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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pro Bowl has come and gone, and very little remains for the football fan until the draft. Baseball hasn't started spring training. The Celtics are frustratingly bad because they come oh so close to ending their losing streak only to drop games by 2 points or 4 points. And no one can watch college hockey because of the vicious injustices which occur each and every night.

Can you imagine that another Beanpot has just concluded and against all probability Boston College was on the outside looking in. You just knew it had to be their year. After all, it hasn't been a very good year for BC athletics. Another middle of the pack football season led to an appearance in the Feel Sorry For Us Bowl, and their coach headed to greener pastures at NC State. Then there's the basketball team and their recent legal troubles.

It must be getting tough for the sweatstains in their cute, little yellow superfan shirts to carry around the burden of athletic disappointment along with their room temperature IQs and bizarrely inflated egos. It's not easy being the Greater Boston area's premier Catholic institution of higher learning, but if they don't pull it together, Regis is just waiting in the wings. But there are more important things in this world than BC, believe it or not. So Jerry York can retire to his lair and dream of that 3rd Beanpot championship and rest his troubled soul with the knowledge that he has been cheated out of his just due. Like Mark Cuban, but with a measure of dignity since he is a good coach and not a total douche.

I was stunned that Marty Schottenheimer was fired today. I guess I'm a little less surprised, having read this piece by John Clayton. I noticed that Manusky had signed to be the 49ers defensive coordinator. I remember being surprised when I saw that on the ticker on ESPN, mostly because I thought Mike Singletary was already filling the position. I guess there is a semantic difference between assistant head coach/defense and defensive coordinator that I'm missing.

Yeah, Marty has a terrible playoff record, but at least he gets teams to the big games. It's not like his teams have gotten worse in each season since he's been there like Danny Ainge or Jon Gruden. I'm having a hard time accepting the coach of a 14-2 team losing his job. It's also amazing to think that grown-ass men (to borrow a phrase from Charles Barkley) working dream jobs in professional sports can't put petty squabbles aside and work together. Actually, it's not that odd, I'm sure that if I were a coach or GM I would allow personal rancor to ruin all kinds of relationships because I'm rude, ill-tempered, sarcastic and difficult to get along with under the best of circumstances. But I try to be a better person once a week, for about an hour at a time.

I'm interested to see where the Chargers go from here. The obvious favorites have to be Ron Rivera and Caldwell from Indy. I wonder whether the Chargers will try to sign Singletary as payback for Manusky. But there has to be a big problem filling their vacancies, since it's come out that AJ Smith wanted to prevent his assistant coaches from interviewing for other positions. Will other teams let the Chargers talk to prospective offensive and defensive coordinator candidates? I also wonder if the AJ Smith-Schottenheimer relationship fell apart because Marty might have wanted to bring in his son Brian from the Jets to be his offensive coordinator.

But away from the mess unfolding in San Diego, where my friend will have so much trouble that even his man crush on Marcus McNeill might not sustain him through a cold winter (figuratively speaking) in paradise. As I sat watching the Pro Bowl, a friend of mine as disappointed in the outcome of the Super Bowl as I was suggested that Peyton Manning bears an uncanny resemblance to Ted Haggard, the disgraced evangelist from Colorado. You be the judge:

Peyton vs. Ted









That remark made me laugh like hell, and it got me thinking that Merle Haggard must be pissed whenever the story about that cat and his man-whoring and meth escapades comes across a news ticker. I apologize for the formatting, still learning some of these things, even 10 months into the blog's history. Now you see why I never post pictures.

Watching the Pro Bowl brought out one of my less impressive moments as sports fan this year. I went on a mini-tirade on how terrible the NFC wide receivers were. How they should have had TO on the team. And then Anquan Boldin made that amazing play to score the final TD of the game and Steve Smith got the two point conversion to tie the score briefly on a great individual effort. There is nothing quite like being wrong (and spectacularly so most of the time) 90% of the time to wound the ego. Bad times.

I am glad Duke fell out of the top 25 for the first time in almost a decade today. I hate Duke. I hate Coach K. I hate the Cameron Indoor Stadium. I hate the Cameron Crazies. Coach K deserves all that he's reaping this season. In my mind, he forfeited whatever claim to legitimacy he had as a basketball coach when he brought in Shane Battier to play for the US National team.

I know the argument that the team needed his toughness and his defense. Alas, the TSA must have confiscated them before he left the country, since they weren't evident in the tournament.
No matter how you slice it, there is no way that he would have been picked for the team if he hadn't raised the flop to an art form in college. If he didn't play for Duke, a better basketball player would have been on the team. It might have made a difference, but not likely. At least it would have been a more entertaining disappointment.