So Al-Jazeera is supposed to air a ‘shocking’ documentary tonight exposing rampant HGH use in the NFL.  Uh…  No shit?  I’m not sure how this is news.  And who seriously cares about this anymore?  It’s 2015…  The time to get upset over PEDs passed ten years ago.

I’m not disappointed at all if Peyton Manning was dosing up on HGH.  I’d actually be happy if he did it because his 2013 campaign was one of the dopest QB seasons we’ve ever witnessed.  If anything, I’d be upset to learn that Tony Romo and Sean Lee have been too scared to get into that shit and that’s why they’re always on the injured list.

Fran Tarkenton says that HGH is too great of a danger to players’ long term health.  But do we really care?  Honestly, no…  Everyone pretends that they care, but nobody’s actions actually back that up.  People have been saying football is too dangerous for all these players since as early as I can remember, and I can’t name a single person that has ever actually stopped watching football because of it.  Do the players really care about what will happen to them?  Honestly, no…

Also, if cloning technology ever gets to the level that it is in The 6th Day, I’m totally on board with a rule letting teams do what the Roadrunners did to Johnny Phoenix.  Maybe only allow it once a season or so though.  We really could’ve used that in Week 2…

My quest to match the winnings of that stupid whore in Vegas is off to a great start.  Three for three on Christmas Eve bitches!  My units are $10,000 each, so I’m already up $30k… Fuck yeah!!  Everything’s coming up for Wilbanks right now.  Might as well hop on this train yourself before we get to full steam…

Washington State -3 vs Miami

My boy Luke Falk is fully recovered from attempted murder and a subsequent follow up concussion.  Sure, Miami got a cool new head coach, but he’s nothing compared to Mike Leach.  Easy as fuck lock!!

Washington -8.5 vs Southern Miss (also -330 moneyline)

The Chris Peterson era has officially arrived in Seattle and this team is starting to look awesome.  Southern Miss had a solid season and probably would’ve won the Conference USA if they didn’t have like 10 injuries in a row in their championship game, but Washington has been blowing out way better teams than this.  Laying a lot of points is annoying, so I’m doing one unit at Huskies -8.5 and one unit on their moneyline.  I know that’s a lot to risk, but it’s not that scary when you’re going with a sure thing.

Nebraska +7 (-120) vs UCLA (also +220 moneyline for 1/2 unit)

Sometimes TJ Armstrong is a really dope black QB for Nebraska, but sometimes he really sucks.  UCLA occasionally looks like a legit squad, but more often than not they look like shit.  Might as well take the value with Nebraska when the spread is as large as this.  The line is at 6.5, but I’m buying an extra half point at the bigger juice.  Not gonna need the insurance, but I might as well be safe.  I also have half a unit (5 grand) on the moneyline.

Redskins +3 at Eagles

Both these teams suck but the Redskins suck a lot less and they don’t have Chip Kelly, so we gotta grab those points.

While most of the western world is worshipping Jesus right now, the god I’m honoring tonight is Charles Woodson.  A vintage bro.  The last of his kind.  Heisman winner as a fucking DB!!!  Are we ever gonna see that shit again?  No way.  He would be a lot more chill if he never played for Green Bay, but shit happens…

Tuck rule??  Really?  Bullshit.  Fumble!!!

You know that parallel universe where this call stood, Boston crucified Belichick for kicking Bledsoe to the curb, and the Patriots haven’t won shit?  Yeah, that place is so much more chill than where we’re living at right now…

RIP Charles Woodson’s career.  I’m gonna miss your era so dearly.  True football…  No fantasy, no bitching about concussions,  just blissful ignorance and glory days.

I’m still stewing over that dumb bitch who thinks she’s a better gambler than me, so I’ve decided to gamble aggressively and try to match her winnings by the end of bowl season.  Of course, I’m gonna have to do my fucking homework and get this shit right in order to not end up in the poorhouse, so I can’t think of anyone better than me to follow right now if you wanna make some money.

Western Michigan vs. Middle Tennessee St. Over 64.5 points

I don’t know anything about Middle Tennessee St, and not much about Western Michigan except they had some pretty good showings in the MAC, including a big win over Toledo to knock them out of the championship game.  I think Western Michigan is gonna win, but literally every single expert I’ve read says this is gonna be a high scoring game.  Never seen such a unanimous opinion on an outcome before in my life.  You can bet your ass I’m betting the farm on the over.

San Diego St -3 vs Cincinnati

San Diego State tore it up in the Mountain West this year, and Cincinnati was a pretty shitty ACC team.  It’s fair to argue that the ACC is a lot stronger than the Mountain West, but the Bearkats are gonna be without Gunner Kiel, their starting QB, due to some shady sounding suspension and that’s going to let me lean on fading them with ease.

Raiders -230 vs Chargers

There’s no question about it that the Raiders are going to win tonight.  The  Chargers have to not give a shit by this point in the season, and the Raiders are young and trying to prove shit and win spots.  It’s also Charles Woodson’s last home game and you know they have to give him a huge sendoff on primetime.  I’m confident in Oakland covering the 5 point spread, but the moneyline is a 100% winner and you might as well be safe going with that.

There’s a little story brewing up in Boston and I have no idea how it’s not a  bigger deal right now.   Nick Roberto, a winger on BU’s hockey team, had been scratched since the beginning of the season pending an investigation into ‘some very serious allegations’, and he ended up suspended for good earlier this week on what are seemingly innocuous charges of betting on sports with bookies.

However, rumor has it there is something much bigger at play here…  Apparently, a handful of players got in real deep with a giant gambling ring and amassed up to $50k in debt.  Investigators found that other players were involved as well, but they aren’t on the team anymore.  Two of the five players that recently departed are #2 overall pick Jack Eichel (yikes!) and Matt O’Connor, the goalie who let in this super sketchy game winning losing goal in the national championship.

You can check out more highlights of Providence upset over #3 Boston here…

This is all shady as fuck, but it’s still fair to be skeptical that the national championship was actually rigged.  It’s really hard to bet on college hockey.  My bookie doesn’t even offer it, and the I think the max limit in Vegas for a game is $5,000.  It’s hard to imagine anybody or any group laying enough money on Providence to cover and profit from a $50k debt and not get noticed by the bookmakers.  Also, the goalie just signed a $925,000 contract and surely wouldn’t have issues covering debt without fixing a game.  Did he hate the program anyways and decide that despite being rich, he still preferred being $50k richer?  Possibly…

No matter what happened, one definite takeaway from this is that there should be no debate on whether or not to allow athletes to gamble on sports.  Some people are complaining that this dude Roberto shouldn’t be suspended because he’s not harming anybody by gambling, but that’s a load of shit.

If anybody fucks up and gets into debt, things like this happen.  That’s how Tim Donaghy got forced to piss all over Steve Nash’s legacy.  It’s happened tons of times in college.  It obviously went down in 1919.  And it’s not okay being a part of sports.

Besides, why do athletes need to gamble in the first place?  When we gamble, we’re just trying to satisfy some competitive urges that athletes get way bigger rushes from when they get to actually play the sports themselves.  There’s no point in them getting involved in this shit.  And don’t tell me about college athletes being poor and needing money.  Everyone in college is poor.

I love Pete Rose to death and he was awesome on Fox this fall, but anybody bitching about him being banned from the game needs to get their heads out of their asses.  Gambling is cool for dumb degenerates like me, but anybody involved in the actual business of sports needs to stay the hell away from it.

They say that resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die…  I know how stupid it seems to harbor so much anger over someone that in no way negatively impacts your life, but I can’t help but feel my blood boil when I think of this broad who won $100K on her second ever sports bet.

Are you fucking kidding me?  It’s gonna take me years to match the gambling winnings of this dumb bitch and she doesn’t even know how a point spread works…  Fuck this god damned cunt!

The worst part of this story might be that she is from Boston and has a Celtics tattoo.  Disgusting.  I hope she gets addicted to gambling now and blows all her winnings and then some.  Somebody take this stupid whore to the casino and get her on the high limit slots ASAP.

She can go straight to fucking hell.

I can’t decide what is funnier about the situation in Cincinnati right now.  The god awful throw that preceded Dalton’s injury…

Or the fact that Bengals fans had legit hope in him to begin with…

Am I missing something here?  The way the sky seems to be falling up in Cincy, you’d think that Andy Dalton was actually a good quarterback.  But, he’s not.  ESPECIALLY in the playoffs…

That is absolutely horrendous.  One touchdown in four games.  ONE TOUCHDOWN!!  And six picks.

It’s not like he’s been shitting the bed against good teams either.  All four of those opponents ended up getting their asses handed to them later on.  One of them was against TJ Yates for christ’s sake!

These games aren’t even close.  They’ve all been blowouts except for 2012, when Matt Schaub(!) managed to fuck up slightly less times than Dalton and the Texans laughed their way to the divisional round after this epic fuck up…

Listen, I’m a TCU fan.  I like the guy.  But the case on him is pretty damn well closed now…  He’s not just bad in playoff games, he’s bad in all night games.  He’s bad any time he’s under duress.  He’s bad whenever he plays good teams (see tweet above).  He can consistently lead a team to the playoffs if he has a great roster around him, but he’s just not cut out for the big stage.

This is why I don’t understand all the grief in Cincy…  They’re acting as dumb as their state brethren up north.  Instead of having to watch the biggest fraud in the NFL inevitably run their playoff drought to the 25 year mark, Cincinnati gets a shining fucking bright beacon of hope.  An ice cold bro who lives for the big moments and has a laundry list of mega clutch throws.  One of the most storied (two time) champions in sports history…

That’s right.  AJ fucking McCarron!

I know his physical tools aren’t necessarily what you hope for in a full time starter, but he doesn’t need to be good.  The Bengals have a stacked roster, especially on offense.  He just needs to suck a lot less than Dalton, and I can’t think of a better young backup QB for this situation.

You think AJ McCarron’s gonna shell up under the spotlight?  Is his confidence ever gonna wilt when the pressure gets too high?  Fuck no.  If anything, this is a step down from the scrutiny he faced as he lead Nick Saban’s powerhouse to immortality (while injured, btw).  Some people say he’s too confident…

“You’ve got to love pressured moments…  That’s when the great ones really shine. I guess Tom Brady was in this same situation when he had the opportunity, so I’ve got to make the most of it”

Personally, I think comparing his situation to Tom Brady’s is bullshit because it’s a huge insult to Drew Bledsoe.  Bledsoe was a fucking legend that brought a whole franchise up from the ashes.  Dalton is trash.

Cincinnati fans – turn those frowns upside down!  Your chances at a playoff win just went from 0% to something like, ohh maybe 15% or so…  That’s not bad!

Still feeling down?  Then you must be a gay, cuz with McCarron we get to see more of this fine piece of Alabama ass on TV…

Dusty Baker found himself caught up in a little shit storm at the winter meetings last week when he was bemoaning the whiteness lack of athleticism on his roster…

“The No. 1 thing that’s missing … is speed. You know, with the need for minorities, you can help yourself. You’ve got a better chance of getting some speed with Latin and African-Americans.  I’m not being racist.  That’s just how it is.”

The PC Police is all up in arms, but I don’t see the issue here…  Everybody who’s played sports before knows this as a fact.  Dusty Baker really isn’t being racist, he’s actually telling it how it is.  Everybody who has black friends is comfortable accepting this fact and voicing it aloud.  If sheltered white writers and internet commenters are still learning the basics of how genetics work, tough shit for them.

Anyway, this little brouhaha reminded me of something I’ve been a casual proponent of for awhile now. A lot of people say that PED abusers from the 90s and early aughts should have asterisks next to their names if they make it to the Hall of Fame…

Yeah, baseball stats are pretty fucked now.  I get that.  Whatever.  I do agree that an asterisk era in Cooperstown is appropriate, but I couldn’t care less about PEDs.  Instead, there should be an asterisk next to anybody who played in the majors before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier…

Seriously, whose stats have been skewed more?  The juiced up hitters like Mark McGwire, or people like Christy Mathewson who tore it up back in the day while pitching to a grand total of ZERO BLACK PLAYERS??

Sports are way too easy when you’re excluding the most athletic subset of the human species!  That’s why lacrosse is so popular amongst white people.  It’s not so hard anymore when you’re just as fast and quick as the rest of competition for once…

Even though they’re all dead now and it doesn’t really matter in terms of correcting the past, it’s still important that we recognize how all those farm boys from the early days were going up against some fucking stupid competition before anybody even starts a PED/Cooperstown debate.

PS – For the record, Dusty Baker was still an absolutely horrendous hire by Washington.  They all but guaranteed themselves that Strasburg’s arm is gonna blow out for good soon and Scherzer will be a colossal $30M/year deadweight throughout the latter half of his deal.  Harper is bolting as soon as he can and before we know it, the Nats will resemble their predecessors from Montreal.  Couldn’t happen to a better sports market.  LOL @ DC!

When I first got the ESPN alert that Arizona traded for Shelby Miller, I was stoked for the Diamondbacks.  They were fun as shit to bet on and watch for awhile last year.  Paul Goldschmidt and the rest of their offense was fucking sick, and their starting pitchers had a ton of raw talent.

By August, though, those young pitchers just flat out collapsed.  Where guys like Rubby de la Rosa and Robbie Ray would normally come into the majors as 4 and 5 pitchers who could slip back to the bullpen if they started to struggle, they had to serve as the 1 and 2 on the D-Backs and the pressure just became too much.  However, now that that Arizona stole Grienke from LA and just got Miller to be ace 1b, the young arms will be in much more conducive situations to relaxing and throwing some fireballs.

I know a lot of people out there view Miller as more of a top end #2 instead of a true ace, but that’s bullshit.  He was firmly in the Cy Young mix for a large chunk of last season until his run support slid from atrocious to literally nonexistent.  Once he had to start going for a complete game shutout every outing, his performance started to suffer (even though he was still awesome compared to most pitchers).  With arguably the best offense in the NL behind him now, he’s gonna breeze through the 20 win mark.

Chief Baseball Officer Tony La Russa

GM Dave Stewart

At the same time, after seeing what Arizona gave up in this trade, I am definitely perplexed to say the least.  While the Grienke-Miller duo certainly makes them a playoff caliber team, losing the prospects they sent to Atlanta severely hinders their long term chances of World Series contention.  They gave up a fucking shit load!

• CF Ender Inciarte – already one of the best leadoff hitters in baseball at only 25 years old, and a defensive beast anywhere in the outfield
• SS Dansby Swanson – #1 pick in the draft last year and is supposed to be ready for the show within the next year (btw, the D-Backs middle infield sucks ass right now)
• P Aaron Blair – solid pitching prospect (#61 overall) that’s expected to be a regular MLB starter

Dave Stewart (GM) and Tony La Russa (Chief Baseball Officer), both hired last year as first time executives, have done a lot of winning in the past as a player and manager, but I’m not so sure they’ll have the same kind of success in the front office…

It’s like they just got dealt an 8 at the blackjack table, but they’re doubling down because the dealer has a 6.  It could work out (and I hope it does!), but it probably won’t.  The time to get aggressive like this is when you’re already an established playoff team and on the precipice of breaking through for a title, not when you’re one year removed from having the worst record in the major leagues…

Braves GM John Coppolella, on the other hand, deserve a lot of dap for this move, especially when you peel it all the way back to its origin…

A year ago, he traded Jason Heyward (who was entering his contract year) to St. Louis for Miller and stud pitching prospect Tyrell Jenkins.  He then flipped Miller for a center fielder who is just as good as Heyward, the best prospect in the game, and a top pitching prospect.  That’s incredible!

When you combine this trade with the Andrelton Simmons deal that brought two solid pitching prospects plus the expiring contract of Erick Aybar, who will surely turn into a prospect or two at the next trade deadline, you gotta start thinking that the Braves will look legit soon.  They’re set up perfectly to start peaking and take over the NL East right as the Mets start losing their aces to free agency and Dusty Baker’s Nats have fully collapsed.

The Atlanta sports scene is pretty sorry overall…  The Hawks are never going to be considered good past the month of February and ousted their awesome GM in the dumbest coup in sports history.  The Falcons hit apogee when their beloved dogfighter went to jail.  And the Thrashers were laughed out of town.  The Braves, on the other hand, are a franchise with at least a modicum of past success and can bring some semblance of respectability to the city.  Good for Coppolella for starting to get them back on track.  Atlanta is too nice and sunny to be complete losers.

The season is 100% lost for Dallas at this point, but that win on Monday night was still meaningful.  Whenever you have a little brother that starts to build up confidence and thinks he’s getting to a point where he can hold his own against you, it’s important to give him a good whooping to put him back in his place.  Washington had a great opportunity to shake up the balance of power in the NFC East, but Dallas rose up and proved once again that the Redskins will always be minions compared to the prominence of America’s Team…

Despite the win, Jerry Jones was fucking livid after the game.  For some reason, he was a little perturbed by the fact that the superstar WR he just paid a $20M signing bonus to wasn’t getting the ball…  He was also upset about the horrendous game management in the 4th quarter and said that his team “won on will, not tactical mastery” before ranting about how absurd it is that they’re still last in this god awful division…

I am stunned that we haven’t been able to win more games without Tony.  And I would have thought that we could have coached it up enough, and put it together enough, that we would not have lost those games without Romo early.  We would be in better shape than we are right now…  I look at it as 4-8 and won’t look at it any differently  as we move up the ladder until something really special happens.

Jerry is spot on in his assessment here…  Almost all of Garrett’s decisions last night were atrocious, and the clock management was criminally horrendous.  It’s not just isolated to this game either.  No matter who the quarterback has been, we’ve had a shit scheme all season.

In terms of Xs and Os, Garrett has definitely been underwhelming as a head coach, but there was never a reason to expect any better.  Coming into this job, Garrett’s schematic credentials were less than just about any head coaching hire I can possibly think of.  Yes, our offense was sick in 07 during his first full year as coordinator, but our NFC East foes started shutting it down when the rematches came up.  By the end of 08, the scheme was completely exposed for good.  Garrett’s never called an effective offense since…

However, Garrett doesn’t necessarily need to be a master tactician to be a great coach.  As Jones said, he can field teams that win on will.  His own gutsy NFL performances give him enough street cred to connect with current players.  When he first became interim head coach in 2010, he took a team that lolligagged their way to a 1-7 start under Wade Phillips and immediately got them to legitimately compete on a weekly basis.

In 2012, we rolled into December as the most depleted team in the NFL.  The front 7 had no starters left, Dez was playing with broken bones, Romo’s back was falling apart, and the team was an emotionally stricken bunch that just had to watch their own teammate get buried after the Josh Brent incident.  They still went on a 5-1 stretch and almost made the playoffs.  The amount of heart they put on display was more than I’ve ever seen in pro sports.

If Dallas is semi competitive in their last four games, Garrett needs to stay.  He may need to delegate the entire offense to somebody else.  Maybe Jerry should lock him up in a room with a PS4 and Madden for a week or two so he can learn how to manage a clock.  But firing him altogether will set this team back.

Not only is Garrett one of the only coaches out there that can motivate and discipline well enough to keep Dallas from turning into a complete shit show, he also might be the only capable coach out there that is willing and able to perform under Jerry Jones.  We all know the story…  Ever since Jones unleashed his egomania and fired Jimmy Johnson, he’s demanded way too much operational control and has been nearly impossible to succeed under as a coach.

He did loosen up and hand the reins to Parcells for a short time, but that was only because he needed some public funding for his new megastadium (Parcells had also just divorced needed some serious cash).  Unfortunately, Parcells is not an option an option at this point, so Garrett really is the only competent option that can work for Jerry Jones.

Garrett isn’t a complete yes man, either.  His fingerprints are all over some of the notable culture changes we’ve seen in the front office recently.  Dallas makes a point to target high character guys in the draft now because of Garrett, and it was most likely him that spearheaded the movement to focus on building the most dominant line possible.

You see… the stress of performing under Jones is nothing compared to what Garrett has had to ordeal throughout his life.  He grew up with a fucking batshit crazy father that called his players “drug addicted losers” after losing his first game as a head coach for Columbia.  He cut the punter on the spot after that same game, claiming that he was the reason they lost 49-17.  I get that special teams are important, but blaming a blowout loss on a punter?  Not only is he crazy, but he’s also stupid.  Also, did I mention Jason was a player on that team?

This dude has been through some shit.  He’ll see these boys through.  He may need to keep his hands completely off the offense from here on out, but there’s no point in getting a new head coach.