So long Brett.  We'll really miss you.  You hillbilly dimwit.
There’s nothing better than those year end retrospectives. Ahh, nothing beats 365 days of sports action distilled into three minutes of Bon Jovi. Really, I’m getting misty just thinking about it. Fortunately, we’re not going to do that today. Nah, we’ll just take a look back at the last 11 days or so. You know, since the last time I bothered took the time to bore you to tears with anything.

But you are “big” and you do live in a motel, Rick
Just before the Illinois-Missouri game on ESPN, Rick Majerus and Steve Lavin were killing time and discussing how good UConn is. Lavin touted the Huskies’ forward Rudy Gay as being the key to UConn’s season. Majerus disagreed and his opening statement caused Lavin to start laughing so hard that when it came back to him for a rebuttal, he couldn’t speak. What did Rick say?

“I’m not a big Gay guy, but…”

The best part was that he had no idea he’d said it. Good times all around.

Nice hair, lousy coach
Mizzou certainly looked good in the Braggin’ Rights game, though didn’t they? One time it looked like they actually called an offensive play, even. I’m pretty sure it was one of the times they threw the ball into their own bench. My how the program has decayed since they had to stop paying the players, and the old AD’s wife got to make fun jailhouse phone calls to Ricky Clemons.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a first round bye
Christmas Eve’s NFL slate had all kinds of games of interest to Bears fans and none of us paid any attention to it. “If the Giants lose to Washington and blah, blah, blah.” Next thing you know the Bears are not only already in the playoffs but with a win in Green Bay on Christmas afternoon, they got to use the I-Pass lane to the Super Bowl with a bye and a t least one home game. From time to time, apparently, there’s value to reading the newspaper?

Wait, you can throw passes to a specific spot, not just “near” a receiver? Did anybody tell the other guy this?
By far, the most impressive thing about the Bears opening drive for a touchdown against the Packers on Christmas was Rex Grossman’s ability to throw the football on time to his receivers and in stride. On three separate occasions the pass was only complete because it was thrown away from the defender in a perfect spot. After watching the parade of clowns who started at quarterback between Rex’s Christmas start in Green Bay and the one almost two full seasons earlier in Minnesota, it was educational to us dopey Bears fans to see how the other half lived.

No one will say this, but pal, you suck.
As huge as the Bears win in Green Bay was, you get the nagging feeling that without Brett Favre the Bears might have lost both games to the Packers this year. Nobody would dare say it, especially not the overmatched Curt Menneffee-JC Pearson combo on Sunday against the Seahawks, but Favre was awful this year. Injured teammates or not, far too many times he just blindly tossed the ball into the air without regard for which team would catch it. He was like Henry Burris without the tan. As great as Favre was for so long, and given how many media wonks had big fours on their kneepads, nobody wanted to tell the truth. That he’d lost it, completely and the Packers are better off without him now.

Your ass is too big to cover it with that.
Jim Hendry officially ran the white flag of surrender up the Miguel Tejada flapole last week when he had lackey Mike Kiley run an article saying that the Cubs never offered Mark Prior to the Orioles, but rather were asked if they’d do a one-for-one deal for the All-Star shortstop and said, “it’d take more than that.” Why should it matter if they shopped the guy around or not? Isn’t that your job as a GM to find out what the value of your players are? For everybody who thinks Prior will take his bruised ego and run off to another team after 2008, all you need to know is that money talks. If the Cubs want him, they’ll have to pay him, regardless of whether they try to trade him every day between now and then or spend the time rubbing lilacs on his hiney and telling him it’s special.

Please, Pissburgh. Please.
It now appears the only thing standing between a Cubs outfield of Juan Pierre, Jock Jones and Preston Wilson is Pissburgh. The Pirates would rather have Wilson than the alternative, Sammy Sosa, but Preston wants to play for the Cubs. He doesn’t want to play for them so bad that he’ll do a one-year deal, but apparently badly enough that he’d do it for a two-year contract. If the Cubs dump money on Preston and his one good knee, they’d end up with a leftfield platoon of Jones and Matt Murton, which, while more productive than just Jock, is probably less productive and certainly more shortsighted than just Matt.

That’s a lovely eulogy, now please get in the coffin, too.
You knew “Sunday” NFL Countdown was going to be bad (well, worse) when they played the somber, quiet version of the theme song before the Saturday edition on Christmas Eve day. Then we got Chris Berman, trying to dial the buffoonery down to a 7 (low for him) and try to seem sensitive talking about Tony Dungy. It was at that moment when he said, “At times like these, it’s hard…we just grope for the right words.”

Grope? Really? That’s the “right” word? Grope?

Then, typically, it got even worse as they felt compelled to let the Pleamaker, Michael Irvin chime in. He said, “There’s a term we use to describe football players in times like these and that’s kindering spirits.”

That might be a term, Mikey. But it’s not an actual word.

“And the band is on the field!”
Can it be a classic if it’s not only poorly played, but nobody watched it? The end of the Michigan-Nebraska Carquest Honda Truck Tire Flow-Bee Alamo Bowl, featured eight laterals and almost 50 Husker players on the field as Michigan was stopped just a few yards short of a game-winning kickoff return for a touchdown. Michigan Coach Lloyd Carr was mad–of course–and called the lack of a penalty, a disgrace. His words might have rung truer had a third of the Michigan sideline not also been on the field during the return, too.

You, you’re not good.
It was official on Sunday, when Brad Maynard completed a first down pass to Adrian Peterson on a fake punt, Kyle Orton became the fourth best Bears quarterback. Given Orton’s continued clueless play and the fact that career-mediocrity Jeff Blake looked better in his fourth quarter mop up duty, it seems apparent, if not a certainty, that the Bears would be best served to make Orton the third quarterback for the playoffs. It now appears that Olin Kreutz’s “rookie of the year” is the fourth highest rated passer on his own team. (Acutally, Orton and Grossman are tied for third at 59.7, but those two having the same passer rating is akin to Adam Dunn and Adam Everett having the same batting average.)

Vera, I’ll even pay for your goddamned cheese head
On the award-winning (they give awards for worst, right?) WGN Three Bears postgame on Sunday, a “fan” named Vera from Freeport called in to say that she had “planned our whole day around the game” and that she was disgusted and disturbed at how poorly the Bears had played, and how she was “inspired and impressed” by the way the Packers played in Brett Favre’s final game and how she was now “going to be a Packers fan.”

Holy crap. How do you argue with the insane (or the inane?) The Bears played the final game like they had nothing to play for, and guess what? They didn’t. The whole goal of the regular season is to a) make the playoffs, b) make the playoffs with the best possible route to the Super Bowl, c) try to have as many of your players healthy enough to play in the playoffs as possible.

The reason the win in Green Bay on Christmas was so big was because the Bears had a) made the playoffs, b) made the playoffs with a tremendous route to the Super Bowl and c) could rest players so that as many of them as possible would be healthy enough to play in the playoffs.

Why didn’t Rex Grossman play? The last time he played in the Rollerdome he fell down, untouched and tore his knee up. It’s true, Peter King, you can’t “keep Rex in a glass case forever”, but you can do it in a meaningless game and at least trot him out to start the playoff opener, at home in round two.

What about the Bears not only losing a chance to set the franchise record for points allowed, but also losing the defensive yardage title to Tampa Bay?

What about it? Does anybody give a damn about the team scoring record? Honestly, most people thought the wrong team had it anyway. Most people assumed the ’85 Bears, you know the only Bears team to win a Super Bowl had the record, but they didn’t, it was the ’86 bunch, who went 14-2 and didn’t win a Super Bowl. As for the phoney-baloney yardage title, Lovie Smith summed it up best in the postgame when he said, “We know who the best defense is.

This is just so typically Chicago. We’re so starved for winning teams (nice job right now by the Bulls and Blackhawks, by the way) that we get distracted by meaningless crap like this. We’re sure we won’t actually win anything, so we need the booby prizes to distract us. The goal is to get to the Super Bowl and win it. Nothing was going to happen on Sunday to make that more likely, and guess what, nothing happened to make it less likely. As for momentum? The Bears have this week off anyway, even had they rolled to a 40-0 win it’s hard to imagine the wave of momentum would still be cresting by January 14 or 15.

The only chance the Bears have to win it all is to have Rex Grossman at quarterback and to have Brian Urlacher, Lance Briggs and Mike Brown healthy when the playoffs start. Amazingly enough, it looks like all four things will have happened. So there’s a shot. Which is more than we’re used to having.

Happy? Man, you are a dope.
Peter King’s all-over-the-place Monday Morning Quarterback included this:

I think the Bears will be pretty happy with the All-Pro team I submitted to the Associated Press this morning. Here goes:

Offense

WR — Hines Ward, Pittsburgh; (tie) Steve Smith, Carolina, and Larry Fitzgerald, Arizona.
TE — Antonio Gates, San Diego.
T — Walter Jones, Seattle; Willie Anderson, Cincinnati.
G — Randy Thomas, Washington; Brian Waters, Kansas City.
C — Shaun O’Hara, New York Giants.
QB — (tie) Tom Brady, New England; Peyton Manning, Indianapolis.
RB — Shaun Alexander, Seattle; Tiki Barber, New York Giants.
FB — Kyle Johnson, Denver.

Defense

DE — Osi Umenyiora, New York Giants; Robert Mathis, Indianapolis.
DT — Jamal Williams, San Diego; Rod Coleman, Atlanta.
OLB — Lance Briggs, Chicago; Shawne Merriman, San Diego.
ILB — Larry Foote, Pittsburgh; Brian Urlacher, Chicago.
CB — Ronde Barber, Tampa Bay; Charles Tillman, Chicago.
SS — Troy Polamalu, Pittsburgh.
FS — Bob Sanders, Indianapolis.

Specialists

K — Neil Rackers, Arizona.
P — Brian Moorman, Buffalo.
Ret. — Jerome Mathis, Houston.

Honors

MVP — Tom Brady, New England.
Coach — Lovie Smith, Chicago.
Offensive Player — Shaun Alexander, RB, Seattle.
Defensive Player — Lance Briggs, OLB, Chicago.
Offensive Rookie — Logan Mankins, G, New England.
Defensive Rookie — (tie) Lofa Tatupu, LB, Seattle; Shawne Merriman, LB, San Diego.
Comeback Player — Tedy Bruschi, LB, New England.

Why would that make us happy? Because you screwed Tommie Harris out of an All-Pro nod? Because you know so little about football that you put Peanut Tillman on your All-Pro team and not the much more talented and productive Nathan Vasher? Because you voted for the wrong Bears’ linebacker for defensive player of the year? Lance Briggs is a fine player, we love watching him, but Brian Urlacher’s the best defensive player in the league right now. All you accomplished by voting for the wrong guy was to take another vote away from Brian. Also, nice job of trying to seem like a football expert by voting for an offensive lineman for rookie of the year. I’m sure Cadillac Williams appreciates the slight.

I’ve seen Grand Marquis with fewer miles than this guy
Congratulations to Jim Hendry for finding another over-the-hill pet for Dusty Baker to play with. Maybe it was just Jim’s desire to complete the French Connection outfield of Jacque, Pierre and Marquis, but signing Marquis Grissom to a minor league deal just gives Dusty Baker another old guy to play. You know Marquis is going to make the team, and I’ll predict right now that he’s in left field on opening-friggin’-day. Splendid.

A thought so sobering it’ll you give you a hangover
Not only are the Cubs not going to get Miguel Tejada, the White Sox are. You know that, right? We’re in Hell. Every last one of us. And in Hell, Kenny Williams’ kids steal your car stereo every morning, and Ronnie Woo Woo sings you to sleep. Shoot — Woo — me — Woo — in the head — Woo — now — Woo!

Al Lopez is still dead.
Thanks to those of you who e-mailed me to let me know that the 2005 Dead Pool standings will not be complete until I come to terms with the fact that Al Lopez is still dead. And thanks to the 22 new entrants in this year’s Dead Pool. Let’s just say that not very many of us think that somebody will be around to not get a Hall of Fame call in 2007.

A three-day bloodbath
Every year my mom gives my dad two tickets to the Cubs Convention and every year I go with. This year ought to be the tensest, most angst-filled edition, ever. The Cubs’ only hope is that the Bears playoff game is Saturday and not Sunday, which would help clear the place a half-day early, otherwise, it’s going to be three days of ugliness. Much like a weekend series in Detroit.

No wonder they locked you up in Lincoln
Remember when Brent Musberger was relevant? Remember when he was still somewhat talented? When Kevin Nealon cared enough to impersonate him by inexplicably pulling down his bottom eyelids when he talked? What happened to that Brent? What we got yesterday was the Roger Lodge version where he spent the whole game talking about how Brady Quinn’s older sister is banging Ohio State linebacker AJ Hawk. Not only that, but at one point, Brent had Brady’s sister and AJ getting married. Which I’m sure scared AJ a lot more than any of the Irish offensive linemen did. AJ Hawk’s a college student. He’s not going to marry the Quinn girl. He’s going to run through about four dozen other floozies in the next five years before he gets one pregnant and decides that marriage is cheaper than child support. He’ll be wrong. But still.

Blood is thicker than semen
Nothing proved that more than the one valuable ABC reaction shot of Ms. Quinn. The second quarter sack of her baby brother by her boyfriend when she got visibly pissed off at AJ.

She is pretty hot
Can you blame AJ? She’s like Jennifer Garner without the huge ears.

Yay?