College Football and the American Healthcare System

Those are my dad’s tickets for the Rice v. SMU game last Friday night. Unused. My dad loves Rice football. He lives for it, this season almost literally so. See, my dad has pancreatic cancer. Don’t know if you know much about it, but if you had to pick a cancer to have, you’d pick pancreatic last. It’s a death sentence. The average lifespan from diagnosis is six months.

About six weeks ago my dad developed an esophageal problem on top of that. His surgery to correct it had complications and he ended up doing nine days in ICU and about five weeks total in a hospital bed. Last week he was moved to a skilled nursing facility, but he’s fucked. There’s not much left of him and, even if puts in the work to rehab successfully, he’ll be functional just in time for the cancer to ravage what’s left of him. But throughout this entire summer, my dad has been focused on one thing. I heard him say it explicitly many times: “I just want to be able to make it to the Rice season opener.”

 

It’s Like I’m God, Or At Least God-Like

Dear Kenny Wiliams:

I imagine you worry about who or what your trigger happy manager might go off on next, or maybe that the 38-year-old you just traded for will get hurt (may or may not have already have happened). But you shouldn’t trifle over such trivialities.

Instead you should be worried about me because I can control the fate of the Chicago White Sox.

Don’t laugh.

 

With My $.02 Added This Should Bring It Up To $6.86

So in the aftermath of the Bissinger v. Leitch showdown on Costas Now there was, somewhat predictably, an uproar across the Internet. A little more surprising was that the discussion spilled over to “traditional” media (radio, TV, print), but, hey, when a respected writer starts to look like he’s going Cruise, who doesn’t feel the need to either attack or apologize?

Clearly, me neither.

Anyway, most of the reactions were telegraphed with blogs defending blogging, basically claiming that many old guard writers, like Bissinger, were scared or threatened.

Really?

Bissinger is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Friday Night Lights—widely regarded as one of the better sports books ever written—was made into a movie, as was his Vanity Fair account of Stephen Glass’ downfall. Universal Pictures recently optioned the rights to another Vanity Fair piece he did, “Gone With the Wind” about—God help us—Barbaro (appropriate because Bissinger is also a horse fucker). And if his wikipedia page is to be believed, he’s pocketed enough dough to lead a bi-coastal life.

 

You’re All Worthless and Weak

Every notice how every now and then your fantasy baseball team is complete pants? Fortunately you don’t lose much ground because the other teams was equally as craptastic.

At one point last night my “team”—yes, I realize it’s a fake team playing fake games, but one thing I like about fantasy baseball is that it lets me see some things statistically that I might not otherwise notice—was a fierce 3-24. I think Kotchman got a hit in his last a bat to raise the batting average to .160 (with 8 K’s to boot).

And these aren’t bottom of the order guys. Kotchman is hitting .340 on the season. Rafael Furcal, Josh Hamilton, Matt Holliday, Aramis Ramirez, Connor Jackson, these are all guys hitting about .300 or better. Shit Furcal is hitting .370!

 

Really, You’re Only Going to Hit .087?

These two things I know:

1) Nobody cares about your fantasy team. While in this case “your” means “my,” it’s true for everybody. The only person who cares about your team, who you drafted, and what trades you made, is you. Even the people you might be playing in your head-to-head league don’t care, or they only care inasmuch as you suck that week.

2) I realize there has only been one week played in the MLB season.

But that’s not going to stop from proclaiming that my team might be the worst ever. At least offensively.

 

Not This Shit Again

Maybe you shouldn’t have been working in the meth lab during the game. You know, take a break. Somebody must have not, otherwise I’m at a loss to explain the following.

Let me be clear that I didn’t actually check the exact time that the Orange Bowl ended, but I’d bet this morning’s yet-to-be eaten breakfast that this comment found my inbox within 15 minutes of the final gun of KU’s 24 – 21 highly unlikely victory over Virginia Tech.

Really, that’s your first impulse? Post a comment on that relatively small blog that claimed Kansas had an easy schedule? You sure you don’t want to find an over-excited and over-served coed? This might be your best chance all year. Nope.

Instead…

I get the following pia.

 

I Really Did Set An Alarm To Get Up At 6:30 To Watch This But Like a Sane (Read: Hungover) Person, I Went Back To Sleep

See that? That’s Niklas Bendtner. And he’s white. And the Tottenham defense—cough*oxymoron*cough—has managed to make him look like the Michael Jordan of Denmark (Yes, it’s Engligh football, but Arsenal’s Bendtner is Danish).

Really, has anyone of Danish origin ever gotten that much air?

 

Say It Ain’t So, FP Santangelo

Twenty million apparentlly doesn’t buy what it used to, does it? Seriously, Bud, you don’t want to ask for a refund?

For all the ephemeral one-day bluster it caused—Timmy Kurkjian is still voting for Bonds and Clemens for the Hall after all—the report itself is amazingly thin.

Well, not in a literal sense. It tips the scales at over 400 pages and it probably wiped out a small section of the rainforest when it set off an armada of company printers upon its afternoon release.

But having actually read the whole thing (What? I’m stuck in Houston) it kind of has that feel of your junior year term paper that you set in courier font just so that the text would make it to a fourth page.

 

At Least I’m Not Rhyming ‘BCS’ and ‘Mess’

First let’s take a moment and acknowledge the awesomeness that was Bizarro College Football Season.

It was awesome.

Okay, now you can revert to your Edvard Munch face.

Yes, the BCS has left us with Cheaty McSweatervest vs. Talky McLoudcoach. God what a dream.

That is if your dreams include getting sucker punched in the nuts. But hey, somebody’s gotta live in Columbus.

Really, the BCS has sucked the lifeforce out of me. I can barely make a dick joke when talking about it. Still, I feel compelled to take a couple of jabs at the cocksure kids in Columbus and Red Stick.

Yes, you won the sweepstakes. Do you deserve it? Not really. Not that anybody else did. Save for Hawaii everyone’s got one big strike against them. Some have two.

 

Rivalry Weak

I’m scrambling to get these up before the Horns and the Aggies face off. So there is minimal snark to kick off this week’s picks. Plus I think I’m still in a tryptafan coma. But it’s rivalry week. Yep, nothing like the traditional West Fuckin’ Virginia v. Connecticut tilt to fire up a sports weekend. At least Kansas v. Missouri means something really significant for the first time ever. I’m going to stop bashing the Fat Man. I am in awe of what he’s done in Lawrence this year. Plus, I’m fearful he might sit on me.

Useless information is after the jump.