September: If the Jackets finish 3rd in the division, I’ll be happy.

October: OH HOLY CRAP KEN HITCHCOCK IS A MINOR DIETY!

December: If the Jackets finish 3rd in the division…

You know what, I thought I’d be able to write more while on vacation. I also thought that I would be able to really clean the apartment, work on my demo tape, and finish my Christmas shopping. One of these things has actually happened.

The picks for the second-to-last week:

• Kansas City @ Detroit (-4.5) -  I don’t know if Detroit will have their heart in it after their epic collapse, but Kansas City is just too awful.
• Cleveland (-2.5) @ Cincinnati - Be honest, when you saw these two teams the first time this year, did you honestly expect the Browns to be 9 and 5, and the Bengals to be 5 and 9? Exactly.
• Miami (+22) @ New England - This coulda been the game of the century. Still, the Pats haven’t been pulling away too far, and I think with the playoffs coming up, Hoodie will start resting Brady and Moss.
• Washington @ Minnesota (-6.5) - Edwards > Jackson, but Peterson/Taylor > Portis/Betts.

Did I mention I have been sick the entire time I’ve been on vaca? Yeah, just my luck.

A couple of weeks ago at work, I was pulled into a production studio and asked to read some copy for the Mud Hens Winter Fandemonium. In case you didn’t know, The Hens moved to WCWA (so that the other station can focus solely on the Tigers). I pick up the script, and immediately read the word “Fandemonium” in my best Top 40 DJ voice. The production guy (JD from WIOT) mistakes it for a bad Harry Carey, but loves it. And we end up doing the entire spot that way.

Enjoy the awfulness:

I always loved taking classes online. Quite simply, it was all too easy to bullcrap your way through it all. Especially with any sort of math class. If someone hasn’t already written something online to do whatever kind of number magic you’re trying to pull off, you can write a program to do it yourself if your geeky enough (Hi, my name is Matt, and I’m a giant nerd).

Which brings me to the story on Florida State. The Seminoles will be without 20-25 players for the Music City Bowl, because they were busted cheating in an online class.

The investigation already has led to the resignations of two academic assistance employees, one of which was full-time academic adviser Brenda Monk, who worked with FSU student-athletes. The school revealed in September that as many as 23 student-athletes were given answers before taking tests over the Internet.

See? There’s your problem. It’s an online class. You can have your book sitting right next to you as you take the tests. You could write out a cheat sheet and have everything you would need available. Granted, that would require a little effort on your part, but just think… you could accidentally learn something!

So here’s what you should have learned instead:

1. The more people that get involved, the more chances it gets blown up.
2. You are no longer a student-athlete. Right now you’re just a student.
3. Take Kentucky -3.

Spending this time off of work has opened up all kinds of television programming options to me. Of course, being daytime TV, most of the choices flat out suck. But I have caught a couple of episodes of the gone-but-not-forgotten Cheap Seats,  as well as some reruns of Simpsons, Family Guy, etc.

But right this moment, FSN is airing that really cool show Sports Science. It’s basically Mythbusters meets The Ultimate Highlight Sponsored By Milwaukee’s Best.  They usually break down the physics of how a ball comes off a bat or whatever. Except the episode I’m watching is based all around cheap shots. And it began with a boxer delivering the hardest, ahem, “low blow” he could.

Because seeing a crash test dummy get hit in the nuts over and over and over again in slow motion is actually kinda funny. But the boxer they got was maybe all of 130 pounds. they made very special note that a punch to the groin from a heavyweight was about the force of getting two bowling balls dropped on your… yeah. Yikes.

I’ll write something sport-esque later today. But now they’re measuring the kind of damage done by the force of a hockey stick to the head.

Update: They just lined a guy up with a tennis ball machine and hit him in the nads. That just ain’t right.