Rant of Week: Hi Mark, and other missives.

For the first PC hockey "weekend" of the new year - should a Tuesday game count as a "weekend" - I'm dusting off the free form rant from earlier in the year.

-First off, Hi Mark. Yes, we will come and visit soon. I was thinking of this weekend, but yet again there's a "the World is coming to an end! Load up on milk and bread and lobsters!!!" type snow storm coming on Saturday night. In truth, it will probably be about 1-2 inches, but the roads will still be awful. Go figure.

-I understand that Tim Army can't come right out and say "Oh my God, we're screwed, we're screwed!" but if there's a reason for optimism about PC's season right now, I'm missing it. One point in Hockey East. One.

-I'll stay in Rhode Island for the next comment. Congrats to Keano Davis and company for somehow getting the PC team I saw flounder against BC to 3-0 in the Big East. I don't care what kind of teams they had to beat to get there and how big of a challenge the game at Georgetown is going to be. That's an accomplishment. Keep up the good work.

-And on opposite side of the spectrum, we have the Celtics. Talk about a perfect cocktail of awfulness: unforgiving schedule, awful bench play, an offense that disappears in the last quarter, teams "figuring out" my man Rondo, a defense that has played poorly at times, and - as always - the awful officiating that NBA is famous for. And now, we have Cleveland on the horizon. The way this travesty of a month is going, look for LeBron to score 137 tonight.

-It's such a cliche: "I almost drove off the road when I heard BLANK on the radio." So no, I didn't almost drive off the road when some caller to WEEI called in to say he thought Theo Epstein was doing a great job this off season. But I did laugh. Loudly. As currently, constituted, the Red Sox will be fighting the Yankees for the Wild Card spot. If everything works out, they might beat out Tampa Bay for the division lead - I'm not sold that the Rays are going to fade.

-Charlie Chaplin needs to focus his feline anger on the tools that infest the Celtics side of www.boston.com. Is it really that boring in Los Angeles that the same two or three Lakers trolls have NOTHING better to do than post immature trash talk and whine about how the person who runs the blog keeps deleting their idiocy? My advice to them : If you don't like your posts being deleted, why don't you attempt to add to the conversation instead of posting like a 9 year old with a sugar high and no dictionary? Or get your own blog so we can make fun of you in a new and different way!

-The biggest story in Boston sports right now is the dismissal of BC's football coach for going behind AD Gene DeFillipo's back to interview for ... the Jets?!?! I've heard every conceivable angle on this story, but no one has yet brought up what an awful job that is: not only are coaching a team that plays second fiddle to the Giants, but you play in a stadium NAMED after the team you're playing second fiddle to. While there's a lot of talent on the Jets, you do have to deal with a quarter back who practically gifted the last game of the season to the opposing team. To top it all off, you have the New York media breathing down your neck and practically begging you to fail. Yep, sign me up for that job! He was better off at the Heights.

The Bruins vs. Celtics Debate: "Marley was dead to begin with."

Let the debate continue... and then end.

I'm not offended by this article. I'm offended by the existence of it. Why not enjoy the fact that both teams are successful? Why do we have to rank everyone?

This isn't the first time the Globe has pulled this crap: they celebrated the Celtic's NBA title by reminding everyone about the popularity of the Red Sox. Did they think we all forgot? It's possible to root for multiple teams in multiple sports.

As someone who roots for and loves all four major Boston sports teams, these conversations make no sense to me.

Appalling

No, not the Red Sox play this week, although that has been atrocious enough. I'm talking about the reporting by our beloved sports press which has been the equivalent of rubbing salt in the wounds.

First off are the nimrods who pronounced the Rays dead after Game One. Why would you ever write that in a seven games series?

Secondly, we have the people who stubbornly cling to the idea that the Red Sox are going to make a miraculous comeback. They aren't. The team can't hit or pitch. They could not beat the Kansas City Royals at this point. Injuries and awful luck have taken their toll. The Sox would be just as screwed even if they had won Game Two. This team - as currently constituted can NOT win three games in a row. They were lucky to win ONE game. It doesn't just seem like it's over, it is.

Thirdly, someone needs to criticize the team. I either see people praising the Rays to the high heavens or glossing over the fact the team is playing poorly. Some one needs to come out and say it. The Red Sox absolutely suck. Many of these wounds are self inflicted. If you can't hit or pitch, you can not win, period. Francona would be better off suiting up the Lowell Spinners.
I have a theory that when you get blown out, half of it is your own damn fault. This is not college or high school where there is a massive talent discrepancy. Yes, the Rays have played well, but they played well in the first and second games, both of which were competitive. If the Red Sox play well, the games will be competitive. If not, you get annihilated.

The article that really set me off this morning was Bob Ryan's piece on why the Rays are unbelievably awesome. While I'm certainly not in the position to argue that point right now, he goes on to say that the Rays are the team of the future and we should all get ready for them to be a power for years to come. I enjoy Bob's writing and I think he might be the best sports writer in Boston. But did he suddenly forget the great young players on the Red Sox who helped them win the WORLD ****ing SERIES last year?

Is that basically what it comes down to? We should just give up because Team Awesome will be around forever and ever? Great, I'm going to stop rooting for the Red Sox and reading the Globe, and I'll encourage the rest of my friends to do the same because we are now powerless before Cowbell Nation (maybe I should trademark that!) and watching baseball is futile. They should just call themselves the Tampa Bay Borg. And when the Red Sox fans disappear and the Globe is out of business at least Bob will be right.

Just taking things to their logical conclusion.

Last word on Manny (for a while)...

The Sports Guy (gasp!) gets it right

I don't often give Bill Simmons credit, but he is right on this issue. Scott Boras has a LOT to answer for. Or, Manny is bi-polar. Either explanation works.

I particularly like the snarky comment about the Globe/NESN/WEEI/WRKO regurgitating the company line. Tee hee.

I apologize for the lack of snark here, but as a married man, I have to start acting like a grown up. (kidding!)

Charlie: you've got some explaining to do, sir!

Whiny Patriots fans?

Do I even need to read the latest atrocity from our friend at the Herald to tell that it's not for my consumption? No, I really don't. I guess it's been a slow week for public employee hacks, Whitey Bulger news and GOP apologizing if Captain Tedium is going after the fans of the New England Patriots. Charlie Chaplin is a bad kitty for not destroying his computer months ago.

Of course, this is nothing new from the Herald who strayed severely from their "We Love the Pats" coverage (which used to be a nice change from the Sox obsessed Globe)drastically with their "Bellicheat" cover, John Tomase's imaginary St. Louis Rams walkthrough story, and Tony Massoratti's ill conceived story about losers in Tedy Bruschi jerseys. The hits just keep on coming.

Meanwhile, Bob Ryan says this better than I ever could. Come back off the ledge people. The Sox are 1.5 games out of first, and the Pats season hasn't ended. Yet.

Sports 1, Jon nil; the mission statement

So, why am blogging here now? I know, you weren't actually asking that. You were wondering why this page came up and not pornography. I can't help you there.
About 9 years ago, I decided that the Providence College men's ice hockey team wasn't getting the support they needed on the internet so I started this page: http://www.geocities.com/boompc99/he.html and christened it the Coffin Online. Asside from random BU bashing and some sick jokes at everyone's expense, all was right in the world. But for some reason, the page was missing something. It was missing a definitive part of my personality: grumpiness. So I decided to dedicate a special part of my page to kvetching, complaining, whining and generally ranting as only a privileged white male in this society can. I called it the "Weekly Rant" page. The problem was it wasn't weekly. The college hockey season begins in early October and ends in early April. That's about six months of hockey, which would translate into about 24-30 rants per year. I was luck to get to 10. Last year, when PC was absolutely horrendous, I got to ONE rant. Well, the Coffin Online is back and updated. Only this year, I'm going to try blogging on this site.
So for those of you who aren't familiar with me, you can expect a lot of snarky humor, the random comment about fine literature and almost inevitably, a few dozen typos. The typos I can fix, but I'm stuck with the snarky humor. Sorry. I'll dedicate one post every week to Friar hockey, but the rest of time, I'll tackle to the quagmire that is New England sports. Fair warning: I don't like the Globe, the Herald, or WEEI. So you can pretty much figure how this is going to go.