Thursday Links (2/19)

I'm a trusting person by nature. I tend to see the positives in people, except when driving or watching Andy Reid coach in the fourth quarter. The thought honestly never crossed my mind in 1998 that McGwire and Sosa were cheating, when I watch trial documentaries, I always want to believe the defendant didn't do it, and each spring, I'm certain this will be the Cubs' year.

So I'm trying really hard to retain my trust in the writers of "Lost." Through the past four years, they have never let me down. Even at its worst, it has remained one of the best shows on television, and at its best, it has been as groundbreaking and entertaining as any show in history.

Still, I'm just not sure how I feel about this season. Is it interesting? Sure. The hour flies by, just as it always did. But more and more I find myself feeling like the episodes are being written trying to fit a bunch of square pegs developed over the last four years into the round holes the writers want to end with next year. Even on a show that has relied so heavily on confusing the heck out of you, this year's twists and turns all seem to be so arbitrary and require broad leaps of logic. And I get the feeling even the writers know it. There has been a ton of dialogue that has basically said, "You've just gotta believe... just go with it and see what happens... stop asking questions."

And you know what? I'd be OK with that, if "Lost" hadn't already raised my standards so much over the past four years. The fun of the show is that it demanded you ask questions, it demanded you looked deeper, it begged you to formulate theories and try to solve the puzzle for yourself. So if it turns out that the solutions were never there in the first place, that the writers are simply going to say, "here's the answer, don't ask why," I'll be as disappointed as I was watching that ball go through Alex Gonzolez legs in Game 5 of the 2003 NLCS.

For now though, I'm keeping faith. I'll still believe. I trust the show won't screw me the same way the Cubs do every year. At the very least, I'm already used to disappointment, so I might as well get my hopes up once again.

(And if you'd care to discuss the show more, I suggest going HERE.)

On to today's links...

-- CBS Sports' Pete Prisco has a good piece on Matthew Stafford. I talked with Kris Durham yesterday and he said Stafford is handling the growing media circus surrounding him really well so far. The two talk at least twice a week, Durham said, but when they spoke the last time, Stafford had to put him on hold while he did an interview with "SportsCenter," which Durham then watched a few hours later.

-- Jeff Owens gives you the inside scoop on Tony Wilson in his latest blog post.

-- Former Bulldogs baseball player Josh Fields tells MLB.com that his first day in camp with the Mariners was "pretty awesome."

-- Anthony Dasher catches up with a few former Georgia players now working to impress scouts at the NFL combine.

-- There are a lot of reasons I love reading the Get the Picture blog, but one of my favorites is when the good Senator finds an article some writer no doubt spent a lot of time working on and then uses a semblance of common sense to completely undermine its conclusions. After all, isn't that what the Internet is all about?

-- A UGA librarian won on Jeopardy. Which seems like a good time to also watch this.

-- Georgia's team chaplain Thomas Settles spoke with Dogwood Valley Baptist Church, and the interview is online.

-- Well the good will from beating Florida didn't last too long. The highlight of the game? The band joining together to sing happy birthday to Mark Richt, who was sitting in the stands opposite the band.

-- Need some feel-good stories? Georgia Sports Blog pointed out a number of articles about some great sportsmanship shown at a high school basketball game, while ESPN's Dana O'Neil has the story of the big heart of a current Clemson hoops player.

-- Access Atlanta has an interview with Ed Helms, who is quickly becoming my favorite character on "The Office."

-- This is exactly the type of thing I would have thought was hilarious to do in high school, and quite honestly, I'm disappointed that me and my idiot friends never thought to do it. It's way funnier than when my buddy Ken switched the "Santa is Coming!" sign outside a local McDonalds to "Satan is Coming!" or the time we swiped a few hundred golf balls from a local driving range and emptied them into our friend's pool.

-- I didn't know the Bobcats had fans... but this should be good marketing material for my buddy Dave who works for the team.

-- Finally, a few days ago, Chip Towers started the debate on who was Georgia's best quarterback ever. Bubba 'N Earl followed that up with a debate on who the Dawgs' all-time best wide receiver was -- a debate that I'm not sure can be answered until A.J. plays acouple more years. After all that, ESPN's Chris Low comes up with the Mount Rushmore for each SEC team, and Georgia's includes just one player.

So, topic of debate for the day: What does it mean that, of Georgia's four biggest names, only one was a player? And who would you choose for the Bulldogs' Mt. Rushmore?