My Sick Mind

The news coming out of big colleges lately is that many of them are jumping from one athletic conference to another for ... anyone ... money. That's right. Texas is staying put, however, Of course, it's not love of conference or tradition or anything as sappy as that. The good folks at Fox TV are paying the Longhorns somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million per year while still allowing Texas to form its own, all-Longhorn network, an option it probably wouldn't have in the Pac-10... Sweet deal. I find it odd that the same NCAA that puts schools on probation because they may have paid a student-athlete's rent or bought him a nice dinner could sanction the school making a financial deal with a TV network. It's OK for the school to make the money but not OK for the students. Not all of the players are going to sign big NFL contracts. Some are actually attending school for an education, and it might be nice to have a decent meal once in a while that you don'...

Brackets. Did you fill out your bracket? How's you bracket? Did you do a bracket? Do you want to get in our braket pool? Bracket ... bracket ... bracket ... bracket. The bracket pool. America's big springtime time-killing obscession between Valentine's Day and Memorial Day. Millions of hours wasted on filling in names of teams that none of us know anything about, except when it comes to the semi-finals, and Gonzaga is in the "Sweet 16" and we feel compelled to tell everyone, "I had them in my bracket." Good for you, buddy. Anything worth paying attention to is worth gambling on. Otherwise, we're only into drinking holidays like St. Patrick's Day and the day before Thanksgiving. The Philadelphia Inquirer, our local newspaper, had the audacity to print a blank bracket in Sunday's paper, expecting us to fill in the names of the teams as they were announced. Seconds after "The Selection Show" the names and filled-in brackets were av...

CAMERA PULLS BACK FROM ANDREW, WE'RE IN JOE'S OFFICE (DAY) ... JOE "Okay. Explain to me like I'm a two year old, because there's an element to this I can't get through my thick head." It will soon be college bowl season. Over the past weekend, an organization called the BCS selected some teams to go to some bowl games. Back in the day, they had names like The Cotton Bowl, The Sugar Bowl, The Orange Bowl and The Bluebonnet Bowl (whatever happened to that?). They corresponded with some annual celebration or a parade of some sort. That was back before college football was the big business enterprise it is today. [Ironically, you can't pay the players] The games were played on New Year's Day, and there were maybe 8 of them. If I had the energy I could do the research, but you get the point. Today , there are more than thirty of them , which is strange because there are 119 Division 1 college football teams, so it stands to reason that (a) you have t...

YESTERDAY: LONDON - Record company EMI Group PLC said Sunday it planned to unveil "an exciting new digital offering" with computer company Apple Inc., raising expectations that The Beatles' music catalog is about to be made available through Apple's iTunes online music store. So, this makes, what, five formats? LP, tape (cassette & 8-track), CD and now the digital. I'd like to know how many people have the same albums in every format. Especially since they just got through screwing us with that re-issue of all the Capital albums. I'm sure Beatle fans were busy warming up their credit cards and making iPod space for another copy of "Hey Jude", until ... TODAY: EMI Says New Deal to Allow Apple to Sell Songs Online Won't Include the Beatles Catalog LONDON (AP) - EMI Group PLC said Monday a deal to allow Apple Inc. to sell the record company's songs online would not include The Beatles' catalog - dashing hopes the group's music wo...

This coming weekend may be a Top 5 Weekend of the Year. The weather is getting just a bit warmer, the birdies are chirping, the basketballs bouncing and the bats and clubs a-swinging. On the hardwood, we get the NCAA tournament cranked up again. I checked the futures sheet I brought back from Las Vegas in January. Georgetown was 40 to 1 to win the tournament. The biggest long shot of the 4. The others were in the 6 to 1 range, with Florida a 9 to 2 favorite to repeat. How much you want to bet that there are some vacationers from the D.C. area who may have laid down a shekel or two on their alma mater? The LPGA is cranking up their first major of the year, The Kraft-Nabisco deal at Mission Hills in California. It used to be called the Dinah Shore, but they took her name off in 2000. It's the one where the winner will jump in the lake at 18 on Sunday. I think it's the only sporting event where the winner jumps in a lake, if you don't count diving. Annika is having ...

You can judge the character of a person by the neatness of his automobile trunk. That's the doctrine I began to embrace immediately after I cleaned and vacuumed my trunk tonight. Prior to that, the doctrine had no meaning whatsoever. By the way, carrying cat litter in your trunk is a great way to combat the effects of icy roads, but its value diminishes when the bag breaks open in the trunk and the ice is on the outside. On the bright side, I did manage to find a ten dollar bill in the trunk. I guess it fell out of that guy's pocket. I CAN MAKE NO FURTHER COMMENTS, AS THE CASE IS PENDING LITIGATION. In other news, I'm in great need of some interesting new music. After getting overly excited by that Morphine band, only to find out that the band is neither together nor entirely alive anymore, I'm wondering if there's anything new I need to hear. On the way home from vacuuming small cubes of clay, I heard a song called "Brave New World" and prayed that ...

The treadmills in our gym sit in front of a bank of televisions, tuned to various channels. Almost always, one is tuned to Fox News. Tonight, on one of their stupid shows, the host was interviewing some kid who started crying for one of those American Idol contestants. Supposedly, the one she was crying for didn't get eliminated [I'm piecing this together from closed-captioning] and everybody figures it's because of the kid. Apparently, the kid is some sort of cult figure, because she was sitting there with her mom, literally inhaling their 15 minutes of fame, and the stupid host was gushing over the kid (I could tell by the way he was gushing) and the kid was giggling and the mom was looking as though she couldn't be more proud. Then, the host said something and the kid started to giggle, then the mom and the host started laughing because the kid was being so darned cute. It was at that precise moment that I started to squirt my water bottle directly into my nos...

Today marks the official beginning of the annual ritual known as The Week of the Persistent Question .What's the question, you ask? (glad you asked). It is any variation of: "How's your bracket?" or "How you doin' in the brackets?" or "My bracket sucks, how's yours?" This takes first place by a slim margin over The Week of the Persistent Statement . "I'm kicking ass in my bracket pool." or "[ Insert name of overrated team ] killed my bracket." or "I'm out of my pool." It's one of those times where a we hear a single word so much that it wears at us. Bracket Pool, Bracket-buster, Bracketology, bracket - bracket - bracket. It's quite a racket, this bracket - in more ways than one. A big TV event and the illusive lure of gambling make for a great Pool-related sporting event. Like the Super Bowl, it finds fancy with people who would otherwise not give a crap but for the availability of ga...

I was an hour late for work today. I set my alarm ahead an hour, too. I thought that’s how it was supposed to work. Otherwise, what’s the point? It's not really an extra hour of daylight, like they tell us it is. It just moves it to a place where we can enjoy it, but why should I lose sleep over it? Another great idea brought to you by the Shrub and his Posse of Pussies. An extra hour of late-afternoon daylight was the best idea that they could come up with to ease our energy problems. Move the clocks, George . I only wish I could have been a fly on the wall during that MENSA-esque brainstorming session. Come to think of it, as a fly, I'd be the smartest one in the room. Then, I was checking the QVC and they were selling this Dragon voice-activated software for your computer. Surf the web, make document files and generally get around on your PC by speaking the commands. Great. Now, not only do we have to put up with the obnoxious cell phone clowns engaging us in their persona...

I was planning to take today off, out of respect for our National Day of Mourning , but I figured that a 3-day weekend was enough. It’s a shame that our federal government didn’t feel the same. Former President Gerald Ford died last Tuesday. It took a week to organize a National Day of Mourning? I suppose we couldn’t mourn properly on a Saturday or Sunday, especially when there’s a Tuesday after a holiday coming up. Beyond the seriousness of the event, it strikes me as a scheme cooked up by a bunch of people who specialize in them. It must be nice to be able to vote yourself a pay raise and organize a four-day holiday for yourself. I’m in the wrong line of work. Speaking of which… College football coaches appear to be in the right line of work. Pardon me for thinking straight, but it strikes me as odd that an organization (the NCAA ) who would have such stringent rules prohibiting athletes from accepting anything as meager as a suit of clothes would allow the coach...

One thing I really enjoy is good hypocrisy . Recently, the folks at Yahoo Sports ran a story detailing some indescretions by former University of Southern California running back Reggie Bush, now a player for the NFL's New Orleans Saints. The story went into some detail about Reggie allegedly (there's that word again) accepting gifts from agents. The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, forbids athletes from accepting gifts of cash or material from anyone, lest their golden image be tarnished. The story went like this: New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush insisted Friday he and his family have done nothing wrong, responding to allegations that they accepted gifts, money and other benefits worth more than $100,000 from two marketing agents during his career at Southern California. "I'm not worried about any of these allegations or anything like that, because I know what the truth is, like I said from day one," Bush said after a Saints practice. "Once the smok...