As I look forward to Monday and the revealing of our topic of discussion, I thought I'd write about some more sportscaster and announcer tendencies that leave you befuddled and/or annoyed.  I know there's been discussion in other blogs on here about the worst announcer quotes and I've talked before about some other quips announcers usually make during a game. Please consider this a continuation of the conversation.  Here are some more of my pet peeves:

The overuse of adjectives that don't really fit the situation.

These adjectives usually include words like "amazing," and "unbelievable."  They're typically used by news anchors when throwing out a teaser for an upcoming sports segment.  For example..."Still ahead, you don't want to miss the unbelievable finish in the Sixers game tonight!"  Then you stay tuned and it turns out Iverson hit a long three pointer as time ran out.  Frankly, I find that finish quite believable.  I've actually seen a similar finish quite a few times.  Iverson is the Sixers' star so it's not surprising that he got the ball in that situation.  Also, he's a very good player, so the fact that he made it really doesn't leave my jaw dropping either.  I would describe that ending to the game as "exciting."  Now if the Sixers called a time out, then Manute Bol came out of retirement and emerged from the huddle for the last play, got the ball on a dish from Air Bud and finished the game off with a tomahawk jam,that I would describe as unbelievable.

The "I don't want to jinx the kicker with a stat that indicates pefection but I'll say it anyway."

This is just maddening and I'm sure quite a few can relate.  Out trots your team's kicker for the field goal and right before the guy's about to kick, one of the announcers has to throw out a stat like the guy hasn't missed from inside the forty in his last 38 tries.  Of course, right on cue, the guy misses.  As if it wasn't bad enough he jinxed him, he's got to make a joke of it and laugh at what he did:  "Hey, I guessed I must have jinxed him.  Ha Ha.  Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut"  No shi* you jinxed him, Al MIchaels.  Why did you have to give that stat before he kicked?  I don't understand.  Why would you say that?!?  Why can't you just wait until he makes the kick and say "that makes 39 for 39."  How many times as this happened over the years? I'd love to see a stat on that.

The sportscaster who has to interject a witty reference or comment.

This phenomenon was documented in an SNL skit with Ray Romano ("Sweet sassy molassy."  Ah, that was good stuff).  Anyway, even if someone thinks that it's annoying when they do it on ESPN, at least their anchors are good at it.  My hometown has a sportscaster who is just awful.  I'm assuming the people who hired him and the newscasters around him either think he's clever because they don't watch sports, or they just send it over to him and stop listening.  Regardless of how mundane the highlight is, this guy's got to throw something in there:  "Williams dropped back and hit his receiver deep, that ended the game and the kids started to weep. Oh man, let's see that again, I just gotta peep."  That was a high school football game, dude.  There were 300 people there.  Just tell me who won the game so you guys can go to commercial.  Is that too much to ask?  Is there any station I can go to anymore where they just tell me what happened and who won the game in a normal voice?

I'm going to head back to sports, now, if that's ok, as some people's insults have inspired me to talk about my next subject:  the heckle.  Ah, yes.  The heckle.  There's nothing like hurling a good insult that is cloaked with so much wit, even the player himself must laugh at the disparaging remark that was just directed towards him.  And for those who can't be witty, a well-timed "you suck!" can do the job just as well.

I'm going to be honest, here.  As much as I like to offer the biting commentary about certain things, I don't have the personality it takes to be a good heckler.  I'm too shy.  True self-reflection:  I think this all goes back to eighth grade when I was watching a friend's little league baseball game.  After the third baseman booted a ball, I started chanting EEEEEEEEEEE 6! EEEEEEEEEEEEE 6!  I thought I would be greeted with laughter from my friends, even if some of the parents couldn't laugh along with us.  But alas, I had forgotten that the third baseman is really the number 5 position in baseball and the shortstop is number 6.  Not only that, but everyone looked at me as if to say "you're not funny, you're just a dic*."  I never truly shouted a heckle like that again, even as I developed my confidence in other areas of life.  Heckling for me is now the equivalent of talking dirty in the bedroom:  Sure, I've got some great things to say.  But I just can't get myself to speak up and say them.

I enjoy nothing better at a sporting event like I enjoy a good heckle.  I would have given my left arm to be sitting in front of the Panthers' cheerleaders during their first game back after the Tampa incident or behind the Vikings bench during the Love Boat scandal.  Sadly, though, if I thought of a good quip or chant I probably would have leaned over to a friend and seen if he would heckle for me.  Then maybe if it caught on, I could join in. 

I know the Cameron Crazies are apparently heralded for their creative heckling and I'm sure many of you can relate some clever stories from other venues.  Perhaps you were the one who heckled a player.  Or perhaps you are StaceyMargarita and you take your heckling to the next level by heckling fans and players alike.  Either way, I applaud your bravado.  I wish I had it in me.

So, can anyone offer up a comical heckling story?  I actually think this could be amusing.  If you want to reveal who your Super Bowl picks are, please keep them to yourself.  Couldn't care less.  But if you've got a good heckling story, I'd sincerely like to hear it. One more day until blogger camp is over:  I can't bear to think about it.

Ok, I'm trying to run the gamut of different blogs.  So far I've tried the humorous approach, the serious analysis approach, and the blog about blogging approach.  Today, I'm ashamed to say I'm pulling out the "give me your feedback" post.  But it's not just a simple question like "who's going to win the AFC?"  Any response to a question like that rarely has any individuality to it, as you can only say so much that hasn't already been said.  The question that I'm asking speaks a person's heart and can only be answered by one person:  you, the fan. 

So often we like to play home sports analyst or columnist and offer insight on a variety of issues.   But even though we most likely would never admit it, we probably aren't qualified to speak very intelligently on a lot of those issues.  This is not to say that our opinions aren't valid or correct, only that if we knew so much about the game of football, or baseball, or basketball, etc., we would probably have a job somewhere in that industry (not always true, but most likely).

I bet most of the bloggers on here have never played major college sports on a serious level and even fewer have played professionally.  But all of us--that's right, every last one of us--has sat in front of the television or in a stadium and watched the big game being played.  We are the fans.  We celebrate with our teams through the good times, and we stick it out with them through the bad times.

Being the pessimist I am on most days (and a Philly fan also, as the two kind of go hand-in-hand), I'm going to ask a negative question that can easily be flipped around to elicit a joyful reaction from people.  And that question is:  What is your worst sports fan moment?  Like I said, you can easily ask the "What is your greatest sports fan moment?" question.  But guess what.  I'm a Philly fan.  I'm telling the truth when I say I can remember watching sports as far back as 1984 when I was six years old.  I'm sure as good sports fans, we all know Philly's last championship in a major sport was the Sixers in '83.  What that means is that as nice as so many of you have been to me in terms of offering your comments and gracious words of encouragement, you can take your greatest sports fan moment and go fu** yourself.  Ah, that felt great.  I actually just went out on my balcony and booed a guy who was putting up a plastic Santa Claus in his yard across the street.  I think the cops might be on their way here.

Anyway, back to the worst sports fan moment.  Obviously, only you can truly speak to when you felt the most sickening feeling in your stomach due to something that happened in sports.  Maybe you're a Bills fan and it was after they lost their fourth consecutive Super Bowl, or maybe you're an Astros fan and it was after you got swept this year in the Series.  I suppose since I'm a huge Eagles fan, many would guess that my worst moment came after a NFC Championship Game loss or when they lost to the Pats in the Super Bowl.  And the answer for me would be not even close.  Because as much as those losses hurt, I didn't feel like we were robbed.  Or as if victory was ours and we could taste it, but we had it unfairly taken away or snatched from us at the last second.  Doing my best to avoid a domestic violence charge, I will now recall my three worst sports fan moments in no particular order.

The Fog Bowl-Yes, the Fog Bowl.  The Birds had been bad ever since I began watching them, but it looked as though for the first time since I pledged my allegiance to the team, they were going to make the playoffs and put up a good fight against the Bears.  And then came the fog.  Lots of fog.  Thick fog that you couldn't see through.  Fog that made it impossible for a young, upstart quarterback named Randall Cunningham to see his receivers and fog that catered to the Bears' strong running game.  How can you play the game when you can't see anything?  I couldn't even enjoy the game I had waited so long for because the cameras didn't penetrate the fog and no one knew what was going on.  I know that the officials of that game are probably very old by now, but if I ever find out one of them is in a local hospital nearby, I'm making a special trip to unplug his ventilator.  Play a whole game of football when you can't even see the field?  Bah!

1993 World Series-At the beginning of the season, no one expected us to be there.  But we were going to do it.  Dykstra, Dalton, the Kruker and all the other boys were just having a good time out there.  Just like we would if we were playing.  I felt like I was on the Phillies that year, even though I was 15.  We had gotten past the Braves with a first round upset and found ourselves in Toronto against the Blue Jays for game 6.  Sure, it was game 6.  Who knows what would have happened in game 7.  But you could feel the momentum swinging back our way when we won game 5.  And after the Phils mounted a late inning comeback to take the lead with the aid of a Dykstra home run, you knew it was a magical season and we weren't going to be denied.  And then that S.O.B. Mitch Williams came out of the bullpen.  The Wild Thing.  The Wild Thing was a cool nickname for Charlie Sheen in "Major League," Mitch, but not for a pitcher who actually played the game for real.  Everyone knows what happened from there. Wild Thing, you make me want to commit murder-suicide.  If I ever see you show your face in Philly again, I will take my cheesesteak, burn you with its cheese, and throw hot peppers in your eyes.

PSU Basketball Falls To Indiana in OT-On a normal day, I'm not a huge basketball fan.  But this game was different.  We all know about PSU's basketball program.  Not exactly a storied program.  But like I said, this was one we could finally get into.  PSU, if I remember correctly, was lead by Bruce Parkhill at the time.  And who was coming to Rec Hall?  Oh, that's right.  A number-one ranked Indiana and Bobby Knight.  No one thought PSU had a chance.  In all honesty, they shouldn't have.  But that night they played inspired ball.  And even though I couldn't reach through my TV and bi*ch slap Bobby Knight myself, the PSU boys were going to do it for me.    I don't remember the year, I don't really remember the players involved, but I remember the play like it was yesterday.  PSU up by three, very little time left, our ball from out of bounds.  On the inbound pass, one of the PSU guys breaks down court.  As he does so, the badly beat Indiana player takes the biggest handful of jersey I've ever seen.  Basically, he was conceding the fact that the only way the PSU player wasn't going to score was if he fouled him and stopped the play.  As the PSU player goes for the ball and gets raped, he reaches back and slaps the guy's hand away to try and break free, basically saying "ok, you fouled me, now get off me."  Ref blows his whistle and the entire crowd erupts as it's an obvious foul call and the game is pretty much locked up if the PSU guy makes a free throw.  What does the ref call?  Of course, an offensive foul for pushing off.  The fans were in absolute shock.  To this day, it was the worst call I have ever seen in a sporting event.  Indiana gets the ball, gets fouled taking a three point shot, makes the free throws, game goes to OT, and Indiana wins.  That ref needed a police escort out and was told he shouldn't return to State College again.  Which was probably a good call, because if he came back and I knew he was coming, I would have put on a Nittany Lion costume, pretended like I was doing some playful antic like rubbing his head, then pulled a knife out of my costume and stabbed him. 

Well, all right then.  I'm off to take some sedatives.  How about you guys?  I challenge you to bring up horrible memories and ruin your day as you tell everyone what your worst sports fan moment is. 

***It's time for some more shameless self-promotion.  If you like anything you see from me, please feel free free to back and comment on something I wrote a while back as I put up a new post every day.  Rememember, my "you read my blog, I'll read yours" promotion is good until the beginning of next year.  And again, unless you were a sociology major in college or you get a good chuckle out of media bias and corporate greed, I'd advise you to skip the 97 page dissertation on T.O. and the media.

A few quick things.  Number one, I didn't write original theme songs for all the teams myself.  Nothing rhymes with Leftwich.  I just kind of took other songs and played with the words a little.  I'm well aware that there's pretty much zero chance anyone knows all of these songs and for that I apologize.  If there's one area of useless knowledge I have that's greater than sports, it's probably the music genre as I have incredibly diverse taste.  Hopefully, you'll know some.  I also know that a lot of times the words don't exactly fit with the melody, so you'll have to do your best to make it work.  I think if you try to sing the song in your head, the whole experience will be much more enjoyable, too.     

Number two, the reasoning behind the title is that if I went to grad school and spent half the time looking for a cure for AIDS as I did trying to think of songs to fit every NFL team, society would be well on its way to endorsing unprotected sex because it feels better.  Seriously, if I put my address on here can someone just come and steal this computer?  I can't walk so there's no way I can put up a fight. 

One more thing.  Like I said to Mets in a comment under my last post, at times I can have the self-esteem of an obese 7^th grade girl.  I don't understand why I wasn't in the most popular section yesterday.  I guess FoxSports doesn't like me.  Oh well, I know who my true blogging friends are and I hope you enjoy:

My last two posts have been serious analysis.  Enough of that, though, as I don't want to risk losing any kind of very small readership I may have developed by pulling the old switch-er-oo like some people do when they hand you a pamphlet that says "You want to know where the greatest party is?" Then you open it up and it says "Heaven.  And Jesus Christ is working the door."  Or something like that.  So, here's some random sports questions I would like answered, but no one will probably ever ask.

Why didn't Rene Portland consider another career?  Excuse my blatant stereotypes, but if you get that bent out of shape over interacting with lesbians, I think the first thing you need to do is reevaluate you selection of WOMEN'S BASKETBALL COACH as an occupation.  Then, just to be safe, I think Rene should also briefly reflect on her choice of hairstyles.  Portland banning lesbians from her basketball team is the equivalent of a male figure-skating coach banning gay guys from his rink.  Utterly inconceivable in my mind, but apparently true.

Why are Gunther Cunningham's glasses tinted yellow?  Is he going downhill skiing after the game? I don't get it.

What's with the Summer Olympic "jumping events"?  Ok, I know this is a little Seinfeld-esque, but if they have the long jump and the triple jump, why not the double hop or something similar?  Considering there's no particular distance to reach, how did we go from one jump to three jumps when we created a second event?  Also, I don't really understand the premise behind the pole vault.  Seems to me it's just like the high jump except you can cheat by using a pole.

Why are the penalties so light for fighting in hockey?  I'm sure people have asked this many times, but I'm going to ask it again.  It's not that I don't understand that fighting is part of the game or that I even care.  I just don't understand how in every other major sport if you throw a punch you are ejected and heavily fined or suspended, but in hockey you can stop the entire game for 20 minutes to fight and then get away with a stiff penalty.  How is that possible?  It's not like there is any more contact inherent in the game of hockey than football.  I also don't see how criminal charges can come into play depending on what you do.  Hit a guy in the face with a stick... possible criminal charge.  Take off your gloves and pummel his face to a bloody pulp with your bare fists...stiff penalty.  Just baffling. Even in boxing they wear gloves.

What makes you a professional fisherman?  This one I really would like an answer for if anybody has it as I neither fish nor watch fishing shows.  Out of any physical or mental game, though-even those many don't consider sports like chess, pool, and poker-I just can't fathom what advanced skills you could posses that would make you a professional as opposed to a guy who likes to fish a lot.

When Magic was with the Lakers and cheating on his wife all the time at night, how many times do you think he used a card game at A.C. Green's house as an alibi?  C'mon, that's funny stuff.

How can you get excited to watch bowling?  Please notice I didn't ask how can bowling be considered a sport or how can you watch bowling.  Just how can you get excited to watch it?  True story:  I had Countdown on and the bowling match ESPN had on after it started right before I was about to switch channels.  I became so mesmorized by these bowlers making their WWF-like entrance and the crowd going crazy that I almost missed kickoff.  The one guy actually did the Hulk Hogan hand cup to his ear thing to elicit applause and the people ate it up.  That's not a joke.  Seems to me every "play" is the same.  There's ten pins.  Here's your ball.  See if you can knock down those pins with the ball.  You can mathematically calculate the number of different things that could happen.  Also, I'm pretty sure those guys are going to spin the ball in the same manner every time, or at least so we can't tell the difference, so nothing too exciting there.  Maybe if somebody tried to block the pins and you tried to throw the ball past them I could get into a little more into it.  As it stands now, not very exciting.  What am I missing?  I will say, though, that the bowling announcer might have the toughest job in sports broadcasting in terms of offering commentary and meaningful analysis:  "Well, Jim, as the replay confirms, Parker knocked down 7 pins that time...Uh, it looked like an eighth pin might fall over there for a second, but it didn't...and...I'm guessing he's probably going to try and knock the other three down now and pick up a spare."

Why didn't someone stop Randy Brown?  Does anyone remember the year the Bulls won the championship (I think it was Jordan's first since his father died) and MJ was lying in the middle of the court, hugging the ball?  It was this unbelievably emotional great sports moment.  But it only lasted for like two seconds, because out of nowhere comes Randy Brown, flinging himself on the ground and grabbing the ball!  Can somebody back me up on this?  I swear to God this occurred.  I could understand Pippen doing this, but Randy Brown? He averaged like 5 points a game.  If Phil Jackson could control players like he said he could, he never would have let this happen.  He should have been like "No, Randy.  Randy, no!  You come here and hug Bill Wennington until I tell you it's ok."  I would equate this event to the Colts winning the SuperBowl this year, and right when they ask Manning where he's going to go after the game, Jim Sorgi runs in and puts his arm around Peyton's shoulder and says "We're going to Disneyworld!"

Why does God hate me? Continuing my ongoing commentary on the phenomenon known as fantasy football rage, I would have to say that since I didn't see the Seahwaks game and can't identify a single defensive player at fault for their performance against the Titans, the entire defense should be put in a gas chamber.  Also, did anyone see the Saints game where Steve Smith ran the end around for a score?  Having Foster, I sat in disbelief for like 30 seconds before yelling:  "It's the Saints!  You don't have to be tricky!  Just hand the ball off!"  I think only 7 Saints defensive players still remain from the beginning of the season, the rest they have to recruit before the game outside the stadium.  That's just called being a di**, John Fox.

I guess if you consider the whole intro to this article, combined with whole gas chamber thing, I can kind of see why God might hate me.