The premise is pretty simple: each week, I'm going to pick five pieces of miscellanea, and set an over/under line based on my analysis. My hope is that everyone else involved with this blog will weigh in as to whether they are taking the over or the under. As always, this will be restricted to sports and stupid shit, and is primarily designed to encourage participation in the blog.
And now, without further ado, let's get to this week's Over/Unders:
- 27.5 - number of touchdowns thrown by Tom Brady in 2009. With the exception of his 2007 MVP season, Brady has averaged around 25 touchdown tosses per year, but never been above 28. While Mr. Bundchen appears to be healthy again, speculation about his productivity has been rampant all off-season, and will be a major story on fantasy football forums all year. It's hard to imagine Brady will approach his record-breaking 2007, and equally hard to imagine that His Royal Hotness won't exceed Matt Cassel's 21 TD passes given that the Patriots' offense is mostly intact, so he'll probably fall somewhere in between. OVER/UNDER?
- 0.5 - number of virgins currently playing in the NBA. This over/under is inspired by Portland-born, ex-Laker power forward A.C. Green, a bona fide glassman and admitted virgin. Now that Green has retired from the NBA to promote teen abstinence (seriously), my question is: has he been replaced? Are there any NBA virgins? On the one hand, NBA players are almost universally rich, super-athletic, and famous. Each of these traits is usually enough to drop a pair of panties by itself, but together, it seems inconceivable that any NBA baller would not have been initiated into manhood at some point. And yet, NBA players are younger now than they were in A.C.'s day, and is it plausible that some foreign-born draft prodigy entered the NBA before entering a woman? Some cultures are less permissive when it comes to premarital sex. Also, would anyone actually have sex with this? OVER/UNDER?
- 14 - number of additional weeks that Makhtar hangs onto the Agrazn's Hatch jersey. I didn't even notice this, but according to my sources, the jersey in question is still hanging in Makhtar's bathroom, some eight months after their breakup. And, if my source is right, she wants it back, but probably doesn't know how to ask because she's not good at expressing her emotions. Seriously, dude, WTF is that thing still doing in your bathroom? Do you try it on from time to time and look at yourself in the mirror, posing and flexing, faking backhand hucks and IO breaks like some overgrown she-male Buzz Bullet? Come on. OVER/UNDER?
- 3.5 - length, in inches, of platinum recording artist Enrique Iglesias' penis. As some of you may remember, the Latin heartthrob accidentally let the world know that he's hiding a lightswitch, baby! beneath those tight pants. He later tried to retract this statement, but if there's one thing you can't take back, it's admitting you've got a microscopic diack. Some cursory internet research revealed that LifeStyle condoms, who offered Enrique a deal worth $1M to be the image of their new line of extra small jimmy hats, conducted a "study" of college students on Spring Break in Cancun to determined the average size of the erect frat-boy pork sword. Since LifeStyle is a notoriously disreputable brand, these results aren't necessarily valid, especially since 400 of these guys isn't exactly an indicative sampling of the population at large. Still, the average was apparently between 5" and 6", which gives us something to work with. If normal condoms are honestly so big on Iglesias that he feels the need to find a different size all together, then we have to assume he isn't within two or three standard deviations of normal, meaning that he's probably somewhere in the 2" to 4" range. Now, he's been able to hold onto Anna Kournikova for over six years, so you know he's either got a magic tongue or she sleeps with the yard boy like Eva Longoria in Desperate Housewives. OVER/UNDER?
- 299.5 - number of future MLB home runs by 16-year-old Las Vegas high schooler Bryce Harper. Like many of you, I wasn't aware of Harper's existence until a few weeks ago, when Sports Illustrated made him the youngest baseball player to ever grace its cover. The article, which is a phenomenal read whether or not you like baseball, basically says that Harper defies comparison when it comes to baseball prospects. He's apparently more developed at 16 than Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, and Justin Upton were at 18. I mean, good God, just look at him--he could pass for 25 right now. Not to mention he already holds the record for longest home run ever hit in Tampa Bay's Tropicana Field (502 feet) and allegedly hit one that traveled more than 570 feet. Of course, none of this guarantees future success, but scouts are so baffled by his ability that they've abandoned baseball completely in search of a realistic comparison. The best they've done? LeBron James. If you watch the kid play, it's apparent he's for real, but how real? Baseball is less projectable than any other sport and there's more room for anyone, even a prodigy like Harper, to fall short. Many people would probably say 300 home runs is selling his talent short, but remember, just that many would put him in the top 10 all-time amongst catchers (if he stays behind the plate) and probably be enough to enshrine him in Cooperstown. OVER/UNDER?
So that's your first edition of Over/Under. Let the debates begin.
