Opinion

It's definitely better than this game, which never even made it into stores:

#1 – Crab Soccer

Anyone who's ever participated in or watched a children's soccer game knows that they're absolute debacles. Weak passing. Disinterested goalkeeping. Fifteen kids following the ball in a tightly bunched knot, while the remaining players sit on the field and pick dandelions. Soccer may be the beautiful game, but it's never been so ugly.

Yet for some reason, crab soccer is awesome. What could be better than seeing a bunch of kids crabwalk around on all fours, trying to kick a ball? The fundamentals are no worse than in actual youth soccer, and the kids get the fun benefit of occasionally stomping on each other's fingers or kicking someone in the face. In fact, we're pretty sure we could talk ourselves into getting excited for the Crab World Cup every four years.

#2 – Getting Hit in the Face with a Dodgeball

Sure, it looks like it will hurt. Does it really, though? Only a little*, and once your nose stops bleeding, you barely even feel it anymore. The few seconds of stinging are more than worth it because they allow you to take part in the best gym class activity of them all: getting out of gym class.

What sort of monstrous coach would make you keep playing after you took a dodgeball to the mouth? That would be downright cruel. No, better to hit the showers, then sit out for the rest of the day. Relax, unwind, have a snack, read a magazine, and laugh at all those poor bastards who didn't have the good fortune to be hit in the face with a rubber ball.

*Unless you wore glasses, in which case your face was covered in lacerations.

The Miami Heat issued their fans the following tip sheet last week:

Now they're coming out with more helpful tips for everyone else in the arena:

We are only a couple weeks removed from the World Series, but already baseball is out of the headlines. To combat the oncoming boredom that winter brings, we might as well have some fun with words. The following are not necessarily nicknames, but telling combinations of words to help you get to know some of baseball's current free agents.

C: Bengie Molina — Binomial Gene

Well, the binomial here would be pizza + cupcakes and the gene would be the obesity gene. Molina is a man of many dinners, and the first ever-professional baseball player to go into a World Series guaranteed of a championship ring. Unfortunately for him, it was not a peach ring.

1B: Carlos Pena — Anal Corpse

After putting up a diarrhea-inducing .196 batting average, Pena's $10.125 million salary in 2010 ranks him right up there with this year's BP oil spill in regards to good financial outcomes.

2B: Craig Counsell — Solacing Ulcer

Tucked away in the bowels of my attic is a very old, very smelly Kermit the Frog blanket. I grew up with that thing. It helped me fight many a cold, several bouts of the flu, and never failed to keep me warm during a new episode of Family Matters or Home Improvement. Even though I've since moved on to a more modern linen-scented comforter, I just can't bring myself to get rid of that dilapidated stink blanket. Craig Counsell is no different, having become a comforting inconvenience, albeit acidic in nature.

He may be the least athletic person on the entire campus, yet for some reason a cruel God placed him in a 7-foot body. And now your school's head coach and his ego foolishly believe they can form this giant freak into the next Wilt Chamberlain.

He'll never be more than a role player, hunched and wheezing as he plods down the court, and every point he ever scores will be thanks to entry passes deflecting off of his brick hands and into the hoop, but he will come through with some clutch fouls in his career. His biggest accomplishment will be convincing attractive girls on campus that he is a future NBA millionaire, when in fact all they really hooked up with was an asthmatic with a pituitary disorder.

Unlike the 7-foot freak, The Leaper is flush with athletic ability. He's quick, ripped and can jump out of the gym. If you could scientifically engineer a basketball player, this is who you would create.

Probably the only negative about The Leaper is that he's not actually all that good at basketball. He's great if you feed him on the fastbreak, but other than that he's kind of lost on the court and prone to turnovers and concentration lapses. Some people say he needs to work more on his game, but he does that already; he spends 5 hours a day working on dunking fundamentals.

It's paying off, too. Remember that dunk he had in his seven-turnover performance last year when your team was eliminated in the conference tournament? It's got more than a million YouTube views now. AWESOME!

ESPN's College GameDay is in Columbus, Ohio this week for Penn State vs. Ohio State.

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