The Rob Lowe tweet heard round the world yesterday now appears to be some kind of inside joke between him and Colts owner Jim Irsay. The two have been good friends for quite some time and a brief Google search reveals several pictures of them together. It stands to reason that Lowe received the information from Irsay and perhaps even consulted him before sending out the Tweet.

So, the question becomes, why? Why did the two troll us on one of the largest social media websites in the world? The answer seems simple, albeit somewhat sinister. This Saturday at 8pm, the Lifetime original movie, Untouchable, will air for the first time. What better way for a little bump in the ratings than to make yourself the most popular person on Twitter for a day?

Almost 24 hours later and Lowe is still trending on every major search engine. Combine that with his boost in followers (started the day at 229k and now sits at 244k) and yea, you get the picture.

We’ve been had.

Shocking news to say the least.

Official: Sources say Manning had surgery this am – cervical fusion with 2-3 month minimum recovery.No word on whether he will be put on IR.

Earlier, in our NFL predictions, we were pretty emphatic that Manning would miss the entire season. So yea, although, he hasn’t been put on the IR just yet, it may just be a matter of time.

And for what it’s worth, Will Carroll of Sports Illustrated believes that the injury could be career ending. According to him, less than 10 NFL players have had the surgery and as far as he knows, no quarterbacks have.

What a wild ride the last few days for Peyton Manning. From starting to Week 1, to officially missing his first NFL start, to possibly being out the entire year.

Peyton Manning will officially miss the Colts season opener this Sunday. The announcement came from team vice-chairman Bill Polian today. This marks the first time since December 20th, 1997 that a quarterback other than Manning starts for the Indianapolis Colts.

Just to put that into perspective, here are some things that happened around the world that year.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule
O.J. Simpson found guilty in a civil court
Princess Diana killed in car crash
Mother Theresa died
The Simpsons becomes the longest-running prime-time animated series
Kyoto protocol agreed to by 150 countries
Dow Jones closed about 7,000 for first time
Mike Tyson bites Evander Holyfield
Tiger Woods wins Masters
Dolly, an adult sheep, is successfully cloned
Microsoft becomes the most valuable corporation ($261 billion dollars)
Tony Blair becomes British Prime Minister
Steve Jobs returns to run Apple
Avian flu epidemic in China
Notorious B.I.G. killed in drive-by

So yea, it’s been awhile, 208 games in a row to be exact. Not as impressive as the record held by Brett Favre (297), but nonetheless, in a sport where 300 pound men are trained to kill you, it’s a remarkable achievement.

118.6

There was talk this week in Indiana that Peyton Manning was past his prime and he couldn’t get the job done anymore. Well, for at least one game, he seemed to have regained the touch that has made him one of the better quarterback of all-time. Manning threw for 319 yards and 2 TDs in the Colts win over the Titans last night. He was near perfect completing 25 of 35 passes en route to a 118.6 QB rating. Hopefully, that type of performance will hold off the fans for awhile.

7

It looks the Red Sox and Yankees are taking their rivalry into the off-season as well. Both teams have made splashes thus far, however, none was bigger than the Carl Crawford signing the other day for Boston. The Yankees are still trying to figure out a deal to get Cliff Lee for that 7th year but nothing has been determined as of yet. Stay tuned though–something may very well come down the pipes today.

18

After making the trek all the way to Mount Kilimanjaro for a fundraising event, 18-time Grand Slam winner Martina Navratilova had to stop because of an illness. “Navratilova, 54, had to stop the climb of Africa’s highest mountain on the fourth day when the expedition had reached an altitude of 4,500 meters”. Nonetheless, fairly impressive for a women her age to be climbing mountains.

180,000

With all due respect to Cam Newton, I don’t believe a word of what he said yesterday. Newton reiterated that he has done nothing wrong when he decided to play for Auburn. “Newton’s father, Cecil, was found by Auburn and the NCAA to have asked for money from Mississippi State in exchange for a letter of intent from his son, a violation of NCAA rules. Cam Newton said, “Everything I’ve done at this university, I did it the right way,”. Yes, I’m sure you and your dad are working independently Cam. Sorry, I call b.s.

18

One of the big sticking points for the new NFL collective bargaining agreement will be the 18-game schedule. It’s definitely something owners are looking for but not something players necessarily want. Last year, the NFL set a record for numbers of players going on the IR and with the number of devastating helmet-to-helmet hits this year, it’s a wonder how some teams will field a squad with two more games.

7

Twice in Peyton Manning’s career he has had back-to-back three interception games. The first time was in his rookie year, so, that was more than understandable. But yesterday, one week after having thrown three INTs against the Patriots, Manning threw four against the Chargers. We’re certainly not saying Manning is past his prime, but the pressure of having to be “Mr. Everything” for the Colts is starting to wear on him.

20

Things aren’t going too well for the Broncos the last few days. First, they had to fire an employee for filming another team’s walk-through and now they find themselves 3-8 for the first time in 20 years. Josh McDaniels may only be in his second season with the organization, but with the way things are going, he might find himself without a job two months from now.

61

The good news is that the Miami Heat still have a chance to win 70 games. The bad news is that they’ll have to go 61-4 the rest of the season to accomplish it. Even the most ardent Heat hater would have never envisioned the team barely over .500 this far into the season. To make things worse, LeBron James seems extremely agitated and even deliberately bumped head coach Erik Spoelstra during a timeout. He apparently took his sour attitude to South Beach too.

40-50

For some reason or other, the amount of accidental falls at sporting events seems to have gone up exponentially. Just last week, a young toddler was killed when he fell 30 feet from a Staples Center luxury suite. And yesterday, a 23-year old man was killed when he fell 40-50 feet from Soldier Field to a rooftop outside the stadium.

.388

IU football is arguably the worst athletic team in the Big Ten and one of the worst football programs in the country. But even they have standards in regards to mediocrity. Bill Lynch, who has only been the head coach for four seasons was let go by the school yesterday. Hoosiers football has been more than terrible recently, winning three Big Ten games under his watch and having an overall 19-30 record.

.638

Despite Vince Young’s stellar record as a starter in Tennessee and his .638 winning percentage, it appears his days in the Music City are numbered. After being booed and subsequently injured, Young made his way to the locker room to get taped up to return. But coach Jeff Fisher opted to go with rookie quarterback Rusty Smith and that sent Young into a tizzy. He allegedly threw his shoulder pads into the stands and stormed out of the media session in the post game. All in all, including the 19-16 loss to the Redskins, not a good day if you’re a Titans fan.

123.1

In the battle of the two best quarterbacks of the last decade, it was Tom Brady and his hair that came out on top. Peyton Manning had a 4th quarter comeback all but sealed up but threw a costly interception in the red zone. His numbers for the day were less than Peyton-esque too, four touchdowns with three interceptions. Brady, however, was his usual self. A ho-hum 186 yards, 2 touchdowns and a 123.1 passer rating.

4

The Brett Favre-Jenn Sterger case, for some reason, is still going on. I’d guess it’s because Jenn desperately wants to keep herself in the news. Regardless of the reason, the investigation movies into the CSI lab this week. “The NFL is conducting high-tech forensic work to trace the electronic pathways and transmission of any photos or messages that might have been sent during communication between them, according to a source familiar with the situation.”

45

As the days and weeks go on, I sincerely believe there’s now a chance that Derek Jeter, the pride of the New York Yankees, will be in a different uniform next year. After initially being offered a 3-year, $45 million dollar deal, Jeter and Yankees management have gone back and forth using the media as their middleman. It’s gotten so bad that Jeter’s agent, Casey Close, issued this statement yesterday. “Derek’s significance to the team is much more than just stats. And yet, the Yankees’ negotiating strategy remains baffling.”

9-6

The worst thing for Nebraska fans this weekend wasn’t the 9-6 loss to Texas A&M, no, that was the least of their concerns. Rumors began swirling late Saturday night into Sunday that their Heisman candidate and quarterback Taylor Martinez had quit the team. It had gone so viral that it was the #1 search on Google last night and it forced Cornhuskers coach Bo Pelini to address it. “He’s still on the team,” Pelini said. We’ll see about that.

Quarterbacks get all the cash money, babes and glory. But while a lot of them dominate on the field, they have more than their fair share of idiotic tendencies. Think about it. Half the time these guys look like complete spazzes. Here are 10 stupid things that quarterbacks do.

10 Point out the Middle Linebacker
The best part of this inane gesture is that I think half of the QBs don’t even know why they are doing it. I remember when Rex Grossman was a Bear he would do it with a puzzled look on his face. Of course, that was his look most of the time, but point is made. Next.

9 Bring Famous Hot Chicks to their Games
Look, your whole team and your whole city is depending on you to win the game. Do you really need any added pressure? Great, now you’ll be even more tense because you want to play well for some hottie that you won’t even be dating in a month, and we get 24 cutaway shots per half showing them looking utterly bored. Tell them to watch it on TV.

8 Quiet the Crowd
This is especially true for those genius signal callers that do it on the road. But it doesn’t matter where you are playing, waving your hands up and down isn’t going to make 50,000 nutty fans pipe down. You’re the QB. If you hurled breakfast through your helmet they would cheer. Instead of waving those arms around, spend another two seconds reading that defense, mm-kay?

7 Anything Peyton Manning Does On the Field
How many times have you watched Manning go through his pre-play shtick at the line and you just wanted to rip his helmet off and slap him silly for about five minutes. Yeah, it works, but it’s aggravating and unnecessary. Half the league and most announcers think he’s just acting out there and not even changing the calls. Ten bucks says as he gets older it will land him on the injury report. And we’ll all laugh.

6 Anything Ben Roethlisberger Does Off the Field
Crashing motorcycles, getting overly wasted, peeing wherever he sees fit and other possible illegal transgressions make Roethlisberger the current most despised player in the NFL. Even the Steelers fan are sick of him and his troubles. How is he not on the Raiders?

5 Berate the Officials
That last call didn’t go your way so what did you do? You went all ape and argued about it. But show up the ref on national TV, maybe cuss at him and make a scene — guess what? You’re not getting any calls for the rest of the game either. Don’t be dumb.

4 Audible Into a Worse Play
Not reserved for just the Madden dorks out there, your fave QB does it too. Your dumb QB is calling an audible to a draw play when the safety is creeping into the box. Meanwhile offensive coordinators scream Rex Ryan-like profanities from their booth, which probably smells like unbrushed teeth and fart. Unless you’re Tom Brady or something it’s probably best to go with the OC’s call.

3 Waste Timeouts
So let’s get this straight — you just audibled into a run play with eight in the box but because you saw a linebacker pump his hand up and down a few times you thought it was best to go talk it over with the coaching staff? How did you get the starter’s job anyway?

2 Get Photographed While Wasted in Public
Eli Manning, Big Ben, Jay Cutler and Kyle Orton are just a few of the QBs that have been all over the Internet looking completely wasted. If you can’t handle your booze, take some of your millions and get an actual working member for your entourage — someone that is smart enough to say no to you and big enough to haul your drunk rear end into a car.

1 Nod While Talking to the OC — On the Phone
It’s not Skype, bro. You actually have to talk to the guy to let him know what you’re thinking — he can’t see you. And what you’re thinking is probably that you’re going long again next series, even though you’ve thrown three picks already. Enjoy it while it lasts, because you’ll soon be the Mayor of Clipboard City.

According to South African vulture lovers, the trade in prescient avian brains has rocketed in the run-up to the Football Frenzy Of Capitalism 2010™, courtesy of the traditional “muti” belief that eating dried vulture bonces will allow the diner to see small objects from a vast distance and, by extension, foresee lottery results and other fiscally-excellent outcomes.

Okay, well I don’t think I’ve ever heard of  “multi magic” before, but I once saw Chris Angel in a mall, so I feel like I know a thing or two about magic. It seems a bit odd that vulture brains were the preferred choice of smoking given the other options available in South Africa. I mean, if anything, I feel like the best kind of brains to light up would be zebra brains because everyone knows that when you smoke those you can see what penalties the referees are going to call. It has something to do with the stripes and whatnot… it’s complicated scientific stuff. I guess endangered species are in trouble for all sorts of reasons.

He ominously added: “The harvesting of the bird’s heads by followers of muti magic is an additional threat these birds can’t endure.”

See, but if they would just have smoked some of the brains of their fallen brethren, they could have seen this coming and migrated to somewhere that didn’t have gambling or soccer or both.

I’m not sure what to think about this gambling ritual.  Seems weird, but gamblers all over the world have crazy rituals ranging from the inane to the absurd. I don’t need any vulture brains to know who is going to win the World Cup this year. I’m on a strict regiment of bathtub crank and Mountain Dew and with all of my scientific research I can safely tell you that the US will win the upcoming tournament. It’s football, so you know we are going to dominate with Peyton Manning and Adrian Peterson.

Wait, what the hell is a “World Cup”?

England win World Cup, says dried vulture brain [Register UK]

Its incredible how close this is to being the real thing. It genuinely looks like Tracy Porter squats the route and is looking at Peyton Manning the entire time.

To the person who made the video, I say to you, well done sir. You may have too much time on your hands but you’ve entertained this lowly blogger.

Holly Madison held a Super Bowl party at Lavo night club Saturday night called the Holly bowl. Naming a party after yourself isn’t really unique, in fact its kind of egocentric. But alas, I’m not sure anybody really cares if she looks like that.

Donned in a Peyton Manning jersey, Holly obviously had a strong rooting interest in the game. Can’t say I’m shocked that a chick who probably knows nothing about sports and who’s famous for showing her boobies to everyone is a front runner.

Unfortunately for Madison, her Colts choked big time. Some of the blame actually goes to her co-star on “Girls Next Door”, Kendra Wilkinson and her husband Hank Baskett. It was Baskett who allowed that onside kick to bounce off his helmet to give the Saints momentum to start the second half.

Woops!

Colts fans, feel free to use these three boneheads as your celebrity scapegoats. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy these pics of Madison.

I got a text tonight from a friend, “Nice prediction” (what an a-hole). I’d feel bad about my prediction if I was going out on a limb or I was the only pseudo sports expert who thought the Colts were the far, superior team.

But I don’t.

The Saints won a game on the defensive side of the ball and with some gutsy coaching decisions. And while gutsy coaching decisions have been a staple of Sean Payton’s coaching career, the Saints haven’t exactly been stellar on defense the last couple of months.

Going for it on 4th down late in the second half looked like a failure at first, but when the Colts gave the ball right back and the Saints scored, all seemed well again.

And then the onside kick to begin the 2nd half was nothing short of brilliant. The Colts were caught with their pants down and any momentum they could have regained was lost.

But certainly the play people will be talking about for years is the Tracy Porter’s interception return for a TD that sealed the game.

Apparently, (and of course this could just be hogwash from the Saints) they had a surprise defense for Peyton in the second half. And while I’m not sure this was exactly disguised as opposed to a mix up between Wayne and Manning, it worked nonetheless.

Manning quickly went from “GOAT” to “A great quarterback who has trouble in big games”.

Sadly, he’ll be remembered for the one mistake that cost him and not the 3 1/2 quarters spent shredding the Saints defense.

On the other side, Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees was spectacular. Rarely missing a throw after the first quarter and being patient in waiting for plays to develop down field.

He was the best player on a team that managed to only lose three games all year. Congrats to the New Orleans Saints, your Super Bowl XLIV winner.

Now, we’re not sure if this picture was taken before or after the play, but regardless, it looks like Peyton’s deal with the devil is starting to take shape.

Scary, and no, this was not photoshopped. Strap some horns on that guy and call him Lucifer

We polled the Guyism staff to get their predictions for the Super Bowl. Not surprisingly, its a unanimous sweep for the Indianapolis Colts

A. Isaac, Sports Editor

While I would love to see the Saints win, I just don’t think they have enough defense to pull it off. Frankly, I’m surprised they’ve gotten this far being that weak on one side of the ball. They dominated teams early in the season but jumping out to huge leads and pinning their backs on the rush. But as the season went on, they struggled in low scoring games, losers of their last three.

They have NO shot in this game if its the in the 20s. At a minimum, they’ll need 35 points to even sniff a victory.

As for the Colts, this game will cement Peyton Manning as the greatest quarterback in NFL history. If he doesn’t throw for at least 300 yards and 3 touchdowns, I’d be completely shocked.

Colts-38
Saints-21

DC Scrap, Celebrity Editor

I predict that Peyton Manning will struggle through the first 20 minutes, then pick the Saints apart with laser-like precision and the Colts will cover the spread. I also predict that a female Saints fan will take her top off and someone will get it on video and post it on the Internet.

Douche Larue, Associate Editor

I think that the Colts win this game. Last week the Saints gave up almost 500 yards of offense to a team that I don’t feel is as good of an offense as Peyton and the Colts. They also had the 26th ranked pass defense during the season and while a lot of that was due to teams having to play catch-up to their high powered offense, I still think Peyton Manning takes over this game. He’s been in this situation before, so I doubt he’ll get the jitters and try to force things and I just see him having a much easier time letting the game come to him than Brees will. Manning is a great pace guy and doesn’t mind playing from behind in the 4th quarter, so I think if the Saint’s offense struggles to get moving (depends a lot on the health of Dwight Freeney), then Manning will systematically pick apart the Saints defense and win his second Super Bowl ring.

Although it could just as easily turn into an epic “Wild Bunch-esque” shootout; sending the “over” on yards and Brett Favre gunslinger references through the roof and my remote control through my television.

I go with the Colts, but it’s gonna be close…

Chris Spags, Editor in Chief

i’d like to see the saints, but i think picking them would be more heart than head

34-24 colts

Cass, Dir of Online Marketing

The Colts are going to win, they have the greatest quarterback in the history of the game. His organization is already working on a new contract for him that’s going to make him the highest paid football player of all time, and all this is being reported before they’ve even played the game.

The Saints are the clear fan favorite, I think they have a wider arsenal of weapons, their receivers just DON’T drop balls. But, betting against Peyton is just throwing money away. So I’m going to place a bet on the Colts, but I’ll be rooting for the Saints, because New Orleans deserves some celebratory rioting, and I’m an nfc south guy. Colts, 38-31

The Colts, who have been a very respected and successful organization over the last decade pulled a big no-no with the fans on Sunday.

In the 3rd quarter, coach Jim Caldwell pulled his starters and the Colts went on to lose the game and blow a potentially perfect season.

To say the least, Colts fans who have followed the team and pay good money to go see games weren’t happy. So when Bill Polian went to do his weekly radio show on Monday, things got heated.

A brief summary from a Indianapolis Colts blog

* One caller claimed Polian and the Colts had run from the win.

* Another caller, a polite but obviously agitated lady, brought up the point that it was unfair to charge fans high ticket prices during a recession only to see the team pull starters.

* Another fan, which happened to be the last caller of the show, challenged Polian by stating the obviously: The Colts did not put forth a maximum effort to win because they pulled their starters at a critical time in the game.

After a heated exchange with another fan, the broadcast went dead. You can bet that if the Colts somehow fail prior to the Super Bowl this year, many will call for Polian’s head. It may be one thing to rest a guy who has an injury but its quite another to bench your starters in a winnable game at home.

Coming from someone who’s a Lions fan, even I find that despicable. And I lived through the Millen years.

{Stampede Blue}

Between Tom Brady and his ‘great fashion sense’ and Peyton singing duets with a guy who obviously has a mancrush on him, who’s a kid to look up to these days from the NFL ranks? Oh, Jim McMahon, whereforartthou? Eh, at least Tom is banging a rich supermodel… we’ll just focus on that, I guess.

H/T: Shutdown Corner