The house always wins, but geez

As of this morning, Denver was a 7 point favorite.  I'm sure that will change, since the "Squares" must be betting their hearts for the Broncos, and the oddsmakers are probably just trying to entice more money on Seattle.

The Raiders deny

Typically, a news report will come out saying that "unnamed sources" say that coach so-and-so will not be coming back next year. Typically, teams will deny the report and express confidence in the coach.

That's just not the Raiders' style.

Michaels, Madden, Fitzgerald, and Holmes

Great game, well told.

Mike Lupica is a jerk, vol. 12

I don't know much about the news writin' business, but this seems rather, um, unprofessional and shitty.

Insiders said [Lisa] Olson was originally assigned to do a story on the Giants place kicker Lawrence Tynes, who went from goat after missing two late game field goals to hero when he made the final one to win the game in overtime.

At the last minute, Olson was told to drop her Tynes line, apparently because Lupica, dashing for a private plane to fly him and his kids back East, said he was doing a similar story about the Scottish-born kicker.

The last-minute switch meant Olson also had to file a new story, which arrived late. Lupica, meanwhile, wrote about Tynes in his story, but never quoted him. When the Snooze doled out its Super Bowl press credentials to 21 people last week, Olson was not among those chosen, despite having covered football all season long, traveling with either the Giants or Jets.

Lupica, by comparison, didn't begin showing up at Giants games until the playoffs, according to sport department sources.

Neither Lupica nor Sports Editor Leon Carter returned a call seeking comment. Olson could not be reached for comment.

Leon Carter just lost a lot of credibility in New York.

Football and the WOD

Lawrence Tynes, who after missing two field goals in the final minutes of regulation last week was very nearly told to make his own travel plans home, only to be redeemed in overtime, has bigger things on his mind.

May 5, 2003, was Tynes’s 25th birthday. With plans to celebrate that night, he drove toward Mark’s house. He did not see his brother.

“There were Suburbans and bags and vans and people in and out of his place,” Tynes said. “And I said, ‘Oh, wow.’ I turned around and went home.”

He was not entirely surprised. Federal agents had simultaneously raided three homes. Among those arrested were Mark Tynes and four of Lawrence Tynes’s best friends — friends from the neighborhood “that I grew up with,” Tynes said.

Mark Tynes was pinned as the leader of an extensive operation that authorities said moved 3,600 pounds of marijuana from Texas to Florida over several years.

“If they would have said 10 years,” Lawrence Tynes said of his brother’s sentence, “I would have said, You know what? You deserve it. It’s tough love. I mean, you do the crime, you do the time.”

But Mark Tynes had a record, including felony convictions for possession. And he “paid a heavy penalty for refusing to cooperate,” a managing assistant United States attorney told The Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal after sentencing. The others cooperated fully. They became government witnesses. Lawrence Tynes watched as each testified against his brother.

“To me, they were all just as guilty as one another, because they were all doing it,” Tynes said.

Tynes should reserve his outrage for prosecutors who gave his brother 10 years for a non-violent crime, not the friends who were given a choice -- his brother or their life.