Out like a lamb…

While perusing the online sports pages this morning and realizing that, whoa, there really are only three regular season football games left, I was struck with a thought: will the Detroit Lions win a game this season?

Their remaining schedule is kinda frightening, with a road game at Indianapolis, a home game versus the Saints, then a road game at Green Bay.  Green Bay is the only possible team I can see the Lions beating, only because they’ve already played them once this year (though Detroit got their arses kicked 25-48), and the Packers are just inconsistent enough to make things interesting.  Then again, the closest the Lions have come to winning this year has been two games that came within four points against two familiar divisional foes. 

The Lions are certainly tough and hungry for a win: will that be enough to save them?

It’s not me, it’s you.

Man, I don’t know which story is captivating more of America’s attention this week: the continuing quasi-feud between Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie, or the continuing actual feud between Cowboys receiver Terrell Owens and Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo.  I refuse to write about “Brangelina” and wasn’t even going to touch the “Tonell” story, but I feel as though I have to.  Bear with me.

You ever have that friend who just can’t seem to get into a good, lasting, respectful relationship?  Your friend (let’s call him “Terrell Owens” *) meets someone, and at first, everything seems great.  This one time, he even cried over how much he loved the other person , and even when times were tough, he blamed himself for the failures.  Considering your buddy’s history with relationships, this surprised you, and you thought, “Wow, this might actually work out!”  But then, something happened.  Like that time a few years ago when Terrell was like, “I hate you, Jeff Garcia!” or a few years after that when he was all, “You suck, Donovan McNabb!”  or, like that time in Week 15, when Jason Witten hung that picture of Tomo Romo in his locker at school, even though everyone sort of knew that Tony was sort of totally going out with Terrell at the time, and you were like, “Oohhhh, daaayum, this is gonna be good when Jessica Simpson finds out!”  Yeah, like that.  

Then Terrell SWEARS he saw Jason slipping notes into Tony’s Trapper-Keeper during AP Biology, and he was all, “WTF!!” and then later, when it was time to pick teams for lab, Terrell assumed he and Tony would be partners, because they were totally awesome together, but then Tony picked Jason!  Even though he really didn’t, because the teacher picked the teams, but OMG!  

Then, Terrell was all, “But I’ve only dropped a few test tubes here and there, this isn’t fair!  Everyone knows you don’t get an “A” in this class unless I’m your partner!”  So like, he got together with one of Tony’s ex’s named Sam, and they met this new guy named Roy, and they all met after school one day to like, talk about how much Tony sucks, and stuff.  And meanwhile, the State Biology Championships were coming up in like, two days, and the opponents were totally really good, even though one of their best guys had recently managed to shoot himself!  How would they all work it out in time??  

We shall see.  

Personally, none of this drama surprises me, but for once, I’m unsure how I feel about it.  I’m not a fan of Owens — if he played for my team, I would probably still feel this way, but I respect that he is a talented player.  I’ve seen teams get burned by him many times — a good throw down the middle of the field to T.O. is deadly if the guy has any space to run after the catch.  But his attitude sucks.  His reputation as a “cancer” in the locker room seems to be founded in truth, especially with the news of this latest “not-so-seekrit” meeting with fellow WR’s Roy Williams, Sam Hurd, and Cowboys Offensive Coordinator Jason Garrett, to whine about how Tony Romo isn’t throwing to them (read: T.O.) enough.  That very well may be true, but there have got to be better ways of solving complaints than turning your team into the plot for High School Musical 4.  

In Tony’s defense, his team was God-awful without him at the helm (and sometimes God-awful WITH him at the helm, but less-so), and I don’t think he’d try his hardest NOT to throw to T.O.  On the other hand, T.O. does make big plays, so he does have a point — he just stinks at getting across that point effectively, and since his career seems to be following a familiar path of conflict wherever he goes, everyone just gets tired of listening to him bitch all the time.

In the end, though, if a team wants to let itself implode over petty nonsense, so be it.  You don’t win Championships that way, but it’s certainly entertaining for the rest of us.   

* disclaimer: Terrell Owens is not my friend.  

For further reading, try Ed Werder’s article at ESPN.com.

Strange bedfellows.

And here I was thinking I would start this blog and then promptly run out of things to say. 

Thank you for giving me one more post, Derrick Rose!   

Now, we’ve all gotten the munchies in bed and paid the price: cookie crumbs in your pajamas, soup spilled on the sheets, and oh yeah, that time you almost sliced your arm off with a knife.  What?  Never happened to you?  Probably because when most of us cut food, we do it in the kitchen, and if we are going to use a knife in bed, we remember that it’s there before we sit back down.  

NBA rookie Derrick Rose was apparently cutting an apple in bed, got up for some water, and then sat back down and cut his arm on the samurai sword knife he was using on the apple.  As humorous as this is at first read, he’s lucky the injury wasn’t worse.  Can you imagine if he’d actually SAT on the knife?  Or did a Superman-leap onto the bed and ended up with a blade in his eye socket?  

Many on the blogosphere are saying this has got to be a coverup of some kind, but honestly, this story is too stupid to make up, right?  I mean, if you get knifed in a fight, the first thing out of your mouth to cover your ass isn’t going to be that you were slicing apples in bed; it’s going to be that you got knifed in a fight!  Or at least that you were attempting to disarm a robber, or that you were injured trying to fix something at home.  

Anyway, be careful out there!  I mean, being cautious around blades on a snowblower seems like common sense, and shoving a gun down your pants without the safety on is even more common, but now we also have to worry about knives in our beds!  This is almost as scary as when Twins pitcher Terry Mulholland had his eye scratched by a rogue feather in a hotel pillow.  

Additional reading.

Hello world!

Hello all, and thanks for visiting my sports blog.  Actually, I intend for this to be a sports blog, but I know along the way I will feel compelled to comment on other things going on around the world, but for now, I’ll try to stay on topic.  

After all, there’s so much to discuss!  I wasn’t even going to start this blog in the first place, not even after the Cowboys signed a guy who’d been practicing his defensive moves while trying to avoid being arrested for the 7th time… not even after rumors of Michael Vick possibly being reinstated made every dog owner in the country go out and buy a security fence… and JESUS, not even after Plaxico Burress decided to show everyone that carrying a gun is awesome for protecting oneself while out at a nightclub, especially while defending oneself from one’s own leg.  

But then, God blessed me with Joe Sakic, who, after recently coming off the DL, proceeded to injure himself using a self-powered snowblower by putting “his hand where he should not have put it.”  Hmm.  Like in the part that blows the snow?  

Sigh.  So after reading about that, I had to start this blog.  Above all, it’s going to be sports from a woman’s perspective, since, like, I’m a woman.  Wait, don’t go!  Seriously, I watch a lot of sports and I have lots to say and it shouldn’t matter that I don’t have a penis.  Don’t judge!  Just read.   I’ll be discussing athletes doing moronic things, and also teams and coaches doing moronic things, with little happy dances here and there if my favorite teams happen to avoid doing either of those previously mentioned things.  I’ll also talk about trades and performance, and just about sports in general.  Football and baseball will be the two most talked about sports, only because I know the most about those two, but since this blog started because of a hockey player’s brilliant tangle with a snowblower, I will make room for hockey, too.  I’m sure basketball will find its way in here as well, since there are plenty of moronic basketball players.  

Now, lest you think I’m being judgmental, I probably am.  But really, people who make exorbitant amounts of money and then do stupid things are just hypnotic to me.  I can’t help it.  As for the name of the blog, in football, which is played with 11 men on the field, the sports fans are often referred to as the “12th man,” since cheering loudly and throwing trash on the field can help the home team.  I decided I’d be the “12th woman.”  

So have a look around and tell me what you think!  The banner at the top is the Presidents Run that the Washington Nationals do at every game.  It’s the Nat’ls equivalent of the car race, or follow-the-ball-under-the-cap thing that most stadiums put up on the big screen between innings.  The Natties are my 2nd baseball team (behind the Dodgers), and the Presidential Run is there so the fans can temporarily forget about the game their team is probably losing.  Plus it’s hilarious.  

Wow, and just as I finish this post, John Daly has reportedly smashed a paparazzi’s camera because the photographer took a picture while Daly was sucking on the green more than usual.  I’ve seen lots of players get pissed at cameras going off while they’re playing, and I’d probably be pretty irritated if someone had their camera in my face while I was golfing horribly.  But please.  You don’t react by smashing cameras unless you’re Kanye West.  

Looks like I’ll have to make room on here for golf, too!

Peace!