Sometimes the pressures of writing passionate screeds about games can make otherwise calm journalists go batty. Consider a few recent examples:

Greg Garber, ESPN.com: I didn't cry when they buried my father -- I wouldn't let myself. I didn't cry when they buried my sister. On Thursday night, with my family asleep upstairs, my eyes filled as Agassi and Marcos Baghdatis played out the fifth set of their moving second-round match.

Steven Wells, the Guardian: You want to know why American football has made me its bitch? It's because it's so relentlessly, jubilantly and definitively futuristic. Baseball is a boring old fart wallowing in nostalgia. Football runs around like a ADD-afflicted special-needs kid with the key to the drug cupboard, wearing tights, a cape and goggles, screaming gleefully as he pretends to be a superhero-astronaut.

Bill Livingston, Cleveland Plain Dealer: A few years later, I was sitting next to him [Tony Kornheiser] before a news conference began at a Florida State vs. Nebraska Orange Bowl. I said Nebraska wasn't the same bunch of plowboys as in the past because it had begun recruiting "speed," which is a code word for black athletes.

Peter King, SI.com: That isn't to say I don't think they're [the Falcons are] not a very good team.