oh but they did

Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco was fined $20,000 for attempting to ‘bribe’ a replay official last weekend. Ochocino busted out a dollar bill while the officials were reviewing if he had his feet in bounds against Baltimore.

The NFL ran through a bunch of reasons why they hit him with the fine, including a violation of the uniform code, bribery, etc.

I get that the league needs to make sure that things don’t get out of control. I understand that they need to make sure that guerrilla marketing campaigns like the Captain Morgan (see Eagles tight end Brent Celek) don’t go viral and ruin every touchdown. Also, just to be clear, that ‘Captain’ pose was about the lamest, cheesiest, least clever end zone celebration ever.

I have no problem with them squashing the throat slashing gesture. I think they are on the right track when they kill choreographed antics in the end zone.

But how about a little wiggle room with things that are, I don’t know, unique and clever? Ideas that are actually funny?

Seriously, NFL? Really?

I am not an Ochocinco guy, but that was funny. I think the guy spends way too much time on his routines and is downright toxic when the team is going poorly. His tweets to ‘Barack’ are stupid. Most of the stunts he has pulled have been stupid. But not this one. This was good. Credit where credit is due.

Ochocinco is certainly an attention whore, and clearly someone did not hug him enough when he was a child, but this was good!

It was a $1!

I don’t think anyone was sitting at home on their couch and worried about the integrity of the league. This was not how Tim Donaghy got started. The simple fact that it was $1 made it funny. Not even Raider fans thought that was serious bribery attempt.

I don’t understand why there has to be a zero tolerance approach on stuff like this. If it’s funny, and everyone knows it is a joke, what’s the harm? Is the league afraid it is going to spark an epidemic of players offering $1 bribes to officials? Turn these guys loose.

If another player has a better bit than offering $1 bribes, then let’s see it.

I know you are running a billion dollar business and that it needs to be serious. But would having a small sense of humor bring the league to it’s knees? I doubt it.

Lighten up.

Sports gives us so much. Competition. Camaraderie. Gambling. Drama. Triumph. Tragedy. Inspiration. Desperation.

But more than any of that sports gives us haircuts. Bad haircuts. In all sports.

In no particular order, some of the worst haircuts in sports history.

Pete Rose: Monchichi style

Rose should not only be in the Hall of Fame for his baseball achievements, but he should have his own wing to commemorate all of his haircuts. The man is in his 60’s and hasn’t had one decent haircut in all of that time.

He has dabbled in the Prince Valiant, the mullet, the crew cut and the bowl; each one worse than the one before it.

Kirk Hinrich: Ax cut

You play in the NBA, maybe you could use something a little more precise than a lawnmower to trim your hair. If nothing else, run that thing down to Sears before your next trim and have them sharpen the blades.

Keith Van Horn: Opie Taylor

You have to admit, it was nice of Van Horn to let his mom comb his hair before the photo shoot. This is the ‘anti-Hinrich’ cut. Looks like he used a laser to carve those bangs. If you look closely, you can see the chalk-line the barber snapped across his forehead to keep everything straight.

Dirk Nowitski: Hair gone wild

He’s from Germany and likes David Hasselhoff; he doesn’t know any better.

Steve Garvey: Bulletproof lettuce

I wonder if he stiffed the barber after he put on that 14th layer of Minwax? That picture may be 3 decades old, but Garvey still works the same cut. Brave.

John Daly: Just a little off the sides...

Points for cutting it yourself, I guess. Daly might be the only one who could give Rose a run for him money for ‘worst hair ever’. Long, dirty, short, greasy. He has all the shots.

Vinny Del Negro: The 1978

Who says the center part is dead? Not Vinny Del Negro. He found what worked for him and ran with it... for 30 years. Easy ladies, he’s taken.

Eric Karros: The Frankie Avalon

Try your hardest not to be distracted by Kenny Albert’s grill and focus on Karros’s hair. He looks like a 1950’s crooner more than a baseball player turned announcer. If Karros ever goes out in high winds, he will tip over... Wind advisory for all trucks, small boats and EK’s mane.

Don Sutton: The Mike Brady

Try and not be impressed with a Hall of Famer who says, ‘Screw it, just gimmie a perm.’

That wasn’t a ‘1970’s thing’ cut either.

Jevan Snead: The SEC

In his defense, this is apparently the only cut that conforms with SEC bylaws. How else would you explain its proliferation among both players and fans?

Other suggestions not only accepted, but highly encouraged.

The 38-28 win ran the Buc's record to 1-7 and saved them the hassle and embarrassment of any further comparisons to the 2008 Lions.

Seeing Tampa win yesterday just reinforces how incredible the 2008 Lions were. To run through an entire NFL season without getting a single break, catching lightning in a bottle, or being lucky enough to catch another team on a bad day. 0-16. Legendary.

The worst team in the history of the NFL.

How bad do you have to be to have professional athletes (or the Lions best representation thereof) and not win once? Think about it.

Have you watched the Cleveland Browns this season? The Browns are nothing short of horrendous, yet they have a win. Browns' QB Derek Anderson had a game where he completed two throws and they won!

The St. Louis Rams might be the single worst collection of football players in a professional league in quite some time, but they found a way to win.

The Bucs themselves are laughably bad but managed to have one Sunday where they posted 38 points and can now take a deep breath and relax.

The Redskins look like they are trying to lose every game and they have won twice!

The 2009 Lions aren’t much better than the 2008 version but they got it done already.

I don’t know if anyone really appreciates just how special it was last season. Every season, when that 32nd and final NFL team gets a win, we should all take a moment and reflect on the perfect imperfection that was the 2008 Lions.

The winless season is like Haley’s comet, only more rare and twice as spectacular.

Tim Lincecum smokes weed? No way!

You really couldn’t tell just by looking at him.

I was stunned every time I saw him pitch and he didn’t drag his pipe out to the mound in his back pocket. If you gave me one guess, and my life depended on it, and I had to name one major leaguer who smoked weed, it would have been Tim Lincecum.

He is a caricature of a pot smoking burner. He probably hot boxes the bullpen at AT&T Park.

He is facing a misdemeanor weed charge after a traffic stop in his home state of Washington.

And guess what? I couldn’t care any less. If the weed is for personal consumption, if he isn’t going Nate Newton or Bam Morris and operating as a weed dealer, then who the hell cares?

I love that a guy who doesn’t crack 6-feet tall, probably weights 150 pounds and smokes weed is flaming guys who are all hopped on HGH or whatever the drug de jour is for MLB sluggers.

Let him have his herb. I’d rather have MLB riddled with guys who smoke weed that guys growing muscles on their faces.

Good for them. Baseball is better when the Yankees matter. Just like it is good for all of college football when Notre Dame is good; love them or hate them, the Yankees make for great theater. The NBA needs the Lakers and Celtics, the NFL need the Cowboys and MLB needs the Yankees.

I am OK with all of this.

But what I can’t deal with, what makes me want to throw up, is the idea that somehow the Yankees were a gritty, gutty group of guys who overcame great obstacles to win their 27th world title.

Yeah, how they were able to fight through a rotation that had CC Sabathia, Andy Pettitte, and AJ Burnett is a miracle. How they were able to close games with nothing short of the greatest relief pitcher of all time was inspiring. If not for the courageous performances of their Hall of Fame shortstop, their roid using Hall of Fame third baseman, and their $20 million dollar, league leading RBI and home run man at first base, who knows what would have happened.

That would be hilarious if it weren’t so insulting. The Yankees might not be able to flat out buy a title, but with the amount of money they have to spend they can cover a hell of a lot of mistakes.

They didn’t overcome anything other than an enormous tax burden. They have the best player available at nearly every position on the field. What they don’t have, they buy; and if that guy doesn’t work, they buy another one.

They deserve to be champs; they earned it, they are a great baseball team. But gritty? Please. No one who makes money like that is gritty.

Ever.

Colbert Speeds to the Rescue

Cable TV host Stephen Colbert is going to help fill the $300,000 gap facing US Speedskating after their number one sponsor went belly up.

Kind of.

Colbert won’t actually fork over any cash, but will head a fund raising effort by “Colbert Nation.”

That’s pretty sweet.

Dan Jansen, a guest on Colbert’s show said losing their sponsor was rough,

“In all seriousness, it’s devastating,” Jansen told Colbert. “It’s not exactly America’s pastime, so we don’t have sponsors lining up to help our team and our athletes.”

It isn’t? Since when? I can’t tell you how many times my friends and I would get together and a spontaneous speed skating competition would break out. We’d all go into the garage, remove the blades from the lawn mover and just skate. Good times.

Speed skating isn’t even Canada’s pastime, and they curl!

I just hope that this doesn’t mean an end to the career of Anton Ohno Apolo. I just don’t know what I, or the rest of the country for that matter, would do if he weren’t front and center in our lives every four years.

You remember that one race where he came from behind, passed the other freak with swords on his feet and won? Yeah, neither do I.

That’s why they are getting money from Colbert. I just hope that Jon Stewart set some cash aside for the 2-man luge team.

According to a report in the always reliable US Weekly, an ex-girlfriend claims that Alex Rodriguez is more of a freak than we ever imagined.

He was so vain," his ex tells Us Weekly. "He had not one, but two painted portraits of himself as a centaur. You know, the half man, half horse figure?"

Adds the ex, "It was ridiculous."

Ridiculous? Ridiculously awesome, maybe.

The guy may have figured out how to hit in the post season, he may well be on his way to becoming a “true Yankee” -whatever the hell that means - but he is never going to be less of a weirdo.

A Centaur?

What the hell? I need to talk to a psychiatrist to figure out what that could possibly mean. I know this, nothing good. Normal people don’t have self-centaur portraits (multiple self-centaur portraits!) hanging in their bedrooms.

Perhaps the most disturbing part is that I am not really that surprised. That’s how you know you have reached an entirely different level of freakery. When no matter how odd, how bizarre, how disturbing the behavior, it is never shocking. Is there anything you could hear about A-Rod that would make you say, “No way. Not a chance that’s true.” If the Centaur thing didn’t do it, nothing will.

Nothing makes sense with this guy now. He swaps religions like most people change their underwear, he gets hits when it matters, and he has a pic of himself as a centaur in his bedroom.

Keep ‘em coming A-Rod, what else ya’ got?

The Florida Gators looked like a legit #1 team for the first time all season last Saturday with a resounding win against Georgia.

Fine.

What wasn’t fine was linebacker Brandon Spikes eye gouging Bulldog running back Washaun Ealey. While Ealey was in the pile at the line of scrimmage, Spikes comes in, finds the gap in Ealey’s face mask and begins viciously gouging his eyes. It wasn’t a slip, it wasn't inadvertent. It was deliberate and meant to injure.

Spikes pulled a move that is illegal in MMA competition, much less a football game. What he did, in my estimation, is at least as bad, if not worse that what Oregon running back LaGarrette Blount did when he punched a Boise State player in the face.

Follow me on this. In no way I am condoning or marginalizing what Blount did. It was unacceptable on every level. However, Blount’s haymaker was not pre-meditated; it was a reaction - albeit a stupid one - to being heckled immediately after a bad loss.

Blount was suspended for the rest of the year and has missed 7 games and counting. A significant punishment. Message sent. The message being that neither the coach, the University, or the Pac-10 conference is going to tolerate obvious acts of violence.

For my money, a punch to the face is a hell of lot less egregious than Spike’s eye gouge. Maybe Blount loosened some teeth, but Spikes could have blinded Ealey.

What did Florida and head coach Urban Meyer do after Spikes tried to tear another player’s eyes out? Spikes will be suspended for the first HALF of the Gators next game against Vandy.

That’s garbage. Total, complete garbage.

Meyer says that Spikes was responding to being gouged earlier in the game. What a cop out. If you have seen the play in question, it takes place during the course of play. Spikes helmet comes off and he is hit and gets poked. Not even in the same universe. This was stepping on someone’s toe in line and Spikes responded with a shotgun to the face.

Urban Meyer should be ashamed of himself. He has decided that winning, that staying in the mix for the national title, is more important than doing the right thing. How that doesn’t earn at least a 1 game suspension is beyond me. How that doesn’t get multiple games is a mystery. Meyer, the SEC, and the school have just announced to the world that all that matters is winning.

Win, screw everything else.

Imagine the following scenario. Turn it on its head. What if a Georgia player had gouged the lord and savior Tim Tebow? You think that Gator fans would be satisfied with a suspension that lasts 30 minutes? Do you think Urban Meyer would be willing to accept the ‘well, they did it first’ excuse?

I understand that football is rough. I know that ugly things happen, and I am not suggesting that they play flag football. But there was nothing rough about that gouge. It was violent, malicious, and intended to injure.

Urban Meyer should be ashamed. No respect for him, for his program, or the school. If you aren’t going to swing the hammer for something that blatant, something that wrong, then you never will.

Go ahead Gator player, do your worst. Because no matter how bad it is, you aren’t going to miss anything that matters. Your coach will make sure of it.

[ Editor's Note: To hear Travis react to the news of the 1/2 game suspension and to see the video of the offensive act - click here]

Who will stop the pain?

A pair of Cleveland Browns season ticket holders are organizing a protest of the team that will take place on November 16th, a Monday night game against Baltimore.

They want fans to arrive late to the game in an effort to show how displeased they are with the team. They are hoping all the empty seats will generate controversy and bring more attention to the struggling team.

Wrong.

Nice idea, cute even, but ultimately a giant waste of your time. It won’t work. You don’t think that Browns ownership is fully aware that the fan base is unsatisfied with a 1-6 record? The team sucks, has sucked for a very, very long time, and most likely will continue to suck for years to come.

The problem isn’t that management is unaware of the problem, it’s that they don’t care. Not to mention the fact that the place is still full, jerseys still sell, and beer still gets consumed.

Fans just don’t get it. The team won’t get good just because you want it to. Ownership won’t change because you show up late, the tickets are still paid for. You will still drink the same amount of beer. Fans will still be decked out in in officially licensed merchandise. Ownership still makes money. Randy Lerner is not going to miss a meal or wear tattered shoes because you sit down 15 minutes late.

Until people stop going, stop buying gear, stop slugging down beers and hot dogs, the message will never be received.

The problem is that you care too much. The problem is that you attend games regardless of how bad the team is. You can’t help yourselves. It’s what makes you great fans, that you go no matter what. It’s also what gives guys like Lerner less incentive to actually fix the problem.

Would you continue to go see the same horsecrap movie week after week if you knew it was the same director, same actors, and had the same ending? Would you continue to give them you jack just because you’re a ‘fan’ and they make that movie in your city? I wouldn’t.

Unless ownership is consumed with winning for winnings sake, like they are in Boston and some other places, then the only thing they understand or will listen to is dollars or lack thereof.

Enjoy your cute little temper tantrum. I am sure people will talk about it. In the meantime, the Browns will go on sucking.

Tony LaRussa is coming back to manage the St. Louis Cardinals next season and he is bringing Mark McGwire with him.

Yes, that Mark McGwire.

The same McGwire that has basically been in hiding since retiring from baseball. The same guy who went before Congress and all but admitted to performance enhancing drug abuse.

THAT guy is going to be the new hitting coach. Enjoy spring training. No one is going to want to know about Albert Pujols or Chris Carpenter, they are going to want to talk to Mac about drugs. Did he, didn’t he; when; how much; where did he get them; should his records count; should he be in the Hall of Fame; what does he think about Canseco, Clemens, Bonds; and on and on and on. When you go Salman Rushdie for 10 years, you leave a lot of questions unanswered.

For all I know Mark McGwire is the greatest hitting instructor of all time; or the worst. Who the hell knows, he hasn’t said anything to anyone in nearly a decade.

What happens when a St. Louis player who is struggling suddenly isn’t? Is it because of film study, a change in approach and technique, or is is something else?

Don’t get me wrong, I know Mark McGwire isn’t going to be peddling "roids" in the clubhouse, (I don’t think), but why open yourself up to that kind of mess?

Sadly, you know exactly how this is going to play out. McGwire will hold a press conference early in the spring, get off some half-baked apology, a la Andy Pettitte, and all will be forgiven. He’ll fake cry, answer some bogus questions, and everyone moves on. Baseball will go back to pretending that they don’t have a drug problem anymore, instead of finding a way to test players fo HGH, and everyone will pretend that they learned a lesson.

In other words, everything will be the same.

Welcome back Mac.