Sixers Trade Rumors

probably nothing is going to happen with these, but i guess the rumors that are floating around are:

- AI to minnesota for KG straight up
- AI to denver for nene, earl watson, pick
- hunter and ollie to cleveland for eric snow

the top one is interesting. not that i want to do it, but a starting lineup of salmons, igoudala, KG, c-webb, and dalembert is intriguing. i guess you could also be looking at snow, igoudala, KG, c-webb, and dalembert.

i'll believe it when it happens. it would certainly enable the sixers to match up with detroit's height, but guard play would be suspect.

Abraham Gets Franchised

phew! i'm so glad the jets franchised john abraham. now i don't have to worry about a) the eagles signing him or b) hearing cataldi whine incessantly if the eagles don't sign him.

the birds don't need another high reputation/low effort/oft-injured/inconsistent production player.

vandenbosh is gone, abraham is gone, seems like help on the d-line is going to have to come from the draft.

Sports Malaise

i'm sure some of it is carryover from the poor eagles season and some of it is because i'm swamped with work right now, but man, am i feeling a whole lot of... i don't know... indifference toward sports right now.

and it's not just that the sixers suck and the flyers are going nowhere... it's not that the winter olympics is the oddest collection of contrived contests around... it's not that winners of both the superbowl and the nba dunk contest were seemingly predetermined... it's not that pitchers and catchers just reported and already brett myers is yapping about something or other... well maybe it is all those things.

yucky, yucky, yuck, yuck. nfl draft is the only thing on the near horizon.

Can't Stop Laughing

i know it's not sports related, but it's just too damn funny not to post. i am not posting this to make any sort of political statement, only as an acknowledgement that i cannot stop laughing after seeing this. (thanks to steve bowers for forwarding)
















there are some damn creative people out there. which is the funniest? karate? impalement? raining down blows upon you? with his bare hands? genius. just pure unadulterated genius.

Larry Brown In Hell

ho ho, ha ha. apparently the knicks are trying to trade for steve francis. this is the most entertaining sports news i've read in a while.

are you kidding? this is *terrific* news! is it possible to stock a roster full of players that larry brown would hate to coach more?

isiah thomas must secretly hate beelzebrown. there is no other explanation for the way he's building this roster. he knows that coaching a starbury/franchise backcourt would literally kill brown.

i hope this happens... am i a bad person for wishing this happens?

Olympics Thoughts

- it's entertaining, but why is snowboarding halfpipe an olympic event? isn't that what the x-games are for? besides, if they allow snowboarding in the winter olympics, shouldn't the summer olympics bring in skateboarding?

- why is the men's downhill scheduled so early in the games? isn't that considered one of the glamour events of the winter games? why have it happen on the second day? is the winter games being run by the same group of rednecks that run nascar?

- every ski jumper should change his first name to matti

rick tocchet

the big news in town is that the rocket was nabbed in a sting operation and is being accused of financing a gambling ring run by a NJ state trooper. i'm not sure if tocchet is actually guilty or not and if he is whether he'll be facing jail time, but i do know that this will have no impact on how i remember tocchet as a player.

rocket played for a lot of teams in his career, but in my mind he'll always be a flyer. tocchet personifies the ideal of a what a flyer should be -- skilled and tough with a lot of heart. if he isn't my favorite flyer of all time, he certainly is in the top 3.

good luck with your legal battle rick!

ugly sixers loss

i love watching AI play usually, but last night's game was horrible. AI's shot wasn't falling so he had to shoot more and more to get his points. u-g-l-y.

how can a point guard end up with zero assists? how is this possible?

bad superbowl calls

look, before i get inundated with email attacks, here are some of the ones i thought were questionable:

- darrell jackson touchdown called back due to "offensive pass interference". the call was way more offensive than the actual interference. you simply cannot make that call in the superbowl (or at least call it the other 4-5 times it occurs during every football game)

- darrell jackson called out of bounds at the end of the first half. one foot in, other foot hits the pylon. am i the only one that thinks this is clearly a touchdown? what, no review? no mention by madden or michaels? what gives here? isn't that the rule? pylon = inbounds?

- roethlisberger touchdown. eh, i can understand why it wasn't overturned, but i think it was clear he didn't get in.

- hasselbeck 15 YD penalty after the pick. what? then again, didn't the eagles have a call like that against them this season? i'm trying the erase it from my memory, so i'm short on details, but i'm pretty sure mcmahon had that same call against him... was it against the seahawks?

- phantom holding call on the long pass to stevens (which ultimately led to the hasselbeck pick). this was probably the single biggest game changing call and probably the single worst call as well. to make matters worse, i thought that haggans was offside on the play. so not only was he not held, he was offside and seattle should have gotten a free play.

- all the non-holding calls on the steelers

- the non-delay of game penalty on the steelers

superbowl commercials

agree with phil that the superbowl commercials were better than the last few have been.

my favorites:

bud light - hidden fridge
fed ex - cavemen
bud light - running from bear

superbowl thoughts

what the f*ck was that last night? this isn't russia. is this russia? this isn't russia...

having spent a good portion of my life there i was rooting for the steelers, but my gosh, if i were a seahawks fan (and thank the Lord that i am not) i would be positively apesh*t right now. that was the worst case of referees deciding a championship game in any sport since the 1972 olympic basketball final. we're not talking about one bad call or two. we're talking about an entire game -- start to finish -- of bad calls, phantom penalties, questionable touchdowns... yikes.

you know what? i am happy that the eagles didn't make it to detroit. if the eagles had been the nfc representative and had that number of bad calls made against them, i'd have to give up sports forever.

- i can understand the nfl's desire to get as many game balls as possible in the superbowl, but why can't they at least rub them down prior to putting them in use? don't you want the biggest game of your season to be well played? why set it up to encourage bad QB play?

- i still think randle el and jurvicius are the two wideouts the eagles should target in free agency

- if the calls hadn't been so pro-steelers, this could easily have been a rout the other way. roethlisberger was obviously nervous and the first couple of picks didn't help his confidence any. if the seahawks had managed any significant lead, pittsburgh would have had to put the ball in big ben's hands... and it would have meant trouble.

- alan faneca is everything that shawn andrews should aspire to be.

Stacy Keibler

not really sports related, but eh, i'm busy and this is what's banging around in my head...

so my daughter likes this show "dancing with the stars" and i noticed that stacy keibler from pro-wrestling is competing. what gives? everyone else is some sort of actor or singer or jerry rice. stacy keibler is a professional dancer! gee, i wonder who's going to win? what a ridiculous show.

i don't have a problem with her winning (she's the hottest one on the show), but the way they have it set up offends my sense of fair play. they should rename it "dancing against the ringer".

McNabb Explosion

what do you guys think about the recent explosion of TO comments from mcnabb? i have no idea where it's coming from. actually, i don't have a problem with anything he said (even the whole "black on black" crime comment, though it is kind of silly), but he kept his mouth shut for so long why open it now? why now?

what's his motivation here? i can't see anything positive coming from this. if anything, this is going to rip things apart again. doesn't this put next season at risk too?

do you think it's because it seems like me-o is going to get what he wants? that there are a number of teams positioning themselves to sign him? could that be the motivation?

why now? what's he trying to accomplish?

Signing Day

good article in today's inquirer about what a great job larry johnson sr. did in maryland -- signing virtually every top recruit in the state. looks like some good times ahead for penn state fans.