The closer we get to the big day, the increasingly inflamed tensions on both sides of the “War on Christmas” seems to grow– and yes, there are two sides. Earlier today on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, fill-in host Cenk Uygur took his last call to tackle a slice of media surrealism entitled “The NBA’s War on Christmas” on FoxNation.com, while failing to note that the piece was not Fox News fare, nor the opinion that of FNC, but of NBA coach Phil Jackson.

TMZ is reporting that Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of sexual assault by a woman in Georgia, marking the second time in a year the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback has faced sexual assault accusations.

The latest Glenn Beck outburst to garner big media attention is a bizarre segment of his radio show in which he compares Tiger Woods to OJ Simpson. Beck’s comments have people accusing Beck of bigotry (buttressed by the fact that he went on to reference another black athlete, Kobe Bryant, whose offense was also not comparable to Woods’), but at least equally disturbing was his return to the “poisoning women” well. Check it out.

So it’s that time of year. Everyone is trying to figure out who the most important person of the year is. Time will be releasing their pick shortly (though they have been known to apply the term “person” loosely). So: Who is the most important person of the year? Capt. Sully over President Obama? Have your say.

In Bill Simmons‘ The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy you essentially get a 700 page Simmons column, complete with lists of the 96 greatest players of all time, the ten best teams in history and around 1,500 words on how Kobe Bryant compares to Teen Wolf. Nobody knows more about the history of basketball than Bill Simmons.

Even non-tabloid readers have heard that Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is the subject of a civil lawsuit, filed by a casino hotel worker in Lake Tahoe, that accuses the two-time Super Bowl champ of forcing her to have sex after a celebrity golf tournament in 2008.

They may have heard about it from any number of outlets, just not the self-proclaimed World Wide Leader in Sports, ESPN.