For goodness sakes, as I sit here watching games, today, I swear that Peyton is in every other commercial.  Am I the only one who is tired of looking at him?

Is he the only athlete worthy of being in commercials?

Now, don’t get me wrong…. I am passionate about my sports… but, when you are castrating people out of your allegiance to your team…. well, even I find that to be a little extreme…

To some Oklahoma football fans, there are things that just aren’t done in the heart of Sooner Nation, and one of them is to walk into a bar wearing a Texas Longhorns T-shirt.That’s exactly what touched off a bloody skirmish that left a Texas-shirt-wearing fan nearly castrated and an Oklahoma fan facing aggravated assault charges that could put him in prison for up to five years.

The shocking case has set off a raging debate in this football-crazed region about the extreme passions behind a bitter rivalry. Some legal observers have even questioned whether this case could ever truly have an impartial jury.

“I’ve actually heard callers on talk radio say that this guy deserved what he got for wearing a Texas T-shirt into a bar in the middle of Sooner country,” said Irven Box, an attorney in this city 20 miles from Oklahoma’s campus in Norman.

According to police, 32-year-old Texas fan Brian Christopher Thomas walked into Henry Hudson’s Pub on June 17 wearing a Longhorns T-shirt and quickly became the focus of football “trash talk” from another regular, 53-year-old Oklahoma fan Allen Michael Beckett.

Thomas told police that when he decided to leave and went to the bar to pay his tab, Beckett grabbed him in the crotch, pulled him to the ground and wouldn’t let go, even as bar patrons tried to break it up. When the two men were separated, Thomas looked down and realized the extent of his injuries.

Yes, I know it is random to blog about urinals… but, check these out.  But, apparently, these are in Vienna…

The Toilet-Bar Vienna is a small public bathroom located in an underpass near the National Opera. As you can see from the photo above, this is no ordinary bathroom. For the small price of just 75 cents, patrons of the urinal arts can relieve themselves in some of the most decorative urinals ever conceived by man.

Actually, the thought of pee’ing in these sort’ve freaks me out.  Personally, I prefer the trough.  Every man should agree that the day the trough started being fazed out of sports venues was a sad day, indeed.

How many times have you had to wait at the trough?

By the way, the article goes on to explain that …

Unfortunately, someone blabbed their mouth off to the opposite gender and local women’s rights groups eventually forced the proprietors to remove the sexist objects.

How is this sexist?  Take a joke!  Strange … yes.  Sexist… I don’t know about that one.

So, do you really think Lance Briggs was NOT drinking….

Let’s see, it was 3:00 in the morning, he had left two clubs, and he demolishes his car… oh, and he sneaks off into the night… I think I am going to be a realist here and go with “he was LOADED”. And, then, Lovie says…

Now how do we get to that far? We have a one-car accident and now alcohol is involved? I think that’s stretching it a little bit to go that far.

Love, don’t make yourself sound completely stupid. It is not about the one car accident. Look, at the circumstances. It is better to say “I have no comment” than make a totally jackass comment.

I just watched the Vick apology… gotta say… I don’t think he is “ashamed” of what he did. I think, however, he is ashamed that he got caught and the world knows about it.

Look, being ashamed for one’s conduct is reserved for DUIs, cheating on spouses, and other things where you aren’t thinking straight. In contrast, killing dogs over a period of time shows a pattern of contemplation and conduct. I don’t buy it.

So, now Vick is in a box. All three of his fellow potential defendants are accepting deals and have agreed to testify against Vick if the case were to go to trial.

Wow, with buddies like this… who needs enemies?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out for Vick. I think we can pretty much all say that Vick will not be playing in 2007. That’s a given. And, if he it is shown that he bet on these dogs … well… that goes against league conduct policies. As such, he will get a lifetime ban. So, in a plea agreement, he cannot agree to that.

So, it will be interesting to see what kind of deal he gets - if, at all. With the forces stacking up against him, I think it would be smart for him to accept a deal.

My projection is… he gets a deal that lands him in the slammer for 6 months.

So, now, Barry is fed up. And, he is tired of being kicked around. So, what’s he going to do? …. hire two big time lawyers and go after - note this and follow me here - not the people who said he was using steroids… but, he is going to go after the people who said that he said he was using steroids….

“Barry is basically saying that he has been kicked around a lot and he is tired of being kicked around,” Burris said. “Our issue is really about statements that are made that are attributed to him that are not true. Particularly, statements that someone might say he made about the use of steroids or tax evasion.”

In his press release, Burris referred to Bonds’ former girlfriend, who made accusations in a Playboy article, and a former business partner who supposedly told the FBI that Bonds had evaded taxes, as examples of what kind of statements he would investigate.

Note, he has very little to say about people’s accusations that he uses steroids… interesting that he is taking the “high and mighty” role and going after the people who say that he says he used steroids.

This is all ridiculous anyway. It is merely designed to be a PR ploy. Anyone who has had 2nd semester torts in law school knows the incredible burden, as a public figure, that he must overcome to prevail in a slander or defamation suit.

Well, I guess it was bound to happen. Oh, how far Professional wrestling has sunk. When I was a kid, I remember it as a little more respectable… Jimmy “Superfly” Snuke, Junk Yard Dog, Big John Stud. But, this is a new low - even for wrestling… Apparently, Pac Man Jones of the Tennessee Titans is considering a career in wrestling.

Perhaps, they can teach him lessons that the NFL cannot. Well, probably not. But, still, he might be surrounded by people “more like him”. And, for that reason, maybe, it is a good thing.

In perhaps my favorite story of the offseason, the NFL has scheduled a regular season game abroad, to take place in London. The Miami Dolphins find themselves in the odd position of being the home team despite having to play approximately 5,200 miles away from home. The real losers here aren’t the Dolphins, or even the Giants, who get screwed having to play a game that could cause jet lag issues during the middle of their season. They weren’t going anywhere anyway, and each team will be lucky to see .500 this year.

The real losers are the Dolphins season ticket holders. They get their tickets as usual to this game, since it is, after all, a Miami home game. One might even consider this a good thing, as they’ll just get to sell their tickets for some nice coin (the cheapest tickets issued so far are $90) on eBay, no? No.

The NFL says the eBays are too scary, with their systems of interlocking tubes and what have you, so they’re not issuing the tickets until the week before the game, essentially forcing the fans to either eat the ticket or fly to London for the game.

I’ll preface this by saying that I applaud most of what Goodell has done as commish, but this blows. If I pay a ton of cash for my season tickets, I don’t really feel the need to take into consideration where the game is happening. I buy Bears tickets, I assume the game is at Soldier Field, not bloody England! Unite Dolphins fans (all three of you!), and say you want to put your tickets on the eBays. Or go enjoy some real beer in Europe, then come back here and stare at your Rolling Rock with disgust. Either way, you lose.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: PacMan Jones walks into a (strip) club, and the night ends in gunshots. Well, this time, despite the lack of a paralyzed bouncer, Pac-Man is being charged with criminal coercion. Legally, such a thing is defined as:

Coercion is the practice of compelling a person to involuntarily behave in a certain way (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. Coercion may typically involve the actual infliction of physical or psychological harm in order to enhance the credibility of a threat. The threat of further harm may then lead to the cooperation or obedience of the person being coerced.

So there you go. I’m no lawyer, but it seems that for him to get charged with this, someone had to LISTEN to what this guy was saying. They had to believe what he was saying was the truth. There’s about 53 guys with less credibility than him, and they’re known as the Cincinnati Bengals. I’d like to blame PacMan for this, but his friends are even worse. A female friend was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon, for attacking club employees with a chair. I’d like to make a number of jokes here, but this is just sad.

On the plus side, we haven’t heard from Ricky Williams in awhile, so…we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.