Archive for the ‘Nick Gholson’ Category

There was a rumor swirling around last week that Oklahoma was holding off on naming a new men’s head basketball coach until this season is over.

This women’s season.

People were telling me that once the UConn women were done for the year — most likely after next week’s championship game — OU was going to make an offer to Geno Auriemma.

Auriemma’s name popped up in some media reports probably because when OU was searching for a new coach five years ago, AD Joe Castiglione supposedly wanted to hire the UConn coach, but Auriemma said no.

Then Castiglione hired Jeff Capel out of Virginia Commonwealth.

Five years ago, the only thing we all knew about Virginia Commonwealth was that it’s somewhere in Virginia.

Today, VCU is the Cinderella at the Final Four.

Capel was 96-69 with the Sooners the last five years, so you really can’t say this was a bad hire.

But I will always wonder what Geno would have done with the OU men if he had been the coach.

OU lost 18 games this year and got Capel fired.

The UConn women have lost just 18 games in the last seven years.

It has been 18 years since an Auriemma-coached UConn team did not at least reach the Sweet 16.

Geno is responsible for hanging seven national championship banners up in the Gampel Pavilion.

But how good do you think this guy would be coaching the men’s game?

If you answered “pretty damn good,” then you and I agree on one thing.

My friend Berry Tramel, columnist for the Daily Oklahoman,  and I agree on another thing.

He probably wouldn’t be a good fit for OU.

This campus is just not big enough for two super egos like Geno Auriemma  and Bob Stoops.

This is the second year that I have covered basketball at the MassMutual Center in Springfield, Mass.

Both times I have been there, I have thought the same thing.

This is exactly what Kay Yeager Coliseum was supposed to be.

If the people who run our town had taken the time to go out and see what a coliseum is supposed to look like, we could have had a nice place like this.

Instead, we went in blind and now Hooterville Falls has a $20 million POS.

Every time I walk into the KYC, I feel like I am entering a maximum security prison.

The “press box” is an embarrassing tree house/kitty litter box.

The MassMutual Center is a beautiful modern 6,663-seat facility that is the home of  an NBA Developmental League basketball team and an American Hockey League franchise.

The facility also hosted the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) men’s and women’s basketball championships this year, as well as the NCAA Division II men’s Elite Eight basketball tournament.

The KYC now has a basketball court but no teams wanting to play there.

What will happen if we ever lose our junior hockey team?

Can you say “giant flea market?”

Got a better idea? Let me hear it.

If you think a sports writer’s life is only filled with World Series and Super Bowls, think again.

Here is my schedule today.

I woke up at 5:15 (EDT) here in Springfield, Massachusetts.

I get on a bus at 6:30 and head to Providence, Rhode Island.

Sometime after 10, I will fly to Philadelphia.

After a few hours of airport “entertainment,” I get on another plane and head to Dallas.

Arrival time is 6 p.m. CDT.

Then I hope on a bus that will probably stop at a McDonald’s somewhere.

These basketball players have to eat, you know.

The bus is due to arrive back in Wichita Falls around 9:30.

That’s a 16-hour travel day.

But you know what?

I still love my job.

Elizabeth Taylor is dead.

I wonder if Debbie Reynolds will go to the funeral.

Seriously doubt it.

There will be a lot of nice things said about Liz now that she is gone, but I will always remember her for being the bitch who stole Eddie Fisher from sweet Debbie.

Eddie and Debbie were America’s sweethearts when I was a kid.

They had a baby together and then made a movie about it — Bundle of Joy.

Then that bitch Liz came alone and tore down Camelot.

I guess my favorite Liz Taylor movie was “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” but probably because of Paul Newman rather than her.

My best Liz Taylor memory — other than the Eddie-Debbie deal — was John Belushi ‘s impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live.

There was Belushi — the spitting image of Liz –  in a fat girl’s nightgown lying in bed and chomping down on fried chicken.

You live 79 years, make tons of movies, marry a bunch of famous men, win an Oscar and how are you remembered?

As a fat vixen bitch twin of John Belushi.

A confused Grant McCasland glanced over at the guy sitting next to me on the bus and gave me one of those “Who’s he?” looks.

This guy hadn’t been on the plane with the Midwestern State basketball group that flew from DFW to Boston on Monday.

Nor was he with us on the bus ride from Boston to Springfield, Mass.

The MSU coach knew what he was — the clerical collar was a dead giveaway.

But he was puzzled as to why this priest was on the bus with the MSU basketball team.

Tobin McDuff from Channel 3 and I had invited the priest to ride with us and the team to the Elite Eight banquet Monday night at the Basketball Hall of Fame.

His group had already headed out to the banquet on their own bus and left the priest waiting for them in the hotel lobby.

We had extra seats on our bus, so we invited him to come along.

The funny thing was this priest was from Bellarmine University — the team that the Mustangs are going to play in the opening round of the Elite Eight on Wednesday.

“Let’s kidnap him,” I joked.

“Tell Bellarmine to forfeit and we will give him back to them unharmed.”

I got a few laughs but no takers.

“Well, couldn’t we at least make a deal and trade him to them for their leading scorer?”

Everybody just sat there and waited for a big bolt of lightning to flash from the sky and turn our bus into a pile of dust.

It may sound crazy, but what would have happened last year if we had kidnapped Taylor Witt the night before the game?

Witt wouldn’t have been around to score 43 points against MSU in the first game of the tournament.

One good kidnapping and Midwestern could be the defending national champion this year.

It is a bad habit of mine to start bitching about something before ever trying it.

So all week I hissed and moaned about the new TV format for March Madness.

Tru-tv?

I didn’t even know I was buying this network.

I had to search to find it at Channel 204 on DISH.

Where are they going to show the championship game — Lifetime?

CBS has done a great job with the NCAA Tournament. Why fix something that’s not broke?

But when I finally got settled down in my La-z-boy on Thursday evening, I got quite a surprise.

I liked it.

Having all of the games shown in full to all parts of the country is better than the old method of giving us just certain games and then breaking in for parts of others.

There was one game on TBS, one game on TNT, one game on Tru-tv and one on CBS.

They put updated scores and clock times for every game at the top of the screen, so you can switch back and forth to watch the more interesting games.

We also get the TNT announcers who normally do NBA games.

I like hearing Charles Barkley’s opinion.

He hates the Big East basketball hype as much as I do.

The new TV agreement for the NCAA Tournament is 14 years.

I’m anxious to see what these networks will do next to make it even better.

I have been blessed with good health for most of my life.

Because of that, I have a very low tolerance for pain.

When I limp into a doctor’s office, I expect to walk out healthy and pain free.

I only go to the doctor when I am really hurting.

And last week I was really, really hurting.

My back was out of whack. Why? I’m not sure.

All I know is after covering MSU’s opening win in the LSC tournament, it took me about five minutes just to get inside my car.

The next morning, it took much longer just to get out of bed.

And I was in Bartlesville, Okla. — 300 miles from home.

HELP!

Since I didn’t know one single doctor in Bartlesville, I called MSU trainer Gary Diehm and asked for help. He said to come by his hotel room and he would see what he could do.

When I got there, Gary said “pull your pants down.”

No movie. No dinner. No drinks. No foreplay.

But I yanked those suckers down. And Gary felt around on my backside.

“Now lie on the bed, on your stomach,” he said.

My first thought: Good thing Gary doesn’t work at BYU.

No, that was really my second thought.

My first thought was “get the hell out of here.”

Funny what a guy will do when he is really in pain.

Well, after doing all a trainer can do to help, Gary recommended I find a chiropractor.

I did, but he told me there was no “miracle cure” for my condition.

So baby Nick struggled through two more days in Bartlesville, drove home, whined to my wife and then went to my chiropractor buddy Mark Brown.

Here we are a week later and I am getting better.

On a 1-to-10 scale, most people would rank my pain about a “6.”

But it’s not their pain. It’s mine.

And on Nicky G’s sissy scale, I’m ranking it at least an “11.”

My opinion of ergonomics has also changed.

No longer do I consider it just a con job for crooked salesmen peddling office furniture.

You will hear a lot of nice things said about Merle Anthony in the next few days.

And all are true and well deserved.

Mrs. Anthony was a truly great woman.

But, when as a kid, I had a different opinion of her.

You might, too, if she ever grabbed you by the ear, jerked you out of your chair and then out of the room. Right in front of all your friends.

I was a smart ass teenager who sometimes got attention by being the class clown.

One day at Wichita Falls High School, several American history classes were in the film room watching a documentary where Tex Ritter and some little boy rode a Greyhound bus around the country.

The bus would stop at several historical sites in the United States. Each time Tex would tell the boy why the place was so important in American history. Then he would sing a song about it.

For example, when they stopped at the Alamo, he might sing the ballad of Davy Crockett.

Well, after two or three stops and songs, I decided to have some fun.

I stared yodeling along with the music.

It was a dark room packed with about 60 kids.

I didn’t think any teacher would find me.

Then I felt this tug on my ear.

Next thing you know I am in the prinicpal’s office with Mrs. Anthony at my side.

She told the principal about my yodeling, and I was given two choices — licks or detention.

I took the licks and had a sore ass for about a week.

I wasn’t a big Merle Anthony fan back then.

But over the next 50 years I changed my tune (pardon the pun).

We need to name a school after this woman.

And maybe a street, too.

It is people like her that make me love my hometown.

I used to love to go to the movies.

But most of my movie-going these days is with the grandson.

The convenience and low price of Redbox are the main reasons I stay away from theaters.

So I have yet to see “The King’s Speech.”

I will wait until the DVD release date (April 29) to see the Oscar-winning movie about stuttering King George VI.

My job has allowed me to interview many famous people over the past 39 years.

The greatest athlete I ever interviewed was a stutterer.

We met in a Cotton Bowl dressing room on Jan. 1, 1986.

Texas A&M had won the game 36-16, but Jackie Sherrill had a run-in with one of the Dallas newspapers during the week leading up to the game. So he closed the Aggies’ dressing room and had a tent set up outside to do all post-game interviews.

It was a cluster, to say the least.

So I got up and went to the loser’s dressing room, which was open.

While all the other sports writers were playing Sherrill’s stupid game, I got a one-on-one interview with the greatest college football player around.

Glad to meet you, Bo Jackson.

We talked a little about the game but more about the decision that he was going to have to make in a few months.

Bo told me he going to play his senior baseball season at Auburn but wasn’t sure if he would go baseball or football after that.

As we know now, he did both. And did them both very well.

But what caught me my surprise that day was the bad stutter that Bo had.

I guess I had never heard him speak before. Either that or he had done a great job of covering it up when on a big stage.

It was an awful, awful stutter.

The Heisman Trophy winner couldn’t talk.

It was sad, really.

But the guy who couldn’t speak became a spokesman for Nike.

He did a series of TV commercials and appeared on several TV shows.

You never hear or read about how Bo Jackson overcame that stuttering problem.

I hope it will be mentioned when they do a movie about his life.

After seeing “The King’s Speech” win four Oscars on Sunday night, it just might.

Let’s see there are still 38 days left until the Rangers’ season-opener.

March Madness will get me through until then.

But pleeeeeeeeese, no more sports weekends like this last one.

The NBA has become WWE.

On All-Star weekend, professional basketball turns to professional wrestling.

Slam dunking over a car?

No surprise that it was a Kia — a sponsor of all WWE-like show.

Then comes the finale on Sunday — the over-hyped game that ended with a 148-143 final score.

Who won?

Who cares?

The highlight of the whole weekend was Justin Bieber. This little kid showed us some game.

Then the next day, he goes out and wins the Daytona 500.

The NBA shared the spotlight with NASCAR on Sunday.

NASCAR doesn’t mess around with foreplay.

They play their “Super Bowl” on the opening week of the season.

And the 16-year-old Bieber outraced all the big stars to the checkered flag.

That wasn’t Bieber? It sure looked like him.

I am told that the Daytona winner was somebody named Trevor Bayne.

At least I had heard of Justin Bieber.

Also, when did NASCAR become a doubles match?

Did you watch all those cars paired up at the end of the race with partners trying to push partners to the front of the pack?

It was one boring sports weekend.

I’m ready for March Madness.

Just read an on-line report that O.J. Simpson was recently on the wrong end of a prison yard ass-whipping.

The story said that a group of “crazed white superacist” prisoners put a hurting on O.J. after listening to him brag about all the white women he had sex with.

It was reported that the young skinheads circled O.J. and viciously punched and kicked him until he blacked out. He was taken to the infirmary where he spent three weeks recovering.

He went back to his cell but reportedly is now too afraid to leave it.

Forgive me for not giving a rat’s ass about O.J.’s sorry ass.

He killed two innocent people — one the mother of his children.

He shouldn’t be in prison right now. He should  have died in the gas chamber years ago.

March Madness is right around the corner, and ESPN radio’s Colin Cowherd has come up with a new kind of tournament.

He is going to have a 64-band tournament patterned after NCAA basketball to decide who is the championship rock band of all-time.

Yesterday, he listed his four top seeds as:

Led Zeppelin

Beatles

Rolling Stones

Guns ‘N Roses.

I agree with the first three.

But Guns ‘N Roses?

I would have the Eagles as one of my top seeds.

My kids would all put U2 up there.

You could put up a good argument for Pink Floyd or Dave Mathews or Steely Dan.

All were better than Guns ‘N Roses.

I think what a fun tournament like this will do is show us that my generation did rock and roll better than anyone.

60-somethings rock.

Paul McCartney is 68. Ringo Star is 70. Had John Lennon lived, he would also be 70 (three months younger than Ringo). Had George Harrison lived, he would be 67.

John, Paul, George and Ringo. 70, 68, 67 and 70.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are both 67.

Jimmy Page is 67. Robert Plant is 62.

Axl Rose — a kid at only 49 — does not belong in this group of greatness.

Sorry, kids, but neither does 50-year-old Bono.

Don Henley, at 63, and his Eagles deserve a top seed.

But the dream championship game would match the Beatles vs. the Stones.

Who would you pick to win the title?

The cold war is over.

Khrushchev is dead.

I may have grown up hating the Russians, but I now feel a special comradeship with them.

Our basketball team didn’t get screwed in the 1972 Olympics.

Those missile-carrying ships had every right to go into Cuba.

Mr. Gorbachev, put back that wall — if you want to.

I have a whole new love for the Russians.

And you will, too, when you check out the cover of Sports Illustrated’s new swim suit issue.

Remember the day when it seemed like all Russian women wore brown paper sacks?

Well, welcome to 2011.

Sacks are out.

Itsy, bitsy, teeny weeny, pink and yellow halter bikinis are in.

That’s what Irina Shayk is wearing on the SI cover.

And it fits quite nicely.

This 25-year-old coal miner’s daughter is one hot Ruskie.

Makes a guy understand what John, Paul, George and Ringo were thinking when they sang:

“Oh show me round the snow peaked mountains way down south.

“Take me to your daddy’s farm

“Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out,

“Come and keep your comrade warm.”

With babes like Irina running around showing off their boobies, who wouldn’t mind being back in the USSR?

It is Valentine’s Day — our annual celebration of love.

And nobody loves this day of love more than Hallmark, Russell Stover and Teleflora.

Having been married four times, I am not even going to pretend that I know a darn  thing about love.

The preacher preached about it at church on Sunday. He even started the worship with a “Love Shack.”

That popular B-52’s song from the 80’s talked about a love getaway where there was “glitter on the mattress;” a place where “everybody’s movin, everybody’s groovin’; a place where there is “huggin’ and a kissin’, dancin’ and lovin” by people “wearin’ next to nothin.’

I have been in places like that in my life, but we didn’t call them love shacks back then.

They were honky tonks.

“Looking for love in all the wrong places,” is the way Johnny Lee sang it.

I never went to those places looking for love. I wasn’t searching for a woman to spend my life with. I only wanted an hour or two of their time.

Confusing sex with love can get you in trouble.

Hey, I am talking from experience here.

When my daughter was a teen-ager, we sat down and talked about the meaning of love. At the time, she thought she was in love with the boy she was dating.

I defined love for her this way.

“Imagine you and your boyfriend are out for a walk and some guy comes up and pulls a gun on you. He says he has only one bullet in his gun and tells you to make the choice on which one of you dies and which one lives.

“If you take the bullet, you really love the guy. But if you say ‘Shoot him,” it’s probably not true love.”

She ended up marrying that boy.

After almost 13 years of marital bliss, I have to wonder: “Who would get the bullet today?”

One day you are singing at the Super Bowl.

Next day you can’t even get a gig with the local 4H club.

That’s life right now for Christina Aguilera.

After botching the national anthem at Cowboys Stadium last Sunday, the pop singer has spent the past week trying to restore her image.

According to eTrueSports, the pop star offered to sing campfire songs for free at the annual meeting of the Lebanon, Pa., chapter of the 4H Club.

The club reportedly said no.

“We sure do appreciate Ms. Aguilera’s offer, but you can’t be taking chances with ‘She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain’ or ‘Home on the Range.’ Then where would we be?” club president Bill C. McIntosh said.

During the Christmas season, we often have school choirs come to the newspaper office of serenade us.

Maybe Aguilera could come to Hooterville Falls and sing for us.

If she does, would somebody please warn me?

I was in the stadium for that disaster last Sunday. I paid my dues.

I want to make sure I am not around for any more.

The bad weather has you stranded in an airport for hours.

Then you finally get on a plane and get to Dallas and find it looking a lot like your hometown back in Wisconsin.

But this is the Super Bowl. Your Packers are playing in it. And you have a ticket.

Priceless.

Your hotel has a four-night minimum, but you shell out a thousand bucks.

Priceless.

You rent a compact car and drive to the stadium on Sunday. You pay 100 dollars to park your car a mile or two from the stadium.

You got through heavy security to get inside the stadium, then find your $800 ticket is in the end zone, almost as far from the playing field as your rental car is from the stadium.

But this is the Super Bowl.

Priceless.

You sit down with and sip on a $9 beer.

Then some guy comes up and tells you to get up. You can’t sit there. Your $800 ticket is no good.

The Packers win the Lombardi Trophy and you are crowded into the concourse to stand and watch it on a small screen with another few hundred angry people.

I can understand why all those people are pissed off.

But I can’t understand this frivolous lawsuit that has been filed against the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones.

First off, once Cowboys Stadium was chosen to host a Super Bowl, it was no longer Jerry World.  The NFL takes over the stadium and runs the show.

All Jerry gets is a nice suite and a lot of important guests.

The league did everything possible to do right by the 1,250 fans whose Super Bowl seats were deemed unsafe.

Some 850 were given new seats.

The other 400 were given two options. They could get a cash refund of three times the face value of their ticket ($2,400) and a ticket to next year’s Super Bowl in Indianapolis or they could get a ticket to any future Super Bowl along with round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations.

To me those folks were treated fairly.

But this is America, where lawyers hide under a rock and eagerly wait for stuff like this to happen.

They convince these fans that they deserve more than just tickets to a future Super Bowl.

So now they are demanding $5 million for their troubles.

That’s bull you-know-what.

I hope the judge agrees.

When I saw the headline on a Yahoo story that read: “America’s Most Miserable Cities,” part of me wanted to read on and another part of me wanted to move on.

I guess I’ve heard so many people make snide remarks about my hometown over the years that I always figure: “Here we go again.”

I remember a line in Dan Jenkins’ novel “Semi Tough” where one of the main characters is drunk and puking his guts out and someone said it was like he had been told he had to spend the rest of his life in Wichita Falls.

And then there’s that old worn out joke about an airplane about to land at our airport and the pilot announces: “We are approaching Wichita Falls. Please set your clocks back 10 years.”

Hey, I know I like to get my jabs in about Hooterville Falls, but I have lived here all my life. It is OK for a real Wichitan — or Hootervillian, if you prefer — to joke about his or her hometown.

But you outsiders, Yankees and foreigners need to shut up.

I am proud to announce that Wichita Falls did not make the Forbes sh..  list  of most miserable cities in the United States.

Here is the top 20.

1. Stockton, California

2. Miami, Florida.

3. Merced, California.

4. Modesto, California.

5. Sacramento, California.

6. Memphis., Tennessee.

7. Chicago, Ill.

8. West Palm Beach, Fla.

9. Vallejo, Cal.

10. Cleveland, Ohio.

11. Flint, Michigan

12. Toledo, Ohio

13. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

14. Youngstown, Ohio

15. Detroit, Mich.

16. Washington D.C.

17. Fresno, Cal.

18. Salinas, Cal.

19. Jacksonville, Fla.

20. Bakersfield, Cal.

Notice that the top city, four of the top five and nine of the top 20 are all from the land of fruits and nuts.

California is struggling with unemployment, a collapsed housing market, high taxes and service cuts.

I am proud to say that Texas has no city on the list.

I am prouder to say that Wichita Falls is nowhere to be found.

Then I later found out that we didn’t even qualify. Only cities with a minimum of 249,000 population were considered.

Still, I am proud of my hometown.

And I don’t even puke when I say it.

A bookie friend of mine e-mailed me a list of  “150 ways to play” the Super Bowl.

It’s a list of prop bets that allow you to be on just about anything you want in the big game.

Will the final score of both teams added together be an odd number or even number? Take you choice and bet a dollar and a dime to try and win a dollar.

Bet this will be the first Super Bowl to ever have an overtime and you get 7-to-1. The “due theory” certainly makes this an attractive wager.

Will there be a successful 2-point conversion? You can get 4.5-to-1 if say there will be.

But the most interesting bet is No. 150 on the list.

How many times will Jerry Jones be shown on national TV after the game starts?

The over-under is 3 1/2.

Seems to me that betting the over here would be a sure thing.

About the time, I was ready to call my buddy and take 50 bucks worth of it, I noticed that he had written underneath that bet that “This is a trick and humorous question only and is not for actual play.”

The only sure thing about betting football is there are no sure things.

A bookie friend of mine e-mailed me a list of  “150 ways to play” the Super Bowl.

It’s a list of prop bets that allow you to be on just about anything you want in the big game.

Will the final score of both teams added together be an odd number or even number? Take you choice and bet a dollar and a dime to try and win a dollar.

Bet this will be the first Super Bowl to ever have an overtime and you get 7-to-1. The “due theory” certainly makes this an attractive wager.

Will there be a successful 2-point conversion? You can get 4.5-to-1 if say there will be.

But the most interesting bet is No. 150 on the list.

How many times will Jerry Jones be shown on national TV after the game starts?

The over-under is 3 1/2.

Seems to me that betting the over here would be a sure thing.

About the time, I was ready to call my buddy and take 50 bucks worth of it, I noticed that he had written underneath that bet that “This is a trick and humorous question only and is not for actual play.”

The only sure thing about betting football is there are no sure things.

I just got off the phone with some guy in Pakistan or Istanbul or the Kingdom of Kabul or some place I don’t plan on vacationing anytime soon.

The IRS and ADP — and quite possibly the CIA, FBI and YMCA — don’t believe I used by flexible spending account on drugs. Even though all of the 60 bucks worth of questionable purchases were from Aetna RX Home Delivery.

Does Aetna RX Home Delivery deliver big screen TVs?  No.

Does Aetna RX Home Delivery deliver pizzas? No.

Will Aetna RX Home Delivery bring a hooker to my house? Wishful thinking.

Aetna RX Home Delivery is just what it is — an insurance company that sells you legal drugs.  And if the CIA and FBI are listening, I stress LEGAL DRUGS.

My phone friend in Uzbekistan was very courteous, but his English sucks.

I struggled through the conversation, repeatedly asking him to repeat the pig latin he was speaking.

Then we got to the part where he tells me where to mail my receipts.

Alpharedda, Georgia.

Can you imagine some guy from Uzbekistan trying to pronounce ALPHAREDDA, GEORGIA.

Heck, I can’t pronounce ALPHAREDDA and I’m an American.

A as in Andijan.

L in Liechtenstein.

P as in poppy fields.

H as in Hamas.

A as in Ali Baba.

R as in rekordowe

E as in ESPN-Islamabad

D D A as in Death to Dumb-ass American

So who out there is planning a Pro Bowl party on Sunday?

Isn’t it strange how the NFL has now replaced baseball as our national pastime, yet few people care about watching the league’s annual all-star game?

My football season ends on Super Bowl Sunday. So playing the Pro Bowl the week after the Super Bowl was a week too late.

And although now playing it the week before the Super Bowl is better than before, it seems like playing it now is still a week too early.

This way you also don’t get any Steelers or Packers in this all-star game.

What you really have is a bunch of good players who would rather be somewhere else.

Maybe it is time to just do away with the Pro Bowl?

I don’t think anyone would really miss it.

We have been watching real NFL games now for 20 straight Sundays, so there is a good chance we pro football junkies will start having withdrawals Sunday afternoon.

The only fix is the Pro Bowl — at 6 p.m. on Fox.

Unless you are into the Winter Games or want to see a taped replay of the Australian Open, you really have no other sports options.

For Cowboys fans, this will be your only chance this postseason to watch your heroes play.

Jason Witten, Andre Gurode, Demarcus Ware, Jay Ratliff and Mat McBriar are all starters for the NFC.