The Climate
With another home win over the Lakers, the Blazers have firmly established themselves as the "Young, Deep Team Nobody Wants to Play" when the playoffs get underway next week, especially at the Rose Garden. As a Lakers fan, it makes me yearn for the glory days when the Blazers were technically the most dangerous organized group of people in Oregon's Rose City.
Josh Pastner
With Winnie Cooper recently tying the knot, it's nice to know that the The Wonder Years' Kevin Arnold has been elevated to men's basketball head coach at Memphis. We're all looking forward to Daniel Stern's inevitable life-lesson voice-overs after heart-wrenching losses and season-building wins in 2009-10.
Bobby Knight on Parks and Recreation
The premiere of the new Amy Poehler show (done by some of The Office writers) was legitimately funny and could soon be one of the better comedies on TV, but clearly the best part of the episode was the last scene, featuring Ron Swanson talking about his office policies (under the watchful eye of a poster of the General). Plus, Aziz Ansari is going to be 900 times more famous than he is right now by the end of the year, so long as his parents don't see this video.
Emilio Bonifacio
After the first week of the season, he's hitting a paltry .500 (including an inside-the-park homer on Opening Day), while making plays in the field and tearing up the base paths for a young Marlins team. Sure, he's inexperienced and will undoubtedly hit some lulls during the season, but one thing will never change throughout the year -- his name is extremely fun to say.
Televised Spring Football
Incomprehensible scoring systems be damned, it's time for some good ol' fashioned college pigskin. In April. On ESPN. Everything about the WWL sending a complete TV crew to cover the Georgia spring game Saturday (Alabama is next weekend) seemed odd and unnecessary, but I got to see Not Matthew Stafford hand the ball off to Not Knowshon Moreno, and was still thoroughly satisfied. I clearly need professional help (after next Saturday).
Golf Fitness
Hopefully the playoff at the Masters was the final straw in the whole "golf is a sport" argument. Taking nothing away from their actual performance and Angel Cabrera's icy win, the playoff participants -- Cabrera, Chad Campbell and Kenny Perry -- looked to possess the collective fitness of pretty much any of Tony Soprano's known associates. In the name of full disclosure, though, I can't necessarily say I'm makingTom Brady nervous about Gisele's whereabouts either.
Like the Trail Blazers, only the opposite. They're the "Team You Used to Not Want to Play, but Now They're Pretty Old and Beat Up," or TYUTNWTPBNTPOABU for short. The acronym may seem unwieldy and hard to remember, but it's probably easier to recall and describe than baseball's VORP or adjusted PECOTA.
The USC Marching Band
The college marching band that plays not two, not three, but ONE song (trust me) somehow continues to land gigs appearing in world-class musical acts and movies (see: Outkast, Radiohead, The Naked Gun), and was just used by ESPN to play the network's first L.A. show. In the realm of one-hit musicians being rewarded solely for awesome headgear, you have to go back at least to the days when Kid 'N Play effortlessly rocked those hi-top fades.
On one hand, you have to commend the Bengals for taking a chance on a player (Tank Johnson) even the Cowboys have given up on, but on the other, much bigger and more logical hand, you don't. It's not that the Bengals are just throwing money at players whose names they recognize as once being decent, it's just that ... oh, no, that's exactly what it is, never mind.
The NCAA
I should almost just reserve a weekly spot in this section for the NCAA, but for now, we'll just examine things on a week-by-week basis. In today's episode, the NCAA has decided to go after college students and the powerful Facebook groups they launch to lure high-profile football or basketball prospects to their schools. Sure, the actual group-petition strategy is a waste of time, as no recruit ever actually says, "I was going back and forth, but the Facebook group really pushed me over the top," but you've gotta love the NCAA for going after the least effective recruiting method, organized by the "boosters" with the least actual amount of power ($$$). Another home run, guys!!
Dan Rubenstein hosts and produces the SI Tour Guy video series for SI.com and co-hosts The Solid Verbal college football podcast with SI.com's Ty Hildenbrandt.
