According to Rick Reilly, the person most hurt by Lance Armstrong's lies was Rick Reilly

I don't think Rick has a baseball HOF vote, but he should.  He gives any of those assholes a run for their money in terms of ability to make everything revolve around himself.

Among my emails Wednesday morning, 

The first time I clicked into this article, I clicked out after reading this far.  I begrudgingly went back when I realized I was overdue for writing a post.

out of the blue, was one from Lance Armstrong.

Riles, 

What do you think Reilly called Armstrong?  Hopefully something as cringe-worthy as "Riles."

I'm sorry.

All I can say for now but also the most heartfelt thing too. Two very important words.

L

And my first thought was ... "Two words? That's it?"

Armstrong, as has been documented in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of places, is a legendary assfuck.  I'm so sorry that the personal apology he emailed you wasn't contrite enough for your tastes, but you should be thrilled you got one at all.  

Two words? For 14 years of defending a man? And in the end, being made to look like a chump?

/smallest violin

Wrote it, said it, tweeted it: "He's clean." Put it in columns, said it on radio, said it on TV. Staked my reputation on it.

Staked your what on it?  Oh, that?  Good news, no one noticed.

But here's the thing. When he says he's sorry now, how do we know he's not still lying? 

Oh my God, who cares?  He's another dirty competitor in the dirtiest sport on Earth.  Like 90% of all pro cyclists are on something.  You're a complete and total hack, a complete and total tool for athletes to use to push their agendas (as you're about to admit in this very column), and that's not their problem.  They might be terrible people but they don't owe you an apology.  They're not your friends.  They didn't steal anything from you.  Get the fuck over yourself and stick to writing stories about disabled children who get to play sports just like everyone else because gawrsh sports are just beautiful aren't they?

And I guess I should let it go, but I keep thinking how hard he used me. 

You're a 15 year old girl realizing the guy isn't going to call.  You're a fucking child.

Made me look like a sap. Made me carry his dirty water and I didn't even know it.

Because you're a bozo.

Look, I've been fooled before. I believed Mark McGwire was hitting those home runs all on his own natural gifts.  I believed Joe Paterno couldn't possibly cover up something so grisly as child molestation. 

Holy God, you are dumb as fucking rocks.

I bought Manti Te'o's girlfriend story. 

OK, that one, woosh, I'm not touching that one.

But those people never looked me square in the pupils and spit.

Pathetic.

It's partially my fault. I let myself admire him. Let myself admire what he'd done with his life, admire the way he'd not only beaten his own cancer but was trying to help others beat it.

YOU ARE ATROCIOUS AT YOUR JOB.

I didn't realize that behind those blues was a bully, 

Everyone realized that!  It's, like, the #1 most well known thing about his personality.

a coercer, a man who threatened people who once worked for and with him. The Andreus. Emma O'Reilly. Tyler Hamilton. Armstrong was strong-arming people in the morning, and filing lawsuits and op-ed pieces in the afternoon. We'd talk and his voice would get furious. And I'd believe him.

How do you have any money?  How have you not been scammed out of every single penny you own by deposed princes of Nigeria who ask for help getting millions into American banks? God you're gullible.  

I guess I should forgive him.

Fuck that.  What you should do first is 1) get off your fucking cross, 2) try to develop a perspective that doesn't place you at the center of the goddamn universe, and 3) stop being bad at your job.  Worry about forgiving Lance later.

If you think Andrew Luck had a better year than Robert Griffin III, you are a bozo

And ESPN's Ashley Fox is definitely a bozo.

It is award season in the National Football League.
The part of the year where NFL writers and commentators devote 100% of their time to mind-numbing bullshit meaningless analysis of nothing, as opposed to the rest of the year, during which they only devote 90% of their time to mind-numbing bullshit meaningless analysis of nothing.

Can an interim coach take home coach of the year? 

WHAT WILL IT SAY ABOUT US AS A SOCIETY IF ONE DOES?

Which dazzling quarterback will win rookie of the year? 

Probably the white one, because even though the black one has vastly superior numbers and had led his team to essentially identical regular season success with a much more difficult schedule, the white one just looks like a quarterback, doesn't he?  I don't know for sure that race plays a part in this, but Jesus, what else would convince Fox (and plenty of other bozos out there) that the guy with the way shittier numbers is the better QB?

Here is how one voter's ballot is shaping up:

Coach of the year: Indianapolis' Chuck Pagano/Bruce Arians.

#CHUCKSTRONG!!!!! My opinion on Pagano has shifted as the year has gone on. That locker room speech he gave after week 6 or 7 or whenever was undoubtedly the douchechilliest moment of the season for me. You know the one, the highlight shows each played it like 12 times that evening.  The one where he was yelling at his team about dancing with his daughters and their wedding.  Look, I have no problem with Pagano and I am glad his disease is in remission, but holy balls. That speech was 80% idiotic football coach bravado and 20% heartfelt emotion, which, at least for me was a horrible mixture. That speech and the praise it got from waterhead ex-player tv pundits made me root against the Colts (not Pagano himself, obviously--I'm not THAT much of a hater).  

Anyways, a few weeks ago I saw some clips of him interacting with cancer-stricken kids, and that actually did warm my heart a little (probably because it was 0% idiotic bravado and 100% heartfelt emotion). So I'm down with the Colts now. But please, could someone please burn that locker room speech clip? Every time I see/hear it, he comes off as a loud version of the boom goes the dynamite kid.

There will be a lot of competition in this category, including Mike Shanahan,

That's rich. I'm pretty sure everything Shanahan has done when his QB was named something other than Elway or Griffin--particularly the job he did in Washington from 2009 through 2011--has solidified his status as a mediocre at best coach/personnel evaluator. If you have Dan Snyder writing checks for you and you go 15-33 over the course of your first three seasons (after the team went 9-7 and 8-8 in the two seasons preceding your hiring), you should absolutely be fired. I'm not sure why he should win an award for stumbling into one of the best pro-ready QBs to come out of college in the last thirty years. He deserves credit for trading up for the pick that enabled the Redskins to take Griffin. He deserves no "coach of the year" level credit for being the guy who walks the sidelines as Griffin wins games for him.

Mike Smith,

No.

Mike McCarthy,

No. 

Jim Harbaugh

Maybe.

and Pete Carroll,

Might be my pick, but Pagano/Arians works too.

but no one endured what Pagano and Arians did. Few expected much from the Colts, who finished last season with two wins and the No. 1 overall draft pick. Pagano made the brilliant decision to hire Arians, whom Pittsburgh had cast aside, 

TMQ would not that weasel coach Mike Tomlin did this to deflect blame from himself, and actually, TMQ kind of might be right.

as offensive coordinator and then relied on him to coach the Colts while Pagano took a sabbatical to fight leukemia.

That's all true, but shouldn't we consider giving the award to McCarthy for having more or less the exact same team that won the Super Bowl two seasons ago and won 15 games last year, and coaching them to 11-5 this year?

Offensive rookie of the year: Luck.

Luck:

339/627, 4374 yards, 54.1% completions, 6.98 Y/A, 23 TDs, 18 INT, 76.5 QB rating, 11-5 record

Griffin:

258/393, 3200 yards, 65.6% completions, 8.14 Y/A, 20 TDs, 5 INT, 102.4 QB rating, 10-6 record

So the difference between them is that Luck accumulated 1000 more yards than Griffin and 3 more TDs on 200+ more attempts, and Griffin was so much more efficient that it's not even worth having a conversation about which of them is better. And this is isn't even factoring in Griffin's large edge in rushing.  Give Griffin 600+ attempts and his numbers would absolutely put Luck's to shame. The difference between them is somewhat similar to the difference between Matthew Stafford and Aaron Rodgers this year-Stafford has way more attempts and thus more yards, and Rodgers is abundantly better in every other way. But yeah, go ahead, tell me about how great Luck was this year.

There was ample competition here, with Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III and Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson each leading their teams to winning records with a chance to win their respective divisions.

Christ, even Wilson's numbers put Luck's to shame in every category other than total yards and lightness of skin pigment.  Why would anyone pick Luck?  I can't think of any theories other than the depressing one I've already floated.  Anyone got any others?  Plz share.

But look at Luck's numbers running a pro-style offense.

And there's the not-so-subtle dig at Griffin and Wilson--apparently they're not running "pro-style offenses."  I haven't seen a ton of Seattle's games this year but I see plenty of Washington's and it's not like they're in the wishbone.  Griffin probably takes 50-60% of his snaps from the pistol.  Who gives a shit?  The numbers are the numbers.  Griffin isn't just an awesome running QB, he was also one of the best passers in the league this year.  He was a significantly better passer than Luck.  I wasn't aware that "number of snaps taken from under center" was an important input into MVP decisions.

In 15 games, he set the rookie record with 4,183 passing yards. 

On 600+ attempts.

He set the single-game rookie record with 433 passing yards against Miami in Week 9. 

There's a good chance he deserved Week 9 offensive MVP.  I'll grant that.

He set the rookie record for attempts 

Big ups to him for being drafted to a team that really needed a QB, and playing for a coaching staff that likes throwing.

and is within 29 of Sam Bradford's rookie record for completions. 

This was written before week 17--he didn't get that number, because at the rate he completes passes, he would have had to throw 57 times in week 17 to reach it.

Luck's six 300-yard passing games are two better than Peyton Manning's previous rookie record of four, 

Yards yards yards yards yards yards.  Hooraaaaayyyyyyyy MVP!

and his 10 wins are the most ever by a No. 1 overall pick, three better than Bradford's seven. 

That's fine--Griffin won 10, and Wilson won 11.  But did they do it running a PRO STYLE OFFENSE?

Plus, Luck has seven game-winning drives this season, and the Colts are in the playoffs. 

Again.

Detractors will point to Luck's 18 interceptions and 54.3 completion percentage as reasons not to vote for him, 

And they will be right, particularly about the completion percentage.

but he has thrown a lot of interceptions because the Colts have asked him to make a ton of throws.  No team has asked more of its rookie quarterback.

Sure, the Seahawks have Marshawn Lynch and a great defense, and I wouldn't bet on Wilson being better than Luck in five years, but the numbers are the numbers.  Washington asked a ton of Griffin, given his RB situation (no one expected this from Alfred Morris, and he's helped out mightily by Griffin's play) and the horrid injuries the team sustained on defense early in the year, and the numbers are still the numbers, and Ashley Fox is still a bozo.

I haven't had a lot of free time lately

I'm sure that's been evident from the frequency and length of my posts.  I barely have time to read stuff by TMQ and Simmons, let alone write about it.  That means I really need to thank noted Scott Boras shill Jon Heyman for providing me with so much stupidity in so few words:

1.  Did I mention that he's still shilling for Boras?  PRINCE WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY!  YOU HEAR ME, MLB OWNERS?  EVERY PENNYYYYYYY

2.  Pudge signed a 4 year/$40MM deal.  It was 2004, but that still doesn't come close to approaching "big ticket."

3.  Cabrera really signed a preTty big fRee Agent Deal, didn't hE?  No but seriously, the TRADE that brought him to Detroit was a memorable TRADE for a couple of reasons: the Tigers took Dontrelle Willis too, much to Florida's delight; and the centerpieces coming back to Florida were Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller, who went on to record negative WAR for Florida over the course of the next three seasons.  

4.  To Heyman's credit, Ordonez really was a free agent, and really did sign a pretty sizable deal.  Never one to ever be right, though, Heyman still identifies a guy who was paid $89MM to produce 13.2 rWAR over the course of 5 seasons (more than half of it in 2007--which is to say, during the other 4 seasons encompassed by that deal, he was a colossal failure) as a real success.

5.  Fielder just had a very good season, one in which he was payed properly.  $23MM for somewhere between 4 and 5 WAR is about right.  So if Detroit signed him to a 1 year/$23MM risk-free deal last offseason, this tweet would be kind of sort of correct (besides the issues raised in 2, 3 and 4 above).  Unfortunately, Fielder turns 29 next season and will be paid either $23MM and $24MM every year until 2020, when he's 36.  So let's maybe hold off before we call this deal a flying success.

6.  This tweet has since been deleted.  WHERE ARE YOUR ETHICS, JON?  Just kidding, I don't really care about that, Heyman is less anti-blogger than most baseball writers.  Complaints 1 through 5 stand though.

As always, Rick Reilly shows us the funny

In a column that no doubt consists mostly of jokes he has already used in other columns throughout the years, Rick brings up a topic about as ripe for hilarious non-analysis as airplane food and boner pills: BASEBALLERZ R SLOW WHEN THEY DO THINGZ, TEH GAME IS BORINGS TO ME.

Things that nobody reads in America today:
The online legal mumbo jumbo before you check the little "I Agree" box.

Kate Upton's resume.

Actually, I would like to read that.  I want to know whether or not she graduated from high school (is that a thing models do?) and where she got her first big break.  EAT IT RICK, I'M ALREADY MESSING WITH YOUR WORLD.

Major League Baseball's "Pace of Play Procedures."

Premise of the article: baseball games are too slow.  Rick's chosen method of drawing in the audience: making a list of things that people apparently don't read and putting MLB's pace guidelines on it.  Since whether or not people read those guidelines is a very relatable, illustrative idea.  Get the engraving machine ready--I smell another sportswriter of the year award.


Not that baseball games don't have a pace. 


Where's he going with this...


They do: snails escaping a freezer.


SNAP!


Cincinnati at San Francisco was a 3-hour, 14-minute can-somebody-please-stick-two-forks-in-my-eyes snore-a-palooza. 


Remember that 3.25 hours number.


Like a Swedish movie, it might have been decent if somebody had cut 90 minutes out of it. 


Don't drag the fact that you didn't enjoy The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo into this.


I'd rather have watched eyebrows grow.  And I should have known better.


That last sentence was a link to a piece he wrote in 2000 about this very subject.  I hate linking to the shitpile that is Deadspin, but they have done a good job documenting Rick's self-plagiarism in the past. Not to say he's plagiarizing here, but come the fuck on, man.  There are like thousands and thousands of things happening in sports that you can write about.  Maybe try not to keep writing about the same shit over and over? 


Buster Posey of the Giants, The Man Who Wrecked Your Dinner Reservations, has this habit of coming to the box, stopping outside it and unfastening and refastening his gloves before his FIRST SWING! What exactly was he doing in the on-deck circle? His cuticles?

I'm not going to say I've never ever been annoyed at the pace of a baseball game, but holy fucking shit Rick, your favorite sport is golf.  Golf is the undisputed heavyweight champion of sports that involve people taking for-fucking-EVER to get ready to swing a thing another thing.  Jesus.  It's agonizing.  But hey, at least when golfers aren't taking four minutes to throw blades of grass in the air and otherwise do the super important things you do when you're getting ready to swing a club at a ball, they're walking places.  Now that's action.

New rule: Umpires who don't order batters back into the box within 12 seconds -- because the rules state that a pitcher must throw the ball within 12 seconds of receiving it -- will get the room at the hotel next to the newlyweds.

NEW RULE: IF YOU TAKE MORE THAN FIVE SECONDS TO LINE UP YOUR PUTT, YOU GET PUNCHED IN THE FACE LOL

There's also this amusing passage in the "Pace of Play Procedures" (hah!): 

What is that "hah" doing there?  Is he laughing at the existence of the Procedures?  Is it a pre-emptive laugh at what we are being led to believe will be a RIOTOUS rule within said procedures?  Is he still thinking about how funny it is to watch snails try to escape a freezer?

"When given permission to leave the batter's box under Rule 6.02, batters may not step more than 3 feet from the batter's box."
Whoo-eee! That's rich. These guys wandered away from the box like 2-year-olds at a petting zoo. Six times they left the dirt circle around the plate altogether. Left the entire circle!

THE HUMANITY!  Look, complain about the number of seconds it takes a pitcher/hitter to do X all you want.  I'm down with that.  At some point, guys are taking too long.  But who gives a flying rat's ass about this?

And by the way, this nonsense about there's only a 2-minute, 10-second TV break between half innings? Bullfeathers. Only once did the break between half innings take 2:10 or less. The rest of the time, it was miles over. The break before the top of the fifth was 4 minutes, 12 seconds! 

It should go without saying that this has not a fucking thing to do with the Pace of Play Procedures or how many inches from the plate batters are wandering these days.  This is about teams making money.  Durrr.

Where did everybody go? 

They were in the stadium the whole time, it's just that the TV feed cut away so sponsors who paid money can get messages about their products out to the viewers?

Out to feed their meters?

No?

There were 14 attempts by pitchers to pick off runners, not one of them even coming close. 

Actually, 14 pickoff attempts in a game that was close throughout sounds relatively low.  I guess it was a game involving the Giants at AT&T Park, so there were probably like six total baserunners during the nine innings.

Most of them resembled somebody tossing a turkey to a co-worker.

Tossing a what to a who?

New rule: Pitchers get two pickoff attempts per runner. For every one after that, the umpire adds a ball to the hitter's count.

Ah, and here we have the exact moment when he went from being a guy who might know something about sports and is complaining about some shit that's sort of OK to complain about, to being a guy who obviously has his head firmly entrenched in his ass when it comes to knowing anything about sports.

Four times the hitter, after going through his Art Carney routine, got into the box, decided the pitcher was messing with him, and called time out.
Twice the pitcher wanted a timeout.
Five times the catcher called time out to go out to the mound to discuss, what? ObamaCare?

That's a thing that was in the news recently!  Other options: the TomKat divorce, how darn hot it is outside, and something about that Justin Bieber fella.

And explain to me why a reliever who's been warming up in the bullpen for five minutes still needs eight pitches to warm up on the mound. 

Because he hasn't been warming up with that catcher, or from that mound.

Do field goal kickers get eight practice kicks? Dumb.

Lulz at the idea of analogizing field goals and pitches.  DO BASKETBALL PLAYERS GET TO PRACTICE THEIR ALLEY OOPS DURING TV TIMEOUTS?  DIDN'T THINK SO.

Three hours and 14 minutes, 170 step-outs, and three double-shot macchiatos for that?

Please, I beg of you, bring on the NFL.

Yeah!  Can't wait for NFL games to start!  If you're annoyed by 3 hour and 14 minute games that mostly consist of players standing around and waiting or adjusting their equipment for twenty seconds before the next three second flurry of action, the NFL is the league for you!  It's wall to wall adrenaline with no breaks or interruptions, and you know what the best part is?  Sometimes you get to take a three or four minute breather while one of the officials ducks into a little booth and rewatches the play that just happened twenty times before deciding that it pretty much happened the way he originally saw it happen.  God it's thrilling.  My heart is racing just thinking about all the action!  

People who think baseball is boring because there's too much standing around but that football is BALLS TO THE WALL AWESOME ALL THE TIME should be sterilized and/or beaten to death in public.

Uh, here's some stuff I was sort of thinking about

Do I have the energy to do a real post?  Not really, and given my half-hearted efforts on that Simmons stuff from last week, it's probably best that I don't try.  Instead:

Courtesy of hdh9 in the comments to Thursday's post, this is what it looks like when someone who gets paid to write makes fun of Bill.

I realize I have bitched about this several times in the last year or so, but I hadn't watched Sportscenter in a few weeks and turned it on this evening to catch highlights of Spain/Italy.  I got about a minute of those highlights, followed by another two minutes during which the anchor read tweets congratulating Spain from soccer analysts like LeBron.  The tweets weren't insightful or funny or controversial.  And the anchor had to sit there and read them to us, because apparently posting them on the screen and giving viewers a few seconds to read at their own pace wouldn't provide the proper framing.  Holy shit, what the hell happened, Sportscenter?

Finally, we all know the only thing worse than Sportscenter is sports talk radio.  It's the clogged septic tank of sports analysis.  Tonight I was driving around and flicked over to my local FOX Sports radio affiliate.  The host, Mike North (the guy who used to have his own show Chicago until he got fired for being an asshole) was talking to some goofball caller about the candidates for the final MLB All-Star spots.  They were discussing Harper vs. Chipper, and shit got very dumb very quickly.  This isn't all exact quotes, but I was listening to it like 30 minutes ago, so it's close.

See, people are saying that you have to take Chipper because it's his last season.  And they're saying that Harper can wait, because he'll have plenty more chances.  


Given that the candidates were just announced, this is probably a straw man.  I don't think that many people who aren't Braves fans are saying/will say that.


I don't like that "we have to honor Chipper because it's his last year" stuff.  

Go on.


I think you have to evaluate based entirely on performance, in the here and now.  


Well that's one way to look at it, and I'm not sure it's the best way, but I can see why you would--


Don't you want to see Harper?  In my opinion, he is the youngest, brightest star in the game.  


Don't go too far out on a limb!  Is Harper "young?"  Sort of.  Is he younger than every single other current MLB player?  Technically, yes.  Is he the "youngest" star (or player) in the game?  TBD.  I'm simply not ready to commit to that idea.  


Also: the people (to the extent that there are any) who really want Chipper to go because it's his last season have things all wrong!  It's all about who's playing better, plain and simple.  Oh, and also, in addition to evaluating who is playing better, you should also make sure to include any player who is young and exciting on the basis of their status as young and exciting.  


Besides, everyone said Mark Fidrych would get plenty of chances to pitch in the All Star Game, and he was out of baseball two years later!


Fidrych did pitch in the ASG.  Twice.  And that's when I flipped to another station.  Sports talk radio is worse than genocide.

By the time you read this, FireJay will be five years old

It's true.  We've been clogging up the internet tubes for a full five years.  That first day of the blog's existence produced several gems.  And hey, in terms of the subject matter we most frequently bitch about, look how much has changed!  Check some of those early posts if you're feeling super bored today. Those were lean times.  It's hard to believe, but I was an even worse writer then than I am now.  At least my life is way better! Back then I was a low level employee at a big company in a depressing city.  Now I'm a midlevel employee at a different big company in the same depressing city.  Let that be a lesson to you, future sports bloggers: your dreams can and will come true.  (Peter King addendum to previous sentence: Maybe.)

5. Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen

You already know my thoughts on Boston's title chances.

/grinds teeth

The Celtics are still just as likely to win the Stanley Cup as they are to win the NBA title.  But I'm still annoyed.

My friend Grande called it first back in February: Even then, before Boston's improbable resurgence, it made the most sense for Boston and Chicago to battle in the 2012 playoffs 

In February, your buttclog of a friend "called it" because "it made the most sense."  Holy shit.  We've found someone with an even looser grasp than Bill on the mechanics of the world of sports.

in one of those classic, "Once upon a time, you were the teacher and I was the pupil, only now, the pupil is all growns up!" 

Star Wars reference + Swingers reference = HOLLYWOOD GOLD

series that would feature tons of highlights from their unforgettable 2009 clash 

As Bill calls it, "[the Celtics'] finals" that year.  No really, after winning that one, they had no reason to keep trying.  At that point they had successfully defended their 2008 title.  You're welcome, Orlando. 

that spawned not one but two columns from me (and served as Derrick Rose's unofficial breakout party, 

Rose's breakout came 14 months earlier during March Madness 2008, but don't expect Bill to miss out on an opportunity to try to convince you that he's a step ahead of the game when it comes to identifying great basketball players everyone already knew were great.

as well as Joe Dumars's break-out-the-wallet-to-overpay-Ben-Gordon party).

It sounds silly, but sometimes things are just destined to happen … 

It sounds like ridiculous bullshit.

and that's why I can't take Atlanta seriously. The Celtics are meant to play Chicago in Round 2. 

I wish it had happened (with a healthy Rose).  How delightful it would have been to see the Celtics get bounced in 5 and have Bill talk about how the Atlanta series was their finals in 2012.

You have the Chicago ties with KG and Doc; you have the Boston ties with Thibodeau and Scalabrine. You have the fantastically underrated Rose-Rondo rivalry (which started in 2009 and blossomed at the USA Basketball tryouts), as well as Avery Bradley (my favorite Celtic in eons) ready to lock Rose down and put himself on the map. You have Noah and Garnett doing their whole passive-aggressive, fake tough-guy agitation routines. You have a really good Pierce-Deng chess match, as well as Chicago killer Ray Allen lurking. You have the seeds for an epic Stiemsma-Asik battle. You have Doc and Thibodeau … and let there be no mistake, Doc would love nothing more than outwitting Thibs in a playoff series and putting the whole "You've never been the same without Thibs" narrative to rest once and for all. It's going to be an absolute classic. You know, assuming both teams get there. I think they will, and I think it's meant to be.

You have a bunch of stuff that's interesting, because these are two of the 16 best teams on the planet and they have interesting players and coaches.  THE STARS AND MOONS ARE ALIGNING.

Speaking of destiny … the odds of a Lakers-Celtics Finals are 50-to-1. 

You know, gambling on that is a great hedge against the insufferable coverage that series would get.  "Wow, I can't go to any sports websites or watch Sportscenter for 2 weeks, but at least I just made $1000."

Just throwing it out there. (Waiting.) Why are you laughing?

Because an episode of The Three Stooges is on in the background as I type this?

4. Chris Paul

I already made the case for his runner-up MVP season here and here, as well as the case that Paul shifts gears like the driver of a Formula 1 car depending on the game, the quarter or even the moment … and under that analogy, you'd think he's saving a little extra something for the playoffs, a little like how Dom Toretto always saves that one last nitrous oxide blast for the biggest moment. Just one problem: I hate the Memphis matchup for him. They can contain Paul with Tony Allen and Mike Conley (a quality defender); as we learned all season, the Clippers' crunch-time offense is basically, "Go ahead, Chris, do something." Again, Memphis is constructed to shut down teams like that. So either Paul clicks that nitrous blast, goes to another level and cements his status as "the best pure point guard ever," or the Clippers are going down … hard. I'm betting on the latter.

Making today's game 7 result very unsurprising.

(Important note: None of this will matter next season, when the Clips are contending as Vinny Del Negro works the weekday midnight shift with a demoted Shaq on NBA TV.)

SOMEONE MAKE ME THE VP OF COMMENTATOR ASSIGNMENTS COMMON SENSE!  GRIZZLIES IN 5!  

3. Kobe Bryant
2. Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich
1. LeBron James

Lumping the last three together because, from a legacy standpoint, they have the most at stake. 

Already went over this a couple posts ago.  It would be true to say that all have a lot to gain.  But Kobe and Duncan/Popovich have very little to lose, meaning they have nothing at stake.  Saying what he just said is like saying "Tom Brady has more at stake in 2012 than any other FOOTBALL player."

If the Lakers win the title, "Kobe vs. Jordan" becomes a legitimate conversation to the chagrin of everyone who believes Jordan was the greatest basketball player who ever lived who ever lived and that we're never seeing another MJ. You know I'm in that camp, but at some point, the sheer girth of Kobe's résumé is going to outlive every reverential Jordan story. 

Such a concerted attempt to minimize Kobe's accomplishments.  The best part about his resume is apparently its "girth," which is an obvious attempt to damn with faint praise.  If I weren't of the opinion that Kobe is a Grade A jizzbag, I'd put more of an effort into refuting this. 

With a sixth ring, Kobe only has to break the scoring record and become the owner of an NBA team that disgraces itself by finishing 5-77 to truly threaten Jordan's throne.

Don't forget the awkward underwear ads with Kevin Bacon!

As for Duncan and Popovich, they have a chance to win titles 13 seasons apart — something that's never even come close to happening in the NBA. Riley and Magic-Kareem won titles six seasons apart. Auerbach and Russell won titles nine seasons apart. But 13??? Will we ever see that again? 

I'm not counting them out or anything, but given the way they've bounced out of the playoffs the past three years (zero second round games won, bounced in the first round as the West's top seed last year) it stands to reason that their title gap is going to remain at eight years.  Who knows, maybe the fact that the season was shorter (although also more concentrated) than a normal season will play into their hand or something.

And also, a fifth Spurs title would propel them into the "Greatest Runs Ever" discussion along with Russell's Celtics (13 years, 11 titles), MJ's Bulls (eight years, six titles), Mikan's Minneapolis teams (six years, five titles) and Kahn's Timberwolves (just kidding). 

HIRE ME TO TELL YOU HOW DUMB YOU ARE AND HOW WE SHOULD TRADE FOR SOME FORMER CELTICS!  WHO SAYS NO?

Throw in Duncan's legacy, Parker's Hall of Fame candidacy, Ginobili's Hall of Fame candidacy and the thought of Stephen Jackson, Matt Bonner, Boris Diaw and Boris Diaw's boobs hugging at midcourt in the single strangest basketball moment of all time 

Some lofty hyperbole there.  Ricky Davis shooting at his own basket to get another rebound for his triple double is not giving up that top spot anytime soon.

and, other than that, there's nothing at stake here.
And by the way, the Spurs should win the title — 

DOUBLE UPSIDE DOWN JINX!  RUN FOR THE HILLS, POPOVICH!

they have the deepest team, multiple crunch-time scorers, killer outside shooting, some much-needed swagger (thanks to Captain Jack's emotional return), the best coach and the best identity (at this point, they know EXACTLY what they are). Maybe if Ginobili weren't playing hurt and they hadn't run into the Z-Bo Chainsaw, it would have been them instead of Dallas last year. 

That's laughable.  Ginobili was a little banged up, so they lost to an 8 seed that lost in the next round to a team that then lost to the Mavericks in 5 in the conference finals.  THEY WERE SO CLOSE!  

Regardless, they have one really good crack at history here. Will they do it? I felt so unsure of my pick that I didn't even have the heart to stick it in the column — I relegated it to the footnotes.

He picked the Spurs, meaning you should withdraw all the money from your 401(k) and put half on OKC and half on Miami.

And then, there's LeBron James … who's about two weeks away from joining the following group (presented in alphabetical order).

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Larry Bird
Wilt Chamberlain
Magic Johnson
Michael Jordan
Moses Malone
Bill Russell

That's the complete list of everyone who won three or more NBA MVP trophies. 

I watched Stern give him the trophy today, it was really funny because he tried to name everyone on that list but gave up after Magic, Bird, and Malone.  Dude needed a teleprompter.

You know what else? In my 700-page monolith of an NBA book, 

Please don't call your own book a monolith.  You're unlikeable enough as things are.

I ranked those guys, minus Moses, as the six best players of all time. (I had Moses at no. 12.) They won a combined 33 titles between them. LeBron, as you know, has none. So yeah, he can keep giving those Sports Illustrated interviews and talking about how he finally gets it and all that crap, but really, he's halfway through one of the most confusing athletic careers we've ever witnessed. How can someone leave such a memorable, indelible, remarkable regular-season basketball legacy while simultaneously leaving us so unsure of his postseason prowess? 

Because until last year, his best teammates (by year, starting with 2003-2004) were Zydrunas Ilguaskas,  Ilgauskas again, Ilgauskas again or maybe Larry Hughes (GAH!), Hughes again or maybe Drew Gooden, one of those three guys, Mo Williams, and Williams again or 33 year old Antwan Jamison.  Put any of those top 6 guys on those Cavs teams in the 21st century version of the NBA, and you don't need to be a fucking Nobel Laureate to figure out how LBJ couldn't win a title.  His performance in 2007, when he singlehandedly carried the Cavs to the Finals, doesn't get enough recognition.  None of those Cavs teams had any business going past the 2nd round, even with the best player on the planet.  I dislike James as much as the next guy and agree that rings are important and all, but I'm not going to crucify him for failing to bring home a title with the teammates he was giving in Cleveland.  If he doesn't win one in the next four years in Miami?  Yeah, I'll crucify him for that.  Literally.

Now that's intriguing.

Not as intriguing as the possibility that the Spurs' unremarkable role players might celebrate winning a championship together!

ESPN is not a meritocracy

Legitimate post coming tomorrow. In the meantime, let's all chuckle at the pumpkinheaded idiot pictured on the right:

I wanted to post a clip of his BBTN appearance from earlier this evening but I couldn't find it. All you really need to know is that he and Karl Ravech (bless that man's soul for having to deal with the Kruks and Fernando Vinas and Schillings of the world) were discussing Brian Wilson's injury, and he (Schilling) pointed out that Bruce Bochy will now have to go with a "bullpen by committee," and Ravech corrected him and pointed out that he must have meant closer by committee, and Schilling agreed and corrected himself, and then eight seconds later went right back to discussing the difficulties associated with managing a bullpen by committee. Then, asked to explain what the loss of Wilson means to the Giants, Schilling said something like

I mean, what he means is everything you just saw right there. The passion. The heart.

when in fact, the viewers had not seen anything related to Wilson leading into the segment. No highlights, no interview footage, no obnoxious Taco Bell commercial. Maybe Schilling was watching one of the above in the minutes leading up to the taping of the segment, and then assumed that all the viewers would have seen the same thing right before the segment aired? In any case, I get that doing TV journalism is probably way harder than most people think it is, but facts are facts: Curt Schilling should be strapped to a rocket and shot into deep space. Or at the very least he shouldn't be allowed on the BBTN set. Maybe let him work the ESPNNews desk between midnight and 5 AM or something.

As for my snarkity snark snark headline, I'm not saying there's anything shocking or inappropriate about the fact that ESPN pays a braindead zilcheroo like Schilling to try to talk about baseball. Just look at who gets paid to talk about football on every outlet that broadcasts it and it's easy to see that all over the sports media world, being a former player is just as useful a career advancement tool as having interesting things to say and knowing how to form complete sentences. But man... Schilling really takes the cake for being uninteresting, unlikeable, and extra stupid.

As entertaining as the comment war going on in the next post down is

Let's see what Jon Heyman has to say about the Ryan Zimmerman extension. (And by the way, all of you who think that everything Braun has said is a bunch of face-saving malarkey while everything Mr. Steroid Test Collector Guy has said is the absolute unaltered truth are fucking killing me. You're just. Fucking. Killing me. But I'll let Chris W fight that fight for now.)

The immediate reaction to Ryan Zimmerman's $100 million, six-year extension with the Nationals was this: Where's the hometown discount?

Where's the beef am I right LOL? To answer the question seriously, something I'm loathe to do but am forced to because providing actual analysis in my posts is one of the conditions of my parole, here's how I see it: If Adrian Beltre's age 32 to 37 seasons are worth $96MM over six years (after five years in Seattle, three of which were pretty awful, and one "Hey wait I need another big contract!" season in Boston), then I'm pretty sure that Zimmerman's age 29 to 34 seasons were going to be worth a good amount more than that had he hit the market after 2013. Just pulling numbers out of my ass FanGraphs style here but let's say $120MM/6. Maybe more if the Yankees were ready to move Fish Fillet-Rod (shoutout to Eriz) to DH at that point.

Zimmerman's total contract, which now runs through 2019, guarantees him $126 million, including the two years he already had on his deal. Forget that $126 million has been an unlucky number in baseball contracts (see Vernon Wells, Barry Zito and Nationals teammate Jayson Werth),

Yes, forget that, even if you're a superstitious idiot who normally wouldn't forget it, because Zimmerman hasn't signed a contract for that dollar amount.

it just seems a bit high considering 1) Zimmerman has an injury history,

He missed a medium amount of time in 2008 and 2011 but still cleared 100 games in both seasons. In his other four full seasons he averaged 157 GP. All told he's averaging 136 GP per year. Yes, loosely speaking, he has a history of being injured. No, he is not a fragile player. No, he is not a likely candidate to miss extended time in the future. No, Jon Heyman doesn't give a shit. Jon Heyman is the kind of idiot who would bother to note that there have been some bad $126MM contracts in recent history, and that if you squint and cock your head to the side and stand on one foot, it kind of looks like Zimmerman signed a $126MM contract.

2) he sprayed a few throws in recent years,

So dumb it's not even worth addressing, other than to say that both by advanced metrics and "the eye test"/traditional scouting, Zimmerman is somewhere between a decent and really good defensive player.

and 3) the Nationals have a top third-base prospect in Anthony Rendon.

And since all prospects always pan out... aw, snap.

Said one competing executive of the Nats' two nine-figure deals now in the books: "Seems like they have two $100 million contracts but no $100 million payers.''

PLEEEEEEEEASE please please please please tell me it was Ruben Amaro who said that.

No matter what anyone on the outside thinks, Zimmerman was said to be the Nats' No. 1 priority this winter, and they did get the deal done. They love him for his defense,

But he has sprayed throws in recent years! It was in all the papers!

his clutch hitting,

Always critical to a learned baseball man like Heyman.

his personality and his local roots (University of Virginia). They also recall that he led the majors in WAR one year.

If true, that would be a HUGE strike against Heyman's argument. Fortunately for him it's not, but Zimmerman still seems like a good candidate to be a 4 to 6 win player early in this contract (huge bargain) and maybe a 2.5 to 4 win player later on (a little overpaid or properly paid).

Zimmerman did agree to a $10 million personal services deferral, which means only $116 million of the $126 million counts as payroll and could help the Nationals in terms of flexibility.

The Jinx of Zito is no more! Shrewd move, Mike Rizzo!

/video of Brian Sabean punching a hole through the top of a stovepipe hat

But the reality is he's a one-time All-Star.

Wait, what? Holy shit you can't be serious.

And that's a lot of loot for a one-time All-Star.

Wow, you really did end up boiling it down to the number of times he's made the all star team. That's awesome. And Heyman's analysis ends right there. Well, how about that. Hold on for a sec, let me check my computer machine for something really quick...

Ah, yup, there it is. Yadier Molina is a THREE time All-Star. No wonder his age 30 through 34 seasons are apparently well worth almost $15MM per. MOLINA'S VALUE GOES WAY BEYOND WHAT THE NUMBERS SHOW! NO ONE APPRECIATES HIM, EXCEPT THE MILLIONS OF FANS AND DOZENS OF WRITERS WHO CRY ALL THE TIME ABOUT HOW NO ONE APPRECIATES HIM! (Quick tangent: Dear (most) Cardinals fans, go the fuck away. You're the fucking worst and I hope your team never ever wins another playoff game. I'd cheer for the Red Sox if they played you in the WS this fall, perish the thought. Fuck you and fuck your smug and undeserved sense of accomplishment. Your city stinks and so does your team. I hope Pujols hits 800 career home runs and goes into the hall as an Angel. Signed, not a Cubs fan even though I bet you're sure I am at this point) Meanwhile Zimmerman's value is apparently wholly demonstrated by the fact that he missed like fifty games during two of the past six seasons.

/sits and waits eight years so he can laugh about how bad the Molina deal was and how reasonable the Zimmerman deal was

How about nobody writes about Joe Paterno for a while

There are way too many people out there acting like he endorsed child rape or something, people who want to brand him as only a half step worse than an actual pederast. Those tend to sensationalize the story of Paterno's passing by saying things like HOW CAN YOU CELEBRATE THE DEATH OF A GUY WHO WAS BASICALLY THE WORST PERSON EVER????? Those people are idiots.

On the other hand, people who insist that Paterno was a saint and that his gargantuan mistakes should not be held against him at all are equally idiotic and even more out of touch. Many of these people, like Ivan Maisel, have their fingers in their ears and are yelling LA LA LA 409 WINS LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU. It's fucking sad.

A man's death demands that we look to his life -- not just the last 12 weeks, swollen and inflamed by the heat of the vengeful -- but 62 years of coaching young men at one university. A legacy covers more than 12 weeks.

Yeah. It covers all 62 years, the last 10 of which Paterno spent with direct knowledge of Sandusky's crimes. And yet Sandusky's access to PSU facilities was never revoked. Paterno never did more with what he was told than talk to some higher-ups and call it a day. Fuck you, Maisel, for trying to frame the problem as being one that only matters since it came to light 3 months ago. It's nearly an implication that the real tarnishing of JoePa's legacy is that Sandusky was eventually caught. "A legacy covers more than 12 weeks." Yeah, no shit it does. Fuck you.

The crimes at stake here are two clicks past heinous. Penn State, not to mention the entire State College community, mishandled the Sandusky case in a way that will haunt town and gown for many, many years. People are angry. They want a pound of flesh.

Sure. And some of that flesh should come from the guy who was in charge of the football program this whole time, don't you think?

And that anger has fueled the pumps that continue to spew vitriol at Paterno, even as the justice system in Pennsylvania continues to exonerate him.

This is the most laughable sentence in the whole article. "Has the justice system charged him with a crime? No. Conclusion: LEAVE JOE ALONE, HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG!"

The Sandusky case has rubbed raw all of us who have children, or once were children. Paterno, the most powerful man on campus, is one more person who looked and did not see, who listened and failed to hear.

He's one of the three or four most important and powerful people who looked and did not see, who listened and failed to hear. He's not some campus security guard who heard a third hand rumor that child rape was happening somewhere on campus and failed to unearth it. He's the guy who was told who was raping someone when and didn't do anything about it. Don't try to blend everyone at PSU who isn't Sandusky into one amorphous blob of "aw shucks, we done goofed, too bad!" It's pathetic.

But it should not cancel all that came before it.

No one worth listening to is saying it should.

It should zero out neither Paterno's six decades of achievement at Penn State nor his lifetime of leadership and beneficence at the university.

Notice which one is listed first. Say Paterno is at the pearly gates right now (or whatever your mind's manifestation of a place where you get judged in some kind of afterlife is, I don't give a shit) and whoever's working the door is giving him a hard time about how he mishandled this debacle. Which do you think he's going to bring up first, that he was a good leader who shaped and improved a lot of lives, or that he was good at getting other people to be good at a fucking sport? I hate to be preachy about it. But if you're someone who's very pro Paterno and you want to defend him from his attackers/celebrate his life, you'd sure as fuckballs better not start by bringing up anything related to football.

Yet a legion of men, who know him much better than any of his critics, continues to defend him. Some are gray of hair and round of stomach, others are younger than Paterno's five children. All of them wore blue and white. They arose to stand by his side when Paterno no longer could stand up for himself. Paterno was the coach who molded them. He instilled a beacon of light to guide them in their lives. He was the man who made them men.

All of that is very good and important stuff, and it's the kind of stuff that makes Paterno someone who will probably one day be remembered more for good than bad. At the same time, no fucking shit his former players are defending him. It's not exactly a slam dunk argument-ending accomplishment to point out that the guys who were recruited by him and lived and died with him for 3 or 4 or 5 years think he's great. JUST SO YOU KNOW, HIS FAMILY KNOWS HIM BETTER THAN YOU DO AND THEY ALL STILL THINK HE'S SWELL! THAT OUGHTA TELL YOU SOMETHING RIGHT THERE!

The Sandusky scandal has revealed that Joe Paterno missed in real time what may be seen so plainly in hindsight.

It should have been plain as fucking day in real time. That's the problem here.

The scandal has cast a shadow over a brilliant coaching life.

Stop bringing that up.

The 409 victories, while record-setting, are not the full measure of the man.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The young men he left behind, the campus to which he devoted his life, a campus whose leaders shoved him aside in the panicky, feverish days after the scandal broke,

Great drive-by pot shot at those on campus who realized "Oh shit, our coach could and should have stopped a bunch of child rapes and didn't. We're going to have to fire him I think."

also give testimony to the life of Joseph Vincent Paterno.

The whole of his life renders the seismology of modern-day journalism moot.

No, it's not moot. It's one aspect of his legacy. All the good stuff he did is another aspect. As time goes on the media and public will balance them. Paterno fanboys and people who hate ugly truths can say that the pesky media's insistence on reporting the scandal is rendered moot by all the good stuff Paterno did, but fortunately they're completely wrong.

The facts of a 62-year coaching career

Again.

were shaken. They did not topple over.

No, they didn't and shouldn't topple over. On the other hand, to the extent that they were shaken, they will probably remain that way forever (as they should). And the Ivan Maisels of the world will keep sticking their heads in the sand like Bob Costas any time someone says something bad about Mickey Mantle. Fucking sad.

Wow, this was really just an angry downer of a post. Can't wait to see what Simmons writes about the Super Bowl this week. Maybe if I beg and plead with him he'll do a whole mailbag about it (and Tom Cruise, and how good he is at gambling, and how much his readers love him).

WMTMQR: Show me the funny

Gregg's in the mood to tell jokes this week, moreso than usual. That's a good thing for us. Also, a shoutout to reader Daniel who went 2 for 3 in the prediction he made in the comments section last post. Buffalo's 3-0 start gave Gregg cause to talk at length about the undergrad institutions attended by Ryan Fitzpatrick (Harvard? I had no idea!) and Fred Jackson. Somehow he forgot to talk about how Stevie Johnson was a 15th round draft choice, though. Of course that's not the real reason Johnson rules--he rules because he blamed God for a dropped pass. But enough about me. Let's talk about pretentious faux intellectuals who write about science fiction and football.

Of course, children, I am referring to the Buffalo Bills and the Detroit Lions. And no, I don't know what "Bills" are, either. This has been lost to the mists of history. Perhaps the team was originally called the Buffalo Williams.

/bike horn

/slide whistle

Told you he was in the mood to yolk around.

The Bills-Patriots game even produced a moment in which the unassuming Chan Gailey, fired twice in the past five years and OOF -- Out of Football -- entirely in 2009, out-Belichicked Bill Belichick.

Do tell.

Game tied at 31, Buffalo's Fred Jackson -- undrafted from Division III Coe College, now one of pro football's top performers -- caught a 39-yard pass, lunging across the goal line with 1:43 remaining. Zebras signaled touchdown. Then booth review began. Jackson's knee went down at the 1, as replay ultimately determined.

Jackson not scoring was great for Buffalo! Belichick immediately realized that if the play was ruled a touchdown, Brady would have 1:43 and two timeouts to try for overtime. If instead Jackson was ruled down at the 1, Buffalo could kneel three times, force Belichick to burn the timeouts, then kick a field goal, leaving New England mere seconds to reply. Belichick gestured angrily at the officials -- he wanted them to count the touchdown. Belichick was demanding that his opponent be awarded a score!

As it happened, a personal foul against the Patriots allowed Buffalo to use the entire clock and launch the winning kick as time expired.

So "doing what any person with a brain and basic knowledge of football would do" now counts as outsmarting a guy who wins Super Bowls and deviously wrecks marriages on a semi-regular basis.

Postgame, Belichick had to explain to baffled sportswriters, in gruff terms, that he called time-out the moment the replay decision was made, because once officials determined the runner was down inbounds, the clock would restart as if Jackson had been tackled at the 1. How could it be that sportswriters who do nothing but football all year round don't know that rule?

How dare those sportswriters not know a basic thing about football! They should be ashamed. I bet they also don't know that if you lose by a field goal on the last play of the game, you could have prevented it by... and you know the rest.

An ideal outcome for the 2011 NFL season would be for two underdog teams from fading old-industry cities to meet in the Super Bowl. From now on, a Buffalo-Detroit Super Bowl is what this column is rooting for. As TMQ noted last week, if Buffalo and Detroit met in the Super Bowl, "One of them would have to win -- I think."

/laugh track

Stop citing to your own columns and unclever pithy remarks.

In Indianapolis Colts news, Peyton Manning seems a long shot to return this season. This would end football's version of "Narnia." Eustace, Lucy, where are you?

I killed the hyperlink- that was another citation to his own (awful) work. Come on man, who are you? Jason Whitlock?

Stats of the Week No. 3: Jay Cutler has been sacked 101 times in 34 starts for the Chicago Bears. While playing for the Denver Broncos, he was sacked 51 times in 57 starts.

Average mouth-breathing Bears fan: "CUTLER IS A PUSSYFACE WHO DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO WIN"

Stats of the Week No. 5: Since earning home playoff dates at the end of the 2010 regular season, the Atlanta Falcons and Kansas City Chiefs are a combined 1-7.

But just ask any Peter King; with their comically overrated QB and unremarkable defense, the Falcons are a lock to win the NFC this year.

Sweet Play of the Week: The Houston Texans leading the New Orleans Saints

You mean the Moo Cows and the whatever the fuck your nickname for the Saints is-es?

Sweet Play Called Back: The Green Bay Packers,

Shit, forgot this one too.

leading by 10, punted to the Chicago Bears

YOU MEAN MING DING XIONG! BEARS WHOSE OUTCOMES ARE DETERMINED BY FATE!

Sour Play of the Week Washington leading Dallas 16-15 just before the two-minute warning, the Skins had the Boys facing third-and-21 on their 30. Since the average NFL snap gains somewhat over 5 yards, and Washington this season is allowing 6.1 yards per snap, all the Redskins needed do was play straight defense and a stop was likely.

Joe Morgan was right. Statistics ARE stupid because you can make them say anything you want. Also, remember those reporters who didn't understand the rules about the clock following a challenge? What a bunch of clowns!

That cannot seriously be an eight-man blitz on third-and-21! The eight-man blitz is almost never seen, because it is like handing out a card that says "Please score a touchdown." Tony Romo threw a 30-yard completion to the single-covered Dez Bryant, penalty yardage was added, and a moment later the home team launched the winning kick.

Bryant was at 75% and Miles Austin was sitting. Blitzing makes much more sense when you can easily use man coverage against the other team's WRs. Not saying it was definitely the right call here, but let's add some context, you know? No? OK, no context.

On the possession, Washington defensive coordinator Jim Haslett called an eight-man blitz on first down, a seven-man blitz on second down

Wonder how those worked out? My guess is that Dallas was already in the end zone after each- so I'm not sure how it could have been 3rd and 21.

and an eight-man blitz on third down.

One fluky scramble and one bad play by DeAngelo Hall (who saw that coming?) later and the Cowboys were back in business. Debate settled: blitzing never works.

He also handed out cards saying "Please score a touchdown." Dallas settled for as field goal.

What?

He also handed out cards saying "Please score a touchdown." Dallas settled for as field goal.

I think that joke is unintentional, but it still made me chuckle. Also, if you watched Washington's victories over Arizona and New York (by which I mean Jersey/A!), you would know that heavy blitzing was a big part of both of those games. But acknowledging that would require Gregg to provide his analysis after considering the facts, rather than only talking about the facts that fit the analysis he wants to provide. Very inconvenient.

Just to prove this was no fluke, at the two-minute warning, the Texans faced third-and-15. New Orleans showed the conservative three-man front that's become popular in long-yardage situations -- then rushed five, sacking Matt Schaub and all but ended the contest. Sweet. Nickelback Leigh Torrence came through untouched for the sack, though Houston had six available to block five. Sour.

I like how he carefully avoids using the work "blitz" when a blitz is successful. Blitz? What blitz? That was a "rush."

Bad Predictions Watch: Reader Tyler Smith of Zionsville, Ind., notes students at Hamilton College tracked a year's worth of predictions by political pundits, and found the average pundit no more accurate than a coin flip. Hamilton College students also discerned a hidden pattern: "Prognosticators with a law degree were more likely to be wrong."

Nothing to get the funny bone tickled like dumping on lawyers! Those stupid lawyers. They're so full of themselves and yet so stupidly stupid. Hey, what do you call 100 smarmy sportswriters at the bottom of the ocean? A PRETTY GOOD START!

A Fine Whine: The San Diego Chargers are plowing new ground by marketing a team wine. The beverage offers "vibrant fruit flavors and toasty oak." Considering the Bolts' performance in 2010 -- first in offense, first in defense, missed the playoffs -- TMQ suspects the wine is made to the highest possible standards from the very finest grapes, and tastes bad.

What if other NFL teams marketed wines?

• Dallas Cowboys Missing Seats Merlot: Rich with deceptive promises, this wine will make you want to stand up throughout any dinner or social occasion.

And then he does like eight more of these. It's depressing.

It's not just that Martz has made the pass-wacky offense one-dimensional: counting sacks and scrambles, he has called 131 passes versus 48 rushes. The 1-2 Bears seemed discombobulated at critical moments against the defending champion Packers. Former head coaches tend to project ego fields.

Nah, that's just Charlie Weis's gravitational field.

/shows self out

Many don't really want to be taking orders, and don't want to be questioned by players or each other. There are so many ego fields on the Chicago sideline, they may be interacting negatively.

That's gotta be it. I can't think of any other reason the Bears could be 1-2, other than the slight possibility that playing at New Orleans and then hosting the pass-rush heavy Packers on consecutive weeks is going to hang plenty of teams with two losses.

What Tom Brady Will Do After Football: Last week TMQ said auto shows feature "glamorous models draped over concept cars you probably wouldn't even want. The models are always women, not male-model hunks, which must be the car industry's way of acknowledging that only men can to inveigled into spending huge amounts of money on cars." Reader Balázs GyQrik, of Budapest, Hungary, reports Citroen had a male model adorning its latest product at the Frankfurt auto show. He notes, "Sure, it's only a drop in the sea, but can hunks in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue be far behind?"

Nope! And that's fifteen seconds you'll never have back.

Are Greek Bonds Backing the Movie "Moneyball"? The movie "Moneyball" is winning rave reviews. Michael Lewis's 2003 book of the same name is also a great read, though handicapped in spots with the contemporary publishing-industry imperative of the nonfiction work that claims an amazing single insight that explains everything about a topic.

I have read Moneyball twice. At no point does Lewis present any thesis that comes off like it was concocted by some dipshit like Malcolm Gladwell. If you got that from it, either you were reading too fast or you are Tim McCarver.

In the film, the handsome Brad Pitt plays Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, who is himself handsome -- maybe Beane could play Pitt in some future flick.

Seems pretty unlikely.

The book and the movie both portray Beane as a super-ultra genius for applying the Bill James sabermetric approach to baseball decision-making, then using James-style data crunching to guide the low-rent, underdog A's to a division title in 2002.

Lewis' book stops in that year, which is handy for its thesis.

Also handy when you consider the fact that Lewis wrote it during 2003 after spending 2002 doing research specifically so he could write the book the following year. WHAT ARE YOU HIDING, LEWIS? ADMIT IT! ADMIT YOU PAID OFF THE A'S TO MAKE THEM WIN THAT 2002 AL WEST CROWN!

Beane continues to run the Athletics using the moneyball approach: yet Oakland has not finished above .500 in five years, and currently is a dreary 72-88. Nor did the moneyball approach ever take the team into the World Series.

Oh brother. Here we go again.

One possibility is that the whole moneyball idea is hype: that Beane had some beginner's luck, which Lewis, wanting to puff up a book proposal, converted into a claim of a sweeping insight about sports economics. Since Beane took over the A's, there are many MLB teams that have reached the World Series without asserting they possess any stunning conceptual breakthroughs about whom to sign.

And nearly all of them have had good luck w/r/t injuries and excellent situational hitting/bullpen work. Two things that have exactly nothing to do with the Moneyball approach, and which the A's teams of the early aughts couldn't quite get right. And of course eventually everyone else caught up with the idea of exploiting market inefficiencies (except the Astros).

It is also possible that Beane fell victim to "commoditization," which happens with increasing speed in a globalized environment. This would mean Beane did in fact have an important insight, but his idea has been copied by most if not all MLB franchises, turning the idea into a mere commodity that, possessed by everyone, confers no advantage.

So you knew all along and just wanted to take a shot at Beane and Lewis before acknowledging it. Nice. Joe Morgan and Gregg Easterbrook have never been seen in the same place at the same time. COINCIDENCE????

Here's what your columnist wrote about commoditization in my 2009 book "Sonic Boom":

JESUS CHRIST. Stop.

Commoditization is a reason the international economy grows more productive and simultaneously more turbulent -- when some business has a good idea, the rest of the world learns to imitate that idea with increasing alacrity. In Beane's case, once the book "Moneyball" was published in 2003, the rest of baseball had a road map -- available for $27.95 in a bookstore -- on how to apply sabermetrics to free agency decisions. The idea was commoditized, and the A's sunk back into mediocrity.

The idea that other teams wanted to know how the A's were succeeding with such low payrolls, and couldn't figure it out on their own, but then eventually were able to figure it out by reading Moneyball, makes me chortle. Can you imagine Brian Sabean and Dave Dombrowski standing in line at Barnes and Noble, excitedly flipping through the pages? Lord knows I can and it's a glorious image. Chortle chortle chortle.

Rule quirk: The other thing Oklahoma State might have done [to run out the clock on the last play of the game] is have the quarterback heave the ball deep down the middle. The clock stops when an incompletion crosses the out-of-bounds markers on the sidelines. But for a pass thrown through and out of the end zone, the clock does not stop until the ball crosses the backline. Surely a high-arcing pass would take more than 5 seconds to traverse from the Team A 39-yard line to the back of the Team B end zone. So in the situation faced by the Cowboys, this would seem a safe way to kill the final 5 seconds. But you'd be gambling that the zebras knew this rarely invoked rule.

You would also be gambling that a college QB can throw the ball 75 yards (or that if they can't, the other team's safeties couldn't track the ball and intercept it and have a chance for a return TD) which would make you incredibly fucking stupid.

That's all I can take- just don't have the energy to pick apart the obscure college score of the week. Later on I plan to post a review of Keith Law's review of Moneyball. Did Keith like it? Does he ever like anything ever? Do I wish someone would kick him in the balls and tell him to lighten up a little (yes, I know I am being a hypocrite)? All these questions and more will be answered later this week! Maybe!