Weekly Sporties

-Back in February, Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Roy Williams sent his girlfriend a Valentine's Day care package: $5,000 for school and dental bills, a signed baseball for her brother (again, Roy plays football, so I don't know why he didn't sign one of those), along with a $76,000 engagement ring and a taped marriage proposal. (I really want to know if it was VHS or DVD.) You may find this hard to believe, but the former Miss Texas he was dating was not blown away by this romantic gesture and turned down the proposal. At the time Williams told her to keep the ring, assuming she would come around. A couple weeks later, when she still hadn't changed her mind Roy asked for the ring back, at which point the woman said she lost it. Williams, who once famously said he didn't believe in tipping because people shouldn't be rewarded for simply doing their jobs, then sued the family for the cost of the ring, at which point it magically reappeared. Who says romance is dead?

-After the lockout went into effect last week, the NBA went viral on their own websites, removing all images of current players from team pages. Yeah, that'll show 'em. Good thing we're focusing on the important issues here. We'll be lucky if there is pro basketball by January... of 2013.

-Yesterday Pyeongchang, South Korea was officially awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics. Now, never having been there, I'm not about to comment on the validity of the city's victory. What was more shocking to me was only three cities even tried to get the games. If I didn't know any better I would think the Olympics are a costly burden on the people and the government of the host country and rarely, if ever, managed to end up being worth it in the end. There was talk of Boston eventually trying for an Olympic games. Let me go on record as saying, thanks, but we'll pass.

-Last weekend was a bizarre TV weekend for me, as I watch all sorts of sports I never normally watch. First of all, I've found myself watching a lot of the Women's World Cup as I love anything when National Pride is on the line. Here's the thing I noticed: these girls play rough. Now, girls being tough is not a new concept to me but what I couldn't get over was how much the refs were letting them play. People were being taken down left and right with fouls rarely being called and flops going unrewarded. It made me want to show the tape to men's soccer. When the girls are putting up with more contact than you are, that proves your sport has a serious issue.

-After the soccer I switched over to the Wladimir Klitschko/David Hayes fight. I'm not much of a boxing fan, but heavyweights are usually enough to get me interested. Now, unlike most fights, this one was on basic HBO and not pay-per-view and thank God for that one. Because personally I would have been pissed if I paid for this awful fight. (Instead I only lost time of my life I will never get back.) After weeks of talking, Hayes spent the entire fight running, ducking, flopping and eventually losing to Klitschko. This was billed as the fight that was going to restore interest in boxing. Instead, I'm pretty sure it reminded everyone just how far the sport has fallen.

-The other odd sport I watched last weekend was the Nathan's hot dog eating contest. Admittedly, this is only marginally a sport and gets most of its viewership out of some level of morbid curiosity. Anyway, here's what confuses me about these people: I can't tell if they know we're laughing at them and not with them. Some of the casual competitors had these very long introductions, which you could tell they wrote just to get laughs and were not taking themselves or the event too seriously. But then they switched to the "professionals" and the entire tone changed. I get the general vibe that those guys are the same people who refuse to admit professional wrestling is staged.

-On Sunday, Frenchman Thomas Levet won the French Open, his nation's national championship. To celebrate the victory (the first French Open victory by a Frenchman in years), Thomas and his caddy jumped into a nearby lake. Unfortunately, during the landing Levet suffered a small fracture in his shin and was forced to withdraw from the upcoming British Open, which he had just qualified for. Now, Levet is ranked roughly 300th in the world, so it's not like he was a threat to win the Open. However, this is just another nail in the coffin of me trying to prove to people that golf is a real sport. I mean, the winner of a major golf event can't even jump into water correctly? You're killing me guys, you really are.