| La-La Land of the Giants
I should have listened to my wife. She told me to wash my car. But I'd been on the road just about every weekend for three months, covering NFL games, and a carwash didn't register on my list of priorities.
So the other day I wheezed up to the Beverly Hills Hotel in my one-headlight Volvo that's covered in dust and bird droppings, and filled with old newspapers, water bottles, my son's basketball, and -- disturbingly -- my daughter's collection of stripped-bare Barbie dolls.
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Express delivery for championship weekend
What about a monster all-football mailbag before we tackle this week's conference championship picks? Is that something you might be interested in? As always, these are actual e-mails from actual readers. Q: Last Sunday's games were a beautiful reminder of why sports is the best reality show of all time, why fans go shirtless in 32-degree weather, why men flock to bars to get wasted and stuff themselves full of buffalo wings, why bookies exist, and why there will be pregame shows with three panels separated in groups of fours some day. You never know. If you told me before the season that Eli -- and not Peyton -- would be playing to go to the Super Bowl, the Chargers would come back to beat Peyton at home with Billy Volek and Norv Turner, and old fogeys in nursing homes would be doing the Superman dance and lining up to buy a Nintendo Wii, I would not only bet my mortgage against those three things, I would have wagered stapling my buns together.
The Buzz: (Foot) long story
In what can only be described as a tale of heroes and villains, one current and two former Florida football players were arrested after causing a disturbance at a campus sandwich shop. One of the accused is now a professional runner and tried to flee on foot but was apprehended (maybe he was wearing Crocs). According to the Gainesville police report, an employee asked the trio to pay for a bag of snacks, and they responded by throwing items at the worker. Talk about not responding well when the chips are down. Tuning in The Patriots-Ravens telecast last Monday pulled in an audience of 17.5 million, the largest ever for a cable program, topping the 17.2 million who watched "High School Musical 2" in August. Perhaps the Ravens should view the Disney drama - they might learn something about harmony.
NFC, AFC games will be bitter
But as far as the NFL is concerned, the storm that blew across the Dakotas and into the Great Lakes region Friday night should provide Championship Game Sunday with plenty of rollercoaster-like thrills and spills.
And even more chills. Unforgiving ones.
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Oh That George Bush! He Was For The Troops Before He Was Against Them
They include Libya, Iran and Iraq under Saddam. The administration was unable to explain why it had not acted earlier to object to the provision. Perhaps it's because Harriet Miers is no longer the president's legal counsel. A deeply embarrassed White House promised that it will work quickly with Congress to restore the dozens of military and veterans provisions in the bill, which got overwhelming bipartisan support, once Congress returns to work in January. The new bill would not, of course, include the terrorist-act provision. The provision was put into the bill by Senator Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat, without public debate, a not unusual occurrance on Capitol Hill. It would help U.S. plaintiffs in lawsuits against Iran and Libya, including relatives of Americans killed in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and in the bombing of a Berlin disco in 1986.
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