Poor Joe Buck (@buck on Twitter), he just can’t win. The St. Louis native is always a dick to your team.Which team? Your team. …No wait. Of the two teams that played in Sunday’s NFC championship game, which one did he hate specifically? The one that you liked.

Of course not everyone is team specific. Other’s just have career advice:

Laugh now, but a small part of you thought Buck heaped a little too much praise on Mike Napoli in the World Series didn’t you?!

What have we done to deserve all these trickster St. Louis teams?

“Oh I, we’re the Cardinals. We’re going to be pretty good there year! …oh wait, no we won’t. Ooop! Lets make the playoffs suddenly…no we won’t, wait…yes we will…just…barely. Hello Phillies! *shot in the face* Just a flesh wound!”

“Hey everyone, we’re the Rams! We did a lot of good stuff last year and spent some money in free agency so everyone says we’re definitely going to be even better and will totally make the playoffs. Oh crap. Turns out we suck more balls than the Oreck Deluxe Handheld Vac. What? You didn’t catch that somewhat obscure infomercial reference? We know how you feel. We don’t catch anything. Ever.”

The Rams are obviously in a far worse state than the Cardinals and not just because we all like the Cardinals better and always will, like how your parents will always prefer your sibling/family pet/someone else’s kid slightly over you. No, the Rams are crap because they are crap. They can’t catch, they can’t protect Sam Bradford, they can’t stop the other team from scoring, and the coaches can’t adjust or fix it. Freaking pathetic. This team looks like another 1-15 team, which after all this rebuilding and high draft picks, the blame rests completely at the feet of the coaching and front office staff. This season just hurts even more because of the talent that is there and the confidence boost from last year.

Isn’t there an Air Bud sequel that we could at least try to run out there? Or maybe a monkey that could grab a jersey[1] or little kid that had an injury that somehow makes him good enough to play professional sports suddenly[2]? Maybe Coach Spags needs to take the team to the mean streets and play a pick up football game with some thugs who will teach them all to love the game and some important, game-changing skills like “knuckle-pucks latterals” or how to catch[3].

We’re running out of crappy sports movie references, so we’ve done all we can. The rest is up to you Coach Spags…because if you don’t get ready for firecoachspags.com! Which, by the way, is available. Just sayin’.

Photo Credit: ESPN

St. Louis Rams running back Steven Jackson was pulled on stage last night while seeing Jabb Awoc Keez and tweeted a photo of him breaking it down. Take a good look Rams fans! This may be the most action you see out of any of the Rams as they could go from poppin’ and lockin’ to just locked out in a few days.

Good moves though. We bet that’s exactly what it would look like if a marionette was pooping on stage.

via @SJ39

No, nothing illegal here officer….oh ok, yeah, that gun. I meant nothing illegal other than that gun. Wanna autograph?

St. Louis native and current Denver Broncos running back Laurence Maroney was arrested Sunday night for unlawful weapons and drug charges. Let us guess: All that stuff belonged to your buddies and you didn’t know they had it?

“Mr. Maroney was unlawfully arrested for possession of weapons. He holds a permit to carry a concealed weapon and he had his permit on his person when he was arrested. He was not arrested for any drugs nor was he involved in a high speed chase. He was released without being charged with any offense and we do not anticipate he will be charged with any criminal offense,” according to the statement given to KMOV.com.

Mugshot! (We’d so do that with our hair if we could. That or the Kid n’ Play “House Party” look. Spazy and un-combed straight hair is pretty close though. Word.)

Police reports contend that a 25-year old (Maroney’s age) was indicated that he had a valid conceal and carry permit, didn’t have it on him, and was arrested for possessing a firearm while under the influence of drugs. That report conflicts, to some degree, with the statement above.

Lets say he does have that gun legally, and maybe he wasn’t smoking any of the drugs, and maybe he was just high-speed chase adjacent…but that seems like an awful lot of crimes to be around without being involved in any of them doesn’t it? At best, Maroney, the former New England Patriot, needs some new St. Louis friends, but at worst he could be looking at a stiff punishment for any of those crimes he “witnessed”.

Playing for the Denver Broncos last year might count as “time served” though, so he might be ok after all.

via Fox News and KSDK

Last week, just after the Rams season came to a close with the thunderous sound of sucking like it was 2009, 2nd year head coach Steve Spagnuolo fired Todd Hewitt abruptly closing his 24 year tenure as team equipment manager. Hewitt succeeded his father in the role, and, in total, had been with the Rams in some capacity since 1978.

We’d been ignoring the Hewitt story, also known as, St. Louis sports media’s current fixation, so far because we didn’t know anything about it. No one did, but the sports guys were still all over it: Bernie Miklasz questioned it, KFNS was all over it, 101ESPN didn’t seem to care hmm…well they’re Rams partners aren’t they? It was weird story for sure, but until someone talked, there wasn’t much for us to say.

Hewitt’s finally talking.

We have decided not to retain Todd Hewitt and Chuck Faucette going forward in 2011. We appreciate their efforts in the past and wish them well in the future.

That’s all the Rams would say. It was their official press release and when asked for follow up by anyone, that’s all they reply with. Hewitt had more to say when he opened up to our friends at the Riverfront Times. Let’s just say he doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the head coach.

​Over their two years together, the relationship between head coach and equipment manager had grown frosty. To hear Hewitt tell it, Spagnuolo brought a militaristic dysfunction to the locker room. He criticized the way Hewitt distributed socks. He questioned the way he hung wall fixtures. He scoffed at him for loading the team plane too slowly. He warned him never to talk back to him. By the second year, Hewitt couldn’t assign a number to a new player without checking upstairs first. “He made life miserable,” Hewitt sums up.

Spagnuolo has come under fire, like any NFL head coach, for lots of football reasons, like his “lets play football like we really just want a tie” offensive strategy, but as far as personal issues, “Spags” has come out squeaky clean thus far. In fact, he’s gotten people after him for being too tied to his value system, a system Spagnuolo has called the “Four Pillars”, which has led the Rams to pass on more talented, but possibly more troubled players in the past. That being said, high levels of angst, paranoia and micro-managing are the hallmarks for the NFL head coach. Ole Spagnuolo seems to have found a way to raise his game there at least, assuring himself a playoff spot in the critical NFL game of “shit that really doesn’t matter”.

Adding fuel to the Spagnuolo fire is that the last 10 Rams head coaches and respective set of players all loved Hewitt and can’t figure out why you would fire the man. Many have called Hewitt with their displeasure and confusion over the whole thing. Sadly even personal phone calls from Dick Vermeil and Marshall Faulk, hasn’t helped Hewitt stay on the Rams bandwagon:

“To be honest, I’m praying they lose every game next year,” he says, adding that he has vowed never to watch another Rams game with Spagnuolo at the helm.

Tough to find fault with that sentiment.

Thank god though that finally, finally, the Rams will have their socks handed to them and pictures hung in a manner that Coach Spagnuolo prefers. You don’t get handed your socks right, people die, it’s that simple. How could the Rams wide recievers think about catching the ball in Seattle when their minds were filled with “I can’t believe Todd hung that photo with only one little nail. What if there’s an earthquake? Without a properly anchored screw that picture might just fall off the wall in 7 to 12 years! …oh crap, I was supposed to catch that. Damn you Todd Hewitt!!!!!!”

The only plus we see in all of this, is that finally someone has left that Rams that 101 ESPN won’t just hire to put on a 14th post-game Rams report.

via Riverfront Times

Oh Mizzou fans, wasn’t it much easier when you had a starting quarterback that was a little short guy that was good but not good enough that any NFL team would pick after 255 chances? You had to go out and recruit a tall kid with a strong arm and good mobility. Now he’s gone.

“This is definitely a bittersweet day for me, I was really looking forward to having a chance to do some special things next season with my teammates, but in the end, this is the right decision to make for myself and my family,” said Gabbert.

…and with that statement, Blaine Gabbert takes the early lead for the understatement of the year. Why on earth would a kid choose to spend more time in Columbia when he could go in the 1st round of April’s NFL draft and be a millionaire? Oh we’re sure he’ll totally miss Harpo’s though. Probably get all wispy about it right when he getting a half and half from some ridiculous broad in the back of his Escalade.

Meanwhile, now that the question of “Will he or won’t he?” has been answered, attentions turn to “Where will he go?”

Currently, and this stuff changes every day until April, ESPN draft expert Todd McShay has Gabbert going #5 in the draft to…you’re really not going to want to hear this…Rams division rivals, the Arizona Cardinals.

Gabbert has risen up the board late in the season thanks to the size, arm strength and pocket mobility to develop into an effective starter in the NFL.

If true, expect Kevin Slaten, the tree falling in the woods of St. Louis radio, to already start carving Gabbert’s name in to his arm right next to Kurt Warner’s. We also have something carved in to our arm, but we don’t need to get in to what the meaning of “fatty” is or what high school was like.

via STLToday