Even though the Red Sox managed to come back against the Mariners tonight and win the single most impressive game a team has ever played in their 27th contest of a 162 game season, today was still a good day in Sedition in Red Sox Nation world. Tom Brady was seen walking through NYC sporting a jaunty Yankee cap. Bob Halloran wrote an uninspired post for his blog, and there was a mind-numbingly dull piece in Red Sox Times on how to socialize with other Sox fans down in New York. And best of all, Steven Jackson and the Golden State Warriors routed the mighty Dallas Mavericks out of the playoffs.

First, Red Sox Nation is in moral crisis because their football hero Tom Brady is wearing a Yankee cap to conceal his receding hairline while he's out gallivanting his Brazilian supermodel companion. And he's spending his time in New York City when he could be in Boston cheering on the Sox. Maybe he could have been seen in green Sox regalia, after all, isn't it his duty to make sure that he spend every waking moment figuring out new ways to do everything New England fans want him to do?

That's just one more reason to love Red Sox fans. This is a huge non-story. After all, Brady came from California and went to school in Michigan. His ties to anything remotely connected to Red Sox Nation didn't even begin until the Pats drafted him. So why is it incumbent upon him not to wear a Yankees hat?

If Brady does in fact, as I fear, harbor political aspirations for his future after football, doesn't it make sense for him to curry favor in New York? It's a bigger, richer market than New England. And he already has Patriot fans in his corner. Hell, he'd have to start breaking in to season ticket holders' houses at night to smash their possessions and kick their children to alienate them.

Then there is our old friend Bob Halloran, who is not convinced that the NFL pays enough attention to on-field performance in the rush to draft workout warriors who put up impressive numbers at the combine. The vertical leap in particular concerns Halloran. I'm sure it never occurred to him, but the vertical leap is one of the better ways to measure a player's explosiveness from a standing start.

And as for the question of whether the teams don't watch enough game film, that is ridiculous. In the process of media build-up, individual workouts and interview sessions, teams seem like they do more and study more than they should as opposed to less. It's hard sometimes to tell everything you need to know about a player from the game tape. There is a very fine line between the player with a great head for the game and a guy who was in the right place at the right time against inferior competition.

If you are a Red Sox fan and you want to network with other colossal tools, there are a number of places in New York City in the heart of Yankee Country where you can meet fellow travellers. Read this Fist Magnet's Guide To Rooting For The Sox In New York to find out where to go. Use extreme caution, however, and do not operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery after reading it. The boredom it inflicts could be lethal in large doses.

I particularly enjoyed the story of the author's meeting with Jonathan Papelbon's mother. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that encounter which I'm sure must have been painfully awkward. Not having a child who pitches for a professional team, I can't say for certain how uncomfortable it would be to meet a random stranger who just happens to root for said team and wants to have a nice chat about my son. But I'm willing to be that it would call to mind visions of Ted Bundy, or at the very least the Robert DeNiro character from the terrible movie The Fan.

And in case you're wondering in Red Sox Nation, there is a touch of grey to the silver lining of tonight's impressive come-from-behind win over the Mariners. First, the Mariners starter should have been pitching to Artie Lange in Beer League. And Matsuzaka walked the bases loaded in the opening frame before he recorded an out. Yeah, JC Romero recorded his first save in a long, long, long time, but lost in all of that is that Jonathan Papelbon might have overstressed his arm throwing those thirty five pitches while blowing the save the other night. That won't be good for the Nation.

Finally, the real story of the night is that the NBA, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and the Rand Corporation can rest easy for another year. Mark Cuban and his Dallas Mavericks have just been eliminated from the playoffs by the Golden State Warriors. For the first time under the current playoff format and just the third time ever, an eight seed has eliminated the one seed. It's only the second time a team which had won 65 games in the regular season failed to win the championship, and the first time a team with many wins didn't reach the conference finals.

Google and YouTube are in the process of retreating to the hills. Since the NBA has eviscerated the lone voice of reason on basketball issues by fining Cuban hundreds of thousands of dollars for his crying out in the basketball wilderness in blogMaverick, the Benefactor can but vent his spleen on media conglomerates. With any luck, Cuban will be too depressed to buy the Chicago Cubs in the wake of this catastrophe.

Dirk Nowitzki's performance, especially in the second half, was abysmal at best. I remember a quote attributed to Napoleon that said "scratch a Russian and you will wound a Tartar." Nowitzki has inspired me to offer this version: "hit a German in the mouth and you will make a gutless bully cry." I'm sure Angela Merkel will give Dirk a national holiday to console him, as rolling over in a playoff game is still the most tangible achievement of any German since a ghost in the machine ruthlessly shanghaied a four week old child into the German army.

Even better, Don Nelson led his team past the owner who fired him. Steven Jackson who did his best to take the mantle of worst citizen in the NBA (based on the way the media covers him) or guy who really needs some help with his decision making off the court from Ron Artest as long as Jackson stayed in Indiana is now somewhat vindicated. At the end of the day, Dallas was outplayed and outcoached, they were beaten as an organization. And it put a smile on my face, if it's any consolation to the Benefactor.

All I have to say on the Western Conference playoffs as they progress is this...

Be looking good Warriors. Be looking real good.

And good luck with that, as Baron Davis reminds us that a guy really shouldn't have a beard that's longer than the hair on his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now that the Patriots have beaten a quality AFC opponent on the road, I guess we can stop concentrating on Tom Brady's body language for a while. Like most people who watch football, I was not surprised that Brady looked unhappy, to say the least, on the field against Denver. The team didn't play particularly well, and they lost the game. It would have been a much bigger deal if Brady took that in stride, but people need things to talk about and write about.

One thing that nobody mentioned in the one million and one analyses of Brady's body language that came out in the past week is the great personal strain in his personal life. As America became metrosexualized in the last 10 or so years, one issue was neglected. What happens when a metro goes bald?

With the recent pharmaceutical advances, male pattern baldness has lost much of its sting. However, there are some who have concerns about the chemicals in these drugs, particularly the need to keep hair loss medication away from pregnant women, or women who might become pregnant at some point. The trouble is, no high profile metrosexual has gone bald with dignity (if that's possible). Brady is blazing a trail for metrosexuals everywhere, and that must be difficult for him. Maybe the media needs to ease up on him a bit, and let him work through this issue.

There were a few things that disappointed me during this weekend's games. Like most people, I'm sick of seeing Peyton Manning in his 25,000 commercials. I understand that he's a high profile player in America's most popular professional sport, but for the love of God, there must be one or two other guys out there. I must confess that I would take the money, so I don't fault him for being in all the ads. I blame the agencies which create the ads and the companies that pay him to appear in them. Imagine the horrors which would be unleashed if he had won a championship? One would never be able to see any sporting event or TV show without seeing Junior Simple.

Another thing that disappointed me was learning that a certain balding metrosexual sent Matt Hasselbeck a scouting report on Branch from John Madden during the Sunday night game. I understand that baldies have to stick together, and there is an element of professional courtesy involved. But in the end, they are quarterbacks on two teams that might end up contending for a Super Bowl berth. Why try to help out somebody that wants to win it all when you want to win it all? It doesn't make sense to me.

Finally, there is the Dockers ad. If I saw that stupid commercial one more time today, I think I would have lost my mind. I still have that insipid "Go, boy, go" song stuck in my head. I hate when that happens. But at the same time, I hope those of you who read this have it echo in your minds all day. "Go, boy, go." "Go, boy, go." Over and over. "Go, boy, go." It's very catchy, isn't it? "Go, boy, go." You can thank me later. "Go, boy, go." Now stop.

And one more thing, in a weird way, it's bad for Notre Dame that Illinois won this week. All of a sudden that impressive 19 point fourth quarter comeback against Michigan State looks quite a bit less impressive. The Spartans managed one offensive touchdown against a team that allowed 20 points to Rutgers in one quarter. A quarterback named Juice Williams threw one of the biggest wounded ducks that turned into a long TD for the Illini.

There might be something to be said for the Spartans going into the tank after the emotionally devastating defeat, but Illinois hadn't won a Big 10 game since 2004. They hadn't beaten Michigan State on the road since the 1980s, nor had they beaten them at all in 10 years. Ron Zook was winless in the Big 10, now he's not.

There was some unpleasantness at the end of the game when Illinois players attempted to plant the flag at midfield. I am of two minds on that subject. It's not cool to do things like that, especially when your team is coming off a year where they hadn't won a single conference game. On the other hand, and I think this applies to the TO situation in Dallas when he disgraced the star, if you want to protect your honor and your field...there is one thing you can do. Win the game. Like Al Davis said: "Just win, baby."

Start spreading the news... the Sox have lost two straight to the Yankees. I wonder now, what the confident Red Sox fan who told me that he'd live with a 12-7 split in the season series will have to say tomorrow. I laughed when he said it to me, and I'm laughing now. Granted, it's still early in the season and two games remain in this series, but the Yanks beat Josh Beckett like he stole something, and they survived a tight game where David Pauley pitched disturbingly well.

One has to wonder what might have been had Manny not been thrown out at second by Johnny Damon of all people. I imagine the Jim Romes and CHBs of the world will have a field day with that one. Of course, Manny was wrong. But at least he was running full speed. I am inclined to sympathize with him when the media attacks him, even though his mistakes and inconsistent behavior is good for the stated purpose of this blog. I just hate the CHB and Jim Rome. Where have you gone, Jim Everrett? Please come back and beat Jim Rome down for auld lang syne.

And if Melky Cabrera didn't make that amazing catch to rob Manny of the game tying home run, would these tools still be sharpening their cleavers for ManRam? I'm sure they would, but even the self-described "hard edged commentator" Jim Rome would have to tone down his burn. Or maybe he wouldn't, since he doesn't seem to be overly concerned with looking ridiculous, sanctimonious and hypocritical all the time.

A while back, I happened to be watching Cold Pizza even though it usually ends up irritating me. They had the frauds from Yankeehater.com on to talk about their site, the Sox Yanks rivalry and the seemingly viable lawsuit against them for trademark infringement. I don't think these guys are frauds because they hate the Yankees, or even because they like the Sox (for the record, some of my best friends are Red Sox fans). I think they're frauds because of their top 3 Yankee haters of all time list they mentioned on the air.

This list is so pathetic that I can't adequitely ridicule it, or even comment on it more fully without descending into profanity, which, to this point, is apparently the only virtue of this blog. Number one on the list is Ben Affleck. This is so obviously an attempt to grandstand and garner attention, not to mention fawn on one of the worst actors of our time. I think Ben Affleck's career was best summed up by the South Park guys in one of the songs from Team America. Since this is a blog, you can Google the lyrics, but if must download the song, please do so legally.

Number two on the list is Larry Lucchino. I don't know Larry Lucchino personally, and God willing, I'll never have the distinct displeasure of making his acquaintance. From the little I know about him, I suspect that he harbors no genuine emotion against the Yankees. I think it's a convenient way to call more attention to himself in an effort to acquire the cult status enjoyed by many associated with the team (mostly without reason or merit, like Jerry Remy).

Number 3 was Carlton Fisk. If even half of the legends told about Fisk are true, he was 3 times the Yankee hater that Affleck and Lucchino would make if they became some sort of Voltron made out of grandstanding, phony Yankee haters. I understand that there was a huge personal and professional rivalry between Fisk and Thurman Munson, and naturally, since Fisk is human, Carlton seems to have downplayed that in the wake of Munson's tragic death. Nevertheless, Fisk was the only legit guy on the list and these frauds had him in third place.

As a concerned citizen, I demand an investigation into Don Orsilo's hairline. What is going on there? Is it human hair, animal, vegetable or mineral? I can't decide myself. Part of me thinks that it is in fact human hair, but some (if not all) was grown on a different head than the one rocking it now. Part of me thinks he was victimized by a bad dye job and insuffienct hair plugs. But I think the most likely explanation is that he gets his hair styled by the guy who used to paint the hair onto the old GI Joe action figures that I had when I was a kid. Perhaps the hair is what makes him think he could hit .260 in the majors (a feat that seems surprisingly difficult for Big Papi so far).