So, Congress finally got around to asking the Justice Department to look into whether or not Roger Clemens committed perjury. It seemed fairly obvious that this was going to be the end result of that he said-he said fest into which the hearings of two weeks ago degenerated in short order. The only surprise was the delay between the hearings and the request.

Personally, I think it had something to do with the fact that Congress was desperately searching for some other charge to file against Clemens. Alas, interrupting a legendary orator like Henry Waxman in the midst of a contralto harangue full of sound and fury but signifying nothing is merely a violation of Robert's Rules for Order. Even though Robert's Rules are the tools which do little more than protect the elected officials from the electorate, an ordinary citizen can't be punished for breaching them.

This case should be fairly interesting in so far as what the result will be. But I am sure that the process by which said result will be obtained won't be tremendously interesting. Yes, no side in this sad little mess has any reasonable claim to credibility. But I don't think I'll be flying to my set to see if Andy Pettitte's story on his own HGH usage habits changes for the third time since his name was included in the Mitchell Report. I would like to see whether the NYPD service record for Brian McNamee sees the light of day any time soon, but I'm not big on hoping for miracles.

Of far greater importance and interest to me at the moment is a nugget in Peter King's Monday NFL column this week. Generally, I avoid Peter King like the plague because he's a New Jersey d-bag and one of the less than shining lights of NBC's dismal NFL Sunday Night studio show. But the guy I go to for my Red Sox info told me that there was an interesting little tidbit about the Dom Capers hire.

I am unhappy with myself for missing the Capers hire on the tickers when it was announced. To me, this is a great sign. It's a panic move on the part of the Patriots. It looks superficially like an insurance policy, a possibility which Peter King is quick to dismiss, in case Belichick should be forced to step down or face suspension for his role in the ongoing signal taping soap opera.

On that level, it would make some sense, since the Patriots had no one on staff with head coaching experience and McDaniel would have caused the knuckle-dragging troglodytes who root for the Patriots to mutiny had he inherited this team. Dean Pees may or may not have potential, it's hard to say as the presence of Belichick overshadows any fair understanding of what he's brought to the table as defensive coordinator. And who knows when this situation will resolve itself?

One thing is sure, it didn't make very much sense for the Patriots to enter the official NFL league year 2008 (starting with free agency and the draft process) without a viable candidate in house. Even if Capers isn't on any one's short list for a quick fix or permanent replacement, his presence means they won't have to make a panic move should Belichick have to leave town for a while.

The reason I like this move is that it shows the Patriots organization is scared at some level. Whether they are afraid of the end result of Arlen Specter's half-assed witch hunt or afraid that it's "Katy bar the door" time for the dynasty is another matter. Hiring a defensive assistant with experience with another branch of the 3-4 tree to serve under a less experienced defensive coordinator cannot bode well for the current coordinator's confidence.

The defense isn't getting any younger in the front seven. Assante Samuel is out the door, and some Pats fans aren't too upset considering he didn't intercept Eli Manning when he could have salted the game away. But that leaves you with fearsome shutdown corners in Ellis Hobbs and Randall Gay (who might be leaving town himself). Yes, in the piece I mentioned, Peter King proved with the case of the 49ers this past season that cornerbacks aren't a great investment compared to a solid pass rush.

When you think that Richard Seymour has quietly become the Manny Ramirez of the Pats defense and that Vrabel is getting older and much more likely to submit a season like he did in 2006 than another like he did in 2007, things all of a sudden look a little bleak in Foxboro. Of course, Adalius Thomas is still around and maybe he can get his statistical production mojo back if the Pats are forced to use him more like the Ravens did.

In another Pater King related comment, I want to address another column he wrote recently, predicting that Matt Ryan will be a better pro than JaMarcus Russell. I find that particularly amusing. One of the rationales for King's claim is that Ryan played and produced his impressive stats with a supporting cast that will not play pro football while Russell played with some of the best players in the nation and several future stars. That is a weighty argument.

However, doesn't it produce it's own weighty counterargument? Even if Matt Ryan played with players that won't make it to the NFL, should he not be expected to play at a high level any way, given the nature of his competition? For the last few years, as much as I hate to admit it, the SEC has been, top to bottom, the best and most competitive conference in college football. The ACC has been in a down cycle.

And on top of that, while both teams play cupcakes in the nonconference schedule, LSU plays Championship Subdivion powers and BC plays teams from the notoriously weak Northeast. And let's not forget, Russell torched an ND team in the Sugar Bowl that managed to send several players on to the NFL (Ndukwe and Landri among them). Matt Ryan struggled to lead BC to a win over a very depleted ND team this year, even though he threw outlet passes to his tailback that reminded people of a very old Joe Montana (the one in those terrible NFL Network diner ads, not even the one who played for the Chiefs).

If I were to give you ten things I think, items one through eight right now would be that Peter King is a d-bag. Item nine would be that anyone who actively reads Peter King to gain insight into the seamy underworld of the coffee nerd should be disenfranchised. And last but not least, item ten would be: "I hoped you enjoyed the dynasty, Pats fans" because it's over.

Here's some Roy Orbison music to help cushion the blow.


The song is called The Comedians. I particularly like the line: "It's always something cruel that laughter drowns." In this instance, the cruel thing will be the decline and fall of the Patriot empire and the laughter drowning it will come from me and the overwhelming majority of NFL fans who have grown tired of the Pats and their fans.

And in one last note, we need to join forces with Sports Guy Nation in a new crusade. Bill Simmons is launching a mock-campaign to replace the GM of the Milwaukee Bucks. I'm not taking the side of the trade that says a guy has to come from an NBA background to run an NBA team. I'm taking the side of the trade that this loudmouth who has never slid into second base in his natural life (not including that rich, full life he leads in his own mind a la Walter Mitty) ought to put his money where his mouth is just one time before he dies.

As a bonus, here's a tools of note feature. I inadvertently typed in Roger's Rules instead of Robert's Rules when I googled the parliamentary procedure portion of what I wanted to talk about tonight. I guess I had Clemens on the brain and I was still chuckling from the Simmons piece. But I happened to stumble across this goldmine of sayings that are too obvious and banal to be considered cliches.

This fellow, Roger J. Wendell, has a website defending 3.8 billion years of organic evolution. And on this website, Roger J. Wendell has his own quaint rules for order. After reading them, it's just too easy to make fun of him. So all I have to say about them is this: if he's the last line of defense for 3.8 billion years of organic evolution, then 3.8 billion years of organic evolution is in for a world of pain.

Bill Simmons just might be the greatest basketball mind in the world today. I doubt it, but I am obliged, as a Catholic, to believe in miracles. But here's the thing, let's say a team were to give him a shot, since he boasts that he has at least some of the answers to fix each and every team in the league at the moment. What happens when he picks up the phone or approaches a GM from another team at league meetings? Are they really going to forget his arrogant columns? Are they going to be impressed by his soprano twittering? Are they going to be intimidated by J Bug and D Bag and Joe House and the rest of his insane clown posse? I doubt it, and I hope I get to see him fail.

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long. With the football season over, and a moderate interest in basketball until the NCAA tournament starts, what was there for me to say? Yeah, the Patriots videotaping scandal has shown surprising staying power (or maybe not so surprising since it gets elected officials headlines while forcing them to take no risks to their future career prospects whatsoever), but I've already said all that I have to say about that, for the most part.

I know NBA teams are scoring more, and sinking ships in the league are offering big name players to potential contenders at bargain basement prices. But I still can't get fired up to watch too much basketball until the playoffs start. No matter how intriguing some teams are starting to look, that doesn't change the fact that there are 8-10 teams more than the market can support.

While there are enough basketball players to fill the league's rosters in the sense that they can all put enough warm bodies on the court, there are far too many guys who have no business in an NBA arena unless they paid the price of admission or sold beer at a concession stand for my taste. There was a time when a player with so little talent and so few discernible skills in the basketball industry like Brian Scalabrine wouldn't be cashing checks from an NBA team. I'm old enough to remember and miss that time and young enough to be depressed when I do remember it.

I do want to talk a little about the big NBA trades that have come down lately. It gives me a chance to do something that I almost never do, and that is compliment Bill Simmons. I guess I'd file it under the "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then" theorem, but Simmons was dead right on Jason Kidd going to the Mavericks being much more likely to blow up than pan out in the short run or the long run. Simmons nailed every one of Kidd's flaws as a basketball player, and how specifically his competitiveness won't overshadow his inability to fit in on an already flawed basketball team.

That said, I am thrilled that Mark Cuban did this. First, it brings together three people in the NBA that I hate more than anyone, even Ainge, in Cuban, Kidd and Dirk. And it puts the three of them on a ship that will almost certainly sink. As Simmons said, Kidd can't shoot and he's too old to consistently drive to the basket. The players who should benefit from an upgraded point guard position were already shooting very well before Kidd came to town. And best of all, Kidd makes $20 million a year at his age, granted the deal ends after next year, but that's a lot of money to pay for a product that just may be past its expiration date. Good night and good luck to any hopes of a Mavericks' title run in the immediate future.

Simmons made an interesting point that Portland would have been a better fit, but Kidd nixed that deal. Apparently he had his heart set on going to the Mavs. Personally, I can't help but wonder if there might be some small motivation for Kidd coming out of the Toni Braxton fiasco, which ruined the chemistry of the young Mavs teams of the mid 1990s after Kidd and Jim Jackson fell out over their interest in the R and B singer.

I also found it interesting that Simmons dared to ask hard questions about whether this Garnett move might not come back to haunt the Celtics from a competitive stand point down the road. I am actually looking forward to that unfolding, considering the fact that I still hate Ainge and wish this team no success. If they don't win this year, all the players will be a year older. More than that, the issues that can arise on a team with three superstars trying to share shots won't be as easy to work around. If people put the team first for a year and it doesn't get it done, particularly if they lose to a one man team like Detroit or Cleveland, it's not going to work like this again.

As Simmons said, and we all know, the simple, pure economic decision was to go for Garnett. Even without the win differential, it got people excited and interested in the Celtics for the first time in 6 years. It sold a lot of tickets and jerseys and other assorted memorabilia. And something tells me, that even if this team comes apart at the seams in the playoffs and never gets close to bringing the 17th banner to Banner 17, those tools won't lose much sleep over it. Not so long as they make money.

So much for the thought that Mark Cuban is a brilliant business man. I wonder how the people who were desperate for Cuban to acquire the Cubs have taken this. I notice Jay Mariotti hasn't had the time to devote an entire column on this story. I'm not surprised, what with the fact that he had to tell us Tiger Woods had overtaken Michael Jordan. Aside from the horrendously half-assed stab at some sort of poetry to start the piece, the worst aspect had to be comparing a golfer and a basketball player.

Consider the fact that Tiger Woods goes ballistic if a fan dares snap a photo of him while he's in his back swing. Then set against that image a picture of Jordan trying to drive to the hoop against the Bad Boys era Pistons or the Pat Riley Knicks whose hacking habits did what just might be irreparable damage to basketball as a sport. At the end of the day, it's got to take a bit more than a few ads for Amex and Buick for a guy who excelled at a hobby to pass by a guy who took a shameful amount of contact in a non-contact sport.

As for college basketball, I'm really not all that hard up for something to watch that I can force myself to sit down and watch a game featuring two teams that I really could care less about battle it out in conference play. The only thing I feel strongly about in the entire college basketball landscape is that I hate Duke. I just hope that the upcoming NCAA tournament provides some earth-shatteringly interesting story lines, otherwise college basketball might be dead to me forever.

Since I was so miserable and depressing yesterday, I thought I'd share something that I like with the three of you who read this blog. Even though I've been a huge Elvis fan for as long as I can remember, there are still some songs out there that I've never heard. Recently, I happened to check out the five disc box set Walk A Mile In My Shoes, The Essential 70s Masters.

A lot of people who claim to be Elvis fans are down on this period in his career. I, for my part, think that he recorded some of his most mature music in this period. These songs might not have climbed the charts the way his more renowned material of the 50s and 60s did, but that's really not his fault. I think people get too hung up on the jump suits, the concert act and the odd behavior he exhibited during the seventies and don't approach the music with an open mind.

I said all that to say this, I think I may have a new favorite Elvis song. It's called Twenty Days and Twenty Nights. He recorded it in June of 1970, and it can be found on disc 3 of the Walk a Mile in My Shoes collection. I was just amazed at the courage it took for the writers to pen the song and a singer of Elvis' eminence to record it when it starts off to tell the story of a guy who ran out on his home and left his wife with a stack of unpaid bills.

Obviously, that's a rotten trick to pull on one's wife, and it doesn't take courage to do it, quite the opposite as a matter of fact. But it takes courage to come out and admit it in the first two lines of a song, when you consider that it's going to alienate the entire listening audience. And I think that, more than anything, is why I really like the music at the end of Elvis's career more than I like a lot of his big hits.

Elvis in the Seventies had the guts to record songs that might not win over a big audience. He was even willing to record songs that caused him a lot of pain, but he didn't wear it on his sleeve the way emo tools do. He was willing to dig deep to find the part of the song that spoke to a part of himself and didn't really give a damn whether people bought it, got it, liked it or cared as long as it mattered to him. And I admire that.

Here's a pretty good version of the song Twenty Days and Twenty Nights available on YouTube. Check it out:



It almost makes up for the local library owning four hardbound copies of the Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, but nary a copy of Trainspotting. I found that out because the authors are next to one another alphabetically, and I've been trying to read the books that movies I've really liked are based on of late. I highly recommend both the book and the movie version of The Commitments, in case you care. And don't worry, I have neither read nor watched any version of the damn Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, thank God.

It's been a while since I've had a Festivus post, by which I mean since I've aired several grievances without benefit of a common theme. But so much has been going on lately that I want to say a little bit about. For instance, I find myself amused by the memory of the voice of Boston sports, even though he lives in LA.

Bill Simmons in yet another mailbag column answered a reader from NY who wrote in to ask:

Can you clarify something for us New Yorkers? The cocky attitude that New England fans carried about the perfect Patriots was suddenly turned into classy responses of "you beat us fair and square," with very few comments like "I hope New York burns in hell." I expected more of the latter. Was your "classiness" just a facade, and have Boston fans exposed themselves as thin once things go south? Or is this more of an Eddie Murphy in "Trading Places" thing where you are a KARATE MAN and get bruised on the inside and don't show your weaknesses? What gives?

Simmons' response reads:

You have to remember, Patriots fans were constantly bristling during the 2001, 2003 and 2004 seasons when opposing players and fans played the "they had no business winning that game," and "maybe they were the winning team, but they weren't the best team" cards. Hence, the "nobody respects us!" angle that was pushed ad nauseum by Patriots players and fans alike. As crazy as this sounds, we believed that 60-minute football games should be used to determine who had the best team, not what "could" have happened or what "should" have happened. (Sorry, everyone from Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Indy.) So when the Giants outplayed the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, we admitted as much -- we've seen good defense and good coaching topple too many "talented" teams to call that game a fluke.

Also, it's easy to forget this after what happened from 2002 to 2007, but Boston fans are REALLY good at losing heart-wrenching games. We've had tons of practice. It was like Madonna dropping the British accent and the classy mom routine and turning into a slut again. You fall right back into it.

I find that tremendously funny. It seems to me that the Patriots were a seven point favorite when they played Carolina. It also seems to me that the only reason the Panthers managed to play their way to the point where the mighty Pats needed a Vinatieri field goal to win the game was an absolutely awful second half performance by Tom Brady. Even though it is very nearly a Federal offense to question Tom on any aspect of his performance, I still remember him turning the ball over a few times when it could have killed that team.

And then there is the game against the Eagles. The Patriots were also seven point favorites in that game. And they squeaked by on another Vinatieri field goal in part because Donovan McNabb couldn't keep his lunch down for the two minute drill at the end of the game. But as for no one expecting the Pats to win that game, I seem to remember the team had a 19 game win streak stretching from 2003-2004. I don't think they were sneaking up on teams at any point in that run.

But far be it for me to suggest that a man can't remember things in his own fashion in what still passes for a free country. Some Boston fans reacted with a stunning display of class because the epic upset in Arizona was so shocking, it even stopped the instinct to bully that resides at the core of the average Boston fan. And the facility to remember things in a way that never really happened is also one of the key attributes of the citizens of Red Sox and Patriots Nation.

Let's not forget that Red Sox fans have made a life of claiming their fathers, grandfathers and ancestors of remoter degrees were loyal, devoted Red Sox fans to the death. And yet the stadium was less than one-third full when Ted Williams played his final game. And I'm sure 2/3 of that generation of Red Sox fans would gladly have shivved the Splendid Splinter with a sharpened toothbrush to steal his medals and the fillings from his teeth.

I also want to talk a little about the tragedy at Northern Illinois this week. This is another symptom of a fundamental problem with our society. And it's not the fact that guns can be purchased in stores. It's a much deeper problem. After all, guns have been available to Americans since the first settlers landed here from Europe. Twenty years ago, just as many guns were available to just as many people and there wasn't even a waiting period or a Brady Bill.

But this isn't a defense of the gun lobby. It wouldn't bother me terribly if the nation made guns illegal. What I do fear, however, is the knee jerk reaction and a government that overreacts to specific events without addressing their underlying causes. This cat went into an auditorium and killed five people because he was a d-bag with serious emotional problems. So why don't we address the system that creates d-bags with serious emotional problems?

For the last 20 years, some geniuses decided that we had to tell every child that he or she or it is special. Every one who participated in any activity had to be given an award whether they earned it or not. The idea behind this is that self-esteem, self-respect, self-worth or whatever you call it can be instilled, inculcated or imposed from on high. That's not the case, it has to be earned. It's a painful process, and one filled with risks with very little reward. But unless a person experiences it, they have nothing.

No one ever seemed to ask a very simple question - what happens to these kids who never had to develop their own sense of self worth when they leave the relatively safe haven of elementary school and enter the real world? The real world, from middle school on is a harsh place. The real world doesn't give a damn how special you think you are or have been told you are. The real world is an awful, heartless, cold place. And we ought to raise and educate children that can deal with it.

Things just get worse, too. For thousands and thousands of years, the human being evolved into an animal that needs a community. And in the last 15 years, it's become easier, thanks to computers and social networking sites, to make friends in Berlin than it is to have friends in your hometown. I exchanged more words so far today with my college roommate over facebook than I did with my own roommate in my apartment. And people wonder why our society has so many inexplicable problems.

And since this latest tragedy is almost sure to bring Michael Moore out of hiding, I want to throw him in as a random thing I hate. I hate Michael Moore, not because I don't share his politics. God knows, I don't, but I have a lot of close personal friends whose politics I do not share. I hate him because he's a whining, carping fraud.

For instance, in his recent film about the state of health care in this country, Michael Moore spent how much money to whine about the fact that the Federal government doesn't spend enough money to provide universal health care to every American? It seems to me that he could have put that money to better effect paying for health insurance for needy families. Not only that, but he could have done more good and earned himself better PR with normal Americans (as opposed to people like me who would hate him anyway, or the people whose hearts and minds he's already won). But that's just me.

If time were not a moving thing
And I could make it stay
This hour of love we share
Would always be
There'd be no coming day
To shine a morning light
And make us realize our night is over

That's how the Elvis Presley version of It's Over starts. In case you're wondering, it is not a cover of the Roy Orbison classic which I included in my post celebrating the death of the Patriot dynasty in the Arizona desert. They just share a title. I included it in tonight's post because today's hearings ended as they began, with a whimper.

While they didn't go as well as I would have liked, they certainly did not go as poorly as McNamee apologists will claim. The only real damaging revelation came when Roger Clemens shocked me, and the rest of the world, by throwing his wife Debbie under the bus unceremoniously. It's hard to believe that a team trainer injected a player's wife with HGH for an SI shoot when he wasn't doing the same for the player.

I was livid when I heard that statement from Mrs. Clemens read into the record. I can't remember a time when a guy threw his wife under the bus to try to save himself. It was bold and shocking, like good modern art (to borrow a phrase from Joseph Heller, and if such a thing exists), but shameless, just the same. It makes it hard for me to defend him, but then, half the posts in this space seem to be devoted to defending the indefensible.

The guy I go to for my Red Sox info considered that to be a smoking gun when I spoke to him this afternoon. It does look bad, but all I can say is this - just because your wife runs your life doesn't mean Roger Clemens and his wife can't pursue independent courses of action vis-a-vis growth hormone. But it looks bad, nonetheless.

As for those who regard Andy Pettitte's testimony as ironclad proof of Clemens' dishonesty, I can't see it that way. Yes, Andy Pettitte is a born-again Christian. But when he admitted to using HGH way back in the aftermath of the Mitchell Report, Pettitte was adamant that he'd only used HGH for a very short time in 2002. Now, his deposition tells us that he also injected himself in 2004 with HGH he got from his father. I can't help but wonder where this story will lead us when Andy is done spilling the beans in bits and pieces.

I thought Roger looked convincing under the questioning. He stumbled a bit, and seemed to falter in places. But he looked like a regular guy under intense pressure in an unfamiliar setting. After all, had Clemens ever testified under oath, on camera before a Congressional committee before? Of course McNamee looked more polished, he's had plenty of experience with this sort of thing.

In the glut of after the fact coverage, I noticed that Congressman Watkins of Maryland got rave reviews for his hard-hitting cross examination of Clemens. Personally, I thought Congressman Burton of Indiana stole the show. And the rep from Connecticut, Congressman Shays, did a great deal of damage to McNamee's credibility when he forced McNamee to admit under oath that he was a drug dealer. It wasn't so much the admission, but the way McNamee failed to weasel out by saying that's your opinion a half dozen times.

McNamee, to me at any rate, looked like a small, devious, petty weasel in his good moments. In his bad moments, particularly under Burton's questioning, McNamee looked like a guy who has already admitted to having lied to police and investigators on a few occasions. I am most interested to find out exactly what is in McNamee's service record from his time in the NYPD.

I don't understand why the NYPD denied a Freedom of Information Act request to release the McNamee records. Knowing the mentality of big city police departments, it's clear they are protecting something embarrassing to some one. The question is to whom is it damaging? It's got to be covering a secret in his past because his father was one of their own or it's protecting superior officers who stand to lose their careers or pensions because they swept something under the rug.

What really ought to happen in the wake of this hearing, which was nothing more than a colossal waste of time, is really quite simple. Instead of perjury indictments, we ought to go back to the way the Pilgrims did it. Clemens, McNamee, all the Congressmen and women and every American who watched it ought to be put in the stocks and pelted with rancid produce. Except me, of course, I am far too valuable for that.

For the moment, I'm still on Clemens' side. I think this hearing did more to damage McNamee's credibility than it did to hurt Roger. I think the expanding revelations hurt Pettitte's capacity to hurt Clemens. I think the Debbie Clemens story is the last thing that remains that can kill Clemens on this issue. And I think that if Clemens had signed the prorated $18 million deal with the Red Sox in May, his name stays out of the Mitchell Report (Sen. Mitchell is on the Board of Directors of the Boston Red Sox)

I should have published this last night, but I just didn't feel like it. But I enjoyed watching this year's Pro Bowl more than I have in the past for some reason. I don't think it is a lingering positive feeling following the Patriots' epic collapse against the Giants. I think because there were more first time guys than usual, the game was played with more intensity than it has been lately.

Or maybe it was because Tom Brady and Randy Moss weren't there. My position on the two of them has been apparent from the earliest days of this blog's existence, so you are free to take it with a grain of salt. But I just can't help believing that even if he had to undergo some Lee Majors Six Million Dollar Man surgery on his high ankle sprain, Tom Brady would have been there to bask in the glow of 19-0. Or perhaps the shock of losing to the Giants overtaxed his fragile intellect so much he had to take a rest. Or maybe the thought of Matt Light facing off against Osi Umenyora one more time was more than he could bear.

As for Randy Moss, I remember mentioning once or twice that he had a history of coming up small in huge moments. For once, I have to include a reference to a Bill Simmons column that doesn't rip the author here. In last week's mailbag column, Simmons said this about Moss:
I don't know how it played on television, but in person, it was a breathtaking moment -- Brady buying himself time with a planned rollout, Moss sprinting down the sidelines flanked by two d-backs, and then Brady launching the ball 70 yards down field as every Giants fan in the building stopped breathing. The pass was right on target and Moss would have caught the football had he jumped for it ... which he didn't. I will always believe that. And by the way, it's taking all the will power in my sick body to refrain from a "If it were Week 6 and we were winning by 28, Moss would have caught the football" joke.

Yeah, Moss caught five balls for sixty two yards and a touchdown, which is nice. But at the end of the day he had a chance to make the play that saved the perfect season and for all his talent, all his athletic ability and all his demons that had come oh so close to being forgotten, Randy couldn't be bothered to go all out for that one moment. Damn shame that. So what if Assante Samuel could have iced the game by not dropping a sure INT. Aren't teammates supposed to bail one another out? We wouldn't have had Havlicheck steals it if we didn't have Russell making one of the worst inbounds passes of all time a second before.

The Patriots and the fans can point to the ankle injuries, but they can't answer that nagging doubt in my mind. Those two would have been in Hawaii had the Patriots won. Flagging the Pro Bowl is just one more of many instances in which these Patriots prove themselves to be classless and consummate sunshine soldiers.

As for my man, TO. I thought it was awesome when he came out and called himself the front runner for Pro Bowl MVP. In another instance of things I can't help but believe, I think that if any other receiver had caught two TD passes and I can't remember how many first downs to bring the NFC back from the brink of defeat, they might have managed to edge out Adrian Peterson. But that's just me. So I have no problem with any of TO's actions yesterday.

It was nice that Adrian Peterson rushed for the second most yards in the history of the Pro Bowl. Maybe if he'd been that intense down the stretch, Minnesota might have beaten out the Redskins for the final playoff spot in the NFC. Perhaps the Vikings should have been offering new Cadillacs for playoff incentive.

As for other peripheral matters... I'm just not sure Andre Tippett ought to be in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, he had 100 career sacks. So did Mark Gastineau. Yeah, those Patriot teams blew, but Gastineau's Jets weren't much better. What it comes down to, I think, is that the Patriots had (prior to this dynasty) next to nothing in the way of history and tradition, so Tippett got in to the Hall.

Now that the post Super Bowl euphoria is passing, it's time to get back to serious business. I didn't take the time to comment when the Red Sox added Sean Casey to the team in the not too distant past for three reasons. First, the NFL playoffs were much more important at the time. Second, I really don't know what to make of it. And third, I'm not too worried about what he can bring to the table.

Casey is, in theory, an interesting addition to the 2008 Red Sox lineup. He's a left handed bat, who can serve to spell Mike Lowell and Kevin Youkilis at stretches during the season. I am not anticipating that he would play third, but with him in the lineup it would free Youkilis to play third and Lowell to rest, or DH according to the whim of Francona.

That said, he's not tremedously young anymore. Casey won't be a character problem, since he's been very well liked by teammates, fans and the media everywhere he's played. But he's slow, even by the standards of these Red Sox who are (with the exception of Ellsbury and others) a particularly slow team, both mentally and physically. Also, I don't see him getting enough at bats to make a big impact on the team's fortunes. But who knows who might get hurt.

In other news, Brian McNamee took the stand in Congress today. His battle with Roger Clemens has taken an interesting turn. And one must wonder how it will impact the more important battle being waged between myself and theKobraKommander for the hearts and minds of my readers. This is, indeed, a strange turn.

Brian McNamee turned evidence including syringes, gauze pads and vials over to the IRS Special Investigator allegedly providing the substance behind the earlier accusation that he had injected Roger Clemens with steroids, HGH and everything but the kitchen sink. At first blush, this looks very bad for Clemens, who testified in his own deposition on Tuesday that he had never taken performance enhancing substances.

If Clemens is proved to have perjured himself, it is, ironically, the only way he can fairly and legally be punished for what he is alleged to have done in the Mitchell Report. As baseball had no comprehensive policy banning performance enhancing substances prior to 2004, all of the allegations against Clemens would be moot otherwise, since one cannont be punished under a law written ex post facto.

As a defender of Clemens from the first appearance of the Mitchell Report, I am not tremendously worried about the material that has been handed over to the government investigators. This comment provided by the doping expert ESPN consulted for their story eases my mind somewhat:

Doping expert Don Catlin said steroids could still be detected in a sample that old.

"But if you don't find it, it doesn't mean it wasn't there before," said Catlin, who added there are sure to be chain of custody issues.

He said HGH would be much less stable.

Any reasonably competent lawyer should be able to get around that, provided that there is anything around which to get in this story. Granted, there isn't a great deal of detail in Catlin's comment, but it doesn't seem strong enough to damn Clemens, either. Time, however, will tell.

I am still in shock that the Patriots who managed to survive so many negative stories and stave off a few big upsets in the making this season haven't found a way to reverse the outcome of Super Bowl XLII. I am also in shock that I managed to walk the tightrope between implying that the Giants could actually win the game without harnessing the awesome power of this blog's jinx.

I can't remember the last time I actually called something before hand and had it come to pass. It may never have happened, I just don't feel like going back and looking through my posts to find it, on the off chance that I was ever right. I get the feeling that I was right in picking Dallas to beat Indianapolis in Dallas last year the week before Thanksgiving. And I think I picked the Bears to win against Seattle and New Orleans last year in the playoffs. But since then, it's been a bad, bad, bad run.

Unfortunately, I think that the NFL will be forced to find a way to have this game replayed until the Patriots can find a way to win. If not, then so many of our most respected sports journalists will continue to look even more foolish than they ordinarily do. For instance, Bill Simmons compared these Giants to the 1985 Pats. The podcast is still up on his site at ESPN, in case you don't believe me. If Roger Goodell and the league office allow this to stand, it might bring down the sports media as we know it.

Meanwhile, I got an email on Saturday from the guy I go to for my Red Sox info. He was out in Arizona for the game. And he had his picture taken with Jim McMahon. It seems very funny in retrospect, to have him out there with the QB whose team devastated, humiliated and set the Patriots back ten years with the savage beating the Bears inflicted that day. And all the while, Simmons is out there comparing the Pats opponent to the Pats of yesteryear. Although, I have to say Tom Coughlin is a lot like the evolutionary Ray Berry in the sense that he's kind of a tool.

This retrospect on what it felt like to see the undefeated Patriots fall apart in Arizona has to be my favorite Simmons column of all time now. One thing I'm not entirely sure of, as I talk about this loss with my friends who root for the Patriots, is whose fingerprints are on this spectacularly offensive offensive collapse. It's easy to blame McDaniel, but didn't Belichick promote him because he was an unknown and could serve as a strawman enabling Belichick to have even more control over the team? It seems like the arrogant game plan that seemed to be governed by the premise that all the Pats had to do was show up would bear this out, but then I might just be blinded by my hatred for Belichick.

It wouldn't be a normal day for Sedition in Red Sox Nation if Jay Mariotti hadn't found his own way to taint what should otherwise be as nearly perfect as a moment can be in sports fandom. The notion that the Patriots should be further punished for the report that came out of Saturday's Boston Herald claiming that the Pats cheated by videotaping the Rams pregame walkthrough before the 2002 Super Bowl is absurd. If they did cheat, it was dirty, shameless and beat. But it's also fairly unprofessional to punish a team now for what they did six years ago.

Professional sports aren't the real world. In a sense, it's not that different from punishing baseball players who took performance enhancers that were banned by other sports but not banned by baseball at the time the players took them. The NFL came down hard on the Patriots when they were caught red handed this year. If it happens again, they ought to come down harder on them. But if six years intervene between that incident and when the story came out, then it's St. Louis' tough luck. Maybe they should have had a guy make sure the stadium was empty if they didn't want people checking out their walkthrough.

The one good thing about this whole episode is that it reminded all of us that Arlen Specter is still alive and kicking in the US Senate. But as for this silly little story, I have a pretty solid record for disliking and ripping the Patriots, their coach and their owner. That said, I have no empathy or sympathy for Kurt Warner and the 2001 Rams. They had every chance to beat a team that was markedly inferior on paper. Knowing the Dick Vermeil/Mike Martz offense, I'm sure they had practiced other plays enough over the season that they could have made adjustments.

The real story is that those Rams didn't treat the game as seriously as they ought to have. They came in as a big favorite, having beaten the Pats on the road earlier in the year and playing in a dome against an outdoor team. They were the greatest show on turf and they failed to show up. It's not Roger Goodell's problem. Nor is it the problem of Congress. Taping other teams' signals isn't right, but neither is a retroactive investigation that really can't culminate in an appropriate or effective punishment.

In general, I try to avoid commenting on specific political candidates in this space, mostly because I realize that none of you give a damn what I think about a particular candidate. But I think we need to throw a tool of note award in Mitt Romney's direction. Romeny's campaign came out today and claimed that John McCain and Mike Huckabee made some sort of illicit "backroom" deal to deny Romney the delegates from W Va. To me, it seemed like more than a little sour grapes from Romney. Or perhaps a sense of frustration because he didn't think of it first, if in fact anything untoward was done.

In case you care, in the interest of equal time, Sedition in Red Sox Nation is forced into an anti-McCain stance because he is supported by Curt Schilling. Mike Huckabee is out because he reminds me of the Homer Stokes character from O Brother Where Art Thou. Fred Thompson is out because he was in Die Hard 2. And Rudy was out because he has a bad comb-over, although I defy anyone to show me a good comb-over, and he did a terrible cameo in Anger Management. Kind of funny, isn't it, the thought process through which we here approach the democratic process.

Eighteen and one. It looks even better spelled out. I didn't post last night because I had to do some serious celebrating. And I didn't post earlier today because I was suffering from a hangover. I was wondering, too, what quote I would use to lament the Patriots fall from glory at the finish line. Over the course of this season, I have been making frequent references to Gerald Ford's first speech to the American people after taking the oath of office, telling every one that the long national nightmare was over. Instead, I think we'll go with Jackie Gleason: "How sweet it is!"

I still don't like the Giants, and I don't think I ever will. But this was just an unbelievable moment. After all the records, all the attention, all the hype and all the disgustingly classless behavior on the part of the coach, the players and the fans, it's all come to nothing.

Brady has the regular season records that Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw didn't get. And now he's added one more mark that the two of them can never touch. He's no longer perfect in the Super Bowl. Sure, the offensive line let him down but Bradshaw took his fair share of hits and still managed to make the plays that had to be made. Montana took the field needing to drive his team 92 yards in the two minute offense down by four, and he did it. Brady just wasn't good enough yesterday.

I just can't say enough about Matt Light's performance. My friend from Maine called him the most overrated lineman in football. I don't think that's fair, I would only put him in the top five. I think Marcus McNeil from San Diego is more overrated, for example. But his performance conjured many happy memories of Max Lane being abused by Reggie White. Too bad Strahan was on the other side of the formation, otherwise the symmetry would have been perfect with the 92 jersey number and the shellshocked Pats o-lineman.

The best part, however, of this Super Bowl is that it presents tantalizing signs of not being the end of the beginning to steal a phrase from Churchill, but the beginning of the end. I know I've said this more than a few times to this point, but age has to catch up to these Patriots soon. Vrabel did come back in a big way this season, but he can't have much gas left in the tank at his age. Bruschi and Seau aren't getting any younger or quicker. Harrison might have to get back on the HGH.

Yeah, they have San Francisco's first round pick. But they aren't going to be in the same position as far as the salary cap economics are concerned. Moss is a free agent, and they have to answer some tough questions. He's coming off a great season, but without the contract year incentive to perform, will he be as hungry next year or will some of the character issues reappear? Stallworth is also a free agent, and will he be as eager to return to a team where he was overshadowed by Moss and Wes Welker?

That's all I can say right now, so I'll leave you with this video, letting Roy Orbison speak for me.

So, since everybody knows that 19-0 is inevitable, the Patriots and the city of Boston have scheduled the victory parade. As the people involved are mental giants of the first order, they have scheduled this parade for the Tuesday following the Super Bowl. That day just happens coincide with Super Tuesday, when Massachusetts voters are supposed to turn out for their presidential primaries.

After all, any Patriots fan who comes out of the inevitable festivities too intoxicated or otherwise impaired to do their civic duty is probably doing the Republic, if not the world, a favor. God knows, enough morons vote, what's twenty or thirty thousand nitwits when 20 or 20 million will vote on Super Tuesday? Who knows, maybe a lower than normal turnout in Massachusetts will finish off Mitt Romney. At this point, with the way he's come back from being written off in this election season, I'd believe it if Mitt ended up starring in a cheesy horror film (to paraphrase the Johnathan Winters character from It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)

I am not one of those people who will complain that the victory parade shouldn't conflict with the electoral process. After all, Tuesday is the only day it could possibly happen. It's just too short a turn around to expect the players to undergo a strenuous public appearance on Monday after the game is played Sunday evening in Arizona. Imagine the jet lag.

As for Wednesday, or a date thereafter... it simply can't work because eight Patriots have to go to the Pro Bowl which is to be played in Hawaii the Sunday after the Super Bowl. Now most people don't think Pro Bowl practices are critical, what with the fact that defenses are restricted in the sorts of schemes they can run and are forbidden to blitz. So there really shouldn't be much game planning, right?

Unfortunately, when you deal with vast intellects like the ones exhibited when Brady, Light, Vrabel et al. take center stage, even a Pro Bowl game plan starts to look like nuclear physics. And for my part, I'd hate to think that these Patriots might miss even one public appearance in Hawaii for the sake of a public appearance in Boston. Imagine what the harsh New England winter weather could do to Gisele's hair. The horror, the horror...as Kurtz would say.

This impending victory parade could be the first local appearance for Brady and Gisele after their engagement. Rumor has it, Brady has promised to spring for an engagement ring for Gisele if (when) the Patriots win the Super Bowl. Granted, the rumor originated in the National Enquirer so we have to take it with a grain of salt.

But my question is, what happens in the extremely unlikely the event of a miraculous upset? If the Giants win, what does Gisele get? A promise ring? A tennis braclet? One of those diamond heart pendants from Zales that will be advertised to death before Valentine's Day? Or does Tom have the backbone to give her nothing after this season is over. To tell the truth, I'd finally have some respect for him if he pulled that move.

Everything is lining up for the Patriots to beat the Giants severely, a perfect storm, as Bill Simmons put it. The layoff before the Super Bowl tends to favor the favorite. They've already beaten the Giants in the Meadowlands in December, so it should be a cake walk in Arizona.

Even better, this 19-0 season will have been achieved at a negligible cost. After all, it's only the collective soul of the New England Patriots that purchased this historic season. In the article linked above, Simmons referenced the book Blueprint, which documented the process in which Belichick, Kraft and Paoli built the three time champions. If the author of that book wants to chronicle this team, perhaps he could title the work: How to Go From David to Goliath in Seven Years.

Simmons compared a potential Green Bay vs. New England Super Bowl to the 1980 Olympic hockey game between the US and the USSR, in the sense that the entire country would be behind Favre in the same way that the Miracle on Ice game galvanized the nation back in the day. It is an interesting analogy, but I think this Giants team is better suited to the part.

Nobody went into the Lake Placid games thinking Team USA could beat the Russians, except Team USA. The game wasn't even on live TV. It was only as the game got going that people realized they were watching something historic, memorable and pretty damn amazing. It's only with 20-20 hindsight that people think that the Miracle on Ice game grasped American hearts and minds and it became a big deal. And deservedly so, it was an epic win for an underdog.

In the movie Patton, right as the German tanks are starting to make their breakthroughs in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944, the general says something very memorable. Patton says: There's absolutely no reason for us to assume. . .that the Germans are mounting a major offensive. The weather is awful and their supplies are low. The Germans haven't mounted a winter attack since Frederick the Great. Therefore I believe that's exactly what they're going to do.

Now I'm not saying the Giants can win. I'm not saying they're going to win. I'm not saying that even if they were allowed to play 14 on 11, any team could stop the Patriots from fulfilling destiny and going 19-0 or even 38-0. It's just one more thing that I want to have out there, along with what I wrote Tuesday last, on the off chance that in this historic season the one mark Tom Brady fails to achieve is that of becoming the first absolute douche to quarterback a team to four Super Bowl wins.

Speaking of QBs who won four Super Bowls, not too long ago, I caught Failure to Launch on cable. And it wasn't very good, even for that dismal genre. But I watched the whole damn thing because Terry Bradshaw stole the show. He was great. I really believe that he should have won an Oscar for that. Too bad the Oscars have to go to whatever films "challenge the intellect" or justify the politics of the populist view when there isn't a clear cut great movie like The Godfather or Gladiator out there.