Vermeil: The man who saved football

Normally I think Tim Keown's pieces for ESPN are simple, lazy hackery -- sports columnists who're resigned to making a "list" or "bullet points" are just too damned lazy to find a real topic, follow it to fruition or even use regular paragraphs and are worthy of all the scorn they can draw. But Keown at least has half a column, and it's very very true.

Dick Vermeil should be everyone's hero. Today we can forgive, even learn to appreciate, all the crying. The man saved football Sunday afternoon, and everybody who has an interest in the game should be giving him his due right this minute.

With his team down by three, and five seconds left, Vermeil turned his back on convention. Most coaches -- heck, all coaches before Sunday -- would have slapped their quarterback on the butt and sent in the field goal team to tie the game and set up overtime.

Dick Vermeil showed more guts than any other NFL coach would have on Sunday.
These are the guys who coach to save their jobs first, and to win the game second. They're assuming failure and reading the next day's newspaper ("We Lose; Coach a Gambling Fool") instead of taking a clear-eyed look at the situation.

Vermeil went for it. He called "20 Blast" and Larry Johnson ran straight into the end zone to win the game. The Raiders cleared out like Johnson was carrying the ball in one hand and a gun in the other....

Trials and errors

Andrea "I done drowned mah five kids in the tub!" Yates is getting a new trial. No, clearly not the stupidest decision from Texas in the last 24 hours. I'm of mixed feelings on the whole thing -- she's obviously not innocent, but at the same time, she's clearly more than a few bacon bits shy of a salad bar, having post-partum depression and continuing to churn out fleshling worm-babies like someone pulled her right arm and her face lit up with three fetuses in a row. Didn't she ask one of her recent visitors in prison who was baby-sitting the kids? You can't sit her down and explain that, well, Andrea, nobody, because you killed them, because they're in little pine boxes, buried in the ground, and they're never coming back. If she doesn't realize this -- and I don't think she does -- then prison is not the punitive place it could be. At least rehabilitate her to the point where she fully understands exactly what happened. Then decide if she's to be punished or nursed back to full health. Because right now the punishment just isn't satisfactory yet.

Also, I'm toying with Adium to get instant-messaging working at work. It's...intriguing. Beware my presence.

Crap. Chefs' Holmes done for season, career?

It's me, isn't it?

Witness the glory of my go-round with this avatar-maker. I think it came out quasi-accurately.

File under "just damned scary": I've been trying to describe the distinctiveness and oddness that is my dad, and it's hard to do. I had him at about one part John Wayne and one part Red Forman (as played by Kurtwood Smith). But if there's one person he's like (and y'all can back me up on this), it is, without a doubt, Emporia, Kansas' own R. Lee Ermey. There's just something about the cadence, the demeanor, and, of course, the shared occupation (albeit in different military branches). So imagine my glee at his appearance as House's dad in the most recent episode -- yes, I, spoiler-whore that I am, managed to stay utterly unspoiled about Papa House's identity until I saw that credit pop up on the screen, and suddenly life made a lot more sense to me....

And yes, speaking of spoilers, tonight a Lostaway assumes room temperature. And if you want to know which, go to cleolinda's official discussion post and search for the first person to say "If someone really does die, please don't let it be --blank--!" Because it is.

Also: Walt's warning, .WAV file, already reversed.