After Week One, a Domestic Interlude

Now that football season has officially started, my husband is thrilled to have somebody in the house to talk about the game with. I was having trouble thinking about how to write about this first weekend of the season, and he was trying to help me out. Here's how it went:

Husband: Well, what do you think you learned this weekend, from watching?

Me: Um, I learned that football is much more interesting to watch if you either care which team wins, or if you're watching Red Zone.

(I usually do not care which team wins, having no home team loyalties. Red Zone, for those of you who may know, is a channel which shows nothing but football all day Sunday with no commercials, and switches between all games that are playing at once. Whenever a team gets close to scoring they switch to that game to see what will happen, and whenever a particularly exciting play happens anywhere, they switch to that game to replay the moment and cover the aftermath. If you have no vested interest in any particular game, it's the perfect way to watch football, because it's never not interesting and the football never goes away. I have been trying hard to watch the evening games so far, but if anything else grabs my attention, I'm gone. It's an uphill battle. I'm not saying that Frontierville on Facebook is fun, exactly, I'm just saying that when I play it I forget that I'm supposed to be paying attention to the Chiefs kicking the Chargers' ass.)

Husband: What else?

Me: Um....I think that's it, actually.

Husband: How about that Michael Vick is still one of the best players in the league, despite having spent all that time in jail?

Me: Well, Vick was good yesterday, but I didn't really know how good he was before.

Husband: Okay, that's fair. What about this—you learned Drew Brees is dreamy.

Me: Oh, I've known that since he won the Super Bowl in February. He's super dreamy.

Husband: Fine then. How did your fantasy team do?

Me: Okay, not great. The Ravens defense did a good job. How about you?

Husband: I'm worst place in the league. The Chargers are still playing, you know. You should pay attention.

Me: Hang on, I have to chop down this tree.

Husband: You know those games are stupid.

Me: I know, but if I get one more neighbor I can build a barn! Please be my Frontier Neighbor!

Husband: No.

Me: I hate you.

Game One Report, a Little Late

There is a sequence in To Kill A Mockingbird in which Atticus tells Jem and Scout they have to go over to some old lady's house and read to her every day, which they do. However, after Jem has been reading for only a short time, the lady is no longer able to pay attention to him, and then she goes into convulsions for no reason that the children are able to see.

While watching the Saints/Vikings game on Thursday night, I felt a lot like that old woman. The first quarter was interesting, I could actually follow what was going on, Drew Brees was playing well and it was easy for me to watch. I felt like a really good student, and as I saw what Brees was doing, it made me want to see Favre get the ball to see what he would do with it, to compare and contrast. Would their styles be noticeably different? Would I be able to tell whether Brees was doing well on his own or depending on his offensive line, by watching how the Vikings offense compared?

As it turns out, I ended up with no idea. I don't know if my attention span needs to be built up, or if the commercials took me too for out of the game, or if Brett Favre has just aged into the least compelling quarterback alive, but I couldn't keep my eyes on the screen after the first quarter. I take heart from the fact that most actual fans only keep one eye on a game while they're doing something else, but still, I'm a little disappointed in myself.

I work on Sunday but I plan to watch the night game, and some of the guys who are on my fantasy team will be playing, so maybe I'll feel more of a personal stake in what's going on. And maybe it won't be boring. That would be nice, I think.

Fantasy Football, just in time!

I hate Dungeons and Dragons. There, I said it. Can't stand it. Never could. Tried hard in college to like it. Failed. Lost the ability to be friends with people who played it.

You'd think that Dungeons and Dragons would have been tailor made for me, especially during my late teen years. I was a fantasy geek. I was a drama geek! What could be more appealing than sitting around with my geek friends pretending to be wizards? I did really like the idea. I had a brief flirtation with the SCA when I was about sixteen that probably would have blossomed into love if the Association Chapter had actually been in the same state where I lived.

Anyway. It turns out that D&D is less whimsy and creative teamwork than it is thinking of ways to magically fuck your friends (both figuratively and...well...figuratively, I guess) and then argue about whether it's legal in the “universe” of the “game.” Oh, and don't get me started on dice. I don't care how long ago it was or how young you were, if you have ever been excited to own a new set of dice, we have nothing more to say to each other.

I realize that fantasy sports is a whole different sort of game for a whole different sort of person. But it still involves using complicated math to determine a reality that does not exist, and for that reason I do not trust it. However, in the spirit of getting into the spirit of things, I went ahead and joined my husband's fantasy football league/ Here is my team:

Quarterback – I'm not a complete idiot, and I decided that if I was going to do this fantasy thing I was going to be in it not to lose it, so my first pick for quarterback was Drew Brees. Unfortunately, I picked sixth in my league's live draft and he got taken before that (no surprise). So I went with Matt Ryan. Ryan's a solid pick; as a matter of fact, he's so good I can't make a joke about him. It's like Meryl Streep and TMZ. They don't bother following her because there's no dirt there. But if there were, it still wouldn't hurt her career at all--she's that damn good. As a backup QB I picked Tyler Thigpen, because he's my favorite.

Wide Receiver – Since Drew Brees got snapped up immediately, I used my first pick to go with Chad Ochocinco, who my husband has dubbed the patron saint of this blog. I don't care what anybody says, I like Ochocinco. He's a little bit dumb, he's a lotta bit crazy, and he's really, really good at football. So there. I went with several backup wide receivers, which seemed like a wise choice because there are more receiver slots on the fantasy team than any other position, and craziness in a celebrity is delightful to me, but may lead to a professional athlete getting suspended from play. So I backed up the Och with Dez Bryant (also delightfully crazy and probably risking some kind of suspension in the upcoming season), Golden Tate (normally well behaved unless there are donuts nearby), and I picked Pierre Garcon and Mohamed Masssaquoi as a package deal in honor of the memory of the French and Indian war.

Running Backs – My running backs are Ricky William, Knowshon Moreno, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Lousaka Polite. I don't know anything about any of them. I hope they're good.

Rest of the Team – I picked Chris Cooper as my single defensive player because he was fantastic in Seabiscuit. I mean, I love that guy. He's a chameleon! You practically can't recognize him from one movie to the next. Boo Robinson is everybody's favorite character from To Kill a Mockingbird, so I was lucky he didn't get drafted before I could get to him. For my defensive line I went with Baltimore because (as I've mentioned before) they seem to have had more books written about them than any other NFL team, and I like that sort of intellectual initiative.

The only players left on my roster are Jason Witten as the tight end and Rob Bironas as kicker. I don't remember why I picked either of them, as I don't really remember doing it and I don't recognize either of their names. I think I just needed to fill those slots and they were the highest-rated players still left.

Anyway, there are no pictures or links with this post because I've procrastinated writing it for a good week and now I'm scrambling to get it up before the opening game tonight. And I'm missing Project Runway to watch it, so I hope Drew Brees is grateful.

Rookie Roundup!

English is a funny language. The rules of grammar and spelling are erratic and difficult to learn, and in many cases, what we think of as standard spellings now were just arbitrary choices selected from multiple spellings which would have been acceptable in the Middle Ages. For example, you would expect “one who is celebrated” to be a celebratee, just like “one who leases” is a lessee, and “one who is kidnapped” is a kidnappee. But instead, “one who is celebrated” is a celebrity. I am sure that the etymology of the word rookie is on the internet somewhere, too, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it means “one who is rooked.” Anyway, now that everybody's got a game under their belt, I thought we'd check back with some of the rookies who caught my eye a couple of months ago.


SAM BRADFORD – Bradford was the number one draft pick this year. He went to the Rams, who unless something very unexpected happens, seem to be putting him right in the starting quarterback position. Now, far be it from me to tell anybody how to run their football team. But let me just say that when I worked at Pottery Barn in 2005 and half of our managers suddenly quit at the same time (one got married, one moved back to Oregon and one got a role in a movie, since I know you were wondering), they hired this woman named Rita to run the store, and I think they made her the manager because she had sort of nice clothes and she was about fifteen years older than anybody else who worked there. And I don't know what she did before Pottery Barn, I think she was somebody's secretary or something but I know it wasn't retail and anyway, she didn't know how to put together a schedule and we all hated her and what I'm saying is, you shouldn't put somebody in charge if they have no experience because the Beverly Hills Pottery Barn crew of 2005 probably wouldn't have beaten the Vikings either if Rita was calling all the plays.

But seriously, Sam Bradford is supposed to be pretty good.


ED WANG – Dude, I was so excited about Ed Wang. The first Chinese player on the NFL. And then he went and injured his hand—in practice; it wasn't even a game—and he had to have surgery, so he's on the injured reserve list indefinitely. Some overachiever he turned out to be.



TIM TEBOW – Tim Tebow is the Justin Bieber of football. A million people seem to be going nuts over him, but I never seem to meet any of these people one on one. I know what he theoretically does, but I've never seen him do it and I don't know if he's actually good at it. And he gets a lot of publicity revolving around his hairstyle, which doesn't look good anyway no matter what he does.

Tebow, like Bradford, played for a losing team this weekend, but at least Bradford was a starter. Tebow came in as a backup and didn't play until the end of the third quarter, but on the other hand, he did actually score a touchdown, so that's something. He's probably already in negotiations to star in a reality show on the Disney Channel during the off-season.


VICTOR CRUZ – I had never heard of this guy before. He's so unknown that nfl.com doesn't even have a picture of him. But one of my husband's friends (who has repeatedly declined to read WtB, by the way) is spooging all over Twitter about him so I thought I'd hit my Google button. Here's the story: He went undrafted this season and then got hired as a wide receiver by the New York Giants, who let him practice with them because they had a little extra room and were polite but distant when asked about how he was progressing. Then when they played their first preseason game against the Jets, he caught three touchdown receptions.

Let me say that again slowly, for the non-sports-fans: on three separate occasions, the quarterback (Eli Manning, and then Jim Sorgi, after Manning cut his head open and needed 12 stitches (true story)) threw the ball and Victor Cruz caught it, and then proceeded to run all the way to the end of the field and score a touchdown. According to The Internet, the last time that happened was in 1998, and the person who did it was Terrell Owens, who is now on the Cincinnati Bengals with Chad Ochocinco, and now they both have reality shows on Vh1 and they beat Sam Bradford's ass this weekend.

And so now I know a guy in Massachusetts who roots for the New York Giants and wants to have Victor Cruz's baby. It's pretty gross.


Oh, and also? Still no word on whether Brett Favre is staying retired or not.

So, what's the deal with preseason?

Do you remember the first season of Seinfeld?

All right, smartypants. Would you remember the first season of Seinfeld if you didn't have all nine seasons on DVD?

Unless you were actually a cast member on Seinfeld, you probably don't. And that's okay. Very few people watched Seinfeld in its first season. It was on Wednesday, for Pete's sake! But that was back in the days when it was all right for a show to not have too much audience to start off with, as long as it didn't offend anyone too much, and the networks still felt like they were only competing with the other networks, and if a show was pretty good they knew that people would find it and then they'd put it on Thursday so people would watch it.

Unfortunately, those days are gone now. Either your show has vampires in it, or it's Mad Men, or it's canceled. Case closed. Nobody's got time for a loser, Arrested Development!

Now, if this blog were about baseball, we could Seinfeld around for a while, write some episodes that didn't make a lot of sense, lose a few games, and be fine. The baseball season has approximately nineteen hundred games a year! Who cares if you lose a couple dozen?

In football, there's no time for shenanigans. There are only sixteen games a season (contrast this with 22 episodes of Two and a Half Men, the most successful TV sitcom of all time). And with only sixteen games, there's no time for dicking around. If you're on that field, you better know what's up.

But the NFL commission is merciful. They realize that the pro game is different from college and their rookies might need a game or two to learn the ropes. They understand that a lot of veteran players are coming back from long vacations with their families, or short jail sentences with their families, or moderately paced reality TV shows with their families, and they need to readjust to not having their families around. They totally know how it is for the coaches to readjust the dosage on their prescription meds to deal with their new game-season schedule.

So this is what preseason is for: After everyone has had a couple of weeks to practice, but before the games start to actually matter, everybody plays four games that don't count. These games serve many purposes, but they all basically fall under the tent of “Yeah, but how do they actually play?” This is a chance for rookies to play pro for the first time, it's a chance for coaches to see who will freak out and need to be fired, it's a chance for Brett Favre to retire again, and it's an extra bonus chance for anyone and everyone to get injured right off the bat.

Most importantly, it gives everybody four chances to lose, and how often do you get to lose something before you even start?

I myself have been injured this past week and I thought it would be a great chance to watch some football after all this abstract research, but we can't afford the NFL network and ESPN was airing the Little League World Series, so no dice. But I have been keeping an eye on the scores and game results, and I was pleased to see that all four of my division favorites won their first preseason game. I was even more delighted to find out that the Miami Dolphins quarterback is named Tyler Thigpen. He's a backup quarterback and he didn't score any touchdowns, but that's my kind of name.

Keep it up, Thigpen! Let's make every irrelevant game count!

It's PRESEASON!!!

They're finally playing! And I hope it's good because I still don't like sports.

Real post soon (probably).

Favre-a-pa-looza

Most people, if asked, would probably say that it is difficult to define exactly what makes a legend. That's because most people are ignorant. The laws of legendhood have been very clearly defined since the beginning of time:

One, you must be extremely fierce, like Cleopatra, Napoleon, or Tyra Banks.

Two, you must spend a lot of time with the gays, like Cher, Bette Midler, or Alexander the Great.

And three, you must go on at least three farewell tours, like Barbra Streisand, Odysseus, or Kiss.

Brett Favre is halfway to being a legend, having achieved one and a half of the three requirements. To be fair, anyone can hang out with gays (although I'm pretty sure Favre is falling short on this one), and fierceitude is an inborn quality—like physical beauty, it should be thought of as a blessing rather than a virtue.

It's impossible to know when, if ever, Favre will be able to overcome the homophobia I am hereby attributing to him. Seriously? I heard he wears two pairs of underwear whenever he has to play against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, just in case. So while he's working on that with his therapist, he's throwing as much energy as he can at his remaining challenge, and upping his farewell tour count (here's the actual timeline, if you're interested):

Practice retirement, 2006: Favre asks the Green Bay Packers where they want to go to dinner. They respond that anywhere he picks is fine with them. He says he's hungry, but not in the mood for anything specific. The Packers say he should just pick anywhere but do it fast because they're getting hungry AND bored. They decide together that Favre will continue to play for the Packers in 2007.

First real retirement, 2008: Favre and the Packers visit the NFC Championship together, but the NFC spends the whole time making out with Tom Brady (who goes on to be humiliated at the Super Bowl), and Favre realizes that the magic is gone from his football career. He breaks up with football and tells the Packers not to call him anymore. But then he realizes he doesn't have anybody to go to the movies with and it sucks going alone, and now that the Packers aren't around all the time there's nobody to pop the zits on his back for him. Still, he can't stand to lose face by crawling back to the Packers, so he starts throwing the idea out that he might be willing to be like, maybe friends with benefits with some other team.

No dice. The Packers still hold Favre's contract and they're not going to release him. They're as sick of him as he is of them, but they'll be damned if they're going to see him happy with anybody else. So with the desperation of a true addict, Favre returns to Green Bay. The Packers laugh in triumph, spit in his face, and trade him to the New York Jets.

Rebound retirement, 2009: Favre enters his relationship with the Jets with all the zeal and passion that any 38-year old man would have with a new, more attractive, and much younger partner. Unfortunately, once the sparkle fades and they get used to each other, Favre realizes that the Jets don't have a whole lot to talk about, and don't remember any of the same bands or TV shows from growing up as he does, due to the age difference. He just doesn't have the patience to listen to Lady Gaga anymore. It isn't working out. He calls it quits. Apparently the contempt is mutual, because the Jets grant him an unconditional release, no questions asked.

Triumphant Re-return, 2009: The Minnesota Vikings send Favre a folded-up note. He unfolds it to read, “DO U LIKE ME? CHECK YES/NO.” He stews. He sighs. He controversially announces that he has no wish to cause controversy. He skips training camp, instead working out with the local high school team in his home town. He realizes that sleeping with high school cheerleaders is a felony. He checks YES. And then he goes to the Vikings, surprising everyone by playing the best season of his football career. He is non-committal about returning for the 2010 season, because he just “doesn't want to feel tied down, man.”

Present-day, 2010: I'm not really sure whether Brett Favre retired at the end of 2009. I don't remember it being announced, but then, if it was, I wouldn't have been paying attention. What he has officially announced is that his ankle is hurt, but if it heals, he will come back to the Vikings. Personally, I think he just doesn't want to do training camp any more. But all signs point to him still being in good shape otherwise, so it probably won't be a bad move on the Vikings' part if they take him. And the Vikings won't even play the Buccaneers this year unless they both make it to the Super Bowl, so Favre won't have to worry about staying up all night before any of his games.


Also, there's this.