Texas is playing in the Fiesta Bowl instead of the BCS National Championship game, and sure, you have opinions and facts and stats to back up why they got the shaft, or why Oklahoma really belonged all along, or why some D-1AA team really belongs in the game instead of either of them, or whatever cockamamie argument you’ve got waiting in your hip pocket.

I’ve got mine, too, and it’s simpler and a bit more visceral: Texas missed the national title game because of the curse of the Longhorn Crapcake:

The horridly flopped twin spurts the frosting gun creating the head, the irregularly shaped skid marks of the horns … if you create such a disaster of a cake, you can only expect Fate to intervene and allow Michael Crabtree to catch an improbable ball for a game-winning TD on the road at Lubbock. Cake-makers of the world, take note: when you make crappy cake, it will hurt your team on the field. We can only hope this cake was taken to a secret location and destroyed swiftly by trained professionals. (Secret location equals "Shaun King’s house," and trained professional equals "Shaun King." His head is getting huge.)

The Sacramento Kings aren’t particularly good. So far, most of what you hear about them has involved rumored trades for Brad Miller or the endless absence of their star, Kevin Martin. But none of that’s going to stand in the way of journeyman Mikki Moore, who has had it up to here with all this losing and lack of motivation.

In fact, yesterday he delivered the NBA’s equivalent of Herm Edwards’s immortal "we play to win the game" speech. From The Sacramento Bee:

"There’s how many people in the world, 10 billion? And there’s only 300 people in the NBA. Wouldn’t you have enough pride to go out there and compete? (I’m) not even saying (how) you’re getting paid to do it, that it’s your job, that’s your 9 to 5, (that) you get a check for this. You could be on the corner slinging dope or at KFC working a drive-thru or the post office. (I’m) not even saying that. Wouldn’t you have enough pride to say, ‘Well, I’m one of the 300 people who’s in the NBA,’ and go out there and compete for your recognition? That’s how I feel about it."

Moore has a unique perspective on the matter, having bounced around, and until recently needing to prove himself every fall. But, at the risk of complete and total moralizing, imagine if the Clippers — who have tons of talent, but have to deal with drama like Baron Davis having to refute Stephen Jackson’s claims that he wants to return to Oakland, and Ricky Davis’ drug suspension — had a copy of Mikki’s sermon framed over their respective lockers. Sometimes you wish there were more Mikki Moores in the world. No matter how difficult that is to say.

If you’re a Cowboys fan, you were likely really, really upset last night. And rightfully so — that game against the Eagles was pretty embarrassing. But then you probably drank and/or slept it off, woke up a little depressed, made it into work on time and were pretty much over it sometime before lunch. This is because you’re a reasonable human being with a fully functioning brain which allows you to realize football is just a game and should be somewhere around the 24-28th most important thing in your life.

But not superfan Alan Lowe, who showed up at Valley Ranch today wearing a sandwich board sign. On the front, it read “The Cowboys have no heart” with "Wade Phillips is an embarrassment to the Star” on the back.

Now, Lowe has every right to act a fool and spend half his day letting the Cowboys know the star is embarrassed. He also has a right not to be a complete jackass and to fully expect the reaction he received from linebacker Bradie James:

The man ended up calling Irving police after a confrontation with James.

James said the fan was blocking his way out of the parking lot, leading him to tell the man he needed to get out of the way or get hit by the linebacker’s luxury SUV.

"He said, ‘Why you guys didn’t show that fire last night? You should have showed that heart last night!’" James recalled to reporters. "So next thing you know, I’m just ripping his sign off him. So I ripped the sign off him. He said I broke his glasses, so I went and gift-wrapped some Oakleys. He got something out the deal."

"I told him, ‘I share your frustrations. But where we differ is I wouldn’t go to anybody’s job, especially not with 300-pound guys, trying to tell them what they didn’t do right,’" James said. "But that’s it. It’s over."

Lowe ended up not pressing charges and later returned to work in time for his afternoon shift.

When Rick Carlisle first put his name on the NBA map in 2000-01, it was as the tightly-wound coach of a resurgent Pistons franchise. He preached defense, team effort, and collectivity; Carlisle even brought about a change in Jerry Stackhouse, then one of the league’s biggest ballhogs. But when he was fired in 2002-03, rumor had it that the players had gotten sick of his act. When the Mavericks hired him to succeed Avery Johnson, some worried that the last thing Dallas needed was another disciplinarian.

So it comes as an incredible surprise to anyone who follows pro basketball that, according to the Mavs themselves, the team didn’t get another Avery — it got another Nellie. From the Star-Telegram:

Through a hectic, sometimes emotional and often bizarre two months, Carlisle, for reasons ranging from injury to personnel inconsistencies and sometimes just his own idiosyncrasies, has deviated from a typical eight- or nine-man rotation.

He instead analyzes practice performances and trusts his instincts during games to pull the strings on an irregular and unpredictable, be-ready-when-you’re-called-upon scenario involving all 14 players. Eleven of them have made at least one appearance in the starting lineup.

And yeah, the players have noticed. Jason Terry refers to Carlisle as "a mad scientist," which might as well be Don Nelson’s middle name. Dirk Nowitzki, prize protege of the former Mavs coach, made the connection explicit:

"It’s almost like with Nellie back in the day. He was liable to do anything. With Nellie, I remember my first year I was guarding Muggsy Bogues. With Rick it’s the same."

The Mavs have flown under the radar somewhat, as have most teams not stationed in Boston, Los Angeles, or Cleveland. Yet Dallas is comfortably over .500, and if the playoffs started today, they’d slip in as the seventh seed. All of this with a new coach, a team many felt was in decline, and the aforementioned injuries. Who knows, maybe the Mavs will enter the postseason as a forgotten team with a chip on their shoulder, a bag of tricks no one’s ready for, and an unswerving belief in themselves. Now that would really be Nellie redux.

Look at this excerpt from Phil Mushnick’s column in the New York Post today and try to guess which word was so offensive that it warranted not only an entire article, but this headline: Foul-Mouthed Ambush Mars Pregame:

Two minutes into Fox’s one-hour pregame yesterday, host Curt Menefee noted that panelist Terry Bradshaw last week said he’d like to see the Lions finish 0-16.

"S—bag," panelist Howie Long said of Bradshaw.
"I am a s—bag," Bradshaw said.

That gave Long, Bradshaw and Fox 58 minutes to apologize, to express their regrets to a national audience for having ambushed it during Sunday daylight.

None came. Perhaps they felt they’d said nothing inappropriate, or, at worst, it was no big deal.

The four-letter word omitted there is “scum” not, you know, the actual bad word you may have thought. Seriously: Scumbag is what has Mushnick upset to the point of demanding an apology from the network. He wasn’t the only one. USA Today’s Michael McCarthy placed the incident in the “ugly” section of this weekly column and asks, “Does somebody have to remind them kids watch the top-rated NFL pregame show, which starts at 12 noon on the East Coast?” The Big Lead is also asking questions because, well, that’s what TBL does: “So Nobody Considers ‘Scumbag’ a Bad Word Anymore?”

Anymore? As if to imply it ever was. I’m only 26, but never in my lifetime have I considered “scumbag” to be some sort of unspeakable insult. I’d put it in the “idiot” or “moron” range, right below being as offensive as “your mom.” It certainly isn’t so harsh that it can’t even be repeated in the hallowed halls of The Post, a publication that considers celebrities in bikinis to be news.

Regardless, none of those words are as troubling to me as the FOX robot’s dance moves. I’d rather have my kids calling each other “scumbag” than going around the house attempting to do The Worm.