Happy 1st of July!

It's the first of July, time to celebrate, as many of us will have a four day weekend this week, some of us (not me) will be taking vacations, others of us will be entertaining a group of toddlers and parents we've never met at our child's 3rd birthday party (me), and more importantly, there is just one more month to go until the football action begins. So, to celebrate the 1st of July, here's a nice easy-going Summer edition of 'Tin Bits' - a look around the world of the NFL:

• Ok, this one is almost expressly for regular reader/commenter, herdfan. Apparently, Chad Pennington has taken up modeling with his SHIRT OFF! Courtesy of Finstache, the latest Dolphins fan blog, run by the guy whose sole mission in the last 40 blog entries was to bring down the Davone Bess impersonator. Yeah, it's not Bess, we get it! LOL, just kidding 'Stache. Gotta be honest, adding 'stache' to anything makes it funny.

• I want you guys to know, I consider there to be a rather thick line between my occasional posts of Jets/Pats/Bills news of incompetency or weakness and some of the South Florida media's occasional BS ****sucking of players off of these teams on their respective blogs. Why the SS is in love with all things Jets, and the PBP is in love with all things Pats, and the Herald is in love with all things Cuban Pork Sandwich, I will never know, but I take no shame in posting negatively skewed news/rumours about these teams because let's face it, we are FANS. We're not looking for objectivity. We're looking for bright spots as far as the Dolphins go, and weak spots as far as our opponents go. This is a competitive sport, not a hippie love fest (no offense to any hippies out there, just trying to make a point). With competitive sports, comes competitive fans. Don't worry, Randy Moss can handle me not stroking his ego, just as he can handle the Miami media not doing the same. But one thing I can't handle is the SS's man-crush on Mark Sanchez. It's completely based on his looks and not on his actual football prowess. And it's directed at the wrong fans. We're Dolfans! If we want to drool over a QB, we've got three of our own!

• Michael Vick is not only not showing up to Dolphins training camp, he's also not showing up to his construction job anymore. According to reports, Vick has got himself a cushy new job as a Boys and Girls Club counselor. Now, I don't know which is weirder, the fact that someone actually hired Vick for this job (it's got to be a pay cut from the construction job, hasn't it?) or that they've combined the Boys and Girls Club into a co-ed camp. When I was younger, it was the Boys Club and then you had the Girls Club. The attendees of each club would spend the summer torturing, raping, stealing from, and spitting at each other. Basically prison for people who barely escaped being sent to prison. Or are on house arrest, a la Vick.

• Recently, teams from around the NFL released their training camp schedules. Miami's scheduled practices are ALL open to the public. However, Buffalo, in the spirit of a team that doesn't want to be there, only allows fans to come to the opening weekend along with a handful of 'night' practices. I shouldn't put night in quotes, because it really is literally a night practice, starting at 7pm! I guess Buffalo is gearing up for all their scheduled Monday Night games this year. But here's something interesting: At the official Bills website, on the schedule page, each away game has a Jet Blue link to buy tickets for the corresponding city on that day. What other team ships its fans around the country and gets a percentage of the ticket sales as well? This is either pure genius or really really sad.

• And finally, with the 4th of July being the biggest drinking day of the year in the U.S.A. I urge everyone to refrain from drinking and driving. All kinds of bad things can result from such behaviour. Ask Donte Stallworth, or Dolphins' CB, Will Billingsley, who's truck is shown below.