Hey, NFL - I Was Thinking...

I was watching football over the Holiday weekend and was amazed at the number of empty seats in the stands. LP Field in Nashville, home of the Tennessee Titans, a decent team with a 6-5 record, was maybe half empty. An optimist might call that stadium half-full, but when you're talking about an NFL venue, you would rather be Lambeau Field, a stadium that would sell out even if the Packers were winless well into the season. Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego also had large sections of empty seats, a strange thing when the Denver Tebows were in town, the hottest topic in all of sports right now.

Television coverage for a football fan can be very frustrating, particularly if you rely on the networks and don't have some pricey premium package. (Let's not even talk about the ridiculous dispute between the NFL Network and the cable giants, who can't come to terms, thus depriving us from even considering a pricey premium package.) So if you live on the East Coast, it will be a rare day when you get to see the Seahawks, the Raiders or the 49ers play. Down here in Florida, we are subjected to Buccaneers, Dolphins or Jaguars games; three teams that make up the Triangle of Suck in the NFL. If we aren't being made to watch them stink up the field, then the networks assume we want to see the Patriots. Recent weekends, I have seen more of Tom Brady and that homeless guy who coaches the Patriots than I have my own dog.

When football is not on, the Sports Centers of TV and the web or the Sports Sections of print and online journalism are talking about football. It is, no one can argue, the new national pastime. We don't give a crap about baseball, in comparison. We eat it up, can't get enough of it, and will watch the sorriest matchup in history if it is the only game on TV. 

Which brings me to my point. A football fan will watch any game if it is the only game available. So...WHAT IF...the NFL played six days a week? (My original plan called for seven days a week, but I'm reminded that Saturday is college football day, and that would not sit well with the American football watching public to mix it up like that.)

The season would still be 17 weeks long, you'd just have fewer games per day. There are 32 teams, which makes 15 games a week, allowing for two teams having a bye every week. So, two games on Monday, two on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Sunday you'd have two early games, two late games and one night game. If a team plays on a Monday, to avoid fatigue and allow for jet-lag recovery, that team plays the following week on a Tuesday.  It would be a scheduling nightmare, to be sure, but not one that some innovative programmer couldn't overcome. A fan could conceivably watch every game all season long, granted with a little back and forth on the remote control between the games happening simultaneously.

What about the other TV shows that would get bumped if CBS, FOX or NBC were to take this on? Oh, how sad it would be if 2 Broke Girls or Whitney or one more CSI wasn't available. Move it to another night or time. If the networks follow the money, which they will, they know that the NFL is a ratings bonanza. Let ESPN and ESPN 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and The Ocho get in on the bidding. Advertising, dollars, ratings, licensing, perhaps even stadium attendance will be affected. (We all know that a nationally televised game fills seats better than one only available in the local market.)

I'm sure there are too many interests involved in a plan like this for it ever to really happen, the most powerful likely being the NFL and their precious NFL Network, but I'm throwing it out there. Football fans and football haters are invited to weigh in in the comments section. Tell me why I'm wrong, why this won't work, or what we could do to make it happen. If you're a fan of Whitney, just be quiet. That show is getting canceled and you know it.    

Why Americans Fail at New Year's Resolutions

In a word: football. How am I supposed to quit smoking, cut back on drinking, ease up on the fatty snacks and grease-soaked goodness when there's a game on this weekend? All those things are as much a part of football as spoiled quarterbacks soliciting unwilling young women for sexual favors. The playoffs are in full swing as the new year begins and you expect me to abandon my season-long tradition of downing a shot of tequila when my team scores? You expect me not to go outside and light a cigarette in frustration when my team does something stupid? Or not go outside and light a cigarette in celebration of my team doing something awesome? Or not crack open a beer to get the taste of tequila out of my mouth? Or not have a cigarette with that beer. And there's half a beer left here; be a shame to drink it without some wings, pizza or nachos. Oh crap, there's more nachos here and my beer's gone; better open another.

Whoever invented the New Year's resolution could not have envisioned a nation whose vices went hand in hand with its national sport. We blame "the Holidays," for our ruined diets and excesses, but our real Holiday doesn't come until early February, when we can unite as a nation around one game. We aren't Christians, Jews, Muslims or atheists during the Super Bowl; we are Babylonian drunkards and gluttons, gathered at the arena's vomitorium so that we might purge ourselves and make room for more wings and beer.

So if you've already failed in your attempts to become a better you, don't blame yourselves, Americans. You belong to a unique place that worships a spectacle the rest of the world will never understand, try though they do. You're a football fan, even if you don't understand the game. The Holiday calendar still applies. Drink like a Greek God. Eat like a Roman Senator. Monday is the start of a New Year.

If They Met in Real Life: My Playoff Picks

Since they say that "on any given Sunday" any team can beat any other team in the NFL, I will ignore the Vegas odds makers and other criminals of the gambling world and employ my own method of picking the winners of this weekend's playoff games. The premise is simple: What would happen if you pitted the two mascots against each other in the real world? For example: if a Colt met a Bronco, that could conceivably end in a tie, as they are both horses. However, a Colt is a baby horse, so you would have to assume the more experienced and wild Bronco would be the victor in that battle.

Are you ready for some stupid football? Let's go.

I liked Baltimore's quarterback better when he was an Austrian rapper back in the 80's. That aside, what is a raven other than a roadkill-eating symbol of mythology and folklore? Can it really do much damage against the hard-working American steelworker? These people deal with molten metal and giant beams of solid steel, sparks flying, risks at every turn. A garbage-scavenging bird is not much to them. One whack from Polamalu's steel forearm to one of Flacco's little bird arms and game over. Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?

The packer, in essence, is a butcher, a meat packer. He wields a cleaver. The falcon, a noble bird to be sure, can maybe peck at his eyes a little bit, perhaps scratch an arm or the back of the packer. But in the end, the dirty bird's head is removed with a swift motion, blood splattering the packer's white apron. He holds the still twitching and headless bird aloft and shouts, "WHO NEEDS BRETT FAVRE NOW!"

This one is silly and too easy. While it is natural for us to regard the patriot kindly, holding him in our national memory as a strong and worthy foe, he is really not much more than a dirt farmer in rags, armed with a mere muzzle-loading musket. Some may think he's a handsome man with flowing locks, but in reality, those locks were infested with fleas and lice. He can maybe get off three shots in a minute if he is really good, (and not cheating) and those old guns aren't known for their accuracy. Of course we don't know what kind of jet he is up against. Could be a Gulf Stream, a 787 or an F-18. Either way, it's a jet, and that little musket ball is going to ding off the side of the fuselage with a very sad sound. The jet swings around and sucks the pretty boy patriot into its engine, leaving nothing but a fine pink mist in its wake.

The seahawk dines on fish. Good fish. Sushi-grade stuff from the waters of the Pacific northwest. This is also one of the habitats of the bear, who is himself a connoisseur of the scaly delicacies of the local waters. If we were deciding who is the better fisherman, the battle would go to the bird. If we were deciding "who wins the fight over the fish that the bear caught," the bird still wins. Think about it: bear catches fish, hawk swoops low and scares the bear into dropping the fish, then grabs it and flies away. But we are talking about the seahawk against the bear in a battle to the death. You can't hurt a bear without a really good gun designed for the sole purpose of hurting bear. Eventually, in all his beast mode confidence, the seahawk flies too close on one swoop and the bear slices him open with his murderous claw.

There you have it. Likely to be proven as accurate as anyone's predictions, and based in reality.

Chargers Get Pipped by Saints

In its continuing effort to sell American Football to the Brits, the NFL sent the Saints and Chargers to London to play at Wembley yesterday, where New Orleans, as noted in this BBC headline, "pipped" San Diego. And Drew Brees gave a "passing masterclass" while triumphing over his "former side."

Guys, it's American Football. Please don't talk about it like that.