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Not only did MLB Network just air the Costas/McGwire interview, but they were able to follow-up with Bob Costas in the aftermath while getting commentary from studio analysts Tom Verducci (si.com), Ken Rosenthal (fox sports) and Peter Gammons (now of MLB). Actual decent and interesting conversation for conversations sake. A blessing to listen to.

Or, you could flip to ESPN and get John Kruk’s take…

Every so often, you are fortunate to be in front of the TV at just the right time to see something memorable sportswise. Course, when you watch as much sports as I have over the years, you will see your share of good stuff. Still, when an unexpected classic unfolds that you watched from the jump, all the better. Previously, the best playoff NFL game I was ever privileged to see was probably the Chargers at Miami game in 1981 (the Winslow game). I will need to reflect on it, but what just came to pass in Glendale may surpass that for me. At the least, it rivals it.

Arizona, up 24-10 at halftime and 31-10 early in the third quarter, had no answer for Aaron Rodgers the rest of the half and a massive choke from ex-Bengal (naturally) Neil Rackers put the game into OT tied at 45. And then Green Bay won the toss. And you would figure it was their game. Only in a game that was marked by offensive brilliance from both teams, it ends on a defensive TD from the Cardinals finally making a play.

Just a fun game. Hard to imagine that the Cardinals/Saints game could be more entertaining than what just got played, but maybe it will be in the ballpark.

Supposedly, against all reasonable guesses, the Reds are going to win the bidding for Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman. He’s 22. He’s a lefty. He’s a flamethrower (reportedly in the high 90s when he wants to). And he has control issues. So there’s that. At any rate, not a bad gamble. And, at $30 million per the reports, if true, it means the Reds might be getting off the financial-woe-is-me bench. And that is something I did not think I would see at any point soon.

…which would mean the Cardinals (and Ravens) are massively hosed today.

Bengals fall in their re-match. Eagles get thumped in their re-match. Phil Sheridan in the Philly Inquirer not feeling Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb this morning. In Cincinnati, Paul Dagherty in the Enquirer jumping fast into the growing Carson Palmer ain’t all that bus.

As for me? Eh. I’ve said repeatedly that the Bengals’ year far out-stripped any reasonable expectations I had. I would have dearly loved for them to find a way to win yesterday to stop that stupid have-not-won-a-playoff-game-in-19 years thing, but when you play as flatline dumb as they did against a good football team, losses happen.

As for what ails the Bengals offense, it is not Carson Palmer. Start with the offensive coordinator and a receiving corp behind Chad Johnson that is decidedly not good. Both of those things are fixable. Good organizations fix such things. We shall see if the Bengals have decided to finally be a good organization.

Sigh.

On a team that went about as far as it could with a reeeallll thin margin for error, two turnovers by the offense and two what-the-fuck field goal misses from Shayne Graham were killers.

Jets 24-14 and the better team.

Shayne Graham. At least they won’t put the franchise tag on him this off-season again. I would hope.

As if the gunplay in the workplace allegations were not already enough, Gilbert Arenas doubled down in the last few days with some pretty damn glib statements and tweets. The overall impression? He has not handled this well. No huge surprise there, I suppose.

At any rate, the NBA has finally had enough, apparently. An indefinite you-don’t-have-to-go-home-but-you-can’t-play-here has been handed down.

At the least, maybe it will be clear to anyone who might still be confused, but the whole thing was no laughing matter. No matter how Arenas tried to spin it.

My annual hoping for Bert Blyleven comes to its yearly zenith tomorrow. Maybe this time will be different. I don’t know why I even care. It’s not like I was a particular fan of his back in the day. Maybe it’s just the fundamental unfairness of his omission due to the varagies of only having 287 wins instead of 300 that grates. And that difference meaning that the far less good Don Sutton is in while Blyleven still waits.

At any rate, Joe Posnanski with a great read in si.com on eight he thinks should be in eventually and those that do not make the the cut. I have never been on the Dale Murphy should be in train, but Posnanski makes a decent case for him. And bonus points to Pos for making a push for Alan Trammell.

Barry Larkin is on the ballot for the first time this year, and I am hoping he gets enough of a vote to make his eventual inclusion apparent. His greatness flew below the radar of too many fans, hopefully the voters will come to appreciate how good he was as the years pass and his resume gets examined more closely.

Blech.

Four rematches on the slate for the upcoming Wild Card weekend, and three of them just happened yesterday. And the ones that happened yesterday were all legit blowouts. So, what does that portend for next week? Who the eff knows? If you are a Bengals fan (mauled 37-0), Cardinals fan (mauled 33-7) or Eagles fan (mauled 24-0), you better hope it is not a harbinger and that there were good reasons for the drubbings.

And if you are the Patriots facing a white hot Ravens team without Wes Welker, well, sitting starters might have made some sense, no? At any rate, the chattering class have this to say:

—Don Banks on si.com with Snap Judgments and this:

Kind of hard to take the Bengals seriously in the AFC playoffs field after their 37-0 debacle in the Meadowlands. Marvin Lewis made it pretty clear that his team’s goal in the second half of the season was to play its way onto the NBC Sunday Night Football flex schedule, but I’m guessing even Cincinnati’s head coach would admit his club wasn’t ready for prime time against the Jets.

New York’s got a legit defense, but the Bengals set offensive football back at least a couple decades with that showing. Cincy hasn’t been explosive on offense all season, but before Sunday night, it had at least found ways to move the ball. Carson Palmer played well into the third quarter, and finished with one completion in 11 attempts, for zero yards and interception. The Bengals finished with 72 yards of offense, with five first downs and zero passing yards.

Of the three rematches in the first round of the playoffs next weekend, I’d say the Bengals (10-6) turning right around and beating New York (9-7) next Saturday afternoon at Paul Brown Stadium is the most unlikely of all scenarios. The Jets are going to the Queen City with a world of confidence, and the feeling that they’re already playing with house money by even making the postseason. It wouldn’t shock me if New York blew out the Bengals again, this time on the road.

I don’t think the Jets are a strong threat to beat anyone else in the AFC field, but the Bengals clearly are their best matchup. That much was proven in vivid detail. Cincy has one and done written all over it, and making matters worse, it’s facing a short week of work to close a very sizable gap between itself and New York.

That all makes a lot of sense. Bengals fans (say, me) have to hope that Marvin Lewis was being cagey and the Bengals were pure vanilla last night and that the return of missing starters Domato Peko, Robert Geathers and Chris Crocker on defense will make a difference sizable enough to close what appeared to be a cavernous gap last night. You also have to hope that the Bengals will actually try this upcoming weekend, because they sure appeared to mail it in early last night. At any rate, a season of close calls that depended on health and luck may have finally caught up with the Bengals. I sure would like to see them squeeze one more win out of it and end that stupid have-not-won-a-playoff-game since 1990 thing, but it doesn’t look good this morning.

—Clark Judge at sportsline.com with Judgements and this:

The New England Patriots are in deep kimchi, and it’s not just because of that report that has Tom Brady with three broken ribs. It’s because they just lost their leading receiver and because they can’t win on the road. Without Wes Welker, the Patriots were 1-2 … that is, if you include Sunday’s loss, which I do. Now they get to find out where they stand without him again, and good luck with Julian Edelman. But let’s say they win their first-round game. Well, then, they’re still toast. They must go on the road, where they were 2-6 — with one of those victories in London.

Players on playoff teams lost to injuries yesterday in largely meaningless games? Wes Welker, Dominque Rodgers-Cromatrie, Charles Woodson, and Pat Sims (Bengals d-tackle). Roger Goodell can kiss various parts of my anatomy with his concern over teams resting starters late in the season after they have clinched playoff spots. The Colts are at least relatively healthy heading into the playoffs, a bunch of other teams can only wish the same were true for them.

—John Clayton on espn.com with Last Call and this:

Broncos coach Josh McDaniels faces a long, turbulent offseason after losing eight of his last 10 games, including Sunday’s 44-24 loss to the Chiefs, and missing the playoffs. McDaniels was hired for his brilliant offensive mind, but the offense wasn’t as explosive with Kyle Orton replacing the traded Jay Cutler.

Yes. For all the fun of Denver’s magical 6-0 start, I would imagine that any lingering good feelings from that are gone among the fanbase. And should be.

As for whatever is left of my thoughts, ntyc, here they are:

—I am always impressed when coaches of teams dead-in-the-water keep them playing hard to the end of the season. Probably because I have had ample opportunity to see that in action (or not in action) so much in the last two decades as a Bengals fan. At any rate, congrats to Tom Cable, Todd Haley and Eric Mangini in Oakland, KC, and Cleveland for the efforts they got from their teams in the last month of the season. That’s not easy to do. Just ask Jim Mora up in Seattle…

—The Bills need to order snowstorms for all their home games starting in late October. Damn that was pretty to watch in HD.

—The Eagles’ collapse yesterday was massively puzzling, given what they had to play for. It sure makes Dallas seem very dangerous all of a sudden on the flip side.

I will go ahead and make my seat of the pants Super Bowl guess through bleary eyes this morning:

Colts v. Cowboys.

Manning ends up winning his second.

How eager is the NBA to sweep the Tim Donaghy book and allegations as far under the rug as possible? The league office apparently passed on fining Rasheed Wallace for his comments on the book because they didn’t want to call more attention to it. That’s doesn’t mean they don’t want Wallace to shuddy, however. From the Boston Herald:

Bad news for the NBA. Rasheed Wallace is getting the Tim Donaghy book. “I want to check it out and see what’s there,” Wallace said last night.

Wallace already has been fined once for criticizing referees this season ($30,000), and as reported in Tuesday’s Herald, he lucked out on another occasion when the league didn’t want to bring more attention to the claims of Donaghy, the former official convicted of gambling. Celts GM Danny Ainge passed on word to Wallace from the NBA that he should watch his critical statements, but the forward won’t bow to the request.

“Either way they’re going to get me,” Wallace said. “If I don’t say nothing I’m going to get fined, and if I say something I’m going to get fined. So I might as well say something about what’s on my mind, what I want to say. They’re going to hit me up either way. I’ve been through that before in Portland. When I wasn’t talking to the media they were fining me. But then when I did talk to the media they didn’t like what I had to say, so they fined me some more. So I was like, ‘Well, (expletive), if you’re going to fine me I might as well say what the hell I want to say.’ ”

When it was suggested he could offer a “no comment” to questions about officiating, Wallace said, “Yeah, I could do that, but I think I have to be honest when I’m asked a question. And what happened to freedom of speech? You know, I say what’s on my mind, speaking my freedom, and I get fined for it. It’s a catch-22 with that (expletive), man.

“See, they think they can control people with money. Everybody don’t live like that. That’s how they live up there in that office. They think, ‘Oh, I’m going to hit him in the pocket. That’s where it will hurt.’ No, it don’t hurt me. I didn’t have it growing up, so, I mean, either way it don’t hurt me. As long as my family’s cool, I’m cool. It ain’t hurting my family. I make sure of that.”

Could someone arrange for Rasheed to record the Donaghy book for a book on tape release? And could they get Rasheed to drop in his own comments every so often during the recording? Because, if so, I would buy that. Several times. Hand it out as gifts and what not.

And here I thought it had all been ironed out between Josh McDaniels and Brandon Marshall. Apparently not. The fallout from Marshall’s benching, a benching that may or may not be related to whatever effort he may or may not have been giving after straining a hamstring in practice, is that he may have played his last down for Denver. From the Denver Post, this appears to have gone down much like the McDaniels/Cutler divorce:

After coach Josh McDaniels gave his version, and then star receiver Brandon Marshall communicated his take, there was but one mystery left unsolved in what has been the year-long soap opera that is “As Dove Valley Turns.” Exactly who broke up with whom?

McDaniels said at his news conference Friday that a pulled hamstring was not the primary reason he decided not to play Marshall on Sunday in the potential playoff-or-bust regular-season finale against the Kansas City Chiefs at Invesco Field at Mile High. “There’s a lot of players that play with things that are more difficult to play with than what he has,” McDaniels said.

Marshall said his hamstring first cramped up Sunday in the Broncos’ 30-27 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. He then yanked it in practice Wednesday while running a slant route. An MRI revealed no structural damage, but Marshall indicated he would not have been able to play because he’s unable to take off from a receiver’s stance without his hamstring grabbing. Marshall, surrounded by reporters at his locker, seemed surprised at the suggestion it wasn’t the injury that would prevent him from playing Sunday but his unwillingness to play through pain.

I’ll say this for McDaniels, he is not boring. Discussion on McDaniels, carrying over from old swamp to new swamp has begun anew with the latest soap opera episode from Denver. McDaniels has won enough this season to get a mini-pass, but not making the playoffs after being 6-0 would likely shorten his rope considerably. Again. And replacing Brandon Marshall, should he be allowed to walk, will be no small task.