House of Swank

A Tale of Two Sports and Seven Words

I know I'm the last person on the planet to memorialize George Carlin in weblog form, but it occurred to me today that one of his most brilliant pieces of work has been ignored in favor of the cursing that he's so well known for.

The first time I heard this routine he put it in a context of why football should be our national past time instead of baseball.  Even without it, I think it nails both sports perfectly and explains why I am a fan of both of them as well.

RIP, Jim McKay

I just learned this afternoon that legendary sportscaster Jim McKay died last weekend at the age of 86.  He will be missed.

If I had to attribute my love of sports to any one person it would be McKay. In the days before ESPN there weren't a lot of television options for a bored kid on a Saturday afternoon.  So on those days, I'd frequently turn into the Wide World of Sports.  Sometimes it would be covering sports I had no interest in (boxing, racing), but frequently enough it would slide into the fun or bizarre that it kept my attention.  Cliff diving, pool, sports you'd frequently only see during the Olympics, it was all covered in the Wide World of Sports.  And McKay projected both reverence and joy in whatever sport he was covering.  As a kid, who knew something could be both fun and important?

I was around 6 months old during the 1972 Summer Olympics, so I did not get to witness first-hand his coverage of the hostage situation.  But I've seen him oversee coverage of many other Olympic games, and without even reading the reports could know that he covered things perfectly.

I miss the Wide World of Sports, the same way I miss MTV.  Both shows forced you to sit through the bad so as to guarantee you'd not miss the good.  They gave you little tastes of things, and if you liked what you were tasting you could go elsewhere to savor them in larger portions.  There are no television smorgasbords anymore, just hundreds of stations filled with focus-grouped programming.

So, goodbye, Jim McKay.  You'll be missed for what you brought to the wide world of sports, and that can never be replaced.

Keyed Up

Today New York Giants officials are receiving a key to the city from the Mayor.

Which surprises absolutely no one, since it is the ceremonial way for a city to say "Thank you for helping spread a positive image of our fair town to the world."

The thing that gets me about this particular display is the fact that the team plays in New Jersey.  But now that they've proven themselves, they're actually allowed into the city.  Even after hours if no one else is allowed to let them in.

Oh Happy Day!

Reasons I am happy the Giants won the Superbowl:

• The butt chin disturbs me to no end.   Especially since his chin strap looks like the back of a pair of tighty whities.  Anything to keep him out of the news.
• I cannot respect a coach who cannot respect himself to wear clean, uncut clothing.
• It's less likely to come out that this win was the result of cheating.
• The only thing more obnoxious than sports fans from New England with bad teams are sports fans from New England with good teams.  They've got the baseball championship at the moment, that's enough.
• Peyton is no longer the alpha Manning.
• It's cool when underdogs win.
• This is one of the coolest passes ever.
• One of the studs of the game graduated from one of the colleges I attended.   No, not the PAC-10 school.  WOSC (well, WOU now), a NCAA Division II school.

Ironically, Students are Probably Ashamed of This...

I spent my Freshman year of college at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.  To say the school's football team was lousy would be an understatement; the big selling point to try to lure students to the (free) games was that the team had new uniforms that year.  Still, no one went.

Some friends and I wanted to see a football game one week, so we went to a high school game at Alamo Stadium, which was closer to our dorms than Trinity's football field, and also offered higher quality play.  I will never forget the confusion on the ticket seller's face when he asked us what side we wanted to sit on and we asked him which team was the favorite for the game (traditionally, when one attends a high school football team, one has a team that they are rooting for).

The crap-tasticness of the football was actually one of Trinity's big selling points.  If you are an academically oriented student in Texas it is easy to feel you are a second class citizen to the football team.  So a lot of smart Texans in search of a liberal arts education go to Trinity because they KNOW that academics comes WELL before football in terms of the school's priorities.  Tennis may be another story, but at least they come by their country club college status honestly. So to see this record-breaking play by Trinity takes the cake. 

Wacky lateral plays that are successful are always fun to watch.  But this one is of epic proportions. Although I think Jim Rome summarized it well today.  What he said was, in effect, you are never going to see a football play with fifteen lateral passes that results in a touchdown again in our life.  But, Cal's five laterals against Stanford retains the title of "Coolest Lateral Play Ever" because a) it's Division I ball and b) they guy had to trample a trombonist to get the touchdown. Still, a fun little blast from my past.

Fantasy Football Simplified

In 2006 something like 40-50% of fantasy football teams with LaDainian Tomlinson won their championships. 

When you consider there are 32 teams in the National Football League, 3-4 running backs per team, and multiple other positions to take into consideration, that is a very statistically significant number.

I suspect that if you were to substitute "2007" and "Tom Brady" in the first sentence you would probably be pretty close to the truth at the end of this season.

Unfortunately, I do not have Tom Brady on my team.

I DO have the kicker who kicked the most field goals in any NFL game ever on my team.

He was on my bench this week. 

But I STILL won the week and beat my husband this week.  Why?  Chad Pennington is the bomb.  Other people mock him, but I love having him as my third string quarterback.  Seven weeks into the season, and he's still the starting quarterback for the J-E-T-S Jets!  And that's saying something this year.

More With the Hot NFL Players

An ASTOUNDING number of people are happening upon this blog wanting to find out who the hottest NFL Quarterbacks are.  So, because I'm bored, wanting to blog, have nothing real to blog about, and need SOME reason to feel good about my fantasy team, today we will do the list of hottest NFL players on In Tiki We Trust (my fantasy football team) as of today.

I'm going by current mugshot on NFL.com, because I've discovered that google images leaves too much room for discrepancy, and for long-time players will favor older photos over current photos.  For defenses I picked Ray Lewis of the Ravens (because he's famous), and his equivalent on the Giants.

Julius Jones, RB

Rob Bironas, K

Chad Pennington, QB

Vince Young, QB

Javon Walker, WR (whose freakishly large neck hurt him a lot)

Matt Hasselbeck, QB

Ravens, D (as represented by Ray Lewis)

Bernard Berrian, WR

Shayne Graham, K

Hines Ward, WR

Maurice Morris, RB (for two more days)

Ahman Green, RB (who would probably move up if he'd shave his beard)

Steve Smith, WR

Jason Witten, TE

Giants, D (represented by Antonio Pierce)

Warrick Dunn, RB

Julius Jones is lucky he's hot, and not injured, because he's holding onto his roster spot by a thread at the moment, and will likely be looking for work in the fantasy football world in the next couple of weeks.

If you've got a particular group of NFL hotties you'd like me to rate, just let me know.

P.S.  To the people finding the blog wanting to know who the hotter Manning is, you need to get your eyes checked.  Without any doubt it's Eli.  No contest whatsoever.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

Jimmy Rollins
Miguel Cabrera
Fausto Carmona
Michael Young
Todd Helton
Steve Smith
Matt Hasselbeck
Vince Young

Double champion this week - baseball AND football!  Meaning I am completely mediocre in both fantasy leagues right now!  Yay me!

Make The Punishment Fit The Crime

There's been a lot of talk in the sports world lately about the New England Patriots and what big fat cheaters they are.  OK, so it generally isn't referring to them as big fat cheaters, but between Mr. Tom "Butt Chin" Brady and Mr. Bill "I make an NFL Coach's salary, but can't afford to wear decent looking clothes on game days" Belichick I really don't care for the Pats.

Anyhow, they got busted for illegally spying on the other time and are also accused of jamming up the radio frequency used by their opponent to call in plays to the QB.  For those not in the know, QBs have a radio transmitter in their helmet, and the coaches will broadcast to them what play they should be running.

There have been fines issued and draft picks surrendered.  Some are saying this is too much.  Others are saying wins should be forfeited and Belichick should be suspended for a number of games.

Me, I say make the punishment fit the crime.  If Belichick is not mature enough to use the radio waves responsibly during a game, then he should have the privilege revoked.  In other words, no radio receiver in Butt Chin's helmet.  They have to run in plays with guys from the sidelines, like was done once upon a time before the current technology was in place.

If the Pats are as good as many seem to think they are, this will merely be a fly in the ointment and they will continue to kick butt.  If they are only good because of their cheater pants ways, this will nip the problem in the bud. 

And anything that annoys the Butt Chin and Belichick makes good sense in my book.

2007 Hottest Quaterbacks

Last year I ranked all the NFL Quarterbacks based on their hotness.  A fair number of people have landed on this blog because of that post.  Who knew so many people needed to know who is the hottest quarterback in the NFL?

Well, given that I think Donovan McNabb may have gotten hotter (shaved his head), AND that people have already started the searching this year, I figured I'd do an updated list.

Before I begin, the methodology:  I go to Google images, type in the QB's name, and go off the first image I can find of his face.  Starter's only.

This year's hottest QB's:

Tarvaris Jackson        Minnesota
Eli Manning                  New York Giants
Drew Brees                New Orleans
Matt Leinart                Arizona
Matt Shaub                  Houston
Jake Delhomme         Carolina
David Garrard             Jacksonville
Tony Romo                  Dallas
Ben Roethlisberger    Pittsburgh
Carson Palmer            Cincinnati
Matt Hasselbeck        Seattle
Marc Bulger                St. Louis
Chad Pennington        New York Jets
Donovan McNabb        Philadelphia
Joey Harrington        Atlanta
Trent Green                Miami
Damon Huard            Kansas City
Jason Campbell         Washington
Vince Young                Tennessee
Rex Grossman            Chicago
Alex Smith                  San Francisco
Jay Cutler                    Denver
Brett Favre                Green Bay
Peyton Manning         Indianapolis
Josh McCown              Oakland
Philip Rivers                San Diego
Tom Brady                    New England
JP Losman                    Buffalo
Charlie Frye                Cleveland
Jeff Garcia                  Tampa Bay
Steve McNair              Baltimore
Jon Kitna                      Detroit