Category: sports

Watching football, curled up on the couch with the laptop catching up on blogs, e-mail, etc and I just noticed that CBS’s new penalty notice underneath the little scorebox in the top corner of the screen looks just like a piece of corn on the cob. CBS, what’s up with that? Are you being paid by ADM to make me want corn?

Oh, and Sam Madison’s interception, picking the ball up from the bounce off his teammates back with a leap OVER him was the coolest defensive play I’ve seen in a long time. Good golly, I love me some football.

Relatedly, I watched NFL Countdown this morning, and they showed Rush’s comment from last week that led to all the brouhaha, and his resignation. A bunch of critics have said that the other people on the show didn’t protest enough. Seeing the replay, I think that Tom Jackson and Steve Young responded correctly. They didn’t respond to the racial aspect of it, because they didn’t recognize that part of it at the time. But, both Jackson and Young both responded very strongly in football terms, defending McNabb’s ability – which I think was the right way to respond to it whether or not they caught the racial aspect of it or not.

It’s a football show. They’re former football players. They responded in football terms. Makes sense to me. I also think that the response from especially Tom Jackson this morning was spot-on. They addressed it at the open of the show before the opening credits, which was perfect. After they addressed, it they ran the opening credits and got down to football. Perfect.

Thank goodness that’s over. I didn’t see the comment, but I sure am glad Rush is off NFL Countdown. I love the show, but seeing his face on the show every sunday made me ill. He added nothing to the show, and was constantly interrupting with his stupid blowhard comments and ruined the genial raucousness of the show that I loved. That show only has room for one blowhard, and his name’s Berman. Berman’s got the experience and the good nature to pull it off and make it funny instead of galling. Rush is just a bore. Good riddance.

Fantasy Football was supposed to start this weekend, but we couldn’t get twelve dependable dorks to register for the league in time. So, attampt two drafts on Wednesday. It’s quite a luxury to be able to see your prospective players in action the first week before you have to draft them. My team, as it has been the last three years is Los Betos named after my favorite greasy Mexican place in Tucson. It’s also funny to me because it either means “The Beasts” or “The Dummies”.

My sinus infection sucks… And in an effort to take my mind off the sucking of my sinuses and the accompanying pain, I decided that Saturday night would be a good time to dye my hair. I don’t have a good picture of it yet, or I would have posted it along with this. The last time I did this (I think it was spring of last year), I went ultra-blond, which isn’t too big a departure from my normal color. Having already done the “one shade off” thing, I decided it was time for something a little more adventurous and Saturday morning picked out “Auburn”, which is a slightly less than ultra-red. I thought my hair would come out a little redder than it did… Right now, I have coppery colored locks (ok, lock? I just got it cut so it’s mighty short). Jen loves it, and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s totally different without being a “crazy teenager” color like purple or blue – not that I won’t go purple someday, I just might.

I would tell you more, but my face is going to pop any second – CAT Scan’s on Thursday.

UPDATE: Since Dawson asked so nicely, I posted a shot from the Sidekick’s crappy camera to my TypePad Mopho Gallery. It really doesn’t do the absolute coppery happiness of my hair justice, but it’s the best I got.

Sorry, one more before I go to bed… how creepy is it when John Madden says “penetration”?

Since I bought my PlayStation 2, I’ve bought just one game, Jak and Daxter. I’ve rented half a dozen now, and have found what will probably be the next member of my permanent collection: Madden 2003. Other than some unfortunate choice of music with profanity in it in the menus, the game is great. The franchise mode is still there (I’ve been playing the Madden series since Madden 1995 on my old 486), only improved greatly with trickier trades. My favorite part though is the improved play designer. It’s way too much fun. I created a formation yesterday with five wide receivers, lined up two to the strong side, and three to the right. The options are amazing, and you can practice the play with any offensive and defensive unit you want. It’s great, totally worth the purchase price. I think next I’ll create a whole playbook of I formation plays with four wideouts. Yes, indeed, the fun never ends.

I’m sure you’ve read all about it already, but I was there. Ok, I wasn’t there there, but I was in the stadium. Yes, we made it to Monday Night Football last night. It took us two hours to get there, a mile of walking past tailgaters, port-a-potties and up four stadium levels of ramps to get to our seats on the upper-deck. That said, we had a surprisingly good view of the field and play.

Ok, the game sucked. It sucked so bad that we knew it was over after the Eagles’ second drive. We were surrounded by a bunch of Eagles fans (four right in front of us, one next to me), and there were a surprising number in the stadium. As the game wore on, and the outcome became more inevitable, it became less and less comfortable to be there. The exodus began shortly after the second half began. As the third quarter drudged towards the 0:00, every Redskins screw up started a stream of Redskins fans headed for the exit and the awaiting traffic jam. That left the hardcore drunkards rooting for both teams, which led to the pepper spray incident I linked to above. When the referee said, “A foreign substance has been sprayed on the Eagle’s bench,” we decided we’d had enough and headed for the ramps.

That’s when we saw the dark side of pro football games – the drunk bastards. See, the police used pepper spray to stop a fight. When we got to the first ramp, it was shut down, and we saw half a dozen fans being sequestered against the rail, surrounded by cops and two or three state police directing us to another ramp because they had closed the ramp to clean up the mess.

On our way to ramp number two, we walked past a small group of Eagles and Redskins fans in a shouting match. As we walked past, the words were heated and slurred and bodies were inching closer to each other, chests thrust out. Yeah, I narced on them.

We escaped the drunken yells of “E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!” and got the car, where we waited about twenty minutes to get out of the parking lot. Surprisingly, traffic was light on the beltway headed home, and we made it home a little before two.

It was fun, but Jen and I both agreed we don’t need to do it again. I like Pro Football best when I can watch it on TV, with my bathroom handy, my snack food (that doesn’t cost 4 times what it should), and I can flip to other games, and turn off the TV if the game gets boring. It was an experience; one I’m glad I had, but not one I’m ready to repeat.

And today – root canal. YES!

In keeping with my theme started yesterday, let’s pay homage to the punters of yesteryear.