> A Wink and a Nod

First off, I think it’s been pretty well established by now that Milwaukee Bucks’ rookie Yi Jianlian’s first name (or last name?) is pronounced like the letter “e.” That being said, headlines that read “Yi Harmony” followed by subheads like “Rook-Yi L-Yi-ds Milwauk-Yi to Victor-Yi” are starting to get a little bit old and confusing by now. The worst such headline I’ve come across read “Earl-Yi Surprise.”

Give me a break.

Yes, the New England Patriots are a pretty good football team. At 11-0 coming into the season’s 13th week, it’s a realistic possibility that they can even go undefeated. So why, then, were the lowly Eagles just one smart decision by A.J. Feeley away from knocking them off last Monday night?

Maybe, it’s because the Patriots were simply overlooking a .500 opponent playing without its starting quarterback. Maybe, as a record 89-point favorite to beat Philly, the Pats got in their own heads. Maybe it was just a case of never knowing what will happen on Any Given Sunday (or Monday, Thursday or Saturday).

Last Thursday, when the Packers fell to the Cowboys, a strange feeling rushed over me.

It wasn’t one of grief, although the Pack had lost just their second game of the year. It wasn’t one of rage, although the men in stripes did everything but take away an Al Harris interception to ensure a Cowboys victory.

Now that all meaningful football games have been played, unless I’m forgetting one – I can’t seem to think what I would be missing – oh of course! Let me re-phrase: Now that the NFL Pro Bowl is the only remaining football game of any importance whatsoever, nationwide attention turns to the NBA, where hundreds of meaningful games remain, or at least there’s a lot of amazing left to happen.

Since football has been the main focus of sports fans for the last few months, chances are that not everybody is completely up to speed with how the first half of orange-ball action transpired. For this reason, we present to you the 51st annual UWM Post NBA Mid-Season Awards.

To use an analogy nobody’s ever used before, the free agent signing process in the NFL, much like the league’s draft, is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.

It’s hard to tell if that former first round defensive lineman is going to be a Ryan Pickett or a Joe Johnson, or if that veteran defensive back will be a Charles Woodson or a Marquand Manuel. It’s extremely difficult for the GM of a team to find players from others teams that will perform well in his team’s system, so it’s pretty much hit or miss.

We probably all knew right away. We probably just didn’t want to admit it. Back when Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were knocking balls out of the park in jerseys that mysteriously no longer fit them, we just shrugged our shoulders and said our ooo’s and our ahh’s with everybody else.

The strike was years ago, we liked baseball again, and look at this! They’re both going to break a 37-year-old record in the same year! Amazing! All was well in the world, until somebody had to go and mention what everybody else had been too afraid to bring up.

It had to happen sooner or later. We knew he wasn’t going to play forever. Yet, as much as we tried to prepare ourselves for the day he finally called it quits, we knew we would never be fully prepared.

Even now that it’s official, it’s still hard to believe. It’s hard not to think that maybe we took him for granted while he was around. He was always just sort of there, ready to play, every Sunday. For some Packer fans, he’s the only player they’ve ever known in his position.

Print off your brackets and grab your sharpies—it’s almost time to fill out your NBA playoff bracket!

Will an eight-seed knock off a one-seed? Can the Spurs repeat? Will the Rockets get over the hump and advance to the final four? The excitement is unbearable!

If I were an eight-year-old girl, and possibly a cheerleader (insert “What do you mean, if you were a girl?” joke here), one of my favorite chants would be “I’ll give you a dollar, and you can keep the change, because all I really want is a quarterback.”

Unfortunately for the world of competitive cheering, I am not an eight-year-old girl, and even if I were, that wouldn’t be a chant I would get too use often – at least not when I was cheering for the Packers.

It’s April in Wisconsin, which can only mean one thing: NFL draft fever is here! As the song goes—NFL draft, NFL draft, keep turning up the heat!—or something like that.

Indeed, the draft is just days away, so in order to get you prepped for a nice, long weekend indoors, I’ve put together the Official 2008 UWM Post Wink and a Nod Guesses as to “Which College Players Will Be Picked By Teams That Can Legally Pay Them Money and Where Exactly These Players Will Be Picked.” In layman terms, it’s a mock draft.

If you are reading this column, you probably have no other options.

You’re probably sitting in the library, dreading the moment in which you’ll eventually have to read your textbooks for the first time all semester in preparation for finals. You’ve now resorted to the UWM Post as a last-ditch effort to delay the work ahead of you, due to the lack of alternative procrastination tools in sight.