Quickly broken

You know you're in for a lousy year when your New Year's resolutions didn't even last as long as your hangover. Or when you play for the 76ers. Most people wait until at least later this week to break their resolutions, and some even keep theirs all year. Like the athletes who promised to give something back, and have already started with the NBA's new ball. Or New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin's promise to lose weight. He's already seeing results, although most of the weight he has shed came off of his shoulders when the Giants finally locked up their playoff berth.

Most resolutions, though, are broken at some point during the year. I just didn't think that so many would be shattered so quickly.

Take San Francisco Giants GM Brian Sabean. This time of year, many people resolve to be better about saving money and getting their finances in order, but Sabean couldn't even make it all the way to the New Year with that one. Though Barry Zito will likely improve a rotation that recently lost ace Jason Schmidt to a divisional rival, spending $126 million over seven years was too reckless even for the often foolishly generous Mets, Rangers, Mariners, Angels, and whoever else agent Scott Boras was pretending to have offers from. At least Sabean was able to front-load the contract, seeing as how Zito's salary in the later years will be supplemented by his Social Security earnings.

Zito, for his part, resolved to take his time and sign with a team that will give him a good chance to win during the life of the contract. That will be difficult, even assuming most of the Giants' current roster is still alive seven years from now. I'm not saying that the Giants are an aging team, but all 81 games on their home schedule are listed as Old Timer's Day.

Then there's Vikings wide receiver Travis Taylor. One of the players reportedly involved in the Love Boat scandal that sullied the team's reputation a little over a year ago, Taylor resolved Sunday night to keep his nose clean and stay out of trouble. However, he seemed to have forgotten all about that promise just a couple of hours later as he was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault, disorderly conduct, and interfering with traffic. According to police, Taylor refused to cooperate when an officer tried to disperse a large crowd outside a Minneapolis nightclub. When he started pushing the officer, a Taser quickly reminded him of his newly broken resolution. On the bright side, Taylor, who will be a free agent after this season, is reportedly close to signing with Cincinnati.

Publishing companies, meanwhile, resolved to learn a lesson from the shameless greed that led Judith Regan to try to publish If I Did It, O.J. Simpson's hypothetical confession. Alas, Time magazine knocked that resolution off track almost immediately by reporting that the rights to the If I Did It material will revert back to Simpson before the end of this year, and that several publishers are already climbing over each other's questionable morals for the privilege of bringing this classic piece of literature to life. If all goes well for Simpson and his new publisher, the book will be in print just in time for the 2007 Christmas shopping season. Which is to say, three weeks from now.

And despite Rocky Balboa's promise never to take a dive, his namesake movie dropped to the No. 6 spot this weekend after debuting at No. 3 a week ago. Not surprisingly, people seem to have decided that a movie about a museum whose exhibits come to life every night was more plausible than a 60-year-old boxer making a comeback because of his success at a video game. I mean seriously -- a 60-year-old playing video games?

Our final broken resolution comes from Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, who resolved to win back his ex-girlfriend, Jessica Simpson. The only problem is that the two never dated. In fact, despite denials from Simpson's people, the New York Post's Page Six reports that Romo has never even met Simpson -- the fish story (or is it chicken?) about their past romance was spread by Simpson's father in exchange for free tickets to Cowboys games. Of course, you can't really blame Joe Simpson; the only other offer of free tickets in exchange for the imaginary hand of his daughter came from Sylvester Stallone.

Adam Hofstetter's column appears every Tuesday on SI.com. Of course, he might go back on that statement in a few days. Resolve to e-mail him at ahofstetter@gmail.com.