Week in Review

Lots happened this week. Here were my five highlights: (1) The story of the most out of control old man not in the Vice President's Office continued to get uglier this week when it came out that Eddie Sutton had a .22 blood alcohol level at the time of his accident. That is almost three times the legal limit and means that he was really, really drunk at the time of the accident. When you consider that he was driving to get on the team plane to fly to a game, the story becomes even more pathetic. His team, the Oklahoma St Cowboys, seemed to shrug off the incident and got a big win over Texas on Sunday. And his son, who has the worst double chin that I have seen since Rob Gidel showed me his prom date, got his coaching career off to a nice start. (2) The first ever black athlete from the United States won a gold medal in Olympic Speed Skating. Of course no black person actually watched the event, taking after the lead of Bryant Gumbel who said that, "there are so few black faces, it looks like the GOP Convention." I actually found this a very monumental occurrence and it made me think that you know the world is a bit screwed up when the best American Speedskater is black and the best two college basketball players are white. (3) Bracket Buster weekend took place and provided very little of interest. Bucknell lost to Northern Iowa in a good game that went into double overtime and showcased all that midmajors have to offer. However Bracket Buster Saturday was a bit sad to me as there was a moment where I realized that maybe I needed to get out more. At 12:07 on Saturday night, I was trying to figure out what to do and said, "Oh good! Fresno St is about to play Creighton." I guarantee that Colin Farrell has never uttered those words at any time. (4) Jimmie Johnson won the Daytona 500, in a race that was marred by a continual mist that made the track look like Soldier Field on a late January playoff game. The race saw a drunk James Caan as the Grand Marshall, a bizarre looking Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas as the national anthem singer, a tightly clothed Bon Jovi as Pre-Game Entertainment and a spectacularly unfunny Jay Leno as pace car driver. The race was marred by a number of wrecks, including one involving Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth that saw both men get penalized. After the race, Stewart said, "he started it and I finished it." I like that kind of honesty in sports and I feel like we will get a repeat line the next time old Man Whittington visits the White House. (5) Finally late word tonight is that Barry Bonds has announced he is retiring at the end of the season. There likely has not been a more reviled player in recent memory than Bonds and even though most agree he is one of the five best hitters in history, he draws approval ratings somewhere between Michael Moore's in Utah and Rick Santorum's at the Men's Figure Skating after party. I have always moderately liked Barry Bonds and watching his head physically explode in size over the years has been quite entertaining. If not for the steroid ban of a couple of years ago, I think he was making a move at Shagari for "World's Largest Athlete head." But now, he will have to settle for the silver and Alleyne can reign supreme. Looking forward to the week ahead...