“Someone, Get Me a Helmet! Quickly!”

Apparently, in the correct circumstances, the AFL is so fan-friendly that one can simply walk off the street and be invited on to the team. Joe O’Donnell, a friend of the Chicago Rush’s John Moyer, was attending the game with his wife when Paul Edinger got a bit of a groin tweak during pre-game. Faced with the prospect of having no kicker and embarrassingly being forced to deliver the ball to the other team by yelling “Waaaaarning: kickoff!” and throwing the ball downfield, Chicago mustered an impressment gang, who were instructed to roam the stands for able-bodied kickers (much to the dismay of James Madison, but to the ultimate delight of O’Donnell). With merely 15 minutes available between the injury and roster submission deadline, the Rush did what any right-thinking team would do: they provided “shoes, shorts, T-shirt and an emergency tryout,” and I hope ultimately a helmet and pads, but what do I know?

O’Donnell went 5/7 on extra points making him – a kicker who last kicked an oblong spheroid through ordinary-sized uprights in 2004 while trying out for the Chicago Bears – not tremendous, but certainly serviceable. The bad news, of course, is that he missed his first and last extra points in a 50-47 loss, and kicked the final onside kick directly to Troy Bergeron. Troy Bergeron doesn’t know how to make mistakes on the hands team. He’s heard of these “mistakes,” oh, yes, but he has no context in which to put the content, so the idea of error is meaningless.

Which is really a damn shame, because you know that if it came down to a field goal to tie, and this guy made it, Disney would have bought the rights to the story on the spot. (Note: Joe – prepare to take dictation. We shall call it… THE LONLIEST GYPSY KICKER.)

In any event, bravo, Joe O’Donnell: to kick 5 extra points cold in a professional game means you have some serious intestinal fortitude, friend. Ice water in the veins. A large set of cojones. ONIONS.

[Thanks, in part, to Sam, who insisted I make note of this in a timely fashion.]

Bwah?

Guh? Utah 51, Chicago 48?

P.S. That’s why you don’t cut your veteran all-star kicker 15 minutes into the season, idiot. It’s bad juju.

Monday Night (Arena) Football Liveblog: Philly at Georgia

So, as we’re all well aware, there’s a crazy gimmick for tonight’s MN(A)F game: your announcing crew is… everybody! We’re going to try to document this disaster. My theory: train wreck that a plane crashes on to, the wreckage of which is loaded onto a tanker which runs aground in the Aleutian Islands, and everyone who isn’t eaten by polar bears is picked up by a zeppelin that explodes.

Other analysis: Philadelphia by 17. Georgia has been awkwardly stumbling from game to game on defense, and hasn’t really found a rhythm on offense. Philadelphia is (a) operating like a surgeon and (b) irritated about letting their guard down last week. Let’s see what happens.

We’re also going to try this liveblogging software thing, and if it works, great, if it doesn’t… Sorry, four people.

If you’re interested, do this thing:

Okay, you should be seeing frames, and you’re probably not. Work, dammit! And if it doesn’t end up working, go here: LIVEBLOG!

That was fun. My thoughts, from the end of the liveblog were thusly:
I think we were best served when Ray was commenting by himself. Also, if we could get a more judicious use of the microphones, instead of “Hey, it’s the guys on the field all the time: isn’t that weeeeeeirrrrd?” that’d be great. Stick Ray on the sidelines, because that was cool, but let him talk more.

The game was a solid B+ (Philadelphia played pretty sloppily), and the experiment a B or B-.

Utah Blaze Totally Don’t Freak Out At All, Cut Videtich

DID YOU KNOW: The Utah Blaze have only had one kicker ever?

DID YOU KNOW: Steve Videtich only needed one field goal to tie the record for career field goals made? AND that he already holds the record for most extra points with more than 1,000?

DID YOU KNOW: That he missed a 36-yard field goal and an extra point that would’ve defeated the (possibly) lowly Arizona Rattlers this past weekend?

DID YOU KNOW: The Utah Blaze reacted like somebody had failed to provide them with a pony for their 16th birthday party, and released the shit out of Videtich today?

DID YOU KNOW: That I made a LOLKicker for poor Steve that made me feel so bad, I decided not to run it?

He’ll probably get picked up by someone else, and we’ll have a good subplot of the Phoenix variety. I hope. But be warned, Joe Germaine and the rest of the Utah Blaze players I can’t think of right now: Coach Danny White is running this ship like Darth Vader ran the search for the Millennium Falcon:

Okay, I’ll run the one that made me sad, after the jump.