This fulfills my obligation to write something about sports

Give me a break - I started this blog right before the Super Bowl, and if there's any sport I'm in the least qualified to discuss in such a formal and public forum as this, it's football. If I had to write about two sports, it would be pro football and college football. Inasmuch it's harder to closely follow baseball throughout the season, which has yet to begin, and I don't know enough about basketball to discuss Steve Nash or the NCAA tournament, except to say that the new Nike ad campaign is awesome and Northwestern shouldn't expect a spot in the tourney, that leaves me in a bit of a pickle. I could break down Super Bowl XLI, but frankly, it just hurts too much.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following 6 paragraphs are a really boring unfunny rant about how boring NASCAR is. Just thought I should warn you.

So, what's the big sports news these days, aside from Carlos Zambrano being his typical asshole self (especially great because he couldn't lead the Loveable Losers to anything resembling a chance for the playoffs last year) and Beyonce gracing the cover of SI's Swimsuit Issue? 5 NASCAR teams were severely penalized for various acts of cheating before the Daytona 500, ranging from putting foreign substances into the fuel tanks to modifying the aerodynamics of the car's body. What does this mean for NASCAR?

I don't care.

I'm sorry if you're a fan of NASCAR, but I just don't get it. Yes, sure, I love a good car chase in a movie, I get the thrill of speed, but the average length of a NASCAR race is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours and 20 minutes. No media time outs. Nothing like a full count, a free throw, a putt, a third and long, anything where there's a moment of calm before what could be a defining moment that can change the outcome of the game. Yes, there are moments that change the outcome of the race, but dammit, they're just going in circles. I've played games of pick-up football that have lasted for an hour and a half, basketball that have lasted an hour, and little league games that were 7 innings - long enough to qualify for a legal MLB game if it were to get rained out. I, however, never in my life played with a Matchbox racetrack set for even an hour. If I spend 45 minutes driving in my actual car, going in a straight line, I can get so pissed off that I question the life decisions and moral fortitude of those driving around me. Driving sucks. It SUCKS. I HATE IT, AND I'M SURE YOU HATE IT TO. Who looks forward to the morning commute? That's all NASCAR is, a three-hour plus commute. Can you tell I'm getting bored just writing about it? Read this paragraph. It's rambling and circular and pointless, and it doesn't take you three hours to read.

Look, case in point: play a game of Madden '07 football on a games console. You play 4 5-minute quarters, the game takes you maybe 40-45 minutes to play out. It'll probably be at least as exciting as a decent actual pro-football game, if you're playing at an appropriate difficulty for your skill level, the game will be fairly close.

Play a round of Mario Kart. A race will take you about 5 minutes to complete, and you can shoot tortoise shells at your opponents if they don't summon bolts of lightning to strike you down first.

Then, play a round of NASCAR '07. If you play a race that's half as long as an actual one, it'll last an hour and a half. Compare to Madden, where with some simply modifications, namely making the game clock accelerated and playing 7 or 8-minute quarters, you can execute about the same number of snaps as in an actual game of football, and it'll still take about an hour or less. Or, you can simulate half a race, where you don't get to shoot objects at your opponent, force fumbles, or do anything more interesting than pulling into the pit to change your tires, and waste 90 minutes of your life. With those 90 minutes you could play 2 games of Madden, read a book, take a nap, cook dinner, or watch 2 real-time episodes of "24" on DVD. You could get into your real car, take this game back to the store and exchange it for something more interesting, like a deck of playing cards or a potted plant. Goddammit, I'm ready for football to start again.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the end of the boring unfunny rant about NASCAR. Sorry.


So, in other more interesting news, the San Diego Chargers are looking for a new coach, including '85 Bears MLB "Samurai Mike" Singletary, because after having a 14-2 season with a record-setting RB and one of the most-feared defenses in football, it was obvious that Marty Schottenheimer had to go.

Also, this week was Gregg Easterbrook's last installment in this year's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column for ESPN's Page 2. I've read him every week this season, and usually find him to be entertaining, occasionally insightful, if not on occasion a little snobby (read a great mock-up of his column here - thanks TC!). This week's column was a little much, though, as Easterbrook goes through all the sports journalists' predictions for this NFL season and explains how they were wrong (for example, pre-season Super Bowl favorite Carolina didn't make the playoffs). In his defense, he turns the microscope at himself a few times, but he is just a little too happy to point out how stupid everyone is (except when he rightfully criticizes an analyst for saying the Lions could be a dark-horse playoff contender. They're the Lions. They're contractually obligated to blow) when they didn't predict the Colts and the Bears would be the last teams standing. The last time I checked, the thing I love the most about sports is that they are unpredictable. Gregg can remind us of that, I just wish he could do it without being a pretentious ass.

Well, that fulfills my obligation to write something about sports. Except, of course, this column blows and actually says NOTHING about sports. I'll do better next time, promise.

Expect it sometime next September.