It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

I hate winter. More accurately, I hate shoveling snow. Who will rid me of this troublesome snow? Hopefully the same person who will bring me some interesting news stories. What a dry week.

Why do we play? Help me out Herm Edwards. We play to win the game. Apparently, Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick didn’t get the memo. That, or he just crumpled it up and threw it away. With 12 seconds left, the ball on the opponent’s one foot line, the clock stopped and no time outs, Billick elected to kick the game tying field goal instead of taking a shot at the end zone to try to win the game outright. Couple this with the Ravens inexplicable failure to center the ball between the hash marks for a Matt Stover field goal which could have redeemed them (had he not missed it just wide left) their opponent, the abysmal Miami Dolphins - who until yesterday had won a grand total of zero games all year long - proceeded to capture their first victory on a 63 yard pass from their psychic citrus quarterback Cleo Lemon to some guy named Greg in the ensuing overtime period. I was convinced that a Ravens defense led by the indomitable Ray Lewis simply had too much pride to allow themselves to be defeated by a team as dismal as the Dolphins - especially after coming to within three feet of defeating what may turn out to be the greatest football team in history two weeks ago. But I guess all the defensive pride in the world is useless if your coach and your offense don’t share it. So can we finally please stop hearing how much of an offensive genius Brian Billick is? An offensive genius would play to win the game. If you play not to lose, you certainly don’t deserve to win.

Note to Dallas Cowboys pretty boy Tony Romo, leave your girlfriends at home. Especially if her name is Jessica Simpson. I don’t want to make this into something it’s not, but there’s no denying the simple fact the two games to which Romo has brought his flavor of the month (previously American Idolette Carrie Underwood) have been two of worst games of his career. I understand that the whole point of being a superstar is to get the hot chicks, but you just can’t bring them to work. You don’t see Tom Brady bringing his supermodel girlfriend to Patriot games, do you? The moral of this story, blondes are bad for business.

In a sports related story, former senator George Mitchell released a report four years in the making on the subject of steroids in professional baseball. The report lists 90 current and former players - including the likes of New York Yankees pitchers Roger Clements and Andy Pettitte - and provides evidence of the purchase and use of performance enhancing drugs by said players. Of course, now that the report is out, the league, the owners and the union are all rushing to the first television camera they can find to explain to anyone who will listen how much of a travesty this is and how hard they are working to ensure the game is cleaned up, while the players’ lawyers all cued up behind one another to vehemently deny any wrongdoing. The problem with this report is that it comes about fifteen years too late. Since at least the early nineties everyone has at least suspected - if not known that steroids were rampant in baseball. But no one wanted to do anything about it. Why? To put it simply, “chicks dig the long ball.” Juiced up players crushing juiced up baseballs over the shorter fences of smaller ballparks were raking in money hand over fist. Testing players for performance enhancing substances would have lowered the rate of their use, which would have decrease the rate of offensive production and cut into revenues. And baseball simply couldn’t allow a little thing like substance abuse get in the way of profits. So they continued to ignore the issue until Congress threatened to revoke their anti-trust immunity if they didn’t at least pretend to address it. Ironically, Major League Baseball’s failure to address steroids sooner seems to have worked to their advantage. Things have been rumored and suspected for so long that now that an official “truth” has been revealed - nobody cares. Baseball players cheat, ho hum, tell us something we didn’t know. It’s sad that we seem to be at the point where we accept cheating as just another part of the game, but I guess on some level, we get exactly what we deserve.

The State of New Jersey has voted to eliminate capital punishment and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. This is really something of a symbolic gesture as New Jersey has not executed anyone since 1963. But the interesting angle to this story is that one of the death row inmates who’s sentences were commuted happens to be the monster who raped and murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka - the 1994 crime that inspired “Megan’s Law”. It’s difficult for me to know what to make of this story. On the one hand, I am no proponent of capital punishment. Too many things can go wrong in the judicial process to attempt to exact such a final punishment, and the state should not be in the business of murdering people. But on the other hand, people who murder 7-year-old kids do not deserve the courtesies we typically extend to civilized human beings. Fortunately it isn’t something we’ll have to give much thought to as this creep will expire in prison.

In an unrelated Garden State story, in a scene straight out of the Shawshank Redemption, two inmates escaped the Union County Jail over the weekend leaving behind dummies in their beds, posters of bikini-clad women covering their escape routes and a note wishing the prison authorities a happy holidays. However, Union County officials aren’t laughing. Maybe they just lack a sense of humor. Maybe they’re just a little upset that they were taken in by the old hole-behind-the-poster trick.

Finally, both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates held their final debates before the Iowa caucuses. I didn’t watch either of them, (thankfully) so I can’t say whether or not anything came of them, but if I were to hazard a guess I’d say they were completely useless. However, there have been some interesting shifts in the poll numbers. Obama and Huckabee are up, Clinton and Romney are down, and for some reason people continue to give money to Ron Paul. If people (Ron Paul supporters) are really that desperate to throw away their money, there’s a large green trash bin out in front of my house specifically designed to receive large bills. It’ll be there ‘till New Year’s Day. I also take cheques. And money orders.