Thoughts on ESPN, McDowell, video games and more

                    

	It was good to see ESPN not go overboard in hyping Tedy Bruschi's return. AP
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Quick hits from the sports world...

• Oh, did Tedy Bruschi return last night? I watched the entire game on ESPN ... must've missed the coverage of it.

• Sometimes when I watch Sunday Night Football on ESPN, I wonder if I'm watching the same game as Theismann and Maguire.

• Roger McDowell? The Braves new pitching coach is Roger McDowell? Wasn't he the guy that used to wear wigs and pull wacky stunts during those Rock and Jock games? Great.

• My dream theory about the loss of Leo Mazzone: Wouldn't it be great if the Braves suddenly reeled off about five straight World Series titles and the team ERA. dropped by an entire run? Maybe Mazzone's been the one holding us back all these years. Improbable, yes, but at this point I'm grasping for hope.

• If I wrote a column about N.C. State football, I'd start by calling Chuck Amato "Chia," for his luscious mane.

• If you want to laugh, the funniest book I've read in about a year is Early Bird  by Rodney Rothman. At 28, Rothman quit his gig writing for TV and moved into a Florida retirement home. Especially phenomenal is the shuffleboard chapter, when Rothman tries to come up with exciting new ways to promote shuffleboard to the retirees, to compete with the popularity of tennis. One flyer we writes reads: "Tennis is great exercise. If you consider exercise getting lifted into the back of an ambulance with acute dehydration."

• I'm wrong sometimes. But rarely am I this wrong for so long. But if I ever find myself in a similar situation, I'll jump on the bandwagon like he did.

• The Eagles need to draft Chris Leak, so they can have another mobile quarterback who refuses to run. Also, Leak looks to be pretty good at throwing those bounce passes that McNabb fires at the feet of the Eagles receivers.

• Eli Manning is playing well, sure, but can we wait until he's won at least one road game before we crown him king? You know, maybe just one?

• My top five video games right now:
1) NBA 2K6. I've got the Hawks in the NBA Finals...in 2007.
2) The Warriors. Just play it.
3) Tiger Woods 2006. Where I break 100 every time.
4) FIFA 2006. I reviewed it here, though it's been considerably less fun since I got fired from Millwall.
5) Madden 2006. Yes, it's still in the rotation. I tried Blitz, but the football action was lacking and it took about three hours to load. So I'm rolling with Madden.

• If I had to be on any NFL team, I'd choose the Denver Broncos. Not because I like them or anything, but because it would be cool to have my first and last name on my jersey like Mike Anderson and Darrent Williams have on theirs.

• Here's my contribution to The Rant: I've never worked in television, but I've always assumed it was a mostly visual medium. So why is it almost every time I'm watching a game (or, more egregiously, SportsCenter) and a graphic comes up on the screen, the announcers feel the need to read it to us. Don't they realize that we're watching? If we couldn't see, we probably wouldn't be watching TV.

• When does hockey start?

Learning a lesson

I need to come clean about my recent golfing misadventures. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my triumphant shattering of the century mark. The next two times I played after that, I broke 100.

So, sitting on three straight under-100 scores, I screwed it all up: I took a lesson.

Recently I went out to Randalls Island, tucked under the Triborough Bridge here in New York City, for a class with a pro. He watched me take a few strokes and pulled me aside. The glaring flaw he noticed in my swing was that my arms and wrists were stiff. Instead of rotating my clubhead toward the sky on my backswing and follow-through, I was keeping the club rigid, swinging it like a putter on a full swing. I then spent the hour working on staying loose, and practicing having my club chop down on the ball. He claimed that if I could incorporate this wrinkle into my swing, I could add 30 to 40 yards of distance.

(Embarrassing part of the lesson came when the pro asked me why I was wearing my golf glove unfastened, with the velcro strap was flapping in the breeze. I told him it was because I'd forgotten to hook it shut. I was too embarrassed to say it was because I love Deion Sanders and that I'd probably be wearing a do-rag, too, if I could pull that look off.)

A week later, I went to Puerto Rico and had a chance to play on the beautiful Ocean Course, which was populated with iguanas and various wildlife. For the first three holes I tried my "new" swing and went 8, 7, 8. Scrapped it after that and finished at 104, my head swimming. Should I stick with it or revert to what was working? Last weekend I returned to the links outside Atlanta and attempted to be more committed to the new swing but finished with a 115, playing the toughest course I've ever played in my life.

So now I'm between swings, hoping that once I get this new thing down I'll be like Tiger after he mastered his new swing. Somehow I doubt it.

Game Of The Week

This is a lot like Mission: Impossible, except without those fake rubber masks and stuff.

Video Of The Week

So many people sent this to me that I can't credit any one person. A very worthwhile three minutes. I just kept waiting for the guy in the back to turn around and belt out the "Tell me whyy-ee?" part.

Bizarre Link Of The Week

A model of San Francisco. Made entirely of Jell-O.

Lang Whitaker is the online editor at SLAM magazine and writes daily at http://www.SLAMonline.com.