I trust everyone had a great Memorial weekend. Some went out of town, I did not. Extended days away from work, typically, provide enough relief that I don't need to spend a paycheck just for gas on an exhausting trip. I joined the family and had the typical cookout with cheeseburgers, chicken wings, potato skins, macaroni salad and baked beans. I spent that night praying endlessly to the porcelain gods.
There's a long standing tradition on Sundays. It has nothing to do with football, basketball or baseball. It's the wonderful world of racing. The green flag fell, early Sunday afternoon, for the "greatest spectacle in racing" -- The Indy 500. And honestly, any race that ends with Ashley Judd wearing a soaking wet dress is a great freaking race. While Indy suffered a long rain delay before ending prematurely because of, Ashley... err... rain, NASCAR ran their longest race of the year; the endurance race; the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's. To sum up, for any racing fan, 1,100 miles of racing is freaking fantastic! Long story short, this racing weekend saw unlikely winners which actually pulls us from the mondane results of five drivers winning, unscientifically, 90% of the races.
But I'm not here to talk about racing. Not since we have Restrictor Plate This on board. But there was other action this extended weekend. MMA played out a marquee match Saturday with two champion fighters. The San Antonio Spurs took a 3-1 lead Monday Night in the NBA's Western Conference Finals. The Cavs won a critical game three in the Eastern Conference Finals. The underdog Anaheim Ducks beat a heavily favored Ottawa Senators in game one of the Stanley Cup finals.
While all this happened, the Cincinnati Bengals locked up (pun intended) everything and everyone to avoid any news that would broadway as instant headlines -- you know, the small list of headlines that says, ESPNews Headlines. And what is ESPNews? It's not a compound word because they removed the required second "N". It should be ESPNnews. If you split the word, into their supposed meaning, it makes no sense. ESPN ews... some people will say ESPN is disgusting. Or it could be ESP News. Which makes sense because ESPN does have that Extra-sensory perception morphing trivial news stories into major headlines (read: Clinton Portis). Perhaps they are just being edgy.. but poor attempts at molecular word engineering isn't very edgy. Craig Krenzel agrees. Perhaps it's just laziness. But we know that's not true because they work very hard at destroying decent products (read: Baseball Tonight).
Perhaps because I live in Cincinnati, I find ESPN's hating on double-N rather troublesome. Perhaps their extra-sense into the super-natural world is something I can't attune my mind to... and in that, ESPN is truly the gift of the sporting gods. Perhaps I'm all wrong. Perhaps ESPN's hatred on "double-N" is purposeful. Like some covert ESPN guy setting up the Bengals to fall. Perhaps, Marvin Lewis was already understanding this when he confirmed that there was profiling... not racial, rather ESPN Bengals-profiling.
I may not fully understand, but I do believe I'm onto something here.
In Bengals news...
- Friday begins a mandatory workout that will last the weekend. T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Deltha O'Neal, "the only healthy veterans not at the first voluntary workout on May 15", will be in town.
- Geoff Hobson, opting not to use Top-Five Questions, examines the upcoming workout.
- The organization released their 2007 Cheerleader roster. Cheerleaders rock!