The NFL

Season officially kicked off last night. Awkward 1st game. It was strangely not-energized after a raucous start. Weird. Daunte Culpepper stabbed one of my fantasy teams in the kidneys with his 2 int performance. Thanks big guy. Glad I believed in the hype. You have 15 more weeks of redemption song to play.

I have privately chatted with my buddies about the following items for some time and I will publicly chat about them now. Some are NFL related, others are just wonderful ideas, either way, this is a free blog so pipe down.

1) How is it possible, with networks like HBO, pay-per-view, and the wonders of the internet, is there not a network that carries games with real sports fans as commentators? The conversations (read heated arguments over minutiae) my boys and I have watching sports are 10 times more interesting than what we listen to on tv. I'm sure that every group of friends feels the same way. Take last night's game for example.

-Incredible discussions over whether or not Chris Chambers is in fact, a pu$$y and how annoying it is that every expert believes he will have a 'breakout year'

-How awkward it was that the pre-game hype fizzled out by the middle of the 2nd quarter and the usually raucous Steeler fans were kind of sitting on their hands.

-Is Troy Polumalu the best safety in the NFL. Excellent debate.

-How many dumb NFL head coaches there are

Real sports fans with knowledge of the players, talking like real people, with curse words and funny terms...like 'pooted' for example.

Note: 'twere this to be created, it would be my dream job. Humorous and enjoyable coverage of legitimate sport. Someone please get on this. Maybe when the NFL network gets big enough to have an NFL 2, they can have a 'game a week' where the normal guys also do a telecast. God I would love that.

2) Why are baked goods always so much tighter when you are watching football? Seriously. There is a formula where 'B' is the baked good:

B x 1.231 = Quality of baked good during football telecasts.

inexplicable

3) The sheer volume of prescription drug commercials/truck commercials makes me want to drive my car to Boston and try and navigate the streets at night.

4) How unbearable are sideline reporters? Several points on this:
-I don't want anyone down there that never played football at any level (so that pretty much eliminates most women)
-There is always something uncomfortable going on, either a player gets questioned in the middle of the game, the coach is forced to talk when he has two much to deal with, the SR has some awkward in game story where they have to cut away from play and he/she talks about the sport in terms that no athlete would ever use.

Here is how it should be: someone is assigned to both sidelines. That person listens to the huddles as def/off coaches instruct their players. If it is interesting, it gets reported...quickly:

"Al, Nick Saban just told his guys to key on where Porter lines up as that seems to be dictating Pittsburgh's coverages."

Bam. Actual insight. Instead of some drivel about a weird team meeting at practice or irrelevant anecdote, we get real info.

The 2nd function of the sideline reporter is to report injuries. Any intern or low level person can do this. A walkie talkie to whoever the stats nerd is in the booth, he hands a note to the announcers, bam. There is your injury report. Bottom line: I only started to feel this way when I had great seats at a Redskins game and Suzie Kolber wouldn't acknowledge me.

5) Does everyone have certain words that are super hard for them to spell? I mean like everyday words. I almost never spell 'restaurant' right for example. Or is it just like people and my boy Quinn who spells 'too' wrong because he really doesn't know the difference between 'to' and 'too' and yet still graduated with a really good GPA from Georgetown?

6) Playing the 'who would win in a fight?' game is one of the top 10 reasons it is better to be a dude than a chick. Chicks would never come up with things like that.