HEY! Don't you like SPORTS?

Of course you don't! You just pretend to like sports because it's a conduit for the exciting off the field drama and irrelevant bullshit that really make your dick hard! Celebrity gossip is too feminine for your tastes (and that suddenly hard dick you've got). You and your halfwit friends wouldn't be caught dead sitting around watching reality TV; but a football game on a football field? Now that's footballtaining! Of course, I'm talking about the storylines and trash talk and hissy fits and other thrilling events that don't really have anything to do with the games being played. The games themselves are like "eh." Here, I'll stop trying to explain you to yourself and just show you a screencap of ESPN's front page stories right now.

Let's take a look, going down the list in order.

#1: Fair enough, that's sports. It's part of RIVALRY WEEK full of RIVALRY GAMES like this one, during which most of the country was not rooting for either team but was in fact rooting for THE METEOR.

#2: Also sports... a tragic, pathetic part of the world of sports right now but still legitimate sports topic all the same.

#3: I don't think I have to explain to you what's going on here.

#4 and #5: You're cool, although the obnoxious crescendo of will he won't he omg what's he going to do stories is just about as fun as the same stories Carmelo generated last year at this time.

#6: Well, there are two really really important stories that came out of the Super Bowl. I'm sure you'll agree with me that they are 1) what the losing QB's wife had to say about the QB's teammates and 2) what the winning team's backup RB had to say about 1).

#7: Holy shit, is that a soccer story? Of course it's fairly common knowledge that ESPN has invested heavily in soccer broadcasting rights in recent years, but if you didn't know that, this would be a good clue to you that it were the case.

#8: Oh, one last really important story from Super Bowl weekend- what some asshole who hasn't played in four years thinks about what a current player did once the season was over.

#9: Actual sports. BORRRRRIIIIING

#10: Not mindless gossip or "drama," but utterly devoid of substance and merely posted on the front page because it contains the word Kobe.

#11: Is he talking about the Minnesota Timberwolves? What league are they in again?

I wish I had grabbed the screenshot about 4 hours earlier, before the evening's games were complete. Then we could have also discussed "Jets to pay Holmes $15.25M guaranteed," which is not actually about sports but about his RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS TEAM WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BE GOOD, and "Suh is fourth on Forbes' most-disliked list" which may shock you but is in fact about something besides sports. This is where we are in the year 2012, people. The country's loudest sports network covers the country's most popular league by shoveling complete garbage down viewers' throats. In theory this practice occurs because the market demands it; those stories get clicked millions of times so they go on the font page. In practice, I suspect ESPN is shaping the market just as much as they're reacting to it. If they can get sports fans that are more interested in interview sound bites than what actually happens on the field and in front offices, it's that much easier for them to generate content. It takes a lot of work to report on real stories. It takes almost no work at all to say oooooooh look at what X said about Y! Isn't that captivating?!?!?!

Fuck it, this weekend I'm going back to writing TMQRs. At least that guy cares about the games.

I should also admit, I'm a little over-focused on ESPN when it comes to this kind of awfulness. I cruised around to some other big network sites today and they're pretty much peddling the same crap. Maybe ESPN isn't actually shaping the market as much as I think, maybe it really is all organic. Christ. I hate everyone.

FMTMQR: I Keep Getting Older, but Gregg Stays Just as Dumb

I took a few weeks off from doing TMQRs. I'm sure all eleven of you noticed. Why did I take that break? Because each and every one of these is a descent into madness. Pretentious madness, which is the worst kind of madness. They take so much out of me. But I'm back. I'm back like pass wacky offenses- just ask Gregg, he'll tell you that it's hardly a new trend! The 1937 Akron Zeppelins of the National Foot Ball Association threw for over 8,000 yards in just 12 games. Now, on to the assholery.

Of the 88 players who started on championship Sunday, 19 were undrafted. Countless megabucks first-round draft choices sat at home drinking blueberry wheat microbrews and munching genetically modified maize chips while watching undrafted gentlemen perform on the big stage.

Yes. Given the fact that 28 teams were not playing on championship Sunday, there were in fact a large number of highly paid/highly drafted/both players not playing. Which just goes to show you- during any given season, there isn't much correlation between having been awesome at college football, and playing for a berth in the Super Bowl. Thank goodness we know. For what it's worth, there were also a bunch of assholes sitting at home on championship Sunday drinking warm Busch Light and eating stale rice cakes who were undrafted and currently play in the CFL.

Kids -- never give up! TMQ admires those players who excel despite being undrafted, waived, or both.

He suuuuuuure does. NO ONE APPRECIATES JEFF SATURDAY LIKE TMQ. NO ONE. I feel the need to balance out his bizarre love for high-achieving undrafted guys, so I've just recently decided that my new favorite players are JaMarcus Russell and Darius Heyward-Bay.

In cultural news, the other day I took a United Airlines flight from Toronto to Washington. Scheduled departure time was 10:03 a.m. -- not 10:00, 10:03. Throughout this column you'll find TMQ's annual review of absurd pseudo-precision.

What? A flight, which depends on an enormously complex system of timing windows for various air routes and air traffic control panels, can't just say "Hey we'll take off around 10 and probably land sometime in the afternoon?" The airline industry could use some streamlining if you ask me.

And how is that cultural news?

In overtime, the host Saints -- outplayed by the Vikings in every respect save turnovers -- faced a fourth-and-1 on the Minnesota 43-yard line. This is do-or-die -- you cannot give the ball back to the other team in overtime. Three times earlier in the game, New Orleans needed 1 yard for a first down, and all three times the Saints were stuffed. Sean Payton sent in a goal-line play -- one in which tailback Pierre Thomas leaps above the trench, as if at the goal line.

It was a good call. I liked it. Of course, you don't really see that play at the goal line very often. When players go airborne while carrying the ball, they're much more at risk to fumble. And on that play, Thomas very nearly did fumble. He lost the ball in midair, trapped it with his leg, and recovered before he hit the ground. Awesome play.

Why do coaches only call the leap at the goal line? Because the most it can gain is 2 yards; the runner crosses the line of scrimmage, then slams to the ground. That's fine at the goal line, but in the middle of the field, coaches want to maintain the chance of a long run.

You are wrong. You are stupid. You are clown shoes. ESPN should dock your next paycheck for that theory. That's worse than "Adrian Peterson is good because he doesn't look at defenders when he's running." Coaches almost never call that play regardless of where on the field their team is, again, because of the risk of fumbling. It's also high risk/high reward- there's no chance a leaping runner, if stuffed, will be able to pick up the first down on a second effort. Once they leave the ground, the end result of the play is essentially predetermined. Either they'll make it or they won't. Which isn't the same as when a RB dives into the line on 4th and 1- they might be able to bounce outside if they're stuffed initially. But really, this is more explanation than you need. Suffice it to say that Gregg is a waterhead.

In mid-December, nfl-forecast.com declared New England had an "88.78 percent" chance of winning its division, while Minnesota had a "98.38 percent" chance and Buffalo clung to a "0.04 percent" chance. Dallas, meanwhile, had a "50.3 percent" chance of reaching the playoffs.

How dare that website publish those decimals which its computer model easily calculated! They're wasting valuable internet bandwidth!

Shawn Fury of New York City notes of a Bulls-Nuggets contest, "With 0.6 seconds left, Chauncey Billups was fouled in a tie game. He made the first free throw, putting Denver ahead. He missed the second on purpose, figuring time would expire the instant the ball hit the rim. Nope.

Right, because there were 0.6 seconds left, remember? The amount of time it takes for a ball to make contact with a rim and then bounce off is probably something like .01 seconds. Because balls are bouncy.

Chicago grabbed a rebound, called timeout and the clock showed 0.3 seconds. The Bulls inbounded to Brad Miller, who catches the pass, pivoted and fired a shot. Chicago wins! Then the refs review it and say no goal, the ball was on his fingertips when time expired. So according to the NBA, in the span of 0.6 seconds, the Bulls could grab a rebound, call a timeout, throw to a player who catches the basketball, pivots and raises the ball to shoot. Imagine what he could have done with 0.7 seconds!"

Well, he could have won the game for his team. Why are you asking sarcastically? Apparently it took 0.3 seconds for the ball to hit the rim, be rebounded, and for the rebounder to call timeout. then it took something like 0.35 seconds for Miller to grab the inbounds pass and shoot it. The fact that it's so hard for some people to understand that those are actual amounts of time boggles my mind. THE NBA SHOULD USE AN ANALOG CLOCK WITH NO SECOND HAND OR MINUTE HAND TO KEEP TIME DURING ITS GAMES. THAT'S ALL THE HUMAN BRAIN CAN COMPREHEND. ONCE THE HOUR HAND IS ON THE NINE, GUYS, GAME'S OVER. AND NOT AN HOUR SOONER.

In Game 2 of the 2009 NBA Finals, time appeared to expire as the ball caromed out of bounds at the end of regulation. Officials Steve Javie, Tom Washington and Monty McCutchen huddled and put 0.6 of a second back on the clock, allowing Orlando a chance to win. NBA officials can sense three-fifths of a second!

When looking at instant replay in slow motion, they might be able to "sense" durations of time even smaller than that! Maybe even all the way down to 0.3 seconds! Madness!

Bills scout Tom Modrak told Mark Gaughan of the Buffalo News that college shotgun spread offenses make it hard to evaluate the pass-blocking ability of offensive linemen because, "The quarterback always throws the ball in 1.7 seconds." College quarterbacks can sense tenths of seconds!

They sure can, on some level. We've already had this argument. And I won. From November 2008:

This recent New York Times story about the work habits of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and Florida offensive coordinator Dan Mullen is both unintentionally hilarious, and disquieting.

Irony. So much delicious irony in that sentence.

The hilarious part: "The hours Mullen and Tebow spend together are geared around 1.3 seconds, the amount of time Tebow has to make a decision after the snap." This is another instance of the sports world's nutty obsession with claiming to be able to sense tenths of seconds.

Yeah, everyone knows that defensive linemen and blitzing linebackers and safties only move towards the QB in full second increments. Why bother practicing for a 1.3 second release when the defenders will only arrive after either exactly 1 second or exactly 2 seconds? How silly is that? I mean, come on, Tebow. Why bother with precision? Like, for example, say you need to throw a precisely timed pass to a receiver who's running an out route. Shouldn't it be good enough to say "Hey, I'll throw it about 3 seconds after the snap?" I think so. I mean, how much more precise could you get.

While we're on the subject, I think it's worth pointing out that a player who runs the 40 yard dash in 4.6 seconds is clearly no faster than one who runs it in 5.4 seconds. Why bother measuring the tenths? What a waste.

Gregg Easterbrook is so fucking stupid that I can't even creatively express my rage.

The NBA season has started, so it won't be long until an official somberly instructs a timekeeper to put a tenth of a second back on the clock.

Hopefully, because then he will write about it and then I will get to write a blog entry that looks exactly like this one in response.

There is no chance Tebow or any quarterback under game conditions can tell the difference between 1.2 seconds, 1.3 seconds or 1.4 seconds.

Very true. However, idiot, that's not the point of whatever these drills are. It's to give Tebow an innate sense of how long is too long to hold onto the ball. Say he runs drill X 100 times. He releases the ball after 1.2 seconds 25 times, after 1.3 seconds 50 times, and after 1.4 seconds 25 times. You think he couldn't pick out at least a few of the times he held the ball that fraction of a second too long? I'm reasonably sure he could. And while he may be incapable of doing that kind of thinking during a game, the point of a drill is to make it so you don't have to think when the game rolls around. You just act.

Probably a good quarterback can tell the difference between one second and two seconds under game conditions, which is impressive enough.

I can tell the difference bewteen 1 second and 2 seconds when I'm playing a pickup game with my friends. I am not a good quarterback. Anyone with a working brain should be able to make that distinction.

But, "Tim, make your read in 1.3 seconds" is a meaningless instruction.

You're a fucking idiot.

See? And I'm still right.

Large, comfortable, well-lit, well-ventilated underground passageways also continue to star in nonsense entertainment. In the recent remake of "Pelham 1-2-3," the bad guys discover an "abandoned subway tunnel" that opens directly into … the lobby of the Waldorf Hotel. At what point, exactly, did the subway once run through the Waldorf? (Addendum: Numerous readers, including Pete Klaiber of Moscow, Idaho, are reporting there actually is an abandoned subway line to the Waldorf Astoria.)

Snarky point! (Oh, and confession that snarky point was completely wrong.)

Then the terrific Indianapolis offensive line -- which started three undrafted players -- adjusted to the feeling of the Jersey/B blitz, and the Jets never got to Manning again.

Don't expect Gregg to write anything about the Jets' awesome offensive line, anchors of the league's #1 rushing defense- it has four count 'em four 1st round picks as starters. BUT DID YOU KNOW JEFF SATURDAY WASN'T DRAFTED?

The Michigan state personal income tax is now 3.95 percent -- it's certainly not 4 percent! The New Jersey top state tax rate is now 8.97 percent -- certainly not 9 percent! Where I live, in Montgomery County in Maryland, the top state-and-county combined tax rate is 9.45 percent -- certainly not 9.5 percent!

How absurdly pseudo-accurate! Say you live in Michigan and your yearly household taxable income is $100,000. (Pretty unlikely if you live in Michigan in the year 2010, but work with me here.) I mean, what's the different between giving up $3,950 of your income to that particular tax vs. $4,000? Fifty bucks? Who cares about fifty bucks? Over the course of several different types of taxes, say you just round everything like this up and end up paying an extra $200 a year. Who cares about two hundred bucks? Certainly not middle or lower class families. I think next time I file my taxes, I'll just round the rate up to the nearest 10%. Paying what the legislature has determined the exact rate to be is just too ridiculously quasi-specific for me.

Jeff Pearlman: Still Sanctimonious After All These Years

I actually came across this--no joke--via Tim McCarver's twitter page. Someone retweeted Tim fucking McCarver's tweet w/r/t Pearlman's article. McCarver's take?

After horrible tragedies, patronizing sportwriters are guaranteed to remind us that sports don't really matter

It's hard to say it much better or more concisely. Can't say I was expecting that from old Timmy. In any case, though I can't improve on McCarver's take, I think it's worthwhile to really look at the crap Pearlman's feeding us here.

EDIT: Looking now at the actual "Tim McCarver" Twitter feed it's pretty obviously a fake McCarver. Damn. I kind of wished it were real. I like T Mac.

I want to scream.

I want to fly to Knoxville, stand in the center of the of the University of Tennessee campus and scream, "Look at this!"

I want to hold up a page from Thursday's New York Times -- the one featuring this image of Lionel Michaud. It is, without question, the most disturbing photograph I have ever seen. Michaud is sitting on a stoop in the central morgue in Port-au-Prince, surrounded by dozens of lifeless bodies. On his knee rests his 10-month-old daughter, Christian. She is dead. Michaud's wife, Lormeny Nathalie, is dead, too.

His head is in his right hand.

His family is gone.

His world is destroyed.

And all you can think about is Lane Kiffin?

Lane Kiffin!?

Last things first: I sincerely doubt that even the most dedicated Tennessee fan is thinking about nothing but Lane Kiffin right now. Food, beer, chicks, foam fingers, and maybe in some far reach of his mind, academics are also probably weighing on hypothetical single-minded UT fan's mind right now as well.

But more seriously, what the fuck is Jeff Pearlman trying to pull here? You're going to take an example of human suffering and try to make us view sports through that lens by using an example of extreme specificity? GMAB. Pearlman over the last few weeks has written a series of handwringing blog posts and articles about the myriad atrocities of the sports world.

Is it fair to go up to him with a picture of the family of any number of the people in America who die every day and say to him, "HOW DARE YOU WRITE THIS ARTICLE BEMOANING THE LACK OF ETHICS OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL COACHES? LOOK AT THIS FAMILY WHO HAS LOST THEIR SON TO GANG VIOLENCE?"

And how far do we extend this line of thinking? Can no sports fan be upset about anything because of The Holocaust? Or The Spanish Inquisition? Or Beowulf's death at the hands of a dragon lo these many years?

I don't mean to trivialize the Haitian tragedy, but let's face it--No one in the entire world would ever say Lane Kiffin leaving Tennessee is a bigger tragedy than the Haitian earthquake. No one. Not even your accursed Tennessee fans, Jeff.

Please, do the world a simple favor: Find the nearest mirror and look at yourself. Wipe off the white-and-orange face paint, remove the goofy hat, slip out of the Peyton Manning jersey, turn down Rocky Top, find a quiet place -- and take a good glance.

What do you see?

They probably see someone who uses sports as a way to escape from the troubles of the real world who feel rightly let down when someone they admire does something they consider dishonest. Sound familiar, Jeff?

Immediately following Kiffin's press conference to announce his departure for USC on Tuesday evening, a mob of approximately 500 people gathered on campus. According to the Knoxville News-Sentinel, fire was set to a tattered mattress and a handful of Tennessee T-shirts. The participants were hoping to catch Kiffin on his way out of town, to presumably do more than merely talk.

The coach was driven home by university police officers, and a Knox County deputy was assigned to protect him. "We assured (Kiffin)," said sherriff Jimmy Jones, "that there would be somebody close."

Yes. This is absurd by any standards and is par for the course in college football--a sad truth we should all be concerned about to some extent. It has absolutely nothing to do with the earthquake in Haiti.

In the ensuing days, Vols message boards have been overtaken by people tearing into Kiffin. Tearing into Kiffin's wife. Wishing him personal harm and never-ending misery. He is, they believe, the anti-Christ -- an evil, self-absorbed man who eats young children and secretly plots world domination from the balcony of his sadistic lair.

When, exactly, did we start reaching such a low? When did sports go from serving as a mere diversion (entertainment, enjoyment, fun), to being a way of life ... an actual barometer of a community's happiness or grief? When did the career decision (albeit, awkwardly expressed) of a moderately successful 34-year-old football coach begin to matter so much?

A long, long fucking time ago, Jeff. A long fucking time ago. Long before your beloved baseball of the 1970's and 1980's. A long fucking time ago. Ask Hank Aaron about the letters he used to get about an arbitrary home run total. Read accounts of Roger Maris's treatment at the hands of reporters and fans outraged he would dare to break a single season home run total. To say nothing of college football fans--look: is it too much to ask of a guy writing a MSM article about the culture of college football to have some perspective w/r/t the history of the culture of college football?

As a boy growing up in small town of Mahopac, N.Y., my parents would try and comfort me following Little League losses by saying, "It's just a game -- keep things in perspective" Then we'd get ice cream. The lesson took some time to sink in, but once it did, I never forgot it.

Wow.

Sports have always been important in my life, but primarily as a way to have fun. Heck, that's when they're at their absolute best: Your day at work stunk, your spouse is in a bad mood, the kid's got the flu -- thank god LeBron vs. D-Wade is on at 8 tonight. Pass the popcorn, ease the mind.

Yup. And you know better than ever that when the thing you use as diversion becomes tainted by something, the customary reaction is to whine like a baby and throw a temper tantrum

But...you know...it's different when...uh...Tennessee fans do it. Because of Haiti? I guess?

Having spent two-and-a-half years of my career in Tennessee, I was an unfortunate firsthand witness to the lunacy that is SEC football. During the time I was a writer at The Tennessean in Nashville, Peyton Manning had the audacity to choose to attend Tennessee over his father's alma mater, Ole Miss. In the months following the announcement, the Manning family was besieged with vicious hate mail from Rebel backers -- all because an 18-year-old kid with the quirky ability to effectively hurl a pig's skin through the air opted for the university of his choice.

Oh no...my mistake. It's because Jeff lived in Tennesse. So he had an up close and personal view of how superior he is emotionally to college football fans. Call it the Jay Mariotti factor.

Pathetic -- but not surprising.

Pathetic. But not surprising.

There is a place in this country for sports. An important place. The lessons of athletics can be invaluable, the bonds everlasting. But when a city reacts to the fleeing of a football coach with greater dismay than the loss of thousands of lives, something has gone wrong.

Terribly wrong.

I would generally agree with this. People put too much importance on sports. Sports are a form of entertainment. They sometimes hold sentimental value to the people who really love them, and they should. But they shouldn't cause anyone to froth at the mouth like a raving lunatic about how they represent something bigger than themselves.

You know...like how they represent something about a devastating earthquake in Haiti