So Many Stories, So Little Time To Write

A week's worth of headlines rolled into one brilliant compilation:

Alex Rodriguez Is A Liar, And Not A Very Creative One!
So pretty much everyone has said that the "I didn't know what I was taking" line is a load of crap despite that every athlete caught doping seems to use it. But not only that, apparently the drug that Aroid claims to have taken without his own knowledge would not have tested positive for the two drugs that he tested positive for. And it is also not for sale in the Dominican Republic - he claimed his cousin bought it for him there. But at least his Valentine's Day-week fall-guy was his cousin and not his wife like Roger Clemens. Next excuse?

Mets Dominate Fantasy Drafts
The Mets have two players (Jose Reyes and David Wright) ranked 4th and 5th in Yahoo!'s fantasy pre-rankings and another two (Johan Santana and Carlos Beltran) ranked 17th and 19th. So with four of the most productive or valuable players in the game, and Daniel Murphy being everyone's late-round sleeper (I hope no one in my league is reading this), how have they not won a playoff game in three years?

Dodgers Fans Actually Listen To Tommy Lasorda
Last week before heading to Spring Training in Arizona, thus officially and finally driving a stake into the hearts of old-time Dodger fans everywhere, Tommy Lasorda actually said that he is not worried about the team signing Manny Ramirez and that they'd be fine without him. Apparently he did not watch the first 100 games last season. Staggeringly, 15% of Dodger fans are exactly as dumb as Lasorda takes them for and apparently agree with the fat bastard, based on a poll I posted on CBS2.com and KCAL9.com last week.

Tour Of California Races Down The Coast
Americans are dominating the nations largest cycling race, with Levi Leipheimer, David Zabriskie, Lance Armstrong and Chris Horner in 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th respectively. Thus far most riders have been content to stay in the peloton (aka pack) and just wind up with the same time as the leader, but Friday is the individual time trial where each rider takes off on the 15 mile sprint course on his own and races only the clock. There could potentially be a massive change in the standings, which have been basically unchanged since the first day of the Tour last weekend. Thus far, Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton have been inconsequential in the overall standings, but neither has nearly the support that those other four Americans have, and Landis was a phenomenal time trialist before his fall from grace and hip replacement. The Tour comes to L.A. Saturday, and should pass my parents' house between 1-2 p.m. on its way to the Rose Bowl. How pissed are the French going to be if Americans get 2 or more podium places in the Tour de France?

David Beckham May Return To Save American Soccer After All
Beckham was going to make soccer relevant in American when he signed with the Galaxy two years ago. After one injury plagued season and one season with the worst record in the league, the sport had vaulted up into the top 10 sports in the U.S. trailing only football, baseball, basketball, car racing*, hockey, Guitar Hero, Mariokart, basket weaving* and soap carving*. Last week it looked like an Italian team and Beckham had arrogantly decided that his contract here was irrelevant and he should just leave. To their credit, the Galaxy told the Italian team to screw themselves and wouldn't let their star go. Supposedly the Italians are planning to sweeten the deal to get Beckham out, but for now he is still back to save soccer once more.

*-not a sport

The Clippers Are Bad, I Mean Really Bad
On paper, this is clearly a playoff team: Baron Davis, Zach Randolph, Eric Gordon, Al Thornton, Marcus Camby, Chris Kaman and Ricky Davis are a solid first seven and they have some decent backups well. Injuries and the fact that their jerseys say "Clippers" on them have cursed them however. How bad are they? Over their last 15 games, they have allowed 113 points per game. and only kept opponents under 100 seven times in the last two months. And Mike Dunleavy has two jobs and I don't.

Suns Didn't Trade Stoudamire But Lost Him Anyway
Amare Stoudamire, rumored to be traded to every team in the NBA, 11 NFL teams, 5 MLB teams, and bridge club, didn't get traded as the NBA trade deadline passed. In fact Rafer Alston was the biggest name to move. Now one day later, the Sun found out they have lost Stoudamire for 8 weeks due to a detached retina. As bad as I feel for the Suns and for Stoudamire himself of course, I cannot help but think about Kenny from Out of Sight and how he had to retire from boxing because he had his retina detached two times. Then I think of Kenny tussling with Toughy and Moselle telling Karen Cisco that if she sees Snoopy Miller to tell him that she needs grocery money and the dog got run over. I love that movie.

NFL Combine Starts
All of the NFL Mock-Drafts that have been published to this point are hereby rendered irrelevant, begging the question of why those writers ever put their names to those admittedly inaccurate rankings in the first place. So who will go #1? Not Andre Smith who decided not to come to the combine apparently because he has not been working out and didn't want to show off all of his new rolls (he's 330+ when in shape). He admitted that he hasn't worked out in three or four weeks and wants to get his "numbers down" before running his 6.8 40. Mark Sanchez improved his stock by signing up to do all the throwing drills, which most quarterbacks apparently don't do. Why do they have this combine if no one goes to it? Anyway, Sanchez's decision to go through all the drills shows he is willing to put out effort and be coached. The trouble is, the drills will likely show he is not a very good quarterback. Pick your poison - spoiled reputation but a top 10 pick, or nice guy reputation and a 2nd round pick.

NBA Dunk Contest Won On A Dunk You've Seen 100 Times
Nate Robinson won the NBA Dunk Contest by jumping over a guy and dunking. In other news, the set set in the west that evening. But I suppose it is better than Dwight Howard winning last year's dunk contest by successfully completing a layup, but not a dunk.

Aikman Award: Color Commentary Of The Week
"Every time UCLA gets up by 7, or 8, or 9, Washington makes a big basket to get it back to a one possession game."--UCLA Basketball announcer Don MacLean, who has to be checked every 3-4 minutes for a pulse. Apparently University of Washington players have figured out how to make a six-point basket, which could really catch on.

Rivalry Week Hasn't Exactly Been What You'd Call Riveting

When ESPN calls it “Rivalry Week” I definitely feel that that means there will be a few larger-than-normal matchups and that I will be spending a lot more time than normal watching sports. So what happened this week?

Sure Duke hosted North Carolina on ESPN and USA hosted Mexico in soccer Wednesday night (two of the Best Rivalries In Sports that I named last February on CBS2.com – I will update that list here soon). But other than that, what big rivalries are there?

Louisville vs. Notre Dame and UCLA vs. ASU are supposed to excite me? Besides being league opponents and being pretty good, are either of these games actual rivalries? Is this the best they could do? Michigan State vs. Michigan was a decent one on Tuesday, but did anyone outside of Michigan care?

And even UNC-Duke and USA-Mexico were both a little lackluster.

Watching basketball at Cameron Indoor is often worthwhile and watching UNC play there is nearly always worthwhile. But this one never really grabbed your attention and refused to let go. It was a game of spectacular streaks (UNC’s red-hot start and then Duke’s I-wonder-if-they’re-cheating-somehow answer from behind the arc). But in the end, Carolina just out-ran Duke and slowly wore them down. No big shot, no real drama down the stretch. Great basketball, but nothing for the history books.

USA vs. Mexico was similar. The U.S. team was just better. They controlled the time of possession and wore down the Mexicans methodically. Mexico had a few decent chances to get a dumb-luck goal and steal a tie (exactly why soccer blows), but ultimately there was very little drama. There wasn’t even any of the normal US-Mexico unbridled hatred. Sure, the Mexican captain made one half-assed dirty play to kick our goalie and got red carded, but that was it. It was very hard to hate Mexico and normally that is really easy. They didn’t go for cheap shots and they didn’t take dives on every other play. In fact an American (Dempsey) was the most obnoxious player on the field. There weren’t even any really good soccer hairdos. Boring.

Is the Daytona 500 supposed to fire me up for the rest of the week? It isn’t even a sport and the only story I have even heard coming out of this is that Jimmie Johnson is going to drive without a brace on his injured finger. Really? Unless you have a broken leg, a broken arm, or a bladder problem, there really is no physical problem that a racecar driver should complain about.

The rivalry between Elgin Baylor and reality is a decent one. Right now, the two are set very far apart from one another. Seriously Elgin, we all appreciate what you did as a player (on and off the court). We all think that your firing was a little unceremonious. But ageism? Racism? You were underpaid during your tenure? How many winning season did the Clippers have in your 22 years? How many sub 30-win seasons? They had more sub-20 win seasons play playoff appearances. You should have been fired years before you were and thus were overpaid in that you even had the job!

Brett Favre vs. Retirement has been quite a rivalry over the past four years. It appears that while Brett was 2-0-1 going into this year, but retirement finally got a win. Last year he retired and unretired, so that counted as the tie.

Manny Ramirez vs. the Dodgers is a good rivalry playing out this week (though that will likely not go final by week’s end). For a while now it had begun to look like Manny had waited himself into a shorter, smaller contract but after Bobby Abreu and Adam Dunn have now both signed elsewhere and the Dodgers are left with just one slugger on the market, it looks like Manny may get closer to what he wanted all along. Was this Scott “Satan” Boras’ plan all along?

Speaking of Manny, Tommy Lasorda said yesterday that the Dodgers will be fine with or without him. I would like to follow this up with a snappy, funny comment, but it is pretty funny in and of itself, so I will leave it alone.

The L.A. Galaxy vs. Some Team In Europe. I don't really know what team David Beckham wants to play for because it is soccer and I can't believe I am bringing up two soccer stories in one post. Anyway, apparently he can't handle playing in the U.S. and wants to go back to play in Europe. What will American sports do without him?

Adam Morrison vs. Vladimir Radmanovic. A showdown for the ages. I think you have to say that Morrison wins this matchup because he was traded from basketball purgatory to the best team in the league on the virtue of being a terrible defender and an average shooter.

Perhaps the rivalry coming this week that will affect the most people for the longest period of time is Fantasy Baseball vs. Free Time. With pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training, many fantasy sites have opened for business and I for one have already opened my league. I opened up the league within hours of Yahoo!’s page going active and my league is #46065. I don’t know if that started at #0 or not, but either way, this amount of man-hours spent researching can’t be good for the economy.