Is OJ The Real Danny Ocean?

Looks like OJ's mug shot may come in handy once again.
This story is just breaking so there's not a whole lot more to report other than what's been reported, but if it turns out that OJ is implicated in breaking into a Vegas casino hotel room and stealing sports memorabilia, then Christmas is here early:

LAS VEGAS --Investigators questioned O.J. Simpson about a break-in at a casino hotel room involving sports memorabilia, police said Friday.

The break-in was reported at the Palace Station casino late Thursday night, police spokesman Jose Montoya said.

Let me guess, they didn't find any fingerprints at the crime scene. My fingers and toes are crossed that OJ is involved in this.

Oh No, The Pats Are Losing One Of Their Two First Round Picks. Whatever Will The Franchise Do?

This penalty doesn't mean shit for the Pats, but it does serve as a pretty solid deterrent, so that's something.
Let me preface this with two things. First, I just killed a bottle of Brunello Di Montalcino (2000 - delicious) solo and am not 100% sober. Second, I am an out in the open, smug Patriots homer and do not apologize for it. So when you read what you're about to read, it will help to know these facts.

So the Pats are losing a 1st rounder (possibly) and a bunch of cash. Boo Fucking Hoo. They had two first rounders as it was and if they don't make the playoffs (which is highly unlikely), they had a couple extra picks in the later rounds anyway. The pick that the NFL will take away from them would be "their pick" (as opposed to the pick they receive from SF). That means, in all likelihood that they'll have to give up pick 28-32 or something like that. They will still have their earlier pick from San Fran which, with any luck, will be around 14-15. So basically, the Pats lost the last pick in the first round in the draft and about a three quarter mil (500k coming from coach B). That's a hell of a deterrent for a normal team who depends on first round talent to build their franchise for the future. But for the Patriots, it doesn't mean shit.

The Pats gain extra early round picks every year. They always have more picks than everyone else because Pioli and Belichick are better at evaluating talent than everyone else. So while it sucks that the Pats won't get 2 of the best 32 players in the draft next year, they will now only one pick like everyone else. So the whole "comparitive advantage" thing that everyone talks about is set back to even (at least in terms of the draft) and the penalty is only going to tangentially affect how much better they become in the future. Really it just slows their progress.

That being said, what else did you want Goodell to do? Ban Belichick? That wouldn't have done shit as either a deterrent or an immediate impact. If you tell Belichick he's out for week 3 (or the next Jets game or the next 3 games), that just means that Belichick will spend the next 72 hours killing himself preparing for those teams. To deter OTHER TEAMS from breaking the rules, you had to take away a first rounder. That it doesn't affect the Patriots is a shame but he had to set a serious precedent, and he did. You wanted the Pats held accountable and wanted the league to come down hard. They were and the NFL did. That's what you pussies have been bitching about for the last 4 days, right?

Sincerely,
Smug Snickering Pats Fan

Wade Boggs Goes "Kanye West" At Fishing Tournament

This is such a fantastic story that I really have nothing to add:

When the final day of fishing came to a close Sunday in Key West, the Mercury Redbone S.L.A.M. saw two men tied atop the celebrity division with 200 points.

Boggs, master of ceremonies for the event, had caught a bonefish and permit on spin over the two days and Mark Cooper, an ex-Denver Bronco, caught a bonefish on fly, matching Boggs' point total of 200.


Gary Ellis ("captain" of the event) made the call to award the celebrity-champion trophy based on time, or who caught his fish first. The title went to Cooper.

Boggs did not take the news gently.

At the awards ceremony at the Westin Key West, when hearing the news, Boggs was quoted as saying, “I caught two fish and you caught one and you win?” He then grabbed the trophy and ran out of the room.

Ellis said those who know Boggs know there is a competitive side to him that is dead serious. Maybe Boggs was joking, maybe not. The problem was, Boggs was right.

While I was talking to Ellis about the results, he realized his error.

“Oh, I just screwed up. It just dawned on me that Wade was right. The grand-champion celebrity has to be Wade Boggs because he caught two fish and Coop only caught one. Oh, I've got to call Wade and tell him he won.”

Starbury On The Stand Is Pure Entertainment

Steph: "I'm talking about that man who tried to jump off the thing for the cash." No further questions.
Well this Isiah trial is going swimmingly. Two days ago it was Isiah laughing at the defendant as she cried on the stand and yesterday it was Marbury's comically obtuse testimony about the entire situation including a sexual tryst with a shitfaced Knicks intern in a truck outside a strip club:

"When you heard about this lawsuit, you thought it was funny, correct?" asked Sanders' lawyer, Anne Vladek.

"I laughed. I meant it was more of a joke than anything," Marbury said.

........

"Yes, I called her a bitch," Marbury said. "I said a lot of different things . . . I said she doesn't run s- - -. . . . I may have said f- - - her. I didn't call her a black bitch."

Glad we cleared that one up. I don't know, maybe it's just me but wouldn't it be more effective if Starbury had called her a black bitch but come off as contrite rather than to clarify that he only called her a bitch and make it seem as though that were somehow ok. If plaintiff is trying to convey just how shitty it was to work for the Knicks under the Isiah regime and Marbury is testifying that even though he admits to calling the defendant a bitch to her face and telling her she doesn't run shit he thinks it laughable that she would bring a harrasment claim, well, that can't be good. It would seem to suggest that no one in the organization understood that some of that shit is not ok.

But let's not dwell on all of that, I'd like to focus on the Marbury sex in the truck incident. Here's the Post's Andrea Peyser's (a woman I normally loathe) rundown:

Here is a cheat sheet to Marbury's Method for Making It. Take notes.

Rule No. 1 - Before even thinking about doing it with a chick, a big-time player better make sure the girl's been road-tested. Stephon solved that problem by coming on to a Knick underling who was "in a relationship" with his cousin, Hassan Gonsalves.

It helped that Gonsalves was on the Knicks' payroll, too. No complaints here about sloppy seconds.

Rule No. 2 - Access is key. Marbury plucked the girl right out of Gonsalves' car, after they all visited Sue's Rendezvous, a Mount Vernon strip club. For the girl's birthday.

3. - The drunker the better.

4. - Professional bitches are a pain the you-know-what. Interns, baby!

5. - Why waste oxygen? "Are you going to get in the truck?" was the extent of Marbury's conversation with the college student. "Yes," she said.

6. - Why waste money on a room when you have a car? "We got together right across the street" from the strip club, he testified.

7. - Why waste gas when you can sit still? "We were stationary the whole time," he said. Doubtless not a commentary on his performance.

Nice. The part that Peyser left out was my favorite comment of the entire testimony. During this exchange on the stand, Marbury was recounting the "conversation" that led to his sexual encounter and remarked, "It really wasn't a conversation..." I just envision him Starbury flashing a wry smile and giving a point to a good-looking juror as he said it. Really good stuff. But the strangest moment of the Starbury experience was when he was leaving the proceedings:

The hoops player then left the court grinning ear to ear and hopped into an elevator with a group of reporters, saying, "Man, money makes you do crazy things."

Then the star paused and weirdly added, "I'm talking about that man who tried to jump off the thing for the cash."

Riiiight, the man with the thing and the cash. Okeedoke, Star. What a fucking mess.

Lastly, I'd really like to know what nickel and dime law firm is representing Isiah. I mean, how do you let your defendant laugh at a sexual harrassment accuser during her testimony and then allow the only positive testimony to come from Stephon Marbury's stand appearance be Marbury's clarification that he didn't call Anucha Browne Sanders a "black bitch," he just called her a "bitch". Not to even get into the relevance of the entire line of questioning regarding Steph and the intern banging outside the strip club. What does that have to do with anything? I guess you could draw the inference that Isiah was fostering a culture of "outside-the-strip-club-fucking-in-trucks" but there are friends of mine who are in or just out of law school who I believe could bar that evidence from the trial. That Isiah's high-priced attorneys allowed every detail of the encounter in is ridiculous and allowing Marbury to take the stand uncoached is fucking disgraceful (and if Marbury was coached by the defense team, he must've just forgotten about it).

I'm not sure what's gonna happen from here on out, but the start of this thing is a fucking circus and makes Isiah and the Knicks look like the least professional organization in modern sports history (yes, even worse than the Patriots). There is no reason that any of this should have seen the light of day. Rethinking that lowball settlement offer now fellas?

Isiah Thomas Hates White People

"Learn how to dribble, shoot, make passes at women and insult white people just like Zeke!"
The Isiah Thomas sexual harassment suit is just heating up, and it is already getting good. Thomas' accuser, Anuka Browne Sanders, took the stand yesterday and aside from the predictable stuff about calling her a bitch and wanting to make out with her, which was all very good stuff, Browne Sanders let the court know that Isiah doesn't think much of white people either:

Sanders said that when she asked Thomas at one point to hand-sign letters to season-ticket holders, he spat, "I don't give a f- - - about these white people."

She said that prompted her to remind the coach that 80 percent of the team's season-ticket holders are white.

Well THEY DIDN'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU EITHER UNTIL YOU STARTED FUCKING UP THEIR TEAM (not that the team is the possession of either white or black NYC. In fact, neither race lays claim to the team at this point.)! There's a ton of good stuff in the article as well as a related article in which it is mentioned that Isiah is openly laughing at the plaintiff's testimony. Now, I'm no expert in jury trials nor do I claim to have any experience in analyzing jury behavior, but I can't imagine that the jury is going to find it in anyway amusing that a defendant accused of propositioning sex to a high-ranking employee is laughing at her teary testimony on the stand. That's not going to stop me from finding the whole situation funny, but that's just because the more of an asshole Isiah shows himself to be the more likely it is that Isiah will suffer the greatest humiliation of his life. And that would be funny for me.

Norfolk St. Coach Piles On The Michigan Debacle

Michigan takes on Notre Dame this weekend, so at least on the field it won't get much worse than the last two weeks. But off the field, that's a whole 'nother story. Losing to a 1-AA team is bad and getting KILLED at home by Oregon is REALLY bad, but how about a coach on a 1-AA team taking an out-of-the-blue shot at your team for no apparent reason:

"After watching Rutgers on film and watching Michigan play [Oregon], I think I'd rather be playing Michigan," said Adrian, whose Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) team will be the Knights' homecoming opponent Saturday.

Yeeeeeeeouch! That was unnecessary. I can't say I disagree and in fact this may even be more offensive to Rutgers who it would seem could wipe the floor with the 2007 Michigan squad, but the real issue is that it was even brought up at all. Michigan is now officially everyone's favorite whipping boy.

Who's More Stupider? The Pats For Cheating Or The Jets For Knowing About It And Not Changing Their Signals

You probably won't hear much bitching about Belichick's spying from tubby here.
After a 1700 word tome on the subject, you may be thinking to yourself "Gee Smittblog, doth protest too much?" And I have the answer: Yes. I'm am overdoing the defense of the Pats on this one. It sucks. I hate putting myself in this position but when assholes in the NY print and radio media just tee off on the Pats (and I'm not saying they are not well within their rights to do so), I feel compelled to respond with whatever scintilla of retort I can muster. So here goes...

It is reported in the New York Daily News today that the Jets knew about the Pats videotaping of opponents' sidelines because they used to do the same thing (link from the Hartford Courant as the NY Daily News site is tweaked) when Mangini was an assistant under Belichick, so Mangini knew how to find the video guy:

Jets coach Eric Mangini knew what to look for. He and several members on his staff previously worked under Belichick.

"[The Jets] knew they did it," an unidentified source with knowledge of the situation said in an e-mail to the New York Daily News. "They caught the guy a year ago, but couldn't do anything about it. When Eric came, he said that's what they used to do. Bill is going to be [ticked] at Eric. He kissed and told."

Couple things that strike me about this and then I'll try and never speak of it again. First, Mangini was on a staff that did this while he was on the Pats. So he is not above reproach. Second, given that Mangini was aware of the practice and on a team that utilized it, it is not implausible to believe that he employed his own shady spying measures. And third, and most damning, if the Jets knew about the Pats ploys and somehow it affected the outcome of the game, the Jets are stupid. Spying isn't exactly "spying" if the person you're trying to deceive knows you're doing it. If you know someone's spying on you, then YOU now have the advantage. You can use dummy signs, use a decoy sign guy or a couple of them. You have the advantage and now control the information that the other team thinks it is receiving. USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE, MORON. Or you could get the videotape guy removed from the game, have the tape sent to the league office and publicly humiliate your former mentor. That's another option, and a pretty effective one at that....

Ummm.... Why?

If you want your child to be ridiculed for the rest of his life, the Mike Greenberg Fathead is the perfect gift.
Well it didn't take long for my "what the fuck?" quota to be met today. Apparently, Fathead is selling a Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic Fathead this week only with all proceeds going to the V Foundation. Clearly the cause is a good one, but given that only 17 total Fatheads ($50 / pop) have been sold so as of 8:30 this morning (as reported by Mike & Mike), what the fuck was the point of this? Couldn't they just have donated a grand to the V Foundation and called it a day? I don't think it qualifies as a "cross-promotion" given the paucity (to steal a word from Bryant Gumbel) of sales to date. I think the only thing you can call it is fucking weird and kinda creepy.

The Cheating Pats And My Moral Quandary

Isn't it possible that the Pats were just filming Mangini's man-tits up close and in HD for their upcoming website "jigglemits.com"?
I'll be honest, I'm not so sure what to think about this one. Should I take the high road and just hang the Pats out to dry or should I take the low road and dig myself one hell of a hole. I'd much prefer to take the former but I'm being pulled towards the latter. The main reason for my gravitation towards defending the Pats is because I'm so biased. I can tell you for sure that if the situation were reversed and the Jets were filming the Pats signs (the questionable utility of such action I'll delve into later) on the Pats sidelines and the Pats got killed in that game, I'd be screaming bloody fucking murder. Fuck draft picks, I'd want the game forfeited and Mangini fucking fired. I wouldn't care what the fuck they were doing with the video or if the camera was even on. I would label the action as "cheating," I would want the cheaters punished and I would hold my team unaccountable for anything that happened during the game and would just chalk it all up to having fallen pray to a cheat. Yup, I would be completely irrational and rightly so because I'd be so pissed I wouldn't need A to lead into B. But since I find myself on the other side of the fence, I'll allow myself to deal with the situation a little more rationally (see what i did there?).

More than anything, the one question I'm confronted with when looking at this whole Pats cheating scandal is: What exactly were they looking at and what exactly were they doing with what they were looking at? Has that been cleared up? If so, someone let me know. I've received various explanations from "they were sending the 'signs' directly up to the Pats coordinators booth" to "they were taping it so they could look at it at halftime and for review for their next meeting with the Jets." Obviously, the more serious of the two is the former. Regardless of the utility of the evidence collected, if the Pats were secretly sending up illegal video of anything whether it be defensive signals or the women's bathroom, that is pretty damning and pretty weak. But if that's true, it raises a couple questions.

First, if the rule states "no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game..." how did the Pats get this guy past security, onto the field and then feed a cable up to the Patriots booth without anyone figuring it out? I understand that there's a lot going on on gameday and you can't have your eye on everything, but wouldn't the only guy without an "NFL Films" credential and who asked for the "plug that hooks up to the Pats coordinators booth" kinda raise an eyebrow even before he just stood there and shot your coaches for 3 quarters before someone said something to him? Not that that really has an effect on how anyone's supposed to feel about the situation. I guess I'm just curious how that occurred? Digression...

Second, if the worst case scenario is that the Pats are sending the defensive signals directly to the Pats booth who can get them before the Pats call a play and relay that information to Brady prior to him getting to the line, why is that any worse than a coach figuring out the calls from the opposite sideline and alerting his QB of those calls from there? I mean, if the real problem is the Pats coming into the information in a deceitful manner, aren't both sign stealing measures equally deceitful? I know there is a rule against videotaping and there is no rule against staring (and I'm still trying to figure out what value there is to videotaping the signs from the Jets sideline and forwarding those signs to the coaches. If all you're getting are the signs, wouldn't it be just as valuable for Tom Brady to stare directly at the D Coordinator as he flashed them in or to have a guy stand on the Pats sidelines with a pair of binoculars and watch? Plus, the entire reason you use signs as opposed to just shouting out your actual schemes is to get your calls to your playes without the other team knowing what you're calling, correct? Unless the Jets utilize actual sign-language for their calls, why would knowing what signs they are flashing be helpful? (unless the Pats are also cryptographers)) but unless the camera on the sideline is equipped with a Whisper 2000 (another device I would find just as helpful as a camera), I'm not sure I quite follow the utility of the knowledge.

John Clayton tried to answer my question:

What advantage could a coach get by stealing defensive signals?
Any good coach with knowledge of the defensive play calls from the sideline can adjust his blocking schemes and come up with the appropriate counter measures. You've seen quarterbacks and coaches study photos of defensive alignments after each possession. If there is a way to pick up defensive signals, a quarterback can make the right audibles and get out of a bad play. Knowledge is everything.

Not to beat a dead horse, but my question remains unanswered. If the "knowledge" of the defensive calls is the issue, why is it illegal to come upon that knowledge via videotape, through a hunch or via psychic powers (the explanation, not the answer, to that is that videotape allows for fast and easy sign stealing while the other stuff is much harder and slower, and it may just be a little more reliable than the psychic powers or hunch)? Apparently it wouldn't be against the rules for Tom Brady to figure the signs out himself and then tell people in a post-game interview that he figured out the signs and made changes on his own. Even thought the entire point of the rule is to prevent people from figuring out the signs. Again, it's against the rules so this whole pursuit is really just academic, but my contention remains that if you don't want people stealing signs, make the act of stealing them illegal, not just one means of doing it (I am really bullshitting here).

Third, it's fun to pile on the best team and franchise in the history of organized sports because they are already hated, but come on people, do you really think this is the first time this has happened? You do? Think again:

A former Patriots video coordinator e-mailed to say what happened during the Jets game was incredibly common and not a big deal. To wit:

“I read your article with amusement about the Patriots camerman being nabbed at NY. Having worked in the NFL as a video coordinator with both the Pats and the Carolina Panthers, I can tell you this happens all the time. I was often asked by coaches to film opponents, usually during pregame warmups. I find it hard to believe that the Pats would be so brazen with it. We often had cameras hooked up to monitors that the coaches would watch in the booth. I never actually recorded anything, so as not to leave evidence! And I can guarantee you the Jets and everybody else are doing it too.”

Oh REEEEEEEEEALLLLLLLLY. Maybe that's why the Jets didn't make such a big stink about it in the first place. Of course this emailer did work for the Pats previously so that kinda implicates them even further, but what I like to take from this is what a lot of people kinda assumed, namely that this is relatively common. So the biggest deal for me is that the Pats got caught (stupid fuckers). How is such a well run organization the first team to get caught doing this shit? That's the part that really doesn't make sense to me. What also gets me is that the "Hey, it's not big deal because everyone else is doing it" defense is exactly what Barry Bonds backers use. So you can lump me right in with those assholes.

Lastly, I think it's pretty clear I'm grasping at straws here. It's really hard to justify your team breaking a league rule in order to gain an advantage whether it be putting jet fuel in your Stock Car's fuel tank, flashing signs to batters from centerfield or sending fucking Nathan Hale across enemy lines to steal defensive signals when it seems so easy to do in a number of other ways. I definitely feel like the Pats were in the wrong here but I'm having a ton of trouble trying to quantify just what it all means. Are the Pats championships tainted? Probably not. Is the Patriots' teflon organizational image tarnished? Absolutely. Though to be fair, this kinda fits in with the unemotional and cut-throat manner with which Belichick runs the joint. If you asked players and fans what team would be most likely to pull this shit, the Pats would probably be ranked at or near the top of that poll. I guess though I personally have a problem with it and think it sucks that my team was the first to get caught, I'm not real fired up about it. They broke a rule and got caught. It's not like they put valium in the Jets' Gatorade or something. So you'd be hard-pressed to explain why the Pats were faster than the Jets and Brady more accurate. And there's also another side of the ball. Let's not forget that the Pats absolutely dominated the Jets on defense too. But I get the feeling I'm not convincing the Pats haters who read this. Probably never will.

So there you have it. The Pats are cheaters and the only reason they were a dynasty was through cheating. Makes sense. Wake me up when they finish the season 1-15. Check that. Wake me up when they win the championship again this February, bitches.

How Bad Is It In Syracuse? They Can't Afford To Fire Their Coach

'Cuse may have to start a bottle drive in order to get rid of this screaming face.
I don't count myself amongst the ever-growing legion of Syracuse football fans who want to see Head Coach Greg Robinson canned, but that's not to say I don't understand where they're coming from. G-Rob's high energy, good-looking, always rosy disposition doesn't exactly meld well with this grizzled, hard-working, blue collar town. The community has not embraced him and I'm not sure they'll ever give him a chance. So it was not surprising that people have been screaming for his removal since about the 4th week of his tenure. Well it turns out that even if the similarly disliked AD Darryl Gross agreed with the fan sentiment regarding G-Rob, they may not be able to afford to buy out the final years of his contract:

The big question around this program now is, does the ailing Orange athletic department have enough money to buy out the last two years of Greg Robinson’s contract? If he can’t outcoach Ron Zook and Illinois on Saturday, you’ll know things with his regime are truly hopeless.

I left in that last sentence about Ron Zook because no amount of mention of Zook's futility is too gratuitous. But as for 'Cuse, does it get any lower than deciding that your program is going in the wrong direction (not that they have) but being unable to do anything about it because you are too poor to make the change? That is pathetic. When your fans, alumni and administration abandon your program in succession, I don't think it's hyperbole to say that you have the worst football program in the land.

Mike & Mike & Mike Coming At You Straight From The Bottom Of The Sea

Well at least you've got your day job, fellas.
As a loyal ESPN radio listener, I've made peace with Mike & Mike in The Morning. It's never going to blow your doors off with intriguing critiques or controversial opinions and it's never funnier than a Tom & Jerry cartoon, but it's a serviceable recap of the day in sports and is comprehensive enough that I feel as though I'm not missing anything. Basically, it's a Disneyfied version of sports. And that's fine. The two Mikes are relatively talented in that they have no trouble meandering through topics or carrying interesting sports conversations even during the doldrums of February. I listen everyday and for the most part I enjoy it. The reason I'm telling you all of this is because I don't want to be pegged an anti-ESPN guy when I say last night's broadcast of the Cardinals - Niners game was perhaps the worst produced and worst called game I've ever had the misfortune of viewing.

First, there was play-by-play guy Mike Greenberg's microphone. It sounded like he was broadcasting underwater or from another room. You could not understand a word he was saying. During situations in which the crowd got loud, Greenberg's voice was completely drowned out. You couldn't hear him tell you what down it was, who was carrying the ball or what kind of penalty was being called for the 80th time (nice discipline). It was completely inaudible. And if the only problem was Greenberg's audio, that in and of itself would have ruined the broadcast. But there was more. It seemed as though Ditka had a head cold or strep or something. His voice was almost at a whisper and combined with submarine microphone quality, his presence was rendered pointless--which is a shame because he was the most interesting character in the booth.

Beyond the horrendous audio quality of the broadcast, there was also a ton of dead air. Every time they came back from commercial and following the strange Digital Robot Blimp flashed the Monday Night banner it was quiet for the first 5 seconds or so. This is an area where people like Al Michaels and Mike Tirico excel. They bring you back into the action and segue into either what previously occurred or what's about to happen either by asking their partner a question or setting scene. With the Mikes, we got nothing. It's likely due to inexperience but these guys have done live sporting events before, so making that excuse is kinda weak. But since we couldn't hear him anyway because the production quality of the broadcast was so piss poor, I guess it wouldn't really matter what he had to say.

The one relative positive was Golic as the color guy. He was fine. He could serve as a color guy for regular NFL games and fit seemlessly. He may be a little too gimmicky and "radio personality schticky," if that qualifies as a phrase, but he was relatively professional. Other than that, it was awful. Fortunately for ESPN, this is not their No. 1 booth. Those guys are great. Kornheiser seems much more comfortable in this booth and Jaws is fantastic, though he may want to try out a phrase other than "where do you come up with this stuff" whenever Kornheiser goes on a weird a tangent.

I guess I didn't really have high hopes for "The Mikes" on the late-night broadcast. And it's not like it was must-see TV or anything, so it wasn't all that risky to trot them out in front of the 500,000 or so fantasy addicts who needed a Neil Rackers field goal to win their first week (I was not one of those guys, I won the first week in my large money league 139 - 58. Thank you Tony Romo and Minn. D.). But they could have done much better than that.

Questions We Wish They'd Ask

Here's a first installment of a questions we they'd ask NFL players / coaches during post-game interviews:

Andy Reid
Q: Have either JR Reed or Greg Lewis been in contact with your son in the last couple days? Because the only explanation I can come up with for those two muffed punts (especially Reed's) is that they were both jones'n for sweet Lady H.

Mike Tomlin
Q: Ok, I'll play along, you're not Omar Epps. So then you won't be able to tell about what to expect from the new season of House and how your role has evolved or if you and the others will be involved in a spin-off?

Norv Turner
Q: Is Norv really short for "Norval?"

Kellen Winslow
Q: If you are, as you previously suggested, "a motherfucking soldier," what country's army would best represent your team? Canada, Luxembourg or Haiti?

Jeff Garcia
Q: Really? Are you sure you're not even a little aroused when you put your hands on the center's ass? It's just that you look talk and act so, well, fancy...

Bill Belichick
Q: You're so surly yet middle-aged women are somehow attracted to you. Please stay away from my mom. (I guess that's not a question)

Joey Harrington
Q: Joey, assuming that you chose football as your vocation because it is what you are best at, aren't you afraid that you will also fail at the things you feel you are not as good at doing when football is over, which may be sooner than you originally anticipated?

Herm Edwards
Q: Herm, you're funny. Not in a slapstick Leslie Nielsen kind of way or prop comic Carrot Top kinda way or even an in-your-face-I-want-you-to-think-I'm-funny-even-though-I'm-one-of-the-unfunniest-people-on-the-face-of-the-earth kinda way like Carlos Mencia, you're more funny like Lou Holtz's lisp, Frank Beamer's goiter or Stu Scott's screwed up eye. You know, the kinda funny where people don't make fun of you to your face but are constantly mocking you behind your back kinda funny... So I guess my question to you is why are you so bad at coaching football?

Tony Romo
Q: Was it awkward when Al Michaels gave slipped his hotel room number into your pants on the way out of the stadium?

Osi Umenyiora
Are you the guy who keeps emailing me from Burkina Faso about how you just came into a ton of money when your rich uncle died and you need me to somehow launder it or something? If so, can you give me some more details? It sounds like a good deal but I couldn't really follow the part that went "the request of foreigner as next of kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner, and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner".

Dear Nike, Thank You For The Greatest Commercial I've Ever Seen

Fucking fantastic. The only thing better is the original:


Russell Means is kind of a bad ass. He doesn't break stride in avenging his son's death until he ball fakes high and somersaults past Magwa in order to two-hand him in the back. One of the all-time great scenes in movie history in a criminally underrated film.

Your 2007 Syracuse Football Squad: On Pace To Be The Worst Team In College Football History

Syracuse is awful. No doubt about it. 35-0 against an average team and 1 yard rushing in the first half with no first downs to speak of.... just fucking awful (I especially enjoyed head coach (low caps) Greg Robinson's take on the matter: "I'd like to think that we're doing the right things. We're just not doing them all well."). They are the worst Syracuse team in recent memory and that is saying something. But just leaving it at that is the easy way out. They have the potential to put together the worst season in college football history. No shit.

While it's impossible to really compare teams of today to teams of yesteryear through statistical analysis because those lazy bastards of yesteryear didn't keep great stats or film all of their games (cheap fucks), there are a couple teams that are generally thought of as the worst teams of all-time. Both the '80 & '81 Northwestern team, 1998 Kent St. team and even more recently the 2005 Temple squad. For my money, the '81 Northwestern team seams to set the bar very high. As laid out by Scout.com:

1981 Northwestern. 0-11, outscored 505 to 82. Lost 21-20 to Indiana in the opener and got obliterated by everyone else. During a three game October stretch against Purdue, Michigan and Wisconsin, the Wildcats were outscored 125 to 0, and lost the last six games 305 to 32.

That is horrendous. But if Syracuse were to continue on its current pace, they'd be outscored 462 - 72. The problem is that Syracuse won't continue on its current pace, they are going to get worse. They still have to play WVU, Louisville, Rutgers, South Florida and Cincinnati. Those teams put up 48, 58, 41, 26 & 34 respectively this week. Oh, and that 26 by South Florida was put up to BEAT AUBURN AT AUBURN! While that 34 was put up by Cincy AT OREGON ST. Iowa put up 35 this week against the 'Cuse after putting up 16 last week against NORTHERN FUCKING ILLINOIS. Assuming Louisville and WVU put up 50+ points easily, that scoring differential by the '81 Northwestern team will be in serious jeopardy. 'Cuse only has one winnable game left on their schedule in Buffalo, and they just scored 42 points yesterday (though to be fair that was against the shitstain that is Temple football). Syracuse is at best gonna be 1-10 and most likely will sit at 0-11. They've run for 32 total yards (8 + 24) in 2 games. They are not even average at any aspect of the game. At this point the only thing Syracuse fans can look forward to is the ignominy that comes with the distinction of worst of all-time. At least it's noteworthy.