The Gronk Ankle Angle.

Ah, Super Bowl Media Day. That wonderful time of year when coaches and players are asked maddeningly predictable questions and give maddeningly predictable answers in return. I've been watching a lot of the early coverage, and remain totally unsurprised by the false humility and barrage of platitudes. Hoodie relapsed from his brief display of an actually sense of humor into his usual taciturn self. Brady and Eli were aloof, saying all the right things while saying precisely nothing of consequence. Blah. Blah. Blah.

As usual, precious little actual football talk has transpired. Where will Eli fall in the pantheon of all-time QBs? I'll care about that when he retires. What about the Brady/Hoodie dynasty? Meh. REMATCH! Only, not so much if you look at the rosters past a few marquee names. Endless replay loop of the Tyree catch. Woo. Freaking. Hoo.

The one legitimate question that's actually pertinent to what will go down on the field on February 5th is, of course, exactly what condition Rob Gronkowski's left ankle is in. And it's been so thoroughly exhausted that they've actually exhumed the dead horse to beat it again. Yes, he's a critical player in this game, and his status could factor heavily into the outcome, but enough. You're not getting anything other than cryptic, useless updates out of the Pats anyway. Here's the thing: I'm not sure it's really that much of an issue. He looks like he's walking fine, with nary a grimace or limp in evidence. He's been held out of practice, true, but that's just caution being the better part of valor.

Consider Hoodie's history of injury reports. Everyone with a slight booboo on their roster is always "questionable." I'd bet money (if I had any to spare) that this is just the latest example of the Pats spinning things as much to their advantage as possible. I don't deny that he's hurt, because I watched that play and it wasn't pretty, but barring a complication, he's going to go.

Tom Coughlin is not an idiot, and he'll have a game plan for healthy-Gronk, limited-Gronk, and non-Gronk scenarios. Same goes for Hoodie. Really, though, I'm not sure that ankle is really going to affect Gronk's playmaking ability all that much.

Of the Patriots' tight ends, it's Aaron Hernandez who would have serious cause for concern with such and injury. Hernandez is the shifty, hard-cut guy; he breaks ankles like an Allen Iverson crossover. Gronk? For the most part, he's a vertical, one-move-and-go type of player. His sheer size is his greatest weapon, and he's not going to shrink four inches because of an ankle injury. A 75% Gronkowski would still be a dangerous proposition for the Giants' defense to contend with.

Even if he's not the force of nature we're accustomed to seeing, his impact is going to be felt. New York will want to test his limitations early and often. As such, they'll likely assign someone to get a jam on Gronk on every play from scrimmage, which will be one less body to handle Hernandez and Welker in the slot.

Long story kinda short, I think Gronkowski will play, and I think he'll be effective. Now can we please talk about something else?

Never Trust The Hawks ... But Maybe Sometimes?

If you appreciate Zach Harper's work or you're a regular on the Daily Dime Live chats he moderates during NBA games, then you already know one of Harper's primary basketball axioms: "Never Trust The Hawks." There are no conditions or subsections to that rule, folks. Never means never. Doesn't matter how good they look on a given night; the other shoe is always a few possessions away from falling. Maybe it's a totally unnecessary reliance on the not-so-vaunted Iso-Joe offesne, or a sudden spate of ill-advised J Smoove jumpers, but something always wrenches up the gears eventually for this team. Like a rickety stage backdrop in a middle school play, it doesn't take much to bring the entire edifice down in a cloud of dust and disappointment.

As a Hawks fan, the frustrating thing about Harper's theory is that there is no empirical data to suggest that we shouldn't transition it from hypothesis into scientific basketball law. Fatalism isn't pretty on anybody (except maybe Cubs fans), but at some point you have to concede that yet again this team is not constructed and/or coached well enough to be taken seriously. That it's time for yet another rebuilding effort that is very nearly doomed from the outset because of the ludicrous financial albatross that is Joe Johnson's contract, and because the front office has not shown itself capable of rebuilding in an intelligent, calculated manner.

And yet ... I just can't write 'em off. After watching the Hawks give New Orleans the business last night, despite it being the second-to-last game of a grueling road trip, I have to think that maybe, just maybe, I can trust my team a little bit this season. Yeah, yeah, the Hornets are a terrible excuse for a professional basketball team right now, and anybody worth their salt ought to crush them, so it wasn't exactly a touchstone victory. I'll admit that ... however:

What I watched last night was a team capable of winning even when many things aren't going right. Joe Johnson and Josh Smith, arguably our two most potent offensive weapons, combined for a paltry 15 points. In the past, such a poor showing from critical players would have been disastrous, even against a lowly team like the Hornets, but it was just a speed bump that the Hawks flew over "Dukes Of Hazard" style last night. When their shots weren't falling, Smith and Johnson didn't disengage, they focused on helping the team in other ways, and notched a combined 17 boards, 4 blocks, and 4 assists. Filling the offensive void, Jeff Teague went off for 24 points, Marvin Williams chipped in for 14, and Willie Green put up 16 in just 18 minutes.

Atlanta also got significant help from Ivan Johnson, Tracy McGrady, and Zaza Pachulia, who all submitted workmanlike efforts to round out the winning performance. A game that at times had the hallmarks of another typical Hawks implosion ended instead with a 94-72 victory. There's just something different about the team this season; a sort of cool, collected hustle that harnesses their best talents and minimizes their deficiencies. They're playing gas-pedal defense and making the extra pass more often. They look like, if not contenders exactly, at least a real, dignified basketball team. Which is kind of a big step up.

Have you checked the standings today, by the way? Atlanta has the fourth-best record in the league. Not in the Eastern Conference, mind, but in all of basketball. Now, I hate the "if the playoffs started today ..." trope as much a s anyone, but fourth in the league?!?!? That's a signifier of at least a smidge of legit ballin', right? Which brings me to another sports meme that might counter "Never Trust The Hawks." That's right, I'm talking about Bill Simmons' famous Ewing Theory.

For the uninitiated, the Ewing Theory postulates that there are instances in which a team can lose its best player and actually improve as a result. The Hawks, of course, have lost their best player for the remainder of the regular season in Al Horford.

I can feel your incredulity from here. "Al Horford?" you're saying. "Sure, he's really good, but was he actually their best player?" Yes. Yes he was.

Before Horford went down this year, he was doing what he always has done for the Hawks. To wit: whatever was needed. Flagging offensive production? Al had us covered by pouring in buckets around the rim. Need help on the glass? He's pulling down rebounds with gusto. And always, always; solid defense, either as a primary or help defender. On a team prone to gunning and spurts of ineffectual play, Horford was our bedrock of consistent excellence. And now he's gone.

Yet this team keeps rattling off wins. In their linchpin's absence, everyone else is filling the gaps. The Hawks are playing like an honest-to-god team, not the ill-fitting collection of parts they have so often appeared to be in the recent past. I know the schedule has been kind to us, and things are going to get significantly tougher from here on out. I know it's maybe unreasonable to expect a team to continue operating at a high level without a dominant presence in the paint. I also know that the Hawks look awfully good right now. I know we've split our battles thusfar with Miami and Chicago. I know the team is playing with a cohesion and verve heretofore lacking in its other recent iterations. T-Mac still has something left in the tank. Ivan Johnson is an unhinged round of ammunition who will, hopefully, detonate in the face of the opposition rather than his own team. Willie Green is having himself a career year. And Joe, Josh, and Jeff can hold it together until Al gets back right around playoff time.

And when Al Horford returns, keep in mind: his legs will be fresher and his hops more hoppy than everyone who has endured the full brunt of the regular season. That might be all Atlanta needs. I'm not stupid enough to think we can seriously challenge the Bulls or Heat in the East. Or even Indy or Philly, for that matter. But if you don't have hope, your sports outlook gets pretty bleak pretty fast. It's true this team ain't built to beat the best under normal conditions, but this season is anything but normal. With so much unpredictability running roughshod over the NBA, it's possible we could rattle some cages at the least. And that's enough to be getting on with for now. Trust the Hawks. After all, what have you got to lose?

Strange Day.

When the Patriots got deus ex Cundiff'ed yesterday afternoon, it took a while to process what I'd just witnessed. Look at this box score again. New England got their butts summarily kicked up and down the turf in every subcategory of every phase of the game. The better team (on the field) lost, simple as that. It rocks you back on your heels to fully arrive at the following realization: Tom Brady carried the Pats all season and basically dragged them to this game. He then threw for 239 yards, 2 picks, 0 TDs, and ended the day with an abysmal 57.5 passer rating. And New England still won the game.

Then that zany Niners/Giants affair came along and out-weirded the preceding four hours. After wading through every stat, every turning-point play, and every small-but-in-retrospect-kinda-huge detail, I can safely say the following: there is no logical reason, whether buried or in plain sight, why the Pats and Giants are booking hotel rooms in Indy while Baltimore and San Francisco book time on their couches to watch the Super Bowl from afar.

Because yesterday's Chamionship games were completely bizarro wars of attrition, in every possible football connotation of that phrase. Field position, injuries, turnovers, shamelessly baffling play calls, you name it. Near as I could tell, the Ravens, Pats, Niners, and Giants were trying to exhaust each other in the futility and stupidity departments, and succeeding heartily in that objective. Some scattered thoughts on a strange day:

A. Due to the amplified nature of the postseason, it's the time of year when heretofore unknown quantities become vividly, if briefly, prominent in our consciousness. Really, it seems like myths, goats, and/or unsung heroes are manufactured by circumstance once or twice per playoffs. It's to the point that the emergence of such moments or storylines has a clockwork-like nature. Even granting that premise, though, yesterday pushed the bounds of no-names having dramatic effects on a game. In hindsight, Kyle Williams (who?) and Sterling Moore (seriously, WHO???) may well have been the two most significant people playing professional football yesterday. ... Huh?

B. Two calls that were not reviewed and could not be challenged yesterday: The Lee Evans TD catch/drop, the Ahmad Bradshaw fumble/forward progress stop. I think replay has done plenty of good for the game, and I fully acknowledge that overusing it would further disrupt a viewing experience that has already suffered mightily at the hands of (see if you can hear the venom dripping from my vocal cords here) TV timeouts. Nonetheless, you absolutely must get those calls right. I'm not saying the wrong conclusions were reached because in both instances I believe the correct call was made, but the NFL needs to amend its definition of when booth-mandated replay is appropriate. As has been done with overtime situations, I like the concept of expanded replay as a playoffs-only device, but the following needs to happen: Expand endzone replay to include plays that were not initially ruled scores, and review all turnovers, regardless of a thrown challenge flag. We can even reduce the number of allotted challenges if we make these reviews mandatory, but it needs to happen.

C. Speaking of overtime, that's twice that the shiny new overtime rules have been rendered moot by sudden-death style endings happening anyway. We have yet to see the college-style possession system in effect. Won't someone please just play a game where this happens so we can figure out if we even need this rule?

D. Still speaking of overtime, Ed Hochuli was, uh, still speaking of overtime. For like twelve minutes. It was a thoroughly entertaining display of awkward verbosity concerning the new playoff rules for OT; "thoroughly" being the operative word. Apparently ol' Ed was determined to make sure every conceivable scenario was explained to the players and everyone watching at home in painstaking, mind-numbing detail. Mission accomplished, Ed. Well done.

E. Steven Tyler. Ugh. I realize it's de facto interwebs protocol to link an article or Youtube clip when you reference something, but I'm not going to do that in this case. If you didn't see or hear that particular rendition of the National Anthem, you're better off. Trust me. Steven can continue being an addled, incoherent source of comic relief on American Idol for the rest of eternity, but can we agree that his singing career needs to be Old Yeller'ed behind the rock'n'roll barn? It's time, right?

F. It's quite possibly that Hoodie has lost his coaching fastball. That doesn't mean he can't or won't throw a great game in two weeks and for the next however many years, but methinks the old guy is slipping just a touch from his pedestal of unrivaled sideline machinations.

G. Of the possible permutations of Super Bowl opponents, this is going to be the most entertaining. The Pats want revenge, the Giants are at the peak of their playoff swagger, and the rest of us get to watch, if not exactly Ali/Frazier II, one of the more loaded rematches of the past 20 years in any sport. I won't beat you over the head with all the obvious subplots and angles that are going to be run into the ground over the next two weeks, but suffice it to say there quite a few intriguing story arcs in play.

(Note: I'm not beating you over the head now so that I'll have some material to draw on between now and then. Shrewd.)

Anyway, as we hurtle inexorably towards February 6, whence we commence another desolate, football-less stretch, we'll have plenty to keep us occupied. There's hoops and hockey afoot, and pitchers and catchers report to spring training in mere weeks. One nice thing about sports: never a dull moment. Unless you're watching Ed Hochuli explain something, of course.

Defending Atlanta In The Face Of New York Sports Snobbery.

Rembert Browne is a better man than me. That statement is in no way based upon firsthand experience; I have never spent one scintilla of time with the guy, and I have no idea what he's like as a person. Other than the fact that we're both from Atlanta and like sports, I'm fairly certain we have nothing in common. So I say he's better in a purely speculative context, but I suspect it's true nonetheless. Why, you ask? Well ...

A week ago on ESPN New York, Rob Parker wrote a piece entitled "City of Atlanta Doesn't Deserve Win." The thrust of the article was that Atlanta's sports fans are not committed and rabid enough to merit the good fortune of a playoff win, that our (perceived) inferior brand of fandom was undeserving of sweet victory.

In Rembert's thoughtful response to that article, he takes the high road, and opts to explain why Atlanta fans are the way they are rather than rail against Parker's assessment. Which is why I can state with 99% certainty that he's a better man than I. See, I bleed Falcons, Hawks, and Braves colors. I love them unconditionally even when they're terrible, which has been most of my lifetime. I live and die with my teams, so any article telling me that my fandom is not strong enough to be deemed "worthy" of the fruits of success is going to get my hackles up. I've been ruminating on Parker's words for a while now, and after careful consideration, I'm not taking any high road here.

Look, Rob Parker is a tremendous journalist who has been around the sportswriting business almost longer than I've been alive and has had an unimpeachably brilliant career. I want to get up front how much I respect and admire his body of work before I do what Rembert declined, with dignity, to do in responding to Mr. Parker:

*faces generally northwards, clears throat* ...

Eff you, you supercilious Yankee jackass. How dare you levy judgement on my hometown from your cushy perch in the Big Apple?

Let me tell you something, pal; being a New York sports fan is easy. Easy to root. Easy to care. You get born into that gig, it's a lifetime pass on the gravy train. And it doesn't even matter if you're winning or losing.

Which is not to say that winning or losing doesn't matter to New York fans, but that winning or losing has zero bearing on the spirit and perpetuation of New York's various fandoms.

Since you, Mr. Parker, seem to think the Yankees are, and I quote, "the standard for excellence in baseball," let's start with that. I'd go with "the standard for petulant, spoiled entitlement," but hey, "tomato, tomato," right? Wow, that aphorism utterly fails in print. Anyway ...

Consider the process of becoming a Yankee fan. (A true Yankee fan. We'll dismiss bandwagoners and frontrunners because I think we can all agree that no matter what teams we root for, those people are jerks.) Say you grow up in New York, the product of a diehard Yankees family. Your ancestors going back for generations were Yankee fans. From the time you can form semi-cogent thoughts and make meaningful emotional connections, you're inundated, inculcated, and inducted in the vast cultural jetwash that is the New York Yankees. The iconography of the pinstripes and NY caps, the mythology of Gehrig and Mantle and Joltin' Joe and The Babe and Reggie and a million others, and the sheer historical grandeur of the franchise looming over everything. That's your birthright. That's what you grow up knowing.

For much of the time, because the Yankees have an impossibly outsized payroll and every kid grows up wanting to play in Yankee Stadium (or did before they built that new monstrosity), you're riding a sustained wave of success. Championships came in your parents' and grandparents' lifetimes. Lots of them. And they're surely coming in yours too. Wait around for a decade, 15 years tops, and you'll experience the rapturous joy of a World Series victory. But, and here's where you really have it made: even when you're losing, your fandom is wonderfully, completely impregnable.

When times are tough, and you've been subjected to the agony of more than a few seasons without hoisting the trophy, you always have your heritage. You can hang your hat, so to speak, on the past. You are secure because even if it's not true just this instant, your team has been the biggest and baddest on the block many, many times. When you make a hypothetical all-time greatest Yankee batting order or pitching rotation, you legitimately feel conflicted about leaving Players X, Y, and Z off the list, so overflowing with greatness are the annals of your history. The enormity of the past lends credence and dignity to your present, and you share that common passion and lore with millions of other Yankee diehards. In short, being a Yankee fan means never having to doubt or question that loyalty. Ever. You are protected and reassured by what you know came before you.

Obviously, the Yankees are the extreme case, but every other New York team has a similar reverential aura, if not quite as lustrous as the Bronx Bombers. So do the teams from Boston, Philly, Chicago, and L.A. There's a sort of presence that revolves around the stadiums and arenas, the histories and myths. A near-palpable sense of gravity. It may be diaphanous and sepia-toned, but it is most definitely there.

Now contemplate growing up a sports fan in Atlanta, where almost nothing is our own, and nothing at all has been our own for very long. See, while Boston and New York and Chicago have had ample time to establish and grow their economies, personalities, and sports franchises, Atlanta did not have that luxury. We were still recovering from Sherman's March and the aftermath of Reconstruction. Note: While I'm proud to be a Southerner, I am not some sort of apologist for Dixie and the Civil War or one of those half-cocked idiots who think "The South will riiiiise agin!" The atrocities of slavery needed to be brought to an end and the South was and is better off as part of the United States than as a separate entity, but that bastard burned the whole damned city down, and then the government and the carpetbaggers screwed up the rebuilding process to an absurd extent. As large a city as Atlanta is, it didn't really start catching up developmentally to the rest of the big American metropolises until the latter half of the 20th century. The point being, we have had a comparatively short period of history in which we were economically capable of supporting multiple professional sports franchises.

Now, getting back to the question of our fandom: since we've used the Yankees as our jump point, let's start explaining sports fans in the ATL with the team the Yanks humiliated in the '96 and '99 World Series, my beloved Braves.

We inherited the Braves in 1966, a hand-me-down organization whose history was entrenched in Milwaukee and, before that, Boston. Ownership moved the team in search of a bigger television market, and fast-growing Atlanta lured them south by the expedient of building a shiny new stadium for them to play in. The team then proceeded to be varying degrees of mediocre and terrible for the next 25 years. In other words, that first generation of Braves fans had very little to cheer about.

Don't get me wrong, there were obviously some wonderful players that donned the Braves uniform during that stretch, and one All-Time iconic moment in Hammerin' Hank's 715th dinger at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. On balance, though, the Braves were regarded as a complete joke by the rest of the league for a very long time. If, midway through your life, your town suddenly inherited a team that consistently failed to play anything resembling competent baseball, why, with no history or sense of tradition whatsoever to bind you, would you embrace that team as a rooting interest? More importantly, why would you raise your kids to root for them? The answers, for most people, are that you wouldn't and you wouldn't. And thus were the first two generations of Braves fans (mostly) as tepid and unconvincing as winter sunshine. Only now, as people my age who were there to experience some of the lean years but still young enough to be awed by and phenomenally invested in that miracle of a 1991 season and the ensuing run of dominance are having children, is a generation of Braves fans being born and raised who have a sense of team history and greatness that will sustain them during periods of prolonged failure.

Atlanta's two other franchises share eerily similar histories to what I just described above. The Falcons arrived as an NFL expansion team the same year as the Braves, while the Hawks relocated from Saint Louis in 1968. Both teams have had a few great, memorable players in the past (Deion Sanders, Jamal Anderson, and Mike Vick for the Falcons; 'Nique, Spud Webb, and Pistol Pete for the Hawks.) However, despite a few scattered eras of playoff contention, neither team has ever achieved any substantial level of victory. (The loan trip to a sporting finals by an Atlanta team not named the Braves? When the Falcons somehow skittered and bumbled their way into Super Bowl XXXIII, only to be clobbered 34-19 by the Denver Broncos.)

The most recent incarnations of those teams are the closest we've come to sustained competitiveness, and as we know, close don't pay the emotional-fandom rent. (It just keeps you from getting decent picks in the draft.)

All of which doesn't even address the profound and protracted streaks of coaching, front-office, and ownership incompetence that have plagued the Falcons and Hawks, and that caused the Flames and Thrashers to be deported.

Are you starting to see why New York fans have it easy, and why Atlantans find devout fandom so difficult? Out teams were losers when they got here and, aside from those 90s Braves teams, have been losers ever since. Hell, even that stretch of Braves dominance was sort of a slap in the face. We had the best pitching rotation in baseball for a decade and only won one World Series. As joyful as 1995 was, the rest of that era was phenomenally frustrating. As for the Falcons, they still don't have a playoff victory under what was supposed to be a promising new regime (though maybe we'll get one now that we're getting an entirely new coaching staff besides Mike Smith.) The Hawks? They've been so maddeningly inconsistent, so good-not-great for the past five seasons (and might not even hit that level this season now we've lost Al Horford) that "Never Trust The Hawks" is a standing meme (or a running, not-very-funny joke) on Daily Dime Live.

So yes, Mr. Parker, our city's fans may lack a measure of the devotion and elan exhibited by those in New York. Feel free to crow about it. (Then again, no one is going to call our city's fans a bunch of entitled, obnoxious assholes either, so maybe we win in this exchange after all.)

Either way, given our sports history as compared to privileged one enjoyed by New Yorkers, I think it's absurdly unfair to criticize Atlanta for our dearth of rabid fans. As Rembert so eloquently pointed out, "Down at the bottom of the map, we live by a different creed when it comes to sports. We don't know a lot about winning, but we're pretty fantastic at being good-spirited, slightly delusional losers."

I just happen to have the perfect anecdote to illustrate that point, a story that encapsulates Atlanta fandom and that would never, in a million years, happen in New York, where winning is expected and losers are "bums." Sit back and listen, Mr. Parker ...

As you probably know, the Braves finished with the worst record in baseball in 1990, then went to the World Series in 1991. We lost that series in truly heartbreaking fashion, over seven unbelievable games, to the Minnesota Twins. What you probably are not aware of, unless you lived in Atlanta at the time, is what happened after they returned home. What happened was this: we through them a big ol' parade. Yes, you read that correctly. Our team lost the World Series and we feted them in the streets of downtown Atlanta, with convertibles and floats and confetti and everything. Kids (including me and a bunch of my friends) skipped school and almost everyone else skipped work to attend. We screamed ourselves hoarse and tomahawk-chopped until our arms damned near fell off as those cars rolled by with our boys smiling and waving. We did this because we were so grateful for what they had given us; something we as a sports town had never had before. They gave us the joy of feeling like we mattered to the rest of the country, even if only in the world of baseball. They gave us the thrill of winning, even if we didn't quite win it all. They gave us the ride. They gave us hope.

So you see, whether or not you think we deserve to win is irrelevant. Our past, or meaningful lack thereof, has conditioned us to be the fans we are. So long as we have the ride, and the hope, the winning will be joyfully appreciated, but never expected. And maybe we'll be happier that way.

Two final notes on something you wrote in that article, Mr. Parker: "In fact, at some point, they might ask a friend -- filled with sweet tea -- at a pork-saturated barbeque, 'Are the Falcons playing today?'"

1. That's a horribly stereotyped literary cheap shot. It's easy, it's stupid, and it's lazy writing, and you're better than that. Don't do it again.

2. Sweet tea and barbeque are freaking delicious. If you lived here, that's one other thing you might understand about us, and one less thing you'd mock us for without any basis of understanding or empathy. I'm just saying.

But hey, no hard feelings, right? "Good-spirited and slightly delusional losers ..." you know what? Rembert Browne is probably a better writer than me, too.

Year End Top 20

I hate to state the obvious, but it's been an interesting year. As are most years, I suppose, but still.

This blog came into existence on March 22, born of my desire to write about something, and knowing full well that "something" probably should not be music, for my own sanity's sake. (You spend your time practicing and playing shows and writing songs and honing your craft, the last thing you want to do is write about it too.) So I went for the other obvious avenue, and zeroed in on sports. There are probably about 18,436,978 sports blogs out there on the internet; encompassing the full spectrum of excellence and mediocrity, and carrying readerships measured in single digits or in vast orders of magnitude. (There is not necessarily a direct correlation between the quality of excellence and the orders of magnitude, mind you.)

My opening forays here were almost laughable attempts at mimicry, with precious little vector or focus. A paragraph of poorly-imitated David Halberstam here, a sentence of failed Joe Posnanski humor there. Simmons, MacMullen, Schiller, Ryan, Magary, Baker, Levy, Wilbon, Carmichael, Shoals, Harper, Roth ... I had a lot of reverential influences. Unfortunately, I kept veering into their varied stylistic bents at random intervals, with no definite rudder or sense of voice. Everything on the page kept coming up as an inauthentic, disjointed train wreck. There were also periods in which I was, for a variety of reasons, not as diligent in creating content in this space as I ought to have been. But you fumble in the dark long enough, you're going to stub your toe on a lamp eventually. Or at least your eyes should adjust enough to make out some dim, purposeful shadows.

I think I'm getting there.

Thanks to all who have read (and hopefully will keep reading) while I figure this whole thing out.

Anyway, to close out my inaugural (calender) year in this whole sports blogging deal, I'm going to leave all six or so of my loyal readers with one final entry before the champagne and revelry of the 31st.

Ladies and Gents, the Top 20 Sports Moments of 2011. (Note: these are highly subjective, in no particular order, and not all choices are "Top" in the superlative meaning of the word. Some choices made the cut because they resonated personally with me, others because they resonated, for better or worse, with everyone. And some are just plain funny.)

1. Penn State. I don't want to dwell on the horrors of the accusations, the disgusting, absurd reactions of some of the students, or even the awful fact that big-time college athletics can be, in the wrong hands and with VERY wrong priorities, fertile ground for something far more shameful than a few kids milking some extra folding money out of a broken system. Suffice it to say that this was the most shocking thing that has ever happened in sports or my or, I believe, any lifetime.

For sheer revulsion, O.J. in 1994 is the only thing to ever come close. It was, perhaps, more alarming in the immediate moment, watching the car chase as garbled bits of increasingly nauseating information reached us in real time. But it was nothing on this scale in terms of deliberation and scope over years and a repeated wilfulness by those in power to ignore what was wrong.

Sadly, it would be foolish to think this is the last terrible thing we will witness in a field that is supposed to be a trivial, joyous distraction from the "real world." (Look how closely the Syracuse scandal followed it.) But we can hope. May we be more vigilant, less ignorant, and better-equipped in the future. May we never allow our love of something so unimportant to cloud our eyes from the momentous and terrible. If this can't be the end of awful moral failing and tragedy in sports, perhaps we can ensure that its limits of horror will never be approached again.

2. Brandon Roy's Last Stand. I'll spare you a recounting of the details, just click on the link. I know a performance in a first-round playoff series in which his team was ultimately eliminated doesn't necessarily jump out as "Top 20" material. But consider: Roy just announced his retirement after a career that was grossly, unfairly abridged due to his knees acting like those of a 65-year-old man. This was his last full-stop display of the transcendent abilities that made him such a joy to watch during that brief window. We will never have the opportunity to watch him on the court again, unless it's on ESPN Classic when they re-air this game. (Which they should and will.)

3. Drew Brees breaks Dan Marino's single-season passing yardage record. Never mind that it came at the expense of completely humiliating my beloved Falcons on national television, watching history being made is always worthwhile. Also, Drew Brees is ridiculously good.

4. Game(s) 162 of the Major League Baseball Season. Honestly, sometimes you just gotta say "What the &#%^?" Tampa Bay's absurd comeback, the Sawx somehow collapsing against a lowly Baltimore team with nothing to play for, the Braves self-combusting against Philly, the Cards' insane surge ... traumatic as it was for those of us whose teams were thrashed in the process, there has never been a better, more improbable, more drama-filled night of regular season action in any sport. These are the moments when the actual theater outclasses anything we could possibly concoct or manufacture in our wildest, most unhinged flights of fancy. Something we'll never forget.

5. Eric LeGrand leading his Rutgers teammates out of the tunnel in a motorized wheelchair. If you didn't cry when you watched this, you may well be dead inside and I feel bad for you. After a horrific injury on the field paralyzed him, LeGrand became the voice of inspiration and optimism for the year. Not a voice, THE voice. In a sport which has seen so much go so horribly wrong this year, this was a moment that said everything about the better angels of our nature. As a matter of fact, it might have left even the angels slack-jawed with admiration and reverence. Here's a young man deprived of not only the game he loves, of speed and strength as release, but of normal, simple actions as a human being. Yet he has remained unwaveringly dedicated to the idea of surmounting his problems, and of smiling and laughing and savoring the things he can in life while he's at it. He's willing himself to constantly create joy out of awfulness, and to beat the steepest of odds getting back to a standing position. LeGrand's tweet after exiting that tunnel:

"So I left tire tracks in the snow yesterday as I led my team out next time will be footprints"

New Year's resolution we should all make: be more like Eric LeGrand.

6. Al Davis passes away. Has there ever been a death that produced a more high-profile and conflicting crop of press clippings? Davis was eulogized and derided; his innovations were praised and his faults were loudly, scornfully proclaimed. The ultimate take away was probably somewhere in the middle. This was a complex man who, for better and for worse, was tremendously important to the NFL, and without whom the landscape of football will never quite be the same.

7. UGA managed to do this. Keep your eye on the down-and-distance numbers in the bottom right, then watch the yellow line on the punt. THE EFFING PUNT doesn't even make it to the first down marker!!!!!! Hilarious.

8. The Bruins snapped a 40-year drought to hoist Lord Stanley's Cup. Which, you know, was cool.

9. On the NFL's opening Sunday, Cam Newton proves every doubter wrong. After a season's worth of dazzling highlights and otherworldly rookie numbers have essentially made him a lock for Offensive ROY, it's easy to forget how loudly many of us, myself included, were laughing when Newton went #1 overall in the NFL draft this year. Personally, I thought he was going to be a novelty/Wildcat guy; Tebow 2.0. But then, nothing we saw of his lone season at Auburn or during the abbreviated preseason screamed "super-clean, super-calm pocket passer." I was on the couch with a bunch of buddies watching Red Zone when they flashed Newton's final numbers (24/37, 422 yds, 2 TD, 1 INT) and a few highlights across the lower half of the screen. No one spoke for a full minute before someone finally said what were were all thinking: "Holy &^%#!" And all this was (relatively) devoid of the overt displays of athletic freakishness he unleashed as the season continued, but it was the precursor, the warning bell: this cat is for real.

10. Pat Summit's announcement of her early-onset dementia. Forget the easy delineations of men's/women's or college/pro, this is one of the five greatest basketball coaches of all time. During her announcement, and all the press conferences and interviews that followed, never once did she bemoan her fate, ask for sympathy, or behave for an instant in a manner that did not exude dignity, class, and the competitor's will to compete in the face of all odds. It would have been only human to exhibit grief and rage at the situation; only human to tread the road of the maligned, broken, and bitter. And since she chose not to exhibit those things or walk that road, we must conclude that Pat Summit is, in that respect, superhuman. And salute her for it.

11. Vin Mazzaro's May 16 stat line. Here we have a true encapsulation of the ridiculous and the awful. Here's the cringe-worthy portion of the box score:

Vin Mazzaro, LHP, Kansas City Royals. 2 1/3 IP, 11 H, 14 ER, 3 BB, 2K, 77 Pitches. Oof.

12. Novak Djokovic, who did not so much have a defining moment in 2011 as make all of 2011 his defining moment. 10 tournament wins, 3 Grand Slam victories, a record-breaking 5 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 titles, more money than anyone has ever made in a tour season, and utter dominance over pretty much everyone and everything in his path. The man finished his year 70-6. 70-6!!!!!!!!! That's inconceivable. (You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.) Everyone from Sampras to Becker to Nadal declared Djokovic's 2011 the highest sustained level of tennis they've ever witnessed. Which means it was probably the greatest season of tennis that any of us have ever witnessed.

13. Peyton Manning's Neck. Has there ever been a single injury that altered the dynamics of an NFL conference so drastically? In the blink of an eye (and the repair of some vertebrae), the Colts went from Super Bowl contenders to almost surely picking first in the 2012 draft. Meanwhile, the Texans, Pats, Steelers, Ravens, and Bengals reap the benefits, while the Colts probably get to reload with Andrew Luck next season. Sheesh.

14. Kemba Walker doing this. And this. And this. I cannot wait to watch this kid in the NBA.

15. Sunday, October 23. Tim Tebow gets his first start of 2011 on the road against the Miami Dolphins. Thus begins Tebowmania, an extended period of time during which all other sports storylines become secondary to an overtly religious, very humble young man winning a few football games. With awful mechanics. And awful-er stats. And largely thanks to a fantastic Broncos defense and a clutch kicker. The degree to which it subsumed everything else was ludicrous, but at some point you just have to ride the wave out. I was as guilty as anyone of buying into the hype, because it was fun and polarizing and interesting. And I suppose I'm still buying in by puttin gthis on the list, but it was a big honking deal before the Pats and Bills deflated the budding myth, and we were all along for the ride.

(15a: The X > Tebow ESPN Invasion. Because holy crap was that funny.)

16. The NBA Finals. After all the hype surrounding talents being taken to South Beach and the incessant, high-pitched media drone around the Miami Heat all season, we finally reached a moment of unanimous public relief/catharsis. Dallas played such beautiful basketball, and so completely destroyed the team that everyone wanted to see get destroyed ... it was a breathtaking culmination to a phenomenal season. We reveled in the grand pageantry of Dwayne Wade playing like a freaking boss (and LeBon not doing so), of Dirk's transcendent(al?) rain of fall-away J's, of Jason Kidd still having that much in the tank. And also the little things, like Tyson Chandler's unbelievable defense, Shawn Marion giving LeBron all he could handle, and of course, J.J. Barea being the most compact form of pure ballin' since Spud and Mugsy. For the Mavs, it was sweet victory and revenge for 2006. For everyone else, it felt like a signifier that perhaps not everything in sports was morally bankrupt, that karma counts for something, and that the good guys still win every once in a while. Which is patently absurd, of course. But that's how it felt.

17. David Freese's staggering Game 6 in the World Series. I'd like to thank whoever put that slo-mo montage with the fantastically cheesy music out into the world. Because it's fantastic. Hometown kid saves the season and then crushes the game-winning walkoff 2 innings later? Are you kidding?!?!?! And Joe Buck managed to not be Joe Buck-ish and instead turn the simplest, most wonderful phrase possible in the moment, a replication of his father's call 20 years ago after Kirby Puckett hit a World Series, Game 6, extra-inning walkoff. Perfect. I defy you to watch highlights of this game and not get chills. Possibly my favorite moment of the year.

18. Any time a concussion or sub-concussive impact was sustained by an athlete. Actually, scratch that: any time anything at all happened that looked like it might have rattled someone's brain even a little bit. I've read enough on the causes and effects of CTE to be sufficiently terrified of it, and what it might do to many of the people we watch performing feats of athletic wonderment on our televisions or tablets or however we consume sports these days. If I have kids, I swear they are never playing football or hockey or dodgeball or riding bikes or going skiing or doing anything that might translate into repeated impacts to the cranium. Ever.

19. Women's World Cup: USA vs. Brazil. God bless Abby Wambach and Carli Lloyd and Hope Solo. And especially the dervish/spark plug/dynamo that is Megan Rapinoe. This was such a wonderfully fun team to watch. They had style and swagger in abundance and a sheer joy on the pitch that was infectious. USA! USA! USA!

20. Bama/LSU. "Remember, remember the fifth of November ..." In retrospect, there's a certain poetic symmetry to this game having occurred on Guy Fawkes day. A whole bunch of gunpowder did not, in fact, blow up, and precisely nothing was proved by its non-detonation. At least where the BCS polls were concerned. Nonetheless, the defensive battle, and particularly the play in the trenches, was undeniably fascinating and beautiful in its own right. When people talk about the SEC being bigger and faster and stronger than everyone else, games like this are what they're referring to. Which is why we're going to get Round 2 in the BCS Championship Game. And why I can't wait to watch it.

Honorable mentions:

Albert Pujols signs with the Angels. Not really a "moment", but any time the greatest player of his generation leaves his longtime franchise and inks the biggest, most absurd contract anyone has ever seen, it's certainly important. 10 years, $250,000,000 for a (supposedly) 32-year-old 1B? I know he's "The Machine" and all, but I have a hunch they're going to regret that deal in about five years.

David Stern blocks the Chris Paul-to-the-Lakers trade, then allows a trade sending him to the Clippers to go through. I may have to retroactively bump something out and put this on the list retroactively if the Lakers manage to fall apart and the Clips wind up being legitimate contenders this season.

The Tiger Woods Hotdog Incident. Just because.

Happy 2012, folks!!!! Thanks for reading.

Star Wars

Before we get into nuts and bolts, I'd like to start out by saying that I am profoundly grateful as a professional basketball fan. For at least the next two seasons, we will have the privilege, nay, the unadulterated, rapturous pleasure of watching Chris Paul and Blake Griffin on the same team. The best pure point in the game is going to be running pick and rolls and hucking oops to a guy who's well on his way to being the preeminent power forward in the league. That's not to mention the fun CP3 is going to have with DeAndre Jordan. Oh, they have Blake double-trapped in the corner? Ho hum. Hey, DeAndre, cut to that empty space there ... here ya go. ... Perfect!!!

I am a reeling, giddy mess just contemplating the insanity that is about to unfold. SportsCenter is essentially going to have to rechristen its Top 10 as "The CP3 and Blake Show" from Christmas through the playoffs.

And yet ...

I'm wondering if the Clippers are going to be contenders. No doubt they will contend, in the sense of existence as an upper-echelon team in the Western Conference. They will likely win a playoff berth this year, and they will be a formidable challenge for any and all opponents with that absolutely devastating high-low action. But "contenders" in the serious, capitalized context of a threat to hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy this year? I just don't see it.

The NBA accomplished its stated goal of attaining sufficient compensation for New Orleans in this deal (i.e. "basketball reasons"), however shady their purported motives may have been. In doing so, they provided the Hornets a wonderful structural base from which to rebuild, and hopefully made the franchise attractive to prospective new owners. The Hornets are going to be worse for the next few years than they would have been with the initial Lakers trade, but they have younger talent, more cap flexibility, and what will be a high pick in a loaded 2012 draft class to work with now. The NBA made the right decision for, in my opinion, the wrong reasons, but in the end no one got hurt.

The primary side effect of this is: the Clippers just completely transmogrified themselves as a basketball organization. Forget the obvious observations that they're no longer a joke/laughing stock, and that having Chris Paul and Blake Griffin instantly legitimizes them as a marquee franchise. I'm not interested in the star power/recognition aspect of this trade for L.A. I'm talking about the mechanics of what it represents for the Clippers in terms of basketball philosophy.

Before this trade, L.A. was going about its business in a certain manner, and now they will have to continue in an entirely different one. They didn't merely switch gears, they took the exit ramp to a completely different road. We can identify those two roads as follows ...

Clippers pre-trade: The Oklahoma City Thunder model. (Or: What the Hornets could/will become if a smart new ownership does in fact acquire the franchise.) A youthful assemblage of talent centered around one transcendent player growing up in the league together, forging cohesive bonds and making steady but inexorable strides towards greatness, with some necessary and expected stumbling blocks along the way.

This is what the Clips were before this deal. They had a stellar young core with Griffin, Eric Gordon, Al-Farouq Aminu, Jordan, and Eric Bledsoe. Their acquisition of Chauncey Billups before the CP3 trade transpired meant that they had a veteran in place to operate an offense full of burgeoning talent, provide a good, steadying personality/influence in the locker room, and tutor Bledsoe in how best to run a system. (I suspect that Mo Williams was either getting reduced minutes or shipped out for parts. Poor guy.)

That nucleus, coupled with some smart moves over the next few seasons (admittedly a stretch given the Clippers' track record) would have allowed them to continue to grow as exciting up-and-comers and potentially dominate the Western conference along with OKC and Memphis for the next 5-10 years. They weren't going to walk away with the hardware this season, but they had the opportunity to realize their collective potential while almost every key player was still shy of qualifying for breaks on their car insurance rates. As the Lakers and Spurs faded/aged out of relevance and Denver and Utah remained burdened by incoherence and rebuilding, the opening was there for L.A.'s "other" team to assert themselves. Now, their paradigm for success has been significantly altered, and I 'm not sure it's for the better.

Clippers post-trade: The Miami Heat model. Clearly, this team was not manufactured in the same manner as Emperor Wade luring Darth LeBron and Jar Jar Bosh to South Beach, but they face a similar set of problems. Acquiring CP3 cost them depth and versatility, and as Miami just demonstrated, it's awfully difficult to win without it. Even if Paul stays healthy (iffy) and elects to stick around after 2013 (iffier), what do the Clippers really have?

Sure, the starting front court is going to be one of the best in the game. Griffin and Jordan are going to be more than a handful for any defense, especially with Paul orchestrating things. But what happens when they need a rest? The trade cost L.A. their only other semi-decent big in Chris Kaman. They better pray D-League veteran Marcus Hubbard can at least hold down the fort when he's asked to spell Jordan. Same goes for Trey Thompkins. As things stand, the rookie from UGA is going to be the go-to guy when Griffin needs a rest, and he may be called upon to fill some time at the 5 is well, either through small-lineup offensive design or necessity. That's not exactly a comforting thought for Clips fans.

I'm not crazy about the Caron Butler/Ryan Gomes/Renaldo Major rotation at small forward, but it's serviceable, and shouldn't actively cost them too many games. (Al-Farouq Aminu was their easiest and smartest give in the trade, in my opinion.)

Now, the real question, and it's a doozy: exactly who's going to be spacing the floor and providing perimeter shooting for this team? They lost a great young 2-guard in Eric Gordon which leaves them with ... uh ... a Randy Foye/Willie Warren combo at the 2? Rookie Travis Leslie? Mo Williams or Chauncey Billups playing out of position? The problem is that right now L.A. has a surffeit of point guards (five total) and no true 2's on their roster.

My personal bet for a solution: Chauncey at the "two." Mr. Big Shot may not be Ray Allen, but he's not exactly a slouch. I can see him running a tight pick-and-pop game with Paul, and a killer give'n'go as well. Paul should always be the primary handler, but if he's swarmed by the opposing D, Billups' PG acumen renders capable of either knocking down shots or finding one the the Clips' interior players as the situation dictates. Both Billups and Paul are good, savvy defenders, which should compensate at least somewhat for their relative lack of size.

This leaves them with Williams, Warren, Foye, and PG Blake Ahearn either coming off the bench or traded off for another asset. An additional big would be nice (and frankly it's a quasi-necessity), but what the Clippers absolutely need is a bench perimeter scoring threat, either a Jamal Crawford type or a J.J. Redick-style sniper. Until they get that guy, they're just not going to be able to sustain offensive momentum while the starters get their rest.

To recap, we're looking at a starting five of Paul/Billups/Butler/Griffin/Jordan. That's more than a pretty damned good lineup, it's downright frightening. The problem is that a key bench rotation of Foye, Williams, and Thompkins ain't going to get it done. If the Clippers can't figure out a way to acquire some better assets, the CP3 trade isn't going to matter.

Right now, it's possible that the Clippers are the best basketball team in Los Angeles. However: the team they (possibly) deposed to (maybe) earn that (hypothetical) title got creamed in the playoffs last season. So even if the Clippers are better, are they good enough?

The answer is an emphatic "not yet they aren't." But they're a move or two away. For fans of this perennially haggard franchise, that knowledge ought to be sufficient to be getting on with. That knowledge, and the promise of oh so many jaw-dropping highlight reels waiting to happen.

The Los Angeles Clippers, folks! Come for the entertainment, stay for the bright, bright future!

Dance Like Everyone Is Looking: An Excessive Celebration Of Excessive Celebration.

There was one hell of a grumpy-pants rant up on Grantland this morning. Normally, I enjoy Jenny Johnson's writing; she's clever and snarky and an entertaining read. But her tirade about endzone dances came off like the old guy in a bathrobe yelling "get off my lawn!" It was cranky and obstinate and a representation of exactly what people mean when they (qausi) jokingly refer to the NFL as the No Fun League.

You can click the link above if you want to read it in full, but if you're disinclined or busy or what have you, here's her essential point: scoring points and making good plays in sports is a job. A job that athletes are paid very handsomely to do. They should not engage in obnoxious, self-aggrandizing celebrations purely because they did that job well.

Here's the part that really yanked my chain, because it is condescending moralizing of the most irksome variety:

"But then there's those players who emerge from the locker room wearing a red crushed velvet suit (I actually saw this), talking loudly and trying to get anyone within an earshot's attention. They want to be noticed, they are desperate for it. But why? Why can't people quietly do their jobs? Why make a spectacle of yourself?"

Well, Jenny, allow me to answer that question for you. Athletes dance in endzones and wear outrageous outfits and legally change their names to goofy things and everything else that bugs you for a few simple reasons.

First, because reputation equals money. The bigger a "name" someone can make for themselves, the more recognition they gain among fans. Since front offices are more likely to shell out truckloads of cash to players with high name-recognition who will put more butts in the seats or in front of the TV, it is in the players' best interest to be as recognized as possible. Obviously, this doesn't hold true for crimes, morally questionable behavior, and the like, but actions that generate considerable attention while being essentially harmless are great ways to get a few extra bucks on that next contract.

If you say that's ridiculous and they don't need any more money than they make already, I suppose that's sort of a valid point, but we live in a capitalist society and it is their right to pursue every available financial gain. Also, I believe that given how much the owners make off these athletes, especially in the NFL, that many of them are considerably underpaid for their services.

The second reason is that it is human nature to seek attention and praise when we do something well. Furthermore, we want to share our pride and happiness in those accomplishments; we want to celebrate. If you ask out someone you're heavily attracted to and they say yes, don't tell me you don't skip down the sidewalk and air-high-five the whole beautiful world when that happens. Don't tell me you don't strut a little when you write a great article or produce a great segment. It's partly wanting recognition for the job, but partly just the thrill and pleasure of having done it well, right? We all do it, because as human beings, we're just plain wired that way. If you claim that's not the case, Jenny Johnson, then you're a lying liar who lies. My point is this: sure, celebrations in sports have an exhibitionist tilt to them, but they're also pure distillations of joy when something cool happens.

And here's the third and most important point I want to get to. You say that a great play is just doing the job, and there's no need to so crassly and brazenly call attention to it. You know what I say to that? I say calling attention to it is a critical part of the job.

Because the job, in reality, is to entertain us. That's what athletes do. Speed and skill and dexterity and grace, playing the game smartly and well, those are some of the mechanisms by which players provide that entertainment. Some of the others include entertaining press conferences and sound bytes, loud and/or hilarious outfits, and of course, swagger-licious celebrations.

The endzone dance, the prance after draining a huge trey, the signature ritual when crossing the plate after a homer, these things don't defile some kind of unwritten code of stoicism and dignity. They make the games more fun. Period.

Put it this way: Jimi Hendrix's job was to play guitar. (Well, some of his job. Hendrix was also a pioneering recording studio wizard and a tremendously underrated songwriter and singer, but that's for another day.) Anyway, sticking with the guitar thing, we can safely say that Jimi did his job better than anyone else on the planet did anything. Maybe ever. But the joy of experiencing his transcendent musicianship was amplified by all the other crazy things he did when he performed. The larger-than-life, campy/sensual gesticulating, playing behind his head or with his teeth, smashing his guitar, lighting his guitar on effing fire!!! None of that stuff was necessary to successfully performing his music, but it made the whole show bigger and cooler and infinitely more memorable.

Personally, and I cannot say this emphatically enough, I really, really f&%$ hate the excessive celebration penalty, and any fines that are doled out to players in a misguided attempt to regulate the "integrity of the game" or whatever the hell Roger Goodell thinks he's trying to do.

You know the Terrel Owens "getcha popcorn ready" photo at the top of this post? I love that photo. That was one of my favorite moments of the 2008 season. Same goes for the midfield--Dallas-star move, the sign-the-ball move, and everything else T.O. ever did in an endzone, because his cockiness and ingenuity in the realm of celebrations were unparalleled. Likewise for everyone else Jenny Johnson mentions as having offended her sensibilities.

Here's the paragraph:

"There are some athletes, past and present, who were/are particularly annoying to watch on/off the field, Chad Johnson (I'm writing "Johnson" instead of "Ochocinco" because I can't bring myself to call him a word that doesn't even mean 85 in Spanish), Terrell Owens, Jim McMahon, Deion Sanders, Joe Namath (remember his fur coats? WTF?) Keyshawn Johnson, Jeremy Shockey fall into this particular category."

The rebuttal, if I may. I was a little young to catch McMahon's prime years, but I'd like to exonerate the rest of that list. Every "Prime Time" dance, spike, and ham-it-up act was fantastic viewing. I loved that stuff. Same goes for Key, and their dynamic, memorable on-field personae likely have a lot to do with them being great on-air mainstays today. Chad Ocho-Johnson rode a bull earlier this year, for crying out loud. He holds up signs and proposes to cheerleaders. You can't possibly tell me that guy isn't entertaining. I think Shockey is great, and as far as Broadway Joe ... I've only got grainy photos to go on, but his coats were outstanding.

Speaking of Broadway, I wish the NFL had elaborate, musical-style choreographed celebrations for big games or rally scores. Or at least grander displays like UGA's team-wide penalty against Florida in 2007. (They still do this in the NBA, as evidenced by the Cavs' "snapshot" routine in the LeBron days.) Unfortunately, instead of limitless possibilities for entertainment, it's a minimum 15-yard penalty and possibly a fine just for doing something cool.

Are endzone celebrations egotistical? You bet. Obnoxious? Of course! But they're also an awful lot of fun. The plays themselves, the events that transpire while the game clock is running provide the drama and context and displays of jaw-dropping athleticism. They are the ebb and flow and larger pulse of the event. The celebrations, when they were aloud without repercussions, were the flip side, the over-the-top theater and spectacle and comic relief. They lent a dynamic that is sorely missed in this more staid (and less enjoyable) iteration of the league. They were exuberant declaration and non-verbal smack talk. They fired up home crowds and agitated fans on the road. I mourn their passing.

I mean all of this within the bounds of reason, obviously. I'm not blanket-condoning any and all potential celebrations. If someone makes a truly lewd or offensive gesture, then there should be consequences. The NFL is a product viewed by many youngsters who, lord knows, don't need any more awfulness or crudity in their lives than the internet and the maudlin, depressing thing known as the modern news cycle already inflict upon them.

(Stevie Johnson's faux pas is an interesting case here. Yes, it was a display of poor taste, but it was also an inspired bit of punking. He probably deserved the fine, I suppose. That said, the crashing-jet pratfall was hilarious.)

Ultimately, I believe that the league was more enjoyable when its players were allowed to ham it up. Celebrating great plays with verve and sass and creativity ought to be encouraged, or at least not condemned. Penalizing a great source of entertainment is idiotic, and it needs to stop.

And if Terrel Owens ever catches a touchdown pass in the NFL again, and I happen to be in the stadium when he does, he's more than welcome to my popcorn.