Uberfluff

 
 
I predict the Saints will win, the key to game isn't Peyton, it will be the Colts defense, and how they fail to stop Drew Brees and company, Manning will have a great game, but Brees will have a better one...   Don't take my word for it, Tecmo Superbowl agrees...
 
 
As a general rule, I make it a practice not to get particularly political in this space--though I think that it's always ok to make fun of flakes and people who make paper mache effigies for their Anarchy/Eco-Cause/Legalize Marijuana march.  (It's so unintentionally Martha Stewart-ish.)  However, every once in a while there's a cause or protest that I think is worthy of attention. 


And that's how I feel about the "Fire Snyder" sign.


For those who don't follow the sports news, Dan Snyder is the owner of the Washington Redskins.  (For the record, not my team.)  Over the last few years, after a lot of hard work and dedication, he has managed to rise to the top of the "Worst Owners in the NFL" list.  He generally spends his days undermining his coaches and team, making bad trades, milking his fanbase for every last penny, and generally driving a once solid franchise to the point where it has become the go-to punchline for sportswriters branching out from mocking the Detriot Lions.  In his spare time, he likes to sue little old ladies for trying to back out of season ticket contracts when they lose their money.  (Really, I'm not making that up.)


As you can imagine, Redskins fans are not particularly happy with his leadership. 


But if you were looking forward to the traditional fan expressions of discontent--attending games with a bag on your head, drawing up witty posters about the team management . . . well, Dan Snyder has taken a page from other incompetent megalomaniacs and decided that the solution is to ban signs from his stadium.  Yep, Redskins fans who spent the entire night trying to figure out how to insult the owner while incorporating the letters "E.S.P.N" will have done so in vain.  You can't bring signs to Fed Ex field.


Enter the bloggers.  A few enterprising fans with internet access are trying to organize a giant "Fire Snyder" sign via seat assignment.  Basically, people sitting in certain seats in the nosebleed section (the 400s) are asked to wear burgundy shirts in an attempt to spell out a giant "Fire Snyder" sign that will hopefully make him insane.  And, as much as I enjoy having a team we occasionally play be completely awful, I have to sympathize with the 'Skins fans.  So, if you're headed to a Redskins game soon, check out this chart and dress appropriately.  


Oh, and there's a new Daily Fluff today too.
 
 
Maybe it's because I'm not from Wisconsin, but I just don't get why people are so invested in Brett Favre's career decisions.  I like Favre.  I generally root for him, when it doesn't otherwise disrupt my own football interests.  But whether he retires or plays until he's using a walker to make off-balance throws to the endzone doesn't really concern me.  Heck, I kind of think it's cool that he's so determined to keep playing.  As long as he's able to play well enough that someone's willing to pay him to do so, then why shouldn't he?  Yeah, I get that he's playing for Green Bay's arch-rival now.  And that this is somehow a betrayal of something to Green Bay fans.  But I don't really get why.  The ownership at Green Bay made it clear that they didn't want him anymore.  So it's Favre's job to stop playing just so that he doesn't disappoint total strangers?  The guy has been playing football his entire life to this point.  But now he has to walk away because of some rigid legacy nonsense?  Would you stop doing something you love (and which your body will only be able to do until you're 40 or so--at the most) because someone you've never met won't think you're as much of a legend?  And which, not-so-incidentally, earns you big piles of money?  The hell with that.


By the way, we have a new Daily Fluff today.
 
 

Well, that was total bullshit.  (I refer here to the travesty that was the actual game, and which I can only explain by positing that the Pittsburgh Steelers have signed a deal with Satan.)  Of course, the ads were a bit on the disappointing side as well.  I know some people get all excited about the Superbowl commercials, but I tend to think there's a bit of a downward trend in ad quality over the last few years.  Sure, there were some interesting and amusing commercials, but nothing really stood out as water cooler fodder for me.  Still, I suppose we can dub a few of them winners by default.

My favorite of the night was probably the Conan O'Brian Swedish Bud Light ad--mostly for the send-up of foreign celebrity commercials, but the Times Square punchline was nicely done too:

Honorable mentions go to the Hulu Alec Baldwin ad, which was on track to be mildly amusing, but pulled out a score with a good punchline, and the Careerbuilder.com work frustration ad that included punching a koala.  I was all set for that to be another run-of-the-mill job search site ad, but since I was already in a koala-punching mood (due to the aforementioned game travesty and the obvious use of dark voodoo magic on the part of the Steelers), this one really tickled me.

So who really whiffed on their million dollar spot?  It's hard for me to just pick one because there are so many ways to squander the money and opportunity.  Personally, I loathe the Go Daddy commercials with every fiber of my being for 3 main reasons: 1.) It's not actually an internet porn site, but the commercials sure as hell give you that impression; 2.) You know, there are women out there who make web hosting decisions (ahem), and we're not particularly moved by the debate over which skanky chick's fan site has better hosting of her lingerie shots; and 3.) So you've decided to go T&A, but now you're going to half-ass it by using Danica Patrick?  I'm not saying that she's not attractive, but she's not famous enough or hot enough to warrant being used solely for sex appeal.  If I'm going to be influenced by the opportunity to watch a hot chick shower on the internet, I want someone a lot sexier than Danica Patrick.  She's what's known as, "sexy for her particular profession," which coincidentally is otherwise entirely male.

The other big miss for me was one of the Pepsi ads.  Actually, I'm not a big fan of Pepsi's advertising in general--they always seem to just miss the mark for me.  And I can't be the only one who finds there whole "new generation" shtick lame and tiresome.  You've been the, "choice of a new generation," for how long?  Frankly, every time I hear the, "new generation," line, it feels a little like the time my mom called something, "phat-with-a-p-h."  Anyway, their biggest miss for me this time was their MacGyver spoof--again, mostly for the missed opportunity.  MacGyver is some fertile spoof territory, and yet this is all you do with it?  Spend the whole time joking about the name?  Where's the MacGyver magic?  How can you give me a MacGyver spoof where no one actually rigs up any cool gadgets or disarms a bomb with a paper clip or anything?  That's the whole point.  Make a bomb shield out of Diet Pepsi cans, disarm the bomb with a mixture of Pepsi and toothpaste.  I don't care, but do something MacGyver-ish.  But they totally missed the opportunity.  And that makes for crappy spoof.

 
 

Today's Superbowl pick in the Uninformed NFL Picks focuses heavily on fandom.  That's because I totally judge people by their football allegiances.  Not if they don't enjoy football, of course.  This only applies to people who claim to watch and follow a team--and mostly only guys at that.  Sure, I judge some girls/women who pick their favorite team by relative quarterback attractiveness, but not too harshly because a.) I understand; and b.) I'm not sure that you really count as a fan if that's your major point of interest in the game.  (And kudos to Tom Brady, who somehow managed to raise his stock with women by dumping his baby mama--who had recently given birth--for Gisele Bundchen.  That's some upper-level attractiveness ju-jitsu there.  I don't know how many guys could get away with it.)

Anyway, I'm going to generalize wildly here, but in my judgment, there are three teams where if the guy is a fan, it completely lowers his stock with me.  Though I should stress that this is less of an issue for someone legitimately from the team's home city.  But then again, these are the teams most likely to have bunches of fans who have never even flown over their region.  And since I've never lived anwhere near any of them, 90% of their fans that I meet are not homegrown fans.  Anyway, they are:

1.) The Dallas Cowboys.  Totally cliche, not to mention a ridiculously overrated team.  A guy who likes the Cowboys is unquestionably more concerned with image and flash then substance.  And if he says it has nothing to do with cheerleaders, that's because his pants are on fire.  Not particularly imaginative either, as when it came to picking a favorite football team, he went with the obvious choice.  Guys whose favorite football team is the Cowboys and yet also choose the Yankees as their favorite baseball team should have been drowned at birth.

2.) The Pittsburgh Steelers.  I don't want to spend too much time repeating what I wrote in the Uninformed Superbowl Pick, but Steelers guys are like the weird mirror-image twin of the Cowboys guy.  They would never admit that the Steelers are just as much about image as the Cowboys, only their image is about faux blue-collar toughness.  Guys who aren't from Pittsburgh but are Steelers fans anyway are inherently untrustworthy and probably blow a kiss to their Ben Roethlisberger fathead every night.

3.) The New England Patriots.  One of the few situations where the legit hometown fans bug me almost as much as the bandwagon fans.  I will admit that ESPN's Bill Simmons is partly responsible for this.  The Cowboys and Steelers may be the classic bandwagon teams, but the Patriots are the new black when it comes to trying to glom on to a team's success.  The Boston/New England area has had insane sports success in the last few years, and still those greedy bastards will bitch and moan about every little setback their teams have.  I can't wait until the sports gods curse them with decades of last place finishes as payback for their current success.

So there we go.  My 3 least favorite fanbases.  Though I could continue, of course.  (The Philadelphia Eagles were only narrowly edged out.  And if the list was a bit longer, I'd probably also have to touch on the Washington K Street Lawyers.)  Any additions?  Objections?

 
 

I'm a Ravens fan.  Since I am married to a Browns fan, I know better than to gloat or whine about football-related things, as there are few sports cities as uniformly and consistently screwed as Cleveland.

Yesterday, however, I was watching the game, and noticed that the quarterbacks involved were named "Joe" and "Sage."  Knowing nothing at all about the team records, stats, or anything else, there is no way that a QB named Joe is not going to outperform a QB named Sage.  Joe is a good quarterback name (along with Dan, John, Steve, etc.).  Sage is a good name for . . . um . . . herbs, wizards, and 5 year-olds.  Honestly, I think that his parents took a good 5 points off of his quarterback rating by naming him Sage.

Of course, it's possible to go too far the other way.  Colt Brennan's parents are lucky that he turned out to have athletic ability, because I'm not sure what you can be besides a professional athlete with a name like Colt.  I suppose you could also be a preppy jackass lawyer.  But becoming a neurosurgeon is definitely out of the running.

Oh, and could all new parents please do me a courtesy and stop naming your children (boy or girl) Logan?  It's giving me major Wolverine-related confusion.

 

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ESPN is reporting that Brady Quinn will start for the Cleveland Browns this weekend, leaving Derek Anderson (a Pro Bowl QB last year) on the bench.  What's interesting in the story are the comments of Trent Dilfer, who says it's a move to appease angry fans after the loss to Baltimore, and that Anderson is not the problem with the offense--more like Braylon Edwards' butterfingers and injuries and such for Kellen Winslow.  (Yes, I realize that, as a Baltimore fan, quoting Trent Dilfer opens me up for the observation that it was stupid to cut him for Elvis Grbac--whose family apparently was too poor to afford vowels--and I have no defense to that.)

Anyway, I watched the game on Sunday, and I can't say that I saw anything that makes Anderson worthy of being benched.  He's certainly not playing as well as last year, but are we really in a place where someone is Pro Bowl-worthy one year, and the source of the problem the next?

On the other hand, I am kinda curious about Brady Quinn.  My sister has a massive crush on him, so it will be fun to torment her about it if he ends up sucking.