To Whom It May Concern

Sports Rock, Wear Your Jock!!!

Actually though, I haven't worn a jock strap since the 8th grade, and that was the only time I ever wore one. I played football that year, I just had to try it once. 45 of us went out for football, and they had only 15 of these coveted practice jerseys, and I won the last one, that was my moment of fame in football.

But anyways, I figured since I tend to spend a considerable amount of time checking out sports, be it watching ESPN on television, reading about things in the Omaha World Herald sports section, or browsing espn.com online, I should maybe put up a fun little post about a few things in sports. I'm certain that I could probably go on and on for about 10 pages of text here but I'll try somehow to shorten what I've got here.

My favorite sport is college football. Yah, you NFL junkies can say what you want about 'level of competition' and all that jazz, and I do like the San Fransisco 49ers in the NFL (even though they hired a complete moron as head coach in Dennis Ericksen), but college football is awesome, EVERY game means EVERYTHING in college football, there are few sports you can say that about. This is because college football has no real playoff format, at the end of the season, whoever the pollsters deem to be number one and number two, they go at it in the title game, a 'bowl game' with all the marbles at stake. A loss during the season can be the end to any team's hopes of winning the national title. In the NFL, a team can lose 5, 6, even 7 games and still get into the playoffs, still having a shot at winning the Super Bowl, and although I do enjoy watching the NFL, the emotion levels in college ball are so much higher.

In the NBA I like the Charlotte Hornets, woops, I mean, the New Orleans Hornets. Forgot momentarily that they moved a couple years back. Oh my, but wait, now Charlotte has a group together and they are going to have the next NBA team, so who in the hell am I supposed to root for now??? Oh the confusion, I think I'm going to wet my pants!!! But honestly, do I stick with the city, the team, the players, the team colors??? The colors haven't changed for the Hornets, but the players change all the time, the city has changed, all this is perplexing, first off, why did Charlotte ever allow the Hornets to leave in the first place if they are going to get another team in right away?? Secondly, interestingly enough, New Orleans had a team once, it was called the Jazz, now of course they are the "Utah Jazz", a name that is hilarious if you think about it, why don't they change the stinking team name to something more appropriate, like the Utah Latter Day Saint Ballers, or the Utah Basketballigamists? (sorry, had to poke a little fun at the Mormons heh). Well, when it costs about 100 bucks for two tickets to a game, I guess I have to realize that what the fans want is usually the last thing on anyones minds in management, be it the team management or NBA management overall.

In major league baseball, I like the Oakland A's. But there are some truly screwy things in baseball. This sport has the most ludicrous sense of what a salary cap is for, I have tried to understand it, I cannot. If there is a salary cap of some kind, obviously the Yankees have found some way to circumvent and weasel their way around the cap. They outbid every other team to steal away every big name player you can think of, and then thier fans wonder why people HATE the Yankees with such vehemency, well DUH, doesn't really take a genius to see why, what the Yankees and that jackass owner of their's Steinbrenner do is cheating, legal or not. It's so fun to watch them lose, and I think that they will be doing a lot of losing, perhaps not during the season, but certainly in the post season, because a team with that many big name stars on it cannot gel with any reasonable amount of cohesion, where as teams like the A's, the Angels, and even the fun loving Twins, can gel because there aren't a bunch of big names in the clubhouse that don't get along with one another. It's sort of like why you don't want a bunch of roosters at one time in your hen house.

For the record, I like the Pittsburgh Penguins in the National Hockey League, but I don't know jack about hockey so I don't follow them too closely. In NASCAR I tend to follow the Dodge cars, because I'm a Dodge man, although... each time I see the Subaru WRX I sort of get all excited and nearly need a cold shower, but that's another story altogether.

Ahh, I love sports, and it's so fun to bitch about sports too haha.