Something told me Hopkins wasn’t gonna get it done last night. That knockdown in the first round almost made me change my mind, but in the end, the fight went about like I expected it to. Now understand, last night I went against two of my most important sports picking rules: I picked against somebody from Philly and I picked the white dude over the Black dude. But knowing that Hopkins throws punches one at a time, I really didn’t have a choice. I wouldn’t have made a bet, like I did with Mayweather, but I told everybody at the party that Bernard wasn’t gonna do it.

I wouldn’t have minded being wrong on that one.

I hope Andy Reid is just talkin. I hope he’s just sayin that he’s not really lookin for somebody to fill the ‘X’ spot because he’s tryin to throw all the other coaches and GMs in the league off the trail of who he’s secretly lookin at. That one experiment with Terrell Owens notwithstanding, history’s not really on his side. And I’m thinkin it probably ain’t gonna be this summer, either. But we’ll see. I’m kinda thinkin that this is gonna be the Eagles’ last go-round — or at least, McNabb’s last go-round as an Eagle. I wanna see them jokers load up and go out right.

The money quote: “On the wide receiver situation and the fans’ clamoring for an upgrade: “[The fans] are passionate about that X spot and sometimes that can be a bit overrated, but I understand the want there. I don’t necessarily feel the same way, but I understand where they’re coming from.”

2 April. I’m callin’ 10-6 and a wildcard spot.

I’m pretty old now, but if I was younger, I’d probably be like these cats, doing MMA in addition to wrestling. I actually fooled around with SOMBO, a Russian style that’s very similar to judo, after my ACL healed in my senior year. By the time I got to SOMBO, the desire to compete had been quelled a little bit, so I didn’t keep it up, but I could definitely see myself competing. Or even as a 20-year old, I could see myself getting back in shape and watching my weight all the time, because the draw of combat is just that strong.

I ain’t doin it now, though. No. Way. (He says. Knowin good and well that if he ever stumbles into some MMA gym, all it would take is one good grapple and a submission and he’d be in there every day tryin to get another one.)

I do think it’s interesting that MMA might actually be helping to generate interest in amateur wrestling. I might have to see about making that connection more explicit for my kids.

Gary Zimmerman, one of my favorite football writers, breaks from the ranks of those who are lionizing the recently-retired Brett Favre, pointing out that as good as Favre was, or even great, if you want to use that term, he could have been better. Because, Dr. Z argues, Favre was so undisciplined at times, he cost his teams some winnable games, including playoff defeats. Yet, “Always ready to make excuses, always braying about “what a good time he’s having,” that was the continual barrage from TV. Maybe a few frowns, a stern reprimand or two, might have toned down the wild maverick a little, but gosh, he sure is having fun out there. And that’s what the game is all about, isn’t it? Fun, boys acting like men and so forth.” Personally, I think Dr. Z is spot-on with his assessment. In a way, all of that uncritical adulation kinda kept me from really appreciating Favre as much. Sure, he had his Super Bowl win and his ironman streak and all that, but why was he so immune to the types of criticism that other quarterbacks, like…ohhh, I don’t know….Donovan was subjected to? But I’m squarely in Dr. Z’s corner when he writes, “How will history evaluate him? Capable of almost anything on the field. Heroic. Indestructible. Maddening at times, but great to root for. With only this low key aftermath.

Could have been greater.”

Reminds me a lot of hip-hop in some ways. I think that at one point, hip-hop had the potential to be as much of a force of social mobilization as people claimed. It never, ever was that, but I think the potential was there. It would have had to have been very focused and utilized by someone with a vision of something greater than profit, but there was a chance. Even if it could not achieve the high-minded goal of being a source of social mobilization, there was a much greater chance for it to evolve into a sho-nuff artform. But then money got in the way. I’m not at all suggesting that artists shouldn’t profit from their work, but when the focus of the work becomes the generation of profit instead of being the creation of art, the quality of the product invariably decreases.

People have different opinions on the true golden age of hip-hop, when the synergy of beats and rhymes had elevated the genre to its highest form, actually was. Some folks swear it was 1988-1992. Others fix it somewhere between 1994-1997. I guess a lot of it depends on when the person came of age, cuz me, I like a lotta records in that 94-97 era, but in my mind, that whole period can’t even fade 1990. But that’s just me. I know other people who would make the inverse argument. Either way, when we look back, we can point to certain emcees and certain rhymes that typify the overall quality of hip-hop during that time period. But as good as the golden era was, no matter when it was for you, there were some wack groups out. I’m not just talkin about ‘marginally corny’ or ‘looking-back-they-weren’t-as-good-as-I-thought,’, I’m talmbout straight-up horrible. And we knew it then. These days, I don’t know if there’s even that level of scrutiny on the artistic merits of hip-hop. Not really. I think that there are pockets of people who think about these types of thing, but they’re also people who came of age in earlier eras.

As good as hip-hop is, and while it may not have turned out to be the tool for social justice that some people expected it to be, it has more than surpassed any expectations on its commercial viability, and perhaps its longevity, it could be better. Its power could be harnessed more effectively if it could somehow be guided out of its current rut of puerile fantasy. While I’m definitely not the one to place any societal problems at the feet of hip-hop, as if its responsible, I think that foci other than “gettin riches, gettin bitches, and issuin’ stitches” would have the potential to ameliorate some of the challenges we face. It may not have any effect, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think any such change is on the horizon, though. Not yet. Not while there’s still so much money to be made.

Unlike football players, though, hip-hop won’t really retire. It just may stop being as prominent. Maybe then, if it lessens in popularity and goes back to being more of the insiders-only club that it started out being, it can recover its potential. Maybe it can be as great as people act like it is now.

In today’s Super Bowl, I don’t really have a strong rooting interest. The Giants are the only team that somebody I know (or knew) personally has played for, so I guess I’m with them, although rooting for another NFC East team…that don’t feel so good. But it could be worse. It could be the Cowboys.

In better news, Art Monk finally got elected to the Hall of Fame. I’m really not sure what the argument ever was against him, but by numbers AND by performances in big games, he shoulda BEEN in the Hall. I don’t even fool with the R*s like that, and I’m quick to say he shoulda been in there. Of course, it should go without saying that Darrell Green is a first-ballot HOF’er. Even though Deion Sanders gets all the glowing pub, if I personally were gonna take two corners from the 90’s, I’d go with Darrell Green and Rod Woodson. I like hitting with my speed and interceptions, thank you.

Of course my real question is whether the Eagles are gonna heed the appeals by both McNabb AND Westbrook to get some more weapons on offense. After three years of denying it, I’m starting to think that the window might be closing on McNabb. Personally, I think he has about one more All-Pro season left in the tank, maybe more if they get some help at receiver. Just once, I’d like to see the Eagles start the season with a full complement of starting receivers. That is, I’d like them to have a legitimate NFL #1 receiver and a legitimate #2 receiver, not just two dudes who do okay that they could get on the cheap.

What if this Russian scientist is right? What if, instead of global warming, the REAL threat is (still) an impending ice age, due to a cyclical decrease in solar radiation?

I don’t think of myself as a contrarian, but I do know that “global warming,” while quantifiable with certain sets of data, sets off some type of alert in my pseudo-scientific mind. I’m not quite slick enough to clearly articulate my reservations all the time, but most of it has something to do with the idea that the variable is too much us and not enough sun.

Living in DC, it’s been almost impossible to escape hearing about the shooting death of NFL Pro-Bowl safety, Sean Taylor. After seeing what’s happened, I’m pretty sure of two things. 1) If I were a professional athlete, I’m not sure how much I would trust the media, either; and 2) as somebody whose personal business is public knowledge, I’m not sure anybody would be able to keep me from keeping a gun at home.

The Ravens gave the Patriots much more of a game than I thought they would. With their frequently anemic offense, I thought the Pats were just gonna roll over the Ravens. Not so. At the same time, as I was watching that 4th quarter, when Kyle Boller’s coach turned back to a pumpkin and they couldn’t convert on 3rd down, I knew they weren’t gonna make it. I didn’t think it would take as many coincidental circumstances, like Baltimore calling a timeout as they were about to make a stop on 4th down, but once I saw that? I knew it was a wrap. Next up? The Steelers. I think the Stillers could probably put together a game similar to the one the Colts, Eagles, and Ravens did, only I think that if they have a lead late in the 4th, they’ll be able to salt the game away. Ben will convert a 3rd and 2 for the game.

AJ Feeley is what we thought he is. And I still think Donovan’s gone next year. But if the Bears can’t get a consistent running game, I don’t want him going there either.

Fight FIght FIGHT For the cherry and the white!

Temple has won 3 football games in a row. They’re actually mathematically in competition for the lead in their conference. What school is this?

Fly on, baby. Fly on.

As the saying goes, pimpin’ ain’t easy, but how hard is hoein’? Apparently it’s harder than it should be.

A DEFENDANT accused of forcing a prostitute at gunpoint to have sex with him and three other men got lucky, so to speak, last week.

A Philadelphia judge dropped all sex and assault charges at his preliminary hearing.

Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni instead held the defendant on the bizarre charge of armed robbery for - get this - “theft of services.”

Unbelievable.

Deni told me she based her decision on the fact that the prostitute consented to have sex with the defendant.

“She consented and she didn’t get paid . . . I thought it was a robbery.”

Are you serious? It’s one thing for people to use the word ‘ho’ in conversation. It’s something altogether different for the justice system to fail to protect women just because they sell sexual services. Theft of services? That warrants some type of reprimand.

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post is making entirely too much sense on this whole controversy over “performance enhancers.”

All sport is an effort to alter the body and change its chemistry. Nice as it is to believe that it should be a matter of pure hard work, just look at how athletes starve themselves on extreme diets or swallow insane dosages and mixtures of vitamins, manipulating their intake and fuels in “legal” but hardly natural ways. You can’t take a diuretic without getting a ban, but you can be anorexic. What sense does that make? You get a sanction for using EPO, but you can artificially — and legally — raise your red blood cells by 2 or 3 percentage points by sleeping in a $20,000 altitude tent, which is not especially good for you, and that’s if you can afford and find one, which a lot of athletes in Africa or Central America can’t.

Speaking of sports, I love coaching, but I’m not exactly waxing teary-eyed over the upcoming end of the JV football season. Before, I wondered how coaches could spend all day and all night at the gig. Now I know.

Still the best QB in the league, bar none. Now that he has actual receiving threats, we’re seein the incontrovertible evidence of that. I still maintain that with a full stable of stud receivers, Donovan could (could have?) put up staggering numbers too, but we can only deal with what is. And right now, New England IS the best team in the league, bar none. That matchup against the Colts is gonna be quite a tilt, but right now, with them fools faithfully droppin 30 points a game, I don’t know what else to say.

Well, the Eagles finally won again. If you divide the season into 4 quarters, the 1st quarter was miserable. The 2nd quarter will set their trajectory for the year. If they’re gonna recover at all, or even have a chance to recover, they’re gonna hafta make their move now.

Jeremy at Parableman has an interesting take on sports in our society vis a vis Ayn Rand’s dismissal of them as an utter waste of time. Now, I’ll concede right up front that as a society, we do waste a whooole lotta time on sports. I mean, just today, I had to get on one of my kids because I’ve heard him spittin stats in a Kobe vs. AI discussion, but he cant remember the password for his email account for my class. I had to call him on it. At any rate, while I readily concede that our society’s deification of athletes, particularly the professionals in one of the big three sports who win a lot, does represent a capital waste of time and resources, I think sports offers a lens into society that most other pastimes don’t, or can’t. Specifically, I think sports, in large part because of our national obsession with them, provide us to look at some thresholds between class and race that might otherwise be all but invisible.

Sports offers the chance for us to see the difference between what we say we believe and what we actually think. This includes the massive amount of time and money that we spend in watching them. For instance, a large part of the appeal is that professional athletics represents one of the core things that we as Americans purport to believe in, which is the idea of a meritocracy. No matter what political persuasion, people believe that the best athletes will inevitably rise to the top. In a lot of ways, that’s true. A lot of other, unwritten rules are evident in sports, too, like ‘you’re only in the wrong if you get caught.’ To me, that’s why the cheating controversy is so big. For the most part, we KNOW something’s going on, but we don’t really care all that much until somebody we don’t like is doing all the winning and ostensibly cheating. In its own way, that’s like the discrepancy between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine.

But that’s me, and I’ve been a sports fan my whole life. I would imagine that somebody who doesn’t do sports and has never done so wouldn’t feel the same way.

So Donovan told it like it is, and people who don’t wanna be self-reflective can’t hear him. What else is new?

Here’s what I know: being an NFL fan in general, but an Eagles fan above all, particularly with the Eagles being my home team, I know what the deal is in Philly. It’s a given that Philly is a tough sports town, although some incidents, like the snowball assault of Santa Claus are a tad overblown. (I mean, yeah, it happened, but it wasn’t like the Santa in question was your regular, jolly, ho-ho-hoein Kris Kringle. If you look into the incident a little more, there’s some other stuff goin on. He wasn’t Black, either.)

Anyway, situations like this help to illustrate the fact that we are not as far along racially as we think we are. That is, there has been a great deal of progress, and we should be happy about that. However, the fact remains that the only racists in the world aren’t members of organizations that tout hateful beliefs. Naw, in some people, it lurks beneath the veneer of acceptance, waiting for just the right challenge to be exposed. Such is the case, I think, with many fans. As in, some of the people arguing against what Donovan is saying are inadvertently proving his point. It’s like when some Muslims were threatening to assassinate people for saying they are violent.

The funny thing is, the HBO show wasn’t about Black quarterbacks, per se. It was about where Donovan grew up. If people took the whole thing in context, it might have been easier for them to understand. But I’m fairly convinced that in most matters, not just issues of race, the last thing people want is for their thinking to be challenged. People like their categories neat and clean. White racists are in the kkk.

I think it’s kinda unfortunate that this interview didn’t air while Donovan was in the middle of an MVP-type stretch like he was last year, though. With the 0-2 start, it looks very current, when the interview was done last summer. And as far as the start goes, I got 2 words for you: Andy Reid. For the life of me, I cannot understand what this dude is doing. Last year, when the Eagles were winning with Garcia, the run-pass ratio was manageable. It was very close to even. The other night? Donovan passed over 40 times, with Westbrook only getting, i think, 17 carries. We already KNOW what works. We knew it last year. The rest of the League BEEN knew it. Andy Reid, though? I don’t know what the deal is. He seems to think Donovan is a Madden player or something. Not to mention that they keep calling plays that don’t make sense for the personnel they have. As in, they’ll have 3-5 and throw a 3-yard pass. Now I realize that the plays are designed for the receiver to get the ball and then make the extra yardage on their own, but they never get those receivers. They had one for ONE year. When they did? It was good night for the NFC. Avent, Brown / Pinkston Thrash, same difference. The Eagles’ X and Z are #3 receivers at best, and Reid refuses to run the rock. Wha’chu THINK gon’ happen? Sheesh.

So to summarize, yeah, being criticized goes along with being the QB. Everybody knows that. The criticism Donovan has gotten his whole career? Extra. But it’s not just about him. It’s about the whole system; it’s about how certified scrubs can get jobs as starting QBs before Black cats with winning records for their career get a call. Remember my premise: equality isn’t about excellence, it’s about mediocrity; it’s not about having the chance to succeed, it’s about having the chance to fail repeatedly. (And don’t fool yourself, the only way it’s possible to say that Donovan ‘failed’ is to say that he never won the Super Bowl. But in many ways, that’s a false measure of a player’s achievement; Trent Dilfer won a Super Bowl, but even most crackheads know better than to say that they’d take Dilfer over Donovan.) Never forget, an equal sign has a high bar AND a low bar.