If you think political talk radio is a brutal place, you should try sports talk radio. In the world of news talk, you have a biased hosed with a political agenda attempting to spin current events to make you see them his way. In the world of sports talk, you largely have a field of minds so jammed with statistics and dates that they are unable to form a point of view on anything other than a simple Vegas line, let alone manage to try to find a way to spin the event for the mindless masses who tune it. This can make listening to channels like Mad Dog Radio on Sirius and XM Radio an exercise in frustration. Yet it is an exercise that I perform almost daily, and occasionally I call in to try to straighten some of these guys out. My latest beef? The New York Knicks.

Well, it is that time of year again. For some, it is an unbelievably long and drawn out process, but for true fans of the game it can't last long enough. The 2013 MLB Season kicked off on Sunday in Houston and most teams had their Regular Season Opener yesterday. How does your team stack up in their division? Obviously, if I were an expert I would be doing this in Vegas. Ironically, I am doing this from Vegas. But I am just passing through and not looking for gainful employment. For what it's worth, here is some perspective from a baseball fan who has waited far too long for opening day. I will break down both divisions and tell you where I think each team will finish. At the end of the year, we can come back and see how good or bad I am.

With the release of the Paterno family report disputing the findings of the Freeh report, the questions surrounding the legacy of former head coach Joe Paterno has been reopened in the court of public opinion, and while a few people seem to be having their eyes opened, many protest the attention this is receiving. As a regular listener to Mad Dog Radio on Sirius XM radio, I hear many of the callers saying they are sick of the story, Joe will always be a bad guy, and they are tired of talking about it. Now I submit to you that I do understand why they feel this way, but I think that many of them have bought the rhetoric without an understanding of the facts. If you will allow me the opportunity to present only the facts from legitimate news sources and actual transcripts of the court testimony, then I believe you will see why the case against Paterno is weak at best and fraudulent at worst. Buckle up, because here we go.

Before you get all excited here, this is not another serving of my world class Haterade. Is the SEC the best conference in College Football? Perhaps. Yes, I said perhaps. Now if you're a fan of the SEC or you know one, you probably cringed when you read that preparing for the slew of insults that gets hurled at anyone who would dare argue otherwise. However, the point of this post is not to argue otherwise. It is to challenge the ridiculous notion propagated by SEC supporters that their conference is head and shoulders above the rest of college football. As their fans like to put it, the SEC is playing the NFL when everyone else is playing college football. But are they really that good?

This week I was bored at a truck stop and decided to try out Amazon's DVD rental feature. I hadn't seen the movie "Idiocracy" in some time, so I decided to give it a whirl. I rented the movie and watched the full thing. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Now being on truck stop WiFi, I did have the occasional buffering, but nothing serious. Perhaps 4 or 5 times throughout the course of the movie for 5 to 10 seconds. Thus, I was surprised when I got the following email from Amazon stating that they were refunding my purchase (they don't usually do that) due to poor video playback (as if the crappy WiFi is their fault). Idiots. I didn't ask for it, why give it? I wish for the sake of Amazon that the idiots on Idiocracy were the dumbest people I had observed all week. And I wish for the sake of Roger Goodell and the NFL that Amazon had sealed the deal. But we'll get to him after this email from Amazon.

Just in case you were wondering about how the NCAA policy on using ethnic names as mascots leaves some teams changing their name, and others keeping their old ones, let me break it down for you really quickly. The Florida State Seminoles, named after the Seminole Indians, are allowed to keep their name because they got the Seminole Tribe to sign off on it. The St. John's Red Storm is no longer the Red Men because they weren't named after Indians. They were simply called the Red Men because their uniforms were red. Thus, no Indians could sign off on this one, and uniforms aren't literate, so they had to change their name on the off chance that the fabric was offended by being assigned to a particular gender. The Utah Utes kept their name when Oren Hatch bribed the Ute Indians with a Casino. And the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are still the Fighting Irish because they are white, so who cares if they are offended. Got it? Good.

At this point, I would like to declare that the verdict is in on Joe Paterno. Well, not so much on Joe. But it is on saying anything good about him. Score another point for the huddled masses yearning to be ignorant. Yes, I know that is a bit harsh, but even when the defense attorney for Sandusky allegedly produces the boy from the shower scene who is telling the same story that everybody except McQueary is telling, they are not deterred. It's either a hoax from the lawyer, the boy is lying, or Sandusky brainwashed him and he is covering for him. Isn't it even slightly possible that everyone but McQueary is telling the truth? "Of course not", they scoff.

It's been a rough week and a half for Joe Paterno and the Penn State Football Program. All of this has been brought on by the horrific actions of one man, Jerry Sandusky. We are told that complicating the matter was a cover-up by Paterno and others at Penn State University. Sports talk radio, and many other media outlets, have been quick to toss Paterno to the wolves for his alleged inaction and his roll in the cover-up of the terrible things that happened to innocent children at the hands of their alleged attacker, Sandusky. Notice how I did that? See how this works in today's world? Since there are criminal charges against Sandusky, we say alleged. But Paterno? Not so much. But was this inaction on the part of Paterno or, worse yet, an active cover-up? Let's take a look at what we know so far before we rush to judgement.