First, the good news.  The Bears won their home opener today against the defending champion Steelers 17-14.  The game featured a mistake-free performance from our new QB, Jay Cutler, in which he bounced back from shitting the bed in his Bears debut against the hated Packers.  Cutler led the team on two 4th quarter drives, one that ended in a TD pass to tie it, and another to set up the game-winning field goal by Robbie Gould.  It was a great way to salvage the season for Bears fans like me who had assumed that our season was over after watching Cutler make the worst first impression of any athlete in my memory and having no cushion for the blow of losing Brian Urlacher, our team leader and best player, for the season after only one big hit.  We looked good today.  Cutler looked good today.  Our receivers looked good today.  Our D stepped up in Urlacher’s absence, including Alex Brown (I can go on an epic rant about why Alex Brown is my favorite player and why he should be making Pro-Bowls if you guys want, but I’ll leave it up to you since that can be it’s own article.  Also, I can give you a full story on why my brother’s favorite player is Adrian Peterson… the OTHER Adrian Peterson.)  Overall, it was an extremely entertaining game and a valuable and uplifting win for the Bears and their fans.

Now on to the bad news.  And it’s really bad.  So if you’re not a Cubs fan, or you don’t feel like laughing at the Cubs’ problems, I suggest you stop reading now.

This is the Wrigley home opener. Way to make a first impression, Milton. I mean that. You showed us exactly what to expect from that day forward.

Milton Bradley was sent home for the rest of the season by Cubs GM Jim Hendry after Bradley was quoted as saying,

“You understand why they haven’t won in 100 years here.  It’s just not a positive environment.  I need a stable, healthy, enjoyable environment… It’s just negativity.”

There’s so much I want to say about this, I don’t even know where to begin.  I’m going to have to do this in stages.  First things first, I have to break down that quote.  “It’s just not a positive environment.”  I’m sorry, but anyone who has ever followed the Cubs, been to Wrigley, heard the myriad songs written about our beloved team, or anyone who understands unconditional love despite all evidence to the contrary knows that he is just plain incorrect about this.  It’s not a subjective judgment.  He is wrong.  Cubs fans are as positive as they come in sports.  Ok, I can understand how Bradley thinks this from his perspective.  The fans boo him.  They’ve booed him since after his home debut, in which he argued balls and strikes with the home plate umpire and got ejected and suspended.  He then spent the rest of the year much like that at bat: playing terribly, blaming it on everyone but himself, and missing time for a variety of reasons that can all be chalked up to his fragile body and mental instability.  So he’s right from his perspective, Wrigley field and Cubs fans have not been kind to him.

The problem is, he feels no responsibility in this and thinks that it starts with the fans.  In reality, they were only reacting to a guy who was TERRIBLE when he played, missed a lot of time, was completely belligerent, and made comments befitting a paranoid schizophrenic all along the way.  As for the second part, “I need a stable, healthy, enjoyable environment,” I can’t believe that Bradley can say that and not realize that he’s really talking about his own mental state, and not the fans at Wrigley.  Milton Bradley needs a stable, healthy, enjoyable environment in his mind.  He is mentally unstable.  He is emotionally unstable.  He needs to create that stability, that health, and that happiness for himself.  This is a shockingly negative, disturbingly paranoid, dangerously angry man who lacks any control over his reactions.  No one can control his or her environment, but a person can control it’s effects on them and their interactions with it.  Bradley clearly doesn’t understand that he has the option of controlling himself in order to change his interactions in a given environment, or he just lacks any will to control himself.  In the end, I would say that it’s a good thing that he has to sit and stew on this, except that I don’t think that he can gain anything from it based on his lack of recognition for his need to change, let alone a desire to do so.  The one positive is that he is kept away from the rest of our team and away from the fans who are completely justified in hating him.  He is a person who spreads his vitriol everywhere he goes.  How can he not understand why negativity follows him?  Has he really never once in his life considered that he is the cause of it all?

The second part of this is the problem of Milton Bradley in general.  He is not even a full year into a three year, $30 million contract.  There is literally NO WAY he can possibly stay with our team.  He has alienated himself from the front office, the manager, his teammates (not ONE of which have I ever heard or read coming to his defense all year), the media, the MLB league offices, the umpires, and the fans.  Note: I could have just said everybody instead of listing them, but I really wanted you guys to understand that it really is EVERYONE that he has come in contact with in his time as a Cub (though I left the clubhouse attendants out of this because I’m not sure about them, but I would go all in on them thinking he’s an epic prick).  We have to trade him, but who will take him right now?  The only way I see out of this is a team trading for him as long as the Cubs pay 80%-90% of his remaining contract through its duration.  I mean, we’re talking about the worst person in baseball.  I mean that when I say it.  I don’t think he’d even be a big deal if he was productive, but he’s made himself completely untouchable with the combination of horrible play and constant deplorable behavior.

The other big problem here is GM Jim Hendry.  He’s the guy who signed Milton Bradley.  Let’s break down the events that led to that signing and the rest of the construction of the 2009 Cubs (or rather the destruction of the 2008 Cubs who owned the best record in the NL).  First, Lou Pinella asks him for more lefty bats after the way the Dodgers exploited our righty-heavy lineup in the 2008 playoffs.  So Hendry trades an All-Star quality utility man in Mark DeRosa, trades Jason Marquis (a pitcher who he wildly overpaid for two seasons prior) and refused to offer Kerry Wood a contract, telling him to go get paid while he could despite Wood being set for life financially and begging to remain a Cub for life so he could help us win and be with his family in his adopted home of Chicago.  Two of those three moves are indefensible (DeRo and Wood).  The other move, Marquis, was good simply because Hendry had overpaid for him in the first place.

Hendry made these moves to free up cap space for the power-hitting lefty bat in right field that he and Lou felt we needed.  This is also to point out that Jim Hendry thought he had solved this problem last year when he vastly overpaid for Kosuke Fukudome who turned out to not be a power hitter at all.  So Hendry had three options: Bradley, Raul Ibanez, and Bobby Abreu.  First, Hendry tried to low-ball Raul Ibanez, and the Phillies grabbed the 30+ home run hitter and All-Star for less than we eventually signed Bradley for.  The next step is the most curious.  I have never heard an account of Hendry offering a contract to Bobby Abreu.  Abreu was the best batter on the Yankees other than A-Rod during their tenure in NY together.  He is a five tool player, and his numbers only would have improved by moving from the AL East to the NL Central.  Age could not have been a factor, since Abreu is two years younger than Ibanez.  In the end, Abreu remained unsigned for an inexplicable amount of time and eventually signed for only one year and $5 million with the Angels, for whom he has had a phenomenal season.  So even though Hendry was presented by more consistent, accomplished, durable, emotionally stable, and somehow cheaper options, he instead decided to pay $30 million for Milton Bradley to play right field despite Bradley being a full-time DH for the last two years and being an obvious risk for injury, suspension, and clashes with teammates and management.

The only explanation for this is that Jim Hendry is not a smart man.  I’m not being mean or calling names.  I didn’t say he’s stupid.  He’s not.  He’s just proved himself to not be anything above average intelligence.  My argument for this, aside from his constantly overpaying for poorly evaluated players and his being ripped off by other GMs who are smarter than him (more on this later), is that he clearly tries really hard to understand the statistical analysis of baseball and fails.  He poorly projected Fukudome’s Japanese power stats to the MLB when every Japanese player to come to the States has had a drop in power from the bigger parks and different balls in the MLB.  He then tried to wrap his average mind around Bradley posting an on base percentage of over .400 for two consecutive seasons.  What Hendry did was he tried to “use SABRmetrics” to play “Moneyball.”  But it’s hard to do those things when you don’t understand what they are.  Bradley’s OBP means that he gets on base, but he only had 22 homers and 77 RBI last year.  Hendry wanted a power bat, and instead he got a guy who requires other guys to drive him in.  It should be noted that Bradley was most effective this year when hitting out of the 2 hole, getting on base in front of Derrek Lee.  In trying to play “Moneyball” by using advanced stats, Hendry failed to realize that the key principal in “Moneyball” is getting a lot of production for very little money.  How was he saving money by overpaying for a guy who didn’t fit our needs?  What was the point of trading away all of those players to pay for the most expensive and least statistically accomplished of his three options?  I don’t think Jim Hendry has explanations for these things, because I don’t think he gets where he went wrong, otherwise he would have been able to see what was wrong with his plan before he executed it.

As for the other evidence that Hendry isn’t smart, he was fleeced by the guy he replaced.  Hendry traded three of our best prospects of the last few years in Rich Hill, Ronny Cedeno, and Felix Pie for Aaron Heilman.  Aaron Heilman was a complete liability for our team.  By mid-season he was only being used mop up duty in huge losses.  Meanwhile, Cedeno is hitting and fielding well with the Pirates, Felix Pie has hit for the cycle with the Orioles, who also have a young starter in Rich Hill who could still be a front of the rotation pitcher if he stops walking people.  Baltimore GM Andy MacPhail clearly understands “Moneyball,” as he has fleeced other GMs for young and cheap talent like Adam Jones, and is building a winner through those trades and through his farm system.  Don’t be surprised when the Orioles are a good team two years from now.  This is a GM who won two World Series championships with the Twins.  He didn’t do well with the Cubs due to the constraints of their parent company and his poor adjustment to having money to spend for the first time in his career.

So, although we clearly made the right choice in switching from MacPhail to Hendry and have had three playoff runs to show for it, Jim Hendry is clearly not the answer either to the Cubs quest for a title, now on its 101st year.  Getting rid of him might be just as important as getting rid of Milton Bradley.  He overhauled a contender and turned us into a very expensive non-contender.  That combination leaves us few options for improvement in the near future.  The only option left is to overhaul the front office.  Thanks for the memories, Jim.  I mean that.  Yours was the most successful Cubs tenure of my lifetime by far.  But you are outclassed by your peers.  You have outlived your usefulness and have become a liability.  You gave us a good run, but it’s time to move on.

"What's that? DON'T throw the ball to the other team? Oh. My bad.

In last night’s game, Bears QB Jay Cutler led us on a 4th quarter drive down the field to score and take the lead with three minutes left in the game.  I thought I had just seen him engineer his first 4th quarter comeback as a Bear.  Then Nathan Vasher decided to fall asleep on D and let Gregg Jennings get by him for an easy TD.  With the Pack up 19-15 and just over a minute left with the ball around the 40 yard line, I thought to myself, “This is why we traded for Cutler.  He has a history of late game heroics.  He has an arm that can take a shot at the end zone from here.  We’ve never had that before.  With him, we’re in scoring range RIGHT NOW.”  So what happened?  His first pass of the drive was picked off.  Game over.

Chris Collinsworth up in the booth immediately blamed the receiver, who was definitely back peddling instead of coming to the ball.  And he should know, having been a receiver himself.  But when that interception is your 4th of the game, nobody’s going to remember the receiver.  They’re just going to remember how you kept gift-wrapping the ball and handing it to the other team.  Nice debut, asshole.

Oh, and Brian Urlacher needs surgery…  FUCK!!!!!!

• The Detroit Lions will be bad.  See?  I’m already 1 for 1, and the season hasn’t even started yet.
• Some team will come out of obscurity to prominence.  Since this is a total crap shoot, I’m going to go with the Texans.  It would be too easy to choose a team like Seattle or Jacksonville, since they were both awesome two years ago and just took a year off last year.  In fact, anyone who chooses them as “sleepers” is a pussy.  There.  I said it.
• Many idiots will pick the Eagles to win the NFC East or even the NFC Championship even though they’ve only won their division once in the last 4 years and have the exact same fucking team every year, with the addition of a couple young receivers and a psychotic backup QB.  Side prediction: Brian Westbrook will get injured this year and Donovan McNabb’s abilities to take his team all the way will be questioned by fans and the media.  Side note: that prediction I just made, which comes with a guarantee, is part of the reason that Philly will never win with this team.  Also, they can’t run up the gut.  Also, Andy Reed is the Walrus, koo koo kajoo.
• Eli Manning will continue to baffle everyone on the planet.  His face reads like he has no idea what’s going on.  He talks like an awkward pre-teen.  He throws for a low completion percentage.  Yet he wins and is considered a leader.  And those people aren’t wrong.  Sometimes I don’t get football.
• Kurt Warner will thank Jesus for something, and maybe even everything.  Just once, though, I want an athlete to blame God for their loss.  If he’s the reason why people win, then by deductive reasoning isn’t he punishing the losers?  And if so, can we start having sideline confessionals as to why the losing players feel that they are being punished?  Now THAT would be must see TV.
• Brett Favre will be forced to retire after this season with an inoperable case of old people smell.
• The Redskins will be ok at best despite spending tons of money in the off-season AGAIN.  Seriously, Daniel Snider doesn’t learn a thing.  Still trying to shove that one-more-expensive-free-agent peg through the championship hole.
• Green Bay fans will be disappointed when they wake up and realize that they are still fat.
• Philadelphia fans will disgrace their city by doing something atrocious.  Scratch that, Philadelphia fans will accurately portray their city by doing something atrocious.
• The Raiders will continue to provide more entertainment off the field than on it.  Unless you enjoy schadenfreude, in which case you will love watching the Raiders.
• Everyone on the planet will spend the first quarter of the season talking about the Wild Cat offense revolutionizing the game.  Then defenses will figure it out and it will be relegated to an occasional trick play.  That’s EXACTLY what happened last year with the spread offense.  The Pats used it to go undefeated in the regular season and everyone tried to copy them… Until the Wild Cat came out.  Then that was the new “revolutionary formation.”  It just proves that 90% of the population easily gets caught up in hype, and also has an extremely short memory.
• Both Ohio teams will suck balls.  And they deserve it, too.  Don’t give me that look, Ohio.  You know what you did.
• Vince Young will continue his mental breakdown.  It’s too early to say if this will be tragic, comic, or tragicomic.
• Several players will get arrested and suspended for a variety of offenses (I REALLY went out on a limb there).
• Travis Henry will get someone pregnant.
• Chad Ochocinco will do something hilarious that will offend Joe Buck’s delicate sensibilities
• Phillip Rivers will continue to be an indefensible prick and that will somehow further endear him to his teammates.  You stay classy, San Diego.
• Drew Brees will finally get that birth mark removed from his face and will win the MVP, proving that voters were misinterpreting the phrase “the face of the franchise.”
• Mark Sanchez will indeed follow in the footsteps of “Broadway” Joe Namath, and by that I mean that he will appear on TV wearing pantyhose and fur coats.

Ok, now onto the serious predictions:

Division Winners: Giants, Vikings, Falcons, Cardinals, Patriots, Steelers, Colts, Chargers

Wild Cards: Bears, Panthers, Ravens, Texans

NFC Championship: Giants over Falcons.

AFC Championship: Steelers over Raven

Superbowl: Steelers over Giants

For those of you thinking to yourselves that picking the Steelers is the safe pick because they’re the defending champs, you’re an idiot.  It’s pretty rare to repeat in this league.  It’s only been done seven times in the history of the Superbowl.  Compare that to the three-peats that happen in baseball and basketball, but never in football, and you’ll realize that this isn’t a safe pick.  You know what?  I don’t have to defend my predictions to you.  If you don’t like them, you can go make you’re own damned predictions.  I’m done here.

"Boo hoo. I'm so sad to be leaving the Packers... So I can play for their rivals, even if I have to wait a full season in between."

Brett Favre has changed his mind for the 15th time, and has accepted a contract with the Vikings. “But wait,” you say, “I thought he had decided once and for all to stay retired and live in bumblefuck Mississippi.”  Well, dear reader, you clearly underestimated Brett Favre’s drive to compete, his need to feed his massive ego no matter what the cost, and his desire to kill his team with interceptions in key situations.

Now, most people say that I hate Brett Favre unfairly.  That’s true in the respect that, as a Bears fan, I truely hate the Packers.  And that guy usued to torture us in the 90s.  I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t beat them for 3 straight years at one point.  I was also at the Monday Night Football game where we had him pinned on the one yard line, only to have him throw a quick slant to Robert Brooks that Brooks took to the house for the longest pass in NFL history.  The only thing redeeming about that game was the greatest catch in Bears history (note: it wasn’t made by a player).

But the real reason I hate Brett Favre is because everyone blows so much smoke up his ass.  Every Monday Night Football was dominated by John Madden basically sucking Favre’s dick on air.  “Oh, Brett Favre.  Look at how strong his arm is.  That throw can’t be made by other players, but Brett Favre can do it.  Look at how much fun he has.  Nobody has more fun than Brett Favre.  Nobody’s tougher than Brett Favre.  I heard that rainbows shoot out of his dick, and that he shits unicorns.  Oh, Brett…”

"Oh no! My team lost beacuse I threw a pick. Oh well, back to "gunslinging."

It’s infuriating.  In his last 4-5 years, he’s had one good season, which ended with him throwing a pick to end their playoff run.  And that would have been a fitting way for him to end his career, simply because it’s his most defining characteristic.  Brett Favre led the league in INTs last year with the Jets.  If you’re thinking, “Well he’s older and he broke down towards the end,” then you don’t know Brett Favre.  He’s the career leader in interceptions for a reason.  He’s led the league in picks 3 times, finished second 3 times, and was in the top ten every year of his career.  And the reason I say his pick to the Giants would have been a fitting end to his career, is that he is also the career leader in playoff picks, including a record 6 in one game.  Several of those picks, just like in ‘07, ended the Packers’ playoff run.  You guys can have your “gunslinger” flinging the ball around with reckless abandon, I’ll take a guy who takes care of the ball over that any day.  I don’t want a leader who goes all-in on every throw and gets burned just as much as he comes through.  It’s a huge rush to watch, but it’s still a guy taking stupid risks needlessly.

Tearfull Press Conference Number 1: I love pain killers! They make me feel great! Can't play without 'em! But, you know, you guys should pitty me and then completely forget about this in a few years."

Favre won 3 MVPs in a row and broke the record for consecutive games played, both impressive feats, until you remember that he did so while taking PEDs.  During his MVP years Favre was addicted to painkillers.  He admitted as much in a tearful press conference, something that would become common in later years with Favre.  Would he have been able to play through all of those injuries and through all that pain without those painkillers?  Of course not.  That’s just as much of a PED as anything else.  He never would have broken the consecutive games streak without them.  They were propping him up throughout it all.  I’m not saying that he would have been terrible without them, I’m just saying that he wouldn’t have that record, and his star would be significantly diminished without it.

I wouldn’t hate Favre nearly as much as I do if everyone else would just acknowledge these things.  But instead they completely ignore them and only focus on the “fun” that he has on the field and his records (but not the one for interceptions, and not the asterisk that should be on his consecutive games streak).  In the end, I would put Favre in the top 10 QBs of the modern era, but no higher.  Just off the top of my head, here’s the list:

1. Joe Montana
2. John Elway
3. Dan Marino
4. Tom Brady
5. Peyton Manning
6. Steve Young
7. Johnny Unitas
8. Brett Favre
9. Dan Fouts
10. Fran Tarkenton

A one woman "fuck you" to sports media bimbos.

Hey there Other Fifteeners.  How ya doin’?  Can’t wait for the weekend to start?  Yeah, me too.  Not that the weekends are any different for me than any other day, but other people seem to like them a lot.  So we have a little treat for you: an interview with a legitimate member of the sports media.  Some of you may know Sarah Spain already from her coverage of Chicago sports stars for Mouthpiece Sports.  If you don’t know, now you know.  So I met Sarah at the now infamous Blogs with Balls conference in June, and convinced her over several pints of Guinness to let me interview her about her experiences in sports media.  After emailing back and forth, we were finally able to put something together, and here it is:

So what’s the weirdest answer/comment you’ve ever gotten from an athlete?

Sarah: Wow.  Tough one.

That’s right.  I don’t pull punches.

Sarah: I can’t think of any truly off the wall weird comments.  I would say that the BEST weird response I’ve gotten is when Blackhawks’ rookie Kris Versteeg burst into song/rap in the Hawks’ locker room on request.  He did a bang up performance of Fergie’s “Glamorous” – no karaoke machine or lyric sheet necessary.

So a hockey player who knows Fergie lyrics by heart busted out a song of hers in the locker room with complete immunity from his teammates?  Are we sure he didn’t get a wedgie or a swirly afterward?  I thought hockey players were tougher than that.

Sarah: The guys definitely rib him about his music preferences, but he can take it.  Seems like everyone on the team likes him and his sense of humor, so he can get away with a couple karaoke missteps every now and again.

Have you ever had a Visanthe Shiancoe moment?  I’ve heard that’s actually more common than we’ve previously been aware of.

Sarah: Never unknowingly done an interview or stand-up with somebody in the background in their birthday suit, no.  Being in the locker rooms, you’d expect that would happen by mistake at some point, but we’ve managed to avoid it.

Do you ever get hit on by athletes?

Sarah: No more so than by regular guys, which is to say, not that much.  I’ve been told I’m quite intimidating and not very approachable.  I think it’s the height.  ‘Course, it could be my sharp tongue – I like to start with the painfully dry sarcasm right from the outset.  If a guy can’t handle it, chances are we wouldn’t last anyway.

So what do you do to soften up an athlete to get them to answer a tough question?

Sarah: Nothing really.  I think one of my best assets as a reporter is my ability to read people pretty well and to speak in a conversational tone rather than letting a certain formality creep in.  Some don’t like my laid-back style, but it’s the key to getting real answers out of people.  At the beginning of an interview I sense what kind of person he/she is and then try to tailor my tone accordingly.  With most of the guys I interview, I think just being close in age to them and being up to speed on sports, pop culture, music, etc. that they’re into helps.  I also use humor as a way of prying them from the usual cliche answers.

Is it awkward to interview someone after they just failed or lost?

Sarah: Yes.  As with everything else, though, each player is different in his handling of a loss.  Some guys you just know to avoid.  Others, Derrek Lee, Ryan Theriot, and Jonathan Toews in particular, are willing to talk no matter what.  You tread lightly when they’ve lost a close one, but you know they’ll be honest about the game – good or bad.

In talking to athletes about their private lives, have you ever uncovered material or comments that might be too scandalous to be aired?

Sarah: No, nothing major.  I’ve edited out an accidental swear or two, but that’s about it.  There are certain things you learn about guys that are private and I keep those to myself.  As much as the world has a fascination with the “real lives” of celebrities and athletes, they’re just real people in a sort of unreal profession.  They need to have lives and let off steam just like the rest of us.  I’ll never be out to make an athlete look bad – that’s just not my style.  I like to bring out what it is about the player that makes them worth rooting for.  You know, why should you love this guy or that guy as much for who he is as for what he does on the court, the field, or the ice.

I asked that question thinking of Clinton Portis’ episode of “Cribs” where he had no qualms showing everyone the stripper pole, mirrored ceilings, and hot tub in his basement/living room. Given your conversational style and behind the scenes subject matter that you cover, do you ever get athletes revealing TMI?  Or are they aware enough of you as a member of the media to keep things at surface level?

Sarah: My site, MouthpieceSports.com, considers itself “the athletes’ media.”  So our goal is to let the athletes speak directly to their fans without the traditional media spin.  If a guy says or does something that he wouldn’t want floating around on the internet, we make sure to respect that.  It hasn’t happened to me much, but there are a few occasions where I’ve edited something out that would reflect poorly on an athlete.  As I said, my goal is to never make these guys look bad, that’s just not my style.

What are the toughest obstacles in your job, and what moments are the most satisfying?

Sarah: Well, the most satisfying for me is when I put together a really funny package that shows off the lighthearted side of an athlete or a team.  I like the idea of sports as entertainment, so getting to use my comedy and improv background to take a look at an issue in a new and different way is the most fun for me (like the Cubs’ Gatorade piece).  My whole career I’ve wanted to “make it” for being me – a fast-talking, smart-assed, intelligent, die-hard sports fan… who happens to be a girl that some people find attractive.  I don’t want to be a cookie-cutter image of what’s already out there.  I think I have a unique voice and a unique skill set that hasn’t been seen before.  Diverging from the status quo certainly has its challenges, though.  I’ve always said that I’d rather be funny than sexy, but I’m certainly not going to TRY to be ugly or pretend not to be a sexual being just so people will stop making it about me being a woman.  There are certainly advantages to being a woman in a male-dominated field, but I’m finding more and more that the disadvantages well outweigh them.  It doesn’t matter that I’m a Cornell grad, or a former D1 athlete, or an accomplished writer, or a true live-it-and-breathe-it sports fan.  There are always going to be people that can’t accept someone who doesn’t fit into one “box.”  To them, I will always be an attractive woman who MUST be sleeping with the players or must have gotten into the industry to meet athletes.  The truth is, I love sports and I’ve worked hard to get where I am.  And, if you want the honest truth, I usually date writers and musicians and intellectual types who like Scrabble.  The only way to succeed when the odds are against you is to make yourself indispensable.  I plan on being so good at what I do – and I’m really the only person doing what I do – that my voice and my content can’t be stifled by tired stereotypes.  If I have to deal with some B.S. on the way, so be it.  Rarely do people with new ideas or new styles take the easy route.

Wow.  That was quite an answer, filled with many hyphenated adjectives.  Give me a second to digest that.  And… ok, I’m good.  So, on the opposite side of the difficulties that come with the job, what’s the most fun part or the best perks?

Sarah: Well, obviously getting to cover the teams that I grew up following and the simple things like getting to stand on Wrigley Field and Soldier Field.  Traveling to places like Las Vegas and Tampa for awards shows or the Super Bowl, getting into special events like Kanye West’s charity concert or Ditka’s  Gridiron Greats dinner.  Getting creative freedom to write about what I want or to do funny interviews like fake tryouts for the Chicago Bears.  I think the best part is that 95% of the time, if given the option to have a day off or work, I’d rather work.  I mean, my job essentially consists of covering games and events that I would be going to for fun anyway.  When the hours are long, or deadlines are stressful, I always remind myself that I’m so lucky to get to do something I love every day.

Well thanks for making me jealous.  So what did we learn from Sarah Spain today TOFers?  First, her life is cooler than ours.  Second, it wasn’t easy for her to make it that way.  Third, athletes somehow are able to hide their junk from reporters in the locker room.  Fourth, being a woman in sports means taking shit from people.  And fifth, Sarah likes to date Scrabble-playing artsy types, not athletes.  Tahnks again to Sarah Spain for taking the time to answer my questions about what it’s like to work in sports when you have a pair of breasts (and not the kind that Prince Fielder is sporting).