D.C. Sports Bog

(Via Fox 5)

Wait a second, Albert Haynesworth showed up on the day his suspension ended to clear out his locker while wearing a shirt that said "PUNK" on the back? Really? That's really the shirt he chose out of his closet on that particular day? The shirt that said "EXORBITANTLY RICH MALCONTENT" was in the wash or something?

"I've got nothing to say," Haynesworth told reporters, though I'm not sure if that was technically the question.

And the future?

"If a guy refuses to talk to you, it's hard to have a conversation with him," Mike Shanahan told CSN Washington Kelli Johnson. "I initiated it before and he refused to talk to me, so that kind of says it all, doesn't it?"

Maybe. The "PUNK" shirt helps, too.

(Via CSNWashington.com)

Not a month after posting a long emotional rant about how all that matters in sports are the wins and losses, I'm not presenting to you blurry images of Kirk Hinrich in his new, doctor-mandated athletic glasses. Consistency is the G-Wiz of little bloggers, as they say.

"I had an eye exam and it was recommended that I wear them, just for protection," Hinrich told reporters on Monday. "Today was the first day with them. Definitely not used to them yet, so just trying to get adjusted to wearing them."

In other non-wins-and-losses Wizards news, Nick Young was one of eight athletes asked by ESPN the Magazine to rank, on a scale of 1-to-10, how often people ask them for loans. His was the best answer.

"Ten," he told the Mag. "They ask for $5,000, even $25,000. I say, 'Talk to the left ear, not the right. The left ear gives out only a few hundred.' "

Dan Steinberg joined LaVar Arrington, Rick Maese and host Jonathan Forsythe on this week's webcast to discuss what 2010 players will likely be on the 2011 roster and how the Redskins could be remade in the offseason.

You can also download the podcast of this show or subscribe to the podcast.

As soon as HBO concluded episode 2 of its 24/7 series with DJ Pauly D Beating Dat Beat, it was obvious that the song would become the fans' anthem. And indeed.

"Beat that beat up washington," John Carlson wrote on Twitter not long after the Winter Classic ended, and Washington did. One Caps fan apparently requested the song from a Pittsburgh DJ on Saturday night. "Get that DJ Pauly D ready!!" another said on Twitter. "Pauly D and fist-pump dance time?" asked yet another. A fourth anointed Beat Dat Beat the song of the day on his Tumblr page on Sunday. Several Washington Post sports writers represented Sunday night on Capitol Hill.

Caps fans have shared stories of buying the song on iTunes or humming it on game days. And when Elliot in the Morning interviewed Mike Knuble this week, he was introduced to the strains of DJ Pauly D. "You had me fist-pumping there, with that music," Knuble said.

And yet, the unanswered question lingered: whose idea was it to link a Jersey Shore sensation with Washington's hockey team? This demanded a Sports Bog investigation.

I think superstar Caps blogger Jon Press spoke for a huge number of Caps fans when he wrote this on Twitter Monday morning:

I've never shouted "red" at a game before and don't intend to start now... but I did on Saturday, and it was pretty awesome.

"Same could be said for many of us," the gents at On Frozen Blog replied.

Plenty of people find both the "Red!" and the "Oh!" used by Caps fans to be cheesy, hackneyed or even disrespectful. And indeed, I think a certain segment of D.C. sports fans just wish those tics would go away. And yet, like the above bloggers, you had to sort of appreciate the moment on Saturday when those gimmicks signaled just how many Caps fans were in Pittsburgh.

"When the national anthem was playing, and all the ohs and the red and all that, that was where I really figured that there was a ton of us there," Karl Alzner told me after the game. It came through plenty clear on the television broadcast (I was listening to it on delay in the auxiliary press area), but it comes through even clearer on the above video. Fast forward to about 1:35. And bear in mind there's an audible curse word after the "Red!" part.

(Via @jbeardsley)

I listened to a decent amount of the Redskins' week 17 loss on ESPN 980, the flagship station of the Redskins Radio Network. And I managed to hear three bits of dialog I wanted to pass along. I promise, I'm not doing this to try to make fun of anyone. They were just special moments.

Moment I: Fred Davis's Touchdown

Larry Michael: Fred Davis is open, it's a touchdown! Touchdown Redskins! Fred Davis! And the Skins are on the board!

Sonny Jurgensen: Good play, good play by Grossman buying time and just waiting for the guy to clear and come open.

Sam Huff: Boy, he was WIDE open. Nobody even...I mean, he hasn't caught a touchdown pass, so they didn't cover him.

Michael: Well, he caught one last week.

Huff: Did he?

Michael: In all honesty, that's his third touchdown of the year.

Huff: Well, good. Nobody was with him.

Back in late October, Alex Ovechkin and Semyon Varlamov went to Bristol and, among other things, taped a This is SportsCenter ad. We were promised it was going to be a good one. It is that.

The ad is supposed to hit the airwaves this week. That makes two new national spots in less than a week. (Here's the other.) Someone's IMG adviser is doing his job.

(Via @NateEwell)

(By L.G. Patterson - AP)

For what I believe is the first time this season, Georgetown is now the unanimous No. 1 men's basketball team in the District, Maryland and Virginia. As determined by 36 random Washington Post readers.

(Yes, we need more committed voters. Sign up by e-mailing me.)

(Yes, we took a week off there. Yes, we could take 714 weeks off and Georgetown would still be No. 1.)

As for the rest of the teams, Maryland moved up from fifth to third. Virginia dropped from fourth to seventh. No one else moved more than a single spot. As before, eight of the top 10 teams hail from Virginia. Local college basketball has reached stasis, if that's a real word.

Nationally, Georgetown ranks 13th in the AP and the coaches' poll. Old Dominion, fresh off a 23-point loss to Missouri, gets six votes in the coaches' poll. Georgetown now has the best RPI in the country, while Old Dominion is 21st. James Madison is 48th and has the third-best RPI in the region, while George Mason is 56th and Virginia Tech 61st.

Here are this week's results, followed by overall record, overall points, first-place votes and hilarious observations that will make you hilariously cry with hilarity.

This isn't about the Redskins. This is about a wall calendar for sale at bookstores and calendar Web sites and newsstands, a calendar that you yourself may have seen packaged underneath your Christmas true or Hanukkah dining room table.

And if so, maybe you put that calendar up on Saturday afternoon and flipped it to January and got to ring in the New Year with one of the most popular Redskins of all times. If so, congratulations to you. What was it Haynesworth said when he returned to the team facility on Monday? Oh yeah, "I've got nothing to say."

(If it makes you feel better, Clinton Portis is the calendar's cover boy.)

Maybe that's why the online team store is only offering the cheerleaders calendar. You figure October model Lindsey M. isn't going anywhere. Now, Lindsay A., who knows?

(Via @AndrewFordJr)

(By Toni L. Sandys - TWP)

CBC's Winter Classic game-day feature on Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin involved separate one-on-one interviews with the two stars, in which they were asked about each other. The piece was framed in the Magic-Bird way, as in, will these guys ever consider themselves friends. It would seem not.

"That's pretty hard with the intensity, the rivalry, and the way it's built up," Crosby said.

"I respect him like a player, like a person, but he's not my friend," Ovechkin said. "It is what it is. We play for different teams and different cities. So me and him never gonna text each other right now, heyyy buddy, what's up, what's going on, what were you doing last night?....Maybe in the future, I don't know, in 10, 15 years, when we're gonna stop playing hockey, we'll just call each other, open a beer and say hey, what a great life we have."