Okay, Maybe We're Done!

Hello friends, and I guess also enemies, I'm back and I wanted to address a few things.  The last post I made was meant as a distraction from all the crap happening in the world right now.  It's not my job, it's just something I like to do.  I like throwing peanuts in people's faces.  It's fun.

However, it's dawned on me over this past week that I can no longer distract you, but rather break down to shit what some of these 'higher institutions' are considering in the light of the Coronavirus pandemic.  I'm not sure if pandemic should also be capitalized, I haven't been through one before.

Essentially, it's become perfectly clear that nobody knows what to do and they are basically playing Madlibs at this point.

Let's start with you, MLB, because you are clearly drinking too much grain alcohol in this quarantine.  The proposition sounds like something a very desperate person would do at the end of their rope and let's keep in mind, their season is just postponed!  It wasn't canceled like the NBA or NHL.  

So here it is, the grand drunken plan, first off, we're all playing in Arizona...in a bubble.  Yep, a bubble.  There won't be any fans and all the players will have to stay away from their families the whole time.  A regular baseball season is 162 games.  I can't imagine they will try to squeeze all those in but still, that's a lot of time away from your family.  Regular baseball life is tough on the family, this is just ridiculous.  Moving on, there won't be any fans in the stadium...but there will be players!  That's right kids, the players will move from the dugout to sit in the stands, six feet away from each other.  We're also eliminating mound visits from the catcher and manager and I can't believe you've let me get this far and I'm still not done yet!  We're also talking about realignment.  We're going to keep how Spring training does it.  In case you are unfamiliar, we have the Cactus and the Grapefruit leagues.  Why?  Because cactus grows in the desert and that's where everybody west of the Mississippi plays and old people love grapefruit so come on down to Florida for the rest!

So how does the playoff dynamic work at that point?  There are fifteen teams in each league.  We're just going to round robin the entire season?  So, when someone wins, do we really care?  Isn't it best to not do this whacky shit and just sit down for a year?!  Hell, if goddamn Pizza Hut can make it through this, I think the MLB will be just fine for a little while.  It's just too gimmicky for me.  I miss baseball, but not this much.  This is too much.

Sigh.

Okay, let's get to you, my most infamous enemy, the NCAA.

Look, it's been no surprise over the years that I have not been a fan of the NCAA.  In fact, I've been on record as calling them the National Collection of Assholes Anonymous.  I'm good at acronyms, what can I say?  But the idea of some conferences operating, because they have the funds, and leaving the rest out, is simply demonic.  Now they haven't come out and said that they're doing this buuuuuuuut let's be rational here, unlike the NCAA.  Some conferences operating is a lot more money than no conferences operating, right?  And what, say it with me, sways the opinion of the NCAA?  Dolla, dolla bills, y'all.  

I'm also going to go out on a limb here, and don't worry, it's a very sturdy ass limb, that these conferences are primarily concerned about college football.  I say that, because, I didn't hear shit when they canceled the goddamn basketball tournament.  And I can't imagine that they're that concerned about the swimmers and soccer players.

All of this is a contingency plan.  It's April.  Who knows where we are come late August?

However, it's April, and I've already heard this shit.  

If there wasn't a time to give money to student-athletes...I'm talking about the ones that have now been banned from their housing units because of the lockdown, and a lot of them, if not most, travel far to go to their school and couldn't just go back to mom and dad's house and are YOUNG and simply...lost.  None of this is right.  It's madness.  I don't want to hear about conferences talking about how some of them can start up and others can't, I want to hear about what they are doing to help, goddammit.  And if they aren't doing that on a conference level, then the NCAA needs to get their heads out of their collective asses and make them do it.  These are kids, that believed in bettering themselves and went to do it, that got screwed because of something that most of us only read in history books.

I'm referring to the plague, which is colloquially referred to as the Black Death, which took place in the 1300's.

The 1300's!!!

Those people thought it was okay to walk amongst rats and just dump your shit bucket out the window onto the street below.

Welp.  No consistencies here.  

We're Not Done Yet!

I last posted in October, it's now March, and the only things I've missed is the collective end of all sports and the entire world descending into all holy hell.  Bad time to take five months off?  I took the liberty upon myself to make sure the unicorn farm was far away from the rest of the population because these moody motherfuckers like to start trouble and my insurance is a bitch as it is so when you mix horses with horns in their foreheads with their innate proclivity for causing mischief and adding THAT to large populations, yeah no thanks, we're heading out to the sticks.

And who would've thought.  High insurance premiums saved us from the apocalypse.

But seriously, you all ok out there?  I've heard terrible, terrible things.  Apparently toilet paper has become the reason to declare war on each other?  Thankfully the unicorns don't need to wipe.  I have no idea why, they just don't.  I mean if I was a mystical creature, I'd probably nix wiping in my top five powers right off the bat, I just don't know if it's a choice or act of God.  Alas, I still need to wipe, but being the only human male on the premises I can probably last another couple of years.  Eh, let's face it, I can get gross with it.  Toilet paper is a luxury item.

But wow.  Weird times for sure.  I mean the things I wanted to talk about seem so trivial now...

...

...Okay fine, I'll talk about them anyways!


You and I need to come to some sort of agreement that the next time I start talking about the Dolphins, just slap me across the face, and tell me that I need to stop because the Dolphins were no longer a thing since the late 90's and if I keep talking about them like they are a thing then I'm going to get committed.  But also, at the same time, a lobotomy seems liberating at this point.

I'm going to shit on a bunch of things right now, and given the lack of toilet paper in the world it seems dangerous, but bare with me.  Let me ask a question.  Can the Miami Dolphins stop playing their seasons like the movie Rudy?

In the movie Rudy, Samwise Gamgee plays this real life tiny guy that wanted to play for Notre Dame football but they wouldn't let him because he wasn't Catholic enough.  Anyways, he spends his entire college career on the practice squad and then, finally, with the threat of all the best players quitting, he's permitted to come to his last eligible game.  He sits there on the sidelines the whole game and it gets to the point that it's obvious that Notre Dame is going to win the game.  Now is the time those same best players start chanting and basically forcing the coach to put poor Rudy in the game in a meaningless situation.  He relents, Rudy goes in, and makes a play when it doesn't matter.  And that, my friends, is what it's like to watch a Miami Dolphins season.

Some people watch Rudy and think "Wow, how inspirational! He never gave up!"  Uh, yeah he did.  He had to have a janitor talk him out of it.  The same janitor that quit from the same team.

This isn't a message of inspiration.  This is a message of "hey, if you don't quite cut it, we've cut some participation ribbons for ya!"


Okay, I'm gonna stop that thought right there.  We don't need that right now.  I apologize.  But I'm right, right?



I'm done with football.  I was very much excited for baseball because my scrappy team of never say die are looking verrrry verrrrrrry promising this year.  Plus, not to mention we got robbed by those cheating Houston Asstros last year.  That's not a typo.  That's who they are now.

In this day and age, if you're going to cheat, Jesus, can't you be smarter about it?  Or maybe smarter isn't the right word.  I think shrewder is.  So the idea is that we have this high tech camera in the outfield wall that's going to determine what pitch is coming in so our batters have the advantage.  Okay, how do we relay what the camera shows?  Uhhhhh, bang on a trash can?  Excuse me?  Bang on a trash can?  What the Hell?  Did we blow our whole cheating budget on the camera?!  Are we going to at least have the same guy do it every time so we can at least say that's just his thing?  He likes banging on trash cans?  No?  Fuck.

What about if we put some more money into the cheating budget?  I could probably make these little devices that you can attach to your uniform and it will buzz in what the camera sees.  For that amount?  I could probably make one small one.

End scene.

You're gonna tell me that those conversations didn't take place?  They definitely did.  Listen, whenever you have some sort of scandal like this come out, there's never any quality intelligence involved.  It's always stupid and it's always caught, isn't it Belichick?




Hey guys, real quick I just wanted to say:
This is a sports blog that's run by a unicorn stud farm, I get it, I really do.  We're all hurting.  I've been away for a while but if it helps people smile, I'll do my best to post some more since I know some of you lucky bastards have been ordered to stay at home.  Some of you hate me for saying that but you have no idea what it's like out here so screw you too!  Anyways, I'll be around more often...for you, for me, for the unicorns...for all of us.  Thanks.

Damn It All, To Holy Hell!

I'm pissed.  24 hours ago I would have told you that there was just no way that the Tampa Bay Rays were going to lose that do or die Game 5 in the ALDS.  I felt an energy from the team that...well, shit, I haven't felt unless I built it up myself as their biggest cheerleader.

In case you can't tell from the title, they did in fact, lose.  And it sucks, and I hate that it's so quickly deflating after such a looooong, looooong season, but that's baseball, kids.

I can take solace in knowing that my ragtag team of misfits and throwaways, that collectively make less money than the top three earning Yankees, gave the best team in baseball absolutely all they could handle.  It took their freak of a pitcher, Gerrit Cole, who will win the Cy Young this year, to beat us twice in a best of five series.  Without him, we would have done it.  We beat Greinke, we beat Verlander when the iron was to our face, and dammit, if only it's not Cole's year!

Cole...Cole...

Weird.  That name resonates with me for some reason.

Anyways, I mentioned the energy from the team, but I also meant the energy from the Trop and the fans that actually came out to support the Rays.  That was incredible.  I honestly didn't think that would ever happen.

I wrote back in June, when the whole weird Montreal thing was happening, that the team should just kamikaze themselves into a championship, and yet somehow those two playoff games at the Trop make me...siggggggghhhhhhh...have hope.



Look, if this is your first trip down to the Studly Pastures and you've never seen a unicorn crap a cupcake before, let me give you some advice: hope, in all it's forms, is the worst feeling you can have when it comes to sports.  Also, never eat the cupcakes.  It is NOT my first trip to the stables, in fact, I've run this joint for longer than I care to remember, and I threw up a little bit in my mouth when I said that part about having hope.

Hope is for the dumb dumbs.  Hope is for the people that refuse to believe in facts.  Hope is for those people that know the inevitable outcome, yet despite that, believe it could work out in their favor.

It is a bad, bad thing.

Hope leads to heartbreak.


And yet, after all this time, and after all the Lucy's pulling the football from me right before I kicked it...I have hope.

I believe, whole-heartedly, that I will one day write a Studly talking about the Rays as champions.  I really do.  And I really hope it's next year because I'm getting tired of how much crap these unicorns produce.


Cole...dammit, I just can't shake it.

Wait a minute!  It's like the SAT's...Gerrit Cole is to Cole Hamels as to harbingers of the Rays doom and the newest member on my list to hopefully get penis rot and get shanked by three midgets in a trench coat.

Damn you, Twilight Zone.

Said The Dolphin To The Horse, Part II

Back in 2011, which might as well be a lifetime ago now, the Studly Pastures was just starting up.  At that point, we were around for just over a year and we were struggling to find our voice and our passion.  It was rough beginnings.  People don't seem to just jump at a sports blog/unicorn stud farm like I thought they would, but eh, let 'em squirm.

Then our passion became clear.  The Miami Dolphins were the worst team in the league and being the worst team in that particular year meant that you were going to be set for the next foreseeable future because the universe was going to bestow upon you, Andrew Austen Luck.  I forsake everything.  I wanted us to not only lose every game but get stomped, absolutely trounced, and leave no doubt!  That's how important it was to me.  Andrew Luck, as I was convinced, would be the savior and turn our franchise around in a way we haven't even sniffed since The Man retired.  I was convinced.

It was clear that we would do it, until a second contender came into the picture.  I have never liked the Indianapolis Colts and it really has nothing to do with them other than I consider Peyton Manning a horrible aberration.  He was the bane of the Dolphins for a long time and those things don't go gently into the night with me.  Never forgive, never forget!

The rest falls ever so perfectly for someone like me living in the Twilight Zone.  Peyton has to have his neck fused to his back so he can still be a person and he leaves Indy to join the Denver Broncos.  He ends up winning a Super Bowl with them so it's not all roses, but he retires shortly after.  However, without Peyton, the Colts, turns out what we thought forever, weren't very good at all.  In fact they won two games that year.  And my plucky band of idiots, that started 0-7, rallied to win six of their last nine.  Six wins?!  When you have Andrew Luck sitting in your stupid, stupid hands?!  What the Hell is the matter with you?  I really can't anymore.  I must have drank myself something stupid that year because not even I remembered that we won six goddamn games that year.  Jesus Christ...

Anyhoo, the Colts had Manning for decades, won a Super Bowl, lived in the sun the rest of the time, he basically dies, they have one shitty year, and then they get Andrew Luck, the next goddamn Manning.

I tried to talk them out of it.  I pleaded with them.  I even wrote them a letter called  Said The Horse To The Dolphin.  It didn't work.  They still took Luck.

And wouldn't fate have it, he was as good--if not better--as advertised.  The Colts were immediately back in the playoffs and contending for Super Bowls and living in the sun and the Dolphins kept their pasty asses in the dark and I wrote very hateful blog posts to the state of Indiana calling them "grain-eating flat-heads".  I apologize for nothing.

But then he started getting hurt, and not just bullshit hurt, but like actually life-altering hurt.  The kind of hurt where, say, and I'm just ballparking here, but maybe at age 43 you just wouldn't feel like a person anymore.  That's a heavy thought to bear and Luck was smarter than that.

See, let me put it this way, Manning and Luck are both smart but they're different kinds of smart.  Manning went to the University of Tennessee, where it's acceptable to do buffoonish stunts like dropping your nut sack on the face of a female trainer and just sit around and lick the icing off of Oreos all day.  That's all good and well.  He was a savvy quarterback though and could read defenses like they were broadcasting their coverage schemes off of his gigantic forehead.  Luck went to Stanford.  That's all I have to say about that.

And when it comes to injury?  They had to fuse Manning back together!  That's insane!  Give it up, man, you've done it, you're good!  Luck probably saw that, looked at his future, and said 'You know, I think one day I'd like to be able to hug my kids without blowing into a straw first!"  And good on him, because I'm sure that's tough as Hell to quit the only thing you've known your whole life but still know it's the best decision for you.

So he retires.  It's shocking but not when I break it down for you so eloquently, so get over it, Media Pundits.  It's not the same as Jordan going to play baseball--it's not---by a looooong shot.

I reached out to some Colts fans, told them I was sorry for them and then I went about my day.

But I just had this nagging, nagging, little thought in the back of my head that kept going back to 2011.  The Suck For Luck campaign did not go my way, obviously, but we have a new campaign this year and it's very much so Tank For Tua, the great quarterback out of Alabama.  Our two quarterbacks this year, that are still currently duking it out for the starting position about twelve days from the start of the season, are Ryan Fitzpatrick and Josh Rosen.  We're tanking, for sure, and we damn sure better not hit anywhere close to six wins!

And it dawned on me, that, without Andrew Luck, the Colts might not be very good this year.  I beg you, Indianapolis, win one more than we do this year.  Please!  Hold out for Trevor Lawrence next year, he's got that Anglo look that you guys seem to die for!

Please...not again...

A Tale Of Two Cities

You know they say that life often imitates art and that can be a wonderful thing.  In the case of it being a book about the French Revolution though, eh, not so much.  Ah Dickens, you crafty old codger!  I hope you're rolling in your grave right now!

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..."

I didn't get much sleep last night so I sort of disregarded the notification on my phone but it said something about the Tampa Bay Rays and Montreal.  I've done some funny things on sleep deprivation so I chalked that up to that and grazed about my day.  Then I saw it on something else.  And again.  Then it had my attention.

Apparently the Rays have permission to explore some sort of deal where they would play the first half of their home games in St.Petersburg and the other half in Montreal.

Oh, because that's a thing?!

I just wrote that and I still don't even know what it means!  I'm literally at a loss.  I don't want to do it, you can't make me!


Sigh.


Fine.


Let's take a trek down the damn rabbit hole.

So here's the problem in a nutshell:

Despite the fact that a team with one of the lowest salaries in baseball constantly overachieves and shits on teams with three times their payroll, and is currently leading the AL wild card, they still can't seem to get people to come out and watch them.  They signed a 30 year lease at Tropicana Field, which back in 1998 when this whole thing began seemed like a 100 year lease, it's really only just eight years away now.  People blame the Trop as part of the reason why nobody goes to games and I'm one of them.  While it's nice to sit in air conditioning and watch a baseball game, well, I can do that at my house.  Because of the dome there's an intricate catwalk system that has a very confusing set of rules on what happens if a baseball were to hit this catwalk instead of this catwalk.  Added on top of that, it almost has a warehousey feel to it, especially since nobody goes there.  The Rays have tried multiple options on new stadiums, including modern waterfront ones in Ybor and actual Tampa, and have been shot down each and every time.

Then there's also the fact that St.Pete is nothing but geriatrics and transplanted northerners.  If you are a Rays fan and you go to a Yankee game, you're outnumbered, in your own damn house.  I mentioned the geriatrics because you have to get on I-275 to get to the stadium and the ol' blue hairs remember when they built the damn thing and they're not driving on it.

So, in recap, terrible stadium, terrible location, and terrible fan base.



And now the solution today is to split custody with Montreal.  Montreal?  Let me see, where have I heard that name before...

It's right on the tip of my tongue...oh yeah...the Montreal Expos, the MLB team that is now the Washington Nationals because, wait for it, NOBODY WENT TO THEIR GAMES EITHER!  They didn't split them in half and let them play the last part of their season in Boca Raton, no, they just straight up said, "You're done, pack your shit!"

That was at least fifteen years ago, so now you're telling me that Montrealians are now suddenly salivating over the possibility of getting a team for half the time they used to get and it's roughly the exact same team that they used to have and didn't bother to show up for in the first place?  Oh, and I should mention that part of the deal they're exploring is to have two new stadiums, one in each city.  Because what do you do when you keep losing at poker?  You fucking double down and really go out with a bang!

I'm not even going to bother with semantics on this one because it's just so ridiculous to me that I don't even want to ponder whether they'll wear different uniforms, play in different leagues, or who holds claim to the title if god forbid, they win something.  That's all stuff for other people to deal with.  I'd rather just kick this in the nuts.

The only positive I could see coming from this is that we could probably have a pretty sweet national rivalry with the Toronto Blue Jays and that's meant entirely as a joke and I would probably eat a bullet if I ever saw the Clash of the Canadians and one of them was my favorite baseball team.



What's the real solution here?


"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."


End it.  You have, hopefully, eight years left, go for goddamn broke and stop with the sustainability bullshit.  Win a title, drop the mic, and literally blow up the Trop.  I'll miss them terribly, I was there Day One back in '98 and they've pulled on my heart strings ever since.  But what a fantastic epic ending that would be if they went all in, took home the World Series, gave the middle finger to everyone that stopped us from being, and that was just it.

My solution is definitely not for the faint of heart but it's one I could at least live with.

To the bitter end, boys.

Red Herring, Sick Mammal

I have the privilege of being privy to several literary techniques, you know, because I've been classically trained by Plath, Vonnegut, Hemmingway, and Kerouac.

For example, I had to have a minor, and that sounds terrible but journalism school required that in order to be through the program you had to have a lesser degree in something else.  Dolla dolla bills, y'all.  So I picked English writing, which should have been a cake walk but it was way more technical that it sounded.  I actually had to learn the business side of it and that brings us here: teaching me the inside workings of the whole establishment was the worst thing you could have done.

I know too much now.

One of the classes I took to finish that English writing minor was a science fiction writing class that was held online.  The final grade was an original written short story based on the techniques that we have learned throughout the course.

The following is 100% true.  I tell no lies.

I wrote the entirety of that short story in a hotel room in Chicago across the street from Grant Park.  The room did not have any hot water but I got free porn on the television.  That seemed like a fair trade off at the time.  I was across the street from Grant Park because that's where Lollapalooza was being held and that's a three day music festival that I traveled to alone in a city that I had never been to before.  My cab driver told me a story about how he got so fed up stuck in traffic that he just up and left the cab with a guy in the back seat.  He told me this, while we're stuck in traffic, in a city I've never been before on the way to my hotel.  No hot water, free porn.

I was there to see the The Shins and some guy named Kanye West that just so happened to be from Chicago.  I also really enjoyed Gnarls Barkley.

It dawned on me when I finally got to the hotel that I had not even attempted the final grade for my science fiction writing class.  So I sat on the bed, whipped out my trusty MacBook, and wrote an odyssey.  Well, it wasn't The Odyssey, but all you could do is buckle up and ride along.  It was a parody of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and it was completely absurd but it was also a deus ex machina.

That's Latin, doll, but it's also a literary technique for basically having something save the day, when all hope was lost, and it was never mentioned before.  It's a cheat.  But I thought it was hilarious and it made perfect sense in my Frankenstein parody, which was titled The Aardvark's Bane.

NOW, when I tell you, that I use a deus ex machina, purposely, regardless of what kind of porn is going on in the background while I'm writing it, you should know that it's all meant as absurdity!  It's fucking called The Aardvark's Bane for Christ's sake!  I'm not mocking the class, the professor, or anybody else who took that class...I'm mocking myself?  Okay, I don't really know who I was offending there but the professor definitely took offense and that was the day that I almost lost a shot at a minor in Chicago at a music festival.  Again, the wording of all this sounds a bit awful.

And now I can't help but think of the Miami Dolphins, dear Lord, why do I think of the Miami Dolphins?!

The Dolphins have traded my favorite Fuzzby in the whole-game, Ryan Tannehill, to the Tennessee Titans.  We thought he'd be right at home in purgatory with the rest of the teams that don't ever seem to do anything ever.

With Tannehill gone, the only other quarterbacks on the Dolphins roster were two guys that just got done with their shift at Dairy Queen and said, "eh, whatever."  I'm not even sure if I'm shitting on Dairy Queen at this point or if it's the Miami Dolphins.  Lines are blurred, factions crossed, and I'm just rambling because what the Hell is the point of all of this?  There's just under a month before the draft and I can't see my team winning more than three games next year.

Fuck!  I even forgot to tell you that we just signed Ryan Fitzpatrick!  This guy might as well be me as an NFL quarterback in that I have no fucking business being an NFL quarterback.  Fitzpatrick is the guy that would work for different gas stations and if that doesn't tell you anything, 'cigarette bribes' will.  He's the guy you can get to do things for cigarettes. "Hey Ryan, I'll throw you two packs of Marlboro Reds if you help my Sister-in-law move her new couch in next Tuesday."

"Hell ya, brother!"


All of this makes me want to watch that Jay Cutler show that's on tv, and then I quickly remember I'd sooner chop off my left hand, and now we have Ryan Fitzpatrick.  And I referenced it as the "Jay Cutler" show but he's just really the supporting role because when can he actually take control of something for once in his life and I feel for you Kristen Cavallari because what the actual fuck..


The fact that we didn't send Tannehill off in a Viking funeral really makes me mad.  Fuzzby deserves better than the Titans.  I think everybody deserves better than being the back-up to Marcus Mariota.  What a weird web we weave.

Float on, graceful swans.  By the way, in case you didn't know, the entire first part was a Red Herring.  Love ya.

Miracle Boy

It's been 363 days since the last time I've posted from the Studly Pastures and all I have to say about that is that I'm only contractually obligated to post once a year.

I'm like the George Clooney of bloggers.  I did my thing, now I'm resting on my nest egg on the shores of an Italian lake and every now and again I'll surprise everyone by appearing in a commercial for an express coffee maker that as far as I can tell nobody actually owns.

Just kidding, I'm still over here shoveling pound after pound of unicorn shit and keeping a keen eye on the weird, wonderful world of sports.

Now that I'm significantly older than when this wild ride took off for the first time I'd like to think that my view has matured and I'm more open to discussion rather than my opinion operating like one of the Ten Commandments.  I'm not sure if you're supposed to capitalize the Ten Commandments but I'm going to anyways because I don't trust the odds of being struck by lightning.  Anyways, I've been really trying to see different view points and really become a structured individual when it comes to conversation but I seem to be running into this problem each and every time--they're always wrong!  It's the damndest thing but I can't seem to find anybody I actually agree with over myself.  Oh well, good thing this blog is like talking to myself in the mirror anyways.  Off we go!


This year brought back haunted memories for me as an old friend was reintroduced into something he has no business doing.  The Green Bay Packers decided it was best in the middle of a season to fire their head coach, Mike McCarthy, who led them to a Super Bowl victory, and told Joe Philbin to go get them tiger!  Now keep in mind, when the announcement came over the airwaves I felt like Darth Vader did when he sensed Obi-Wan on the Death Star.  I was just as surprised as anyone that Philbin was still in football, let alone a position that allowed him to be promoted via assassination.  What the Hell is it with this guy?  Does he knit Christmas sweaters for the commissioner every year and he gets these ridiculously underqualified jobs in return?  Like I said during the painful years that he coached the Miami Dolphins, Joe Philbin is better placed in some high school in Wisconsin trying to get kids accepted into trade schools.  I'm sure this past Sunday, when the Chicago Bears clinched the North and eliminated the Packers from the post season, Philbin let out his best "Well, shoot!" and then proceeded to gently blow on his hot cocoa.  I'm sorry for you Green Bay, if only more of you subscribed to the SP you would have known about Philbin.

Speaking of the Miami Dolphins, they've now resorted to Divine Intervention in order to achieve victory.  Last week's win over the Patriots was dubbed the "Miracle in Miami" and I immediately thought, "Great, a miracle, I'm sure we'll get some more of those!"  Don't get me wrong, watching Tom Brady wipe that smug shit-eating grin off his face while he's talking to some teammates about what type of Uggs he's wearing that night as Kenyon Drake goes racing past is one of those moments that I'll keep seared on the back of my cerebral cortex for the rest of my life.  But a miracle?  Hardly.  When it comes to the Miami Dolphins and miracles, I'll start believing when I don't spend the final two weeks wondering if we'll get the fourteenth or the fifteenth pick in the upcoming draft.  I'll consider it a miracle when Ryan "Fuzzby" Tannehill doesn't hold the ball for ten seconds and takes a game-altering sack on third down.  I'll start to believe that maybe a higher power has something to do with it when I can watch them play against a broken ass team like the Minnesota Vikings and have them not manhandle us like we owed them money.  An early December win against the Patriots is the same as getting a participation trophy, not a miracle.

So let's see, is there anything else in the last year I want to bring up other than the two things that happened in the last month...uhhh...LeBron joined the Lakers...nobody cares...Bryce Harper is going to get a contract that instead could be used to sustain the rainforests...nobody cares...oh, I got one!

The University of Central Florida Knights haven't lost a football game in two years and all they get to show for it is the chance to play LSU on New Year's Day in a bowl game that doesn't really mean jack shit.  A four-team playoff to decide the National Championship is nothing short of a joke and really makes me revisit that path I always take when I say I hate the NCAA.  I really fucking hate the NCAA.  What are we doing here?  Four teams out of 130 are the official odds, but they're really not because you let a 'committee' determine those four teams based off of their own biased opinions.  And, guess what, who would've thought that those opinions are leaned heavily on by money?  At the end of the season we end everything with a big Bullshit Parade and tell people that Alabama are the champions when really all they had to do was beat two teams picked by a committee of people that actually don't give a shit about football.  WOOOOOOO!  Congrats, dickheads.

Why not UCF?  They haven't lost in two years, nobody else can say that!  You want to argue strength of schedule and I don't really get that because we're just asking to play the big boys, not get handed anything.  What would be so really terrible for the NCAA if they let UCF play Alabama?

That they could beat them?  Then what would we do?  Change everything?

Now there's a theory...