Facial hair on the Broncos QB and more wackiness

Each Friday, SI.com's Justin Doom offers his take on the week's most interesting stories.

For a guy who left Arizona, Plummer looks like he belongs in Raising Arizona. Getty Images

So Jake Plummer kinda-sorta apologized for his F-bomb-laden phone call to a Rocky Mountain News columnist after she outed his Broncos cheerleader girlfriend. He also said his related comment ripping fans -- "You think Denver has the greatest fans? Well, they aren't" -- was "taken out of context." You know what Jake really needs to fix this whole mess? The magic 'stache.

Remember Plummer's moustache? It was epic. He looked as though he could've passed for Rookie Cop No. 2 in Super Troopers. And now there's an actual online petition you can sign in support of the 'stache.

Who doesn't want to see this thing make a comeback, besides maybe Plummer's new gal pal? I hope she digs facial hair. Otherwise, Jake may soon be saying something, surely taken completely out of context, such as "You think Denver has the greatest cheerleaders? Well, they aren't."

Man in grocery store bumps into cart, falls down, waits for whistle

Vlade Divac, who joins Hakeem and Kareem are the only centers in NBA history to collect 13,000 points, 9,000 boards, 3,000 assists and 1,500 blocks, announced this week that he's retiring to take a job with the Lakers as a liaison/scout in Europe.

The Lakers surely will do everything they can to honor Divac's many accomplishments with the team, possibly by constructing a large bronze statue in front of the Staples Center that depicts a smallish power forward spinning past an already-toppled and astonished-looking Divac who's flat on his back begging for a call.

Tell us how you really feel, Part 1

As noted in Tuesday's L.A. Times Morning Briefing, American-based freelance writer Steven Wells recently wrote in England's Guardian newspaper why he's not exactly a fan of America's pastime:

"Most American males over the age of 30 will parrot the line that soccer is 'deadly' to watch. And yet, every week throughout the summer, hundreds of thousands of Americans ... dutifully troop into state-of-the-art stadiums to spends three hours (or longer) watching baseball -- a sport so glacially tedious that it makes even the dullest MLS soccer game look like Topless Humans vs. Gorillas No-Rules Roller Derby on Crystal Meth."

Wells immediately was contacted by the Fox network, which sought to purchase the rights to such a show.

Tell us how you really feel, Part 2

Speaking of Fox, and of baseball, Salon.com's King Kaufman, who's long been critical of the network's sports broadcasts, wrote an excellent piece this week on this season's playoff coverage, including how Thom Brennaman now has supplanted Steve Lyons as Fox's "most irritating announcer":

"It starts and nearly ends with his irritating, high-in-the-throat voice, which sounds like he's trying to imitate what he thinks an announcer should sound like. Then there are his 'this is what a baseball announcer is supposed to sound like' mannerisms, like stretching out the word 'long' for about five seconds whenever he uses it, or saying 'nineteen hundred and eighteen' to refer to a long-ago year, rather than, you know, '1918.'"

As someone who's watched a "mighty good" number of Cubs and D-Backs games for a llloooooong, llloooooong time, "by no means" can I disagree with Kaufman. Boyyy, oh boy.

Blue 32, Red 18, Black 80 ... and the Powerball ... 47

The NFL this week cracked down on an Illinois lottery promo where winners were promised Super Bowl tickets, ostensibly because lottery officials didn't secure league approval to use or even refer to "NFL" or "Super Bowl," both of which are licensed trademarks. Those who won Super Bowl tickets still will receive them even though the promotion, which was supposed to run through the end of the month, was shut down Wednesday night.

Lottery officials recognized that using "NFL" or "Super Bowl" could put them in a bind, so they instead called their promo "Super Game XL," which still wasn't good enough for the NFL.

"If you are describing what everybody perceives as the Super Bowl," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said, "that is a trademark infringement."

"And, clearly," McCarthy did not add, "in a league where we shamelessly exploit everything from gyrating girls to beer guzzling to penis-enhancement pills to market our product, this completely free publicity for our biggest event of the year is not something we're looking for. And it has nothing to do with how we like to pretend the NFL is in no way linked to gambling. That's preposterous. By the way, on a completely unrelated note, did you see that the Rams are only minus-3 at home vs. the Saints this week? Did I just say that out loud?"