If there's one thing I hate it's Thursday night football. Sure, when I was single it was just another excuse to go out and do some beers and watch a game. Funny thing happened on the way to the bar; I got married, and, more importantly, had a child. Apparently it's bad form to go out multiple nights to drink and watch a game, who'da thunk it? And even though my other half is still in London, damn it I'm going to groove on tonight's game like Rick James at a vaseline wrestling contest. Call me Super Freak, but I'm all over this game like gross slime is all over the contestants of said event. I know that Da Bears aren't going to win anything this year. I get it. So tonites game is my playoff extravaganza. Fact is that who ever loses this game is done. Period. It pits my Bears against the team with my favorite coach, Mike Singeltary. My question is; how in the world can you expect a team to get a game plan together, practiced, and in place in what, 2 days? The NFL is far from the saturation point, but having games on Thursdays is ultimately a bad idea. Far too many fans are going to miss the game simply because it's friggin' THURSDAY!!! And just to go back on something from earlier in this blog, I didn't actually have the child myself. Being a man I am robbed of the sweet pain of childbirth. (so put that in your feminist feminine hygiene product and smoke it!) But again, this whole idea that football should be on every night and you suck if you can't change everything about your existence to watch it is retarded. Here we have a game that may only appeal to fans of these teams, but that happens every Sunday. Personally I think this is a huge game for Lovie Smith. Yes he brought the team to the show a couple years back, but since then fired Ron Rivera and has taken over the defensive calls himself. How's that turned out? Eventually you have to point the finger at the man running the show. With all these Uber-coaches available I don't think this is a good time for anyone in the coaching profession to be putting up 8-8 seasons. Especially when you're in the greatest sports city in the world, Chicago. So look for Da Bears to come out tonight and keep themselves in the hunt for at least 2 more weeks. Sorry Mr. Singeltary, love ya, but your teams going down like the whore on nickel, Thursday night special, beer night. That just doesn't feel right does it?
I've been thinking about this whole Andre Agassi thing for a couple of days now. The fact that several years after the fact he writes a "tell all" book the talks about how he hated his life is incredibly annoying. I do hate it when someone who has more money than they know what to do with complains about the source of the money. Didn't Mr. Agassi realize that he could have simply walked away with his 10's of millions of dollars and found something that made him happy? But after listening to some of the tools who have been attacking him I've reconsidered. Andre was forced to play the game by an overbearing father who cared little if any for his happiness. He then found himself in a marriage that he simply didn't want to be in. Then his body began to fail him terribly. Now I don't know about you, but yes, I can see how this happened. Unless you are from friggin' mars I think we all want to please our parents. Yes, it was Brooke Shields, but the divorce rate is what in our country? And as I get older I agree that it can be more than emotionally challenging to age gracefully. Then I have to go and hear what a tool like Marat Safin has to say about Andre Agassi. Here's one quote; "If he is as fair play as he says he is, he has to go to the end," Safin said. "You know, the ATP has a bank account and he can give the money back if he wants." Hey moron, what the hell does that even mean? It's bad enough that you're attacking a guy whose jock strap you couldn't carry on your best day ever, but do you have to do so in such a confused way? I've never been a real big tennis fan, but I can tell you right now that Mr. Agassi was 10 times the player you've ever been. And if I'm not mistaken his philanthropic activities outside the game are more than just about every other athlete, combined. It's far too easy to say that he wrote the book for money or attention. The fact is that he doesn't need either. You have to look at the source of what people do. And in this case I do in fact believe that Mr. Agassi wrote this book in an attempt to actually help someone. Yeah, Mr. Safin, you're probably not his target audience, but out there somewhere right now is someone going through crap that makes them feel like they're alone in this world. And maybe, just friggin' maybe Mr. Safin, you self centered weasel, they'll get a chance to hear about this book and realize that everyone, even tennis idols, go through the same things. So before you go and get all self righteous on Mr. Agassi's ass, you could stop for a moment. I was going to say "stop for a moment and reconsider, or change your tone, or whatever", but nah, maybe you could just stop and save us all the sermon you no talent ass clown!!! Rock on Andre!! You've been a fantastic role model.
I can live with the fact that you've changed your format, from cool, over sized mag, to corporate small. The fact that you still complain about "The Man" even though you are "the man: can get old, but I can live with it because I still like your articles that are about music. But now that you've allowed easily the worst journalist of any generation to cover football I have to say enough is enough. Or Basta Ya!!! The fact that Matt Tabai is writing about my favorite thing in the world is so far past annoying it's not even funny. And just like with his other ill-informed opinions, he's brought the most negative spin on the situation humanely possible. His recent article about the Washington Redskins owner, Daniel Snyder, is the worst piece of crap I've ever read. His scorched earth approach to people is unacceptable. Sure Mr. Snyder can be a little controlling, but could that be because he's become incredibly successful with a hands on approach. Mr. Tabai seems to harbor 10,000 pounds of resentment against Mr. Snyder because he is such a success. He even attacked the idea of hiring Joe Gibbs as a gimmick. What? It didn't work, but that doesn't make it stupid. How many sports fans would die to have an owner willing to spend in the way that Mr. Snyder is? The bottom line is that Matt Tabai is a worthless, bitter, piece of shit. He writes for a magazine that feels the real victims of those "To Catch a Predator" specials are the predators themselves. He couldn't go one article, about football, without trying to cheap shot former president Bush. He's the rare kind of asshole who can make you dislike him even when he's writing about an issue that you agree with him about. Do I even mention his misguided tirade against Rush Limbaugh? Nah. Sufficed to say that it was about as uninformed,one sided, unintelligent as his political masturbatory rants. But at least then he wasn't trying to ruin what really matters in this world; the NFL!!!
It was only 3 weeks ago that I found some great advertising offering Super Bowl tickets for the "sure thing" event in waiting; a New York Jets VS. New York Giants game. What happened? Let me say this, I can't recall a time where so many have jumped off so quickly for such sad reasons from their teams bandwagons. I swear, NY fans need to have their meds checked. One buddy of mine, who actually writes for this site, almost broke both ankles jumping away from his team(see Big Blue blog). Sure, both teams have hit a rough patch, but to give up on them entirely? The G-men are 5-3 while the Jets still stand at a respectable 4-4. Not exactly disasters. What these teams really need is to get healthy, while their fans could use a mental health day. It's just maddening to me to have to sit in traffic and listen to NY sports radio and the unending parade of "true blue" fans who do nothing but rail on their teams. It's not like they're rooting for the Browns or Raiders, in that case I could see it. If you're a NY fan, and you get through to "Miked Up" do me a favor and try not to simply bury your team with obvious points, have an answer. Come to the table with a couple of ideas, not just bitching like a bunch of pms-ing high school girls who can't convince their mom's to let them have the car for the night. You're better than that. Not better than Bears fans, but better than a bunch of pimply faced teen aged girly girls.
You can call Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner a lot of things, but a shrewd football man isn't one of them. Or it is. Wait, I'm not quite sure what I meant by that. Well rest easy Dog Pound members, your fearless leader has rooted out the real problem and put an end to it; that being the evil workings of the now ex GM George Kokinis. It took less than a year for Mr. Lerner to sniff out the cause of the teams ill's, and to remedy the situation. Obviously Mr. Kokinis was the reason the the Browns have gotten off to another miserable start. Just look at the moves he's made that have clearly had a long lasting effect on the teams ability to compete. Yeah, this guy sucks, off with his head!!! Or could there be another problem that this storied franchise is overlooking? Perhaps when said owner, Mr. Lerner, wants to identify the reason for his teams suckyness, he should merely look in the mirror. Who was it that went out and hired Eric Mangini 15 seconds after he had been fired by the Jets? Surely it must have been the evil George Kokinis. Actually no, he wasn't really there yet. The point here is that you can always tell a sinking ship by the way the captain of the vessel is acting. In this case the owner is jumping into a lifeboat and kicking everyone else back into the water. My advice to Mr. Lerner? If the ship is going down at least act like the captain at the end of "Titanic" and have some cool about you. And yes, I know you get that reference, we all saw the ultimate chick-flick. Who knows, maybe you won't have to spend your time meeting with fans who just want to tell you how bad you suck, in order to convince them not to embarrass you when your team gets on Monday Night Football, by staging a walk out. Please, please, please, do some homework on the next guy you're going to hire. And be ready for his first bit of advise that will surely be to fire your current head coach. There are several Super Bowl caliber coaches available for next season, make sure your pride doesn't get in the way, and go hire one, no matter what it costs.
So now Brett Favre has slayed every dragon before him, well other than winning a Super Bowl in purple. He has shown everyone that they were wrong to doubt him even for a moment. So why was I still so annoyed with the "Chosen One" this weekend? If I look deep into my heart the reason becomes clear; Steve Mariucci. My God, Mr. Favre I apologize with every ounce of my soul. It wasn't you. Watching the NFL network I see now that the moment that the gag reflex hit me was when Mr. Mariucci came on screen, with his sheepish, aw-shucks demeanor and yet still cocky attitude because he's BFF's with the afore mentioned Favre. If I have to sit and watch as all the commentators sit around ogling Mr. Mariucci because he's "that close" to the fire I swear I'll crap your pants. His interviews amount to little more than verbal blow jobs, yeah, I said that, and don't even scratch the surface of what could be done. Now I'm positive that if you asked Mr. Favre he'd tell you that "Mooch" does a great job, and to leave him the frig alone, he's shown that loyalty really matters to him. I think it's just that "Mooch" has overstayed his welcome by about as long as he's been there. So for the love of all that is holy, and the safety of your pants, don't think I"m not serious about soiling them, let's pray that "Mooch" can find another line of work where his boyish charm won't loosen my bowels.
