The Turkey’s Gone, But There’s Still Pig in the Fridge
December 1st, 2008by Reno J. Romero
LAS VEGAS, NV -
The NFL season is winding down. Which is a little sad. Not entirely sad because there’s still a lot of football to be played. But still. Week 13 is a goner. All bets are settled.
The payoffs are in the distance.
For some teams.
The beginning of the season is always full of talk. All the experts on TV and radio yapping it up, telling us how the season is going to play out.
“I see the Patriots running the table,” some of them said.
“I don’t see Brett Favre taking the Jets to the playoffs. Different team, different city. But they’ll be a lot better. He’s still a gunslinger.”
My friends - not being chained down by the FCC and heavy contracts- are more poetic with their claims.
“Fuck, T.O. I hope he gets his teeth knocked out of his mouth. Shut him up for a minute or two. The Cowboys ain’t that good. They ain’t. Romo’s gonna choke like he always chokes. Watch.”
“Jesus, watch out for the Jaguars, bro. Bad fucking defense. That quarterback is good. He runs, has a good arm. They’re gonna take Indy. Twice.”
“The Bengals blow. Their coach blows, their quarterback blows. The whole city blows.”
That’s how it sounded at the beginning of the season. Some things came true. Others didn’t. That’s the beauty of it all, the mystery. No one knows what the season will bring.
“That’s why they play the game,” Chris Berman - the voice of ESPN - always says.
Here’s how things are looking:
Before the season started the experts and the non-experts picked Brady and the Patriots to win it all. The Patriots lost in the Super Bowl last year to the Giants and were still the favorite to win the Super Bowl this year.
It was a slap in the face to New York. People thought their Super Bowl win was a fluke.
But that’s not the case. Brady got hurt. New England is 7-5 and fighting to stay in the playoff picture.
The media ignored the Giants at the beginning of the season. They didn’t take them seriously. There was no story.
But now they’re changing their tune. Giants are 11-1, playing kickass football, and are heading for the playoffs in the driver’s seat.
Yesterday they stomped the Redskins. Even without Plaxico Burress, their big-cash wide receiver, who a few nights before, accidentally shot himself in the thigh. He was at a club.
He paid the police station a visit today. They were looking for him.
There’s a story that the gun slipped down his pants and when he grabbed for it it went off. He didn’t have a permit for the gun. Not a good thing if you’re in New York. This could land him in some ugly trouble. He was the one who made the Super Bowl winning catch giving himself a championship ring and a fat contract.
Well, there you go, folks: even millionaires have problems.
AFC Stands for Apple, Flacco, Colts
The surprise in the AFC is the Titans. 11-1. Solid defense. Good coach. Nashville in the background. Kerry Collins at the helm. Does anyone remember Collins? He’s been around. Had a bout with booze and is now looking at taking his team to the playoffs.
No one saw it coming. Well, maybe Vince Young did.
The Steelers are winning. I was a big Steelers fan when I was a kid. Well, so were a lot of people. Anyhow, they’re looking pretty good. Their offense is so-so. No running game to speak of. And Ben makes me nervous.
They say defense wins championships. Good. The defense is running this show.
The Bengals, Browns, Raiders, Texans, Bills, all suck. Their stories are the worst stories you’ve ever heard. Pay them no mind.
The Colts are still punching at 8-4. Oh, yes. Peyton. But they’re not the same team. A little sluggish. They’re not putting up the points like they used to. But they’ve won more games than they’ve lost. The numbers don’t lie.
The Ravens are winning. No one saw this one coming either. I didn’t. Ray Lewis is screaming like a bastard again. Their QB is having a good year. His name is Joe. Joe Flacco. No one knows who he is. But it doesn’t matter.
“That’s why they play the game.”
And the Jets. Brett and the Jets. He was thrown out of Green Bay like an old dish towel. He’s now winning in the Big Apple. The offense has been solid. He’s throwing the ball deep, the defense is holding their own.
They got their asses beat by the Broncos yesterday. But they flew into Nashville a couple of weeks back and handed the Titans their only loss.
8-4.
Broadway Brett.
“Git er done, jerk-off!”
The Giants of the NFC
The Giants are good, period.
The Cowboys are 8-4.
The Eagles are 6-5.
I’m not a superstitious man, but I think Donovan McNabb’s career has been cursed.
Booed on draft day my his own fans. Rush Limbaugh. Lost four NFC championships. Lost one Super Bowl. Terrell Owens. Those weird Campbell’s Soup commercials he made with his mother. Him not knowing that an NFL game can end in a tie.
What, Donovan? Huh?
It hasn’t been a smooth ride for McNabb. This could be his last year in Philly.
The NFC South has some action going. Tampa Bay is in first place. Go figure. The Panthers are right behind them. Go figure. But no one saw the Falcons flying around with a winning record.
No one.
Vickless equaled winless.
But no.
Rookie QB slinging the football like a primed veteran. They just whooped the hapless Chargers in their own backyard. L.T who? They tore up the Panthers a couple of weeks back.
I’m sure Arthur Blank is relieved about this - no longer has to concern himself with Michael Vick’s diet.
The Rams, Seahawks, 49ers, suck. Real bad. And, they’re all in the same division! The team in first place in the NFC West is the Cardinals. You heard right. The Cardinals.
They’re 7-5.
In the NFC North the Vikings are in first place. Which is not saying much. But they have a pretty good defense and Adrian Peterson, who is arguably the best running back in the league. He’s brutal. Runs over people just because.
They beat the shit out of the Bears last night.
But no one sucks like the Detroit Lions suck. It’s a habit of theirs. A hobby. Year in and year out they lose. This year they finally - finally, fired Matt Millen, the President and CEO, after years of him leading the team into a sea of piss.
He was a disease to the Lion’s organization and got paid for it. They paid this man to royally fuck things up on a consistant basis. It was a pathetic feat never accomplished before.
Their fans marched to get him fired. Opponents wanted him to stay on, realizing that with Millen still on the Lion’s payroll it gave them a better chance at victory.
This year the Lions haven’t won a single game. Not one. They’re dismal, a stain on the NFL cloth.
And where’s Jon Kitna - the Preacher of the NFL - while his team is wallowing, stinking up the field every Sunday?
(Here’s Kitna eating a helmet.)
Forming a Christian metal band? Hooking up with Stryper?
Advising Ted Haggard?
“See, Teddy. Life is like a football game…”
The season is not over. There’s still time for the Lions to get at least one win before they turn off the lights on what is yet another lousy season.
“That’s why they play the game.”
Tags: Adrian Peterson, Brett Favre, Campbell's Soup, cops, Cursed, football, Giants, Jack Lambert, Jessica Simpson, Jesus, Jon Kitna, Juke, Michael Vick, Millen Man March, new york, NFL, Reno J. Romero, Speed, Steelers, Superstition, Ted Haggard
hut one
need to get me one o’them geetars
hut two
Jessica and PETA are coming over to free the pig
hut three
where’s the pic of you in the striper spandex, babycakes?
you where the pic is since it was your camera that snapped the infamous shot.
me in rock poses.
next time i’ll wear my gene simmons outfit and breath fire on your neck.
bye, jos!
love gun,
r
Brother Reno:
I was born slightly deficient of the sports gene, so I’m always in awe of anyone that can discuss sports or write about sports in this manner. Well, hell, my friend. You could write about the lifecycle of the angiosperm and it would still be a hoot.
Hope all’s well.
the Urban Legend has just thrown down a challenge
the lifecycle of the angiosperm
we’ll wait right here with our hoots at the ready.
angiosperm: nice flowers.
angie’s sperm: bad night in vegas.
“hey, this is angie…”
people are better off if they don’t have the sports gene. in fact, i barely do. don’t like basketball, baseball, etc.
football is the only game for me.
and what a game it is.
hut one.
hut two.
thanks, rich.
Sports tend to bore me unless I am participating but as Rich says, good writers can write about anything and make it interesting.
I stuck right there with you. Hey, Nashville in the background.
Shout out for me I bet.
sports are boring, 11. it’s a proven fact. but i have it bad w/ football.
i like the action, the long pass.
i like the damn helmets, the fake grass.
viva nashville. it’s all you.
soldiers under command,
r
I have an odd affinity for football. These allegiances are formed during childhood, I think.
Every Sunday.
It relaxes me.
Packers are my team. Rough year. Losing all the close ones. Already looking to next season. We need a defense.
Also a Colts fan. Spent part of my youth in Indy. We had season tickets during the Gary Hogeboom/Jack Trudeau years. Talk about miserable.
Right now I don’t see anyone taking the Giants. Cowboys have talent. Tampa has a nice defense. Indianapolis has Peyton.
Who knows?
If I’m a betting man? NYG.
**
Anyway, good to see some sports writing on the site.
BL-
i think you’re right, it’s a childhood thing. i’ve loved football for as long as i remember. steelers, vikings.
ham.
fran.
rodgers is going to be a solid QB. if he could keep some good people around him then it’s on. i’m surprised by their record. i thought they would have had more.
anyhow, we still have a bit to go.
see you at the 50.
Nice Reno. Good summary of the NFL at this point in the season. I was in Vegas last week before Thanksgiving. Kept half an eye out for you but no dice. I heard 8-gold medal-winning Michael Phelps was in town at the Venetian with his new cocktail waitress/stripper girlfriend.
I wish I could ignore the sports. I’m not crazy about it like some folks, but I’ve got a couple of west coast teams I like to watch. I grew up in Fresno in the lovely San Joaquin Valley of California, where we got Raider football and SF Giant baseball, so I’ve been a stalwart and dissapointed fan of them for years. Fucking Al “Skeletor” Davis.
I now live in San Diego, with its own rich history of underperforming franchises. After brief brushes with greatness, the Padres are back in the toilet and headed farther down the drain next year. The Chargers can’t figure out how to get the offense and defense to both play well in the same game, and are masters of the last second heartbreak loss. Plus I’m getting my ass handed to me in fantasy football.
Oh well. Any given Sunday, right?
phelps and a stripper? ohh. like it.
raiders, huh? yeah, i understand. i grew up in CA and there were a million raider fans. i didn’t couldn’t do it. like i couldn’t do being a rams fan.
san diego has had its shots at championships. i’m not a baseball fan but i like the chargers. for a while there i’d go down every year and catch a game. saw them play the steelers. saw them play the vikes. saw L.T light up the vikqueens on a sweep.
it was flawless.
anyhow, it’s on. there’s still a lot of punching left. on any sunday: you bet.
Reno, I’m really sorry, but I do not understand how anyone can watch football except from the point of view of the mother of the player who is getting the shit kicked out of him. Sort of like watching the parallel bars at the Olympics. (Their poor mothers!)
Reno, please pray for my Lions. This is beyond embarassing. They are, after all, an NFL team.
I bought season tickets with my brother in 1999, two days before Barry Sanders retired via fax to Lion headquarters. We saw many entertaining games at the Silverdome the first 2 years and then, like a fart in the wind, it all vanished when Millen came aboard. We gave up our seats 2 years ago–could not bear to watch it anymore. Yes, we still travel downtown now and then to enjoy a crisp Sunday morning of tailgating, including this past thanksgiving, but there is an emptiness around Ford Field. It is sad. That’s all I can say.
The Vikes are up next. Your team against mine. I can at least make one prediction hold true however: Adrian Peterson will clean up for my fantasy team!
kitna’s prayers are not working. who would have thunk it?
i predict the lions to beat the queens this week. if they’re gonna win one this year it will be at home against SOMEBODY.
that somebody is the vikings. it’s their destiny. remember, lyons: the vikings suck, too. not as bad as the lions but they don’t have much to talk about.
well, they have peterson.
he’s an animal.
an animal in a purple uniform.
perhaps if ford gets a few bucks from the working folk then they can pay attention to the sad product they have taking the field on sunday.
but they have bigger problems.
“piss on, kitna,” one big cheese said. “i can’t even sell a fucking car.”
irene-
see, I AM THE MOTHER! the mother to all them over-grown muscle-heads! i gave them birth. i gave them football and fame and girls and guns to shot their thighs with.
i’m caring that way.
here’s the deal, irene: this sunday watch a game. get lenore to explain the rules. grab a beer or some sweet tea. i prefer sweet tea while i watch football. but beer will do just fine.
(i’ve had at least 6 million beers while watching football over the course of my miserable life…)
make some bar food and go with the flow. not really a spiritual journey. but one hell of an experience, no doubt.
you live in florida, eh? ok, you have a few teams down there. here’s how it looks:
miami dolphins: horrible team. BUT they’re not as bad as people thought they were going to be this year. so that’s a plus. the minus is that they have terrible colors (sea-foam blue and orange!), have a lousy name: the DOLPHINS? huh? one of those things with fins and a blow hole?
lord have mercy.
tampa bay buccaneers: good team. vicious defense. you’ll love them. nice team colors. cool helmets. go out and buy one and put it in your library.
jacksonville jaguars: their year has been the exact opposite of the dolphins. people figured them to have a good year and they went out and had a sucky year. go figure. it’s a mystery. another reason why you should watch a bunch of overpaid bastards run around trying to knock each other’s heads off.
i suggest you go with the winning team since that’s what most people do.
oh, and feel free to pick a team that doesn’t come from your state. see? see the potential?
anyhow, there you go.
the hail mary!
first and ten,
r
Reno, I’ll try, but I am afraid after the first person is gang tackled (sp) and doesn’t get up right away, I will have to turn it off. But I’ll try. (In Miami you HAVE to be for the Dolphins.)
dolphins are a very historic NFL club. people simply love them. anyhow, good. watch a game w/ the good doctor.
WAIT!
victor doesn’t like football? surely he does. right?
poo!
okay, have fun. let me know how it goes.
r
We do need more sports writing. I enjoy football if I am at a bar drinking/eating. But that seems to be the only time. It’s weird to me how Americans love their college sports. The Longhorns. A&M. That stuff is born in college.
Tom Brady is such a beautiful piece of man meat.
There’s a bar near my house that I watch NFL at sometimes, but on Saturdays they go ape shit crazy in there for Texas Tech. Everyone wearing Lubbock t-shirts and jerseys. Scared the crap out of me the first time I experienced it.
There was no football team at my college. You can’t have a football team whose mascot is a banana slug. It just wouldn’t work. I can’t even force myself to watch a college game.
americans love their college teams. it’s sickening. especially those texas fuckers. they’re out of control. hell, they pack their high schools on friday night to watch a batch of zit-faced punks throw the ball around and whatnot.
they do. PACKED high schools!
texas is insane when it comes to sports. that whole area is drunk w/ sports.
you’re right: tom brady is a beautiful piece of man meat. you bet. look at that asshole! look at his friggin’ life! hot BROAD. kid (s–?). purdy magazine face. cash. super bowl wins. probably drives around a cute car w/ all the fixings, farts in a shiny house.
damn.
good for him.
like rod stewart sang: “some guys have all the luck.”
later, mlp.
pork rinds,
r
I was wondering when you were going to slam on the Lions. If you gotta suck, you might as well be the best at it. And my Packers are making me sad. I don’t think I’ve seen my gramma bring out any of her cheese-head gear this season. I still have hockey, so it’ll be OK.
oh, those lions are the worst. it’s been a while since we’ve seen something like this. they’re bad. real bad.
sorry about the pack. but they’ll be all right. the QB has potential. next year. there’s always next year…
thanks for the comment, kaite.
r
I’m hurt, Reno -no mention of the Dolphins in your NFL Year in Review So Far?
Now Reno, I’ve just read down the comments… Hmmm; the Dolphins ARE mentioned by you! Ah, I see you’re enthused because they’re vying for first in the AFC East. Yeah, I know -it’s mind- (and in Vegas, odds-) boggling… After a Bucs (was it ‘76?) /Lions (it IS ‘08) year last year, they’ve come a long way, baby! Interstellar distance, almost. I am a Dolphins fan -winced thru last year, with both eyes mostly open, hurtin’.
But their colors which you seemingly happily disparage are great -mid-winter orange for a nice, warm, mid-winter shining sun; mid-winter aqua for nice, warm, clear water, mid-winter white for… uh, away games, and the purity of all those beautiful young things on South Beach, yeah, that’s it!
And a Dolphin as a mascot? Well, I must admit, I wanted it to be the Barracudas, but a Dolphin is one of the larger sea creatures, and is fast, really fast, and best, is smart.
So I’m happy with the Fins choices in colors and name, and with their picks of Parcells & Ireland & Sparano.
And I am REALLY happy with this year’s record: they’re winning, and even if they “lose out”, they STILL come in at five-hundred. Not too bad for a 1-15 team that the Ravens want to forget…
Brad? You spent some of your youth in Indianapolis & have some feelings for the Colts? My man, suffering thru the Hogeboombust and Trudeaudundidn’t years ain’t the Colts -the Colts is Johnny U calling his own plays while inventing the 2-minute drill, Tom Mackey, the first really great tight end, Big Daddy Lipscomb, huge DT and early adopter of drugs, and the Asylum on 33rd Street.
And Reno… You couldn’t get into the first team to put a symbol on their hat? A team with fleet Tommy McDonald? A team with the o-riginal Named Defensive Line, the Fearsome Foursome (unlike my golf group, who play so badly we’re the Fearfool 4Sum, and we spell the game the way we play it: backwards)? I mean, how could you NOT be a fan with a team that had a HUGE guy at 6-4/225# playing QB in Roman Gabriel? I thought those guys were the best, behind the old NY Football Giants, when I was a kid…
Irene, honestly? I don’t know if there’s any hope for you. You’re a mother, AND you’re married to an otherwise FINE fellow who, alas, lacks the sports gene. Sure, try a beer, or some tea, maybe, and sit down with someone who knows and loves the game and can not only explain it, but bring some of its soul and passion to light for you, and especially someone who has a real nifty, amply illustrated, concise and clear and logical and incremental in its progression to bring not only comprehension but apprehension (in the non-pejorative sense of the word -the connaitre as opposed to the savoir in French, you might say) of the game to the non-cognoscenti so as to elucidate, clarify, and bring warmth to watching…
Football… I guess I kinda like that game…
-Frank
frank-
where do i start? i don’t know what to do here. i’m stumped. but first: thanks for the comment. very nice. very purdy. had me nodding my head. had me laughing. good job. you know your football.
and that’s a fuckin’ beautiful thing.
damn football gene.
the dolphins are playing well. no doubt. i didn’t see it coming. i figured that pennington (sp?) would just under arm three yeard passes and they’d make porter do all the tackling. earning that damn pay.
but they’re winning. they used to win. i know you remember.
(i promise i won’t get into the dan marino thing. i wrote about him a few posts back. don’t read it, frank. and if you do, realize that it was from the heart, a good honest thing…i’ll explain later.)
nice description of the unies. very romantic. but no. they’re nasty. but what can they do to remedy the situation? nothing. they’re the dolphins. champs in the past. even with the colors, the mascot with a cute kissy face.
hey, frank, don’t despair, how about the cardinals? they’re in the same boat. wings and fins. what can the cardinals do with the mean tweety mascot? blame it on the shot callers.
blame it on millen.
the playoff are almost here. the panthers just pummeled the bucs. the score didn’t reflect it. did you see carolina run all over them? it was nice.
okay, i will throw out another shit-taking post as soon as the post-season teams that their places. see you them.
thanks, frank.