Retarded:

Colored Fielding Gloves

Fielding gloves should come in three colors and three colors ONLY - black, brown, and some mix of black and brown.  In my opinion, baseball gloves are like mixed drinks;  if they come in a color that a woman would decorate her bathroom in, then I'm not interested.  Seriously, there's nothing like a bright red-and-silver fielding glove with pink sparkles and My Little Pony stickers on it to scream "Prissy Diva Bitch" to everyone in the ballpark.  Sure, it works for guys like Manny and Pedro because there's really nothing those two could do that wouldn't be badass and awesome, but for the rest of the folks out there "multi-colored" should equal "homo-erotic".  The same goes for guys who get stupid shit embroidered on their gear, like how Jorge Posada has his name written on all of his catching equipment.  It doesn't look cool; it makes you look like you can't remember your own name.  Possibly even more lame than Posada is Gary Sheffield, who has a personal logo that he has stiched on all of his shoes and batting gloves and shit like that.  It incorporates a little chef's hat.  get it?  Sheff?  HILARIOUS.  Honestly, the ONLY thing that's acceptable to have embroidered on any piece of your gear is the flag of the Dominican Republic, since that's instant street cred and the DR is fucking awesome when it comes to baseball.

Awesome:

Pink Bats

I know the pink bats get a lot of shit because, "dude fucking pink is for GIRLS yo", but I think the pink bats are fucking awesome as hell.  First off, there's something very Freudian about swinging around a giant pink phallic object.  It's like a mega extension of your cock that you use to bash the shit out of things, which pretty much rules.  Secondly, all proceeds from the pink bats go to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.  That's certainly a noble cause.  Breast cancer is serious shit, and believe me when I say that a nice shapely rack is a terrible thing to waste.  So now you've got the double-decker quarter pounder with cheese of awesomeness that's like, "watch me swing my giant hard dong and crush balls because I love boobs!", and it's fucking rad when you can make a statement like that without even saying a word.

Pink bats are awesome.

Retarded:

Flopping

I loved watching the World Cup, but one of the things I couldn't stand was that it seemed like a significant portion of the game was devoted to trying to draw fouls by flopping around like a fish and crying your eyes out while writhing around on the pitch like you've just had your ankle run over by an eighteen-wheeler.  Come on now, I know you guys are European, but give me a break here.  Nobody believes that anyone can be this much of a pussy, and you just look like a fucking stunt double in a shitty action movie.  Seriously.  If I wanted to watch grown men cry all day, I'd fucking go to a funeral.  Now get off your whiny ass, stop trying to draw a cheap foul and start looking to exact cold hard revenge on the bastard that tripped you up when you had a clear shot at the goal.

Awesome:

Getting Red Carded

Usually, when a guy gets red carded, it's not the sort of cheap-ass foul where the other guy flops like a Uwe Boll movie on opening weekend.  It's a hardcore, balls-out slide tackle or a conspicuous elbow smash or a fucking devastating headbutt to the chest.  Sometimes it's the unfortunate by-product of living for revenge, but that's the chance you take when you avenge your teammate or your sister's honor or whatever it is you're trying to moke somebody out for.  With all the flopping and pussing out that runs rampant in professional soccer, it's truly awesome when somebody decides to sacrifice his body for the team and cheat to win.

Retarded:

Headbands

I'm noticing this growing trend of basketball players who wear headbands, and I can't say I like it.  It just screams "1970s", which contrary to popular belief is NOT a good thing.  You know what else was big in basketball in the 70s?  Short shorts.  And don't nobody wanna see that come back into style. 

Awesome:

Face Masks

The basketball face mask is the greatest creation since James Worthy's sports goggles.  It really doesn't matter who you are;  if you strap one of those bitches on you're going to look like a cross between Batman and Hannibal Lechter.  Who would fuck with somebody sporting a full-on face cast in the low post swinging his elbows around looking for a rebound?  You can't.  It's fucking psychological warfare, and it pretty much rules.

The only acceptable reason to wear a headband
is if it's holding your face mask in place.

Retarded:

The Flea Flicker

The flea flicker, aside from being the most useless play in Tecmo Super Bowl, is probably one of the stupidest plays ever.  For the uninitiated, a "flea flicker" is when the QB hands the ball off the the running back, the RB takes three steps towards the line of scrimmage and then pitches the ball back to the quarterback, who in turn throws the ball downfield to a (hopefully) open receiver.  Sure it sounds like a cool trick play, but I think it's the most retarded play in football.  First off, the defense can always sniff it out because it's the only time a quarterback actually pays any attention to the play after he hands the ball off.  Secondly, we all know that the only trick plays worth pulling are the Puntrooskie and the Fake Field Goal.  Everything else is a waste of a down because trickery in a game like football is like trying to win a swordfight with algebra;  It's fucking stupid.

Awesome:

The Power Sweep

I used to think that if I coached football I'd run a Bill Walsh-style West Coast passing offense.  But now I realize that I would just run the motherfucking power sweep on every single down.  This is the way football is supposed to be played - you take all your bigass fucking angry three hundred pound monsters and get them out into the open field where they can flatten guys half their size and open gigantic holes for your running back.  Is there anything more enjoyable then watching a 6' 7" offensive lineman run full-steam into a 5' 11" safety and replace him with a gigantic human-shaped crater in the ground?  Not in my book.

Retarded:

The Scoring System in Tennis

Love, fifteen, thirty, forty, deuce.  Six games per set, best of five sets.  Purple monkey dishwasher.  I'm convinced that the guy who came up with the scoring system for tennis was one of those eccentric geniuses who is absolutely fucking brilliant but who also spends twenty-four hours a day bouncing around a rubber room with only his straight jacket and imaginary friend to keep him company.  Is there ANY rhyme or reason to the scoring system whatsoever?  I feel like I'm looking at a goddamned stock market ticker when I try to figure out what the score is in a tennis match.  Here's a quick tip:  if 60% of the people in America have no clue how to keep score in a game, then the scoring system is way more complicated than it needs to be.

Awesome:

Acing the Butt Out of Someone

One of my favorite games of all time was Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast.  Me and John Jungerberg would drunkenly play that game for HOURS at a time, and there was truly no greater feeling than Acing the holy living butt out of the other guy.  I feel this will need clarification.   See, in tennis when you score a point on your serve, it's called an Ace.  In Virtua Tennis, when you blow your serve past the other guy without him even getting a chance to hit it, it's called Acing the butt out of someone.  It's like "to the Xtreme", and is generally followed by shouting and slurred taunting, which is awesome.  Now if it felt that good to ace the shit out of a guy in computer tennis, I can only imagine that it's even better to do it in real life.  Acing the shit out of someone is like the ultimate way to humiliate your opponent, because you've just fucking laced this tennis ball at roughly one-half the speed of light and the other guy's just sitting there holding his racket with a stupid look on his face like some kind of chump.

Retarded:

Pass Interference

Pass interference is the stupidest penalty in professional sports.  First off, there's no clear-cut definition, so whether or not a defender is committing a penalty is completely subject to the referee's interpretation of the rules.  Secondly, you can get popped for PI for the stupidest reasons, like accidentally running into the receiver while you're going for an interception.  It's a well known fact that WRs are the biggest prima-donna bitches in pro football, and it really seems like every time a defensive back accidentally kicks dirt on the flanker's shoes the freaking dude is throwing his arms up in the air calling for a flag.  It's retarded.  THIS IS FOOTBALL.  If you're afraid of physical contact, go play golf or something.  Otherwise quit your damn complaining - the DB should be allowed to touch you before you get the ball.  I understand he shouldn't be allowed to tackle you before you catch it or pull your arms so you can't make the play, but if eight year old girls can put up with little bit of bumping and slapfighting then you can too.

Awesome:

Stiffarming

For all the flashy spin moves and jukes and crap out there, nothing screams awesome like fucking sticking your hand in a defender's face and muscling him to the ground.  It's just hardcore.  I mean, sure guys like Barry Sanders are awesome with all their elusive moves, but there's something inherently bad-fucking-ass about completely trucking some asshole who's trying to take you down.  I mean, why bother running around a guy when you can just flatten him?  And if he tries to take you down, just jam your hand in his face and chuck him down like a sack of potatoes.  The stiffarm is truly one of the best maneuvers in football.

I GUESS this would still count as interference.

Retarded:

Two Minutes for "Holding the Stick"

"Holding the stick" is one of the fruitiest-sounding penalties in sports.  It's like getting two minutes for "ass grabbing" or something.  The only thing more humiliating than getting busted holding some other guy's stick would be like if you were de-pantsed by the goalie in the middle of the game or something, but even then it's debatable.  I mean, not only are you publicly accused of a foul that sounds like it could be the title of a bad gay porno, but you're also getting busted for doing something completely lame - who grabs another player's stick and holds it?  I guess I could see grabbing the stick, wrenching it away and then throwing it across the ice, but even then it just makes more sense to shoulder-check the guy into the boards.

Awesome:

Five Minutes for "Fighting"

Hockey is one of the most badass of all sports simply by virtue of the fact that there are actually provisions in the game's official rules that specifically deal with hand-to-hand combat.  How awesome is that?  It's the only sport besides boxing where you don't get ejected for getting pissed and punching some stupid motherfucker right in his bitch face.  In fact, some hockey teams hire guys just to be "enforcers";  they basically skate around and look for people to knock down or fight.  That's fucking rad.  The best part about a fighting penalty is that both players get called for it, so it's not like an "Unsportsmanlike Conduct" call or something where you hurt your team by being a violent roid-head.  In hockey, you're actually doing your team a favor by beating up the other teams' players, and it's tough to argue with the badassitude of sitting in the penalty box for five minutes because you had to rock some jerk's face off.

Not really relevant, but I thought it was awesome.

Retarded:

White Basketball Centers

The big goofy white center is one of the most unskilled position players in all of professional sports.  Usually he's just some big gangly seven foot tall European dude who's making the league's minimum salary just to stand under the net and be fucking tall.  He can't shoot.  He can't pass.  He can't dribble.  He doesn't jump.  He gets out-positioned and worked over on the glass.  He fouls anybody bigger than him.  He's what the team owners like to call "a hustle guy", which basically is NBA code for "this guy has no ability whatsoever but he really likes to play and we don't have anybody else tall enough to plug into this spot".  He seems like he's going to be a superstar when he's blocking shots from Point Guards half his size, but when you put him up against another Center or a Power Forward who actually knows what they're doing and he'll do his best impression of a bridge support pillar while the other guy runs circles around him.

Awesome:

Bill Russell

Bill Russell is up there with Wilt, Kareem, Parrish and Shaq as one of the best centers in the history of sports.  He doesn't get all the props that those other guys do, probably because he was before their time, but he was an unstoppable machine on the basketball court in his day.  In thirteen NBA seasons Russell was a five-time league MVP, a twelve-time all-star and won eleven championships.  ELEVEN fucking championships in thirteen seasons.  That's unfathomable.  He also pulled in 51 rebounds in a single game, averaged 22.7 points per game for his career, won an Olympic gold medal and was one of the most prolific shot-blockers in history.  The guy was a fucking beast.  He didn't pull any of this "me first" shit you see nowadays, preferring to be a team player and "spread the wealth", and always taking time out to swat his opponent's shots up into the rafters.

Retarded:

The BCS

The BCS is like college student government, where only the most popular frat guys and sluttiest sorority girls get invited and anybody who runs with an awesome platform like "fill the university's olympic-size swimming pool with Jell-O" gets laughed out of the inner sanctum of the Greek council.  There are no "Cinderella" stories, no underdogs - just a lot of overrated teams from overrated conferences getting paired up in such a way that all the big-time bowl sponsors get a nice fat payday.  It's like the NCAA doesn't even give a shit about stupid crap like "having an undisputed national champion" or "Mid-Major Conferences" unless it means raking in another dump truck full of gold doubloons for FedEx at FedEx Presents the FedEx Orange Bowl FedEx brought to you by FedeEx.  What a crock of shit.

Awesome:

March Madness

March Madness is how college champions are supposed to be determined.  Just a 65-team Battle Royale, winner-take-all mega-playoff where everyone has an equal chance of taking home the prize and the only guys who get left out in the cold are potential 16 seeds with no legitimate claim to the title anyways.  Plus it makes an awesome office pool.  But seriously, anything can (and does happen), and March Madness just proves that the pollsters don't know shit about shit.  Like if basketball had a BCS-style system, you could only expect to see the #1 seeds battling it out for the top spot.  However in the last four years, a number one seed has only one the title ONCE.  BECAUSE THAT'S WHY THEY PLAY THE FUCKING GAMES.  God damn I hate the BCS.

Retarded:

Helmets with Face Shields

"Oh no my beautiful face!  I shan't allow something brutal or harmful to come near my delicate head for any amount of physical contact shall immediately result in the loss of my facial perfection!  Oh whatever shall I do?"

Face guards on hockey and football helmets are stupid.  Be a man!  Back in the day, you had to pull motherfucking teeth to get hockey players to even wear helmets at all and football players wore leather caps that were only slightly more protective than one of those flimsy sailor hats you make out of newspaper;  now these tough guys are so worried about getting accidentally poked in the eye by a piece of loose dust that they have damned windshields attached to their foreheads.  Plus, how can you hockey players expect to get into a fair fight with that ridiculous thing on your head?  Who's going to want to punch a piece of plexiglass?

Awesome:

Facial Scarring

I don't care who you are.  You could be a damn Teletubby and a nice long facial scar would make you seem like the motherfucking Terminator.  There is nothing more badass looking than a good scar across the face, so why would you do anything to prevent the possibility of an awesome mutilation?  Why wear a guard on your face when you're only preventing the occurrence of something that will gain you fear and respect amongst all the world's most badass people?  I mean, how can you fuck with a guy who has one of those totally sweet scars that go across their eye?

Retarded:

Fantasy Football

Now I like Fantasy Football as much as the next guy I guess, but it should be a diversion when your favorite team isn't on TV... not a focal point of network sports coverage.  The commercialization of this part-time hobby is really starting to piss me off.  Like when I visit SI.com I don't want to read some jerk's predictions of what players' stats are going to be.  Those analyst fuckers have a hard enough time picking who's going to WIN the game, let alone whether or not the backup running back is going to carry the ball five or ten times.  It's even worse on TV.  I freaking hate watching a close game in the final minutes of the fourth quarter and then having the entire field by obscured by a giant "FANTASY UPDATE" graphic displaying, "DIRK HARDPECKER HAS 4 YARDS ON 2 CARRIES" in giant yellow text.  Who gives a shit?  Why should I care?  Also, "fantasy football" just sounds gay.  Those two words are just not meant to be used together, unless you're talking about the picture above I guess.

Awesome:

Having a Favorite Team

In this day and age, fan loyalty is a fickle beast.  Your favorite teams depend on the support of their die-hard fans, and jumping off the bandwagon when things start getting rough is doing a disservice to yourself and your team.  You can't truly appreciate the Super Bowls and NFC Championships unless you've suffered through the 4-12 seasons, the endless years of mediocrity and the Bubby Brister era.  Truly we must constantly strive to support our teams, no matter how many of their players are on your opponents' fantasy football teams or how attractive their cheerleaders are.

But attractive cheerleaders certainly help.

Retarded:

Roughing the Kicker Penalties

The kicker is generally regarded as being the biggest bitch in professional sports.  He doesn't take contact, he doesn't make tackles, he doesn't dump Gatorade on the coach's head;  he really doesn't do shit except kick the ball.  I guess that's a necessary aspect of the game, but the roughing the kicker penalty is fucking stupid.  Basically, you're not even allowed to TOUCH the guy in any way, because he'll flop like a professional soccer player and it's a fifteen-yard penalty and an automatic first down.  That's fucking bullshit.  I know you gotta protect this guy or whatever, but he wears fucking pads and a helmet.  He plays football.  If he can't deal with getting bumped by a guy who's trying to block the kick, he needs to fucking grow a pair of nuts and either come back when he's ready to stop complaining or go join one of those European soccer leagues.

Awesome:

Roughing the Kicker

Retarded:

Uwe Boll Beating the Shit Out of Lowtax

I presume that most of you have seen the infamous video of Something Awful's Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka getting worked over by Uwe Boll.  From what I understand from Lowtax's version of the story is that Uwe apparently offered to go one-on-one in the boxing ring with some of his biggest internet critics.  Now I consider myself a Lowtax fan (otherwise I wouldn't link to him on my main page), but this video clip is retarded.  You can tell that Lowtax was expecting this to be a stupid publicity stunt, but Uwe was an amateur boxer for many years and it obviously taking it way too seriously.  He wasn't fucking around, and ended up pummeling Lowtax about the head and neck in an entirely one-sided bout.  Now first off, it seems that neither of them were on the same page in terms of what to expect from this fight.  Secondly I would guess that Uwe Boll has about a hundred pounds on Kyanka, which is more than enough to put them in separate weight classes, so it was sort of like having George Foreman fight Sugar Ray Leonard; no matter how tough Sugar Ray was, he wouldn't have stood a chance against a guy that much heavier than him.  And not to mention the fact that Kyanka had never boxed a day in his life.  I guess maybe he shouldn't have accepted to fight Boll, but it just seems wrong.  It definitely looks retarded.

Awesome:

Mike Tyson Beating the Shit Out of Everyone

I wrote a Badass of the Week article about Mike Tyson once, and to this day I regret the fact that I wrote it about his character at the end of Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! and not about the actual guy.  Tyson was the most badass boxer the world had ever seen for quite a few years, until he got old, lazy and lost his mind.  I mean, nobody had seen anyone move that quickly and hit that hard.  He was fucking unstoppable.  He'd knock guys six inches taller than him out in the first round, and would get a better workout hitting the heavy bad in the gym than beating the snot out of those giant men and rendering them unconscious in less than three minutes.  One time he did so many sit-ups that he actually fractured a bone in his motherfucking spine.  Honestly, watch this video montage of Mike Tyson completely wrecking like fifty guys and tell me he wasn't the most fearsome and powerful boxer since Ali.