SportsPants

Wow. Talk about going against standard thinking.

If you listed the positions of a football team from most important to least important, you start with quarterback and somewhere toward the bottom of the list would be the kicker. Sure, if the kicker was a stud, you'd rank him higher since he could win several games by himself, but that's a rare breed of kicker.

Most kickers are streaky specialists. As we saw this past season, when a kicker loses any of his confidence, he can melt down quicker than ice cream in August. It seems half of the teams in the NFL had kicking troubles this season. The Cowboys and Redskins both dumped kickers mid-season while the Bengals and Chargers lost playoff games thanks to shoddy kicking.

Kickers just seem interchangeable. A team uses one until he freaks out, then he goes to another team and tries to start fresh.

So why would the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks place franchise tags on middle of the road kickers? I'm confounded, confused, and possibly even flummoxed. Like the Southpark Chewbacca defense, it does not make sense.

Jeff Reed isn't a bad kicker for Pittsburgh, but he didn't exactly set the league ablaze last year. He didn't make any kicks over 50 yards and his kickoffs were routinely short. Worth hanging onto, but not a top three kicker.

Olindo Mare is an even bigger reach for Seattle. He's 36 years old, has only been in Seattle a couple of season and every training camp, the Seahawks coaches bring in competition to overtake him. Mare had a good late season surge last year, but he struggled early. Plus, Seattle used a franchise tag on kicker Josh Brown back in 2006. Brown is now long gone.

Maybe the Seahawks and Steelers saw how badly kickers struggled this past season and don't want to risk losing their guys in free-agency. Maybe the teams are convinced that the kickers will be in the zone next season. Whatever the reason, both teams are paying top dollar to hold into their guys, so they should probably have a team psychologist on site just in case things go a little wacky on their kicker's brain.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Tiger talk

Meaning of Mardis Gras

NBA Trades

And Olympics thoughts

Plus general silliness all on this week's SportsPants PantsCast.

Click here to not change your life.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

The NBA trade deadline showed us that a day of reckoning will be coming in the Mistake By The Lake.

Click Here to read about it.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

This just in: Tiger Woods is sorry for what he did, but would like his privacy. What a scoop!

I've never seen a pre-game show for a press conference, but today every sports station around had a running discussion on what Tiger might say at 11 a.m. EST today. This was probably the biggest non-sports related television event since the O.J. trial. It was like we were going to break amazing new ground.

We didn't. Tiger read from a prepared statement, was never caught off guard, and rarely said anything we didn't already know.

Don't get me wrong, Tiger nailed his statement just like he nails a golf ball (or nails mistresses for those of you snarky types out there). He managed to make himself sound like he was defending his wife and family from those awful media types while still accepting responsibility for his actions. Predictably, he discussed how he let his family down and didn't adhere to his values, but wanted privacy to cope.

Really the only thing we learned was that Tiger's wife supposedly didn't attack him the night of his car accident and that he's going to embrace Buddhism again (much to Fox News' chagrin since apparently only Christians can use religion to better themselves).

And that's that. No groundbreaking information, no concrete plans aside from another Tiger stint in sexy rehab. Just an athlete who is sorry and wants privacy for his family. As usual though, Tiger put up a good show.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

You don't care about the Olympics. That's cool. But if you don't get revved up with this performance last night, you have completely lost your sports heart.

Check it out

Valentine's Day, Winter Olympics, things, stuff, puppies.

Click Here To Listen

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Did I mention that things sucked for Lindsey Vonn? She got off easy.

She doesn't luge.

The Vancouver Olympics are quickly being known as a luger's nightmare. The track features the world's longest luge drop and it's causing havoc among the Olympians.

The luge sleds get up over 90 miles per hour during this drop and control has become a major issue. Already there had been two big crashes during test runs which luckily didn't result in injuries.

Then today, 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili crashed. He lost control going 95 miles per hour, flew off the track and hit a metal pole. He was air-lifted to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Now the Olympics take a somber tone. Injured shins might suck, but no we're talking about a real chance of dying. Lugers aren't going to slow down going through this track. They want to win. Whoever gets the gold will have earned it on this track.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Imagine working out and practicing for an entire off-season only to get hurt before the regular season starts. That would really suck.

Now multiply that by four years.

I can't imagine what has to be going through Lindsey Vonn's head as she attempts to move forward with her Olympic ski bid despite a bruised shin that is making things difficult. I know if it were my head, it'd be saying "are we advanced enough to create bionic legs?"

You might snicker when you see that Vonn's four-year quest for the Vancouver gold has possibly been thwarted by a bruised shin. After all, you probably played through bruised ribs or that sprained knee to help the team make the playoffs.

To you I answer: you've never skied downhill at a professional level. Those people go really fast. They scare me. In a good way.

The question isn't whether Vonn can physically make it down a hill on skis. I'm guessing she could. The problem is that she's being timed. She has to go downhill faster than everyone else on a bum leg.

That's the downside of individual sports: When there's a hitch in your giddyup, everyone notices.

Lindsey Vonn picked a terrible time to get injured. Or maybe it's the perfect time. After all, this is how Olympic legends are born.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Who Dat won de Super Bowl and we discuss the game, the commercials, the after effects and other nonsense.

Do yourself a favor and Click Here for a sweet time waste. Check SportsPants on Itunes as well!

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Stop the presses. There will be a New Orleans Saint player in the Hall of Fame. And it happened in the same season when the Saints are in the Super Bowl for the first time. It's a good time to break out the fleur-de-lis and "who dat" gear.

Some might see the Rickey Jackson enshrinement as an omen for the big game tomorrow (especially all you crazy New Orleans folks with your voodoo and such), but I just see this weekend as a welcome party for the Saints as a legit NFL franchise. I, for one, am happy to see the black and gold around.

Sure there are players in the Hall of Fame that have played for the Saints ... at the end of their career. Guys like Earl Campbell, Jim Taylor and Doug Atkins were all shutting it down with New Orleans. Rickey Jackson was a Saint from the get-go.

At first I was skeptical of the Jackson Hall of Fame selection. There were guys out there like Charles Haley and Roger Craig who had won multiple Super Bowls and suddenly this is the year Jackson gets the nod? Sounds like people are riding the Saints season of good will in that Hall of Fame selection committee.

Then I took a look at Jackson's numbers.

He racked up 128 sacks, forced 40 fumbles and recovered 29 others. Plus, he had nearly 1200 tackles. For perspective, Lawrence Taylor, the Hall of Fame outside linebacker against whom all other are judged, had 132.5 sacks and recovered only 11 fumbles.

Jackson belongs in the Hall of Fame and his fellow Saints linebackers (Sam Mills, Pat Swilling and Vaughn Johnson) formed one of the nastiest sets of linebackers in NFL history. It seems odd having a Saint in the Hall of Fame as well as having New Orleans in the Super Bowl. It's supposed to be a time of change and the Saints are changing for the better.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

It took way too much time dealing with Apple technical problems, but the PantsCast is now on I-Tunes.

Just go to this URL:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=354156912

Don't be a slave to the computer anymore, just load up the PantsCast to your mobile type device that's all the rage with the children these days and move forward in your activities. That is all.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

I have a friend who swears that we are currently in the worst sports month of the year. His argument is that once the Super Bowl ends, you have no football, no baseball, and basketball is in the dog days of it's season. Hockey doesn't seem to register on most people's radars, and there is no golf yet.

He does have a point. February has very few exciting moments. Basketball and hockey are at the midpoint so there is no playoff pressure yet. It's winter outside, in most places it's snowing, and all you want is for something to watch while you're stuck indoors.

I think that's why February gets labeled as the worst sports month by many. They need something to keep them from going nuts and February doesn't provide enough.

How can you vote for February though when July is sitting out there? July is that netherworld between the NBA Championship and Stanley Cup and football season. Nothing happens except for baseball (and golf if you're one of those people).

"Ah-ha!" You might say. "This year we have the World Cup so July will be much better!" First all, you'd have to be a soccer fan to say that and we know America doesn't have many of those. I personally love watching the spectacle of the World Cup, but when I do, I'll only see a handful of games in July. Most of the games are in June, so that argument doesn't work.

Even on the years when there is a Summer Olympics, most of the events are in August. So while February can at least get something every four years with the Winter Olympics, July never gets any event it can call it's own.

So unless you're a gigantic baseball fan who only needs to watch some pitch and catch to be happy, July is the worst sports month of the year due to lack of choice. The good news is that it's July. You can go outside and play.

February and July both have a strong following to claim title of "Worst Sports Month". Everyone has an argument. Please give me yours:

Which is the worst sports month? July or February? Pick your side, young warrior.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

It is time for the big game and we have a PantsCast to match! I don't want to oversell it, but this might be the best thing anyone has done ever.

That includes the Magna Carta, but doesn't include the outdoor smoker.

Check it out!

Jay Novacek's wife has committed suicide by shooting herself. That's disturbing to me even for a suicide.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHY