No I Did Not Copy The Onion

With the Super Bowl is over, this week marks the start of a month of pure sports boredom. Nothing exciting will happen this month in the world of sports and you can quote me on that. Rather than trying to write an excruciatingly boring column on the NBA, college basketball, or the NHL, I thought I would make up some fake issues and then argue about them. This will surely be more entertaining than anything that is actually happening.

Fake Issue 1: Tiki Barber winning the Super Bowl MVP

I thought you had to actually play in the game to receive this award (or at least make it out of the Wild Card), but apparently Tiki has a lot of fans in the media, which I guess he is also a member of now. Now you all know that the MVP usually gets some sort of automobile in addition to a trip to Disney World, and this year’s car was a Cadillac. Basically, we should have seen this coming. Remember those commercials where Tiki is driving in an Escalade in Manhattan and talking about seizing opportunities? While you may have thought that that was just some loaner car for the commercial, in reality it was his Super Bowl MVP trophy.

Fake Issue 2: Whether Peyton Manning should have called a timeout in the fourth quarter to film a MasterCard commercial

I would like to thank the ad wizards that came up with this idea. I was confused for a moment as to why CBS cut away to commercial only to come right back to the game, but when I saw Peyton take off his helmet and look straight into the camera, I knew we were witnessing advertising genius. Sure, the Colts might have needed that extra timeout on that last-second drive that may or may not have happened, but Peyton probably earned a lot more money for that spot than he would have earned under his current back-loaded player contract (Did you know he only earned $2.50 per game this season? No wonder he needed to do all those commercials. He’s probably really looking forward to the 2013 season, when he will receive $4 million per play).

Fake issue 3: Awarding the Triple Crown to Barbaro posthumously

Sure, he was a great horse and a true fighter from what I’ve heard, but this is ridiculous. Is horse racing that desperate to stay in the news that they would desecrate one of the most prestigious awards in all of sports? I’m pretty sure Seattle Slew and Affirmed are giving Barbaro a pretty hard time about this up in Horse Heaven (aka the art cabinet in Ms. Stevenson’s first-grade classroom). While this may be good news for Barbaro’s owners, it is not for Triple Crown Productions, who replaced Visa as the sponsor of the races and now has to fork over the $5 million bonus.

Fake Issue 4: Baseball banning the use of non-traditional statistics

This came as quite a shock to all the “stat nerds” and “computer dorks” on the Internet, but Major League Baseball does not have a reputation for being particularly logical. Apparently the old-time scouts still have a lot of power in baseball circles, and they felt their jobs were being jeopardized by people with calculators. I have to agree with these scouts. Any idiot with a spreadsheet can make statistics, but it takes a true baseball man to know if a player has the heart, drive, soul, and spiritual fortitude to be great. While I will now never be able to realize my life long dream of crunching baseball numbers in a cubicle, I know that somewhere out there is an old man who couldn’t identify a radar gun if he was holding it and who has never watched TV that is accurately and passionately identifying the next great crop of ballplayers. Godspeed.

Fake Issue 5: The NBA pretending to change back to the old ball

After months of complaining, the players finally forced the league to get rid of the new-fangled synthetic basketball and replace it with the good old-fashioned cow hide version. What the players didn’t know was that these “old” balls were actually the synthetic ones fitted with several small pieces of leather. I have to commend the NBA on its fiscal responsibility. Knowing that a shift back to the classic ball would leave thousands of unused basketballs sitting in a warehouse in New Jersey (which can’t be donated to anyone because, let’s face it, these balls are like a book that’s been taken into the bathroom), the league cleverly killed a bunch of cows, processed their hides into small circles, and paid a bunch of sweatshop workers to stitch together the new hybrid basketballs. Players can’t tell the difference because they can still feel the leather’s smooth feel on their hands during the game. This Is just another example of why David Stern would make a great US president.

Fake Issue 6: Whether this column should actually address a serious and important sports topic.
Maybe next time.