The bubble is shrinking like Roger Clemens' sperm count

Arizona State, Florida, VCU, Ohio State Syracuse, Oregon et al. are sweating bullets right now.

It's one of those rare times when many fans root against upsets because while fun and all, tourney slots are disappearing faster than the people in this picture.

San Diego's in. Does the WCC now get three teams?! With South Alabama's loss, does the Sun Belt now get two? The big school bubble teams have very little room for error in their respective conference tourneys.

Oregon, which got back on the bubble after a sweep of the Arizona schools last week, may just be its own worst enemy. The Ducks could certainly use another win, and by beating ASU and UA, Oregon jumped to the No. 6 seed in the Pac-10 Tournament. Now, rather than getting a play-in game against pathetic Oregon State, the Ducks get ranked Washington State instead. A loss and the Ducks might be NIT bound.

It's a wildly fun time of year. Unless, of course, you're living on the bubble. Then you need some Scotch and mild sedatives.

The next great televison show

This was an email thread from a group of friends. If you aren't entirely sold, there's something wrong with you.

So I have this new idea for a pilot. I can't take full credit for it because there is a brilliant, brilliant mind here at the TV station. But here goes:

The show is called "Donkey Lighthouse."

A boat of donkeys being transported by a crew of men has crashed on a deserted island. The only thing on this island is a lighthouse. The crew is killed in the crash but the donkeys survive -- they will be the main characters.

The goal of the donkeys is to get rescued from this island. Big problem: the light in the lighthouse has burned out! No boats know the island exists, thus the donkeys can't get saved.

But in Episode Three there is a big breakthrough -- they discover a closet full of new bulbs. They can be rescued! But -- and we're banking that the audience has some familiarity with donkeys -- our characters don't have an opposable thumb. The light bulb can't be screwed in! They can't be rescued!

Romances are sure to develop, but this is really the story of survival and the fleeting hope of being rescued. How far will their determination take them? Can obstacles be overcome? Will they be saved?

TV execs or agents reading can direct offers here.

Blind Résumé

It's March! Fuck yeah! Hoops, baseball, NFL Draft talk...we're exiting one of the worst stages of the sports year and entering one of the best. We're finally getting into college hoops and the bubble talks; it took about a month longer than normal. Who's gonna dance? Who are the last four out?! With Selection Sunday less than a week away, it's time to start using the phrases, "Bubble Watch," "Tournament Résumé" and "Auto Bids" on a daily basis. So for the next week, we'll be playing Blind Résumé. We'll present two bubble teams' résumés and your job is simple: in the comments, say which team deserves to get in and which one doesn't. (If you think both are in -- or out -- suggest who you view as the better team). You might know who these teams are, but don't spoil it for the rest of us. Since this is one of those blind item things, check back at 3 p.m. Pacific each day as we'll post the true identities in the comments.

Team A:

Record: 21-9 (7-9 conference)
RPI: 42
Strength of schedule: 60
Against RPI Top 50: 5-4
Last 10: 5-5

Team B:

Record: 17-13 (8-10 conference)
RPI: 31
Strength of schedule: 2

Against RPI Top 50: 5-7
Last 10: 3-7

Play the part of a committee member in the comments. Who dances?

Blind Résumé

It's March! Fuck yeah! Hoops, baseball, NFL Draft talk...we're exiting one of the worst stages of the sports year and entering one of the best. We're finally getting into college hoops and the bubble talks; it took about a month longer than normal. Who's gonna dance? Who are the last four out?! With Selection Sunday less than two weeks away, it's time to start using the phrases, "Bubble Watch," "Tournament Résumé" and "Auto Bids" on a daily basis. So from today until next Friday, we'll be playing Blind Résumé. We'll present two bubble teams' résumés and your job is simple: in the comments, say which team deserves to get in and which one doesn't. (If you think both are in -- or out -- suggest who you view as the better team). You might know who these teams are, but don't spoil it for the rest of us. Since this is one of those blind item things, check back at 3 p.m. Pacific each day as we'll post the true identities in the comments.

Team A:

Record: 19-9 (8-7 conference)
RPI: 39
Strength of schedule: 36
Against RPI Top 50: 4-8
Last 10: 4-6

Team B:

Record: 18-12 (8-9 conference)
RPI: 52
Strength of schedule: 8
Against RPI Top 50: 1-7
Last 10: 5-5

Play the part of a committee member in the comments. Who dances?

Fruit Stripe Gum will only let you space out for about 30 seconds

Is there a bigger let down in the food/chewing gum industry than Fruit Stripe gum?

It has all the look of a scrumptious burst of flavor with every chomp, but then -- bam! -- it's gone. It's 30 seconds of amazement followed by years of disappointment.

Much like the first time you got laid.
-------------------------------
Brett Favre's retirement means very little to us. Michael Jordan retired like eight times before finally calling it quits. Favre isn't done until he can't walk anymore.

Though, if this is truly it, it's fitting that his last pass was an interception.

--------------------------------
Why is a standard work day eight hours? Why eight? Why not six? Or four? If the work day was shortened, would oil prices increase any faster, would oxygen not be free and would the terrorists win?

And who actually works eight hours per day. Most people probably just space out for a while and do only around an hour of real, actual, work each day.

One could even look at it like this: if the employees are happy, productivity increases. How do you make employees happy? Make them work less.

Yeah, we're going to run a very successful company someday soon. We'll put in an hour a day and do, oh, about 15 minutes of real, actual, work.

Though we're going to start charging for oxygen.

--------------------------------
This fan's sign is awesome!


Though this one is better!


--------------------------------
Peter Pan really knew what he was talking about. Times are far simpler when you're a kid, but it's the little things that make us miss childhood.

If you do an analysis of food items catering to kids, it's clear that times are better before you mature. Kids can eat Captain Crunch, Sprinkles yogurt and Gobble Sticks. If we took a Lunchables to work, we might get fired.

The moral of the story: sugar and preservatives improve general happiness.

--------------------------------
If you had a fantasy draft of women -- celebrities, models, adult stars -- who'd you take?

Jessica Alba? Marisa Miller? Carmen Electra?

We might be on to something here! Who's setting up the league? Do it at work. While you're "spacing out."

Blind Résumé

It's March! Fuck yeah! Hoops, baseball, NFL Draft talk...we're exiting one of the worst stages of the sports year and entering one of the best. We're finally getting into college hoops and the bubble talks; it took about a month longer than normal. Who's gonna dance? Who are the last four out?! With Selection Sunday less than two weeks away, it's time to start using the phrases, "Bubble Watch," "Tournament Résumé" and "Auto Bids" on a daily basis. So from today until next Friday, we'll be playing Blind Résumé. We'll present two bubble teams' résumés and your job is simple: in the comments, say which team deserves to get in and which one doesn't. (If you think both are in -- or out -- suggest who you view as the better team). You might know who these teams are, but don't spoil it for the rest of us. Since this is one of those blind item things, check back at 3 p.m. Pacific each day as we'll post the true identities in the comments.

Team A:

Record: 17-11 (11-4 conference)
RPI: 47
Strength of schedule: 13
Against RPI Top 50: 4-6
Last 10: 8-2

Team B:

Record: 20-9 (9-6 conference)
RPI: 38
Strength of schedule: 58

Against RPI Top 50: 1-2
Last 10: 7-3

Play the part of a committee member in the comments. Who dances?

Blind Résumé

It's March! Fuck yeah! Hoops, baseball, NFL Draft talk...we're exiting one of the worst stages of the sports year and entering one of the best. We're finally getting into college hoops and the bubble talks; it took about a month longer than normal. Who's gonna dance? Who are the last four out?! With Selection Sunday less than two weeks away, it's time to start using the phrases, "Bubble Watch," "Tournament Résumé" and "Auto Bids" on a daily basis. So from today until next Friday, we'll be playing Blind Résumé. We'll present two bubble teams' résumés and your job is simple: in the comments, say which team deserves to get in and which one doesn't. (If you think both are in -- or out -- suggest who you view as the better team). You might know who these teams are, but don't spoil it for the rest of us. Since this is one of those blind item things, check back at 3 p.m. Pacific each day as we'll post the true identities in the comments.

Team A:

Record: 18-10 (8-8 conference)
RPI: 67
Strength of schedule: 59
Against RPI Top 50: 5-6
Last 10: 4-6

Team B:

Record: 22-6 (16-2 conference)
RPI: 49
Strength of schedule: 160
Against RPI Top 50: 0-5
Last 10: 9-1

Play the part of a committee member in the comments. Who dances?

Floyd Mayweather's acting career begins

From reader Michael H., comes a promo of what looks like Mayweather doing some WWE thing with a guy who resembles our image of Bigfoot. Or the Boogie Man.

This looks fine and all for people who like sports movies/TV shows, but until we see Mayweather and Yao Ming battle to the death, we're not impressed.

A sign of things to come?

Fuck.

The time I took an hour-long shit

Being a shitter (n. A person who takes shits) is a lot like being a baseball player.

Sometimes you're in the zone and then you get in a slump. For one reason or another, a major leaguer, paid millions for his services, cannot for the life of him hit the ball well. Same goes for a shitter. You can be in a month-long zone where every shit you take is a well-packed turd and becomes a one-wiper. But then you fall into a slump.

I, friends, am in a slump.

Saturday night I got home around 1 a.m. and had been gassy as hell the last few hours. Probably the tacos at Jack in the Box. It would've been in my best interest to pump out a crap like an hour before I left where I was, but it was the wrong time, wrong place.

So I waited. Bad move.

Rule No. 1 about taking a good dump: When you first feel it, go for it. If you wait, it just makes a mess and takes a chunk out of your day.

But I broke the cardinal about taking a good dump and it cost me. Severely.

I sat down around 1:05 and everything was working fine. I settled down with a three-week-old issue of SI, read about the increasingly-popular dribble-drive-motion offense being run at many high schools and colleges, the race in the NBA Western Conference and Miguel Tejada's hero status in the DR.

That took about 25 minutes. And I still hadn't gotten to wiping.

Now our pal Lozo says that no crap should take longer than five minutes. Au contraire, Mr. Lozo. Au contraire. After 25 minutes, I was just getting started.

I'd prefer to not be graphic, but after about a half an hour, I still felt the pressure of some excrement, but it just couldn't work its way out.

This is where things got dicey.

My legs were asleep, my ass was asleep and I was out of reading material. I knew I wasn't done, but I needed aid in working the shit out of my body.

I walked around.

Pants around ankles, I walked into my living room, watched some SportsCenter and waited. It worked, too, as when I sat back down, I was able to work a bit out. But I still wasn't done.

So I walked around some more. I thought about doing some jumping jacks, but still covered in my own feces, feared a potential spray on the white carpet.

Around 2 a.m., I was fed up. I was trying to get to bed at a reasonable time and was sick of sitting around covered in my movements.

I wiped, pulled my pants up, and walked away, pretending nothing happened.

But something clearly had. I may never be the same...

Oregon State is not good. Well, its record isn't good. They could probably win some games in the Big 10. But so could Oak Hill Academy.

It's been a long season for Oregon State basketball. Coach gets fired in the middle of the season, star player gets dismissed by new coach and current players recently threatened to fight with an opposing team prior to a game.

Putting salt in the wounds, OSU is the only team winless in a BCS conference. (C-USA's Rice and the Mountain West's Colorado State are winless in league, too).

Oregon State is 0-16 in Pac-10 play and losers of 18 straight. The last time the Corvallis school was in a single-digit game was Feb. 7.

But things could be worse. At least the school's mascot isn't a slang name for a vagina.

Oh.

Our voice can be heard

...Sunday. 1:30 Pacific, 4:30 Eastern. Listen here (or maybe here). We think.

We've been invited back to the FDH Lounge, an Internet TV program on SportsTalkNetwork.com. We did the show around this time last year, to promote our "Would you do..." tournament.

They're doing a day-long marathon to help raise money for a good cause. You can read about it here and here.

'I don't roll on Shabbos'

The fine folks in the Colorado Senate are recognizing that it ain't kosher for a Jewish school to play on Shabbat, the day of rest.

From The Denver Post.

In a bipartisan show of support for a local Jewish school basketball team,
lawmakers in the Senate this morning urged state athletics officials to push
back a game until after sundown on Saturday.

The boys from Herzl/Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy basketball team are
currently fighting their way through their high school district playoffs. If the
team wins one more game, it will play for the championships. But the Colorado
High School Activities Association has scheduled that championship game for
during the day on Saturday and has said it won't move the contest.

The boys' religious beliefs dictate that they not play between sundown
Friday and sundown Saturday.

If Herzl/Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy isn't the most daunting high school name out there, we don't know what is.

Big Picture Categories: sports movies

King's Cup might be the best drinking game out there. Everyone has their own version, there's ample drinking and sometimes -- on a few lucky occasions -- hot chicks end up naked. One of the best "games" in King's Cup is Categories, which often is represented by the Jack card. In Categories, the person who draws the card says a category (fast food joints, baseball stadiums, etc.) and everyone must go around the circle naming one until somebody stumbles. When that person fucks up, they drink. Make sense? Good.

For how much we like sports, sports movies have never really done it for us. They're often trite, cliché and corny. Occasionally there will be a good one and, for some, these niche movies really work.

With last weekend's Academy Awards, movies are on people's minds. So let's keep things sports-related and list off some of the best -- and inevitably some of the worst -- sports flicks of all time. We'll start and you guys continue in the comments. You can go again after every five comments. One -- one! -- answer per comment, assbags. First person to mess up has to listen to "Wild Thing" on repeat.

We'll start with one we quite enjoy: Major League.

All right, movie buffs. Spew your pop-culture knowledge in the comments.

Your 2008 free agent All-Star team

The first Spring Training games are tomorrow and we, probably like you, sorta can’t wait. The Mets play the Tigers! Texas vs. Kansas City in the battle of Surprise, Ariz.! Baseball! Actual, live baseball! With runs and innings and outs and umpires! It’s here! Finally!

Well, for us, anyway. For these lads below, that whole matter of finding a team still remains. Damn logistics.

There are still so many big-name players currently unemployed that we’ve compiled a list of remaining free-agents who are former All-Stars (year(s) selected in parenthesis). It’s a pretty solid squad. We think it would probably take two of three from the Giants. Here goes:

C - Mike Piazza (1993-2002, 2004, 2005)
1B - Ryan Klesko (2001)
2B - Julio Franco (1989-1991)
3B - Jeff Cirillo (1997, 2000)
SS - Tony Batista (2000, 2002)
LF - Barry Bonds (1990, 1992-1998, 2000-2004, 2007)
CF - Kenny Lofton (1994-1999)
RF - Shawn Green (1999, 2002)
DH - Sammy Sosa (1995, 1998-2002, 2004)
Bench - Reggie Sanders (1995); Preston Wilson (2003); Rondell White (2003)
P - Roger Clemens (1986, 1988, 1990-1992, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2003-2005); David Wells (1995, 1998, 2000); Aaron Sele (1998, 2000); Eric Milton (2001); Russ Ortiz (2003)
RP - Armando Benitez (2003-2004); Jose Mesa (1995-1996)

Let’s go, GMs. Rondell White is still out there. Rondell White!

-ALS

They still love Kelvin Sampson in Montana

Perhaps you didn’t know this: Kelvin Sampson used to be the men’s basketball coach at Montana Tech. Yeah, true story.

He was the coach for the Orediggers – the Orediggers! We can’t tell you what an Oredigger is or does. (Someone please help!) -- and later donated $50,000 toward the cost of renovating their athletic facilities. He’s a beloved figure there, you could say. So much so that they named their new court after him.

And they aren’t going to change it.

Montana Tech has no plans to change the name of its new basketball court, despite recent allegations against its namesake, former Indiana men's basketball coach Kelvin Sampson, athletic director Joe McClafferty said.

Montana Tech is 5-17 and could use a new coach. We might know someone who’s available. Just sayin’. Or, hey, a phone call or two couldn't hurt.

-ALS

Shouldn't some one take a flier on Barry Bonds?

The days are longer, the sun is brighter and there's baseball in the air. Spring Training is underway and for the next month, you can talk about how your team has a chance at the playoffs, if X pitcher wins X games, X player has an .XXX OBP and just about everything else breaks right.

Hey, the Giants are 0-0 right now, tied for first and haven't yet lost 100 games. Times are good!

But with all the optimism in the air surrounding your favorite team, why hasn't any team jumped the gun on Barry Bonds yet?

Sure, he's 1.) A legal issue and 2.) A PR nightmare, but teams can't complain about his .276 batting average, .480 on-base, .565 slugging, 28 jacks and 75 runs scored in 126 games last season.

It's clear he's become a defensive liability, but just about any AL West team could use his services and DH him. Hell, if an NL team could get him on the cheap, platoon him in left field. At this point, a guy like Bonds could put a good team over the hump. And he's close to achieving some milestones; that'll put fans in the seats.

We'll see what happens. But we suppose Kangaroo court is the least of his worries.

We're getting reach-around treatment

Blog buddy and super commenter Rick from Stiles Points asked us some questions which we gave verbose answers to.

Go check it out. Leave a comment. Live a little.

It's insightful and provactive and slightly arousing. For women. Arousing for women.

Sometimes there are ulterior motives for eating pancakes

One word describes Mrs. Butterworth: MILF.

She's smart, sweet and delicious on pancakes. You could say that Mrs. Butterworth would be delicious with some Mrs. Butterworth's on her.

And while Mrs. B's bottle is a little more PC than it used to be, Aunt Jemima -- quite the looker herself -- is a bit behind the curve. Kinda like the Washington Redskins-equivalent for maple syrup.
----------------------------------------------
Breakfast is our second least favorite meal of the day, only ahead of fourth meal, which is the stupidest fucking ad campaign in advertising. We eat like six meals by eight o'clock, so don't tell us to think outside of the bun when we're drunk and horny late at night.

Meanwhile, eggs are boring, oatmeal is like eating cement and cereal was much more fun when you were 7 and had your pick between a cartoon tiger, leprechaun or bunny.

----------------------------------------------
We don't understand MySpace and the Facebook. It's neat to stay in touch with friends and see pictures; social networking sites are fantastic for that.

But then there are those people who play on these sites for hours. Like what the fuck do you do? It's not like a video game where you advance to the next level.

And the people who update their "status" letting you know that they're studying, taking a shit, or making sweet love to Mrs. Butterworth? Fuck that.

----------------------------------------------
Usually we have no problem with ESPN. It still has the best coverage of games of any network. It has solid play-by-play guys, decent color commentators and the hottest pieces of ass roaming the sidelines.

Yet there are times where the network's self-promotion is bothersome. Take for example Wednesday night on College Game Night. Before showing highlights of what must've been a great game between The U and Duke, we got to see highlights of the blowout victories of Memphis and Tennessee and then a preview of that game, which conveniently, ESPN is carrying Saturday. That's a serious lack of news judgment.

Oh, and 1st and 10 is perhaps the worst 30 minutes of television since the invention of cable. How nobody has cut out Skip Bayless' tongue is mind-boggling.

----------------------------------------------
We forgot how to sleep.

We'll be tired all day, be ready to go to sleep at 10 and then get a second wind, stay up until two, get in bed, and fall asleep at three.

And naturally, wake up at nine, tired, yet able to fall back asleep.

That's fucked.

We need some Ambien, big time.

----------------------------------------------
Hey, Oscars Sunday. Who ya got?

Here's what we want:

Best Picture: There Will Be Blood or No Country for Old Men -- if it's Atonement, that'd be criminal.
Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Actress: Fuck cares?
Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country
Supporting Actress: This is still an award?

----------------------------------------------
The first of many pornos we'll direct/co-star will be called, "No Cunt-ry For Small Men."

But did he call the bank?

Somewhere, Kelvin Sampson is making a phone call.