OK, IT'S NOT TIME, BUT...

How in the heck did I miss this???

On December 18th 2001 -- the day before my 21st birthday -- I made it into Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback, the best and most literate sports column since the big bang (complete with haikus, complaints about inaccuracies in Star Trek, and discussions about space travel and missile defense). This was back when Easterbrook did TMQ for Slate, before he jumped ship to ESPN.com.

I emailed TMQ to complain about a play during the 49ers loss at St Louis earlier in the month. I appear near the bottom, in the "Reader Animadversion" section:

Brendan Getzell pointed out that Kurt Warner's walk-away-from-the-line fake on fourth down against the Niners, however clever-looking, should have drawn a flag because as part of the act, the space alien unbuckled his chin strap. They may allow that on your homeworld, but not here, buddy! NFL rules require that chin straps be buckled at the snap; an unbuckled strap is illegal procedure. Getzell further notes that the Niners defenders who turned away from the line just as the trick play began are thus not to blame—seeing Warner unbuckle, they assumed zebras would wave the play dead.

Hehehe, you tell 'em, me!

So let's see, completely by myself, my worthless opinions have been featured at/on/in: Gregg Easterbrook's TMQ, Rollingstone, CNN, MediaWhoresOnline (the whore of the year page!), the SF Chronicle, the SF Examiner (the old one), the Nueva Notes (hehehe!), the Patriot (sorry to disrupt the circlejerk, boys!), and of course, TFM.