Anyway, you don’t need me to tell you anything about this year’s post-season. If you’re a baseball fan you already know way more than me and you’re happy to let me know by rattling stats off the top of your head. Fine. You just carry on through the division series.

If you want some smart baseball commentary, check out Can’t Stop The Bleeding or one of the hundreds of baseball blogs out there. We’ll have some silliness for the LCS round I’m sure after we get some beers and nachos.

Yes, we’re extremely late to the party on this Colin Cowherd vs. The Big Lead story, but you have to remember that oddsnark is located so far away from the bright center of the blogging universe that the light we see from our monitors today contains news that is actually millions of years old.

Anyway, if you’re like us and missed this item because you’ve been so wrapped up in the saga of Sanjaya on American Idol, here’s a quick recap: Cowherd, a talk show host and blowhard on ESPN radio, last week issued a fatwa against The Big Lead and instructed his knuckle-dragging followers to flood the site. They did and crashed The Big Lead’s servers for about two days.

Firstly, I’m either impressed that Cowherd has that many listeners to bring down an Internet site, or I’m disappointed that The Big Lead is hosted on an old Gateway 386 in someone’s basement. Secondly, has the blogosphere really reached such proportions that big-time sports radio is lashing out like a wounded animal? We just might be witnessing the end of the world as we know it.

Seriously, though, this little episode offers a startling reminder of just how new to the game this Internet medium is. In the fallout from his “fatwa,” Cowherd was lightly admonished by the brass at ESPN and made an apology on his show. No harm, no foul, right? Since it was “just” an Internet site, no one seems to think it matters all that much. But what if instead of a Web site, he had told his listeners to all go out into the night and burn every copy of the USA TODAY they could find? Or what if his listeners had tried to jam a competitor’s radio signal? There would be a cry throughout the land and lawsuits and all manner of teeth knashing and hand wringing.

The upside to all this is that The Big Lead is back online and getting loads of free publicity from blogs such as this one and in the mainstream media. Cowherd’s little stunt has done nothing but raise the profile of sports blogging, so maybe we should thank him. Looks like the joke’s on you, caveman.

And if any other talk radio host out there would like to target an Internet site, please choose this one. We could use the publicity.

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Seattle Mariners fan Deanna wins our award as an All-Star of sports blogging for her up-to-the-minute reports on the Japan Series. Game 2 just ended a few hours ago (Japan is 14 hours ahead, remember) and the mainstream news sites have yet to publish any reports on the game, but at Seattle Marinerds you can get a complete summary of how the Nippon Ham Fighters tied the series 1-1 last night with a 5-2 win over the Chunichi Dragons.

Seriously, what the hell did we do before the Internet?

Anyway, thanks Dave. Dave? What are you doing, Dave? Daisy, Daisy/Give me your answer do . . .

Seriously though, this is bad and it is spreading. A couple other sites called SportsOrbis and Brawl Hall are engaged in the same kind of behavior. YAY! Sports, though, is fighting back with some hilarious posts meant to let SportsOrbis readers know they are being duped. Hopefully we can help by getting the word out so other people will stop reading these sites.

(See, James, it’s not so hard to do.)

If you don’t recognize them all bundled up against the Toronto cold, that’s Los Angeles Kings center Sean Avery and Canadian hottie Elisha Cuthbert, formerly of the hit show 24. Oh, you didn’t know she was a hockey fan? Maybe you didn’t know she was Canadian? Well, brother, she’s both. In spades. The NHL even recruited the Calgary-born, Montreal-raised actress and all around puck bunny to write a blog about the hockey season. She must be very busy because there are only four posts, which is too bad because it looks like she’s got the inside scoop. Oh, and for those that still aren’t convinced she’s Canadian, check this out:

But what the above doesn’t tell you is that CantStoptheBleeding.com is one of the best damn sports blogs out there, with tons of daily content, about both sports and the world in general. Check it out, knock back a few absinthe shooters, and all shall be well in your world.