If you can't turn a profit on an NFL team...

Five teams lost money in 2006, according to Forbes. The Lions, Seahawks, and Falcons lost between $1.8 and $3.4 million, the Colts lost $17.3 million, and the Vikings lost $19.1 million. The Redskins were the top grossing team in the NFL by a mile, but the Raiders were number two! The unbelievably flawed Oakland Raiders! In a year where they went 2-14 with Bob Newhart as OC! Where if you go to a game you might get stabbed, but you'll definitely watch some crappy football.

Your next Heisman trophy winner is...

Vince Young. NCAA officials met with Lloyd Lake yesterday for nearly six hours. Lake alleges he gave Reggie Bush and his family $291,600 while at USC, much of which in the form of a rent free mansion where Bush's parents stayed. Bush could allege that he has no control or knowledge over what his parents do, but that doesn't fly. When he went to his parents' house for Thanksgiving and found that they lived in a mansion, maybe he thought to ask his surrogate dad if he got a new job, or whether this real estate could impact his eligibility at all. But the NCAA might not want to listen to Bush at all; Bush has steadfastly refused to give his side of the story to NCAA officials, except to accuse Lake and Michael Michaels of extortion, involving the FBI for about five minutes.

The likely outcome of this is that Reggie Bush will have to give up his Heisman trophy to Vince Young, although Bush has indicated that he wouldn't willingly give up the physical trophy. The worst case scenario is that USC will have to vacate their 1.5 National Championships won with Bush.

As for this year's Heisman, Dennis Dixon is the clear winner. Two weeks ago, after throwing five touchdowns against Florida, Andre Woodson had my vote, but Dixon's four TDs against ASU clinched it. If you take away his 1 TD, 2 interception game against Cal, Dixon has 19 TDs and 1 pick on the year. He also has a rushing TD in every game except against ASU.

Well this is depressing

Gisele Bundchen insists on being paid in any currency besides U.S. dollars, which is a wise move because the dollar is down 34% since 2001. Thirty-four percent! Damn! And how hot is Gisele? She's got the perfect body, she's one of the world's richest women, and she's giving Brady investment advise? She's like the female Chuck Norris. I bet she makes minute rice in 2 seconds and shits chocolate.

Typical slimy owner or Robin Hood?

In 2000, somehow I ended up working the nightshift at my job, 10-8, so I couldn't watch game 2 of the World Series. Then I remembered about a site called Broadcast.com, where I streamed the game that featured the infamous bat toss by Clemens in the direction of Mika Piazza, and followed that up with Patrick Roy tying the NHL all time wins record. Mark Cuban founded Broadcast.com, which was sold to Yahoo for $5.9 billion in stock.

His latest venture: a stock blog called Sharesleuth.com. The site is free and features no ads; it seems that the site is completely financed (and then some) by shorting stocks that plummet when the blog reveals accounting irregularities. For those of you that haven't seen Trading Places, the editor or this site, Chris Carey, looks into shading companies, Cuban basically borrows the stocks and sells them, Carey publishes his findings on Sharesleuth, the more people read the postings the more the stock plummets, and Cuban pays for the stocks he already sold at a lower value. Cuban told Wired that he made $150,000 off of shorting the stocks and then denied that figure.

So is this a public service he's doing, or is it "about as basic an ethical violation as there can be," "a real blot on the profession" of journalism? In each one of these articles or blogs I cite, Cuban responds by blasting print journalism. To Wired, he says "You pay for the newsprint and postage by selling ads for products that you know nothing about and hope they work. How is that working out for your industry these days?" I give credit to Cuban because at least his operation is transparent. Honestly, if you knew how some of these billionaires make their money, it would make your skin crawl. I first saw this story on Deadspin, accompanying a story about how the $795 million of public money going toward the new "privately financed" Yankees stadium is being spent. At least some good can come out of Sharesleuth taking down these overvalued companies; I don't see how the Yankees buying crystal baseballs with public funds benefits anyone.

The numbers are in, and they're big - eight leg big

Halo 3 flew off the shelves last week, to the tune of a mind blowing $170 million in sales in the first 24 hours alone, better than the openings of Spider-man 3 ($151 million opening day) or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours). It may be unfair to compare a movie's opening to that of a video game because preorders figure heavily into a video game, but the book comparison is more apples-to-apples. The cheapest of the three editions of Halo 3 retails for a little less than twice the cost of Potter, but with the discounts offered for new release books at most stores, consumers were paying more than twice as much. These numbers weren't completely unexpected: Microsoft was expecting to best SM3 (sounding a lot like the cast of Entourage regarding Aquaman) with $155 million in opening day sales, which would have been an improvement over Halo 2's $125 million in opening day sales.

I preordered my copy way back in March, the ridiculously opulent $129.99 Legendary Edition with a full size Master Chief helmet and two bonus discs, and it finally arrived Friday. I've been playing it no quite around the clock since, but I did stop watching football yesterday during the 4:00 games to play. The gameplay is incredibly diverse, featuring locales such as swamplands, mountains, metallic towers, organic tunnels, and of course space stations. A staple of the Halo franchise has been the inventive vehicles, and this iteration is no exception. Several battles put the AT-AT battles from the beginning of Empire Strikes Back to shame.

It hasn't been all candy and nuts for the Halo 3 launch. An enormous number of the middle-priced Limited Edition were plagued with faulty boxes and scratched discs. Also, some 99.9% complete beta copies were leaked, resulting in some XBox Live accounts to be banned until 9999 (not a typo). Still, it's a historically successful release and leaves little doubt that video games are a mainstream form of entertainment.

Has eBay been hacked?

Huge breaking news on the internet: eBay may have been hacked because personal information such as contact and credit card information is being posted on the "Trust & Safety" eBay message board! Yesterday at around 9 AM EST account information of approximately 1200 eBay users was posted on the message board with the subject "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" followed by a six digit number. It's not clear what percentage of the data was accurate but I'm hearing mostly accurate with some credit card numbers being off.

One possibility is that the information that has been posted was compiled by phishing. But a Youtube video (since removed) was posted with the title "ebaY Major Hack AttacK! User's Data Posted On Ebay T&S Bd" under the username cappnonymous. Here is a list of usernames for eBay accounts whose data has been compromised. This is honestly one of the most devastating things that could possibly happen on the internet. As many people have credit card or PayPal accounts linked to eBay as any other site on the web. Change the passwords to your eBay and PayPal accounts immediately.

Little Man

In a mildly hyped interview with George Michael, Daniel Snyder said that a newspaper would have more of a bias than a television station.

Snyder: Well I think part of the problem with the media is that there's a landscape change in the media, and newspapers, for example, their circulations are declining rapidly, three, four percent a year. So what they need is controversy to sell, they need negativity. And I think when it all comes down to it, it becomes a sort of feeding frenzy for them. If you look at the more modern media, newer technology, whether it be Comcast SportsNet or what have you, it's almost a little bit less biased because there's less agenda.

Now, Comcast SportsNet fills an enormous amount of programming with Redskins interviews, and have a financial partnership with them, with Redskins Radio on twice for an hour today. It's unbelievable how biased television has become with regards to sports because they air so many games. For example, it wouldn't make much sense for Sportscenter to talk about the decreasing relevance of baseball and the rampant use of HGH as a lead in for Sunday Night Baseball. And it's a joke the Snyder thinks his constituency is so stupid as to not realize that.