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You’re Thomas Dimitroff, the new general manager of the Atlanta Falcons. Your team has holes at just about every position. The lone exception is running back, where you have an underrated backup and potential superstar in Jerious Norwood. So what do you do? You give $35 million to Michael Turner, the most overrated backup running back in the league.

Apparently it slips your mind that Turner wasn’t even the 2nd best running back on his team last year. It also slips your mind that big money free agent running backs never make an impact. Do you even remember the last high-priced running back who turned out to be a good signing for his new team? Was it Edgerrin James? No. Dominic Rhodes? Ooops. It’s not Stephen Davis, Lamont Jordan, or Duce Staley either. You need to go back farther than that. Back to a time when the names Curtis Martin and Ricky Watters were at the top of everybody’s free agent list.

So will Michael Turner save the Falcons? No. Will he help the Falcons? Probably not. Will the last three years of his contract become an albatross that the team can only rid themselves of by taking a huge cap hit? Probably. On the plus side, either Tim Tebow or Matthew Stafford will look sexy in a Falcons hat on 2009 draft day.

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This may come as a shock to many of you, but apparently Troy Brown is famous enough to be the subject of a “celebrity roast”. Later today the former Marshall receiver will be honored at a roast in Huntington, just miles from the Marshall campus. Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich, and Randy Moss are among the invited roast guests.

I don’t know if this will function like the normal Comedy Central roasts, but if it does……oh boy.

I picture the evening going a little something like this:

PENNINGTON: It’s great to see Randy Moss. I guess he must have thought there was some kind of “Losing the Super Bowl” parade here tonight. Look at him sitting down over there. It’s weird to see him so lethargic somewhere other than a football field.

MOSS: Thanks Chad. I’m impressed you’re even able to hold that drink with your right arm. That thing is flimsier than the rolling papers I currently have in my pocket.

LEFTWICH: Uh oh. Randy, if you don’t back off Chad might have to file a restraining order against you. And we all know you’re familiar with those.

MOSS: Two words. Joey Harrington. Two more words. Chris Redman.

TROY BROWN: Isn’t this supposed to be about me?

All in all it will be an entertaining evening in which Brown show his versatility by getting 14 different drinks from the bar while he is being roasted.

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(Every week there are a number of stories slip through the cracks here at ShakedownSports. These are just a few of them.)

–Last Tuesday Kevin Durant was booed when he went home sick just before tip-off. Oh also, it was “Kevin Durant Bobblehead Night.” Durant then made things even worse when he later revealed he went to Oklahoma city to receive treatment.

–On April 11th the Rocket will unveil a monument honoring Hakeem Olajuwon. Just one week later, in a much less publicized move, the Blazers will name a lower concourse restroom stall after Sam Bowie.

–The NFL’s competition committee is discussing the possibility of giving one defensive player on each team a radio receiver in his helmet. I’m not so hot on the plan. Don’t Ray Lewis and Joey Porter already hear enough voices in their head?

–Attention San Diego State fans: Your dark days are over. DirecTV has reached a deal with the Mountain West Conference to carry the conference’s new television network. Finally, a reason to be happy I have Comcast.

–The Falcons won their draft coin toss. They will now pick 3rd and the Raiders will pick 4th, but the important thing about the coin flip is that it won Michael Vick three cartons of cigarettes.

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…Shaq looked pretty good in his Suns debut last night. And by “pretty good” I mean “not fat.” It was like 1995 inside his jersey. And keep in mind that this is only his first game. By the time the playoffs roll around he’ll be a dead ringer for Boris Diaw. Shaq wasn’t able to lead Phoenix to victory, but he did flash signs that he can be the defensive force the team needs.

…Jason Kidd also made his debut last night. The results were inconclusive, but Dirk Nowitzki had a nice game, and that’s the most important thing—that Kidd can make him and MVP-type player again.

…The Orioles can’t catch a break. It looks like Troy Patton (the key guy in the Miguel Tejada trade) might have a torn labrum. At least his past steroid use wasn’t documented in an official report.

…I love Coby Karl—mostly because the guy went from walking on at Boise State to playing in the NBA with only minimal help from his NBA-coaching dad—but here’s another reason. On Tuesday Karl played 37 minutes for the Lakers D-Leauge team. Immediately afterwards the Lakers called him up and he scored five points against the Hawks in a game that same night. Color me impressed. I can’t even play back-to-back pickup games without getting fatally winded.

…Do you ever wonder what happens to the sod from the Super Bowl? Some lucky high school gets it. That means 10 years from now some skinny 9th grader will get tackled to the turf, and there lying beside him will be Tom Brady’s long lost infallibility.

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The Baltimore Ravens are being sued, and surprisingly it’s not by the family of Knute Rockne over the team’s bastardization of the forward pass. A Baltimore man named Frederick Bouchat is once again suing the team for stealing his logo design. Bouchat also sued the team last year, but while the judge ruled the Ravens infringed on his copyright, he was not awarded any monetary compensation. Now he’s suing the Ravens, the NFL, NFL Films, and the Baltimore Sun—all are organizations he claims are profiting for his design.

I can’t think of any situation to better illustrate the recent struggles of a franchise. Six years ago nobody would have dared to sue the Ravens. The fear of Ray and Jamal Lewis showing up at your door with machete’s on their belt would have been enough to scare anyone into keeping quiet. Not anymore. The Ravens have lost that crazy, unpredictable, maniacal aura. It’s gone.

As for the actual lawsuit, would it really be so bad for the Ravens to give the guy a million dollars to keep quiet? The team gave $25 million Elvis Grbac—the least they could do is give some cash to the guy who unofficially came up with their logo.

If Bouchat doesn’t get anything form this most recent lawsuit, it’s time to give up. Right now Roger Goodell is busy tending to more important things, but if Bouchat isn’t careful he’ll wake up one morning in a ditch wearing nothing but an official pair of Baltimore Ravens Crocs. You do not want to mess with the NFL. The league has more power than the Chinese government.

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Last off-season Drew Rosenhaus made a big fuss about NFL players being franchised. At the time he was representing Lance Briggs in a bitter contract negotiation with the Bears, and to help out his man he appeared all over TV to explain how the franchise tag was just an intricate way for teams to avoid giving players long term contracts.

It seemed clear to me that Rosenhaus was just another agent pumping out carefully worded half-truths in order to get his player more money. Since I generally believe that the owner is always right and the players and their agents are greedy, money-grubbing whores (and that Donald Fehr needs to get beaten up by a horde of angry homeless people), I figured there was no way Rosenhaus of all people would be the agent to have a legitimate beef. Now I’m reconsidering.

In the last two weeks Eagles tight end L.J. Smith and Bengals lineman Stacy Andrews were both franchised. Each player is now guaranteed a one year contract that’s the average yearly salary of the five highest paid players at their positions. Think about the previous sentence for a second. It means that for a franchise player to not be overpaid he must be one of the top three players at his position. Interestingly, L.J. Smith isn’t even one of the 10 best tight ends in the league and Andrews isn’t even penciled in as a starter for the Bengals (nor are there more than two images of him on the internet in which he’s even wearing a helmet). Both teams are admittedly overpaying these players by astronomical amounts.

So why are they doing this? Drew Rosenhaus has the answer. By franchising Smith and Andrews the Bengals and Eagles can avoid giving them much riskier long term contracts. The teams overpay this year, but because they have the cap room and are getting another year to evaluate the players, it’s the economical move (and because nobody will give up two first round picks, the teams don’t have to worry about somebody else offering their franchise players long term deals.)

I’m now ready to admit it. Rosenhaus was right. The players are getting screwed. The fact that L.J. Smith was franchised should be a blaring siren to players, agents, and fans that the tag is being abused. Teams are simply using it as a way to avoid giving players the security of a long term contract. L.J. Smith might be happy right now (”guess what mom? somebody thinks I’m one of the 5 best tight ends in the NFL!!”), but when he’s out of the league in two years he’ll wish he had been offered that 5-year deal with $10 million in guaranteed money.

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Here’s how big it was. The Vegas casinos lost money on the game.

Keep in mind that the casinos are the only ones who really have an idea of what’s going to happen in a particular sporting event. Your favorite talking heads and sportswriters know nothing compared to the oddsmakers. That’s why they almost never lose money (that, and the 5% juice they’re taking). For the casinos to lose something truly improbable and unexpected must happen. Eli Manning winning a Super Bowl was exactly that.

In other news, the Shaq-Marion swap is now official, and there are a few things I want to add on top of what I said yesterday. First, there are going to be anywhere from 10-15 more minutes available to Suns bench players. A lot of those could go to Leandro Barbosa. Since Barbosa is awesome, I consider this a good thing. A few more minutes could also go to D.J. Strawberry, who was tearing up the D-League. This is also a good thing.

People also can’t underestimate is how Shaq will be energized by playing for a contender. He knows that he’s old and washed up, and that’s exactly why he’s going to bust his ass for one last shot at a title. He has two full months to get into shape–that should be plenty of time.

Finally, I want to emphasize how much Marion’s offensive numbers could be the result of playing with Steve Nash. Marion has shot 53% from the field over the last three years. That seems pretty high for a  guy who can’t shoot and doesn’t have any post moves. Don’t be surprised if Marion’s shooting percentage hover near 40% in Miami. If Marion is on your fantasy team, trade him now.

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In the year 1066 William the Conquerer invented the first ticket so he could charge admission to peasants who wanted to see his spoils from the Battle of Hastings. Hours later the first counterfeit ticket was invented.

Anytime there’s a big sporting event it’s a given that there will be some crafty hustlers trying to make a buck off fake tickets. Sunday’s Super Bowl was no exception—nine men were arrested for selling forged tickets. The arrests came despite the fact that they adhered to the #1 one rule of counterfeit ticket scalping: If you’re caught, do whatever you can to destroy the evidence.

Police found 35 fake tickets before they could be flushed down a toilet, and five more before they could be eaten by one of the suspects.

There’s nothing like trying to keep a straight face as the scalper you’re arresting attempts to stuff five Super Bowl tickets down his throat. In the end, it was probably a good thing the tickets were forgeries. I hear the authentic hologram on the real tickets gives you explosive diarrhea.

While reading about the scalpers impromptu meal I couldn’t help but think of this classic scene from Saving Silverman.

Oh Jack Black. You and your crazy excuses.

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Well, that was a nice final 12 minutes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—a good pass rush will almost always make a Hall of Fame quarterback look like David Carr. The only thing that could have made the game more perfect is if Tom Coughlin had whipped out an Eric Mangini mask and a camcorder for his post-game handshake with Bill Belichick.

Speaking of Belichick, this was not one of his finest moments (or even one of his finest least fine moments). First there was his mind boggling decision to go for it on 4th and 13 from the Giants 31 yard-line. Clearly Belichick thought he had a 4th-and-13 play that was sure to work. Judging by the deep pass, he reasoned that if the offense had a good chance of scoring a touchdown on the play, that made the gamble worthwhile. Still, you have to give your kicker a chance to make a 48-yard kick indoors.

Then there was Belichick’s performance in the final second of the game. Look, I don’t care if Belichick deals with the league (regarding injury reports) and media (regarding press conferences) as little annoyances he can treat like shit. But leaving the field before the Super Bowl is over is disrespectful to the Giants and the game—way more disrespectful that running up the score could ever be. I think when Belichick has some time to think about it he’ll regret his behavior.

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If you’re interested in some fake analysis, check out this article. If you’re interested in some real analysis, there are two points I want to make.

First, the Giants chances rest solely on their ability to get to Tom Brady. The key to Brady’s success (and Peyton Manning’s for that matter) is the fact that he usually has all day to throw. Brady is a great quarterback, but there are 5-10 other guys in the NFL who could put up MVP numbers if they had that kind of protection. Look at any game the Patriots or Colts have lost or nearly lost in the last few years. In all of them their opponents were able to get pressure on the quarterback. The good news for the Giants is that in week 17 they got pressure on Brady with three and four man rushes. There’s no reason to think they can’t do it again.

The other thing I want to mention is what a big advantage it is for the Patriots to play the game in a warm weather. Despite being from New England, the Patriots are not a cold weather team. Wes Welker had spent his whole career in warm weather. Randy Moss had spent his career in warm weather or indoors. In the Patriots close calls against the Eagles, Ravens, and Giants (which were all in cold weather) Brady’s receivers dropped a lot of passes. If this game was being played somewhere else, the Giants could count on the cold forcing two or three drops.  Those two drops might not seem like a lot, but they could easily be the difference between a three-and-out and a 70-yard touchdown drive.

Since every other point about the game has been discussed to the point of overkill, I’ll leave you with a prediction.

Patriots 34, Giants 24.

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