Q: Why can't American athletes get their priorities straight?

A: You may remember, after the Nets beat the Cavs in Game 5 of the second round of the NBA Playoffs, LeBron James telling reporters, "It's just basketball for me. I've got a family to worry about."

WRONG! It's like I've always said, "No matter how sweet personal life is, it can't be compared to the exultation of capturing glory for one's nation."

In fact, I have it tattooed on my inner eyelids.

EARLIER IN CHINA: Hurray for executing the insolent!

Q: "The most important work anyone has ever done in blogging about sports"?

A: Here I though it was Deadspin's coverage of Carl Monday, but it turns out they're #2.

CANADA.COM: Midnight blogger exposes a scandal

KC Johnson does not fit the stereotype of blogger, journalist, legal analyst or lacrosse fan.

Yet in the last year he has become all four. The bow tie-wearing, Harvard-educated professor is the prolific blogger behind Durham- in-Wonderland, writing hundreds of posts about the Duke University sexual assault scandal. A tenured history professor at Brooklyn College in New York state, he stays up until midnight to post his latest musings on the case, even though he is five states from the action in Durham, N.C.

One of the accused lacrosse players publicly thanked Prof. Johnson for his "diligent work exposing the truth" after the North Carolina Attorney-General dropped the charges against the three last week. Indeed, some of the defence lawyers relied on the blog to help build their court arguments.

Nothing against Johnson, but the day my lawyers are relying on "the blog" is the day I get new lawyers.

Fellow bloggers frequently said if a Pulitzer were awarded for online commentary, the contrarian professor would win. "There is absolutely no doubt that Johnson's blog, Durham-in-Wonderland, was the single best source of information about what happened in that house in March of 2006 and what has happened with the case since," one sports blogger wrote this week.

"[W]hat he's done is the most important work anyone has ever done in blogging about sports."

Nothing against Johnson, but the day a Pulitzer is awarded for online commentary is THE DAY I WIN A PULITZER.

Q: What is this, a weather blog?

A: Hey, sorry for the recent lack of Surprising Answers^®. I've been focusing my attentions on the aforementioned plans to move somewhere not miserably cold. More on that soon.

In the meantime, here's some stuff to read:

• Remember the two-faced cats who were surely harbingers of the apocalypse? Boing Boing just posted an update on a two-faced cow from Virginia: She's dead, Jim.
• The U.S. military has unveiled a charming new invention to NPR: A heat ray that makes you feel like your flesh is burning. It does no permanent damage, they say, and will be used to disperse crowds, presumably at war protests or for when Congress gets unruly.
• McDonald's owns a lot of words.
• John Kerry is getting uglier.
• And via Gawker, the New York Times makes some absurd claims about this year's Super Bowl commercials.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, congratulations to Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts. No one believed they could pull it off. Well, almost no one. God, I'm a genius.

Q: "How do I explain to a mom that her kid has herpes forever?"

Wrestling: Now even more like gay intercourse.

A: That's the question posed by Owatonna High School coach Scot Davis after a herpes outbreak forced a suspension of Minnesota's HS wrestling season. Awwwwwwkward.

I don't mean to make light of this story, but it's hard to hold back when the sidebar is headlined "South Dakota on herpes alert." Anyhoo, Scot, the best I can tell you is to go ask Alice.

On the bright side, it's only showing up on wrestlers' head, neck and face, which basically makes it like a really bad cold sore. Just remind everyone not to make love to the team from Rochester, and you should be just fine.

EARLIER: Are you a kitten with herpes?

Q: What are my NFL playoff predictions?

A: One of my predictions is already going to be wrong, so I'd better get this baby up quick...

Wild Card Weekend

• COLTS over CHIEFS
• COWBOYS over SEAHAWKS (UPDATE: Oopsie daisy. I'd made a joke here, but I hate to make light of an impending suicide)
  
• PATRIOTS over JETS (btw, the Jets made the playoffs? wtf?)
• EAGLES over GIANTS

Whatever They Call Next Weekend

• COLTS over RAVENS
• PATS over CHARGERS (Bill Belichick = sneaky bastard)
  
• COWBOYS over BEARS (UPDATE: But seriously, someone better drive Tony Romo home)
• EAGLES over SAINTS (sorry, New Orleans, The Lord God hates American sports; like, for instance, how one month after 9/11, the New York Yankees lose Game 7 of the World Series in preposterously unlikely fashion, with Mariano Rivera on the mound, to the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks, which, by the way -- it's probably fair to admit after all this time -- was totally hilarious)
  

League Championships

• COLTS over PATS (see below)
• EAGLES over COWBOYS (bonus prediction: Jeff Garcia throws four touchdowns in the win, followed immediately by the Cuyahoga River exploding into flames)
  

Super Bowl XLI

• COLTS over EAGLES, 31-28.

WHY I'M PICKING THE COLTS

By all accounts, the Indianapolis Colts are the worst they've been in several years. Given how the last several years have played out for Peyton Manning (superb, record-breaking regular seasons, followed by miserably embarrassing playoff defeats), the Rules Of Sports In The Era Of All-Encompassing And Quite Frankly Boring Parity decree that this is the year they go all the way.

It will be a great travesty, and lead to a summer in which literally every ad on television features Manning in a costume and/or talking in a funny voice and/or being ridiculed by Tony Dungy. Also, the Cleveland Browns will be universally lauded for their savvy first-round draft pick, leading to great disappointment when, two months later, the player is mauled to death by bears. Happy 2007!

---

DON'T FORGET: WhyWahooWeeps, the delightful Cleveland sports blog, is coming soon.

IN THE MEANTIME: Discarded Cowboys QB Drew Bledsoe has much to celebrate on "his" famous blog.

Q: Why is 2007 most certainly the Cleveland Indians' year?

A: Because 2007 is the year I unveil my Cleveland sports blog.

Have you seen it? Probably not, since I just bought the domain five seconds ago...

WhyWahooWeeps.com
(coming soon to an Internet near you...)

And so it begins. Sort of.

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EDIT: Added weepy Wahoo.

Q: Why are PETA members cancelling their NBA season tickets?

A: Haha, just kidding! Emotionally crippled hippies don't care about sports. They're trying to reject their fathers, not bond with them, duh.

But in a fantasyworld where PETA members did buy NBA season tickets, they almost certainly would be cancelling them now that commish David Stern is doing an uncharacteristic 180 and returning to leather balls, reports ESPN.com's Marc Stein:

It might be the most stunning ball reversal in hoops history.

Not even three months into the life of its controversial synthetic basketball, NBA commissioner David Stern moved Monday to hush scores of discontented players by shelving Spalding's new microfiber composite ball and authorizing a switch back to the old leather ball for all games starting Jan. 1.

"Our players' response to this particular composite ball has been consistently negative and we are acting accordingly," Stern said in a statement. "Although testing performed by Spalding and the NBA demonstrated that the new composite basketball was more consistent than leather and statistically there has been an improvement in shooting, scoring and ball-related turnovers, the most important statistic is the view of our players."

Hahahaha, everyone's in a joking mood today! Oh, wait, he was being serious. Odd, considering it was just six weeks ago that ESPN's Chris Sheridan wrote, following a conversation with Stern, "No matter what the players say, the new NBA ball is here to stay."

See, what Stern really means to say is that the new ball (which PETA really did try to take credit for, by the way) is causing actual injuries. It's not the pain that'd concern him so much as the fact that having Steve Nash's hands fall off would be bad for business. Stein continues:

ESPN.com reported Friday that league officials began contacting all 30 teams late last week to start gauging its supply of leftover leather balls from last season in case the decision to switch came quickly.

The hope now, according to sources, is that the league can get a playable supply of leather balls to each team by Christmas...

Say, that might be a tall order -- maybe even too tall for the NBA! Didn't Isiah Thomas trade the Knicks' stash of leather basketballs for a set of Lincoln Logs and Brian Scalabrine or something?

Holy mother of God... this is a disaster!! How will the league EVER be able to find so much leather -- and at the height of the frantic holiday shopping season!?!?!

BREAKING: DISASTER STRIKES NBA! SEASON TO BE CANCELLED! CHRISTMAS IS RUINED!!!!!

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[click to enlarge]

Well. Well. Well.

Look who's gone and saved the NBA's sorry ass once again. Oh Bron-Bron -- you're T.A.M.S.Y.'s hero!

(But probably not Susie's.)

Q: Didn't they always say there was no surf in Cleveland, USA?

A: Damn you, Euclid Beach Band, for your dirty lies.


The New York Times today has an expose on the Cleveland surf community: Yes, You Can Surf in Cleveland.

“Cleveland surfers have a reputation for being gritty and hard-core,” said Ryan Gerard, owner of Third Coast Surf Shop in New Buffalo, Mich. “They just don’t care what other people think about them.”

Occasionally there are days when the waves are good and the sunset falls into Lake Erie like a red fire and the Cleveland surfers bob silently in the water, alone in the city. And they laugh at their good fortune.

“Nobody surfs here to get noticed,” Scott Ditzenberger said. “We surf here because we love it.”

Speaking of not getting noticed, I've never heard of a Cleveland surf community. Wait, is the Times still running stories by Jayson Blair?

While I'm running photos from the Times, check out this sweet shot of the Discovery launch in Cape Canaveral yesterday:


As per always, click to enlarge.

Q: Are Mets fans silent, deadly?

A: No, they're loud, obnoxious and deadly. But it's QUIET funny that you mention that, because the Mets and Cardinals are in the middle of QUIET a battle.

ESPN.com told me so QUIET recently.

OH SNAP EMBARASSING TYPO!

[NOTE: My blog is slowly becoming the crazy old man who writes daily letters to his local paper listing punctuation errors. DEAL WITH IT.]

Also, Endy Chavez just made what will probably be --especially if the Mets win -- considered the greatest catch in postseason history (suck it, Willie Mays), to rob St. Louis' Scott Rolen of a two-run homer.

Of course, T.A.M.S.Y. hates all teams from New York, but it really was a snazzy little catch. Congratulations to Endy, baseball player and huge fan of The Answer May Surprise You.

ALSO: Sexy Teenage Susie recently linked me to this kickass New Yorker story about clumsy kajillionaire Steve Wynn and his enormous drunken elbow. Very entertaining.

Q: Do you hate the Yankees as much as John Green does?

A: If so, you should turn on ESPN2. Daniel Cabrera of the Baltimore Orioles is about to take a no-hitter into the bottom of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium.

UPDATE: Stupid Robinson Cano.