Snake

Mrs. BigKat and I were watching Food Network the other night and saw Kenny Stabler. He was tailgating at a Raider game with Guy Fieri. Turns out Mrs. BigKat had no idea who Ken Stabler was. I was SHOCKED! She grew up in northern California and didn't know who the Snake was? Back when I was a boy, that was who we all wanted to be. It was basically Superman, Batman, Fonzi, or Ken Stabler.

Well, today, I googled Ken Stabler to see what he was up to these days (other than eating chili burgers and ribs on Food Network). I saw he had a website, so I sent him the following email:

Hey Snake!

Saw you on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives the other day! My wife had no idea who you were. And I said 'Are you kidding me?' I told her about when I was a boy, you were they guy that all of us on the playground wanted to be. 10 or 12 boys running around yelling 'I'm Ken Stabler!', 'No, I'M Ken Stabler!'

Her excuse was that she grew up watching the niners (her family only started watching them because they found out that they had a quarterback that looked like Barry Manilow and they liked Barry Manilow).

Anyhow, just wanted to say hi!

Thanks!

BigKat

Well, he wrote back to me! The Snake wrote back to me! He even signed it 'Snake' at the end! Here's what he wrote:

BigKat

What a fun e.mail....I played with and for a great group of people and we played for all the right reasons..for each other, the city, ownership, and fans like yourself.

All the best to you and yours

Snake

I'm so happy. I feel like I'm 6 years old again. It's cool knowing that Ken Stabler is my new best friend.

How'd I miss this?

From Rick Reilly:

"Why is nobody talking about Antrel Rolle!" All he did was lose the Super Bowl for the Cardinals! Rolle, the Cardinals' safety, was on the sideline at the end of the first half when Steelers linebacker James Harrison intercepted Kurt Warner at the goal line and began his unthinkable 100-yard touchdown rumble. That was a 14-point swing for the Steelers and turned the game. But Cards' wide receiverLarry Fitzgerald was close to catching Harrison at the 30 when he ran smack into Rolle, who had stepped onto the field go get a good look at Harrison going past. Fitzgerald slammed into Rolle, pushed him out of the way, had to start over and didn't get to Harrison again until the goal line, when it was too late

Did this really happen? I've long since deleted the SuperBowl from my tivo, so I had to go to YouTube...

Wow...

Harrison barely made that touchdown. If Rolle stays off the field and Fitzgerald doesn't run into him...

CURSE YOU ANTREL ROLLE!!!

Overtime Debate

I just read this article in which Don Banks and Peter King debate the NFL's overtime rules.  I've actually emailed in my comments to them a couple of times about this, but never heard anything about it. Here's what I think:

1) Peter King mentions several times that the current OT rules are unfair because, in roughly a third of all OT games, the team that wins the coin flip scores on the first possession. Therefore, winning the coin flip is too much of an advantage.

I think this is goofy! If you want to figure out if the coin flip is an advantage, you should be looking at the percentage of teams that win the coin flip that go on to win OT. If that number is much more than 50%, then you can say that there's a problem.

2) I believe that there's an easy solution to take away the advantage of the coin flip. It works under the same principle that you'd use when you have 2 kids that want to share a cookie. In the cookie scenario, you have one kid cut the cookie in half and let the other kid choose who gets which half. In OT, one team gets to choose the spot of the opening possession (yardline and direction). The other team then gets to choose whether they want to start on offense or defense. The winner of the coin flip chooses who gets to make which decision. Simple!

So if a team wins the coin toss and really wants the ball, they can get it...but they may end up starting at their own 5 yard line going into a headwind!

I really don't know why no one has ever brought this idea up, it just seems so obvious to me. I have to assume that there's at keast one sportswriter or coach out there who's had to make his kids share a cookie.

Trinity/Millsaps

Here's another video of the Trinity/Millsaps play, but from a better angle and with more detail. I didn't notice this in the original video, but the lateral at the end, the ball actually skipped on the ground before it got to the guy that ended up scoring.

Busy Busy Busy

I haven't done an update here in a while, but I have several posts that are half done. I've found that it takes me a long time to do a really interesting post. And lately it seems like it's very hard to find any free time. But the fall soccer season is officially over now, so hopefully, that will make things a little less busy. Although we are thinking of signing both boys up for basketball. We'll see.

Anyhow, here are my 3 interesting things for the day.

1) One of the cats threw up on my VOIP router. It still works, but it's pretty yucky.

2) I made my first 2 running goals! Now I have 2 little medals!

3) I just saw this video:

49ers Bad News or Good News?

Bay Area sports writer Ira Miller wrote an article about the sad state of the SF 49er running game. Frank Gore, the 49er running back, is having a particularly bad year. To illustrate this, Miller says:

Throw out that 43-yard touchdown run on fourth down against the Rams, and Gore is averaging only 3.1 a carry.

to which one of his readers replied:

Throw out all his other runs and he is averaging an amazing 43.0 a carry.

So I guess it all depends on how you look at it. Aren't football stats fun?

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Here are a few of my favorite things...

 

Hmmm...now neither of these guys is on my team. I still like them though.

 

The guy he dunks over is 7'2"

 

I think this was the same All Star weekend when Richardson bounced the ball off of Carlos Boozer's head and the drilled the 3 to end the Rookie/Sophomore game. So it was a good weekend for him!

 

J-Rich should've won this instead of Fred Jones. He did a dunk at the end that would've been the best dunk ever. He threw it in the air (I think it might've even been off the backboard), did a 360, went between the legs, and almost dunked it. He still should've won though. This dunk was great.

By the way, the first time I saw this, it wasn't in Spanish. 

 

Who would've thought that Matt Barnes would make it into my favorite things list?

 

Mrs. BigKat hated this series. Plays like this were too stressful for her.

 

I missed this one live. I'm really sad that I missed this one live.

 

Coach Cheeks is so nice. I don't know why D-Miles would want to say all those bad things about him.

 

My buddy says that he can do this. But he also lies a lot, so there you go...

 

I missed this one live too...

 

When I watched this game live, I thought that they were going to call it back.

 

This was the best. I still have this game on Tivo.