I guess it had to happen sooner or later, but I still wasn't ready for Brett Favre to retire. Obviously, no one plays in the NFL forever, and quarterbacks take a fair amount of punishment over the course of a season. But seeing Brett Favre go is like losing something I could always rely on.

I am 28, I remember a lot of NFL games before Favre broke into the league. So it's not like losing part of my childhood or my youth. It's just that Favre was the last of the great old style of NFL quarterback. Now we have the two Mannings, Brady and the rest who are sort of manufactured, prepackaged automatons on and off the field. Their play is pretty much the same, their sound bites are pretty much the same. They just aren't that interesting.

Sure Peyton Manning is in every third commercial for every fifth product and we get the rundown on all of Tom Brady's sordid off-field dalliances, but that doesn't make them stand out from the herd of celebrities that stalk the media landscape these days. And I think an NFL quarterback should stand out. Like Namath having the guts to rock pantyhose in that creepy ad campaign or sport a man fur on the sidelines. Or like Don Meredith (even though he was already retired and broadcasting at the time) who introduced MNF fans to a game in Denver saying: "Welcome to the Mile High City, and folks that's about how I feel right now."

Yeah, Favre had a recurring problem with the huge interception at the exact wrong time, but at least he had daring. A guy has to do a lot for his team just to get them into a position where he can kill them with a bad throw. And while Favre did make his share of mistakes, he did it with style. So now he leaves the NFL with Manning, Brady and their peers who talk like Junior Simple but cut a nice figure in a fancy suit. And I think we're all just a little bit the worse off for it.

Speaking of the NFL, I am enjoying the offseason moves for the Philadelphia Eagles. As one of TO's biggest fans, I still enjoy seeing the Eagles in the process of imploding. When all is said and done after this season, it will be the signing of Asante Samuel that draws the most attention, whether it works or fails. But as ludicrous as it was to give him a six year, $55 million contract, it isn't the worst decision the Eagles could have made, or did make for that matter.

That dubious honor has to go to the Eagles' front office brain trust who decided to slap the franchise tag on tight end LJ Smith. In case you don't know, the franchise tag forces the team to offer the player a one year deal equivalent to the average of the top three salaries at his position. So that means if you're franchising a guy, you probably ought to be damn sure that he is one of the three best players in his category in the league today.

There is no way LJ Smith is a top three tight end in the NFL. Perhaps he is as talented as draft gurus and Eagles execs have claimed, but I think if that were the case he'd have proved it by now. Hell, even Kellen Winslow II has had a breakout season, and he's been in the league half as long and missed almost two entire seasons to boot.

Out of curiosity, can you even tell me that LJ Smith is a top three tight end in the NFC East? Would you rank him ahead of Jason Witten, Chris Cooley and Jeremy Shockey? I don't think I would. And that's not even beginning to compare him to guys like Ben Watson or the likes of Gates and Gonzales.

Now, it may be that the Eagles franchised him in the hopes of trading him, but who the hell would give up anything of significance for LJ Smith, let alone two first round picks? I think if I were an NFL GM, I'd demand a late second day pick included in a package for LJ Smith where I had to send nothing back in return, or maybe a used kicking tee and worn out down and distance markers.

There are at times, other concerns when it comes to franchising or not franchising a player than simple statistical production. But is LJ Smith so important to the Eagles (who didn't even make the playoffs last season) that the entire football landscape in the City of Brotherly Love that the whole thing would collapse if he left town? This just might take the cake for dumbest decision made in the NFL this offseason, at least until the Eagles draft in April.

In other matters, Mountain Dew has come out with a new marketing campaign. It is called Green Label Art, and they are selling their product in limited edition aluminum bottles featuring six distinct designs from six of America's edgiest up and coming artists. I bet you James McNeil Whistler is shaking in his boots in the afterlife, fearing that his place at the pinnacle of artistic achievement in American history is about to come to an end.

When I saw this campaign, it reminded me of a scene from the classic film "The Third Man." The character played by Orson Wells delivers a famous line:

"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly."

If one were to modernize that quote to describe America today, I suppose one could say that we've had 220 years with a few ups and downs, but with unprecedented security, peace and prosperity and we produced six tools who adorned a soda that is little more than citrus flavored rat poison with six "works of art" that make a sane man want to weep for the future. I shudder to think that there will come a time when a person who owns unopened bottles with these images on them will make a fortune on eBay. What a world.

I think Jerry Garcia said it best when he said...

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's not very often I find myself changing my mind on any given issue. Some say I'm stubborn, some say I'm a contrarian, some say I'm any one of a number of unpleasant and unprintable things. Sadly, I've been thinking they might be right. But what can one do?

Today, I think I just might have to change my mind on the whole Roger Clemens saga. With the 60 Minutes piece and that creepy, Richard Nixon-esque press conference where he played that taped phone conversation, I stuck by him. I think, in part, because I couldn't put a human face on those who were hurt by Clemens' alleged cheating. Now I have that human face.

Bill Simmons provided that human face in his most recent contribution to ESPN the Magazine. Roger Clemens and the other cheaters must be punished not because of what they've done to make a mockery out of the baseball record books, but because they have hurt Bill Simmons' feelings. He used to treasure memories of some of Clemens' great days in Boston, but now he doesn't know how to feel about them any more.

I can't help but wonder if Dr. Phil is racing over to Simmons' house to help talk him through this grave emotional crisis. I realize that this is a sad, selfish and oftentimes stupid country in which we live. But the thing is, no matter what he did or what he didn't do, Roger Clemens doesn't owe any fan of any team a damn thing. Nor has he been proven to have done anything.

And what happens if he clears his name before Congress and in a court of law? Will Simmons, Shaughnessy and the rest apologize? Or will they still whine about what damage these allegations have done to Clemens' legacy and to the pure sport of baseball? I'm betting on the latter. Especially since they won't have to admit that they did as much damage in the rush to judgement on Clemens as he did in being accused.

In other news, the Patriots had their send-off as they left for Arizona in Foxboro. At the risk of sounding old and bitter, am I the only one who remembers a time when a team went to the Super Bowl without a rally? Are we really that bored and hard-up for ideas on how to spend our time that we now have to go out and say good bye to our team as it departs for the Super Bowl? I know 19-0 is historic, but it's not like they landed on the Moon or discovered a new continent.

So we have a tool of note for today, or more accurately, 15,000 tools of note. That's how many people showed up to listen to Tom Brady speak and watch the team get on busses. In January. In New England. In the snow. And honorable mention goes to Junior Seau for wearing that ridiculous hat.

So, we're counting down to kickoff, and the inevitability of 18-0. It's not an inevitability that I particularly enjoy, but one that I have come to accept. I am tired of convincing myself that there are any one of a number of vulnerabilities on this Patriot team that any one of a number of opponents could exploit in any one of a number of ways.

It doesn't matter how slow and decrepit the Patriot linebacking unit is. It doesn't matter how dirty Rodney Harrison plays this week. It doesn't even matter that I don't think Laurence Maroney is a legitimate big time tailback in today's NFL. All that really matters is that Quentin Jammer, Antonio Cromartie, Marlon McCree, Clinton Hart and Eric Weddle have a better chance of being elected Pope than they do of containing Moss and Welker this week. And even if they could contain those two, what of Ben Watson, Stallworth and Kevin Faulk (who has been coming up big in situations where I didn't want him to come up big since he was at LSU under Gerry DiNardo's reign of terror)?

Yes, the Chargers managed to lead the NFL in takeaways this season. They also managed to beat Indianapolis twice this season, even winning in the RCA Dome last week. But they also suffered humiliating losses to the Patriots and the very, very, very average Minnesota Vikings this season. Playing on the road and in the cold in New England against the undefeated team that every one loves to hate, it's just not happening. I only hope LaDanian Tomlinson manages to be as entertaining with this year's round of postgame whining as he was last year.

Since this blog is supposed to be about the Red Sox, I would be remiss if I didn't pass along Mike Lowell's statesman-like response to potential testing for HGH in baseball. Mike Lowell is willing to take the test, provided that it's 100% accurate, but he's out if the test is only 99% accurate. I can't help but wonder if there's any room for negotiation there, since it seems very unlikely that any test for any substance will ever be 100% accurate.

Lowell also brought up the double standard issue. Baseball players, writers, coaches and so forth have been quick to point out the fact that Shawne Merriman was suspended for four games and still went to the Pro Bowl last year, and Rodney Harrison missed the first four games of this season for being implicated in an HGH scandal. But it is baseball that is in the cross hairs.

It's simple, as Lowell himself conceded in that article. Baseball looked the other way for a long time, refusing any kind of testing. The NFL, on the other hand, has had a ban on steroids for years. It might not be perfect, but at least football players have been suspended for violating the NFL ban on performance enhancers for years.

Mark McGwire admitted he took andro in 1998, when it was not banned according to the rules of Major League Baseball. It was, however, a banned substance in the NFL at the time. Roger Clemens is alleged to have taken steroids in years when none of the substances Brian McNamee and George Mitchell accuse him of taking were even banned in baseball. Baseball didn't even start testing or developing any kind of comprehensive policy until Congress got on their case.

I don't think there is a double standard here. Rodney Harrison and Shawne Merriman lost a quarter of the season and four game checks. Four games doesn't seem like much at first, but when you do the math it is the equivalent of 40 and a half baseball games. Considering the NFL developed and implemented this policy on their own, long before baseball got religion thanks to a Congressional hearing, I think it's more than reasonable.

I do think Merriman shouldn't have gone to the Pro Bowl, but I wasn't one of the people who voted for him. I think out of common decency, he should have declined the invite, but that's his business. It is, or at least it was, a free country. If people are dumb enough to vote to send a cheater to the Pro Bowl, that's their misfortune.

In other news, in my ongoing effort to make this blog more interactive, here's another gem of a comment from an anonymous reader. In a recent post I happened to bid the Seattle Seahawks a less than fond farewell from the 2007 season. As a part of it, I ripped Seahawk fans for ripping off traditions from Texas A & M and suggested they should play a song to commemorate every early exit from the playoffs the way A & M plays Taps across campus when an alumnus (or alumna) dies in the line of duty serving in the Armed Services.

I suggested "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" as Seattle stole the nickname Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz (Not very funny, but then I just might have overindulged with respect to beer at the time). Reader KobraKommander (in one of his rare instances of bringing things to the table) improved the suggestion with one of his own, offering "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," which is pretty funny.

To make a very long, and pretty unnecessary story short, the anonymous commenter suggested "I'm an @#$hole" by Denis Leary. I bring it up because this is a bit ambiguous. I assume the commenter meant that I, the blogger, am the @#$hole. But it is open to the suggestion that the commenter himself could be the @#$hole. Or any Seahawk fans who might play that to bid their team adieu from the playoffs could be the @#$hole. And let's face it, the odds are that if you live in Seattle or root for the Seahawks, you probably are an @#$hole.

While I have been trying to avoid posting in the middle of a bender, tonight it seems as though I have no choice. Our long national nightmare just keeps dragging on as the Patriots refuse to do the right thing and lose. Even as the core of their defense ages in dog years, with Bruschi, Seau, Harrison and Vrabel winding down at the wrong time, they still manage to win week in and week out. And it's a damn shame.

I must confess, I was amazed to see two personal fouls called on Rodney Harrison in one season, let alone one game. He is a great player, and although it hurts me to say this, a sure-fire Hall of Famer. That said, he is now, and has always been a dirty player whose playmaking capacity, strength and toughness grow impressively in inverse proportion to his opponents' abilities to deal damage in return. In that sense, he is the evolutionary Jack Tatum, a kinder, gentler cheap shot artist for the Bill Clinton era in America.

I am coming to the conclusion, to borrow a phrase from an old episode of the Simpsons, that the Patriots suffer from Three Stooges Syndrome. If you remember, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic explained Mr. Burns longevity was a result of that condition, that there were so many diseases and conditions attacking him at once that they cancelled each other out. The Patriots have so many dueling vulnerabilities that they just might be invulnerable. And what a shame that would be for the Republic.

But after a certain point, how can one maintain interest in ripping a functionally illiterate quarterback, a sunshine soldier at lead wide receiver and a decrepit defense? Especially when they seem hell bent on getting stronger and faster and healthier with each swipe I take at them. I know they are a very good team, and I think I'm devoted enough to intellectual honesty to give the Devil his due when I criticize them. It just seems that they are so eminently beatable that this little thing of theirs has to come to a screeching halt at some point. I just wish it had been tonight, 16-1 had such a lovely ring to it.

The real story of today, however, is the savage beating Green Bay applied to Seattle. I have always expected to be a minor villain in the local sports scene, what with the fact that I harbor deep-seeded irrational antipathies to every local team and all. I didn't expect to become a minor villain to a lunatic fringe group of Seahawks fans because I dared provide a rational analysis of their team, their town, their "traditions" and their QB.

Seahawks fans, or at least the few that tripped over this blog in the dark, took umbrage at the fact that I called Matt Hasselbeck the fifth best QB in the NFL. I think the real thorn in their side came out of my assertion that the gap between 1-4 and 5 was bigger than the Grand Canyon. And yet as we sit here tonight and look back on the mauling they received at the hands of the Green Bay Packers, I could very nearly take a small measure of solace from the fact that I was more right than they were. Favre, Romo, Brady and Manning aren't in the same league as Hasselbeck.

I just wish the Packers had had the chance to utterly humiliate Seattle in the Emerald City in the vicinity of the 12th Man. Since they have a proclivity for stealing traditions from Texas A & M, I have a suggestion for Seattle fans. Texas A & M plays Taps across campus when one of its alumni who serves in the military dies in the line of duty. It occurs to me that the Seahawks fans could construct a similar ritual for this time of year when the Seahawks' Super Bowl hopes are crushed.

They shouldn't play Taps, since that would insult the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces, but they should be able to create a parallel tradition for their own minor tragedies. Yeah, Seattle has loud fans. So do most NFL towns. And most of them didn't boost their nickname from the town in the Wizard of Oz. So maybe Seahawks fans could gather and play Follow the Yellow Brick Road to mourn yet another year of Seahawk failure when the chips are down.

And as for the 12th Man, I haven't the time or the inclination to do the research right now but we all know they ripped of Texas A & M. In point of fact, I have the time, but I am a bit buzzed right now and working real hard on a full-on drunk, so I just won't do it. But I can, through the imperfect medium of my memory, trace Texas A & M 12th Man references back to the 1986 bowl game where the 12th Man selected to cover a kick from the Texas A & M student body tried to steal a towel from Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown as a souvenir. I can't trace the Seattle 12th Man back past the turn of the century. Case closed.

Before I conclude yet another meandering window into my own tormented mind, I want to say one more thing. In the past, Tom Brady has come under fire in this space for being a balding metrosexual. Perhaps I ought to have been more sensitive, since it must have been difficult to blaze that trail as publicly as Tom Brady has, but sensitivity isn't my strong suit.

That said, Tom Brady seems to have more hair now than he did at this time last year. Now, I wouldn't be much of a Catholic (and Lord knows, I'm not) if I didn't allow for the possibility of miracles, but I don't believe in this particular miracle. Never having set an NFL record myself, I don't know if setting the touchdown mark cures minor physical ailments, but I think old Tom Brady might just be on the Rogaine or at the very least sporting hair plugs. Could this be some sort of under appreciated performance enhancer? Would that I knew enough science to investigate.

Rest assured that my running debate on the Roger Clemens story with the KobraKommander will be resumed in the not too distant future, if for no other reason than this is my blog and I'll be damned if I let him have the last word.

So, our long national nightmare drags on. The Patriots are still undefeated. The Giants did manage to play surprisingly well. I have never had much faith in either Tom Coughlin or Eli Manning, so I went into the bar to watch last night's game without a lot of hope. And the Giants played just well enough to get me excited, only to pull the rug out from under me when they eventually collapsed.

There are some encouraging signs. Tom Brady set the single season passing TD record. Randy Moss set the single season receiving TD record. The Patriots set the single season scoring record. And they became the first team to go through a sixteen game regular season without losing. And in all of that I can still find some positive aspects.

First, the last two QBs who set the single season passing TD record did so in seasons which did not culminate in championships. Then there's the fact that Jerry Rice set the single season record for TD receptions in a season in which the 49ers didn't win the Super Bowl. And the last two teams that set the single season scoring record (the 1983 Redskins and the 1998 Vikings) failed to win the Super Bowl. Not only that but the suffered embarrassing losses (the Raiders blew the Redskins out in the Super Bowl and mighty Minnesota lost to a terrible Atlanta team at home in OT in the NFC Championship Game).

It is true that this season for the Patriots has been utterly without precedent, from the head coach being mired in the most inexplicable scandal since Watergate (why, by the way, did Nixon even bother breaking into the DNC offices? He went on to win 49 states, were his preliminary polling numbers that out of whack?) to the 16-0 finish. But only one team has finished a regular season undefeated and gone on to win it all since the days of the Decatur Staleys and a ten team league. That was the 1972 Dolphins. There were two Bears teams in the late 30s and early 40s era that went undefeated but lost the NFL Championship Game.

I guess it depends on perspective. One can see history and karma being full square behind this Patriots team, or one can see history and karma setting a massive ambush for this mob of cocky nitwits. And based on the crowd at the bar last night, I get the sense that very few people deserve a comeuppance more than Pats fans. I actually overheard a guy at the bar refer to Mangini as "Mangina." And he seemed to be one of the more enlightened and articulate Pats fans in the place.

Far more vexing at the moment was the crime against aesthetic sensibilities perpetrated by the Dallas Cowboys this afternoon in the nation's capital. What the hell happened there? Did Jerry Jones forget the shipment of Diet Pepsi Max? Did he finally grab the headset from Jason Garrett and take the helm? I know the weather was frightful, but with the way they played you'd think that none of the Cowboys had ever seen rain before in their lives.

Having said that, I am not too nervous about their chances to advance to the Super Bowl. After all, most of the same people who are hyping the dangers of facing the Redskins in the playoffs were sitting there around Thanksgiving time telling us exactly how dangerous the Minnesota Vikings would be in the playoffs. Funny how that ended up working out these last few weeks.

I suppose it is unfair to dismiss the Vikings at this point. After all, they do still have the potential to surprise a few teams this postseason. I imagine they just might be able to rush onto the field in Seattle or Pittsburgh as though it were Wrestlemania. Or they could really impress the other guests at whatever resorts they will visit while the teams that actually made the playoffs are busing playing this January.

I would like to see the Redskins win next week. Even before I earned the ire of a few losers who root for the Seahawks, I didn't much care for the team. I just didn't like the way the team and the fans reacted to the bad calls in the Super Bowl two seasons ago. It's not as though they would have been so interested in the pure technical art of officiating a professional football game had the calls gone in their favor. Plus Matt Hasselbeck is a bald whiner and a proud product of Boston College.

I just don't see it happening. Todd Collins has been a great story so far and they have the sympathetic angle covered because of the tragic death of Sean Taylor. But that sort of thing only takes a team so far in the playoffs. I remember back in 1991 when Mike Utley was paralyzed playing for the Lions and his thumb up gesture as he was carted from the field galvanized the team for its stretch run. They made it all the way to the NFC title game, but it all came to a crashing halt against the Redskins under the first Gibbs administration.

Incidentally, that was also the year that the Falcons latched on to the MC Hammer song To Legit to Quit. Of course, like so many of my digressions, this has no real point. But they rode the momentum of that dreadful song and the pointless human interest story it generated for nearly two months. Fortunately, they rode the momentum right into the divisional round in old RFK Stadium and the Redskins crushed them 56-17. I really don't know why I bring that up, except that it is on my mind right now, and (at least to me) moderately amusing.

What really concerns me about the Redskins going forward is their defensive backfield. This is a trifle indelicate, considering I've already mentioned that their Pro Bowl caliber safety was murdered in the not too distant past. But I just don't see them being able to contain the Seahawks vastly overrated group of wide receivers. Stopping the Cowboys today, with TO on the sidelines and an understrength Terry Glenn trying to get some game action prior to the playoffs in a driving rain storm is one thing. Holding down Bobby Engram and Nate Burleson in front of the even more massively overrated 12th Man is a whole different story.

I will, I think, be posting more about the playoff matchups as we get closer to game time next weekend. I also have to collect my thoughts tomorrow to see if I can find a way to talk myself into a plausible scenario which ends in Illinois beating USC in their first bowl game since 2001. It's definitely doable, but I have to consider the ramifications of the SIRSN jinx, which has claimed more victims in the last 18 months than the SI jinx has in its lifetime, I think.

I'm getting kind of tired of prefacing each of my increasingly rare posts with an apology. But it gets kind of old after a while, sitting here in front of the computer trying to invent reasons why a given team has a chance to beat the Patriots. And should I indulge in speculation on what team will give up which prospects and position players to get Johann Santana away from Minnesota? It's just not all that interesting to me at the moment.

I suppose I could take a sort of grim satisfaction from the fact that the Patriots have become everything which they were not supposed to be two years or so ago when every talking head and his brother insisted on holding them up as the model of virtue and excellence in professional sports. But even that gets old after a while.

I must confess, I was disappointed to see the way the Patriots reacted to Anthony Smith's "guarantee." It was disgusting to see Tom Brady go out of his way to get in his face after the first TD pass. Brady is, regrettably, a Hall of Fame quarterback on a record setting pace. Anthony Smith is a second year nobody whom the media exploited to generate more interest in a non-story.

There was a time when Brady was supposed to be a paragon of how to succeed with class and dignity. There is very little that smacks of class and dignity in going out of your way to put down a guy who barely even ran his mouth. Could you see Joe Montana or Terry Bradshaw doing that? Hell, Bradshaw never seemed to go out of his way to talk trash to Hollywood Henderson, who said considerably more insulting things about Bradshaw than any one has ever said about Brady.

Now the Patriots are playing the Jets again. Thankfully the media has an easy angle courtesy of the whole taping signals scandal to justify hours of coverage devoted to a very mediocre game. Conventional wisdom tells us that the Jets have no chance to win this game. Unfortunately, I can see no reason to disagree everybody and his brother for a change.

In other news, George Mitchell has finally delivered his report on steroids in Major League Baseball after 20 months of what surely was a exhaustive and ethically conducted investigation. In a blaze of vindication for those who have dragged Roger Clemens' name through the mud on this issue for the last two years or so, his name is at the top of the list of high-profile players who are named.

If you had told me earlier that losing to an unknown despite running not only as an incumbent but the sitting Senate Majority Leader to boot would end up not being the most embarassing professional failure of George Mitchell's career, I wouldn't have believed it. And then he had to go and release this report.

If sources like discredited and terminated former Yankees strength and conditioning coach Brian McNamee are at all typical of the informers who are expected to provide the Mitchell Report with its substance, then I am willing to bet guys like Clemens, Tejada and Pettitte will have little to fear from these proceedings.

This report which tells us many things we already knew (like MLB dragged its collective feet on the steroids issue) amid its hearsay and innuendo about respected players and choice nuggets about players who have already been caught cheating like Giambi, will likely go down in the annals of justice with hard-hitting and epoch shaping events like the Red Scare, the Army-McCarthy hearings and the Salem Witch Trials.

Curiously, outside of Eric Gagne, no one of consequence from the Boston Red Sox was named in this document. Thankfully, and perhaps conveniently, Brendan Donnelly was not offered a contract today. Interesting....

There are some occasions when I wish I were a Patriots fan. Not to enjoy this undefeated season in the making, not to jump on the bandwagon and not to find out if, as the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss. But to be able to quip after the Patriots bye this week that the NFL finally found a way to stop the Pats from scoring. I imagine that if I were as dumb as the average Pats fan, I could convince myself that I were clever dropping a line like that.

Thanks to Mike Shanahan's hesitation and a fair-sized hangover, I left Travis Henry in my fantasy lineup this week. So his DNP didn't help, and Manning's epic six interception performance still ending up netting 21 points thanks to a FFL commissioner whose struggles with incompetence should make him the subject of a made-for-TV movie of the week, I came in to tonight's game trailing by 1.5 points. All I needed was one catch for six yards from 49ers TE Vernon Davis to win. That didn't seem like an unreasonable expectation, did it?

Of course, with the brilliant pass protection scheme of the San Francisco offense keeping Davis in for max protection, even though it didn't work at any point in the game, that simple hope was doomed from the start.

This season has forced me to face an unpleasant reality. So much attention has been paid to Tony Romo's new contract, Brett Favre's milestones, Peyton Manning's Super Bowl championship and Tom Brady's illegitimate kid and amazing stats. But there has been a vast, dishonest, corrupt conspiracy to divert attention away from the greatest quarterback in the game - Matt Hasselbeck. With the way he put up numbers against the 49ers in tonight's game, the NFL must waive the whole retirement for five years requirement to induct him into the Hall of Fame immediately.

I've been wondering why Hasselbeck is shunted aside in favor of guys like Manning and Brady. It can't be a question of talent, numbers or overall success. It has to be because he's bald and he has that sad little emasculated voice that distinguishes true he men like Hasselbeck and Bill Simmons. Hell, field generals like Joe Montana and Johnny Unitas wish they could have an epic moment like the overtime playoff game when Hasselbeck announced over the stadium PA when the Seahawks won the coin toss that the Hawks would take the ball and win the game. Alas, Hasselbeck threw an INT which Al Harris returned for the winning TD.

It must be a conspiracy, though. It can't be because Hasselbeck is barely above-average at his position. Nor can it be that he is more prepared to provide an excuse for his failure than to drive his team to success. Nor can it be tied to the fact that he plays in a dick town whose most notable football tradition was shamelessly ripped from Texas A & M. As an aside, why couldn't Seahawks fans have stolen the bonfires which collapse and kill the builders instead of the 12th man.

Unfortunately, the story didn't garner the national attention it deserved, but Hasselbeck and his teammates made sure to remind themselves of Super Bowl XL prior to this season's meeting with the Steelers. They brought motivation from the bad calls which they felt deprived their team of the championship they so richly deserved. Whether it was because he spent too much time reading his playbook out loud to clam his children, because State Farm wasn't there for him, because they dwelt too much in the past or because the Steelers are just that much better, the Seahawks were soundly beaten.

This game against San Francisco is fairly typical of Hasselbeck's career. The Seahawks came in expected to win, even without Deion Branch and Shaun Alexander. San Francisco has been dreadful all season, no matter how much they spent this offseason. And Hasselbeck was throwing the ball all over the place. He's always very good in the games he's expected to win. But when the team plays a better team, he folds.

I said all that because Steve Young appeared in the broadcast booth tonight, complaining that Hasselbeck is ignored because he plays in the Pacific Northwest and toils on a team with very little tradition of excellence, so they don't draw media attention. That isn't the case, necessarily. With so much coverage by ESPN, ESPN2 the NFL Network and FSN, with the interest in fantasy football and with the internet, fans have so much access to so much football information at every minute of every day. If fans aren't focused on a player it's performance based, not regional bias. Maybe Hasselbeck is the fifth best QB playing right now, but the Grand Canyon separates him from 1-4.

In other news, BC lost again this week. It seems like an annual rite of passage, like the swallows returning to Capistrano in California in March. Thanksgiving approaches, BC controls its own destiny for an automatic berth to a BCS bowl and a .500 team upsets them. And all of a sudden, there is no BCS berth. And then the whining about BC missing out on higher profile bowls because of the perception that BC fans don't travel well begins in earnest.

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.

What a depressing weekend. I never would have believed that the Yankees could take two out of three from the Red Sox and it wouldn't make me smile. What is happening to the football team at Notre Dame is just that depressing. And the instability and unpredictability of the early stages of the NFL season isn't helping.

It's hard to find words to describe what Michigan did to Notre Dame this weekend. Suffice it to say, there just isn't a lot of fight in this vintage of the Fighting Irish. I guess the one moment that best encapsulated the debacle in the Big House this week came when the ABC telecast wound down mercifully. As they do for each team in each game, they chose the Chevrolet Players of the Game.

I didn't bother to remember which individual was singled out for Notre Dame, I just remember that he was a defensive player who recorded 9 tackles, including one for a loss. The team was beaten 38-0, and the player of the game was a defensive player. The bright spots were so few and far between that a guy who made a tackle behind the opponent's line of scrimmage merited a $1,000 donation in his name to the University of Notre Dame's general scholarship fund. How the mighty have fallen.

And as for the telecast itself, if ABC had dragged 3 of the inbred hayseeds who made up the home crowd in Ann Arbor, the network could hardly have assembled a crew more biased toward the Wolverines. That wouldn't have been such a big deal if they were at least decent announcers. Paul McGuire gets worse with each word that leaves his mouth. The world might be better served if they paid him more to stay home than they pay him to show up for work. Or at least unplugged his mike periodically. Let him think he's calling the game if they don't have the heart to get rid of him.

I found the brief segments where individual Wolverines were allowed to share fun little snippets of their thoughts and feelings about the game to be the most galling aspects this particular telecast. Granted, I have searched far and wide to see Jake Long give his own opinion of his strengths. And I was deeply shocked to see that literacy and the ability to point out forks in his family tree weren't among them.

A close second on the list of things that continue to vex me from the Michigan game is that Mike Hart delivered on his guarantee, so now this win will probably be cataloged in history with Babe Ruth's called shot and Namath's guarantee in Super Bowl III. Of course the fact that I predicted a Michigan victory in this space last week is absolutely no consolation. A blind man could have seen it coming with the way Notre Dame has played to this point.

Even with Ryan Mallett making his first start (and knowing Mallett would be a tool, with that name and all) I didn't expect Notre Dame to be 3-0. I knew with their opening schedule and a slate of untested players at key positions like QB, RB and WR that this 0-3 start was a very real possibility. What I did not expect, however, was that after 180 minutes of football I would find myself on a vision quest to see the Fighting Irish score their first offensive touchdown of this season. I could live with 0-3 if even one of the games were close enough to make me think that 0-7 weren't on the horizon.

The season has been so disappointing and surprising that I have struggled to find a good analogy. The closest I have been able to come to it is if I were to walk by one of those Dance Dance Revolutions games and hear Born to Run. Hearing that foolish machine play an Elvis song would hurt more, but surprise me less with the way Elvis Presley Enterprises operates. No, finding that Springsteen sold out in such a shameful manner would be the only equivalent to this travesty of a season.

Two final thoughts on Notre Dame-Michigan. First, I don't know now when I'll see 3:10 to Yuma. Russell Crowe attended Saturday's game in Michigan regalia as Lloyd Carr's personal guest. Eventually, I'll get over it because I love the movie Gladiator. But I hate Michigan, so it will take a while. And good riddance to Demetrius Jones as he transfers to Northern Illinois. Maybe he wouldn't have been as hurt by losing his job to Jimmy Clausen if he had tried to play a bit less terribly.

Then there is the bizarre NFL season to date. These weekend's games didn't do much to improve my state of mind. In fact, it made things much worse. First, no one on my fantasy team got in the end zone. So that put the kibosh on the Pork Chop Express. It didn't help that Chad Johnson had such a big game, as he was on the opposing team. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I hate Chad Johnson. TO made his shtick possible when he signed that ball in Seattle all those years ago, but every one loves Chad and hates TO.

Since the Cleveland vs. Cincinnati game was so surprising, it has been covered to death. I, however, have my own unique angle. I am (or more accurately now, was) in a suicide pool. For those who might not be familiar with the term, the people against whom I compete and I pick one team per week. If that team wins, we advance, When the team you pick loses, that's it for the pool entry. To make a long story short, I picked Cincinnati this week.

I had my reasons. In no particular order, here they are. As I understand it, the rules said I could only choose a team once. So I was trying to save teams who looked more like a guaranteed win for later on in the season. Fat lot of good that did me. In my inimitable wisdom, I decided that I was going to target teams that weren't very good and pick their opponent in the early going.

In week one, I chose San Fran over Arizona and that nearly blew up in my face. So I decided to pick against a team that looked dreadful in week one. So I chose Cleveland, who was so bad against Pittsburgh that they cut the guy who started at QB. And go figure, they scored 51 points. I would have bet going into the game that they wouldn't have scored 51 points by week 5.

It might be due to some neurotic streak in my personality, but I am not going to eat any crow on this Patriots win. Yes, the Chargers have an vastly superior pass rush than the Jets. But if you recall, the Patriots did just as good a job containing the same defensive package last season in the playoffs. And then when all New England seemed ready to fall in love with the Pats O-line, Dwight Freeny and Robert Matthis carved them up as though that were the object of pass protection and not the antithesis of pass protection just one week later. So I am not sold on this offensive line.

And the Chargers do have a better secondary than the Jets, so it was a more impressive performance for Brady, Moss and the rest. But the Chargers are not really that good in the defensive backfield. Maybe you think Quentin "Bad Mamma" Jammer qualifies as a front-line, shutdown corner. I don't. He's adequate, forgettable and occasionally regrettable to steal a line from the Simpsons President's Day Pageant in the Ralph Loves Lisa episode.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but Moss has always been a great front-runner. On national TV in the regular season, he just might be the best of all time. However, that isn't what gets players to Canton. Lynn Swann got into the Hall of Fame with weak regular season stats because he was incredible in huge games like Super Bowls. Moss hasn't gotten there yet, but he's fallen short in NFC championships. So forgive me for not putting on sackcloth and streaking my face with ashes as though I were a penitent man.

I didn't have much time for watching highlight shows or Sportscenter these past few days, but I wonder how much attention has been paid to another oddity at this stage of the season. During the four minute offense when the Colts had a chance to shut the door on the Titans, Manning threw two incompletions and took a big sack with under 3 minutes to go in the game.

If I remember correctly, the Titans only had one timeout, so even three running plays would have all but killed their chances to win, even if they went for no gain. Hell, even kneeling the ball three times would have run time and forced the Titans to burn their last timeout. It certainly would have been better than two incompletions which burnt mere seconds off the clock and a sack which forced the Colts to punt.

Granted it's all academic, as Indy went on to win the game, but for all the praise given Manning for his inexpressible brilliance it would be nice to see him take some heat for this one. Indy might have come up with a TD on one of those passes, but then again there could have been a deflection that turned into an interception or that sack could have turned into a fumble. Or Vince Young could have engineered game-winning drive when they only needed a field goal. You can't get lucky all the time, but you can be smart every day, as they say.

I don't have very much to say on the cheating scandal. Yes, every one tries to steal signs and signals. That's just one of the things that happens in professional sports. But having some front office flunkies sneaking around in the bowels of Giants Stadium with video recording equipment is a little bit excessive, no? All we need now is to find out that Kraft or Belichick referred to these guys as plumbers or a revelation to inform us that there is a recording system in the Patriots front office with a number of suspicious gaps in the tapes and then we have the NFL's version of Watergate.

I don't expect that there will be any kind of consensus on this issue. It's tricky. It seems to me that the Patriots and their apologists are dead wrong, because they're falling back on a defense that never got any of us out of punishment when we were kids. Just because every body else steals signs doesn't make it alright that your flunkies skulk around with cameras. Granted, Patriots fans as a group struggle to compose a more reasoned defense, but that's no fit excuse. But I have a strong antipathy to the Patriots, their fans and their management, so I might be wrong.

I guess I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little about this weekend's Red Sox Yankees series. I will keep my comments to a minimum since I fear my lengthy posts following the August sweep might have jinxed the Yankees a little bit, since they didn't gain any ground in the standings until very recently.

I will also refrain from making too many cracks about the three homer performance from Frank Thomas. I'd hate to beat Dan Shaughnessy to the punch by making some quip to the effect that the Big Hurt put a big hurting on Big Schill. Hell if I could work in blogboy blowhard, I'd write his whole column for him. I'd hate myself for it, since I'm sure the CHB all but wet himself with excitement when that third bomb left the Sky Dome or the Rodgers Centre or whatever the call it in Toronto.

I don't know what to make of Joba Chamberlain. It was nice to see him unveil his curveball for all of about ten seconds. He locked up Pedroia with it, but probably wasted it on JD Drew. JD Drew couldn't hit an eephus pitch at this point. As my old grandfather used to say, he couldn't hit the floor if he fell out of bed. My grandfather loved bad jokes and hated the Red Sox, God rest him. And then the media beat the story to death in an evening of good, hard work. Or at least work.

I'm not too worried about him letting up his first career run in the form of Lowell's homer. It had to happen at some point, as they say. Ideally, it wouldn't have come against the Red Sox, especially not in the manner in which it occurred. But Lowell is a very dangerous hitter in Fenway Park. That's part of life in baseball. If you throw heat it's not going to end well if a guy gets a hold of one.

What bothers me a little bit is that so much is being made of him now. Between the 17 and 2/3 inning scoreless streak and the "Joba Rules," he's a bad month away from being this generation's Mark "The Bird" Fydrich. Not so much from the eccentricity standpoint, but the young pitcher who gets a big buildup but never gets back to that early magic. Chamberlain's gotten too much attention. Hell, Clay Bucholtz hasn't gotten nearly as much coverage and he threw a no-hitter. This can't end well.

Finally, watching this evening's third quarter, with Charles Barkley in the booth, I am more convinced than ever that he should be announcing games. I know with the way the sports media is seeking uncontroversial controversy (think the NBC Sunday Night studio show) soon no sporting event will take place without Joe Buck or Cris Collinsworth or some similar bland, white-bread mouthpiece demanding that you take their position on an inconsequential argument.

John Madden is the last real loose cannon calling NFL games, and he's too old, fat and jolly to say anything that would hurt any one's feelings. But at least he avoids real controversy by being genuinely nice. That's why I like him, even as he nears senility. Every other announcer lacks the balls to say what's on their minds or the minds to have something to say. So Barkley should call games. Or I could to it. I'd work for food, short money and one of those set ups they use to conceal witness identities in mob trials.

Against all reason, the NFL has yet to put an end to the charade that is the 2007 regular season. Even after today's action which saw the New England Patriots win the single most impressive football game in recorded human history, the show apparently must go on. When you get right down to it, you know that if you can beat the Jets in the Meadowlands, you can beat any team anywhere at any time.

There are some misguided naysayers who might offer an alternative explanation for today's event. People might dare whisper that the Jets made the playoffs on the strength of a weak schedule and some lucky breaks. They might wonder whether those factors might have had enough of an impact to negate the dreadful play on words that makes up the nickname of the young Jets head coach. But who among them would dare show their face in the wake of that amazing win?

After all, there is no possible alternative but to assume that today's dominance was due solely to the excellence of the New England Patriots. Who could dare think that the Jets inability to rush the passer and even more pathetic secondary play could have been the result of a bad football team as opposed to an outstanding opponent?

I think the one moment that best encapsulates the state of the New York Jets this season came when the crowd cheered after Chad Pennington was hurt. Not only did it show the Jets fans as total dbags, but it showed that this team can't be all that good if Kellen Clemens is the savior waiting in the wings.

In his brief career, Kellen Clemens had thrown two passes prior to this season and managed exactly zero completions. To his credit, he did lead the league in TD passes this preseason. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but that just impresses the hell out of me. Isn't that why we remember Joe Montana all these years after he retired? For leading the league in TD passes in preseason after preseason?

Outside of New York, no one cares who accumulated what meaningless stats in which slate of meaningless games. If Kellen Clemens is the QB of the future and the future is now, then the 2007 season is already over for the New York Jets. If that is the case, then the blowout the Patriots laid on them this afternoon isn't as impressive as people seem to think.

As impressive as Randy Moss' day was, perhaps it might be wise to wait for him to play a team with a serviceable secondary before we pack his bags for Honolulu and the Pro Bowl. For instance, on his long TD catch can we fairly say that he beat triple coverage? Might we instead say that three Jets took up some space but didn't earn their game checks even though they must have enjoyed their front row seat for the play?

Of course, it is somewhat unfair for me to be so critical of the Jets secondary today. After all, the front seven would have been hard pressed to do less to help their defensive backs. They made the Patriots offensive line look like supermen with their lackluster pass rush. They almost got near Brady once. I think I remember that.

In all fairness, I am just a bit bitter because Brady's performance probably cost me the game in fantasy football. Of course the Kansas City Chiefs horrendous offense dragging Larry Johnson down as though they were a 10 man albatross and LJ were the Ancient Mariner had a fair bit to do with it. And Tony Romo (my QB) hurt more than he helped with his treasonous penchant for throwing to Jason Witten (my esteemed opponent's TE) instead of Terrell Owens (my WR) poured salt into the wound.

It hurts losing this game (which isn't technically over, but I need a huge second half out of Romo and TO and a near miraculous effort from Vernon Davis against Anquan Boldin) to have a chance. It hurts doubly because I'm losing to Mr. Bean's stunt double and a guy who played Eddie Kennison. I guess I'm just not as smart as I think I am, or a victim of bad luck.

But before I wrap this post up, I have a couple of other things to say about a couple of things. First, on the Auburn-South Florida game. I have to congratulate Auburn coach Tommy Tubberville for his amazing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. After South Florida tied the game with about 45 seconds to go, and Auburn holding onto two timeouts, Coach Tubberville elected to play for the tie and overtime rather than risk a turnover playing for the win.

Even if Auburn had turned it over, South Florida was out of timeouts. Their kicker had just tied the game, but he'd also missed four kicks that day. But giving them an equal chance to win the game by eating the ball and going to overtime couldn't have been good for Auburn's confidence. I assume this knowing that South Florida went on to upset Auburn. The moral of the story - only a tool plays for a tie.

The only thing that keeps Tubberville from becoming a tool of note is that he wasn't the biggest tool in the stadium. I saw a guy rooting for South Florida while wearing a wrestling singlet, only this and nothing more. It got me thinking, is there ever an acceptable time to wear a wrestling singlet. And the answer is no.

It is never appropriate to wear a singlet. Not as a costume for Halloween. Not while watching a football game. Not in the privacy of one's own home. Not even while engaged in that least cool and most homoerotic of sports, Greco-Roman wrestling is it appropriate to wear a singlet. A man should never wear scanty, skin-tight garments. It's not a good look.

If you wear a singlet in public you ought to be arrested. Doubly so if you wear it to an event that isn't a wrestling competition. If you aren't arrested, then maybe you ought to do the rest of us a favor and refrain from passing your genes to the next generation. The only thing that keeps him from being the tool of note is that an odd combination of laziness and horror at the choice of attire prevents me from searching for a photo of that tool.

Among the other things that are bothering me from this weekend is the new Nike ad campaign. In particular, the commercial featuring Shawne Merriman and Stephen Jackson is antagonizing me. I don't know if you recognized the song when you heard it, but it is the Promontory Theme from the cinematic triumph, Last of the Mohicans. It's the song playing while Chingachkook, Uncas and Nathaniel chase down Magua and his warriors at the climax of the film.

If I were a better person, I'd admit that I'm just a bitter person who resents Shawne Merriman's new, edgy style of play. But I'm not, so I can say spiteful things. For instance, I'd have less of a problem with this if a needle injecting some illicit concoction of performance enhancing chemicals were photoshopped into the ad somewhere reminding us of Merriman's four game suspension last season. Or maybe it would bother me less if someone could prove that Chingachkook's triumph over Magua had been aided by some sort of banned substance.

But even more than the Patriots winning, the Bears losing and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad use of that song from that scene, another event is bothering me. I don't know if you saw it, I didn't. I had to be told by a Patriots fan who wanted to rile me for failing to show the new look Pats the proper respect. Last night, while I was occupied watching real sports, NASCAR and Dale Jr. crossed a line I couldn't believe they would dare cross.

In his seemingly futile chase for the Chase for the Cup, Dale Jr. dared adorn the hood of his car with the image of Elvis Presley. The universe punished him for his insolence, and he didn't win the race. In fact, Little E didn't even finish the race. If winning mattered to him, and I'd bet it doesn't based on the frequency with which he wins, this truly would be a blow.

It is not fair to blame Dale Jr. for this without criticizing the corporate entity that controls Elvis' legacy. Shame on the functionaries at Elvis Presley Enterprises for whoring his image out to be painted on the hood of a race car. Do they not earn enough money profiteering from his life's work? If I thought I had the discipline not to violate it, I would call for a boycott on Elvis just as I did against John Cougar Mellencamp. But I won't be that sort of hypocrite.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be looking good Warriors. Be looking real good.

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