Oh, hello there.  Perusing the Internet on a Saturday, are you?  Well, you must be just made of free time.  Someone else doing your errands for you, your highness?  Then you’ve got all day to check these links out.

• Animals pick Super Bowl winners.  Well, the meerkats picked Arizona, but what does Erudite Ferret say?  [First Cuts]
• Chris Mottram rounds up his week in Tampa… and then leaves before the game.  Ha ha, sucker.  [The Sporting Blog]
• The babes of the Super Bowl.  Hmm.  Needs more… nope, actually it has enough boobs.  [Gunaxin]
• Cardinals and Steelers fans can order “Super Bowl XLIII Champions” t-shirts.  I’ll put this out there: I will pay top-dollar for a Seahawks Super Bowl XL champs t-shirt.  Medium, though — not XL.  Does that make sense?  [Busted Coverage]
• Well, well, well… look who’s fallen for the siren song of football. [FreeDarko]
• A fight on Radio Row!  Sadly, no sports talk DJs were killed.  Will that medium hurry up and die already?  [Sports Radio Interviews]

Now go outside and get some fresh air already!  You look terrible.

What to watch for in this weekend’s biggest matchups.  One side or another in ALL CAPS.

STEELERS over Cardinals – A lot of so-called experts have spent the extra week talking themselves into believing that the Cardinals are the same caliber of team as the Steelers.  Now, I’m not saying that the Cards don’t have a chance, but I think it’s pretty foolish to predict that they’ll even cover the 7-point spread.  Hope for the best and prepare for the worst, people.  And put a lot more effort into preparing for the worst.

GEORGES ST-PIERRES over B.J. Penn — It’s a pretty fantastic weekend to have a big flatscreen with HD.  I’ll take GSP in this fight; if he has a weakness, I haven’t seen it.  Maybe his weakness is Thai whores?  B.J. Penn should bring some to the Octagon just in case.

Penguins over MAPLE LEAFS (Hockey Night in Canada) — Goddammit.  The plural of “Leaf” is LEAVES, you stupid Canucks!  I’m never gonna get over that.

Joe Torre over DAVID WELLS — The fat man won this round, but I’m not gonna stand behind a guy with diabetes who once missed playing time due to gout.  Gout: the “Disease of Kings” that attacks the “decadent and indolent.”  Wells is gonna die before Torre can respond.

Have a great weekend, everybody.  Check back in over the weekend, as I’ll be doing some extra work like posting Super Bowl links and putting prettier pictures at the top of the page.

I hate bullshit power rankings, so I make up my own.

1. Dead Frozen Hobos in Detroit. Could anything else possibly be #1 this week?

2. Shane Mosley. It’s a couple days later, and this still makes me smile.  Please, please, please: Shane, for your next fight, wear a flapping dickey.

3. MMA Romance Novels Featuring Time Travel. Only at With Leather is this just as popular as a serious, topical interview with a credible sports journalist.  Probably ‘cuz of the Photoshop.

4. Puppies. I’m not asking you to watch the Puppy Bowl, I’m just saying: respect the cuteness.

5. Strippers. There are more strip clubs than high schools and hospitals in Tampa.  Sounds right.  There are more boners than kids needing an education and sick people.  There are always more boners.

6. Water-Powered Jet Pack. The only other song the video could have been set to is “America, the Beautiful.”

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Travis Pastrana is one of the more revered figures in motocross, and his career spans several different kinds of life-endangering fringe sports, including rally racing and all kinds of activities that involve doing flips on motorbikes. So it’s not so much a question of “Why would he attempt something as stupid and dangerous as a back flip on a child’s tricycle?” — it’s more “Well, why wouldn’t he?”

For the last two years, I’ve been at the Super Bowl, swindling my way into various parties so I can take pictures that don’t turn out well and tell stories no one’s really interested in.  Turns out I can stay home, get better photos, and not waste my and your time recounting disappointing evenings.  I mean, uh, WOOOO SUPER BOWL!!!!1!!!!11!!!

Anyway, these are photos from last night’s Gentleman Jack/GQ/Yardbarker Super Bowl pre-party, hosted by Terrell Owens. Aside from the banner image, we’ve also got the soul-sucking eyes of agent Drew Rosenhaus — yes, he has a Superman logo incorporated into a T-shirt of his own agency — and Darren Sproles, whose watch is slightly nicer than my Casio.  BUT DOES IT HAVE A CALCULATOR?  I think not.  Winner: me.

Tomorrow’s UFC 94 ticket offers the most anticipated MMA fight since Randy Couture returned to the UFC to fight Brock Lesnar, as lightweight champ B.J. Penn will attempt to become the first fighter to hold belts in two weight classes when he takes on welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre.

Eagerly anticipating the event, I conversed with Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim, author of Blood in the Cage, a book that details the parallel stories of the UFC — which went from freakshow curiosity to worldwide phenomenon — and Pat Miletich, the legendary MMA fighter who started out as a hard-luck drunken brawler in Iowa.

The following Q&A happened over email, and has been edited for clarity.

With Leather: Regarding the early days of the UFC, you wrote, “With a minimum spent on promotion, 80,000 households — culled from a 12-million household universe — paid $14.95 apiece to watch this strange curiosity.  Given that the first-place prize was only $50,000, the total purse barely $100,00, the production budget roughly $500,000… well, you do the math.”  Actually, how about this: YOU do the math.  I’m here to read about fighting, not do story problems.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

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