My NFL preview

Well, with week one on the books, and since it’s all anyone seems to be talking about, I’ll chime in on the new NFL season. Actually, I have absolutely nothing to say on this topic. You see I love sports, but I have little to no desire to spend time studying them. I watch Sportscenter at least once a day, re-fresh ESPN.com about a million times each day I spend in my office, listen to sports radio while I’m out avoiding my office but that’s it. I’m a headline guy. I know the big stories that can be tied up neatly so that they only take up about five minutes at a time. Beyond that I really don’t care. I thought it was awesome that Terrell Owens was doing sit-ups in his driveway during a press conference to talk about how much he hated his quarterback. That’s it though, I don’t really care why they don’t like each other; knowing that they don’t is enough.

Sports provide endless amounts of entertainment and only part of it comes from the field. I love the NBA, but I haven’t watched a full game in years. I’d much rather read stories about players getting busted for fighting pit bulls or carrying weed and guns on airplanes. I don’t care to watch a Heat game on TV, but I’ll sit through any Shaq interview, particularly if involves a camera crew following him around for any length of time. That guy’s fucking hilarious.

The thing with the NFL, is that its gotten to the point where just about every fan, and there’s billions of them, are the complete opposite. The internet, the NFL Network, DirecTV, 24 hours of ESPN on a bunch of channels; they all allow total access to any and every team and player in the league. And because of the fantasy league stuff, all of these outlets have completely exploded in popularity and relevance. As you could probably guess I’ve never participated in fantasy sports of any kind.

It’s not that I just don’t like the fantasy thing, I just don’t care enough to put in that kind of time. Frankly, I think most people who do are fucking geeks, and that includes most of my friends. It’s one thing to be in a league, take it somewhat seriously as far as trying to win goes; but its another thing completely to be one of the losers at a bar on Sunday with two newspapers, six magazines, Internet print-outs and copies of Bill Simmons’ last five columns. Last week at a bar in Dallas I even saw three guys with lap-tops. That’s fucked up. I was with people who are in fantasy leagues and they thought that was fucked up. These guys are probably really into Texas Hold'em all of a sudden, too.

One argument I always hear is that it’s just a way to make every game interesting, because you’re either rooting for or against certain players or defenses. The wall-to wall coverage and subsequent popularity of it all makes it inescapable and I get tired of hearing about it constantly. If that works for you, knock yourself out. It just doesn’t work for me. It seems like the whole deal has been kind of created and over-saturated by companies looking to expand interest in programming that’s relatively easy to produce. Not much different than reality television actually, which I love. Go figure.

Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t care about the fantasy thing either way. Its just the wall to wall over-analysis that always seems to go hand in hand. What ever happened to just watching a game and enjoying the sport for what it is? Maybe it's a way to get more involved with a sport you love, maybe it's a way to justify getting out of the house and away form the wife for a few hours, maybe its a gambling problem: I don't know. It just require too much attention and diligence for me.

Which brings me to my second, possibly misguided, closed-minded opinion. I’m sick of the Dallas fucking Cowboys.

I used to be a huge Cowboy fan. I loved Troy Aikman, Emmett Smith, and especially Michael Irvin. In fact, #88 is still one of my favorite people in the world. He wore a purple, mink coat to court for his cocaine trial; that’s what’s right about sports. That’s what I like. About the time, Jerry Jones started fucking with the team, and turning it into a soap opera, I checked-out. Three years ago I hopped on board with the Houston Texans at the ground floor and now we're headed straight to the top.

If you’re not a Cowboy fan, living in Dallas during the football season sucks. I spent 10 years in DC and that town is crazy about the Redskins, but believe me when I say it is ten times more so with the Cowboys. Nothing can happen without it being a breaking story. Every Bill Parcels press conference is carried on TV and radio, and nothing ever comes out if it except maybe a racial slur. The guy doesn't asshole who hates the media, doesn’t give interviews, and keeps all matters regarding his team very closely guarded. Thankfully the team’s owner is an ego-maniacal media whore who will gladly spin any issue however he thinks it will play best with the public. I kind of like that about him because I like people who are blatantly full of shit, and throw that in the face of an ignorant public.

Jerry and the local media feed off the whole America's team thing and it becomes a completely uncontrollable, all-access, overblown love-fest. I don't even think they're America's team at this point, that distinction has rightfully been passed to the Texas Longhorns. Anymore, fans don't rely on two weekly nationally televised games for their football fix. They can see any team, any time anywhere in the country; so there are no longer teams that gain popularity based solely on big media coverage or a lucrative TV deal. The Cowboy's may be Mexico's team though. The Mexican's love the Cowboys. I don't know why but they do.

So after beating San Diego, Sunday you can imagine the all-out fuck fest that’s been going on here in town? You’d think they cancelled the season and handed over the Lombardi Trophy. Funniest thing about it is the fans here in Dallas are very used to this criticism. They’ve been told for years how overboard they go over the slightest success, but it continues nonetheless and no one does anything to stop it. So what happens? Every sportscaster’s commentary, every column, every dumbass caller to a radio show starts their diatribe with the following: "I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves here, I realize it’s only the first week, BUT…" Then they go on to fellate the team and schedule their February vacation to Detroit completely negating their opening caveat.

This will go one for a few weeks. I’ve already heard that because of some team being overrated, and some guy being hurt and one team losing to some other team there’s a pretty good chance the Cowboys could be looking at a 5-0 start. From there apparently, they’d have to fall pretty hard to miss the playoffs. They even like Drew Bledsoe all of a sudden because he gave Larry Allen a hug. So now we've got a city full of idiots, blindly optimistic about a shitty football team. Look, I don't care that people get behind their team, and I can understand people being slightly unreasonable about it; hopeful even. I get that way about a team I like. But it's the degree to which it happens here, often without any real basis that gets to me. People just need to relax and let the games happen, drink a cerveza, eat a taco and chill.

Goodnight and go fuck yourself San Diego.

Shit

Tradise is gone

After only a few episodes E! has decided to cancel Taradise and I think that sucks. The only positive I can take from this is that she's leaving me wanting more. Eventually, I'm afraid Tara's drunken whorishness would have gotten played out and I would have tired of it.

The Defamer blurb makes a good point about footage that's already been shot. I hope they release a DVD. In fact Tara is good friends with Joe Francis fmo Girls Gone Wild, maybe he can have a hand in it.

I guess I have to find something else to write about now.

Life in Taradise

As I mentioned last week, Taradise on E! is probably the most consistently entertaining show on television right now. Well except for Entourage. Nonetheless, I've yet to get tired of watching Tara bumble through exotic locations proclaiming them the greatest place she's ever been in her whole life and describing every club she goes to as "so full of life". My biggest hope is that when the first season comes out on DVD, E! is smart enough to include tons of behind the scenes and "after hours" footage.

I'd like to see Tara throwing up in a Greek fountain, or trying to score coke off a bouncer. Scenes of her waking up in her clothes from the night before, farting on herself and then demanding an omelet and a bloody mary would be hilarious. Maybe even some sort of quiz-show type deal where she's asked lots of questions about the history and culture of the places she's traveled. Remember when Shaq went to Greece for some international basketball tournament? They asked him if he visited the Parthenon, and he said "I don't remember the names of all the clubs we went to over there."

Last night I watched the Mykonos episode. Fairly uneventful except for one huge highlight. Tara and the gang ran into That Guy Who Played Urkel and his buddy from the Kansas City Chiefs Freddie "FredEx" Mitchell. Tara kept talking about Freddie and Urkel like they were some unstoppable pair of party super-hero's. And I suppose they were. I guess Urkel has resigned himself to being Urkel for the rest of his life and accepted that if he rolls with it, he can pretty much fuck around for the next fifty years and no one will really care. Urkel don't need no day job. FredEx seems to be his buddy, and for an NFL player shows a remarkable lack of ability to be cool. I once saw LaVar Arrington at a club in DC and he knew how to party. Groupies, champagne, a posse, intimidation; the whole deal. Freddie was acting like a closeted frat-guy freshman looking to score with a TV nerd. Not even Tara was feelin' it; and she's a strung out, C-list, "actress". You think girls like her don't throw themselves at any NFL player they can get within 100 yards of?

Anyway, as good as this show is without some tweaks it should soon loose its luster. They need to go ahead and accept the train wreck factor and play it for as long as they can. They need a smarmy producer off-camera to egg her on, slip X into her drink, challenge her to crazy dares and feed her completely false information by the truck load. "The Pyramids were built in the 1850's by Mexicans who had come to Egypt hoping to free the slaves from the mythical sea monsters" I promise she won't catch on.

I gotta go. I obviously think about shit like this too much.