Super Wednesday
"I call heads or tails and 90 percent of the time I win." - Patriots' Rodney Harrison on the mathematics of the coin toss.

The Big Hype blows forward. When you think about it, it's perhaps a little sad that to realise that by kickoff Sunday, we'll have been force-fed slightly over 300 hours of hype for a 60 minute football game. That's a 300:1 ratio for those of you keeping score. Can you imagine if every CD in your collection had 300 hours of commercials to listen to before you could finally get to the music?

Nevertheless, for a quick rundown on all the nothingness you missed not being part of the media on "Media Day", here and here are your summaries in case you missed it.

Whilst Freddie Mitchell's mouth scored a goose egg in the controversy department, the usual Iggles centre of controversy, Terrell Owens, revealed he would definately play. When you have as big an ego and as big a mouth as TO, don't you sort of have to play in the most meaningful game in your life in order for all the other rubbish to have been justified?

Two other interesting finds:

By now, everyone's heard of Jeff Thomason's miracle story of going from contruction site project manager to the Super Bowl Iggles since January 24th, but has anyone seen his former employer's burst of free PR? You wonder at the absurd millions that will be spent on 30 second commercials during the Super Bowl and then think to yourself, wow, if only you'd thought to have one of your employees make it to the Super Bowl, just think of all the millions saved in advertising!

And the other find was the The Official Website of Dhani Jones, an Iggles LB who left Michigan for the NFL the same year as Tom Brady, and does not merely mimic the typical athlete-speak:

"Sure, it was getting cold and the forecast was snow-filled, but with ease Greg Lewis caught the ball in perfect gait. On each call made by Texas Johnson, a.k.a. defensive coordinator Jim Johnson, the checks were rattled off as if they were dominoes falling one by one. What was once oxygen was now replaced by synchronicity, making it easier for the team to breathe. Quietly exhaling, I sat down next to offensive line coach Juan Castillo and listened to the pin drop as Father Time - Andy Reid - presented his words of consequence before the night snack."

Oh, but if only Ben Franklin had been born about 270 years later and 200 pounds heavier! Then again, if so, what would the bridge between Philadelphia and Camden be called, The Dhani Jones Bridge?

*****

Skip Bayless knows the The Greatest Ever question remains unanswered.

Sports Amnesia knows it will go unanswered for about another 115 hours or so.

In the meantime, we'll continue mulling the Sammy Sosa trade.

We've all heard how Sammy's production has dropped:

Starting with the 2001 season, his batting average has dropped from .328 to .288 to .279 to .253, his home runs from 64 to 49 to 40 to 35, his runs batted in from 160 to 108 to 103 to 80, his on-base percentage from .437 to .399 to .358 to .332, his slugging percentage from .737 to .594 to .553 to .517.

On the other hand, something that seems to escape peoples' attention in the steroid rush of accusation is that yes, Sammy had a four year period were he was spectacular:

1998 .308-66-158
1999 .288-63-141
2000 .320-50-138
2001 .328-64-160

But in the years leading up to that burst of greatness, his stats mirrored what they've been for these last three seasons when he's allegedly on the downswing:

1995 .268-36-119
1996 .273-40-100
1997 .251-36-119

vs

2002 .288-49-108
2003 .279-40-103
2004 .253-38-80

So in a sense, you might consider that it's all a matter of perception. It isn't that Sammy is getting worse, it is merely that he is returning to the form he enjoyed prior to the four year aberration between 1998-2001. This doesn't mean that Sammy is withering from a lack of steroids or even that he's necessarily going to keep getting worse. Only that he is returning to form. Returning to form in a hitter's ballpark, in a city with no pressure and with a chip on his shoulder. This is potentially the steal of the offseason and unlike most of my Mets brethren, I'm not so sure we shouldn't have listened to Omar. As outlined in Archie Bunker's Army, Sosa might have run media interference for Carlos Beltran and eased the transition for our future superstar.

On the other hand, imagine how many millions of Cubs fans are just itching to yell "I told you so!" eleven months from now?

Consider the talent migration out of the NL Central this offseason to date: Sammy Sosa follows Carlos Beltran, Jeff Kent, Edgar Renteria, Mike Matheny and Woody Williams, along with the Cubs' Moises Alou, all gone out of the Central for greener pastures.

By the way, Sammy is 140 homers shy of Babe Ruth's mark. Implausible as it may seem, especially with Barry Bonds breathing down the Babe's neck, wouldn't it be funny to see him top 714 in Camden Yards, two blocks from the Babe's birthplace?

*****

Fellow blogger James Dawson kindly pointed out backstage to me after last weekend's remarks on the Arizona Cardinals' new modernised mascot that "BTW the prehistoric bird you show is a pterodactyl" (whereas I'd given it a new-fangled and ridiculously incorrect spelling of "terradactyl").

Now that I've gotten over my embarassment, I can thank him and add that the name derives from the Greek words ptero (winged) and dactyl (finger). Like all pterosaurs, pterodactyl's wing streached from its last finger to its torso, and was internaly supported by collogen ridges. (source: Websters Dictionary Online.

And within days, once the hype has been digested, will be Sports Amnesia's Official Super Bowl Edition.