friday's ramblings

Brian Boitano would be proud.

Last night, Evan Lysacek became the first non-Russian to win the men's figure skating gold medal since ... Brian Boitano, in Calgary 22 years ago.

Between the Olympics, college hoops, two tremendous NBA showdowns between four championship contenders, and an epic "Survivor" tribal council, its a wonder I'm functioning today. But anyways, here's Friday's Findings:

* the thing I loved the most about Evan's gold medal winning performance? The fist pumps at the end. When he knew he'd nailed the performance, and is there at center ice, doing the double fist pump and shouting "yes! yes! yes!" Like me after a great Chiefs play. I love it.

* men's curling falls to 0-4. On the bright side, the sooner they're eliminated, the sooner they can have some fun with that 14-1 ratio of condoms to athletes.

* the morning after, and the BuKCs deals yesterday look even better than they did at the time. GM John Hammond did a tremendous job yesterday, picking up a solid starting two in Salmons, importing a decent defender in Ivey, and gaining not one, not two, but three! second round picks over the next three years. In addition, the BuKCs can swap firsts with Chicago this year if the Bulls pick is outside the top 10. Solid, solid effort.

And yeah, I know, you don't build in the NBA with second round picks, but at least now the BuKCs have ammunition to trade up in round one over the next three years (or trade back into the bottom of round one) thanks to having six second round selections.

* The 'Cuse holds off Georgetown. Always a good thing to sweep your hated rival.

* Intriguing night on the bubble. Minnesota stopped the bleeding and got a huge blowout win over co-leader Wisconsin. Marquette embarrassed themselves in a humbling loss at home to Pitt. Mississippi choked at home against Vanderbilt. Florida got a win it needed over Auburn. Cal got rolled by Oregon State. The next three weeks are gonna be entertaining. I just hope the Selection Committee sees these power six schools sh*tting all over themselves, and decides "you know what, we're better off taking a top two school from a mid major conference, than we are taking a team that finished 8th in the SEC".

* Huge weekend of college hoops upcoming. Its Bracket Buster weekend on the ESPN Family of Networks. Again, Selection Committee, please: the teams getting their shot at national exposure this weekend are FAR better selections than the 9th place finisher in the Big East. NOBODY outside of Cincinnati wants to see a 18-13 Bearcats team get in over a 25-7 Wichita State team or a 30 win Cornell team that nearly beat KU in Lawrence and is running away with the Ivy League.

* Best games / most intriguing games / games I just want to watch:

Colorado at KU (3pm Saturday, 38 the Spot). Guess its time to dust off the "Picture Quality on 38 the Spot Sucks" Facebook page. KU hasn't looked great at home against two doormats (Nebraska, Iowa State) the last couple weeks. And they needed overtime to win in Boulder last month. With a backloaded difficult closing stretch (at OSU / vs KSU / at MU) awaiting the next two weeks, I'd like to see the Hawks jump out to a 20 point lead at halftime and win something like 90-55.

Tennessee at South Carolina (12:30 Saturday, no local TV). South Carolina needs this win. Badly. Especially coming off the proverbial "crapping the pants" defeat at Arkansas earlier this week.

Baylor at Oklahoma State (12:30 Saturday, 38 the Spot). Oklahoma State needs this win. Badly. They were the last team in on Bracketology this week.

UNC at Boston College (11am Saturday, CBS). Can UNC inch one step closer to arguably the most humiliating, pathetic, sh*t-tacular title defense in history? God I hope so. Go Eagles Go!

Florida at Mississippi (11am Saturday, no local TV). Potential play-in game?

Xavier at Charlotte (1pm Saturday, no local TV). Big A10 game between two solid contenders for the tournament.

Missouri at Nebraska (5pm Saturday, Metro Sports). Tigers House of Horrors. They can't afford to screw up the three "easy" games left, and this is one of them.

Villanova at Pitt (11am Sunday, CBS). Rematch of one of the best Regional Finals in history. Possible Big East championship on the line as well.

* Two tremendous NBA games last night. Boston holds off LA in Staples. I know the Lakers were Kobe-less, but the Celtics needed this game, if only to prove to themselves that they still have the talent to beat anyone on any given night. Could be a win that rights the ship, so to speak. And the Nuggets / Cavs, holy God. That is the NBA at its finest. That game (118-116 Nuggets in OT) is why I freaking love the NBA. LBJ had 43. Carmelo had 40, including a contested game winner from 20 feet as time expired. Give me a game with both teams well over 100 any day of the week over a 59-55 Big 10 (plus one) slugfest.

* The road to the playoffs is officially underway now for the BuKCs. 30 games left. Trailing Chicago by 1 1/2. The playoff odds at espn.com still have the BuKCs stealing the eight seed, but not by much. Games like tonight (at Detroit) are games the BuKCs simply have to win. You can't whiz away layup wins like the Pistons if you expect to be playing come "40 Games in 40 Nights" time.

* The new season of "Survivor" has been awesome so far. Last night's episode was really good. (If you haven't seen it yet, feel free to skip this paragraph). You open with Boston Rob of all people collapsing under the strain of stress and a killer flu epidemic. He was literally foaming at the mouth, he was so out of it. Fortunately, he recovered, and helped rally the Villains to win immunity again ... which led to an epic, absolutely epic, meltdown on the Heroes side with James and Stephenie trading verbal assaults all the way through the torch being snuffed out. If you checked out on "Survivor" a while ago (like I did), you might want to come back this season. Last year drew me back in, and this year's been even better. (You can catch up at cbs.com, or, considering you're only two episodes in, you really haven't missed much up to this point, so join early-stream).

* OK, time to deal with the Event of the Day, I guess. The Eldrick T. Woods presser.

My thought on this whole sordid affair is basically this:

Who cares?

Sure, as someone that despises Eldrick T. Woods, I'm kind of getting a high out of watching his world implode. But what exactly did Eldrick T. Woods do to deserve the public scorn, the backlash against him?

So he cheated on his wife with numerous women. OK. What concern is that of ours? I don't mean to belittle infidelity, which is certainly a serious thing. But isn't it a PRIVATE serious thing? Or at least it should be? Eldrick T. Woods didn't do one thing that millions of people aren't doing, and that any one of us wouldn't at least seriously contemplate doing if we were in his position.

Seriously, what did Eldrick T. Woods do that justifies apologizing to the paying public? He didn't kill someone while driving drunk and/or high (Donte Stallworth, Leonard Little). He didn't use illegal, banned substances and then lie before a Congressional grand jury (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, to name a few). He didn't kill a teammate because of driving recklessly (Dany Heatley). He didn't beat his wife (Jim Brown). He didn't get arrested with over 340 lbs of weed in a truck he was driving (Nate Newton). He didn't get arrested for soliciting "self employed models", doing lines of coke, dropping the "Do You Know Who I Am" blast at cops, and most recently, face a multi-million dollar lawsuit for raping a chick (Michael Irvin). He didn't run an illegal gambling ring that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of pit bulls (Michael Vick). He didn't plow into a cop writing him a ticket (Randy Moss). All those athletes continue to earn a living in the sport that made them famous, and for the most part, the American public couldn't give a rat's ass. And yet EVERY SINGLE ONE of the incidents above is FAR worse in my book than getting going down on a cocktail waitress in a church parking lot.

Break the law, even on multiple occasions, and we the sports public forgive you. Cheat on your wife, and sorry pal, you don't deserve a second chance? Huh? What f*cked up sense of logic is that?

Again, I'm not attempting to paste over what Eldrick T. did. I personally think cheating is the most pathetic thing a person can do. It indicates a complete lack of self-control, and a complete disregard for your significant other. Its the most self-centered act a person can commit. But if the worst thing a guy does is cheat, I can live with that. Eldrick T. doesn't need to apologize to me. Or to anyone else not in his immediate family and circle of friends. That's why today's presser was so pointless. He's apologizing to people he doesn't need to apologize to.

The worst thing out of today though, is that he continues to come off as the self-centered egotistical arrogant prick I've always believed him to be. This presser wasn't about seeking forgiveness or getting back into the public's good graces. It was all about Eldrick T. Woods, his (still) completely out of control ego, and his belief that the world should (still) cater to his every wish and demand. "Leave my family out of this". Too late, Eldrick. You drug them into it with your "irresponsible and reckless behavior", to borrow your own words.

I hope for his wife and kid's sake, that whatever rehabilitation he is going through works. As a golf fan, I hope he comes back to the sport as good as he ever was, and the sooner the better.

(And I still want to know how someone can not be addicted to sex. The lingering question in the room, and nobody has an answer ...)