The (Mostly Hypothetical) NFL Preview: Pittsburgh Steelers

I will get to the (Mostly Hypothetical) preview of this year's Steelers in a moment, but first a response to "Will_Parky", who took issue with my saying that Philip Rivers is the 32nd best starting QB in the NFL:

your saying rivers should be ranked 32nd QB in the league? yeah thats why he's rated one of the top 5 ? ? ?

Nicely worded, "Guy Who Definitely Isn't Philip Rivers Using An Assumed Name." Let me defend my position:

1. Philip Rivers is not a winner.
2. Philip Rivers inherited a team that was a winning team.
3. Would you trade your quarterback for Philip Rivers, keeping the rest of the team you have?


That's Step 1 of how you rate a player, after all: Would you take him over the guy you've got, with your same personnel?

(Step 2 is: Would you want this player to be the one you rely on with 2 minutes left in the Super Bowl and your team down 6 points, with the ball on your 20?)

By that measure, where would you put Philip Rivers? (Besides the bench?)

On with the Steelers!

Team: The Pittsburgh Steelers.

Quick Recap: The Steelers were last seen being almost completely unable to play through their hangovers and take advantage of the Packers' comical attempts to cover up Rodgers' latest concussion/nearly lose the Super Bowl, and the aftermath of that has been that one of the Steelers' players -- James Harrison, he of the apparent 'roid rage causing him to lash out at everyone including but not limited to Strawberry Shortcake-- attacked Ben Roethlisberger for not being Peyton Manning but being paid like him.

According to Deadspin's Haters Guide To Fantasy Football, which I read for the laughs because if you research fantasy football you need a more productive career or a girlfriend or both, the Steelers made no offseason moves. According to people who are forced to follow Wisconsin Badgers football because they (a) live in a Madison suburb and (b) have a former-boss-now-partner who wants to take them to a game and they figure it's about time they started living the high life, what with being a partner now, only they are a little dismayed to learn that "high life" for a partner in a medium-sized Madison, Wisconsin law firm means "Going to watch UW play UNLV," which is only a little more entertaining that my traditional foray into UW games (watching them beat up on Northern Illinois 133-2)...

... I got lost in parentheticals there. Suffice to say that the Steelers had former UW running back John Clay in camp, until he walked out on them. Since Clay walked out on UW, too, (leaving a year early) that wasn't entirely unexpected. That's still a gutsy move from a guy that went undrafted. I wasn't able to find if he's back in camp or any other news about him, so let's assume that the Rooney family had him killed. Seems about right, doesn't it?

Speaking of the Rooney family, did you know that the guy who people hold in such esteem, Dan Rooney (the patriarch of the Steelers-owning clan?) holds some sort of honorary post in the British army? It's true: he's an "Honorary Commander of the British Empire," which means that if his team doesn't make the playoffs every year, he can order Redcoats to invade Philadelphia.

If you're not careful, you might confuse them with:

This category of the (Mostly Hypothetical) preview is more for casual fans, like me, than people who obsessively watch ESPN and preview shows and know how to spell Mel Kiper's name (I always want to give it a Dutch-y twist: Kuyper.)

People like me don't know about all those third-string players and second-string players and even first-string players and are likely to say something like "Are you sure it's James Harrison who ripped on Strawberry Shortcake, or are you making that up?" and so it's important to make sure, when googling around for information on the Steelers, or other teams in the NFL, to not get them confused with people whose names are similar.

Which is easy to do -- suppose, for example, that you google the word

stealers

looking for people who steal -- like, maybe, you're a lazy cop who knows that everyone proves everything by Googling.

If you did that, you'd find out that somehow, Pittsburgh Steelers still comes up first on that list, probably because Google doesn't want any trouble with the Hessians that Rooney can also command, and you'd have to go down third on the list to find Stealer's Wheel, whose Wikipedia page says was band that

In the early 1970s... was considered to be the British version of American folk/rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Heady praise, indeed! But does it hold up? The group did make "Stuck In The Middle With You" which, I swear to God I always thought was done by John Lennon:



I'm not even kidding. Prior to writing this, I'd have bet you good money that Lennon made that song. (I wouldn't have paid up. I'm cheap.)

Stealer's Wheel also charted with Star





and "Everything Will Turn Out Fine,"



Which sort of sounds like it uses the same acoustic-riff that Stuck In The Middle With You did, doesn't it? You didn't see CSN&(Sometimes) Y reusing anything from Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, did you?

Score: America: 1, Britain: 0.

Or: America! F*** Yeah!

Let's celebrate by hearing what purports to be a version of that song on the ukulele:



Good God! That was awful. Here's a better one:





What's A-Twitter With This Team? I think the only thing you need to know about the Steelers and what's being said about them on Twitter comes from this Tweet:




Yes, nothing can stop you, John Clay, except having to practice.

(And Iron Man. Iron Man can stop anyone.)

What Romantic Comedy Character Will The Steelers Be Like This Year? This is where a lesser sportswriter (i.e., every other one) goes for the obvious joke vis a vis Roethlisberger's well-publicized troubles with the ladies -- which, you'll note, is the first time I've mentioned it in this post.

But I am not a lesser sportwriter. I'm not a sportswriter at all.

I'm me! Pleased to meet you!

Anyway, here's what romantic comedy character the Steelers will most resemble is Aldous Snow.

Who you know better as "Oh, yeah, that was Russell Brand's name in Forgetting Sarah Marshall":



Aldous Snow-- that is, "Russell Brand's character in that other movie where Russell Brand essentially played Russell Brand" -- almost stole the show from the rest of the movie, getting Sarah Marshall and being generally obnoxious and making that video and otherwise being, at first blush, the most memorable thing about the movie.

And Aldous was supposed to be kind of a bad boy, too, albeit one with some wisdom that he dispensed at the end to Jason Segel (if I'm remembering right).

But he wasn't really a bad boy -- and when he tried to clean up his act ("We gotta do something") the way he did it was vague and not very helpful and didn't really do much to distill the image he had already, and in the end, Russell Brand/Aldous Snow was a loser anyway because Sarah Marshall decided she liked Jason Segel after all (again, if I'm remembering correctly. I don't take notes in movies, after all.)

So what you're left with is this muddled sort of after-image: was he bad? Was he entertaining? And it doesn't matter, because he wasn't the central focus, after all, but simply a sideshow and one that lost in the end.

So have at that, Steelers fans. Your team's gonna do something, but it's not clear what and it won't matter anyway.


************************************************************************
Previously on (Mostly Hypothetical) Previews:

Washington Redskins

Tennessee Titans

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Seattle Seahawks

San Francisco 49ers

Detroit Lions.

San Diego Chargers

Got a team you want to preview? Got a book or movie or other thing you want to hype? I love guest-posters, and I'll print your post if it's good and give you free hype. Email me and include NC! in the subject line.

Update On God: He likes Larry Fitzgerald, still hates Buffalo (but watches Keeping up with the Kardashians.)

Larry Fitzgerald, whose total NFL career, as far as I'm concerned, can be encapsulated in the phrase "not living up to potential that may not exist" got paid this week -- $50,000,000. And you may think that Larry Fitzgerald got paid because of his talent, but that talent appears dubious, at best, given that when you think NFL wide receivers over the last few years, where does Larry Fitzgerald appear on that list? I'll give you the list of NFL Wide Receivers over the last three years, off the top of my head:

1. Ochocinco.
2. Terrell Owens
3. Sidney Rice
4. Donald Driver
5. Greg Jennings.
6. Hines Ward.

Now, granted, that list is Packer-heavy because I live in Wisconsin, and it includes Hines Ward mostly because he managed to fend of crowd favorite Kirstie Alley on Dancing with the Stars, but still: Nobody knows Larry Fitzgerald.

Except God, and He's really the only person who counts, right? After Fitzgerald parlayed being "the most attractive woman in the royal family"*

*this is a saying that I use when the competition is not really all that strong. Fitzgerald may be the best receiver on the Cardinals, but saying that is like saying "she's the most attractive woman in the royal family," or "he's the smartest Palin." There's not really any yardstick to measure by, is there?

into $50,000,000 -- or one thousand times the annual median income in Arizona, although to be fair all those illegal aliens are keeping wages down for people, right? -- people like me were left wondering who was responsible for this. It can't be Fitzgerald, right? For obvious reasons (he's not that good, is my point.) It could be stupid ownership blowing money on a never-will-be, paying about $1,200 per dropped-errant-Kolb-pass, and I was about to blame them, but then I got the information, straighthand, from someone who knows: Chris Johnson, holdout running back, who tweeted:

god is good.

You know Chris Johnson has the inside scoop, because we all have to call God by his formal name, God with a capital G. But Chris is on an informal basis.

And Larry himself appears to also be on speaking terms with God**

**or god, because I can't rule out the possibility that Chris Johnson just spilled the beans and we actually live in a multitheistic world; for all I know, Johnson was speaking of just one god out of many. So it may be Thor that did this.

because he Tweeted back

thanks CJ you up next my guy

and if you want to determine the relative positions of "NFL Players" vis a vis "God" in the average footballer's mind, just note that they don't capitalize God but do capitalize each other.

That's not all God was up to this week, though: As shown by people giving credit where credit is due -- i.e., thanking God on Twitter, God also made sure Kim Karsdashian's made-for-tv wedding went through, and it's probably because He was so busy doing that that Tim Tebow got relegated to third string and hasn't yet been shipped off to Buffalo -- God being too busy to strike down Kyle Orton (that's for next week) and still too mad at Buffalo, which is apparently modern-day Gomorrah, to send a real quarterback there.

Speaking of which, everyone knows what Sodom did to make God mad, (they raped angels, according to some people) but what did Gomorrah do? Are college students going around gomorrahizing each other? Shouldn't they be? Isn't that what college is all about?

Aaaaaannnnd... there's the NSFW filter kicking in on your computer.


Previously, on Updates On God:

God likes Ochocinco.

This is a better way to save money than cutting your players and moving to Toronto. (Hint, hint, Ralph Wilson)

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Straight Talk for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

So if you’re aware of anything, you’re generally aware that it’s more expensive than ever to be a pro football fan – you’ve got to spend more for jerseys, more for tickets to games, probably more for hot dogs once you get to the games and want something to eat, although a hot dog is really more of a BASEBALL thing, come to think of it.

You know what pro football needs? That Nacho Hat that Ned bought Homer at the Isotopes game. Why isn’t THAT a thing yet? “Nacho nacho man…”

Where was I? Oh, yeah: Sports are more expensive, so if you want to keep enjoying them at your same level as in the past, you’ve got to cut costs somewhere, and I think the place to start is your cell phone bill, where you’re paying too much.

I can tell you’re paying too much because you probably don’t have Straight Talk.

Yet.

Straight Talk is the no-contract, no-credit check, no hidden charges cell phone provider that can cut your cell phone bill in half – making you richer INSTANTLY. It’ll be like you were the first pick in the draft, but you won’t have to pretend you didn’t know your dad was soliciting money for you to attend a college.

My cell phone bill typically comes in at about $100 – and my phone was $200, because it’s a “smart phone,” although I don’t feel so smart to have paid that once I found out about Straight Talk. With them, I can get a name-brand phone (Samsung, Motorola, and more) and an unlimited talk/text/net/everything plan- everything you need - and cut that bill down to less than half.

The unlimited plan is $45 a month, with nationwide connectivity and reception, and phones start as low as $10, with smart phones available for way-low prices: smart phones with cameras, Bluetooth, the works.

So I could have more than $50 per month left over – or $600 a year. That’s a lot of new Buffalo Bills jerseys I could get – a home AND away, and maybe even some for the kids.

Or I could get the cable channel that actually lets me WATCH their games – and still have a smart phone, so I could call a friend during the game.

Straight Talk has other plans, for lower prices, if you don’t need unlimited. They include 411 calls for no charge, so you can stop googling people’s numbers and just place the call, and they don’t have reactivation or disconnect fees.

What’s not to like?It's what your mom would tell you to do, and mom knows best. Find out more by watching this guy:

And don’t just listen to me. Listen to this actual customer:

I wonder what Serena Williams' bikini ranking is. (Weird Sports.)

So Serena Williams got into the US Open but was ranked 28th? And apparently this is controversial because she's "surging?" That's why I'll never understand tennis.*

*The list of reasons why I'll never care about tennis is even longer.

It seems that the tennis world is agog over the fact that Williams is going to have to face "top seeds" in early rounds of the US Open -- and will have to do so only because, you know, she hasn't been playing tennis at all, or all that well, for 18 months.

That's not all Williams' fault; she did suffer some injuries (sliced foot and blood clot) that sidelined her -- but the fact remains that she is currently ranked 28th in the world, and will be seeded based on that 28th ranking.

That's not enough for the Tennis Lover of the world:

The four Grand Slams can seed players without going by rankings in case of aberrations. Wimbledon seeded Williams seventh upon her comeback in June despite the fact she was ranked 25th at the time.

...

Though she fell flat at Wimbledon, Williams has rediscovered her form, winning two hardcourt titles this month -- in Stanford and Montreal -- and is emerging as the favorite to win her fourth Open.

Dumping Williams to 28 means she will have to face a top-eight seed in the third round -- possibly even No. 1 seed Caroline Wozniacki or No. 3 seed Maria Sharapova.

That comes to you from the NY Post, and you can see their argument, right? Wimbledon ignored the rankings and listed her higher, and she "fell flat," so the USTA should ignore the rankings and let Serena...

... wait, I think I'm missing something, here. Like tennis' scoring system, the idea that Serena should be ranked higher than 28th makes no sense.


_______________________________________________________________________________


Like tennis? Try first serve tennis. To find out more about how First Serve Tennis got in this post, call (210) 349-3439.

I bet Favre set this up just to make Aaron Rodgers lose sleep. (Brett Favre Legacy Update!)

I keep thinking I should have a little jingle for this feature. I've never had a jingle.

Anyway, Brett Favre hasn't yet signed with Miami (or, hopefully, the Toronto Bills) but he is still out there getting publicity, via his drink-cadging Doppleganger:

A man who resembles Brett Favre has been impersonating the former Packers quarterback around Green Bay. He's even been spotted wearing a No. 4 jersey. ...the man impersonating Favre reportedly attended the Packers practice Thursday and posed for pictures with several fans. He also showed up at two local sports bars.

(Source.) Despite previously hating Favre so much that they burned him in effigy, short-memoried, easily-duped, not-yet-sold-on-The-Anointed-One-Even-With-The-Super-Bowl-Ring Packer fans asked Not-Favre to sign autographs, which he apparently did still posing as Brett. Some fans weren't fooled:

"The guy is a phony...But he keeps his head down so you can't get that good of a look at him,"

Said the owner of a sports bar where Bizarro Favre held court for fifteen minutes or so. (Same source.).

Judge for yourself: Here's Fake Favre sitting in the stands watching a Packers practice:



Just to make sure they weren't (or were?) being Punk'd, the Green Bay Press Gazette tracked down Favre's travel coordinator, who confirmed that Favre hasn't been in the Green Bay area since the last time the Vikings played the Packers, which raised the obvious question:

Why does Brett Favre need a travel coordinator?

The only possible answer, to those in the know (guilty!) is that Favre needs a travel coordinator because he is clearly planning on signing with the Toronto Bills, and travel between Mississippi and Canada is tricky. probably as soon as tomorrow. Don't hesitate to draft him in your Fantasy Football league.

Tennis, Anyone?

Ever seen a plate of Japanese food wreck a tennis tournament? That's just what happened when Rafael Nadal played his second round match in a tournament with blistered fingers -- having burned them reaching for a hot plate in Ohio.

What, famous tennis players have to feed THEMSELVES now? Don't they have some sort of specialized plate grabbers they could use, or couldn't a member of their entourage be forced to go touch everything before they do?

Or maybe Nadal should have done what George did in that episode of Seinfeld where he was a hand model, and gone around with oven mitts on.

As it was, he had to play out the round with bandages on his fingers, and that no doubt affected his game at least somewhat.

Whether he was looking for a racket that worked with blistered fingers, or a plate grabber, I bet the equipment he needed could have probably come from first serve tennis, - a tennis store he could have easily found online or called at (210) 349-3439.

The NFL is doing what it can to make sure you never see quality football again.

A while back, when the NFL strike settled, I remember hearing on commentator say "Will the fans forgive the NFL?"

He meant "Will the fans forgive the NFL for the lockout because they missed football news over the spring and early summer?" which is a silly question because those months are full of stupid NFL news, anyway, and abbreviating the free agent period to about 72 hours made no difference in the fan's lives, and left nothing to forgive.

What he should have meant was this: "Will the fans forgive the NFL for making the NFL season have even fewer games with teams that are ready to play at a high level, and also will the fans forgive the owners for setting it up so that even more players can get injured early on?"

Both of those things are what the lockout did, and they will have a huge impact on the NFL season.

I've mentioned in the past that NFL teams don't really start playing until Week 4, a figure I arrived at by noting that:

A. All NFL teams figure it takes about 4 weeks of preseason games to get up to speed on their offenses, and

B. No NFL teams run the "full package" of their plays, sticking with vanilla offenses and not really practicing their plays, to avoid giving the other teams films of their "real" plays to look at.

All of which means that:

C. NFL coaches are stupid and think that other coaches are, too, as if they've been on the job for more than a year, then the other teams have more than enough film of their plays -- unless NFL coaches every year introduce entirely new plays they've never run before, which would be even more stupid than just not practicing.

Plus, at best, not running your "real" plays in the preseason would only help for the first 2-3 teams you play -- by week 3, everyone's got film of your "real" plays, and

D. NFL teams, by not really practicing their plays with their first string during the preseason go into weeks 1-3 not totally prepared to play football for realz, as the kids don't say.

So this year, you're going to have teams be even more unprepared (less prepared?) going into the season, because they didn't get that extra few weeks of training camp before the exhibition games began, so by my estimate, it'll be about week six before teams really know what they're doing out there.

By which time, they'll have to get the backups ready to play, if The Dorsey Levens Effect is real, which it is.

The Dorsey Levens Effect is what I call the tendency of players who don't get a full preseason to be injured early on in the season. Back when the Packers were coming off their Brett Favre Super Bowls, Dorsey Levens was their starting running back, and felt like he should be paid more money than he'd agreed to be paid -- so he held out for a while in training camp, got a raise to $25 million, and then broke his leg the second week of the season. His holdout lasted 44 days -- 44 days of training camp he missed, only to come in and play the first two games.

My theory -- (and it's a theory like evolution is a theory, meaning that it's a fact unless you live in Texas, in which case you're more or less an Iranian when it comes to intelligence, treating people fairly, and actually being good for America) -- is that players who hold out tend to be injured at a higher rate than other players, and my reasoning is that even players who are as well-conditioned and work-out-year-round-y as NFL players are today need to bring their bodies slowly up to the even higher level of performance that's demanded on game day, when people move full-speed and they don't have that tendency to not actually hit the other guy that hard that their own teammates do.

(I assume that even though they hit hard in practice, players on the same team aren't really as motivated to knock down their own teammates as players on another team might be.)

Which means that a player who holds out doesn't have as much time to get his body back into real playing form before the hits start counting, and is that much more likely to be injured.

I'd like to tell you that a scientist somewhere or other has backed me up on this -- but googling "do holdout players get injured more frequently" led to nothing from science.

But, googling "missing training camp more likely to cause serious injury" led to this site, which said:

Also, by holding out,players become much more susceptible to serious injury because they have not had the benefit of the conditioning and preparation they would have received in training camp.

And that was written by a lawyer, so you know it's accurate.

But it makes sense, doesn't it? Not just the conditioning -- but the expectations a player has. A receiver who doesn't know the route to run, a running back who can't remember blocking assignments, and so on, are players who aren't expecting something -- so a block gets missed, a cut gets made late, and a player gets hit when he's not expecting it and gets injured.

Me and that other lawyer aren't the only ones who think this is true, either. Former Rams coach Jim Haslett blamed Steven Jackson's injury a few years back on his holdout. Darrelle Revis held out last year and then hurt his hamstring, with some people blaming the injury on the holdouts.

Which is interesting, because ordinarily, a holdout player has only himself to blame -- he didn't want to honor his contract, and got himself injured as a result. But this year, it's the NFL's fault if players start suffering injuries at a higher-than-usual rate because the NFL locked them out and then refused to move back or shorten the regular season. And with the NFL already being sued by former players who allege the league didn't do enough to protect them from injury, you'd think someone in the front office would have thought of this.

Essentially, the 2011-2012 season is a massive test of The Dorsey Levens Effect: This year, the NFL has essentially had nothing but holdouts, as the strike meant no mini-camps and no offseason visits to the team trainer, and as a result, I'm betting we'll see a higher-than-usual injury rate

But I'm hedging that bet by also betting that not a single commentator will call out the NFL for locking out its players and making them more likely to suffer serious injuries.

National Benefit Authority helps make Canada the Paradise Of The North.

Here in America, it's easy to imagine that Canada is a paradise (weather notwithstanding) -- we're always told that Canada has this or that or the other thing benefit.

What we don't hear is how confusing that can be for the average person, who may have to navigate complicated government programs without help. That's where the The National Benefit Authority comes in.

The National Benefit Authority was set up with the simple goal of helping Canadians who suffer from disabilities get the money they are owed by the Canadian government. The man who set it up did so because he helped some relatives apply for a disability claim, and learned first-hand how confusing the Canadian system can be, and found nobody really able to help him.

So he set up the National Benefit Authority to help people who might find themselves in that situation, and the NBA will now do the work for you. They've worked through almost every kind of claim, so they've got familiarity with a variety of the different processes you'll have to go through, and they'll supply a dedicated Benefit Specialist to help make sure your claim gets processed quickly and correctly.

If you're Canadian, don't miss out on the benefits you deserve -- call the National Benefit Authority.

Kobe Bryant thinks you should think he's a good guy. (He's not.)

The NBA lockout is of concern to NBA fans and sports casters, even though it shouldn't be because there is zero percent*

*that's the fewest percents as you can have!

chance they'll miss any of the regular season, and even if the regular NBA season was canceled in its entirety, would that be so bad? It's meaningless, anyhow, and just allows people to think that LeBron James might actually be good at basketball.

What the NBA fans and sports casters aren't talking about, at least prior to today, are the people who actually are affected by the NBA lockout -- the people who work for the teams and who now are starting to be laid off. You may have heard of them: They're the team employees who don't get signing bonuses starting in the millions, and so they can't afford to take three months off without pay.

Luckily for them -- or at least two of them-- the Heroic Lifesaving Angelic Probably-Would-Be-Elected-God-But-He's-Still-Pretty-Humble Kobe Bryant**,

**why is there no emoticon for sarcasm?

and other LA Lakers have leaped to the rescue. Or, at least, "dropped their pocket change and decided not to pick it up" to the rescue:

Kobe Bryant insisted on giving some of the team’s playoff bonus to two members of the Lakers’ video department whose contracts were not renewed after the season.

Chris Bodaken and Patrick O’Keefe split about $65,000 of the Lakers’ playoff bonus. Bodaken started with the Lakers as a ball boy in 1986 and spent the last 10 seasons as their director of video services. O’Keefe was the Lakers’ video coordinator for six seasons. They both hope to be re-hired by the team when the NBA lockout ends. For now, they are thankful for Bryant’s financial gesture.

My source for that quote is "The Hoop Doctors," which called the move a "nice gesture" by the Lakers. (I heard similar sentiments on CNN, home of the staged walkout.)

And gesture it is. In that a gesture helps out not at all. Imagine a starving Ethiopian. This'll help you:


Now gesture at those kids. Give them a wave. Or a thumbs up. Feel better about yourself?

Neither should Kobe and the Lakers.

The NBA pools playoff money and gives it to teams based on how far they advance in the playoffs, and the teams vote on what to do with it. The Lakers last year got $604,000 in playoff money, and voted to give 10% of their bonus to two guys who are out of work.

10%.

"They're a huge part of our team," said one player.

(Source.) No, they're not. They're at best less than 10% of the extra money your team makes.

Let's put this gesture in perspective.

The LA Lakers were valued at $584 million by Forbes in 2008, the latest year I could find. That was more than double the value just 9 years before. Their revenue that year was $191,000,000. Even with the recession, they're rolling in money.

Oh, and they're going to pay Kobe Bryant $25,000,000 THIS YEAR ALONE. That's on top of the $24,000,000 they paid this spoiled jerk last year, and in advance of the $27,000,000 he's supposed to make next year.

In 2010, all but two of the players on the Lakers' roster earned over $1,000,000; of the three who didn't earn that, two earned $474,000.

And they voted to give $65,000 to two guys who are unemployed.

Now knowing all that, I think we can see exactly what gesture it is the players made to these two guys -- it involves the middle finger, and the players showing exactly what they think of the lower-level employees who work for their company.

Well, F$#*(# them, I say. Why are they being given any credit? Why is this story being reported as something good? This is no more good than Kobe high-fiving those guys on the way out the door.

Kobe Bryant could pay their entire salaries and not notice the money missing from his account. But he's a hero because he voted to give a miniscule portion of some of the extra money he was offered last year to a few unemployed guys? He takes a helicopter to work, and I'm supposed to applaud him for leaving a small amount of money on the table.

I like sports as much as the next guy. But I think it's time we started actually thinking about what it is we're idolizing, and stopped pretending that every single thing some genetic-lottery winner does is worth kissing his a$# over. You want to cheer for someone when they put forth effort in 40% of their playoff games, that's your prerogative. But the lead on this story should've been "Selfish athletes vote to screw over little people."

Why not have a professional do what they're trained to do?

I'm always pointing out the various professional things that people think they can do by themselves. People do their own taxes, defend themselves in lawsuits, pull out their own teeth...

...well, they probably WOULD, if they could stand the pain.

And people insist on acting as their own real estate agent, even though that's a dumb thing to do, given that there are professional real estate agents who can save you lots of time and winnow out the houses you don't want to see -- narrowing the choices by price and options, and also helping you out by knowing stuff about the community you might live in.

Take Hansen & McCoy, a firm that helps sell Canyon Lake real estate and other real estate, or Lake Elsinore real estate, and around there.

Hansen & McCoy focus on purchasing properties in short sales -- so they can help you whether you're buying or selling, and they know their stuff. They can ease the transition from the current house (which may be unaffordable to you) to a new house, letting you stay in the residence until it sells.

Or they can find you Menifee real estate or Temecula real estate or
Murrieta real estate.

So many people are trying to sell their own house, or spending their weekends trying to find a house to buy - -when they could call Hansen & McCoy and let someone else (someone who knows) do the work.

I'll just say it: The video made me cry (Autism Works)

This time around:

-- Project Lifesaver may be having problems,

-- the Autism Society of Greater Madison golfs,

-- college for people on the spectrum,

-- and a review of a semi-autism-friendly business,

but first this:





That's from "Lou's Land," and I had to stop watching it halfway through and then watch it in pieces because it hit home, especially the part about "discovering a new normal." I won't take away from Lou's story by telling my own here; I'll just say that I understand exactly what he means and I've bookmarked his blog. You should, too. You can't help someone unless you try to understand what they've going through, and blogs like Lou's can assist you in knowing what it's like to live with autism.

On to happier, more hopeful things, like college for autistic people. The Autism Speaks official blog has a post on helping students on the spectrum achieve in college, pointing out something that I didn't know -- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that colleges make reasonable accommodations to people with learning disabilities, including (but not limited t0) autism spectrum disorders. The protections and services aren't as aggressive as those for kids in high school and lower (provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA]) but they're there and may help kids on the spectrum get into and through college. Autism Speaks has some pointers and links for more information, but the school counselors can provide information, as well.

Update on Project Lifesaver: On August 7, I mentioned elopement and wandering and recommended "Project Lifesaver," a program that fits wanderers with GPS-enabled bracelets.

On August 16, we got a letter from the Dane County Sheriff's Office that raised concerns about this program. The letter says the office "has been experiencing significant equipment failures with many of our Project Lifesaver clients" including the "lack of any transmitted signal," which, of course is the whole point of the bracelet. The letter concluded that:

Without reliable and operating equipment in addition to the lack of support from Project Lifesaver International, the program does not meet the standards of the Dane County Sheriff's Office... the Dane County Sheriff's Office will not longer implement the program.

The Dane County Sheriff's Office will try to find a substitute program; if you have a friend or relative on Project Lifesaver, please pass this on to him or her, and don't trust the equipment. (We haven't; Mr F still doesn't get to go outside alone and we keep all our windows and doors double-locked.)

Business Review: We took our kids to get their annual photos -- Sweetie starts planning her Christmas cards around June, and the annual Christmas card photo is usually taken in August. We don't go anywhere fancy -- just to the Sears Photo Studio at the West Towne Mall in Madison, Wisconsin, and they're generally pretty good there.

It's hard to get some kids on the spectrum to sit still for anything, let alone pictures taken by a strange person. When we took the twins for haircuts last spring, for a week before their teachers played "hair cut" with them, telling them social stories about getting hair cut (social stories are stories designed to teach autistic kids social skills) and pretending to cut their hair, and it worked great; the boys sat still during their hair cuts and Mr Bunches actually enjoyed it. (Mr F still cried, but quietly and sitting, instead of hollering and trying to escape like he used to.)

We tried the same thing with pictures -- for two weeks before, each therapy session ended with the therapists posing the boys and taking their picture with our camera, just like a photo studio, and those sessions went well. The actual day of the photos, we had a bit more trouble.

We arrived about 10 minutes early, and had to wait about 15 minutes later than our appointment, which was problematic. While no business can entirely control their schedule, waiting with autistic kids is trouble, because we'd taken the time to have the boys tired out a bit by playing (another strategy the therapists had recommended), but that doesn't work so well if they then rest up.

Mr F was also upset because -- something you never think about until you're with an autistic kid -- we'd walked through the store to get to the studio, and the store was full of clothing hangers, which Mr F likes. I try to discourage him from simply taking a hanger as we walk through the store, so by the time we reached the pictures, he was disgruntled and getting upset.

(The worker didn't mind that we then borrowed a hanger from a nearby department, which helped calm him down.)

Once we actually got the pictures going, the photographer was great -- she followed our instructions on what order to take the pictures in (get the little ones done first) and followed our instructions to just start snapping pictures, not worrying about whether kids were sitting correctly or facing the camera or smiling.

About 10 minutes of photos later, we had some of the best ones yet. So other than making us wait (even though we'd reminded the woman when we made the appointment that the boys were autistic) the trip went reasonably well.

Golf Outing: If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I began volunteering with the Autism Society of Greater Madison (ASGM) last night; my first volunteer effort was helping out at their annual golf outing, "Golf FORE Autism" at the George Vitense Golfland:



I was there from 6-8:30 p.m., helping people navigate the mini-golf course and then helping move tables around. Several area businesses including NBC 15 sent teams out to play in the par-3 midnight golf outing, and while I had to leave before the night was over, it seemed like everyone was having a great time.

ASGM is the oldest autism chapter in the country, and chaired by David George of NBC 15; if you are interested in the many events they sponsor or are looking for help beginning to navigate the world of autism, go to their site.

Autism Works is an across-all-my-blogs post that attempts to spread information about resources, businesses, apps, and other things of interest to people who have autism or have a relative who is autistic. If you have information to share, leave a comment or Email me ; please put "autism works" in the subject line.

All of these dogs' teams will do better than mine.

Probably because they don't reflexively pick nothing but Toronto Bills' players and Brett Favre:




Image courtesy of The Chive.

Merrill Hoge, Restaurant Critic? "It wouldn't surprise me if this restaurant had the best chicken ever." (Quotent Quotables)

"Ben Roethlisberger is Tim Tebow minus Jesus."

-- Daniel Tosh.

I'm not sure I get that. But with Tebow in the news for saying that Jesus is going to strike down Kyle Orton or something, I thought it was topical.

Actually what happened was that Merrill Hoge, whose job it is to say controversial things in order to keep ratings up, regardless of whether he's right or not (Colin Cowherd frequently tells listeners to his show that he views being entertaining as being more important than being right, so keep that in mind, ESPN fans), insulted Tim Tebow's mechanics, resulting in LeBron James leaping to Tebow's defense (LeBron knows a little bit about success, after all, and has vowed to only get within shouting distance of it) and somehow a guy wearing a Jesus jersey got mixed up in it, and then Tebow got criticized for saying he felt like he'd had the starting job and then got it taken away, making people like me wonder why it is that Tebow is such a lightning rod for controversy.

Heck, one guy even requested a restraining order against Tebow -- lumping Tebow in with Obama and Jesus as the people he needed protection from:

John D. Gilliand explained in Alachua County court records that he felt threatened by Tebow, Obama and Jesus. "I was trespassed from the Kangaroo Gas Station on University for saying T-Bo sucks," Gilliand wrote in the petition for injunction for protection against repeat violence against Tebow. "I personally hate any type of exercise although I feel Billy Blanks has a wonderful video."

Gilliand makes reference to Tebow, Obama and Jesus as part of gangs or making gang symbols at him. He states in all three that he is not a Gator and never went to Florida.

Let's make this clear: Tebow is controversial because he's upfront about his religion, instead of just thinking things quietly the way deeply religious footballers like Kurt Warner did in the past, and that's why he's attracting extra attention - -not because he's unorthodox in his play, but because in America, we have separation of church and football, except when we don't. It's okay for the Giants to pray for Norwood's kick to go wide right even though at the time we were in a war in Iraq and maybe they should've had a sense of priorities, it's okay for the Toronto Sleeping Pills' receiver to blame God for making him drop a pass, but when a guy on the Broncos says he thinks believing in Jesus makes him a better person and better player, people go all nuts, because it's one thing to believe in Jesus when you really need that field goal, but it's another thing entirely to, you know, believe in Jesus.

Believing in Jesus for reals is incredibly controversial in America, where most people express some vague religion but we're uncomfortable with people whose religion moves beyond fortune-cookie platitudes. And Tebow is upfront about his religious beliefs. Not in an in-your-face way; just in a polite, "Hey, I believe what I believe" way that even Jim Gaffigan and the Pope might find acceptable:



...but which most people in America are still bothered by, because religion bothers most people when it's done in a sincere way. And that makes Tim Tebow attract all that attention, which makes it obvious why Merrill Hoge chose to talk about Tebow as opposed to say, Joe Flacco, another overrated quarterback whose play is far below what people expect of him: Tebow attracts controversy, and Hoge (and other ESPN personalities) are attracted to controversy like GOP presidential candidates are attracted to corn dogs.

Hoge wasn't doing sports reporting; he was doing sports paparazzi-ing, and you should take him, and every other ESPN commentator, with the same level of seriousness that you do those "reporters" on TMZ: they're there to stir up controversy (in a player-friendly way) and not to do real analysis.

Which is fine, because sports don't need real analysis. They're sports, one of the lowest rungs of entertainment. Restaurant critics have the exact same societal value as sports analysts, and I'd rather get my sports views from Tosh. He's got the same chance of being right as Hoge, but he doesn't just pick out people to be controversial.

(And, while I'm at it, I'd rather have Tebow than Sanchez; either one's going to miss on the important throws, but Tebow's less likely to embroil your team in a statutory rape controversy at playoff time. Why isn't that controversial? and why isn't Hoge writing about that? Because picking on the Jets and Sanchez isn't allowed at ESPN, which'll down Jesus but finds sleeping with 17-year-olds perfectly acceptable.)

Tosh on other sports:

The (Mostly Hypothetical) NFL Preview: San Diego Chargers.

The Team: San Diego Chargers.

Quick Recap: So they've got Norv Turner, and Philip Rivers, which means they're not going to win any games of consequence. I also saw that they got rid of Shawne Merriman, something I only realized because I saw that Shawne Merriman now plays for the Toronto Bills.

Beyond that, I know really nothing about the San Diego Chargers, and that's more or less the way it should be. They're the backwaters of the NFL now, aren't they, ever since they dumped Marty Schottenheimer all because he couldn't win a big game, in favor of Norv Turner, who can't even win a medium-sized game. In fact, if there's one thing the Chargers should be known for beyond being the West Coast Bills -- like the Toronto Bills, they are simply there, neither terrible nor great, but they have a better record than Toronto because they benefit from a weak division -- it's giving up on great to get well, I guess so: Eli Manning was traded for Shawne Merriman, Nate Kaeding and Philip Rivers, and Drew Brees was sent packing for Philip Rivers, too, so they've invested a lot of effort in a quarterback who ranks, if you ask me, 32nd in the NFL.

But apparently, that's okay with San Diegans, who probably assume that since they're living in paradise already, they don't need to get much from their football team. It's different for people who live up North; we've got nothing but 9 months of freezing temperatures and sleet and snow, and having a team in the playoffs is often the only thing we've got to look forward to in January.

If you live in a warm climate, your team should start out with two losses on their record to even things out.

If you're not careful, you might confuse them with:

The Chargers -- the band. You don't have to be all that careful -- googling Chargers will get you mostly the San Diego Chargers, and even if you know the band The Chargers it may not help -- go to Youtube and search for The Chargers band and you'll get page upon page of marching bands.

Go to Youtube and search by name for a song by The Chargers, say, "That Night" which is the leadoff song on their Myspace page, and you still don't find them.

But you do find a link to the "Pearl City Lady Chargers." Pearl City is a city in Hawaii, so it seems that Chargers is the name of choice for cities that have so much else going for them, they don't even need a good sports team.

I then wondered if that last fact was a scientific fact, or merely a "scientific" fact, so I went and tried to find a list of all the teams that were nicknamed the Chargers, and found this page, labeled "Charger Fans' Nicknames."

That's a list of nicknames Chargers Fans have, right? Grammatically, that's what it looks like. But Chargers fans do not care about grammar any more than they care about meaningful wins, and so it's actually a page of nicknames Chargers fans give other teams.

They call the Toronto Bills the "Jills," or the "Sleeping Pills," which is actually pretty good: The Toronto Sleeping Pills. I like that.

They also nicknamed one Chargers player "Tony "Orlando and Dawn" Martin". I like that, too. Charger fans, you're okay.

Oh, and that band, The Chargers? They're only okay, too -- just like the San Diego Chargers, nobody pays much attention to them, it seems.

What's A-Twitter With This Team? Tweeting Athletes lists 27 Chargers players posting to Twitter -- but it was taking forever to load, so I moved on. That Chargers Fans attitude (eh, who cares?) is infectious.

Which Romantic Comedy character will the Chargers most resemble this year?

Pregnant Jennifer Lopez in The Back-Up Plan. Don't bother worrying about whether this character had a name; sometimes, with vanity projects like this and Mission Impossible: 3, the point isn't so much to have a character as it is to make a point about the person starring in the movie.

That's why MI:3 should have been subtitled Isn't Tom Cruise a fantastic husband? The entire point of the movie is Tom Cruise rescuing an actress who looks exactly like Katie Holmes, after all.

Similarly, The Back-Up Plan (which Sweetie and I actually stopped watching just before Lopez seemed about to eat goat food soup in the movie) had as it's point proving that Jennifer Lopez could have it all -- twins and a hot guy and some sort of micro-farm that generated enough from sales of cheese at a farmer's market to make it obvious that the farm was a front for insider trading or a drug operation.

Overall, though, nobody cared -- just as I don't care enough to look up her character's name, and didn't care enough to watch the rest of the movie, nobody cared what happened to Lopez's character in that movie because the so-called "problems" of the ridiculously overprivileged are not problems at all, and they don't drive a plot forward. They just exist, waiting for money to solve them. So Jennifer Lopez's problem -- she's insanely well-off and able to simply get pregnant the first time around with in vitro treatment, and only then meets a hot guy -- isn't a problem at all. She'll be able to (as in real life) afford nannies and go back to work, and there are plenty of guys out there who won't mind that they're not the biological father of the first two kids, especially if they get to sleep with Jennifer Lopez.

That's your Chargers: not really a problem at all, and not really worth caring about this year. They'll just exist.



Don't you love that ad! Men! They just can't handle babies! And women are so competent! and Beautiful! Now you know where talentless hack Rachel In The OC gets her material, when she's not recycling old According to Jim episodes.

That spot actually aired during the Super Bowl, which makes it fitting, as that's the closest the Jennifer Lopez of the NFL will get to that game, ever.

Oh, and I got around to looking at that Twitter page. Here's what Takeo Spikes has on his mind:

TakeoSpikes51 This dude is crazy sitting in a bathtub w/over 100 snakes. If it was me, you would think that tub was a chocolate Latté machine. Lol #scared

Charming.

************************************************************************
Previously on (Mostly Hypothetical) Previews:

Washington Redskins
Tennessee Titans
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Seattle Seahawks
San Francisco 49ers
Detroit Lions.

Got a team you want to preview? Got a book or movie or other thing you want to hype? I love guest-posters, and I'll print your post if it's good and give you free hype. Email me and include NC! in the subject line.

Zoloft lawsuit asks whether you've been harmed by medication.

A new zoloft lawsuit is raising some serious questions about the use of the drug.

Zoloft, typically used for depression, OCD, panic and anxiety disorders, and even PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) has had more than $1 billion in sales in the United States. But as far back as 1996, the FDA warned Pfizer, Zoloft's maker, about selling Zoloft outside of approved uses. By 2004, more lawsuits were filed arguing that Pfizer had failed to properly disclose potential side effects.

There are people who suggest that Zoloft's side effects can be extremely harmful; the website that link goes to above notes that Zoloft may result in "Akathisia," or extreme moodiness, which might rise to violent behavior.

If you or someone you know has taken or is taking Zoloft, you should contact a medical professional to discuss potential side effects. And if you think you've been negatively affected, you should contact qualified legal counsel.

We need fewer photos of golfers, and more of golfers' (potentially hot?) girlfriends. (Quotent Quotables)

If you know me*

*You don't, and you shouldn't. You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Dottie, a rebel.**

Then you know that I have long railed against the Kerriganization of our sports world -- the celebration of not-quite-winning, i.e., losing, that is represented by the Silver Medal, or worse. I'm not sure when it started -- probably when everyone began treating beating the Soviet Union en route to the Gold Medal as, somehow, bigger than actually winning the Gold Medal that year -- but it's in full force in America (where we previously said we didn't deserve to beat even France,) and getting worse, as represented by Jason Dufner's near-win in the PGA Championship this past weekend -- and as further demonstrated by Dufner's explanation of why he didn't win and didn't care:

I love playing golf, love competition and I want to be as good as I can be. If that's 20th in the world with no majors, or first in the world with 10 majors or never winning a tour event, I'll be fine with it. Coming from where I came from to being in this position, it's a dream come true.

(Source, but don't go there unless you want to see an article beginning with an annoying Dr Seuss reference and follow through with a terribly boring recap of actual golf holes. Turns out the only thing worse than watching golf is reading about someone else watching golf.)

So Jason Dufner is okay with never winning a tour event, which may be news to his sponsors, who were probably hoping he'd at least try, once, in a while.

Look, I'm no fan of the win-at-all-costs school of thought, but we need to balance things out here. We already decided that second-best in economics/sanity is good enough for our House of Representatives and our Republican candidates for president; do we have to have professional athletes who just don't care, too?

The other great quote in that article comes from Dufner's girlfriend (does it seem fair that golfers get girlfriends? I agree: No.), Amanda Boyd, who agreed that Dufner never seems to get excited about golf but does get excited about Auburn football, but said:

That's true... But I can get him worked up, too.

I wasn't able to find a shot of Amanda Boyd. That picture on the post is not her -- it's Miranda Cooper, who was sitting and minding her own business watching golf when Dufner's shot at the Quail Hollow Championship landed in her lap.





** Here's where that's from:

Way to give your fans hope, Buffalo!

Hot on the heels of the Toronto Bills' decision to blow off the NFL season entirely by trading the most talented person on their roster for a guy they'll cut in week 2 next year comes this disturbing Tweet from the official Bills' Twitter feed:

QBs Brad Smith and Joshua Nesbitt will see action under center tonight. Smith will also return kicks along w/ Da'Norris Searcy

You may wonder, if you are a football fan, what a quarterback -- even one as generically-named as Brad Smith is -- is doing returning kicks -- but that's because you are not privy to the genius mind of Coach?/Arby's Assistant Manager Chan Gailey, who saw in QB Brad Smith lots of potential.

Brad Smith, you see, played quarterback in college, but was then made a wide receiver by the Jets when he was drafted. The Jets know a thing or two about personnel -- or so you'd assume by the fact that they've made it deep into the playoffs two years running.

But Chan knows a thing or two, as well -- or so Buffalo fans are praying, because who wants to get a passport out everytime you go watch your "home" team play? Says Chan:

“I see him being used in a similar role as I used Kordell Stewart in Pittsburgh. He can play some receiver and quarterback. He gives you a lot of versatility. He can play special teams, cover kicks and return kicks.”

As I said: genius. You can't go wrong modeling your team after the Kordell-era Steelers -- the team Chan was an offensive coordinator for, helping them to an 11-5 record and the AFC championship game. Of course, that team had Jerome Bettis at running back and Yancey Thigpen at wide receiver. So, um, there's that.

Overall, though, if Smith plays quarterback, and on special teams, he saves you at least 3, maybe 4 roster spaces. That's that many fewer lockers to pack up and move across the border in the middle of the night. Ralph Wilson is always conscious of the bottom line.

That is the FASTEST anyone has ever given up on a season.

Who's the hot prospect in college football that everyone will want to draft number one next year? I only ask because the Buffalo Bills have set their sights on him by trading away the best player on their roster in exchange for... I don't know. Lunch?

From Buffalo News.com:

The Buffalo Bills traded their highest paid player today by sending receiver Lee Evans to the Baltimore Ravens in exchange for a draft pick.

The move comes after days of speculation that the Bills were fielding offers for Evans. The draft pick is a fourth-rounder, according to ESPN.

Bills' sports writers, not wanting to admit that they'll have to transfer to Toronto in a year or two if they want to live in the same city as the team they cover, are claiming it's a good idea:

Receiver is perhaps the deepest position on the Bills team. ... The deal leaves Stevie Johnson as the Bills' No. 1 wideout. Roscoe Parrish and David Nelson are next on the depth chart and usually play out of the slot positions. Nelson can play on the outside, as well. The Bills added former first-round pick Buster Davis last week. He was signed after being released by San Diego. The Bills have high hopes for big fourth-round pick Marcus Easley, who missed all of his rookie year last season to injury. Second-year man Donald Jones is a lock to make the team. He can play outside as well. The deal helps the bid of Buffalo's Naaman Roosevelt to make the team. Roosevelt was called up to the 53-man roster the latter part of last season and has looked good in camp.

Sounds deep to me. Let's see: guy who was injured before he ever played, guy who was cut by San Diego, guy who couldn't make the team last year. We're set.

Just to put this in perspective: Lee Evans was the best wide receiver on the Bills for a long time, including last year ... and he didn't rank in the top 50 receivers overall... in the AFC, even.

So how bad are the guys behind him?

And the Bills, with Evans, ranked 12th in the AFC in receiving yards last year, and 9th in receiving touchdowns. Do you really think they got better by doling out the best player on their roster?

Apparently, hiring Chan Gailey to work part time as the Bills' coach when he's not supervising at Arby's wasn't enough to sink the team down low enough that the owner can move them to Canada. But don't fret, Ralph Wilson -- if this doesn't do it, you could always just start randomly assaulting the fans who still bother to show up hoping the Bills will win a game.

Here's what Buffalo will no longer be seeing, and what Ravens fans would see if Joe Flacco hadn't gotten his job by default:





And here, for good measure, is a guy named Lee Evans who apparently is a comedian. I'm not 100% sure but he kind of looks like the pizza delivery guy from There's Something About Mary:

Aaron Rodgers still doesn't like Mike McCarthy

It's no secret that The Anointed One in Green Bay doesn't like Mike McCarthy -- but he also doesn't like practice, or being told that he has to actually do that.

After Coach McCarthy -- who won my grudging respect by actually coaching well in the playoffs and Super Bowl -- took his Green & Gold Defending Champs to task for sloppy practice, A-Rodg had this to say:







The media, because they love The Anointed (but Disappointingly Mediocre In The Second Halves Of Big Games) One, is playing this off as an homage to famed troublemaker Allen Iverson's rant. Which just goes to show: if they like you, what you do is great/funny. If they don't like you -- as when Brett Favre hated practice, what you do is selfish and prima donna.


Other things Aaron Rodgers doesn't like:

Christina Aguilera

Jessica Szohr

Justin Timberlake

Cancer survivors

The truth

Injured reserve players

His special teams players

All his other teammates

Brett Favre, Mike McCarthy, and Clay Matthews

The Packers uniforms, (and their throwback uniforms).