Made

This might sound like splitting hairs, but it epitomizes a really disturbing trend in football analysis, so I have to post it. Phil Simms is certainly not the only guilty party, but he is the funniest:

"Troy Smith is in his second start today, and did really well last week, but he's gotta learn to make them....make you....beat them deep."

Might not be an exact quote. Phil Simms made me make him make me make myself have trouble remembering who made who make what by making this.

Anyway, if you enjoy hating dickish place kickers as much as I do, or if you're looking for some sort of reason to be happy about the Pats going undefeated, you'll love this post over at KissingSuzyKolber. You might also want to check and see if that video of Bill Gramatica injuring himself celebrating a field goal is still on YouTube. That stuff's hilarious.

Scouts Inc rates your team's Quarterback!

Ineffectively.

The reason why is very simple. Simple enough that they admit it themselves, before the list is even seen.

The hardest part was deciding how to rank them. Do we look at just this year? Do we look at their careers and their body of work? We decided it would be a mixture of the two, that we couldn't completely ignore a veteran with a history of great success having a subpar year.

The hardest part is coming up with a method of evalutation. Really? I can give you a ton of ways of evaluating QBs (in no particular order, as Scouts Inc. would prefer it):

yards
touchdowns
yards per attempt
completion percentage
consecutive starts
college starts
drawn out of a hat
drawn out of a shoebox
alphabetically by last name
alphabetically by first name
alphabetically by middle name
numerically
color of teams home jersey
QB DVOA
age
height
weight
stench

and last and most definately least:

Wins!

The point is, if you are going to make a list, you need to have criteria. "A mix" of the criteria does not cut it. Then you just have subjective dribble.

Thought it wouldn't get any worse than "Touch 'em All"?

You thought wrong.

Behold, the ESPNU Championship Series.

At times like this, I can't help but wonder how the person responsible pitched this:

So, the BCS sucks. How dare they decide who's better than whom in order to set up the national championship game? Fuck. It really burns me up when people think they can know who would win in a game that never happened.

So anyway, I got this idea. We take the top 10 teams in the BCS, since they know who's better than whom. Then we put them into this playoff bracket, and hold a playoff. What? Nah, there won't be any actual games. We're ESPN though, we think we can know who would win in these games that never happen. So basically, we decide these match-ups that mean nothing and then predict the outcomes, except we're never wrong, because they never happen.

"Great idea! We'll make it a yearly feature."

Cloud over Baltimore just self-satisfaction

The dense, impenetrable cloud that hung over Baltimore this Monday night has dissipated. The sound of gun shots and foul stench remains, but locals report they are "used to it".

The Ravens gave the Patriots all....well, most....that they could handle, in a stadium that was filled to the brim, and, amazingly, a couple of fans were able to squeeze in between the collective egos of Bill Belichek, Brian Billick, and Don Shula.

The Patriots remained undefeated, leading Shula to trade in the champagne for enormous quantities of Nutrasystem low-carb whiskey. Brian Billick was seen kissing...his job good-bye.

Eagles' Provide League with Blueprint for Beating Seahawks

1. Don't actually beat them.

[not actually an effective blueprint]