The Morning Walk-thru - Hoya Saxa!

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Final Four...You can be forgiven if you're excitement isn't quite what it should be. With two 2-seeds and two 1-seeds surviving, it looks like the quiet dude who doesn't like sports and took the chalk out of ignorance is getting the last laugh.

I'm glad Georgetown won as they're the only rooting interest I have left. Don't like Florida, loathe Ohio State and UCLA...well...if Bill Walton wasn't like some crazed skeletal cheerleader I could probably stomach the Bruins. Alas, Bill is a crazed skeletal cheerleader so Go Hoyas!

Put the whistles away?...Speaking of the Hoyas, Tyler Hansbrough got absolutely mugged in overtime going up for a shot that was partially blocked while Tyler's arm was partially severed and, in an alarming trend, the refs did nothing. But that's just the latest example.

Georgetown was still playing and able to dismember Hansbrough because, apparently, traveling is not a rules violation in the last minute of close N.C.A.A. Tournament games. I believe both of the above examples fall under an old, little-known referee's code known as the "I Have no Balls Exception."

I understand the value of letting the boys play a bit, hell, we've come to expect it. It's masculine. It's American. It allows us to say "survive and advance" and mean it literally. But it seems to have gotten out of hand in this year's tournament.

The old adage is, if you don't notice the officials then they've done their job, but at this point they've become conspicuous in their absence. Somebody needs to step up and just make the call that they would've made in the first two minutes of the game, otherwise we might as well play basketball for 32 minutes and, say, jai alai for the last eight because that's almost what we're getting now.

I imagine Chris Webber must be torn up watching these games because, if it had been this way in 1993, his plea for a timeout wouldn't be a technical. The refs would all just look at each other, then at him, and let them play on.

See, a technical would influence the outcome of the game and that's not for them to decide, it's for the players.

Don't Tread on US...Landon Donovan scored a hat trick and the US MNT is 3-0 in international play. It's probably too early to get too excited but we do have snazzy new blue pinstriped jerseys that remind me of Ron Santo's Cubs.

Check out the goals below. Landon absolutely laces that last one...




Peyton exposes SNL...After two and a half seasons full of Manning commercials, we know that Peyton is a droll, if not convincing, actor. So seeing him on SNL this weekend was kind of like watching him play quarterback: not very flashy but deadly efficient.

What was surprising, however, is how Peyton's lack of range was totally overshadowed by the utter awfulness of the writing on the show. For some reason, I still watch SNL pretty regularly and I would say the vast majority of the skits fall totally flat. They're seven minute torture sessions that hammer one joke into oblivion. Peyton's chops looked pretty good by comparison. How did that happen?

Imagine if Tina Fey went on Pros vs. Joes and totally dominated Peyton Manning in a football challenge, reading his eyes, baiting him into poor throws and picking him off four times. That's what Saturday night was like. Peyton was funnier than 10 or 15 people who are paid to be funny.

This was good, though...