So, the NCAA tournament is again upon us. I'm sorry that I haven't been posting much lately, but I haven't really had all that much to say. I'm staying away from commenting on the Celtics because my comments on the Red Sox throughout last season looked fairly ridiculous when October's travesty finally played itself out. And I just haven't really been all that motivated to watch a lot of college basketball these days.

One of the problems, I suppose, when it comes right down to it is that I hate Duke and I hate North Carolina. I just don't want to see either team do well. Nor do I want to see announcers grovelling at the feet of the coaches and players associated with either team. And unfortunately, while one can never escape the latter (especially where Duke is concerned), there was far too much of the former for my taste this season.

And then at the end of last week, Illinois launched an improbable, history making run in the Big Ten tournament. Too bad they fell short, but it was still a great story. And you can tell it was a great story, based merely on the reaction of the Chicago media's one man answer to the bubonic plague, Jay Mariotti.

I realize I spend a scandalous amount of time in a blog devoted (ostensibly, any way) to the Boston sports landscape shredding a columnist from Chicago. But if ever there were a person who deserves it, it's Mariotti. And since not every one has the time to read fine sites like Jay the Joke and Boise Wants Jay, there's always room in this space to let Chicagoans know that a few people on the East Coast feel sorry for what they have to endure.

I've been thinking this for a long time, but I am now just about convinced that Jay Mariotti is the biggest douche in the continental United States. It seems improbable that a moderately trained chimpanzee could spend a decade or so covering sports and manage after all that time to fail to understand why we watch sports. And yet Mariotti has not developed the faintest inkling of the curious appeal that a team like this season's Illini can have over even the most cynical, relentlessly negative, unpleasant people in America (i.e. me).

Illinois had, up until this month began, been one of the big disappointments in college basketball. They could do a few things effectively enough to hang in most of the games they lost, but they didn't do enough of those things well enough to win, or even be a particularly watchable team. And all of that changed this week, at least except the bit about being particularly watchable.

Although, as an aside, I should introduce this anecdote. I have a friend who did a semester abroad at St. Andrews in Scotland, mostly for the academics, naturally, but he managed to get in a round or two of golf. He came back with a term he picked up from the natives to describe what we might call a wormburner. In Scotland, some people call it a Sally Gunnels shot, after some female track star in the distant past. The rationale, as they put it: "She's not pretty but she sure can run."

Leaving aside for a moment that which is Scottish and very likely sexist, that was this season's Illini in the Big Ten tournament. In the words of Victor Frankenstein, it wasn't supposed to be this way, it was supposed to be a thing of beauty. But for three and a half games over the course of four days, Illinois reminded us that we look to sports as the last remaining area where David has a shot against Goliath.

In every other aspect of our lives, some one some where is probably micturating upon you in some sense and expecting you to believe that it's raining. It may be your boss. It may be Uncle. It may be the guy who lives three doors down from you and brings his dog to drop a deuce in your wife's flowers while you're just trying to get some damn sleep. Who knows. But odds are some one in life is making your life more difficult than it really ought to be and you probably can't do all that much about it.

And go figure it had to be Wisconsin who stopped Illinois. If ever there were a team custom tailored to play the modern American Goliath, it's Duke. But Wisconsin's a close second. In fact, I hate the Badgers and Bo Ryan second only to Duke in the NCAA landscape today. And for a lot of the same reasons. Wisconsin players flop shamelessly and whine incessantly.

If they wore blue and white instead of red and white, all Wisconsin would need to play Duke's mini-me is a Coach who looked enough like a certain German dictator to make me think there might have been something more than meets the eye behind the plot of the classic Gregory Peck film The Boys From Brazil. Too bad they have to settle for a cheese ball who looks like a frustrated, failing lounge singer, right down to the lame wardrobe and giant bald spot.

Not so in sports. Every once in a while, there's a team like Illinois that, despite all signs to the contrary, manages to pull off an inspiring run like this weekend's trip through Indianapolis. And when that improbable run occurs, there's going to be some douche like Mariotti out there to try to ruin that for the rest of us. He's the guy who's going to sit through the sub-prime meltdown, the Bear Sterns China Syndrome and the damn recession that's falling down around our ears right now and rip to shreds the few bright spots that might give us a reason to smile for 15 minutes. Even I won't do that/

I guess the lesson here is that if you find yourself on the other side of what the guy I go to for my Red Sox info blithely refers to as "the douche trade" and I'm not standing there with you, you must really be king douche. So once more, congratulations, Jay.

In other matters, I have decided to revive last year's failed experiment. If you want to enter the Sedition in Red Sox Nation bracket challenge and prove that you can pick college basketball games better than a bitter dude whose motivations stem from bizarre, yet deep-seeded, personal antagonisms against coaches he's never met on campuses he's never visited in towns he can't spell, have at it.

Go to this link, and sign up: http://sirsn.mayhem.sportsline.com/e
The group password is s3dition

And I promise to cheat only if I lose.

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.

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.

So, the BCS National Championship Game was played tonight, and still all any one can talk about is this Roger Clemens story. To respond to the lone gunman's comment on last night's post. It is an interesting point that Clemens could have been injected by a team doctor or trainer if he weren't receiving an illicit substance. However, I would counter that by wondering aloud what sort of nitwit pays someone to do something illegal with a check?

I disagree with the notion that Clemens put himself in the position where he has to prove himself innocent. When he stayed silent, every moron with a press pass wrote, talked and shouted that Clemens had to answer these charges. Had he not gone on 60 Minutes, would that somehow have gone away, or would the CHB and Jay Mariotti and Bill Simmons have screamed more bloody murder?

And if I'm not mistaken, Brian McNamee was an employee of the Toronto Blue Jays when he met Roger Clemens and injected him with whatever he was injected in 1998. It was only later that he served as Roger's personal trainer.

Then, there is the CHB's dismal insult to his readers' intelligence masquerading as a column in this morning's Globe. The press conference this evening where Clemens played the tape of his phone conversation with McNamee should have been stage managed better. If you read Jay Mariotti's "thoughts" on the situation, you might get the impression that Clemens ducked the question McNamee posed frequently "what do you want me to do?" I thought Clemens was crystal clear in his answer "I want someone to tell the truth."

Perhaps one can assume that Clemens meant the Pope or Mike Huckabee or Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Tank Johnson, but I was convinced that Clemens was telling McNamee to come clean. Perhaps there are those people out there who would have been more explicit in language and in tone, perhaps responding to McNamee's curses with similarly strident language. I wonder, though.

The worst thing Clemens could have done was been harsh with McNamee. He would have written a even less favorable story against himself for the legion of press drones out there. After all, McNamee introduced the topic of his dying ten year old child. The media would have burnt Clemens at the stake if he'd spoken harshly to the father of a dying kid. So I had no problem with that particular answer.

I'm not sure what taping that conversation gets Clemens in the long run. It makes him look a lot like Richard Nixon. Now, I'm as big a fan of Nixon as the next guy, but he did have a few issues with paranoia. And embroiled in a he said he said scandal like this, looking like Nixon probably isn't the way to go.

I don't see a problem with Clemens comments that Andy Pettitte's case is a separate issue. Why does it necessarily follow that because Pettitte admitted that received HGH injections from McNamee on two occasions in 2002 then Roger Clemens must have also been injected by McNamee? The transitive property only applies in algebra class, and it is not admissible in court as evidence, as far as I can tell.

This section of Shaughnessy's analysis of the Clemens interview bothered me most of all:

Asked what McNamee gained by lying, the best Clemens could do was, "Evidently not going to jail."

In fact, "not going to jail" was McNamee's reason for telling the truth (McNamee cooperated with Mitchell as part of a deal to avoid federal prosecution). McNamee faces going to jail only if he lied to Mitchell. Wallace then asked Clemens why McNamee would go to jail and the Rocket responded, "Well, I think he's been buying and movin' steroids."

Wallace then failed to ask a follow-up.

Not going to Federal prison, or any kind of correctional facility is pretty high on just about every sane person's list of priorities. Or maybe the CHB hasn't seen OZ. Perhaps the Massachusetts Department of Corrections could let him take a look at their facilities in Concord or Cedar Junction to educate him on what life in prison even in these enlightened times is like. Let's just say there's a good reason the Red Cross won't take blood donations from people who've spent more than 72 consecutive hours behind bars in the past year.

Maybe the CHB has seen the Untouchables or perhaps On the Waterfront a time or two too many. Not every person who oversees investigations into various crimes, misdemeanors and other such violations of the public trust is an altruist. Say McNamee stretched or bent the truth a time or two but provided the information to put some people behind bars and earned a few headlines for the occasional ambitious civil servant, might that not influence that ambitious civil servant to help McNamee out in return? That's how the justice system works in this country.

And closing his little piece of drivel with this cute little epigram: "And we've heard too many lies from those who came before and wound up guilty as charged" did very little to calm me down. What bearing does any other person accused in the previous round of Congressional hearings or in the Mitchell Report have on this case? It doesn't matter one bit for Roger's case whether Mark McGwire or Rafael Palmeiro lied or told the truth. For that matter, it doesn't have any impact on this case if Mark McGwire dressed in a damn tutu and stood outside an elementary school punching every seventh child in the face or jumped on Oprah's couch like Tom Cruise. Good work with the responsible, honest journalism. I bet Grantland Rice is real proud.

What with the way the Cleveland Indians seem desperate to save Major League Baseball from the indignity of a World Series that somehow lacks a major market team despite the fact that both Denver and Cleveland are much bigger cities than Boston, I spent a lot of time searching for something to watch. The Illinois vs. Michigan game would have been a great candidate but for three serious questions.

First, why do the Marching Illini wear capes? Are they super heroes? Even the silly helmets on the USC band (the real USC not that disco with books that stands out for its subpar academic repute in the desert of ignorance that is the SEC) look far less ridiculous than the capes.

Second, could Brent Musberger be more biased in favor of the Michigan Wolverines? Ryan Mallet fumbled two snaps, and Musberger still raved about him as though he threw for 300 yards and 5 TDs. In the drive to respond to the Illin field goal which tied it at 17, Musberger raved about Mallett as though he led a drive reminiscent of Joe Montana's game winner in Super Bowl XXII. The only differences between the two drives, Michigan gained the bulk of its yards on the ground, not through the air, and the drive ended in an interception not a TD.

Third, why is it that no one talks about Rashard Mendenhall from Illinois as a potential Heisman candidate? I know Matt Ryan has the inside track because BC plays the very best Division 1-AA has to offer and a very bad Notre Dame team. Just because Illinois will have to wait until it plays Ball State to hope for some crumbs of attention in a Jason Whitlock piece doesn't mean Mendenhall hasn't earned some consideration.

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the Red Sox game to some degree. There is some consolation for a person with my viewpoint in Curt Schilling's performance. It means that he basically can dictate his contract terms to Theo Epstein. Of course Theo lost any slight degree of leverage he had when Schilling put his house up for sale in September and started saying that he'd like to play in a place like Tampa. There is no way that Tampa is an empty threat. Schilling would definitely go to a team that will likely lost 90 games next season to pass the twilight of his career.

Of course no one can fairly blame Theo for being manipulated and outmaneuvered by a fraud who plays Everquest for hours on end. After all, getting into a bidding war with the Yankees for the services of Roger Clemens couldn't possibly hurt the club as it makes its decision to pursue or not pursue Schilling. There's no way offering a prorated $18 million to Clemens will embolden Curt Schilling.

In part, it made sense to offer Clemens that type of deal. Why not? There was a chance they could sign him. And making the Yankees go all the way up to $28 million (prorated, to be sure) was a big dent in the vast, vast, vast resources of the Bronx Bombers. After all, Boston had a lot of appeal to Clemens, with the patient, tolerant and very nearly but not quite human media and all. And Clemens really needed to break the tie with Cy Young for most wins in club history to cement his legacy right.

The question now becomes, given the humble bearing and equanimity with which Schilling approaches every situation, whether Schilling will be avaricious enough to demand certain concessions from the team. After all, it wouldn't surprise me with the way the team bent over backwards to throw money at guys who had nowhere near the track record Schilling brought with him when he signed in '04, if Schilling felt himself entitled to demand that his General Manager clean his pool or serve as human foot stool. Could it really be any more humiliating than paying JD Drew the remainder of his $70 million over the next four years, because the grand slam tonight didn't really wipe the slate clean?

Even if the Red Sox come all the way back to go to the World Series, is it going to change the fact that Julio Lugo was paid $8.3 to be 1/2 of a baseball player? Will their be no repercussions for that little anomaly? Will Jacoby Ellsbury pushing Coco Crisp out of the lineup be sloughed off as a curious but not unpleasant quirk of the game? I understand that Red Sox fans are hypocrites, but Red Sox Nation might want to think twice about ripping the Yankee spending machine, even if it might be more intellectual activity than would kill a Red Sox fan or two million.

And speaking of hypocrites, it's been too long since I ripped Jay Mariotti. There is something very sickening about this recent column Mariotti wrote ripping the Bears for the Adrian Peterson performance last week. It seemed to me as though Mariotti was implying that the Bears somehow passed on Peterson despite Mariotti's urging and giggling while he did it. Perhaps I'm not as intelligent as Mariotti is, but I just don't see how the Bears could have drafted Adrian Peterson.

In a sense, it's possible to say that the Bears passed on Peterson by not taking a trade with the Washington Redskins which would have given the Bears the sixth overall pick in return for Lance Briggs. Mariotti did call for the Bears to trade for that pick, but he called for the Bears to acquire that pick with the express purpose of drafting Ohio State wide receiver/kick returner Ted Ginn Jr.

Ted Ginn is not playing particularly well right now, to be charitable. Moreover, he would provide the Bears with an adequate player whose skills might overlap with Devin Hester and Bernard Berrian without providing an upgrade on either player. Perhaps Adrian Peterson would do a better job running behind this offensive line than Cedric Benson, but there is no way to prove that. However, given the fact that Mariotti is a douche and universally loathed, perhaps it would serve his ends better to praise Cedric Benson than to bury him. Then, perhaps Benson would be benched.

Somewhere, in some physical model of the universe, Tom Brady is crying for a roughing the passer penalty even now, when the game is already over. I do have it on good authority that Congress is currently debating a way to make any hit on Tom Brady a federal offense. It is early in the season, though, and sooner or later all good things must come to an end. But other matters must intrude before I discuss the Patriots.

One thing that is bothering me at this point in the season is the rumbling that Cedric Benson should lose his job. I don't think the Bears made a mistake in going with Benson and trading away Thomas Jones. After all, Thomas Jones didn't exactly torch the Bills this week, managing to gain just 19 yards. The fumbling has been unpleasant, to say the least, but in the grand scheme of what is wrong with the Chicago Bears, it's merely a blip next to the ghastly quarterback play.

In yesterday's game, Cedric Benson gained 50 yards rushing on 15 carries. That's not too bad. Granted Thomas Jones would have found ways to get more yardage and more carries by simply seizing the ball from his quarterback and turning passing plays into rushes, but short of that I don't see how Benson could have done more to help the Bears win when the offensive masterminds abandoned the run far too early.

After the Lions scored their first TD of the fourth quarter to cut the deficit from 13-3 to 13-10, a lesser man than Ron Turner might have placed more emphasis on the run to work the clock. Instead, he left the game in the capable hands of Brian Griese who managed to find a wide open defensive back for a big TD. A moderately competent high school quarterback should have been able to avoid that pick.

Detroit followed the big Hester return with a long TD drive, but one that didn't take much time off the clock. So the Bears took the field with all the time in the remaining on the clock. I joked with my friends as we watched the game that the run was no longer an option in the Ron Turner offense with that much time on the clock and trailing by only four points. Unfortunately, I was entirely too correct for my taste and for the Bears chances to win.

The Bears are advertised to be a team predicated on running the football and playing good defense. Against the Lions, the Bears threw the football 51 times in a game they never trailed by more than ten points. With a quarterback who hadn't played a game of this magnitude in more than a year.

I appreciate that the Philadelphia Eagles had torched Detroit through the air last week. But the Bears simply aren't built that way. Their wide receivers aren't that great. Mushin Muhhamad has been a disappointment. Berrian is fast, but inconsistent at best. Rasheed Davis looks like a serviceable number 4 option, unfortunately he's forced to be a number 3 in this offense that has no better candidate for the role. Greg Olsen hasn't been on the field long enough to be fairly evaluated. Desmond Clark is dependable, but they forget he exists at times.

The Bears need to find plays and blocking schemes that recognize the difference in style between Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson. Their offensive line simply isn't playing very well or very consistently. Obviously, it would be great to have the line playing well, but it would be possible to muster an effective running attack if they were only consistent. That way, Benson would have an idea of where they might generate push and where he might have success. If that were the case, he'd have more confidence.

I suppose I might be underselling Ron Turner's prowess. There may be a method to the madness that I just don't see. Maybe it works out to the good of the team to have the tailback unable to trust his offensive linemen. Maybe having a tailback who has to wonder from play to play if he might get a chance to see daylight will bear dividends later in the season. Or perhaps Ron Turner is just such a nice brother he's trying to mirror Norv's lack of success in San Diego.

Before I move on from the Bears, I think it's time to rip Jay Mariotti. It was with very little shame and humility that Mariotti discussed to awful play of Brian Griese this past week. It was almost as though he hadn't called for Griese to play at the top of his lungs. But I suppose one must ask the question has any one with more to be humble about than Mariotti ever been less humble?

It was, however, particularly perceptive of Mariotti to upbraid Cedric Benson for not doing more. Ron Turner was right to go away from the run when he did. Benson gained 47 of his 50 yards in the 3rd quarter. It wasn't as though he was building momentum as the game went on, right? Poor blocking and poor play calling could derail any running back's performance.

Seeing a sentence like this in Mariotti's column: "He failed again, looking more interested in running out of bounds then putting the cause on his back" makes me wonder if any editorial restraint exists on the Sun Times. Instead of then it should be than, that's a high school mistake. I don't think I'm nitpicking here, or being hypocritical. Yeah, I make my share and several other people's shares of mistakes in my posts, but I'm not paid to write for a major metropolitan newspaper.

And then there is this thing (I hate to dignify it by calling it a column) on Rex Grossman from ten days ago. I leave it to you to decide whether Mariotti's lack of discretion or the indecent enthusiasm with which he seemed to enjoy his lack of discretion is more offensive. It's just one more reason to despise Mariotti. There is nothing like a lazy, slovenly, arrogant douche to make you want to name your firstborn Jay.

I could not be more tired of the speculation that the Patriots might emerge from this season undefeated. First, the season is only 1/4 of the way through its course. To this point, the Patriots have played 2 sinking ships and 2 teams that may want to simply give up the ghost on the season. As impressive as the first three 38 point performances were, the Patriots still have some dangerous teams on the schedule.

At this point, I have the same level of confidence that the Pats will go undefeated as I have that Daunte Culpepper will duplicate his efforts against Miami going forward, that Terry Francona and Theo Epstein will survive in their present capacities for another season if the team loses to Anaheim and that I will ever have even a passing interest in the future of John Edward Thomas Moynihan. In short, I have no confidence that this team will beat all of the following teams: Pittsburgh, Dallas, Indianapolis and Miami twice.

I will have more on Francona, Epstein and the rest of the Red Sox brain trust as they get closer to losing a playoff series, but something must be done. Last year, the can't miss rookie closer burned his arm out and had to be shut down early. This year, Clay Buchholz came on like a house afire, threw a no-hitter in his second start and had all of Red Sox Nation aflutter with laughter as they scoffed at the Yankees and their conservative Joba Rules. It's not quite so funny now that Buchholz is done for the year as the team plays on, due to fatigue in his shoulder.

There was a time when the Red Sox used to trade all their prospects for veterans to gear up for the stretch drive. Under this regime, apparently the MO seems to be to call up those prospects and throw them to the wolves. I guess they think it's better to have those guys burn out before their minor league deals expire only to be replaced with much more lucrative contracts. But then I'm cynical. The question Red Sox fans have to ask themselves is would they rather believe this administration is corrupt or incompetent.

PS - I was joking when I mentioned the Miami Dolphins, but it does seem like they have a habit of playing spoiler and upsetting the Patriots these last couple of seasons. And don't get too excited about a career day for Sammie Morris. Perhaps if the Bengals had more than two linebackers available to play the bulk of this game, things might not have been so bad. I think Justin Smith said it best when he said it felt like 9 on 7 drills out there. The Pats might as well have been on a power play as though it were hockey with the Bengals injury woes, but that's life.

PPS - Trevor Hoffman looked very old tonight, blowing this save. He also looked a lot like the Snowman (Jerry Reed) from Smokey and the Bandit.

MAX MERCY HALL OF FAME #5

I didn't want to do this, but I feel I owe it to intellectual honesty. Jason Whitlock has to be inducted to the Max Mercy Hall of Fame. It's difficult for me because I really like his writing in general. I was glad to link his piece ripping the Mavericks and Dirk Nowitzki for all the whining they did following their collapse against the Heat two NBA Finals ago. But no one can write a sentence like this: "No one in America writes more provocatively and intelligently about football than yours truly."

If George Orwell (who wrote more provocatively and intelligently than any other writer about everything) had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement and look himself in the mirror. If Chinua Achebe (not dead, but my favorite living black author) wrote about sports, he couldn't make that statement. If Dr. Martin Luther King had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement. If Frederick Douglas had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement. No one who writes about sports can make that statement.

Hell, no one who writes about anything can make that statement. No one with any sense of propriety or intellectual moral rectitude can say that they write anything about anything more provocatively and intelligently than every other writer in America. How big does your ego have to be to make a statement like that?

This is obviously a delicate area for me, not so much because Jason Whitlock is the first African American writer to receive this dubious honor, but because I am calling a writer's ego into question when humility is not one of my virtues and when I have devoted a shocking amount of space in a blog primarily about the Boston sports landscape to defending Terrell Owens who has quite an ego of his own.

I think the difference between TO's man crush on himself and Jason Whitlock's boasting is that TO has to step out on a field and prove his worth against 11 guys on the opposing team who want to rough him up every time he touches the football. Jason Whitlock has to type up a column, get it past an editor and hope emotionally stunted people with social problems stumble across it on the Fox Sports website. There are objective criteria against which TO's performance can be measured to see if he is earning the right to his arrogance. That isn't exactly the case for Jason Whitlock.

The sad thing is, if you took the time to comb through all 194 posts on this blog, I'm sure you'll find instances where I did basically the same thing. Particularly if I'm whining about the CHB or Mariotti being paid handsomely to write garbage whilst I labor in obscurity. Of course, my standard defense is that I abhor all forms of hypocrisy but my own. Even more depressing, I published my 100th post in early March of this year. So in those 5 months and 10 or so days, I've published 94 times. I really need to get a life.

I don't know if you happened to catch any of the Tigers Yankees game this afternoon. I was grievously offended that MLB allowed Clemens to return from suspension and overshadow Curt Schilling's quest to win for the first time since coming off the DL on August 6th. And as for that nifty little play where Clemens struck out the batter at the plate and then Posada deked the runner on third into the third out, that was but a silly little farce. Varitek and any of the Red Sox pitchers could do that at will if they weren't about such tactics which pervert the spirit of the game, or if they had the brains to think of something like that.

Today was a banner day for New England sports fans. Most importantly, the Red Sox basically increased their lead over the Yankees, even though it won't show in the standings. So Steve Phillips and the Mike and Mike crew have jumped the gun by scheduling their discussion of whether or not it's time to press the panic button in Red Sox Nation for tomorrow morning. Tim Wakefield went eight innings and Paps closed it out in the 9th. Meanwhile the Yankees overcame a Rivera blown save to win in the home half of the 9th. For all intents and purposes, the lead might as well be back up to ten, maybe twelve games.

While it may be an impressive feat to hold any given 9 men who are paid to hit a baseball without a hit for 6 solid innings, let's not forget that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are not exactly the 1927 Yankees. It's true that getting BJ Upton to end the game when you're up by three and there isn't a soul on base is the basic equivalent of fanning Ruth and Gehrig with the bases loaded.

Unfortunately, it doesn't change the fact that they just dropped 2 of 3 to the Orioles. Nor does it change the fact that Eric Gagne looks a lot more like a mistake now than he did when the CHB mushed him with this puff piece. One can only hope said article brings the same magic to KG that it has to the Sox to this point.

The real triumph came in the form of an Esquire magazine piece naming Tom Brady the best dressed man in the world. Call me old fashioned, but who gives a damn? What exactly is the methodology that produces lists like this? Was any consideration given to the day when he was photographed looking like an unmade bed and rocking a Yankees hat? I must confess that I was a little disappointed that they included the pope on the list. Not so much that His Holiness didn't top the list, but it seemed like they were making fun of him a bit. Benedict XVI wears the same papal vestments that Popes have worn for quite some time, right?

Of course, I only bring up this monumental achievement of Brady's to express the hope that this small victory and the fact that the team won the offseason will keep Patriots fans warm when Randy Moss and Stallworth come up short, the thin secondary gets thinner and the inside linebackers get their AARP cards. Of course, I was also the guy who spent much of the spring angry at the amount of hype given to the Lance Briggs holdout while one hardly dared whisper about the Asante Samuel contract situation. So what do I know?

Among the several things I know at the moment: Lance Briggs has since signed with the Bears. Asante Samuel has yet to sign with the Patriots. For me, it's fascinating to watch this situation unfold. Samuel is looking for a massive deal like the one Nate Clements signed with San Francisco, and I can't say I blame him. Why not shoot for the stars? The team certainly seems to need him, since Chad Scott went down for the year in the first week of camp, and defensive back was not a strong point from jump street.

But the team has a valid point, as well. Samuel has 16 career INTs, but he picked up 10 of them last season in his contract year. While ten interceptions is, in the grand scheme of things, a very productive season for an NFL defensive back, one must still temper one's desire to throw bags of money at a guy who broke out in a contract season. One also must temper one's admiration of a ten interception season when 3 of those picks came during Rex Grossman's inexplicable effort to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on the brand new field turf in Foxboro last November.

Too often, cornerbacks in the NFL have shown flashes of brilliance only to burn teams who sign them to big contracts down the road. However, the Patriots do not have much depth in the secondary. Rodney Harrison is a year older, and his injury history is not encouraging. The rookie from Miami needs to show he can behave like a human being in the event of a fight. Eugene Wilson in adequate, maybe. Chad Scott was old, now he's on the shelf. Randal Gay probably grew up tough as hell because of his last name, but hasn't proved himself over the course of an entire season to the point where he deserves to be the number one cornerback on a contender.

I guess what really bothered me was that the Bears were ripped for not signing a linebacker when their linebacking corps was still in good hands. Urlacher is Urlacher, the overplayed vitamin water ads notwithstanding, and Hillenmeyer is quite good. Jay Mariotti even went so far as to suggest that the Bears should have dealt Briggs to the Redskins for their number one pick and then used said pick to draft Ted Ginn Jr. (in case you're wondering, I will be tracking Ginn's performance as one more way to show my solidarity with the anti-Jay movement).

Of course, Belichick will work some magic, and maybe our old friend Vladimir Putin can get another crack at a Patriots Super Bowl ring. So none of this will have mattered.

I want to end tonight with the first random thing I hate in quite some time. Tonight, it's Carrie Underwood. The other day, I happened to be listening to Mike FM, the station with no DJs and totally random music. They happened to play Carrie Underwood's Before He Cheats. That song bothers me because of the line: "right now, he's probably buying her some fruity little drink cause she can't shoot whiskey."

Every time I've heard that song, I ended up going back over the list of things I look for in a woman. And wouldn't you know, the ability to shoot whiskey just isn't there. Maybe I'm crazy, but what the hell do I want to spend time with a woman who drinks like I do? So I can share a his and hers moment where we both exit through the screen door without actually opening the damn screen?

The sad thing is, there are people in this world who do think that a woman who shoots whiskey is an ideal mate. I could only imagine the horrified looks on my parents' faces if I were to bring such a woman home. I wonder how the introductions would work: "Whiskey-drinking Annie, I'd like you to meet my mother and father."

I have to say that it might be refreshing to go to a wedding and not worry about whether I would be the biggest drunk there, unless of course it were my wedding and the other contestant just happened to be the bride. That would, indeed, be a sad day in my world.

I would like to be a guest at that wedding, though. Especially if I got to sit in the back row and make bets with other guests as to whether the bride or the groom would make the biggest drunken spectacle of him or herself. Imagine that, offering odds or setting up a system of squares to see who passed out first, or who fell into the cake, or who threw the first punch at whom?

Plus, to get back to the song, based on my experience, a woman who shoots whiskey is very likely going to be cheated on at some point in her life. The women I know who knock back a shooter or ten tend not to be at the top of the aesthetic spectrum. They tend to lack polish, sophistication, and, to be frank, manners. So the song becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You warn a guy not to cheat when you're doing something that might drive him to cheat... It seems like you might have missed a step somewhere down the line.

If you've been reading this space regularly, I think you probably know that I hate Barry Bonds by now. And if you haven't, then I guess I ruined the surprise. But every once in a great while, a writer of such talent, perspicacity and eloquence comes along and makes me think for a fleeting moment that I ought to reconsider my opinion of the man who will hold the MLB record for most home runs hit over the course of a career any day now.

Tonight, that writer is Jay Mariotti. I know I spend a great deal of time in a blog that is supposed to be about my hatred for the Boston Red Sox ripping a "man" who writes for a newspaper 1,000 miles from Boston. Sometimes I almost feel badly about it, but then I read his columns and I grieve for Chicago. Mariotti's recent piece that comes dangerously close to being about something but degenerates into an incoherent rant about Bonds is more a cry for help than anything else.

I know I'm no stranger to an incoherent rant in this blog. But I'm generally drunk when I post jibberish, and I usually apologize for it. Also, this site is free. I don't get paid for it. I don't have any ads to click. So I think I have the right to criticize people who are paid handsomely to do a job and who are covered by an editing staff yet somehow manage to submit disgusting mishmashes of sentence fragments and run-ons for profit.

I wonder why an organization like NOW hasn't noticed that Mariotti is as capable of sexism as any figure they've protested recently. If I started a post with a line like: "Swollen ankles? What is he, pregnant?," I imagine I would get some nasty comments back, but Mariotti's piece was published in a big city daily. Where was the righteous indignation?

What worries me is that Cubs fans are signing petitions and hoping that Mark Cuban wins the bidding process for ownership of the team. You know how I know that Mark Cuban isn't the answer to the Cubs' problems? Jay Mariotti thinks it would be great if Mark Cuban bought the Cubs.

Considering the fact that the Mavericks have not only won every NBA title since Mark Cuban purchased the team but have managed to scrape together 3 Super Bowls, 4 Stanley Cups (they might have had the 5th if not for the lockout) and a runner-up finish in the English Premier League, Cuban will bring 5 or 6 World Series championships to Chicago from jump street. Or maybe I'm the one that thinks an epic collapse in an NBA Finals and a quick exit at the hand of the eight seed the following year isn't much of a resume. Cuban is a shameless self-promoter, not a winner.

Yes, Mariotti loves Cuban now. Just wait until that day when the Benefactor brings his act to Chicago. Mariotti will be the first guy to rip him for acting like a spoiled 3 year old when the Cubs end up on the business end of a close call. Or wait until Cuban can't get into a nightclub and acts like one of the princesses from My Super Sweet 16 when she finds out that Cindy down the block is having a more expensive party.

That's probably why Mariotti wants Cuban to buy the Cubs. That means at least 15 columns a year without any thought on the part of the writer. That's like catnip to a writer of Mariotti's eminence. I don't think a writer owes it to a city to root for its teams, but I do think I writer owes it to himself to be honest about his motives.

I really wish I didn't have to keep saying the same things over and over again, but Cuban can't be allowed to purchase the Cubs. Plus I'm sure John Henry is in favor of Cuban buying a franchise. That way there will be at least one owner who is a bigger tool than Henry with his quaint little Howard Hughes mania for cleanliness. I couldn't begin to think of an executive who would be a bigger waste of oxygen than Larry Lucchino, so I don't know who Cuban's right-hand man will be.

This story arc is taking the jam out of my doughnut, and that's not cool. The Red Sox lost again to the Royals, dropping two out of three to KC. And the Yanks beat Toronto, picking up yet one more game. I should be much happier than I am.

On the plus side, Dave Chapelle said his recent trip to the ER was due to exhaustion. Perhaps it's not as easy to bear the burden of being one-fifteenth as funny as you think you are as I thought. I'm not going to lie, I did like the first two seasons of his show on Comedy Central. And I didn't care one way or the other when he left the way he did. It was his business.

But when I saw him on Inside the Actor's Studio, that was it for me. For a guy whose credits are very meager, Dave Chapelle is an arrogant, obxious dude. My first problem is that there was no mention of the very prominent role Dave Chapelle played in Robin Hood Men in Tights. And the complaints that the studio turned Half Baked into a weed movie for kids didn't sway me. Even if it were the Citizen Kane of weed movies before the studio bastardized it for mass consumption, that doesn't mean the movie deserved to exist in its own right. If you don't want your movie to be altered, don't sell it.

Between blowing through screen doors as though I were the Kool-Aid man and waging one-man wars against Cambridge, Brookline and Connecticut, I have found myself too busy over the last two weeks to criticize some of the old familiar enemies of this space. For too long, Bill Simmons, Dan Shaughnessy and Mark Cuban have been able to vomit up ignorance into the punch bowl we all share whilst the general populace is all too willing to call it alphabet soup and move on. Believe it or not, despite what that last sentence and my track record would have you believe, I'm not drunk. It's just a complicated paraphrase of a great line from an episode of NewsRadio.

Tonight, it's time to criticize the Benefactor one more time. I never got around to saying this at the time he elected to tell the world about his colonoscopy (as I was disappointed in the complete lack of discretion on his part), but I found it surprising. Not just the over-sharing, but for what the doctors apparently didn't find. I would have bet good money (Hell, I would have bet internal organs and wound up in a bathtub full of ice down a kidney) that the doctors would have found Mark Cuban's head right there in his colon. Alas, the search continues.

The reason I feel compelled to criticize the Benefactor tonight is simple. Mark Cuban has submitted an application to Major League Baseball for the right to bid on the Chicago Cubs. No matter what anyone tells you about Persian restaurants and excessive heat, that rumor is what made all those people sick at the Taste of Chicago festival the other day.

The city of Chicago is the second-best city in the world, right behind Boston. I like the Bears. Antoine Walker is from Chicago. Hell, I even like the Cubs. To me, the Cubs represent everything that the Red Sox never were. The Cubs and their fans dealt with losing longer than Red Sox Nation, and they deal with it still. But they bear it with class and dignity. The Boston Red Sox and their fans have yet to bear anything with class or dignity.

One never hears Cubs fans raise a cheer of "Cardinals Suck" the way Red Sox fans chant "Yankees Suck" at the drop of a hat. Cubs fans don't resent the fact that the Cardinals have been more successful than their team. Instead, they pity Cardinals fans for being from Missouri. Chicagoans know that St. Louis has a brewery and an arch and little else on which to hang its hat. I admire Cubs fans for that.

The last thing the fans in Chicago need is for Mark Cuban to purchase the Cubs. Can you imagine how he would comport himself on a stage as big as that? He very likely would morph into Commodus from Gladiator and show up at Wrigley in that white suit of armor that Commodus wore to the arena in the film's final scene. 81 times a year, Wrigley would become a zoo, a place to see and be seen rather than a place to watch a game. Basically, it would become Fenway West.

Furthermore, I don't view the Mavericks as an NBA success story. It is undeniable that Dallas was a doormat before Cuban purchased the team. Now the road to the NBA title goes through, or more precisely over, the Mavericks. However, in professional sports, second place is king of the losers. And the Mavs haven't won it all. Nor do they show any sign that they will any time soon. The Benefactor has yet to address his team's fatal flaws, and it looks like another great regular season and abrupt exit from the playoffs is in the cards.

Even after every dollar spent and improvement made, the Mavericks really aren't a marquee franchise. Admittedly, they should take consolation from the fact that the four time champion Spurs aren't one either. The NBA lives and dies in New York, Boston, Chicago and LA. The Mavericks and Spurs could win the next 74 NBA titles between them and never produce a moment like Hondo's steal (or Bird's) or Reed gimping out to play against Wilt. It just won't happen.

But somehow through all of that Mark Cuban has earned the right to purchase a Major League baseball icon? Dallas is a third-rate city. It has Nieman Marcus and the Cowboys and some oil companies growing fat off gouging the rest of us. Chicago is a whole different animal. If he buys the Cubs he has to win or face a media storm not seen since Jay Mariotti was a child.

Let's say the Benefactor buys the Cubs and turns them into a perennial playoff team, but never wins it all. Obviously it won't taint his legacy, since Mark Cuban, for all his wealth and prominence, doesn't have a legacy. It will, however, be a big disaster for a fan base that has suffered enough.

The one comforting factor in all of this is that there is no way the Cubs will sell for less than $700 million. That means the Benefactor would either have to put nearly half of his net worth on the line or build a consortium to purchase the team. I can't see a consortium putting up with his grandstanding nonsense, so this may all have been a false alarm. Let's hope.

I'm sorry I haven't updated for a few days. I've been busy, as you would expect, since I'm a popular guy. My social calendar is always full, but of late it has been fuller than usual. But I have some time and quite a bit on my mind this evening.

Over the last few days, I have run across three tools who deserve to be mentioned as tools of note in this space. I happened to see a guy pulling into a Home Depot parking lot this afternoon driving an oversized camouflage pickup truck customized for off-roading. Ordinarily, that alone would catch my eye, driving an off-road vehicle to Home Depot is never cool. However, this dude was wearing what appeared to be welding goggles in lieu of sunglasses. Wearing tinted safety glasses as sunglasses is never acceptable, never mind the welding goggles. It is ironic, is it not, that such a giant tool would be travelling to a massive warehouse filled with tools of every description sold by one of the world's largest purveyors of tools? Technically it's a mere coincidence, but ironic sounds better.

Another tool who has managed to stand out from the herd of tools to warrant mention in this space is none other than the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome. Mr. Newsome has decided to save the environment by banning bottled water from city offices in San Fran. Even though I realize that this decision is going to put a stop to global climate change, greenhouse gas concerns, the hole in the ozone layer and Republicans and their corporations, I wonder whether the mayor of San Francisco could have found a legitimate step to reduce his city's eco footprint.

It seems vaguely noble at first, trying to cut down on the amount of plastic recycled each year. But residents who sign the no bottled water pledge receive a stainless steel recyclable container. Now I might not be particularly smart, but doesn't that mean that you end the plastic problem by creating a stainless steel problem? Of course one can sell scrap metal (or recyclable metal, if you want to put a pleasant face on it) for good money. Particularly stainless steel.

I wonder, then, if this move to stainless steel recyclable containers is more utilitarian than altruistic, while still being a total waste of time and shameless grandstanding. Would that ending the public menace that is the plastic water bottle could change the fact that the city's budget is a mess, or undo the fact that the mayor got caught tagging a subordinate's wife.

Our final honoree for tool of note is our old friend, the CHB. In a recent "effort," the CHB came tantalizingly close to proving that he is, despite his advancing years, hip, with it and completely connected to current trends in the youth culture. He discovered what no one else had had the perspicacity to realize. It was the run of the 2005 Chicago White Sox that made Journey's Don't Stop Believing a cult classic.

Now I am no Journey fan, but I am sure that many others who feel that way have found that particular song to be a guilty pleasure long before the White Sox latched onto it. The song did manage to climb to number 9 on the charts following its release in 1981. It's been in a large number of movies and TV shows, most of which occurred before the White Sox made it their theme.

I think you'll find if you take the time to look up when the White Sox were on a road in Baltimore and Joe Crede requested some Journey songs, which triggered the song becoming the team's theme for 2005, that it had to have occurred after the Family Guy episode that started the song's reintroduction to the mainstream was shot and probably after it aired. That particular episode aired in June, and it got a much wider audience than the White Sox did prior to the playoffs. I also don't think that Laguna Beach took its inspiration for using Journey from the White Sox.

Thanks, though, for the effort. If only the CHB would either familiarize himself with a small portion of the world outside of his experience in the press box prior to writing about it. Far better if he just retired, but why would any of us be so lucky.

And finally, congratulations are due to the Chicago Bears. After all, who would believe that they cut Tank Johnson for the sake of expediency? It takes very little moral courage to drop a guy like that who has had legal trouble. It also took little moral courage not to step in with a sterner hand before the situation came to this pass.

I really don't know what the right thing to do in a situation like this is. I like Tank Johnson as a football player. I think he has a chance to get his life together. He hasn't shown the propensity for attracting trouble like Pacman Jones. We know Tank didn't pay a visit to the strippie prior to his meeting with Roger Godell because Jay Mariotti probably would have had that big heart attack, the one Fred Sanford always threatened to have from the sheer unadulterated pleasure he would have derived from another slip up from Johnson.

I was looking forward to another year of rooting for the Bears. Now I'm not so sure. Any team that did something Mariotti hoped for this much might not be worth rooting for over a long season. I don't have any other team that really inspires me right now, though. I will make a deal with New England though. If Bob Kraft can conjure a pair of testicles and some guts, make his way up to Kennybunkport this weekend and come back with the ring a certain Russian head of state (can't mention his name lest I get some polonium in the mail) pocketed a few years back, I'll root for the Patriots. I'll even defend Randy Moss when he lets his team down when they need him most.

It's been a very long time since I attacked Jay Mariotti in this space. With the Red Sox roaring out to that 14 and 1/2 game lead in the first two months of the season, I was just too depressed to read Mariotti's appallingly dishonest carping. I just couldn't handle it. But with Humpty Dumpty falling flat on his face for the second time in as many starts, I thought I could handle it. I was wrong.

What bothers me most about Mariotti as a man and as a writer is the fact that he acts as though he were tough as nails right up until the moment confrontation could become conflict and then he backs off, whining with his tail between his legs. Just look at that infamous dust-up with Ken "Hawk" Harrelson when Mariotti said "I ought to slug you" only to back off and threaten litigation when Hawk showed signs that he intended to do harm to Mariotti.

A close second in the treasure trove of inadmirable character traits that make up the man, the myth, the fraud is his complete lack of scruple and honesty as a writer. The man has no sense of irony, either. Consider this piece he wrote for Monday's paper on the US Open. Mariotti calls Tiger Woods into question for his inability to catch Cabrera, while barely conceding the fact that Mariotti believed that Eldrick would win the tournament.

It's almost as though this column, which appeared in Suday's paper had never been written. I realize a two or three paragraph apology for the tortured logic, mangled metaphors, left-handed compliments, phony tough and crazy brave rhetoric and general poor taste exhibited in that piece would be out of the question, but a brief, humble little digression along these lines: "Look, I made a mistake. I thought the guy was going to win. I had a deadline and might have gotten carried away thinking I was a much better writer than I am. But I was wrong and I'm sorry" would have been nice.

That is far from the only instance. Earlier, before the US Open, Mariotti wrote this piece ostensibly feeling a bit of empathy for Phil Mickelson in his hour of difficulty. Then, after Mickelson missed the cut, Mariotti wrote a column to demonize Mickelson for complaining about the rough. I can't believe that editors, TV producers and the vast public tolerate him. Outside of a blogs, like fireJay.com, Jay the Joke and Boise Wants Jay, hardly anyone calls him on this nonsense.

Mariotti is currently lining up Mark Cuban for this treatment. At the moment, he is in favor of the rumored interest in acquiring the Cubs shown by the Benefactor. Part of it is due to the fact that Jerry Reinsdorf hates Cuban and Mariotti hates Reisndorf. I'm sure there must be, somewhere in the dark recesses of the back corners of Mariotti's oh so prodigious mind, the faint hope that Mark Cuban will buy the Cubs and bring his little freak parade to Chicago. I'm sure that will mean weeks and weeks of columns and hours of TV time for Mariotti to rip Cuban and the Cubs with very little intellectual effort. But I'm sure a nice guy like Jay hasn't thought of that.

Now it's time for me to go back to hating the Red Sox, at least until the fall. Once the Bears start playing again, I'm sure Mariotti will be writing articles like this more often. After all, when can a middle-aged never-was bully a massive, three hundred plus pound world class athlete? Perhaps that is the root of his appeal to whatever demographic Mariotti appeals. All the other frustrated Monday morning QBs must look to him to take the big and the strong down a peg since they can't do it themselves.

Sometimes I wonder what goes on in Terry Francona's fragile little mind. Tonight, according to Remy and Orsillo, he hoped to get seven innings out of Julian Tavarez. Aside from the fact that Tavarez has gone seven innings only once this season and had thrown over 100 pitches twice coming into this evening's game against Oakland (which is run by the Sabremetrician's lizard king), it seemed like a nice plan. Unfortunately, even good plans sometimes fall apart.

As it was, the Francona Tavarez plan hit a snag in the form of Mark Ellis, who was a single short of the cycle, having faced Tavarez three times in his 5 and 2/3 innings of work tonight. Just in case you care, Mark Ellis was hitting .257 when he came up for his third at bat of the evening. But apparently Julian Tavarez was good for what ailed him at the plate.

I am not happy about this series, even though Papelbon is almost assuredly not available for Game One. After all, Francona's mighty closer is only to be used in consecutive games in the direst circumstances. Of course when you're Terry Francona, sometimes the direst circumstances include a game in which the Sox were leading by five runs in the ninth and then a tie game in the top of the ninth the following evening. On the plus side, as neither was a save situation, Papelbon has only one blown save to date.

But, the real problem is that the Oakland offense is not good. Outside of Ellis' remarkable performance, the offense did very little against the least formidable of the Red Sox starters. And on the other side, the Red Sox are coming off a long game with a slightly later start than usual (8PM Eastern vs. the usual 7PM game time) and a cross country flight that got them into Oakland in the early morning hours. So it was no surprise that their offense struggled against Danny Haren, the ace of this Oakland staff. It bodes ill for Oakland that their pitching gets worse as the Red SOx finally have a chance at a full night's sleep.

In other news that bodes ill for Sedition In Red Sox Nation, Jon Lester threw a complete game one hitter at the Norfolk Tides today in a 7-1 victory for the Pawtucket Red Sox. Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you the name of a single player on the Norfolk Tides, but I'm willing to bet that they aren't very good. I base this supposition on the knowledge that they are the Orioles' AAA affiliate, and the Orioles aren't that good.

Any pro-quality prospect in Orioles organization is probably competing to push the spare parts that surround Miguel Tejada and Brian Roberts out of Camden Yards. So Lester didn't exactly throw a one hitter against the 1927 New York Yankees. Here is as good a place as any for me to offer this disclaimer, I am glad that his cancer seems to be in remission, but not glad enough to wish him professional success in this organization.

And we have a tool of note segment from this weekend's spectacular managerial tirades. It's not Lou Pinella, who didn't seem to do anything to deserve a suspension. Nor is it Ozzie Guillen, who is still immune from criticism in this space because he makes Jay Mariotti froth at the mouth. Nor is it the manager of the Mississippi Braves for his spectacularly stupid behavior.

Instead, it is the entire Mississippi Braves organization. I'm sure you've seen this footage by now, but I give you the video of this sad spectacle in part because it's funny, but also to ask this question: "Why didn't a player, a coach, a front office executive or a damn peanut vendor go out there and tackle that nitwit before he started crawling like a fat guy trying to do Rambo in some demented parlor game like charades throwing the rosin bag as though it were a grenade?"



I was under the impression that professional sports teams were expected to look out for one another. Granted that fracas between Barrett and the Big Z in the dugout at Wrigley calls that naive assumption into question, but don't minor league teams sell themselves as a purer form of baseball, untainted by the vast sums that grow monster egos at the highest level? The video is just surreal.

His team allowed him to ruin his career. Even if he somehow managed to cure cancer (I admit that's somewhat unlikely for the manager of an obscure AA team), every single person who watches it will remember him as the guy who slunk on the turf behind the pitcher's mound as though he were an infantryman dodging enemy fire and threw the rosin bag like a grenade. Who is ever going to hire him again?

Can you imagine that sell as an MLB general manager? You might as well announce the hiring of Shemp from the Three Stooges (if he weren't dead) as tell the press in any given city that has a professional sports team that you wanted to hire the guy who went ballistic in such a bizarre fashion on the field turf at the Mississippi Braves game. Granted the guy probably had no shot at making it to the Show as a manager. But at least he could have dreamed about it.

Now he's going to go down in history as a viral video loser like that fat guy who fell off the Dance Dance Revolution machine or the loser who filmed himself doing a very graceless rendition of a Jedi routine. Some member of his organization had a moral responsibility to step in and stop him from making such a moron out of himself. Maybe they didn't want to do it, but I feel they owed it to him.

Who is Travis Buck? Up until tonight, it seemed like he was nobody. Then he came up to bat in the hallowed stadium in the Fens this evening, facing the single greatest closer in the history of the world, provided of course you limit that history to April-July of 2006. Travis Buck committed a cardinal sin, one for which the Universe will exact a horrible vengeance. He dared hit a home run off of Jonathan Papelbon, handing that fearsome reliever his first blown save of the season.

Having the best record in baseball in April is all well and good, and going through a whole month of baseball without a blown save is the first step on the way to a World Series win. But could it be that there are some flaws beginning to emerge in the mighty Red Sox facade? They started out strong, taking a four run lead bu the end of the third inning. And then they allowed the As to score five unanswered runs.

And in blowing his first save of the season, Papelbon threw 35 pitches. That's an awful lot for a guy with arm concerns. It's even more when you consider the fact that the team is taking every conceivable measure to limit his appearances and keep him from overtaxing his mighty arm. Sooner or later, the team will need more out of its bullpen than it can deliver.

Okajima has massively exceeded expectations, to my disappointment, but there is no guarantee that he can sustain this performance level over 50 appearances. Timlin is not a spring chicken anymore. Brendan Donnelly is a fearsome competitor when it comes to getting into shoving matches with Jose Guillen, but he took the loss tonight. Who knows when they'll need a big performance out of Papelbon again? And who is 100% convinced that a guy who looked pretty tired in his lone inning of work tonight can keep pitching at the level the Red Sox require to sustain this momentum? Plus the Yankees are playing the Rangers right now, and looked like they might come alive any day now.

The Dallas Mavericks managed to stave off elimination tonight, winning Game Five in their series with the Golden State Warriors. It's depressing, but I can't shake the feeling that they are poised to make a run in the next two games entirely too reminiscent of the run Miami made right over them in last year's Finals. I really don't want to see that happen, but for some reason I can't get too motivated to root for Golden State.

I'm not sure why. They play a very entertaining brand of basketball, in fact their style is very close to what basketball ought to be. Plus I really hate Dallas. I think it's Baron Davis that is turning me away from the Warriors. Look at this video of Baron Davis clapping in the process of being ejected from Game Two of this series. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's eerie. I've never seen anyone clap in such a maniacal fashion. Watching the guy clap like that got me thinking that he just might have a freezer full of body parts (human, animal, both) in a garage somewhere in the suburbs of the Bay Area.



Just a bit more on the NFL Draft, I was not particularly impressed with the Bears top pick in the recent draft. I think Greg Olsen has a chance to be a very good tight end in the NFL, but I think they had bigger problems to address. I think they could have used Alan Branch, even though Mel Kiper wasn't in love with his work ethic. They very nearly lucked into him with their second round pick, but Arizona made a crafty move to trade ahead of them.

I was also hoping they'd get a chance at Joe Staley when Kansas City didn't take him. I, or more precisely my fantasy team, badly needed Kansas City to take the best available offensive lineman. Larry Johnson was the centerpiece of my team for the last season and a half (it's a keeper league). Now, there is the fact that it's been many moons since a back who set the NFL record for carries in a season came back strong the following year. Signs do not point to LJ having a very good year behind a makeshift offensive line which has not recovered from the retirement of Willie Roaf and now Will Shields is gone. Bad times, but I can't let LJ go at the moment.

But back to Greg Olsen...

After today's revelation that Olsen was part of a group of nitwits who recorded an obscene, sexist rap song as freshmen at the U and Jay Mariotti's "effort" to waddle his way to the moral high ground on the subject, I'm inching my way closer to supporting him. In the interest of full disclosure, since I did not own up to the fact that I called out a Red Sox pitcher in my tirade against said team's proclivity for beaning opponents to send messages because he's hit more batters than any other pitcher since 2003 without mentioning that the pitcher in question throws knuckleballs and a fastball that is slower than most changeups, Greg Olsen forsook the University of Notre Dame to play for Miami. So I'm still not particularly inclined to empathize with him.

I know I piled up some tool of note segments yesterday, but believe it or not, I have more. Check out this hilariously disappointing video of a tool trying to power slide/burn out in a Barbie convertible. It's disappointing because there is no audio and it's difficult to tell just how fast he was going at the time of the incident. What a shame.

Perhaps I'm being cruel in enjoying what appeared to be a fairly painful injury as much as I am. But it serves him right. The odds of me experiencing a similar injury have to be in the trillions to one against. There is no way that I'd get into a Barbie car in the first place. I certainly wouldn't allow any observer to record the moment for people like me to mock. And if by some ghastly set of circumstances I broke one or both of those restrictions, I sure as hell wouldn't try some Fast and the Furious style nonsense whilst driving a roofless vehicle designed for little children. So this nitwit deserves to be mocked.

Then there is this video. I'm not sure if it qualifies as a tool of note segment. But it's worth watching. Some unknown person operating under the moniker Leeroy Jenkins is roaming the World of Warcraft landscape and leading unsuspecting gamers into ambushes. I have to salute him for the industry he has exhibited in his quest to tool on tools.



However, World of Warcraft is reeling from being mocked in South Park last year and a recent episode of the Simpsons. Plus it seems like a hell of a lot of time and effort for about 15 minutes of genuine entertainment.

Like the good episodes of the Simpsons and Family Guy, the Miami Heat's title defense might as well be ancient history. Like disco and Vaudeville, Miami is dead. I know this because it seems to be the principle under which Jay Mariotti is operating these days. The sad thing is, under the Even A Blind Squirrel Finds A Nut Now And Then Theorem, he's right. Miami can't beat Chicago. And there is a villain in all of this most people might not realize - Pat Riley.

It's hard to criticize a coach with seven NBA championships on his career resume, but I think Miami might have stood a better chance of defending their title with Ron Rothstein still running things. I don't know how many times Chicago has to exploit the fact that Miami is not quick enough (or perhaps motivated enough) to rotate to open perimeter players before Miami tries something different. Even if it didn't work, it would have been nice to see Miami try different looks.

Also, every minute that Eddie Jones and Udonis Haslem occupy space on the basketball court has become an affront against the sport. Udonis Haslem has been outplayed by PJ Brown, which baffles me since Udonis Haslem is supposed to be a guy who brings energy and hustle to the defensive end of the floor and the offensive glass. Isn't that what PJ Brown made a living doing in the NBA for the last quarter century (deliberate exaggeration)? So Udonis Haslem is being outplayed by an older version of himself, who doesn't really enjoy a reputation as a savvy, heady player. At least not to the extent that it would justify the humiliating fashion in which he has handled Haslem. As for Eddie Jones, he looks like he aged four years in the last two weeks.

Dwayne Wade is pressing, and he's committing way too many turnovers to only score 21 points a game. Shaq is playing well in the first half, when he manages to avoid foul trouble. Too bad that he can't avoid foul trouble. Part of this is his fault for not adjusting to the way the refs are calling the game, and part of it is the fault of the referees for calling touch fouls that cut one way. Based on what I have seen to this point, I feel Shaq would be morally justified if he grabbed Ben Wallace and hammered him into the floor with his fist as though he were Spike (the big bulldog from Tom and Jerry) and Wallace were Tom.

And this brings us to Ben Wallace. If you've been following this blog since its inception, you may have noticed that I don't think much of Ben Wallace. I once called him the evolutionary Bill Russell, which believe it or not is an insult to Wallace and the way the game is played now. Ben Wallace is very nearly able to influence a game on the defensive end of the court the way Russell could because offenses stagnate to wait for a superstar to score and because the refs are immoderately inconsistent with the way they call games.

Ben Wallace is like Bill Russell in the same way a savage kick in the groin is like a steak dinner. When Wallace wants to shift position to front Shaq whilst defending him in the post, Wallace grabs Shaq and uses his body as a lever to get himself into position quickly. That's some good thinking, fine, practical application of physics, but it's not basketball. Russell played Wilt physically but cleanly. He'd be rolling over in his grave watching Wallace defend Shaq if he were dead.

I just don't see how the Bulls were able to handle the Heat so easily in the first two games when I look at the two teams on paper. I realize that Chicago is a better, tougher team than they were a year ago. They're younger and more athletic than Miami. Miami has been decimated by injuries all year, and now that all the pieces are back and in place (even though Wade's shoulder is not healed) they're out of sync. Shaq and Wade missed so much time that the team isn't sure how to play with the two of them on the court at the same time.

Miami wants to look to Wade the same way they did last year, but with 1 and 1/2 shoulders, he just can't be the same guy. So the rest of the team is torn. They're used to looking to him. They want to look to him, but they also know he's hurt and it makes them tentative. This tentativity (it's a word now, baby) cripples them in every phase of the game. I think they have the mindset that D Wade will save them on offense, on defense and in a fire should one break out ingrained so deeply that they can't get beyond it. That's why they're slow in rotations and a bit stagnant on offense.

Antoine and the second unit turned this game around tonight in the second quarter. They forced turnovers, they shot well, they played with energy and they took the lead from Chicago. Meanwhile, while the game started to get away in the fourth, Antoine was on the bench as Haslem failed to track open shooters on the break, failed to catch two Dwayne Wade passes which resulted in turnovers and generally removed objects from the table. Finally with 3:10 to go, Riley put Antoine back on the floor.

I can see a certain logic in making sure that he was fresh for the most important minutes of the game, but with less than five minutes to go, there were stoppages for a called team timeout and a TV timeout where Toine could have been put back in the game. I understand that a coach has tough decisions to make. Toine was excellent in the second quarter, but not so good in the third. But the Heat were down 0-2 in the series, taking on water as the Bulls ran off a 15-2 run.

By the time Antoine came back into the game, it was just too hard to come back. Antoine was called for a charge and a flagrant with less than a minute to go, which hurt more than it helped. The charge was his fault. The flagrant wasn't. I though as I watched the game that it was just a foul, Antoine didn't hit him harder than the situation required and he tried to hold Deng up as he fell to the floor.

Even worse, with 30 seconds to go and counting and down by five the Heat were trying to foul while the ball was on the perimeter to extend the game. And of all times for the officials to swallow the whistle, that's when they did it. For all the touch fouls that they've called on Shaq through the first half of games 1-3, this time the Heat needed to drop Luol Deng to the floor to get a call.

The kick in the ass of a flagrant foul in that situation isn't the two shots, because it was in the act of shooting and the Heat were over the limit at the time. Any foul but a technical would have been two shots at the time. Possession reverted back to the Bulls so stopping the clock didn't help even a little bit. Down by 5, with 18.7 seconds to go, it would have been a miracle if Chicago had found a way to lose.

Interestingly enough, Dick Bavetta was calling this game. For those who don't know, his presence at games which the home team desperately needs to win has been a staple of almost every suggestion that the NBA attempts to assist high-profile franchises survive and advance in the postseason Bill Simmons has ever made. And it just so happened that the officials swallowed the whistle when the home team with huge star power desperately needing a win tried like hell to foul on the perimeter, right up until the time that Luol Deng hit the floor.

Regardless of how a person wants that game to turn out, a foul should be called when contact occurs on the perimeter in that situation. Even though the flagrant foul pretty much turned out the lights on Miami Heat, not only for Game 3 but for the series, Luol Deng hitting the floor didn't need to happen. I don't mean to insinuate that Antoine Walker deliberately knocked him to the ground. Even if I thought he meant to do it, I probably wouldn't admit it here, since I have gone out of my way to defend him dozens of times.

Luol Deng is a big piece of the Chicago Bulls. I think Mariotti rushed to pronounce him a closer after only two stellar playoff games. I think he was phenomenal in Game One; he beat Miami by himself really (not because he didn't have help, but without his tremendous game, Chicago couldn't have won). And he was excellent again in the second game. He didn't have quite as good a game tonight, but he certainly played very well. If he got hurt in that episode, it would have reflected poorly on Walker and it would have crippled the Bulls hopes to beat teams like Cleveland and Detroit.

I think Mariotti rushed to judgment on the closer status (the article is on Deng, the closer crack motivated by the person on Around the Horn, both likely motivated by something like the impulse to apologize for this drivel in a normal human). I have two reasons for thinking that. First, Mariotti is a total douche, a miserable person and a terrible writer. Obviously that would amount to more than one reason if they didn't point to the simple fact that it makes me want to vomit when I find myself agreeing with him even on simple facts like water is wet.

The main reason is that I think a guy has to take a team to a conference finals at the very least before he can become a closer. After all, the Bulls are now on the verge of winning their first playoff series since Michael Jordan walked the Earth. I think that Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Kirk Heinrich and Andreas Nocioni have not earned the right to be called closers, even if they were cut up and recombined into some sort of Frankentool. How can you be called a closer when you have not, to date, even closed out one team?

And before any one who reads this decides to get in my eye (I expect some negative feedback, because attacking Mariotti has attracted positive feedback in the past but I've never done it while being hostile to a Chicago team), I admit that every single one of the players I just combined into a Frankentool is very good. But let's not forget that I'm not a Chicago guy and not a Chicago fan (I'm not sure how to categorize the strange emotional attachment to the Bears that developed during my efforts to help build and maintain the Bears bandwagon last season).

By the way, I am aware of the Michael Jordan "comeback" with the Wizards, I choose not to acknowledge it any more than I absolutely have to. I was never really a Jordan fan, though I did root for his teams against the Utah Jazz and the Lakers during the three-peats and always against the Pistons. While I am not a Celtics fan now, I used to be right up until Ainge mounted his one man crusade against a team that had made a conference finals appearance and a trip to the second round before he arrived even though it had hired him.

I haven't done this much explaining in quite some time, probably since the inaugural post or one of my apology posts. But this is a weird post. I don't know that I've been as critical of a team that I don't hate as I had to be with Miami tonight. It's just not easy being one of the appallingly few Antoine Walker fans from Boston. I think all of them are included in my original seven readers.

I apologize for the coherence of this post. I'm not even drunk. But with the Heat playing, the Sox playing the Yanks and now the Mavs deflating in Game Three in Oak-town, I haven't found time to eat yet. The blood sugar is a tad low, so I have to wrap up and get my grub on. Before I sum up as best I can the many, many, many threads of this post, I want to add my voice to the number of people lamenting the fact that the NBA gives out its awards so soon after the regular season. How can Dirk be the MVP and Sam Mitchell Coach of the Year when their teams are on the ropes?

And that brings me back in a very long, meandering, roundabout way to my point (such as it is). There is no way Miami should have found itself in this position in the series with Chicago. Yeah, Chicago is younger and more athletic than Miami. But Miami is seasoned, with players who should know by now how to come up big in big moments. If you had asked me before the playoffs started which series could come close to being a desperately poor man's edition of the Celtics vs. Lakers series in 1987, it would have been the Heat vs. Bulls. Alas, thanks to Pat Riley and his determination to hide Antoine on his bench as though Employee Number Eight were the light under the basket in an inversion of the Biblical original.

I'm not as depressed by the demise of the Heat and the defeat of the Yanks as you might expect. Maybe it's because there was just an excellent episode of South Park (the Junior Detectives episode, I highly recommend it). Maybe it's the fact that Jackass the Movie is on right now. Or maybe it's the fact that I have the John Wayne opus The Horse Soldiers waiting in my saved programs on On Demand. Or maybe it's that Dallas is on the verge of dropping Game Three to Golden State like an overly ambitious Tae Kwan Do novice missing with a big crescent kick and dropping like a sack of potatoes. Who can say? But at any rate, good evening.