On Saturday night Kelly and I played in a “Nite Lite” golf tournament at Porter Valley. One word: Awesomeness. The format was a Texas Scramble, which basically means everyone hits a ball and then decides who had the best shot. Then everyone hits from there as if that was his shot. We got to use two or three of my drives and several of my other shots, so that was heartening. The sun was gone from the sky by the time we started the back nine and it was just about pitch black, so we had glow-in-the-dark balls and neon necklaces and little glowing ropes on the carts. It’s quite amazing that nobody was killed.

Because there were so many groups we started on the 5th tee. Every fourth or fifth hole had a theme. The first tee was margaritas and fajitas and tacos. The fifth was ribs, chicken, and rum drinks, etc. The best was probably the 10th hole, with chocolate brownies, scotch, and cigars and coffee. One of the holes was cheese and crackers and wine. Our last hole was, if I remember correctly, fourteen; we finished the night with Italian sausages and beer. This was not an evening for the intestinally weak. Lots of photos, of course, posted to Flickr.

On Sunday I ran the XXIII^rd Los Angeles Marathon. My goal was to beat my time from last year, when I ran it in about four hours and forty-five minutes. Unfortunately I was felled by a wicked flu bug about two weeks ago which knocked me on my ass for a while. I didn’t start training until the end of January and taking a forced ten-day break right before the race didn’t help. I managed to murderize the 26.2 miles in 5:40, about an hour worse than last year (but about ten minutes better than two years ago). I swore that this would be my last one, but I can’t live with that time, so it looks like I’ll be back for 2009 …

My friend Andy loaned me the latest Michael Lewis book, The Blind Side, last week. (I seem to remember reading an excerpt from it in Sports Illustrated earlier this year.) It’s a great look at the high school / college football recruiting process in the SEC. The author does an excellent job of jumping between the histories of ‘legacy’ players in the NFL, the evolution of the left tackle position, and the story of Michael Oher, a freakishly large kid who wants to play ‘in the league’. If you’re a football fan you’ll definitely enjoy this one. And now I’ll have to start paying attention to Ole Miss to see how this kid performs this year.

Right now I am sitting in my suite at the Camelback Marriott in Scottsdale, Arizona, just a little more than a day away from getting to see my Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. The story of how I got here is incredible on many levels, and even attempting to do it justice in a blog post is ridiculous. What I can tell you is this: I owe it all to a man I will never see again. In the six or nine months that I knew him, he somehow managed to become one of my ultimate best “best friends”. I have never known anyone like him, and I find it impossible to believe there will ever be anyone else like him in my life. He was an amazing force of nature, a man that I consider myself truly blessed to have gotten to know.
Bill Gross died on Sunday, October 21^st, 2007, as I was packing the rental car in Hawaii getting ready to return from my honeymoon. He was my business partner, my boss, my mentor, my walk-to-Starbucks companion, my confidant, my guardian angel, my benefactor, my hero, and my best friend. I am still in shock and I am still in pain and I miss him and I cannot fathom how I can be going to this game without him. I know that he is rooting for the Giants just to piss me off, just as much as I know that inside he is pulling for the Patriots because he knows they are my favorite. I would trade anything to get to hear him make fun of me again.

Last season, the Colts won the Lombardi in part by establishing a pass-wacky attack that defensive coordinators were obsessed with stopping, then gradually shifting toward the run in the postseason, then rolling out a rushing-based game plan in the Super Bowl that took everyone by surprise. … Belichick is among the best-ever students of the sport, so don’t be surprised if he remembers and attempts the same switcheroo. Of course at this point, don’t be surprised if Belichick suddenly rips off his prosthetic human face and reveals himself as a hideous reptilian space alien come to spearhead an invasion fleet.

A man walks into a bar with a cat in his arms and asks the bartender if the cat can stay. Grudgingly, the bartender agrees to let the cat sit on a bar stool, and he then turns on the 49ers game.

When the 49ers kick a field goal, the cat just goes wild, jumping up and own on the stool, then going the length of the bar and high-fiving customers.

The bartender is amazed. “If he does that for a field goal, how does he act when the Niners score a touchdown?”

“I don’t know,” said his owner. “I’ve only had him three years.”

Vote756.com: I’m going with option B, the asterisk.

Superman wears Tim Tebow pajamas.

Commissioner Bud Selig announced Tuesday the discovery that Hall of Famer Hank Aaron had in fact accumulated 50 previously unaccounted-for home runs … bringing his once record total of 755 to an even higher 805 and putting the all-time home-run record perhaps forever out of reach.

What happens when a real celebrity has a real blog? There are a few mediocre celebrities that have pseudo-real blogs. (Zach Braff comes to mind. Aside from the fact that you can clearly see he’s high every now and then, he’s about the least controversial guy in Hollywood.) Few truly famous people are out there creating honest-to-goodness blog entries. Mark Cuban is one. Curt Schilling is another.

Schilling is a rock star in the baseball universe, and he has been since even before he helped pitch the Red Sox to the most amazing win in baseball history. He started a blog a few months ago and he writes from the heart, not just marketing drivel or media propaganda. It’s great reading. He writes about Spring training, about his team, about his life. He basically keeps a blog just like I keep this blog.

Right now Schilling’s under a bit of a media attack. Some jerk reporter has accused him (and his team) of doctoring “the sock” — exaggerating the amount of blood by adding ketchup or some nonsense like that. But Schilling — unlike most people who find themselves the subject of media scrutiny — has a blog. His reply to the issue is brilliantly-written and well worth a read. Here’s a snippet:

If you have the nuts, or the guts, grab an orthopedic surgeon, have them suture your ankle skin down to the tissue covering the bone in your ankle joint, then walk around for 4 hours. After that go find a mound, throw a hundred or so pitches, run over, cover first a few times. When you’re done check that ankle and see if it bleeds. It will.

On my desk right now is a football-shaped bowl of Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers. I poured three entire boxes into the bowl a few days ago and am now in trouble. You see, I’ve been methodically eating them by color. I started with red and then went to orange. The problem is that now there are only purple, yellow, and green remaining. I had been planning on eating the green ones next. If I do that, though, then there will only be LSU colors left in the bowl. They are an SEC rival, so I just can’t do that. I can try to think of them as the Lakers, but I just don’t care enough about basketball … and the Tigers will still be in the back of my mind. I can’t eat the purple ones because that would leave yellow and green and that’s just hideous. I can’t eat the yellow ones because then there will only be green and purple and that’s even worse. I’m thinking that the best course of action in this situation is to just put the whole bowl on Molly’s desk.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback scores again with 2010: The Mock Draft.

Are you a sports fan? Have you ever wondered just how accurate those clocks are? And can a ref — or anyone — really determine a hundredth of a second?

The schedule for the University of Florida 2007 football season has been published. You can find it at the University Athletic Association website. They even give you the ability to import the schedule directly into Outlook!

It took me a few minutes to find it, of course. There is just a lot of stuff cluttering the site … Y’know … all about how we won the National Championship in basketball last year, and then the BCS Championship in football this year, and then the National Championship in basketball again this year.

Can there possibly ever have been a better time to be a Florida Gator? Basketball … then football … then basketball again?! I almost — almost — feel bad for Ohio State. We don’t even consider them “rivals”, but they must hate us now.

The Gators became the first team to go back-to-back since 1992 and the first ever to repeat with the same starting five.

They finished with a 10-game winning streak and haven’t lost a postseason game in 18 tries, counting sweeps at the Southeastern Conference tournaments the last two years.

The Florida Gators are, in sum, why we love college basketball.

Last year was for a ring. This year was for history and something as simple and pure as a teammate’s respect. That’s a legacy.

“Why go to Kentucky?” junior Corey Brewer said. “When’s the last time they won a national title?”

Also see: Eddie Munster Coaches Florida to Second Consecutive Championship