Wow. Just: wow.

I'd love to write about the Super Bowl all day, but there are other nagging tasks. Namely, the tasks that pay my rent.

But today is a day when I'm kind of sorry for the people who don't like football. What an incredible sport and what an amazing game. Last night's finish--a (and it's hard to believe this is true when I type it out) 83-yard, 12-play drive inside the two-minute warning, ending with a TD with just over 30 seconds left--was almost impossible; more rare than the buzzer-beater or the walk-off home run. You hope for it, but so rarely get it, so when it happens, it's magic.

I always have new favorite parts of football; those little bits of the game that you never see until you start analyzing the game to ridiculous levels. Last night's game gave me a new moment in football to crave and love: the late fourth-quarter, four-point deficit. It's that moment when a team has a chance to win the game, but only with a TD. No field goals to tie: a TD or go home. It's happened several times in this year's playoffs, and it was perfect that the Super Bowl ended the same way.

Brief notes:

• As if anyone else questioned that Bill Belichick is a noteworthy asshole in a profession known for assholes, that he stormed off the field before the game was even over proved it. I second (third? 3000th?) the opinion that he'll retire to avoid all the questions of cheating and...being--and I can't emphasize this enough--a total dick.
• Okay, maybe Eli Manning's a jerk for what he did in his draft year, but come on: besides Patriots fans, how could you not love the goofy grin of glee he had after that game? You just want to tousle his hair.
• In all of the talk of Randy Moss's amazing season and the fact that he had Tom Brady throwing passes to him, everyone seems to have forgotten that he's choked before. And he choked again.

And now the wait until September...

"Hail", hell

Redskins fans are so cute. There are not other fans anywhere in sports that are as optimistic as 'skins fans. They could be suiting up the worst team in the history of the franchise to go up against an All-Star team, and those fans would still honestly, deeply believe that they have a great shot of winning.

Which, of course, I guess they always do. Any given Sunday, etc. But as they go up against a pretty tough task--squeaking into the playoffs and then going against the Seahawks on a rainy Seattle field--there's still no harsh words or anything but belief from even the crankiest of fans. They don't even see the possibility that they could lose. It's impressive.

It'll end in tears.

Conclusively, cheating is for losers

Oh, I'm ever so pissed. This Rolling Stone blog post gives a nice all-star team of people in the Mitchell Report, and I count three past Astros (Caminiti, Pettite and Clemens) and one future Astro (Tejada). And how many World Series titles do the Astros have? NONE.

My friends, citizens, children and underlings: what's the point of cheating if it doesn't even make you win?!

Thanks for nothing, jerks.

Rank

Someday, in the Are Seven design reworking that I dream about but will probably never get to, I'll put the post labels up at the top. That way, you could quickly see that this post is entirely about football, and then you could see right up front whether you wanted to read it or immediately carry on with the Are Seven-less part of your life. Never let it be said that I like to waste your time. Because I don't.

Football topic #1: the BCS. I actually tend to subscribe more to the Kornheiserian Theory of College Football: that the ranking system, no matter how ridiculous it is, makes the sport unique and more exciting. It's what gives huge importance to the regular season, and what makes those upsets so huge. A playoff system would not only take that away, it wouldn't even get rid of the arguments; it would just change them. The idea that a playoff system would make everyone happy (or even anyone happier).

At the risk of philosophizing something that's not really worthy of philosophy, I actually like the flaws in the college system because it shows the flaws in all of sports. No matter how much is scored and how obsessive you are about stats, it's miles away from being an exact science. In any playoff system (the NCAA basketball tournament, for example), you're still going to get arguments over who gets in and who doesn't. There's arguments about the teams that played better down the stretch who should get in over the teams that faded but still made the postseason. Refs miss calls, people make mistakes, external factors come into play. In a word, it's unfair. Just like (yes, I'm gonna say it) life.

Football topic #2: last night's game. Listen, I hate the Patriots, too. It's not just that they win all the time: it's their bland and generic, mid-90's marketing-friendly uniforms, the fact that girls pick them as their favorite team because they have the cute QB, and Bellichick is redefining the asshole coach.

But: they're a team of destiny. They're like the 49ers in the 80's. There's no way this team is going to lose. There was never any doubt in my mind in the game last night that the Patriots wouldn't get a last-minute TD to win it. That doesn't mean that I didn't hope, or jump off the couch and try to will that amazing last-second catch into the end zone using The Force (which I was reminded again I don't have), but there was no way this team was going to lose that game. They're not like the '98 Vikings or the '01 Rams; teams with high-octane offenses that wilted as soon as they faced a quality foe. This team comes up when they need to, and make the most of the chances that they're given, which is more important than any other quality. Just ask the Ravens.

It actually kind of sucks to hate the Patriots. I wish I could enjoy this ride they're on. I wish I could enjoy watching potentially the best team in the NFL. But they're just so unlikable. Even the '90's Cowboys were at least fun to hate. This team just kind of makes me want to turn off the TV.

This paperback has been SACKED!

I got to yell out "DONE!" last night, launching my newly-finished copy of The Blind Side across the room.

People might try to tell you that you don't need to know anything about football to like this one (and by "people", I mean the back cover of the book), but it sure as hell helps. The true (aka "non-fiction") story of a poor black kid named Michael Oher who was taken in by a wealthy white family and came to be one of the most sought-after left tackles in the nation contains a lot of analysis on how left tackles came to be sought after in the first place. If you don't have a good concept of the weight around names like Walter Jones, Orlando Pace, Lawrence Taylor and Dwight Freeney, a lot of the book is going to go right by you like Chris Doleman.

But if you have the patience to try and understand the game a little more, and especially if you have any kind of understanding of the game, you should read this book. Now. No, no. There's no time for that. Just start it now. The dramatic moments are incredible, the analysis of the value rise of the left tackle is something that should educate even the most die-hard football fan, and the story of how a kid with barely any school, a fractured family and absolutely no money could have such a dramatic life change at fifteen. Very highly recommended.

Last Saturday, my good friend TV was nice enough to show the LSU/Ole Miss game, where I could watch Michael Oher in action. Now, I've seen plenty of football in my time, but I can't claim to be well-versed in what makes a good left tackle, but I tells ya: no LSU defensive player got past Oher on the left side. He was a wall. I didn't watch the whole game, so maybe he's inconsistent, but he was perfectly consistent when I was watching him. I can't wait to see him in the pros.

If you want my copy of the book, talk to Christian. He has first dibs.

The ubiquitous, unimaginative headline: DYNAMO DYNASTY

HOUSTON WINS THE TITLE!! HOUSTON WINS THE TITLE!!

It feels good to say that, even though it's about a sport that I'm pretty indifferent to. That seems to be the way, though, with my geographical sports allegiances. DC and Houston have a ton of MLS titles between them, and the Hurricanes won a Stanley Cup recently, but those are sports that I can enjoy when I'm watching them, but otherwise don't think about much. Which is about the same thing I could say about, say, the Today Show.

If it wasn't for basketball and having had the joy of watching the Rockets and Tarheels win multiple titles, I'd think that God personally sets aside time to fuck with my teams.

While I have--and always will--mostly just watched for the word "Houston" in the standings of any sport, it's hard to get too excited about the Dynamo's second title in as many seasons as they've been in the city. Partly because it's a sport I don't follow very closely, but mostly, it's because they're called the fucking Dynamo. Come on, MLS: if you want to break American's association of soccer with little kid's leagues, you're going about it wrong. The Dynamo?! Seriously? As all the orange jerseys gathered to celebrate at the end of the game, I was looking down the sidelines to see who was handing out orange slices and Kool Aid.

Still, I'm going to allow myself a little glow of satisfaction that Houston won a title. And as I fall asleep tonight, in that brief moment before sleep sets in, I'm going to put the word "Oilers" behind "Houston". And just pretend.

Calibrating my cheering compass

There's a book idea that's been building up in me for a good while now. I'm not really sure what form it would end up taking or how I would approach it, but the basic idea is that it would be an informal look at sports fandom in the South and West. These are the areas of the country that the population is migrating to, and as a result, they have brand new teams and citizens whose histories and ancestries are in other parts of the country. Which leads to the perception that they have bad, fair-weather fans, which is both unfair and accurate.

It's frustrating to me and my years of Houston sports fandom, for some reasons that I can justify and other reasons that are no more than emotional annoyances. But I've found myself rooting for those newer teams that are from cities that I would never want to live in, those teams that have uniform identity crises, that can't fill their stadiums even in the playoffs. There are northern sports fans and writers that can't seem to accept that those other teams actually have fans who get upset when their team loses and who have waited for years to see their teams win. I love seeing that tilt in history, that forcing of people to accept that even teams that aren't old enough to have black-and-white footage of them still get to win every now and then, too.

All this is a badly-phrased way of saying that I'm throwing my hat straight into the center of the Rockies' ring. And I only have one hat. It's a Texans cap.

This Is Illness

God, I've been so bored. Being sick sucks anyway, but being in the same apartment for four days without any decent human contact just adds insult to infirmity.

But my best friend in the whole world was there for me, as he always is. TV, you never let me down. Here's what me and TV talked about over the last four days.

Pan's Labyrinth
...which I can now put just behind the The Sweet Hereafter and Dead Man Walking on my list of Movies That I Loved But Never Want To Watch Again. I'm not ashamed to admit that, after about the first 15 minutes, I had to turn the lights back on. I would say that it's a triumph to create a human character so evil that even the most grotesque fantasy creature couldn't come close to his scariness, but then again: X ALMIGHTY DID YOU SEE THAT DUDE WITH EYES IN HIS HANDS?!! Nightmare city.

This Is England
A fantastic movie whose incredible acting was only outdone by the soundtrack selections. This song should be part of everyone's collection, which I say because it's now part of mine:

Toots and the Maytals, "54-46 Was My Number"


Football
There were some great games on this weekend. Thanks, TV! You always know how to cheer me up when I'm sick. TV and I noticed that, once again, it seems like ownership trumps talent in the NFL. It doesn't matter what kind of talent the Saints and Bengals put on their teams: ultimately, they're the Saints and the Bengals, and that beats out any amount of Bushes, Palmers or Johnsons. Hmmm...that last bit sounds like the punchline to a stupid dirty joke. Sorry.

Shot at Love with Tila Tequila
I usually consider myself pretty channel-blind when it comes to my TV surfing. Whatever looks interesting, I'll watch, but I rarely pay attention to which of the hundreds of cable channels I'm watching.

But I can usually tell when I've come across MTV when all of the people on my screen seem borderline retarded. Seriously: in the '80's, I was one of the worst students in my school, barely scraping by and making terrible grades. But if I was 15 years old now, I would guess I'd be the smartest kid in class, getting A's from frustrated teachers only because I know how to spell "you're" instead of "ur".

So I turned on Shot At Love for a trainwreck, and I got it. But while I question the "reality" of this show, it's actually a pretty interesting concept: contestants vie for the affections of the hostess, but the hostess is bisexual, so it's a house full of vacuous men and stripper lesbians¹ (a third, less-known category of lesbian). I really wish I could trust the sincerity of the contestants and the hostess (who I believe is looking for "love" as much as Brett Michaels is), because it's a kind of fascinating psychological study in gender and sexuality.

But from the "scenes from the season" shown at the end of the episode, it pretty much looks like they're all idiots, so "fascinating" is probably far, FAR down the list of adjectives that anyone would use to describe this show.

¹ These two words are going to bring a lot of unwanted search engine traffic my way. Sorry to disappoint you, boys.

The good old days

In times when I'm short on time, I have to turn to the other sources of words in my life: news stories, other articles, strange art installations, graffiti. Today, I'll turn to my email, where there was a great thread among the team owners of the Max Fisher Players Fantasy Football League that began when talking about these "throwback" uniforms that the Philadelphia Eagles wore last weekend, and then became a thread about how, if they're going to go back to the uniforms they wore in the '30's, why not go back to those times completely?

All authors quoted without permission.

"How cool would it be if the throwbacks included leather helmets???" - Christian

"And really tiny pads too!" - Chris

"Move the goalposts to the middle of endzone." - Paul

"And don't throw a pass because...well, because they don't know what a "pass" is yet!" - Chris

"Also, there are no commercial breaks, the cheerleaders are covered from wrist to ankle, and the game ends when every single player is dead of a severe spinal injury. Good times." - Reid

"The announcers all wear striped jackets and straw hats. Also, they use megaphones. Only souvenirs available are full-length fur coats and pennants on sticks." - Paul

"All players must work delivering blocks of ice in the offseason." - Jason

Any other suggestions?

What are words for...

I'm reading The Professor and the Madman (Yes: still), which is (partly) the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Those volumes took decades to put together through the work of volunteers who would cite references to every word in the English language.

This is where you come in, my little volunteers. I don't need a definition or a citation from you. I need a word. Christian and I were in a sports bar yesterday, and we saw many examples, but there's no one word; no brief indicator or label for the person. This is where you come in.

The definition:

__________: (n) A person who cheers loudly for a sports team, letting their volume and obnoxiousness make up for the fact that they know very little about the sport or even the team that they claim to be huge fans of. In relation to football: jumps out of their seat at a five yard gain. Trash-talks after the first score of the game.

You know the people I'm talking about. So what's the word?

Could someone please take ownership of this country? Oh. Thank you.

Another football season starts, another round of terrible commercials to punish those of us who are cursed to care about football.

Oh, but wait. There's a twist this year. The twist is that the commercials are exactly the same as last year. There's the creepy "it's the meers" little girl, the same Chemical Bros/Q-Tip Bud commercial, the strangely disturbing painted-film Schwab commercials, and those moderately-funny coach press conference that will make me chuckle a little bit the first 3-4 times I see them and then groan the next 4000 times. And then there's the fucking "this is our country" spots being played in—and I would be willing to make a wager on this one—every single commerical break without exception. In a move to keep our sanity, Christian and I have decided to stop hating it and adopt it as our rally cry: "Yeah! This is our country! Woooo!"

It's week one and I'm already hurting. Mute button, guide me to February.

With the brain of a bobblehead

You've probably guessed already, but the blogging muse isn't returning my calls this week. She isn't giving me any creative ideas for posts, hasn't given me any good new music, and whenever I think about writing about one of the two noteworthy events of my last week, my muse raises an eyebrow as if to say, "I wouldn't if I were you." And I don't want to piss her off, even though I'm beginning to think I already have.

But while I need her for the good stuff, I have odds and ends that I can stitch together to make that ultimate in blogging desperation: the list.

• I'm off to the Nats game tomorrow night, which I'm very excited about, partly because it's Teddy Roosevelt Bobblehead night, and also because I'm going with some very entertaining company. Can't wait.
• I'm getting kind of excited about the Texans. I know that it's standard for any football fan to get overly excited about their team based on the preseason, but Schaub looks like he could be really good, and rookie reciever Jacoby Jones is looking like a future superstar. If anyone wants to join me at {location TBD} to watch the opening day games next Sunday, I'd love to have the company. {crickets}
• First listen roundup: The new Sharon Jones album? Meh. The new Beirut album? Enh. New Jose Gonzalez? {shrugs} Bat for Lashes? No thanks.
• Why is it that, even though I now live only a five-minute walk from my job, I still can't make it to work on time without running around frantically?
  

That's all for me at the moment. Enjoy your Fridays, and I'm going to take my muse out tonight, buy her dinner and get her drunk, and if all goes well...let's just say that she'll have a long list of topics for me by tomorrow if you know what I mean, buddy! Heh heh heh...

Goodbye, Phil

Being a high-octane, thrive-on-pressure, top-flight, ultra-hyphenated managerial type, I can understand the need to always—ALWAYS—produce results. Don't, and you're out. That's just the part of the high stakes world we top rollers have bought into.

But that doesn't mean that I can't produce some tears for some of the casualties of the chew-'em-up, spit-'em-out world of professional sports. Yes, even we top dogs have feelings, and I'm feeling those feelings today as I read headline after article after headline about the firing of Astros manager Phil Garner.

While I understand that pathetic last couple of years that the Astros have had (trust me: I understand), I still wish they'd given him a little more time. This was the guy that—not once, but TWICE—miraculously pulled the Astros out of their rightful spot of title bearers of mediocrity and gave them not only their first post-season series win EVER, but their first World Series appearance, which to the Yankees, Reds, Cardinals or Braves fans in my readership may not seem like that big a deal, but it was a life highlight for me.

So I understand. He can't cut it. He's had two pathetic years and he hasn't been able to pull the team up like he did in the past. But good Lord: this guy gave we Astros fans the best years of our life. Would it kill anyone to give him another couple years? Or do I have to coast off of the autumns of 2004 and 2005, when I had a beautiful girlfriend (different girls) who raised her eyebrow in a really sexy way over my Astros-fan geekdom and I watched the team that I was cursed to love win improbably. Those were good Falls. I said goodbye to them today.

But...Astros honchos? Between you and me as big shots? These things happen, huh? These things happen.

Take me out to the squall game

Alright, kids: settle down for a story that's probably past its expiration date already, and is a pretty superfluous telling, since about half of my regular readership experienced it first-hand, but it deserves to be put down in type, if only because Annie will probably enjoy it at least a little.

The cast of characters is three of the best friends a guy could ask for: Hans (visiting from Asheville), Doug (visiting from Nashville, aka Ca$hville, aka Asheville-with-an-N) and Christian (coming at you live from 13th street NW). The main point of the trip was to see God's Gift To Music Lovers on Sunday night, but we take any chance we can to get together and rehash the same 10 jokes enjoyed by approximately six people for well over a decade. Needless to say, it was a blast. I would say that you should wish you were there, but not being one of the four of us or Alex, I can't imagine you would have thought it was nearly as funny. By which I mean, "funny at all".

Saturday's baseball game was a must, partly because sports is a required feature of these weekends and partly because of Doug's near-obsessive Marlins fandom. We gave The Finger to the forecast of rain, headed to the stadium and settled in our cheap, upper-deck seats, which we chose in spite of Christian's absolute insistence that he would accept nothing less than the $150 Diamond Level seats.

It started to rain, of course. And then it started to POUR. By the end of it, the game had been delayed for over two hours, but the plus side was that there were only a few hundred people left in the stadium, which put us in Christian's precious Diamond Level seats: first row, directly behind home plate.

It was both a thrilling and a bizarre experience. Being right behind home plate gave us about as great a sense as possible of the sheer power that goes into the hits and the pitching. But we had these rich cat seats in an almost-empty stadium. There was a couple of kids heckling the Marlins hitters (Doug: "It's like watching a game with the Bad News Bears") and their heckles echoed off the empty corners of RFK. So sitting in those seats was like being a millionaire in a country where they don't take your currency.

Then the rain started falling, as rain does. It was cold and we were looking at another delay, so we figured we'd head out. Unfortunately, we listened to me and left just before the Nats went up to bat again. Hans, Christian and I hit the bathroom before we left the stadium, and when we were in there, a huge roar (well, as huge as a couple hundred people could get) filled the stadium. I figured, Classic. We miss the one good thing. I just didn't know how good until Doug walked into the bathroom with that you're-not-going-to-believe-this look that he does so well.

"Yeah," he said. "That was an inside-the-park home run."

"No it wasn't," I said, and I really didn't believe him.

"Yeah. It was."

Sure enough, we get to the monitors outside the bathroom just in time to hear the announcer say, "...and that was an inside-the-park home run for the Nationals!"

We couldn't stop laughing about it on the wet walk back to the Metro. We stick out a 2-and-a-half hour rain delay only to miss the most exciting play of the game. We started imagining all the ridiculously thrilling plays we were going to miss by heading home.

The rain fell even harder as we headed home, and we assumed that there was no way they were going to finish. Finally back at my place, we checked the score again, and it showed the Marlins up 3-2 in the middle of the 9th with play suspended. As we all went to bed with the sky opened up, there was no reason to think that game was anything other than over.

The next day, at brunch on the roof of The Reef, half-full of mimosas, we figured that we might as well get Hans to dial up the final on his fancy-pants internet phone.

"Weird," he reports back. "It says 7-3, Nationals".

That couldn't be right, we thought. It was impossible, we thought, but we were already laughing as we added the runs and figured out what happened. Did we really leave a game that was won by a walk-off grand slam after the Nationals had tied it? Sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

Maybe it's not that funny when taken as a whole. The game ended at a quarter to two in front of maybe a dozen people. There's no way in hell we would have sat through another rain delay. But sitting there with my best friends on a sunny roof top deck, there didn't seem much in the world that was funnier than us missing out on a game whose exciting ending we had predicted as a ludicrous exaggeration. Maybe you had to be there to appreciate why it was so funny that we weren't there.

What? Games? Oh, right.

It's usually around this time of year that I keep forgetting that there's still football on. Championship Sunday is, in theory, the best day of football all year, but by around this time, I've usually moved on, unless a team I'm excited about is in. But here they are, and I know that you're all clamoring for my takes on the teams and the games.

Bears at Saints
Even I'm getting a little tired of the "football is healing New Orleans" stories. You can't deny the feel-goodness of it, but we've already heard about it a million times. Let's move on, huh?

But the thing is, I've always loved the Saints. It's an amazing city, they easily have the best uniforms in football, and I've always felt a fondness towards the perennial losers. And in spite of what everyone thinks about their own teams (find a fan who doesn't think that their team blows it more than any other), no one has lost more than the Saints. I would LOVE to see them win a Super Bowl, even without the Katrina thing.

But I love the Bears as well, in spite of the fact that I hated them in 1986. Again, great city and great uniforms, they're part of the greatest rivalry in the NFL (Bears/Packers), and their winning/losing story is one that's shared only by the Jets: they have only one title, but it belongs to one of the best teams/stories in NFL history. Beautiful. I'd be pretty happy watching the Bears win the Super Bowl.

I think that a lot of people think the same as me about this game: it's just hard to see the Saints winning, for no other reason than they're the SAINTS, fercryingoutloud. The Saints simply do NOT win the NFC Championship.

Plus, it's hard not to see the 2000 Ravens in the Bears. Questionable offense (remember that streak that the Ravens had that year where they didn't score an offensive TD?), but the defense makes it happen. In another field goal-filled game: Bears, 12-6

Patriots at Colts
It's easy to think that the Colts are the 2006 baseball Cardinals. It's easy to point out that the Colts have shown that they can win without an aerial attack. It's logical to think that they have a chance since the defense has shown that it actually can stop the run.

But come on. It's Patriots/Colts. Does anyone really, truly believe that the Colts are going to win this one? We're not talking about a scrappy young team that's never been there, that no one believes in because they're new and inexperienced. This game is a rerun. We've seen it before and we know how it ends. Patriots, 24-10

Your thoughts?

Never a second chance at a first draft pick

Scoring my feelings about yesterday's helping of football:

• The Texans win: +10
• The Texans win in spite of -5 yards passing, and only because the Raiders somehow managed to be even more incompetent: -4
• Vince Young beats the Colts in his rookie season, while the Texans are 0-10 against them: -4
• Reggie Bush gets over 150 yards of total offense and FOUR touchdowns: -6
• Considering the previous two points, Mario Williams gets two tackles: -8
• Having to watch the media rightly trumpet up Bush and Young's performances, knowing that half that attention could and should be going to the Texans if McNair had made the right choice: -10
  

TOTAL: -22. I'm just sick about yesterday. And I'm sick on top of being sick about it.

I'm not asking for your pity; I'm demanding it.

Carlos the most

It's a desire that's both odd and understandable that makes pro sports fans expect team loyalty out of the players on their team. When a player goes from one team to another, they're doing no more than any of us do when we switch from one job to another: going with the more attractive offer, the better situation, the new job after we've lost our old one. Yet athletes who were once loved in their old towns get hated when they change jobs, getting called traitorous and greedy.

But it's a little different with Carlos Beltran. There were some Astros fans who got up in arms when he left the 'stros for the Mets, but mostly everyone understood his situation, and were just thankful for the amazing (though short) time he'd spent with our team. And it was an amazing time: Beltran was amazing in the half season that he spent in Houston, especially in the post-season, where he just seemed to come through dramatically and reliably every single time.

And because of those great memories (in spite of the way it ended) of the Astros 2004 post-season, I could fully enjoy Beltran's fantastic home run last night without feeling at all sad that he was no longer with the Astros. I reveled this morning when reading Deadspin's wrap-up of the night before when he describes the home run pitch like this: "...but the minute the pitch left his hand, you knew Beltran was going to get his Astros on." I don't blame him at all for moving to New York and taking the big bucks, and I'm thrilled that he left a legacy that was so much more than the short time he was in Houston.

The fact that he beat the Cardinals didn't hurt.

I'll never go back

If you watched the Tigers/A's game last night and if you're anything like me (which I hope for your sake you're not), you turned it off well before it was over. If you're like me, you didn't turn it off because it was 5-0 in the seventh inning, and you didn't turn it off because of the unbelievable level of sloppy play, but you turned it off because there was some jackass in the stands whistling this same line over and over again. It sounded like this:




Well, I just whistled it, but you probably couldn't hear it. It sounds something like the irritating whistle bit in Joe Cuba's "El Pito (I'll Never Go Back To Georgia)", going something like, "TWEET-tweet, TWEET-tweet". Hm...that's also not very helpful. But it was extremely annoying and the guy would not shut up; doing this little whistle at least every 30 seconds or so.

At least I could turn him off. The people around him had to suffer him on top of watching their team get whalloped.

Suddenly: death!

One of the biggest advantages that baseball has over other sports is in its ending potential. More than any of the timed sports, you have a much greater potential to have the game end on a single play, on a team doing something incredible instead of just time expiring with a big huge "meh".

So as the game between the Redskins and Jaguars—my two least-favorite teams in the NFL—ended in a thrilling long pass, I wondered how anyone could criticize sudden-death overtime. It's the only chance that any of the non-baseball sports have of matching that thrilling ending, and watching the tens of thousands of people in ridiculous FedEx field going nuts as Santana Moss streaked for the endzone, I couldn't imagine how anyone in the world could have a problem the NFL's approach to regulation ties, could feel as though it's inferior to the NCAA's Calvin Ball-like overtime rules. It's about as thrilling as it gets, even when you wish that both teams could lose.

Title goes here

Working in the web world, you get used to mistakes. Because it's so easy to fix a mistake quickly, it's easy to get careless and let reminder text ("PUT CAPTION HERE") or stupid typos or even outright falsehoods slip past the goalie and into the net of the public (maybe stupid analogy? Delete later). There's been plenty of times where some mistake has caused me to blush mightily and feel ruined for the day, but it's nice to be able to clean up my mess and know that it was only the people who visited in between the mistake's posting and the fixing of it who would have seen.

Not so on live TV. You send a mistake through the airwaves, and there's no way to take it back. So I can clearly imagine the forehead heat of the person who let this one get by during last night's Redskins/Vikings game: