They say opinions are like assholes.

Everyone's got one, and they all stink.

I tend to agree with this sentiment, but I'll take it a step further. Opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got one, they all stink, and people will guard their own with all the strength they can muster.

With that said, I'm just an asshole with an opinion and internet access, and I feel like the safest topic to cover would be sports, where being an opinionated body part can be done in a way that doesn't tend to offend people as much as if discussing other topics.

I love that sports is a quasi-oasis from life. Obviously it's not completely separated from the realities of life in 2006, but it's one arena where you can have a staunch, unwavering opinion on something, and talk to someone with a completely opposite opinion, and get to the point where you're yelling at each other, and not get too far into personal judgment of each other's character. At least for the most part.

I mean, the point is, in discussing something like politics, there are going to be very fundamental differences in the types of people that take opposing sides of an issue. Current hot-button issues like President Bush, the war in Iraq, immigration, etc., tend to lead to people making personal attacks on one another and questioning their education, or their values, or their morals. In contrast, sports is relatively tame.

That's not to say I don't get fired up over certain things, or that I won't stoop so low as to personally question and/or attack certain people over certain topics related to sports. I'm sure I will do that at times. All I'm saying is that me talking shit about Eagles fans, or giving my half-baked opinion about the MLB steroid controversy is a lot less controversial than someone talking shit about immigrant workers or giving their half-baked opinions about the War on Terror. These things have a time and place to be discussed, and I definitely have my own strong opinions on the goings-on around me. Make no mistake, I don't watch sports to keep my head in the ground away from the world, I watch it because it's entertaining, and it's nice to take a break from the rest of the world every once in a while.

Blogs in general seem to be read mostly by a) other bloggers, and b) people who are bored at work and are looking to keep themselves entertained. That's why political blogs are by and large so damn boring, because they're often just a predictable self-perpetuated cycle of people who pretend they're smarter than they really are and are trying to show off how smart they are only to be contradicted by other people who pretend they're smarter than they really are and want to expose these first people as not as smart as they claim to be. So, in all that bullshit, the essence of the issues at hand are lost, and all we're left with are talking points and a whole lot of rambling.

So with that, I introduce you to 44 Sports, a periodical column of a 24 year old New Jersey sports fan's thoughts and opinions about the world of sports. I've become pretty used to starting projects and then ditching them for something else after a couple weeks or months, but I'm going to try to break that habit with this column, and hopefully it keeps my interest.

Any feedback, feel free to send to fortyfoursports@yahoo.com, or just leave comments under my various posts and I'll get back to you. I'm always up for a back-and-forth on any topic, and I'll do my best to pay attention to this column enough to respond to any comment or criticism that I receive.