Honestly, how was anybody able to be a football fan before they invented NFL Sunday Ticket? I don’t want to turn this into a commercial for the greatest invention of the last 100 years (have the Nobel people been alerted?), but this Sunday, like many Sundays before and many since, was spent wearing a groove into the couch with every game at my fingertips.

Honestly, how was anybody able to be a football fan before they invented NFL Sunday Ticket? I don’t want to turn this into a commercial for the greatest invention of the last 100 years (have the Nobel people been alerted?), but this Sunday, like many Sundays before and many since, was spent wearing a groove into the couch with every game at my fingertips.

OK, nobody actually uses their fingertips to change channels, though do they? If you are ever being tortured in a Cambodian prison camp and they are going to cut off a finger, don’t let them take your thumb, it’ll just screw up your remote control skills, something fierce, and forget about working the Playstation 2 controller.

Where was I?

Pregame

ESPN added Rush Limbaugh to their pregame show. Who thought this was a good idea? Let’s just hope this trend doesn’t catch on. If I see George Will sitting at the Baseball Tonight set, or Jerry Nadler sucking down chicken wings with the NBA 2night gang, I’m heading for the hills.

I do like the fact that they make Rush sit at the kiddie table. It’s still better than where they stuck Chris Mortensen. He’s locked in a room by himself. Rush has some red challenge flags and he can throw them onto the main set when he wants to argue a point somebody just made.

Now, if only they could get Michael Irvin to actually finish a sentence. Michael apparently has been watching Mike Ditka tapes.

“The Cowboys have a better passing attack than I…Miami needs to remember to not forget Ricky…”

Over on the always electric CBS pregame show, Dan Marino is telling us how he once broke a finger and had a hard time gripping the ball so the trainer taped a thumbtack to this finger. Huh? The Bears tried that with Kordell Stewart, only the trainer kept taping the thumbtack on backwards.

Does Ford sponsor the Fox pregame show? I had no idea? I just thought James Brown really liked to sit in front of sixteen TV monitors with “The New Ford F150” on them all the time. Honestly, since they have NASCAR now, you’d think they’d learn how to just cram all the sponsors into their commentary.

“Ahman Green drives through the hole just like a Ford heavy duty pickup would. He’s a great complement to the Sprint long distance that Brett Favre can provide.”

James Brown said that Patriots defensive lineman Sam Adams’ name sounds like a can of beer. A can of Sam Adams? I’m not partying with JB.

Every time Jimmy Johnson tries to rip the Dolphins he can’t do it. Not with longtime boyfriend Dave Wannstedt still trying to run the Dolphins’ organizations straight into a reef.

The Broncos brought Danny Kannell in to give them depth at quarterback? Danny Kannell? Really? Aren’t any of those Elway kids old enough to hold a clipboard?

On CBS, Deion Sanders is wearing the following outfit. He’s got a maroon three-piece suit, a brown and black striped dress shirt, brown shoes made out of some exotic lizard and an orange tie. And he looks good. If I had that on, I’d look like I was wearing a prune over an orange.

Marino just said that he has breaking news that the Cleveland Browns’ defense has a drug problem. “They get drug up one side of the field and then drug back down the other.” Has Bill Scheft started writing for the NFL Today? Now all we need is a rimshot and a vaudeville hook on the set.

HBO has George Lopez and Wanda Sykes on Inside the NFL. NFL Today insider Jay Glazer says CBS is in negotiations with Carrottop and the guy who played Kenny Bania on Seinfeld.

Jillian Barberie is wearing Joe Pantoliano’s Kangol during her weather forecast, and she’s plugging the fact that she’ll be hosting a local Emmy preshow in Los Angeles. You don’t get this kind of fascinating stuff anywhere else, folks.

Frank Caliendo is the “new” Jimmy Kimmel, and the more I see him, the more I wonder if anyone’s ever seen him and Andy Richter in the same room at the same time. His John Madden impersonation is good, but the part that got me was when he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a chicken wing. I don’t why I liked that. I just did.

On CBS, Randy Cross just said, “Chiefs’ guard Will Shields will make his uh-hundred and sixty-eighth consecutive start today.” Uh-hundred? I have no idea.

Deion gets big laughs when he “accidentally” says that the key for Atlanta against Tampa Bay’s defense will be to “use your big black…back.” Jim Nantz says, out loud, “I’m glad you were the one who said that, Deion.”

I think we actually have a pulse on the CBS pregame show this year! Who knew?

Every time you see Emmitt Smith doing an interview, he’s wearing the same royal blue and white sleeveless t-shirt. Don’t the Cardinals have any swag they can throw his way? He might as well wear a shirt that says, “I USED TO PLAY FOR DALLAS!” on it.

Laveranues Coles was asked to compare his new quarterback, Patrick Ramsey, to his old quarterback Chad Pennington. He says Ramsey has a better arm. I’ve got news for you Laveranues, everybody has a better arm than Chad.

I enjoyed Lesley Visser’s hard hitting interview with Terrell Owens. Among her questions. “Do you think you could be a model?”
”Do you want a big contract?”
“Do you breathe in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide?”

Marino says, “To me, Kelly Holcomb is only 1-4 as a starter.”

Yeah, to me, too, Dan.

At the same time, CBS has their “cast” in suits on a miniature football field with Carolina coach John Fox demonstrating how to block a field goal, and on Fox they have their “cast” with Cowboys’ defensive back Darren Woodson demonstrating hot to tackle a wide receiver. On ESPN they have Rush Limbaugh explaining the Bush tax cut to Merrill Hoge.

Howie Long has an interview with the Barber twins, which, is not only redundant, but we’d rather see the Barbie twins or the Olsen twins, wouldn’t we? If it was Fox Sports Net, Howie would just have interviewed one of the Barber twins, but he’d have asked him the same questions twice.

Terry Bradshaw muses that “Alge Crumpler is a great name and a great color.” I haven’t the foggiest. But my mom once hit my brother’s car in the driveway and it became a nice shade of crumpler.

CBS spends five minutes with Nantz, Marino, Boomer Esiason and Deion making their picks on every game. Is there anybody in America who cares?

On ESPN, Tom Jackson is interviewing Gus Frerotte, who has been brought in to be a calming, veteran influence on Dante Culpepper in Minnesota. Let’s just hope Gus doesn’t try and teach Dante how to headbut the stands after a touchdown.

Kickoff for the noon (CDT) games…finally

A quick rundown of the early games, gives you the pecking order of the games. Fox’s top team of Joe Buck, Cris Collinsworth and whatever’s left of Troy Aikman are doing the Tampa Bay-Atlanta game. Conversely, the New Orleans-Tennessee game is being done by Ron Pitts and Tim Somebody. I missed the open and though I watched a lot of the game, Ron never called him anything but Tim. Ron, he’s not Cher or Gallagher, you can’t just call him by one name.

Tim was full of good stuff though. He said this about Tennessee wide receiver Drew Bennett, “When you’re 6’5, you can fall forward and gain two or three yards.” Huh? He’s 6’5, not 9’5. I’m guessing two yards, tops.

Detroit is trying to butch up their Honolulu blue uniforms with a little black trim. Now if they’d actually tackle somebody it might start to take effect.

Atlanta plays in the Georgia Dome, but somebody forgot to tell Bucs defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin that. Monte’s standing there in a rain suit. I’m not even making this up. Monte’s the highest paid assistant in the history of the NFL, and he has the most elaborate combover in the business, and now he’s apparently developed some sort of aquaphobia.

Monte’s fascinating. Better send Lesley Visser to interview him next week.

A new NFL Sunday Ticket feature this year is something called “enhanced games.” They pick two early games and two late games and put them on two channels. On one channel you get the regular game feed. On another, you get a bar that runs down the left side of the screen with constantly rotating and updated scores of other games. When one team enters the opponent’s red zone, the score turns red so you can click over to watch a potential score. At the bottom of the screen is a ticker with constantly updated statistics, so fantasy owners can obsess over them all day. I spent the first week looking at Anquan Boldin’s stats and thinking that either I had a carbon monoxide leak in my house, or that they were all typos.

The early games on Saturday were Kansas City- Houston and Indianapolis-Jacksonville. Unfortunately, even on the “enhanced games” there was no option to turn off the voices of Hollerin’ Kevin Harlan or Randy Cross.

But if there was, we’d have missed this gem from Randy. “There’s a word to describe Priest Holmes. ‘Patience in motion.’” Uh…that’s three words.

I’m not making this up. Our pal Tim doing the Titans-Saints game just said, “When Eddie George falls forward, it’s five yards.” Huh? Wait, how tall is Eddie? He’s six feet taller than Drew Bennett? That has to be some kind of record.

The Jets fake a field goal in epic style. Their holder is the punter, Dan Stryzinski, and he takes the snap, as the kicker goes through with the kick, giving off the “Lucy just pulled the football away from Charlie Brown” effect. Then, Stryzinski throws to the center, Kevin Mawae. It’s incomplete. Riddle me this, Herman Edwards. Instead of a) kicking the field goal in a three point game or b) going for it on fourth down, you have your punter throw a pass to your center?

Given the leg flailing done by the kicker, if this play’s not called “Lucy Van Pelt on one,” it really ought to be.

More fun with kickers. Gary Anderson has found a job again. He’s the Joe Nedney replacement in Tennessee, and he’s wearing that stupid one bar facemask, still. Do they even make that anymore, or do we think Gary has to actually bring it with him from team to team? Why does he wear it? Other than the fact it makes him look like every generic team bobblehead ever made, does he think a normal facemask would obscure his vision of the ball and force him to miss it completely and fall down?

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, Bill Cowher shows us how to fake a field goal. Even though he lined up his kicker for a 50 yarder, after he’d badly shanked a 47 yard attempt before it, the Bengals figured it was going to be a field goal. Instead, the holder, quarterback Tommy Maddox, takes the snap, drops back and finds tight end Jerame Tuman for a first down. The kicker did not do a pretend kick either, which kind of disappointed me, actually. But notice that the Steelers had their quarterback throw a pass to their tight end, which seems a little more logical than their punter throwing to the center. But maybe that’s just me.

Non football related note. In the Cubs-Pirates game, a camera shows a teenager with a Steelers #83 jersey on. He turns around and we see that indeed, he’s wearing a Louis Lipps jersey. That made my day.

In fact, it reminded me of the day that former NBC announcer Charlie Jones accused Bears linebacker Otis Wilson of being the dirtiest player in the NFL for a forearm to Louis Lipps’…uh…lip. Mike Ditka went off on Charlie during the postgame press conference calling him, “The most powerful man in the NFL.” Sometimes, I miss Coach Ditka and his sarcasm.

Speaking of the Bears. Bears fans all over the country were horrified when in the Colts-Jaguars game, Colts DB Walt Harris makes a diving deflection of a sure TD pass. CBS broadcaster Steve Tasker says, “You can’t do that any better than Walt Harris does it.” Huh? The Walt Harris? If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in the kitchen with my head in the oven.

In Atlanta, Warren Sapp and Booger McFarland (you have to love a guy named Booger) are playing tight end in the Bucs’ goalline offense. When Sapp catches his first NFL TD pass he does the little Beyonce bounce dance. On the enhanced channel, Tracy Morgan shows up and says, “A little birdy told me, Sapp can’t score a TD. Sapp too slow.”

The photo of Tom Brady that CBS uses when they show his stats is hilarious. He obviously had a hat on most of the day when they took the photo and took it off for the picture. He’s got a part in his hair that looks like it was made by a lightning bolt. Hard to have confidence in your QB when his picture makes him look like Alfalfa.

In Cincinnati, Jerome Bettis is in at tailback for the Steelers and CBS has a stat that in the history of the Bengals, only Franco Harris has run for more yards against them than Bettis. Franco has almost 1500 yards in 22 games, while Bettis has more than 1400 in 14 games. Brent Jones says this, “If a lot of people played the Bengals two times a year, a lot of people would have the most yards against them.” Huh? Again, I’m stupefied.

Is anyone else troubled by this commercial for Levitra where the guy is trying to throw the football through the tire swing? He takes some erectile dysfunction medication and he can throw the ball through the tire? The subtext is disturbing to say the least.

Dante Hall just returned another punt for a touchdown for the Chiefs. Dick Vermeil is crying. Neither one shocks anybody any more.

The Jets and Patriots are locked in a 9-9 death match of anemic offenses. It gets so bad that with the ball on the Jets 20, the Patriots decide their best bet is to let their halfback, Kevin Faulk, throw a pass. It should have been picked by the Jets Sam Garnes. Dan Dierdorf then makes a hilarious, “Defensive backs are wide receivers who can’t catch” joke. Yeah, we all miss him on Monday nights don’t we? Sure.

I misread a CBS promo for the new Joe Pantaliano show “The Handler”, I thought it said, “The Panhandler.” But of course, that’s the new Jimy Smits show.

How sad is it that David Caruso has a hit show and I have to change all my Caruso jokes to Smits ones?

Texans special teamer Matt Stevens has enough tattoos on his arms to qualify for a guest spot on Carnivale. Yikes. Dennis Rodman looked at him and said, “Dude. Take it easy on the tats.”

Breaking news from Atlanta: Doug Johnson is not good.

My favorite sideline moment of the day. Bonnie Bernstein is on the sidelines at the Patriots-Jets game and she’s doing her stand up. You can tell she thinks they’ve switched from her to the action on the field so she literally jumps forward to grab her notebook and read a quote. Only, the camera’s still on her. Or rather, it’s on where she used to be.

When Tennessee offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger takes off his headset his hair makes a pyramid on his head like Simon from The Real World. I say we start calling that shark fin hairdo the “Heimerdinger.”

The afternoon games have their own pecking order. Let’s just say if you tune and you hear, “I’m Ian Eagle, along with Solomon Wilcots” you’re probably not rooting for a Super Bowl contender.

Phil Simms and Greg Gumbel are in San Francisco where the awe-inspiring Cleveland Browns offense is gunning to double its season TD output. With one.

The always hilarious Brian Baldinger is in Phoenix where it’s 105 degrees at kickoff. He’s paired with Kenny Albert and honestly, I think Packers fans deserve this.

Baldinger is having problems on the first Packers possession telling the difference between Tony Fisher and Donald Driver. This is not a good sign.

This just in: the Detroit Lions are not good.

The Chargers have their cool 1960’s powder blue uniforms on today. Why would a team have such a cool jersey and only use it once a year? Does anybody like the navy blue ones? I could understand it when they were trying to blend Doug Flutie’s mullet into his helmet, but now?

Owen Pochman is kicking for the 49ers. I went to college with a girl we called pock face. I don’t that the two are related, though.

Who is the genius who invented this TV sequence—touchdown-extra point-commercial-kickoff-commercial? I hate him, whoever he is.

However, I love the Southwest Airlines commercial where you see a grocery checkout guy raise his hand and say, “I’m open.” Only to have a guy pushing his cart, reach in, grab a pineapple and nail him in the head with it. Then it says, “It must be football season.” Nicely done.

We have our all-important Ed Hochuli sighting in the San Diego-Seattle game. Ed’s not getting much action early in the game, and suddenly he throws a flag, blows the play dead and says over the PA, “After further review, I have incredible triceps!” He then flexes the backs of his arms and we’re underway again. Strange.

Johnny Greer is doing the Packers-Cardinals game and he’s finishing off every penalty explanation with, “Hot enough for you?” He can stop that any time.

Just what color is it that the Seahawks are dressed in from head to toe? They look like giant bruises.

The Packers’ Mike McKenzie’s dreadlocks are so long in the back that it actually looks like a poodle is dry humping the back of this neck.

Can I write “dry humping?”

Owen Pockman has four field goals, and he’s a one man wrecking crew in the Niners 12-0 lead over the Browns. You can’t stop Owen Pochman!

Gilbert Brown is playing for the Packers in that sweatbath in Phoenix. Whoever launders the Packers jock straps deserves hazard pay after this one.

In Washington, it looks like Giants’ coach Jim Fassel is trying to “outvisor” Steve Spurrier. Ooh, Fassel is pretty crafty with the mind games, right? “I’m pushing all my visors into the center of the table. Who’s with me?”

The Rams have a tight end named Brandon Manumaleluna. I don’t know a lot of Spanish, but that has to mean “bad moon” doesn’t it?

I’m not making this up. Jeff Blake has led the Cardinals to a seven point lead over Green Bay with three minutes left. In the old days, you’d look at the situation and see Brett Favre, 80 yards and three minutes and figure it was in the bag for Green Bay. Now, you just look at him and wonder, “Hey Hillbilly? Why don’t you just throw the interception on the first play and move things along?”

Meanwhile, in Seattle, the Rams have the ball and are nursing a lead. Marshall Faulk has broken his hand and Lamar Gordon is in. Normally, this would send the fantasy football owner side of my brain into, “I need to pick up Lamar Gordon” mode. But we all know that an injury to Faulk just gives Mike Martz an excuse to throw the ball on every down. He does, one gets tipped and picked off and he’s “outgeniused” himself again.

Two seconds to go. Brett Favre pass. Intercepted. Why can’t I use these powers for good? Though, I enjoyed that pass. Muahahahahahaha!

The Seahawks have beaten the Mike Martz Evil Super Genius in Seattle.

What’s this? The Browns have scored a touchdown? Really? Up is down. Right is left. Black is white. Brown is…ok, that’s enough. You get it.

What is the apostrophe for in Andre’ Davis? Is it for the missing ‘w’?

Suddenly, the only game left is Washington and the Giants. Fassel still has the visor on…the mind games continue.

Did the Giants ever even have the ball in the fourth quarter? I think Daniel Snyder called the Mara family and bought a possession from them. Can he do that?

If he can, you can bet the McCaskeys will be selling them off like hotcakes in Chicago. Who can blame them with that offense?

Moose Johnston proudly announces that with a penalty in overtime the Redskins have tied their franchise record with 18!

Jeremy Shockey catches a first down pass and…guh…why doesn’t he just wear a big sign that says, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at ME!” on him?

Somebody named Jim Finn takes a swing pass and rumbles down to the Redskins 20 yard line. This one’s going to be over. Soon.

Dick Stockton, “All Finn had to do was catch and scamper.” I saw Catch and Scamper in Vegas one night. Very nice.

Matt Bryant ends our day of wall-to-wall Fox and CBS football with an OT field goal to give the Giants the win. Not only did the Giants almost blow it with a Trey Junkin-esque snap, but after the game, punter (and holder) Jeff Feagles took off his helmet to reveal that he’s a dead ringer for YA Tittle. Not a good thing.

I’m exhausted, frankly. And only have six more days to rest up before it starts all over again.