New Zealand Does Something Sports Related, Gives Me the Chance to Post a FOTC video

As indicated by the headline, New Zealand qualified for the World Cup by beating a team 99% of Americans couldn't identify on a globe. And as promised here's some FOTC...

New Weekly Feature

Coming up with reasons for why your favorite NFL team's head coach should be fired is a cherished pastime, and as I watched yesterday's monkey stomping, dozens of ideas ran through my head as to why and how this team had reached such depressing levels of suck, and it goes well beyond the extent of "Lovie Smith doesn't yell enough." From my primordial ooze of seething Bears hatred and some light football analysis, comes a new series for FPTT... Why The Bears Suck. Episode One will be posted very shortly...

Female Soccer Player Makes Female Soccer Interesting, Somehow

It's not often that the crazed, possibly hormonal, antics of a female soccer player make national news. Thankfully, an expert is brought in to make sense of it all by telling us that pulling somebody down by the ponytail is unsportsmanlike.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4628040&categoryid=2378529

Weekend Picks

Your favorite feature is back after an unexplained two week hiatus.

Baltimore (-3) at Cincinnati
Arizona (+3) at Bears
Carolina (+13) at New Orleans

UNC (-10) vs Duke
ND (-12.5) vs Navy
Houston (-2) at Tulsa
Washington State (+32) at Arizona

FPTT Record: 7-6-1

Hey Look, NBA Season Started

I want to preface this post with an apology for not providing you guys with an extensive season previewing for this upcoming NBA season, but when your favorite team relies heavily on scoring from Ty Thomas and Luol Deng it's hard to muster the energy for something like that.

Anyway, the Bulls have now beaten the Spurs and the Lebrons, so I guess it's time to start writing about them or something. The aforementioned Luol Deng put up, what I hereby coin, a Barbara Walters (20 points/20 rebs) against the Bucks (yipee!) and D Rose has the best mustache this side of Stan Van Gundy, so things are off to a pretty good start. My realistic ideal season for the Bulls would be something like this...

- Top Four seed in the East,
- Pull off a midseason trade for a two guard who can provide some scoring when D Rose is off (Salmons it too mediocre for this)
- Win the first round series,
- Have a second round series where D Rose comes into his own and wills the team to a couple wins, but goes to a game seven and ends in a loss in a series filled with one too many coaching blunders to justify keeping Vinny around for a third year.

then...
- Sign Chris Bosh (or sacrifice Vinny to the basketball gods and land Lebron)
- Hire an actual coach who can move the team into position to contend for the east in 2011 or 2012.

A ray of sunshine has broken through the dark, production assisstant banging clouds at ESPN.

ESPN has through another little controversy with one of its on camera talents having trouble keeping his pants on around 22 year old beefy chicks (in all fairness, what successful, wealthy middle-aged man couldn't resist this). But now the four-letter-network has rebounded by putting two of its most interesting employees together for the return of Mayne Street.

Weekend Preview and Picks

FPTT is experiencing some techincal difficulties (i.e. my laptop power adapter is broken) so we're going to keep this short and simple. This weekend looks like the best weekend of the year to park on the couch and work yourself into a drooling stupor with the slate of college, nfl, and mlb playoffs.

Top 10 Games to Watch This weekend

10. Dodgers v Phillies (Friday/Sunday)

9. Mizzou at Oklahoma State

8. Angels at Yankees (Friday/Saturday)

7. Virgina Tech at Georgia Tech

6. Texas vs Oklahoma

5. Bears at Falcons

4. Iowa at Wisconsin

3, Giants at Saints

2. USC at Notre Dame

1. Ravens at Vikings

Picks

College:

Wake Forest (+7) at Clemson

UConn (-13) vs Louisville

Wisconsin (+2.5) vs Iowa

Georgia (-7.5) at Vanderbilt

Houston (-17) at Tulane

Virginia Tech (-3) at Georgia Tech

NFL:

Carolina (-3) at Tampa Bay

Cincinatte (-5) vs Houston