Odds and Ends From Bleacher Seat

That sucking sound you’re hearing is the sound of Ronde Barber being...well, it's just the sound of Ronde Barber.

Though Eli Manning's payback wasn't as pronounced as Tom Brady’s to Anthony Smith, he burned Barber with several passes to both Toomer and Burress. All would be forgiven were it not for Barber weaseling on his comments about the Giants by wanting to differentiate between Ronde the commentator and Ronde the player.

Ronde, if you want to gear up for your post-football life instead of focusing all your energy as a player on the playoff game at hand, Tiki provided you with a great example.

After his 60 minutes appearance, Roger Clemens can't go Marion Jones now without looking completely foolish. He is stuck with standing by his story (which may be true) or crashing harder than the guy who Jackassed the half-pipe with his 40-foot fall sans skateboard.

Wake me when the controversy over BCS rankings are over. Better yet, just bury me.

Watching Terry, Jimmy, Howie, Dan, Boomer, Shannon, and company yuck it up over lame stuff reminds me why I didn't play football.

The Seahawks burned Sean Taylor this weekend. According to the Skins, Taylor was there with them. The Seahawks burned the Skins. Ergo...

Speaking of the Seahawks (which I try not to very often), they and the Broncos have virtually no excuse for not making the playoffs every year with the huge home-field advantage they both enjoy. Opposing teams should be spotted a touchdown just for having to play under the conditions of deafening noise in Seattle and high altitude in Denver.

Memo to TV networks: Get your reporters off team benches and sidelines seeking comments from coaches and players while the action is happening. Fans do not need to see this invasive interference of the sporting events they're watching. Take the microphones intended for NBA coaches and shove them.

Kudos to Coors for its smart commercials featuring footage of Parcells, Green, etc., and to the The Football Network for its entertaining commercials set at Joe’s Diner.

Other than the idea of rules being broken and being a bad influence on kids, I just can't  get too worked up over paid professional athletes choosing to put performance enhancing substances in their bodies. For purists concerned with records, where do we draw the line?

Baseballs have been juiced, golf balls and clubs have undergone technological changes, and these days the head of a tennis racket is as big as all outdoors, to name just a few examples. All-time-best arguments stretch over decades of athletes and many technological and rules changes that mostly render the arguments futile.

I am loyal, really I am, but after decades of being less than a die-hard fan toward the New England Patriots, I have turned on them this year. I like to think that it is they who have gone over to the dark side, not me. The Pats gained no advantage this year from any illicit videotaping and I suspect they got little if any advantage from any illicit videotaping they may have done in the past. But any beatdowns on teams this year is not proof that they didn't gain a competitive advantage in the past and the Pats seem to think that it is proof.

This season, any close game the Pats win, Belichick and Brady claim the team “did not play their best game.” This is disingenuous to those few teams that played them close. I suspect the Patriots will run the table but it's going to be oddly delicious if they do not.