Thoughts on the Giants/Pats Game

• I originally thought that the Giants should have rested their starters. Despite the fact that they played well and didn't incur any major injuries, I'm still not sure that I've changed my mind. Perhaps it will be a huge confidence boost for Manning (who played as well as he ever has) and the rest of the squad. But they played their best game of the season and still lost. When was the last time the Giants brought their A-game in two consecutive weeks? Probably early in the '06 season. If they get their doors blown off by the Bucs, no one will care that they played the Pats tight.
• The Pats couldn't ask for a better scenario. They took a good team's best punch on the road and proved they could come back from well behind. And the Pats will never have to hear that their final opponent on their path to perfection laid down for them. Having said that I am betting that somebody picks them off on their run to the title.
• When the cameras zoomed in on Tom Coughlin, my buddy Oatmeal described Tom Coughlin as a "fuddy duddy". I almost busted a gut, because I hadn't heard the phrase in ages and it couldn't be more perfectly applied. This got us on a game-long riff listing the biggest fuddy duddies in sports. Being baseball-centric fans we decided on Bud Selig and Bobby Cox. Please place any other suggestions in the comments section.

30 Increasingly Bold Predictions for 2008

Totally plausible

1) Hockey games continue to be played. I continue to ignore them.

2) The Yankees will lose to the Red Sox in the ALCS. A-Rod will be the scapegoat for batting .240 in the series. The fact that he hit .409 with 3 homers in the Divisional Series against the Tigers will be forgotten.

3) The Colorado Rockies go from the World Series to 4th in the NL West.

4) The Patriots lose to the Colts in the AFC Championship game.

5) The Phoenix Suns upset the Spurs and then the Celtics to win the NBA Championship.

6) The Mets miss the playoffs again. Willie Randolph is fired.

7) Bobby Bowden dies.

8) Memphis basketball loses one game all season. They win the national championship.

9) Ryan Howard hits 62 homers. People say he is the "true home run king".

10) Someone will be paralyzed in a UFC match. Congress will conduct high profile hearings in an effort to ban the sport.



Very unlikely, but not at all impossible

11) Roger Federer finally wins the French Open. Then loses at Wimbledon.

12) With the addition of a Pro Bowl D-lineman, the Jets have the best defense in the NFL next season.

13) Roy Hibbert falls to the 20th pick in the draft. Within 6 months, seventeen teams regret passing on him.

14) Diamond Dallas Page will die of an overdose. It just feels like his time to go.

15) Athlete's gang affiliations become 2008's dog fighting.

16) Wayne Chrebet makes a comeback with the Jets. Although he clearly has nothing left in the tank, the Jets hold onto him all season as a 5th receiver for PR.

17) Gheorge Muresan passes away this summer. The phrase "gentle giant" appears in every obituary.

18) Joba Chamberlain and Tim Lincecum win their respective league's Cy Young Awards.

19) David Beckham and the LA Galaxy mutually agree to a buyout of his contract.

20) Andre Ethier and Alyssa Milano start a relationship that results in their engagement in 2009.



A full court hook shot; Lefty

21) There will be a modest dance hit, featuring samples of Mike Tyson's craziest quotes, set to house music.

22) Isiah Thomas, mercifully fired after this season, will be the runner-up on next fall's Dancing with the Stars.

23) Prince and Cecil Fielder mend fences and replace Donovan McNabb and his mother in the Campbell's Chunky Soup commercials.

24) Donyell Marshall admits that he has been living with HIV for the past 8 years. Why Donyell Marshall? Why not Donyell Marshall?

25) Allen Iverson and a UPN starlet will be the stars of the celebrity sex tape of 2008.

26) Another color is discovered in the spectrum between orange and yellow. Roy G. Biv becomes obsolete. It has nothing to do with sports, I just feel strongly about this one.

27) Curt Schilling blows out his shoulder in Spring Training. He immediately announces his retirement and that he will run for president as an Independent.

28) Alex Rodriguez's daughter is kidnapped, setting off a media frenzy a la the Lindbergh baby. Her semen filled corpse will be found buried beneath Kyle Farnsworth's gazebo.

29) Ronde Barber joins Tiki in retirement. They live openly as an incestuous gay couple.

30) Travis Henry fails to impregnate anyone all year.

Eight Most Overrated Ladies of the 80s (#2)

A special treat for our 800th post.

2) Molly Ringwald- That orange hair! Not auburn or strawberry blonde; both of which can be sexy on the right girl...Clown wig orange. (When will I stop writing sentence fragments?)

I am attracted women of all kinds. Black women, Latinas, Asians, brunettes, blondes. After years of not seeing anything beautiful in Indian/Middle Eastern gals, I now have the hots for many of them as well.

But I have NEVER been attracted to a woman with orange hair. I consider it a small victory if I don't barf in their presence. They invariably look unwell.

My revulsion was not borne of a lack of exposure to red/orange hair at an early age. My father was afflicted with this hideous condition. He had the good fortune of graying noticeably by his late 20s, sparing me from ever absorbing the full brunt of his unsightly prime.

In well lit environments, my hair bears slight traces of this scarlet curse. Those recessive genes are a cunt. Therefore I fully understand that if I don't mate wisely, I will have to give my offspring the Susan Smith treatment.

I know I'm not alone on this one. In fact I think I'm in the majority. Which is why it's so ridiculous that John Hughes tried to shove Molly Ringwald down our collective throats as some kind of teenage sex symbol. Obviously it worked because The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink were all monster hits. More than 20 years later, each is still in regular rotation on cable. Yet I have never met anyone who thought Ringwald was hot.

P.S. She wouldn't even look good with brown hair as she has really Plain Jane features and her body is remarkably unremarkable.

A Concise Take on the Two New York Football Giants' Controversies

1. Sit the starters
2. Sell the tickets

There Are Plenty of Good Quarterbacks

Count me among the multitudes that were convinced by the anti- modern quarterback campaign. I'm a little embarassed. I pride myself on seeing through these baseless lines of bullshit, but this time they got me.

It's omnipresent. After the Patriots quest for perfection, it's the biggest story in the NFL this year. "The quarterback play is horrendous."

Does anyone realize that with one week left, 8 QBs are on a pace to throw for 4,000 yards this season? Brady, Romo, Brees, and Favre are already there. Manning, Kitna, Hasselbeck, and Palmer are all 185 yards or fewer away.

What is the record for most QBs with 4,000 passing yards in a single season? Five; in 2004 and 2006. So this season we will see 3 more 4,000 yard passer than have ever been seen before. But there are no good QBs?!

Thinking that perhaps there was more depth in the past, I checked how many 3,000 yard passers there are this year. There will almost certainly be 15 in 2007. Only four seasons in history have featured more 3,000 yard passers. All were in the new millenium.

Granted passing yards isn't a perfect statistic for determining the quality of quarterback play, but it's as good as any other statistic that I'm hip to. I'm sure the football sabermetricians have developed a superior metric, but I don't follow the sport as religiously as I do baseball. I'm too lazy to do any more legwork on this one, but my limited research suggests that there is no empirical evidence that quarterback play is down in the NFL.

So, once again, we are left to rely on the anecdotes of our elders. The same ones who will try to tell you that Oscar Robertson would have mopped the floor with Michael Jordan. The ones that tell us Pedro Martinez couldn't sniff Sandy Koufax's jock. And Rocky Marciano would have knocked out Lenox Lewis in the first round.

"There are no good quarterbacks" is the new "There is no good pitching." A fallacy to be ignored.

You Tube Clip of the Day

For my money, the best SNL clip of the past 20 years. A marquee host, clever premise, and almost every member of the uber-talented early 90's cast.

We Didn't Start the Prior?

I was going to post on this, but Tremont already alluded to this in his last post. I'm miffed that the Mets didn't take a one year flyer on Mark Prior. It's the perfect low cost/high reward type transactions Omar was making earlier in his career. Maybe Prior thought it best for his career to throw in near perfect conditions within the pitching friendly confines of Petco Park, but as is evidenced by nearly every signing in the free agent era, a player will go to the highest bidder. The Mets couldn't/didn't offer more than a $1M? They should've doubled that offer. If he no longer had the stamina to start, he may have proven valuable out of the bullpen, which is an area the team surely needs some help in. Furthermore, he would've provided a feel good story in spring training for a franchise that desparately needed one coming off last years collapse, and at the price he signed for, if he gives a league average pitcher he is an absolute bargain. If resembles his former self, well....

Pun of the Day

Looks like Santa Claws made it to San Francisco for Christmas.

(Hat tip to Fat Dizzle)

Don't Fire Isiah

It's a month and a half away from pitchers and catchers. The Jets stinks. The Giants are boring. The Nets are a disappointment. Hockey is still hockey. Screenwriters are on strike. If it weren't for the Knicks fiasco I might have to read a book.



For the first time in my life I find myself really pulling for the Knicks. I'm not looking for greatness, or even mediocrity. I want them to play just well enough to keep the Isiah Circus in town for another year. It's greedy, I know, to ask for more from a man who has already given so much.

• The Knicks are 97-177 since the start of the 04-05 season.
• Thomas has already hired 2 Hall of Fame coaches, only to fire them after one season each.
• He is solely responsible for acquiring the most shiftless roster in the history of sports.
• He has signed players with no discernable basketball skills (Jerome James, Jared Jeffries) to long term contracts.
• He has traded bad contracts for worse contracts and won't have the Knicks under the cap for at least 3 more years.
• With far and away the highest payroll in the sport, he has not only not found a franchise player, he hasn't even found a championship caliber second fiddle.
• He has subjected his employers to an expensive and embarrassing sexual harrassment case.
• He has turned Madison Square Garden into a venue more hostile than they see in any road game.
• And he has done it all with a Pat Riley/Phil Jackson kind of arrogance normally reserved for the elite coaches.

Like a great artist I can't wait to see what he does next.

MLB Transactions

In order of importance, not chronology.

• A's trade RHPs Dan Haren and Conner Robertson to the D'Backs for OFs Carlos Gonzalez and Aaron Cunningham, LHPs Brett Anderson, Dana Eveland, and Greg Smith, and 1B Chris Carter. I really like this trade for both teams. The D'Backs might have turned themselves into the best team in the NL. They have added a co-ace to go along with Brandon Webb and not given up a single player that contributed to last year's division winning team. Billy Beane is wisely toward 2010, as the A's can't compete with Angels right now. Gonzalez is a blue chipper and Anderson, Cunningham, Carter, and Eveland are all fine prospects. Win/win.
• Cubs sign Kosuke Fukudome to a 4 year $48 million contract. In a market where Aaron Rowand gets 5 years and $60 million, this strikes as pretty reasonable for a guy who is supposed to be an Ichiro/Matsui hybrid. Fukudome fit a need as the Cubs couldn't afford to go into the season with Matt Murton and Felix Pie starting in the outfield. They have made themselves favorites in the miserable NL Central again.
• LA Dodgers sign P Hiroki Kuroda for 3 years and $35.3 million. I don't get this one. I know it's a thin market for pitching, but this is a 32 year old man who has only had one season in Japan with an ERA under 3.00. After the Kei Igawa debacle I'm surprised anyone is willing to spend big money on another Japanese pitcher without a history of dominating. The Dodgers have a first rate farm system and certainly had the chips to get themselves in the mix for Dan Haren or Eric Bedard. Instead they settled for an expensive back end of the rotation starter. Not good.
• Mark Prior signs with the Padres for 1 year $1 million (up to $3 million with incentives). Really? That's all it costs on a flier for a man 2 years removed from being the best young pitcher in baseball? Great deal for the Padres. I have no idea how the Mets, Yanks, or some other large market club didn't cobble together a better offer than that.

Post Dump A'comin'

I don't have much to do for the next 5 days so I plan on giving you readers what you have come to expect; analysis that is not quite sophisticated enough to be taken seriously and not funny enough to be considered comedy. Sorry for the absence.

Be Careful What You Wish For

If there is a more tedious attention whore than Pete Rose it's Curt Schilling. Schilling weighed in on the steroids issue, saying that Clemens should give back the 4 Cy Young Awards he won, while taking PEDs. While I can't stand the messenger, I'm ambivalent toward the message. I suppose it's well within a clean player's right to make such a statement, but it strikes me as somewhat disengenuous.

He has played with Lenny Dykstra and Luis Gonzalez, perhaps the most obvious PED users in the history of the sport. He hasn't said a thing about them. Without LuGo's huge 2001 the D'Backs never would have even made it to the World Series, let alone won a championship or World Series MVP. If Gonzalez ultimately gets exposed, should Schilling return his ring and trophy.

(Full disclosure: I sort of stole the last paragraph from a guy named ThinkBlue on a message board. I would have posted his comments in their entirety, but he was all over the map.)

Net Losses

Really quick, because nobody else cares

1. Lawrence Frank is the coach of the Nets and Sean Williams and Jason Collins are Nets players. Therefore it's incredibly puzzling that Frank was the last man in America to realize that Williams is a much better player than Collins.
2. Vince Carter has returned to his uninspired 2004 Raptors form. The next four years should be a treat.
3. I know the Nets have never been much of a draw, but it looked like there were 1,000 people at last night's game. The Knicks and the Nets might have the two worst home courts in the NBA right now. I'm not sure which is worse, the anger or the indifference.

Rose Really Smells Like Boo Boo Boo

Insufferable self-promoter Pete Rose couldn't bear to sit this one out. He is using the steroids scandal to garner some more support for his own reinstatement.

In an interview with Dennis Miller, Rose said "I've been suspended 18 years for betting on my own team to win." "I was wrong ... but these guys today, if the allegations are true, they're making a mockery of the game." He went on to say "If you're going to put these guys that supposedly did steroids into the Hall of Fame, I mean I've got to get a shot somewhere."

No Pete, you don't. It's not even necessary to get into the reasons why gambling on your team is far more dangerous to the sport than steroid use. MLB Rule 21 clearly states "Any employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible." Pete Rose even voluntarily signed a contract that guaranteed his expulsion from the sport.

Yes he has the right to apply for readmission, but why should he be accepted? He publicly lied, in every available medium, for 15 years about his involvement in gambling. Rose even wrote a book denying his involvement. A couple of years ago, in yet another book, he finally comes clean and basically admits that he made an ass of all of his supporters.

Here is my favorite part of the Dennis Miller interview:

And if steroids were prevalent in his day?
"I would have got 5,000 hits," he said.

Isn't that basically a tacit admission that had he played in this era he would have done steroids as well?

Good Riddance Rich Fraudriguez

Perhaps it is sour grapes or perhaps my delicate soul has yet to recover from the crushing loss to Pitt a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't care less about Rich Rodriguez bailing out on the Mountaineers. How valuable can a guy be if he gets a strategic beatdown at the hands of Dave Wanstache in the biggest game of his coaching career?

The conventional wisdom is that Rich Rodriguez is some sort of offensive genius. Certainly, he has been the most influential coach in college football over the past decade. His spread offense, or evolved versions of it, have become the norm for college teams across the country. Instead of a genius however, I think of Fraudriguez as more of an offensive savant. The Rainman of college football. Sure, he can tell you how many toothpicks are in a box, but he doesn't have the common sense to throw a post against a defense playing with ten in the box.

Assuredly, Fraudriguez deserves some of the credit for WVU's recent surge into the national spotlight, but I believe the true man that made it all possible is named Mike Tranghese. Tranghese is the president of the Big East conference. The same conference that lost Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College to the ACC a few years ago. The same conference that brought in Cincinnati, South Florida, Louisville, and Connecticut to replace them. WVU was historically a four loss team before three Big East powerhouses fled to the ACC. Bring in four lesser teams and suddenly WVU becomes a two loss team. Is it because Fraudriguez is Lombardi reincarnate or is it because WVU gets to play Connecticut every November instead of Miami?

The anger coming from Morgantown has less to do with Fraudriguez leaving then how it happened. It all started this time last year when Fraud all but took the job at Alabama before an emergency meeting of boosters and WVU brass banned together to hand Fraud a ridiculous pay raise and a load of promises to improve WVU's facilities. Fraudriguez accepted the last minute offer, lied about never verbally accepting the job to Alabama and sobbed about how much he loved Morgantown, which incidentally is where he grew up and where Don Nehlen generously allowed that fat prick to walk on to the football team twenty five years ago.

Fast forward to November 30th of this year. Two days before the biggest football game in WVU history, Fraudriguez gets a call from Michigan. Obviously Fraud is going to ignore the call and get his team ready to walk over Pitt and play in the national championship right? Wrong. Fraud entertains the offer if only to leverage WVU for more money, blows the Pitt game, and I am out a thousand bucks for a wasted trip to Morgantown. Undeterred, Fraudriguez flies out for an interview with Michigan and then tells them he is passing on the job thinking everyone will love his loyalty so much in Morgantown that he may get another raise. Unfortunately for the Fraud, WVU brass told Fraud that if he pulled this kind of stunt again they would fire his ass. Realizing that trying to leverage for more money two weeks after losing horribly to Wanstache in the biggest game in WVU history and costing me a thousand dollars may not win him a lot of support in West Virginia, Fraud decides to take the Michigan job after all.

Fair enough. But the Fraud doesn't stop there. Instead of meeting with his team to tell them the news like a man, he decides to call up some WVU recruits. Specifically, he calls up Terrelle Pryor, the best high school spread quarterback in the county and tells him to scratch WVU off of his list and consider coming to Michigan. This does not sit well with Fraud's current/former players. After eventually calling a team meeting, Fraud is berated by the WVU players and forced out of the WVU locker room. It would be in Fraud's best interest to make that the last time he ever steps onto the West Virginia campus. He should probably hire someone to come get his stuff.

In summation, Rich is a fraud, WVU will live on to burn more couches and lose more big games, and I will continue to blow a thousand dollars traveling to them.

Nightly Wrestling Haiku

Interracial bros

In tie-dye, overalls, and

Taped bridge on glasses

David Eckstein and Me

As a child, every two or three summers, my father would set his mind to some home improvement project or another (finishing the basement, building a deck, an extension on the house, an enormous shed, an extension on the enormous shed). For a month or so, he would spend his entire weekends working on these projects. This in turn meant that I would spend my entire weekends doing the same.

Those rank among some of the worst days of my life. I had no mechanical inclination, so I was essentially useless to my father. My greatest contribution to any of the projects was handing him nails when he asked me to. Looking back, the time I saved him by fetching shit was more than offset by the time he spent trying to teach me things I would never learn. I was probably a net zero.

Yet my father insisted that I be out there "helping" him. He must have known I was of no real value, but he wouldn't let on. He would say ridiculous things, like "I never could have done this without your help". Then he would give me something like $50 for my 50 hours of labor. It was hardly the going rate for an integral part of a construction crew. And, honestly, I was still grossly overcompensated for my work.

David Eckstein's free agency reminds me of the obvious gap between my father's rhetoric about my efforts and what he was willing to spend for them. For all of the insane hyperbole about how invaluable Eckstein is, the best he could get was a 1 year $4.5 million deal. As it turns out, the market didn't value him as much as the great J.C. Romero.

P.S.- The above hyperlink sends you to every firejoemorgan.com featuring the name David Eckstein. They hate him the way the Iron Shiek hates Bee Brian Blair. I strongly recommend reading it.

More on PEDs

I probably have been a tad glib about my feelings towards performance enhancing drug usage in baseball. In truth I was somewhat bothered when some of my favorite players from childhood and adolescence turned up on the Mitchell Report (Andy Pettitte and Randy Velarde among them). It hurts a little when you find out the heroes of your youth aren't everything you thought they were.

I wish something could be done to keep PEDs out of the game. It's just completely implausible. No one has yet developed an accurate test for HGH; And HGH is already old hat. Attempting to keep up with the designer drugs is utterly useless. They aren't going away.

So, as a fan I have a couple options. I can cut off my nose to spite my face and stop watching baseball or I can get over it. I choose the latter.

No Headline, No Conclusion. What do you want from me?

Rich Rodriguez has taken the University of Michigan gig. I get it. The Michigan job is arguably the most glamorous coaching position in college football. It must be tough to turn that kind of opportunity down.

If I were him though, I would have stayed with West Virginia. The WVU job has to be the most underrated in the country. In fact I would think West Virginia football is one of the 5 or so best programs to run in America. Sounds strange, but consider the following

• They have a rabid fan base, but they are not so spoiled that they will call for your head after a 9-4 season.


• The Mountaineers can clearly attract top recruits, as few teams in the country have as much talent at the skill positions as anyone besides USC.


• In the Big East, the Mountaineers are likely to win as many conference championships as any other team in a BCS conference. There is no reason West Virginia shouldn't win 7 out of every 10 Big East titles. If everything goes gangbusters in Michigan, Rodriguez will probably win 4 or 5 out of 10 Big Ten titles. Regardless of how well the Wolverines do, Ohio State, Wisconsin, a resurgent Illinois, Penn State, and Iowa are going to win some championships.

That's all I got.

Mitchell Report

I suppose it's my duty as a sports blogger to comment on the Mitchell Report, although I could not be more underwhelmed with its findings. I already knew Bonds, Sheffield, and Giambi were on the juice. Prior reports had already linked that Clemens, Pettitte, Tejada, and many of the other names to HGH. What earth-shattering revelation do we have here?

I fail to see how this report does any good. It implicates dozens of players, but does nothing to alleviate suspicions about dozens of others. Nobody that had doubts about Albert Pujols, for example, is now convinced that he is clean. The whole process was an exercise in self-flagellation by a commissioner who was ashamed of himself for what happened on his watch. Perhaps the only thing the Mitchell Report accomplishes is clearing Bud Selig's conscience.

Sabean is not Tres Bien

The SF Giants have signed Aaron Rowand to a 5 year $60 million contract. I'm not really interested in breaking down the deal too much. Suffice it to say Brian Sabean is a retard. I'd rather take a looksy at the projected Giants starters next season.

C Bengie Molina
1B Rich Aurilia
2B Ray Durham
3B Kevin Frandsen
SS Omar Vizquel
LF Dave Roberts
CF Aaron Rowand
RF Randy Winn

Amazing. Rowand instantly becomes their only average player. If you woke a guy out of a 10 year coma, told him the year, and read him the rest of the Giants lineup, he would ask "They're still playing baseball?...Professionally?"

Tejada Trade: Astros Perspective

I'm not quite sure which way to go on this one. Ordinarily I'd say a 73 win team with as many holes as the Astros shouldn't be dealing the farm for a slightly past prime player. In this case, however, there are two mitigating factors. First they play in the NL Central, where not crashing the team plane makes you a legitimate contender. Second they are sort of pot committed at this point. Rightly or wrongly, they have spent big bucks locking up Oswalt, Berkman, and Lee for the next several years. They almost can't afford not to try to maximize the value of those deals.

Apologies for the fence riding. This is a toughie.

Tejada Trade: Orioles Perspective

Orioles trade Miguel Tejada to Astros for Luke Scott, Troy Patton, Matt Albers, Michael Costanzo, and Dennis Safarte.

None of the 5 players the Orioles received in this deal are blue chippers. Luke Scott is nice enough player, but Troy Patton is the only one of the bunch with anything resembling All-Star potential. This trade will never do for the Orioles what trading Herschel Walker did for the Cowboys. But it's a start.

For years the Baltimore Orioles have been unable to seriously commit to either contending or rebuilding. They would go out and sign Miguel Tejada to a huge contract and surround him with Quadruple A players and bargain basement retreads. Last offseason, coming off a 70-92 record, they signed 3 middle relievers (Denys Baez, Chad Bradford, and Jamie Walker) to big contracts. Predictably they combined for an ERA of nearly 4.50, but that's not even the point. The real problem is that they were delusional enough to think that they were just a solid set-up crew away from playoff contention.

I will take the Miguel Tejada trade as an indication that the Orioles are willing to gut the whole team and start from scratch. Long overdue. They have been under .500 for 10 consecutive years. I'm sure their fanbase would tolerate another two or three years of sucking if they saw some light at the end of the tunnel. Now if they ship off Bedard, Brian Roberts, and one or two of the relievers they signed last year, they might be able to acquire a nice little nucleus of young talent to build around for a possible '11 playoff run.

Another Vicktory, eh?

If I'm were a Canadian Football League owner, I would be putting a little money into a 24 month CD so I could make a healthy offer to Michael Vick once he gets out of the clink. It would be the perfect symbiotic relationship. Vick gets a chance at redemption and the opportunity to play football again and one lucky CFL franchise will get a lot of attention and revenue.

Pay Up

Since Monday SYHD has been a subscribers only site. Since we lack the technical know-how to convert this into a pay site, we will be operating on the honor system. E-mail us at shootyourhopesanddreams@gmail.com and we will tell you where to mail your check.

Sketchy Business

I think it's time we reevaluate the necessity of courtroom sketch artists. I know what Michael Vick looks like. I know what prison jump suits look like. I know what lawyer-types look like. I know what courtrooms look like. Without the benefit of this picture, I would have imagined a scene much like this one. Now if one of the attorneys had his dick out or Michael Vick was choking out a dog with his handcuffs, by all means sketch away. But a scene so banal requires no artist's rendering.

After we do away with the guys that hand you towels for tips in swanky men's rooms and air traffic controllers, I say we 86 the courtroom sketch artists.

Petri-No Mas

Bobby Petrino is headed back to college game. He thought he was inheriting a contender with Vick and now he has a colossal rebuilding program in Atlanta. So he's bailing. I can relate. The moment anything in my life has gotten remotely challenging I have always quit on it.

What I can't understand is why he decides to sign with the University of Arkansas. If you want to go back to college football, how about putting a call into to the Michigan AD? I'm sure UCLA would be thrilled to have him. Honestly I'd even rather have the Texas A&M gig. Instead of arguably the most storied program in college football or the SoCal sun, he chooses to coach a mediocre program in an impossible conference in the flyover state to end all flyover states. What am I missing?

My Tim Tebow Heisman Thought

I'd like to thank god that I'm not an Orlando Magic fan because there is no way I could root for two Jesus-loving athletes in Tim Tebow AND Dwight Howard. There is just so much righteousness and lord praising that I can handle. Knowing my personality, if I were not a UF Law alum and a Gator fan I would hate Tebow (same goes for Joakim Noah), but I am what I am, and I'm sure glad I can root for Timmy to win Heisman #2 and #3. In fact by the time all is said and done the award might be renamed, The Tebow.

Fred Taylor = Bill Withers

There has been a lot of talk on both the blogosphere and amongst mainstream media outlets about how Fred Taylor is one of the most underrated running backs in NFL history (though if everyone deems him underrated, doesn't he then become "rated"). Anyway, I was listening to WFUV on my commute home and on came the Bill Withers' tune "Lovely Day". I started thinking about how underrated Withers is an artist and viola! Fred Taylor is the NFL version of Bill Withers...or is Bill Withers the music industry's version of Fred Taylor.

Withers had four legitimate hits, "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lean on Me", the aforementioned "Lovely Day", and "Just the Two of Us", spanning 10 years. "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lean on Me", and "Just the Two of Us" were all Top 5 hits. He has been sampled and covered countless times by countless artists (though I'm hesitant to label Better Than Ezra as artists). He's even won a few Grammy awards. Yet despite all his success I've never known anyone who owns a Bill Withers CD or seen him concert. I've never heard one person, critic or laymen, list Withers as one of his favorite artists or even refer to Withers in hushed accoladed tones. And this isn't just a generational thing as Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and Marvin Gaye are household names amongst Generation Y. Withers however, for whatever reason, fell through the cracks.

While Withers achieved success and was summarily forgetten, Taylor has had an impressive career with little to no fan fare or recognition. Perhaps, it's because he plays in that hellhole known as Jacksonville, or his groin has become a Monica Lewinsky-esque punchline, or that he's screwed many a fantasy team because he didn't get goal line carries. Regardless, Taylor has put together a very nice career. I won't rattle off all of his statistical accomplishments, but he has rushed for over 1,000 yards six times in 9 seasons and is on pace for his 7th in 10. This season included, he has averaged over 4.5 yards/attempt 8 of his 10 years in the league. His 10,457 rushing yards puts him dangerously close to OJ Simpson, but not as dangerously close as Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were. (Too soon?). But also like Withers, Taylor has also fallen through the cracks. He's only made one Pro Bowl. You never hear Taylor mentioned in any discussion about top backs in the league over the past decade. I doubt a Taylor jersey has ever been sold outside the "greater" Jacksonville area. You hardly ever see Fred Taylor on the promos for an upcoming Jacksonville prime time game. It was Brunell, then it was Leftwich, then Jones-Drew, but not Taylor. He is kind of a like a poor man's Curtis Martin in that no one realizes how good he is until they take a look at his stats.

I don't know how to wrap up this post.

More Free Agent Signings

Dodgers sign Andruw Jones to a 2 year $36 million deal. If the Dodgers are willing to banish last year's offseason mistake, Juan Pierre, to the bench I love this deal. The Dodgers should play Jones in center and Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier at the corners and have one of the better outfields in baseball. However Joe Torre's history suggests that he will find any excuse to ignore players who aren't old enough to run for the Senate. Pierre is probably going to play and be the least productive left fielder in baseball.

Brewers sign Eric Gagne to a 1 year $10 million contract. No me gusta. Gagne has pitched all of 67 innings since 2004; 67 Scott Proctoresque pretty decent innings. $10 million is a ridiculous amount to pay an injury-prone run of the mill reliever, coming off a dreadful stint with the Red Sox.