Sports Illustrated Preview

LeBron has to be the greatest athletic specimen in the history of mankind. According to the cover story LeBron got that ripped by never lifting weights. He only started lifting recently. How is that possible? He has a 44 inch vert. And he says he can get at least a foot higher jumping off one foot. He's 6'8" and 270 lbs. In my opinion him and Kobe are 1 and 1a as the greatest basketball players in the world. LeBron is only 24. To me its all amazing.

Bruce Springsteen is playing at the Super Bowl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Springsteen sucks.

SI Players NBA Poll - Who is the best all-around athlete in the NBA? #1 got 66%. It's obvious. Name 4 out of 5 and I'll give you a dollar.

Michael Redd out for the year. I'm not a big Redd fan. He's never gonna be the guy to lead a team but he's by far the best player we have. It's nice to see Charlie V stepping up a little now. No way the Bucks make the playoffs, especially if Bogut's playing time is spotty.

Mosley beat Margarito last Saturday night. This is the first of about 6 pending sports bets I have from my trip to Vegas. I took Mosley (4 to 1 underdog). That was a smooth $70. Awesome ass beating.

Jeff Kent definitely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Super Bowl preview. SI predicts Cardinals victory. That would not be good for me. I win $130 if Steelers win by more than 7 with a combined score more than 47.

The Wake Forest dude who hit the last second layup against Duke is a world karate champion. I bet you didn't know that.

Here's an article about figure skating. Anyone interested?

Moving on...

I wouldn't mind reading Joe Torre's new book. There's a couple page excerpt here that I'll read the next time I'm taking a crunch. Must feel good for Torre, though, that the Yanks missed the playoffs last year. I know it felt good to me.

I've watched a bunch of the Australian Open, mainly b/c it's on during the early morning hours. Tennis chicks are so hot. A few of them rank in the unbelievable section of hotness. I watched all the semifinal matches. Being an American I was naturally rooting for Andy Roddick. I've seen him face Roger Federer numerous times and he gets mopped up every time. I enjoyed Serena's jumblies bouncing around during the finals. Federer vs Nadal in a couple hours. I'll be watching.

Seth Davis' Three Pointer section - What's this? "Wisconsin is sliding towards the NIT." I couldn't agree more Seth. Nice game against Northwestern tonight, by the way.

Other thoughts -

Ricky, you are a pussy. A text message at 4:30 in the morning doesn't negate your pussiness from staying in at 7pm last Saturday. You and Don are hairy vaginas. We actually had a really good time at the Helm. Played a couple hours of pool. Had another deviled egg. We should go get wings sometime.

Juice, I'm gonna start siphoning a little cash here and there in preparation for the possible (but will never happen) Vegas trip. Ricky, tell Don to come with us.

The girlfriend and I booked a trip to the Dominican Republic for March 13-18. We're staying at the Majestic Elegance in Punta Cana. 5 nights of all inclusive fun. I'll make it back just in time for the NCAA Tourney.

Vegas, baby?

OK, I'm back.

A rather uneventful trip in terms of Vegas excitement, but a successful trip nonetheless. I'd like to do a clever and witty rundown of events, but I'm simply too lazy.

Overall, I won around $300. I won about $600 the first night, which is always great getting ahead right away. Worm dominated the first night, winning around $1500. I went out to vegas with $1300 and returned with $1000.

Fuck you Juice and your prediction of me lying around in Vegas like a sack of shit. Granted, I have done that on more than one (or two) occasions, but not this time. I made it to about 5am the first night. As I opened my eyes at around 11am I did not have a headache and thought all was good. Well, all wasn't good. Three of the four of us (Worm got back around 9am and didn't join us) wondered over to OSheas for food. All I could eat was half of my Subway five dollar foot long. That is a bad sign. We stopped in at the Mirage sports book only to find out the Mirage now makes you place bets to get drinks. Fucking gay. That was the main reason I loved their sports book so much. As long as you were sitting there you got drinks. Now you need to either bet on a horse race to get a drink ticket or, get this, bet $250 on a single sporting event. 250 FUCKING DOLLARS. If you need a drink ticket that bad and you lose the bet, that better be the best drink you've ever had. Anyways, I was really put off by this development because the Mirage sports book is awesome to watch a game at and I was really looking forward to watching the conference championship games there on Sunday. We decided to find a new venue.

Getting to the point, we made it back to the room where I proceeded to upchuck. I could have preserved a lot of energy by simply throwing my sub into the toilet.

We made our way to three casinos I had never been to - Palms, Rio and Gold Coast. At the Rio we made a great discovery. They're sports book doesn't require you to make a bet to get a drink. This was a big relief. We spent the entire day there on Sunday. I was absolutely certain the Eagles were gonna win, so I lost that bet. On a side note we got word from Schmock he wanted to place a bet on the Cards. Somewhere in the correspondence with Schmock confusion took hold. Worm thought Schmock wanted $40 on the Eagles. So when we got a "u bet!!!" text from Schmock after a Cardinal touchdown we knew something was wrong.

The second game provided me with one of my all time favorite sports betting Vegas moments. My top moment ever was the double reverse flea flicker Steelers vs Bengals the game Palmer hurt his knee a couple playoffs ago. This year, the Palamalulululululu pick for a TD was AWESOME!!! I bet a hundy on the game and came away victorious. But since I bet a hundy on the first game the championship games were a push. But still a great time. Nothing is better than a full day at a sports book.

A lot of funny shit happened (Worm doesn't snore, he makes creepy sexual noises instead) but most were of the "you had to be there" type. I was out and about all three days, so Juice's prediction was wrong. I also won money, debunking another Juice prediction.

Fuck Juice. Fuck him right in the butt.

I have 50 bucks on the Super Bowl right now. I have the Steelers (-7) and the over (47). I also placed about $200 on some future bets (Stanley Cup, Daytona 500, NBA Championship, World Series).

Time for Juice to figure out a date. I will not take part in planning another trip but I'll try to make it.

Sports Illustrated Preview

Good god. I realize Barack Obama plays hoops. But, Jesus Christ, do I have to hear about it ALL THE TIME? Don't worry, I won't enter into a long political diatribe, partly due to the fact I don't typically discuss politics and partly because of the strong liberal current running through this blog, but the media circle jerk over Obama is never ending. He hasn't done anything yet. Save the nut busting at least until he's in office.

As you all should be well aware, I depart for Las Vegas in just over 24 hours. This means I will be betting heavily (my 'heavily', not degenerate gambler 'heavily') on the AFC/NFC Championship games. Probably around $50/game on assorted over/unders, prop bets and money line bets. I haven't decided how I'm going with the Ravens/Steelers. But I'm excited about that game. I'm definitely betting on the Eagles. I think they're gonna win by at least 17 and I heard the line is maybe 2.5. Really? Also, I hear there's a UFC event in London this weekend. I am not a UFC fan in the sense that I know next to nothing about it. I'm pretty big into boxing but never got into the MMA craze.

I cannot put into words how much I hate the long dreadlock look. It looks fucking ridiculous and we'll see two of the worst on Sunday - Larry Fitzgerald and Troy Palomoulululululululu.

SI Players NBA Poll - I'm gonna let you guys try to answer this, and don't cheat. The question posed to NBA players was, "Which NBA player would you least like to mess with?" The top answer received 46%. Second place got 17%. Those were the only two with double digit percentages. Can you guess the two? #1 is pretty obvious.

About fucking time Jim Rice made it into the Hall of Fame. And, while I'm on the subject, my all time favorite athlete also made it in, Rickey Henderson, because Rickey Henderson is the greatest Rickey Henderson and he's more Rickey Henderson than any other Rickey Henderson. Truthfully, though, he was my idol. I was a leadoff base stealer through high school and I wore #24.

Dan Patrick interviews Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham. Kudos to Whittingham for voting the Utes #1. They have a legitimate claim. It always works well for the BCS when teams like Utah go undefeated but get smoked in whatever bowl they play. This year it didn't happen. Anything that fucks the BCS makes me happy.

The return of Golf Plus!!! I entered the fantasy golf league that Bear posted. Didn't have a great first week but I'm just warming up.

54% of America's top 100 golf teachers say Tiger will be better when he comes back, which I hear could be for the Accenture Match Play next month.

SI predicts Steelers 20-Ravens 13. Pretty high scoring in my opinion. I'll go Steelers 17 - Ravens 6. For the other game they have Eagles 24 - Cardinals 19. That's horseshit. I have Eagles 31 - Cardinals 13.

WOW, Jake Delhomme laid a monster egg. That's the stuff the end of careers are made of.

Oh no....... The only person the media loves more than Obama right now is????????????? You guessed it, Superman Tim TEBOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I do think it's pretty sweet he's coming back. Reminds me of another big white guy from another sport on a certain college basketball team that came back for his senior year.

SI's 2009 College Football top 10 is already out. Florida #1, Texas #2 and so on.

Focus - D-Wade. He's pretty fucking good. Leads the NBA in scoring. He averages almost 3 steals and 1.5 blocks per game. Impressive.

Apparently Illinois is the most surprising college basketball team team in the nation's most surprising conference. Fuck Illinois and fuck the Big Ten. I hope North Carolina goes through the Big Ten's best again to get to the NCAA Championship game like they did in 2005. Speaking of UNC, I was completely caught off guard by how much "undefeated season" talk was going on prior to them losing to BC. And now they've lost twice. I'm not the least bit concerned. They'll end up with a #1 seed.

Other thoughts -

I completely agree with Juice's assessment of the Dungy situation. It's very comparable to when someone famous dies. That person is ALWAYS the greatest person who ever lived. I know nothing about Dungy other than what I hear on SportsCenter. But who knows if maybe he whacks it to kiddie porn and kills baby seals? I'm not saying he does, but none of us actually know.

I'm not afraid to admit the new season of 24 has sucked me right back in. Tell me you don't want to bend that chick FBI agent over. Holy fuck she's hot. Being a member of the law enforcement community makes that show hard to watch sometimes. The scene where the dirty FBI agent is checking the basement for that sniper is ridiculous. A single person would NEVER NEVER NEVER be allowed to search for a fucking SNIPER by himself on a floor of a large building. So that part was extremely frustrating. But, luckily for me, I'm able to ignore most of that stuff in this show.

I really don't care too much for the Trevor Hoffman signing. Not that I think it's a bad signing. But, like I said before, I just don't think he's gonna make that much of a difference. I hope I'm wrong.

I heard a sports talk radio dude say Corey Hart faded down the stretch last year. I thought that was funny because he's wrong. Corey Hart faded before the stretch. He was completely irrelevant in the 2nd half of the season.

I listen to most Bucks games on the radio (the radio announcers are fantastic, by the way) but last night I saw them on tv for one of the only times so far this year. Tell me, does Michael Redd look a little fat? Joe Alexander looked pretty good, except the incredibly ugly last second 3 to tie. I hear the Bucks may be auditioning him for some sort of trade to the Grizzlies? I don't know what that's about.

Juice, have you picked a Vegas date yet? I hope the wife's permission is still in effect.