It’s not often that we pat ourselves on the back here at LBS, and that’s probably because most of what we do is crap. I recognize that. But even if our expertise is only posting garbage, we take some pride in knowing that we’ve been doing it for quite some time. This little blurb here is officially the 3,000th post written at LBS, which isn’t bad considered the site is just over three years old (started in January of 2007 – we haven’t changed much, have we?). We’re averaging just over two and a half posts a day since the site’s inception. I realize that you’d love to see more content generated here. I’m right there with you. Unfortunately, things like full-time jobs and life sometimes get in the way, but I continue to make a great effort to give you an enjoyable product with fresh content as frequently as possible.

It’s almost funny that a few years ago we were in the heart of a blogs vs. mainstream media debate. Now, nearly all the big sports sites have bloggers working full-time, and even some blogs that started out part-time have gone full-time. That makes it hard to keep up with the competition production-wise. With that in mind, keep your eye on the byline for each post because you may start to see new writers pop up in an effort to provide you with more quality content. Lastly, and most importantly, thank you for taking time out of your day to read the site. Whether it’s once a day, once a week, or once in a while, I don’t care — just that you’re reading means a lot to me. Thanks for your support of LBS and please pass along the word if you know someone who might enjoy the site.

A lot of people who read the site have no idea that I work for Sporting News Radio as a show host and update anchor and that I work on this website on the side. Likewise, many people who listen to the show have no idea that I also have a sports site on the side. So for those who were curious or happened to listen to the Sunday morning show I was hosting during football season, I wanted to apprise you of my new schedule. LBS takes the radio waves by storm on the following nights:

Friday: 11pm-5am PT
Saturday: 8pm-1am PT
Sunday: 8pm-11pm PT

You can listen at sporting news radio’s site, on Sirius channel 127, or on your local affiliate. For those who don’t care and just want their share of funny videos, scandalous pictures, and inane commentary, sorry to bother you. Please carry on as you were. Thank you for your time.

We apologize for interrupting your normally scheduled programming to bring you this announcement. Some of you may have been aware that aside from updating LBS with frivolous sports content, I also host a show and do sports updates on Sporting News Radio. For the past 6-7 months, I had been hosting a Friday overnight show but that shift has moved to Sunday mornings. Meaning if you’re on the East Coast, you can kick off your NFL Sundays with me from 7am-10am on your local Sporting News affiliate or at radio.sportingnews.com. If you’re on the West Coast, I know it’s early but should you happen to be up sometime between 4am-7am PT, you can put on 1090am in So Cal to catch the show. This weekend we have the pleasure of being joined by former Super Bowl MVP Doug Williams at 5:25am PT/8:25am ET. We’ll also talk shop with Hall of Famer Warren Moon at 6:30am PT/9:30am ET. Keep it in mind if you happen to be up early on Sundays and thanks for reading.

That’s right, I’m going parasailing with my 20-year-old girlfriend. And keep it quiet — the wife doesn’t know anything about it! See you back here on Tuesday, the 21st (unless I find my way to a computer before then …)

I leave you with a photo gallery of Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo, back in their pre-breakup, happier days. You think she digs bloggers??

Just wanted to let you know that I’m pretty pumped up to be hosting a Friday overnight show on Sporting News Radio. I realize the 11pm-4am PT slot means it’s Saturday morning on the East Coast, but hey, if the sun ain’t up, then it ain’t a new day yet in my book! Anyway, the show runs from 11pm-4am PT and can be heard on 1090 in San Diego/LA and Sirius Ch. 127. You can also hit us up online at sportingnews.com where you can get a live feed of the show. There are affiliates around the country where you can listen in cities like Houston (610 Sports), Miami (790 the Ticket), Detroit (97.1 WXYT), and Chicago (670 The Score), so if you’re interested in listening you can let me know and I’ll tell you the station you can tune into. We take phone calls at 800-777-2907 and you can always email the show as well. When you’re heading home from the bar or whatever on Friday nights, or waking up for golf on an early Saturday morning, from now on keep the show in mind and hopefully you can contribute!

For as much as you do for the site by reading, commenting, and supporting all things LBS, I don’t do nearly enough for you. But I’m going to try and make things up. I have a Super Bowl prize pack from Pepsi to give away that would be perfect for someone hosting a party. Here’s how we’re going to run the contest. The football season is full of stories — good and bad alike, but there’s nothing worse than suffering a bad beat during the season. Let me know a bad beat story that you had, either as a fan or a gambler, and the most sympathetic case will win the prize pack in hopes of cheering them up. Lions fans should run away with this thing. Anyway, here’s the Pepsi pack we’re playing for:

The picture doesn’t show that you’ll also receive 5 24 pack coupons and 5 Frito Lay coupons. In these tough times, that’s nothing to sneeze at. Best of luck to all those who participate.

OK, so my last week’s worth of posts and comments disappeared due to some sort of unfortunate database glitch. For anyone who missed it, I checked into the emergency room last Monday, believing my appendix had burst. Well, not only did my appendix burst, it was also discovered during surgery that my guts were pretty jacked up. They wound up removing a good 6 inches from my colon and 12 inches from the small intestine, so I’m told. It wasn’t pretty. After five days in the hospital — four on I.V., I’m back home and recovering. I lost a bunch of weight, energy, and hair (bastards shaved off my manhood!). I should be good to go for the most part from here on out, luckily. Anyway, the posting around here might be a little light for the week as I get my sea legs back, but I had to share these videos of my surgery and experience I recorded for you while in the hospital. Hope you enjoy:

(You’ll have to turn the volume up for this one)

OK, so many of you have realized that the comments haven’t exactly been working too well lately. (That’s code for every single comment has been flagged as spam over the past week). Anyway, to try and get around this problem, I’ve instituted a new system where a program called disqus will host all the comments. Feel free to register with disqus — you can create an avatar and it keeps track of all comments you’ve made on this, or any site. Also under the new system, you can vote comments up or down depending on how good/bad you think they are. I hope the new system works much better than the previous one. And if you don’t feel like registering with disqus, you can still comment in the “unclaimed” setting. Here’s to brighter commenting days.

A few days ago (seems like weeks to me), I presented Mark Spitz’s comments about not being invited to Beijing while Michael Phelps was trying to break his record of 7 gold medals. I called Spitz a bitter man in that post because, let’s face it, he definitely had a bitter tone. But I guess I’ll admit that someone did drop the ball by not inviting him. Either way, the Spitz fan base was none too pleased by my remarks if you couldn’t already tell from the comments, and some of them decided to really let me have it. Apparently it’s ride or die with the Spitz crowd, and since I wasn’t riding with them, my site had to die. That’s right — my server was under a Ddos attack (that doesn’t mean any more to me than it does to you) — but apparently my site was getting inundated with repeated requests that brought the site down. I had to move to a temporary IP address for the meantime just to get back up and running. Looks like the problem has finally been solved (thank God), and now I am back in my element, and hopefully you will be able to continue enjoying what I present here on this space. So sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your continued patronage.

Just wanted to give you all a heads up and explain what’s been going on with the site in case you’ve noticed some issues lately. An influx of traffic on Tuesday caused the site to go down quite a few teams, and the server was hovering in and out of commission throughout most of the morning and afternoon. We changed up hosting companies a few months ago, and now we’re in the process of upping the server so it will be able to withstand greater loads of traffic. So for the next day or so, if you try to access the site, sometimes it will be smooth and sometimes it will take longer to load, depending on which server you get connected to, the new one or old one. Either way, things should be much better from here on out.