Beach Bowl!!

Yesterday the 944 VILLAGE officially opened up and it kicked things off with a live broadcast on Spike TV of the DirecTV Celebrity Beach Bowl. Obviously there is no ocean here so they piled in sand/dirt to make a field, dragged over a couple of bleachers and set up a giant music stage. Game on.

Watch the fun in the sun!

Michael Irvin and Shannon Sharpe served as the Host's of the show. Lance Briggs from the Chicago Bears and Michael Smith of ESPN were the refs. As for the "athletes" you got the blue team aka Sunday Ticket coached by Cardinals QB Matt Leinart and the white team aka Nascar Hotpass coached by Bengals WR Chad Johnson.

From the get go... the blue team was ready to roll. Doug Flutie, Rocket Ismail, Daryl Johnston, Carl Banks, Michael Clarke Duncan, Brody Jenner and the flashiest of them all Terry Crews. Terry was announced, ripped his shirt off and started making his pecks alternate going up and down. Crowd loved it.

Team White had some star power with Warren Moon, David Spade (who I'm pretty sure never played one down), Kendra Wilkinson (think Girls Next Door), Ickey Woods, Stacey Keibler and Pete Wentz and Andy Hurley from Fall Out Boy. Pam Anderson was supposed to be out there playing but according to a Boston reporter who was standing next to me, she was: "playing diva like always." Snap!

Chad Johnson got a little creative with his play-calling at one point. Had Warren Moon throw the ball into the end zone and out of nowhere Chad pops up and catches the ball. No rules against it, points for the white team. So Matt Leinart comes up with his own trick play, has Flutie run to the side, toss him the ball and then launches it down to the end zone. But Flutie's flag came off before he tossed the ball to Leinart. At the end of the day, it didn't matter because the Leinart and Co. dominated.

If there was an ultimate highlight reel from this game, Doug Flutie would be alllll over it. Michael Irvin told me after the game was over: "Did anyone tell Doug Flutie that he was old?" Guy was running everywhere, scrambling, blocking, spinning! Even caught a diving INT to end the game in the end zone, all barefoot.

Spoke to Carl Banks, Michael Irvin, Daryl Johnston, Doug Flutie, Terry Crews, Rocket Ismail, and Warren Moon after the game and got their predictions for this weekend. That story should be up sometime today.