I’ve been here before!
It’s painfully close to the end of the week, so you know what that means - blogging on company time! All your favorites, from Grampa Gary’s Power Rankngs to Can’t Miss Random Pick and Weekend Pillow Fight await you after the jump:
Ah, yes, the low-hanging fruit of posting this Far Side picture. In this allegory, Utah’s the door, by the way.
Holy flaming dog-poop! Utah won their pillow fight with Kansas City for their first victory of the season! Success and joy abound, for Coach/GM/Incompetent Buffoon Danny White’s urge to kill is subsiding! I could cover this in the Weekend in Review that tends to go up on Wednesday-or-not-at-all-sorry-about-that, but screw it. 1-9, baby! No zeroes here! All right! Let’s you, me, and our 12,000 friends celebrate.
Wait - 12,208 people saw this game? For real? An 0-9 Utah draws 12,000? What were they giving away, gold bullion? Was it “Full price ticket for the first wife, all extra wives are free” night? (Ah, yes, polygyny jokes in re: Utah. Will you never get old?*)
On the other hand… the completely mysterious Cleveland Gladiators managed to capitalize on smashing Matt D’Orazio’s bones to a fine powder, forcing a somewhat-rusty Tony Graziani into the game. Cleveland… controlled the clock? I mean, it was a relatively low-scoring affair, and the Gladiators got four rushing touchdowns out of Marlon, excuse me, Marlion Jackson, so… presumably… I seriously have no idea what to make of Cleveland. I have to presume that Bernie Kosar now just wears a cape and a zorro mask and hides in shadows, leaping out at unsuspecting owners.
[Ominous voice] No team remains unbeaten. No team remains winless. [/Ominous voice]
As for tonight’s tilt in Tampa between the semi-mighty Chicago Rush and the mostly-spastic Tampa Bay Storm, well, let’s just say our loyalties are divided. On the one hand, a human being who’s been nice to us, which allows us to overlook the fact that it seems that he’s on his back a distressing amount of the time and while he gets his stats, there hasn’t been as much, you know, winning as one might like. On the other hand: blatant homerism! WOO! Our city rocks the hardest! We have deep dish pizza and beef sandwiches and HOLY SHIT: MARIO’S ITALIAN LEMONADE OPENED FOR THE SUMMER LAST WEEK.
[The sound of a chair being flipped over, doors slam, minutes pass]
Where was I? Oh, yes: torn between whatever the opposite of a rock and a hard place is. Here’s the analysis: Tampa Bay hasn’t done well against defensive pressure, which is the only thing Chicago’s consistently shown. If Brett Dietz, the Finnish Flash, can escape from the Rush D, they’ve got a puncher’s chance. Michna’s a good kid, but he doesn’t quite have ice water in the veins yet. You know when you turn on the tap to “cold,” and you run your hand under the stream and say to yourself, “Well, I could drink that, or I could see if there’s anything left in the Brita,” but it’s colder than tepid? That’s what Michna has. Chicago has the defensive edge, and they’re even on offense.
My theory? Chicago pulls out a squeaker, but Tampa Bay gets some sort of moral victory. OR, if the Storm do pull this one out, expect them to go on a second-half run, a la last season.
WHERE IS THE WINDEX?
MOVING IS A TERRIBLE IDEA. SO IS MOVING RIGHT BEFORE ATTENDING THE KENTUCKY DERBY.
Since my ride is picking me up shortly and I have 10 minutes’ worth of internetz access, we’ll forget Grampa Gary this week and just summarize the week thusly:
THE GOOD: Philly, Chicago, New Orleans
THE BAD: Cleveland, Georgia
THE UGLY: Kansas City, Utah, your mom
CMRP: New Orleans over Georgia. Tasty!
WEEKEND PILLOW FIGHT: Kansas City? UTAH? BLARG!
TC may have something cooking for you kiddies - have a great weekend, enjoy the games, and when in the infield at the Derby, always help strangers saran-wrap their friends to portable toilets.
Coming up with fresh ideas is tough, just ask Brett Ratner. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this nugget by Neal Pollack on Slate regarding things such as weekly power rankings, mock drafts, and MVP races being signs of lazy sports writing (ironically, similar points have been made on Slate in the past) and overall detrimental to the appreciation of sporting in general. Fair enough. Then, yesterday KSK’s Big Daddy Drew posted an NFL draft preview on Deadspin that suggested anyone bemoaning the surplus of mock drafts can, in his parlance, choke on a dick. Fair enough.
Both articles made me further question qualms I’ve had about my weekly riffing on the occasionally disjointed Gary Horton AFL ramblings from the WWL, and gave me an idea to keep this feature fresh.
Maybe next week. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m at Excel training right now! Time for some good ol’ fashion blogging! Grampa Gary, you’re getting roasted in bold after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of days late, I know, but nevertheless, we promised clips of referees talking about things, and we shall deliver!
First, a grab of the “Madden ‘98″ graphics I was referring to:
Throwbacks! As for the rest, well, there’s the old saying that there are two things you’re better off not knowing how they’re made: sausage and laws. We can add “sorting out complicated officiating infractions” to that list once I figure out how to make it pithier. Enjoy:
My favorite part is the bit where they show the stands from just behind the referee. The Kansas City fans do not look happy, and it makes me not want his job. If you were curious about the guy in the brown suit jacket who is irate at the end of the clip, it’s owner Neil Smith, who, we’re happy to say, watches from the stands.
We also get a clarification on what sorts of celebrations are okay, and what aren’t. I’m with Ray and Bob: that line’s pretty arbitrary.
“You can pump all night,” indeed…
Okay, if this is a “rules broadcast,” to introduce strangers to the Arena League, then who better to impose upon for my liveblogging purposes than someone who’s never seen the friggin’ game. So I’m hanging out with my friend Pat tonight.
Lead in to the AFL? College Bowling, of course. “I like college bowling more than pro bowling, actually - it has more integrity,” says Pat. Maryland-Eastern Shore is your women’s bowling champion. Yes. This is terrifying.
But, everyone’s miked up, we’re at the Something-or-other Dome (Sprint Center) in Kansas City, and I’m going to document the exact moment that strangers lose interest in the AFL.
Ray Bently and Bob Wischusen are our guides. “Oh ho ho,” says Pat, “We’re going to have a ratings bonanza!”
The dimensions are described to my friends, who are speechless with what I assume is confusion
We’re doing this crazy thing … now:
Take a long look at that face, Chicagoans. That is the face that handed us an OT loss. Take solace in the fact that MyHeritage.com says he looks like either Michael Douglas, Boris Yeltsin, or P Diddy.
What a weekend of mostly-predictable results. What does this weekend look like? The always-astute analysis (ed. note: not entirely sarcastic, except it’s more obvious than astute, whatever, he seems to watch most of the games or at least pay someone to do it for him) of ESPN’s Grampa Gary Horton holds the answers. Read the rest of this entry »
The weekend in review post is coming, but one thing had to happen first. The AFL got more than scant recognizance on ESPN! Woo! It took something outrageous to happen, like Orlando’s Elton Patterson blowing out his quad doing some sort of jig in the end zone to fire up the Predators faithful, but Kornheiser and Wilbon care! They actually care! Plus, this gives me an excuse to run the footage of his leg exploding.
Ah, youthful exuberance. It can happen to the best of us, right, Random Gramatica Brother?
More orange on the page! WAY more interesting than Ol’ Illinois What’s-His-Injury.
Okay, this may or may not have quasi-broken 10 days ago; that doesn’t make it any less interesting. It’s a well-known fact that Chad Johnson is cranky with his situation in Cincinnati, to the degree that he blew off the Bengals opening workouts this week. However, curious is the fact that he’d be willing to play anywhere else. Even… the Arena League? Why, yes, according to offhand statements on ESPN Radio.
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Whatever it is and where ever I am, it’s going to be something fun. You know what, I might be playing Arena ball. That’s the route I might have to go.”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the silliest possible thing ever. We saw, with our own eyes, in perosn, Bobby Sippio leap into the stands after a touchdown, dance with fans, and then SPRINT back to his bench and dive over the boards to avoid a delay of game and/or too-many-men-on-the-field penalty on the extra point. That’s Bobby Sippio. He never made a public statement implying his desire to use a deer as a prop in a touchdown celebration. The Bleacher Report puts it best:
“Plus, the AFL, unlike the NFL, would most likely allow his dances and celebrations since they realize it’s entertainment and because well, they’re desperate for fans and would love to increase their ratings. I mean, the guy would be bringing in tons of fans and giving the league more media coverage than ever so I doubt they’d have a problem with him whipping out signs and Irish dancing.”
Commissioner Hagrid, when he handed out the 64-ton Arena Bowl trophy mentioned that the AFL stood for “All-Fun League.” the guy would be allowed to carry fireworks in his uniform if he wanted. He could wrap the ball in flash paper and set the thing on fire. He could leave the field, fly to Switzerland, put the ball in the Super Hadron Collider at CERN, and the AFL’d sent a camera crew after him and hold the game until he came back. And these are all inanimate objects! Do I see strippers involved in these touchdown celebrations? I certainly do.
Johnson wants to play in Dallas. Chris Sanders wanted to play for the Cowboys, too, but he didn’t get his wish. Maybe… nah. That’d be insane. But it’d be destination TV, that’s for certain. You want to get stupid, AFL fans? Root for further logjams in the Bengals front office.
(Note: This was originally referenced on the 18th of March on The Fanhouse. It was promptly forgotten about until The Bleacher Report and Under the Roof showed up in my Google Reader this afternoon. Hat tips all around.)
