Though I’ve taken to calling notoriously disruptive receiver Terrell Owens, “He Who Shall Not Be Named,” for the havoc he caused for my beloved Philadelphia Eagles after Eagles fans embraced him following his great 2004-2005 season with the Birds, there are still some fans who are excited – or at the very least optimstic – about the recent arrival in Buffalo.

One such fan is my best friend Brendan Sorg. A Western New York native like myelf, and a Bills fan essentially from birth, I asked Brendan how he felt about his Bills taking in such a high-risk (and potentially high reward) player. 

Here’s What He Wrote:

Time Out:  TO to Buffalo?

It’s been over 9 years since the Buffalo Bills lost in devastating fashion on the infamous “Music City Miracle” play in their last playoff appearance.  Since that time I’ve seen my beloved Bills drift in and out of NFL relevance.  We’ve been a competitive team most years, typically over-performing for parts of the season to finish a game within .500.  We’ve endured the Willis McGahee and JP Losman debacles and the tenure where Marc Levy and Ralph Wilson teamed up to give us the oldest (I mean most experienced) GM/Owner tandem in NFL History.

Last season, the Bills created a lot of Buzz when they opened the season 5-1 (mostly because 4 of those wins game thanks to games with the Rams, Raiders, Seahawks, and Jaguars).  The Bills came back to reality and their lack of experience caught up with them.  They finished 0-6 in the Division and 7-9 overall. 

The disappointing end of the season led the usually conservative Bills brass to take a big free agent swing and sign Cowboys outcast receiver, Terrel Owens, to a one-year contract over the weekend. 

Initially I responded like the rest of America:  “The Bills?  Really?!”  Then I saw the press conference. When TO proclaimed that he “left America’s team for North America’s team,” I had a good laugh, then I paused…and thought…and concluded…this might work.

Buffalonians have immediately embraced Owens because it signals a new kind of hope that Bills fans haven’t seen in years.  The national spotlight on Buffalo…in March?  Whether reality or not, a perception is created that Buffalo can once again the big free agent.   With season ticket sales slipping, Owens is one of the rare NFL “entertainers” that can attract national broadcasts and put fans in Buffalo (and Toronto) in the seats.  And on a young team, Owens brings the passion and competitive nature that if channeled and managed carefully, can be infectious to the team.

And we still haven’t yet touched on the best part of this signing…he only got a one year contract!

In the next year, due to the Owens experiment, we’ll learn the following about the Buffalo Bills:

• Are they indeed one playmaker away from being a legitimate playoff contender;
• What kind of wide receiver can Lee Evans be with a legitimate weapon on the opposite side;
• Now with a plethora of weapons (Evans, Owens, Lynch, Parrish), does Trent Edwards have the skills and mental toughness to be a franchise quarterback; and
• Will Dick Juron be entrusted with the head coaching responsibilities in 2010.

I believe whole-heartedly the Bills have much more to gain than lose in this relationship.  Should the Bills miss the playoffs again and TO holds up his legacy as a coach and quarterback killer, Buffalo will be no worse off than if they had another 7-9 season without Owens and were looking to replace Juron and Edwards.  But if they win with Owens, it’s not only an aging receiver’s career that will be rejuvenated – but along with it one of the NFL’s great franchises. 

If you’re a betting man, remember:  No one circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills.

This documentary had a lot in its favor before I slipped it into my DVD player to watch it before Idol tonight. For one, I’m a sucker for sports documentaries like this so it would have taken a lot for this doc, produced and directed by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, to turn me off.  After a long day of work, full of the usual end-of-journalism hoopla with talk of layoffs, wage decreases and furloughs, I was in the mood to be distracted and boy was I.

While Yauch gets much of the limelight, the real star of this film in the soundtrack. Yauch masterfully uses a slew of modern hip hop hits (and even a Beastie Boys classic) to masterfully enhance every jump shot, block and dunk to something of a masterpiece, often cutting together the same play from multiple camera angles at multiple speeds.  The sound editing in this film is also nothing short of amazing. There are several moments in the film when all of the noise is cut except for the subtle thud of footsteps and the pounding of the ball on the ashpalt as a player moves down the court. 

As a basketball film, Yauch’s movie is incredibly entertaining. Where it starts to get a little dicey is when Yauch attempts to comment on the use of basketball as a vehicle for social advancement for some of the inner-city players and the incredible hype forced upon the incredibly young by the interage age, typified by a comment made in the film by someone that anyone with an internet service can have a recruit ranking website. The film that “Gunnin…” will most often be compared to is 1994’s Hoop Dreams, but its a much less effective social commentary, more style over Hoop Dreams’ incredible amounts of compelling substance.  Instead this movie feels like am more stylish version of 2001’s “Preps: Chicago Hoops,” a show on Fox Net that followed a handful of Chicago-area prepstars – including Eddy Curry and Duke guard Sean Dockery – through their senior year.

The ineffective social commentary aside, this film is stylish, funky and endlessly entertaining. A must-watch for the avid or even casual basketball fan.

Grade: A solid B+

With everyone chiming in on and what their favorite (and least favorite) Super Bowl ads were last night, I thought I’d throw in my two cents on what my favorite spots were from last night’s surprisingly epic game between the Steelers and Cardinals. I’ll spare including links for the commercials I liked the least, namely all of Budweiser’s ad, even the one featuring Conan O’Brien, a guy that I think is always funny except in this ad, which I thought was otherwise pretty stupid. The combination of the dreadful Clydesdale ads and that douchebag with the telestrator really made Budweiser the night’s big loser for me.

Without further adieu, the best of Super Bowl ‘09 ads:

Career Builder

Though I find the repetitious nature of this ad a little tiring, the combination of the koala getting punched and the woman riding the sea lion is one that made me laugh harder than I had laughed at anything all night.

Audi

Simply put, this ad appeals to the 10-year-old in me that loves Jason Statham and car chases.

Pixar’s Up

Though I still think this ad plays a little too much like a Pixar’s greatest hits reel, this movie looks like unbridled wonderful, though I’m still not sure exactly what it’s about.

Cars.com

This was an ad that I really liked but was kind of on the fence about as to whether it was one of my favorites of the night. I really liked the set up but felt like the end fell really short. The ad feels a little too ambitious for Cars.com.

My thoughts go out to Jim Johnson who is battling melanoma cancer in his spine.

Often courage and bravery is ridiculously overstated in the world of sports, but the courage Johnson will need to battle this very serious ailment can not be understated. My thoughts and prayers and the thoughts and prayers of Eagle Nation are with him.

In yesterday’s Orlando Sentinel, columnist David Whitley made a plea to President Barack Obama, asking the 44th POTUS to enact a number of changes, in light of Obama’s vocal disdain for the BCS system in college football. The column is more or less written in jest, and almost certainly implies that Obama has better things to do (which he does.)

The column is broken down by sports and while most of them are pretty ridiculous (see Whitley’s insistence that deer on hunting shows be armed in the same way the hunters are), a few of his football suggestions are things that I’ve proposed myself in conversations with friends and co-workers.

For example:

•No more commercial breaks between a kickoff and the start of the possession.

This was a phenomenon that began some years ago in certain Fox games, a strategy I presumed was meant to allow the network to get the most bang for its buck during its marquee games. Now it happens on every network, every week, in every game, regardless of how little actually rides on said game. The fact that the league allows the networks to go into a TV timeout right after going into a TV timeout following a scoring play and subsequent PAT if applicable is ridiculous and flies in the face of their, “We can’t change our overtime system because the games become too long.” The game’s are already nearly 4 hours long and have far too many TV-imposed stoppages as is. Do away with this silly money grab.

•Pacman Jones Rule: Every time a player with more than two arrests is signed, the team forfeits a draft pick.

This is something I proposed a long time ago when I saw Floyd Reese appear on ESPN as one of their talking heads. This was the man responsible for drafting the aforementioned Pacman in spite of numerous red flags. This is the only way the league has any hope of phasing out dunderheads that are appear in police blotter as many times as they appear on highlight reels. You need to give franchises a reason not to take a flyer on a talented but troubled player. I guarantee you that if a guy is arrested three times and the team loses a 2nd round draft pick for the following year, they’ll think twice about signing Tank Johnson or Chris Henry.

Awesome news, kids. As if it wasn’t bad enough that my Eagles got bounced from the playoffs by a 9-7 team from the NFC West, ESPN has devised a way to really ruin my day.

Introducing the Worldwide Leader’s Prestige Rankings, a system designed to be a “numerical method of ranking the best FBS college football programs since the 1936 season. Point values were assigned for certain successes (win a national title, earn 25 points) and failures (get your program banned from the postseason, lose two points). “

For those of you unaware, I’m a proud graduate of Indiana University, a program with a less than stellar football tradition.

How bad is the football tradition at IU, you ask? 

Well according to the Ruin Pat’s Life Rankings.. ummm… I mean Prestige Rankings, since 1932, my beloved Hoosiers are the 102st worst team out of 119 FBS teams. Awesome.

Joining my Hoosiers are the bottom of the barrel are the following powerhouses:

101. Rutgers: minus-6
102. Indiana: minus-8
103. Buffalo: minus-11
104. New Mexico: minus-14
T-105. UAB: minus-15
T-105. Florida International: minus-15
107. Arkansas State: minus-17
108. Akron: minus-21
109. UL Lafayette: minus-23
110. Memphis: minus-24

My mom, my dad, my best friend.. in the past 12 hours they’ve all asked me the same question in one form or another, “Are you okay?”

It’s a reasonable question given the end of what many Eagles fan had convinced ourselves was a season where finally we would finally see our beloved Birds hoist the Lombardi Trophy. A team of destiny, I kept saying following last week’s win over the Giants. But it was not meant to be.

At halftime, I sat at my desk at the Gazette, my feet on the desk, knees bunched against my chest and sat in stunned silence. “How could this be happening?” I thought. Sure, I had given Arizona more of a chance than anyone else and knew that it wasn’t a good thing that many thought this was a lock for my Eagles. Just bad karma. After all, I thought, this was a team that laid it on a wildly overrated Carolina team just a week before. They were playing inspired football and playing in a stadium with 7,000 extra seats. This was not a lock, I thought, but never prepared myself for Larry Fitzgerald’s three touchdown first half and the complelte inability of a Jim Johnson defense that had carried us this far to stop anything Cards offensive coordinator Todd Haley threw at them. Still, I was hopeful.

“I’m so depressed,” my girlfriend said at the half. Still, I reassured her, that the game wasn’t over. The Eagles had withstood the Cardinals’ first half blitzkrieg and couldn’t play worse in the second half. Besides, the Cardinals offense was given up the intermediate routes on defense, a fact that was very much to the advantage of the Eagles speedy, undersized receiving corps.

And then it happened. Jim Johnson started bringing men off the corners. Consecutive three and outs. The Eagles offense got its footing against an atrocious Cardinals defense. I watched as DeSean Jackson tipped the ball to himself and strutted into the end zone. I couldn’t believe it. We were winning.

Fade to black.

We all know what happened after that.  The clock had struck midnight and this team of destiny appeared fated to end yet another season one game away from The Big One. Still, as I watched Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhut run across the field, saying, “We Did It.” I didn’t throw anything or cry or curse or call for Andy Reid’s coach or the end of the Donovan McNabb era in Philadelphia (he still gives us the best chance to win). I took a deep breath and put my Eagles stuff away, tucking it away until Draft Day, when hope springs eternal for every fan.

What more could I have asked from my team? Faced with a 21-point halftime deficit, they refused to give up, refused to stop believing in one another and gave everything they had. And came up short. 

I’m not going to sulk or pout or say that I’m not going to watch the Super Bowl now (even though I think everyone would agree that the Cardinals and the Steelers are not the two best teams in the league by a long shot — still think a college football playoff is a good idea?), no instead, I’m going to watch the game with a passive interest and look forward to next year. 

There’s always next year. Fly Eagles Fly.

Tommy Bowden owes much of the $2.25 million he’ll receive this year to the University of Arkansas.

It was the Razorbacks’ baffling interest in Bowden to fill their coaching vacancy last year that led the Tigers to extend their head coach’s contract through 2014, a contract that will cost the Clemson about $2.5 million to terminate Bowden at year’s end, if the Tigers’ dream season continues to evolve into a nightmare.

Under Bowden, Clemson has been the East Coast version of Iowa. A team that perennially looks great on paper, makes a number of “dark horse” list for both conference championship and BCS contention, and then promptly folds.

Clemson fans thought 2008 was going to be the year that the Tigers would break through that glass ceiling and, once again, ascend to ACC superiority and vie for a shot at the national title. And who could blame them? Returning the best backfield in college football with quarterback Cullen Harper and running backs C.J. Spiller, many in the upstate thought a return to glory was imminent.

Not so fast.

The team got embarrassed by Alabama on national television, and this week’s home loss to an underrated but talented Maryland team send the Tigers into the bye week with a lot of soul-searching to do. The rest of Clemson’s schedule is favorable but not without a fair share of landmines with road games at Florida State and Wake Forest, not to mention their season finale against the hated Gamecocks at Death Valley.

If Clemson is able to win out the rest of their schedule, they may save their coach’s job, but with all that talent, anything less than nine wins will smell an awful lot like an abject failure and could ultimately spell the end of Bobby Bowden’s unspectacular — and expensive — tenure as the Tigers’ head coach.

Who’s got ‘em? This guy…

Watching Purdue struggle to put away a Central Michigan team that’s missed a bunch of field goals and has been awful in pass protection and I caught this Big Ten Network spot that I thought might be worth sharing.