New Rules

Anyone familiar with the HBO show, Real Time With Bill Maher, would know that every week Maher likes to close his show with a segment called "New Rules", in which Maher offers quick takes on events that occurred during the week. Always one to sample a good idea, I decided to offer up my own brand of New Rules.....here goes:

NEW RULE: Baseball has to juice up every player on the Major League roster. Quite frankly, I'm not nearly as bothered by players on steroids as much as I am annoyed by "purists" faking outrage over baseball's loss of innocence because of the rampid use of performance enhancing drugs. Let's be clear about one thing: Baseball stopped being innocent the minute it started paying players $25 million dollars a year and began charging fans $2000 for a seat behind home plate. Over the last 15 years, baseball hasn't just lost its innocence, it's been pinned down and gang-banged over the pinball machine like Jodie Foster in The Accused. We've been given no reason to believe that every player of the last 30 years, down to the bat boys, weren't hopped up on PEDs. Even if there are clean players, the cloud of suspicion looms so far and wide that it's nearly impossible to declare anyone innocent with any real conviction. So why try anymore? I'd rather watch a game filled with asteriks and guys so juiced up they pull a hammy when they zip up their pants than continue to listen to old-schoolers pretend that the game isn't tainted. Baseball's juiced up. So's pro wrestling. So's the Tour De France. They're still standing. You want a competition where everyone's clean and the playing field is fair and balanced? Go watch Iron Chef.

NEW RULE: Congress needs to stay off Sportscenter. In an attempt to force NCAA Football to adopt a playoff system, the boys on Capital Hill are getting involved in irradicating the BCS. You would think with an economy in shambles, unemployment sky high, and people losing homes left and right, the government would have bigger priorities. You'd be wrong. Look, guys, it's a nice gesture, but I care a bit more about GM and Chrysler than I do about USC and Ohio State. Let's leave sports to the pros, OK? We'll work on getting a legit system that will determine an actual NCAA champion that nobody will remember in a few years and you stick to pretending that the War on Terror wasn't a waste of our money and resources. Besides, given the Iraq fiasco and your "War on Drugs", your track record doesn't leave us very optimistic. Besides, the BCS gets it right once every eight years, which is more than I could say about you guys.

NEW RULE: NCAA Football has to adopt a playoff system. Sure, the absurdity of the BCS ranking system has given us all enough controversy and blog fodder to keep us occupied, but enough's enough. With the way bowl games are added every year, you're already involving half the NCAA anyway. You can't possibly tell me Middle Tennesee St-Louisiana Monroe would draw more people and revenue than having the top 8 teams square off in single-elimination playoff? There's a reason March Madness is so successful. People demand a true champion at the end of the day. Besides, with the rate the economy is going, you're not going to have many sponsors for bowl games anyway.

NEW RULE: Hot girls in sports jerseys have to know something about the team they're rooting for. Hey, I like college girls bouncing their jugs up and down in my face, screaming hysterically, as much as the next guy, but there's only so many times I can listen to bimbos in Lakers jerseys ask me "Which one is Kobe?". I'm not saying they have to be able to break down the Cover 2 or tell me the career batting average of Robinson Cano, but at least know the first name of the guy whose jersey your wearing. It's ok to admit that you're a Patriots fan because Tom Brady makes your nipples hard but enough with the half-brain comments and cheers after every first down. Pink jerseys for girls were made for women to look cute not for them to turn into Fireman Ed. So please, pick up a Sports Illustrated or shut your pipe, if I wanted to listen to clueless airheads yap to no end, I would have went to JMU.

NEW RULE: ESPN has to merge Around The Horn and PTI into one show. Look, both are really good shows and they are entertaining in their own way, but at the end of the day, its still a bunch of talking heads arguing about the same topics. In an era of non-stop news access, the evolution of sports talk radio and podcasts, and round-the-clock sports channels, watching two shows with bickering sportswriters gets to be a bit overwhelming. You can ditch Around The Horn's silly point system. You can knock out some of PTI's gimmicks. Just scale it down a bit. We already have a network filled with extremists screaming about the same thing over and over again. It's called Fox News.

- Dave