This Water Cooler is the Water Coolest!

We're back and it's been recently brought to my attention that we're not supposed to take it anymore.  So for those of you that have been still taking it you can go ahead and not take it anymore.  Thank you.

I'd like to consider myself a fair guy.  I don't think I have unreasonable expectations where I hope that my favorite sports team doesn't do anything to completely embarrass me and if and when that happens I won't just spray cologne over it and pretend it's not there.

The Miami Dolphins have spent the better part of the last year trying to convince us it was just a cold sore and now we finally have admission that it's full blown herpes.  Joe Philbin seems like a nice enough guy to buy sweaters from but when you let your own employees harass each other in a myriad of ways and don't claim ownership of that then one of two things should happen.  The first is you're lying and should be fired.  The second is you have no control of your own employees and should be fired.

However, the Miami Dolphins embrace the lifestyles we have here in the Twilight Zone and let Philbin go out there in his nice, non-confrontational button down shirt and swear that from now on we really, really won't let people treat other people like they're not actual human beings.  Good on them.

Okay faceless entities, a proposition: I will write the Studly Pastures until the Miami Dolphins win a Super Bowl or I meet my untimely demise.  So the deal is that unless I die or the Dolphins win the Super Bowl, the SP will continue on.  You game?  You actually have no choice.  I've already decided.  The last post I ever write for the SP will be the Dolphins' Super Bowl victory or something really stupid because I died shortly after that.  It's the ultimate game of internet chicken.




Enough about that crap, let's talk about some Olympics crap.  It seems to me that for some reason before the last three days that Americans thought we could beat Canadians in hockey.  Really?  I know most of you like to brush off Canada little-brother style but if there is one thing that they nailed down and really made 'their thing' it's hockey.

I know here in America we have to concern ourselves with trivial things like keeping the rest of the world in order but in Canada they don't have that problem.  They just sit up there and play hockey until we tell them to do something.

In all seriousness though, our national women's hockey team choked and in further seriousness, I was hoping I would never have to mention women's hockey.  Two goal lead, third period, and closing minutes...and you lose?  I'm not insinuating that this wouldn't happen to men because I watch American soccer and it happens all the time but come on!  You'se had 'em!  You'se had 'em!!!

It's okay, girls.  The World Cup is five months away and the Summer Olympics is two years away and the word 'Canada' will be irrelevant for all of that.




Finally, I have to end with Derek Jeter.  The Yankee short-stop is retiring after this upcoming season and to me that's the right decision.  Jeter announcing his retirement is like a race horse being put down after breaking it's leg...except the horse is pulling the trigger.  Jeter is showing something rare in athletes like him that have spent most of his career in the spotlight and in the center of attention: the ability to know when it's time to walk away.

Somewhere on a farm in Mississippi, Brett Favre is re-enacting the entire plot of Necessary Roughness--the movie, not the show, have some class.

Jeter will always be for me that iconic athlete that I miss because I knew I was getting old.  Ken Griffey Jr. was the man when I was a kid but he was injury prone and didn't have the staying power.  Jeter has had his fair share of injuries but it wasn't until recent years that injuries really got to him.  Even as a Rays fan it's hard not to see Jeter at short-stop for the Yankees.  After going through the fanfare last year with Mariano retiring it should be safe to assume that the Captain will get the same treatment.

I can only hope that in his last at-bat he's pulled for a pinch-hitting Bernie Williams.  That'd be amazing.  I love baseball and I love the fact that I care about a rival teammate retiring.  Sigggghhhh.



I guess in a way, kids, I have announced my own retirement.  One way or another, the Studly will end either with my death or a Miami Dolphins Super Bowl victory.  I wish Vegas would calculate these odds for me because I could walk out my door tomorrow and get hit by a bus but the Dolphins can't win the Super Bowl tomorrow.

So I guess the only thing left to do is live life to the fullest, right?  In the immortal words from Robert Loggia from Necessary Roughness, "YOU TEAR THEIR F****** HEADS OFF AND SHIT DOWN THEIR NECKS!"  "Let us pray."

Float on, graceful swans.

Slow Progress Is Still Progress

Hello, faceless entities that I do so enjoy, and welcome to another installment of that thing that's uber-popular overseas and easily dismissed in the States.

I'd like to think I do more for you than just kick over my soap box and jump on top of it but my voice is just so darn velvety that I guess I'm just like the rest of these schmuck bloggers so how can I lash out at you for not labeling me any different?

Because I am!  I use big words to tell dirty jokes!  I relate to the poor and the rich while staying so deliciously middle class!  I have an educated background that I choose to ignore and just spew random verbs and nouns together to get a cheap laugh from someone I've never met!  What?!  WHAT?!

So I don't know if you heard but there's a guy named Michael Sam (one love for my two first-names people, where you at?) who decided to tell the world that he's gay.  Good for him, I wish him all the luck, and I hope he finds the man of his dreams.  Eh?  What's that?  Oh because he's an NFL-draftee hopeful, and a great pass-rusher from the SEC we need to talk about this more?  Siggggggghhhhh.  Didn't we do this in The Great Divide?  I'm pretty sure we did.  But okay...I guess...

Saying the Michael Sam announcement isn't a big deal is the same thing as saying that any pivotal moment in any human civil rights movement wasn't that big of a deal.  This is a huge deal because we're getting ever so closer to this not being a big deal at all and that's the ultimate goal.  Jason Collins broke the barrier with his announcement but he's 35 and hasn't played an NBA game since he came out and likely won't again at this point but I hope I'm wrong.  Sam is different.  He's leaving college for the NFL the year after being named SEC Defensive Player of the Year.  He will be drafted and he will play in the NFL next year.  Sure, there's been gay football players before but they haven't come out until after they retired.  Sam is the first to announce he's gay before starting his NFL career.  Monumental?  Check.

Sam's announcement has been met mostly with sincere admiration of his courage and acceptance by athletes of all walks of life.  There has been little detraction but that just brings me to Jonathan Vilma.

Vilma, as far as I know, isn't a bigot--or even an asshole maybe!  He's just a guy voicing his opinion like the rest of us and he said some things before his camp got to him and made him backpedal and say some PR things instead.  Basically the gist of what Vilma said was how he was supposed to act if a player that was openly gay happened to glance over at Vilma while he was changing or getting out of the shower.

Jeez, I don't know, Vilma.  He would just have to resist the temptation I guess!  I thought I was the only one around here who thought the sight of my naked body was irresistible?  I guess Vilma and I have something in common after all!

Michael Sam said he was gay, not a sexual deviant.  I work with women everyday and I have yet to get a sexual assault charge.  Granted I've never showered with any of them but if it was acceptable to have a uni-sex shower at my work I think things would work out pretty smoothly.  Okay that's a terrible example...but the point remains the same.  We're all professionals in a professional atmosphere and our personal life choices don't affect that.

Vilma's words were the template for any athlete that's ever had a concern about a gay person in the locker room.  Isn't that always the first words out of an ignorant person's mouth?  "Well shoot, how am I gonna shower with them?"  It's okay Adonis, that just leaves more hot water for you because all gay athletes take cold showers as a coping mechanism for working in the Sexiest Place on Earth.

There's going to be more than just this, I can guarantee it.  Hell, I run into idiots every single day of my life and I'm not even a public figure.  But the good news is that Michael Sam appears to be one tough guy and the other good news is that he's going to get drafted into the right locker room too.  The front office that looks at his stats and realizes how valuable a pass-rusher is instead of looking at his dating record and bedroom tactics is going to draft him.  I love the management team of Green Bay and Baltimore and wouldn't be surprised in the least bit if he goes to either one of those teams.  He'll get in the right situation, he'll find his version of a Pee Wee Reese, and the rest will eventually fall in line.

And I hate to get all Forrest Gump on you guys but that's all I have to say about that.

Float on, you graceful swans.

Rocky Mountain Low Is Too Cliche

Well, well, well...here we are.  It's the day after the Super Bowl and I've come a-collectin'.

I'd like to say that I've correctly predicted the Super Bowl winner the last two years but last year all I kinda said was that the Baltimore Ravens would make the game and for some reason never really came to any sort of end with that.  Eh.  Half a point?

But I definitely said that the Seattle Seahawks would win it all this year and wouldn't you know it...they did!

Sure I said that they would be playing the Houston Texans but that just goes to show you how much of a crap-shoot this thing really is...you could peg anybody in there really.  What's that?  A lot of you thought that the Denver Broncos would make it to the Super Bowl too?  Well fine!  I'll just go stand in the Stupid Corner with everybody else that makes ridiculous statements as if they're premonitions that don't come true to allow enough space for the rest of the world that loves to decree themselves Nostradamus incarnate!

Actually I won't.

I am just like the rest of you (not really, because I really do study the history of the game, but for all intensive purposes I am just a man who can't predict the future) and maybe it was my blind hatred for Peyton Manning but I knew deep down in the very hearth of my gourd (that's a saying) that Lil' Top Heavy never stood a chance in this game.  But it wasn't even just him it was the rest of his horse-loving, Coors Lite drinking, mountain skiing yahoo gang as well.  They were screwed the minute Richard Sherman managed to deflect everyone's attention away from the fact that Colin Kaepernick is a terrible quarterback.

I'm not even going to invoke the Weather Defense either.  Look, the NFL lucked out completely in the fact that it was a clear-sky balmy 50 degrees for the game because Roger Goodell is the arch-villain from Die Another Day.  I'm still against cold-weather Super Bowls because the Devil always collects his due and I don't want the best thing ever to become a farce of itself because of a blizzard.  I'm getting ahead of myself here though because the thing that I've always known, and assumed that others knew but was proven wrong this past week, was that blizzards don't just affect Peyton Manning...they tend to get to the other players on the field too.

Peyton Manning can't play in cold weather.  What?  Why?  Is he out there in board shorts and a mesh tank-top?  Is he the Heat Miser?  (Which now I'm mad at myself for never, ever referring to Peyton Manning as the Heat Miser because Eli makes the peeeeerfect Snow Miser)

Just stop!  Weather doesn't affect ONE person or ONE team and this is coming from a life-long Miami Dolphins fan.  The Miami Dolphins still to this day think that they have some sort of home-field advantage in August and September because it's way too friggin' hot for somebody not from here to perform well.  We've gone forty years without a championship, folks, and it's looking more and more each day like we can't blame the damn weather anymore.

The collective body of sports enthusiasts seems to suffer some sort of temporary Alzheimer's whenever we are treated to a great offensive team.  "Wow, look at all those points!"  "Wow, they can score on anybody!"  "THIS IS THE BEST TEAM EVER!!!!!"

I must be the only one living in the Twilight Zone that knows that I'm actually living in the Twilight Zone because I've heard all of this before.  I heard it in 2002 for the Oakland Raiders, again in 2007 for the New England Patriots, and once again this year for the Denver Broncos.  The thing that all three have in common?  They lost the Super Bowl to a really, really great defense because that's what the best offense in the league does...they lose to the best defense.

I wasn't planning on Seattle playing Denver in the big game because I thought Denver would have Denver'ed out in one of the earlier rounds of the playoffs.  I thought at the time that Houston would have been a more intriguing team for Seattle to face in the Super Bowl because I thought Houston had a comparable defense--at least in the front seven...okay...maybe front four!  I also failed to realize that Houston had the emotional stability of a 16-year old girl on Junior Prom Night.  That's right...Junior Prom Night.

Seattle's defense this year was absolutely amazing.  They didn't just stop other offenses...they smothered them.  Offense in the NFL is all about timing and rhythm and the mark of a great defense is being able to disrupt that timing even if just for a second longer.  Things like being able to get to the quarterback quickly and knocking wide receivers off their routes are tools that tend to get this job done and Seattle utilized both of those things last night.

The Seattle win was inevitable and the blow-out was just the cherry on top.  Do I revel in the fact that most of the world is targeting Peyton Manning for this loss?  Yes, of course I do!  What kind of question is that?  I loathe Peyton Manning and his suffering is my life force.  I just gained ten more years!  To pin the loss on Peyton is moronic, like I've mentioned in this post, but I'm going to allow it.

So, thank you, Seattle.  Enjoy the title and I hope it's not as fleeting as I hear it is.  I only mention that because, you know...the whole forty years thing and if I was writing this in my forties I would have to really sit back and reflect on some of the choices I've made and how the Hell I've gotten here...I'm going to eat these words in twelve years, aren't I?

All that's left for Peyton is to retire and pitch a sit-com to CBS where he and Dan Marino have to move in together after their respective football careers are over and open up a pizza joint together.  Peyton, of course, will play the smart guy and Dan will just be the guy who gets all the chicks.  Then the cycle will have completed itself and hopefully by then I'll be dead.

Float on, graceful swans.