I think John Facenda said it best when he said, “Professional football in America is a special game, a unique game. Played nowhere else on earth, it is a rare game. Pro football is a mirror of early America, reflecting toughness, courage, and self-discipline. The game is perpetual motion, a swirl of flying bodies and constant collisions. A two and a half hour carnival of color, sound and action. There’s glory in the legends of this hard-muscled life, and there’s poetry in each season made of sweat and strife. Do you fear the force of the wind? The slash of the rain? Go face them and fight them, be savage again. A time for achievement. A time for purpose. A time for glory.”
It’s also a time to fire up the grill, fill up the cooler, drop down the tailgate and ogle some scantily-clad cheerleaders! Finally, football is back, and not a moment too soon. As usual, the last six months have been fairly torturous. Sure, there was March Madness, the NFL Draft, the emergence of Danica Patrick, a mildly entertaining steroid scandal and, of course, Gary Busey’s debut on Celebrity Fit Club to divert our attention for brief spurts, but otherwise it’s been another fairly standard spring & summer just biding our time from Super Bowl Sunday to the beginning of the next NFL season.
It’s like when you were a little kid spending the day at the local pool. You’d be having a great time swimming around, splashing your friends, dunking each other, doing cannonballs, taking an occasional leak in the deep end, you know, all the typical stuff. Then the lifeguard would set down his GED study guide, blow his whistle, and make everyone get out for the obligatory chlorine break. That always killed me. I mean, here’s a high school kid who couldn’t change the oil in his own car but he knew precisely when the Olympic-sized swimming pool needed more chlorine, and more importantly, precisely when he’d administered enough to all four quadrants so that it was now safe for you to return without fear of catching hepatitis B from any potentially harmful dookie particles that may have avoided the filtering system. Anyway, so you get out of the pool, nothing else to do but toss your Scooby Doo towel around your neck and head for the snack bar for some Sixlets, some Bottlecaps, maybe some Jawbreakers, and an occasional French Chew while trying not to get third degree burns on the bottom of your feet from walking on the 230-degree cement. After the candy binge, a few rounds of hitting each other with twirled up wet towels, and several minutes of sheer boredom, FINALLY- the whistle blows and we all would jump back into the pool. Well, my friends, that’s where we are right now, the whistles have blown, the footballs have been kicked, and I’m ready to jump back in with a Triple Lindy that would make Thornton Mellon proud.
Yep, I’m pretty jacked-up about this upcoming NFL season. As a matter of fact, I'm you could say I'm just about as excited as Andy Dick at a bratwurst festival. And why shouldn't I be? Look at some of the storylines already in place- There's the T.O. soap opera, the Brett Favre Farewell Tour, the Vikings Roberto Duran Experiment ("No Moss"), the return of Reefer Ricky, Big Ben's impending sophomore jinx, the Pacman Jones trainwreck, the Patriots attempt to three-peat after losing both coordinators and three of their best players, the last season of Monday Night Football on ABC, the new Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders Calendar, plus, all the impending Ron Mexico jokes & jersey sightings. And it will all eventually culmintate with two solid weeks of Super Bowl hype in the murder capital of the United States! I think think it's safe to say that this is shaping up to be a pretty damn entertaining season. But not everyone is as excited as I am. Some people, believe it or not, could actually care less. It's true. We call those people coma patients. Or homosexuals. Or homosexual coma patients. Or, women. Not all women. And not all homosexuals. Just some of them. But definitely all coma patients.
Speaking of which (women, not coma patients), I was talking with a friend of mine at a barbecue last week about rounding up the fellas to meet somewhere to watch the Thursday night regular season kickoff. My friend’s wife happened to be standing next to us and chimed in with, “Oh my God, what’s so special about the first game? They play a bunch of games. I mean, what’s the big deal?, blah, blah, blah.....” To which I answered, “Uh, well, to borrow a line from Joe Dirt,- You might as well ask ‘Why’s a tree good? Why are flowers good? Why’s boobs good? They just is”. She then responded with, “Joe Dirt, ugh, that movie was soooo stupid.” Honestly, I don’t know why he’s still married to her.
Anyway, with the start of every new season inevitably come the predictions, and any of you who know me are fully aware that I hate these predictions and I especially hate the hacks who make them. There are just too many human variables involved for anyone to accurately predict anything about how a season will play out, and anyone who claims that they can is nothing more than a traveling carnie disguised as a "Vegas insider". Now, while I don't believe in the Vegas "insiders" and I wouldn't offer a cup of donkey spit for their opinions, I do believe in where they live. I believe in Vegas. You see, I make it a point to believe in anyplace that stays awake all night offering free drinks while you gamble, all-U-can-eat steak & shrimp buffets, legalized whoring, man-eating white tiger shows, and a top notch CSI unit. And according to Vegas, here are the odds on just some of the things I'm personally looking forward to seeing over the course of the upcoming NFL season.......
Over/Under on the number of strands of hair Chris Berman will have left to comb-over this season: 12
Odds that ABC will dare to interview Joe Namath on the sidelines of a Monday Night game this season: 10-1
Odds that if ABC dares to interview Namath, that they will have Lynn Swann conduct the interview instead of Suzy Kolber: 2-1
Odds that if ABC dares to interview Namath, that he will tell Swann that he wants to kiss him: EVEN
Odds that Mike Vick will infect another woman with herpes before the season is over: 5-1
Odds that Ron Mexico will infect another woman with herpes before the season is over: EVEN
Odds that Terrell Owens and Andy Reid will hug and make up before the season's over: 10-1
Odds that Terrell Owens and Donovan McNabb will hug and make up before the season's over: 20-1
Odds that Mama McNabb will come off the sidelines in Week 1 with a folding chair and whack T.O in the back, WWE-style, then jam a large can of Chunky Clam Chowder down his soup hole: 3-1
Over/Under on how many of Mike Martz' players will threaten to kill him before Week 8: 2
Over/Under on the number of Ravens who will have court dates by Week 9: 3
Odds that Payton Manning will break his own single season TD pass record: 4-1
Odds that Payton Manning will lead the Colts to the Super Bowl this season: 3-1
Odds that Payton Manning will choke like dog eating a furball when the Colts go back to New England: EVEN
Over/Under on the number of times this season that I'll reference the fact that one of my old college roommates banged Marty Schottenheimer's daughter: 18
Odds that the retired fireman who starts the J-E-T-S! cheers at the Meadowlands will finally fall off of his brother's shoulders this season: 10-1
Odds that if he does fall, it will be caught on camera: 15-1
Odds that if he does fall and it is caught on camera, that I'll laugh so hard that I accedentally soil myself: No Line
Over/Under on the number of doobie roaches they'll eventually find in Ricky Williams new beard: 14
Over/Under on the number of times Don Criqui will make me want to jam a sewing needle into my eye: 16
Over/Under on the number of times Stuart Scott will make me want to jam a sewing needle into my eye: 28
Odds that I could actually find a sewing needle in the house: 10,000-1
Over/Under on the number of times I reference Jeff Fisher's porn mustache by Week 5: 11
Odds that smoking-hot US Olympic soccer star Heather Mitts will realize that boyfriend AJ Feeley is a hack and dump him by Week 6: 3-2
Odds that Mr Feeley will wind up as the next Bachelor on ABC: 3-1
Over/Under on the number of times "Redskins offense" and "putrid" will be used in the same sentence by sportswriters this season: 168
Odds that the Texans remove the tribute to Kiss' Paul Stanley cattle skull from their helmets and change their name to the Oilers: 50-1
Odds that the Texans will keep their name but change the logo to a cattle skull with an absurdly long tongue & a pretentious personality: 40-1
Odds that if the Texans do this, that Gene Simmons will immediately sue them for part of the action: EVEN
Odds that the Titans' Pacman Jones could spell "Tennessee" if you spotted him the "Ten" and the "see": 100-1
Odds that he'd spell it "Tenuhsee": 2-1
Over/Under on the number of times I'll type "Damn the Niners, Damn them straight to hell" this season: 18
Odds that someone in Oakland Alameda Stadium will don a '70's afro wig and a Darth Maul mask & call themselves "Darth Moss" before Week 4: EVEN
Odds on that person being currently employed: 30-1
Over/Under on the number of times that Randy Moss, Sebastian Janikowski, and Kerry Collins have collectively been under the influence of something over the last five years: 1,775
Over/Under on the number of Mama Squintz jokes by Week 8: 25
Speaking of Mama Squintz, I'd better get going. I left her lying on the futon with a dozen Oreos, a tall glass of milk and a vibrator. Last time I did that, when I came back she was drinking a milkshake & was picking cookie crumbs out her privates. Now that was a mess.
(One down, 24 more to go....)
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