Look: I do not aim to make light of the sexual assault accusations against Ben Roethlisberger. But something in the story caught my eye:
A 20-year-old student in the college town of Milledgeville, Ga., told a police officer that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger sexually assaulted her.
Hold on one second: Milledgeville? How is this the first time I’ve heard of this town? What a shame it should come up in these circumstances.
Hat tip to Sunil, comptroller of Nellyville, for the heads up on this one.
An auto parts manufacturer named Shahid Khan is set to purchase the St. Louis Rams, and good luck with that, sir.
More importantly, Khan has an incredible mustache. Check it out:
Fun fact: Reading a Teleprompter is really hard. I filled in for Brittany Umar today hosting The Nooner and didn’t get to deliver the jokes as well as I would’ve liked because I was focusing on trying to read without embarrassing myself. Here’s what it looked like:
You might have seen this on Deadspin already, but whatever. Before I go on I should warn you that the video linked below contains language that is completely unsafe for work. So wear headphones.
It also contains one of my favorite gags of all-time, and, to be honest, one that’s unfortunately ruined by the title of the YouTube video — “Ditka does interview in his underwear.”
To be fair, I probably wouldn’t have stayed through to the big reveal at 3:07 if I hadn’t seen that title, but clearly, the element of surprise is what makes the no-pants joke works best. Luckily, Ditka’s behavior is outlandish enough in this clip that you almost forget the title by the end, so it’s still funny that he turns out to not be wearing any pants.
I mean the whole thing is, we see people sitting at desks wearing shirts and ties or the tops of fancy ladyclothes all the time, and we never ever see what they’re wearing underneath. And pants are terrible constricting. So it’s only natural to assume they’re pantsless down there. Good for Ditka for getting it. Why wear pants if you don’t absolutely have to?
I had a sports/comedy TV show in college of which, thankfully for my career, no evidence exists online. But I’m pretty sure that nearly every time we stepped away from the desk for one reason or another, we did the no-pants joke. Too easy, probably, but made me giggle every time.
Then, I got an internship at a local network news affiliate to find out that the sportcaster really did give his nightly reports with no pants on! It was amazing. I mean, granted, he wasn’t in his underwear, but a suit top with lacrosse shorts was nearly as silly.
Anyway, here’s Ditka inadvertently performing my favorite gag:
Interesting piece on Drew Brees in the Times today from Judy Battista. Battista details Brees’ history of being told he was too short to play quarterback and examines some of the perceived limitations for short quarterbacks in the NFL.
The money quote comes from a former Cowboys executive who developed a computer program that concluded NFL quarterbacks must be at least 6-foot-1:
“Brees is a 1-in-100 guy. If you look around, the quarterbacks that are playing the best, they’re all at least 6-3.”
Well, yeah, but if you’re unwilling to draft quarterbacks below 6-foot-1, then, ahh, you know.
Drew Brees was excellent in high school, then he was excellent in college, then he surprised everyone by being excellent in the NFL.
I feel like the NFL’s talent scouting system is pretty terrible across the board. A lot of that has to do, I think, with the nature of the sport: No football player ever plays in isolation; his success inherently depends on that of his teammates.
But it seems like there’s way too much emphasis on size and combine numbers and not nearly enough on ability to play football.
My colleague Mike Salfino loves to point out that an NFL draft selection has only a 47 percent chance of having a better career than the next player selected at his position. It’s an interesting point.
Someone thought Vernon Gholston would be good. Someone thought Kurt Warner should be bagging groceries. Everyone needs to pay more attention to what happens on the field.
Reading about Stanford runningback, Heisman hopeful and MLB prospect Toby Gerhart in the Times last week made me think about Bo Jackson, for obvious reasons.
I was six years old when Bo Jackson first joined the Raiders, but I was head over heels for baseball by then and starting to grasp football, so I recognized that it was cool.
I guess, naive as I must have been then, I didn’t really think about how crazy that was.
In 1989 and 1990, Bo Jackson totaled 60 home runs, 41 steals and a 132 Major League OPS+. In those same years, he combined for nearly 1800 yards from scrimmage with 9 touchdowns and 5.5 yards per carry.
Then Deion Sanders, just a couple of years later, posted a 130 OPS+ with the Braves in the same year he picked up over 1000 return yards for the Falcons.
To be honest, I didn’t remember Neon Deion being any good at baseball. His baseball career seemed like a gimmick, and so I was surprised to learn he was actually a decent player for a couple of seasons.
Jackson, though, was different. Bo Jackson was a star in two professional sports at the same time. Again: Bo Jackson was a star in two professional sports at the same time.
That’s nuts. It’s so hard to imagine nowadays, in an age of such advanced specialty workouts and everything else.
And maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that Jackson got that terrible hip injury and flamed out so quickly.
But man, Bo Jackson was a stud.
I read his autobiography, Bo Knows Bo, pretty soon after it came out. It dealt with a bit with his childhood and a whole lot, if I recall correctly, with his college sex life. I was nine. I think the entire time I was reading it, I was thinking, “I obviously shouldn’t be reading this.”
After taking a knee on the one-yard line to secure a victory for the Jaguars yesterday, Maurice Jones-Drew apologized to his fantasy owners.
It’s a particularly hilarious thing to say, and as a Maurice Jones-Drew owner who lost by exactly the difference the touchdown would have made, I appreciate the sentiment.
In the hands of a professional like Jones-Drew, it’s fine. He was obviously kidding, plus his point was that the win was more important to him than the touchdown. But the fact that he mentioned it — even jokingly — shows the way fantasy-football analysis has spiraled out of control.
I’m so sick of the fantasy spin. When an important player gets hurt, it feels like the first thing ESPN tells me is the fantasy implications. And that’s about the last thing I want to hear about.
I want to hear about what it means to his team, and what it means to my team, and what bearing it has on the race for the playoffs. Excuse me for actually caring about real football.
I know this makes me sound like a curmudgeon, too. But whatever. Allow me to continue curmudging.
Too often, it seems like the NFL has become Fantasy Fantasy Football, where players are arbitrarily assigned to teams with other guys who may or may not help them score more points in your league.
And I get that fantasy has contributed a ton to the NFL’s success, plus plays a big role in the web ventures of just about every network covering football. And heck, I like playing fantasy football, because it’s a fun excuse to be able to say really mean things to friends and co-workers.
I just don’t want to hear about it so damn often. Tell me what’s happening in the actual game, not in the games surrounding the game. Break down a coverage, examine a blocking scheme, analyze a blitz package. Help me understand which teams are actually better than the other teams, not just which players will rack up the most impressive fantasy stats.
Over at the Big East Sports Blog, Aditi Kinkhabwala weighs in on Playoff PAC, a bipartisan committee of congressmen dedicated to revamping the BCS system
Finally, our legislators are addressing the real issues!
The Playoff PAC press released describes the BCS as “inherently flawed.” I might argue instead that it’s “incredibly stupid.”
I understand that bowl games, thanks to their sponsorship deals (hello, Poulan Weedeater), earn schools big money. But does anyone think an eight-team tournament wouldn’t mean even bigger money?
I’m sure smarter people than me have weighed in on this, and I don’t follow college football all that closely so I haven’t given it a ton of thought. But if there are four big bowls, why couldn’t they rotate each year, with two being the semifinals, one being the consolation game and one being the championship?
Sure, determining the eight teams that make the tournament would be pretty arbitrary. And four teams would be forced to play two more games than their schedules normally call for. But I bet all those kids would be down, and I would guess the revenue the schools generate off the tournament would make all the little inconveniences well worth their while.
Am I missing something obvious? Probably. Feel free to let me know. I bet there won’t be a whole lot of BCS adherents around, though.
This space is not about politics, nor do I ever intend it to be.
But could you imagine not being allowed to join the ranks of Dan Snyder, Jerry Jones and Al Davis because the things you’ve said and done have offended too many people?
Yikes.
Tedquarters 