Sorry about the layoff

R.I.P -- Jiri Tsluty's Career

We took a few days off. I know -- we weren't even a week in and we couldn't make a post for 3 days, we're big jerks. I'm sorry. NoNo also volunteers himself for whatever punishment you deem necessary.

It's just that this week couldn't have been any shittier sports-wise. Did you know that Barry Bonds got indicted? Did you know that A-Fraud agreed to the outline of a new contract? Did you know that OJ Simpson got indicted? Jesus Christ already ESPN. 3 hours dedicated to 1/600 of the players in MLB. Everybody out west
wonders why there is an East-Coast bias -- this is what happens when ESPN has Thursday night games in Arizona and there is nothing to show until 9:00 at night.

Starbury is back on the bench after Isiah was able to destroy whatever evidence Stephon had against him. I'm guessing that he had pictures of Thomas and Jiri Tslusty together from Jiri's 16th birthday party at Michael Jackson's house. I really gotta say I love the blackmail. This is at least the second instance this fall that has taken sports back about 50 years. The other was the report that JP Losman was on the bench for a few games early in the year because Ralph Wilson wouldn't be able to pay him if he reached the incentives in his contract. These days, I thought sports were pretty stable in general, even if there were a few whackos. I think it is slowly being proven that there are few normal people in sports, and those that are don't stick around in high profile positions for very long.

Well, party at our house tonight...stop by if you want. NoNo and I will be reading from Wurthering Heights. We might even invite you into the special room. I'm serious. R

Bar Trivia Rules, and so does UCLA

Ah, bar trivia. Tonight, team "Naughty by Nature" - that'd be myself, Robert, and two other indispensable team members - was crowned trivia champions at one of the local dive bars. The prize? A 50 dollar bar tab. Come hang out with us, we have bar dollars.

The questions that put us over the top, you ask?

-What country is the leading exporter of olives? That would be Spain, not Greece. Hooray.

-What national chain store was the location of Shia Lebouf's recent arrest? Walgreen's.

We somehow got both of these right. Ah, the benefits of higher education.

Anyway, while this was going on, a TV in the background was showing the UCLA- Cal State San Bernardino game. A few things worth noting about this one:

-UCLA looks good. Real good. CSSB had something like 15 points at the half. Ben Howland has his boys playin some serious defense, but it's also worth noting that CSSB probably wouldn't beat my intramural team. I also still have a few doubts about whether or not these guys will be able to score with the likes of a UNC, but they're legit title contenders and they're built for the NCAA tournament, make no mistake.

-Got to see the much-hyped debut of Kevin Love. After hearing how he's the next basketball Jesus (thanks ESPN!), I was actually pretty impressed. He seems to be able to score in traffic, and he looked pretty good on the boards (again, consider the opponent). Perhaps the most hyped phase of his game, his Peyton Manning-like outlet passes, actually got him into trouble a few times. Every time Love brings down a defensive board, he's immediately looking down the court and has no qualms about chucking it deep. I think this worked once and the other times he overthrew his man, but I love the idea - he'll burn teams on these a few times a game, especially in a run and gun Pac 10.

-Kevin Love's facial hair. There was a year where Kris Lang attempted to grow the chin strap at UNC, and he looked like a beaver-lumberjack hybrid. Well, K-Love has brought the white-guy chin strap back, and he looks like... well... K-fed. Lose the lame facial hair buddy, you've been hanging out with Lorenzo Matta too much.

-Steve Lavin was announcing the game. The sound wasn't turned up so I didn't get to hear any of his gems, but I did notice them pull one of those borderline-asshole "Hey Steve Lavin, remember how awesome you used to be back when you coached at UCLA, and now you can't land a coaching job? Yeah!" highlight reels, where they then panned back to Lavin and you can tell he's calling producer an asshole under his breath..

-John Wooden looks old. He may be the only coach where everyone knows he blatantly cheated, but he gets a free pass because he's just an all-around great guy who everyone respects. In other words, the complete opposite of Coach K.

-Speaking of cheating, it seems like the Toledo Rockets play every fucking Tuesday night football game on ESPN. People wonder why Toledo got involved in a college gambling problem, and the answer is pretty obvious - they play every Tuesday/Wednesday night game on ESPN. These games are nationally televised. People bet on these games, just because, hey, its a Tuesday night football game. MAC teams and other non-BCS conference teams, fly under the radar a bit as far as NCAA sanctions go, because most of the 5-star recruits who people watch closely go to larger schools where it's much harder to get away with things like this. Thus, these MAC kids are more susceptible to point-shaving or something similar. Needless to say, they were playing Ball State or someone shitty tonight. I didn't pay attention to the score.

-UNC plays Davidson tonight at Bobcats arena. Look forward to seeing how we match up with Stephen Curry, one of the best scoring guards in the country. Which brings us to our Gardocki of the day: Did you know that Stephen Curry is the son of former Virginia Tech star and Charlottte Hornet Dell Curry, who was one of the greatest 3-point shooters to ever play the game? Over/under on how many times they mention this during the game tomorrow? I'd say 15. Seriously.

-NoNo

Fantasy Basketball Sucks.

I mean, really. The last 6 guys to move in free agency in my leaguewere Jason Kapono, Linas Kleiza, Carlos Delfino, Kelenna Azubuike, and Keith Bogans. Those guys wouldn't win a pickup game at Woollen. Nothing says excitement like waking up in the morning to check the old fantasy basketball score just to see "Oh HELL yes, Delfino's got a great matchup against the Warriors!"
I'm just not seein' it.

With fantasy football you get a week to analyze the matchups, talk shit, and legitimately ask yourself if Marshawn Lynch will be able to hold up against that stout Vikings D. Baseball gives a chance for the stat-heads to do their thing. Fantasy Nascar and golf is cool for dads, I guess. And I refuse to acknowledge the NHL unless the Hurricanes are in the Stanley Cup (in which case I'm the biggest damn bandwagon fan you'll ever see).

But fantasy basketball is worthless. I'd much rather bet on which NBA star will be the next person to be arrested outside of a strip club (come onnnn Smush Parker!), or what freak injury will happen next to Grant Hill. Who will be the first to implode on his team this year, Stephen Jackson or Ricky Davis? Things like these make the NBA fun to watch, not worrying about whether or not Reggie Evans shot 40% from the field.

Actually, I'm just fucking jealous since I'm last in my league. Fuck this.

-NoNo

Greatest MNF Game Ever

Somebody's getting fired in the NFL scheduling division Tuesday morning. I don't know how Seattle vs. San Francisco got put on Monday night. That was one of the worst games of the year. Each team played terribly, Seattle just happened to be mediocre as compare to S.F.'s utterly lame. This game had only one chance for greatness -- the Mike Nolan subplot. I honestly thought San Francisco had a chance before the game on that basis alone. I thought all the aura that comes with Monday night, Shaun Alexander's absence, and the Niner's desire to win one for Nolan could combine to override Alex Smith's talent and their defense's ineptitude. I was wrong. Must have been because Nolan went without a suit on a night where he surely should have had one on. In fact, the suits are the only reasons I have any respect for either Nolan or Jack Del Rio.

My night got even worse went I stopped watching that game in order to listen to the end of the Pittsburgh Penguin's game against New Jersey.
Final score: Devils 3 Pens 2. I can't bore you with a lot of hockey talk; I can't watch the games so I can't tell really what we are doing wrong, but I'm guessing it's a lot. Sidney Crosby's point streak is still intact though. It should be something to cheer for once we're winning again. There is still a long way to go in the year, I'll just hope we can turn it around. As long as Mike Lange is doing my play-by-play, I'll continue to listen no matter how bad we are.

Here's today's Gardocki: Did you know that A.J. Hawk is dating [now married to] Brady Quinn's sister? (As they pan to her just being a babe in half Notre Dame/half Buckeyes jersey from the 2006 Fiesta Bowl) R

Gardockis

'Did you know that Chris Gardocki has punted 1,177 times without having one blocked?'

Men who announce football games are, on the whole, retarded. I'm not saying it's an easy job, but after 15 years of watching sports, I know I couldn't hit a baseball or a receiver in stride, but I do feel confident that I could jump into the broadcast booth for Fox and be a sufficient color guy.

Anyway, if you watch enough, you begin to notice that even the best crews only have so much to say. There often isn't actually anything interesting to say, but they are getting paid to speak, so they do. In this case, what we like to call a 'Gardocki' comes into play. One of the most trumpeted stats over the past few years was Chris Gardocki's unblocked punt streak. Every time he did punt, without fail, at least one guy would tell us what number it was, or when Gardocki had entered the league, or some other bull that doesn't really matter. Almost every player has something 'interesting' about them that needs to be brought up once a week. We keep a running tab of the good ones at the house, so we'll post them at our leisure. After all, we do have lives... sort of. R

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Wes Welker on the World Wide Web

Hi there.

This is our first foray into the world of blogging, so we'll see how this goes. We're three college dudes living in Carrboro, NC. It's basically a tiny little communist hippie town in the middle of North Carolina, complete with about 12 burrito places, free farmers' markets, free mass transportation, and a general disdain for personal hygiene. Most importantly, it's the neighbor town to Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina, where we're students. Right in the middle of ACC country, we're privy to some pretty great live basketball, football (getting there, anyway), and women's field hockey (hooray!). Most of our time is spent in our TV room either drinking, watching sports, or on a real crazy night, drinking AND watching sports.

So, I know what you're thinking - Is that Wes Welker? What in the fuck does that mean? Well, the idea struck Russell and I while we were watching the Celtics lay some rapes in a preseason game when they showed a crowd shot. Junior Seau was pretty easy to recognize, but the average looking white guy next to him? Eh, not so much. Turns out it was everyone's favorite white wide receiver, Wes Welker! Then it occurred to us - would any sports fan really be able to pick this guy out walking down the street? He's awesome, but he's a pretty average guy, just like us. A deeper meaning, bitches.

We've got a location and a title - now who the hell is writing these things?

First up is Russell. He's from Pittsburgh and always wears a backwards hat. If Big Ben and Sidney Crosby somehow had a baby, I'm pretty sure he'd go gay for it. He's also the resident cook, and the current champion of the Red Lobster Neverending Shrimp Eating Contest (tm).

Robert is the house advertising guru and resident emo kid. He likes Joy Division, dark rimmed glasses, and cheap wine from Trader Joe's (but then, who doesn't?). I'm pretty sure he's the one that came up with the "Cabana Boy" nickname for David Carr, so for that we can be eternally grateful.

And I'm Stephen, but I'm going to go by the sweet blog name NoNo. It makes me sound like a fucking badass. I'm a physics major and generally have a pretty dorky outlook on things. If my life were a sitcom, it'd be like that Big Bang Theory show, only without that stupidly hot blonde chick. I also took Utah State to the promised land on NCAA 2008 on Heisman mode. Let's see you assholes do that.

And that's that. Stay tuned for some Pulitzer-worthy sports posts. And perhaps other things, if they're awesome enough.

-NoNo