Category Archives: Football

Football, Skitch Hanson

Up the Middle with Skitch Hanson: A Fashion Plaxico-No

Today, Scratchbomb hands over the reins to nationally syndicated sports columnist Skitch Hanson, as we’ve done many times before. You may know him as the author of the highly popular syndicated column “Up The Middle.” You may also have read his best-selling book Numbers Don’t Lie Except When They Do . He’s also a frequent guest on ESPN’s sportswriters panel show Tiny Elf-Like Men Shrieking. Without further ado, here’s Skitch.

I want to thank The Scratchbomb for having me back. I’ve turned into a bit of a “pariah” around the office ever since I got back from Beijing. My newspaper didn’t appreciate some of the charges I ran up during the Olympics. I tried to explain to my boss that it wasn’t my fault, but he hasn’t trusted me since the Rental Car Incident of 2003.

(My loyal readers will remember that well, but for the rest of you, let’s just say that you should never try to force a cassette tape into a car stereo CD player, no matter how badly you want to hear “Sweet Baby James”. And remember: even if you’re trying to be helpful to the good people at Hertz, marinara sauce is no substitute for transmission fluid.)

Here’s what happened: One night in Beijing, I ate a crazy vegetable the locals call “egged-plant” and found myself in some gastric distress. A friendly cabbie brought me to the local pharmacy to get some Pepto Bismol, after I made myself understood with 15 minutes of an embarrassing set of hand gestures.

When we go to the pharmacy, the cabbie asked if he could borrow my corporate AmEx. He said he needed some medicine for his sick wife. I know it sounds crazy now, but I felt I owed the guy. Plus, I wasn’t really sure this place was a pharmacy at all. I’ve never seen a drug store that had crap tables and roulette wheels, and guys guarding the doors with
switchblades.

So imagine my surprise when I get back to the States and the only pharmaceutical purchases on the statement were 500 gross of Viagra! Plus 17 flatscreen TVs, and a bunch of charges to some Web site called LithuanianBrides.com. That sounds like a place where you could get something nice for your wife, so maybe the cabbie wasn’t totally lying.

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Football, The Funny

Brett Favre and the Aw Shucks Method of Getting to Yes

murphy.jpgOkay Brett, I’ve come down here to Hattiesburg to meet with you. I hope we can come to some sort of peace agreement and end this whole unpleasantness.
favre2.jpgUnpleasantness? What’re you talkin’ about? Ain’t
no unpleasantness out here, Mr. Murphy. I just wanna get out there on
the football field and have some fun.
murphy.jpgOf course you do. But if you showed up at Packers
camp right now, it would just be a huge distraction for everyone
involved. We need to decide the future of our relationship and proceed
from there.


favre2.jpg
‘Relationship’? That’s some pretty fancy talk. Brett Favre don’t know
from fancy talk. He’s just a simple guy who wants to toss the pigskin
around and have some fun. Just like in this here advertisementation.
wrangler.jpg

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Football

Up the Middle with Skitch Hanson: A Date with Density

Today, Scratchbomb hands over the reins to nationally syndicated sports columnist Skitch Hanson, as we’ve done many times before. You may know him as the author of the highly popular column “Up The Middle.” You may also have read his best-selling books “What I Really Meant Was… ” and “The Top 100 Lists of Top 100 Sports Lists “. He’s also a frequent guest on ESPN’s sportswriters panel show Who’s the Loudest? Without further ado, here’s Skitch.

Last year’s Super Bowl pitted two black coaches against one another for the first time, and in so doing, completely eliminated all traces of racism from our country. This Sunday, we will witness another clash, one even more historic: a clash of destinies.

I asked a prominent scientist who asked to remain nameless, how do you determine which team’s destiny is greater? How do you measure the surface area of fate? What is the body mass index of karma and kismet?

He told me that all of these things are ephemeral concepts and therefore immeasurable. So I asked him, about the teams’ density ? That sounds like “destiny”. You can measure that, right?

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