Nothing's Gonna Change My World

There were plenty of funny, idiotic and crazy news happenings this week and I figured to discuss a couple of them at The Wheelhouse.

Did you hear about this news? NASA is planning on beaming a Beatles song into outer space Monday. The Beatles' song Across the Universe (fitting) will head into outer space at 7 PM Eastern Time on Monday and will be aimed at the North Star, Polaris, which is a short 431 light years away from Earth and won't reach Polaris for a long time. I can't stress enough how stupid this is. They don't mention the numbers in any of these articles, but my guess is beaming sounds into outer space and perfectly aiming it to a point in the sky isn't exactly the same price as a happy meal at McDonalds. Why is NASA wasting time and money on this? Instead, why don't they focus their time to answer questions like life of Mars or if an asteroid is barreling toward us.

Happy Groundhog's Day! Today in the small (and I stress small) town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania everybody's lovable groundhog, Phil, was pulled out of his hole to forecast the weather. And as usual Phil saw his shadow again, leading to six more weeks of winter. A record crowd of more than 30,000 people gathered at Gobler's Knob to see Phil this year with Feb. 2nd falling on a weekend. We at The Wheelhouse used to make the small trek from our hometown to Punxy every year to celebrate the festivities during the simpler times of our college days, but like everything else, jobs and our lives got in the way this year.

Terrelle Pryor is milking his college decision for everything it's worth. Pryor, the number one prospect coming out of high school this year, is down to about four schools on his list of who to sign with and play football for. I don't like to rave about what athletes did in high school because mostly it's against joke competition, but coming out of Jeanette High School outside of Pittsburgh, Pryor had a ridiculous career (only player in PA history to run for 4,000 yards and throw for 4,000 yards) while leading his team to the state championship his senior year by mercy-ruling teams the entire way. The NCAA national letter of intent day is February 6th and according to an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pryor was going to announce his decision live on ESPN, but now might hold off on his decision for a while due to a possible visit to Oregon next week. Michigan and Ohio State are still the two main frontrunners for Pryor, but Oregon and Penn State are still in running though he had this to say about Happy Valley last week, "I just don't know about the area up there. I don't know if I'd like being in that kind of area." Uh, hey Terrelle...you don't like State College? Have you been to Columbus?

The Super Bowl is tomorrow. I will admit that I have watched zero minutes of analysis, highlights and pre-game hoopla from ESPN the past two weeks because it's all a circus and I just want the game to start. So on the eve of Super Bowl XLII a report is released that claims a Patriots employee taped the Rams walkthrough the day before Super Bowl XXXVI. That was the Super Bowl where the Pats were heavy underdogs and then came out and shocked the Rams for their first championship. Now the report is missing certain details at this time and the NFL is looking into it, but there's no doubt in my mind that this is true. The Pats were caught doing this in Week 1 of this season and punished by the NFL, but it's naive to think they haven't done it in other years. The media needs to stop downplaying spygate and finally admit that some of their Super Bowl titles (if not all) might not be legit as we all think. In a three-point game against the Rams in SB XXXVI, you think having the other teams' plays and signals wouldn't make a difference? Please. Hopefully the NFL investigates and gets to the bottom of this. If anything it's another cloud that hovers over Belichick and Patriots as they go for 19-0 tomorrow in Arizona.