CERTIFIED IRRELEVANT: this is why you proof-read and occasionally research

The masses have spoken: this is likely not Jim Thome’s car. Of course, when writing the post in my brain last Friday, it was a little heavier on the “this could easily not be Jim Thome’s car” and lighter on the “this is the car of Jim Thome and the back of that guys’ head moderately resembles the back of Jim Thome’s head”.

Ironically, a Google of “Jim Thome License Plate” brought up his JockBio, which states his vanity plate of choice is “25 DBTH” for his jersey number and “Don’t Believe the Hype”.

So, “Don’t Believe the Hype” where ‘the’ is ‘my’ - JM most likely did not tailgate and surreptitiously (read: painfully obviously) photograph Jim Thome and his car for the masses.

Anywho - how ’bout them Soul?

Reader Suggestion Theater: Things for Utah’s Mascot to do

Chief of the Utah Blaze is challenging YOU, dwindling Utah Blaze fans, to challenge HIM to entertain YOU during what could be the Blaze’s fifth-straight LOSS versus Georgia this Saturday, and per his page, the front office doesn’t want to see him lit on fire unless you really REALLY want it.

Our ideas thus far:

• Attempt the drop-kick-field-goal …um, while jumping off a trampoline
• Boxing match with giant fire hydrant
• Showing the defense how to stop a third or fourth down conversion
• Any of the above with something on fire

Leave your suggestions in the comments - if you’re so inclined, suggest them directly to the man dog himself here.

Brett Favre Retires With Ground Left To Make Up

By now, it’s big old news that Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers announced his retirement, realizing that there was no way that he was going to bridge the 440-touchdown gap between himself and Dr. Clint Dolezel, Ph.D. He finally made his peace with merely being better than Jay Gruden and Todd Hammel, and decided that it was time to permanently shift to lounging around on his sprawling Mississippi estate, leaving only the possibility of rolling around in piles of money to occupy his time.

It’s at this point that I’d like to start the rumor that he’s going to join the Orlando Predators in order to prove his dominance in all phases of football. Then he’s going to play for FC Dallas, and perhaps a couple seasons of rugby. Aussie Rules football? The baffling Celtic football? What is it at the end of the tunnel pictured above? ESPN makes it look like some sort of Renaissance painting of St. Francis of Assisi.

Seriously: let’s go with the idea that since his competitive streak can’t be capped, he’s going to play for the New Orleans Voodoo, because it’s close to home. And he’s going to play for free. And he has the stated goal of throwing 220 touchdowns this year. It’ll be great. It’s like he’s going to the football equivalent of a methadone clinic. “Brett, we’re going to get you to step down from competing gradually…”

Out of Our Comas…

Briefly, anyway. Sooooooo… Yeah: that happened. We were up on Deadspin, and didn’t actually report on the game, because we did enough of that here. In any event: whee, yay fun.

The plan for this week was to recap what we got out of going to New Orleans (besides free food and carpal tunnel), as well as to decide what we’re going to do next. Unfortunately, real life got in the way. I know my esteemed co-editor is swamped at work, and my office has decided to block wordpress and any other blogging sites. That puts a crimp in the ol’ plans. So, if anyone wants to hire some random dude with a theatre degree, you know where to find me.

I’m going to get into a recap of the season eventually, but suffice it to say that we entered into this project for the purposes of having a regular target to make fun of, and ended up rather liking the sport. It was sort of weird, how it happened. We still won’t pretend to know what we’re talking about, but our setting of “Ironic Detachment (Cruel)” has shifted to “Ironic Semi-Detachment (Fondness)”.

What to do in the long months until the nets go back up? The title “It’s Still Football” could just as easily pertain to our alma mater, so we may throw up a post about Northwestern now and again, and if we come across weird football things that fall through the cracks, we’ll put them up. Of course, when Bobby Sippio gets picked up by the Bears, or something, we’ll weigh in. But we don’t really know what to do with ourselves. So, check in every now and then, and hopefully we’ll have something funny to say. Of course, if anyone out there has a suggestion, we’re open to it.

And, like I said, we still haven’t given the 2007 season the wrap-up that it’s due, so this isn’t a “signing off” post, or anything like that. I’m just ruminating because I can’t when I’m at work. Bastards.

No, Harold, I Do Not Want Anything From Boston Market

We have some time - the teams are stretching, and the kickers have already played the game where they try to doink the ball off every post - I’ll go off-topic and post the ESPN Sexual Harrasment Policy. They’ve limited the one that goes up next to the OSHA regulations to one page, and taped it to the wall outside their truck. (Click to see it. I’ll resize it later.)

I, for one, welcome our new Dutch overlords.

Start about 3:00 in. As if you’ve never seen this.

[Editor's note: don't get all pissed off by this post. This is called 'satire']

I’m not sure how, but apparently, a Google of one sort another led a regular contributor to an NFLE Amsterdam Admirals message board… here. The text next to the link to our humble blogging abode: “Staan veel links op de site naar AFL.” Which, according to Babel Fish, means “To stand much left on the site to AFL.” Perfectly clear. Does anyone speak Dutch? We’d love to know if our bump in traffic was friendly, like when Disney invaded France, or hostile, like… when Disney invaded France.

Anyhow, I have a few questions for our sadly-now-without-a-football-diversion dictators:

• So… do y’all speak English?
• Did we do anything good for you in WWI or WWII?
• Is everything we heard about Amsterdam in Pulp Fiction true?
• Is rooting for the Turku Trojans an acceptable substitute in your post NFLE world?
• Can we refer to you as “Danish overlords” too, or does that mean we’ve been taken over by pastries?

Anyhow, our condolences on your loss, but at least you can make a trip to London this fall to see a battle between two NFL powerhouses. By which I mean the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants.

Actually, both of those teams could probably get rocked by the Berlin Thunder (2-8, 0-5 at home). Which, incidentally, is where Travis Lulay ended up, since you asked.

Happy 4th of July, by the way. Go America.

Topical? No. Self-Serving? Um, Yeah.

Good news, It’s Still Football Readers! Both members of the editorial cabal survived the first round of the Ladies… Gauntlet of Eventual Shame. I, for reasons that involve Higher Maths, got relocated to the Campbell Conference Region. So, look for me there, where I am contending against Tom, an NFL Fanhouse writer. That’s personally troubling, as they are, on the whole, rather talented. However, I remain a brooding actor in my picture. Look how deep I am!

J Fizzle remains in the Mid-Atlantic Conference and matches up against Precious Roy from Kermit the Blog. [Co-editor's note: seriously, read his post - you'll get four credits for intermediate statistics at any accredited university. Plus, Barry Bonds can suck our collective nuts] Hey, Roy, nice Godot joke; we’ll just be hiding in these trash cans, waiting to make our Samuel Beckett references. However, I’m not sure if we have any response to your statistical analysis. I’ll let JF handle that. [Co-editor's note: see above. Barry Bonds can suck our collective nuts - JFiz]

[UPDATE: Roy made a few (deserved) pokes at your black-and-white photographed editor, and as you can see in the comments section it's all in good fun - I'm squared off against a gentleman and a scholar, who happens to be one hell of a writer and completely right about my handle]

Now, mobilize, you several dozen denizens of the It’s Still Football Nation Municipality Rural Area! As Aristotle said: “Vote or die!”

Da Coach Says…

“Last Monday was far superior to this Monday.”

Briefly: An excuse to mention American Idol and Romo/Underwood

One of our early claims to Internets fame (Ed. note: not to be confused with actual fame, unless you’re Gary Brolsma or Will Ferrell’s landlord)(Ed. note: even in Internets terms, this post was not really that big a deal) was an in-depth look at a humorous fan interference penalty during a Dallas-Orlando game that prevented Clint Dolezel from getting ever-closer to that 800 TD mark.

Because this was our first ‘big splash’, we took delight in seeing readers submitting comments, which until then, we hadn’t really had (to clarify, both readers and comments). One of those comments caught my eye, because it linked to a site about a contestant on ”American Idol”. I didn’t think too much of it, mostly because I hadn’t watched an episode of ”American Idol” since the audition of William Hung. I’ve actually been so unaware of “American Idol” that last year, when I was still working in a restaurant in my final year of college, I walked by the above-bar television during a slow post-lunch hour. I glanced at the screen, and asked my manager who the old guy with Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest was. My manager informed me that was Taylor Hicks, who had won the night before.

Anyhow, I didn’t think too much of our Idol commenter until recently, when I casually glanced through our archives to see how the site had progressed since we started in March. Again, I saw the Idol comment, then did a quick Google to see who it was and how they’d fared in the show.

The author was ‘Blake Lewis’. Tonight he finds out if he can look forward to the illustrious career of an “American Idol” winner like Reuben Studdard, or the lucrative career of an “American Idol” runner-up like Bo Bice.

We should point out that although the commenter name and (secret to you) email address is ‘Blake Lewis’, it doesn’t seem as though it’s run by the actual beat-box champ, or that he enjoys the ongoings of the Arena Football League. However, we look forward to the day when he follows in the footsteps of “Idol” winner Carrie Underwood and dates Tony Romo, so we have another excuse to put up this picture:

So, go Blake. Beat …your competitor. I actually have no idea who you’re up against, all I know for sure is that recently Paula broke her face. And it wasn’t Simon’s fault.

You Know Who Else Was a Dark Horse? James K. Polk.

In the annals of questionable decisions, electing to create a blog about the Arena Football League ranks as pretty ludicrous. We knew this: very few things could guarantee us fewer readers for our clever-ish writing. Another thing we know: we’re not going to be mistaken for a latter-day Adonis any time soon. Therefore, when the Ladies… announced that they’ve decided to form a “Hot Bloggers Bracket,” I immediately said, “It would be a terrible idea to enter ourselves! It’s ideal!” J-F responded, “It’s like they’re the soccer-team high school clique and as AFL bloggers, we’re like the Dungeons and Dragons crew,” and lo, it was to be.

Mind you, we’re not monstrous; in fact, there have been ladies (small “l” for now, perhaps a capital “L” later?) who find us downright attractive. One girl, specifically, found us both attractive, each in our own unique way, as we are not twins. Maybe Twins, but not twins. And only one of us would want to be a Twin. And I’m not fat and bald, like Danny Devito. But I digress. What we may lack in, say, abdominal definition and, in my case, what the Europeans refer to as “Height,” we certainly make up for in wit. It’s rapier-like, as I’m sure you’re aware … ladies.

Since we have to submit photos, here are some of us being harmless, delightful chaps, occasionally in a sporting context.