“If it happened, it had to have happened before or after I was in the clubhouse. It absolutely did not happen during normal hours (noon until say 11:00 pm). And if it did happen, it is one of the best-kept secrets in the history of baseball, a sport not known for keeping any secrets. To suggest that a female reporter had sex in the shower with five players, one would have to assume that there were others around, like the clubhouse managers, coaches, or other players, in which case that escapade is not a secret for very long. In a word, if I had to say whether or not that ever happened, I would easily say NO.”

James dismisses a suggestion he’s considered a long shot and believes he was called by God to run for office.

“That doesn’t mean God says, ‘You’re going to win, Craig,’” he said. “But I would far rather have done this than let God down and not do what he had called me to do.”

Sitting, as I was, in a living a room amidst the exurban sprawl of Frisco on Sunday, that comment stung. I mean, he wasn’t talking about North Texas, and yet he was.

And Michaels isn’t alone. Indianapolis is getting rave reviews for its hosting of the NFL’s championship extravaganza. Having been blessed with unseasonably pleasant weather this year (as opposed to the ice and snow we greeted fans with in Dallas for Super Bowl XLV), there’s already speculation about how soon the capital of Indiana will get to host another. It’s very unlike the “Will North Texas Ever Get to Host Another?” headlines that followed our region’s turn.

Much of the praise for Indy is about its compactness. Whereas North Texas had some activities in Fort Worth, others in Dallas, and the game in Arlington, with driving required to get anywhere, Indianapolis was walkable. Sports economist Patrick Rishe wrote a column for Forbes yesterday where he noted that “Bigger is not always better” — another slap in the face of Texas?

And most importantly for many sports spectators be they corporate or common Joe…you can freely imbibe and then simply stumble back to your hotel room …

The proximity between the stadium, the hotels, and the entertainment amenities shot the convenience quotient for out-of-town visitors through the roof…with the most taxing commutes of Super Bowl XLVI week in Indy being the 7 miles to either the Indianapolis Airport or driving north to either Broad Ripple’s entertainment district or to Butler University to catch a Bulldog basketball game.

Mac Engel of the Star-Telegram called Rishe and got him to make a head-to-head comparison:

“What happened last year in North Texas was so unfortunate because that was a situation where it could have worked,” he said in a phone interview. “You have things in Fort Worth and things in Dallas that make it an attractive destination. But Indianapolis proved that it’s not a detriment at all to have everything in one spot. It can be a real positive.”

Engel’s suggestion is that the next North Texas bid sell Fort Worth’s downtown as being as compact as Indy’s and to use it as the base for most of the activities (aside from the game, of course). A Fort Worth CVB representative points out that the city would need another major hotel to make that feasible, but never mind that, Engel writes:

Because a large, vibrant downtown on Randol Mill Road in Arlington is not a realistic possibility, and downtown Dallas remains primarily a financial district, the best alternative is here in Cowtown.

Most of these assessments of which region did a better job hosting, though, ignore what is likely the NFL’s bottom line. Where did they make more money?

Lucas Oil Stadium, the host on Sunday, accommodates about 70,000 people for the game. Cowboys Stadium can cram in more than 100,000.  Walkability be damned, they’re not going to ignore all that extra cash, are they?

But his injury history gives one pause. Plus he’s going to turn 31 this season. The overwhelming body of evidence in baseball suggests that most players peak between the ages of 27 and 29, which means that Hamilton is past his peak and will see his skills decline from here on out.

Which isn’t to say that he won’t still be a valuable player this year, and for a few more years yet. If he’s looking for something like the 10-year deal that Albert Pujols got from the Angels this offseason, that seems unlikely (and would be incredibly unwise.)  Last November, Adam Morris of Lone Star Ball argued that the Rangers should let Hamilton walk after 2012. In January, Grant Brisbee of Baseball Nation called Hamilton’s situation “The Most Difficult Contract Decision in the History of Baseball” and argued that Hamilton is worth a big money-short term deal.

So does what happened at Sherlock’s last week change anything at all?  The Rangers had reportedly been discussing a possible extension with Hamilton, but that has been tabled now.  And yesterday on Fox Sports Southwest, Dallas Morning News writer Evan Grant said this:

If he walks away from the Rangers after this year, I don’t think that the Rangers will have “lost” him. I think the Rangers will be OK with that at this point in time because he will have kind of come to the end of the road here.

I don’t think what happened last week really changes much of anything. I suspect the Rangers knew that incidents like it will always remain a possibility with Hamilton. I think the team would very much like to sign him to a short-term deal. But some other team is bound to be willing to overspend on Hamilton’s prolific talents and to commit to a ridiculous contract length.

If the relapse did anything, it gave the Rangers (if they let Hamilton walk) a bit of cover with the casual fans who think of Hamilton purely as a baseball god and don’t understand that the odds are that we’ve already seen the best he has to offer.

The guys who came up with the greatest time-waster known to man, Words With Friends, had the best moment in this Best Buy ad, tweaking the recent Alec Baldwin-American Airlines brouhaha over playing the game on the plane. They show up at about the 30-second mark.   Rating: 9 out of 10

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban makes a cameo at the end of this Skechers ad.  Unfortunately, the line they gave him falls flat.  Rating: 4 out of 10

Deion Sanders shows up at about the 11-second mark in this Century 21 ad, having baked cookies for his open house.  Apparently he’s still having trouble selling his “$21 million” home in Prosper?  It’s solid work on his part.  Rating: 7 out of 10

And we got a double dip of Deion from this Bridgestone Tire commercial, where he tries to receive a pass from another Dallas Cowboys great, Troy Aikman.  Troy doesn’t get to do much, but Deion again gets to show how his “Primetime” skills.  Rating:  6 out of 10

“It never gets easy,” he said.

Based on his account of the evening, it was far more than just a drink or two.  He said he had 3 or 4 drinks with his dinner (after a difficult personal family matter drove him to be at a restaurant by himself.)  Then he called teammate Ian Kinsler for company. Kinsler stayed with him for awhile, and they moved to another place after the first place they visited closed.  Later, Kinsler went home, and Hamilton promised him he was not going to go out again on his own.

But he did. He went back to the place they’d just left and had more alcoholic beverages.  No one saw him drinking, he said, since he has a way to keep people from seeing him do it.

“Once I do drink, I can be very deceptive, very sneaky in a lot of ways,” he said.

The extra danger for Hamilton is his history with other drugs, and there’s no telling, once he starts drinking, when the “switch will flip” and he might be led to those other vices.  He said he didn’t use anything else that night and has been tested twice for drugs since then.

He thanked the Rangers for their support and didn’t field any questions.

Delonte West: Fitting in very well so far — off the bench, as a starter, playing point or shooting guard, whatever. Struggled with his shooting recently, but broke out of it in a big way the other night against the Suns, making 5 of 6 three-pointers. Also, more important, he did this. Grade so far: Kanye West’s verse from T.I.’s “Swagga Like Us” (language alert).

Lamar Odom: He has been … not great. I mean, there are reasons. Family stuff, getting jilted by the Lakers, etc. But, no, aside from brief flashes, he’s been struggling. Upside, I suppose: there is, like, an 1,000-percent increase in Kardashian sightings at games. Grade so far: this GIF of Ron Swanson getting his mustache burned off.

Vince Carter: I was admittedly on the fence about this. I didn’t think he’d accept his role. But he’s been an extremely efficient scorer and has even shown evidence of his once storied athleticism. Nothing bad to say about him. He even made room for some Detroit fans during a game. Grade so far: Matthew Lillard in The Descendants.

What? You're not using venison on your Super Bowl Frito Pie, like this version at Tillman's Roadhouse? Photo by Kevin Marple

While the organizers of last year’s North Texas Super Bowl are wondering why the football gods couldn’t have delivered us the weather we’re having this week in 2011 — instead of the Snow-and-Ice-Mageddon we got — Smithsonian.com reflects upon another Texas contribution to our country’s annual orgy on football and new television commercial campaigns: the Frito.

Those little fried corn chips were given birth in San Antonio in the 1930s, and they remain a cornerstone of business for the Plano-based Frito Lay company, which owns the trademark for the “Frito Chili Pie”: officially a “packaged meal combination consisting primarily of chili or snack food dips containing meat or cheese corn-based snack foods, namely, corn chips.”

But Smithsonian traces the true roots of Fritos much further back in the history of the Americas:

As much scorn and derision as today’s leading nutritional gurus heap onto processed foods, it’s worth noting that Fritos arrived here by way of a Mesoamerican staple and their invention and flavor owes a debt to one of the greatest food processing technologies ever invented: nixtamalization. The 3,000-year-old tradition adding calcium hydroxide—wood ash or lime—so greatly enriches the available amino acids in masa corn that Sophie Coe writes in America’s First Cuisines that the process underlies “the rise of Mesoamerican civilization.” Lacking this technology, early Europeans and Americans (who considered corn fit for slaves and swine) learned that eating a diet exclusively based on unprocessed corn led to pellagra, a debilitating niacin deficiency causing dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death.

Just a little something to think about as you’re dipping your chips this Sunday.

Somehow, I’ve neglected to put this up for, like, 18 days. I regret the error. Oh, what’s my favorite part? I guess I’d have to say: YES.