Your humble correspondent has returned this week from that den of Sin and Vice, Greater Chicagoland, to the vast expanses of the Great Plains in order to watch the NCAA tournament in the home of the defending national champions, get rid of a bunch of his worldly possessions and find someone to sublease his Kansas home (anyone? anyone?). Normally, Lawrence, KS is the kind of happy Midwestern college town where people do clichéd Midwestern college town things like leave their doors unlocked, greet people with a smile and a "Go Jayhawks" (for reals, people do this), and go to campus bars without fear of getting shot in a drive-by. Unfortunately, the latter happened Wednesday night, three blocks up the street from your correspondent's hopefully-soon-to-be-former house. What's the world coming to when underage, upper-middle-class kids from the Kansas City suburbs can't drink a 32-ounce Natty Light without getting shot? Chicago looks secure and stable by comparison. But you're not here for the Kansas Crime Report, are you? No, you're here for the Deadspin Comment of the Week, which this week goes to...ArkansasFred, who blew his prize-winning load on this comment about removing fighting from hockey :

This is similar to my idea of improving porno by taking away all the hot chicks and close-up penetration shots and replacing them with tight shots of dudes grimacing while they orgasm.

Congratulations, Fred, even if you're not really from Arkansas. Your prize is one (1) Philadelphia Phillies Shirtsey, owned by Deadspin Editor A.J. Daulerio. He'll even autograph it for you, if you're that hard up for celebrity encounters. AJ explained his love of the Shirtsey in his 2008 Phillies preview.

For Christmas this year, I received that shirt you see in the right hand corner. It was a gift from my well-intentioned fiancée, who decided that she'd invest in something sports-oriented. It is a thoughtful gift, isn't it? It is very well-made and its colors suggest the Phillies baby blues of the 70's, replete with red and white racing stripes on the arms. And the number: 22. Why, that's the number worn by Jay Loviglio in 1980. Then it was Bobby Dernier's number for a while. Now? It's mine. I'm sure my first reaction when I unwrapped the shirt was the way a parent reacts when their toddler gives them heartfelt, but completely useless presents like a shoe box full of grass or a broach made of bowtie pasta. My second reaction was pure bewilderment - when had I expressed my desire to start dressing like Jermaine Dupri? Look, I'm a Phillies fan, but I've never been much of personalized jersey guy (except in unique circumstances, of course). It's always bothered me that Philadelphia sports fans have this odd tendency to buy team jerseys, then put their own surnames on the back. You can get away with this if you're a famous singer or a politician, but not a Jewish mortgage broker from Bryn Mawr. (Honestly, you're not helping the cause if you take the Taxi Crab to Broad and Pattison then show up sporting a Flyers jersey with the "Schwartzenstein" on the back.)

And this isn't even a jersey. It's a button-down shirt that looks like a jersey. This is just awful.

Congrats, ArkansasFred! We hope you treasure it as much as its last owner did. And now on to this week's capricious and arbitrary nominees...
Re: Mike Piazza's bacne
Jefferson Tardship: "Mike Piazza's pride is marching down Market Street in San Francisco on the last Sunday in June. Naked."

Re: Testicles & nonplanets
ClintonPortishead: "What's the difference between Pluto and LeVance Fields' testicles? One night is not quite the size of a planet, and the other one is Pluto."

Re: Vince Young's meat products
Mo Knows Ladies:Seems strange that Vince Young is selling Hot Links considering his Wonderlic score resulted in a court order forbidding him from being near an open flame.

Go forth and vote. May the best comment win.

If you've seen a comment that really tickles your fancy, don't hesitate to email me a link.

You waited all week for it, then I made you wait the weekend for it, and since nothing else was going on in the world of sports, you were sad and alone. But now, finally, it's time to present the first-ever Deadspin Comment of the Week award, as voted by you — the readers. It's like the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, only slightly less mature. Over 3300 votes were cast, and since we had Robert Mugabe himself certify the election results, you know it's legit. And the award for Deadspin Comment of the Week goes to...Stev D!

"We as a society celebrate people who kill sharks, but when someone uses their internship at the National Aquarium and comes in off hours and attempts to make love to a dolphin, I lose my college scholarship. Hypocrites."

Congratulations, Mr. D. Your prize awaits. This week's valuable prize is a baseball autographed by rapper Fat Joe, because hey — sports! If anyone guessed "baseball autographed by rapper Fat Joe" in the Deadspin Comment of the Week Prize Pool, give yourself a round of applause. Treasure it always, Stev D. The rest of you should be sure to "check out Fat Joe's new single 'One' featuring Akon; his 9th album Jealous Ones Still Envy, J.O.S.E. 2 [will be in] in stores April 7th!"

And now, this week's capricious and arbitrary nominees:

Re: Last Thursday's Duke-Binghamton live blog
Wampeters, Foma, and Pat Falloon: "So, since you're a Dukie, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're paying someone at a less prestigious university to write all this for you."

Re: "Improving" hockey by removing the fights
ArkansasFred: "This is similar to my idea of improving porno by taking away all the hot chicks and close-up penetration shots and replacing them with tight shots of dudes grimacing while they orgasm."

Re: The NCAA's anti-sign, anti-Jesus stance
parsley sagehenbait rosemary and thyme: "Same thing happened to the guy at the Kansas City regional with an Owen 3:16 sign."

Go forth and vote. May the best comment win.

Since Rob Iracane's departure, I've gotten literally several emails asking, nay, pleading for some sort of replacement for Mr. Iracane's cherished Combudsman columns, especially the Comment of the Fortnight features. As I beat to my own beat, it would be unseemly to copy the format wholesale, so we've done some rejiggering and retrofitting and come up with this spiffy new feature.

You may have noticed "featured comments" popping up on the front page over the course of this week. Members of Team Deadspin have been given a handy little "promote" button (times being what they are, we had to reappropriate the "preview post" button - sorry) that pins especially chuckle-worthy comments up top for all to see. Those are your Comment Of The Week nominees. Every Friday, Deadspin readers and commenters will vote on the top three nominees to decide the Comment Of The Week. The winner (and his or her prize) will officially be announced in the following week's Comment Of The Week post. Deadspin has warehouses full of tangentially-sports-related promotional items that need good homes, and what better way of unloading them than with a trumped-up weekly contest? Good luck, commenters. On to the nominees:

Re: Spear Fishing And The Meast-y Killing of Sharks
Stev D: "We as a society celebrate people who kill sharks, but when someone uses their internship at the National Aquariam and comes in off hours and attempts to make love to a dolphin, I lose my college scholarship. Hypocrites."

Re: The ACC, Lesbians, And You
Her?: I don't get why the NCAA wouldn't be all over this. Every lesbian I've seen in my entire life (and I've seen a lot of lesbians) is a smoking hot, scantily clad nubile woman more than willing to sex it up with another lesbian wherever they meet: be it an office, classroom, the gym, at one of their brothers house while he's away on vacation ...

Re: The Memphis Tigers' Appetite For Cupcakes
wonderlic—-myballs: When the best team on your non-conference schedule is Syracuse, and the Orange beat you at home, you're not very good. Kudos to Memphis for finishing the regular season, but likewise I'm undefeated at ping pong down at the MorningWood Convalescence Home and my court mandated community service hours are just about done.

Go forth and vote. May the best comment win.

Standard contest rules apply.