I really don’t want to know what’s happening in the lower half of that picture.

In news that made Jay Leno briefly consider starting up a sports blog, Louis Murphy of the Oakland Raiders got arrested over the weekend for possession of a Viagra™ without a valid prescription. He was also arrested on charges of failure to obey a police officer and resisting arrest, but there isn’t a lot Leno can do about that. Louis Murphy is in the news today, have you seen this, have you heard about this? He was pulled over by Gainesville police, who found eleven pills of Viagra. Getting arrested for Viagra! If the arrest takes more than four hours, you should consult your physician! [applause]

The sort of depressing aside to these wonderful Performance Enhancing Drugs jokes is that 1) the police pulled over a black guy in an Escalade for playing his music too loud, 2) instead of pulling over, Murphy just drove to a public parking lot, got out of his car and started walking away like nothing was happening, 3) he refused to show them ID and 4) nobody else from the Raiders was around to help him cheat his way out of it. The other depressing aside is that Murphy is 23-years old and possessed more than a sample pack of dick medication.

I only want to comment on this so much, both because hard-on jokes are lazy and because the whole thing reeks of Radio Raheem and I don’t want anybody whipping a trashcan through the window of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

[Gainesville.com]

I’m not really sure where I stand on the NFL’s criteria for what makes a completed catch. I mean, if the guy has two feet inbounds and he has possession, that sounds like a catch to me. On the other hand, I understand that the way the rule is written now makes officiating the catch easier; the side judge doesn’t have to watch the guy’s feet and the ball at the same time. Which brings me to the “catch” by Raiders wideout Louis Murphy in the first half of last night’s game against the Chargers.

The league office issued a further clarification of its officials’ ruling on whether Murphy maintained possession of the ball. While Article 7 of the 2009 NFL Rule Book was applied in making the booth decision to reverse the touchdown, the NFL also is further citing its rule book for an explanation:

“Rule 8, Section 1, Article 3, Item 1 of the NFL Rule Book (page 51) states that ‘if a player goes to the ground in the act of catching a pass (with or without contact with an opponent), he must maintain control of the ball after he touches the ground, whether in the field of play or in the end zone. If he loses control of the ball, and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete. If he regains control prior to the ball touching the ground, the pass is complete.”‘ via.

Like I said, Murphy’s effort in the video above looks like a catch, but I get it. I can’t help but feel for Murphy, who took that ball to the sideline, thinking it was his first career TD. It’s that secret human side of me that I don’t show to anyone, except orphans and some kinds of wildlife.