Call of the Day: Tracy Morgan + Sarah Palin = Hilarity, TNT Apology

Here’s the biggest issue I have with the video below, that spread like wildfire yesterday evening after Tracy Morgan popped into the TNT pre-game show and said that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is “serious masturbation material” on live television…

…Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley have the argument of who is more attractive — Tina Fey or Sarah Palin — ALL THE TIME????

Seriously, Kenny, you guys are rich and famous. Not even loser schlubs sitting at home with nothing else to do but watch old SNL bits on Hulu have that conversation any more. And it’s an argument between the two of you? Not a debate, but it devolves into an argument? I mean, come on, Kenny, one is smart and funny and quirky and the other has a funny accent and knows her way around a shotgun…hmm…tougher than I thought.

Anyway, Fey’s 30 Rock co-star didn’t let the question go without a quip that rendered Barkley and Smith speechless, and left Ernie Johnson with a look so uncomfortable, it was barely even funny to watch him awkwardlyREAD MORE

Call of the Day: The Federer-Djokovic Aussie Semifinal Is For The Birds

Roger Federer asked for time in the middle of the second set because he saw something caught in the net. It was a bird feather. A bird feather!

Just before the end of the second set — a game that gave Novak Djokovic a two sets to none lead — the birds struck again. Chris Fowler and Patrick McEnroe were all over the call.

Those darn Indian Mynas indeed. From Wiki:

The Common Myna…is a member of family Sturnidae, (starlings and mynas) native to Asia. An omnivorous open woodland bird with a strong territorial instinct, the Myna has adapted extremely well to urban environments. The myna has been introduced in many other parts of the world and its distribution range is on the increase. It is a serious threat to the ecosystems of Australia. The Common Myna is an important motif in Indian culture and appears both in Sanskrit and Prakrit literature.

In Australia, the Common Myna is an invasive pest. They are now often the predominant bird in urban areas all along the East coast. In a 2008READ MORE

Call of the Day: Barack Obama Thinks Science > Super Bowl

Man, Barack Obama sure is pissed off at Jay Cutler.

Okay, the actual quote from President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night was, “we need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.”

Technically, he didn’t say the winner of the Super Bowl isn’t important, just that it’s not the only thing that should be important to our kids. But come on, this comment is on the heels of deciding he’s not going to the game this year and, lest we forget, the President did appear on an episode of Myth Busters this season.

Clearly Science > Super Bowl.

Maybe it’s more than that. Maybe, to the President, Science > Sports. Listen to the second half of that clip, where he explained the plan to replace No Child Left Behind (one of the worst programs in the history of our government) with Race To The Top. Race? It’s not an actual (be it on foot or, heck, even bike). Rather, thisREAD MORE

Call of the Day: Maurice Jones Drew Learns The First Rule of Funny Is To Be Funny

The most fascinating part of Jay Cutler’s second-half disappearance during Sunday’s NFC title game was not the pontificating members of the media trying to one-up each other to get their character-damning tweets on top of the “OMG he said WHAT” pile of rhetoric; it was the NFL players doing the exact same thing.

Most notably, Maurice Jones-Drew took some very public jabs at Cutler, equating him to Florida head coach Urban Meyer (“Hey I think the urban meyer rule is effect right now… When the going gets tough……..QUIT..”) and most damningly saying: “All I’m saying is that he can finish the game on a hurt knee… I played the whole season on one…”

That, of course, is patently false as we pointed out yesterday that after Jones-Drew disappeared in the second half of a divisional game against the Colts in week 15, MJD missed the last two games of the season because of injury while his team was technically still in the playoff race for at least one.

Turns out, he was just joking! He was being funny! HeREAD MORE

Call of the Day: Steelers Head Coach Mike Tomlin Sure Can Cut A Promo

All credit goes to Greg Wyshynski for Tweeting this last night after the Steelers dispatched the Jets to get to yet another Super Bowl.

I don’t mind losing to Pittsburgh, mostly because Mike Tomlin uses his trophy interview time to cut a WWF promo.

The man sure does know how to cater to a home crowd.

What’s funny is that Tomlin’s promo is actually better than the actual wrestling promo I used to make the Photoshop. And, yes, had I thought about it leading up to the game, I totally would have done a version with Rex Ryan as King Kong Bundy pacing in the background.

Jose Canseco Eats, Is, Bananas

I’ve always tried to stay away from the Jose Canseco is crazy posts because, well, Jose Canseco is crazy and there’s not much newsworthy about that.

Alas, when he’s one of the only people in your Twitter stream when you get up at the crack of dawn, the old roided-up slugger is just too hard to ignore.

So, here’s a recap of the last few hours in the life of a madman:

• First, late last night Canseco posted:

Canseco on the Mets would be the greatest thing in the history of baseball. The slugger followed up that plea for help with this nugget:

If I can hit a softball 550 feet amazing what I can do to a baseball. Sandy alderson let me know what you think I wanna play for you

Then things went dark for six hours, during which Canseco either went to sleep, or out to dinner, or just sat on the couch and popped 600 more crazy pills.

Somewhere around 2am on the east coast (11pm on the left), Canseco showed up again. After talking about how heREAD MORE

Call of the Day: Sports, Politics, Silliness, Perspective

My brother told me a long time ago that we, as people, need to go into every conversation with the understanding that you don’t know what’s going on in the lives of the others involved. You don’t know what yesterday and this morning was like for me and I don’t know what that same time period was like for you. Yet our actions, and our reactions to events acted upon us — by other people or nature or God or an other worldly force — shape not just our own daily lives, but the lives of those around us.

In an odd way, that lesson relates to sports. Life is why sports are great. To most folks, sports isn’t real life. Sports is an irrational hatred of Tom Brady because you like a team that wears green not blue. Sports is the distraction from life. It’s the distraction from having to drive in rush-hour traffic or fight with your kids about bedtime or shovel six inches of snow. Without sports (or celebrity gossip or cooking showsREAD MORE

Call of the Day: Is Onion SportsDome Funnier Than Actual Sports?

In a word, no.

The Onion SportsDome debuted on Comedy Central last night and after seeing the first-ep highlights and consuming promo after promo for what’s felt like months (note: probably just a few days), one conclusion is obvious: sports are funny already, so made up sports probably won’t be as funny as the real thing.

It will be interesting, however, to see if totally made up sports can be funny enough to make this show a hit.

In other words…meh.

Look, parody sites are great and there are a ton of great sports humor sites, but most of those sites focus on taking something that happened in sports already and showing how hilarious was, or with some good Photoshopping or simple, clever wording attached, hilarious it can be.

That’s not to say that made up bits about sports aren’t funny. Like this clip from last night’s SportsDome about St. Louis giving Albert Pujols the key to everything in the city. This is funny.

Not only is that premise funny, but the crosstalk between the play-it-straight Sage Steele news reader and theREAD MORE

Call of the Day: Brent Musburger And The Case Of The Missing Touchdowns

Look, I love Brent Musburger and I think that he and Kirk Herbstreit are the best announcing tandem in college football. Sure others like Brad Nessler, Verne Lundquist, et al are fantastic announcers, too, but something about Brent’s voice that just screams “big game.” Add in Herbie and you have the best booth in America.

Having said that, Brent’s not without his quirks, and mistakes. So, with respect, let’s pick out a few of those moments from last night’s title game!

I seriously thought about clipping together all the times he called LaMichael James by his first name only, perhaps thinking his name was James LaMichael or perhaps an homage to all of us calling Brent, himself, primarily by his first name. Anyway, if “LaMichael” was added to the Brent Musburger drinking game, you all were sloshed by halftime.

But clipping that was way too much work. Instead we clipped up his two touchdown calls…that weren’t. Now, the second one in the clip below wasn’t his fault, as the officials signaled it a touchdown before replay got theREAD MORE

Call of the Weekend: Tom Hammond & Mike Mayock, “Are You Kidding Me?”

Every NFL fan has seen this video six hundred times by now, but it’s still the best play of the weekend. Having said that, is it the best call of the weekend? To be honest, the call itself is probably not. But bear with me on this one…

I think Tom Hammond is a solid announcer for NBC, though whenever I hear his voice I immediately assume I’m either watching Notre Dame or an Olympic Track and Field event. I just don’t think Hammond’s call is as spectacular on this play as some people were saying online after it happened. He does — to his credit — sound as surprised as all of us, which was good to hear from a play-by-play announcer because, let’s face it, who in the world expected that to happen?

That said, this is the call of the weekend for one reason: Mike Mayock, who has quickly established himself as a better-than-solid in-game color analyst. There’s a lot to be said, clearly, for someone who seems prepared for every situation…even the inexplicable.

“Are you kiddingREAD MORE