Last Sunday, Seahawks maniac Owen Schmitt decided he would smash his own head open against his helmet. View the YouTube video here. Why? Who knows. Testosterone? Steroids? Any number of things could be at work here. The point is that he did it, and he cut his head open, and he needed stitches before he could play in the game. This is not a very smart individual.

Fortunately, other smart individuals know this. Unfortunately, Seattle Times columnist Steve Kelley isn’t so sure. He’s convinced kids need a reminder not to do this sort of thing. Ready, kids? Ready to be told obvious things? Here comes the faux-locker room speech:

But listen, gentlemen, as far as I’m concerned, what Owen Schmitt did was more stupor than blooper. It was silly, and it could have been serious. We have enough concern about head injuries in our game. We don’t need any that are self-inflicted. If you want to ring your own bell, join the choir.

Look, I want you to play as hard as Owen Schmitt does. That kind of on-the-field aggression is what we coaches have been preaching to you guys since camp. But, do me a favor, gentlemen. Do yourselves a favor. Keep your helmets on. And hit the other team. Not your own forehead.

Uh … thanks, coach?

Kelley does succeed at this much: He manages to elicit the same feeling in me, the reader, as he would if he gave this speech to a group of high school kids. There’d be a few guffaws. A couple guys would suppress laughter. Most  would sneak uncomfortable glances before slowly walking away from this crazy old man yelling at us.

Michael Jordan likely wants you to think so! (That assumes Michael Jordan still sells cologne. Can you still get that stuff? It was an awesome Christmas gift when I was a kid.) But this isn’t about Michael Jordan, or his marginal cologne. This is about a 2009 freestyle skiing champion Michelle Roark, who is convinced positive smells can make you a better athlete. Her rationale seems slightly, um, unscientific:

Ms. Roark, who is two classes short of a chemical engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines, is convinced that the scent from a patent-pending perfume blend that she developed and calls “Confidence” is as important to her success as a good night’s sleep. Before competing, she douses her neck-warmer in the natural fragrance and spritzes it on the back of her neck and behind her ears. “It’s scientifically proven that smell is closest to our emotions and our memories,” Ms. Roark said during an interview this week from Switzerland, where she is training for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. “Why shouldn’t we use it?”

Well, OK, sure. It’s scientifically proven that smell is close to emotions and memories. I mean, I assume that is scientifically proven. I am granting Ms. Roark the benefit of the doubt. I actually have no idea. But assuming it is scientifically proven, what does that have to do with skiing down a mountain? Or in other sports? What good will that do when I’m on the basketball court? Beyond the basic comfort level of knowing that I smell exactly the same every time I hit the gym, cologne isn’t going to make me run faster or jump higher or suddenly possess a better mechanical release on my jump shot. I just won’t smell as sweaty and gross. Why does that help me, again?

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Last night, U.S. soccer closed CONCACAF qualifying with a pretty thrilling tie with Costa Rica. Non-soccer fans probably consider the previous phrase an oxymoron, but when you score a goal deep in extra time to draw the game at 2 — especially when that game’s major purpose for the U.S. was to honor injured teammate Charlie Davies — that’s a thrilling tie.

But it really didn’t matter for the U.S. Their place in the World Cup was secured. It did matter for Costa Rica, who needed a win to qualifying, and Honduras, who needed to beat Ecuador last night (they did, 1-0) and the U.S. to beat or tie Costa Rica to sneak into the World Cup. This is what happened. Hondurans were pleased by this development. Notice the love for the U.S. at the end:

Forget soft power and diplomatic common sense. This is how the U.S. improves its international standing. If our soccer team gets really good and starts beating everybody, at least half those teams will love us, right? There is literally nothing wrong with this theory.

I know. I don’t want to do it either. But if the price of wings keeps rising, as Darren Rovell reported yesterday, there’s a pretty good chance we’re all going to have to go boneless. What is this, North Korea?

But it’s true. The New York Times reports:

“In seven of the last 11 months, wholesale wing prices have been higher than breast prices.”

That’s pretty astounding, considering the amount of chicken involved in each piece; breasts are considerably larger than wings. The New York Times has one suggestion for those looking to avoid spending what will soon be seemingly exorbitant prices on wings: Go boneless.

Don’t get me wrong. I looooove boneless wings. They rev my engine. But they DON’T belong in the newsroom! (It is AnchorWING, not AnchorLADY, and that is a scientific … OK you get the point.) What kind of sporting world would it be without the ability to order three or four pounds of wings on a Sunday afternoon? What good is 30 different types of sauces if you can’t lick these sauces off your fingers?

The sad thing is that this dystopia is self-created; the reason for these high prices is as simple as popularity. Which means that if we all don’t stop eating wings, we’ll all have to stop eating wings. I just don’t know what to do. But I’m definitely not going to stop eating wings.

The common perception is that if you have a world-changing NBA superstar — LeBron James, Dwight Howard, that sort of guy — you’re best off surrounding this player with as many three-point specialists as possible. It makes sense: Star X will draw tons of double and triple teams, and if he’s a good passer he can find open players on the perimeter time and again.

But, as with most things in basketball, we sort of take that for granted. What if it wasn’t true? What if teams, under the impression that they were getting more open looks from three when they weren’t, were overvaluing shooters at the expense of signing other skilled players, possibly for less money?

Fortunately, math exists. Awesome (and awesomely designed) sites like BasketballStastistcs.com can double-check this sort of thing. Thanks, Mayans! The conclusion? Most stars do indeed get their shooters more looks. Good to know.

The only star BS tested for and didn’t find a correlation to higher shots for was Steve Nash, but there are good reasons — his style of play, his stature, his ability to find teammates moving to the hoop rather than driving and dishing — for Nash’s outlier status. Nash haters would probably tell this means he’s not a superstar, but those guys are big jerks who smell like burnt Velveeta. THAT’S RIGHT I SAID IT.

Did you know that running marathons is bad for you? I knew it. That’s why I didn’t run the Chicago Marathon on Sunday morning. It wasn’t because I am currently in the worst shape of my life, having stopped playing basketball in the evenings altogether once I started a new job. It’s not because I haven’t been on an actual, legitimate run in over a month. It’s not because I keep telling myself I’m going to buy a cheap stationary bike and keep putting it off because I “need to save the money.” (Stationary bikes are discretionary spending; new speakers for my computer setup are totally necessary. Duh.) And it’s definitely not because I ate six microwave taquitos and one of my roommate’s leftover hot wings yesterday and thought “hey, I ate pretty healthy today.” Nope! None of that had anything to do with my decision to sit (read: lay; I actually prefer to lay down, because I find the physical energy required to sit upright too taxing) the 2009 Chicago marathon out. It was totally this, instead:

If you ran the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Sunday, don’t be surprised if you feel a cold coming on this week. Marathoners are six times more likely to get sick during the week after a race compared to those who didn’t trash their immune systems, according to exercise immunologist David Nieman, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State University.

Ha! Idiots. I’m totally not going to get sick this week. Immunity, bitches! What do you guys get for all your trouble? The best shape of your life and a sense of accomplishment the likes of which I’ll feel maybe a handful of times (if I’m lucky) before I die? Pshh. Overrated. And I got to sleep in. I totally win.

As someone who quite frequently spends his Sunday mornings in bed, in pain, telling himself he needs to get up so he can set his fantasy football lineup because he can’t be sure whether or not Donovan McNabb is going to play and I can’t afford to lose again, I’m 1-3, this has to stop, maybe I’ll run to the store and make mimosas, yeah, a mimosa sounds great right now … I think it’s safe to say Anthony Kim is a pretty big hero of mine.

Kim, as you possibly already know, was outed by Robert Allenby on Sunday, accused by the Australian of walking into the Presidents Cup host hotel Sunday morning at 4 a.m. in bad condition. Allenby said Kim was “sideways.” Kim proceeded to wake up for his 8 a.m. round, shoot 6-under, and easily handle Allenby to win a point for the Americans. This apparently made Allenby slightly upset:

“Maybe we should all take the theory of Anthony Kim,” Allenby said. “Get home at 4 o’clock (in the morning) and then go shoot 6 under.” Asked if his comments were on the record, Allenby said, “I don’t care. Ask his playing partners. Ask his team. He is the loosest cannon in that team.” Allenby went on to call the 24-year-old Kim golf’s “current John Daly.”

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