August 15, 2011
Randy Neil
Seriously. The powers that are controlling football may very well be the smartest marketing group on the planet. I don’t doubt the lock-out was real. What I doubt is the fear and panic ESPN and the NFL tried to instill in fans and viewers this summer. Was anyone really going to walk away from a multi-billion dollar business?
What they did was genius, though. They single-handedly doubled everyone’s interest in football in a few short months. Now, the commentators and analyst get to say things like, “Now that football’s back” or “Thank God we have football again” like we missed something during the summer.
Fans are grateful for a football season that we all fretted wasn’t going to start until… well… when it normally starts.
With that being said, THANK GOD FOOTBALL IS BACK, THOUGH!!
To start the season right, the NFL gave us the Hall-of-Fame induction ceremony. Deion Sanders, Marshall Faulk, Shannon Sharpe… screw the Hall-of-Fame award, give them Academy Awards! Did you see their award speeches? All of them were over-the-top tear-jerkers that would make any grown man cry. “Whether you hate him or love him, you knew him as…. PRIME TIME.” I suppose I’d be full of myself if I was being inducted into the Hall-of-Fame, too. I just wouldn’t want everyone to cry about it.
David Akers, long time kicker for the Eagles, was traded this year. As the longest active Eagle in football, he wanted to thank all the fans for his time spent in this wonderful city. He rented an entire billboard on I-95 for a month just to say thank you. Well, I’d like to say, “Thank you, David Akers. That, was a super classy gesture.” I wonder what would happen if McNabb pulled something like that when he was traded.
Speaking of classy, I didn’t get much of a chance to bitch about caddy Steve Williams. It’s a funny thing that the media does to people. As Tiger Woods caddy, Williams never discussed anything with the media and often shunned them. After being fired, he became the most vocal person in the world. It’s kind of a double-edge sword though. The media made this a story. They took it and blew it up into something much bigger than it should have been.
Now, I can’t say that Williams isn’t to blame for this, but when the spotlight was shined on him more brightly than ever, he did what any man would do, and talked. It’s tough to remain steadfast in your morals when you find yourself being discussed on national television.
What’s most ironic is how the media turned on the man after the story got so big it imploded upon itself. You can’t ever blame the media, because it’s not a real person. The media is, and always will be, a blameless entity. Were they partially at fault for trying to manifest interest in something that really shouldn’t have been that big in the first place? Probably. It’s remarkable that they can then change the story to, “Steve Williams draws too much attention to himself.” as if that wasn’t their doing in the first place.
The media begged him for his story, and then when he delivered, they scolded him for selfishness and poor timing. Just as they did with Lebron, and countless others, it’s how the story goes.
On the lighter side of things, Bert & Ernie from our beloved Sesame Street released an announcement (again) to the press this week that they were in fact, not gay. A group of people started a petition online to suggest that “the couple” gets married on television to inspire kids and help the cause for same-sex marriages. The Children’s Television Workshop (producers of the characters) then had to release a statement stating that “the two are not homosexual, because they are puppets, and puppets have no sexual-orientation.”
That is hilarious. Whether you’re for or against same-sex marriage, the idea of puppets transforming themselves to any sort of figure for civil rights is comical. My rebuttal to CTW (if I had one) is, “What about Kermit and Ms. Piggy?” Wasn’t she always trying to get with Kermit? Isn’t that sexual orientation? Ugh, I can make an argument out of anything….
Enjoy your football. Til next time folks….
Free agency is always one of the most exciting and mind boggling times of the NFL year. Exciting because players move around nimbly bimbly from team to team, and mind boggling because teams are always declared ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers.’ The fact of the matter is that most of the time, the ‘Winners’ of free agency are still ‘Losers’ when it comes time to play actual football. Don’t believe me? Well then let’s take a look at some of last year’s supposed ‘Winners’ according to John Clayton from ESPN.
