From the Grinch to the Ginch

I wanted to do a little bit on sideline reporters. Particularly that one that looks like Underdogs girlfriend Sweet Polly Purebread. The cartoon is Underdog so all the main characters are animated dogs, so even if Polly is sweet and Pure she is a dog. Need I say more? Then there's the one that resembles the 7 that bartends at your local dive. Michelle something or other I think is the name of that sad excuse for sideline snizz. She resembles that bartender. You know the one I'm talkin' about. She works at the place that sucks but it's walking distance so going there means you don't have to worry about driving home. You rarely go to the miserable hole in the wall and you rarely think about her but on the odd occasion that you end up there she might be the only thing in possesion of two x chromosones and if the tube is showing some of that Olympic crap with 12 year old children twirling sticks with ribbons attached... well, what's a guy supposed to do with his eyes?


6 or 8 beers later she's lookin' downright doable and you're looking forward to her walking to the other end of the bar so you can stare at her 7 ass which has, through the magic of alcohol, become an 8 and a 1/2 ass. It, of course, goes nowhere because she's already got you pegged as a loser for being there at all and doing a poor job of hiding your staring at her female parts every chance you get. The next day the whole thing will be forgotten and you'll feel no inclination to go back and indeed wonder why you didn't just go home earlier.

My point is ... what the hell are women of this caliber doing on all the big NFL broadcasts? I don't want my sideline updates from some "gal" with real sports knowledge. I want a broad so hot she makes my eyeballs melt and my pulse race at first site. I don't care if she gets all here commentary fed to her through an earpiece. The broadcasts are already loaded with authentic expert commentary. Do we really need to pretend the sideline reporter is anything more than eye candy? Can't I just have my 15 second sexual fantasy with a desireable woman before we get back to the action on the field? Is that too much to ask?

It irks me everytime. So I decided to go look for a picture or two of these two woofers but when I type in sideline reporters, you know what I get? This

Yeah, thats right. She doesnt look like Underdogs girlfriend does she? And how about this one?

She also came up under "sideline reporter" .... Want a few more?So where is the 7 in that crowd I ask you? Why aren't any of these obviously talented sports professionals trading witty barbs with Goose 'n Moose? Why aren't Madden, Micheals and Dierdof and Simms calling their numbers? Can't someone start a petition to can Michelle whats her name and Sweet Polly purebread? If they can take the time to redesign the NFL logo, ball, change instant replay rules, dream up new ways to turn fans upside down and shake more money out of them through PSL's, surely they can correct/improve this aspect of the viewing experience. Can I get an amen?

Today I became a true Jet fan

Grinch steals Jet fan hope.

The Jets lead the division but this is how I feel about our season.




Full disclosure: I didn't even see the game. I have NFL gamepass and with the top shelf option that means access to all games. I originally thought that I'd watch every Jet game this season but being on the euro side of the Atlantic means a 4 oclock game in the states starts at 10pm for me.

This didn't seem like much of an impediment in theory but I foolishly overlooked the fact that I'm an old man with a three month old infant and a nine year old (plus some kids from my ex's life before me) So being sleep deprived and having to wake up early every day and deal with infant, sleep deprived partner, getting kids ready for school etc the whole idea of staying up till 1am on a Sunday evening just didn't survive the first encounter with reality.
Even my strong desire to see all this seasons games could not exceed my desire for the sweet release and refuge of the scant sleep available. And so each week I pray the Jets have a 1 oclock game or I have to make plans to watch the archived version the following day.... if I haven't seen the score or if I have and it's a game I still want to watch.

It was with a heavy heart that I hit the hay last night as I really really wanted to see the Jets redeem themselves after last weeks Bronco loss. Last weeks loss was easily written of as par for the course for Gang Green. I mean, it wouldn't be the Jets without the requisite inappropriate loss at regular intervals and since the Pats also lost we were still in first place yadda yadda yadda.
I figured it was a well timed wake up call to prevent cockiness seeping in, to keep us sharp for our turn at a cinderella march to the Super Bowl. Then I woke up this morning, clicked my browser on which of course has the NFL.com set as home page and saw that the Niners had beaten us.


My first reaction was "Well, I guess two weeks ago when an all NY Super Bowl was the topic dujour, was the high point of the season"

This sounds rational enough no? It sounds like a normal innocuous response right? Wrong! Suddenly I had a blinding flash of realization that the Jet lifer body snatchers had finally gotten to me. Just like that I'd given up on the season. Without preplanning or forethought, I'd reached the conclusion that the appearance of great things to come would be as good as it would get. There was the towel flying through the air in slow motion, on its way to the canvas in the middle of the ring way before my fighter even had a chance to struggle to his feet. For ten year now I'd resisted adopting the bone-deep bitter stance and attitude of most of my fellow Jet fans friends who were lifers and seemed to crumble into a sobbing heap of wailing flailing flesh at the first sign of trouble in any given season. Indeed, on any given Sunday, like dogs that have been beat to much they would seem to "spend half their lives just a-coverin' up"

But there I was. An objective look at the standings would show that due to our in division record we are in fact still in first place in the division. Repeat: Jets in first place in the AFC east in Week 14. True, its a three way tie in an excitingly tight division race in which we own the tie breakers right now but there I was, slime still dripping off me from the pod, deciding that the season would be all downhill from here.
I wasn't wailing flailing or sobbing yet but I'd let my mind make that Jet fan suicidal lemming-leap nonetheless. I desperately thought about sliding back into the body snatchers pod and trying to psychic-ly reverse the process through sheer force of will. This couldn't really be happening! I could just picture my bitter Jet bretheren looking at me with that blank stare and saying in that monotone "Now you are one of us. Come on lets watch the game" I would be led to a spot on the couch and much like a passenger on a doomed Jet, would spend the rest of my football watching days raising my seatback, slapping my tray table up and leaning forward into that crash position at the first penalty or turnover for the rest of my days.

I didn't want it to end like this. I really didn't. I never thought they'd get me. I wasn't one of them. I was a modern era Jet fan you understand. I only came onboard when Parcells took over the controls in 98. I didn't come with that baggage of 30 years of heartbreak after the franchises one brief shining moment. It couldn't happen to me.
And still it did. I stood there like the Grinch watching the Who's celebrate down in Whoville without their pantoozlers and wuffles... puzzling and puzzling till my puzzler was sore.
Oh well... I never thought I'd be old enough to pull my elsatic waist band up to mid spare tire either.

On the bright side if we do make a Fairy Tale march through January, I will celebrate with my Jet fan friends not as a newcomer or an outsider. No... for better or worse, I have become that which I have feared and looked upon with pity and contempt, I am now a true Jet fan.

Ken

Dick jokes from decades past and great football names

I was just watching some ESPN classic episodes of "This week in the NFL"... you know, the ones with Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshire sitting in ultra cheesy low budget sets. My personal favorites are the ones that have them sitting in front of a football shaped coffee table.

Anyway while enjoying the week 8 recap from 1971 Pat Summerall was narrating over the martial music that became the mind soundtrack to every sandlot and backyard football game played by kids in the seventies and he called a play naming the quarterback for Atlanta... Dick Shiner.

Yeah, you read right. I had to rewind just to make sure I heard it right. Then I had to lie to my girlfriends young son who wanted to know why I was laughing.

I mean really... Dick Shiner?

I watched some more highlights because the youngster wanted to see the old Jets highlights but I was making a mental note to write an item about the Shineroski, the ol' Shinola. By the time I got around to writing I'd lost my certainty as to which team the Shine-man played for. I thought it was Atlanta but since I have my total lack of journalistic integrity to think of I decided to devoted at least 15 seconds to fact checking.

As luck would have it I have the Encyclopedia of Football in it's most current version and I looked up the Shine-ster .
Sure enough there he was and to my surprise, he'd played for ten years! For the Falcons, the Giants, the Saints, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Washington... the Shiner shone nationwide. Here's a picture of the man showing the gritty determination he would need to endure his habit of forgetting his helmet on the sidelines.


I couldn't believe I didn't recognize his name as I was around twelve back then and even though it seems impossible, I liked a good Dick joke then even more than I do now. How the hell did I let that meatball by me without hitting it out of the park?

Surprisingly enough that is not the worst Dick related, joke ready football name I ever heard. When I went to college at Glassboro State our football teams coach sported the moniker (gods honest truth) Dick Wacker. Pronounced Dick Wacker. Now really, what sadistic son of a bitch, boy named Sue parents hung that albatross around some poor infants neck? Ya know? Who would do that to a kid?

On the other side of that fence are many great Football names like Joe Namath, Emerson Boozer (cool and funny) Wilbur Marshall, Deacon Jones, Dexter Manly (a good contradiction that tips in favor of cool by the fact that he was big and scary) Joe Kapp, Too Tall Jones, Hollywood Henderson, Mean Joe Greene, Hacksaw Reynolds ... yeah I know these are all from the Stone age but I was just watching highlights from 71 so bear with me. Or is it bare with me?.... oh who the hell cares.

Anyway my friend had a kid a while back and as soon as I heard his name I thought "this kid has got to play ball" His name is just to good not to. Wanna know what it is? .... wait for it... a little more... ok, ya ready? get a load of this... Diesel Beck. Eh? eh? Is that awesomely perfect or what? When you're on the sandlot choosing up sides is there anyway you don't pick Diesel? If he's even remotely good and his name comes up on the draft board, could you resist calling that name? If your an announcer calling a game is there any cooler name to be calling?

I tell you this. If Brian Urlacher had the name Diesel Beck he would get at least a few extra Pro Bowl votes every year... no doubt.

And thats all I have to say about that. .... except Dick Wacker, Dick Wacker, Dick Wacker

Billie Johnson: trailblazer

The Spatwrap cleat cover, the debris inhibitor, Cleat Shoe Cover, The Sports Spat. These are the names for the various models of this new craze currently sweeping the football nation. (yeah, I know they've been around for a while but I just love using any variation of the phrase "craze sweeping the nation") My first reaction is to go with the ol' "What will they think of next" cliche, but it has kinda been done before. I seem to recall a lot of players that just taped their shoes to achieve the solid white look. And considering those black rubber or rubber-like elbow covers I suppose it was just a matter of time till they migrated down to the shoes.
I'm not altogether sure how I feel about this. I love innovation especially when it's an accessory and it's all about the look. And I give it bonus fashion love for being pointless. Debris inhibitor?... yeah right. Try as I might I can't recall a single episode of football related performance being inhibited by debris lodged in a shoelace or some of that ever present field debris affecting a play....
...no wait... there was that time when the Oilers Bille Johnson was on the verge of breaking another big kickoff return when the fishing line hanging off a piece of driftwood lying on the 47 yard line got snagged in the Nike logo tip that was protruding a 32nd of an inch from the side of his shoe and ... well we've all been there before, trying to outrun some closing cornerback while attempting to shake loose from 16 pounds of water logged driftwood covered with tangled knots of 20 pound test polyethylene line and the odd barnacle.
I hate when that happens! But now that I think of it that was right before he became famous as Billie WHITE SHOES Johnson. And he made his shoes all white by covering them with tape. Eureka, I've traces the origins of the Sports spat debris inhibitor right here in this unlikely stream of consciousness!

And so it only took another 20 years after Billie hung up his white shoes to come up with a solution accessible to every player. Of course back then they figured that 20 years hence we'd all have those Jetsons flying cars but hey, at least these new babies are available in team specific colors. And they have pre-cut holes for the cleats. Cooool.
I do have a problem with the toe however. Billy covered the whole shoe. If the shoe above was already red and covered with a red spat I'd like it better. This is like when I first noticed this new doo-dad it was a black spat on a black shoe, like in the first picture above. I know that technically a spat doesn't cover a whole shoe but the only person I can think of who wore spats was Scrooge McDuck and really, he wasn't even close to being as cool as even the lowliest bench warming scrub on the 70's Saints.

And really, don't you think it just a matter of time till sharp corner of the bumper of a 78 Chrysler catches in that open toe? Someone's going to lose a million dollar bonus performance incentive over this.I know a few Savage lawyers that'll be lined up to represent that player against the company foolish enough to claim they're "Debris Inhibitors"
And who knows maybe the Gods of Irony will smile on the situation and the Blood sucking shyster that runs the Debris Inhibitor into bankruptcy will use his cut of the Multi million dollar award to go out and by him or herself a set of real spats...

Ken

My friend Brett

I live with an stark raving mad savage. In other social settings I refer to her as my significant other, mother of my child, yadda, yadda, yadda. One of the tidbits in the mountain of evidence that demonstrate her femininity, ... I mean insanity, pard0n my redundance, is that she sends me e-mails even though we live in the same apartment and our computers are about 20 feet apart. Normally this is not a big deal as I ignore them much as I ignore the rest of the mountain. I'm not sure if ignorance is really bliss but ignoring things is key to our relationship.

One of the things that I love about my live-in savage is how she tolerates, indulges and even encourages my football obsession. Which brings me to the email in question. She sent me a facebook link that if clicked on, makes me a Facebook friend of Brett Favre.

I was shocked in that I had no idea Brett was on Facebook. Now that I've clicked his "friend button" I feel comfortable calling him by his first name. I'm barely on Facebook myself and for every unit of enjoyment I get from contact with long lost friends is balanced by two units of annoyance with the whole dopey thing and the time it sucks from my Pulitzer award winning pursuits. The whole site seems to go far beyond just social networking and seems determined to waste ones time with pointless ancillary crap.

But in this magical season of NY football how could I not love a woman who finds a way to make me Brett Favre's personal friend? I must admit that I've got some mixed emotions about the whole thing, I mean, I know there's just some pasty faced toady boy clicking on the thousands of friend requests but that's for those other common losers. Surely Brett, by now is aware of our elevated status as real players in the football universe and may even be interested in a soft landing on the staff of FFF after his playing days are over. This year will be his first Super Bowl win as a Jet and after he reprises this act a-la Elway to make it back to back titles then he will be ready to transition and what better fit could there be?... did you pick up on that little fashion humor there?... "fit".... get it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they can't all be golden. So what do you think? How long should I wait for a reply from the Favre-meister? I mean, I know he's busy an all right now but we gotta feel a little love if we're gonna keep a seat warm for him in the Fashion command bunker.

I'm a reasonable man. I'm thinkin' if one of his cyber-serfs wants to stand out from the crowd he or she could send a few luxury box tix along to us at Football Fashion Fanatics we'd be more than happy to keep our burgeoning friendship on ice and his future place secure while he goes about the business of finally relieving the pain of the legions of bone deep bitter Jet lifers.

This season just keeps getting better. Me and Brett... BFF

Pantherific Pulitzer Party

Wow... those pulitzer people know how to party! I was expecting egghead central but instead got a roomfull of Hunter Thomson wannabees. I guess it's been about a week or more since winning the prestigious award and most of the money is already gone. Shoulda said ixnay on the ookershay a little earlier in the week. At least it was a first class bender. Yep, best crack hotel money can buy.
In any case I had the presence of mind to save enough for cab fare home. I had to shoot my way out of the room with a fistfull of the last of the larger denomination bills but it was worth the risk since it left me with enough to buy a case of suds on the way home so I could orchestrate a soft landing over the next few days and keep FFF command central afloat for the weekends games.
Let me tell ya, it was a party that would make the Stabler/Matuzak Raiders proud. Hell, it would make the Raiders, the late 70's Led Zepplin road crew and pre-Rehab Robert Downy jr proud.
So anywhooo.. back to the biz that got us into the A-list shindigs in the first place.. FOOTBALL FASHION !
One of my obsessions has been getting a good clear picture of the outward curling 3/4 helmet stripe of the Carolina Panthers. For decades now I have hunted this elusive prey with only partial success. All my previous attempts have yielded only limited success in the form of pictures that are like those grainy bigfoot shots you see on those half baked alien/conspiracy/we didn't really land on the mood idiot psuedo-documentaries.
Well, I guess my possesion of the Pulitzer Prize has imbued me with new super journalistic powers because before my hangover from the award ceremony afterparty had even kicked in, I had snagged the shot that has eluded me all these years. My total lack of dedication has finally paid off. Witness the glory below of the best direct shot illustrating the most unique helmet striping in all of Pro football.

Huh?! Eh? was I kiddin'.... she's a beauty right? As anyone who has followed this site knows, the Ravens, and Titans have fading front to back double stripes and the Broncos have a single back to front fading center stripe but no one in the history of the game has ever gone where these boys have by throwing the outward curl into the mix. And now greatness has graced these hallowed pages for the second time this month when the Football Fashion gods smiled over at Lady Luck and gave her the nod to spread 'em for us one more time before the Pulitzer Viagra wore off.
I have a wise old uncle who once told me "kid, if you live a good life, you get lucky once in a while" That seemed like a pretty dismal prognosis to me so I promptly ignored it, reversed field and dove head first into a pile of heroin and hookers. As you might expect, I met Hollywood Henderson and Micheal Irvin in there. And so I followed this glorious path to this high paid cushy gig writing about the really savage side of football.
So now its time to crank up a stogie, lean back and bask in the glory for a while before it's time to watch the the Jets and Titans go at it. It's gonna be house divided here at FFF what with the fashion commissioner pulling for the Titans to remain undefeated and me pulling hard for the former Titans to knock the boys from Tennessee off their undefeated throne. Yeah, I got the 72 Dolphins on my side this week but I ain't gonna sit at Griese or Shulas table. Oh no, I'll be headed straight over to the Mercury Morris corner and we're gonna round up the Sundance kid aka Jim Kick and with the bar set Pulitzer party high we're gonna watch the Jets win and then show 'em how it's done.
Party on Wayne, Party on Garth
Ken

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