The waiting is the hardest part

We've resisted writing about the Super Bowl so far because, well, this Super Bowl is pretty resistible. Pardon us if we're not feeling it for Steelers-Cardinals -- we put most of the blame on the Cardinals, although the Steelers' first-team-to-17-wins brand of football doesn't do much for us. It's not like the Ravens would have been any better.

But that's all for Sunday. It's Saturday night, and that's when the real Super Bowl magic is made.

Wilson, Robinson, Robbins. Their names ring out in John Facenda's voice from across the years -- the guys who never even made it to Super Sunday because of what happened on Saturday night.

Barret Robbins sounds like he had some serious issues before he ditched his Raiders teammates for a bender-licious weekend in May-hee-co. Stanley Wilson can probably be excused for getting coked up and passing out in a bathtub -- for all we know, that was standard game prep when he played in Barry's Wild West Show at OU. And Robinson went out to find a hooker the night before the Super Bowl. Who could have figured anything would go wrong with that? Just bad luck, we guess.

All the pressure, all the hype, all the media -- all three of those guys took as much of it as they could and then imploded, steps from the finish line. We think of them every year about this time. And we're wondering if there's anybody down there in Tampa who just hit that point, who's going to lose the game tonight, before it ever gets played tomorrow. Sleep tight, guys.

30 minutes later, you're hungry for another stadium

We read that the Chinese are sitting around watching the paint peel off their Olympic stadium. Sounds like the new plan is some sort of Beijing shopping and dining experience built around it. In a country of 67 quinzillion people, maybe they should just knock it down and build more apartments. Maybe one of the U.S. motorsports companies could go over and turn it into a tight little NASCAR track. Goodbye, Bird's Nest; hello, Bristol.

You know, just as everybody seemed to love the Beijing Olympics (and looked past the fact that the hosts are a little touchy about criticism and, you know, like to deal with their dissidents with a less-than-Olympic spirit), Atlanta takes a lot of heat for the 1996 Olympics -- too hot, too crowded, too much commercialism, lousy stadium. But we give the Atlanta organizers credit for having a plan for that stadium once 200 countries' worth of athletes packed up and left Dixie in the rearview, a plan other than watching it rust, that is. They tore down about half of it, rebuilt it and, bingo, they had a new place for the baseball team. Sure, Turner Field isn't the best ballpark out there, but it's a lot better than that crappy dump the Braves were playing in before.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Practicality is underrated.

Act 2 starts now

Rod Blagojevich impeached? Get outta here. Seriously, we were getting used to the seeing the guy's face. Dude's made the rounds recently. He probably would have been shaking it on TRL if they hadn't canceled it.

But once you're too corrupt for even Illinois, it's probably time to bid your political career farewell. Time for Blago's second act, and I can see his chances for success better than his chances for failure, in order, as:

1. NBA sideline reporter
2. "Meet the Press" host (that David Gregory guy has some hair too, but nobody messes with Blago)
3. Britney Spears' husband.

Don't scoff at a comeback. Think about it.
-- Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series.
-- First black president (and if he'd lost, first woman president, or maybe first hot-librarian vice president -- history-making, no matter how it turned out).
-- Utah in the BCS title game. OK, so that one didn't happen, but it should have.
-- Arizona frickin' Cardinals in the Super Bowl.

It's just not a year to bet against the dogs, or Blago.

Not in my America

We'll make this quick, because we're not feeling that great -- we just checked the mirror and we're paler than a Duke cheerleader.

Did we read correctly that Canada is going to issue $1 coins and stamps honoring the 100th anniversary of the Montreal Canadiens?

Imagine if our mint decided to honor, say, the New York Yankees with a $1 coin. Imagine the Yankees' first trip to Fenway once those coins hit the street. Vendors would be selling them for $1.50 apiece outside the ballpark to Red Sox fans to take in and chuck at the Pinstripers. Derek Jeter wouldn't get from the dugout to the base line before he had a dozen of those implanted in his skull.

I don't pull the not-with-this-taxpayer's-dollars crap very often, but, by God, not with this taxpayer's dollars.

Act like you haven't been there before

So we saw this on SI's site, nestled among the acres of cheerleader shots, in the Hot Clicks section. It came during a recent tournament game between the Guthrie Blue Jays and the Midwest City Bombers, two very good high school teams in Oklahoma. The YouTube post credits Donté Foster of Guthrie with the buzzer beater.

It's a pretty unusual shot, but the weird thing is the reaction, or lack of it, from the Blue Jays. It stood out to the YouTube posters, too -- after the guy hits the shot, his team walks back to the bench. Some low-fives for the miracle-shot guy, but not much more emotion.

From the scoreboard, it looks like the end of the first quarter. If we're reading the board right, it looks like Guthrie had only scored three points up to that point, a pretty poor output for a good team (also a little hard to believe, but we weren't able to find a box score online; Guthrie went on to lose in two overtimes). So, not a great moment for a hugfest on the court, we're guessing.

We're always eager to point the finger at athletes who prance after a dunk when their team is down by 25, or strut when they make a tackle at the end of an 8-yard gain. Sports is full of unwarranted celebrations, at every level.

But on this one, we'll admit to being a little torn. We would have liked to seen a crack in the game face, a smile, some high fives, something. From the looks of the Internets, Donté Foster is a very good two-sport athlete and probably won't be playing his last games in high school, so there's plenty of time left to be businesslike.

Don't know how many of those you have left in you, Donté. Take your joy where you can.

Blow it out

Boy, that 100 to 0 girls high school hoops game down in Texas sure has everyone's baggy basketball pants in a twist. If you're not up on the details, here's the latest.

Now let's be upfront about this: Though some people have made them out to be, the girls on the losing team are not heroes. They kept playing even though they were getting drilled, which is commendable, but that's all they could do. They couldn't score, or really even get the ball up the court, and they couldn't stop the ball from going the other way over and over, so they just kept playing. Badly, put playing. That's commendable, but it's not heroic, and we're a little uncomfortable with the sometimes over-the-top praise being heaped on them from a lot of corners.

But just leafing through the comments after the story on the ESPN site (and, yes, we know that's generally not a good idea), we found that this story has caused some people to become completely unhinged.

There you will find no shortage of very serious people -- you can tell because they use all capital letters a lot -- who are sure that any criticism of the winning team's coach is representative of THE END OF AMERICAN GREATNESS or THE PANSI-FICATION OF AMERICA or some such.

There's some good reading in there, and a lot of typos for people so committed to excellence (or EXCELLENXCE, as one spelled it), but, hey, who are we to point fingers.

There's an interesting debate to be had here on mercy rules in high school athletics, but for those of you are looking constantly for the silver bullet of proof regarding THE DECLINE OF AMERICA, you're not going to find it at a girls' basketball game. Bonus hint: You won't find it at a girls' cross country meet either. Just a lot of very skinny girls.

Our take: We would have backed off the press a little earlier. You can't really sharpen your press against an opponent that bad. You really can't sharpen much of anything. Just win and get out.

More important, if it was our boss that came out in the media on the other side of the issue, we wouldn't have come out disputing him until we had all our stuff packed up in boxes. Unless you have a lot more juice than we do (and we hope, for your sake, that you do), when you take your boss on in the press, it's pretty much over. And that, my friends, IS WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT.

A national day of ... something

Man, that was a long Sunday, wasn't it? When the NFL pulls its crack off the street, there's nothing else that can get you to that happy place. Early conference games in college basketball? We'll pass. Another day in the death marches that are the NBA and NHL regular seasons? Yeah, right. Australian Open? Bonus points for the mini-riot, but no, no, no.

Next year the league will give us the Pro Bowl on the weekend before the Super Bowl. I guess that's like methadone. No, wait, methadone is what heroin addicts get. Which drug are we on again?

Rather that begging for table scraps from the NFL, or pretending that some other meager sporting event will substitute for postseason pro football, maybe we ought to (prepare yourself) think outside sports and come up with something on our own.

You know how they designate a day to change your smoke alarm batteries (or as we like to say, a day to force your kids to change the smoke alarm batteries)? Let's make the Sunday before the Super Bowl stand for something. Here's my suggestion.

Make it sort of a spiritual free agency day. If you've been a Baptist all your life, go to a Methodist church, or a Catholic church. If you're a Presbyterian, go to a mosque. If you've spent most of your life in church, stay home. Pick one, as long as it's not your own. (And we know not everybody worships on Sunday -- we're looking at you, our Jewish friends -- so everybody should be flexible, plan accordingly and all that stuff.)

Perhaps it will open eyes, join hearts, make the world a better place. Or perhaps it will produce a riot that will put the Australian Open to shame. I've got all my money on the latter, but perhaps the human race can pull off the upset.

Either way, it's better than sitting around watching the Bob Hope Classic and hoping it transforms before your eyes into an NFC semifinal. We tried it -- it doesn't work.

Always a sad occasion

Headline, Page C2, New York Times, Jan. 21 (yeah, we know, it's been a few days -- if we could just learn to read without moving our lips, things would speed up considerably)

Theater Group Homeless After Zipper Shuts

Stimulate this

We're just getting past the point when we can stifle a snicker when we hear "stimulus" and "package" in the same sentence. We're funny that way.

It looks like our government is going to be writing some big checks very soon, though, and we've thought of a few ways to spend a billion or two.

1. Fox. Sure, Rupert's not hurting for cash, but let's throw some money at Fox's BCS coverage. Even our impressive pain threshold wasn't enough to get us through the title game a couple of weeks ago. Three stationary cameras (two in front of the bands) and a webcam hanging from the belt of the back judge aren't enough. Announcers who trumpet great fouth-down stands on third down and gush man-love sonnets over J.H. Tebow need to go back to the minors. Fox's remaining BCS time is short, sure, but it's clearly not short enough. Spend a few hundred million and make it right.

2. The Raiders. Assisted living for Al Davis, the best that money can buy. Make sure the doors double-lock from the outside.

3. L.A. First a billion to put an NFL team back in the second-biggest city in America. Then, to make sure the graft isn't rejected, spend several billion more to move a bunch of Giants, Jets and Eagles fans out, a la the witness protection program. Give them jobs cleaning the streets or making sandwiches or guarding prisoners or whatever. Then get them in their new team's gear and get them out to the stadium on Sunday. Fill in empty spots in the stands with institutionalized old folks, except Al Davis. For God's sake, our second-biggest city. What an embarrassment.

A place of his own

Dear Mr. President,

We know you're busy. New town, new house, lots of friends calling in favors. Go out for a quiet night of inaugural balling with the missus and what do they kids do? Not only do they throw a party, but they invite the Jonas Brothers. You must still be cleaning up.

But hear us out on this one, because we think you're already making a mistake. So here's the free advice for the day: Don't close Guantanamo.

We're not here to get into that whole try-them-or-don't-try-them, torture-them-or-don't-torture-them thing. But if you're going to move the current residents out to Leavenworth or Newark or wherever, don't close the place down. Let somebody else have the full Gitmo experience.

Pacman Jones.

We know you're no stranger to the sports pages, so you know the guy's a one-man crime wave. Sign something into law with a fancy name -- we like the Gentleman's Club Protection Act of 2009, but, hey, you're the prez so you can name it what you like -- and give Pacman his little piece of Cuba, whether he likes it or not. Even if he isn't guilty of something at this very moment, it's only a matter of time.

We know you're probably not a gentleman's club kind of guy (at least we never saw you at The Admiral), but, for God's sake, it's a homeland security issue.

Bonus idea: Throw some extra cameras up, start a reality show and generate some revenue to help pay down the debt the U.S.A. is piling up. "Guantanamo Jones," maybe. You couldn't just show Pacman and the military guards (and you'll need some of those, you know -- the guy plays in the NFL during his down time) and hold ratings, so introduce some new elements in each episode. Some familiar to him (strippers, guys with guns, maybe Jerry Jones), some not so familiar (just about everybody else, maybe the Jonas Brothers). Watch hilarity ensue.

Sell it to NFL Network or MTV, maybe both. Sell a sponsorship to a music label. We're just looking for a few bills out of this, enough to create a currency blizzard of our own and send a strip club into a panic. Hey, it sounded cool when Pacman did it.

Love, CrackStaff

The interview you don't want

We don't question the motives or intentions of mixed-martial arts fighters. It's a rule of ours. We hear they are more thoughtful, introspective folk than we might imagine, plus we don't like the idea of them ripping our heads off and using them as carry-on luggage.

But once in a while it's time to break the rules.

Look in the Jan. 19 SI, the one with Jesus H. Tebow on the cover. Look for the Pop Culture Grid (which strangely enough has little pop and no culture -- who named this thing?) There MMA fighter Matt Lindland says the person he'd most like to be interviewed by is "'Dateline's' Chris Hansen."

In our most nonconfrontational tone of voice: Dude.

Chris Hansen is the guy who does the "To Catch a Predator" shows for "Dateline." There's really only scenario in which Chris Hansen interviews you. It goes something like this:

You find yourself spending way too much time chatting with some 14-year-old hottie online. She tells you her folks are going to be out of town. You invite yourself over, tell her exactly what you're going to do to her in full-on Hustler detail, and get there as fast as your El Camino can carry you. Maybe you pick up a 12-pack or score some weed on the way -- that part's optional. She invites you in, then leaves you alone for a moment.

That's when Chris Hansen interviews you. You may have your pants around your ankles or you may not -- that part's optional too -- but in the end it's all the same. Chris gets his camera time and makes you feel like a bad, bad boy. Then you're invited to head outside, where there are more cameras, plus cops waiting to put you down whether you are walking, running or begging. Arraignment. Conviction. Prison. Bad, bad things.

Don't do it, Matt. Take on Mike Wallace or Chris Wallace or Wallace Shawn or the ghost of Tim Russert or that producer guy who gets in people's faces for Bill O'Reilly. But don't take on Chris. Chris only plays home games, and he never loses.

Easiest job ever

No, not this guy. He's seriously screwed.

But a Friend of The Staff referred us to the coming issue of WWE's magazine, which advertises on its cover WRESTLEMANIA PREDICTIONS.

Really? You're really going to stick your neck out and predict what's going to happen at a professional wrestling event? When you work for the company that will be putting said wrestling event on? Oooh, but it says they're "unauthorized" predictions. Well, OK, knock yourself out, Kreskin.














Yeah, I know, it's all entertainment, but really. I bet if you gave Mr. Wrestling Prediction the script before he saw "The Crying Game," he could have predicted that the chick was sporting a unit.

Stoners: The forgotten sports fans

Give the Minneapolis Swarm credit. It would have been easy to roll out a bug for a mascot. An angry-looking wasp, or really anything with a stinger. But no, the Swarm is thinking different, thinking big.

Meet Buzz, who, as you can tell from looking deep into his frighteningly dilated pupils, is unquestionably, irretrievably stoned.

This is brilliant. Buzz, with his gentle, quizzical smile, reaches out to an entire demographic underserved by professional sports teams. Sure, as Josh Howard will blissfully tell you, lots of pro athletes smoke weed, but no team until now has said to the pot-smoking masses, "You're one of us. We accept you. Where do you keep your stash?"

The Swarm already has some college-students-get-in-free nights going, but there's potential here for much more. How about a Taco Bell late-night drive-through sponsorship for my man Buzz?