Monday Morning Grab Bag

Item 1. The NBA playoffs are over. Feels like they just started yesterday, no? Chris W agrees I'm sure. Anyways, ss the final seconds of the Heat/Mavs game ticked away, ESPN announcer and obvious MENSA member Mark Jackson had some great ideas for Miami's front office (forgot to DVR, quote is approximate).

If you're Miami, you know you got close this year. So this summer you make everyone on the roster available. You've got the pieces for a championship team, but you need to move them around and get the right combination.

First of all: what in the fucking fuck are you talking about? Make EVERYONE available? You realize you're not talking about the Pacers or the Jazz, right? Second of all, even if we were to try to make this quote intelligible by assuming he meant "make everyone except Wade and James available," what the fuck are they going to get in return?

For Bosh you could probably get another incomplete player with an undeserved max contract. Joe Johnson, come on down! For Mike Miller or Udonis Haslem you might be able to get something of fair value. For the rest of the team you could probably get exactly jack diddley fucking poo. HEY GOOD NEWS FOR TEAMS THAT NEED A REALLY UNREMARKABLE POINT GUARD, I HEAR MARIO CHALMERS MIGHT BE AVAILABLE FOR THE RIGHT PRICE.

What a weird, weird, weird (and wrong) thing to say. If there's ANY team that isn't going to do anything significant with its roster this offseason it's Miami. And the Knicks, because the Knicks are screwed six ways to Sunday in terms of the salary cap and the only guy in the management side of the organization without his head up his ass just left town.

Item 2. Deadspin continues to a good place to catch breaking news and watch funny/cool videos. And it also continues to publish editorial material that's so thunderously stupid it makes me wonder how the site got to where it is. Even Barry Petchesky hasn't said anything as dumb (in the last two weeks) as what Tommy Craggs had to say about Grantland Rice. And just to clarify, I'm not some Rice fan. I don't give a shit about him. But really, look:

He was a pandering mythmaker who wrote verse and prose the way Thomas Kinkade paints carriage lanes ("The Hills of Fame still beckon where the Paths of Glory lead …"). Reading him today is not unlike looking at your maiden aunt's collection of Precious Moments figurines. Moths come flying off every word. He was responsible for a lot of the worst pathologies of sportswriting today, and the fact that a major web site now unironically carries his name tells me we've done to Rice what Rice did to so many ballplayers over the years.

Right, because he wrote 80 years ago, when audiences demanded that kind of stuff. There was no TV, no internet. Either you read about the game in the newspaper or you had no fucking idea that it even happened. Using purple prose made a lot more sense back then. It reads awkwardly today, but do you think people back then demanded it in part due to the fact that they never got to watch the events of a game unless they attended it? Do you think critics back then appreciated it more than critics today do? I'm going to guess that if the answer to either of those questions was no, then no one would know who Rice is today. This criticism is akin to talking shit about baseball players from the 19th century because most of the hitters couldn't hit home runs and none of the pitchers threw sliders.

An older Rice wrote: "Only those who looked upon the spectacle today can know what it means. One might as well attempt to describe the glory of the Grand Canyon or the peak of Mount Everest at dawn."

Rice was covering the fucking Olympics.

Wow, how fucking ignorant about 20th century history can you be? Yeah, the Olympics. Which were the biggest fucking deal in the world of sports at that time. I'm kind of surprised Craggs didn't immediately move on to attack Rice for failing to cover the Super Bowl. GOD, HOW COULD YOU EVER ACT LIKE THE OLYMPICS ARE A BIG DEAL? How about if you wrote about them when one world war had just ended and the foundation was already being laid for another?

Four years later, he called the success of American blacks at the Berlin games "Darktown on parade" and wrote: "America will be okay until it runs out of African entries. ... We may have to comb Africa again for some winners." Elsewhere, Joe Louis was "stalking" his prey, a "panther" with the "speed of the jungle, the instinctive speed of the wild." (He once said of Louis, "Sportsmanship should be the very mortar of an athlete but never an entity in itself for conscious display," and a modern reader might hear the same harp music that played over all those preposterous stories about Kevin Durant's humility.)

Right. He wrote a lot of really racially insensitive stuff. JUST LIKE EVERY SINGLE OTHER FUCKING SPORTSWRITER OF HIS ERA. Doesn't make it right, of course. Just makes it completely unremarkable. But don't tell that to Deadspin, the sports blogosphere's leader in 1) general cluelessness about sports/everything and 2) desire to sensationalize shit that isn't sensational. Hmmm, have we seen this before?

The standard defense here, that Rice was only as bigoted as his time, is probably accurate.

Dumbass.

Item 3. Speaking of Grantland, I decided to head over and check out Simmons's project as it launched. I checked out two of his posts (because much as I bellyache about him I'd rather read his tripe forever than read a single word from Malcolm Gladwell or Dave Eggers, especially if they're writing about sports or pop culture). If you haven't checked out his "welcome to the site" post, I'll summarize it for you: Hey, I was a writer for Jimmy Kimmel when he launched his late night show! Pretty neat, huh! /name drop name drop name drop

Not yet fully deterred, a day later I checked out an article he wrote about the Boston Bruins. His shameless frontrunnerism when it comes to the Bruins has been discussed here before, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him admit to such right up front in the post's title. And then I started reading the body of the post, and there it was, right at the top-

My father had three things left on his Sports Bucket List:

And that's as far as I got before I remembered: you can take Bill Simmons out of the formal ESPN mainframe but you can never get him to stop being Bill Simmons.

And of course, as always, let me throw in our boilerplate Simmons disclaimer. I am insanely jealous of Bill Simmons. I only write about him because I wish I had his job (and that he was my dad).

The only thing worse than being a power-crazed asshole like Roger Goodell

is wrongfully accusing Goodell of being an asshole when he actually wasn't. Enter Deadspin's resident guy who probably lived under power lines and ate a lot of paint as a kid, Barry Petchesky.

Quietly, the NFL fined Carolina's Tyler Brayton $15,000 for setting a moving screen on an Atlanta gunner last week. That's less money than Alosi, and no suspension, so the NFL's consistent record of inconsistent punishment continues.

This would be biting and timely criticism- if only the NFL had actually been responsible for Alosi's fine suspension. Unfortunately they weren't. The Jets made that call. Alosi situation: Jets applied harsh internal discipline; NFL elected not to do anything further. Brayton situation: NFL stepped in and applied tepid discipline; we don't know what the Panthers would or would not have done. Yep, it all adds up. TIME FOR OL' BARRY THE WHISTLEBLOWER TO LET THE PUBLIC KNOW HOW RIDICULOUS THIS IS!

Nice try though, Barry. It's bad enough that you often shit the bed when you write an editorial post. The least you can do is try not to also shit it when you're just doing a quick throwaway "breaking news" post. But living up to that standard would require you to know stuff about the subject you're covering, so I guess we're both shit out of luck.

If you bother to click on the link, please note that none of the first 30 or so Deadspin comments point out this pretty obvious error. But hey, at least they all managed to either 1) make a lame pop culture reference 2) make a lame joke about how bad the Panthers are or 3) make a lame joke in an attempt to agree with Barry's commentary. Thanks Deadspin! You continue to be a holding pen for snarky, unoriginal douchewads.

And for the three of you out there wondering whether or not this blog should be in the business of attacking no-name bloggers who are definitely not part of the MSM: I don't know what to tell you. It is what it is.

TMQR tomorrow. Maybe.

Bill Simmons - Fibber

Bill Simmons is currently in a bit of a tiff with Sports by Brooks over whether he stole an SBNation Blogger's idea about how Chris Johnson needed a better name in order to become an iconic player. The answer: it doesn't matter; KSK beat them both to the punch by a couple days.

What I (and perhaps the rest of the sports blogging world should) take umbrage with is this tweet from Simmons on the matter:

I don't read sports blogs. Sorry. Swear on my daughter's life - not true. RT @utep4321 SBB reporting your a thief! http://bit.ly/5MsX7o

This is a rather bold claim, coming from Simmons, who a few months ago had this to tweet:

"AJ, the emails are coming from inside the house. GET OUT, NOW!" is my single favorite sports message board comment ever.

However, that's not actually a "sports message board" comment, that's a comment on this Deadspin post. So, in fact, Bill Simmons does read sports blogs because Deadspin is most certainly sports blog. I don't think Bill Simmons is ripping off bloggers ideas (or at least any of the good ones, ZING), and maybe his ESPN overlords don't want him acknowledging Deadspin, but still...c'mon, Bill.

Mariotti Is Back, and He's Taking Shots at Blogs Like Ours Already

I don't have time to cover the whole column he shat out this morning as part of his new gig with AOL Fanhouse. Here are some highlights, though. (And as usual, we will not be linking to him. Find it on your own and read it if you are into hurting your brain.)

I should add I'm doubly thrilled to flee the darker corners of the newspaper business, which was reminding me of Marley the dog in his final days.

Hey-ohhhhhhhhhhhhh! Pop culture reference! The newspaper business probably also reminds him of Rod Blagojevich's political career!

The large paper in Chicago, the Tribune, started a digital transition years ago and gave itself a chance. The Sun-Times? The owners became jailbirds, preferring to siphon profits rather than invest in the future.

Whether or not this is true, all I can say is: you stay classy, Jay.

I resigned after the Games with a calm, professional letter,

If the rumors that all he said was "I quit." are true, then no. That is not professional. At all.

They (the Sun-Times) accused me of using Beijing as vacation time ("Hey, kids, let's ditch Hawaii and hang out in a Communist country.").

Awwwwwww. You poor thing. They forced you to go to the Olympics? How did you manage? God, that is so unfair. I'm sure glad my employer didn't make me go to the Olympics. What a shitty time that would have been.

They let a few staff writers, who should focus on doing better work, react with rage reminiscent of Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction."

Extremely dated pop culture reference! Suh-weet. Is there room for "Rain Man" anywhere else in here?

I am here to bring you fiercely independent views

By which he means using his column as a forum to level personal attacks at people he has a grudge against.

Expect me to zealously comment on national issues while spanning the country and world to cover events.

Expect him to also compare struggling teams to Britney Spears, and successful teams to Miley Cyrus.

I've never bought into this "mainstream media vs. bloggers" blood war because, in my mind, we're all writers. The best young writers provide compelling takes on sports. The losers wake up each day and attack (choose your ESPN target),

He's talking about us!

an approach that can't attract much audience beyond a few neurotic souls in sports media.

And now he's talking about friend of FireJay Jeff Pearlman. Jeff, idea for your next book: an expose on the 2005 White Sox, featuring every single horrible thing Ozzie Guillen ever said about Mariotti behind closed doors.

Now hear this: I'm a bit too busy to hate bloggers or, really, anyone but terrorists and certain Illinois politicians.

There's your Blagojevich.

I just think they should be writing about Steve Smith, not Stephen A. Smith.

No, we will write about you. Because you are much, much, much worse than Stephen A. Smith. I don't even think Smith has a writing gig anymore.

I'm not going to lie, I kind of missed him. Life just got a little bit more exciting around these parts.

Jeff Pearlman Is Nothing If Not Nonsensical

Welcome back to Jeff! It's been far too long. Despite the infrequency of his appearances on our blogonet, he's one of our favorite targets. Articles like this make it easy to see why. (Also, he's a decent human being who wrote a decent book and did a decent quasi-interview with us. But all those things take a back seat to his ability to produce indecipherable garbage from time to time.)

Roughly 15 years ago, when Spike Lee directed the phenomenal film "Malcolm X," legions of African-American men began to utter the mantra, "I am Malcolm X."

I didn't know a lot of African-Americans back then, seeing as how I was nine and living in Honkysville, Colorado. But I'll take his word for it.

Roughly seven years ago, when Nike produced a series of cleaver Tiger Woods commercials, legions of golf fans began to utter the mantra, "I am Tiger Woods."

This is recent enough for me to remember, but I definitely don't. Then again, while I do enjoy playing golf, I would rather hang out with Bill Simmons than watch it. So maybe I'm not familiar with the mantras of its fans. Where is this going?

For the record, I am not Malcolm X.

For the record, I am not Tiger Woods.

Given that Jeff is a white guy who (based on the subject matter he usually covers) doesn't care about golf, that's probably correct.

Now, everyone bask in the glory of this bizarre intro's payoff.

I am Ed Wade.

Why? Let's look at the format of the setup: because of [incredibly influential cultural phenom], people at one point in time decided to say "I am [incredibly influential cultural phenom]." Ed Wade is not influential, not even in baseball circles, unless you count the negative influence he's had by giving out awful contracts on a regular basis. He has done nothing to make himself a cultural phenomenon. Most importantly, no one has started recently saying "I am Ed Wade." He got his ass kicked by one of his employees. If that elevates someone to "I am" status, you can consider me P.J. Carlesimo.

Too soon? No, definitely not too soon.

You wanna make something of it?

In what context? Getting your ass beat? Being critiqued on a nerdy blog created and and read exclusively by nerds? Depends on what kind of "something" we're talking about.

That's right -- I am Ed Wade, the first-year Houston Astros general manager and the fiercest punk toughie this side of Kimbo Slice. Until Wednesday evening, the very sight of the 52-year-old Wade suggested all the fire, brimstone and passion of a piece of grandma's meatloaf.

This is why we have a "food" label.

He is roughly 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds, with an uncanny (and, admittedly, unflattering) resemblance to Dan Frischman, the actor who played Arvid Engen in "Head of the Class."

And this is why we need a "references to irrelevant 80s TV shows I had to look up on IMDB just to understand" label. (Don't bother looking, I didn't create one. Thought it would cheapen the already dumb joke.)

Wade wears glasses, dresses in the polo-and-khaki stylings of an accountant and shuffles softly about a baseball diamond.

Sounds like he belongs in a basement, or possibly working for the Oakland A's.

He speaks in gentle tones, and rarely utters a foul word.

Wait- is he Jay Mariotti?

In other words, thug life 'til we die, playa!

Where does this come from? Is he trying to tie back into those black men he was referring to with the Malcolm X thing? Is he doing a Michael Scott-like parody of ignorance? Is he just trying to give his readers douchechills? The world is so full of mystery.

It was 55 minutes before Wednesday night's Rangers-Astros game at Minute Maid Park when I was standing inside the Houston clubhouse, chatting with Drayton McLane, the team's owner.

Were you inexplicably talking to him in Ebonics?

Suddenly, from behind me came screaming. And louder screaming. And louder screaming. The first voice belonged to Shawn Chacon, the disgruntled (and occasionally hot-headed) right-handed pitcher who had been demoted to the bullpen and consequently demanded a trade.

The second voice belonged to (gasp) Wade.

Thanks to the magic of modern technology, my Olympus digital voice recorder

Product placement.

captured most of the exchange. It went thusly:

Chacon: "%&#@ you."

Wade: "%&#@ you."

Chacon: "No, %&#@ you, %@^#*$%&#@*$."

Wade: "You know what, you're suspended."

Chacon: "I don't give a %&#@. Suspend me, %@^#*$%&#@*$."

Wade: "You're suspended %@^#*$%&#@*$."

Chacon: "I better not see you again Ed, you punk%@@ %*&#$."

Wade: "Yeah, OK."

Chacon: "%&#@ you."

Wade: "You're just as stupid as you can get."

It wasn't a good day for the Astros. I didn't see a physical confrontation, as the dispute started in another room before spilling into sight, but Chacon told the Houston Chronicle that he grabbed Wade by the neck and threw him to the ground. "I jumped on top of him because at that point I wanted to beat his (butt)," the pitcher said -- omitting the unspoken, I have willingly thrown away my career and will see all of you at my new job at the Shell station on Louisiana Street. Please remember to tip.

I think the generally accepted joke here for someone whose sports career is obviously over is that they will be bagging groceries. But pumping gas works fine as well, I guess. Either way- can we get back to the part where Jeff "is"/wants to be Ed Wade? This doesn't seem to have much to do with it, and tough as it has been to follow, that's what I understand the point of the article to be.

I know … I know -- we're now required by clichéd journalism law to talk about what a horrible thing this was,

You're not, but thanks for sneaking that in anyways.

and how a person in Wade's position shouldn't lower himself to the level of a journeyman pitcher with an IQ apparently lower than his ERA (5.04, for the record).

Buh-zing. Nearly all jokes that follow the "This guy's [quantified trait] is higher/lower than [other number loosely tied to guy]!" fail. This is not an exception.

I, however, disagree. For decades now, men who look like Wade (and, ahem, me) have had the sand kicked in our faces by morons of Shawn Chacon's ilk.

And that's not changing anytime soon. Just ask Wade's larynx. What is the point? Why does Jeff want to be Ed Wade? Because Wade talked back to Chacon? Whoop-de-shit. He still got jacked up. And the fact that he subsequently fired Chacon isn't really anything to write home about either. Nerdy people in power positions have never suffered from an inability to hire and fire toughy-toughs.

We take it because -- usually based on genetics and financial worth -- we have little choice; because the giants rule the world and the runts search for the leftover crumbs.

Right, but here's the deal- if Wade really were a good role model for nerds everywhere, he would have earned enough respect from Chacon that he wouldn't have been chokeslammed. Chacon might have been furious at him, and cussed at him, and wanted to attack him. But a truly powerful and admirable nerd can do what he wants with his jockish employees without fear of physical assault. So what I'm trying to say is that Wade is actually kind of a bitch. Good at running his mouth, bad at backing up his tough talk, and worst of all at commanding the respect of his employees.

No more. With Ed Wade as our mighty leader, I believe a new day has dawned.

I hope not. That means my only hope of not being a hopeless zero my entire life has just evaporated. Fuck trying to make it to upper management- only being strangled can come of that.

No more bullying!

This incident definitely involved bullying.

No more intimidation!

Wade might not have been intimidated during the verbal confrontation, but how do you think he felt after the physical part? What if he saw Chacon waiting for him one night in a dark parking lot? Do you think he might be a little intimidated?

No more unreasonable trade demands and lengthy holdouts!

But plenty more awful contracts with no-trade clauses.

No more!

Plenty more.

I am Ed Wade!

I am Ed Wade!

I am Ed Wade!

I am -- ouch! I just got a paper cut.

Does anybody have a Band-Aid?

Oh oh ohhhhhh! I see what you did there! Clever. The whole thing was tongue-in-cheek, huh? Nope. I'm not buying it. Too late, Jeff. Somewhere between a bad joke and a misguided serious statement is this article's lame and painful middle ground.

Looking back on this post, I realize it makes me look like a grumpy old fuddy duddy who takes things too literally. Yes, AND?

Oh, and if Jeff Pearlman himself stops by to comment, be sure to lay into him pretty harshly (I mean, about his writing. No personal stuff). Every time he's here he insists he likes that. Creepy, but whatever.

Gene Wojceichowski- Still Full of Drivel

Even when he picks a very defensible angle on a topic he still comes out sounding like a dummy.

This is that special time of the year when the nation's best freshman basketball players appear in front of the TV cameras, say that deep in their hearts they'll always be a Bruin-Wildcat-Trojan-Tiger-blah, blah, blah, and then announce their decision to leave school for "the next level."

I like how that's in quotes. As if it's worth questioning whether or not the NBA is the next level above the NCAA.

That's what UCLA's Kevin Love said: "I'm in the right spot to take my game to the next level."

That's what Kansas State's Michael Beasley said: "It's time for me to take my game to the next level."

That's what Memphis' Derrick Rose sort of said: "… I feel that it is the right time for me to take this step."

That's what Arizona's Jerryd Bayless sort of said: "It's the right time to move on."

That's what they all say: Love, Beasley, Rose, Bayless, USC's O.J. Mayo, Indiana's Eric Gordon, maybe even Beasley's K-State freshman teammate, Bill Walker. The basketball Class of 2011 just became the One and Dones.

Well, ten or so of them, anyways. The other several hundred are remaining in school, well aware that they don't have the necessary talent to compete in the NBA.

First of all, if the NCAA and the NBA really want to improve our lives, they'll outlaw the use of "the next level."

Because the NBA is really "the previous level?" Because it would be better for kids to come up with a different, untrue reason for leaving school? Sure, it's a cliche, but it's one that has enough truth to it to not bug even someone as critical as myself.

While we're at it, no athlete is allowed to say, "It's not about the money," because, dude, we know it's about the money.

Sometimes. In many cases because the athlete in question grew up with almost no money at all, and has a family they want to provide for. This cliche is worthy of being complained about when it's said by a pro athlete choosing $50 million over $30 million, but I don't see any problem when it's a college athlete choosing $15 million over $0 million.

And on a more general note, no airline pilot is allowed to say, "Well, folks, we're just waiting on some paperwork and then we'll be on our way." There is no paperwork. You're stalling. Just go ahead and tell us the flight's been delayed 40 minutes.

OK, Peter King. Thanks for the Annoying Travel Note of the Week. Tell us about how nice the concierge at the Best Western in Saskatoon was while you're at it.

Anyway, technically speaking, the "next level" for these guys is the National Basketball Developmental League. The next level after that is the NBA.

Oh, yeah, I bet you'll be seeing all of those guys you just mentioned suiting up in the D-League come this fall. No doubt about it. I'd be shocked if Gordon cracks an NBA roster before 2010. What, you think Kevin Durant just came straight out of college and started contributing for the Sonics? Poppycock.

The NBA isn't kidding when it says its league is where Amazing Happens. Amazing because the NBA forces the very best high school players to wait until they're 19 (or one year removed from their high school graduation) before they can declare for the NBA draft.

That's not amazing. It's a (kind of) well intentioned rule. If that's amazing, lots of stuff is amazing. I won't even make a list. OK, maybe just one example- cardboard boxes.

That's the only reason why Love spent a season at Westwood, Mayo at L.A., Beasley at Manhattan, Rose at Memphis, Gordon at Bloomington. What a deal. The NBA gets a free minor league system, and the college programs rent a star player for nothing more than the price of room, tuition and books.

Whether it's working out this way or not, the NBA is merely trying to improve the overall talent level in the league and prevent guys like Lenny Cooke and Taj McDavid from ruining their careers before they have a chance to get off the ground. It's not really exploitation from that angle. The NCAA is a different story, but it's not like they made the rule. They've been exploiting athletes for years, but this doesn't do much to change that. It just means they get to exploit some super-talented athletes that otherwise would have never passed through their system.

And, as usual, the player is used as a commodity. He becomes -- what's the term? -- "product."

Agreed, but I don't think the NBA sees them that way. The NCAA does, but still- not their policy, not their fault. The one-and-done rule has nothing to do with them.

USC coach Tim Floyd didn't attend Mayo's farewell news conference. But he did issue a statement thanking Mayo, who wore NBA logo socks in his final game, for "everything O.J. did for all of us the year he was with us."

What Mayo did was increase average attendance at USC's Galen Center from 5,798 a year ago to 9,647. Cha-ching.

I'm sure Floyd sees Mayo as nothing else. Just an ATM in sneakers.

Anyway, Floyd will soon welcome USC signee DeMar DeRozan, "… probably the best NBA prospect on the West Coast and maybe in the country," Floyd told the Los Angeles Times. In other words, another one and done.

Whom Floyd hopes will help him win, but only because Floyd wants more money. His motives are entirely financially motivated and have nothing to do with putting the best team possible on the floor except inasmuch as it helps him get a new contract.

Meanwhile, K-State coach Frank Martin told reporters at Beasley's recent news conference that "Mike has put our brand out there again, let people know Kansas State basketball is back, and he's put us on national television."

Branding. Television exposure. Revitalized K-State hoops. That's super.

Now then, what exactly did Kansas State do for Beasley?

What exactly does any school do for a student athlete who doesn't graduate? What's the difference between being a superstar like Beasley and leaving after a year with no diploma, or being one of the hundreds of role players every year (particularly among the ranks of men's basketball) who finish out their eligibility and have to leave school without earning a diploma? Gene has correctly identified the problem- unfortunately, he's still working on figuring out the fact that the NBA's age policy has nothing to do with it.

Sorry, but I'm not seeing the upside for the players here. Everybody conveniently benefits from this mandatory, one-year sentence except the actual freshmen. K-State gets its precious brand and TV games. USC gets its attendance spike. UCLA gets to the Final Four. Memphis does too, and coach John Calipari gets a new contract.

As for NBA teams, their scouts get a whole year to evaluate the freshman talent against college, not high school players. And here's the best part: The NCAA provides the talent free of charge!

Just like they always have! And yes, the NBA does want to give teams an extra year to evaluate talent. They're protecting their league from unnecessary dilution, and protecting unprepared players from themselves. For a year anyways. It's not much, but it's something.

In return, the players are deprived of the opportunity to go directly from high school to the NBA, even if their games are ready or near-ready.

That's the idea, yes, because many players in the past have proven to be horribly poor judges as to how ready or near-ready their games were. If they're really that good, that draft pick and those dollars will be waiting for them just a short year down the line.

They also risk injury. IU's Gordon and his left wrist can tell you all about it.

Take out an insurance policy. If they're really that good, they can afford to pay it because they'll be making big money 12 months later. This isn't that complicated.

Did I mention how academic integrity takes it in the shorts?

I'm getting very frustrated at this piece, because I know I'm not being funny or saying anything new. But really, Gene? Seriously? A buttsex joke? Academic integrity has been "taking it in the shorts" from the NCAA for decades now.

These freshman stars are only required to attend at least one semester's worth of school. Once the season is finished and they declare for the pros, anything goes. They can phone it in, skip classes or quit altogether.

Of course, the downside to that is something called the Academic Progress Rating. If a program's APR is too low, the NCAA can take away future scholarships. So if, say, Mayo, decides to quit going to classes this spring semester, USC pays the price.

OK, good. So you realize that. While it's an imperfect system, it's still a system. The NCAA has a long ways to go but they're at least trying to look like they're coming close to making an effort.

The entire arrangement needs a bar of soap and a shower. Worse yet, there's talk of the NBA possibly adding another year to the draft ban. Dumb. The NBA ought to get out of the minimum age requirement business.

After all, amazing happened when the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted an 18-year-old King James, and when the Charlotte Hornets drafted a 17-year-old Kobe Bryant.

Sure, let's let the exceptions dictate the rules. Have fun pretending like there aren't dozens of high-school-to-the-NBA failures for every Kobe or LeBron. I'll be here in the real world, realizing that some promising careers might have been saved had the kids been forced to go to school and grow up a little bit before entering the league.

And the NCAA ought to get out of the enabling business. Being at school isn't the same thing as being in school. Rationalize it any way you want, but one and done is mercenary sports, nothing more.

OK Gene, I'm going to stop you right there. This is it, we're done. The NBA's fucking age rule has essentially nothing to do with the massive academic problems faced by the NCAA in revenue sports.

And no, Jermaine O'Neal, it also has nothing to do with racism. Go back to being injured and cashing enormous paychecks.

I'm sure some people out there will disagree with me or want to point out something stupid I said. I'm not around during the day to check comments and defend myself, so feel free to carry out the blogopages equivalent of suckerpunching me or kneeing me in the balls. It's fine, I won't notice. My favorite baseball team has now lost four straight games which they were leading in the 8th inning. The world of sports can't get much worse for me right now. Life is just so damn tough.

Alright Everyone, Back To Your Basements

We're not welcome in the Dallas Mavericks' locker room anymore.

Mark Cuban is the only blogger allowed in the Dallas Mavericks locker room.

At Cuban's direction, the Mavericks have created the first blogger-free policy in the NBA, perhaps in all of pro sports. As a blogger himself, he believes people writing for blogs don't need behind-the-scenes access to do their jobs, even if those blogs are run by newspapers.

Cuban said his point is that if he allows one blogger in, then out of fairness he would have to allow all of them, even if it's just a suburban teenager who runs a fan site. Instead, he said it's better to keep them all out.

"My choice, my decision," Cuban said, adding that he hasn't discussed it with the league office. "We brought it to their attention after the fact. I think they recognized, look, it wasn't a blogging issue, it was a space issue. If you run out of space, you've got to put the velvet rope somewhere. So what do you do? Do I say, `Oh, you're major media, you can get in and little mavsforum and mavstalk and mavswiki, you can't get in?' I'm not going to do that."

Well, you should do that. At bare minimum. I mean... that is, if you don't want to be labeled as insensitive, backwards-thinking, and possibly racist.

Does anyone out there have any experience with forming special interest groups and subsequently getting desperate politicians into back pockets? Our rights as bloggers are in jeopardy. We need to stand up for ourselves. This decision sets a dangerous precedent; before long, we won't be allowed in mall food courts or comic book stores. Not that we like going outside anyways, but it's always nice to know you have the option in case you want to check out girls through binoculars, right? Next, the powers that be will start restricting our content. We'll be prevented from using made-up statistics like OPS or making fun of David Eckstein. And eventually... I shudder to even think of it... our parents will make us move out. You heard me. No more free food. No more free rent. No more not having a job. No more playing 19 hours of Sega Genesis a day. This is the world we face, people.

In protest/response to this development, I will no longer blog about the Mavericks. I ask all the rest of you out there to join me in this boycott.

Reader Extra Participation Friday: Keeping It Simple

Lately there's been, well, not much participation in Reader Extra Participation Fridays. Part of me wants to attribute this to the fact that we only have nine readers. But a small sliver of brain keeps insisting it's because I choose topics that are too complex and don't lend themselves easily enough to comedy. So let's ignore bad journalism for this week's installment and just talk about something everyone has an opinion about: What are the best and worst professional sports ever created? We'll keep a broad definition of "professional sport"- anything people do for recreation that requires them to move and is televised. So after some careful consideration, let me make my personal nominations:

Best- Bowling, because any fat pasty guy/blogger could conceivably practice enough to go pro in it.
Worst- Baseball, because it's impossible to play in a basement. Fucking sun.

Don't think you have to try to be clever or anything. This is an environment of welcoming. If you just want to straight up say that football is awesome and womens' basketball is a joke, nobody's stopping you. I'm changing the format of this in hopes that more than three people will throw their hats in the ring. Go on, make me look like a desperate, pandering genius.

Raise Your Hand If You Think The Average Article About Sports Needed To Be Written

And also raise your hand if you're not a Hannah Montana fan.

Got you good, asshole. Now you're either a fan of bad sportswriting, or a fan of music aimed at pre-teen girls (and a potential pederast). OK, put your hands down. Enough "yolking" around! Since it's Articles That Didn't Need To Be Written Week here at FireJay, let's just get to the articles that didn't need to be written. Actually, first let's crown a winner from last week's Reader Extra Participation Friday. I'm handing the title to Jeff for pointing out this very relevant fact:

Mark Price has the best career free throw percentage in NBA history, edging out Rick Barry.

But Barry could argue that Price had the luxury of playing his prime years against a more diluted league because of the late 1980's expansion.

That's worth one box of Cheese Nips. Congratulations. It didn't jive perfectly with the topic I assigned, but it's pretty funny anyways. And only two people responded so I didn't have a lot of material to work with. Sorry Jim, better luck next week.

So anyways, let's move on to some absolutely groundbreaking material produced by some of America's finest sportswriterjournalists. These guys really put the "expos(e)" in expository. Foxsports.com's Jeff Goodman wants you to know that there are other good NCAA basketball teams out there besides Tennessee. They tend to fly under the radar a little bit, but if you really job your memory you may realize you've heard about some of these other contenders before. Like, perhaps dozens of fucking times since November.

Tennessee is deep, athletic and talented. The Vols play hard and have proven they can get out on the road and win in hostile environments. They've now proven it at Xavier, in Seattle against Gonzaga and in the most hostile environment that anyone will face this season — in Memphis.

All true. The Red Sox were also very good in 2007, and I hear the Giants' defensive line played well in the Super Bowl.

However, it's not as if it's Tennessee and everyone else.

What? No fucking way. You might as well tell me that babies don't actually get delivered by a stork, or that cigarettes don't cure lung cancer.

North Carolina also has two setbacks — and one of them came without its starting point guard, Ty Lawson. The Tar Heels may not be as deep as a year ago, but Roy Williams still has more than enough firepower — when Lawson is healthy — to play with anyone in the country.

Baloney. Since when has Williams shown he can win in March and April? And since when were they any good this year? Oh, that's right, they have one of the most hyped (notice I didn't say overhyped, but he's still annoyingly regular-hyped) players in the country. He's a big white guy who looks like he should be playing the jocky villain in a teen romantic comedy. Forgot his name though.

UCLA has had a trio of slip-ups, with the most recent one coming at Washington — the ninth-place team in the Pac-10. The Bruins have battled their share of injuries as well — their own starting floor leader, Darren Collison, missed the first six games, Mike Roll has been out for nearly the entire season and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute hasn't been 100 percent in months.

Never heard of them. Call me when you reach back-to-back Final Fours.

Kansas lost at Oklahoma State on Saturday night, but the Jayhawks may have as much talent among their first seven players as anyone in the nation — and what was once regarded as a weakness in the middle, has become a strength with the emergence of Darnell Jackson.

If they don't still have Raef LaFrentz, I'm not interested. Aren't they a football school now anyways?

Duke had a brutal two-game stretch recently, but the Blue Devils are certainly capable of making a legitimate Final Four run. They defend, can shoot and are obviously well-coached.

Insert "Coach K looks like a rat" joke here. That's all I got.

Don't discount Memphis from the equation, either.

Really? They just lost a game in the final minute to another really good team in February. I thought that meant they were ineligible to participate in the tournament.

Even after a disappointing performance Saturday, John Calipari's club still has the toughness, experience and talent to advance to San Antonio.

Not a chance. No way. I'll give them that first round win over DeVry A&M, but I refuse to pick them against the winner of the 8/9 or 7/10 game in their bracket. Give me Marquette and the under. As you can see, this article absolutely didn't need to be written. I don't have a ton of time, but let's just belabor that point with one more little example. CBSSportsline's Mike Freeman wants you to know that not all NCAA athletes are law abiding citizens. Re: The Tennessee Volunteers:

On Jan 11, 2008: Police cite freshman wide receivers Gerald Jones and Ahmad Paige for possession of marijuana following a traffic stop near campus while the two hosted a recruit from Oklahoma on his official visit, the newspaper reported. Freshman offensive lineman William Brimfield, who was with Paige and Jones at the time, was not charged by police but was disciplined by Fulmer.

On Jan. 21: Campus police arrest freshman tailback Daryl Vereen for public intoxication and underage consumption after responding to a call of a fight in progress outside an on-campus residence hall.

On Jan. 26: Police arrest All-SEC lineman Anthony Parker for disorderly conduct at an off-campus apartment complex, the paper says. Public intoxication, drunkenness, and fights seem to be a main theme when it comes to rules breakers in the Tennessee program. If only the Volunteers had that kind of fight in them when they played Florida.

Feb. 2: A walk-on defensive back, Vince Faison, was arrested for DUI after police found Faison passed out behind the wheel of his truck in the parking lot of an on-campus fast-food restaurant with the engine running, the paper wrote, and his foot on the brake pedal with the vehicle in gear. Well, hell, who hasn't passed out after gorging on too many burgers and fries? So judgmental, you people.

Feb. 13: Fulmer dismisses two players, the paper reports, for an undisclosed violation of team rules. Both players were arrested within the past 18 months. I can't imagine what it takes for Fulmer to toss someone off the team. A meeting with the Taliban? Eating someone's liver with fava beans?

Feb. 17: Police arrest the Vols' punter for DUI and leaving the scene of an accident after he allegedly struck a parked car causing more than $400 in damage. The punter allegedly bolted from the accident. Who says punters aren't real athletes? Probably ran so fast the police put out an APB for Deion Sanders. The punter's case is an interesting one. It wasn't the first time he found himself in trouble, or even the second. Or the third. This could be his fifth alcohol-related offense, according to the Knoxville paper. That's where you just wonder what the hell Fulmer is thinking.

1. I have no idea why he's picking on UT specifically. I don't really care that he is, because I don't give a shit about them, but it seems strange. Any number of schools have the exact same problem.
2. Anyone who isn't aware of this kind of thing already is not the kind of person who is going to come to CBSSportsline and read this article. So, thank you for telling a bunch of people who are already sports fans something that every sports fan knows.
3. What the hell Fulmer is thinking is that he gets paid to win, not to run a program with no criminal incidents. I think that aspect of big money college sports is pretty well documented.

Again, the transgressions listed are all solely from this year. Fulmer's track record in this area is extensive. He leaves a trail of player arrests, DUIs and serious crimes in his ample wake yet suffers no significant penalty for running the 21st-century version of The Mean Machine. And the NCAA sits on its hands and monitors telephone calls. It's ironic that Fulmer would be in greater trouble with the NCAA if he made illegal contact with a recruit than when one of his players allegedly hits a car and runs from the crime like a gutless turd.

Every turd is by definition made out of guts, so that insult doesn't work. And do you want to know why the NCAA seems to care more about recruiting violations than delinquent programs? Because when schools cheat, no one else besides their governing body is going to penalize them for it. On the other hand, when kids get in trouble, schools are supposed to adequately police themselves. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Usually they fall somewhere inbetween. But at least they almost always put up the appearance of trying to fix the problem. When Kelvin Sampson committed his violations, there was no way Indiana itself was going to do a damn thing about the issue. Like so many others, this article did not need to be written.

Tomorrow: Baseball has a steroid problem! Tom Brady is dating that ugly-faced supermodel! And the NBA's Western Conference is probably much stronger than its Eastern Conference!

Peter King, Please Shut Up

First, let's briefly hand out the Reader Extra Participation Friday award for last week. Lots of good submissions, and thanks to everyone who threw their hats into the ring, but I'm going to award the title to Jones.

Moon launch: rockets make it possible

I mostly laughed at this because I could see it actually being on the cover of Popular Mechanics sometime in the early 60s. And without rockets, we wouldn't have this moment.

Next, let's do something painful and review why Peter King is annoying. From his "non-NFL thoughts of the week." (Yes, I know this blog is allegedly about sportswriting. But if this dummy is going to pop off at the mouth about other things while in the process of writing a football column, it's fair game.)

b. Finally saw Michael Clayton. Very good movie. Not as good as No Country for Old Men, or Charlie Wilson's War, but I believe if I were writing a blurb for the newspaper ad for Clayton, I would write: "Taut legal thriller.''

Wow. You have a way with words, my friend. How long did it take you to come up with that? It's so simple... yet so accurate. Watch your back, guy who currently writes newspaper ad blurbs for movies. There's a new guy who wants to do what you do (if you actually exist) in town.

c. Len Pasquarelli was up and about and feeling well in his Phoenix hospital room Sunday, just seven days after his bypass surgery. "Let me tell you something,'' Pasquarelli, the ESPN.com pro-football maven, reported from his bed Sunday afternoon, after his first post-bypass shower. "There's no better feeling in the world than your first shower after a heart attack.''

What does that mean? Len? Maybe you should just lie back down for a couple more days.

d. Coffeenerdness: No coffee news this week. None. Had a lot of tea, actually, coming off my bronchitis/virus/ear infections. Filled to the gills with the green tea, just like Phil Simms advises.

Phil Simms- health adviser to the stars. Does he have any recommendations as to how I should deal with my scoliosis? What about acne? Scurvy? Rickets?

e. Do people realize how silly they look and sound, even with Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) in their ears, to be cackling and talking loudly and gesturing with no one around.

Apparently King is still familiarizing himself with the concept of cellular telephones. Given how often he claims to text players, this is surprising. Either that or he wants to draw some meaningless distinction between hands-on cell usage and bluetooth-enabled usage.

OK, I think that was sufficiently awkward and painful.

Back To The Grind

Enough of this vacation nonsense. Starting today, I'm back to my usual at least one post per weekday routine. That's good news for both of you out there who are still checking the blog after our week-plus hiatus. Thanks for sticking with us, and if you see any of the other ten people that used to read us, tell them we're back.

Let's get things started with two quick new years resolutions-

1) By popular demand, I'm going to try to be less angry and more light-hearted/carefree/happy/comedically inclined. Basically I'm going to spend less time talking about how how furious bad sportswriting makes me and instead spend more time coming up with unwitty jokes. I'm going to end more sentences with exclamation marks! Because that implies excitement! Which makes everything seem more energetic, and high-energy people are always funny! See what I mean?! I feel like Dane Cook already! In order to get my mind in the right place for this transition, I'll probably visit funny sites like this more often. Or this. Or this. These make me laugh. I like laughing.

2) I will start getting in shape, eating healthy, reading books, volunteering for charities, and generally putting the shattered pieces of my life back together.

See what I mean about writing more unfunny jokes? It's gonna be a great year.

A New Milestone in Blogging Laziness

Blogging is an amazingly lazy process. Example: I was about ready to go to bed and realized that it's been an extremely long time since I have voiced opinions in a post. So here I am, it's 1:15, and instead of holding my breath in anticipation of the forecasted six inches of snow that will bring the Saint Louis area to a screeching halt tomorrow, I went trolling the blogosphere for somebody with a Doug Weight/Andy McDonald trade post that I could carve up.

Enter St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Jeremy Rutherford.

He reports hockey news and painstakingly handcrafts a blog for the P-D sports section. So, Jeremy, can you weigh in on the trade for us?

I’ve got a house full of people over for a Christmas party, so instead of blogging, I will post the story that I wrote for tomorrow’s Post-Dispatch

Oh, sorry. Wouldn't want to keep you from showing your article to your friends. My apologies. Go back to your cheese balls, and we'll touch base with you later.

The article really isn't bad, I guess. It's really just a bunch of facts. And who would want to read that in a newspaper, right? I hear a foghorn off in the distance... BOOOOOOR-INNNNNNNG.

Now please, somebody tell me that I'm inherently lazier than Mr. Rutherford for only boldfacing one sentence.

Why Are You Here?

It's getting to be Thanksgiving. You should be worried about dealing with your family, watching football, and fighting off thousands of strangers just so you can buy some shit at the mall. It's true that bad sports journalism never sleeps, but even we here at FireJay have to come out of the basement and spend time with our parents every once in a while. We'll be back with a vengeance next Monday. In the meantime don't expect too much out of us. Or, do expect a lot out of us, and be disappointed. Whichever. Here, if you get bored, read this for some laffs-

http://marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com

It's beautiful.

TMTMQR: Gregg Easterbrook Stoops To Several New Lows

Where to begin... where the ass to begin? After almost a month of filling his columns with relatively mild (by his standards) bullshit, let's just say the TMQ is back this week with a fucking vengeance. Oh my Jeebus. Record setting levels of pretentiousness? Check. Stupid nicknames? Check. Awkward/forced praise of cheerleaders who would probably incapacitate Easterbrook if he ever so much as made eye contact with him in real life? Check. But most importantly- Making numerous claims that demonstrate a total lack of knowledge about how football is played? Check. Let's begin.

Once, in Silicon Valley, I heard Joe Costello -- a founding light of "electronic design automation" and now CEO of the lowercase think3 -- give a talk about the difference between seeking success and avoiding failure. Studies of crashes during aircraft landings under difficult circumstances, he said, showed that pilots who made bad mistakes when approaching an airfield and crashed, but lived to tell the tale, reported that they had been focused on avoiding obstacles. Pilots who made difficult landings without incident reported they had focused solely on the runway. Business and artistic success, Costello continued, follow the same pattern. Setbacks result from constantly trying to avoid obstacles, worrying about what might go wrong. Achievement results from keeping your eyes glued to the prize and endlessly repeating to yourself, "I can do this." Or, as I once wrote, "Keep your gaze in the distance, and though you will stumble, you will reach your destination."

Are.

You.

Kidding me?

Who attempts to quote themselves like that? I don't think the ten biggest assholes I've met in my entire life could come up with something that outrageous if they combined their efforts and worked exclusively on this imaginary project of pure douchehead brainstorming for an entire year. Hey Gregg, hows the view from your tower? As I once wrote, "Easterbrook is comically pretentious."

These thoughts came to mind when Tiki Barber said on NBC's "Football Night in the Known Universe," or whatever its formal name is, that rookie Adrian Peterson of Minnesota keeps his eyes straight ahead, looking only down the field, ignoring tacklers. Watch tailbacks: Most are darting their heads from side to side trying to figure out where problems are. Peterson says he is always looking at the goal line and driving his legs, ignoring tacklers. His runs have this quality: maximum power toward the goal line, pay no attention to the obstacles. The great Walter Payton once said he could never remember the numbers of those who hit or missed him because he was looking down the field and the rest was a blur. (That's a paraphrase.) Peterson seems to have this same success-focused running style, plus he's bigger and faster than Payton was.

This paragraph really shows a smooth transition from pure own-fart-sniffing self-promotion to demonstration of a complete lack of knowledge about the sport of tackle football. See, this is how it actually works. If you are an offensive player carrying the ball towards the end zone, there is only one thing that will stop you from getting there: tacklers playing for the other team. You will absolutely, positively, not reach the end zone if you do not avoid them. Sure, you can run over or through a couple of them. But even a great RB like Peterson depends largely on not not getting anywhere near the other team's defenders. When they grab onto or run into the guy carrying the ball, it usually results in the end of the play.

I know Peterson says he doesn't think about avoiding tacklers. Excuse the double negative, but that doesn't mean he's not subconsciously doing exactly that! It speaks to his abilities that he (allegedly) doesn't really worry about any of the eleven guys who are trying to tackle him when he has the ball. But if he really, truly ran without regard for where defenders were, he would not be good. He would not be average. He would be a really athletic guy who sucks at football. He would probably be a track star or something. He would definitely not have set the NFL single game rushing record last weekend. Sure, he's not thinking about it. But I've seen him make enough devastating cutbacks this season that it's clear some part of his brain understands the concept of avoiding tacklers.

I can't believe I'm actually explaining this, as if any of the seven of you don't know how football works. Let's make it really simple. I have two friends named Chris and Alan. They're both more or less equally athletic. Whenever we get together with some other friends for a football game, they always have to play on opposite teams because they're easily the two best players and both are a threat to break a big play at any time. Next time one of these games goes down, I'm going to ask one of them to play the game like he normally would, and the other to "focus on the horizon/goal line" rather than the defenders trying to bring them down. I will bet everything in my parents' basement (there's a pretty nice coffee table down here, plus some old LPs and a record player) that the first guy has a really good game and the second horribly disappoints his teammates. Hell, to control for any variation in their individual performances, I can have them switch roles halfway through. I don't think I can overstate this: IT'S ABUNDANTLY CLEAR THAT GREGG EASTERBROOK HAS NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT HERE. None.

Wow, that may be the longest rant I've ever delivered about a single paragraph of crapass sportswriting. But I'm pretty sure it was worth it. After Easterbrook reads this, I'm sure he'll print a retraction in next week's column. As long as he can squeeze it in between an update on space telescope technology and complaints about the lack of realism in Battlestar: Galactica.

Cheerleader of the Week (peace offering to Patriots fans edition): Reader Jim Hickey of Andover, Mass., nominates Jessica of the New England Patriots cheerleaders, whose swimsuit photo we can link to but not show for cleavage-based reasons. According to her team bio, Jessica is majoring in cardiovascular technology at St. Vincent's College, a specialized health care institution, and her career goal is echocardiography. Imagine the effect of Jessica administering heart tests on any traditional male patients: "You seem healthy, but your heart rate is a little high at 195."

Now, as a 23 year old guy living in my parents' basement, I don't have a lot of room to talk here. I haven't had a date since I took my second cousin to my senior prom. (Our parents set it up.) I don't think I've talked to a woman besides those related to me in well over a decade. But all that aside, that joke is awkward as hell. LAWLLLL! Hott gurlzzz make guys nervous! Ohhhhhhh noooooooo! I hope Jessica never needs to check my heart rate. It would probably be more like TWO hundred ninety five!

Sweet Play of the Week: With Buffalo trailing Cincinnati 21-19, the Bills reached first-and-goal on the Bengals' 8 in the fourth quarter. Marshawn Lynch had rushed on six consecutive snaps, and the Cincinnati defense was fixated on him. Lynch took a pitch right, accompanied by pulling tackle Langston Walker, and flipped a touchdown pass to tight end Robert Royal.

What? A trick play can be sweet? What happened to "just run the ball up the middle and everything will be OK," one of Gregg's favorite Greggisms? If this play had resulted in an interception and the Bengals had gone on to win, he'd be waxing poetic about how Bills coach Dick Jauron should be fired and deported to Iran. And that the forward pass should be made illegal during the 4th quarter for teams with the lead.

Sweet Series of the Week: Atlanta and San Francisco tied at 7, the Falcons reached first-and-10 on the Squared Sevens'

Math joke! Seven squared is 49. Clever.

19. Atlanta rushed on five consecutive snaps, scoring the touchdown, and went on to win. The football gods smile on this sort of thing!

And they also smile on halfback passes. So basically, hindsight is 20/20 and the football gods smile on anything teams do to win.

Untouched Touchdown Run of the Week: Carolina-Tennessee, scoreless, the Flaming Thumbtacks

That's what their logo looks like!

were facing third-and-goal from the Panthers' 3. Vince Young dropped back, scanned the field, saw the middle open and simply walked in for the touchdown. Note: Tennessee recorded seven sacks in the game, and Carolina has a total of seven sacks on the season. Didn't we used to hear that Julius Peppers was the new Fred Dean?

Clearly, any DE who isn't recording sacks must be terrible. Wait, what's that? There's such a thing as offensive schemes in which multiple offensive linemen block the same defender? To be fair, I guess my sarcasm there doesn't hold a ton of water because if Peppers is consistently getting taken out of plays that should theoretically open up other guys on the team for sacks. I can't explain why it's not happening. I can, however, explain Peppers' sack totals so far for each of his 5.5 years in the league:

2002- 12
2003- 7
2004- 11
2005- 10.5
2006- 13
2007- 1.5

There you have it- proof that Peppers is not good. Fred Dean, your legacy is safe.

Denver is barreling down the tracks toward a switch in the wrong position, likely to become the train-wreck team of the 2007 season. By Thanksgiving 2006, the Broncos were 7-4, had a highly ranked defense and held the inside track to win their division. Then Mike "The Ultimate Leader" Shanahan showed the door to quarterback Jake Plummer and began making wholesale changes on his defense, including firing his defensive coordinator. Since that moment, the Broncos are 5-8; their rushing defense is now the league's second-worst; and they just got punched in the nose by Detroit, last season's second-worst club.

There are two problems here.

1) Who gives a shit how bad the Lions were last year? It's pretty obvious that they're good this year. Should we crap all over anyone who loses to the 2007 Browns or Bucs? I guess we would if we wanted to be like Gregg Easterbrook and desperately pounded home our points with irrelevancies.

2) Three weeks ago the Broncos beat the Steelers. Now, this doesn't mean Easterbrook is wrong about Denver. They look absolutely awful (and I say that as a Bronco fan). But for the sake of not looking like more of an idiot, why would Gregg choose to immediately follow that paragraph with this one below?

Monday Night -- You're Surrounded: Will Dec. 9 -- Pittsburgh at New England -- be Super Bowl XLII.LXXV? The Steelers just blew Baltimore off the field. Not only did they win big, they held the Ravens to five first downs! Sure, the weather was bad. And sure, the homecoming-game atmosphere -- was there a dance afterward? -- was a factor. But it takes great defense to hold any team -- even the low-voltage Ravens -- to five first downs. Here are the Baltimore offensive possession results: fumble, punt, fumble, punt, punt, interception, touchdown, end of first half, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt. Pittsburgh has a great defense and a good offense. Unless the Chargers snap out of it, the Steelers are the only team besides the Colts that can threaten the Patriots. Circle Dec. 9 on your calendar now.

That great defense gave up 31 points to a Denver team that has trouble cracking 14 most Sundays. Also, here's who Pittsburgh has beaten: Cleveland (decent), Buffalo (bad), San Francisco (awful), Seattle (average), Cincy (awful), and now Baltimore (average). Oh, and they've also managed to lose to Arizona. Let's wait for them to beat someone besides the Browns before we decide these guys can hang with the Patriots. Speaking of which, here's my favorite part of Gregg's New England/Indianapolis breakdown:

For the Patriots' part, you saw that steely-eyed determination when, trailing 20-10 in the fourth quarter on the road at the house of the defending champion, New England looked more pumped and resolute than Indianapolis did.

Lunchpail alert!

Well, that's it. Exhaustion has set in. I have nothing left to form into a coherent conclusion. That rant about Adrian Peterson's running style really took a lot out of me. Um... do you want to go back and read it again? I mean, I really worked hard on it, and it would mean a lot. No? Wait, where are you going? Come on, you can at least stick around long enough to leave a comment.

Fine. See if I care.

Stewart Mandel Tries To Talk Some Sense Into Dumb College Football Fans

I know what you're saying- isn't this an anti-sports media blog? Well the answer, of course, is yes. We do specialize bitching and moaning. However, our contract with Google states that we are legally allowed to make three (3) posts that are in support of a sportswriter per calendar year. And after reading what CNNSI.com's resident college football mailbag answerer had to say about the "my conference is better than your conference!" argument, I felt compelled to use one of our exemptions. After all, they don't roll over to 2008. Why not use 'em while you've got 'em?

You see, there's nothing that frustrates me more than fans getting hot and bothered about which conference is more powerful than the next. I rant about this to my real life friends (all two of them) at least once a week every fall. Honestly, people... how the hell can you tell which conferences are better than others unless a variety of teams from each square off against each other? You can speculate about common opponents, strength of schedule, coolest fight songs, and best tailgates all you want. But in the end there is no other way to judge conference A against conference B unless a bunch of their teams play. There just isn't.

Sadly, I often feel like I'm pretty much alone in holding this opinion. We live in a culture obsessed with trying to figure out what's going to happen next, rather than just basking in the here and now. Sports and sports media hype today is all about predicting the unpredictable. Which 9th grader is going to be the next 1,500 yard rusher in the NFL? I guarantee there are dozens of creepy rivals.com analysts out there who could debate this topic for hours. Who should be placed atop the eternally meaningless "power rankings" column on your favorite sports website? If you want to lose hope for humanity, check out the comments section attached to a power rankings article anywhere. How so many people so hung up on where a random sportswriter ranks their team is beyond me. How many more years will (suffering team X) go without a title? It's a topic tailor made for "Around the Horn."

And of course, debating the relative strengths of conferences fits right into this clusterfuck of unbridled speculation. But this doesn't stop it from happening ad nauseam every year from August until the first week of January. People just eat this shit up. Everyone and their brother wants "experts" to weigh in this meaningless argument and side with their local conference. It drives me bonkers. How about we just worry about the games that are actually being played? Do we really need to waste energy figuring out whether the Sun Belt is better or worse than the MAC at the halfway point of the season?

So on that note- thanks, Stewart, for articulating my feelings on the matter better than I ever could have. Either click the link and read his whole mailbag (which is very good), or if you're pressed for time, sit back and enjoy these excerpts.

Mind you, this whole thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. While people used to complain about certain teams' soft non-conference schedules (Kansas State, Virginia Tech, etc.), I really don't remember reading any 12-page manifestos championing the Big Ten over the Big 12 or the SEC over the Pac-10. These days, however, some fans get as worked up about defending their favorite conference's honor as they do cheering on their favorite team.

It seems to me this can be traced back to Auburn's 2004 exclusion from the BCS championship. While there were certainly BCS controversies before that one, I rarely remember conference affiliation entering the equation. But when this happened, fans of not only Auburn, but also the entire SEC, were indignant. To them, this wasn't just about an undefeated team being deprived an opportunity at the title; this was about an SEC team getting shafted.

And so, over the two years that followed, SEC coaches and fans alike took every opportunity to make sure such an injustice wouldn't happen again, beating it into the rest of the country's brains just how much tougher their conference was than everybody else's. This of course only intensified after Florida demolished season-long media darling Ohio State last January -- which in turn has caused backlash against the SEC from fans in the rest of the country.

All over a topic for which -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER.

We could literally go on like this for days, people, and we'd just keep going in circles. The only way to truly gauge the respective conferences is when their teams play each other, usually either early in the season or in the bowls, and even then, those results invariably come with asterisks.

When it comes to the various conference loyalists versus critics, it seems the truth is often whatever you want to make it. For the love of humanity -- and more importantly, my sanity -- can we please move on to some other topics?

I like it when professional journalists feel the same way I do! Almost makes me feel like I'm not living in my parents' basement and eating Pop Tarts three meals a day. If they can get paid for feeling this way, why can't I? You know, besides the fact that I have no journalism experience, no connections, and no writing skills.

One Yankee Fan Purports to Speak For Millions of Other Yankee Fans

How often can you say this: whew, what a Monday!

First, we got Big Leadeded. Always a thrill to check that morning roundup and see our blog's humble name among those cool enough to make the cut. And if anyone reading this is new, as in, you hadn't seen us before yesterday and were somehow motivated to return this morning, we appreciate it. Poke around a little bit. If you don't like what you see, go to one of our links. I guarantee you might enjoy us or someone we plug.

Second, we got into a couple reasonably bitter comment fights. For the second time in two weeks we squared off against some angsty Padres fans, in addition to exchanging words with a couple of Simmons supporters in the post that was linked on The Big Lead. What can I say; I'm not exactly proud of how often we get into these nerdy wars of words... but they're still fun anyways. Hey, what's the point of living in your parents' basement if you can't anonymously argue with other people living in their parents' basements?

Third, longtime FireJay reader, interviewee, and whipping boy Jeff Pearlman had this to say about the Yankees, their season, and how their fans (supposedly) perceive the way things went down in 2007:

When did a baseball season in New York become solely about the finish line, and not about the journey? How can a team that clawed its way out of a 14½-game hole be deemed a failure for falling to a team -- the Cleveland Indians -- that features two of the league's top five starting pitchers? Do the memories of Alex Rodriguez's 54 home runs and Chien-Ming Wang's 19 wins and Derek Jeter's steely determination and Joba Chamberlain's meteoric rise fade to ashes without a diamond-studded ring?

Is this who we are?

Is this what we've become?

Yes, I know plenty of ink has been spilled on this topic. But Jeff's angle interested me because of an email I received from FireJay tipster/reader Tom E. In Tom's words:

Of course, the “voice of the fans” is a ploy that Pearlman did not invent. Many columnists use it to express disapproval without admitting that they are the ones who are doing the disapproving. I suppose that claiming that the fans are upset allows them to avoid directly confronting the coaches and players they are skewering.

In my house, where three die-hard Yankee fans reside, we certainly were disappointed by the Cleveland series, but we also took pleasure in what we thought was an exciting season with a great comeback and an influx of exciting young players. And watching closely on TV, I didn’t get the sense that the fans at the game were anything but supportive. The gross generalizations that claim to have insight into how millions of people feel about a team and its season are weak, at best.

Tom: thanks for the insight. I certainly and obviously appreciate it. Now let me basically restate what you said in my own less articulate terms.

Whoa whoa whoa. Listen. I'm no Yankee expert, but this is mildly suspicious to me. Maybe that's how Steinbrenner feels about your boys. Maybe he feels that anything less than a championship is automatically a failure, regardless of circumstances (like being fifty games out in May or whatever it was). But here's the question- do many/most/all Yankee fans feel that same way? You never say for certain that that's the case. Meanwhile, the impression I get from interacting with a large number of Yankee fans on the web (besides just Tom) is that most of them feel the season was definitely a success. At the very least it wasn't a failure. The number that want to see Choke-Rod resigned, as well as the number that want to see Joe Torre brought back, speak volumes to that end. So who's setting the standards... millions and millions of devoted fans, many of whom are mature adults with well developed decision making capabilities? Or a crusty old bastard of an owner who's never been famous for is rationality? I'm just saying is all.

Anyways hopefully our week ends up being as exciting as I promised. Thanks for checking in and be sure to tune in frequently lest you miss out on a sissy-ass comment fight.

Cry about it some more, pussy....

I know that the meaning of this site is to knock on sportswriters who write about sports as a career, but I couldn't resist this cry baby Padres fan's post on his well read MVN blog.

Matt Holliday never touched the plate and Tim McClellan knows it. He absolutely knows it. He stood back and did not make a call because he knew it. A thought process happened, and then he made the call in slow motion. They are interviewing Matt Holliday on TBS at this very moment and even he won’t say he touched the plate. Quote, “The umpire said I did, so"

First of all, shut the fuck up you bitchy, sore-loser faggot. Second, maybe Holliday didn't know if he touched the plate or not because HE SLAMMED HIS HEAD INTO THE DIRT as he was sliding in. And although I believe that he probably didn't touch the plate after watching the replay, all video evidence is inconclusive. So even if the MLB had a video official with replay rules, it still would have been too close too call.

What’s more, I am flat out, right now accusing Tim McClellan of making a call that, if not downright influenced by a desire to punish Sandy Alderson and the Padres, was at the very least a call that ended a ball game which he had no evidence to make. A call that ended a team’s season. I can’t prove that it was consciously or subconsciously influenced by any bias. But I believe it. See, the non-call was already a call. It was saying he did not touch the plate. Never seen an umpire reverse a call? Guess what? You just did.

Apparantly you don't watch much baseball, because if you did, you'd know that McClellan takes FORRRRRRREVERRRRR to make any call.

And fucking hell... there is no conspiracy against the Padres. Maybe next time take a second or two before you post hyperbole filled shit like this.

ESPN and other idiots like this guy keep stirring the pot (as they always do), trying to make a huge story out of Holliday's slide. This really is a non-story. Please ignore the blown call on Atkins' HR, and the fact that close calls like this happen all the time in baseball. You got screwed, boo hoo hoo.

Shut the fuck up, and go back to watching the Chargers win the AFC west--- oh wait

jeff pearlman is a busy guy... SIKE

i mean, how busy could he be if he has time to answer questions for us here at firejay? seriously though, it's very nice of jeff to take some time out of his busy schedule for this. it's even nicer considering we've ripped him a new one on this very blog not once, not twice, not thrice, but a multitude of times. fortunately for us, jeff is a chill guy. the author of "love me, hate me" (which is a very good book, as i've mentioned before, and certainly should be just as well known as "book of shadows" when it comes to journalism that exposes barry bonds for what he is) speaks on blogs, anti-media types, east coast bias, and more in this interview.

LB: thanks for talking with us today, jeff.

JP: Sure. No problem.

LB: let's get the ball rolling with some "tough", so to speak, questions. how do you feel about this blog and others like it? nerdy nerds, sitting in their parents' basements, eating microwaved dinners, and criticizing hardworking professional journalists such as yourself. is this fair? is it right? what is your perspective on the rise of the "blogosphere" in this regard?

JP: I'm actually a fan of the blogosphere, because I like the idea of anyone/everyone having a voice. It doesn't seem fair that the only people allowed to vocally criticize a manager or player are the 500 newspaper columnists across the country. Why, by the basis of studying journalism in college, do we along get that right? Also, I'm a fan of writing. And the fact is, there are many blogs out there with excellent writers who are allowed to be angry, snarky, funny, etc. Unfortunately, your blog stinks. But nobody's perfect.

LB: have you ever had any discussions about anti-media blogs with other professional journalists? how do they feel about it? if not specifically anti-media blogs, what are your thoughts about criticism directed towards the sports media by average run-of-the-mill sports fans in general? surely you can't take people like us seriously.

JP: See, that's where you're wrong. I do take it personally, and so do alot of writers. How can't you? I slave over an article, put my all into something, stay up all night trying to craft it—and you just come along and thrash it. That hurts, and it makes no difference whether the thrasher is my mom, my brother, Dan Pasqua or Larry the blog guy. It always hurts. I suppose that makes me awfully thin-skinned. Such is life. It's who I am. Most writers probably take it better than I do.

LB: how, if at all, do you anticipate the landscape of sports journalism on the whole to change with the rise of the blogosphere? do you notice the line between professionals such as yourself and "amatuers" being blurred in any way? will major sports outlets need to make any major adjustments in the coming years should consumers continue to gravitate towards non-mainstream sources of analysis?

JP: The No. 1 thing is that the line between what's printable and what's not has been completely blurred. If a blog like Deadspin shows, for example, Matt Leinart or Vince Young doing shots with hookers in a seedy motel, mainstream papers have to—absolutely, positively have to—follow up. In the past, you didn't see those stories quite so often. Now it feels like they're everywhere. That's a result of Deadspin, of YouTube, of Facebook, etc. The web has opened everything up wide. I'm not sure how I feel about it, because for so-called celebs there's no longer any time off. You're in public, you're 100% under the radar.

LB: good point. i'm sure leinart could easily become involved with something several times spicier than that. anyways- is there anything you wish people like us knew about your job? this is your free opportunity to gripe about how hard it is and how we don't understand, etc. go ahead and tell it like it is.

JP: My one beef is this: Excellent writing comes with risks. Anyone can write a standard lede, a standard game story, a standard profile and never, ever get ripped. But I've always believed in pushing the envelope. It was something that was stressed to me at Sports Illustrated, and now at ESPN.com, too. The problem is, when you push the envelope it doesn't always work out. You take a lede too far, or your transitions suck, or ... a million different things. Instead of appreciating the fact that a writer tried for excellence, though, bloggers like yourself take great joy in killing us. You never, ever, ever kill Joe Smith of the Patent Trader for his boring take on Mahopac-Carmel. But dare Scoop Jackson or Mike Silver or Mark Kriegel try for the next level, you're always there with the knife. I'm obviously aware that I've written some real crap. We all have. But it comes not from laziness, but effort. I feel like that's lost among bloggers.

LB: ok, those are fair points. but it just so happens joe smith of the patent trader is one of my favorite writers. anyways, i want to ask you about something else. this is going to sound like a loaded question but bear with me. for obvious reasons, major sports outlets tend to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on teams from large media markets (new york, chicago, los angeles) while sometimes ignoring teams in smaller markets (seattle, milwaukee, cleveland, denver, etc.) that are making significant impacts on their leagues. your thoughts- is this just an unfortunate but necessary side effect of the nationalization of the sports media, or something that should be looked upon as a legitimate problem that needs a solution?

JP: I don't have a problem with it. Eight million people live in New York City. That's eight million people (well, not all of them) who live and die with the Mets and Yankees. Milwaukee, on the other hand, is home to approximately 550,000. To suggest fans care about both teams equally is illogical. When I was in college at the University of Delaware, our student newspaper would give the same coverage to swimming and diving as we did men's basketball. Then we realized six people were reading swimming and diving stories. So we stopped writing about it.

LB: clearly not the answer i was hoping for, but thanks for the honesty. shifting gears towards something you're very familiar with: hypothetically, say you're in san francisco on the night of august 7, and somehow end up with a ticket to a giants game, and you feel like, hey, why not go? and somehow, you emerge from the bottom of the pile in right center field with that oh-so-valuable baseball. i could care less about this fashion designer's little internet poll thingy. what would you do with home run #756?

JP: I have two kids, and college is insanely expensive.

LB: fair enough. it's getting worse all the time. let's talk barry bonds books. specifically, i'm curious about the relationship between "love me, hate me" and "game of shadows." how much have you ever talked with mark fainaru and lance williams? any? obviously you guys have a decent amount in common.

JP: I know Mark and Lance pretty well from our mutual Bonds experiences. I interviewed them both for my book; we've talked since and sort of bonded over devoting our lives to such a prick. In a way, I consider them my brothers of hell.

LB: are you mad at them for collaborating on a book? imagine if you had enlisted a co-author- you might have been able to beat them to a release date, and that might make "love me, hate me" the more commonly mentioned of the two books.

JP: How could I be mad at two guys responsible for doing such important work? I truly respect those guys 1,000 times over. They deserve what they've gotten. Do I wish my book came out, oh, a month earlier? Yup. But it is what it is—and they had the Balco goods. Thing is, I'm a fan of reporting. More than I'm a fan of writing. I respect people who dig into a subject like they did. No hard feelings. Also, there was a certain full-circleness (not a word) to it all. My first book, "The Bad Guys Won," was a biography of the '86 New York Mets that spent eight weeks on the NYT best-seller's list. It came out a couple of weeks before Mike Sokolove, an excellent writer, released "The Ticket Out," a killer bio on Darryl Strawberry's youth. So what comes around goes around, I suppose.

LB: gotcha. i didn't mean were you literally angry at them, i just wanted you to admit you wish "love me, hate me" had come out slightly earlier. so thanks for that. anyways, obviously you're still pretty young and want to continue moving on to bigger and better things as your career progresses. but how would you feel if when all was said and done your lasting legacy was "that guy who wrote that one book about barry bonds?"

JP: Ha. I'd be thrilled. Truly thrilled. That book was two years of my life, and it sort of vanished beneath Shadows. I'm proud of it; proud of the reporting and the digging and the effort I put into that thing. Plus, it's a helluva lot better than being the fucking John Rocker guy—which I still seem to be.

LB: let's give you time to plug whatever it is you're working on now. any books? other long term projects? anything you'd like to push, just in case more than ten people end up reading this? i mean, i have to give you some incentive for doing this interview.

JP: No incentive needed, but I'm wrapping up a biography of the 1990s Dallas Cowboys. That, and I'm raising my two kids. My daughter Casey is 4 and my son Emmett is almost a year. Emmett is not named for Emmitt Smith, by the way.

LB: sure he isn't! let's close up with some quick, simple questions. the title of your book comes from the barry bonds quote: "love me, hate me. i don't give a fuck." i think that really sums up barry's attitude very well. so give me a jeff pearlman quote that someone might use for a book title were they to pen one about you.

JP: "I pick my nasal hair in airport bathrooms."

LB: i can't tell if that's dirty or not. bloggers/amatuer writers with big dreams about getting into professional sports journalism should make sure they do what, in order to best increase their chances of one day making their living from writing? please don't say moving out of their parents' basements,

JP: First, start contributing to magazines/newspapers/online publications/etc. And do reporting—real, honest-to-goodness reporting. Interview people. Interview people's mothers and fathers and high school coaches. Pitch pieces to as many places as possible—the local weekly paper, the state's official magazine, Jugs, whatever. Bust yourass. The thing about blogging is that, while it's great, it's also lazy. I know—I write a lame blog, and it's literally me on the couch. It may well show you can write, but it doesn't show you can report.

LB: i'll keep that in mind. most of your recent columns are about baseball- if baseball didn't exist, what sport would you focus on the most?

JP: Running. My passion.

LB: understood. this is cheesy, but our several readers want to know- if you could have lunch with 3 figures from sports history, dead or alive, who would they be?

JP: Red Smith, Jim Murray, Tyler Ugolyn.

LB: i have no idea who those last two are, so i'll have to look them up. who finishes with more career HRs- bonds, arod or pujols?

JP: Bonds.

LB: my god, i hope not. finally, off the record- how the hell did you originally find our blog back in may of this year?

JP: On the record, Jesus led me to you.

LB: alright, that's all i've got. thanks for being here.

JP: Sure. No problem.