Everyone over at Sports Illustrated is crafting their own sports bucket list, and their preeminent Buckethead Peter King delivers about what you’d expect. His complete list can be found here, continue after the jump for some highlights.

1. Short-season Rookie League games

That’s like, baseball, right? We’re off to a blazing start.

Not sure where, but in places like Billings, Mont., and Casper, Wyo., with the sun setting over the left-field fence, with purple mountains majesty above thy fruited plain. Preferably with a local micro brew in my right hand.

If Casper, Wyoming is known for two things its the Casper Ghosts rookie league team and delicious craft beer. Actually Peter does bear a striking resemblance to Tim Ray, the Ghosts’ Adventure Guide.

2. Texas-Oklahoma (when both are ranked in the top five)

Fine.

3. Manchester City at Manchester United

Of all the soccer matches in the world he picks the Manchester Derby, England’s approximate equivalent of Jets-Giants.

I saw City play this spring, and the energy level for a match against Blackburn was splendid.

So Robinho wasn’t playing?

I can only imagine what the locals do when they’re playing the other locals. This time I’ll dress better. I bet there were 5,000 men with coats and ties at the Manchester City grounds.

Jack Del Rio would love it here! Unfortunately the scene was marred by another 42,000 fans wearing jerseys, singing Blue Moon, and carrying on like ruffians.

5. Pittsburgh Steelers intrasquad scrimmage/practice

Get the fuck outta here.

The players take yellow school buses to the site…

Even the elite flyers?

…and sign autographs ’til the cows come home.

Good cows. Keystone cows.

Only in western Pennsylvania, folks.

Literally. THERE IS NO OTHER PLACE ON EARTH WHERE THIS HAPPENS.

My favorite:

Amateur: The 14-inning, 3-2 Montclair (N.J.) softball victory over rival Cedar Grove in the Essex County Tournament quarterfinals in 2003. Southpaw Mary Beth King threw all 187 pitches for winning Montclair — and scored after tripling in the bottom of the 14th to win it.

Huh. I wonder what ever became of her.

SI: Peter King’s Bucket List

Yes, yes, yes: we know.  Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback appeared on SI.com yesterday, and there was no immediate dissection from Big Daddy Drew.  You had to wait nearly a full revolution rotation of the Earth to get this column (that’s like a week in Internet time!), and it’s from one of those non-Drew, non-Ape KSK writers you barely tolerate.  Well, sorry.  Drew’s having some elective surgery and won’t be around this week.  Welcome to life; get used to disappointment.

But on to more pressing matters: Peter King is touring NFL training camps!  What invaluable insights does he deliver this week?  Are the NFL mess halls up to snuff?  Did he find time to visit Toone P. Wiggins?  Will there be time for him to talk about the Red Sox?  Is he surprised by August weather being so hot?  Won’t someone think of the Kit Kats!

We are ready for some football. Great to see it back Sunday night, with Vince Young beginning what he hopes is his resurrection (now, if he’d only quit talking about it) in the Hall of Fame game against Buffalo.

Great lede.  Way to mail it in before the game — no one who saw VY’s pop fly of an interception would begin a column with that statement.

Offseason text message from Mario Manningham to Eli Manning: “When can we get together? Want to work on the ins and outs of this offense.”

Looking for one reason Manningham just might be the guy the Giants have been looking for at wide receiver? It’s the change in this kid.

That’s right: Manningham went gay.  Hence the thinly veiled double entendre to Eli.

And though Manning says he expects the Giants to be receiver-by-committee this year, I say Manningham is going to get every chance to be the bookend to Steve Smith at some point. That’s how good Manningham’s offseason was.

Really?  Manningham has a chance to play opposite the same Steve Smith who accrued 574 receiving yards and a single touchdown in 16 games last year?  WOW!  Bold statements, Mr. King.

9:45 a.m., Wednesday (Chiefs camp, River Falls, Wisc.): You’re not going to believe this.

STARBUCKS HAS COFFEE ICE CREAM!?!?!?

11:45 a.m., Thursday (Minnesota Vikings camp, Mankato, Minn.): I came here expecting to see the fastest man in the NFL, Percy Harvin, ripping up Vikings camp. And I did see an incredibly gifted player, Harvin, getting coached very hard because the Vikings want him ready to play a big role on opening day 2009, not opening day 2010. But after seeing Adrian Peterson sprint around left end on an early-practice reverse like he’d just taken the baton in the Olympic 400-meter relay, I didn’t know who was faster. Especially on the fast track of the Metrodome, I have no idea how teams are going to defend the Vikings when Peterson and Harvin are on the field together.

By tackling the shitty quarterback?

I expect Harvin to have the opportunity to be the Offensive Rookie of the Year. He’s too talented, and he has Peterson to take the pressure off him. And vice versa.

Harvin ALREADY has the opportunity to be the Offensive ROY.  He’s a rookie and he plays offense.   It’s this sort of mayonnaise-flavored non-analytical non-prediction that ruins the actual reporting that King occasionally does.  Sack up and make a prediction, you silver-forelocked fart locker.

The troubled Harvin, obviously, got investigated thoroughly before he was drafted out of the University of Florida in April. When Brad Childress went to Gainesville the week before the draft to meet Harvin and spend a day with him, he said he wanted Harvin to pick him up and drive him around. “I wanted to be in his car, and I wanted to smell the car,” Childress said. You know, for the pot smell.

And any lingering scent of undergraduate pussy.

1:45 p.m. Friday (Hall of Fame preliminaries, Canton, Ohio): I’m in town for one of the greatest honors of my life. Heck, the greatest professional honor — the McCann Award, which is presented annually by the Hall of Fame to a writer for long and distinguished

Like my johnson.

reporting on the game. So the tireless Pete Fierle of the Hall’s staff has set up a behind-the-scenes tour of the Hall for us with one of the Hall’s archivists, Jason Aikens.

Of the Akron Aikens?!?!?

It’s Nirvana. I held Johnny Unitas’ 1956 contract in my hands (he made $7,000 for the Colts before he was somebody, and his handwriting was exquisite).

That Unitas had a signature you could set your watch to!  And John Elway?  His block letters define clutch.

Hanging from one of the shelves is Pat Tillman’s garment bag (Samsonite, I believe).

It was the bravest piece of luggage King’s ever seen.

Aikens opens up one drawer and pulls out a game program from 1946, from Paul Brown’s first professional game — the Cleveland Browns against the Miami Seahawks, an All-America Football Conference game. Leather helmets.

Leather helmets?!? In the Professional Football Hall of Fame? GET OUT!!!!

6:45 p.m., Friday (Canton): The commissioner of the NFL should be on injured-reserve. He’s not sure how it happened, but while climbing Mount Rainier to raise money for the United Way a month ago, Roger Goodell dislocated a rib. It might have happened just from the intense breathing because of the scarcity of oxygen that high above sea level.

Similar to the breathing PK experiences when he climbs the 67 stairs to his apartment, or when he gets a voicemail from Favre.

8:30 p.m., Friday (Canton): Did you know that when you look out at a crowd of 4,000 people you really can’t see much of anything? Something about the lights in your eyes. Anyway, the folks at the Hall told me three minutes for my speech at first, then asked if I could do it in two. Of course, I took more than six.

Of course. “I’m a long-winded selfish fuck who can’t pick up on social cues that people don’t want to hear me blather on and on.  Ha ha ha!  Isn’t life grand?”

The best thing I hear all night: Berman saying Ralph Wilson never voted for one single franchise transfer in his 40 years as an NFL owner. Beautiful. Reminds me of a conversation I had with Wilson last year. “I will not move this team,” he said. “I cannot move this team. What would the people of Buffalo do without the Bills?”

Oh, I don’t know — travel to Toronto for Bills home games?  Thankfully, that will never happen while Ralph Wilson lives.

I’ve often said this is a trip real football fans have to make at least once, even if you don’t get the thrill of nosing around the archives.

“Even if you plebes don’t get the majestic splendor of preferential treatment that is warranted by someone of my professional stature, you can still attain a semblance of pleasure here.”

4:05 p.m. Sunday (Browns Family Day, Cleveland, Ohio): If autograph-signing won quarterback jobs, Brady Quinn would be a Hall of Famer. Now. For 65 minutes, he signed for the crowd of 14,000 attending the Brown-White Scrimmage at Cleveland Browns Stadium.

BUT DID HE HAVE UNITAS’S PENMANSHIP?!?!? Don’t leave out details, King!

The Browns, however, were the first team I’ve been around this summer that I just didn’t get a good vibe from. The players are still feeling out Eric Mangini, and more than a few think he’s working them too hard. Well, the Browns were 4-12 last year, fired the coach and GM, and need a new sheriff. That’s what Mangini is trying to be.

What?  A professional football coach from the Belichick tree being tough on his players?  This is unheard of!

Quote of the Week II
“You’ll find out during the season.”
–San Francisco defensive coordinator Greg Manusky, on his defensive philosophy.

It was a slow week.

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me II

I learned exclusively Sunday that Eric Mangini had the stomach flu on the day he interviewed with Cleveland owner Randy Lerner for the Browns’ coaching job last November. He felt queasy on the drive to Lerner’s Long Island home, and had to have his driver and brother-in-law pull over a couple of blocks from the house so he could throw up, twice. During a break in the meeting, Mangini used the bathroom and threw up a third time. And during the second half of the meeting, he asked Lerner to hold that thought … while he threw up a fourth time.

That’s what I call playing hurt.

That’s what I call interviewing sick.

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me III

Have you ever shaken hands with Adrian Peterson?

No.

I don’t recommend it.

Here’s what Peterson does: He is the aggressor when a hand is offered, digging his palm deep into yours and squeezing hard. I’d shaken his hand four times before last Thursday,

“How many times have you shaken his hand again?  Zero?  Only four more times and you’ll start catching up with me.”

and now I was going to have a plan for it. Before he got the chance to dig his palm deep into mine, I was going to dig mine into his, because I figured if he didn’t know what was coming, I’d have the edge.

This wouldn’t be easy, as Peter is a natural bottom.

He walked toward me after Vikings’ practice Thursday morning and I got ready. But he was like Gary Cooper in High Noon. He drew first and shot. Even though I tried to get my hand far down into his palm, he was quicker. And when I squeezed, he destroyed me.

“It hurt, but I liked it.”

We talked for 10 or 15 minutes, and when we parted, I wanted one more shot.

That’s what she said.

I tried the amiable route — hey, have a good year, stay healthy, yada yada yada, and stuck my hand out almost as an afterthought, to try for the element of surprise. He stuck his hand out. At the last second, I plowed ahead, hard, and got my hand deep into his.

Deep into his hand.  Not his rectum.  Just to be clear.

No use. Even when he didn’t expect to shake, he figured out in a split-second what I was trying to do, and he death-gripped me, and I almost felt like, ‘Now I know how he can change lanes so quickly and make people miss.’ He gripped so hard I thought I heard a bone crack. I know when I’m beaten.

So, to recap: even after Adrian Peterson crushed Peter King’s hand five consecutive times, King — a lumpy sportswriter in his fifties — thought he could deliver a stronger handshake than one of the best players in the NFL.

c. I think the commissioner, Jerry Jones, Dick Ebersol, John Mara, Adam Schefter and others were way too kind in this piece my editors asked Schefter to write in recognition of me receiving the McCann Award.

Uh oh. King linked to something written about him. Is it any more obnoxious and out of touch than things written by King?  Let’s take a look:

“The thing I have always admired most about Peter King is his love for his work and his genuine enjoyment of being around people who compete [in] the drama of the games,” said Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

“He has been a serious contributor to the NFL for more than 20 years, because he has reached out to our fans and helped make our game the most popular sport in America. [...] Passion is an overused term in athletics today, but Peter has it. He brings it to work with him every day.”

You know what?  The Double-J is exactly right.  That’s everything that’s good about King: he really loves just talking to players and celebrating the NFL. He’s self-absorbed, self-important, oblivious to criticism, and more naive than a teenage Mormon bride, but he’s a nice guy who loves his job.

“I always look forward to Monday mornings to read the ultimate quarterback of NFL journalism,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “Nobody does it better than Peter.”

FALSE.  Many people do it better than Peter.   Unless “it” is relaxing one’s sphincter to bring a lonely quarterback to orgasm.

And then there’s one of Peter’s bosses, the chairman of NBC Sports, Dick Ebersol. “Peter has a natural curiosity and boyish enthusiasm about many things in his life, especially this game that we all love,” Ebersol said. “He may be in his early fifties, but he has all of the enthusiasm of that young boy from Connecticut who, from an early age, simply adored sports.”

“This fully grown man has the analytical skills of a child.”

Over time — which, ironically, is a subject that Peter rails against in print —

Wait, he rails against the passage of time?  “Time, you are the Continental Airlines of dimensions!”

he became a towering figure in his profession, an example for others, a man that remained humble when many would not have been.

Unless, of course, your hotel doesn’t provide free coffee in its lobby before 6:00 a.m. DON’T THINK PETER KING HAS FORGOTTEN YOU, MARRIOTT LAGUNA CLIFFS!

“I have known Peter for some 25 years and he hasn’t changed,” said ESPN’s Chris Mortensen. “From day one, I’ve eyewitnessed his passion for his job, the excellence of his world and his love of sport. All of it is only surpassed by the fact that he is one of the best persons in the world and a great family man.”

Mortensen then retracted his statement after Jay Glazer reported that King is not, in fact, one of the best “persons” in the world.

Peter doesn’t big time anyone, no matter how big time he is.

Unless you’re a child hoping to get a foul ball from a spring training baseball game.

Anyway, back to King’s column:

g. If you go to the Hall weekend, don’t think you’ll catch up on sleep by missing the parade. Big, big mistake. Big-time high school bands, baton-twirlers, floats, Rod Woodson and Dan Fouts riding in convertibles and waving, crazy things like dancing garbage-can haulers. Total Americana.

So wait a sec, all those things kept Peter King from sleeping? The baton-twirlers were making too much noise? “Hey, someone turn those floats down!”

i. Thanks to the Army Medivac team from Sarasota, Fla., for the lift in the Blackhawk helicopter Saturday night, the one that buzzed Fawcett Stadium. Glad to see the country’s in good hands, men. The thing I’ve emphasized to people about our military that the public might not know is how smart these soldiers and pilots are. Impressive.

Some of them are even bright enough to hate reading your column. And it’s medevac, not medivac, you simple-minded soft-serve bowl of Neanderpolitan.

h. Jay Cutler, in front of 27,000 at Soldier Field Saturday, went 22 of 27. There’s no stopping the hype now, and it’s (mostly) justified.

Cutler on his performance: “Whatever.”

i. In the Foxboro area today? Go to Patriots practice and get screened for skin cancer. The Patriots will be doing it, free, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and from 3-7 p.m. in the W3 lobby, the area where fans arrive for camp. Excellent and timely idea, considering that a million new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed every year, and that Jim Johnson just died from it.

Boston fans, RESPECT THE SUN.

l. Wish I could see all 32 [preseason camps]. But it’s a death march to try. John Clayton did it once, and he survived. I’d fear for my health, my marriage and my sanity.

Especially his marriage. The temptations on the road are great and numerous. So many quarterbacks with exquisite handwriting!

e. Why haven’t we become technologically advanced enough to be able to go online on airplanes? Is any airline doing this yet? I’d love to hear if one is. Let me know.

*facepalm*

You know, for someone who writes an Internet column and uses Twitter, you’d think Peter King could use a search engine. I Googled “airlines with Internet,” and here are some stories on the first page of results:

American Airlines Launches Internet Service on Longer, Nonstop Flights
Southwest Airlines joins the “superskyway” with inflight Internet trials
American Airlines launches Internet service on SFO flights
United Airlines offers Internet Access

Pretty fucking exhausting work, typing three words into the most popular webpage on the Internet and pressing “enter.”  But then, maybe that sort of thing isn’t obvious to someone with the mind of a child.

Allow me to apologize in advance for the lack of venomous vulgarity in this week’s breakdown of Peter King’s reviled Monday Morning Quarterback column. Drew’s unavailable today, and while Princess Assloaf provides the usual amount of retardation today, I can’t help but soften my stance somewhat, given that King kindly filmed the above segment as the opener for Saturday’s Blogs with Balls conference, where Christmas Ape and I both appeared on panels to swear about how to “make it big” in blogging. Yes, do it right, and you, too, can barely eke out an existence! Join the movement!

After the jump, prepare to not talk about Favre (read: talk about Favre) and get informed with totally unbiased recommendations for summer reading!

I’m mostly going off Favre Watch for a week (I can just feel the disappointment out there) to talk about some other quarterbacks, Donovan McNabb and Mark Sanchez most notably.

That Sanchez! Just like Johnny Damon!

Then it’s onto something I do far, far too little — promote reading.

Yes, usually Peter does the opposite by subjecting us to his column.

Not to be preachy, but in the IM/Texting/Twitterization of America, I’m going to give you five superb summer options, including the most vivid, riveting war book of our time. I’m not a history buff, but I’m a huge fan of books that put you in the middle of something historical.

So he’s not a history buff, but he IS able to tell you which book is better than all others on a historical subject.  That’s the kind of expertise uninformed hyperbole you can’t pay for!

A lone paragraph on Favre first:

This comes one whole paragraph after he said he was “mostly” going off Favre Watch.  Nice restraint.

He’ll be on HBO tonight with Joe Buck on his new show, “Joe Buck Live,” and it’s a good get, obviously. America might be totally sick of Favre, but everyone in the business wants to hear about his probable return to football.

What Peter King says: “The entire country is sick of Brett Favre, but everyone I work with wants to hear about Brett Favre, so I’m going to push this on my readers all across the country.”

What Peter King means: “FUCK YOU, readers.”

There’s a reason Roger Goodell’s always on the elliptical trainer.

Goodell told him about this thing called “physical fitness.”  It’s even better than walking!

At any league meeting or Super Bowl, you’re bound to see Goodell, at 5:15 a.m. or some similar early hour, dripping with sweat in the fitness center of some hotel.

Peter knows because he stumbled into the gym in search of free coffee.  So hard to find before 6 a.m.

In three weeks, he and close to a dozen community leaders in Seattle will attempt to climb the 14,411-foot peak at Mount Rainier to raise –they hope — more than $1 million for the United Way.  “I’ve been staring at that mountain since I was a kid,” Jim Mora told me Friday, “and it’s time I do something about it.”

Oh no!  Mora’s going to nuke Rainier off the map!  He’s mad with power!  Why did Holmgren give him the nuclear codes?!?!?  WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????????

The climbing schedule would sound hellish for a world-class athlete, never mind a 50-year-old commissioner. On the morning of July 7, the climbers will trek to about 10,000 feet, set up tent, and sleep until about midnight.

Will they be starting at the Visitor’s Center?  Because that’s at 5400 feet, and you can drive there.

Speaking of the Seahawks …

This kicked off seven MORE paragraphs about the Seahawks, all on the first page of MMQB.  Peter did, however, stop short of giving a hat tip to daughter Mary Beth.

I’m concerned about how little I’ve read the last few years. Maybe it’s e-mail, maybe it’s the voluminous easy sites that magnetize you to them four or five times a day…

“…maybe it’s all the time I spend bitching about coffee and listening to old messages from Favre on my answering machine.”

…when 10 or 15 years ago I’d have sat down and read something of substance.

Something like…?

I’ll pick up the latest Grisham (I’ve loved them all except “Playing for Pizza,” which seemed nonsensical to me) and have it done in two days.

Oh, John Grisham.  Interesting.  See, when I think “substance,” I generally think of something that might challenge my intellect.  But no, a novel about lawyers in danger that you can breeze through in two days is substantive reading for people who assume that following road signs is more efficient than taking three minutes to study a map to plan a driving.  Golly, I can’t wait for literature recommendations from a Grisham fan.

1. Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath, by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman.
The Normans, husband and wife, are good friends of our family.

You have to be fucking kidding me.  Of course.  Of course they are.  In fact, I feel naive for not seeing this coming.

It would be shame — for you — if you thought my affection for the Normans colors what I think of the book they worked on for the past 10 years. I don’t consider myself anything close to a history expert, nor a fan of the military genre, but this is such a vivid slice of an important piece of American history that anyone with the slightest interest in where we have come from simply has to read this book.

I don’t want to take away from the book, because I haven’t read it and it may very well be excellent.  At the very least, the Bataan Death March is a war crime that more Americans should know about.  However, King’s recommendation essentially read like this: “I don’t know much about history, and I’m not a fan of military books, but this book that close friends of mine wrote is the best military book of our time.”  Please pardon my skepticism, sir.

The temptation in a war book is to make one side full of good guys and the other side the bad guys

Wrong.  Any historical (that is, non-memoir) account of war worth its salt owes it to the reader to at least attempt to show both sides.  But what do I know?  I’m just a history buff who enjoys the military genre.

But the Normans made the Japanese soldiers as human as the Americans, writing that on the morning of one attack, Japanese lieutenant Ryotaro Nishimura “woke his men at three o’clock and huddled with them at breakfast: miso soup and an egg over a thick porridge of barley and white rice. Japanese soup always reminded the men of home, but on this morning the troops complained the miso had a ’strange’ flavor, and Ryotaro Nishimura knew that the men had awakened with the metallic taste of fear in their mouths.”

I mean, wow. It’s like that for 398 pages.

Well done, Normans!  Nothing wins over Peter King like the story of an unsatisfying meal!  He felt the same way the last time he ate at Capital Grille!  Why, Peter once had a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks that tasted kind of metallic!  He knows the taste of fear!

Tweetup Updates. I’ll be having four of these before the start of the football season… Preliminarily, I’ll be at the Los Angeles Coliseum on Monday, July 13 (with Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times); in Albany on Monday, Aug. 3; in Indianapolis on Monday, Aug. 10; and in Boston in early September at a site to be determined.

Readers, that’s what we call “marching orders.”

Quote of the Week I: “When we were looking at taking Mark, I studied all the great generals to see what those men were like early in their careers, see how they reacted. It’s all about how they reacted in battle, what happened when the action was really live. You see that in Mark, his calm.”
– New York Jets owner Woody Johnson on rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez

Holy fuck that is stupid.

I realize you get excited about your players, particularly about the man you believe is the next long-term quarterback in franchise history, but that is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard an owner say.

Wait, what?

**reassembles exploded head**

Sometimes we forget that, for all of his non sequitur ramblings, Peter King can actually use his spongy head to formulate decent thoughts about football.  Consider this your carrot, fatass.

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me: MMQB hero of the month Austin Wood, the Texas left-handed reliever who threw 13 scoreless relief innings in the NCAA Tournament, was rewarded for his pluck last week. The Detroit Tigers selected him in the fifth round of the Major League Baseball draft, making him the 150th overall pick in the draft.

I think it’s time to remove the “May” from the title of that section.

I think you’re going to see an announcement soon that Matt Millen is joining Bob Papa in the Thursday night NFL Network booth. Assuming it happens — and I’m sure it will — ESPN is getting busted in the chops by this in almost the same way NFL Network got busted in the chops when Jon Gruden jilted the Network for ESPN.

Oh no!  Jilted by Matt Millen!  Now the company won’t be subjected to failure and financial ruin!

The big difference is, Gruden left the Network high and dry; Millen will still be doing the work he previously agreed to do for ESPN.

Oh, so… ESPN wasn’t busted in the chops at all.  In fact, this thing Peter King thought he thought has been a waste of everyone’s time.

You might ask why ESPN agreed to allow Millen to do the Thursday night games and beat himself up by giving himself three separate jobs, at least in November. Good question. I’m told it’s because he really wanted the Thursday night gig and wouldn’t have been a happy ESPN camper had he gotten turned down.

You can’t lose talent like Millen!  No one wears a mustache like him!

I think [the Plaxico case] is a very slippery slope for Roger Goodell. He’s on record as being opposed to discipline for a first-time offender until that offender has his case adjudicated in a court of law. So on the surface, he seems bound to have to give Burress his day in court before bouncing him. The mitigating factor here is that it’s such an open-and-shut case; Burress has never argued that he didn’t possess the gun, and he has never argued that he didn’t fire the gun. But if Goodell lives by his precedent, he’ll let Burress play until he’s tried. I’m not trying to be a cop here. I’m just saying this continuance for Burress, on all sides, might be legally justifiable. But it stinks. That’s the only word for it — it stinks.

Bah!  Damn you, legislative process!  Peter King demands justice immediately!  You hear that, Schlereth?  YOU OWE KING A CAPITAL GRILLE DINNER!!!!

I think the Rex Grossman signing in Houston says one thing to me:

Texas bitches gonna get impregnated with the long ball.

The honeymoon’s over for Dan Orlovsky as the walk-in, no-doubt backup to Matt Schaub.

Oh no!  The city of Houston barely even had a chance to fall in love with the terrible quarterback on its bench!  Now that they’re got an erratic mediocre guy in front of him, they don’t know WHO to love!

I think the next interesting football-related journalistic battle line might be how many clicks NBCSports.com can take away from the field by acquiring profootballtalk.com. Today, NBC will announce it has reached a deal with PFT that will allow the site to exclusively license its content to NBCSports.com. Mike Florio, the dogged founder and writer for the site, is giving up his day job (lawyering) to devote more time to PFT, so NBC could be getting even more valuable content than PFT has been publishing.

But not more valuable than the new SPRINT FAMILY PLAN!!!

I must be un-American. I hate “Sweet Caroline” in the bottom of the eighth at Fenway. How’d that dumb song ever get picked as a fan anthem?

Holy shit.  That’s two feathers in your cap this week, King.  Three if we count the Blogs with Balls video.  DON’T TRY TO WIN ME OVER, JERKASS, or I swear to God I’ll take your daughter out to a nice seafood dinner and never call her back.

Have you noticed a lot of baseball players look like they’re wearing pajamas, not form-fitting uniforms?

Yeah, it’s almost like they’re wearing them in the traditional style.

Peter King wants men in tighter pants, dammit!  It’s not a sport unless he can salivate over the outline of your beefy haunches.

Amazing but true in Saturday’s New York Times: The Yankees have sold out one game out of the first 30 home games this year at the new Yankee Stadium.

Probably has something to do with charging $500 for a ticket during a recession.  Amazing but true.

How does Luis Castillo show his face Friday night when the Mets play at home for the first time since The Drop? Not just The Drop, either … how about picking up the ball with two Yankees steaming around the bases and throwing it to second instead of throwing it home? Insane.

Well, Castillo’s getting paid $6.25 million this season.  I would assume that he has a stipulation in his contract to show his face in his home park even after he costs his team a game.  But by all means, Peter, act like the play affected much more than 0.6% of the entire season.

Coffeenerdness: Settled into a good routine here in Boston at night, working or TV-watching in the last couple of weeks before vacation, and brewing a small pot of Peet’s Major Dickason’s Blend decaf. That’s some great coffee. Sounds like the script for a commercial.

“Peet’s decaf!  Great for watching TV at night!”  Lofty ad campaign.

Mike McGuire, back in Germany, is beginning to focus on his favorite pastime, the NFL. “So you know I was a Drill Sergeant for three years and a Drill Sergeant Leader. My thought is that with all these in-shape super-hard NFL players, we should take a couple of them, work them out and do a two or three day “In the Life of a Basic Training Soldier.” That would be awesome. I talk with my wife all the time about what I would do to them and see just how good of shape they are in. People would watch that. I know that NFL fans would be interested.”

That’s a fucking stupid idea.  The purpose of Basic Training is to get soft-bodied recruits into shape and to teach them discipline.  It’s not exactly scaled to challenge professional athletes.  “Oh wow!  That’s amazing!  Julian Peterson can do TWENTY push-ups!”  The only conceivable way this could be interesting is if we got to watch Vince Wilfork try to run three miles.

Mike McGuire, NFL network programmer. You’ve got a retirement job, Mike.

The NFL Network may disagree.  Don’t quit your day job, Mike.  Whatever that is.

Welcome to another spectacular edition of the internet’s least reliable gambling column, Always Be Covering. Today, in the grand tradition of Fire Joe Morgan I’m going to attempt to tackle the Sports Guy’s latest offering following his spectacular 0-4 performance a week ago. Buckle up…

Not to step on Jeff Foxworthy’s toes, but here’s how you know you just went 0-4 with your Round 2 playoff picks:

That’s the first sentence? Jeff Foxworthy references? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? Obviously I’ve made a huge mistake.

• If your first three favorites lost their games outright in a scenario that would have netted 29-to-1 odds on a three-team parlay, you just went 0-4 on your playoff picks.

If only I had parlayed the moneylines of three games I picked wrong I’d be rich, richer than Nazis! HOW COULD I HAVE MISSED OUT ON THIS OPPORTUNITY?

• If your wife comes home, sees your face and asks, “What’s wrong?” …

You just got caught masturbating to old game film of Tommy Heinsohn. Or maybe you incorrectly picked some football games, you know, either way.

I might as well be Louden Swain in “Vision Quest” right after Carla moved out without telling him.

Well, you know what happens after those montages? The dude always comes back! Didn’t Louden end up pinning Chute? That will be me, dammit! Have some faith.

I’ve barely made a dent and I’ve already gotten through references to a 90’s comedic hack, The Longest Yard, Swingers, and Vision Quest. So yeah, it’s pretty much the same column I remember from the last time I read Simmons.

The lesson, as always: I am HUGE in Pakistan.

Also HUGE in Pakistan: human trafficking, feudalism, and religious persecution.

I am immediately adding this to my Sports Czar campaign: If Collinsworth is gigless for an NFL playoff weekend, either CBS or FOX has to hire him for one of the games or risk a $1,000,000 fine from the FCC. We don’t want this to happen again, baby.

Wait, are you the Sports Czar or the Chairman of the FCC? Eh fuck it, you can probably do both.

The Don Beebe Award for “Best Momentary Silver Lining During An Out-And-Out Catastrophe”
To ABC Family’s HD channel for showing the four-movie “Karate Kid” marathon during Sunday’s games as my handicapping world was falling apart. Just as it was becoming apparent Eli had a better chance of eating one of the goal posts, digesting it and crapping it out over throwing a decent pass in the Giant Stadium wind, “Kid II” was finishing up and “Kid III” was looming. So all wasn’t lost. I spent the next hour trying to find similarities between Eli and Daniel-San, ultimately coming up with seven

Only seven? LOOK CLOSER!

Note: Can you tell “Teen Wolf” has been on a lot lately? I can’t stop mentioning it in columns.

Apparently Teen Wolf has been on six times a month for six straight years. But really, you can’t stop mentioning it? Have you tried not mentioning it? Because that’s probably the first thing I’d do.

By the way, a reader pointed out No. 45’s incredible performance on Fox’s team and I looked for it on my third viewing of 2009 … there’s a good possibility No. 45 finished with 22 points, 25 rebounds and nine blocks without getting a single line of dialogue. Check it out next time it’s on.

No.

Note to Jake: Don’t blame yourself, blame us. It’s our own fault for trusting you laying 10 points at home. And just for the record, I’m adding this to the Playoff Manifesto next year: “Never lay significant points with a QB whose name rhymes with ’snake.’”

Yep, that’s your problem. Not nearly enough rules! New rule suggestion: Never take gambling advice from a guy who can’t go a week without analyzing the stats of role players from Teen Wolf.

The Ryan Seacrest Trying To High Five a Blind Guy Award for “Most Entertaining and Somewhat Amazing Moment By A Host Or Play-By-Play Guy”
To Kenny Albert for not blinking once during his pregame and second half intros for the Panthers-Cards game. Would he blink if you threw water at him? What if you punched him right in the face?

If you punched him? No, probably not.

The Dee-Dee Getting Assaulted Again on “Hunter” Award for “Serious Promos for A Serious Show That Become 100 Times Funnier If You Don’t Watch That Show”
To CBS for the incessant stream of “Grissom leaves ‘CSI’” commercials that had me initially saying, “Wait, Marquis Grissom is leaving ‘CSI’?”

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

I can’t tell if I missed out by never getting hooked by this show, or if I saved 200 hours of my time that was spent on more important things, like trying to figure out No. 45’s stats in the final “Teen Wolf” game. It’s a coin flip, really.

Kill me. Or him. Just kill one of us.

The Come And Touch It, Dave, Award for “Most Noble Attempt to Degrade Me For My 0-4 Performance Even Though Nothing Else Needed To Be Said”

Bronze (to U. Howard in Philly): “Damn you. I just realized that you went 0-4. It’s a good thing you’re funny or else I’d stop listening and reading religiously. Keep making with the laugh laugh. You’re like that girl we all dated for a while in our early- to mid-20s that was only good for one thing. She couldn’t cook, couldn’t take care of a pet or a plant, barely could read. But she did one thing well.”

That’s right, his pussy is like a vice grip.

The Kate Winslet Accepting a Golden Globe Award for “Most Uncomfortable Performance”
For the poor Tennessee fans … you could actually hear their sphincters collectively tighten…

Literally!

Nobody knows that haunting sound better than Red Sox fans…

Obviously. NO ONE DENIES THIS!

Alge Crumpler’s fumble was a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways; it’s not like the fans made it happen, but they created an environment with their excessive doubt where it opened the door for something like that to happen. (Yes, I fully believe in this crap.)

“Well that’s because you’re an idiot.” -Elaine Benes

Anyway, the strangest thing about the Dave Roberts Steal in 2004…

Is that we’re talking about it now in this completely unrelated forum?

…and the one thing I will never fully be able to figure out — not just at the time, but four years later — was why the beaten-down Red Sox fans rallied behind Kevin Millar in the top of the ninth, then reacted like Mia Wallace after Vincent’s adrenaline shot just because he drew a walk and Roberts ran out of the dugout.

I am officially lost in this metaphor.

I was there.

We know.

I can still see him leading off first base and being utterly convinced that he could steal it, even though we had 86 years of bad luck working against us. We all felt that way. It was weird. I cannot explain it. Like we knew.

We’re clairvoyant.

By contrast, the Titans fans never seemed like they felt good about winning that game.

Ah, so it’s their fault.

So how do we explain that? Is there a term we can come up with?

Surely.

Maybe CISSESP (Collective In-Stadium Sports ESP)? I believe in ghosts, I believe in bad karma, and I absolutely believe in CISSESP.

But do you believe in the Church of Baseball?!

Can you think of any two people who have less in common than James Brown and Pacman Jones?

Caligula and Judge Reinhold.

Going in, I thought the famously clean-cut Brown was going to be dressed like one of the “Exorcist” priests and just start the interview by saying, “Pacman, welcome to the show … THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!”

To be fair, JB did go to a Catholic high school.

As it turned out, Pacman’s response was wildly disappointing — partially because I couldn’t understand him, and partially because … well, I couldn’t understand him. So that was a problem. I was hoping he’d go off the board with something like, “Pacman likes to watch his fellas get their lap dances on! Pacman don’t like ‘em himself, Pacman just likes to watch! Can you feel me?”

OH PACMAN GON’ DRINK!

The Alec Baldwin Playing Tony Bennett Award for “I Like Things That Are Great … Good Things Are Fantastic”
To the things I liked about Round 2 and the week that went with it: Larry Fitzgerald settling the “Who’s the best receiver in football” argument once and for all …

Or at least until the great WES WELKAH! returns next season.

… the sassy new judge on “Idol”

TH-THAT’S TONY KORNHEISER’S MUSIC!

To the things I didn’t like about Round 2 and the week that went with it:
.. Kobe not being satisfied just with ripping off MJ’s fist pump, so he rips off Sam Cassell’s Testicle Dance …

But KG’s pathetic rip-off Jordan’s chalk clap? Chills.

Without further ado, the championship weekend picks…

Oh thank God, it’s over! ON TO THE PICKS!

/looks at Simmons’s picks
//realizes they are the same as his own

Fuck, I may as well just embrace it.

/turns on Teen Wolf