The NFL Draft came and went faster than a weekend bender (but that may have had something to do with my weekend bender). I spent this past Sunday watching every single pick of the second day of the NFL draft, all 8 hours of coverage (awesome, I know). I watched two players from I-AA Richmond get their names called and lots of college football household names fall into the late rounds. The latter are destined to never be heard from again.

I’ve spent the last four years with these guys, watching them play, wagering on them, inevitably violently cursing them, so the whole experience was weirdly nostalgic seeing that now they’re irrelevant.

And don’t give me the Tom Brady / Terrell Davis argument. The Tom Brady phenomenon requires a player not to get any playing time in college because they are sitting behind another great college football player. The Terrell Davis phenomenon requires a major injury in college that sidelines the player for most of their collegiate career. In either case, pro scouts know these guys have talent, but they don’t know exactly what they are getting so the players fall in the draft.

The guys I’m talking about have all played A TON of college football; the pro scouts know what they’re getting when drafting these players and they’re looking for them to to fill out the roster, help out during training camp, and eventually quietly disappear without even a mention on ESPN’s Bottomline.

So without further ado, one final look back…

Dennis Dixon, QB - Oregon

5th round pick # 156 (soon to be cut by Pittsburgh Steelers)

Steelers Logic: Maybe we can turn him into Antwaan Randle-El.

Reality: Dixon is coming off a serious knee injury. He’s never experimented at receiver in college like Randle-El did. And generally the QB to WR doesn’t work (see: Matt Jones, Eric Crouch, etc.).

Most Memorable Degenerate Moment: When Oregon putting a 39-7 beatdown on Michigan in Week 2 last season. Oregon ran the statute of liberty followed by a fake statute of liberty in the process. Both were pretty sweet. The Ducks were +8 going into the game and a lot of people enjoyed a nice payday rolling on the moneyline.

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Time for Part II of my scintillating NBA Playoffs preview. Click here for yesterday’s take on the Eastern Conference.

1) LA Lakers. You’ve got Kobe racking up almost 30 a game. You’ve got Pau Gasol fulfilling his destiny as a born number two option. And you’ve got a coach who’s won nine NBA championships. Yet, for some reason, I’m still not convinced the Lakers are the best in their conference. The team to emerge from the West is going to have to have tremendous point guard play. Maybe it’s me, but if I had my pick of Paul, Parker, Williams, Kidd, Nash, or Derek Fisher, I’m going to take Fisher last and see if I can trade him for a twenty piece nugget every single time.

2) New Orleans Hornets. Chris Paul is awesome. I’ve got a boner right now just typing about him. A judge in Louisiana should command that David West allocate 20% of all future earnings to Paul. I have my reservations about the Hornets in the playoffs though. I don’t think West is a 20 point per game scorer in the postseason. And historically Peja Stojakovic disappears when defensive intensity picks up. I smell a ton of minutes for Paul in the playoffs, but I worry that in the first round Jason Kidd will be able to force Paul’s supporting cast to be beat the Mavericks.

3) San Antonio Spurs. If you don’t know what the Spurs bring to the table, then you probably gave up on reading this article after you saw the title. The Spurs have never won back to back Championships. I don’t expect them to break that trend this year. I think next year Duncan and the fellas put together one more Championship run before he officially starts declining.

4) Utah Jazz. After a shaky start you have to really like this team. Boozer is ultra consistent. Deron Williams can play with anybody in the league (I consider him the second best point guard in the West, after Paul, of course). And the Jazz not only get double figures from Okur, Kirilenko, Brewer, and Korver, but all those guys bring different scoring styles to the table whether it be shooting, slashing, posting up, or offensive rebounding. They will push the Lakers to the limit in the second round.

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The NBA playoffs are upon us. That means roughly half our readers are going to start watching NBA games and the other half still won’t give a shit.

I’m an unapologetic fan of the NBA, so this is pretty much the one week a year that people are interested in my knowledge of the league. If you are someone who plans to follow the playoffs, here’s a crash course of what you need to know about the Eastern Conference, by seedings:

1) Boston Celtics. After Garnett, Pierce, and Allen, the Celtics have a bunch of good role players. Leon Powe, Sam Cassell, Eddie House, James Posey, and Kendrick Perkins all average right around 7 ppg. The only question mark for the Celtics is if they can get strong enough point guard play out of Rajon Rondo and Sam Cassell to make a championship run. I also question the level of irony of a bunch of black dudes playing for a team with a leprechaun for a mascot, but that’s not a question for the playoffs.

2) Detroit Pistons. I fucking hate the Pistons. Chauncey, Rip, Rasheed, and Ben ran Larry Brown out of town despite his success because they didn’t want to have to work as hard as he made them. Ever since that power play, those under-worked, overpaid, lazy bastards have disappointed in the playoffs. Nothing will change this year.

3) Orlando Magic. You can counter balance how much I hate the Pistons with how much I love Dwight Howard. As a matter of fact, the entire site LOVES Dwight Howard. The problem is that in the playoffs teams are going to slow the pace down on the Magic and double Howard every time he touches the ball. And I don’t think the team has enough shooters to make their opponents pay for doubling Superman. Maybe they’ll knock the cobwebs off J.J. Reddick, or hire Dick Vitale to show up and give him a reach around pep talk, but I doubt it.

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If you could redo your brackets right now, who would you take to win it all? The current Vegas odds have UCLA, Memphis, and Kansas at 3 to 1 and UNC at 8 to 5 (that’s less than 2 to 1 for those of you doing caveman math).

In our NextRound pool only two people backed Memphis. If I could redo my brackets today I would take Memphis to cut down the nets.

First, they have Derrick Rose. When it’s all said and done he might be the number one overall pick in the NBA draft. The guy’s numbers don’t do him justice because he’s unselfish to a fault. It’s not like his numbers are exactly bad though; he went for 21 points, 9 assists, and 6 rebounds against Texas. Not to mention he held Longhorns’ superstar point guard DJ Augustine to 4 of 18 shooting, all the while making Augustine look like a second class player.

But the thing that makes Rose so dangerous is that he can get any shot on the floor at any time, regardless of the defense. He’s the most talented player left in the tournament, there is no debate (first person to tell me Hansbrough is the most talented gets donkey punched).

Second, Memphis is the only Final Four team that had to deal with beating the number 2 seed in their bracket. They had hands down the toughest matchup this past weekend and in the process made Texas (who I’m sure a ton of you had going to the Final Four) look like the girls JV squad from your favorite Catholic high school. I respect the hell out of the  Texas basketball program, but Memphis handed them the most impressive no-rubber beat down of the season.

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Click here to join NextRound’s 1st Annual Tournament Challenge: Booth v. All. You can win a t-shirt and a sweet set of steak knives just by beating NextRound’s marketing director/resident couch dweller.

Since it’s Booth v. All I’ll be using today’s column to outline and defend my bracket, primarily the controversial picks. Also, I want NextRound Nation to know what they’re up against over the next couple of weeks. The brackets won’t be visible on Yahoo Sports until tomorrow, but you can view mine by clicking on the above picture and zooming in.

Don’t think for a second I haven’t already printed out multiple of those bitches and cashed in on many a $2.99 Toasted Wrap Combo from KFC.

Here we go…

1st Round

Thursday

12:20PM (3) Xavier over (14) Georgia. What asshole scheduled this game? Did they think to themselves, Georgia just played 3 games in 30 hours; what is the shortest amount of rest we could possibly give them?

12:25PM (12) Temple over (5) Michigan State. I am not a fan of the Big Ten this year. I think Temple will be ready to play and I think Michigan St. will turn in another one of their inexplicable lackluster efforts.

2:55PM (9) Kent State over (8) UNLV. I don’t know dick about either of these teams, but Kent St. is a 2 point favorite so I’m going with the odds makers. Those guys are paid to know something about all the teams, especially the ones that play at the end of their strip.

7:10PM (11) Kansas St. over (6) USC. I am officially backing Michael Beasley over O.J. Mayo. I think Beasley solidifies himself as the number 1 overall pick in the NBA draft with a Superman-like performance.

9:55PM (10) Arizona over (7) W. Virginia. I love teams with great guard play in the tournament; Arizona’s PG Jerryd Bayless averages 20ppg. No relation to skip.

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The next three weekends are MASSIVE couch weekends for me. Well, almost every weekend is a massive couch weekend for me, but over the next three my ass will wage war against my upholstery. Tournament time is when Booth shines.

Now that NextRound 1.0 is finally starting to make an appearance, Maske wants me to initiate some creative marketing schemes to get everyone excited about the launch. What’s the first thing I came up with? You guessed it…

NextRound’s 1st Annual Tournament Challenge: Booth v. All

Starting Monday, we’ll be running a tournament pool, NextRound style. I’ll post my bracket and whoever beats me will win a NextRound t-shirt. The overall winner will win a sweet set of steak knives (they exist, swear).

To make sure everyone out there has a fair shot at those knives today’s column is dedicated to imparting a little knowledge on teams that have no shot at making the Final Four but could possibly get as far as the Elite 8 (or suck balls and get upset in the first round). Making the right decisions on these teams could mean the difference between you rocking a money NextRound T that will definitely lead to you taking home a young lady friend with questionable morals, or you spending another Friday night eating takeout with plastic silverware.

Of course, being the true marketing director I am, I plan to dominate this pool and take home the knives myself. Big Macs are WAY better when cut into fours. Besides, mailing t-shirts sounds like a lot of work.

The Moderately Good Breakdown

Here are a team or two from all the major conferences that we know right now will be in the NCAA tournament. All the following teams have question marks. I plan to use the conference tournaments to get a better feel for whether or not I’m comfortable backing them in the NCAAs.

Big Ten.

This is the most intriguing conference tournament. Not because any of the teams are any good, but because four teams from the Big Ten will definitely make the dance and all have the potential to go down early or make a deep run.

1) Wisconsin. The Badgers are going to be seeded WAY too high going into the NCAAs. Probably a 2 seed if they can win the Big Ten tourney. Don’t get fooled into thinking they will cruise into the Sweet 16; they could easily go down in the 2^nd round. Wisconsin only has 4-6 seed talent.

2) Purdue. I like the way this team plays. But traditionally young teams falter in the tourney. Keep this in mind when you make them your sleeper.

3) Indiana. The Hoosiers have sucked donkey nuts since their coach decided he hated himself. Do you think they will pull it together? How well these guys play this weekend will really influence how I feel about the in my bracket.

4) Michigan State. Everyone likes to back Izzo in the tourney because of his back to back to back Final Four runs, but this team has been Jekyll & Hyde all year. Be wary of expecting the Spartans to play well 3 games in a row.

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Monday afternoon I settled in on the couch to watch PTI when I heard something that made the french fries fall freely from my mouth. The Steelers signed Ben Roethlisberger for over 100 million dollars.

The thought of that guy being worth nine figures made me so sick that I almost didn’t eat my nuggets. “Almost” being the operable word in that sentence.

I think the Roethlisberger contract is a terrible decision by the Steelers for many reasons, but I’ll start with the most obvious: the guy is about as smart as a bag of wrenches. I’m pretty sure he would have stuck around for a one year membership in the Jelly of the Month Club. (Speaking of “Christmas Vacation”, I’ll save my Roethlisberger/Cousin Eddie comparative article for a later date.)

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Big Braindead is a terrible quarterback by any means. I’m just pretty sure that with the Steelers style of play they could have signed a number of guys to lead their offensive attack for a lot less coin.

Not to mention the AFC and Super Bowl go through New England and Indianapolis, and as long as Brady and Manning are around the Steelers are going to be spending a lot of greenbacks to finish somewhere between 3^rd place in the AFC and just missing the playoffs. As a matter of fact, I predict the Steelers miss the playoffs next year. I LOVE the Browns to get over the hump and take down the AFC North in 2008.

Speaking of Cleveland, how much do you love Donte Stallworth to the Browns? He’s the perfect compliment to Braylon Edwards and may help make Derek “Horse Cock” Anderson look even better next year. The guy is a flat out dominant number 2 wider receiver. He made a name for himself across from Joe Horn and had a solid season last year across from Moss.

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In the last week or so the debate over National College Basketball Player of the Year has heated up. That’s because this is the only part of the season where it’s a viable topic. In another week or so the same college basketball analysts currently talking POY will only have time to debate three things: who’s in the tournament, who’s on the bubble, and who sucks and stays home.

This year Tyler Hansbrough is the media darling for POY. If you watch any college basketball on television you know the guy’s name is synonymous with phrases like “great motor” and “relentless play”. It’s enough to make one think that the analysts sporting Hansbrough Hard-Ons are talking about him eating a pizza off their backs, not playing power forward.

As far as wildly overrated players go, Tyler Hansbrough is about to set the record for most courtesy reach around offers extended to one human being.

Believe me, Hansbrough IS wildly overrated. He is nothing more than the college equivalent to Shaquille O’Neal in his NBA prime. His entire game consists of two things. First thing: he gets the ball, lowers his shoulder, and drives to the basket. Second thing: he misses his first shot, fouls the shit out of the defensive rebounder over the back, and either scores the put back or gets a cheap foul call from the refs.

I have to give the guy credit for being able to make a free throw, but any asshole could get 25 points and 12 rebounds when 8 of those rebounds are off his own misses and the butt pirate is handed 15 free throws a game when any other player would have fouled out with ten minutes left in the second half.

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After Michael Jordan retired from the Bulls (the second time), the NBA fell into a decade long funk. The game became terribly boring to watch for everyone from the casual fan to the most hardcore NBA supporter. What happened? Tim Duncan and Shaquille O’Neal happened.

Since Jordan’s retirement, a team with either Tim Duncan or Shaquille O’Neal on the roster has won the NBA Championship, except for 2004 when the Pistons upset O’Neal’s Lakers in the finals. History will look back fondly on Shaq and Duncan for their dominance. Sports writers will nostalgically remember the era of the unstoppable big man. But us fans are the losers. Because we’re the ones who had to sit through the boredom of watching teams walk the ball up the court and dump it inside.

Until Don Nelson happened.

Nelson took over the Mavs and brought back his “don’t worry about defense, just outscore them” philosophy. Initially other NBA franchises looked at Nelson’s style as a gimmick, not unlike the “Run and Shoot” offense in college football.

Then Mike D’Antoni happened.

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There are two types of gambling: Gambling to Win and Gambling for FUN.

The following column focuses on gambling for FUN. Do not misinterpret any of the below as advice on how to win money. If I knew how to win money my permanent residence would not be a series of my friends’ couches.

While most people are focusing on which team to wager on, I’m focusing on compiling my ten prop bets for the Super Bowl. This can be a long and arduous process due to the sheer quantity of prop bets available. Luckily, I’ve spent a quarter of a lifetime developing an intricate seven step system to wade through the sea of props.

The Goals:

1) To wager on prop bets that will be determined at several different points throughout the Super Bowl, &

2) To wager on prop bets that will spread your routing interests evenly between Giants’ players, Patriots’ players, and random shit that goes on throughout the game.

STEP 1: BET THE COIN TOSS

You MUST bet on the coin toss. It is really the most affective way to establish yourself as the coolest and toughest person at the your Super Bowl party. And not only will it establish that you are ridiculously cool and tough, but it will also send a clear message to all the amateur sports fans around you that you are a degenerate gamble who does not socialize while the game is being played. Nothing makes me want to stab someone with a plastic fork more than being asked a pointless question like what I do for a living when I’m sweating out whether Junior Seau can get over the 5.5 tackles total.

When it comes to the toss I always pick the team I think is going to win the toss instead of heads or tails, because the Super Bowl usually uses some weird commemorative coin with Vince Lombardi’s face plastered on one side, and the refs never clarify which side is heads and which is tails.

Super Bowl XL the coin had the Steelers’ logo on one side and the Seahawks’ logo on the other. Tom Brady (who was ironically the ceremonial tosser of the salad coin that year) just flipped it and the toss went to Seattle since their logo was up. Brady must have been busy devising his plan to impregnate hot actresses and then bang hot models, because the fucker didn’t even name heads or tails.

If I remember correctly Vegas and the online sports books had to NO ACTION all the coin toss bets. Fuck that. My middle name is ACTION. That shit doesn’t fly for me.

So, how do you pick which team to bet on? Simple, decide who’s the biggest mush you know (in my case Toast) and ask him who he thinks will win the coin toss. Then bet the opposite.

My Pick: Giants

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