Sports fans have heard all manner of strange excuses for a team's underperformance but Baltimore Ravens' coach Brian Billick has distinguished himself by "blaming the Linux operating system".

In a preview to Sunday's visit to Cleveland (where they lost 24-14), the Washington Post reports that Billick blamed the previous week's "defensive breakdown on team's switch to Linux operating system". On October 14, Baltimore went down 31-23 at the Green Bay Packers.

What? Has the Washington Post been hacked? Did the Baltimore defence forget how to "crash" into the opposition? Has the world gone mad? Or, are Americans displaying a sense of humour?

Yes, strange as it may seem it appears that writer Norman Chad is having a joke at the expense of Brian Billick, a noted Mac fan. In the story he also says: "if you play [an Arizona] Cardinals game film backward, I believe there's a satanic message."

Very droll.

So we guess that Sir Alex Ferguson's excuse for a few seasons ago that Manchester United was losing at half-time in a game against Southampton because players couldn't see each other in grey shirts remains the best worst excuse ever. Unless you know different... ®