This Week on the Internets (17 August 2009)

Couple days behind schedule, here, but I think still worth posting… I’ll blame it on Thursday night at some Irish bar drinking 250th anniversary Guinness and a Friday – Saturday suddenly filled with trips to various home-related stores and studying for the GMAT.  It’s a sad state of affairs.  Nonetheless, a few hours on a Sunday seems as good a time as any to recap the week prior.

All that said, please do scroll down or click here if you are looking for our NFC East preview.

Football is finally giving at least a few people in this country something to talk about other than the never-ending health care debate.  Maybe the President should go back to fighting for a college football playoff system.  He might lose the Southeast after this health care bill; a government-funded playoff system could well keep the SEC on his side of the fence.

Chad Ochocinco, the receiver formerly known as Chad Johnson, kicked a game-winning extra point and followed it up with a successful kickoff as the Bengals beat the Patriots in preseason football last night:

Hilarious.  I’m happy to feed the beast.  This guy just never runs out of material.  Bengals kicker Shayne Graham had a sore groin, so lookie-here-Chad volunteered.  “Esteban’ Ochocinco is back,” he said, according to the team’s website.  His other comment? … “You haven’t [expletive] seen anything yet.  Know how serious I am?  I just cursed.  I’m taking all the hate that I received from the media and balling it all up.  Just like in the movie theater when you’re watching all the previews, this is what I’m using the preseason for.”  You just can’t make this stuff up.  The NFL is America’s sport because it’s meticulous enough to endlessly debate rules like two versus three player wedges on kickoff returns, brutish enough to just partially limit helmet-to-helmet contact over, and dynamic/outlandish enough to provide entertainment like this.  Roger Goodell must spend half the day just banging his head on his desk.

Cincy Jungle provides a bit of perspective from Cincinnati while Outside the Beltway remembers a few similar instances during the regular season, if anybody is interested.

Otherwise in the NFL, he-who-shall-not-be-named continued the longest consecutive “sikes” streak in the history of sports, signing a two-year deal with the Vikings.  Everybody thought this story was dead, then a few players anonymously said it wasn’t, he had a turkey sandwich for dinner (at least we’re told) and suddenly is expected to player 2-3 series in a preseason game tonight.  We’re going to do our best to make this Favre-free blogging starting… Now.  I’m tired of getting punked and trying to rationalize the spelling of his last name every time that I type it.

Plaxico Burress reached a plea deal that effectively ends his career but sets the stage for a comeback in 2011 with the Eagles after McNabb gets cut for salary cap reasons and Michael Vick signs a long-term team with the team.  Also, the Dolphins have the swine flu.

Next topic:  Track (and field).  I never would have believe that this sport would be worth mentioning in August, with the NFL, college football, and baseball’s playoff race upon us.  But it is.  Usain Bolt broke world records in the 100m and 200m this week, which is nice, but apparently the public would rather discuss the gender of the 800m women’s gold medal winner.  I’m not going to delve into that – not really where I want to take this post – but regardless of the “truth”, if such a thing even exists, here we find another prime example of “off-the-field” coverage receiving far more attention than “on-the-field” coverage in sports these days.  Either way, everybody seems to have something to say about an issue that we may not really ever have an answer to.  We’ve got birth certificates coming out, charges of racism, demonstrations of national support, debates on the idiocy/accuracy of sex testing, gender bias…  The list continues to grow.

In college football, the AP’s top-25 poll came out early Saturday; we’ll quickly disregard that useless information and provide our own set of previews in the coming weeks.  I, for one, continue to firmly disregard any polls before Week 4, BSC-relevant or otherwise.  Aside from the fact that everybody is just positioning whoever the “buzz-worthy” team are in some kind of order, with Florida rightfully at the top, there really isn’t much to learn from these polls as the turnover is limited at best during the first month of the season (aside from nationwide kickoff games) and they unfortunately set the tone for polls that actually count in the BCS later in the year.  It’s difficult to employ a few general expectations to a set of data and then make any significant changes when your expectations are proven.  Even if the unexpected occurs between Virginia Tech/Alabama and USC/Ohio State, I’d bet that the top-10 will remain pretty static through September.

I’m about spent for today…  Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.