Kissing Suzy Kolber tackles a question we’ve been struggling with ourselves: Whom are we supposed to root against in the AFC Championship Game this weekend?
On one hand, the only thing that makes Peyton Manning even vaguely interesting is that he tends to collapse in the playoffs. If he were to somehow win, we would be ready to burn every picture we’ve ever seen of him by next Tuesday … and we’d still have a week and a half left to go!
Meanwhile, the Patriots, for all their pluck and gumption, are starting to grow tiresome as well, in a mid-90s Cowboys type of way. That’s not really fair, but hey: Thus is the price of dominance. Also, Belichick is starting to drive us insane; we think he’s responsible for losing all the dream fights against ninjas that we usually win.
We know that the Peter Kings of the planet are all fired up about this game Sunday … but really, we just can’t figure out who we want to lose more. We could use your help, if you’re offering. Because we really don’t know.
While we assume this means the ridiculously named Citifield in Flushing will be hosting in 2011 — assuming, of course, alien captors with superior technology have not overrun our planet by then, harvesting our internal organs to produce the precious fuel their planet had dried up — we wonder whether or not the Yankees overload by then will have become so official and overwhelming that an All-Star Game will be too much to tolerate. Or, more to the point, if Rudy Guiliani, deep into his run against Sen. Barack Obama for the presidency, will throw out the first pitch.
Washington’s ‘07 starting rotation (John Patterson and four guys to be named later) has roughly 30 career wins to its credit, a number which is only magnified by the fact that their broadcast booth now has 10 times that many. That’s right, Larry David-lookalike Don Sutton is doing color commentary in DC this summer. Hopefully he’ll be better than ‘86 Met Ron Darling was during the Nats inaugural season. Either way, he — like Brian Billick before him — is a product of Match Game fame …
Many thanks to Capitol Punishment for the link, although they fail to share what the question was that prompted Sutton to play the ‘Belly Button’ card. Please use the comments section for your best guesswork.
Washington’s ‘07 starting rotation (John Patterson and four guys to be named later) has roughly 30 career wins to its credit, a number which is only magnified by the fact that their broadcast booth now has 10 times that many. That’s right, Larry David-lookalike Don Sutton is doing color commentary in DC this summer. Hopefully he’ll be better than ‘86 Met Ron Darling was during the Nats inaugural season. Either way, he — like Brian Billick before him — is a product of Match Game fame …
Many thanks to Capitol Punishment for the link, although they fail to share what the question was that prompted Sutton to play the ‘Belly Button’ card. Please use the comments section for your best guesswork.
Deadspin associate editor Rick Chandler made a rather surprising confession to us the other day, and we demanded he write about it. So he now has the floor.
Trivia question: At the time that Marty Schottenheimer last won an NFL playoff game, Tom Brady was being coached by …
Answer: Me.
And if that tidbit isn’t enough to get Schottenheimer fired, nothing is. A friend called over the weekend to remind me that, during that cold, petulant January in 1991, Brady was playing for the Junipero Serra High (San Mateo, Calif.) freshman basketball team where I was a coach. Now it can be told; the school that gave us Barry Bonds, Lynn Swann and Gregg Jefferies was the site of my first coaching gig. And we were all sure that Brady was destined for great things in basketball.
Football? He had played quarterback for Serra’s freshman team that went 0-8, taking maybe a half-dozen snaps the entire season as the backup. You think Brady is slow now? He was glacial then. The man who replaced Drew Bledsoe couldn’t, in his freshman year, rise above Kevin Krystofiak (currently a local insurance broker) on the depth chart. Back then we actually thought that his dominant sport would be baseball, where he was a catcher (in fact he was taken in the 18th round of the draft by the Montreal Expos following his senior year). Although he was the starting quarterback by the time he reached the varsity, he showed little of the three-Super Bowl promise that was to come. To my recollection, none of his Serra teams even made the playoffs.
But here’s the thing. You knew, somehow, that Brady would make it. He was just too smart, too positive, and loved football too much. You rarely use the word destiny when dealing with teenage athletes, but Brady had that vibe. He was the kid who was always smiling. Even as a senior he would see me around campus and call out my name, and, for the record, it’s not usually cool for an upperclassman to acknowledge their old freshman coaches. Reminds them of humbler times, like the football season when they were 0-8.
But the Serra freshman basketball team? We were 9-3 and took a league co-championship. Who would have though then that Tommy Brady would go on to fame with a small role in the film Stuck On You? Crazy world.
By the way; my friend’s math was a little off. Schottenheimer last won a playoff game in 1993 (Chiefs 28, Oilers 20), when Brady would have been a high school junior. By then I was coaching Dan Serafini on the freshman squad. Um, notice how none of these guys went on to play basketball? — RC
(Ed. Note: Deadspin editor Will Leitch feels obliged to point out that in 1991, he was a sophomore in high school. He was not coached by Rick Chandler.)
For those of you whose lives are just not completely without a drunken photo of Kyle Orton, Rex Grossman or Ben Roethlisberger … hey, it’s your lucky day! This one’s from Mondesi’s House, and features Big Ben making the exact face you would expect someone to make when they are sitting on a couch next to Carson Daly. (Sorry, Carson! LUV YA!)
Legitimate question: How the hell do NFL players have time to meet girls during the season? Particularly the quarterbacks. The reason we never believed that Tony Romo was dating Jessica Simpson was not because we didn’t think he had a chance with her; after all, he is able to walk upright. It was because the life of an NFL quarterback seems so complicated and full of meetings and film that it’s a wonder he was ever allowed to leave the complex.
Anyway, apparently Tom Brady has found some time while charging through his Patriots’ most surprising playoff run since their first one; The Boston Herald reports that Gisele Bundchen was waiting for him outside the New England locker room following the upset victory over the Chargers on Sunday. We have no idea when he could have met her in the first place; doesn’t Belichick have him locked in some underground bunker from November until February?
Regardless, we think we know now why LaDainian Tomlinson was so pissed post game.
Also, much respect to Hoops Addict for their original Dunk of the Day series. They’ve been at this much longer than FanHouse, but there’s enough above-the-rim gold on YouTube for us all.
Buster Olney — whom, though we occasionally 
Deadspin associate editor Rick Chandler made a rather surprising confession to us the other day, and we demanded he write about it. So he now has the floor.
Legitimate question: How the hell do NFL players have time to meet girls during the season? Particularly the quarterbacks. The reason we never believed that Tony Romo was dating Jessica Simpson was not because we didn’t think he had a chance with her; after all, he is able to walk upright. It was because the life of an NFL quarterback seems so complicated and full of meetings and film that it’s a wonder he was ever allowed to leave the complex.