As a grown adult male who has never been able to grow sufficient facial hair, I don’t typically handle news involving mustaches and beards very well, but if that news creates the opportunity to rank celebrity mustaches and/or beards then I can live with it. In this case, Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers appeared on Jim Rome’s new show on Showtime Wednesday night and Romey asked the hard-hitting questions as usual.

Asked Rome, as his assistant cleared a spot on his mantle for a Pulitzer:

“You have long been a practitioner of the mustache. In the spirit of Movember, who are the greatest ‘staches in history? Which gentlemen belong on Mount ‘Stachemore?”

Of course I’m kidding with my jabs at Rome, because this kind of question is right up my alley, perhaps behind similar queries like “Have you ever tried to get two girls pregnant in the same threesome?” to Antonio Cromartie or “A-cup, D-cup or a nice palm full?” to Jay Cutler. So who did Rodgers name as his facial hair inspirations? Dude, it’s right there in the headline. Geez.

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The immediate future, I guess.

If you wanted to feel really f**king super old today, this year’s college freshmen were born in 1994. This is a drag, especially for freshman-level college professors who accidentally say “Pulp Fiction” in class and get stared at until they mention it’s what Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam were parodying in Space Jam. Then you have to explain what Elmer Fudd, Space Jam, movies, parodies and references are. (Tip: they’re the thing from Family Guy.)

The Beloit College Mindset List helps combat that by putting out a yearly list for college professors, reminding them via nonscientific study that kids born in 1994 “see the world in a different way”. If you’re wondering what this has to do with sports, one of the notes mentioned is that kids grew up in the 1990s having no idea that L.A. had a football team (much less two of them) or that Cal Ripken wasn’t just given the consecutive games record by default.

From CF News 13:

Remember when suitcases had to be carried instead of rolled? Or when an airline ticket was a booklet of pages separated by carbon paper? Maybe you remember when Lou Gehrig held the Major League record for consecutive baseball games played.

This year’s college freshmen don’t.

They never lived in a world where Kurt Cobain was alive or an NFL team played its home games in Los Angeles. The Class of 2016 has no need for radios, watches television everywhere except on actual TV sets, and is addicted to “electronic narcotics.”

The article goes on to say kids think ‘The Twilight Zone’ is about vampires and quickly includes a quote from an 18-year old saying “no we don’t”, so remember that this is intended to remind teachers how ignorant their kids are gonna be and is in no way accurate. I mean, hell, I know Cleveland had an NHL team even if they merged with the North Stars two years before I was born and like 27 years before I moved to Ohio.

For anyone reading this who sincerely doesn’t remember the Los Angeles Rams, watch this video. Never forget.

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Last week, NBA commissioner David Stern took our attention away from the remarkable success of his league’s shortened season and exciting playoffs when he nailed Jim Rome with a loaded question when asked if the NBA was fixed. “I know that you appreciate a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy,” asked Rome. “Was the fix in for the lottery?” Responded Stern, “I have two answers for that. The simple easy one, no, the second, a statement, shame on you for asking.”

Stern could have stopped there, but he pressed the issue by asking Rome, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” And mouth-breathers everywhere, not knowing what a loaded question is, were like, “LOLWUT? Jim Rome beats his wife???” Of course he doesn’t, and once again the diabolical Oz hid behind the curtain.

So was Stern a little more behaved when Michael Wilbon asked a similar question during halftime of last night’s exciting Game 3 of the NBA Finals? Of course he was.

“It makes for good copy. It makes for good questions. And, you know, bring it on… But I think the people that know the NBA and know me don’t take our responsibilities lightly. We do it with responsibility and we do it with transparency.”

And then he goes on to explain that each team with a lottery ball has a representative in the room, there are 4 media members present, and the Ernst and Young guys are doing their thing, too. But what does that mean to the common fans who still wonder: A) Does the league fix the Draft Lottery for specific teams based on circumstances? And B) Are small market owners that play by Stern’s dark shadow rules rewarded for their loyalty? I think if a growing number of fans – and allegedly team executives – believe that your league is fixed because only the major market teams win championships or because teams that lose their stars miraculously get top draft picks, then you have an obligation to respectfully show them that it’s a stupid idea.

Stern doesn’t want to do that. Instead, he invites the conspiracies by mouth-farting, “Bring it on” because he’s a such a badass, you see, and then striking down guys like Rome for asking the question that we all want an answer to. But hey, at least Stern can take the time out to remove a few ribs and blow himself to remind us all how awesome his league is. And, damn it, we keep watching.

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How many of you can picture a barefoot Tim Tebow being forced to walk on broken glass? Come on, let’s see some hands.

The people in charge of farting out Die Hard movies have overcome the two biggest obstacles keeping them from making a Die Hard 5 — “getting Bruce Willis” and “googling ‘die phrases’ to find an old saying with the word ‘die’ in it so they can add the word ‘hard’ and pretend it’s applicable” — so 2013′s A Good Day To Die Hard (ugh) will follow John McClane to what I can only assume will be Soviet Russia to rescue his kidnapped son. The producers are trying to pull a “Shia LeBouf” by casting a handsome, action movie type to play the son and shift the franchise’s focus away from the 56-year old Willis, who first gave Hans Gruber a Hard Death almost thirty years ago. Said young person would then be the star of Die Hard 6: Live And Let Die Hard and a Die Hard 7: The Die Hard Has Been Cast.

I think you know where this is going.

The topic of Tebow came up Wednesday when Tom Rothman, co-chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment announced the new film project exclusively on Wednesday on the syndicated sports show The Jim Rome Show, known as The Jungle.

“What do you think of Tebow in the lead?’’ Rothman asked Rome and the listening audience. Rome did not give Tebow a thumbs up.

“He might be too nice,” Rome said, referring to Tebow’s wholesome reputation. “But no one would work harder to make it work.”

I always pictured Tebow as more of the “show up ten years from now in a Lifetime movie” type, but if Die Hard 5: Die, Die Hard My Darling involves down-to-Earth homebody Tebow breaking necks in the Kremlin or swinging through a jungle of CGI monkeys, I’m there.

On a more serious Die Hard franchise note, how are we going on our third movie without Reginald VelJohnson? Better yet, why not put Carl Winslow in a Broncos jersey and let him fill in while Tebow films this one? I want to see him take a snap and run from the Dolphins defense yelling “HARRIETTE”.

In an announcement akin to holding a Christmas present that feels like it’s jeans and opening it to find out that, yep, it’s jeans, the Carolina Panthers have made rookie Cam Newton their official Week 1 starter against the Arizona Cardinals. To date, Newton has thrown one (1) 10-yard touchdown pass in handful of preseason appearances, but according to Panthers head coach Ron Rivera, that speaks for itself.

“It speaks for itself,” Rivera said. “With what Cam’s done and the direction we’re headed with this football team, in all honesty he is our starter. He is going to grow as a starter and we’re going to grow as a football team. It’s not just about him. It’s about the rest of us growing in our system.

“We didn’t draft Cam to the be savior. We drafted him to help lead this football team.”

Derek Anderson will be his back-up, with Jimmy Clausen sitting in the locker room somewhere practicing his John 16:33 facepaint, because Carolina totally needed a Tim Tebow that no one wants.

Unless you count the time he sang Justin Bieber in public, nothing about Cam Newton’s preseason was damning. Normal rookie mistakes, like locking onto receivers early, throwing into double-coverage and not being able to accurately hit a three-man target. He’s got a strong arm, he moves well and he looks more confident every time he plays … and if the Panthers really wanted the lowest-possible-rent Michael Vick, why not go ahead and start him?

“I did but I didn’t expect anything given to me. It doesn’t stop here. I can’t sit back and say I’ve arrived because we have a long way to go,” said Newton.

Some people are looking at the situation a little differently.

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In case you don’t read the Best and Worst of Raw column every Tuesday afternoon, let me catch you up to speed: You know those people who say, “you know wrestling’s fake, right” every time it comes up in conversation? Those are the same people who send you a “whoa did you see that I think that was real!” IM when something unconventional happens on TV.

I don’t want to generalize, but ESPN’s Jim Rome strikes me as that type of guy. Why do I think that? Because of this newsbit that has been literally copied and pasted verbatim onto every half-assed, pop-up-filled dirt sheet wrestling newz site today:

Jim Rome aired CM Punk’s RAW promo in its entirety today on The Jim Rome Show and offered the WWE Superstar 45 minutes to come on his sports talk radio to finish his speech.

The more detailed synopsis from The Wrestling Observer, the one that gets quoted less often, reveals an important detail.

Jim Rome on the air brought up the Punk promo and said he believed it was legitimate and wanted to get Punk to do his show to tell him what he was going to say when they cut off the mic…(Rome) said he believed it to be real but with WWE you never know, but he said working in entertainment it is frowned upon to blast corporate partners (which is why he thought it was real was the crappy shows on USA Network line).

Punk made mainstream news by ending this week’s Raw with a vitriolic speech about what’s wrong with pro wrestling and basically everyone he works with. Rome — a guy who is more or less my generation’s Morton Downey Jr., but who is still employed by a legitimate sports news and presentation organization — analyzed a segment from a weekly wrestling show, deduced it as “real”, then offered a fictional character a chance to come on his show and say what he was going to say when the show went off the air. What’s he going to do next, frame-by-frame the Sopranos finale and ask Tony to come on his show and explain what happened when the screen went black? This is easily the most embarrassing thing to come from ESPN and wrestling since Erin Andrews got caught naked on GTV.

Hey ESPN, I can run a radio show for half the cost of Jim Rome and pretend twice as many wrestling storylines are real. I can do it for soap operas, too. If you cut me a suit and give me a $500 haircut I can even call Jim Everett a woman so many times he jumps the table and tries to strangle me to death.