Too far ... way, way too damn far

Like President Barack Obama, don't like President Barack Obama, I really don't care. I tend to like him more than not, but everyone's entitled to his or her own opinion.

But this, this is not acceptable. (Be warned; right from the title, there's a lot of a certain word starting with "n.") It would be bad enough if people were complaining that the president talking of an unspeakable tragedy was interrupting their football, but the language is vile and racist and unbecoming anything other than a sub-human.

(My friend KB sent me a note that while some people seemed proud of themselves when she checked the Twitter machine afterward, a bunch deleted their posts, deleted their accounts or apologized. Having not checked myself, I'll take her word for it. I'm guessing there are a lot of people who thought they'd never be found out in the vast Twitterverse and are feeling a serious bout of blabber's remorse.)

Is this what we've come to as sports fans, that the understandable desire for watching sports to be an escape -- more than once this weekend I switched to a random college basketball game to get away from Newtown coverage for a little while -- that we respond to real life daring to intrude with "stick to sports" at best and outright racism at worst?

No, I know we haven't. But it still makes me sad.

P.S. -- My guy Poopsie and I had been having a conversation on Facebook about my recent sabermetrics post, and he sent me a note that he had some new information on Adam Dunn, but didn't feel right, given current events. I told him to lay it on me, that the diversion would be nice for a few minutes. He did, and then I told him something I noted watching the Rockets-Celtics game after reading a story on the Rockets in Sports Illustrated. It was nice.

Why I need the 49ers (or the Ravens) to win

I really don't have much use for any combination of the Patriots, Ravens, 49ers or Giants, so whoever wins next week's conference championship games doesn't make much difference to me.

However, on the assumption that the Patriots win (which is obviously not a sure thing by any means), the 49ers absolutely, positively have to win.

Why?

I live outside of Boston, where they're already ready to hand the Vince Lombardi Trophy over to the Patriots. If it's a Giants-Patriots Super Bowl, there will be nothing in the papers, on TV or the radio for two solid weeks other than getting "revenge" for Super Bowl XLII, and it won't take long before the Patriots getting revenge for the Giants costing them their undefeated season turns into "us" getting revenge for the Giants costing "us" "our" perfect season.

Trust me on this one.

Clearly, the NFL will promote just about anything

Apparently, there has been a little bit of trouble keeping the lights on during the Steelers-49ers game.

Among all the jokes on Twitter about the 49ers not paying their electric bill comes this one from Steelers linebacker James Harrison

"If I cant play then can't nobody play... Lights out!"

Harrison can't play not because he's injured, but because he's suspended ... by the NFL. Yet I first saw his tweet as a retweet by ...

... the NFL.