Watchdog

Many thanks to my new best friends at The Big Lead.com for interviewing me and posting said interview today, an event that is sure to boost my page views and make Bob Glauber insanely jealous. (You should read his NFL blog once in a while just to make him feel better.)

I told the Big Leaders that if they waited a day I could find them a picture of me dressed as a bulldog for an event at my kid's school last year - that's not me in the picture to the right - but they wisely opted to just go with my WatchDog logo.

I thought the best thing about the Internet is that space is no object, but I plead guilty to going overboard in the wordiness department and do not blame the Big Leaders for trimming me a bit. Here's the original version of the Will Leitch lunch story that ended up on the cutting room floor, if they don't mind me sharing it:

"Thanks for having me. This is my second-greatest blog-related honor. No. 1 is my visit to the sparsely furnished Brooklyn basement from which Will Leitch rules the world.

"I brought lunch. I got one sub with mayo and one without; I figured if I were going to dine with a guy from somewhere in southern Illinois, I’d better add mayo. Sure enough, that was the sandwich he picked.

"You can take the blogger out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the blogger.''

What I didn't mention was that I bought two different kinds of chips, one plain the other interesting. Naturally, Will opted for the plain. I think he picked the diet Coke over the regular, so maybe he's becoming a little bit more of a New Yorker.

Anyway, as I said, I'm honored and just hope this interview doesn't lead to me being fired, as happened to my old pal Jason Whitlock after his infamous Big Lead interview a while back in which he said unkind things about some ESPN colleagues.

Back to my Barry Bonds column now . . . Read it tomorrow in Newsday!