Week 9: Mookeystinks, Kyle!
Turn me loose, let me go, I’m Dr. Feelgood!
Fresh off the bye (OK, I was too drunk to type by 6 PM last Friday), we’re debuting a new feature on this week’s Crap-O-Rama: “It’s All The Cowboys’ Fault!”
Buttressed by my countless explanations to the breathless Texan hordes that Buddy Ryan’s classless antics (ie, The 1987 “Kneel-Down Game” and the following season’s “Bounty Bowl” and “Bounty Bowl II”, all three of which the Eagles won, by the way) were in fact prompted by St. Tom Landry running up the score with his union-bustin’ All-Pros against the Eagles’ replacement players during the NFL players’ strike – continually passing the ball in the second half of an eventual 41-22 win that wasn’t half as close as the score would indicate – I will now move on to document another case of overwhelmingly jerky Cowboys behavior.
In the late 1950s, after the city of Dallas had already lost two franchises – the two incarnations of the Dallas Texans would become the Baltimore Colts and Kansas City Chiefs – the NFL again tried to expand into Dallas, as the region had suddenly become habitable to humankind after the proliferation of air conditioning. The most powerful and vocal opponent of this expansion was Redskins owner and decorated racist George Preston Marshall, whose still-segregated team enjoyed a monopoly of fandom among football followers below the Mason-Dixon line.
The robber-barons who would own this new franchise in Dallas, Clint Murchison Jr. and Bedford Wynne, were expecting Marshall’s opposition, so to ensure the birth of their expansion team, they hatched a plan that would foreshadow the corporate gangbang the NFL would become decades later. Knowing that everything under the sun is ultimately for sale in Texas – and that, unlike civil unions, laws in Texas somehow apply to every square inch of this fading republic – they bought the rights to the song "Hail to the Redskins" and threatened to refuse to allow Marshall to play the song at games.
Over a barrel, Marshall relented, and, in an orgiastic celebration of extortion, the Dallas Motherfucking Cowboys were born on January 28, 1960.
(Note: Match.com CEO and frequent “Dr. Phil Show” celebrity guest Jim Safka just walked by my desk as I was compiling this worthless, expletive-laden invective; just to the left of my keyboard is a plate of tortilla chips and a bottle of Shiner Bock. Maybe I should quit bellyaching about Dallas, huh?)
(Naaaaaahh.)
Anyway, fast forward to November 10, 1962. At the time, the Redskins football team is still a year away from integrating, but the entire city of Dallas had been legally desegregated only about a year earlier and the mayor is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Nonetheless, the Cowboys – at least in their view – have purchased the rights to the Moral High Ground.
(Note: The greatest line in sportswriting history – edging out the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray’s “Gentlemen, start your coffins” – was written by Shirley Povich of the Washington Post at about this time: “Cleveland runner Jim Brown integrated the Redskins’ end zone.”)
At any rate (what about four and a half times a football season you use this beat-ass line, you retarded hack), this was the date of the “Cowboy Chicken Club Game,” as Dallas partisans somehow invaded D.C. Stadium and unveiled four banners reading "CHICKENS" over the 50-yard line and end zone facades during "Hail To The Redskins." Two acrobats then ran onto the field and released a black chicken and threw colored eggs into the crowd during the National Anthem, apparently to symbolize Marshall's stance against signing African-American players to play for the Redskins.
(Meanwhile, at this juncture of history, I remind you, if a black man is found north of downtown in Dallas, he is burned to death with limited legal recompense, and students are in the midst of their first year of integrated classrooms. Back to your normally scheduled hypocrisy.)
(Egging the crowd during the National Anthem??!? Enemies. Of. Freedom.)
Anyway, there’s reason number 7,128 to hate the Cowboys.
So, after your team loses most ignominiously this week and you drown your sorrows in your inebriant of choice, find the nearest Cowboys fan, ask him why he’s a Cowboys fan, and when he mentions God in the first sentence of his reply, punch him in the fucking mouth.
Now let’s get to it.
As always, in deference to The Man, all picks were verified by a Magic Eight-Ball, a bag of chicken bones, and Dave Labowitz, the only person on Earth who is almost as bad as I am at predicting the outcomes of NFL games.
Atlanta at Detroit
-We’ve secretly replaced Michael Vick with an actual NFL-caliber quarterback. Let’s see if anyone notices.
-We’ve secretly replaced Bill’s lousy jokes with Matt’s lousy jokes. Let’s see if anyone notices…
Pick: Atlanta
Dallas at Washington
-The only way the Cowboys could blow this game is if they forget to wake T.O. up before kickoff.
-Bad news for Terence Newman this week: No superstar opposing wide receiver to completely neutralize.
Pick: Dallas
Green Bay at Buffalo
-J.P. Losman’s mechanics still wretched; claims “chicks dig QBs who throw off their back foot.”
-Packers still yet to play against an actual NFL team since week 1 throttling versus Bears.
Pick: Green Bay
Houston at New York Harsh-Ass Resin Hits Giants
-I finally figured out what the Giants defensive players are doing with those pantomime jump shots after making a play: Trying to get a tryout with the Knicks.
-Houston Coach Gary Kubiak handed David Carr his unconditional release papers on Tuesday, but Carr bumped into the overhead projector on the way out of the film room and fumbled them; he’ll start this week.
Pick: New York Weird Al Yankovic Got Madd Flow Giants
Kansas City at St Louis
-Rams defense: Will tackle for food.
-If the Chiefs win this game, wins against Miami and Oakland in the next two weeks would put them at 7-3. (Really, this is funnier than anything I could come up with.)
Pick: Kansas City
Cincinnati at Baltimore
-Bengals defense: Will tackle for the mercy of the court.
-Still at least one more week of Brian Billick grandstanding and smirking as his defense carries him to an ill-gotten victory.
-Note to Chad Johnson: You’re more aerodynamic when your mouth is closed.
Pick: Baltimore.
Miami at Chicago
-Dolphins defense: Will not tackle. Period.
-One more listless performance from his team and Nick Saban will have to resort to a little-used tactic pioneered by his mentor Bill Belichick: lock himself in his office and not speak to his own players or coaches all week.
Pick: Chicago
Tennessee at Jacksonville
-Not sure if this to David Garrard’s credit, but he is clearly better than Byron Leftwich at running Jack Del Rio’s retarded, horseshit offensive scheme.
-Pacman Jones’ excuse that he allegedly spit in the face of a female student at a party: He was just doing his Bluto Blutarsky “I’m a zit” routine.
-It’s amazing that Jack Del Rio, miscreant that he is, manages to do a four-hour radio show every morning in Washington while still coaching the Jaguars.
Pick: Jacksonville
That Jack Del Rio PhotoShop hack job reminded me of something:
Minnesota at San Francisco
-Mea culpa, Brad Childress: At this point I would be willing to trade Daunte Culpepper for a dozen honey-dip Timbits, but you’re gonna get about the 35th pick in next year’s draft for him.
-In the absence of new stadium funding, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to unveil Monster Park renovation plan: Bulldoze it right into the Bay.
Pick: Minnesota
New Orleans at Tampa Bay
-About the only thing Reggie Bush didn’t screw up last week was that he didn’t have a punt blocked.
-Maine WR Kevin McMahan was “Mr. Irrelevant”—the last pick overall—in the 2006 NFL draft. Marques Colston was taken three picks ahead of him. So he's not even irrelevant enough to have a nickname? (Next guess: he's Randy Moss.)
Pick: New Orleans
Cleveland at San Diego
-Sunday Crap-O-Rama Worldwide News Services has discovered that, for potential marketing and product endorsement reasons, Shawne Merriman changed his story regarding the reason for his failed steroids test. His original excuse: he was anally violated by Guillermo Mota.
Pick: San Diego
Non-Sequitosity, Installment II: Check out the latest in vehicular fashion:
Denver at Pittsburgh
-The key to Willie Parker’s success: he’s not particularly big, he’s not particularly fast, but he’s awfully Ecksteiny.
-The key to Jake Plummer’s success: Lost down storm drain last December.
Pick: Pittsburgh
Indianapolis at New England
-Peyton Manning’s last-ditch effort to vanquish Tom Brady: Beat him over the head with the enormous playbook he’s memorized backward and forward.
Pick: New England, and lay the points.
Oakland at Seattle (plus total points)
-Now that Randy Moss is through with his inexorable laps around the drain of irrelevance, he can move on to his second career as a Diana Ross impersonator.
-Art Shell’s Halloween costume: Escaped mental patient.
-My Halloween costume: This.
Pick: Seattle 23-13
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