About two weeks ago, I posted in this space to ridicule the Philadelphia Eagles for their terrible decisions this offseason. I couldn't conceive of a world in which a team could slap the franchise tag on LJ Smith and throw a mountain of cash at a cornerback who considers it beneath his exalted dignity to tackle. And then I took a quick look at the Oakland Raiders offseason transactions. Good thing I'm not a Raiders' fan.

According to John Clayton, Al Davis got the money to back his insane spending spree from selling non-voting shares in the Raiders. I wonder if the people who sprung for those shares are suffering from buyers remorse right now.

I think, and it's just me talking at this point, that when the dust settles, the trade and ludicrous contract extension that brought DeAngelo Hall to Oakland (at least until his next sideline hissy fit) will go down as the worst of these moves. Lest we forget, even as Clayton compared Hall to Lester Hayes and Mike Haynes, that this is the same man who whined to the league office that TO spat in his face (after TO torched him for two TDs in the game) and neglected to man up and throw down with TO.

It doesn't exactly sound like much of a pathway to the old Raiders mystique, is it? I can't say for sure what Hayes or Haynes may have done had a WR who torched them for two TDs compounded the injury with the insult of spitting in their face. But something tells me that their reaction might have been a bit stronger than crying to the League Office. I'm guessing guys like that just might have taken it upon themselves to kick the offender's ass. But maybe that's the difference between an NFL Hall of Famer and an overpriced fraud.

As you are all aware, the NCAA tournament is underway, and has been for a round and a half at this point. And all I can say is that I am very depressed. I tune into games desperately seeking the greatest broadcaster of all time and find that he isn't allowed to broadcast every game.

And don't give me any static about one man being unable to broadcast multiple games concurrently. Based on what I read from Bill Simmons and his legion of minions, Gus Johnson can eat lightning and crap thunder. So he surely can broadcast three different college basketball games in three different cities in three different time zones and fix the plot holes and inconsistencies in Shakespeare all at the same time.

I guess it's fair to say, at this point, that I am somewhat less than impressed by the cult of Gus Johnson. I've watched football and basketball games he's called for a few years now, and I just don't see what makes him so special. In fact, if I had to do some sort of blind test, a sort of Pepsi challenge for sports announcers, I don't know that I could tell the difference between Johnson and Kevin Harlan or Kenny Albert or mediocre broadcaster X.

This year's first round slate marked the longest span of time in which my sweet sixteen survived intact in at least five years. Generally, I lose at least one (and often a Final Four team) in the first set of games on the first day of the tournament. It's just a natural result of picking games based on personal animosities as opposed to logic and/or reason. But it can be embarrassing.

This year's casualty was UConn. And they played a very entertaining and nerve-racking game before falling in OT to the UCSD Torreros. The other teams I had picked to win in the first round who fell short were Winthrop (after watching Tom Tuttle from Tacoma fold in Communist indoctrination in Volunteers, I will never pick Washington State, plus they gave us Drew Bledsoe and Ryan Leaf), St Mary's, Arizona and Kent State. I didn't have any of those teams going anywhere, so it wasn't that bad a day and a half any way. For the moment, I am tied for first in the SIRSN challenge, with slightly better odds of winning than any of my competitors.

And as an aside and at the risk of making the same joke as 10 million other people, I should have seen this UConn loss coming. The UCSD Torreros were throwing Jim Jones' grandson at them, after all. It got me wondering as I watched the game, how many times do you think some friend's parent offered that kid Kool Aid without realizing that it was a trifle indelicate in his youth?

The Western Kentucky game was considerably more enjoyable for me, since I called that one correctly. Or more precisely, I guessed right. But this isn't the day for detailed game breakdowns. God knows, there will be at least 20,000 of them floating around the internet by this time. And there weren't any incidents that I feel compelled to complain about at length in the games.

However, there are a few things with which I had a problem in the last day and a half that I am sure will piss me off to no end before this tournament ends. Considering the fact that they are a division of Toyota and they presumably appeal to the higher end consumer demographics, I think the good people at Lexus owed us a little better or at least more imaginative ad campaign than this pathetic where did all the hs go drivel.

But the real villain of this tournament to this point has to be Coke. Maybe I am the only person who feels this way, but I hate the Coke Zero ads. The fake efforts to get a lawyer to sue Coke Zero on behalf of Coke for taste infringement were funny for all of about 13 seconds when they first came out a couple of years ago. Alas, even then the ads went on for 30 seconds, or at least 17 seconds too long.

Coke Zero doesn't taste like Coke. It tastes sort of like coke that has been distilled through a rag soaked in Windex. And don't ask me how I know what Windex tastes like, my childhood contained a series of ill-advised experiments which I am, in hindsight, lucky to have survived. The fact remains that these commercials weren't terribly imaginative to start with and have been on for far too long. And they play them fourteen times an hour it seems.

There is one more thing I need to complain about. Despite what Pat Forde would have us believe, I will not be rooting for Bruce Pearl and Tennessee this season. Or ever. Forde wrote a nice puff piece about the trials and tribulations Pearl experienced after he ratted out the University of Illinois for recruiting improprieties while he was an assistant at the University of Iowa. For that noble and self-sacrificing act, Pearl was blacklisted and relegated to Division II until he made such a success of himself his vast awesomeness could no longer be overlooked.

Truly it is a heartwarming story, until one recalls (as Forde admits) that Pearl taped conversations with the recruit in question to obtain the evidence to rat out Illinois. Despite the fact that I am myself a product of a Jesuit school, I do not find that the end justifies the means. One cannot really portray oneself as a martyr and a crusader for that which is right if one has stooped to questionably ethical means to do so. So it's not just that natty pale orange blazer that makes Bruce Pearl look ridiculous as he stands on the moral high ground, it's what he did to get there.

And if you need more convincing that Bruce Pearl is, in fact, a douche, don't forget that he went to BC, a notorious haven for douches from all walks of life. And he's a close friend of Bo Ryan, a noted douche in his own right, and the coach of the University of Wisconsin Badgers in Madison, Wisconsin, which is douche central in the Midwest.

So, everybody and his brother feels compelled to talk about the Michael Vick plea today. For something that any reasonably intelligent person could foresee, it has garnered a surprising amount of coverage. Of course he was going to plead guilty. Once the other co defendants agreed to testify against him in return for a reduced sentence, what the hell kind of case did he have? Vick had to plead guilty, otherwise he was going to end up in jail for a very long time.

But there was at least one entertaining and interesting development to come out in this sordid mess today. A shady, corrupt organization has placed an ad in the New York Times questioning whether PETA kills more animals than Michael Vick. Once you get over the shock of any group, however misguided and corrupt, daring to question the practices of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, it's pretty damn funny.

This is funny because this type of in your face, guerrilla marketing is what brought PETA to the attention of the general public in the first place. And anything that's bad for PETA is good for society as a whole. I do not like PETA. I am not a big fan of people who wear fur, but I don't really see it as murder. I do think that if you want to rock a leopard coat, you ought to have the good manners to take the big cat down yourself. But if you want to wear a mink or something like that, I just don't have the time or the energy to care about it.

My real problem with PETA comes from the fact that I believe it is one's moral obligation to eat meat. Think about. Over the last ten thousand or so years, we have domesticated a group of species and eliminated a number of predators in the interest of spreading what passes for civilization. If we suddenly stop eating meat, what becomes of the cattle and the pigs and the chickens and the turkeys? Are we going to allow the bears and wolves and wild cats to come back into our neighborhoods? Something tells me that that won't end well.

Of course, there are other, perhaps more practical alternatives to allowing the natural world to reestablish something approximating population equilibrium the old fashioned way. For instance, food animals could be sterilized and euthanized. What you do with the bodies at that point is beyond me, I realize there are alternatives but I'm not interested enough to research them.

I might be old fashioned, but I don't see how chemically castrating livestock and euthanizing them is particularly more humane than allowing people like me to eat them. I do think that food animals should be treated better than they are at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I have no sympathy or empathy for them. I just believe that if you raise healthier animals, I eat better meat.

I wonder, now, since I have Al Gore's assurance that catastrophic climate change could precipitate another ice age, how am I going to survive if I go vegetarian. I'm not a biologist, but I have noticed some things from casual observation of the world around me. One of the things I've come to realize is that plants have a tough time growing in winter conditions. The winter wheat might have been the greenest stuff Pop Fischer ever saw, but I don't think you're going to see much of it when the glaciers come rolling through the Boston Common.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe prehistoric man weathered past ice ages on a hearty diet of lentil soup and tofu. I have heard that a three bean salad prepared properly has as much protein as a nice, thick porterhouse. But I've come a long way to say that the worst thing to come from this Michael Vick mess has been to elevate the profile of PETA, and the best thing to come from it to this point is this ad ripping PETA.

In other news, rumor has it that Mark Cuban will be this season's token stretch on ABC's inexplicably successful Dancing' With the Stars. I say stretch because Mark Cuban isn't a star. He's a waste of space who creates controversy. One silver lining in this dark cloud (more media attention is not what Cuban needs), is that this little farce might distract him long enough to derail his bid to acquire the Chicago Cubs.

As I watched PTI and Around the Horn this afternoon, I learned two things that some think might make this appearance something less than an abject humiliation (like being denied entry to a Manhattan night club after trying to bribe the bouncer). First, Cuban is a pretty good natural athlete. But more importantly, Cuban helped pay his college tuition by teaching dancing. So he's going to strut his stuff, right?

I have the Benefactor's athletic prowess on good authority. No less a luminary than Michael Wilbon has tested Cuban's skills in pickup basketball games. Hell, if you take one good look at Wilbon, you know he is a tremendous basketball player. Look at his svelte, muscular build. You know Wilbon has game. So if he says Cuban can ball, then the Benefactor us almost certainly a tremendous natural talent.

And then there's his past as a dance instructor. Before we get all kinds of crazy, let's not forget that Cuban taught disco dancing, and he did it while at Indiana University. I don't really want to insult the great Midwest, and Bloomington, Indiana in particular, but it's not like he was tripping a light fandango at Studio 54. I don't know what the last days of disco were like for the Benefactor, but I doubt he was brought in as a consultant on the set of Saturday Night Fever.

I expect Cuban will find a way to come out of this appearance on Dancing With The Stars looking ridiculous. Even if he dances brilliantly, there is no doubt in my mind the Benefactor will find a way to turn a bravura dance performance into a public humiliation. But if he comes out for one show sporting the lily white suit of armor that Commodus rocked in the final battle in Gladiator, I will gain respect for him. I'd go so far as to recant almost 83% of the unpleasant things I've said about him in this space.

Finally, since the game is still going on, and I'm on record as saying I wouldn't post at length on preseason football, I just have a few things to say about the NFL. First, I have to congratulate my old friend DeAngelo Hall. He shaved a message to Chad Johnson into the back of his own head, and then proceeded to be beaten in ugly fashion by that same player.

Then there is the trainwreck that is the ESPN Monday Night Football crew. Tony Kornheiser called Chad Johnson "the irrepressible Chad Johnson" and his mike wasn't cut off instantly. I hate to say this, because I like him as an analyst breaking down film, but Jaws isn't doing anything for me. He does great work on NFL Live and the Matchup show. But he doesn't seem to bring the same insight to the table in real time. Maybe it's just Kornehiser taking the air out of the booth, and that could happen to anyone.

Finally, Asante Samuel is back, baby. And with any luck, he has stayed out long enough so that he'll be out of sync with his teammates. What a shame it would be if the Patriots were to stumble out of the gate this season. I just don't think I could bear up under that type of emotional strain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, I feel I have to apologize to both of my readers for my inconsistent updates. I keep meaning to post, but things sometimes intrude. It took me some time to adjust this week to a serious miscarriage of justice. I'm only now strong enough to sit up and take soup. Other than that, I have been bedridden with horror since Saturday night.

I cannot believe the NFL did not listen to a luminary like DeAngelo Hall. I mean, when one considers the great experts on American jurisprudence, Mr. Hall should rank among the towering figures like Marshall (John or Thurgood), Holmes, Jay and the rest. After all, he built a reputation as a great cover corner on the strength of a handful of games in his brief career. Of course it helps that very few cryptofascist reactionaries like me can remember that his bad games far outnumber the good, but thankfully the American people listen to ESPN and only two or three lone gunmen stray on to my site.

Terrell Owens spat on Mr. Hall, and yet TO is not facing the firing squad. Surely spitting on a overrated defensive back is the elusive second capital crime specified by the Founding Fathers in the small print of the Constitution. $35,000 is not nearly enough money for a crime of that magnitude. If the powers that be cannot find legal grounds for execution, perhaps we can find a way to banish him from the land without sinking under the weight of our disappointment.

Perhaps the league has something more suitable in mind. It occurs to me that this Sunday night will find the Dallas Cowboys on the losing end of a hellacious beating. The Eagles have already won this contest. I heard a reliable rumor that placed DeMarcus Ware in his bathtub in the fetal position weeping at the prospect of facing the real best running back in the NFL this week. That person in San Diego is a media creation who is nowhere near as talented as Brian Westbrook, whose durability issues are a product of the Bush Administration and some misguided black magic scheme on the part of Texas Christian alumni, desperate to see a graduate succeed in the NFL for the first time since Bob Lily walked the Earth.

I don't know if you've heard, but Jeff Garcia is back in Philly. Back with a vengeance. He's put together two good games in a row, so the last 2 seasons of something that would have resembled mediocrity, provided some one changed the meaning of mediocrity to abysmal, have been expunged from his record. Garcia will go in to Texas Stadium a bit like Eastwood entered the billiard parlor at the end of Unforgiven. If things work the way I think, Jerry Jones will be forced to surrender the playoff berth already clinched by the Cowboys to a more deserving team, like Atlanta.

Obviously, I watch too much ESPN, and I overreact to what I see. It's not good for my long term health. It sets my blood pressure rising, and gets me grinding my teeth. I really shouldn't watch it so much, but I'm not very bright. Lately, I have been hearing a lot about how Garcia has the Eagles rolling right now. They're a juggernaught. But I'm not sold.

They beat the Giants by 14 this week, but it wasn't a blow out. One can interpret things two ways. A much improved Eagles defense stonewalled the Giants 3 times in the red zone, forcing field goals, or Tom Coughlin and his offensive coordinator will soon enter an offseason that will be Thunder Dome for bad coaching. Two of them will enter the offseason employed, at least one of them is getting fired.

Of course there is always the lingering TO story when the Eagles and Garcia return to meet the man that should have genuflected before the team and the QB. Yes, he should have been the first player in NFL history to be suspended for spitting on another player. Spitting is 10 million times worse than the Albert Haynesworth situation combined with the Miami-Florida International riot. But the player has been allowed to play against his former team and the QB he tried to out so that his humiliation can be complete.

I think $35,000 was too much. Spitting is filthy, and he should have been ejected, but I guarantee that there was at least one other offense that warrants ejection that went uncalled this season. As for DeAngelo Hall, he needs to man up. After a backhand, spitting is the most humiliating thing a man can do to another man on an athletic field. If a guy spits on you and you exhibit the restraint not to cost your team with a retaliation penalty, kudos to you. But it's your job as a man to find the spitter and settle the score by kicking his ass. Whining to the commissioner to have the spitter suspended is even more emasculating that being spit on in the first place.

Perhaps DeAngelo Hall can take cold comfort from the fact that he is a Pro Bowler and Owens is not. Everybody knows Owens should have been voted in; he came in third in fan ballots. He caught more TDs than Anquan Boldin and Steve Smith combined. There is a simple stat that offsets that disparity, however. It's not dropped passes (of which TO had far too many). It's theoretical TDs. Steve Smith caught 30,000 of them.

By theoretical TDs, I mean how many he would have caught had Jake Delhomme been healthy all season and not dropped off in performance, had Keyshawn done more and less to help the team at the same time, had more trash receptacles been available for more vomiting when the camera was on him, had Carolina lived up to expectations, had a butterfly in Beijing flapped its wings and caused a rainstorm in New York and had the Moon been in the third house when Jupiter aligned with Mars.

Unlike everybody else in America, I like TO. I have no problem with him throwing McNabb under the bus. If a world class athlete is sick in the huddle and can't call plays in the biggest moments of the biggest game of the year, there is something wrong with him. Maybe it's the Chunky soup that accounts for Donovan's history of awful clock management. I also have no problem with him calling Jeff Garcia a fag. It's stupid, childish and immature, but he's a grown man playing a child's game for millions of dollars, not a civic leader.

If you look to singers, actors and athletes to set the moral compass of the greatest nation on Earth, you're a moron. It's not my fault, and it's not TO's fault that he isn't what a generation of young males need in a role model. I don't know what they need. Maybe they don't need role models at all. Maybe the rest of us can expect them to figure out where they need to be to function in society by holding them accountable for their actions.

I don't mean TO shouldn't be held accountable for what he's done, just that I don't think he deserves to be placed in the stocks in the public square for being childish. He has that right, or at least he did when this was a free country. Maybe if people listened to him and responded to him earnestly and kept the soapbox speeches and shame on you lectures in check for a moment, he might not act out for attention the way he does.

I don't know whether he sleeps in meetings. I don't believe him when he says he takes plays off. I think he said that knowing it's what the media wants him to say so he can stay in the limelight for another news cycle or two. Watch the tape of the Saints Cowboys game. You'll see TO sprinting down the field with Julius Jones on the 70 yard TD run. He certainly didn't take plays off.

I've said a lot, and wandered off course even more than usual, to say that he should have been fined for the incident, but less than $35,000. He should have made the Pro Bowl. He had the best season of any NFC receiver, drops and all. And maybe, next time he shoots off his mouth, one reporter can ask him if he really wants the negative attention. After all, he's going to retire one day, and how will he find the spotlight then?

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