What will Mercury Morris do now that the Packers are no longer perfect?

Mercury...

I just...

I don't have words... The only thing I hope he does is...

This

Question Below

Do you think Indy's win over Tennessee (and any subsequent win) will be enough to save Caldwell's job? Was that job in jeopardy to begin with? Why or why not?

I don't think that Caldwell's job was ever in jeopardy, although it should be. In a strange twist the injury to Peyton Manning may have actually saved him for a year or even two. Logically, most fans and observers are assuming that the Colts are the worst team in football only because they lost Manning, I say that's just impossible.

(Now, to be fair I should disclaim that I am quite possibly the biggest Manning hater in the world. I can't stand anything that guy does and I think he's such a phony, pompous, media darling that actually chokes puppies and abuses his teammates when the cameras aren't rolling...)

Anyway, I say again, that's impossible. There is no way Manning makes up 10 wins himself. Everyone forgets, they weren't very good last year. They struggled to get to 10-6 and didn't do much to improve in the off-season. Everyone has reacted to this Colts season based on two faulty lines of thought. First, that this was still the Colts team of '05-'09 when they had one of the best offenses in football, it's not. Marvin Harrison isn't walking through that door and if he does he'll probably have a gun in his hand.

Second, people have such a selective memory about Manning that they forget that he wasn't particularly dominant last year. For some reason the media and some fans put the blinders on about this guy. He had 17 interceptions in 2010 against 33 touchdowns. Tom Brady had 36 touchdowns against only four interceptions. Aaron Rodgers had 28 and 11. Brady, Rodgers, Vick, and Roethlisberger all had QB ratings over 100, Manning's rating was just north of 90. Hall-of-Fame names like Schaub, Rivers, Flacco, and Freeman all had markedly better seasons than Manning in '10 in terms of QB rating, touchdown to interception ratio, and efficiency. Taking the 11th best quarterback (no joke check it out) in the NFL off of the Colts did not make them a one win team. I'm not suggesting that they wouldn't have been better with him, but there is very little chance that team makes the playoffs even with a healthy Manning.

Luckily for Caldwell hardly anyone agrees with me. He's going to get a completely free pass for this season from the fans and the media. Then when the Colts trade Manning to the Cowboys or 49ers next year so they can start Luck right away he will get another free pass because of his rookie QB.

So, with a healthy Manning and an 8-8 record Caldwell would probably be on a very hot seat right now, but because of the injury and the resultant zero-expectations his team is going to win one or two games and he'll be completely safe. And it's all because of selective memory and a gross distortion of Manning's value and the quality of the Colts team as a whole.

If you were to put together a Jeter-style "thanks for riding" gift bag for your one-night-only lady friends, what would be in it?

Three cards. It could all fit in an envelope.

1. A comment/feedback card (because everyone could use improvement).

2. A Starbucks gift card that may or may not have any money on it.

3. The D-Man's business card.

Do you think the Pats will be able to freeze Tebow Time?

I had this conversation last night...

The short answer is yes, I think the Patriots will win on Sunday and put the Tebow mania on hold for a week.

However, I'm scared. I feel about this game the way I feel when they play the Jets. I know the Patriots are better and I know that they should win. But I'm not convinced that they will. And it's compounded by how badly I want them to stomp the Broncos and shut-up Tebow's Bible thumping minions for a few days.

The problem is that right now New England's defense is really good at making opposing quarterbacks looks good. Rex Grossman went up and down the field on them last week and made it look easy. Without a lucky bounce on the last possession that game is probably headed to overtime. Tebow isn't as good as Grossman but he doesn't need to be because Denver's defense is much better than Washington's.

I know everyone thinks the Patriots are going to come out and put their foot down right from kickoff, and I hope they're right. I'm just not convinced that they can get enough stops to build the huge lead that it would take for me to be comfortable in the fourth quarter. If it comes down to Tebow-time it's going to be one stressful scene in Bar 96... I'll take Brady-time over Tebow-time every day of the week and twice on Sunday, but still it's hard to game plan for magic and fairy dust which is what the Broncos have seemingly been winning on.

On a slight aside I think this game will actually be a good test for Tebow. If he can't move the ball for three quarters against the putrid Patriots defense then he just isn't any good. EVERYONE has been gashing this defense, particularly through the air. You have to figure the Pats are going to do everything they can to make him throw it (surprisingly their rush defense is not nearly as bad as their pass defense) and if he struggles it will go a long way towards proving his ultimate ineptitude. If he has some success, like I think he will, it will fuel his blind devotees even more but I really don't care as long as the Patriots come home from Denver at 11-3.

If you're Chris Paul, what is your reaction to being the NBA ownership's PDA (public display of authority)?

Chris Paul comes out of this with an interesting legacy. In practical terms he was barely involved. He may have requested to be traded from New Orleans but that was totally superfluous, he was on his way out of there regardless and everyone knew it. This has really been a story about Stern, the owners, and why it's a terrible idea for a league to collectively own a team. On the other hand, Paul's name was the headline on all the coverage and he's inextricable from what happened, whether he did anything to deserve it or not.

He's also now unavoidably connected to the lockout, in fact he is probably now the third face of it with Stern and Billy Hunter. One side will see his case as proof that the lockout worked and that the owners reasserted some power. The other side will see it as proof of the opposite and that the commissioner's time in the captain's chair is running out. Both sides are at least half right. When the book about the last six months in the NBA's history is written the final chapter will likely be about the CP3 saga and how the league went completely off the tracks for two weeks trying to prove...something.

To answer your question about how he feels about it I can only assume that he's thrilled with the result but not the process. While I'm sure that he felt like a very well-paid piece of rope being used for the tug-of-war between the teams and the league this has actually ended up being a lot of free publicity for Paul and the Clippers.

Unless CP3 is a total idiot he had to know that trade talks starting the same day the new CBA was signed were bound to draw some negative attention. I'm sure he didn't expect the rain of nonsense that ultimately resulted, but he had to expect some backlash. When it all started spiraling he probably thought that he was going to be stuck in New Orleans or end up in a similarly small market under league mandate for this season. That, along with the label (fair or not) of discontented superstar could not have made him very happy. But now let's look at the results.

First, he's out of New Orleans, which is exactly what he wanted. Win.

Second, he's in L.A., which is a huge market and an awesome city in which to be young and rich. Win.

Third, he's not on the Lakers, which means he doesn't have to play with Kobe, hear all the talk about whether they can coexist, and try to win on a team with no big-men. Oh and as an added bonus the rest of the basketball world doesn't automatically hate him for appearing to force his way to such a loath-able team. He and Kobe together would have had a Miami Heat-sized target on their back. Win.

Lastly, he got paid. Who doesn't want that?

I'm sure if you gave him the choice he would rather have not been the test subject for the new CBA and for Stern's declining influence and authority. However, you can't say that he's a loser in this deal and I'm sure he's pretty happy with it now that it's done.

What the hell is going on with the CP3 trade attempts?

There are so many possibilities and opinions on this circus that it may become the subject of a book someday. "The Trading of Chris Paul and the Pointless Lockout" or "When David Stern's Dementia Became Obvious: A Laker Executive's Memoir". But here's my take.

The biggest wrenches in this situation are perception and timing. In some minds, the NBA was locked out for five months was as a direct result of what Lebron and more importantly Carmelo Anthony did last year. You can talk all you want about splitting revenues, sign and trade restrictions, and contract length. All of those terms and considerations gloss over one primary concern: power.

Without getting into too much boring detail here, David Stern and the NBA made the decision years ago to market the league based on its stars, rather than its franchises. It's a game where success and failure can literally be determined by one player, (ask Cleveland) and so using the stars as the vehicle to sell the league made (and still makes) sense. You don't hear promotions for the Knicks against the Hornets on ESPN, you hear about CP3 against Melo etc. etc.

By doing this in the 90's (Jordan, Barkley, Malone, the tail end of Bird etc.) and now (Lebron, Kobe, Melo, Howard, CP3, etc.) the NBA has achieved its highest levels of success ever (granted there was a huge post-Jordan talent vacuum in between). But it's a level of success that comes at a cost. A player that can win games single handed, sell tickets by showing up, and command millions in endorsements is no longer a pawn, no longer an employee in the traditional sense. It would be more accurate to refer to him as a limited partner, but one whose income is tied only to his own performance in the long-term, not on a nightly basis.

Which leads to a shifting in power. Players still can't pay their own salaries, build their own arenas, or fill their own rosters (yet). But in a media hungry world where fans crave unprecedented access and coverage of their favorite athletes, players can shape their own messages and wield considerable leverage. All it takes is star tweeting that he wants to play in New York and the rumors start. Every time he misses a clutch shot he's tanking to get traded. If he's on the bench more than usual the coach is tired of his whining about wanting to get out of town. When they lose he answers questions about his trade demands and when they win...he answers questions about his trade demands. It's a cycle that impacts everyone, including the owners.

People tend to see what they want to see or what they fear they will see. So imagine you are an owner of an NBA franchise and your star player who is up for free agency at the end of the year (or two) comes out and demands a trade. You know from past experience (watching other gazillionaire white guys deal with it) that once this happens performance often starts to decline along with attitude. Now the owner is hyper-sensitive to anything that even looks like petulance or pouting so he sees it in every missed free-throw, every blown defensive assignment, and every disagreement with a coach. It doesn't take long before the owner (or the GM) says, "Enough!" and trades the player for $0.75 on the dollar to, "get something for him."

With the new CBA (and even prior to it) players are perhaps even more motivated to make these trades happen during the final season of their current contracts through a sign and trade. The reason is simply financial, they are allowed to sign longer extensions with their current teams prior to being moved than they would be allowed to sign with their new teams after the trade. Some look at it as win-win. The player gets a longer deal and and the owner and his franchise get something for a player that was going to leave for nothing anyway. Nobody wants to be the next Cleveland.

This idea that a player (an "employee") could determine his own trade destination, was such a sticking point for the owners that they were willing to lock the players out and miss nearly 20 games each to stop it. Not all the owners of course, but most (and the ones who benefit from this type of movement sat very quietly hoping nobody would notice them when this came up). It's not the money, it's not even that players want to leave for greener pastures, it's the power that the media and enlarged player personalities can generate and its ability to erode the power of ownership. It's not a surprise that many stars eventually end up playing in big markets, the problem is that there is a developing perception around the league that they can decide to force their way there whenever they feel like it or whenever one of their friends signs there.

So rewind to three weeks ago with that long-winded back story. The lockout, that was supposed to regulate player movement and restore power to ownership, has been over for 3.5 seconds. What are the first stories that come out? "Where are Chis Paul and Dwight Howard going to end up?" You can't blame the owners for saying, "...wait...we just lost millions in an ugly and public CBA battle to change...nothing? Superstars can still force their way out of small markets whenever they feel like it? Oh heeeelllll no! ... Oh and by the way we own the damn team so why are we going to screw ourselves over by making the Lakers better?"

When the first trade proposal sending Paul to the Lakers came through it seemed like most observers' reactions were, "Already?" But many owners reactions more closely resembled, "GVOISNDBEO#$*&@@!!!!! LKVNEOIVNEO#$*!&@!!!!!!" Which roughly translates to, "You have to be fucking kidding me, I'm going to kill one of my lawn guys for sport this afternoon."

Which probably would have happened, but luckily for at least 29 lawn guys there was yet another wrinkle here which almost never happens...

All the owners were together in the same place... Because they had JUST signed the new CBA, that was going to prevent this type of player leverage, at the NBA offices in New York. It had been approved and announced a few days earlier but not actually signed. Had the trade been approved by the teams even three hours later CP3 probably ends up a Laker... But it didn't. So these arrogant rich guys got to sit in a room together and stew, and vent, and rage, and ultimately concoct an argument for Stern that probably went something like this...

Owners: We're going to kill you.

Stern: Agghhhh!

Owners: WE own the Hornets!? WHY did WE trade one of the best players in the league to the Lakers... Sorry Mr. Buss.

Stern: Mmm?

Owners: We're going to kill you.

Stern: Agghhh!! No, kill another lawn guy for chrissakes, I'll cancel the deal.

So he did, and now the league finds itself embroiled in quite possibly the most awkward conflict of interest in the history of sports.

They collectively own a franchise that has an unbelievably valuable commodity in Chris Paul that is going to be playing somewhere else at the end of the season, one way or another. They just locked out their own businesses in part to stop small market teams, like New Orleans, from being pressured into trading unhappy superstars to larger markets, like LA. If they trade him on the same day that the agreement is signed they're essentially saying that the lockout was for nothing and they get the added benefit of looking completely impotent or incompetent (take your pick). If they don't trade him the franchise that they own collectively might go under before someone can buy it from them AND Paul is leaving anyway. And not to mention that one of these owners has to sign off on trading for Paul while collectively agreeing to trade him to himself. Conflict. Of. Interest.

So to sum up this extremely long winded argument the problem with the attempts to trade Paul are:

1. The timing was horrible. The first act the league completes after a five month lockout in part due to unrestrained player movement cannot be an apparently unrestrained move by a player.

2. The league cannot have the perception, true or false, that they sold a marquee player from a small market to a large one. Again, why did we have a lockout?

Perception and timing.

What's the solution?

Umm... there isn't one.

Unless of course they want to trade him to the Celtics...

Question Below

Everyone is talking about Eli Manning proving himself as an "elite" quarterback this year; I say he's still tier 2 (and an ass clown). Why am I right?

(Huge sigh) You're not.

Excuse me while I go puke in my shoes.

He's really good, and even better late in games. It nauseates me to say but he's extremely clutch and he's doing it on a team that isn't overly talented. His wide receivers don't scare you much more than the average, if at all. The defense has taken huge steps back from their previous dominance. Their coach's face is grotesquely deformed due to exposure to frigid temperatures. He's the Giants' best player and they're going to win their division...

Excuse me once again while I puke into my shoes.

Now, to your point that he's second tier I would agree with that in the strictest sense depending on how you define your tiers. There are three QB's that, this season, have set themselves apart from the rest statistically: Rodgers, Brady, and Brees (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH no Peyton....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA). All three have a chance to break Marino's single season record for passing yards and combined they have six total losses. They are the top tier using those measures.

Unfortunately I think looking at it that way is flawed because what by so doing you're saying is that the top tier consists of the best quarterbacks on the best offensive teams which isn't exactly fair. It's almost like the Heisman conversation from yesterday, to judge a player based solely on the success of his team is not a true measure of his value. Manning is having a tremendous season because his team isn't very good and he might be one of a small handful of reasons that they're winning. Roethlisberger is another example. His team is doing well and he is having probably the best season of his career but he wouldn't be ranked among the league's best by the previous measures.

All that being said if I'm starting a team I'm not taking Manning with my first pick or even my first five picks. But if I need to win a game in the fourth quarter right now I'd probably take him over everyone but Brady (maybe Tebow-time...hehehehe) and even that might be because I'm a homer. Rodgers is better but less proven in the clutch and Brees just is not as good in those crunch time situations.

So like I said... (huge sigh) ... You're not right.

Under what scenario could TJ Yeats lead the Texans beyond the divisional playoffs?

The only way that T.J. Yates leads the Texans beyond the divisional playoffs is if T.J. Yates does not have to "lead" the Texans, AND Andre Johnson comes back, AND they have home field advantage. I'm not going to go on and on about how Yates isn't any good, I actually think he is serviceable, especially compared to some of the truly lousy quarterbacks out there. (I'm looking at you Matt Moore and Caleb Hanie.)

Rather than ability the larger issue for Yates is that he's a rookie and his team is very light on talent and depth at the running back position. It's not like they can just line up and smash it 50 times and only throw on 3rd 8+. He's going to have to win them games, which is already difficult enough in the playoffs but if you take away Johnson and put Houston on the road in the cold in Pittsburgh, New England, or Baltimore I don't think it will be pretty.

But, if they can hold onto home field, get Denver-esque defense (turnovers), and not fall behind to where they would need to throw to come back then I wouldn't rule them out. That defense is vicious even without Mario Williams and they can run it enough with Tate when they're playing from the front. In order to hang onto home field however, they won't be able to lose, not even one out of three because either Pittsburgh or New England are running the table.

I feel like I'm seeing 15-yard penalties everywhere....is the the NFL getting soft?

The NFL isn't getting soft, it's getting scared. With all the attention paid to concussions and the life-altering effects they have had on previous generations of players the NFL really has no choice but to try to keep their players safer. The only way to do that is to flag anything and everything that looks like a dangerous hit.

Rule changes come along in every sport, players are going to have to adapt. I'll grant you there are a lot of plays where a defender gets flagged for a hit and I don't know what his alternative was. Football is a fast moving game and you can't plan every collision to avoid the head and land perfectly on the shoulder, meaning some of these flags are not necessarily the fault of the offending player. That being said possibly being considered soft is better than having to open your own hospital to care for all your retirees in vegetative states.

I think the real question is whether the flags are working. The intent is good but are players actually safer? Are concussions down? Will the life-span and quality of life for retired players improve? I don't have an answer to any of those, but those are the things the NFL should be worrying about, not a perception of softness.

Does RGIII deserve the Heisman? Did he deserve it 1 month ago? What changed? What does it mean for Andrew Luck and is Indianapolis now sucking for

I think the Heisman is such a flawed award. I don't even know what qualifies someone as deserving anymore. Is it an MVP award or does it go to the best player (if you think about it those really are two totally different things)? Does your team need to be really good / nationally relevant in order for you to be the best player? Is it really just an award for the best offensive player on the best team? What role to do politics and campaigning play?

The Griffin case was such an anomaly in my opinion and, at the risk of being overly dramatic, such a reflection on our current media culture. To answer your second question, I don't know if Griffin deserved the Heisman a month ago, but he certainly would not have won it. In this, "what have you done for me lately," 24 hour news cycle, immediate gratification culture that we live in it is apparently more important to be scheduled to play on the last weekend of the season than it is to actually be the best player. It's also apparently very helpful, if you going to lose, to do it early in the season when people aren't paying close attention and won't remember.

Luck was punished by a couple of things. First, he didn't play on the last Saturday of the season so he wasn't "fresh" in voters minds. (This is totally mind boggling to me, the kid has been an unstoppable machine for three years but by virtue of not playing one more game before the votes were due he's all of a sudden not as good as a QB from fucking Baylor? I digress...) Stanford lost to Oregon on national TV and he threw a costly interception. (Never mind the 50+ points his defense allowed.) Other than that game Stanford's games weren't broadcast nationally very often and by virtue of playing in California many of their games started late on the east coast. That relative lack of exposure and one notable failure seemingly created this perception that he wasn't quite as good as he was last year. Whether that's true or not is debatable but if Stanford beat Oregon and played in the Pac-12 championship game Luck is your Heisman winner, guaranteed.

If you look at Griffin's, and maybe more importantly Baylor's season you'll see what I mean. As I said above Luck was punished for losing on national TV to Oregon on November 5th. That was Stanford's only loss. Baylor has three losses, K-State, Oklahoma State, and ... wait for it ... A&M (yup you read that right). And in case you forgot (I did) they didn't just lose to A&M, they got demolished 55-28. They also got thumped by Oklahoma State 59-24. So what's the difference? Baylor's last loss was October 29th at OK-State, a week before Stanford's loss. It was on TV but it was regional coverage on ABC at 2:30 PM, meaning viewers on the east and west coasts could have been watching something else. The entire college football world watched Luck lose to Oregon but very few watched (and even fewer remember) Griffin get crushed in Stillwater, nobody remembers anything about the A&M or K-State losses ... and that makes him more deserving of the Heisman? Baylor lost three times in one month, Stanford lost once all year... 'Splain to me how the "Luck lost the Heisman against Oregon" argument makes any sense?

As you can probably deduce I think Luck got screwed and is the better player. Griffin was sort of the Newt Gingrich of the Heisman race, showed up late, caught fire, didn't screw up publicly, and was on TV when it mattered. Perhaps a better analogy is Spaz's hiring at BC. What were his distinguishing characteristics? He was there, he was loyal, he wasn't going to leave, he had a ton of experience, Gene D. loved him. All of those are helpful but should they be the only reason you hire someone? No. What were Griffin's distinguishing characteristics? He played well in a game on December 2nd, he didn't lose on national TV, he didn't lose after Halloween, and his team beat Oklahoma and Texas on TV.

Do those things really make someone the best football player in the country? Absolutely not, but they do answer the question, what have you done for me lately?

As for the NFL part of your question, I think there is almost no chance to Colts even consider Griffin. Think about their successes of late. They have all been due to the ability of a very traditional pocket passer, I don't see them trying to change their entire system to fit Griffin's style, especially not when a better player is available that makes more sense. Griffin is going to go high in the draft (he should send Cam Newton a thank-you note) but where the voters failed to have any perspective on the Heisman the NFL has the luxury of time to actually look at them and determine who the better player is based on....you know... PLAYING. Not arbitrary scheduling and flukes of TV coverage.

Do you think Tom Coughlin took his kicker-icing cues from Jason Garrett's moves last week? (i.e. did he see that Bailey was successfully iced last wee

I don't think what happened last week had anything to do with Coughlin's decision to call timeout. That's such a common move in the NFL these days, even though I think it rarely works and has backfired as much as it has paid off. There have been plenty of cases where the kicker missed the first kick only to get a second chance because of the timeout (which makes a coach look very very bad as the second kick is sailing through the uprights).

Another thing to remember in this case is that Bailey wasn't really iced, the kick was blocked. It's not like he went out there and shanked it 30 yards to the right, the Giants line just made a great push. The timeout didn't do anything to Bailey, it just have the D a second chance to get to him. Coughlin's going to get credit for pushing the right button at the right time but it's such an overrated move, especially when it works, and it's too fickle in my opinion. If you do it and it works you're a genius, if it fails you're a clueless buffoon... The only thing that anyone knows for sure? Don't ice your own kicker.

Lebron Thoughts - 2.0 The Real Winner Is...

So I've been thinking about this Lebron "decision" situation some more and it has occurred to me that there are some really interesting questions that we may never know the answers to. First and foremost who was pulling the puppet strings the ultimately led to Lebron choosing Miami? Does D-Wade have that much juice in the league right now? Have we underestimated him as the second-fiddle in this free agent class? Or was it Riley? Does the "Coolest White Man Alive" still wield the force it took to manage quite possibly the most ego-laden teams in NBA history in Los Angeles? Where does Worldwide Wes fit in? Call me naive but this move doesn't have his stamp on it to me. If LBJ had ended up in Chicago or New York I would buy it, but there are too many alphas in Dade county already for me to believe that Wes was able to throw whatever weight he has around.

Regardless of the answers to those questions (which, like I said, we'll probably never know) it seems clear to me that there is one winner here and that's Dwayne Wade if...

HE WOULD JUST SHUT THE F#!*% UP!

Seriously D-Wade, a World Trade Center reference? What's next calling the rest of the league a bunch of chrome-dome kids with leukemia? Is there a hotter button to push than 9/11? Oil spill jokes maybe? I don't care what he meant by it (and that fact that he's at least partially right doesn't matter). Just SHUT UP!

You won, you pulled off something that I and everyone else with an opinion thought was impossible. You took the biggest free agent in the history of sports and made him at worst your equal and at best your sidekick. Ride the wave, bask in the glory of your victory, buy another mansion or Lotus, but for the love of God stop talking about it.

It hasn't been discussed much but how could this have worked out any better for Wade? He gets to stay in South Beach where he is a king. He gets to play alongside what would have been the greatest player of all time and another one of his best friends who's no slouch. And the icing on the cake is that he will take none of the James-ian fallout from his former team or fans and comes out smelling like roses (especially in Miami) because he took a discount to stay home and try to win. AMAZING! Who hates Wade right now (assuming he SHUTS UP!)? Chicago maybe for not coming back to his roots? That's it, otherwise all he did was make himself a legend in Miami and probably to some degree change a lot of perceptions about him. Which brings me to...

If Miami rattles off three championships in a row is D-Wade the Jordan of this generation instead of Lebron? The conversation is over in Miami. After pulling this off James could reinvent the wheel and South Beach would still be Wade territory. But the credit and the legacy for any rings depends dramatically on how the championships are won. Say they split the workload 30,30,20,20 (Wade, Lebron, Bosh, supporting cast). Can we say those championships "belong" to Lebron when he joined Wade's team where he had already accomplished several things James couldn't? (Won a championship, attracted Bosh, leaned on the organization hard enough to get him help...) Unless LBJ goes for 40,17, and 11 through a playoff run the answer is no.

Let's go over it again. Wade, the alleged second prize in this free agent class managed to: 1. Attract a premier big man to his team; 2. Lead (not follow) the biggest free agent in sports history to his home team (where he will never be more than a 1A to Wade's 1); 3. Convince the organization to find a way to pay all three; 4. And keep his reputation relatively in tact or enhance it from some perspectives while the prince of basketball's image was going all "Mickelson at Wingfoot" for joining him. Unbelievable.

So maybe we underestimated you Mr. Wade... Maybe you are the big dog in the draft class of '03... Now please... PLEASE SHUT UP and make me believe it.

The Lebron Conundrum

A little more than a week ago Lebron James announced, in horrifically dramatic fashion, his "DECISION" to join Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, and Pat Riley in Miami. Sports fans around the country were horrified, Cleveland broke off from the rest of the United States and floated out to rest somewhere near the lost city of Atlantis (no small feat for a landlocked Midwestern city), and a cloud of righteous indignation hung over the sports world like a pending thunderstorm. Pundits from all sides crucified Lebron and his image went into a quasi-Tiger nosedive.

As a fan of an Eastern Conference team I hate that LBJ ended up in Miami forming a seemingly unbeatable triumvirate. The East is essentially theirs until someone takes it from them and my level of faith that the Celtics can do that is hovering around the mendoza line just a month after Boston was one game from banner 18.

That being said we as sports fans need to check our hypocrisy just a little bit when it comes to James' decision. In the past week I've heard numerous people lambasting Lebron as the archetype of all that is wrong with sports today. A typical athlete that has no loyalty to anything other than himself or his numerous bank accounts. A demon wresting the nobility and joy from sports and replacing it with a cold black heart to be found sitting in a corner booth at an ultra-exclusive South Beach club we as fans could never find nevermind enter. Truly the anti-Christ of basketball.

Some of those criticisms may very well be true, but unfortunately for those facing a precarious fall from the soap-box, they don't apply in this case. Was the self-promotion fest known as "The Decision" a truly skin crawling self aggrandizing nightmare to watch? Of course. (Sidenote: ESPN is far from blameless in this...) Has his callous departure from his hometown made the burning of his jersey and the removal of his likeness from anywhere in the city seem like an under-reaction? Sure.

But if you take the emotion out of it and look at what he actually decided to do it becomes clear that Lebron (along with Wade and Bosh) has taken the road less traveled. In reality he did something that we wish athletes would do more of, he chose winning over money. Cleveland could have paid him 30 million dollars more than any other team over the life of a maximum contract AND in Miami James will receive less than the max. Let me make sure that's clear. Lebron will get less money with the Heat than he would have with ANY OTHER TEAM. The Knicks could have paid him more, the Nets could have paid him more, the dreadful Clippers could have paid him more, everyone with the cap space for a max player could have paid him more. He turned that extra money down for a chance to play on what could be a historically good team. From what I've seen in sports that's pretty atypical. Do you think ARod would be a Yankee right now if they hadn't offered the biggest number? No chance.

Also, how many guys of Lebron's stature would be willing to go to another star's town and team? Miami belongs to Wade. He won them a championship in '06 and is still at the very least their co-top dog. Lebron didn't assemble this dynasty, he was added to it. That's a strange idea for perhaps the greatest basketball player (athlete?) in the world right now, but it's true. If he wins in Miami it won't be because he's the greatest of all time. It will be because they are a great team with three great (two great, one good?) players. He likely gave up his chance to be discussed in the same category as Russell and Jordan to chase championships and avoid being discussed in the Malone / Barkley category. Now whether he is aware of that probability is up for debate, but if he is (and I think he is) that's not a "typical athlete" decision.

Look, the way that Lebron delivered his decision was unacceptable. There is no question about that, especially given that he never told Cleveland that he was definitely leaving until just before the announcement. So he deserves to take heat from that and if I were him I'd avoid setting foot in Ohio for a while. But while we reserve the right to get on him for many aspects of his decision we can't call him the typical athlete and say he represents everything that's stereotypically wrong with sports. We can say he's taking the easy way out and leaving the chance to be Clevaland's Jordan on the table. We can say he's selfish and thoughtless for crushing his hometown in such a cold and deliberate way. We can even say he's making a bad decision, if it doesn't work his legacy won't be tarnished, it will be torched like his last number 23 jersey. But we can't say he represents all the things we hate about sports. We're still allowed to hate him, just not for that...

On The Eve of The Finals

We know the NBA wanted Kobe v. Lebron... Hell I kinda wanted Kobe v. Lebron, but I guess we can settle for two teams that have collectively won almost half of the NBA Championships ever awarded.

When the Celtics face the Lakers for a title it's like all the ghosts of our collective basketball pasts are reincarnated for two weeks. Everybody talks about Russel, Cousy, Bird, Parish, and McHale; West, Magic, and Kareem; DJ and Worthy; and even goggle faced, "Ohhh you got laid out!" Kurt Rambis.

But in this particular case I think talking about the old guys has special significance because both of these rosters are not very far away from being retired suits themselves. Everyone loves to talk about how old the Celtics are but the Lakers aren't an upstart cast of young pups either. Kobe has maybe two years left as the second best player in the world. (Stop sighing and rolling your eyes, just because Lebron couldn't carry a mediocre roster past a better Celtics team doesn't mean that Kobe is better. He just isn't, he used to be, but not anymore.) Gasol is only as "good" as he is because of Kobe and some of the other talent around him (and his game is so fucking ugly and uncoordinated that he's one half goony step away from a blown ACL at any time). Fisher is a dinosaur and Artest might not be human so who knows what his lifespan is.

The one Laker I left out? Lamar Odom. Why? Because I wanted to write this. Someone this week, if it hasn't happened already, is going to write an article or say something about how he is the key player for the Lakers in this series i.e., "You know Rick, I really think that Odom is going to be a key for the Lakers in this series. If he plays his best, with that effort that seems to come and go, the Celtics have no chance. I think he'll do it. Lakers in five." How do people still believe this? The guy has had the chance to be Pippen for a decade now and has been out to lunch for 97% of that time. He hardly ever tries, plays almost no defense, takes possessions off like he's playing for the Longhorns, and still people see one good game and say, "Woweee! That Lamar Odom, if he could play like that every night he'd be a superstar." Yeah? Well he can't. And he won't.

So what is going to be the key?

First for the Lakers... Wait who gives a fuck what the Lakers should do? This is a Boston blog...

Okay, for the Celtics there are a few things.

1. Rondo has to absolutely shred Fisher if they are ever stupid enough to match them up. Fisher got roasted by Russell Westbrook in round one and Westbrook is no Rondo. I'm not saying that Rondo has to score like he has through most of this run, he just has to create inside and cause havoc in the lane.

2. Pierce has to dig deeper into that fountain of youth he discovered before the Orlando series... Even if Kobe covers him. We saw in the Cleveland series that Pierce can't handle bigger, stronger, more athletic defenders. Well, Kobe isn't much bigger and Pierce is probably stronger but Bryant is a much better defender than anyone the Magic ran at him. Plus he has the superstar factor so Pierce won't get many calls on those pump fake and dive into the defender's chest moves that he seems to rely on far too much.

3. Ray Allen has to hit. The problem with having one of the best outside shooters of all time on your roster is that when he goes cold he has to keep shooting to get out of it, essentially throwing possessions away. (See the first few rounds in '08 CLANG!) If Allen can keep it rolling the Celtics have an excellent chance to win this series. If he doesn't he has to keep shooting and we'll have to keep praying because that's the only chance Boston will have. Obviously Rondo's playmaking ability makes his teammates better but I think Allen's shooting has the same effect. If he is making shots is does three things. First it spreads the floor even more for other players. Two, it allows him to get to the basket himself if the defense over pursues to his shot. And finally, it always gives the Celtics a chance late in close games.

4. Old Man River... I mean Kevin Garnett. I don't even know what to say about him. He's been bad in playoffs. I know, I know, they're in the Finals how bad could he have been? I'm telling you, BAD. He has NO elevation anymore and he gets pushed off the spot by every offensive player that weighs more than 180 pounds. He's become all flash and no substance. I love his energy and maybe (hopefully?) he can dig down into that psychotic part of his makeup that made him such a great player and pull out 4-7 great games... But I'm not convinced. He has to pound on Gasol and abuse him like he did two years ago for the Celtics to have a chance. That was the decisive matchup between these two teams in '08; if it flips with the rest of the rosters essentially the same (Wallace and Artest are a diva-wash) how can Boston overcome that?

PREDICTION:

Ummm.... I don't know. Obviously I'm rooting for Boston, I really am but there are a few things working against them.

Did you see Kobe in the last five minutes of game six in Phoenix? Unstoppable, and you just know he wants redemption for being humiliated in Boston two years ago. Bad.

Also, the setup of the finals is different than the first three rounds. It's played 2 in LA, 3 in Boston, and 2 in LA. That doesn't set up very well for the visiting team. Boston basically has to win one in LA and then sweep at home to avoid trying to clinch on the road in game six or seven. A very daunting task to say the least.

I'm going to say Celtics in six, with my heart, not my head. They are the old(er) dogs that know this is their last shot. There is no way this roster looks the same next year and even if it does who knows what the rest of the East or the NBA for that matter will look like? If it doesn't get done now it will be a while before we see banner 18, so I'm saying they dig just deep enough and steal one in LA, then take two out of three at home, and then stun the NBA world by lighting up LA in game six to break Kobe's heart. Here's hoping.

Tiger v. Phil

I'm going to preface this by saying I have always hated Phil Mickelson...

Okay, now that all the women have clicked away let's continue. He's whiny, he chokes, he doesn't look like an athlete, and he seems like an incredibly pompous jerk. In short (excuse the last part) he's not Tiger Woods.

I love Tiger. I love that he swears, slams clubs, and pumps his fist when he wins. I love that nine times out of ten you know that his big putts are going in because the ball and putter collectively are too scared to do otherwise. I love that he spends ridiculous amounts of money on houses, boats, and cars. And to be honest I love that he doesn't sign every autograph or pat every kid on the head as he's walking the course. Nobody comes to your cubicle to ask you to sign something or be nice to their little rug-rat everyday, why should he have to?

Do I love all the tabloid nonsense about his affairs? No, he never should have gotten married. If you're a professional athlete worth one billion dollars DO NOT GET MARRIED. I don't care how hot, how Sweedish, how blonde, or how flexible she is just don't do it. Stay single and bang everything that breathes between Orlando and Vegas and nobody cares. Do it with pretty wife and two kids - instant pariah with a phony trip to "sex addiction" rehab for dessert.

(Two things on the rehab story. 1. How pissed is Tiger going to be when Elin still divorces him after he went though all that shit pretending to actually want to stop banging porn stars and cocktail waitresses? 2. Sex addiction = access and opportunity. It's not a fucking disease, it's called being rich, famous, and young enough to still have functioning plumbing. Find me a guy who says he wouldn't take that affliction and I'll show you a liar.)

All that being said, after everything that's happened in the last six months could there have been anything worse for Tiger than Phil winning the Master's?

Stop thinking. Short of a long list of 11 year old boys coming out Michael Jackson style and saying that Tiger has a "treasure" room, the answer is a resounding NO.

Not only did Tiger's biggest "rival" (I use the term loosely, it's like a dolphin being the rival of a great-white) win another green jacket, he also dumped a whole canister of gasoline on the, "We Hate Tiger Woods Because He Did What Rich Famous Guys Do" Club's inaugural bonfire of Woods related paraphernalia.

With one long hug with his cancer stricken wife on the backside of the 18th green Mickelson turned what was a moderately successful week for Woods (all things considered) into a disaster. Every woman watching thought one of two things:

1. (Sniffle, sniffle...)
2. Tiger Woods is an asshole. Why can't he be like that?

(It's one thing for every woman to think that, but what do the sponsors think? That's a huge question for him going forward).

The reality is Tiger Woods is not like that, and that's what makes him the greatest golfer in the world. It's not a good guy contest, it's not a nice husband / father contest, it's a golf tournament. Not being like Phil is what made Tiger the best, trying to be like Phil will be his undoing. Phil plays with the kids, takes vacations, gets fat, and seems like he genuinely puts his family first. Tiger hits balls until is hands bleed, everything else comes second. (Insert balls joke here...)

Would I let Tiger watch my kids (if I had any)? No chance. Would I want to learn how to win from Phil? Nope.

Tiger and Phil are completely different people, but on that April Sunday as Phil emerged from the veil that Tiger had cast around the entire week at Augusta to claim his third green jacket and embrace his wife like he never wanted to let go they were drawn into stark comparison both on the course and off. And for once Phil came out on top.

Enjoy it lefty, as a fan I hope that you stay a great dad and husband off the course and that Tiger goes back to crushing you on the back nine.

Camera-Gate!

Let's take a short trip back in time.

It's last Friday in Foxboro. Bill Bellichick has assembled his offensive staff for a meeting. He wants to hear the group's plan of attack for Sunday's game at the Jets.

After an exhaustive report from each position head, outlining every coach's decisions and recommendations Bill takes a deep breath and looks down at impressively marked notebook. After a pause he looks up and glances from face to face around the room. As his gaze moves from coach to coach none can hold his eye. When the last breaks eye-contact under the guise of scribbling a note Bellchick's normally placid face turns to a sneer, then quickly a grimace.

It is as he feared. Despite the contributions of the assembled group, some of the brightest offensive minds in football, they have all, himself included, come to the same conclusion. They cannot beat the Jets.

Silence hangs in the room, replacing the promise of the coming season, one which was heralded by fans, local, and national media as a potentially dominant campaign.

Months of planning, plotting, strategizing, and training have gone by the wayside even before kickoff as the Patriots' staff realizes that it has failed to figure out a way to utilize one of the deepest and fastest wide receiving corps in football, the second best quarterback in the game, and a developing running back to beat a mediocre division rival.

Bellichick says only two words. Words which give every man in the room chills. They are a veritable death sentence for the season and maybe for their careers.

"Call Estrella."

An appeal is voiced from the back of the room, a voice of reason, "Bill... No. We don't need this. Just throw it up to Moss. He's 6'5" with 4.2 speed, he can run by at least 3 defensive backs at a time!"

Bill's response is swift and harsh, "No! I will not leave this game in the hands of one of the greatest quarterback receiver tandems in NFL history! No chance. Your failures have left me with no choice! Why would I want men who have given their lives to football, who work 16 hour days studying film, looking for tendencies to make these types of decisions? My answer is nay I would not! Can't you see our only hope is to rest all of our faith on this young A/V intern's ability to steal and decode signs!"

Another plea, "But Bill, think about it. He's only 26, and has never played a down of football in his life. He's a technician not a coach. He won't even know what he's looking at. Not to mention the fact that once he films the signs he'll only have 15 seconds, maybe 20 to figure out which play they're calling from hundreds of polaroids or a 400 page playbook and relay that information to our staff, who then will maybe have a second or two to figure out the alignments involved and pick a play which suits our advantage and get the call to Tom who will already have had to snap the ball. It can't be done! It's madness!"

A scuffle ensues. Bellichick has called his goons in from the hallways to dispose of this dissenting opinion. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, the speaker will never be seen again, his body replaced by an exact robot replica which will stand on the sidelines as a reminder to all: This is a Dictatorship, not a Democracy!

"Put the plan into motion. Retrieve Estrella from the dungeons and alert him of his duties. Make sure to have plenty of sionide poison at the ready. He will have to be ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for this cause. He is our only hope."


Sounds a bit ridiculous doesn't it?

Well you wouldn't think so if you've turned on a TV or read a newspaper in the last three days. Cameragate has gripped the football world and polarized it into two groups. Patriot fans and everyone else. For the latter, and notably larger group it is almost like a victory parade. Now every fan of a mediocre franchise thinks they can explain why the Patriots have been so wildly successful while their team have not. For the former, well like I said heavy is the head the wears the crown.

The reality, in this case isn't even somewhere in the middle.

Of course what the Patriots did was wrong, in that it violated league rules and a NFL directive sent out by the commission in 2006, but to even suggest that this type of misdemeanor could have 1. Affected the outcome of Sunday's game or 2. Been the principal reason that the Patriots have won three Super Bowls since 2000 is utterly and embarassingly preposterious.

SInce I can't speak about every game in the Bellichick / Brady era where this has been an issue I'll just stick to using this one as an example for now. First and foremost the tapes were confiscated in the first quarter, which by any observers recollections was the most evenly played of the game. After that time the Patriots decimated the Jets, especially in the second half, even without the findings of the illicit tape. Is that sinking in? New England won the game by 24 points, and turned it into a laugher long after their renegade camera James Bond had been kicked out of the stadium. How, those of you who are calling for a forfeit, do you explain the Pats second half success? Luck? Maybe they had another camera?

Let's assume that they did, or that the camera in question was feeding to a recorder somewhere in the Meadowlands that the Jets never found. Why in the blue-fuck would they need Randy Moss to beat triple coverage with his super-human speed if they knew what defense was coming? And why, if they knew what was coming would Brady ever even look in the direction of a receiver flanked by three defensive backs. Do you really think this conversation took place between the booth and Bellichick.

"Hey, ah Bill we just stole some signs for this next play and it seems that they're going to triple cover Randy and leave the middle of the field totally open, you think we oughtta throw another receiver into the slot to fill that void?"

"Nah, you know what, I think, despite our knowledge of their play calling we should just let Randy run by the three defenders for a 50 yard TD. You know, do something nice for the kids, give everyone a reason to go out and buy those number 81 jerseys."

It's just laughable, and every arm-chair Bill Polian is getting his power and royal blue tightie whities up into a bunch because they hated the Patriots before this, and now they feel justified.

Is it a coincidence that the first player to come out vocally against Bellichick and the Pats is the same player who blasted them at the end of last season? Of course not! Tomlinson hates New England, hates their success, and hates most of all that they stole what will probably be his best chance to win a Super Bowl last year. Not exactly an objective opinion, but who cares put it on ESPN 100,000 times a day and print it in every newspaper nationwide. Hell, preach it as though it were gospel while you're at it.

And that's not even the most deplorable display following this incident. The New England fans who are leaping off the bandwagon, including spineless Herald (baseball, stick to that) columnist Tony Massarotti make this an even more aggravating story. Now of course you can't take this too seriously but on an ESPN.com message board today one post said and I quote, "Was a Pats fan 'til today...[insert paragraph of mindless drivel here] Am now a Colts fan."

Are you out of your mind? So on Sunday you liked the Patriots, but after finding out that they tried to steal signs you no longer like them... and oops how convenient for you that you just happened to pick the defending Super Bowl Champs as your new favorite team you bandwagon jumping, DLP buying, Peyton Manning ball-washing pathetic excuse for a fan. Good riddance, New England is better off without you. Just a guess here, you didn't pick that team randomly out of a hat did you?

The Sky is...

Falling! Duck! Take cover! The Red Sox lost to the Royals! It's over! Abandon ship! Maybe next year! Get Papelbon back in the rotation! Put Schilling out to pasture! Trade Lugo now! Are you worried yet?! Why NOT!? The fucking Yankees won today!

[Deep breath...]

Welcome to the 2007 Red Sox season. After one game a few things would seem to be glaringly apparent.

1. Curt Schilling is done, finished, may actually die of old age on the mound during his next start.

2. Julio Lugo is no more than a poor man's Jose Offerman, which is to say he will be lucky to hit .200.

3. Manny Ramirez is good for one thing and one thing only, grounding into sixth inning double plays.

4. That other Asian guy, Okajima, doesn't know the season started yet, he still thinks he's pitching batting practice.

5. Maybe a little less blogging and a little more pitching? Forget the changeup let's get that fastball up over 90 first eh?

But then again it's only been one game. Lest we forget, there are 161 left to play and in my humble opinion two things are for certain. The Red Sox are not going to finish the season 0-162 and the Royals will not end the year 162-0. It's been one day people, let's relax on the apocalyptic meltdowns ok?

So since we've decided we're not going to freak out anymore, let's take a logical look at what happened yesterday. The first and most troubling thing for me was Schilling's lack of velocity. Last year NESN didn't show the radar readings on all of Curt's pitches, now I wish they had stuck to that plan for this season. His fastball was topping out in the very low 90's in the first few innings and bottomed out in the fourth at 88. That's Keith Foulke-esque, and while I know he spent the whole spring working on it, Schilling doesn't have Foulke's changeup to compliment that "blazing" sub-90 heater (I guess Folke doesn't anymore either but at least he did at one point). Without mid-90's velocity on the straight fastball Schilling's effectiveness is minimized to some degree, because his best pitch, his splitter, has no velocity variance from his regular fastball. If hitters don't have to worry about the splitter buckling their knees AND the fastball blowing past them both pitches become remarkably ordinary.

Also, while this has been wildly overplayed in the media I just can't comment on Curt's struggles without mentioning his weight. The guy looks fat. Plain and simple. I'm not one of those people who is going to sit here and say things like, "More Jogging, Less Blogging!" (dirtdogs.com). No one can work out all day. But regardless of your extracurricular activities, there is no excuse for coming into the season looking fat, slow, and old if you want to be the ace of the Red Sox staff. It's not the main point of yesterday's start, but it should be on our minds going forward

Obviously I'm not ready to throw in the towel on a great competitor like Schilling after one game. Yesterday absolutely could have just been a hiccup and not an indicator of things to come. He's a warrior (I hate that sports cleche but it applies here) and even with deteriorating physical skills his ferocity and baseball intelligence should be able to buy him 12-15 wins this season. That being said, his spot at the front end of the rotation looks very shaky, and the door is certainly open for Josh Beckett or Diasuke Matusaka to step through and assume that role.

One thing about yesterday's game that is being overlooked is the performance by Gil Meche. While it certainly can be said that the Red Sox didn't hit, to place all of the blame on their lineup is to grossly underestimate the performance Mech put on. He made the Royals look like geniuses for inking him to a 55 million dollar contract last winter. After the first inning he simply dominated the Sox lineup, throwing under 10 pitches in three of his frames and once he was given the lead he never allowed them back in the game. Sometimes you just run into a buzzsaw on the mound, and wiith no other evidence to suggest otherwise, I am willing to say that is what happened yesterday. The Sox lineup is still potent and will not be shut down like that all the time, in fact they'll probably will bounce back with a far better performance on Wednesday.

An exclamation point on the struggles of the Sox offense was new shortstop Julio Lugo's three consecutive strikeouts in his first three at bats in a Red Sox uniform. If I were him I would avoid listening to WEEI at all today (which I guess won't be hard since they're on the road), they won't be kind. But the good news is all he has to do to get back in our good graces is have a good game tomorrow. To be fair, coming into the game Lugo was 0-7 lifetime against Meche, and it's just a fact that some pitchers just have some hitters' number, and vice versa. I don't think we're looking at a potential all star here, but we should still consider Lugo a key to this lineup so long as Gil Meche doesn't get traded to an AL East team.

This time of year everything is thrown into sharp relief, especially on paper. Looking at a team and trying to evaluate it after one (or even a few) game(s) is like trying to evaluate a hitter's batting average over the same amount of time. One day could be hitting 1.000, the next he could be down to .200. Everything is overly fluid at this point, and just like every season it will take a few weeks to sort out the good from the mediocre and even longer to determine the mediocre from the bad. So while the Yankees looked like they could win every game 9-5 yesterday and the Red Sox appeared to be the next incarnation of the '05 Tigers that could all be flipped on its head by this time tomorrow.

So relax, it's baseball season, a six month excuse to not leave your couch between 7 and 10 PM five nights a week.

While it wasn't a great day to be a Red Sox fan or player yesterday it certainly was a great time to be a former member of the hometown team. Seemingly everyone of consequence that has left the Sox over the past two seasons had a great day, highlighted by much maligned shortstop Edgar Renterria's two homeruns, including a game winner for the Atlanta Braves. Man, why can't we get players like that? Other ex-Sox studs studs on Monday, Trot Nixon went 3-4 for 3 runs scored, Hanley Ramirez went 4-6 with two doubles, an RBI, and four runs scored, and Johnny Damon predictably got on base twice and scored a run for the Yankees. At least Derek Lowe got shelled. That always gives me a warm feeling in my stomach.

Variance

Congratulations to the Colts. While their Championship is largely due to circumstance, officiating, and luck they still had to win the games and as such are deserving of that credit. Now, with a large mouthful of sour grapes I'm done with the NFL until April and the draft.

Of course my problem going forward is that we have nowhere to go from here. The Celtics have lost 16 straight games and are only seven losses away from the all time NBA record (with a five game west coast swing coming up...). As much as I want to I cannot, as a fan of the team who ended up with Chauncey Billups instead of Tim Duncan ten years ago (when the Celtics had a franchise record low 15 wins) put 100% of my hopes into the Greg Oden / Kevin Durant sweepstakes. Even if the C's don't win another game this season there is no guarantee (only about a 60% chance)) that they will end up with one of the first two picks. Such is life with a draft lottery.

The Bruins draw about as well as the Revolution and their play is reflective of that apathy. Granted I'm not a huge hockey fan, but I can't get behind a team that can give up three goals in less than 100 seconds like they did last night. Not to mention the NHL is still having serious trouble recovering from their strike and the subsequent fallout.

So lest I delve into an in depth analysis of BC women's tennis, I am going in a different direction.

Today, I'm going to blast a former Irish mafia boss with serious (?) connections to Whitey Bulger. To read John "Red" Shea's memoir (again ?) Rat Bastards and believe it (which you really can't) is to worship at the altar of the self proclaimed biggest badass and greatest overall human being in the history of badasses and human beings.

To be honest he lost me on page six where he explicitly details his first night after after being released from prison. His buddies from Southie, being the good ol' boys that they are, leave him a little present in his hotel room, "two Oriental girls." Rascist misnomers aside, the story degenerates quickly from that point culminating in a paragraph so inconceivable that I actually laughed out loud.

"Of course, after a bit I'd had enough of watching them and had to get into it. I worked on the older one first. After a half hour of that, I switched to the smaller one. She couldn't take it. She couldn't quite take me. I couldn't believe it. She was screaming like I was killing her. The older one said, 'Too big for her, mister. Too big.' The small one said, 'Me Chinese, you too big.' She tried to squirt this lubricant, and I knocked it away. I just continued to slam her. She was grimacing in pain, but she finally stopped screaming and yelling, 'Too big, too big!" I was slaughtering her. Fast slow, hard, soft, it didn't matter. I thought, What did they send me a virgin whore?"

The problems with this paragraph clearly abound, but the highlights for me are the following. After 12 years of prison with nothing but memories and of course the showers as entertainment (in which he vehemently denies any participation, of course) am I really supposed to believe that "Red" is such a sexual dynamo that he can watch two girls go out it, then have sex with one for half an hour without any sort of...incident? Pardon my phrasing but the guy hasn't had pussy in over a decade, nobody has that kind of control. Furthermore, as far as I know prostitues get paid to have sex, a lot of sex, and Shea is an Irish name. I guess anything is possible but even if he's hung like a zebra why the hell do I care? Does that have anything to do with his time in the mob, his drug dealing, his life story, anything at all other than his desire to tell the world about his allegedly prodigious package?

This story is an excellent example of my biggest problem with the book as a whole: there is no burden of proof. He could have made the whole thing up. I remember reading a criticism of Jame's Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which centered on the fact that since the entire story takes place in an anonymous environment (a rehabilitation clinic) there is no one in the world that can prove his outlandish tales true. The same can be said for Shea and Rat Bastards. Nearly everyone involved in his tales, from Bulger down the line, eiither flipped and testified or vanished off the face of the earth. He could claim that Whitey had a third hand growing out of his ass and there would be no one to refute it, there's no accountability.

I'm not debating the fact that he was a major player in the Irish Mob and that he worked closely with highest members therein. I'm sure all of that is true or he wouldn't have done 12 years in prision. What I question is the personal braggery inherent in every detail of the story.

He paints himself as the unflinching moral, ethical, and social compass for all of South Boston and the United States prison system. Everyone who flipped on Whitey (even though he had already ratted many of them to the FBI) for whatever reason is a useless piece of garbage who should be killed. Anyone who ever backed down from a fight isn't a man and should be viewed as a spineless weasel. Anyone who ever tried to stand up to him or fight him was cowed by his intimidation and ferocity, even the most hardened criminals in jail, because lest we forget, John Shea invented to the words bad and ass and it was his idea to put them next to each other.

From being the unquestioned leader in all of his multiple houses of correction to getting a getting a fellow inmate to quit his job rounding up stray cats on the prison grounds because animals don't like to be caged any more than humans (I shit you not, page 250, "Red" Shea drug dealer, ass kicker, lover of kittens) it was always the "Red" way or the wrong way. And of course the wrong way was always swiftly punished with Chuck Norris justice.

It just reeks of bullshit. I'm sure he dealt a lot of drugs, won a lot of fights, and that he really does despise anyone who ratted to keep themselves out of prison but you just can't read this book and believe it word for word. His last story from prison is a indicative punctuation mark to a series of tales that go from entertaining to wildly improbable. Shea was just 30 days from his release date after 12 long years, all he had to do was keep his nose clean and he was free. Of course a Cuban guy decides to call him a pussy, because clearly he was unaware that you don't mess with John Shea no matter what. In a shocking plot twist "Red" finds the guy and pounds him into the ground whispering into his ear in a very badass Van Damme kind of way, "A real pussy huh?" as the Cuban lay flat on his back with a broken jaw.

For his indiscretion Shea got to spend his last month, plus a few extra weeks for his behavior, in the hole. But our hero "Red" he wouldn't have it any other way.

" Sure enough, thirty days in the hole: narrow bunk, twenty-three hours a day lockdown, meals shoved at you through the door, no company, nothing. But I did what I had to do. If I didn't stand up to this Cuban, I'd be like Vinny Black and Dominic (guys who got out of jail on time because they are big bleeding vaginas who wouldn't fight to keep themselves in longer...). No matter when it happens, even if it's two minutes before I'm supposed to be released, no one is going to fuckin' treat me like a punk. If it means staying in jail, picking up a new case, or another ten years. so be it. I walked into prison a man, I am going to leave a man, no matter what. Can't let it happen, as I told these guys and as I proved. Practice what you preach."

Maybe I'm looking at this with too much rationality, but that's just stupid. If you've really kicked ass and taken names for 12 years you've proved your toughness and your worth. To just call this Cuban a punk, laugh in his face, or at least make him hit you first, makes a hell of a lot more sense than purposefully buying yourself more time in the joint.

I do have to give him credit, if he means all of this crap, then he is more set in his convictions than most other people, and that is probably to a fault. To take the rap when everyone around him was jumping off the sinking ship takes a serious amount of fortitude, and his rage at those who, in his mind failed to do the right thing, is somewhat understandable. While the actions that brought him to that point certainly aren't admirable, his ultimate unwavering support of what he believed in is, if only to a point.

The story of John Shea's life would make an interesting read, and I would like to see it someday. Unfortunately Rat Bastards skips too much of the story in favor of street morality lessons and and one overwhelming message: John Shea wants you to know that he is the hardest guy in the history of Boston's hardest neighborhood (of course everyone who could swear to that is conspicuously missing...) and if you question that undeniable fact he will come directly to your house to kick your ass too. And God help you if you tell on him for it...

Apathy

I want to care about the Super Bowl. As an admitted sports fanatic I am obligated to care about the Super Bowl. But damn it, I just don't care about this fucking Super Bowl.

What has happened to me? Am I such a sore loser that my team's elimination means I can no longer take pleasure in one of the premier sporting events of the year? Do I really need a vested personal interest in the outcome of the game in order to have a passing interest?

Of course I want the Colts to lose, badly. But on that same token I don't want the Bears to win. I think they are a mediocre team, at best, with a terrible quarterback and an overrated defense that sailed through the softest division in football and won an NFC Championship in a year where that title is comparable to being the best of the worst. How tough it is to win 13 games when you have four to six guaranteed victories in your division at the outset?

This lack of a perferential option has led me to what would have previously been an inconceivable apathy. I'm rooting for the Bears in theory, although I'm not sure they can win, but in practice the game is almost meaningless to me. A win for the Colts does not elevate them into the same class as the Patriots of recent years, nor does a victory for Peyton Manning put him on the same level as Tom Brady. A loss sets them back of course, but Manning's statistical dominance will always lend the uneducated and the uninclined to exhault his greatness regardless of his ultimate failures. The advertising can't get any worse, and I can't hope that it will lessen even with a loss.

So what's actually at stake here? Sure the media will be horrendously obnoxious in their praise of Manning should the Colts prevail, but will that really be much of a change? Mainstream sports media always degenerates into hyperbole immediately following champtionships, as they extol the victors as the greatest team in memory, forgetting that memory is extremely recent and ultimately fleeting. And if the Bears win they will join the annals of lousy teams who got lucky with circumstance, scheduling, and perhaps one miracle game.

Neither of these teams are worthy, and that vacuum has robbed me of a passion for this event that has almost always been ample in years past.

For the NFL however this is the dream, their highest profile player against one of their largest and most passionate markets. This game will get huge ratings, as everyone in the Chicago area will obviously tune in, while the rest of the country (save a few intelligent New Englanders) will watch to see if everyone's favorite nice guy can finally earn his birthright (pardon me while I throw up a little bit in my mouth). Regardless of the outcome it's a win for the league.

On that same note, I heard an interesting theory on WEEI this morning. Mustard and Johnson fielded a caller who made a statement to the effect that the NFL is absolutely thrilled with this Super Bowl matchup, and that with a victory Peyton Manning will vault over Tom Brady as the most respected quarterback in the game. After predictably and correctly lambasting the caller's final point their response was to say that a victory for the Colts is actually another dream for the league as well because it will set up the best rivalry between two quarterbacks that the NFL has ever seen. They made the obvious comparisons to Bird v. Magic, and the Red Sox and Yankees. Oddly I think I would agree.

Should the Colts win tomorrow Manning will obviously have a huge monkey off his back, and that perceived vindication will put him closer to equal footiing with Brady. Without the obvious caveat of, "Well, where's Peyton's ring?" dominating the debate any longer the league would have a rare circumstance on its hands where two premier quarterbacks both in their primes, both with Super Bowl championships will be squared off consistently in a meaningful and wildly entertaining rivalry. It's a ratings and publicity bonanza which would invoke memories of the glory days of the NBA when Magic and Bird combined for eight championships in their historic duels.

Believe me I hope it doesn't play out that way, but for everyone other than Patriots fans it would set up a yearly drama the likes of which football has not seen in years.

To be honest, sports wouldn't be what they are without rivalries. I hate the Yankees, but Red Sox season would be just a bit duller if both teams weren't competitive every year and didn't play each other 19 times and often in the post season. In the same regard I hate the Colts, but I can't ever remember being more excited about a game, and more engaged in the actual contest than I was two Sundays ago. To consider your team the good guys there has to be a villain. To really love one team, you need someone to hate with equal passion. Why do you think that the most passionate sports fans also have the most venom? Do you see many foaming at the mouth maniac Brewers fans? Of course not, but who would they hate, the Rockies? Sports rivalries transcend the games themselves, enrapturing cities, colleges, and neighborhoods the way no physical competition ever could on its own.

So while I hate the Colts and wish them nothing but failure, on some level I'm glad that they're around because rooting for is not nearly as fun as rooting both for and against.

As for this Super Bowl itself I'm not actually invested enough to make any analysis beyond the following. It's going to rain and that gives the Bears a chance. The blueprint on how to beat Manning is there, hit him in the mouth and hope he starts crying. Shorten the game with the run and whatever you do don't fall behind. Also, don't let Rexy kill you and try to win the field posiition game. If the Bears have one advantage it is that they have far less to lose than the Colts. There is no pressure on them, they're not supposed to win, but the exact opposite is true for Indy.

Can you tell I'm searching for ways the Bears can win?

Well they can.

But they won't. Colts: 24-13.

Is it Over?

I can't watch ESPN.

The NFL Network? Well that might as well be video of my own execution for as far as I'm concerned.

SI.com? Absolutely out of the question.

I flipped on sports radio 850 WEEI yesterday, they were talking about Vinatieri. I changed the channel.

Since Sunday I've lived in a self-imposed football free coccoon.

It's been four days and I'm still not ready to face the reality that the Patriots were eliminated one game short of the Super Bowl by the much heralded though marginally accomplished Indinapolis Colts.

If only it had been anyone else. If only we didn't have to find ourselves overwhelmed and inundated by Peyton Manning ball washing for the next two weeks, then maybe I would be a normal human being again by this point. Alas, I am not.

Thinking about the game still makes me angry. The name Reche Caldwell is banned from my ears, don't utter it near me lest my fury turn on you. I'm thinking of cutting up my MasterCard due to their involvement with that goofy nitwit that wears number 18.

Sadly I have learned that there are casual fans in this country who think things like, "Wow, I'm really happy for Peyton Manning, he seems like such a nice guy." And, "I like his commercials, espeically the one where he cheers for the regular people. Such a fine gentlemen and role model for our children." Really? Are you fucking insane? Did you forget that the role model himself sumarily threw his entire offensive line under the bus after last year's loss to Pittsburgh?

Is he a great quarterback? Yes. Was this victory on Sunday a coronation of him as the premier signal caller in the NFL, vindicated and freed from criticism through superior play? Absolutely not., He didn't win this game for the Colts, the Patriots, Tom Brady, Reche Caldwell, and Todd Sauerbrun gave it to him.

As Bill Simmons said on Monday, "We had it."

I think that's what makes it so difficult to accept. They should have won. In fact they had the game won. At the Colts 28 yard line, with less than three minutes to play in the first half, up 21-3 the Patriots had tickets to Miami punched. A touchdown
and the game is over. A field goal with no time left for the Colts to score at the end of the half and the game is probably still over. Yet that's not how it happened. A questionable offensive pass interference call, a bonehead penalty, and a sack pushed the Patriots out of field goal range and gave "D-Caf!" a shot to get back into it.

I'm a wildly sore loser. Anyone who knows me can vouch for that, and this week is no exception, I'm full of heinsight and bad intentions. I want Reche Caldwell to go down in the history books as the Bill Buckner of football. How do you drop a ball when you are so wide open that the announcers are screaming about no one being on your side of the field? Sure he might not have scored on that play, but where would he have been stopped, at the five, at the two? To say that play didn't cost them the game is grossly understating the importance of that drive. They ended up losing by four, a touchdown there instead of a field goad... well thanks again Reche.

As you can probably tell I don't know where to start. This is actually my third attempt at writing this. I started out thinking I would write a nice couple of paragraphs about how the Colts were the better team and, in a tremendously out of character move, I would try to be a good sport. I can't do that. I hate this Colts team and everything about it, especially it's quarterback too much. Then I thought I would write about how the we saw history on Sunday, as the Pats dynasty faded into the past. But as I started writing I became less and less convinced that was the case.

The result of those false starts is this meandering pointless post which may or may not get relegated to the deleted file soon after publishing.

I'm still unable to put into words how frustrating it is to lose a game to a hated rival when victory is so near. Now that I think about it, it's probably what the Colts have felt about the Patriots until this year. The problem for me is that it's not suppossed to be this way. We're used to winning that game, and while we have lost in the recent past, we have never lost the close game that hinged on clutch plays by dueling stars. Tom Brady has always been able to kill 3:30 with a three point lead. Bill Bellichick has always been able to pull out last minute defensive miracles against powerful offenses. They have always taken advantage of their chance to win in the end.

But not this time. It's like having your girlfriend let her ex shave her head randomly, you want to still like her, but how can you deal with the change and disappointment?

I have learned a few things from this experience though. There is nothing on TV during the day aside from ESPN. I can't even count the number of hours I've killed watching Family Guy and 24 dvds merely to avoid the possibility of seeing a Super Bowl preview on SportsCenter. I also learned I don't really go to any non-sports related web-sites, and God forbid I go to one of those now, lest there be a picture of a Dungy, Manning, Vinatieri circle jerk.

Random aside: do you think Vinatieri advertises for the regional pizza chain in Indiana and have they, like Papa Ginos did here, started calling all their non-pizza appetizers kickers?

So I guess the question is what do we do now? Well for one thing I need to think more about the dynasty and whether it's actually over. My initial thought was that it most certainly is done. Teams historically fall off dramatically in the sixth year after their first Super Bowl victory, (the Steelers and Cowboys both missed the playoffs) but do we really count that first one? They didn't even make the playoffs the following season. The real dynasty started after they won the second one in '03, which I guess would give us three more years of competitive teams. And with Brady and Bellichick still in their primes (at least Brady...eek) at the helm, will the fall off be that dramatic? I'm still not sure, but there will certainly be more about this coming later.

Another question: do I now root for the Bears? Worse, do I now have to put my Super Bowl hopes on Rex Grossman? I guess I do. I'm certainly not rooting for the Colts because if they win I will have to avoid all sports media outlets for another month while the world slowly washes Peyton Manning's ass crack and apologizes for calling him a choke artist for the last five years (when he was a choke artist, THE choke artist).

I absolutely loathe the idea of Indy winning a ring. I don't want them mentioned in the same breath as the Patriots of this decade, and while I'm no fan of the Bears either, I guess I'm throwing my hat in the ring for a repeat of the '86 Super Bowl Shuffle.

I guess that's it for now. I should get back to watching the Lifetime Movie Network anyway, they were starting to wonder where their one viewer went. More on the fallout, the Super Bowl, and the future of the Patriots coming soon.