Sportsthodoxy Guide to Ray Lewis and the Chelyabinsk Meteor

They're more similar than you thought

Chelyabinsk Meteor	Ray Lewis
Act of God	Pawn of God. Really.
flattens the countryside	flattens quarterbacks
explosion audible for miles	self-aggrandizement audible for miles
caught on dozens of cameras	no witnesses
blows up	blows up defensive schemes
breaks apart in the lower atmosphere	falls apart when asked to cover tight ends
sets off car alarms in Chelyabinsk	sets off police scanners in Miami
cracks during descent	exposes crack in postgame

The Sportsthodoxy Guide To The Coachin' Harbaughs

Now that the matchup is set for the Super Bowl (We're not monetizing this thing, so we're going to say "Super Bowl" all we want instead of, say, "The Big Game" or "The Uper-Say Owl-Bay" or whatever the NFL's lawyers insist on) it has become clear that the major storyline for the game will be Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh. Having the two coaches of the two Super Bowl participants be brothers offers an unprecedented opportunity to beat the topic of fraternal competition to death, and we look forward to the full weight of Fox, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and others being turned to pumping a glorified, billion dollar version of "Mom liked me better!"

With that in mind, here's your quick guide to telling the two coaching brothers apart so that in the weeks to come, you can have a better grasp on which one of them you think is being overexposed at any given moment:

	Jim Harbaugh	John Harbaugh
Best known for winning...	At Stanford	The loyalty of Ray Lewis
Coaches...	San Francisco 49ers	Baltimore Ravens
Has a star player who...	Is named Frank Gore	Might have once been drenched in gore
Lost last year’s conference championship game because...	He kept sending a kick returner with a concussion out onto the field	Forgot that special teams are actually part of the game
Played..	Quarterback in the NFL for over a decade, though not very well	Defensive back for the U. Yes, it was a shock to us, too.
Got his coaching break from...	Dad, and don’t think he’s ever going to hear the end of it	Andy Reid
Run in with authority...	DUI arrest in 2005	Once bumped a ref and got fined for it
Is going to win the Super Bowl because...	His head will explode during a sideline tantrum if he doesn’t	Ray Lewis has said that God wants him to. And even God is afraid of Ray Lewis

Sportsthodoxy Guide to Statheads and the Tea Party

Recently, noted bow-tie enthusiast Ken Rosenthal compared the baseball stathead community to the Tea Party, implying that they had gotten so vociferous and unyielding in their debates over the Hall of Fame that they'd shut all possibility consensus down. Whether that argument holds true or not - there's something to be said about the you-damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn vitriol heaved by the Tracy Ringolsbys of the world as contributing to the general air of frostiness, not to mention Jon Heyman's factually inaccurate mash note to Malibu Fantasy Jack Morris, but that's neither here nor there. At Sportsthodoxy, we feel it is our duty to help you differentiate between the Tea Party and sabermetricians through this useful field guide:

	The Tea Party	Baseball Statheads
Wear....	...outdated tricorn hats and wigs	...outdated t-shirts from 90s power-pop bands
Congregate...	...near hilariously misspelled protest signs	...in their parents’ basements
Prone to long-winded rants about...	...the Founding Fathers, never mind that they didn’t say half the stuff these guys say they did	...Bill James, founding father of sabermetrics, never mind that he’s working for the Red Sox
Fallback argument is...	...the Second Amendment	...WAR (because OPS+ is kludgy as hell, and WARP3 is proprietary)
Have an in-spite-of-his-meager-track-record crush on...	...Rand Paul	...Erubiel Durazo? Kila Ka’aihue? Daric Barton? Wily Mo Pena?  They're sluts, the lot of them.
Dream of...	...a smaller government	...a smaller BBWAA
Favorite flag is...	“Don’t Tread On Me”	“World Series Champions” pennant
Don’t like Jack Morris because...	...he did his best work in Detroit, which is a union town	...he wasn’t actually that great
Believe the Distributive Property is...	...a Socialist plot	...basic math
Hate government funded ballparks because...	...they’re a taxpayer financed boondoggle	...they’re a taxpayer-financed boondoggle

My God. Rosenthal is right after all.

Sportsthodoxy Guide to the 2013 ESPN MNF Booth

With reports that Ray Lewis has signed a contract to be a part of the ESPN 2013 Monday Night Football broadcast team, we at Sportsthodoxy Central decided you might need some assistance telling the difference between Ray and current MNF color commentator Jon Gruden.

	Jon Gruden	Ray Lewis
Height	5'9"	6'1"
2000 AFC Championship	Lost	Won
Buseyfication	Looks suspiciously like Gary Busey	Acts suspiciously like Gary Busey
Super Bowl Rings	1	1
Children	3	6
Sainted Despite	...winning the Super Bowl with somebody else's team, against his old team, which was still using his old playbook	...maybe killing a couple of dudes
Enormity	head	ego
Hobbies	dancing with head coaching job offers	pregame fireworks dancing
Drink Every Time He Says	"They're running a cover-two, man-under"	"The bottom line is..."
Crazy	looks like a psychopathic toy	may have killed a couple of dudes