Justin, Robots & Hines

With all the talk about the AFC Championship game, I've neglected the Tarheels the past few days. Well, I aim to make up for that in the next few sentences. Every Tuesday Adam Lucas of TarheelBlue does a mailbag and yesterday's was pretty funny.

Here at Mailbag World Headquarters, we pride ourselves on being fairly reasonable humans. We're fairly even-tempered, except during Carolina basketball games, and we like helping fellow Tar Heel fans find the answers to their latest burning questions. We get hundreds of questions every week (if it takes a while to respond to you, that's why) and most of them are thought-provoking.

However, there are three common questions that threaten to cause us to do something drastic, such as hunting down the questioner in person and whacking them over the head with a copy of "Leading With the Heart: Coach K's Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life."

This is the last time the following questions will ever be discussed in the Mailbag. Please don't push us over the edge, it's much too far from March for that to happen.

Question One: Justin Bohlander is no longer a Tar Heel. He decided to concentrate on his academics and is still enrolled at UNC.

Question Two: The diamond sign Rashad McCants makes is borrowed from rapper Jay-Z and his "The Family" entourage. Feel free to use it yourself at the Smith Center.

Hey, I'm usually the last guy to find out about everything, and even I knew about Justin and Robots. But it gets better -- and not surprisingly, I didn't know this either:

Question Three: The "kid on the end of the bench" is Steve Robinson's son, Denzel. Despite what the person next to us at the Georgia Tech game said (seriously), he is not a "walk-on who played against William & Mary." He is not eligible to play and therefore will not be stealing any of Jesse Holley's minutes.

You're kidding right? First, for those of you who don't know, Robinson is an assistant coach. Second, what does that say about William & Mary's program when a 10-year old kid allegedly got in the game? (Me shaking my head) OK, this concludes the UNC portion of this post.

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Here's my favorite quote from Cowher's Tuesday press conference:

Q:Do you want Ben to wear gloves during week if he is going to wear them in the game?

A:He has to assess that. I'm not going to sit there and tell him what to do in regards to that just throw the ball to the receiver, with or without a glove. I don't want to get into all the idiosyncrasies. I know everyone is worried about his thumb. I didn't know anything about his thumb. He just said that it wasn't fitting right. I don't ask those things. If the guys open just throw it to him and whatever that entails you wear.

Why the hell is the media so preoccupied with this glove? Ben also wore gloves in Week 16 against the Ravens and I didn't hear anyone making a peep then. And I like how Cowher cuts to the chase: "If the guys open just throw it to him and whatever that entails you wear." Nice.

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Finally, here's a quick Q&A between Peter King and Hines Ward. If nothing else, it's a nice break from all the chuckleheads blabbing on about why the Patriots would beat a team comprised of the Justice League All-Stars. Oh yeah, I also thought if you had to describe Hines Ward in a few sentences, these would do nicely:

ON THE BIG HIT The hardest I was ever hit was by [Patriots safety] Rodney Harrison when he was with San Diego. I caught a pass, and as soon as I caught it, bam! He hit me straight up. My chin strap was on my eyebrows. I got right up and smiled. After the game, he said to me, 'Man, you're one tough son of a bitch.' Great moment for me.

I don't know how many NFL receivers would describe that as a great moment other than Hines.