Girls Are Wimps

It's a relatively slow news day in the sports world, especially in Chicago where the hot rumor is that the Cubs are interested in the recently released Jim Edmonds. Oh boy! Why the Cubs would want an aging outfielder who's bat and glove have been deteriorating at an alarming rate, I don't know, but whatever. I don't much care either.

Anyway, I've had to do some reading this morning to find a story I felt like posting about, and I found one over at The Postmen.

Thanks to a groundbreaking study, there's enough evidence out there that suggests girls may be weaker than boys. I'll let that shocker sink in for a second or two.

Okay, got your head wrapped around that one? I know, it took me a few minutes to come to terms with it, but apparently it's true. While Title IX has gone a long way in helping young women play athletics in school, it's also led to an alarming growth in injuries amongst the girls playing the sports. The same types of injuries boys are usually immune to.

It's gotten especially bad for girls when it comes to the most fickle of our knee's ligaments, the ACL.

Playing through pain, rushing back from injury — a warrior-girl ethos — was ingrained in Janelle, just as it is in many young women. The more she was hurt, the more routine the injuries felt. Her first A.C.L. operation, she told me, was “monumental. It felt scary. You know, it’s surgery.” Then she added: “The second one was like, O.K., I know what I need to do, let’s just do it. Let’s have the surgery and rehab and get back out there.”

By Janelle’s and her mother’s count, her club team, with 18 players, had suffered eight A.C.L. tears — eight — during her high-school years: Janelle’s two, another player’s two and four other girls with one each. A high-school teammate one class above Janelle endured chronic ankle problems and, according to a Miami Herald article, six ankle operations — three in each leg — over the course of her four years on the varsity soccer team.

It's at this point I feel that I should point out no woman I know has ever torn her ACL while cooking me dinner. Just sayin..... (I'm kidding!)

I'm not sure why this should come as a surprise to anyone, I think it's pretty obvious to anybody who's met a man and a woman, that men are just generally stronger physically. The fact that a man's body is much more adept at avoiding injury should not come as a surprise, but at the same time, if women continue to pursue athletics like this, their bodies will adapt over time as well.

Charles Darwin taught me this. He also taught me how to chug three beers at the same time. Which piece of knowledge to you think I've used more effectively in life? Still, the article is pretty interesting (and very long) so if you have an hour or two to kill at work today, I say go for it.

Bobby Knight Retired? Awesome.

As you can tell by the title of this post, I'm extremely excited about the news of Bobby Knight's retirement. And by extremely excited, I mean I don't care. It's just that the Super Bowl is over, and baseball doesn't start until March. What the hell am I supposed to do for the next month and a half?

What else am I supposed to write about this morning?

It's a question I've been looking around all morning for an answer for, and I just can't find it. The biggest story in sports right now, aside from the Patriots loss which I don't care about anymore, is the fact that Bob Knight retired yesterday. It's a big deal, yes, as Knight is one of the college coaching legends, but let's be honest, he hasn't been relevant in seven years.

That's when Knight became coach of Texas Tech, and aside from fun videos of him arguing with his neighbor about some buckshot, I haven't paid much attention to him since.

My main question about this story is why Knight chose yesterday to do it. It's somewhat hypocritical of a man who spent his career preaching commitment to his players to up and leave halfway through a season, isn't it? Is it because he just achieved victory #900 a few weeks ago, and figures he has nothing left to coach for?

Is it because he knew that since this is the dead time in sports, if he retired yesterday he'd be the biggest story?

Maybe he's telling the truth, and he's just tired.

I don't know, and I don't think it really matters. All that Knight has been good for the last ten years is a soundbite, so I can think of no better way to honor his time as a coach then by letting you listen to him talk some more.



The man has a way with words.

Foul Balls

Gisele Won't Keep Her Word - Before the Super Bowl took place this last weekend, Tom Brady's girlfriend Gisele Bundchen made a promise to us all. She said that if the Giants somehow managed to upset her boytoy's team, and win the Super Bowl, she'd run through midtown Manhattan naked.

Well, the Giants lost, so I've flown to New York and have been walking the streets of Manhattan for the last 36 hours, and I haven't seen her yet. It doesn't look like I'm going to, either.

"It was a mistake and I'm sorry I said it. I don't know what I could have been thinking -- Midtown Manhattan is a parking lot any time of day or night. It'd take 30 minutes just to make it from the Theater District to 34th Street. And what if I ran into the Naked Cowboy and had to pose for pictures with every out-of-town Tom, Dick and Harry? Tack on another 30 minutes, easily. How 'bout I simply flashed my breasts from a billboard in Times Square and call it a day ... will that work?"

No. No it definitely will not.

This Is Just Mean - Imagine your a high school senior from a small town, where you play football. Nobody in the history of your town has ever gone on to play Division 1 college football, but you have a shot.

Then the phone calls start coming. It's Cal head coach Jeff Tedford, and he wants you to come to Berkeley to play on his offensive line. After a few weeks you decide you want to go to Cal, and you set up a press conference in your hometown to announce your decision.

A bunch of people show up, including your family (They look so proud!) and a couple of news stations who are covering the story for that night's local news. You announce your decision to attend the University of California, and everyone celebrates. You feel like a God for one night in your life.

Then a few days later, you find out it was all bullshit. That's what happened to offensive lineman Kevin Hart of Fernley, Nevada.

But it appears that Hart, pictured above with Fernley coach Mark Hodges at Friday's ceremony, was the victim of a prank. Somebody, it appears, has been impersonating Tedford. There never was a scholarship offer — let alone any official contact — from the Golden Bears.

Hodges, who has been a coach for more than 20 years, now says the matter is a "law enforcement investigation."

Oregon was another so-called finalist for Hart, and somebody appears to have been impersonating an Oregon representative as well. An official from Oregon confirmed Hart was not being recruited. The validity of Hart's other finalists — Nevada, Illinois and Oklahoma State — remain in question.

The lesson of the day so far has been don't trust anybody. Not Bobby Knight, not Gisele Bundchen, and now anybody you talk to on the phone. They're all lying to you!

David Beckham And Snoop Are Boys

Start with the fact that there isn't anything going on in Chicago sports right now that I feel like talking about (I did think about writing about Donovan McNabb, but I got about 9 more months of not being that excited by the story to write about it). Add to it the fact I'm already sick of the Mitchell Report and all the steroid talk, and then throw in the fact I have to work earlier today than usual, and I just don't have anything I feel is worth writing about today.

Sorry, but them's the breaks, kid.

So instead of leaving you here wondering what the hell is going on, I'll just post this video of David Beckham and Snoop Dogg chillin.

Midgets Are For Entertainment Purposes Only

Seriously, we need a lot more Midget vs. Mascot fights in this world. Hell, they don't even have to fight, they can just compete at something. I'd watch a midget and a mascot play checkers and enjoy every second of it.

(Courtesy of Home Run Derby)

The Bears and Chargers Hate Each Other

I wasn't aware of it, but apparently there's a lot of bad blood between the Chargers and Bears right now. Maybe it all started when Ron Rivera left the Bears for San Diego, because ever since then everything the Chargers do pisses off the Bears.

Like that LaDainian Tomlinson commercial where he tears the Bears defense up?

The Bears didn't take too kindly to it, though LaDainian insists it's only a commercial.

"I didn't make the commercial. I'm endorsing Nike," Tomlinson said in a conference call Wednesday. "If that's showing disrespect to the Bears, then I'm sorry for that. But it's a commercial, so guys should take it for what it's worth.

"I don't know how this thing got blown out of proportion of what it really is about. If they need motivation or whatever, then so be it. Our motivation is to win games. That's it. Not to talk trash."

Oh, snap! You see how he got that whole "I don't talk trash" in there while he was talking trash? It's obvious that LaDainian is a seasoned pro at this.

The talk between these two teams doesn't end there, though. You know that stupid "Lights Out" dance that Shawne Merriman does when he scores? Well, somebody asked Brian Urlacher about it, and he said it's stupid, too.

"The thing is, if you're going to do it, do it all the time," Urlacher said. "Do it when you make a bad play too. You'll never see me doing any stupid [stuff] like that after a play. The only thing I'll do is get a little happy with my teammates."

Man. I haven't seen two sides who hate each other this much since the PLO played Israel in that badminton tournament last year at the Y.

Face Meet Pavement, Pavement, Face

Mr. Ufford is right. On a slow news day like today, there's really nothing better than watching a bunch of people hitting their face on things.

Horse Owners Are Immature

There really isn't much going on in the wide world of sports this afternoon, so I figured I'd share this video from Awful Announcing with you.

It takes a very witty and subtle sense of humor to come up with a name like Hoof Hearted for a horse. It's the type of humor you'll never find here, that's for sure.

Well, at least not on days when I'm writing. Panger, maybe.

Drop Acid Before Proceeding

Holy shit, what the hell just happened? Where am I? Oh man, the colors.....the pretty pretty colors. Why is that cougar trying to eat my unicorn? Whoa, I feel like I'm floating.

So cold.

Dude, I have like 3,000 fingers.

(Yeah, I don't know why some Kansas State fan felt the need to make that video, or what it's even for, but there are a bunch of stoned college kids forever grateful to him.)

Case of the Mondays

God, it's a slow news day today. Is it too much to ask for something interesting to happen? Couldn't Tony Romo have tried to kill himself? Maybe Tank Johnson could go on a killing spree?

Give us something.

We're bored.

Thankfully, when we're bored we can always turn to With Leather for YouTube fun. Matt is pretty solid when it comes to finding entertaining YouTube clips, and he's got another one today that we're going to post here.

It's in honor of Greg Paulus, who got up close and personal with Virginia Tech's Deron Washington on Saturday.

Here are 35 balls to the face in 32 seconds.

We're really hoping this isn't the last time we use the Balls to the Face tag.