'It's All About The Nation, Baby'

The City of San Bernadino (outside of Los Angeles) has had a ban on the sale of 40 ounce bottles of beer since 1989. If you've even been to San Bernadino, you could probably guess that this ban has never really been enforced. Apparently the city has decided to enforce it now though, because they say there is a correlation between that particular product and crime, and Dr. Dre would probably agree. You might ask, "Why is this on my sports blog?"

This story was reported on Tuesday's news on KCAL and they had a reporter go out there and interview liquor store patrons to see what they think of the ban. What do you think people who hang out at liquor stores in the middle of the day in San Bernadino think of a ban on 40-sales? But why is this on a sports blog?

Unfortunately the version of this story that KCAL posted on their website was from early in the day, before the guy interviewed the locals., so those interviews are not available online (that version of the story aired late last night and the web producer didn't copy over the old version...tragic). So you can't see this story online, but the reason that it is on a sports blog was that the first interview they showed was of perhaps the single greatest stereotype in the history of humanity, and it happens to be sports related.

"What do you think of the city banning 40's?" asks reporter Greg Mills.

"If you're gonna banding things," a short, fat, Hispanic man slurs out through his obvious mid-day drunken stupor, wearing a JaMarcus Russell Raiders jersey in the middle of May. And as he throws his arms out as wide as he can and shakes his head seemingly unintentionally, he finishes with, "all liquor should be banded."

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Raider Nation.

USD Was Robbed, The Cubs Can't Buy One, And Raider Fans Steal Things

Similar to how the New York Giants won the Super Bowl and returned the next season with a chip on their shoulders after being written off as repeat-contenders and picked third in their own division, my alma mater's men's basketball team has been slighted after winning their conference tournament.

The San Diego Toreros knocked off two top 25-ranked teams (St. Mary's and Gonzaga) to win the West Coast Conference Tournament and then another when they beat UConn in the Tourney before falling in a heart-breaker to fellow Cinderella Western Kentucky.

So coming into this season, you might think that USD would get some respect in the national polls, or at least within the Conference! Rather, they were picked to finish third in the league and received just 1 vote for the AP top 25. Granted this was the first vote in school history, but it is still something of a slight. After all, they did not graduate a single player, nor did they lose their coach, and they added two top recruits (one of whom - Roberto Manfra - scored 21-points on 9-of-10 shooting in their season opener last weekend).

They are clearly not national title contenders, but for fans of college basketball, USD is one to watch this year (which won't be difficult since 15 of their games will be televised).

On Saturday, my wife and I watched Fever Pitch (which is a pretty good romantic comedy to fall back on if you are stuck having to watch a romantic comedy) and afterwards I was explaining why the "Curse of the Bambino" was such a big deal and how long it had been, etc. She said that it is just like that with her San Jose Sharks because they can't get out of the first round of the playoffs, and I didn't bother explaining that the Sharks have only existed for 17-years so it is not exactly the same thing.

But we got to talking about long losing streaks and curses in sports and of course, I mentioned the Cubs. I told her that they haven't won now in over 100-years. She asked if they'd ever been close and I said a few times, but mostly they have just stunk. Her response to this cosmically-cursed, haunted, agonizing situation was simply, "Why don't they do something about that?" I guess they just never thought about that - stop whining and go win something!

Finally, while I was in the San Jose airport last night (missing the freaking Giants game, but I am not bitter), I was watching a little boy who must have been about 1-year-old sitting in his stroller playing the the straps of the purse of the woman next to him. After a minute or two, I realized that he didn't know this woman, but he was just playing with her purse. I thought it was a cute moment until I moved up in line and got a better look at what was going on.

The kid had a Raiders' shirt on and I couldn't help but wonder how early Raider fans start teaching their kids to be criminals, if this 1-year-old was already working on purse-snatching.