Dr. Tom

Fans bitching about schedules is almost as pointless as players and coaches bitching about schedules. Yes, you have to play haf your games on the road. Yes, saying you're playing a "championship schedule" is ridiculous, considering the way many teams' fortunes change from year to year. The only two teams that can legitimately gripe about their schedules, IMO, are the ones forced into traveling on short weeks by playing at Dallas or Detroit on Thanksgiving. Any other bickering is rubbish.

Yup. I only play in no-limit rooms, in fact. I despise low-limit hold 'em. Ooooh, I can "protect" my Aces under by raising a whole dollar? Wow, sign me up! If you play in the play-chip rooms, you earn UB points at the end of every month, at the rate of one point per hour in the rooms. You can then play in real-money tournaments with UB points as your buy-in. You also earn UB points immediately (and more of them) by playing in any real money room with blinds of $.10/.25 and above.

If it's a nice car behind me, I tap the brakes and hope they'll make me rich by rear-ending me. If it's a piece of shit behind me, I generally ignore it.

Goin' to Big Night Baltimore A friend of mine won tickets on the radio. We're staying at one of the nearby hotels. It looks to be a pretty awesome place to go, so I'm expecting to have a hell of a time.

WTF?? If Moss is a cancer, then what's TO? Hodgkin's Disease? Why on earth would the Vikings get rid of someone who is a)worse and b)six years older than their marquee player? It makes no sense. The Vikings have the cornerstone of a good young offense in Culpepper, Bennett, and Moss. All they need now is to find defensive backs who don't loiter on pass coverage when it's *fucking obvious the pass has to go in the end zone, and all you have to do is stop it to make the playoffs*. A few other comments: The Patriots were 7-0 against teams with winning records. That should be convincing enough. Because we should have won the St. Louis and Miami games, and there was really no excuse for losing either. The other reason, of course, is because, with the exception of running back, Seattle has worlds more talent on offense than the Ravens do. Your 2nd best receiver (Jackson) would be an upgrade over ANY of our receivers. Your backup QB should still be wearing our uniform, were it not for the one major move in franchise history I've disagreed with. Your club should be able to put up points anywhere, but they can't. Their turnover differential plummets on the road, as well, and the defense becomes a lot more porous.

I still think you should focus on being an inside linebacker. Small defensive linemen (anyone under 280 pounds) HAVE to be quick and explosive. Maybe you can become that way ina few months, but I wouldn't go betting the farm on it. A guy like Dwight Freeney can blow past some offensive linemen and get sacks, but there are times he gets pushed around like a little bitch because he's small. If you end up at 260 or so, you're going to get dogged by a 300-pound offensive lineman unless you can get around him right off the bat. If he has good technique and footwork, though (and some guys that size are surprisingly quick and agile), then you're going to spend a considerable amount of time on your backside. Go the linebacker route. I really think it's a better call. You shouldn't have to cover speedy wide receivers: that's the job of the DBs. You'll be in zone coverage sometimes, and WRs might come into your zone, but that's when you lower your shoulder and try to separate them from the ball when they make the catch. Your man coverage roles will be against tight ends, so if you can run with people your own size and build, you should be fine.

Yes. I think it's a tough record to break, but it's not untouchable. Warner challenged it a few years ago. Gannon made a run at it last year. Yes, both eventually fell short, but to me, the yeardage mark seems easier to attain than the touchdown record. A team that falls behind a lot and is forced to pass could see their QB pile up the yardage, but not necessarily the TDs.

I bet the Bills are really glad they chose Gregg Williams over Marvin Lewis now...

The perfect season. There's just no reason to do it anymore, since teams now focus on remaining healthy for the playoffs, as they should. It doesn't matter if you swept the regular season... if you get bounced in your first playoff game because your star RB tore up his knee carrying you to that precious 16th win, what did you really accomplish? Johnny Unitas' 47 straight games with a TD pass. That's three full seasons, less one game, in a row throwing a TD pass. That's just not going to happen. Dan Marino's 48 TD passes in one season. Peyton Manning led the league this year. Guess how many he had? 29. Yeah, that's good -- almost 2 a game, in fact -- but Marino averaged 3 TD passes a game for the entire season. That's just insane. With defenses geared toward the pass these days, an average od 3 TD passes a game just isn't going to happen anymore.

A "martyr" for whom, exactly? More fuckheaded extemist Muslim terrorists? Good gracious, we've never dealt with any of them before, have we? Bah. Let them come after we cut off his head. Let them all come at once, in fact... there's no point in making our servicemen clean their guns more than once.

I've long thought they should build several smaller towers in a circle, with a nice memorial park at the center of them. That way, the dead are remembered, and the office space -- which is necessary, let's face it, though I'd hate to see the lease prices in that new design -- can be restored.

Someone's severed head found in a toolshed would be "big news" only if the former owner of the severed head were someone newsworthy. Michael Jackson's severed head? Sure. Jimmy Hoffa's? You bet. Some random chap's severed head? That's fluff, and fluff gets moved to GC.

I also recommend UltimateBet.com. The play-chip rooms are decent, considering you're playing for free, but the real-money rooms and tournaments are where it's at.

Ok, I'm trying to follow this. You spent $13 and $66 on the DVDs you exchanged, so you spent $79 total. And you exchanged that $79... for 3 movies??? Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe you left out a detail or two, but I don't see how that could possibly be a good deal for you.

Don't go for the glory-boy plays right away. Give yourself a solid base in the fundamentals: learn to move and pursue laterally (presuming you're more cut out to be a linebacker like APO said, because of your size), learn to quickly shed blocks, and learn to wrap up and tackle someone in the open field. If you can stop the run decisively as an inside linebacker, you're doing something good.

I'd replace Griffey and Burrell with Giambi and Cirillo, myself, but I can't quibble too much with the list. A-Rod's contract is bad, but there are definitely worse out there. The real kicker to it is that Tom Hicks basically outbid himself by $70 million, then had the termerity to expect someone else to pay so that he could be rid of that contract (to be fair, for one that's worse). Amazing. Hicks might be the stupidest owner in baseball.

I'm not a psychologist, but from the classes I've taken, I would say that is a festering load of horse shit. Then again, most things psychologists say and write are festering loads of horse shit, so I can't claim to be surprised. Personally, I'd make like a psychologist and invent a syndrome for Jackson, and call it SFS: Severe Fuckhead Syndrome.

Amazing. A jury trial for Usama bin Laden indeed. A terrorist piece of shit like him doesn't deserve any kind of a trial: he deserves to be executed at halftime of the Super Bowl and have his head mounted on a pike and paraded up and down the streets of NYC and DC. At this point, I don't know if Dean will even get his party's nomination, and I would have considered him a lock a few weeks ago.

Gil's Pizza (small Baltimore pizza place) 0wnz0rz all other pizza places.

Buffalo at New England ---> SATURDAY Seattle at San Francisco ---> SATURDAY Philadelphia at Washington ---> SATURDAY Chicago at Kansas City Cleveland at Cincinnati Dallas at New Orleans Indianapolis at Houston Jacksonville at Atlanta (next year, this'll be a very good game) N.Y. Jets at Miami St. Louis at Detroit Tampa Bay at Tennessee Carolina at N.Y. Giants Minnesota at Arizona Denver at Green Bay Oakland at San Diego Pittsburgh at Baltimore (RAVENS~!: 26 points)

But Eddie Izzard gets to say, "dashed cunning!"

I also presume everyone here is a guy unless they say otherwise. Let's face it, this place isn't exactly awash in estrogen. BTW, I also know where Hermit got his screen name. That's something else not many girls do.

I'm a night owl, so I'll be up for a while still. No presents yet, but I'll be doing the gift thing with family and friends for the next 3 days.

Pretty good on most counts, so I'll go with a solid ***.

I say, old bean, it's because I'm such a whore for the bloody language that I like to make mine sound as much like the dog's bollocks as I can. Pip pip!