DanMargarita.com

Recently the Boston Globe and its counterpart, the Boston Herald featured auto racing on their respective front sports pages.

Auto racing is reportedly the fastest growing sport in America, for reasons unbeknownst to me. It was never popular here in the north, but was always big in states where for years Hee-Haw consistently drew higher TV ratings than 60 Minutes.

The Patriots continued their downward slide since the departure of Bill Parcells and as a result, Coach Pete Carroll was fired.

I was really hoping that Carroll would do well since by all accounts, he is a nice guy. Unfortunately, it seems that with few exceptions, to be a successful coach in the NFL, one must be a complete S.O.B. I imagine that as a football coach, Attilla the Hun would have gone undefeated.

The Bruins were always able to sell tickets, no matter what their place in the standings. After hitting the depths in the Steve Kasper years, the disgusted fandom finally got turned off to their beloved B's.

An intense search by management led to the hiring of the highly respected Pat Burns as head coach. Burns has not been much more successful than Kasper, with the B's at the bottom of the heap in their division, sporting an 18-24 record as of this writing.

It is a sad commentary that in the NHL the seeming minimum requirement to making the playoffs is having a franchise in the league, thus the Bruins are still not out of the playoff hunt.

The good news for Celtic fans is that the team is not in last place. The bad news is that they are in fifth place.

Rick Pitino was given a dump truck full of money of money to turn the franchise around, but for a number of reasons, not all of which are his fault, the team is still foundering.

Pitino wrote a book called Success is a Choice. Judging by the team's record, it appears that the Celtics have chosen to be mediocre.

Despite having some young talent on the team, very often the Celtics look like they couldn't beat the Washington Generals.

I should explain here for non-sports fans that the Washington Generals is the team that the Harlem Globetrotters play in their exhibition games. Can you imagine what a depressing playing for the Generals must be? Knowing that before every game that you are expected to go out and lose? I don't think self-esteem is a quality found in abundance in the Generals' locker room. The first piece of equipment issued to the players ought to be an ELECTRIC razor.

As I look out the window at the foot of snow on the ground, I can cheer myself up in knowing that that the rest of the Red Sox report this week.