Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everybody!

If you celebrate the holiday I hope you have a wonderful day doing whatever Easter traditions your family may have and if not Easter isn't your thing I hope you are simply having a good weekend. To those participating in an Easter Egg hunt, may you find as many eggs as possible. In the last couple of years I have noticed the skill which is required to have a really good Easter Egg hunt. It is not enough just that you hide the eggs - you must hide them with enough deception so that it is somewhat of a challenge for the people involved, but not hide them so well that the next time you see the egg it is after you run it over with the lawnmower. Where this gets really tricky is when you have kids spanning a wide age participating. Obviously the older the kid the more elaborate you can be with your hiding places, where as a little kid can literally be standing over an egg and not see it. It is a delicate mix. Also, I feel like there should be an age limit for hunting Easter Eggs - perhaps something as simple as once you hit a double-digit age your hunting days are over - because like all things, at some point dominating all the other children at finding Easter Eggs stops being impressive and starts being sad.

That being said, can we talk for a minute about how strange the entire idea of an Easter Egg hunt is? Regardless of how religiously you may have been raised, growing up I think we are all taught the same basic principles - don't eat candy you find on the ground, don't run around too much while you are wearing your nicest clothes and if you have a lot of something you should share it with other. But when it comes time for an Easter Egg hunt? All of that goes out the window. Feel free to run around and get sweaty in the clothes your mother fought very hard to keep clean all year round (don't forget to throw in a grass stain for good measure) while collecting as many candy-filled eggs as possible from all sorts of questionable locations (Under the swing-set which no one has cleaned in years? Why not? Also the candy is usually something without packaging like M&Ms, but since it was in a very thin, poorly-sealed plastic egg that should be ok.) and whichever child has the most eggs when all is said and done is the winner, so being nice and giving the kid who doesn't have any eggs actually works against you. I assume this is just how Jesus wanted the day to be.

Weekly Sporties

-Hockey's trading deadline is quickly approaching and a lot of teams are looking to add a scoring punch as they approach the playoffs. The biggest name available was Calgary Flames captain Jerome Iginla and every contender in the league was trying to get him. So, you can imagine that like most local hockey fans I went to bed rather pleased on Wednesday night after multiple reports that Jerome Iginla was going to be a member of the Boston Bruins, only to wake up Thursday and discover he was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Apparently the Flames liked what the Bruins were offering the best, only since Iginla had been with the team for so long he had the right o say where he was traded. After initially telling the Flames he would accept trades to the Bruins, Penguins or Los Angeles Kings, Iginla weighed his options and decided he most wanted to be in Pittsburgh. Honestly, I don't have any problem with his decision - he's been in Calgary for 16 years, really wants to win a Stanley Cup and Penguins star Sidney Crosby is playing out of his mind right now. Pittsburgh is already the favorites to with the Eastern Conference and this acquisition further solidifies that feeling. Where I take exception is that the Flames told the Bruins the trade was done without telling Iginla first. That seems like kind of a big oversight. Players are notoriously fickle when it comes time to move and can change their mind at any point. Why not just tell the Bruins that they like the deal but need to run it by Ignila to confirm he has was onboard? That way no one gets their hopes up and the Bruins don't needlessly sit the player they thought was going to be included in the deal, which is what happened Wednesday night. Anyway, it's back to the phones for the Bruins, who still need to improve their offense. Hopefully they can still make a deal before the deadline, though it would probably be much easier to get it done if everyone involved would get on the same page.

-Just like in college football, the days immediately following a team's NCAA run are filled with hirings and firings. Some of them are very interesting because it give you a window into certain program's mindsets, like Minnesota, who fired coach Tubby Smith who just won a game in NCAA. You would think that would have been enough for the Gophers, who don't have a great basketball tradition, but apparently not. The other big name fired this week was the guy Smith's team beat, UCLA's Ben Howland. UCLA is the standard for college basketball and aim for championship or nothing, so his firing is not as surprising. What is surprising is how many coaches don't appear to want the job. Already guys like Shaka Smart at VCU and Brad Stevens at Butler have turned down the job, which would have seemed insane just a couple of years ago. At first I agreed that it was a crazy decision, but the more I think about it the less crazy it is. Obviously UCLA has a very high standard. While that is great for the alumni, that can be very hard on a coach. Also, guys like Smart and Stevens have shown they can win just about anywhere and if the schools are willing to pay them close to what they could make at a bigger program why not stay put, keep adding to the foundation they created and not have to move your whole family? There is something to be said for being the biggest program on campus, something which is increasingly rare around colleges. Not to mention Butler is headed to the new Big East and should have an easier time getting to the NCAA tournament with that schedule. I do wonder if VCU is getting left behind due to the conference they play in, but considering these days conferences are being drawn in crayon it is entirely possible they could switch leagues by the time this blog post goes up. So, while the UCLA job is rather tempting, turning it down isn't the career suicide people once thought it was. It just goes to show that sometimes tradition simply isn't enough.

-You may have thought yesterday was just Good Friday, but it turns out it was also big contract day, as three major deals were announced within hours of one another. First it was Justin Verlander re-signing with the Tigers for 7 years and $180 million, then Buster Posey remained with the Giants for 9 years and $167 million and finally Tony Romo signed an extension with the Cowboys for 6 more years and $108 million. As we always do when similar events happen close to one another, I guess this means we have to figure out which deal was best. Obviously, from the players' side it has to be Verlander because he got the most money and the highest per-year rate. But if you look at it from the team side of things I think Romo's deal is best. Yes, that may seem like a lot of money for a guy who has only won a single playoff game in his career whereas Verlander and Posey are both league MVPs. However, you have to remember that NFL contracts are only about the guaranteed money, which in this case is $55 million. If Romo is awful two years from now he will be cut and most of his deal will come off the books. MLB contracts are fully guaranteed, which means if something happens to either Verlander or Posey the Tigers and Giants are still on the hook and paying a lot of money for guys who can't play. History is littered with deals given to starting pitchers who then got hurt and were never the same again. Also, catcher may be the most physically demanding position in sports and the law of averages say there is no way Posey doesn't miss significant time during some part of that contract. (Ask the Twins if they would like to reconsider the Joe Mauer deal or if the Mets would like to be able to get out from under Johan Santana's contract.) It's nice that these guys wanted to remain with the teams that originally signed them and show some loyalty, but too often professional sports ends up being a reminder that loyalty can bite you in the end.

-During last month's NFL combine I told you why I thought the exercise was mostly meaningless. Scouts and team executives put way too much emphasis on a few drills when they should know all they need from the four years of tape the player has submitted during his college career. However, the NFL Combine is still far more useful than what has been taking place this week - Pro Days. Pro Days are essentially the same thing as the Combine, only they take place on individual college campuses and feature just the players from that school. The thinking is that some guys may have been too nervous during the combine and feel more comfortable in familiar settings (especially quarterbacks who will be throwing to the same guys that have been catching their passes for years). This is really useful because, as we all know, pro football is all about making players feel comfortable. Also, they seem to get a more friendly stopwatch, which is why guys' 40 times all miraculously improve during Pro Days. But despite my feelings about the futility of the exercise, there was one story worth noting. University of South Carolina Marcus Lattimore, who suffered one of the most gruesome leg injuries every caught on film in a game early in the season, participated in the Gamecocks' Pro Day even though most doubted he would ever play football again. His effort was so inspiring that the normally reserved scouts in attendance gave him a standing ovation when he finished his workout. What I will be interested to know is whether that applause translates into getting drafted, because I fear not. He'll get a look in someone's camp, but that knee is going to scare a lot of people away. If he ends up having a solid career it will be an inspiring story but scouts don't need inspiring - they need as sure a thing as possible. And considering no one was trying to tackle him during his Pro Day, Lattimore remains more question than answer.

-I don't need to tell you that sports are better when they are played in the bad weather. Even though the quality of play may not be as high, at least everything looks cooler. It is even better when it involves sports which don't usually play in that kind of weather. For example, last Friday night the US and Costa Rica played a World Cup Qualifier in a blizzard. It was crazy (but beautiful) scene as several inches of powder fell during the game and the teams had to resort to using a yellow ball to make sure they could see it. The United States won the match 1-0, but afterward Costa Rica said they would ask that the result be vacated because they had repeatedly asked that the match be abandoned (they also want the refs reprimanded for letting it continue) and were confident they would have won if the game was played in normal conditions. On the one hand I can totally see their point. Conditions were tough out there and I'm sure not something they had trained for. On the other hand, it is not the US team does a lot of practicing in the snow either. Conditions were just as tough for them and yet they didn't call for the match to be called off. Plus, Costa Rica finished the game. If they really had a problem with it than you walk off, take the grief from the fans and admonishment from FIFA, but you have a better chance of replaying it at a later date. Waiting until the game is over and you've lost just leaves the door open for cynical people like me to wonder if the protest would have happened if the scored had been reversed or if Costa Rica is just upset they lost to a perceived inferior opponent and are looking for an excuse? In the end FIFA has said the game will stand, which typically happens when you play a game to the finish. Still, to avoid this from happening again maybe next time don't schedule a warm-weather sport to be played in Denver in March. Does FIFA not have access to weather.com?

-If you don't follow autoracing closely you may think that Formula 1 and NASCAR fans are all part of one big happy family of gearheads, but they aren't. In fact, there is kind of a rivalry between the two factions over which racing style is better. Formula 1 has faster cars and more turns, but much less passing and absolutely no touching of cars (because they are deathtraps). NASCAR has fewer turns and less speed, but more bumping and shoving. In the end it is all a matter of preference with Formula 1 being seen as more wine and suits while NASCAR is beer and jeans. However, if you want to know  the real reason why Formula 1 doesn't have the same level of popularity as NASCAR in this country it is because in NASCAR no one hand-picks who gets to win which races. Last Saturday was the Grand Prix of Malaysia (probably another reason Formula 1 isn't that popular here - they occasionally race 12 hours in the future when most people are asleep). The race was coming to a finish the Red Bull team was running 1-2, when second-place driver Sebastian Vettel was told to hang back and let teammate Mark Webber have the win. You see, the season is just a couple of races old and ownership felt Webber was going to need the points later in the season more than Vettel would. It was long-term strategy. Well, Vettel didn't feel like coming in second and passed Webber for the win. This lead to the awkward moment of the winner of the race having to apologize to his owner for winning. Look, I can appreciate a team understanding the season is a marathon and not a sprint and an owner who is trying to make sure both his drivers are racing for a championship. However, that doesn't really jive with how sports work and it certainly doesn't seem like you are giving the fans full credit for their ticket if guys aren't competing until the end. NASCAR may be less refined, but at least they don't have to apologize for racing the entire time.

-Actually, racing hard to the end is also an issue in NASCAR this week but for totally different reasons. As Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin were coming to the line during last weekend's race in California they start bumping one another. Eventually they ended up wrecking each other with Hamlin taking the worst of it, fracturing a bone in his back and potentially missing the next six weeks of racing. The reason this is noteworthy is that up until last season these two were teammates and everyone thought they got along pretty well. Now we know that wasn't really the case as Hamlin spun Logano out last week and Joey vowed revenge at a later date as the two sniped back and forth on Twitter. (Before learning just how badly Hamlin was hurt Logano also regrettably told a reporter, "That's what he gets.") Normally a guy getting spun out and eventually wrecking the guy who did it is par for the course, so you would expect most people to take Logano's side. Unfortunately for Logano, this is not the first person who has taken issue with his driving style as Tony Stewart came at him following the race for what Stewart thought was excessive blocking (take that with a grain of salt because Tony Stewart is the kind of guy where when he does something to you it is fine, but if you do the exact same thing in retaliation you should be shot). Now several people are gunning for Logano and NASCAR says it has no problem with any of this. Look, I appreciate that the people running the sport have told drivers to, "Have at it" to get back to the bootlegging roots that made the sport so popular, but at some point they need to step in before someone gets killed. Vigilante justice and guys policing themselves sounds fine in theory, but when guys are driving at 200 mph it is actually super dangerous. Some say ratings are down because guys are too worried about sponsors, but I don't think acting like idiots to the point sponsors don't want to be associated with your sport is the way to fix an image problem.

Come Out When You're Ready

During the past week there have been all sorts of rumbling and reporting from sources like CBSSports.com that a current NFL player is gay, planning to come out and wants to continue his career. According to the reports the player isn't very worried about the reaction of his teammates, but is concerned about the abuse he would take from fans during away games. I have to say, I question just how true this is. It is not that I doubt there are gay men playing in the NFL - between the statistics and the fact several players have come out after their career was over I can pretty much guarantee that there are. What I question are the reports about the player being ready to come out. Putting stuff out there like this is a fairly easy way to bring some publicity to your website without ever having to back up your claims. No one is going to demand a name and you can always say the player changed their mind. Something like this happened back in 2001 when an editor for "Out" magazine claimed to be in a relationship with a baseball player for one of the East Coast teams and if the player didn't out himself the reporter would print his name in the next issue. (Amazingly, the magazine was in desperate need of attention at the time. What are the odds?) Anyway, no player ever came out and the magazine never named him, probably because the entire relationship was imaginary. It has made me question stories like that ever since.

The timing of this report does also feel rather convenient as the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the defense of marriage act as well as Prop 8 in California. The discussion of gay marriage and its impact on society is a very hot-button issue right now, and trying to get some extra pageviews from people looking for news on the subject wouldn't be very hard. Also, rumors of one athlete or another being gay is nothing new. The only difference here is that for once the player is said to be considering outing himself, not the subject of rumors from a vengeful ex or the target of a blackmail scheme. I am quite proud of how most of the media has handle this report because while the rumor of a gay baseball player a decade ago lead to speculation, finger-pointing and guys like Mike Piazza famously having to hold awkward press conference to assure people it was not them, this report was met with a shrug and feeling that if it happens, fine but no one is about to launch an investigation. In fact, it has gone the other way with guys like Rob Gronkowski saying they would be accepting of a homosexual teammate. I like to think the reaction by the media is proof that we're slowly inching towards a world in which this kind of thing will no longer be news.

Then again, I have always said how impactful the first openly-gay athlete is will depend on just who the player is and at what stage of his career he is at. Guys who were fringe players coming out after they have retired doesn't do anything to advance the discussion. For this to make any type of cultural shift they need to be a franchise-level player and still have a career ahead of him, one that would make it hard for any team to release him because the media storm simply wouldn't be worth it. In some ways I think the NFL is the worst sport for a player to come out in, not because football players are neanderthals (which we will get to in a second), but because the contracts are so flimsy and football coaches don't like distractions. They will release a Rhode Scholar because they think wanting to focus on academics takes away from film study, so they will have no issues cutting a guy who the media wants to constantly ask about, thinking it is just one more minute their players won't be able to think about the upcoming game. However, the NFL may be the best stage because it is America's past time. Let's be honest here - there are plenty of openly gay players in the WNBA but no one cares because it is the WNBA. An openly-gay NFL player would put it into a lot of people's homes.

The one aspect of this story which I actually like is the part where the player isn't worried about his teammates. That shows real progress. Let's be honest, professional athletes are not usually the most open-minded of people. Many of them are raised in very conservative household (even though you know I often think the athletes who can't wait to thank God are doing it for show and not because they are actually that religious) and the culture is not usually one of tolerance. If this guy truly feels like his locker room would be accepting of him it can only be because they already know and he hasn't taken any grief for it. (It's hard to keep secrets on sports teams at that level - you just spend too much time together.) That would be a great development for someone like me who loves football but also thinks people should be allowed to marry whomever they fall in love with. Honestly, seeing guys play for my favorite team, but knowing that due to their politics I would hate being trapped by them at a party is a very strange juxtaposition (at least I'm quite familiar with it because it is also how I feel about the Catholic Church). So, I think the day where there is an openly-gay athlete playing professional sports at a high level is coming quickly, but I just don't think that day is coming this week.

G.I. No

As a kid in the 80s, I was all about GI Joe. Everyone had their toy obsession growing up and that continues to be mine. I have said this on multiple occasions, but if playing with toys were socially acceptable for a man my age I would probably have an entire room in my house still devoted to them. (Somehow things like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Star Wars slipped through because while you may get some good-natured ribbing about it, it's common for fans of those franchises to be able to fly their nerd flag high, yet not for fans of the Joes... I assume it is because anyone who has a room dedicated to war toys ends up on some kind of watch list.) Anyway, since it is not I have had to keep my nerdom going in other ways, specifically supporting the live-actions movies which have been put out in the last few years. The first one came out in 2008 and it was, sadly, an underwhelming effort. Something was just off about the entire movie. It wasn't bad, I am just not sure it did justice to the franchise I grew up with and while I bought a copy of the movie, it was done more out of a sense of obligation than enjoyment. I was hoping the latest edition would be a stronger effort. I should have known not to get my hopes up.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead.
**If you want to see the movie for yourself I suggest
skipping the rest of this post and coming back tomorrow.**

This movie was so bad. Not even "so bad it's good" - just plain bad. I want you to know it pains me to write that sentence because I desperately wanted it to be good. I even went in with lower expectations so that I could say the movie was better than expected, but apparently that was asking too much. Do you know how upsetting it is to severely lower your expectations and still have something fall short of them? Halfway through I was fighting the urge to tell them to turn it off like George C Scott in "Hardcore." Look, I wasn't going in planning to see an Oscar contender here. I thought I would get a few action sequences, a flimsy plot and lots of catch phrases thrown back at each other. I would have walked out thrilled if that is what I got, but this movie pretty much has no plot. I've been thinking about it all afternoon (I went to an early-afternoon showing with all my children-of-the-80s brethren who just knew not to drag wives or girlfriends to this because we would be paying for it later) and I still can't tell you what the purpose of this movie was. You expect action-movie bad guys to have a terribly complicated plan for their relatively simply goal, but this one took the cake. I don't want to spoil too much of it for the people who wandered onto this post accidentally, but the last few minutes may have contained some of the stupidest plot holes ever captured on film. I didn't need much of a back story, but I at least need it to be even 1% possible, which this movie was not.

Even worse was the whole movie felt poorly-constructed. I've said it time and time again, but people will upgrade a bad movie if you at least take the time to make sure it is at least well-conceived. In those situations we can at least appreciate the effort. Honestly, bad editing is the thin line between being in the theater and being released straight-to-DVD. This movie had some really clumsy jumps (we'll get to why in a second), and I found them really distracting. Plus, this movie felt trapped between two different ideologies. One of the things people hated in the first movie was that it was too reliant on special effects, like accelerator suits and pulse cannons. So, this movie toned that back a little with regular bullets and the Joes wearing standard-issue uniforms. Still, you can tell someone felt the need to insert a big visual effect, which is why they blew up London (which you see in the commercial) for really no real reason. It does nothing to advance the plot, I'm sure that some producer just thought it would look really cool. And that's the problem really - the whole movie felt like the producers figured out the action sequences they wanted and then tried to construct a movie around them, only they didn't try very hard.

But the main problem with this movie is the fact that they kill Channing Tatum off in the first 20 minutes. (Everything you see in the trailer? That's pretty much every scene he has in the movie.) Look, I can take Tatum or leave him as an actor but you can't kill of the character of Duke in the first 20 minutes of a GI Joe movie - it'd be like trying to make the "Star Trek" reboot with no Captain Kirk. It immediately showed me this movie was being made by people who don't give a crap about the franchise. Even then I was willing to live with it if they had just gone with it. I may not respect a decision, but I'll accept it if you make me. These guys were wishy-washy about it. The movie was famously bumped from a scheduled release date of last June until today. The studio said it was so the movie could be converted for 3-D, but rumblings were that it was done so they could shoot a few additional scenes with Tatum, who had a few hit movies after shooting on this one wrapped up. (They still kill him, but it's 20 minutes into the movie instead of 5.) As such they probably want to have the option to bring him back if there is a third movie and did so without consulting the director. The result is the removal any official acknowledgement that Duke is dead but they achieved that with a few really sloppy edits that wrecked any flow the movie may have had. They really would have been better off just scrapping as much as possible and re-shooting the movie. They could have easily cut out every scene Bruce Willis was in, as he was utterly useless (again, every scene you see in the trailer is every instance of him appearing in the movie). I assume he was on set for all of 30 minutes and did every scene in one take, just as soon as the check cleared.

If you have read this blog before you know that I try to avoid telling people not to see a particular film because I don't feel it is my place to assume my taste in movies is universal. However, in this case I don't feel like I am going out on too big of a limb when I tell you that you should really avoid this movie at all costs. If you are a fan of GI Joe it will just ruin the memories and if you aren't then you wouldn't get why the fact it is so bad is so crushing. There are always a couple mindless action movies in the theaters at any given time you could see instead (I hear "Olympus Has Fallen" is just the kind of campy action fun "GI Joe: Retaliation" should have been) and if you can hold out for a little longer we will be in summer blockbuster mode before you know it. I'm sure "GI Joe: Retaliation" will have pretty good box-office numbers because the end of March is a bit of a dead-zone for movies, which is good because I sincerely do want them to make a third one... primarily so that this horrible movie isn't the last time we see GI Joe on the big screen. I just hope whomever is put in charge of making the next one does a better job. The good news is that they really couldn't do much worse.

A Killer Choice

Like most people, I enjoy your average hour-long TV mystery. They are a fantastic way to kill a rainy Saturday or pretty much any day when there is nothing better to watch. The only thing you have to watch out for is not getting too involved or suddenly your entire day is gone. People's love of these kinds of shows are exactly why "CSI", "Law & Order" and "NCIS" have been on the air for a combined total of about 30 years and each franchise has spawned numerous spin-offs. The only problem with a lot of these shows is how predictable they are. I'm not just talking about the formula of "find body, go after wrong person, get shocking evidence, arrest correct person, justice gets served." The writers of these shows have to crank out a large number of episodes a season and there are only so many ways to vary a show like that, so a bit of a routine is expected. What I don't like is that as who-dun-its these shows are supposed to keep you guessing who the murderer is until the very end of the hour, but the murderer is always the special guest star. Honestly, the second you recognize an actor from another show you can be 95% certain they will end the episode in handcuffs. Knowing how the show will end certainly makes them a little easier to tune away from. That is why I appreciate how a few shows have at least attempted to change this.

A couple times in the last few months I have seen a few shows offering a sort of "choose your own adventure"-type episode, in which they flooded the episode with more suspects than usual, then filmed several endings in which different people were guilty and viewers were allowed to text in their vote as the show went on to let the producers know who they thought the killer was. The outcome with the most votes would be aired, but don't worry if they ending you wanted didn't win, because they would all be available online. Yes, I am aware this is a blatant rip off of the classic movie, "Clue". But since I love that movie as well as choose your own adventure books as a kid I would prefer to think of it as more of an homage. For people like me who claim these kinds of shows are too predictable it was a chance for us to have our voices be heard, vote for the random actor to get the big reveal at then end and finally see a show where the only recognizable star wasn't the obvious choice. (Sadly, I didn't watch a couple of the shows but I'm willing to bet the big guest star still ended up being the killer just because TV watchers are trained for that to be the conclusion.) It's pretty much the only election you don't want to win.

Of course, this only works if you believe the voting was being calculated live and the writers didn't simply flip a coin before the episode aired, which is something I find myself being a little skeptical about. I know editing has come a long way and plugging the viewers choice should be a relatively straightforward process, but there are still plenty of things which could go wrong and this was (allegedly) live TV we were talking about. I have a hard time believing uptight studio executives would be willing to risk an editing snafu in front of a prime-time audience. Just because they shot three endings doesn't mean they ever intended to air the other two. Plus, the reason the guest star always ends up being the killer is because they cost the most to get on the show and producers want to get the most bang for their buck. It certainly doesn't make sense to pay someone tens of thousands of dollars to get them on the show for a single episode and then use them in 5 scenes. All that leads me to have some doubts and makes me think the 'vote for the ending' idea is just a marketing ploy to up ratings, because as far as I know they didn't plan to release voting results once the show was over and let you know just how close it really was.

Still, I can't blame producers for trying to get fans involved because if shows like "American Idol" have taught us anything in the last couple of years it is that people love voting about things on television. Plus, I'm always saying how flawed the ratings system is for television because it takes a small number of people and then uses their viewing habits to decide what goes on television for a large number of people. Asking the people who are watching to text in seems like a better measurement tool. Sure, not every viewer who watched cast a vote and I'm sure there were more than a few viewers who voted numerous times but I would be willing to bet it was a far more accurate viewing data than what the Nielsen ratings box gives you. Not to mention there are plenty of people who love these shows but not at the time they originally air. I've seen many Law & Order marathons, but couldn't tell you what day the show originally airs on network television. That can't be good for business. So if nothing else this was a far more original way to attempt to boost ratings for a one-hour mystery, which usually tries to draw people in by making scripts out of the most recent headlines or having an even bigger guest star (who will definitely turn out to be the murderer). If we didn't want the show to end that way we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Alarming Advertising

Outside of major events like the Super Bowl when advertisers don't care about demographics because they know everyone in the world will be watching, it's no secret that advertisers spend a lot of time researching just what kind of people are watching which television programs so they can tailor when their commercials air. And it goes beyond age and sex - they want to know the average income of people as well as their shopping habit and people are only too happy to give that information up. It is all about making sure the audience who is most likely to buy that product is in a position to see it as many times as possible. It is why you see a lot of video game and beer commercials on ESPN and reverse mortgage and steady cane ads when "60 Minutes" comes on. Obviously, this is not a perfect system because it paints people with a very broad brush and humans are more diverse than that. Not every ESPN viewer is a 23 year-old frat boy who is counting down the minutes until he can start drinking again and there are plenty of young people who enjoy a well-informed news magazine program. However, while the commercials for a show may not fit you exactly, they can be a good indication of just what kind of crowd you are being lumped in with. Frankly, that can be even scarier.

Sometimes when I am watching a show and keep seeing the same commercial over and over again it makes me worried that the product really is being aimed at me. It is one thing to see a bad commercial when someone else has the remote, but if the same bad product is repeatedly advertised during a show you have set your DVR to record, it starts to mess with your head. The latest commercial I would like to never see again is for a take-home HIV test. Just last week I wrote about how much I like working from home, but that it was time certain industries realized that it just didn't work for everyone. Chief among my targets was the medical community, because I just don't think things like dental surgery should be done in what used to be a study until the homeowner realized they never actually studied in there. Well, if you think I was uncomfortable with the idea of a licensed medical professional working in his living room, I think you can guess how I feel about the idea of people being able to conduct a test for a deadly disease during a commercial break of "The Big Bang Theory." Not to mention these people couldn't figure out how a condom works and we're supposed to believe they know how to make sure a DNA test doesn't get contaminated?

The advertisers say the home HIV tests should really be used more like a warning system and that if you get a positive result you should go and get tested a second time by a professional. Considering people who aren't sick don't usually feel the need to check if they have a fatal disease, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they should just get tested by the professional the first time around. I can understand the people who argue that having a take-home version of the test will inspire more people who are worried to check themselves out without embarrassment, but if you are really that worried then I think your dignity is just going to have to take a backseat on this one. Plus, if you got into the situation of needing this test due to some risky behavior than maybe a little shame is just what will inspire you to make a few life changes to insure you never find yourself in a situation like this again. I guess my main problem with these kinds of tests is that while I will also concede that people don't always have the time they need to make sure all their errands get done, I feel like you should make time for these. Checking whether or not you have HIV is not on the same level of picking up the dry cleaning.

As it turns out, take-home DNA tests are all the rage right now. You can use them to find out everything from what your child may be allergic to or if that really is your daughter. (I'm sure without the supervision of a law enforcement officer (and really, if it wasn't due to a court order why else would you be taking a paternity test?), they are extremely accurate because no one has ever felt the need to cheat on a take-home test.) What's next, including it as prizes in cereal? Normally I wouldn't take the time to write about a silly product I saw advertised on television because there are just so many of them. Also, it is not like I do this with every product - you certainly don't seem me taking to the internet to complain about how many luxury car commercials air during the average golf telecast. The problem here is that I keep seeing this commercial for something I would honestly be afraid to need over and over again. I have seen it on multiple channels during multiple shows I enjoy. I've always said once is an accident, twice is a coincidence but three times is evidence, so what does it say about me that research has determined people who enjoy the shows I do also have a high risk of fatal diseases? It has begun to make me wonder if these advertisers know something I don't. At the very least I feel like I should improve my viewing habits.

Pretend This Is Clever

Every year on my birthday I write about some life lesson I have learned in the past 12 months. Unfortunately, you may have noticed that none of those life lessons involved catching on to the fact that when the news does a late-afternoon tease about some story which will be airing on the 11 o'clock news it will never live up to the hype. Seriously, I fall for it almost every time. I'm sure you know exactly what I am talking about. They come on with an ominous-sounding voice-over making a vague statement about something in your house which could potentially kill you. What is it? Well, to find out you have to tune it at 11... which is when you discover it is something very obvious and not a danger to people who can read and have common sense, such as the product in question being Drain-O that will kill you and even then it will only happen if you drink the entire jug of it and don't call for help. Not only is that not breaking news, you can argue that it doesn't even qualify as news since the story hasn't happened to anyone so far. This is always how the majority of these stories end up and yet I keep finding myself tuning in, just on the off chance today is the one time it turns out to be an important story.

I'm no better when it comes to headlines on the internet. I'm constantly clicking on articles and falling down the rabbit hole that is the internet because of an interesting headline. Actually, the internet may be even worse than a traditional newspapers because while newspapers need you to be intrigue enough to buy the paper, the internet only needs to keep your attention for the five seconds it takes for a page to load. Thus, headlines are designed to be as sensational as possible to draw you in and they don't even have to connect to the story. As if to prove this point, most writers aren't even allowed to write their own headlines, as the majority of publishing companies have a group of people whose only job it is to come up with a phrase which will intrigue you enough to click over and at least read the first headline. Think about it like this - the article writers are a blog post, the headline writers are Twitter. (Yet article writers are always getting in trouble for what their headline says because the headline writers don't put their name on it.) They really don't need you to stick around and read the article, just count as a pageview. I know all of these facts, which is why I was extra mad at myself last night when I came across and article and couldn't help myself from clicking on it. The headline read: "Too much tea causes unusual bone disease."

Before I clicked I was certain this story had to involve an extreme circumstance. I mean, tea is as old as time and if resulted in a serious health condition we would have heard about it before now. Still, I begin every morning with a bowl-sized cup of tea which I allow to steep for a while beforehand, so that nagging part of my brain kept poking at me, saying "Better read the article just to make sure it doesn't apply to you." Plus, we all know how fickle the medical community is - what is the cornerstone of a healthy diet today is the very thing which will cause you to drop dead tomorrow. So, I opened up the website and discovered the story was about a 47 year-old Michigan woman who had contracted a very rare form of bone cancer which researchers claim could be tied back to the fact that she had been drinking a pitcher of tea made from at least 100 tea bags every day for 17 years. [Sidebar: Seriously? I would love to talk to this woman and ask if any part of that felt right to her. I enjoy a nice cup of tea as much as the next fellow, but even I couldn't drink a pitcher of it. Also, 100 tea bags? How big was this pitcher?] Once again, the shocking news was essentially that gorging yourself on a product for an extended period of time is not good for you. I can't imagine this safety tip applied to anyone other than that one woman.

In some ways I guess the fact I fell for a sensationalized headline again shouldn't be considered shocking news either. Also, I can't exactly feel like I am the victim of a scam because I do the exact same thing when I am writing headlines for my blog post. (I rationalize it by saying at least one readers get here I try to give them better content.) Sadly, this is just going to continue because it is not like the internet puts a premium on quality content. The only thing I have working in my favor are things like Google's preview feature which let you get an image of the page without actually having to go there and that is usually good enough to read the first few lines of the story. I may still be interested enough to mouse over and see what the story is about, but at least now the website won't get credit for a pageview. It is the smallest of victories, but if enough people do that it may just remind a few websites that the only way to build a truly loyal fanbase is to actual provide a useful service and not just trick them into looking at your site for five seconds every few days. Then again, expecting high standards from random internet sites happens so rarely that seeing it occur would probably cause you to spill your entire pitcher of tea in surprise.

Time To Go Outside

As I mentioned the other day when I wrote about having to change both shear pins during a freezing rain shower after they broke trying to clear wet and heavy snow, I may have officially reached my breaking point with this winter. For the first time in several years I actually had to remind myself why I live here instead of someplace warmer (short answer - I hate heat even more than snow). I love the change in seasons as much as the next guy, but even I can feel like enough is enough. Given how hard this winter has been I hardly think I am alone in that. Even by the toughest of standards this winter has been more than most people should be expected to handle. Still, even with that moment of exasperation at least I can hold my head up high and claim that I never tried to blame a rodent for my troubles. It is just too bad not everyone can still make that claim. A prosecutor in Butler County, Ohio (just north of Cincinnati) has filed an indictment against Punxsutawney Phil, claiming his proclamation back on February 2nd that there were only six more weeks of winter deliberately and maliciously misled people. He is seeking extradition to Ohio and if Phi is found guilty the penalty would be death.

Now, I am sure this was done very tongue-in-cheek but it still does not paint the people of Butler County in a very good light because not only did they have time to think this up, they still thought it was a good idea the next morning, wrote it out and then sent it to the proper authorities. You would have thought somewhere along the line someone would have been like, "Hey, I think this has gone on far enough. The joke was funny for a second, but maybe we should stop now." (Although, on a positive note they clearly have a low crime rate if a prosecutor has this much free time.) Even worse the people of Pennsylvania have begun to stand up for Phil, claiming he never made claims about how warm the spring was going to be, just that it would start. This is what happens when people spend too much time inside. I've always said the reason Boston produces so many funny comedians is because people have to spend the winter months inside entertaining themselves, but clearly people's imaginations can take very different paths. I can only hope it starts to warm up in Southern Ohio very soon, because we wouldn't want the legal system being clogged with frivolous lawsuits against the Freeze Miser.

Weekly Sporties

-During my time working at Gillette Stadium, one thing was made abundantly clear - the Patriots biggest rival was not the Dolphins or the Jets, it was the other professional sports teams in this city. It actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. The average fan only has so much money to spend on merchandise and tickets and even though they can be fans of all their local teams, they are bound to love one above the rest. So, like children trying to get into their rich parents' good graces, the teams may outwardly love each other, but secretly love it when they can stick it to one another. That is why I was not surprised when I heard the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL were getting some push back from the Baltimore Orioles regarding their request that the Orioles switch their Thursday, September 5th contest to a day game so the Ravens could open the season at home that night, as the NFL has been doing for the last couple of years. You see, the Ravens and Orioles share a parking lot and it just isn't big enough to host both games at the same time. However, the Orioles are flying in from an away game the night before and who knows what time they may actually get home. Playing at 1 o'clock is not something you want to do if you didn't get to bed until 3 AM. Plus, the Orioles are projected to be pretty good so they could be in the thick of a pennant race and the game could be really important. Of course, these are all convenient excuses to mask the real issue - the Orioles were there first and don't like acting like second fiddle. Now, reports are the league is going to have the Ravens open up on the road instead, which is exactly the kind of fall-on-the-sword move you expect from someone who wants to look more gracious while really playing the martyr. Here's what I don't get: why can't they just play on Friday? They can't do Saturday because of a law giving college football that day (really, there is a law on record about this), but there is nothing about the rest of the week. They have only been doing this Thursday night opener for a few years and they even moved it last year for the Democratic National Convention. So, making the Super Bowl Champions open on the road is really being done to make MLB look bad. I can't imagine why the Orioles weren't in more of a hurry to accommodate the Raven's request.

-Fighting with Major League Baseball to uphold a tradition which has only been around for a few years was not the only think the NFL accomplished this week. They also had their rules committee meet and handle some business. First was abolishing the "Tuck Rule" which people around here know because it was rule which kept the Patriots alive during the infamous "Snow Bowl" game against the Raiders in 2001. I'm fine with the rule going away because it was another judgement call that an official had to make and the fewer of those that exist the better. (Just an aside to Raiders fans: no, this does not mean the Patriots' Super Bowl win that year is invalidated. You still had multiple opportunities to stop the Patriots on that drive and in overtime and you didn't get it done. No football game is lost because of one bad play. Also, it was over a decade ago, quit your whining.) To me the more interesting rule which was enacted was the new policy which states that running backs are no longer allowed to lower their heads and use the crown of their helmets against a defender like a battering ram. As you can imagine, offensive players are furious at this with former players like Emmitt Smith saying it was crazy to expect a player to keep his head up when a players was coming in trying to tackle him. Meanwhile, I really like this rule. First off, it is about time the NFL implemented some rules to protect the defense. I mean, there are dozens of rules about where and exactly how hard you are allowed to take down certain offensive players, so putting one on the books designed to make playing the game a little more safe for the guys on defense is probably over-due. Still, it is more about spirit than actually implementing it because the simple fact is this is one of those rules which comes in to play about once every 10 games. Your average NFL running back doesn't have time to build up that much momentum. It is as close to the least they could do as possible and even that is too much for offensive players.

-While the NFL is at least trying to pretend like it cares about player safety on the other end of the spectrum we have Olympic boxing, which this week announced it will do away with headgear starting at the 2016 Games. This will allow them to go with a more professional style and scoring system in hopes of attracting boxers who wish to pursue a career in boxing following the Games (because headgear stopped guys like Evander Holyfield and Roy Jones, Jr). It is amazing to me that in this day and age of increased concussion awareness there is actually a sport which thinks less protective gear is the answer. Of course, they found a person who said less headgear would actually make the sport safer because if boxers has less headgear they wouldn't be so inclined to take as many blows to the head, arguing that one knockout punch actually does less damage than a series of less-forceful blows that the boxers thinks they aren't doing any damage because of the headgear. (I would argue that you could always wear the headgear and teach boxers to duck more, but that's just me.) I can't stand it when sports do this kind of thing - claiming a move is designed for safety when what boxing is really after is more knockouts. Boxing is boring enough when you have two lightweights dancing around for round after round, removing the threat of a knockout in the heavyweight division has made Olympic boxing largely irrelevant and I think when they saw wrestling, one of the staples of the Games since they began, taken off the docket for the 2020 Games boxing officials got scared and desperate for ways to more their sport more interesting. Someone should tell them that lawsuits from people who are suffering from debilitating injuries as a result of playing your game is not something the Olympic Committee is going to be in favor of. Besides, I turned away from boxing not because of the lack of big hits but because the judging feels so corrupt and the Olympics may be the worst-judged boxing matches of all time. Then again those are the people who now run the sport, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised they are so willing to throw their athletes' safety under the bus and not address their biggest problem. Maybe taking them out of the Games wouldn't be the worst thing for everyone involved.

-If you gave the average sports fan the option of swapping their current team's owner for another one, most people would pick Mark Cuban for that swap. The reason he is so popular is that he runs his team like most fans think they would - he spoils his players to attract the best free agents, values winning over making a profit, sits courtside to yell at refs and still dresses like the average fan in jeans and a t-shirt. Also, he doesn't stand on ceremony, often saying what he feels. This can both help and hurt him, as was the case this week when his Dallas Mavericks welcomed the Oklahoma City Thunder to town with former Maverick Derek Fisher along for the ride. Fisher was with the Mavericks to start this season, but wasn't getting much playing time and asked the team for his release so he could spend more time with his family back in Los Angeles, where he has an ill daughter. The team granted his release, but by February Fisher felt comfortable enough to return to the court. Rather than call the Mavericks, Fisher signed with the Thunder, who have a much better record and a legitimate chance to win a Championship. It was a very cheesy move for a guy who already had five rings. (I'll be honest, I've never been a fan of Fisher. He's the Jorge Posada of basketball - riding the coattails of much better players to rings and somehow translating that into people thinking he's better than he is, even though he had opportunities to lead teams on his own and failed.) Cuban didn't appreciate the lack of a phone call and joined in the rest of the Mavericks fans in booing Fisher every time he touched the ball during the game. Some say this behavior is below an owner. I say it is exactly what he should be doing because Fisher's slight was more personally directed at Cuban and his team than anyone in the stands. Also, unlike some people I don't see any way this hurts the Mavericks in free agency because they still play in a first-class arena in a state with no income tax. That is really the kind of thing all players care about, definitely more than whether or not Cuban boos a former player in his return.

-As you know, I don't usually get into baseball until all my other sport viewing options are done for the season, so it should come as no surprise to learn I haven't been watching any Spring Training games this year. In fact, they only come to my attention is something wacky happens since a person standing totally out of place is pretty much the only thing which makes an inter-squad game which don't count at all interesting. The good news for baseball is that one of the fun quirks of Spring Training is that occasionally Major League Baseball uses it as a place to experiment with new rules, so wacky stuff happens quite frequently. That was the case the other day when an injury forced an umpire to call balls and strikes from behind the pitcher. You see, the home plate umpire had taken a ball of the hand and broken it, which meant he needed to be removed from the game. But, rather than wait the 10 minutes while the emergency umpire got all his gear on, the second base ump decided to move the game along and took up a position behind the pitcher to call balls and strikes from back there, which isn't usually done beyond the tee-ball level because it is harder to tell where the ball crossed the plate from 60 feet away. As you can imagine it was not the smoothest transition, as the ump clearly unnerved the pitcher by standing there and was asked to get out of the shortstop's way more than once. It only lasted for a couple of batters before the replacement umpire was ready and the rest of the game went on without incident. Obviously, this is not an idea which has any legs or will be around for the long haul. Still, I found it interesting for this reason - it proves even umpires think Spring Training games are stupid and don't need to last even one second longer than necessary. Any rule which speeds up baseball is alright in my book.

-Speaking of speeding up games, after watching the first two days of March Madness, I would like to propose a new rule of my own: I think the NCAA should lessen the number of timeouts teams get in the second half of games. I came to this conclusion after watching a game in which the refs stopped play every 10 seconds to make sure there is the correct amount of time remaining on the clock, which is essentially a free timeout for both teams anyway, and then the coach who got the ball called yet another timeout to draw up a play. Look, I'm not complaining about the refs wanting to make sure they have the time right. At the end of a basketball game every second is precious and a team having 6 seconds to work with is a lifetime compared to only having 4, so they need to get that right. But it is no secret that the end of basketball games take way too long. Between fouling and consecutive timeouts the final minute of a game can actually take closer to 10 minutes of real-time. That is why I don't think coaches really need that many timeouts to begin with. Besides, it is not like they ever use them during the first 18 minutes of the half. Since there are a number of timeouts mandated by TV commercial breaks both coaches get more than enough time to draw up a play without wasting one of their own, so they simply save them for the last :30 seconds and then use them all at once. Under my new rule you would get all but two timeouts taken away once there were under two minutes in the game. However, refs would still be allowed to go to the replay screen for close plays and make sure the clock is accurate. It wouldn't make the game infinitely faster, but definitely speed up the proceedings a little bit. Plus, coaches would have to really think about when to use those two timeouts wisely, which would add a small degree of difficulty, since having 20 timeouts at your disposal allows you to constantly correct mistakes, even though it makes the people watching at home think their biggest mistake was turning the game on in the first place.

-It is not uncommon to find out a player from a foreign country is actually older than he originally says. I've talked about this before, but an 18 year-old prospect is infinitely more appealing to a sports organization than a 20 year-old one because scouts and coaches think they have just that much more time to develop them into the superstar they know they will be and then keep them on the roster for an extra couple of years. It happens so frequently in baseball people hardly bat an eyelash anymore when a player's true age comes to light and at this point the age a player is given in the program should have quotes around it. However, that usually happens when a player comes from a foreign countries where record keeping is not as thorough, not the US. That is what makes the recent revelation that "19" year-old UCLA freshman forward Shabazz Muhammad is actually a year older than originally thought such a strange situation. Muhammad was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Las Vegas, not normally the kind of places where keeping track of the year you were born should be a problem. This is just one of a few interesting facts in a long article from the Los Angeles Times about Muhammad's father, which also included the tidbit that his father picked the name Shabazz because he thought it would make his son more marketable around the world. In fact, pretty much every thing Ron Holmes did in the last few years was designed to get his son to the NBA and make him a superstar. (This would be the ugly side of parental support.) The question now is whether this long-standing deception will hurt Muhammad's draft stock more than simply being a 20 year-old freshman would. My guess is that it won't considering this is such a bad year for draft prospects, but I'm sure there are some basketball executives out there who are reminding themselves that when you draft a player you are also drafting his family. And from some of the things I read in this article, that would scare me more than a false birth certificate ever would.

The Window Remains Closed

Yeah, I know. I've seriously slacked off the last couple of days. I would like to point out that it has not entirely been my fault - there hasn't been a lot of news to discuss lately. I mean, I could discuss the election of the new Pope, but trying to definitely tell you how a man I have never met is going to do leading a religion consisting of millions of people across hundreds of countries when there is a very good chance he won't have nearly that much power is not something I'm comfortable doing. It is exactly what made me a terrible sportswriter - I don't know what's going to happen and I won't pretend I do. Also I haven't seen enough movies for a new round of movie reviews and even though I want to talk about awful the very idea that celebrity diving was not only put on television but pulled in pretty good ratings infuriates me, I'd rather not give that freak show any more publicity. That leaves me with talking about politics and that can be summed up in five words - they all kind of suck. Considering I like to get closer to 1,000 words on a post that is not exactly the meaty topic I would have liked.

Lastly, the weather hasn't been on my side. It's hard to go out into the world and make observations when we're getting snow every day. Also, my car broke down... I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood... Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD! Sorry, where was I? In the end, this is on me. Hopefully the weather will cooperate a little more this weekend and I will be able to go out and have all sorts of adventures to regal you with on Monday. In the mean time, it's another hungover teacher video.

Missed My Window

Depending on which study you believe, the first two days of the NCAA basketball tournament cost this country somewhere between $100 million and $300 billion dollars in lost revenue from business having to pay people who are't doing any work. Any other industry which was this disruptive we be called to the floor of the Senate to answer questions in front of a subcommittee, but rather than combat this problem we actually seem to encourage it by advertising the best ways to sneak out of work to watch games. CBS could help by scheduling the games for later in the day or starting the tournament earlier in the week, but instead the network and its partners have begun putting every game on TV, starting them at noon and streaming them online. If you can't watch the games online, don't worry because there are numerous websites which will constantly keep you updated or even send an alert to your phone when there is an upset brewing, complete with a "Boss" button which takes down the window the game is in and instantly replaces it with generic spreadsheet designed to fool employers. Honestly, it is a perfect storm to get nothing done.

Sadly, that includes me. There is only a small window between afternoon and evening waves of games for me to get a blog post done and as you probably guessed, I missed it. So, like so many hung-over teachers have done before me, we're having video day. Enjoy.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Bracket Busting

With the NCAA tournament set to begin tomorrow afternoon I, like about 100 million other people, filled out my own bracket the other day. Now, unlike some people I just do one bracket because I think that is the only way to truly test your knowledge of college basketball. To me there is nothing impressive about picking a bracket correctly once you have filled out five of them and done it in five different ways. All you have done in that situation is filled out every eventuality and removed all the risk, which would be like appearing on "Let's Make A Deal" and claiming victory when a glitch allowed you to open all the doors. Plus, I feel like having brackets full of different winners removes much of the viewing pleasure from the games, because sports is only fun when you are rooting for one team over another and which teams are you supposed to cheer for when you have one team winning on one of your brackets and their opponent winning on the other one? I assume it would be based on whichever bracket has done better at that point, but that is not exactly what tournament organizers had in mind. The good news is that if you are cheering based on a strong feeling about one team vs the other than that is the way you should do all your picks.

Anyway, I am always fascinated by the tactics certain people use when filling out their brackets. Obviously, some people just put their Alma Mater into the Championship Game no matter what their seed or how many superior teams they have to face along the way. But if you don't pull for a specific team (or you do but that team stinks and you are a realist), than any number of superstitions are at your disposal. My sister is a big fan of going my uniform colors and it has worked out for her in the past. My aunt sometimes goes by which state she would rather live in and has had equal success. Others go by conference allegiance, thinking a bad record could be excused by a tougher schedule than other teams. (This year that is the Big 10.) Others try to base it off past performance which is kind of insane considering the really high-level college programs are lucky to keep their best players for more than one year, which means 70% of the roster is totally different. Then there are the people who simply flip a coin because they think the randomness of the universe has the same odds of picking correctly that they do. (Please note these people are idiots and if they are ever the leader of a project you are on at work you should start updating your resume - it may never go according to seeding, but it is not random.)

The one thing I never understand are the people who feel the need to put in an absurd amount of upsets. I know that upsets are what make college sports (and more specifically this tournament) as popular as they are today. However, there are never as many upsets as we think there are going to be. After all, between a very long regular season and conference tournaments, we have had close to 40 games to figure out which are the best teams so wouldn't using that information be the smart thing to do? Instead, those upset-seekers make fun of the people who pick too many higher seeds as having no imagination when the reality is those are usually the people who take home the prize. I get the appeal of a tournament thrown into chaos by a ton of upsets because all four #1 seeds making the Final Four is boring, but at least that way we get the best basketball to the very end. (Something about the week to think about it and for the other coaches to prepare for them causes the upstart teams to shrink in the moment.) The ironic aspect to all this is that the same people who want crazy upsets never pick the right Cinderella team, so when the random team does get to the Elite Eight they are just as mad as the people who picked the favorites because both brackets are a mess.

Now, if you are looking for me to tell you who you should pick in your Final Four you should probably try another blog because your guess is as good as mine. I've got all big-conference schools in the Final Four, but there is a reason I made my picks in pencil and not pen. Thanks to one-and-done stars and smaller programs getting as much national air time as the powerhouses (which reduces that as a recruiting tool), college basketball is as even a landscape as you will find. Every sports league strives for parity, because fans who are delusional enough to think their team has a chance are what drives up ratings. But when every team is equally bad I don't know if that is the kind of level playing field these college presidents had in mind. I wouldn't be surprised to see a couple of #1 seeds make the Championship Game, but it is just as likely a team with a #7 or higher seed could make a run no "expert" saw coming. (Good news for them is that no one keeps track of how often they are wrong. They are the weathermen of the sports world.) I just know the next two days are pretty much the best ones we get on the sports calendar all year, so enjoy them - even if your Championship pick is eliminated by tomorrow night.

One Last Repair, Take 2

At the tail end of yesterday's post I mentioned I would love it if my less-than-thorough shovel repair job was the cosmic push which caused last night's snowstorm to take an abrupt turn and head just about anywhere else in the world. Unfortunately, that was not the case, but when I woke up and found just a few inches of snow I figured that was good enough. However, that feeling only lasted until I tried to shovel it. The weather spent the night wavering between rain and snow, which meant the snow was wet and extremely heavy. This is the worst kind of snow there is - honestly, I would rather have 12 inches of light snow than 3 inches of this crap. It was the kind of snow you can only push for a few inches before it becomes nearly impossible to move and you have to clear it away a couple feet at time, which takes forever and kills your back. This kind of snow is exactly why I have a snowblower at my disposal. At first I felt kind of bad breaking out the machine for a few lousy inches of snow, but I figured it beat the alternative and at least it would be faster. Again, that was what I thought at first.

At first I was quite pleased with my decision because the snow was so heavy that even the snowblower couldn't throw it very far. Rather than the high, majestic arc you get from the light snow this heavy snow was going less than a foot, like the snowblower was throwing up on itself. But, I was willing to deal with that. The first real issue with the snowblower came at the end the driveway. Any time plows are going up and down streets with wide blades on the front of them you should expect a fair amount of debris to be swept up in the process. Now, I don't know why this is but for some reason it seems as though the less snow on the ground the more random crap in the snowdrift. Also, because they had plowed a couple hours before I got there the snow and ice combination had frozen into a nice ice wall at the bottom of my driveway. This meant I had to attack the wall with a little extra force. Almost immediately I noticed that the snowblower didn't have the oomph it previously had and I was concerned one of the blades may have been jammed. I figured I would give the blower a break and started my way back up the driveway, which was when I noticed the snowblower has stopped blowing the snow and was just pushing it up the driveway. Stopping the snowblower I discovered the blades had completely stopped because both shear pins had broken.

Now I was stuck because I had a half a driveway left to clear and a snowblower that couldn't blow snow. Yesterday I was lamenting whether or not to fix a shovel because I thought I could get away with not fixing it for a few months. As much as I wanted to just put the snowblower back in the shed and shovel the rest of the driveway, I didn't think that would be a good idea because I would probably forget about it until the next time it snowed and because the snowblower wasn't throwing the snow all the way off the driveway the uncleared half now had 8 inches of heavy, wet snow on it. This meant I was going to have to fix the blades in the freezing rain (this was when thoughts of moving to Arizona started going through my mind). I don't know if you have ever changed a shear pin in a snowblower, but it is one of those tasks which seems like it should be very straightforward, but always ends up sucking. First you have to get the remnants of the last pins out and I think it goes without saying they will have stopped at an angle which makes that a pain in the ass. Then you need to put the new pins in and tighten the bolts and again the blades make doing that a process which seems like it should be much easier.

Even with both blades finally turning it still wasn't a smooth process because snowblowers aren't really the kind of thing which should be tilted for long stretches of time. That meant in addition to the blades still getting clogged with the heavy snow, now the snowblower saw fit to turn itself off whenever I paused or ran into a particularly tough pile, which was every time I got to the end of the driveway. Plus, the delay had just given the snow time to solidify in the chute, which means I was now throwing bricks of ice about six inches, which made making any progress a pain. It became quite the ordeal. About the fourth time the snowblower just turned itself off I pretty much gave up. You know, I have a theory that more things break in the winter time because of the harsher conditions and I would be fine with that, except all the things that have been breaking lately are supposed to be used in the winter. I mean, I don't care if my snowblower is running fine in August. But when it can't perform the one job it was designed for that is a problem. Either way, what I really want is for this to be the last time I have to deal with this kind of thing for several months. And this time, I seriously mean it.

One Last Repair

It probably won't shock you to learn that I broke a shovel while digging out during the last snowstorm we had about a week and a half ago. I've mentioned this numerous times during this blog's existence, but I have found that many things are not built up to Rakauskas-grade and thus my family has a long traditions of things snapping off in our hands and then breaking even worse when we try to fix it using large fingers in small spaces. That is why a long time ago I began weighing all my repair decision against the time it would take to fix the item, how much it cost in the first place, along with how much a brand-new one would be and just how pressing my need for the item was. Because the foot-plus of snow we got just a few days ago is already gone I was confident the snow was over for the year. Therefore, I was perfectly content to leave this shovel to the side and let it either slowly disintegrate over time or fix it whenever I got around to it in the fall in anticipation of next winter. Of course Mother Nature wan't going to let me get away with this, because we're getting one more (hopefully final) fresh coating of snow this evening and into tomorrow.

Because I am not one of those idiots you see on the news who acts genuinely shocked every time it snows in New England during the winter months, I have more than one shovel. The problem is that I don't have many shovels which don't also have a metal edge on them. And while the metal edge comes in handy when you want to get under the ice layer and down to bare asphalt, it is not the shovel you want to use when it is time to clear the snow off the roof of your car. Because the snapped shovel was both wide and metal-free, it was quite good when it came time to clean off the cars. At first I thought about simply buying a replacement, but the stores today were quite crazy. Apparently a lot of people were suckered like I was during the last storm when we were told to expect around 7 inches of snow and woke up to find well over twice that much on our driveways and were determined not to let that happen again. I know there was a run on milk this afternoon, so I can only imagine how quickly the few remaining shovels (most hardware stores have already made the switch over to spring tools, so at least everyone should get a sweet deal on mostly-dead plants this weekend) were being gobbled up.

That is why this afternoon I found myself performing surgery on a shovel. You see, the wooden handle had snapped down at the bottom, near the shovel itself. This meant I still had roughly 90% the handle to work with. I figured it was going to be a fairly simple process in which I would take the one screw holding the two pieces out, let the end of the broken handle still in the end of the shovel fall out, smear a little glue on the end of the piece I had to use, put it back together and be done with the entire thing in 5 minutes (which is good, because 5 minutes was how long I wanted to spend on this project). The fact the screw came out so easily should have been my first guess that this was going to be harder than I expected, because the odds of one small screw holding this entire thing together for a number years was remote at best. (I do appreciate that despite all the advances in science, the shovel has remained largely untouched. Humanity got that one right on the first draft.) Clearly there were other forces at work That other force turned out to be some industrial strength adhesive which should make it's patent holder proud. I don't know if it was just glue or they sealed the end of the handle in the molded piece of plastic at the factor, but if these two pieces were going to come apart it was going to take a lot of work.

At first I thought it may just be an issue of needing to get it started and not having the angle to do so, so I tried to be very clever by drilling a screw into the wood and then pulling on that screw. All that showed me was how hard it is to firmly clamp a curved shovel in a straight work table clamp as I nearly hit myself in the face a few times. Next I tried sliding a screwdriver in between the wood and the plastic in an attempt to break the adhesive seal, but after a couple minutes I became convinced this was simply going to crack the plastic in half, which would have rendered the entire experiment a lost cause. What I ended up doing was taking the largest drill bit I could find and drilling several holes close to one other, to essentially hollow out that part of the wood. Only then would my screwdriver technique do any good and even with the improved technique it was still very slow going. I only got about three or four inches of the shortened handle into the shovel instead of the six inches I was going for before I got fed up and said enough was enough. I think it will work, but I am not what you would call supremely confident. I would say hopefully we just won't get that much snow, but the history of this particular season is not on my side. Either way, my fingers are crossed this is the last time I have to worry about it for a few months because I am ready to start working on repairing all the rakes I will be breaking shortly.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

A happy St. Patrick's Day to you. Admittedly, I have never been a big celebrator of this day. One of my least-favorite things is dealing with drunk people and St. Patrick's Day has them in spades - it is the same reason I no longer enjoy New Year's Eve. That being said, there are a few things about the holiday which I do enjoy. The first of which is wearing copious amounts of green. Then again, I pretty much wear something green everyday, so it is not like a big change in my life. The main thing I enjoy about this day is the music. So, with that in mind I made you a little playlist. This is only a sample of some of the best music, but I was a little limited in my selections. This should be enough to get you started, but I fully encourage you to do some searching of your own.

Weekly Sporties

-The biggest news in this neck of the woods this week was when Wes Welker left the Patriots and signed with the Denver Broncos for 2 years and $12 million. Heading into the offseason many people had expected Welker to remain with the Patriots and if he didn't it would only be because he received a massive deal from someone else. Well, neither happened. (I know $12 million sounds like a lot of money and in any other world it is, but not NFL free agency.) Almost immediately the finger pointing started as reports began surfacing that the Patriots had only offered him 2 years at $10 million and actually began negotiating with his replacement (Danny Amendola), as soon as they were allowed to. People in the Welker camp are saying the Patriots unwillingness to budge just shows they never wanted him back while the Patriots supporters are saying it was a solid negotiating tactic to not let emotions get in the way. What's weird is that I feel like we just went through this when Ray Allen left the Celtics for the Heat, in which the team and the player both acted like they wanted to remain together, but neither side really put their heart into it. At least Welker landed in a good spot, because if you aren't going to keep catching passes from Tom Brady, Peyton Manning is a good second option (provided he stays healthy). And, much like Ray Allen, I don't think the true fans are mad at Welker for leaving because they understand his reasons, even though I have no doubts there are a few people acting like idiots on the internet. Since there is no bringing Wes back, Brady is really the person the Patriots need to make sure is cool with all this because he just signed a deal giving the Patriots more money to play with in free agency and so far they haven't done much with it. Obviously, free agency just started but I don't think assembling the 2011 St. Louis Rams receiving corp is what he had in mind. They better do something with this money or there is no way any player will take a hometown discount again.

-However, even with the Welker signing not all is well with the Broncos at the moment. You see, despite the fact the season ends in February the NFL's financial calendar doesn't reset until March. That means this is the time when contracts get signed and also when all those huge roster bonuses included in deals made several years ago come due. That is why teams spend the first couple of weeks in March feverishly trying to renegotiate those contracts to save themselves some money and releasing veterans who don't want to comply. Denver was in such a position with defensive end Elvis Dumervil, who had $12 million roster bonus coming on Friday. The two sides cut it very close, but had agreed to a restructured contract with Dumervil which would keep him on the Broncos and give the team a little more money to play with. The only problem is that they agreed to the deal at around 3:30 and it had to be faxed to the league by 4. Well, Dumervil's agent didn't send the contract to the Broncos until about 4:05, which meant it couldn't be approved by the league and while the Broncos were waiting for the deal to arrive they were forced to cut Dumervil rather than pay him all that money. This means one of the leagues better pass rushers is now a free agent (causing some to question whether or not his agent did this on purpose) and rather than save about $9 million in salary cap space, the Broncos only got about $5 million in savings and they have no player to show for it. The Broncos could always re-sign Dumervil, but now he would essentially count against their salary cap twice. I am left with two questions: why is there no kind of wiggle room here? For example - why couldn't a team inform the league a deal has been agreed to but they are just waiting on the paperwork and be granted a 15 minute extension? Also, who still uses fax machines? Isn't this what email was invented for? It's not like game film is actually still on film, so you know the league can adapt. Hopefully this incident will be the thing which spurs them to advance to at least the early 2000s.

-One of my least favorite things in sports is when something which happens to role players on a daily basis and no one makes a peep suddenly happens to a superstar and people react like a crime has been committed. This happened this week when Kobe Bryant rolled his ankle in a game against Atlanta on Wednesday after landing on Dahntay Jones' foot following a jump shot. Bryant claims this was done on purpose, that Jones deliberately stuck his foot under Bryant's in an effort to injure him, and now every analyst with a microphone wants to make this equal to a crime against humanity. (They also decided to ignore the fact that Bryant was simultaneously sticking out his front leg in an effort to draw a foul, because that doesn't fit the narrative.) First off, I would question why Jones would be trying to get Bryant out of a game which was already over. Bryant was taking the shot with under 3 seconds left and when his shot rimmed out the game was done. Also, if you watch the film Jones's eyes are following the ball, which makes perfectly positioning his foot where Bryant was going to land rather difficult. So, really this entire controversy is based on the fact Bryant went on a post-game rant about wanting revenge and the news he would be out 'indefinitely', which would be a serious blow to the Lakers' post season hopes, something the NBA does not want to see. (It should be noted that Bryant actually played last night, so 'indefinitely' was 2 days and zero games.) The amount of preferential treatment given to superstars may be my least-favorite thing about the NBA. Yes, it sucks that Kobe rolled his ankle, but that doesn't mean it is part of some giant conspiracy or that a new rule has to be implemented. It means Kobe should tape his ankles and get on with it, because if the roles were reversed that is what everyone would be saying. I know the NBA has a habit of protecting its superstars but, jees, at least try and be a little more subtle about it.

-So it turns out that once the actual games start, the World Baseball Classic is kind of interesting. Of course, this opinion is based entirely on the fact that the United States, despite being largely devoid of big stars, made a rather unexpected run into the semi-finals, which they did mostly on the back of Mets' third baseman David Wright. Unfortunately, that weight of carrying a nation was a little too much for Wright, who suffered a pulled muscle a few days ago. Wright said the injury was nothing serious and that once he warmed up it was fine. He also said that if the injury happened during the regular season he would have been fine to keep playing. Well, the Mets decided it was more important for them to make this call and that they want him to actually play the regular season, so they pulled him off the team. Without Wright the USA lost to Puerto Rico and was eliminated from the tournament. This revealed the fatal flaw of the World Baseball Classic - it is largely meaningless in the grand scheme of the sport. Sure, it would be nice to win, but not at the expense of the games which actually count. Of course, the Mets are paying Wright a lot of money and therefore have every right to say whether he should try to play through injury. Still, I can't help but wonder if it is wise to allow individual teams to have a say over whether or not their players are too injured to continue because they won't have the interest of team USA in mind and be extra cautious. You would like to think that the WBC officials could tell the teams that once they agreed to let a player on the roster they were no longer going to have any kind of say in the matter, but a stance like that would only ensure that no team allowed their marquee players to participate and the tournament would lose the little star power they have left. Considering that is pretty much the only leg the tournament currently has to stand on, they can't afford to lose that.

-If you think the Mets have injury concerns, you should look to the other side of the city where the Yankees are falling apart. Already without third baseman Alex Rodriguez for most of the season, first baseman Mark Teixeira suffered a broken bone in his arm and will miss the first two months of the season. That means the Yankee infield is extremely thin. At first General Manager Brian Cashman said the team would not be making any moves to fill the void, because he didn't want to create a logjam when injured players return. But, after realizing that if he didn't do something to prevent a freefall there might not be much a season to come back to, Cashman started changing his tune. His new strategy appeared to be to get an older player who wouldn't mind considerable bench time later in the season. That is why the Yankees's General Manager began using the media to let it be known the team would like to sign the recently retired Chipper Jones or bring Derrek Lee out of retirement. First off, the names being floated are kind of sad coming from a man whose job it is to know every player at every level. You mean to tell me he doesn't know of any younger players who would be happy for the opportunity? Seriously, the names Cashman is floating out there sounds like the kind of thing you would hear from the guy in your fantasy league who hasn't paid attention to baseball in the last couple of years and only goes after names he is familiar with. Secondly, why does Brian Cashman, who has had this job for 15 years, need the media to pass the team's interest along to Chipper and his agent? Shouldn't the GM of the New York Yankees either have every agents' number in his phone or at least have the number of a person who does? Has he built up no contacts in the last decade and a half? Gee, I can't imagine why the Yankees roster was so poorly assembled.

-Well, we have a new entry into the ongoing debate over whether or not golfers are tough. First in the 'yes' column we had the LPGA golfer who was bit by a poisonous spider, cut the poison out of her leg using a golf tee and still finished the round. In the 'no' column we had world #1 Rory McIlroy walking off the course in the middle of the round because his wisdom tooth hurt. Now we have this story, though I'm not sure which category it should fall into. The other day a man was golfing in Illinois when he noticed a strange-looking patch of Earth near the middle of the fairway. He went over to investigate and suddenly the ground opened up beneath him, plunging him into a sinkhole. He fell almost 18 feet before hitting the ground and broke his shoulder in the fall. Now, I know that technically a sinkhole could happen anywhere, which means it is not golf-specific. However, you could make the case that other professional athletes like football and baseball players are in recently-built stadiums where the ground was tested before construction and deemed safe, so their environment is more controlled. Not only do golfers have to deal with hazards beyond their control such as snakes and alligators, but we must now add sinkholes to the list of things they have to worry about as they golf. Even if the chances are extremely remote of this happening to them, it is just one more thing they have to worry about in the back of their minds. Even the toughest of football players would admit that the looming specter of the ground opening up and swallowing you whole makes the game much more mentally fatiguing. Also, you know it is just a matter of time before someone gets on the governing bodies of golf and demands a rule be implemented for how you play a shot which has fallen into a sinkhole or what to do if your match-play partner gets swallowed by the Earth. To me, golfers have enough to worry about considering they are expected to call fouls on themselves, so I say dealing with sinkholes is another notch in the 'tough' column.

-I often think it must have been a lot of fun to be a sportswriter back in the days when the NFL or NBA were just starting up because of the absolutely chaos that took place behind closed doors. You always hear urban legends of guys getting traded after two General Managers spent the night getting drunk and playing poker. If that is the stuff we know about, imagine all the things crazy stories which never surfaced. Seriously, if the internet existed back then many of things we now know to be institutions would have never had a chance to gain legitimacy. Now those leagues work very hard to maintain their well-crafted image and all the fun stories are killed before they ever see the light of day, which is why if you want to find the more unusual stories you need to look to a smaller, fledgling league to produce them. This week was no exception, as the National Lacrosse League featured one of the more bizarre transactions you are going to hear about. Buffalo Bandits general manger Steve Dietrich only had two goalies on his roster and wanted to have the rights to a former, currently retired player, just in case they needed a goalie in an emergency. So, he sent a sixth-round pick to the Toronto Rock (by the way, new names would be a good idea for this league) in exchange for the rights to this goalie. That goalie's name? Steve Dietrich. Yep, Dietrich traded for himself. This is exactly the kind of thing which probably happened all the time back in the early days of the NFL but could never happen today, which is a shame because this story is awesome. I can't say this will make me more of a lacrosse fan, but I admit it gives the fans of the NLL a chance to feel as though they are getting in on something at the ground floor. Who knows, but maybe someday they can be like the dozen people who saw the first NBA game ever played? As for Dietrich, hopefully the pick he traded doesn't go on to be a Hall of Fame player or else that trade will go down in lacrosse infamy. The good news is that if he ever has to release himself the conversation should be relatively brief.

What Is Career Suicide?

Admittedly, morning shows are not my thing. I am not a morning person and the last thing I want to see at that hour are people who are abnormally chipper. Plus, the shows don't often give me the information I really want. It may sound strange, but at 7 AM the best way to clean my carpets is not fresh on my mind. Back in the day they might have provided some kind of service, but from the clips I catch now it is four minutes of news (most of which happened yesterday) and then a long interview with a star of some show on the same network pimping their premiere, which I will also not want to watch. If I watch anything in the morning it is either "SportsCenter", "Morning Drive" on the Golf Channel or the local news and even that is just for the weather. I have begun to feel like morning shows are fading in the same way late-night talk shows are losing their relevance. What's even weirder is that they are also the same in that the people who work in television are the last one to see this and continue to treat these jobs as if they are the end-goal for every kid who ever picked up a microphone.

Last week rumors surfaced that Jay Leno is again on his way out of "The Tonight Show" and that Jimmy Fallon will replace him, which led to all sorts of people talking about who will get Fallon's current job as host of the "The Late Show". Oh, you mean who will get to host a show which starts after midnight on a third-place network? Yeah, let's all fight over that one. Similarly, after a long run at the top of the morning-show ratings the "Today" program has begun to slip down in the last couple of years. They've tried swapping out co-hosts and adding different segments, but nothing has slowed the slide. Since they have run out of other things to change there is talk long-time host Matt Lauer is on his way out, even though he just signed a massive extension about a year ago. (For the first time Lauer has also started to catch a little heat as the main antagonist for the way co-host Ann Curry was quickly dumped. No idea if it is deserved or not, but where there is smoke there is usually fire.) It's not that big of a deal - everyone in TV gets fired eventually. But what I can't understand is why people seem anxious to fill his spot. Yes, you too can get up at 3 AM for the chance to talk to Gary Busey once he gets fired from "The Apprentice" again. Thanks, but you can keep that job.

But, don't feel bad for Lauer, because reports are that he is already in line for a new gig - host of "Jeopardy." This is surprising for a couple of reasons. First, I thought Alex Trebek was going to do that job until he dropped. Secondly, I thought game show host was what you did when you couldn't get anything else. If Lauer really is getting pushed out the door at NBC you would think he would have plenty of opportunities before even thinking about hosting a game show. He may not get the hard-hitting news job that Katie Couric was given when she first left "Today" (and given how her ratings were, that may be for the best), but Lauer shouldn't be that far down the list of openings just yet. I would expected him to have the chance to host his own show on one of the 24-hour cable networks or at least a softball interview show. If that failed he would have gone to another one of the 24-hour networks working strictly as a reporter and if that job was also a flop then and only then do you sink to game show host. I guess I am just surprised to see him fall to the third option straight away.

What's even stranger is that Anderson Cooper is said to be his main competition. What the hell is going on here? These are two well-established journalists and they want to host a game show? Sure, if you are going to host a game show "Jeopardy" is certainly a more respectable choice than, say, "Who's Still Standing?" Also, I will grant you that the hours on a game show are much better since you probably tape two episodes a day, which translates to 3 days a week (Lauer would be able to sleep in for a change) and the stress level is greatly reduced. Still, the general rule of thumb is that game shows are for people just starting out or desperate to hang on, which neither of these guys are. I will grant you that game shows have come a long way, but reportedly Lauer is getting tens of millions as the host of the "Today" program - I hardly think "Jeopardy" is offering that kind of cash. Besides, both of these guys have something you can't buy in TV - good reputations. Why would you want to throw that away? Then again, after years of interviewing people and having no idea what kind of lies they are getting ready to tell you, it would be kind of nice to have all the answers.