FanHouse Bill Simmons

The weekend Brandon Jennings saga will only gain steam this week as talking heads give us the holy word on how a 19-year-old professional athlete should act. (Because 40-year-old white men know best, right?) In case you missed it, in a phone conversation with rapper Joe Budden, Jennings disparaged the Knicks, Chris Duhon, Ricky Rubio and (depending how you look at it) Luke Ridnour. Budden streamed the conversation on his Web site (apparently unbeknownst to Jennings). In the aftermath, Jennings erased his entire Twitter account and Budden sought to remove an unauthorized recording of his stream that had popped up on YouTube. (The video has popped back up, by the way.)

Responses from the blogosphere have been nuanced -- the FreeDarko sermon is particularly on target (and interesting, considering FD's Shoals helped break the story for The Baseline). But we have been through enough of these episodes before to know that the prevailing sanity will not last. Before the storm, allow me a question. (I think I've killed whatever suspense that line could illicit by posing the question in this post's headline.)

I really can't think of anything more demoralizing than losing to Jimmy Fallon. At anything. (I suppose I should mention this is a spoiler alert for the handful of diehards who faithfully patronize "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.") But that's what happened to the world's best golfer this morning.

After accepting Fallon's challenge earlier in the week, Tiger Woods made his way to Manhattan and proceeded to get whupped in his own game, Wii-style. Yep, that's right, Fallon, a self-proclaimed video game nut (That's mildly tolerable when you're in your early 20s; it's sad when you're in your mid 30s -- how is that not obvious?) "shot" par while Woods went double-bogey, bogey, quitting before the three-hole round was complete.

"I just got absolutely schooled in my own game," Woods said after the showdown at Times Square. "I certainly want a rematch."

Translation: "Next time I see Fallon, I'll have Stevie break his legs." (Moving pictures after the jump.)

Disclaimer: I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell a great deal. I read his books, columns and blog. There's a substantial backlash against him, especially in the sports world, but I'm not a part of it. He has great gifts in distillation and (in my opinion) telling stories. I'm a fan. (I also generally like Bill Simmons, for the record.)

But Gladwell's argument that the reverse-quality structure of the NBA draft "does untold damage" to the league is awful. I touched on Gladwell's discussion of "moral hazard" in the NBA draft over the weekend as it relates to another plea by the author (that teams think outside the box more frequently). But here I'd like to really dig into Gladwell's specific theory (endorsed by Simmons) that all teams would benefit from a complete reformation of the current draft system.

One of the maddening things about the Detroit Lions over the eight-year Matt Millen era -- and especially during their winless season in 2008 -- was that no matter how awful the team was, the coaches and front office seemed to feel certain that they were doing things the right way, and that they didn't need to change.

Every time Millen addressed the media during his horrendous run as the team's president, reporters would pose him questions about ways that the Lions should change their approach, and Millen would, without fail, insist that he had the right plan for changing the team's fortunes, and that they were close to turning the corner. And after Millen was finally fired early in the 2008 season, head coach Rod Marinelli constantly insisted that his approach to coaching was the right one, even as he became the first coach ever to finish a season 0-16.

In his lengthy dispatch exchange with ESPN's Bill Simmons, New Yorker writer and bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell endorses wholesale changes to the NBA draft. Specifically, he wants to erase the incentive for bad teams -- he wants all teams, elite and awful, to have a shot at the best players in the draft.

Gladwell has most recently been the talk of basketball blogs for another opinion, that NBA and college teams need to embrace the full-court press as a legitimate strategy. Frankly, these two opinions don't make sense coming from the same person.

If you've never seen The Colbert Report before, please take the following steps -- close your browser, shut down your computer, and move to another country. Seriously, Stephen Colbert's ability to make any and all confrontations between famous authors, politicians and now college basketball coaches funny is a thing of beauty. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was on the Report Tuesday, talking about his new book and, thanks to Colbert, he somehow wound up comparing Stephen to LeBron James.

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Jay Cutler recently found out that the Denver Broncos -- now under new management -- wanted to get in on the Matt Cassel shopping extravaganza (Cassel was apparently shopped to the Bucs, Lions and Chiefs) and allegedly tried to trade him.

And now, after saying he was done in Denver, Cutler is apparently rebuffing the team's attempts to have a sit-down/kiss-and-makeup session with the quarterback. Yes, there's drama. And yes, it's totally unnecessary.

TNT finally ceded to Bill Simmons' demands this year, offering up a game of H-O-R-S-E at the All Star Game festivities. The competitive game is a throw back to every playground and childhood basketball memory. Despite some giving the network a hard time for going this direction, a game of H-O-R-S-E is awesome for everyone.

Well, unless they try to ruin it with corporate sponsorship. Which is what TNT appears set on doing. Because they're not playing H-O-R-S-E anymore; now it's G-E-I-C-O (via FirstCuts).

With attention spans dwindling, we forego full game-by-game previews to give you the essentials you need to know about every contest this glorious NFL weekend. Click here to go back in time.

The 1s

Minnesota (7-5) at Detroit (0-12): I'm a huge fan of the "Well, if the Lions are going to win, this is the game to do it" theory. But they're going to stop Adrian Peterson? Really? Sure, it might be their best shot to win, but how does AP not go for 200 yards and three touchdowns in this game?

Also, I'd like to bring up this point we FanHousers discussed the other day. If you had to start your team around one player, who would it be? I initially thought Peterson until I realized that, as good as he is, running backs can go down with any injury (see Tomlinson, LaDainian) and never be the same. I heard a few names go around, like Justin Tuck and Albert Haynesworth. I really believe I'd go with either Matt Ryan or Mario Williams. You'd never go receiver because there are too many out there (unless you were Matt Millen). You want a young defensive player, like Williams, or a quarterback that can win, like Ryan. What are your thoughts?

Pick: Minnesota

Back in the early days of NHL FanHouse, we had some fun when Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis engaged in a very brief but public feud with local sports radio personality Steve Czaban. While others might have thought it silly, I thought it was a lot of fun to watch in an "everybody wins, nobody gets hurt," sort of way.

My only regret is that nobody unleashed any insults along the lines of Mark Crawford's crack about Scotty Bowman and the steel plate in his head. Now I would have paid to hear something like that.

Well, Leonsis has gotten his Irish up again -- I know he's of Greek descent, but stick with me here -- and this time the object of his ire is ESPN's own Bill Simmons. The trouble started when Simmons fielded a question in his Sports Guy column from a reader who was astonished that the Washington Mystics had raised not one, not two, but three banners to the rafters of Verizon Center touting their league-leading attendance (1998, 1999 and 2002).

It was the following answer that drove Leonsis to the keyboard:

I don't consider those three WNBA attendance titles valid because half of those crowds were made up of Pittsburgh Steelers fans. But I mentioned your e-mail to my buddy House (a D.C. fan and resident) and he shamefully passed this tidbit along: Apparently last month during a Capitals game, the Caps raised a banner to commemorate their 2007-08 Southeast Division title.