I’m exhausted. I have a crazy headache. I haven’t showered (sorry, everyone else in the office). I have red, white, and blue confetti stuck in the soles of my shoes. And my face hurts from smiling so goddamn much. Having just arrived back at Mishka HQ after a half-exuberant/half-despondent flight from Indianapolis that travelled to NYC via Boston (who’s cruel idea was that, by the way?) I can very definitely say that last night’s Super Bowl XLVI was the most exciting, tense, and magical-feeling sporting event I’ve ever attended. Somehow, against many odds, this was because of Eli Manning.

The Manning era for the G-Men has been a strange one defined by a general but uninspiring competence that is punctuated by seemingly impossible flights of brilliance at exactly the right moments. If this is in fact his doing, some sort of 4 year cycle of mental preparation to prime his men for invincible playoff runs, then perhaps Tom Coughlin is secretly the finest coach in the NFL. Then we have young Eli, his hands now weighed down by two hulking, diamond-encrusted rings: accessories he’s much too awkward and sheepish to ever consider wearing once.

It is in part this distinct lack of swagger that has prevented the Giants from building up a new fan base in New York since their last Super Bowl victory, instead letting the braggadocio of the Jets find the limelight with their open aping of the Broadway Joe aesthetic, though they embarrassingly lack the Lombardi hardware to back that up. After watching how that Giants team played last night however, it seems ludicrous not to consider Eli an elite quarterback, and the rest of his squad right up there with him.

This is a man who has outshone Tom Brady, the terminator of Super Bowl performances, not once but twice. The Patriots may have lost last night, but Tom Brady played a monster, monster game (though one that featured 2-3 mental errors that Giselle will certainly get tired of hearing about). He broke Super Bowl records. He threw for 66%, but forget some key (not to mention easy) drops by Hernandez, Deon Branch, Wes Welker, plus the garbage time hail mary to Gronk and that number is back up near 80.

And Eli handily put up bigger, better, and eventually the winning numbers. He was, in a word, unstoppable. Once again he led an improbable and flawless late game drive, culminating in one of the weirdest touchdowns I’ve ever seen s Ahmad Bradshaw seemed to awkwardly breakdance into the endzone, the Pats defense ruefully following Coach Bellichiks eventually ineffective strategy of time preservation. Then there was that pass to Manningham, a explode-out-of-your-seat pinpoint stunner that will define the win (and haunt Wes Welker’s memories as he thinks about the cruel brush of his ball as it passed through his fingers).

I don’t know how everyone felt at home, but the Giants faithful in that stadium weren’t just nervous of the suddenly gigantic seeming 57 seconds Tom Brady had left to gut punch the jints and become a god: they were fucking terrified. Because after all, if Eli can do it, how can Brady not? How can this guy really be better than that guy? Again?? 2 minutes later, Brady stormed off the field helmet in hand and the Coughlin/Manning Giants became the least likely football dynasty in recent memory. What a game. What a night. What the fuck is going on.

More sports! It’s Week 2 of the NFL Playoffs, and now that the weak teams have been weeded out (seeya Cincinnati!) we can finally get down to the nitty gritty and hopefully get some games that aren’t complete blowouts. It’s been a very strange and altogether entertaining season, with a definite paradigm shift occurring not just in which teams are at the top of the league, but also how they got there.

But no matter what, playoff football is playoff football – its hardscrabble play where underdogs can rise off of sheer force of will. The Broncos, of course, are the obvious leader in that department, but lets not forget the TJ Yates led Texans, who last week won their first playoff game ever. There are 4 games this weekend. Let’s break down tomorrow’s, shall we?

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New Orleans Saints at San Francisco 49ers – Saturday 4:30ET

The seemingly unstoppable Saints offense will be faced with their toughest challenge yet in the Niners, a team who up until 3 weeks ago had not let in a rushing touchdown all season. Just think about that for a second. It’s no secret that Drew Brees is having the season of a lifetime, shattering Dan Marino’s long held single season passing record. He and Marques Colston have been the magical pair the past few weeks, but he’s no slouch with Devery Henderson, Robert Meachem, and the gigantic tight-end Jimmy Graham either.

To make matters worse, their Darren Sproles led run game has been gelling wonderfully recently. They did not meet the Niners brick wall of a defense this season however, and the prospectors have been holding teams to just over 300 yards a game (Brees is averaging 466 yards just passing). Presumably, this should quell the offensive firestorm a little bit, but Frank Gore, Michael Crabtree and especially Alex Smith are going to have to step it up big time to get points on the scoreboard, because god knows the Saints will (heh heh).

I’m really looking forward to this game for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the coaching battle between Sean Payton and Jim Harbaugh. It’ll be interesting to see how the Saints playoff experience (5-2 under Brees) will stack up against Alex Smith’s complete lack thereof. The Saints suffered a stunning early exit in last year’s postseason, but judging by their handy dismantling of the Lions (who’s defense, admittedly, had a habit of hemorrhaging points) shows they’re not looking to repeat that. I’m gonna say Saints over 49ers, 27-17.

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Denver Broncos at New England Patriots – Saturday 8:00ET

Can he really do it again? Probably not. In what many are saying might be the most watched playoff game ever, Tim Tebow and the apparently blessed Broncos will truck over to the Northeast to take on the frustratingly consistent New England Patriots. Almost never have two teams had such different quarterbacks. Theoretically, the precision and rocket arm of Tom Brady (who, by the way, also crumbled Marino’s record) makes Tim Tebow look like a joke. But Tebow stepped up his passing game big last week, throwing something like 30 yards per completion.

You can blame it on the injury ridden Steelers missing Ryan Clark, but there’s no way you can say that’s not impressive. Really though, the secret star of the Broncos is its defense, led by Von Miller who is definitely duking it out with Cam Newton for rookie of the year. If the Broncos can bring pressure past the Patriots very solid O-line, and get Tom Brady flustered like they did with Big Ben last week, this game could be closer than you think.

But, regardless, all signs (including their last meeting, which the Patriots dominated) point to Bill Belichick ending up back in the AFC Championship like he always does, the smug bastard. Outside of Mile High Stadium, Matt Prater’s kicks fall considerably shorter and Tebow’s bomb passes probably do too, hopefully not into the hands of First Team All-Pro Devin McCourty. Who the fuck knows with this one though. Maybe he really can do it. He’s shut me up before. Nonetheless, Patriots 21. Broncos 10.

So I’m gonna let my sports fandom bleed onto the Bloglin a little bit. Sorry! I would only do it for something I thought was really interesting, and I think that Floyd Mayweather finally publicly demanding (in a tweet) that Manny Pacquiao fight him is worth it. He even has a confirmed date for the fight, the very soon (at least in terms of training) May 5th. I can’t express how much I would love to get sloshed on tequila this Cinco de Mayo and watch the fight everyone has been waiting for for years.

Boxing has been on a serious downturn recently, with incredibly bunk (Mayweather’s maybe-cheap-shot on Ortiz, B-Hop’s TKO by Dawson) to controversial (Pacquiao-Marquez III) fights, with many boxing writers and fans, myself included, awarding fight of the year to the straw-weight division (!) fight between Akira Yaegashi and Pornsawan Porpramook. Who? Exactly. Though you should really watch that fight if you haven’t, it’s pretty incredible.

Boxing used to be one of the most watched and revered events in the US, and I for one wish for that time to come back. When it’s really firing on all cylinders, pugilism is a sport unlike any other, the purest expression of human in battle with another human that taps into both primal bloodlust and American bootstrap-pulling ethics. But the days of Ali, Frazier, Foreman, and even Tyson are long gone.

The two bright lights have been the undefeated Mayweather and mini-whirlwind Pacquiao. But they’ve never fought each other! What’s the deal? I thought the elite fighters were chomping at the bit to prove themselves against each other, but not in this case. Until now. Hopefully Pacquiao steps up (there have been rumors that his reservations are entwined with potential steroid use. I don’t know enough about that to comment) and in a few months we’ll have a real event on our hands.

Hey look! Sports stuff! Though this may come from Chicago Blackhawks fan Frank Saracco, I think all us New Yorkers can appreciate it’s disdain (loving disdain, Philly fans. Relax) for the Flyers, especially after our epic victory at the Winter Classic. Better luck next time Briére, the 5 hole works a little better when the goalie stick isn’t fully covering it! Anyway, check out this mural that this dude made for his daughter. Bawww!

It’s all of the Blackhawks drawn as her favorite heroes like Batman, Thor, Lion-O, Shrek, and the dragon from How To Train Your Dragon (?). This girl is all over the place. The Flyers have been cast as Darth Vader, Wile E. Coyote (is he really evil per se? I guess so…), Maleficent, Skeletor, and Coach Laviolette is Stewie Griffin for maximum lolz. This is fun. I like this.

Via Puck Daddy

Last week, I mentioned that the second episode of HBO’s 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic was lacking in game footage and it’s almost as if the producers heard my cry as episode three delivered and then some. From the beginning we are thrown into the Flyers locker room where head coach Peter Laviolette shows the most emotion he has all series long as his team finds themselves down a goal heading into the third period against the Colorado Avalanche. His mini tirade sparks his team to find the equalizer before falling in a shootout resulting in the team’s second consecutive loss as the team leaves for Dallas hoping to turn their fortune.

The Rangers first appear during their family skate at Bryant Park before attending a ugly Christmas sweater party where Michael Del Zotto debuted a sweater featuring some rather risqué reindeers. Luckily, no children were in attendance. Later, the team is shown pummeling my beloved Devils which fortunately lasted only a minute or so.

Like most teams in the NHL, it is customary among the Rangers to pass out a special item for the MVP of the game. The Rangers being from New York and all chose to pass out a fedora which was most likely donated by Sean Avery. For this win, Henrik Lundqvist earned the honors and I couldn’t’ help but wonder whether he too keeps a spare in case he doesn’t get the MVP after each game.

Claude Giroux returned to the Flyers line-up against Dallas after battling a concussion he received in the first episode and has himself quite the return notching a goal and three assists. During the game he chats with Stars center Steve Ott who encouraged the younger Giroux to check his stats on NHL.com because he’s really good at face-offs. Ott would go onto lose the ensuing draw and later tell Laviolette to show some “fucking class” as the coach refused to wait for the Stars to leave the ice resulting in a shove captured by the cameras.

Laviolette later has a case of amnesia when confronted about the incident and choses to focus on the win instead. Prior to the game against the Rangers, Laviolette and his staff find themselves watching the Ott incident on TV at a bar which summarized how big a deal it was to the hockey world despite the coach’s attempt to play it down.

When the Flyers finally meet the Rangers at MSG it’s pretty much gold as far as the chirping between players goes. From Brad Richards telling Tom Sestito that his one day in the NHL is like fantasy camp to Mike Rupp telling former Ranger Jody Shelly he’s “fucking irrelevant out here” to my favorite chirp simple “fuck you Lundqvist”

It’s really what a rivalry is all about, nonstop shit talk. While it didn’t capture the pre ‘Classic’ showdown like last year with the Caps and Pens, it was easily the highlight of the show.

Afterwards we are finally given our moment of Byrz, as the goalie is shown celebrating Christmas with his family and hot blonde girl husky, Milya. Bryzgalov also divulges the many faces he has starting with his home face, his public face, his game face, his off-day face, and his HBO face. No matter how many times you read that over it won’t make any sense. Guy is simply out there.

Next week the two teams finally meet in the Winter Classic as the show comes to its conclusion. Hopefully HBO will have its best for last.

Well, that was discouraging in its predictability. After 9 seasons with the Metropolitans, Jose Reyes has decided not to renew his contract and will be playing for the newly renamed Miami Marlins and getting paid about 18 million dollars a year to do so. Good to know he ended his tenure by selfishly bunting his way into the batting title and essentially (did I say essentially? I meant literally) sitting out a lions share of his last game as a Met.

Needless to say, it’s a dark time for baseball fans in this city who don’t fuck with the pinstripe brigade. This is of course another black mark on the Wilpon era, which is already dark enough to have its own event horizon. Would you believe me if I told you that the Mets didn’t even have enough scratch to make Reyes an offer at all, let alone one that was vaguely acceptable? Ugh.

Though I would never want the Mets to be as cash flush as the Yankees, because that’s basically cheating (sorry guys! it is) there is a point where you have to come to terms with the fact that a baseball team simply can’t win if they’re flat broke. I guarantee you that Billy Beane at the height of his powers wouldn’t be able to fix this squad in the next 5 years. It’s not even the current situation that is the worst (thought it is really bad).

It’s the fact that Wilpon has left the team in such a shockingly deep financial hole that it will take years and years to climb out of. I can attest to the fact that the attendance was paltry last season, when there was a vague sense of some sorta-but-not-really competitiveness, but even that is gone now. I loved going to Mets games, and probably spent as much for tickets on the 15 games I went to as I would have on 3 Yankee games.

I’m all for savings, but even I was a little uncomfortable paying only (sometimes under) $5 for a seat in what is really a very nice stadium. If that number drops even further this season to attract higher attendance its just going to be awkward. The Mets are already bad. They are going to get much worse. Fred Wilpon owes massive amounts to the owners of the stadium grounds, to SNY, against loans taken out on the team, and even to Bud Selig, who lent him money to keep the team from folding after losing brain melting amounts in the Madoff disaster.

I’m talking many hundreds of millions of dollars. Holding onto Jose Reyes? Hah! Let’s manage expectations and see if we can keep David Wright (highly unlikely), Jason Bay (also questionable) or even Angel Pagan. Who else is there even? RA Dickey? Josh Thole? Ruben fucking Tejada? Oh man, we’re in trouble.

Hockey has always struggled to get a stranglehold on American viewership since the 2004 lockout. Prior to the lost season, one could find a game on ESPN on any given night followed by a highlight show. Since then, the NHL has acquired marketable stars but outside the Stanley Cup lacked another distinguishable platform to not only show them off properly but hand select who to feature. Enter the NHL’s Winter Classic. Having only been around since 2008, the yearly event has become the league’s marquee single game event when it pits two teams (usually rivals) outdoors in stadiums reserved for either football or baseball.

It has quickly become a fan-favorite among the diehards and has peaked interest from people who wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves avid hockey fans. Last year saw the league’s two biggest stars in Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin went head-to-head in front of 68,000 fans at Heinz Field (home of the Pittsburgh Steelers) as kind of a wet dream turned reality for the league. To further peak interest leading up to the New Year’s Day event, the NHL teamed up with HBO to shadow the teams in a never before seen uncensored inside access to the players, locker rooms, hotels, homes, and anything else fans would never normally get to see.

Anyone who has ever seen anything sports related on HBO knows it’s guaranteed to be damn good and 24/7: Road to the Winter Classic went above and beyond the call. In fact it was so popular that HBO plans to release it on DVD this month, a first for any of their 24/7 shows. With the success of 24/7 and the Winter Classic itself the NHL re-upped for this year’s edition between the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers which is to be played at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philly.

To give us a taste of what’s to come, HBO released the above 12-minute trailer to basically make our mouths water with anticipation leading up to the December 14th season premiere. What will make this season better than last is the teams involved are actual longtime rivals. Any hockey fan outside of DC or Pittsburgh will have you believe the Pens vs Caps rivalry isn’t all that grand compared to what you find around the league and they’d be right.

Unlike last year, the teams play in the same division and are also significantly closer in proximity. The antagonistic factors found in a roster featuring Sean Avery, Chris Pronger, Scott Hartnell, Jody Shell, Brandon Dubinsky blows it’s predecessor out of the water. Then there’s the always entertaining John Tortorella who’s stands a good chance of out cusring Bruce Boudreau in the first episode alone. Despite only having true success in baseball this city vs. city match-up itself is always great as both have a reputation as being a top sports town.

Anyway, I’ll be back throughout the series to do Bloglin recaps as it airs, thoughts, and analysis on the show which will be the best thing on HBO in December. Believe that.

The Ultimate Warrior (I’m sorry, just “Warrior” nowadays) is getting his own reality show: The Warrior Show. Hell. Yes. Not much has been revealed about the show, but the official Facebook page says it will be on Real TV. Is that even a channel? I dunno, I don’t have cable. But judging from the above clip it looks like something I would watch the shit out of.

The gist seems to be that Warrior takes a shitty metal band every episode and gets them into shape. In the above clip, he’s barking at some band called Asking Alexandria until they puke up their wine. These boys better ask Alexandria for a diaper cause the Warrior only pukes rocket fuel and is going to gorilla slam their pride into the unforgiving pavement of Parts Unknown!

As is customary, let me begin at the beginning of what is becoming my most intense period of discontent with professional athletics. On July 8th, 2010, LeBron James announced his decision to sign with the Miami Heat basketball team in a televised special called, aptly, The Decision. Let me qualify that, though I think it was not the most loyal choice, I have no real problems with LeBron’s actual decision to leave Cleveland.

Part of this comes from my theory that LeBron James, or at least the one we see, is not a real person. He is a cipher, a carefully calibrated almost-hero whose authors made a grave error and brutally tarnished the legacy of a preternaturally talented young man who, from the age 14, has been literally referred to as a King. Any human with a realistic sense of the world around them would have avoided The Decision like a plague. LeBron on the other hand appeared genuinely shocked at the backlash.

The season and playoffs, despite my malaise at the Lakers’ early exit, ended up being the most exciting in recent memory, and ended with the underdog Mavs defeating the evil Heat. Hooray for all, and well deserved national schadenfreude ensued. Then something quite strange happened. LeBron, in one of the most inexplicable moves I’ve ever witnessed an athlete make, even more damning than The Decision, gave an interview in which he essentially told his detractors to shut up and retreat to their shitty jobs.

That was when I really realized that this was not a human that lived in the same world as the rest of us. That comment showed a fundamental misunderstanding of what professional sports are. To draw a distinction between a team or a league and its fans is to nullify the league’s existence in every way. Could a professional athlete really behave like that? I was comforted by my belief that LeBron was the most obvious of outliers, a selfish and misguided deviation. I was wrong.

Somewhere, in a parallel earth, it is basketball season right now. My father, a born and bred Pittsburgh boy, was a devout Pirates fan and general baseball super-enthusiast. That is, until 1994. That was the year when the MLB cancelled their whole season. It took him over 15 years to really start appreciating the game again. I fear that, without a resolution soon, I will feel a similar betrayal. All because of pure monetary greed.

In many ways this lockout has been like finding out Santa Claus isn’t real. Any sense I had of a team fighting for their city or their fans has been damaged, I hope not irreparably. The NBA Lockout is a sad and disheartening thing to watch. Especially in our country’s time of economic struggle (to put it lightly), it infuriates to no end watching players stubbornly grasp onto almost incomprehensible amounts of money, refusing to give an inch even at the expense of THE GAME NOT EVEN BEING PLAYED.

I really can’t stress that point enough. I’ve lost the ever-important suspension of disbelief about why athletes deserve so much money, because right now the players of the NBA are not professional athletes. They will regain that title when they play a game. So perhaps the rest of the league is more like LeBron than I feared. To them, their mere existence is the spectacle, the importance. Not throwing some silly orange ball through a metal ring. They just want us to go back to our shitty jobs.

I have two questions: “What did we do to deserve this?” and, more troublingly “did we do this?” Does it not logically line up that our continued treatment of these players as superhuman has contributed to their comfortability with values that are in no way indicative of the adoring public’s? Or is it the player’s responsibility to “stay grounded” and maintain perspective, contextualizing themselves as a proletarians who just happens to be payed enormous salaries? Is that even possible?

Why does it somehow seem wrong to everyone (at least me) to pay them even vaguely normal amounts? I know I seem to be coming down pretty heavily on the side of the owners right now, but the fact is that the league loses 300 million dollars a year. I’m no economist, but when reminded that the league could theoretically be profitable if less than 15 players were released from their mega-contracts, it feels like something is out of whack.

That being said, I’m sure there are some ins and outs of this process that I don’t fully grasp, and probably a lot of deep seeded acrimony between the players and owners. But that’s not what I’m thinking about right now. I’m thinking about how I’m not sitting on my couch wearing my Kobe jersey and watching those beautiful purple and yellow bastards play basketball. That hurts.

Remember back, if you will, to this year’s most unexpected riot (perhaps only rivaled by the recent Penn State fiasco) the Vancouver Canuck’s loss extravaganza. Our usually kind neighbors to the north really only get riled up about one thing, and that’s hockey, so when the ‘Nucks went down hard in Game 7 to the Bruins from Beantown, Vancouver popped right the fuck off.

You may also remember that a Мишка outfitted gentleman was caught on tape trying to stop people from fucking up a car. Way to go guy! Now Vancouver, ever vigilant and thorough, has released this handy and humorous poster in an attempt to track down the last of the unidentified rioters. So if you’re from Vancouver and see your own face on this bad boy, good luck, because you’re prolly fucked eh!