Nice Rack....er Racket. Nice Racket!

Some stuff I was reading and watching when I wasn't typing this...

ESPN.com actually stopped writing about Jerome Bettis being from Detroit for once; and when they did, they came up with some good stuff.

Ted Cluck watched the full week of Senior Bowl coverage on the NFL Network and wrote a very entertaining diary of the experience. Here's a snippet of the intro:

I love football, but I love the NFL draft even more. The draft had me at "with the 247th pick in the 1987 NFL draft, the Indianapolis Colts select Bob Ontko, LB, Penn State." If I were Tom Cruise, I would jump up and down on a sofa for the NFL draft. If I were John Cusack, I would lift a boom box above my head and play a Peter Gabriel tune.
For the past several years, my buddy Regner and I have been watching all 173 hours of NFL draft coverage together. We call it Draftmas, and wear the jersey of our favorite busts -- Rashaan Salaam (8 bucks and change on eBay) for me, Joey Harrington for him.

This year, Chuck Klosterman is doing a running blog of the Super Bowl hype from Detroit. Klosterman's writing is hit and miss, but the hits more than make up for the times when he just comes off as a pretentious music geek. I wonder if Bill Simmons is getting a little nervous that ESPN is handing out the bigger gigs to someone with a little more creativity? Oh well, I suppose Simmons could still do a Bi-Curious Guy Q&A with Tom Brady and polish the All Pro QB's nuts some more...

Everyone who said that Boston clearly got the better of the trade with Minnesota is feeling a little foolish today. Marcus Banks: 20 pts and 6 assists in 21 minutes; Mark Blount: 16 pts, 10 rebounds, 4 blocks in 28 minutes; Ricky Davis 4 of 9 shooting, 5 rebounds, 5 assists. Final score: Minnesota 110, Boston 85. The headline on ESPN: "Celtics Sczerbiak scores 22 in Loss to Former Team." Nice to see that ESPN still managed to keep the story focused on the New England team, instead of the three players that actually played well...

Villanova is better than Louisville. But you already knew that...

To noone's surprise, Mike Shanahan is making his overtures at Terrell Owens. I can't remember, was Jake Plummer the quarterback T.O. was predicting would have led the Eagles to an undefeated record if he'd been at the helm instead of McNabb? I know it was a QB that throws horrible INTs at the worst times, but the name escapes me...

And just because I want an excuse to post this pic... Scarlett Johansson credits tennis with helping her maintain her knockout body. "Tennis is great. You don't even notice how much you run. You get a nice body, taut legs and great butt." Ya know, I don't think anyone would complain about Title IX if instead of funding women's field hockey, all of the money was going towards creating world class tennis facilities at universities across America. Something to consider.