Well it’s still February, a month that amazingly continues its tradition of feeling like the longest month of the year while remaining the shortest.  Let’s get to the stories of the week.

Tiger Woods y’all. As this post goes up Tiger will be giving his statement to the media from Florida regarding his future and certainly the past few months. I love how the media is so offended and outraged that Woods is controlling the situation. No questions?!! Well, I never! Settle down journos, I think you got your fill of TMZ-ish dirt on Tiger from his harem. Tiger owes you nothing-whether you’re a journalist, a sponsor, or fan-and if he wants to give a statement regarding his future that’s his call and you have no place to dictate or bitch about how it goes down. Now, make it up to me by yelling “you the man Tiger!” when he walks in the room. Thanks.

Olympics opening week.  Personally I have loved the first week of the Olympics more than I predicted. There have been some very compelling and exciting events like Apollo Ohno skating to a medal in short track. Short track speed skating is phenomenal. A small group of skaters fly around this tiny track and pass each other a bunch of times in the last few laps. It’s like a watchable version of NASCAR; there are even crashes! Anyway, America’s biggest stars all found their way to the medal stand this week with Shani Davis (from Chicago!), Shaun White, and Lindsey Vonn taking goldwhile Bode Miller and Apollo Ohno have also medaled.  The US even took gold in men’s figure skating last night as another Chicagoan, Evan Lysacek, became the first American man to win the event since 1988. U-S-A, U-S-A!

NBC fail, but not really.  There has been fury from fans regarding NBC’s Olympic coverage and for good reason. Dick Ebersol and the rest of the folks at the peacock have created an event that is tough to stomach for sports fans. Despite the games being conveniently located in Canada, Americans have been forced to watch many events on tape delay. There have also been a ton of commercials. I like to complain how the NFL broadcasts have the annoying policy of going to commercial after a score, then back for the kickoff, then back to commercial before the ensuing drive. NBC has taken this to another level of torturous viewing hell. During tape delayed skiing runs, they went to break after almost every three minute run, we missed large parts of hockey games while they covered post-game for curling, and there have been times where the advertising has seeped into coverage infomercial style. Despite all of this, ratings have been huge, once again showing that the bottom line is more important than pleasing your audience.

Trades!  The trade deadline in the least competitive league in professional sports passed yesterday. Of the four (two?) teams that could plausibly win the championship this year, the Cavs were the only one to make a big deal, acquiring Antwan Jamison from the Wizards for pretty much nothing. The Bulls made some moves to clear cap space next year, which seemed to be the goal of a lot of teams at the deadline. That is sad. Can the Lakers and Cavs just go ahead and play the finals now? If the NBA promises everyone a few million in cap space, everyone might agree to it.

Pitchers and catchers report. Almost every team in Major League Baseball has kicked off spring training! About a month and a half out from Opening Day, pitchers and catchers reporting is the first sign of hope that winter is coming to an end. It’s time to get your fantasy preview publication of choice and crafting your squad.

The Bears stand at 4-5 and without a winning streak of some kind, they will likely be out of the playoffs.  Hell, Lovie and Jerry Angelo will probably be out of a job.  That being said, the media, fans, and pretty much everyone connected to the league in any way is down on the Bears.  As such, Lovie, Jerry and Jay have gotten pretty sick of answering questions about their terrible team.  So sick in fact, that they will no longer be answering those questions.  Not for NBC at least:

In a sign of how difficult things have become in the Bears’ world, the beleaguered team stunned a network giant Wednesday by rejecting NBC’s request for prime-time access to coach Lovie Smith, quarterback Jay Cutler and general manager Jerry Angelo.

Smith and any requested players, including Cutler, will be made available to NBC for standard pre-production meetings Friday with announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth. Such sessions always are off-camera. But no Bears personnel will be on-camera for NBC’s pregame show.

I’m not sure what this is meant to accomplish.  As the article points out, an opportunity to talk to Costas is usually a chance to put your own spin on the story.  That being said, I’m sure the frustration of the last month or so is difficult to deal with and having to explain to the media over and over again what’s wrong can’t be good for anyone’s confidence.

Or maybe the Bears are just hoping that if they don’t talk about how bad things have been, those things will just go away.