The common misconception is that Pittsburgh has terrific natural shielding to protect it from disasters. Too far inland for hurricanes and nor’easters, no nuclear power plants around to melt down, and the mountains protect us from tornado’s touching down. I myself thought that to be true up until a few days ago when Pittsburgh’s National Weather Service tweeted out which counties had the most tornado’s in the last 114 years.

Color me shocked to find out Westmoreland was number one on that list. Ironically, we just passed the 4 year anniversary of one of the most viral tornadoes to hit the United States.

Unlike the terrible videos of tornado’s ravaging the midwest, this one had a more comedic tone with the perfect delivery of ‘OH MY GOD, TORNADO! TORNADO!” I guess the natural “would you rather” at this point would be, have tornado’s roll through in March? Or snow storms?

And there you have it, the golden ticket to winning the Masters. With Tiger having a down year decade, the doors been opened to the new wave of golfers and Bubba has walked right through it with a belly full of Moes.

These comments just about lock up Bubba as “Common Man of the Year.” Pretty sure we’ve all been in those shoes where when we find out the Ms. won’t be joining us for a meal and our first instinct is the last thing she would ever approve. I’m pretty sure every relationship starts with a oath, not unlike the Nights Watch oath, where she is responsible for you never eating like a slob ever again.

But hey, when the cat’s away the mice will play. Who’s ready to hit up Moes? This years Masters tees off in 16 days. If we go two-a-days on burritos we can get in at least 30 and in turn golf better than the defending champ.

This is the time of the year when by now you’re fully on board with Wrestlemania. Last year it was the Yes Movement and the two years prior was Rock-Cena. 

WWE’s downward turn began last year at Consol Energy Center during the Royal Rumble. Management let part timer Batista win and it was met with one of the most infamous crowd boo’s ever. It was so intense that on the WWE network they have since dubbed out the boo’s. Oddly enough this would also be the final night we saw CM Punk. 

WWE fixed their screw up in subsequent weeks thanks in large part to the vocal crowd who made it known they wanted Daniel Bryan in the main event. Wrestlemania was fixed and they put on a great show including the kick off with Hogan, Austin, Rock, The Streak coming to an end, and capped off with Daniel Bryan defeating all three members of Evolution for the titles. 

Fast forward a year. The fans hated another Royal Rumble but this time management was not backing down. Triple H went on Stone Colds podcast and told the fans they don’t know what they want and the Road to a Wrestlemania was set. 

Problem is the main event never got the big match pump it needed. Sure Paul Heyman worked wonders on the mic but then they let Roman Reigns retort and all momentum was lost. Management had their eyes on this guy since his debut. But the fans only saw a third of the Shield and then a guy get injured before being thrust into the spotlight. 

There was no organic build like Bray Wyatt and Dean Abrose. They shot for an orchestrated build but it didn’t have the longevity as Seth Rollins current run and therefore waters down today’s product.  At Royal Rumble WWE called in his “cousin” The Rock to elevate Reigns and that blew up in their face when the “People’s Champ” was also getting booed. 

Since the launch of the WWE Network, Raw has lost momentum. Instead of dedicating three hours convincing you to shell out 70 bones for a PPV, they split time between previews, recaps, and WWE Network promotion.  That was completely evident tonight when they took a shit ton of momentum from Sting in the opener and let it whittle away to nothing when it was time for Lesnar and Reigns final showdown before the main event. Instead of a testosterone fueled exchange reving up and building toward Mania we got 2 grown men playing tug of war with the strap and posing for that quintessential face to face Wrestlemania shot. 

I like when it becomes less predictable. No chance Lesnar ends the streak last year and the poof it’s gone and we have a hell of a moment. This year we at least have the question of will Brock resign? I personally would love him returning and keeping the belt since he’s bigger than anyone or anything WWE has. 

Mania has a lot to look forward to this Sunday. It’s just a shame the Heavyweight Title is taking the backseat to (at least) the Intercontinental Title Ladder Match, the United States title match, and the WWE vs WCW Grudge match. We’ll see how it plays out. 

Here’s what we know. World class reporter Stephen A. Smith broke the news Chip Kelly is a racist. Only a few short weeks later the NFL, known pot stirrer, stages Chip Kelly next Mike Tomlin for the annual coaches photo. 

There’s no report of any incidents but we know how the NFL likes to bury tapes. 

More to come….

ESPN And then there were none. In the 35th game of the NCAA tournament, the final perfect bracket fell. A 26-year-old sign language interpreter from Cleveland picked his favorite team — Ohio State — to beat Arizona. The Wildcats bested the Buckeyes 73-58 Saturday night. On Friday night, the man who became the sole ESPN.com entrant with a perfect bracket through the round of 64 was checking his phone from a salsa club, reloading the final scoreboards to make sure he still had every game correct. By day’s end, Malachi, who asked to keep his last name anonymous out of privacy concerns, had the only one out of 11.57 million brackets with every team still in green. Picking Kansas to beat Kentucky in the Elite Eight is one regret for Malachi, who had the only perfect bracket out of 11.57 million after the second round. So what type of basketball savant is this guy? How much research and number crunching did he do? “Nothing,” he said Saturday, after his first two picks of the day, UCLA and Kentucky, advanced. “I actually haven’t watched a full game this entire year.” Malachi got much further than anyone got last year, as no entry on any of the major websites survived the round of 64. He said his brother called him Thursday morning to remind him that he only had 15 minutes to fill out a bracket. He filled out two. “I knew I had to have some upsets, but I can’t really give you specific reasons as to why I chose certain teams over others,” he said. In the Midwest and the East, Malachi chose all the favorites to win, with the exception of Dayton. In the West and South, he then picked both 14 seeds, Georgia State and UAB, to beat Baylor and Iowa State, respectively. Other upsets included his favorite team, Ohio State, beating VCU, and UCLA beating SMU. Malachi has a great chance of winning his brother’s bracket contest, which he says features only six or seven of his friends, but as he looks at his bracket, he says he is upset about picking Kansas to beat Kentucky in the Elite Eight. “I didn’t realize KU was kind of having a down year and Kentucky was where they were,” Malachi said. “If I were to do it over again, I would have Kentucky winning that game.” Malachi also has been ribbed by those looking at the score of the title game in his bracket — Duke 58, Kansas 0. “I swear I typed it 58-52,” he said. “But it was funny to hear the guys on ‘SportsCenter’ call me a ‘wacko’ because of the score.” Those who have achieved success over the years to beat the odds have often been the beneficiary of luck. In 2006, only four fans out of 3 million brackets entered on ESPN.com had the Final Four perfect. One of the fans, Russell Pleasant, admitted that he picked George Mason that year because he got the school confused with George Washington.

Just another black Monday at work today. You make your rounds and take a look at where you fall in the company March Madness pool and even though you had a respectable 34-14 run you are in the middle of the pack again this year. Who is that at the top? Oh that’s fucking Gloria the lady with hundreds of pictures of cats throughout her cubicle. How the hell is she ahead of you and how the hell did she Georgia St? Oh because Panthers are like cats… of course.

Same story every year, you got gals like Gloria dominating her pool and guys like the famous Malachi becoming an internet sensation when he starts out perfect in the first two days. I still think I favor the 2 people who got every single game wrong on Thursday but this guy still deserves a ton of credit right?

Hell no. Not after he goes ahead and rubs dirt in all the fresh wounds across America when he discloses he had not watched an entire game all year and was that guy living under a rock, unaware Kentucky was dominating. That’s the part that really irks me. He is a big enough sports fan to claim to have “favorite teams” and filled out his bracket based on name recognition knowing teams like Kansas were a perennial powerhouse. How on earth did he not stumble upon the fact that Kentucky was head and shoulders above the rest of the field?

If that’s me and I biff that bad on the final score no way in hell I’m confessing that I fat fingered the final score and entered 58-0 instead of 58-52. At this point I’m already well along the path of the supervillain and it’s here I own that 58-0 score with something like “same logic help me go perfect in the first day, why not a 58-0 championship.”

But I guess maybe that is why I’m in the middle of the pack behind Gloria and Malachi.

What a wild week it has been. Watching March Madness last week I learned after a 2 year hiatus, McDonalds was bringing back Chicken Selects. Boom, that solved the daily dinner question right?

No sooner than I could get to a drive thru, early reports were already coming out.

Remember how they used to be awesome chicken strips? Not anymore they shrunk them!

They’re dried out!

Well shit there goes that pipe dream. Ordinarily I would conduct my own field research, but given news had also broke that the famed Shamrock Shake was secretly a trojan horse death bomb, I was OK saying sayonara to Mickie D’s.

Fast forward today and what do you know, after a three year hiatus, Chicken Fries are back… PERMANENTLY!!! Good news honey, BK answered our nightly “what’s for dinner” question!

Just goes to show us, time is a flat circle.

via

Let us dive into the mind of a killer right here. Because make no mistake about it, he has been hyping up this date for weeks and now he’s been left at the sex altar with nothing to show for his efforts but a sealed box of condoms. Given that his next play was to return to the store go through the BS at customer service for his $3.81 means there aren’t backup options at play and this guy is likely becoming Patrick Bateman.

If you ignore the golden rule of high school health class and unsafely store you condoms in your wallet, go ahead an peek at the expiration date. We’re talking years here. A long enough time that this guy can go back to Friendster and trick court a nice girl into another date.

Who knows, the joke here may be on the girl who canceled. If he’s so frugal he goes through this awkward return process for $3.81, I bet he’s sitting on a nice little nestegg…

Pittsburgh Sporting News Mellon Arena, also known as the Civic Arena and nicknamed “The Igloo,” was constructed with nearly 3,000 tons of Pittsburgh steel and was the first retractable major-sports venue in the world. From 1967 to 2010, it essentially served as the home to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Within the span of 40-plus years, Mellon Arena hosted infinite memories. These memories remain alive in the city of Pittsburgh even though our beloved Igloo is no longer with us. What are with us, however, are the moments that were brought to life there and will never be taken away. Let’s take a look back and reminisce about the Top Five Moments held at Mellon Arena.

#5:  Sidney Crosby.  On July 30, 2005, Crosby was selected first overall in the draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins.  He scored his first NHL goal (and added two assists) in his first home game as a Penguin on Oct. 8, 2005 against Boston at Mellon Arena.  He also became the youngest player in NHL history to score 100 points in a season on April 17, 2006 against the New York Islanders at Mellon Arena.

#4:  June 4, 2009:  The Pittsburgh Penguins were down 2-1 against the defending champs, Detroit Red Wings, in game four of the Stanley Cup Finals. Jordan Staal tied the score on a shorthanded goal at 8:35 of the second period.  Sidney Crosby and Tyler Kennedy scored for a 4-2 victory that turned the series and catapulted the Penguins to win their third Stanley Cup championship.

#3:  December 27, 2000:  Thee Mellon Arena legend, Mario Lemieux, returned to the Penguins lineup after a three-year retirement as if he never left the ice.  He assisted on two goals and scored one.  He went on to score 35 goals and have 41 assists in 43 games that season.

#2:  May 26, 1992:  The Penguins were down 4-1 in game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Chicago Blackhawks before Rick Tocchet and Lemieux scored in a span of 59 seconds.  Then Jaromir Jagr tied the game and Lemieux won the game with 12.6 seconds left.  Pens went on to trump the Blackhawks 5-4 and sweep the series.

#1:  Mario Lemieux and His 5 Goal Extravaganza:  December 31, 1988, the Pens hosted the New Jersey Devils and Lemieux owned ice.  Not only did Le Magnifique score five goals, but he scored all them five different ways; even strength, shorthanded, power play, penalty shot, empty net.  No other building will ever host this type of achievement.

Get real, Pittsburgh Sporting News, get real. You go ahead and check how many views on YouTube all of those moments have. You don’t even scratch the over 1 million views the video of Undertaker throwing Mankind of the 16 foot cage has.

That is an event that transcends Mellon Arena, Pittsburgh, and the WWE, you cannot leave it off. If PSN is paying you to put little fan girl lists together for some click bait then I guess you did your job. But if you’re trying to live up to your “Freelance Writer” title, it is your responsibility to do a little due diligence and curtail your school girl crush on the Pens.

Is that bad? Are there any eye doctors out there who can help me with this ailment?

Not sure who OK’d this decision. Wasn’t pretty in the 2013 Highlighter Bowl and isn’t pretty tonight. 

Speaking of highlighters, today has been a fire day for Mr. Locktober, hit on the first 8 and lead in my ninth. 

ESPN After a wild day of the NCAA tournament, just 273 out of 11.57 million Tournament Challenge brackets were a perfect 16-for-16 on Thursday. In comparison, there were 18,471 perfect brackets out of just more than 11 million on the first Thursday last year.  Another 7,802 brackets went 15-for-16 on Thursday. On the other end of the spectrum, there were 2 brackets that got no games correct on Thursday. 

Wow wow wow. This is more impressive than a perfect bracket. Almost suggests that if these people used their powers for good, bracket pots would just be a stop on their way to global dominance. 

Every office has that jabroni dancing in his cubicle because he picked UAB or Georgia State soley on the principle that he’s a troll. He also incorrectly chose Layfayette and Hampton which goes to show how far trolling will get you. 

These 2 brackets on ESPN went past trolling when they picked two 16 seeds incorrectly but also rolled with Iowa State and Baylor? The only explanation is they are from the future and here today to blow all of our minds.