The Sports Blog 2.0

Bye Week Blues

With the Giants coming up on a bye week, I've compiled a list of things to do during your team's bye week. Feel free to add your own.

10. Spend Some Time With the Wife or Girlfriend

She will absolutely adore the fact that you've taken a weekend away from football to spend quality time with her. Take her for some early Christmas shopping, watch Lifetime, take her out to dinner, whatever she wants to do.
Bonus Points: If she knows nothing about the game of football, don't educate her on the meaning of a bye week, she will think you're taking time off from football just for her!

9. Fantasy Sports

Spend all the effort you would normally put into your team, into your fantasy team! Spend the day pouring over stats from around the league, keep ESPNews on all day, and see just how many TD passes Tom Brady can throw this week. That's if you don't spend your weekend doing this anyway.
Bonus Points: Get a custom jersey made up for your fantasy team. The other guys in your league will hate to see that.

8. The Great Outdoors

Spend the day outside, if it's not too cold yet. Play some touch football. Go roll around in a big pile of leaves. Remember, there is a world outside of your living room, and reality is still slightly clearer than your HDTV.

7. Through the Magic of Television...

You can relive previous highlights from this season, or previous seasons. Watch the best games your team played all season, and review it like a head coach, pointing out strengths and weaknesses throughout the games.
Bonus Points: Put the films on your computer and make your own NFL Films style highlight reels.

6. Learn Another Sport

Check out English Premier League Soccer or Australian Rules Football. Maybe scout out a new kicker or punter for your team. There are many international sports that run all year long, so try to find something that you can watch after your team has dropped out of the playoffs (Note to Dolphins fans: now is that time).

5. Learn to Play Cornerback

I don't care how you do it. Suit up with the local Pop-Warner league, play some Madden, read "How to Play Cornerback for Dummies", just get it done. You know who you are, Terrence McGee.

4. Play Endless Hours of Madden

This may also help you with option 5, but if you'd rather just coach your team to the Super Bowl, spend the day playing video games. Take your XBox 360 online, and school some 12 year-old in on the art of the west-coast offense. Just don't tell your friends when he pulls a Bill Belichick runs up the score on you.

3. Tailgate Anyway

Have a cookout, spend the day drinking and feasting like it were any other Sunday afternoon, without all the heartburn from the agony of defeat.
Bonus Points: Try actually tailgating at your home team's stadium.

2. Plan Your Super Bowl Party

This is great chance to figure out who you're inviting to your Super Bowl party, where you're hosting the event, what you should serve (here's one of my favorites). Also, now is the time to decide weather you're going to rent that 72" flat-panel plasma this year.

1. Watch Football!

Pick another team to root for, or root against your friends' teams. It doesn't matter, Sundays are for football. As long as there's a game on, you'll find something to keep yourself occupied until your team returns, it's only a week away.

A-Rod, Free Agency, and the Red Sox

So Alex Rodriguez has opted out of the last three years of his Two Hundred fifty two million dollar contract yesterday. He forfeits the remaining $81 Million the Yankees would have had to pay him over the next three seasons. Read the full article here.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of what is wrong with free agency. Apparently a contract means nothing anymore in the sports world. A guy signs a contract for $252 Million over 6 years, and three years down the road, he decides, "I came to this city for a world series ring, it's been three years, I don't have a ring yet, lets see who offers me the most money." I don't expect a guy to have a lifelong loyalty to a team anymore, that went out with the days of team buses and player/managers, but at least show some courtesy to the fans that paid your salary. Rodriguez reminds me of the kid who decides he's a fan of whatever team won the last World Series. One year, he shows up to school wearing a Yankee cap, next thing you know, it's April again, and this time he's sporting a Randy Johnson D-Backs jersey. I understand the need to follow the money in professional sports these days, because it's become just that, a profession. Still, where do we draw the line? I think at $252 Million, the line is just below that. Who knows, maybe Boston will pick him up in the off-season, and Yankee fans will really have something to jeer about.

Speaking of the Red Sox, I hate to utter these words for the second time in three years, but the Sox are World Champions, again. Congratulations to the city of Boston. Now the rest of the league can hate you too! As a devoted Yankee fan, I do have to give it up to the Sox, they played a great series, and they tore it up. Any chance of David Ortiz opting out of his contract this season?