I was talking with a friend the other day about ESPN and I couldn’t remember the name of one of the anchors so I had to do a little research in order to find the name. Well, I finally did find who I was looking for, and it was Trey Wingo.

Now, if you’ve already clicked on the above link, you probably already know where I’m going to go with this. Apparently, Trey Wingo is not this man’s real name. It seems that his relationship with Stuart Scott goes back further than we thought. His real name is Hal Chapman Wingo III. This leads me to believe that the name Trey actually comes from the fact that he is “the third”, and thus, the trey.

I don’t usually give much thought to people’s names since I’ve seen some really weird ones and they usually don’t choose the names themselves. But he had to give this one some thought. Going by Hal would have been just as easy to say, but no, he chose Trey. The only way I can excuse the man is if ESPN came up with it for him and made him use it, which actually wouldn’t surprise me that much either.

For all of you Dodger’s fans out there… OK, just the one, here’s a video of a decent curve thrown by a young 19 year old in your system. Apparently he won’t be in the rotation come the regular season, but it’s something to look forward to in the future. Sean Casey had no idea what to do with himself.

If at any point today you had the television turned to a news station, you probably were bombarded by the Congressional hearing that was going on today about steroids in baseball. This whole “drama” starred Roger Clemens who the media was infatuated with. I was actually surprised at how big Roger’s butt is being able to fit all of the reporters inside.

While I was at lunch, CNN Headline News had constant coverage of the hearings. The occasional commercial was the only interruption. It strikes me as a little odd though, that the “Headline News” channel was only talking about one supposed headline. The other observation I made was the “Breaking News” description that they had on the lower portion of the screen. They actually bothered to say that the hearing being on a 15 minute break was “breaking news”. Astonishing.

I wasn’t able to catch all too much of what was being said since I was at work (and partly because I didn’t care), but there is some apparent controversy over conflicting testimonyby Clemens himself, a trainer, and Pettitte. If you want to learn more, I’m sure you can find all you want on this day-time soap station. Maybe Britney Spears will do something crazy, like leave the house, so that the media has something meaningful and exciting to cover.

I’ve heard so much already about the Super Bowl, and most of it is the same thing said over and over. Yes, we’re all glad that the Patriots lost, even though I’m not over-joyed that the Giants won. It was the lesser of two evils as far as I’m concerned. I’m also not too interested in talking about the commercials either since that’s also been over done. I will, however, mention my favorite: the Doritos commercial where the giant mouse comes crashing out of the wall and tackles the guy. Things like that are always funny.

So instead of any game speak, I’ll bring to everyone’s attention something that a friend of mine kept pointing out all game long. And that is the inability of the defense to get a read on Eli Manning because of his crooked eyes. As you can see in the picture, it’s difficult to tell where he is actually looking. Maybe he has greater vision of the field because of this but it’s got to be tough on the defense. So this has been my contribution to all the Super Bowl talk that has been going on. Take it for what it’s worth.

Now that both of the championship games have been played, we now know who is going to be in the Super Bowl. It’s no surprise that the Patriots are going to be playing in the Super Bowl, but I sure didn’t expect Eli Manning and the New York Giants to be there. It’s almost not a game worth watching, except it is the Super Bowl. At least I’ll have the commercials to look forward to.

As for the outcome of the Super Bowl, I’m not so sure I can make a reliable prediction. On the one hand, the Patriots are unstoppable. On the other, the Giants would only need to pull off one more upset which they’ve been pretty good at as of late. As much as I hate to say it (being a Cowboys fan), I’ll be rooting for the Giants since I don’t want to see New England win. I suppose the more acurate description would be that I’ll be rooting against the Patriots.

I also had one other thought earlier that I’d like to mention. How did Bridgestone become the half-time sponsor for the Super Bowl? Not that it really matters all that much, but honestly, a tire company? Even though the game is sure to be a disappointment, I can at least hope for enough media distractions and possibly clever advertising to help me get through it.

This weekend are the two championship games to determine who goes to the Super Bowl. I don’t really like any of the four teams that are still in it, but I’ll still watch the games I’m sure. In fact, I don’t like three of the teams and I’m indifferent towards the other (San Diego). So here’s how I think it’s going to go down.

NFC Championship: Green Bay vs. New York

Most would say that the Packers have the advantage since they’re at home and can take the cold weather. As far as I’m concerned, both teams are going to be playing in the same conditions, and it’s supposed to be extremely cold. I wouldn’t give any advantage either way based on the weather, but I will tip the scales towards Green Bay for reasons of skill. I just don’t think that Eli Manning will last the whole game, and I think Favre will.

AFC Championship: New England vs. San Diego

Even though no one is really giving any credit to the Chargers, I think the team will step up their game because it’s the playoffs. They also have an even better reason to play for, and that’s to be able to say that they are the team who knocked off the Patriots. You also have to look at the Patriots last few games and they weren’t complete blowouts. I still think the Patriots will win, but it might be a better game than what most are expecting.

I don’t really take too big of an interest in the local college basketball scene here in St. Louis, but since I live here I heard about a new division one record that the Saint Louis University Billikens set this last Thursday night. They now have the new record for the fewest points scored in a game since the institution of the shot clock with a whopping 20 points.

The previous record was 21 points, and I must say that this is quite the accomplishment. The game was 25-7 at the half, and at one point the Billikens missed 23 straight shots. Seems like a pretty pathetic game to me which makes me glad I don’t really care about Billiken basketball.

And this brings me to another point, what a Billiken even is. Wikipedia tells us that it was…

“a charm doll created by an American art teacher and illustrator, Ms. Florence Pretz of Kansas City, Missouri, who is said to have seen the mysterious figure in a dream.”

Apparently it was quite the craze back in the early 1900s, but it’s a pretty odd choice of mascot as far as I’m concerned.

I was able to watch the Las Vegas Bowl between Brigham Young University and UCLA. We didn’t have it on regular TV, but we were able to access espn360 and then project it onto the ceiling. I didn’t think that it would be a close game really since UCLA was playing something like their fourth string quarterback. I didn’t forget, though, that it was still BYU who is notorious for choking late in the game.

The first half went pretty much as expected with BYU scoring a couple of touchdowns and holding UCLA to a couple of field goals. It wasn’t until the final minute of the first half that BYU showed their true colors. Deep in their own territory with under a minute to play, they decide to run the ball of all things and ended up fumbling it. They should have taken a knee and gone in at half-time with a nice lead. They can’t have thought that they would score on a run from their own 10 yard line, and if they had realistic hopes of scoring, they should have thrown the ball. But BYU did what they do best and gave up a last minute touchdown.

The second half was uneventful at best. UCLA did manage to score another field goal, and the Cougars didn’t feel like scoring I guess. BYU did manage to give up a big play at the end of the game giving UCLA an easy chip shot instead of a more difficult field goal. While I’m not a fan of the prevent defense, I don’t think they should have run the blitz either. The last play of the game somehow went in BYU’s favor though. What should have been an easy field goal ended up being blocked/tipped. BYU should have lost the game in my opinion (even though I’m glad they won). And as for Bronco’s hope of gaining credibility with the BCS, it’s pretty much shot due to poor coaching.

I’ve been watching quite a bit of football the last couple of weeks, and especially enjoyed the recent victory of the Dallas Cowboys over the Green Bay Packers. I did, however, wonder why some of the timeouts called were “full” timeouts and others were 30 second timeouts. I wasn’t aware that there were different timeouts in football like there are in basketball so I did a little research to find out why.

Apparently it has to do with the television coverage of the game. Normally timeouts are for 1 minute 50 seconds and the coverage usually goes to a commercial break. However, if television doesn’t utilize the timeout for a commercial break, the time is reduced. The mystery has now been solved for me. Hopefully this has also cleared things up for some of you out there who have also wondered about this.

There are a couple things that I am less than impressed with concerning the second game of the World Series. First of all, I am sick of the tag line for the playoffs. Not only do I have to listen to Dane Cook talk about October, others insist on using “witty” wordplay. One Boston fan at Fenway was holding up a sign that said:

There’s only one Soxtober.

I don’t think I even need to say anything about this as it should speak for itself. I was also not so excited to see Troy Aikman in the stands wearing Boston Redsox gear. As you may know, I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan, but there is definitely a conflict of interest here.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that Kevin Youkilis runs funny? You should watch him sometime and let me know what you think. And finally, for the seventh inning stretch we had to listen to Boyz II Men sing God Bless America, and they weren’t exactly on pitch with one another. Of course, I don’t really expect much better from the Red Sox organization.