Today's High Five: Excuses are for losers ... and so is the BCS

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5. I hate it when athletes, coaches and teams make excuses. I especially hate injury excuses.

The Packers won the Super Bowl last season despite a dozen important players being out with injuries. That being said ...

Aaron Rodgers wasn't one of the injured Packers.

It would seem there are injuries, and there are facts.

Fact is, the Bears are toast without Jay Cutler. Not because Cutler is a great QB but because Cutler sometimes plays great -- and because the only other option is a never-will-be named Caleb Hanie. (Which, naturally, is Jerry Angelo's fault for generally mismanaging the most important position in pro sports.)

And now, RB Matt Forte -- unquestionably the team's MVP -- is out up to a month with a knee injury.

The Bears were a flawed team with little margin for error. They managed to win 7 of their first 10 games thanks to defense, the kicking game and just enough offense led by Forte and Cutler. They are 0-2 since Hanie had to take over for Cutler, including Sunday's 10-3 home loss to a terrible Kansas City team.

OK, those are the facts. Even a skeptic such as myself should be able to differentiate between such cold facts and common, everyday excuses, right?

Well, that terrible KC team was being quarterbacked by a never-will-be named Tyler Palko because their starter, Matt Cassel is out.

Meanwhile, the playoff-bound Texans are 2-0 since starting QB Matt Schaub and backup Matt Leinert got hurt, with third-stringer T.J. Yates at the helm.

If the Bears can't beat a Palko-led Chiefs team at home, they weren't good enough to matter, anyway.

4. The notable thing wasn't Tiger Woods finally winning a tournament, because it was a limited-field event that he stages for himself and his pals. For me, the big thing was the camera shot of Tiger lining up the winning putt ... with TV viewers getting a clear view of his Ping putter.

Swoosh be damned!

3. Even when Rodgers and the Packers clearly aren't at their best, they are amazing.

They will win the rest of their regular-season games, and I see absolutely no way an NFC team beats them in Green Bay during the playoffs. That means New England, Pittsburgh or maybe Baltimore will have to do it in the Super Bowl.

2. Of course, the biggest victory of the weekend involving a team from the Land of Cheese and More Cheese was ...

Marquette 61, Wisconsin 54.

My wife and I watched the game at a Charlotte establishment with several other MU alums and it was a joy to behold.

Despite playing without their starting point guard and despite getting almost no production from standout forward Jae Crowder, who was in foul trouble throughout, our Golden Warriors dominated every aspect of the game and led almost from tip to horn.

This is the deepest, most athletically dynamic team Buzz Williams has had at Marquette, and I have a feeling I'm going to be thrilling (or boring) you many times this season with tales of their exploits. Deal with it!

1. For the sixth straight year, I will not be watching one second of any of the meaningless exhibitions masquerading as college football from now until early January.

I call it Boycott College Sham.

Not the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, featuring Illinois and UCLA teams that have a combined 12-13 record and have fired their coaches; not the Pinstripe Bowl, which will take place on what's sure to be a sunny Dec. 30 day in the Bronx; not even the Beef O'Brady's Bowl, which by name alone should humiliate participants Florida International and Marshall.

And certainly not the mythical championship game, in which LSU gets another chance to beat an Alabama team that has no more of a claim to this spot than any of a half-dozen other squads.

This is not to hate on 'Bama. It might be one of the top two teams ... and it might not be. We simply cannot know as long as the BCS is allowed to exist.

I know my one-man protest means nothing. Hell, it meant nothing even when I had a real voice as a newspaper columnist and enlisted a few followers.

It just makes me feel good not to be party to a system that rewards hypocrisy, stupidity, rigidity and mediocrity.

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Brilliant ... and lucky, too

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Everybody has only great things to say about Mark Dantonio, and not just because they feel sorry that the Michigan State coach suffered a heart attack shortly after his Spartans beat Notre Dame.

Dantonio has "guts" and "courage" because he called for a fake field goal in overtime. And the TD pass that resulted from his gutsy, courageous call gave Michigan State the win.

The following day, Redskins kicker Graham Gano apparently booted a winning 52-yard field goal in OT. But Texans coach Gary Kubiak had called time out just before the snap and Gano had to try again. The next time, he missed badly, and the Texans ended up winning.

And let's go back to the Super Bowl, when Sean Payton had his Saints attempt an onside kick to start the second half. They recovered, captured momentum and went on to stun the Colts.

So, Payton, Kubiak and Dantonio are brave and brilliant and ballsy.

That's cool. But what would they have been had the Colts recovered the onside kick ... Gano missed the first kick but made the second ... and Sparty's fake field goal failed?

Stupid and silly and sucked in by the lure of gimmick plays, that's what.

Ah, the line between genius and goofball. It's finer than ever, isn't it?

Butter for that toast, Ozzie?

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The Bald Truth

One day after Ozzie Guillen said his White Sox would be toast unless they win the three-game series at Minnesota, they were dominated by a pitcher who hadn't won in nearly two months and lost the opener.

I understand motivational tactics, and I consider Ozzie a strong motivator. And I also happen to believe he was telling the truth.

But what does he say to his guys if they go on to lose this series as most of us figured they would?

I mean, as rallying cries go, I've heard better than: "There's still a month to go, but you now officially have my permission to mail it in."

The Balder Truth

You'll hear no similar ultimatums from Lou Piniella to his Cubbies.

Not until somebody wakes up the whole lot of them, anyway.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

First, Brett Favre says he might have a cracked rib. Then, he lines up at wide receiver and delivers an illegal block that sidelines Houston's Eugene Wilson with a knee injury. Then, he throws a TD pass as part of a nice three quarters of make-believe football for the Vikings.

Say what you want about his inability to make up his mind, his ego, his lack of loyalty to the Packers and his late arrival to training camp.

The man is a football player. Period. Let's not get so sick of his silliness that we forget it.

Was Kane really able to do such a thing?

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The Bald Truth

The first time I read the Patrick Kane story, I couldn't believe it. So I surfed the 'Net and found more versions of it. And it still seems too absurd to be true.

For those unfamiliar with the whole shebang: The 20-year-old Blackhawks star - the carefully marketed, baby-faced face of the franchise - supposedly beat the crap out of a Buffalo cabbie over 20 cents.

The CliffsNotes version: He and his cousin, James Kane, allegedly handed the cabbie $15 cash for a $13.80 fare after a night of partying. After the driver gave the Kanes a dollar back but said he didn't have 20 cents in coins, according to the police report, one of the Kanes tore money from the driver's hand and both punched the driver in the face and head.

(Click here for the TV interview of the cab driver.)

"They broke my glasses. They ripped my clothes off. All over 20 cents," the cabbie told the Chicago Tribune.

As I said earlier: Un-freakin'-believable.

But is it? Is it really?

Is there anything that pro athletes - so full of wealth, testosterone, feelings of invincibility and senses of entitlement - are above doing?

Even sweet-looking kids like Patrick Kane, the new EA Sports NHL '10 video game coverboy and a prospective U.S. Olympian?

Hey, I'm not here to convict Patrick Kane. I don't know all the facts. The only people who really know what happened in that cab are the Kanes and the cabbie. Over time, hopefully everything will come to light.

All I know is that the most unbelievable actions involving jocks turn out to be all-too-believable anymore.

I'm determined to keep an open mind. A skeptical and cynical mind, yes, but an open one.

If these charges prove false, I hope Patrick Kane can have some semblance of a normal life and NHL career. If they prove true, however, I hope he rots in jail until he's ready for hockey's Senior Circuit.

The Balder Truth

I'm not supposed to joke about such a serious subject, but ...

I'm so, so, SO tempted to give Patrick Kane a new nickname that's sure to give him street cred:

"20 Cent," of course!

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Every time there's a story about a one-time multimillionaire athlete or rock star or actor going broke, the natural reaction is:

How? I couldn't spend all that money even if I tried!

Well, actually, you could. And these rich and famous people do. All the time.

A three-paragraph item tucked deep inside Sunday's Tribune tells of the real-estate transactions of one Rex Grossman, the QB Chicago fans learned to loathe until he was handed a one-way ticket out of Bear Country.

Seems that Grossman - who already was trying to sell his three-bedroom suburban townhome for $899,000 - now is trying to unload his 3,437-square-foot condo in the new Trump International Hotel & Tower downtown at a substantial loss from the $2.68 million he paid for it less than a year ago.

OK, I understand why Grossman bought the expensive home in the 'burbs. That's where the Bears train and the former No. 1 draft pick figured he'd be the team's starting quarterback for a decade. Plus, he bought it before the market went to crap.

But the Trump place? Really? He thought $2.68 million was a bargain for a condo in a declining market? And he thought buying a second place in Bear Country was a good idea even though the team had lost all faith in him and practically was holding the exit door open for him?

Either he got bad advice, he's really stupid or a little of both.

Maybe Rex has made dozens of great investments and that was just a bad one. Maybe he's got more money than God and would laugh at his name even being mentioned in this blog post.

Still, such silliness is just one of hundreds of examples I can give you illustrating how a millionaire can become a bankrupt ex-millionaire faster than a mediocre QB can get picked off for a TD.