded human history, just ask Mr. Cuban and he will tell you at great length. Maybe NASCAR fans could simply look at a blank wall and not lose the life-affirming, intellect building experience that is watching stock car racing.

I might seem excessively antagonistic to the good people who watch car racing, and that's probably true. But I have another painful task to get to before the evening is over. We have the first two time honoree for tool of the week. It is I. Tonight, I learned that the Verve's Bittersweet Symphony sampled the symphonic version of The Last Chance by the Rolling Stones, not You Can't Always Get What You Want as I had said. I should have done a bit more due diligence rather than going with something because it amplified a point I wanted to make.

At long last, our long regional nightmare is over. Bud Selig will make the announcement sometime in the not too distant future (he'll hold it for a week or so to let the NFL have their little title game) that the formality that is the 2007 season need not even be played. The Boston Red Sox will be awarded the World Series trophy. Matuszaka will get the AL and NL Rookie of the Year awards, Schilling and Beckett will divide the two CY Young awards between them and Ortiz and Manny the two MVP awards.

The final piece of the puzzle is now in place. JD Drew and the Red Sox have finally agreed on the language which will enable the Red Sox to void the final years of the deal should JD surprise us all by hurting himself and missing significant time. After all, just because he's played a maximum of 145 games in his career, and only done that twice doesn't mean that Red Sox Nation should sweat his durability.

There are a few major concerns in this signing. First, JD Drew is not a good guy. He talked the Dodgers into letting him out of his deal this offseason so they could renegotiate. Fans in every city where he has played hate him (except Atlanta, where there are no Braves fans, only nitwits who show up to be seen at the games and do the foolish Tomahawk chop), even Philadelphia where he never played a game but pulled a John Elway and demanded a trade before he'd play for the organization.

Second, there are warning signs that he's not prepared for the pressures of playing in Boston. He spaced out in the playoffs for the Dodgers, getting thrown out at home immediately after one of his other teammates had been tagged. It's also not a good sign that Curt Schilling came out and implored Boston fans to give him a chance 6 months before the season even starts.

Third, the Red Sox have a three man outfield in place right now. Is it really clear that JD Drew is ahead of Wily Mo, Coco or Manny? How will the fans react to a fourth outfielder who earns $70 million over 5 years? Perhaps I'm being unfair, I imagine that Drew could fit in as a spot DH and maybe a first baseman. Obviously the moderate, even tempered citizens of Red Sox Nation will gladly embrace an overpaid underachiever.

There could be another motive behind the Drew deal. Even though he is not as talented as Manny, not a natural center fielder like Crisp and carries more baggage than Wily Mo, JD Drew could have been signed to make one of the other outfielders expendable. It would solve all of the Red Sox problems if they were to deal Manny and plug JD Drew into left field on a regular basis. Or at least as regular as a guy who might make it to 145 games if we all go down to the chapel and light candles can be.

Of all people, I shouldn't be one to raise questions or complaints about this signing, since it seems that the Red Sox "brain trust" is in a death struggle with galactic stupidity. For the guy who writes Sedition in Red Sox Nation, that seems like it should make me happy. But it confuses me. It seems like the only person who could like the Drew signing is the CHB, since it would set up his dream scenario, the Manny trade. I would like to see Manny traded because there is no way that trade makes the Red Sox better. But as I don't understand this JD Drew scenario, maybe it means the the Red Sox aren't stupider than I expect, but stupider like a fox to borrow a phrase from Homer Simpson in the Lemon of Troy episode.

Other things have confused me a bit over the last day or so. First, Gilbert Arenas is allowed to impugn Coach K and Duke's ability to stop him should Agent Zero get the chance to play the man who cut him from the US National team. Obviously, Gilbert needs to watch more basketball at the NCAA level. Yes, he could put up 85 points in an NCAA game, but in Cameron indoor stadium he'd have 3-4 fouls within 10 or 12 seconds of stepping onto the floor. I have to say that the Washington Wizards gold and black uniforms frighten me. They look like something out of a bad sports movie.

The two other things that are bothering me at the moment will have to wait for another day, since I'm tired. They are: the Winter X games and Toyota coming to NASCAR.

Today was a banner day on Rome is Burning. In the middle of the host's gushing praise, the Benefactor managed to say that David Stern does some things as a commissioner that suck. And interestingly enough, that isn't the statement that bothered me as much as two of the other thing he said this afternoon.

First, he said that the NBA's product is better than it has ever been. That is not accurate. The NBA is not what it was when Jordan and the Bull were three-peating. Nor is it anywhere near what it was back in the 1980s when Jordan was an up-and -comer, and Bird, Magic, Dr. J and Barkley stalked the NBA landscape.

The problem with the NBA is that there are probably a dozen teams that are any good. And most of the rest of the league becomes unwatchable at the very mp moment that the game should be most interesting. Almost every team starts to stagnate offensively in the last four or five minutes of a game. The team's best perimeter player gets the ball and dribbles from half court into the teeth of defense.

And the average NBA team is a sickening joke of a sports franchise. Part of it is the economic system which rules the league. An overpaid stiff with an expiring contract is now a hot trading commodity. Theo Ratliff's chief value for the Boston Celtics is that his horribly bloated contract expires soon. But that doesn't change the fact that he shut it down for the season after playing only 44 minutes. When you realize that his salary for the year is $11.7 million, that means Theo earned just over $1 million for every four minutes he spent on the court. Nice work indeed provided, of course, that you can get it.

But the product is better than it's ever been. Which brings us to the real villain of the post. Our old friend, Danny Ainge is reaping as he sowed. Maybe Doc Rivers is a bad coach, but it doesn't change the fact that Danny Ainge came into town, dealt a valuable piece of a playoff team and promised to build a contender. Unless some amazing set of circumstances comes together involving seven or eight teams disbanding and joining cults, the Celics aren't contending for a championship any time soon.

The Celtics are 12-29. They are 2-14 since Paul Pierce got hurt, but they were 10-15 with him in the lineup. They have a better record on the road than they do in the TD Banknorth building (I won't call it the Garden). To add salt to the wounds, the team currently leading their division is under .500. Thank God for the Memphis Grizzlies, otherwise the Celtics would be the worst team in the entire league. In spite of all of this, Danny Ainge is still running a team that hasn't won since January 5th.

On top of this statement, the Benefactor compared himself to Terrell Owens today, which is a fair point when you remove TO's athletic ability and the fact that if push came to shove TO could intimidate more formidable adversaries than Bill Simmons, he and the Benefactor are practically identical twins. Ironically, in a moment that could have compromised Jim Rome's integrity if he had any, Cuban threw Don Nelson under the bus for suggesting the Mavs tank the season the first year Cuban owned the team to get a better shot at a top pick. After all, Jim Rome is always slamming TO for throwing McNabb and Garcia under the bus. But he had nothing to say to the Benefactor on that score.

On a lighter note, I happened to catch Inside the NBA on TNT tonight because there was nothing better on. I was glad I did, because Barkley was brilliant. He ripped today's players, calling them "nitwit-ass players" and suggesting that as "grown-ass men" they ought to behave better. Then he suggested that he will get out of any trouble that his remarks might bring him by telling the world that he's gay and he's on his way to rehab, which is what all the celebrities are saying these days when they make a mistake. A man that eloquent, or at least that funny, ought to get away with saying that stuff.

So it's down to two teams in the NFL. And at last, and in no small part due to my efforts, the Bears bandwagon is rolling to Miami for Super Bowl XLI. For all of those people who laughed at me following the Arizona game and the Miami game and the Green Bay game on New Year's Eve, now I'm right and you were wrong (I don't think I need to be more magnanimous in victory than Bill Belichick was in defeat). But my world makes a little less sense now than it did on Sunday morning.

Peyton Manning beat the Patriots. Unlike many in New England, I did not brace myself for the apocalypse. I didn't see it coming, but I am not as surprised by it as some commentators either. It was only a matter of time before he won a playoff game against the Patriots. These things happen in football. The quarterback of the moment always has a nemesis he must pass to get to the next level. Brett Favre and Steve Young both had to beat the Dallas Cowboys and Troy Aikman in their quests for immortality. Terry Bradshaw had to beat the Miami Dolphins and Bob Griese. In large part that is forgotten, because the average fan has the memory of a goldfish and the last five years are the sum and total of the NFL.

What really surprised me, what upset my comfortable world view was the manner in which Manning won. My calling him an archfraud in this space now hangs on the erratic right arm (and odd, nearly shot put throwing motion) of Rex Grossman. Not only did Manning win, but he came back from an 18 point deficit in the biggest game he'd ever played. That surprised the hell out of me, and a lot of people the world over.

But the thing is, it was bound to happen. Every year, Brady gets a little older, and that defense ages in dog years. People get hurt, and all of a sudden the Patriots look like a who's who of has beens and never will bes in the secondary. Ray Mickens was playing defensive back in the fourth quarter. Who knew he was still in the league?

I think the dynasty is over, not just because I don't like the Pats. Consider the Reggie Wayne near fumble on the game winning drive. Since 2001, those plays have been going the way of Patriots. Sooner or later, they had to run out of luck. It just seems like these things are all coming to a head at the worst possible time. As I said earlier, this team keeps getting older.

They really haven't reloaded through the draft as well as they needed to, either. Yes, Maroney was a great pick and he's their back of the future. But was Pioli in the men's room when it came time to draft Chad Jackson? If some one said that the Florida receiver turning in the best overall performance during this playoff run would be Jabar Gaffney when this season began, that person would have been laughed out of town.

When it really mattered, the Patriots wide receivers who came up big against the Chargers came up very small against Indy. That was pass interference on Troy Brown. He gave the Colt defensive back a forearm on his way by, which is what made it an obvious call, as opposed to the simple pick which led to the Reggie Bush TD. Blocking downfield before the ball is caught is offensive pass interference. But the enduring image of this collapse has to be Reche Caldwell and his creepy wide-eyed stare after each crucial drop.

So there we have the Patriots entering the decline and fall portion of their dynasty. They are thin (at best) at wide receiver. Their linebacking corps consists of Roosevelt Colvin, two aging stalwarts whose best years appear, like objects in Meat Loaf's rear-view mirror, closer than they are in Bruschi and Vrabel and then two guys who would be fortunate indeed if they were allowed to back up Urlacher and Briggs if they played for the Bears in Banta-Cain and Alexander. Their offensive line doesn't inspire terror. Their defensive line is outstanding, but the secondary is a mismatched crew destined to lose Assante Samuel in the not too distant future. But they have cap room, if they want to spend it.

Then there is my adopted team, the Chicago Bears. They overcame Sen. Obama's effort to jinx them, and they overcame me speaking highly of them to beat America's new team. It's too bad in a way that the Saints had to lose. If I hadn't become emotionally invested in the Bears, I would have been rooting for the Saints this year. If they'd won I would have rooted for them in the Super Bowl against the Pats or Colts. But there's always next year...

I was disappointed, but not surprised at Reggie Bush when he scored that TD. The play was the first real flash of the brilliance he showed day after day at USC, and it reminded me of the number of times he'd made arrogant celebrations like that against a certain team from the nation's premier Catholic institution of higher learning in which I am also emotionally invested. I was amazed that he wasn't flagged for the celebration.

If TO had done either the pointing at an opponent or the flip into the end zone he would have been flagged. If TO did both on the same play, he'd be in front of a panel at the league office as though it were the Spanish Inquisition and TO said the world was round. But some leeway is given to those who attended that first-rate academic institution in LA. Perhaps Reggie was taking lessons on how to behave in the adult world from fellow Trojan Sean Salisbury. Read this, and see if you can resist making a joke involving a manufacture of prophylactic products who shares the name of the school's mascot.

That joke about a reaction to TO taunting, flipping and dancing has been in my mind since I saw the play on Sunday. Unfortunately, TO had to do it again. It's like there is some sort of bizarre cosmic connection that causes him to go out and say something that didn't need to be said as soon as I get ready to make a positive reference to him. For the 1,000th time, I was told that it was time I gave up on TO today. I'm just not ready to do it.

I wish he hadn't said it, but I don't think it was quite as big an insult as the media has made it out to be. TO doesn't live in the same world that normal people inhabit. When he was a kid, his grandmother was the most stable thing in his world. Unfortunately, since he's been in the NFL, Bill Parcells is probably the most stable, positive influence in his professional world. Now Parcells is out of the league, for the time being anyway, and TO is still in Dallas. As his last fan, I am not looking forward to this coming season. What a media circus this will be.

If only TO could learn how to live without being the center of attention. Or even better, the media could act on their threat to stop paying attention to him. I love hearing that threat. As though the media could ignore the best source for the quick story so that the American sports fan could learn how to feel from the font of righteous anger with the least effort expended.

It reminds me of something I read the other day in Dickens' Hard Times:

Whenever a Coketowner felt he was ill-used - that is to say whenever he was not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to hold him responsible for the consequences of any of his acts - he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he would "sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic." This had terrified the Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several occasions.

This applies to both TO and the media. Neither party in this dreadfully repetitive pas de deux can exist without the other. And neither is good for the other. He enables the media's indolence, and the media enables his penchant for attracting negative attention. Too bad for people who just want to watch football, but then are there any left? Every thing has to have drama and back story, now and it's too bad.

It's finally happened. I suppose it was a matter of time, but I doubt any one expected it to come so suddenly. After decades of mocking kings, popes, God Almighty and any one and every one under the sun, the Onion has finally brought ruin down on itself. Where will we go to find out what larks Area Man and Area Woman have gotten themselves into this week. A legion of Patriots fans is now gathering. In about three years, after they learn basic navigation and develop opposable thumbs, the Onion is done like dinner.

For those who have not seen the slander most vile, here it is. The very idea that Bill Belichick could muddle his way through any question on any subject is anathema to a New Englander. We know that if this great coach and archdouche doesn't have a home-made particle accelerator somewhere on his fortified residential compound, it's because he lacks the time rather than a working knowledge of advanced multidisciplinary physics. That, and I'm reasonably sure the presence of a particle accelerator on the grounds of the Patriots team facilities would attract a certain amount of interest from several government agencies.

It's bad enough that LaDainian Tomlinson can get away with casting aspersions on the great Belichick. But when the NFL, the US government and all right thinking Americans tolerate a media outlet of questionable repute slandering the man who single-handedly saved the National Football League, I just don't think I can find the strength to go on. Belichick did save the NFL, just ask a Patriots fan. That conversation might get a little murky when you point out that the NFL hasn't faced a grave threat since 1987, but a command of current events and the ability to bring the powers of rational thought to bear on said events have never been the hallmarks of the New England sports fan.

That said, the article itself was a little disappointing. It wasn't very funny, in the first place. I felt they tried too hard to work in the economic angle, any question on any other subject would probably have been more amusing. That's the trouble with satire as a genre, when it's good it's great and when it's even average it's stale and disappointing. But, since I went 2 for 2 last week, I'm feeling arrogant enough to predict these games.

The past record doesn't mean very much when it comes time to lace up the spikes on game day. Neither Manning's long run of failure against the Patriots, nor his recent string of victories in Foxboro will have the impact that the media is giving them right now. As for my feeling, I want both teams to lose. Since that it impossible, I have to weigh my hatred of the Pats against my hatred of Peyton Manning. I simply do not want to live in a world where Peyton Manning is a champion. After all, I pronounced him an archfraud in this space in September. So I'm going with the Patriots.

Then there is this piece I discovered on Slate. If you are wondering why Slate pays people to write about football, or like me you wonder why Slate pays the people it pays to write about football, this will justify your sentiments. First of all, this tool runs down the idea of seeing a playoff game live. I've never seen an NFL playoff game in person, but I think it would easily be the most amazing experience of my life.

The game I saw at Gillette Stadium this season was fantastic. The playoff game which featured the largest single comeback in NBA postseason history (Celtics vs. Nets, 2001) was unbelievable. The overtime playoff loss to the New Jersey Devils (1994) I saw at the real Garden was awesome. I imagine an NFL playoff game would be like all of that combined and then some. I imagine it would rank right behind Springsteen's concert as the most amazing spectacle I've ever seen.

Atmosphere isn't overrated. Sitting in front of your TV, even if it is HD, is overrated. But even worse, this person referred to Shaun Alexander as Gimpy McHalfspeed in an article for which he was paid (in the interest of fairness, I must confess I didn't click that link to find out if it were an original or borrowed name. I was simply too depressed). Would that I were a douche with a prepackaged sense of humor, then I too could be paid for poor writing (and I am aware of the irony inherent in my criticizing another writer when this isn't exactly Charles Dickens).

Then there is this other participant in Slate's dialog on the NFL playoffs. Quick aside: Good call on the dialog format, Slate editors. After all, Plato is still jumping off the shelves these days for other reasons than the simple fact that educators will insist on force-feeding him to generations of people that really don't need it (far be it for me to discount the wisdom of the ancients, I just don't see the brilliance of the Republic, a work which continually runs down Athenian democracy while admitting that the work could not have been composed under any other system). I just don't like Plato, but now isn't the time for philosophy.

According to our commentator, weather will not be as big a factor as predicted. After all, most of the Bears players do not come from Chicago originally. But the Bears do have more recent experience at managing cold weather than the Saints do. Living on the Great Lakes, which tend to be a degree or two chillier than the Gulf Coast, and playing in Soldier Field (which is outdoors, and as such slightly cooler and a bit more windy than your average dome) might give them a slight edge over a team which comes from 1,000 miles to the South and is still practicing indoors.

In the end, I think the weather will give the Bears a slight edge, but one that will matter very little if they can't keep Deuce McAllister in check. I think the Bears will win the game. I see NO as somewhat better on offense than Seatlle and not quite as good on defense. As long as Rex doesn't make stupid mistakes, I think we're looking at a rematch.

In the Super Bowl, I see Kraft and Belichick using the two week layoff to pressure Dolphins management into converting the field format in another sad psychological ploy.

Today is Muhammad Ali's 65th birthday. Watching the various retrospective on his career as a boxer, a champion, an athletic icon and social activist made me sad. Not just to see what age, a genetic disease and too many rounds in the ring have done to him, but to remember that boxing was once a great sport. Perhaps it could be great again, but I'm not holding my breath.

Now the 17 governing bodies award 35 title belts, the three or four uber-promoters that cripple the sport, the two cable conglomerates that own any fight worth watching and charge ridiculous sums for the right to watch a meaningful fight have all but crushed boxing. But people still like boxing. That's why recent movies like Rocky Balboa, Undisputed and Cinderella Man do so well at the box office.

Boxing, when it's done right, is the most compelling sport. It's so compelling that a boxing movie that is even remotely well done is all but guaranteed to become an instant classic. More great movies have been made about boxing than any other sport. Raging Bull, Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky Balboa, Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Great White Hope, The Champ, Cinderella Man, Undisputed and others are among best sports films ever. People who never saw LaMotta, Graziano, Marciano, Braddock, Louis, Baer, Ali, Frasier or Foreman fight live still watch these movies and remember the fighters they featured. Rocky is one of the great iconic characters of all time.

Undisputed might have had potential as a franchise had they not gone the straight to video kick boxing champ goes to prison controlled by Eastern European organized crime ring route. Seeing a heavyweight champ played by Ving Rhames imprisoned for sexual assault did not require much suspension of belief, since it happened to Mike Tyson. While it seems unlikely that an elderly organized crime figure in prison for life could wield enough influence to set up the climactic bout, it's still a damn sight more likely than the factors which had to be set in place for the second film to happen. But back to boxing in the real world...

Part of boxing's demise has to be attributed to the increased popularity and expansion of the professional sports leagues. If some one had two avenues to wealth and success, but one of which entailed getting punched in the face and gut for a living, who would take the punching option? To choose getting punched in the face over playing basketball or football or baseball one would have to be dumb enough to think that Adult Swim on Cartoon Network presents keen satire and not something that a middle schooler place in a flaming bag and leave on the teacher's doorstep (the lone exception is Venture Brothers, but Assy McGee and Moral Orel are two of the worst shows that have ever been on the air).

I think Ali is another part of boxing's demise. He was too big a star for the sport, if that makes any sense. He was too good, too charismatic. Maybe that's what made him hang on too long and take some vicious beatings from Larry Holmes and Ken Norton. The Rope-a-Dope was a brilliant ploy, but taking everything George Foreman had to dish out, he probably shortened his career, at least as far as his best years were concerned. But more importantly, he set a standard that no successor could live up to.

Now that boxing is terrible and, for the most part, not accessible to the average sports fan, what has taken it's place? For the most part, the casual fan has gone over to the NFL, or one of the other sports leagues. Some have gone to the WWE, which enjoyed a resurgence in the last decade, which led to the ill-fated XFL. But as soon as any wrestler builds up a following these days, he ends up making terrible action movies like the Marine. I mist say, I liked the Rundown and Scorpion King, so the Rock is forgiven.

Then there is cage fighting. Some people seem to enjoy it. I've never been all that impressed by it. Maybe because the scrawny wuss of an older brother from Napoleon Dynamite was training to be a cage fighter. Maybe because I am not all that interested in watching two men in their drawers roll around in a cage. Maybe because Joe Rogan is involved. Life without News Radio has not been easy for him and Andy Dick. Yeah, he was hosted Fear Factor, but he was also part of the team that forever killed the Man Show (not that it deserved to live).

I think the main reason I don't like UFC is that I miss boxing. There was a comforting sameness to boxing. No matter who is fighting whom, there is one set of rules by which both combatants compete. In cage fighting, almost anything goes. By that rationale, one might as well have the Cleveland Cavaliers show up to run the pick and roll against the Bears defense this Sunday. Or Burger King might run horrible commercials in which the whoppers are portrayed as a human family. I keep hoping that one day I'll wake up and those commercials will just have been a nightmare.

I know it's a strange thing to write on Muhammad Ali's birthday, but I've been wanting to go on about this stuff for a little while now, and I'm still trying to face the reality of a Pats-Colts showdown for the right to play in the Super Bowl. Would that there were a way for them to tie and the Bears and Saints play for all the marbles.And there's the Jason Kidd divorce situation. I find it amusing that he has accused his wife of intolerable cruelty when he pled out on charges of punching her in the face. But there will, I think, be a whole series of amusing revelations emerging in that divorce.

But we have a moral quandary in the tool of the week award. First because there is a tie. This nitwit on YouTube is certainly worthy of mention. As impressive as it is to sink trick shots on a pool table, the accomplishment loses a little bit of luster as soon as you videotape it. But when you sync it up to a little teen angst music and post it on YouTube, you just cry out to the world that you are a guy who never moved on emotionally from the days when you ruled the pool hall in the mean streets of the suburbs and all the overweight women thought you would be the ideal father for illegitimate child 3.

I feel a little bit bad about it, but this guy deserves it too. He might not deserve it as much, since he didn't go into all the effort that our trick shot artist did. Plus the guy's audience was tooling on him already. But the fact still remains that he was drawing freehand circles, and he just wasn't very cool.I don't know if one can look cool drawing freehand circles, but I'm willing to bet that this particular person couldn't look cool, no matter what he did.

But the moral quandary, aside from mocking total strangers who may possess strange ass-kicking powers, is that it isn't much cooler to link to these videos and make my snappy comments than it is to make them in the first place. After all, I watched these videos. I feel a little better that I found these videos through a friend rather than searching for them myself. He sent me the link to the freehand circle guy because I had an algebra teacher who used to draw perfect freehand circle. I wouldn't say he looked cool doing it, but it was a damn sight cooler than the video from YouTube. But the fact remains that these tools made their videos and I looked at them, so who is the real tool here?

This weekend has given us all a lot to think about as the playoffs come to an end. I think the Verve said it best when they sang: "It's a bittersweet symphony, that's life." Unfortunately it turned out to be a very bittersweet symphony for the Verve when it turned out that they had sampled a symphonic version of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the Rolling Stones. That's a little bit ironic, when you lose the rights to your breakout song, it gets used in a Nike commercial even though your band was rabidly opposed to corporations. It's just a bittersweet symphony of not getting what you want. But anyway...

First and foremost, I spent today riveted to ESPN News awaiting the firestorm of consequences to catch up with LaDainian Tomlinson for impugning the class of the New England Patriots and their wily supergenius of a head coach. The blogosphere has been burning LT for his "sour grapes" attitude. But the mainstream media has yet to call for his deportation, deactivation or any other punishment that would fit his heinous crime.

The nerve of some people. It's not as if Bill Belichick has been mentioned as a home wrecker in divorce proceedings in New Jersey, after all. Oh wait, I'm sorry. He has. Plus he looks like an unmade bed on the sidelines and has a long track record of being a total douche. Let's not forget that he gave Magini the silent treatment (a gesture so immature that even I, the least mature person my age I know, think it's immature) for bailing out to coach the Jets when he pulled the same move in abandoning the Jets to coach the Pats. And of course there was the shove he gave a photographer, which I didn't really care about because it was kind of funny.

I don't have a problem with what LT said. In part, it's because I don't like the Patriots. Actually, I'm starting to hate the Patriots nearly as much as I hate the Danny Ainge Celtics, but that's a story for another day. Also, I don't think a guy who submitted a first rate offensive performance can be considered a whiner. It's not his fault that Shawmne Merriman has a foolish dance and a strange sense of timing. LaDainian Tomlinson did every thing he could to help his team win, he just needed a bit more help than he got.

I am the guy who got mad at the Michigan State players who got into an altercation with players from Illinois who were celebrating their first win in Spartan Stadium since 1994 at the fifty yard line. I also criticized the New York Giants and their fans when they complained that Mario Williams and David Carr dared imitate the "ballin'" jump shot celebration. Believe it or not, there is a difference as far as I'm concerned.

LaDainian Tomlinson played a great game, he could not have done more to defend his turf and his team's honor. The Giants and Spartans cannot make the same claim. Neither can Shaun Phillips who made the same sort of comment as LT today. Maybe it's hard to have a consistent reaction as a fan because the athletes and situations involved change so much over the course of a season and a career.

I have not been a big LT fan up till now. He's a great talent, he certainly deserves all the praise he has gotten to this point in his career based upon his numbers. He was the best player in the NFL this year, and, unlike some other MVPs in recent memory, he did not submit a disappointing individual effort in his lone playoff game.

More than anything else, I think LaDainian Tomlinson's comments did not bother me because it was his honest emotional reaction to a heartbreaking defeat. As Mike Holmgren said following the loss in Chicago, everything a player or coach has done over the last eight months was building to the one moment when a playoff game can be won or lost. And all of a sudden, it's over. And for the Chargers it was a shockingly abrupt and baffling ending. Every thing that could have gone wrong in the fourth quarter seemd to go wrong. A game that they dominated in the murky recesses of statistics went tragically wrong in the material sphere.

In all of that, frustrated, hurt and confused, LaDainian came right out and said what he felt. He was mad as hell, and he wasn't going to take it any more. Like Faith Hill's reaction after finding out that Carrie Underwood was female artist of the year at this past fall's Country Music Awards, LT's tirade shocked a lot of people who only knew him as the mild mannered back who scored a league record 31 TDs and never even spiked the ball. But the minute he said anything negative about the single most impressive dynasty of the last 5 years and the greatest coach of all time, then he was a selfish crybaby.

In case you care, I didn't have a problem with Faith Hill's negative reaction to the award going to Carrie Underwood. It seems every single person in America is so image conscious that they are terrified of showing any genuine emotional reaction to a disappointment. I am tired of good losers. You show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser as the saying goes.

That said, I don't want to see more Peyton Mannings, either. Last year it was the protection, earlier this season it was the defense. Who knows who will be responsible this time around should the Colts fall victim to the Patriots? It surely can't be the quarterback. That much is clear. I only wonder if the fans in Indianapolis will be yelling "movers" should the breaks start beating the boys in Indy this weekend.

If you are a somewhat less than gracious loser once in a while, but you don't point the finger at people on your own side (unless you're TO), that's fine. If you keep going there, then you're Peyton Manning. After three or four centuries of going there, then you're French. The real tragedy of the Chargers falling this week is that I now must root for the Patriots this week. And after that, who knows? I guess there's always the NFC Champions. I want the Bears to win, since I held the bandwagon together in spite of some long odds and shoddy play from Rex Grossman. But I can live with the Saints far more easily than I could with the balding metrosexual and his mentor in the hack-a-hoodie. God forbid it be the Colts.

And so it seems that Barry Bonds has tested positive for a banned substance.

Spoiler alert: There will be no links for the Barry Bonds section. Every single person in America has said more or less the same thing about him, so all you have to do is sit still for five seconds and a story or two or ten will find you. Yes, it's not really a spoiler alert, but I didn't want to postscript it either.

The only surprise is that he allegedly tested positive for amphetamines and not steroids. The real tragedy here isn't that he'll break Hank Aaron's record while looking like a total fraud. The real tragedy is that he has given the media one more chance to react like the Claude Rains character from Casablanca during the famous scene where, in his capacity as prefect of police, he shuts down Rick's for gambling an instant before the croupier hands him his winnings.

99.9% of Americans believe Barry cheated, but what can you do? Unlike everybody else who has taken an image hit in the fallout from the Grand Steroid Conspiracy, Barry Bonds was always a dick. I'm sorry about violating the policy against obscenity I've had since jump street (but on the plus side I got to use jump street, I've been trying to work that in for a while now), but even in my vast vocabulary of insult and invective, there is no other word that can encapsulate my distaste as brutally and succinctly.

This is a guy who went to a judge and asked for a reduction in his child support payments during the player's strike of 1994. I imagine he was paying a monstrous sum, and maybe it was hard for him to cover it with his other expenses. That's life. Many other people have to deal with the same type of problem, but they might not have the luxury of economizing the way a very wealthy man who plays a professional sport can. Maybe he could have gone without creatine for a month or two, until he got back on his feet. Better that than going into court with his hat in his hand to cry poor mouth.

I must say I enjoy his explanation of past conduct. Poor Barry did not know that the substance he thought to be flax seed oil was a banned performance enhancer. Amazing. I should go out and do something illegal and plead ignorance. I wonder how far that would get me. "Sorry, officer. I didn't know it was illegal to jump a stolen car into a school like I was driving the General Lee on the Dukes of Hazzard." I think if I did that, I'll probably do a fair bit of time in a government facility, even if I said I didn't know it was illegal. But Barry Bonds can't be constrained by mortal bonds like laws and rules.

Then there are those who loathe Barry less than I, who rationalized his conduct by saying: "He saw what cheating did for McGwire and Sosa. Of course he was going to do the same thing." Is that so? What if he saw McGwire jump off a bridge? Should Barry do that too? Obviously, it's too much to ask for a person with wealth and fame to be held responsible for their actions.

I have oversimplified things to this point. I don't think athletes should be treated like Caesar's wife, and be expected to be above reproach in all matters. I have defended Terrell Owens in this space, and will continue to do so, even though he proves himself unworthy of it from time to time. But a smart athlete tries to stay as squeaky clean as possible. Look at D Wade or Lebron or Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. They make millions of dollars in endorsements because they make it very hard for people to hate them (I do not hate Wade or King James, but I have the strength to hate Brady and Manning). Imagine how much more money Barry could have made if he'd stayed off the roids and been a nicer guy.

Of course every reporter and his brother were scandalized by Barry's claim that he took the pills from a teammate's locker. I wasn't surprised. He is, as I said, a dick. That is what dicks do. The better question is what manner of man goes into another person's stuff and starts taking his pills? Is Barry psychologically compelled to just grab bottles of pills and start cannonballing them? Does it justify taking a banned substance to say that they belonged to some other person? What a world.

But enough about Bonds. The NFL playoffs are in full swing. And even though I got to thinking that it was time to lay off the Sports Guy for a while, he just keeps right on being a tool. He has presented the Little Big Horn award to Herman Edwards for steadfastly running LJ into 8 man fronts. I must confess that I am no fan of Herman Edwards as a game coach, but he has one thing going for him that Bill Simmons doesn't. Herman played the game.

As Bill Simmons astutely notes, an eight man front means one-on-one coverage on the outside receivers. With the vast experience gleaned from years of playing Madden football on various video game consoles, Simmons thinks that it would have made sense to throw the ball to wide receivers covered by one man rather than run the ball into the teeth of a defense expecting the run. It does seem logical. Then again, on paper the Spanish Armada wins any day of the week (but not twice on Sunday). That's the problem with things that seem logical on paper, in the real world strange things can happen.

For instance, you could be playing a team with defensive ends who are considerably quicker than any of your blockers, even if you chipped with a back or max-protected (I'm not sure about the hyphen, but I think it looks better) with two tight ends. Your options at quarterback could be a very shaky Trent Green, Damon Huard who showed some potential but not enough to inspire confidence and untested rookie Brody Croyle. Your wide receivers could be past their what can only charitably called primes making one-on-one coverage a situation where you are vastly outnumbered by an Indianapolis defensive back from a very average secondary. Do you still want to pass?

Maybe Arizona could hire Simmons as their coach. Why not? No matter whom they hire to replace Dennis Green, that organization is almost assuredly about to squander the incredible potential of Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin and Matt Leinart. The least team management can do is to give the rest of the country a few laughs in the process.

Hell, I'm available. As a former second string high school lineman, I have no illusions of being able to command a team's respect. Nor do I have a wealth of practical knowledge, or relevant experience for that matter. But I guarantee my press conferences will be entertaining and memorable, more in the manner Ozzie Guillen or Parcells in the day. If there is a "They are what we thought they were" moment, it won't be so repetitive, even if it is as incoherent. I'll work for short money, too. I figure $1,000,000 is reasonable for a guy like me, so I want $2,000,000. And a decent severance package. Bill Bidwell, think about it.

To the Sports Guy's credit, I do agree with him 100% about Dante Hall, which is why I left the ex X factor's name out of the attack on KC's wideouts and decided to work that joke in here. But he has to give his man crush on Cris Collinsworth a rest. Collinsworth sucks as an announcer. He sucked as a pregame show talking head. He probably sucks at life in general. And on top of that, he called the game in Chicago on New Year's Eve dressed like he was auditioning for the Rex Harrison role in a remake of the Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I understand that if you held a gun to Simmons' head and asked him to admit honestly what athlete of the last 50 years he most resembled, he'd answer Collinsworth, but enough already.

It's time to wrap this up. So, in case you are wondering, if you held a gun to my head and asked me that same question. The answer is Art Donovan. I refuse to provide a link here. It's a damn shame, but he is quite simply the best professional football player to emerge from the fraudquarium that is Boston College ever. Period. End of list. Including Flutie, who won the Heisman, and the other Flutie and Hasselbeck, and the other Hasselbeck.

It's not my fault you (rhetorical, not specific to the unfortunate few who read this space) don't know NFL history. And it's a damn shame that a player that talented and a man that eloquent had to emerge from an institution I loathe, but that's life in the big city.

By the way, I only recently (as in the last week or so) realized how much I sound like O'Neil from Platoon's character from Scrubs. I did not watch the show until I read the interview he did for a recent American Airlines in flight magazine (no link, do your own leg work here, I will never link to an in flight magazine site). I will not give the character's name. I just started watching Scrubs, and I am still coming to terms with that fact.

I hate Zach Braff, and the character O'Neil from Platoon calls Barbie. But I like the janitor and the unpleasant old doctor. So I have a lot to try to understand as I go forward and watch the show. But I'm late for drinking time now.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is an outrage being perpetrated as we speak. According to Bill Simmons, anonymous posters and bloggers are slandering famous people all over the internet. He has a long history of problems with blogs and bloggers, just look at this. I have seen a negative mention of my blog, and it upset me. I thought about posting my own response on the site, then I had a few beers, then I had a few more and eventually I got too lazy to do it. Then I got too drunk to do it, eventually I woke up hung over in a few hours and didn't really feel like responding.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't go overboard on this point, but I have something to say about the Sports Guy's whining that I mentioned in a recent post that has been weighing on my mind over the last few days. Seeing him whine about bloggers who slander people makes me wonder what exactly he thinks he does in his writing.

Is he entirely fair to Art Shell? I admit, Art Shell didn't bring images of George Patton to mind as he prowled the sidelines. But Art Shell is also an NFL Hall of Fame left tackle, and one of the best offensive linemen of all time. Is it worse to call a sportswriter a tool from Connectitcut who never slid into second base than to run down Art Shell for being a bad coach on a bad team?

And then there is Isiah Thomas. Isiah certainly doesn't think Simmons is very fair to him. Coach Thomas went so far as to call out the Sports Guy. I liked Simmons suggestion that the two meet in a more mature setting to hash out their differences. The more I look into this story arc, the more I see a few of Jay Mariotti's character traits in Bill Simmons. Perhaps Simmons shares the opinion of his physical prowess evident in the Deadspin poll of his odds of success in a fight against Mark Cuban.

I could talk too, about Doc Rivers, whom Simmons has criticized a number of times and for whose Celtics tenure Simmons even provided a premature obituary. And Danny Ainge, who has assembled a team that could not win even if Red coached them in his prime. Simmons has not called for his dismissal, even though the Sports Guy professes to love the Celtics.

What really bothers me is the slander on Springsteen. I grew up loving Springsteen's music. Like a lot of people at the time, I misinterpreted Born in the USA. In my defense, I was 5 when it came out in 1984. I was a bit more aware of contemporary music at that age than most children because I grew up in a house with four older brothers. Plus I like to think that even at that age my obvious natural superiority to my peers was well evident. NB- This blog isn't a very representative sample of my intelligence or writing ability. My laziness, anger issues, misanthropy and drinking habits are much more evident in this space.

To imply that Springsteen would consider selling a song of his to Verizon shows a fundamental ignorance of the man and his principles that cannot exist in an intelligent child of the 1980s. Springsteen came out an aggressively criticized the incumbent President of the United States for attempting to appropriate Born in the USA. He allowed Kerry to use No Retreat, No Surrender, but the Boss had campaigned against the current President as well. Springsteen also refused to allow American car makers to purchase the rights to the song for commercials.

As steamed as I am about that, it's still not enough to make Simmons the tool of the week. That honor goes to me today. As I looked over a few of my posts from earlier in the football season, I came across a sentence or two that I really want to delete. I actually questioned whether Florida was good enough to win the SEC championship game. I badmouthed Urban Meyer as a coach. I was right about Michigan as a team whjo whined a lot about their bowl position and then got killed. But I was wrong about BC on the same prediction. That and my track record in the NFL with the Bears and Cowboys.... Yikes.

A lesser man, or at least a less arrogant one, would have given up on picking the outcome of games. I am not one to accept it when I've been humbled. I'll continue fighting on in the face of every instinct that tells me to cut my losses. So this week, I think the Bears will beat the Seahawks.

It has all the telltale signs that I should have noticed last season when I picked the Bears over the Panthers. Last year, the Bears beat up on the Panthers in the regular season at Soldier Field. The defense dominated that meeting. Then the Bears had a quarterback change at the end of the season. Then they went on to play abysmally as the home team coming off a first round bye in last season's playoffs.

This season, the Bears played the Seahawks (who were without Tiki Barber's stunt double) and beat them convincingly. Their defense dominated the Seahawks. Now they come into this week's matchup against Seattle with a QB controversy, injuries and fatigue on defense (losing Tommie Harris hasn't helped, nor has Tank Johnson with his close friend's shooting death and the alleged arsenal at his house). But I think the Bears will win this one, even though Matt Hasselbeck's mom will be doing her best to care for the team in the hostile environment. I'm bound to be right sooner or later.

Then there is the much anticipated matchup between the Pats and the Chargers. In spite of my friend from San Diego and his man crush on Marcus McNeil, I have to take the Pats. Yes, I know that 75% of LDT's yards and TDs have come over the left side of the offense this season. I know McNeil is the left tackle, but is his mere presence enough to account for that. Without access to the entire season's game film and play calls, I can't speak with 100% certainty on this phenomenon. All I can do is ask questions.

For instance, where is Antonio Gates lined up when Tomlinson runs behind McNeil? Surely the presence of a receiver of his caliber impacts the alignment of the secondary. If he is on the other side of the field, the secondary must be lined up to reflect that and might, then, not be in ideal position to react to a back of LDT's talents quickly enough to stop him. LDT must get to the second level of the defense for this theory to come into play, and it's not likely that even the great LDT can do that without help from his left tackle. However, that might make McNeil A piece of the puzzle, as opposed to THE piece.

Another valid question: "Is Brandon Manumaleuna in the formation?" Manumaleuna is a great blocking tight end. He is valuable, both as a front side blocker and a decoy. If he's lined up next to McNeil, he's helping him out. If he's on the other side of the formation, he's drawing the focus of the defense away from McNeil's side. Again, it makes McNeil important, but not the end all be all of the scheme.

Finally, what was the ratio of yards and TDs gained over the left side last year, with the immortal Roman Oben (the same Romane Oben who flopped in Tampa Bay) holding the fort. Unless LDT got a lot more of his yards and TDs over the right side in 2005, I think the rush to crown McNeil was a bit premature. He is a very good tackle, especially playing left takcle as a rookie. Not quite rookie of the year, and no Willie Roaf, Jonathan Ogden or Orlando Pace, the dominant left tackles of the last generation.

Marcus McNeil is important in this matchup, since he will face two of the best defensive ends to play San Diego this season in Richard Seymour and Ty Warren. Is he ready for a Pro Bowl player like Seymour? I don't know, but it might be the least of San Diego's problems if Marty reverts to his past playoff form.

But there is also the question of Shawne Merriman and Jamal Williams. Can the Patriots handle those two Pro Bowlers? Jason Taylor ate the Pats tackles alive, and Merriman would have beaten Taylor for Defensive Player of the Year, but for the big if (the 1/4 of the season lost to the "false-positive" test for a banned performance enhancing substance). Jamal Williams is the best nose tackle in football, with apologies to Vince Wilfork, who turned out much better than I thought he would after watching his early seasons. I thought his bulk would keep him in the game, since he can't be pushed back too far, but now he's making plays. Only time will tell.

In the end, I'm picking the Patriots. It's win-win. Either the jinx holds, and the Patriots go down, or I'm right for a change. I'm not touching either of the other games. I want Baltimore and New Orleans to win, but I don't want to go out on a limb on either game.

TO fired his publicist today, finally. She would have been tool of the week, had she been cool enough to be a tool. I don't have words to describe what a bust she was/is. That was a weird situation. Just one more reason to make me tool of the week... I have Rosanna by Toto on my iPod.

Again, it's been a fairly long time since I last posted. Sorry. Maybe I would have more than two loyal readers if I updated more often, but what can you do? As Eddie Curry once said: "Some nights the effort's there, some nights it's not. There isn't much I can do about that." A lot has happened since that last post. And I have a few things to say about the last two weeks.

Every time I write something positive about the Cowboys or the Bears, the teams seem to regard it as license to go in the tank. Two days after my defense of TO, he's over at the Eagles' hotel visiting people the night before the big game between his Cowboys and their team. On the off chance that you read this, Terrell, do me a favor. As your last fan in America, all I want is for you to play one game without a catastrophic public relations mistake. Just one. Maybe then you can build on that. But baby steps, as Bob from What about Bob would say.

Then there was Tony Romo hugging Carrie Underwood on the field during warm-ups. There was a time when Bill Parcells ruled his teams with an iron fist. This simply would not happen back in the day. Madden was right to be surprised and right to say that he'd go nuts if the situation had happened on the field when he coached.

It isn't any of any one's business whom Romo dates and what he does when he isn't on the field. However, when he is on the field, he has the chance to do something that millions upon millions of guys in this country would kill for, and for which he is well paid. He ought to act accordingly. On the field before the game he should be focused on the game.

That said, I don't have a problem with TO signing the football, or Chad Johnson proposing to the cheerleader. I don't even mind TO defiling the Star when he played for San Francisco. In my way of thinking, it's not the same type of distraction. A touchdown celebration can be childish, but there is a certain amount of evidence to show that the player who celebrates must have had his head in the game, at least enough to score in the first place. In the end NFL players are paid to put points on the board and win games. Celebrating like an idiot isn't a problem for me because they've done their job.

Hugging an attractive celebrity when you ought to be thinking about the Philly defense and winning the game isn't a good idea. In fact, it seems like something one could expect to see in the Nationwide insurance "Life Comes At You Fast" ad series, followed by a quick cut to a group of Eagle defenders bearing down on a starstruck/lovesick QB. I didn't expect to see it from a Bill Parcells team. The atmosphere created by that hug and that hotel visit is a big reason Dallas is playing in Seattle and not hosting a game this week.

As for the Bears, there really isn't anything to say about the loss to Green Bay. As for their QB situation, what can you do. Maybe I'll finish the version of The Night Chicago Died that I promised in the buildup to the Pats vs. Bears game in November. I never finished it because I never thought I'd need it. Then I had to travel, then I got sick. I should get working, though, since it could be the third quickest exit of this NFL postseason behind Dennis Green and Jim Mora and slightly ahead of Nick Saban and Art Shell.

Then there is the Notre Dame debacle. Everybody said LSU would kill them, and kill them they did. It was a marked improvement over last year's blowout in the Fiesta Bowl, I thought. Yes, this year's margin of defeat was larger, but at least it was close for a while. The Ohio State game was a savage beating by the end of one quarter. I am deeply disappointed in the poor offensive play in the third quarter. I'm not surprised that they were blown out when they let LSU keep the ball for 10 minutes in the quarter. The defense was dead on its feet after that.

But as I said in the bit about TO, baby steps. Weis has reached two BCS bowls. They were slightly more competitive in this one than they were in the first. The next step is competing for an entire game. Then the next step after that is actually winning a BCS game. I am not overly concerned about the bowl losing streak. As long as they keep getting to BCS bowls, it's fine. As a fan, I'd rather have the team blown out in the Sugar Bowl than win 8 straight Who Gives A Damn Bowls like a certain ACC school with a fan base that doesn't travel well.

Of course today is a day that will live in infamy in Red Sox Nation. Bud Selig, the two Presidents Bush, the Three Billy Goats Gruff, the Bilderbergers, the Trilalteral Corporation, the Rand Company and the Knights Hospitaler have colluded with George Steinbrenner in such a way that Randy Johnson has been tentatively traded back to Arizona for Jose Viscaino, among others. The true injustice of this deal is that the Yankees are on the hook for only 1.5-2 million of his $16 million salary for next season.

Every right thinking American knows that the Yankees should have to pay far more than that. More, even, than the $16 million Johnson is slated to earn. I figure it should be in the $40 million range. Then the Yankees should have to pay for 4 or 5 teams entire payrolls. But to truly make it fair, the Evil Empire should be forced to reimburse the Red Sox for the ludicrous sum they spent to secure the negotiating rights to Matsuzaka. As for the salary the best pitcher since David from the Bible is set to earn, I think the Sox might be able to manage by sticking 100 more seats in Fenway. Anything more and the bubble gum might give out. I expect that the bailing wire might continue to hold the relic together for one more year, though.

On a final note, I saw Rocky Balboa tonight. I thought it was great. Outside of the scene with the licensing board and the scene where Little Marie brought him Adrian's picture, I would not have changed a thing. I thought it was the best installment since Rocky II (I am far less impressed with III and IV than some others are). I think it's a bit sad that we're losing Rocky now.

The character came on the scene in the mid 1970s when spirits were low. The economy was in ruins, Vietnam, Watergate, the oil embargo, rampant inflation, bell bottoms. Truly it was, as the late President Ford said, a long national nightmare. And there was Rocky. He made people feel like an underdog could go the distance against all odds.

And the strangest part of all of it is that Stallone created Rocky. He wrote the script. He was a down on his luck actor, a guy who had done a pornographic film. He had no money. But he wrote this script and wouldn't sell it (even for $100,000). So he gets a mulligan for Rocky V, and every other bad decision he made (Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, all of them), except Cobra and Tango and Cash.

I think the one thing missing from this list of suggestions on how Rocky Balboa could have been improved is this: a tool from Connecticut who never slid into second base, whose athletic career highlight is donning a banana hammock and ski mask to parade in front of the giant windows in his college's library and running Norv Turner off a $5 blackjack table in Vegas could come and offer Rocky career advice.

It seems each day brings the Sports Guy closer to tool of the week or the Max Mercy Hall of Fame. Unfortunately I would then have to bestow that same honor on myself, and I'm just not ready to do it. He has it coming, had it coming for a long time. Since 2001 when he asked how long we'd have to wait for Springsteen to sell the Rising to Verizon. Imagine that. Bill Simmons questions Springsteen, implies that he might sell out. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world...

Unlike many people, I did not go into Rocky Balboa expecting a train wreck. I had no problem forgetting Rocky V and the brain damage. It isn't as though things like that have not been asked of us before in the franchise. Lest we forget that Rocky has sustained so much damage to his right eye in the first fight with Apollo Creed that there was a chance mentioned throughout the early stages of the film that he could go blind if he were hit there. And yet he goes on to defend his title a number of times, fight a charity exhibition against Thunderlips, fight Lang twice and Drago before fighting Mason Dixon. This injury to his right eye is also the reason for his switch from southpaw to right handed fighting. So I can suspend my disbelief.

Now it's 2007. This war we're in keeps getting longer. The economy isn't very good. Entertainment is dying around us. If you don't believe me, consider this: Alpha Dog is soon to hit theaters and it features Justin Timberlake and the cat from Girl Next Door as tough guys. Can Rosie O'Donnell playing a lesbian version of Richard III be far off? Truly that will be the winter of our discontent. You picked a fine time to leave us, Rocco.

PS - I apologize for that awful series of jokes/references, that was a very CHB way to end a post. So in the way of making up for it, I must confess that I had to see for myself if Adrian had simply been written out, or had Talia Shire died and I simply hadn't heard. As far as IMDB knows, she'd still alive. But tell me that you knew without clicking the link. What has she been in that hasn't been awful and a massive disappointment in the last 20 years? Look at her IMDB resume and tell me that isn't the career of someone who could have died ten years ago and no one would have noticed. And like that, a lightning bolt is headed this way.