. . . about Glenn Beck before now. I haven't watched his show recently, but when I did in the past I found him somewhat funny, and someone that I could agree with on a number of things (but not everything, and certainly I could do without the hyperbole).

Then I see this.

I don't really care if other people like soccer or not. I know it doesn't mesh that well with American sports sensibilities and tastes. I used to think it was awfully boring myself.

But to imply that I'm un-American for liking it?

Soccer to me represents the last 8 years of seeing my now twelve-year-old son have an absolute blast - and lots of success - on the field. He's worked his way up to the top team on a local select club and is at the age where things are about to really get interesting out there on the pitch. His dream of dreams would be to play in a World Cup someday, and he and his friends yelled themselves hoarse during the USA-England match at the beginning of World Cup pool play.

I say all that to say this: we bring our experiences, our understandings, and our culture to our sports. Many Europeans think basketball's boring, for instance.

Don't get me wrong - I find humor in American jokes about soccer (so, my facebook friend who has engaged in humor at FutBol's expense, this is not directed at you). But I'm reminded of one time when I was talking to a friend of mine at church, one who was generally very critical of a lot of things (and entering his Calvin Cage-Phase, by the way). I mentioned something about soccer, and he rolled his eyes and said "third world sport" and then started complaining about immigration or something. That had a different "feel", and it wasn't even subtle. It wasn't "I think soccer's dumb". It was UGLY XENOPHOBIC AMERICAN.

So, Glenn Beck, go take a flying leap. The USA made it into the second round today!

That's what Bono said when the U2 show at Houston's Reliant Stadium commenced last year, and that's what the entire Baylor University community should be saying as the men's basketball program begins its title run in earnest at the same Reliant Stadium this weekend.

It's the Sweet 16 and the Bears are in! Even the Baylor ladies' team advanced to the Sweet 16!

It all starts tonight. Sic 'em, Bears!

Contra vs. Duck Hunt

There is so much awesomeness here, it may blow up your monitor.

Curling rocks! Just ask Hammerfall.



[H/T The Corner]

Ask me if I care.

Well, I guess you don't have to ask now, since that was just an expression.

Pre-game show is on, and there was just some big to-do about "The Who" having done everything in 40 years of music...except this. And oh, what a challenge it was condensing 40 years of music into 12 minutes... blah, blah, blah.

Then I heard the CSI theme song and decided that will probably be the most well-known song.

Comments and thoughts on the half-time show, go here...

All right, tell us:

Who do you want to win?

Who do you think will win, if different?

What up with that?

It's so, so pretty.

Thanks to the magic of the Interwebs, and a lead from a Twitter friend, Beck and I got to watch the game online despite being out of viewing area. Our screams at this final moment frightened our first grader to tears.



Wild Card, baby. Wile-duh. Car-duh.

Last night the Tennessee Titans beat my Texans on Monday Night Football. It was a great game. Some observations:

- Just like the Titans season, the career of Vince Young has been resurrected. It's hard to believe that just a few short weeks ago the prevailing wisdom, even among Titan fans, was that Vince Young was done. "He's not an NFL quarterback". "He's a quitter", etc. Vince Young has proven what he really is: a winner. There's no stat-sheet for that.

- Passing over Vince Young for Mario Williams in 2006 is once again looking like a stupid decision. Again, the Titans can point to a lot of reasons they won the game last night, but from this Texans fan's perspective, without VY, the Titans don't win that game. He made plays when he needed to.

- Maybe teams will once again crack the VY code. I don't know. The Texans defense seemed surprised, somehow, that VY used his legs to get easy first downs. It's almost as if our defensive coordinator planned for Kerry Collins.

- There's something disturbing about the Texans sideline in the fourth quarter in close games. I remember thinking this last night as MNF cut to shots of Gary Kubiac and the players on the sidelines when the game was tied 17-17 with a few minutes left: they know they are going to lose. Shots of the Titans sideline told a different story. They were loose, and confident. They knew they were going to win. I think that's the difference in the game.

- This was a huge game for the Texans, and hence the disappointment is palpable in Houston. This is the second game in a row that we've lost in the last seconds with a missed field goal. It doesn't take much to separate 7-3 from 5-5. This game, for all intents and purposes, took the Texans out of the playoff picture. Their season now has devolved into an effort to finally have a winning record (the best the Texans have ever done is 8-8). Unfortunately, even a winning season won't be enough for this star-crossed franchise.

- I think this game also was the end of Gary Kubiak's career here as head coach, which is sad. I like Koobs. But he hasn't been able to turn this team into a winner. He's gotten tantalizingly close. But the calls for his removal are going to get loud, now.

- A win next week against the undefeated Indianapolis Colts (another team that always pulls out a win against the Texans, no matter how close the game is) could possibly save the season. But the Texans pretty much have to be perfect from now on.

- For Titans fans, what a season this is turning into! It's hard to believe they were 0-6 just a few weeks ago. Though the Texans have a better record, the Titans seem to have a better chance of making the Wild Card this year. I'm glad for their players and for Jeff Fisher, who is a class act. I'll do my best to ignore the classless, bird-flipping octogenarian up in the luxury box.

- For entertaining football, the Texans/Titans games are hard to beat. These teams really hate each other, and that makes the game fun to watch. As Monday Night Football goes, that was one of the best games of the season. I wish the result had been different, but hats off to the Titans. They are the better team, and they showed it last night.

- Quaid, who never gave up on Vince Young in conversations in this space, should be feeling a satisfying sense of vindication this morning. :-)

So unless you are completely disconnected from any news outlet of any kind, you probably know my Tennessee Titans got utterly destroyed today by the New England Patriots. It was arguably the "awfulest" NFL game loss in almost 40 years.

Here's the conversation I had with my daughters Macy (8) and Grace (6) afterward.

Me: Well, the Titans lost. Really bad too. It was 59 to zero. That's the worst loss in the NFL since 1976.

Grace: They got no points?

Me: Nope, no points.

Macy: Whoa.

Me: Yep. What do you think they should do?

Macy: I don't know.

Me: They might fire their coach.

Macy: No!

Me: No?

Grace: What does fire mean?

Me: Get rid of him.

Grace: I wouldn't fire him.

Me: No? But something has to change. What would you do?

Grace: I would just tell him to play better.

Me: You think they haven't done that already?

Grace: No.

Macy: What would happen to the team?

Me: They'd keep playing.

Macy: Without a coach?

Me: No, they'd hire another one.

Macy: Oh. Well, that's okay.

Grace: No, they should keep the same coach.

Me: That's very gracious of you, Grace.

Grace: I'm going to practice my tap dance moves.

In honor of Michael Jordan's induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, ESPN features the Top 23 Michael Jordan Moments.

Love it.

Even though every few years we hear about the alleged "next Michael Jordan," there never will be another one like him. Not Lebron James, who is phenomenal. Not Kobe, who I admit is a great player.
Nobody else carries the weight of myth on the basketball court.
(And does anybody watch the NBA any more?)

I remember watching what's usually known as "the flu game" live. It might've been the most heroic athletic performance I've ever seen.

My Rockets have just won game 6 in the best of seven Western Conference semis. Without Tracy. Without Yao. Without Deke. Up against the (apparently no heart, no effort, no passion) Lakers, who are the "best" team in the West.

No one picks the Rockets to win game seven in LA. But no one thought they would even sniff a game six, especially after Yao went down.

The Rockets were absolutely blown off the court in game five in LA, so this is an amazing comeback. The heart of a champion is still beating.

I'm proud of my team, win or lose in the next game. Go Rockets! Beat the Lakers!

The Lakers are still heavily favored in this series, but it was very nice to see my boyz take Game One in L.A.

Go Rockets!

The game still has 3 minutes left, but my Rockets are up by twenty over the Trailblazers, so I'm assuming we'll hang on to win this one.

The Rockets have won a playoff series, for the first time in twelve years. Good job, guys.

Now we get to go face the Lakers in the second round. Let's go Clutch City!

This Fox Sports commercial never gets old:



Watch my Kobe Briant no-look Confusion Makuh!

I took one of my sons to watch the Spurs vs. the Cavs a few weeks ago and witnessed LeBron James' pregame chalk ritual. Pretty cool...that he has a pre-game ritual, that is.

Well apparently he has a new one.



And Shaq won't be outdone.

The war of the pregame rituals

By now, you've no doubt seen LeBron James and the Cavaliers' hilarious pre-game "photo-op" intro. Before the starters take the floor, LeBron pretends to grab a bunch of cameras from his teammates and snaps pictures of them as they pose for group shots like high school students out on a class trip.

Well, not to be outdone/YouTube'd, Shaquille O'Neal called the LeBron's intro "weak," and tried his hand at choreographing a better one in the locker room before the Suns faced the lowly Wizards over the weekend.

"Everybody always talks about LeBron's weak intro, so I challenge LeBron to intros," The Big Xerox told reporters/bloggers post-game. "Alright? So he does his little camera thing, we did our bowling thing, we'll let the people decide. If he changes his intro, then I'm going to change my intro."

So, "people," which choreographed pre-game ritual do you like better? Let's hear it.

Yes.

Perusing Fran Blinebury's Courtside blog on chron.com has got me feeling nostalgic this afternoon:

Yao had a sore left shoulder from a third quarter rejection and a lower lip that wouldn't stop bleeding.

He was lucky he didn't also have a severe case of windburn after the way Al Jefferson blew past him for 17 of his 36 points in the first quarter alone.

So before the cameras and microphones and most of the other notebooks gathered around his locker, Yao shook his head, leaned down to me and said, "Was Hakeem better than that?"

I nodded my head and grinned.

Having grown up in Houston I have fond memories of watching Hakeem Olajuwan dominate both sides of the court. The man was unbelievable. He didn't have the pizzazz of some of his contemporaries like Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, but what he lacked in PR skills he made for on the court. Blinebury continues:

Jefferson is fast. Hakeem was faster. Jefferson is slick. Hakeem was slicker. Jefferson has moves like one of those 3-card monte dealers who fleece your money in Times Square. Hakeem was like David Copperfield. He could make the Statue of Liberty disappear right in front of your eyes.

"Really?" Yao asked as I kept nodding my head. "Look at that footwork by Jefferson. See those shots."

Just ask David Robinson. Olajuwon was out-dancing the stars years and years before it was a hit TV program.

It was never one move with Hakeem. It was a series of moves, one built upon the other, the answer to an endless puzzle that defenders were rarely ever able to figure out.

He didn't just slip around a defender for a layup like Jefferson. He also came dropping down almost from the rafters to hammer home a dunk. There was the jump hook that was unerring and deadly.

And, of course, there was the Dreamshake from the baseline. The closest Jefferson can come to that a little turnaround that looks like he's shot-putting.

Yao listened and his eyes widened.

"Oh, by the way," I told him, "then there was the other end of the floor where Hakeem was a defensive monster."

He blocked every shot within sniffing distance and he jumped into the passing lanes to strike like a cobra on defense while also controlling the backboards.

"I have heard all of the stories. I have watched videos," Yao said. "But, of course, our careers were in different times, so I never got to play against Hakeem in his time. I have always wondered what it would be like. I see Jefferson tonight and I think this must be it. Right?"

I shook my head and grinned.

Yao smiled back.

"Maybe it's good I never got the chance," he said.

He was one in a million.

... how even the Superbowl can't make car commercials exciting.

Go Cardinals!

Titans turnovers + Redonkulous ref delay of game no call = Titans season over

Is "Colt McCoy" not simultaneously the most ridiculous, most sublime, and most fitting for quarterback position at the University of Texas name there could ever be.

Colt McCoy. That's so made up.

I can play this game too. Try these names on for size:

Chest Throckmorton
Branford Cannon
Biff Brawnson
Shooter McAwesomeness
Radical von Velociraptor

You try too . . .