Wings on Fire

So I'm sitting in the office Sunday night puttering along as usual when the call comes.

Donovan McNabb's been traded?

To the Washington Redskins?

A division rival?

Really?

REALLY?!?!?!

Never has one decision thrown every aspect of my life into complete chaos.

Right now, it qualifies as the second-worst personnel decision the Eagles have ever made. (The first, of course, was letting Reggie White - arguably the greatest Eagle ever - leave in free agency for no good reason and getting nothing in return.) Green Bay traded Brett Favre to the Jets. San Francisco traded Joe Montana to Kansas City. The Oilers traded Warren Moon to Minnesota. You know what all of those teams have in common? They don't play each other twice a year.

You don't - DO NOT - trade such an important player - especially a top-10 quarterback - to a team that can hurt you as badly as the Redskins can now hurt the Eagles.

The trade itself was only a mild shock. With all three of their quarterbacks in the final year of their respective contracts (an unusually egregious oversight by the Eagles' front office), the situation had to be settled. They couldn't risk going into the 2010-11 offseason not knowing what they had in Kolb and not knowing if McNabb would want to return. So something had to be done.

But to the Redskins? With the division's best defense and finally a head coach and GM who know what they're doing? And that's the most you get in return? Jay Cutler can't lace McNabb's cleats and the Broncos got two first-round picks from the Bears for him. McNabb's only worth a 2 and a conditional 3? And if the Raiders did offer their second-rounder and Nnamdi Asomugah - only one of the league's five best cornerbacks - then it wasn't even the best offer the Eagles got.

Are the Eagles a better team now than they were a week ago? Not one reasonably intelligent football fan would say "yes."

I still remember the uproar when the Eagles were considering taking McNabb in 1999. I remember the chorus of boos that rained down from the Theatre at Madison Square Garden when the pick was announced. I remember McNabb looking completely unfazed by it all. I remember some so-called "experts" claiming that it was a bad decision. But the truth then - and even more so now - is that your football team will never be successful without a good quarterback. Ask any Cleveland Browns fan.

Andy Reid knew that. That's why he drafted McNabb and didn't draft Ricky Williams, and didn't trade out of the No. 2 spot in the draft and risk not getting the quarterback he needed. Oh, and by the way, not only did Williams never live up to his potential, but three of the other four quarterbacks drafted in the first round that year never got a second contract, including the ones drafted right before (Tim Couch) and after (Akili Smith) McNabb.

Is Kevin Kolb a big-time quarterback? Can he be? The truth is, we don't know. Sure he's the only quarterback in history to throw for over 300 yards in his first two starts, but let's not forget that: in the first start he also threw three interceptions and the Eagles lost by 26 points; and the second start was against the Chiefs, one of the three worst teams in the NFL last season.

And while we're here, let's get something else straight: The Aaron Rodgers comparison only succeed to a certain point. People forget this, but Aaron Rodgers was being talked about as going No. 1 overall in the draft in 2005. Kevin Kolb was on no one's radar.

As far as McNabb, sure, the biggest strike against him is that he "can't win the big game." But let's look at those big games again. The Rams and Patriots were better teams. The Cowboys were a bad matchup across the board last season. The entire team played terribly against the Panthers (that was the game where the Eagles' WRs dropped about 10 passes and was the impetus to go get Terrell Owens) and the defense cost them the game against the Cardinals after McNabb had led them back from a defense-caused deficit. The only one of those losses you can realistically blame McNabb and only McNabb for is the Vet finale against the Buccaneers, and Ronde Barber owned McNabb his whole career, not unlike how Ty Law owned Peyton Manning when Law was with the Patriots.

Admittedly, McNabb tended to underthrow receivers and seemed a little over-sensitive to criticism at times. And some of that criticism was deserved. But a lot of the criticism - much of it from uninformed corners such as Rush Limbaugh, Bernard Hopkins and the president of the Philadelphia NAACP - was specious at best and flat-out inaccurate at worst.

And now some of those same people, along with the segment of idiot "fans" who give Philadelphia sports fans worldwide a bad name, are glad he's gone. You all know who you are, too. You booed him at the draft, were ready to dump him after he'd gotten the Eagles to three straight conference title games, took Terrell Owens' side when he turned against him, and conveniently forgot that Rodney Peete, Ty Detmer and the immortal Bobby Hoying had been taking regular snaps from center in the three years prior to McNabb's arrival. He was the best and most successful quarterback in that franchise's otherwise miserable history and you never accepted him. I hope you morons are happy.

I'm willing to give Kolb a chance. But this had better work. Because right now, it looks like a bad move. And if 54 weeks from now, Roger Goodell is standing at the podium in the Theatre at Madison Square Garden saying, "With the first pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, the Philadelphia Eagles select Jake Locker, quarterback, University of Washington," then it's an absolute disaster.

Questions You Didn't Ask Me

Just how bad a beating did your bracket take?

Brutal. Both of my pools were effectively over halfway through the Sweet 16. And no, I didn't win either of them. The only two things I can hang my hat on this year are picking Murray State to beat Vanderbilt (Three teams won 30 games this year. The other two were Kentucky and Kansas) and getting the West Region right through the Sweet 16 in my Yahoo pool.

Was the Big East overrated after all?

Yes and no. I don't fully buy into the idea that you can determine the real strength of a conference by how its teams do in postseason play, though it's probably a little easier in basketball than football now that every football team in America runs the spread these days. On the other hand, I'm still a bit baffled at how Notre Dame and Marquette, after widely being considered bubble teams going into the Big East tournament, both ended up pulling No. 6 seeds. Georgetown just didn't show up against Ohio. The Hoyas are wherever Luke Harangody and Scottie Reynolds' shot are.

What happened to Temple?

Cornell couldn't miss. This was a classic case of my "three S's" theory of a few years ago making a comeback. The three S's are shooting, size and seniors, and if you're a lower-level team that has all three, you're never really out of any game. Also, somebody had to eat the 12-5 bullet (and both teams were probably seeded too low anyway.)

Who did the committee leave out of the field this year?

Virginia Tech raised the biggest stink, but the Hokies' 12-1 nonconference record is a bit deceiving. They didn't beat a good team all year. You could make a case for Mississippi State, but not a very strong one. Honestly, the correct answer is "no one." Every team in the field of 65 should have been. Well, except Florida.

Speaking of...

Expansion. For or against?

AGAINST. The only reason this is even being considered is because the "C" in NCAA actually stands for "cash". Why else would you mess with perfection?

The one expansion proposal I would even consider ties in to something that regular readers know I've been complaining about for years: I've always hated the fact that the "first-round" game consists of the lowest two automatic qualifiers, leaving one of them out of the main bracket. An automatic bid should be just that - an automatic bid.

So what I would be in favor of is something like the following: The tournament is seeded as normal except for the last four at-large spots. Then the selection committee takes the last eight at-large teams and matches them up in four play-in games. Play two games at two sites on the Tuesday that the play-in game is now and we settle this bubble business once and for all.

Exactly how large are Ali Farokmanesh's balls?

IMMEASURABLE.

What did we learn that can help our brackets next year?

Well, we can officially add "be wary of high-seeded teams with double-digit losses" to the rulebook. When I say "high seeded," I mean seventh or better. Just... be careful. Especially if their first-round opponent only has single-digit losses.

Also, Kansas is probably back in the "not to be trusted past the first round" camp.

Can Butler actually win this thing?

Sure, why not?

DIY 2: Electric Boogaloo

Same room. New challenge.

For as long as I can remember, I've valued my independence. From growing up as a typical 1980's latchkey kid to living in a single dorm room my last two years of college to living on my own for about seven and a half years now, I've always managed to figure out how to do things on my own, from teaching myself how to cook the basics to rigging a TV stand to putting in an overhead desk light in a desk with no overhead holes. (Here's how I did that.) Truth be told, I'm probably not as improvisational and self-reliant as I like to think I am sometimes, but I've still figured out enough to get me this far.

But what possessed me to try to replace my own bathroom sink? I mean, it looks fine...


But upon closer inspection...


Oh. Yeah, that's kind of an important piece that's just sitting out on the surface of the sink like that instead of being down in the drain where, well, where it's supposed to be. I'm not exactly sure how this happened. But it caused a problem that needs to be solved.

There's not a lot of room to wriggle around in the cabinets underneath the sink, but I was able to squeeze my way in there and get the underneath bolt supports loose enough to disconnect the assembly from the water line. Which left me with this:


Notice that the faucet is still attached to the flex piping. Easy enough to remove, right? Not if your wrench isn't big enough. I was going to need reinforcements.

BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL!!!!

You could knock somebody out cold with that thing. Seriously.

So I put the BIG WRENCH to work and got the old faucet off the pipes, then switched it out for the new joint.

Some serious age down below

Now this was the hard part - installing the new plunger. First I had to remove a leaky section of pipe and get the old pop-up assembly out of its death grip to the underside of the sink. Then I had to put the new one in its own death grip (which is far more manageable) and figure out how to re-attach the pipe and test for the leak, then tape it up.

The new pop-up assembly. It's GREEN! The wooden bit on the left is the sliding drawer on the top level of the cabinet.

The last part was installing the actual plunger and connecting it to the assembly, which revealed the source of the problem that led to all of this in the first place: the previous plunger had somehow gotten stuck and broke off inside the drain, which not only caused the leak, but also caused the drain stopper to snap off. Who knows. But after several adjustments, I got the plunger to work to where it does what it's supposed to do... plunge.

See? That thing moves up and down now like it's supposed to.

SUCCESS! *flexes*

All told, the job took five to six hours, not including cleanup and disposal of water and undesirables:

The de-parted

The moral of the story is that the "easy installation" that was touted on the package is a half-truth at best.

The other moral of the story is that sometimes doing it yourself is worth the aggravation, even if it's not done perfectly, because you can go and adjust things later and actually know what you're trying to do (and saving at least $300 in the process).

Actually, the real moral of the story, when you take into account that I've replaced a toilet, a water heater, a refrigerator, and now the bathroom sink since I've been here is this:

The next place I live is going to be a lot newer.

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Listening to: Kanye West - Stronger
via FoxyTunes