Golden Girls Striptease, More NFL Replay Options, and the Announcer Curse

As an Oakland Raiders football fan, my hopes of a Silver and Black Super Bowl are over as fast as they start lately and I have to find other things to key in on during the NFL season to keep me interested...Al Davis showing overhead projections just doesn’t do it for me.

Fantasy football goes a long way in the regular season to keep me interested, and football for football’s sake is a good of reason as any to post up in the La-Z-Boy and down adults beverages and pretzels. 

But as the post season rolls around and teams start to get eliminated, I start to key-in on some of the smaller subtleties of football—from announcers to glitches in the games—that keep me tuned in, for the most part.

Yesterday’s conference championships gave me plenty to think about, besides the fact that for the most part that both games were entertaining, so I made notes and today I will Monday morning QB about aspects of Sunday’s events that, to my beer-filled mind, were interesting in one form or another.

“Show it again, Sam”

Instant replay in the NFL needs to change, in a big way. In each of the two games on Sunday, I saw plays that should be reviewable, but weren’t.

In the Card’s/Eagles game, a kickoff thudded off of the Arizona turf and bounced off an Eagle player. Now the ref’s made the correct call on this play, the ball hit the Philly player as his foot slipped out of bounds, but that should be a reviewable play and it wasn’t.

In the Pittsburgh/Baltimore game, a nice acting job by Steelers’ punter Mitch Berger earned Pittsburgh an automatic first down after a personal foul was called against the Ravens for running-into the kicker, a call that was as bogus as a Keanu Reeves movie.

I think a coach should have the ability to call for a video replay on anything he wants. Phantom pass interference or holding call, premature whistles or anything else that could have an outcome in the game should be challengeable. The red flag should be for a team’s use whether a they wants to review a push-off by a wide receiver or if the team simply want to see the replay of their owner high-fiving a woman’s face. 

You get two replays a game, use them how you want and let’s take the refs mistakes out of the game.

“Halftime Woes”

Can someone call the CBS studios and tell them that Dan Marino, Boomer Esiason, and Shannon Sharpe during pregame and halftime is the definition of unwatchable? I’d rather watch the cast of the Golden Girls perform a burlesque show.

FOX and ESPN aren’t that much better, but during halftime of the late game yesterday I flipped the channel to ESPN 2 and watched strongman Phil Pfister pull Oprah Winfrey around a city block with his teeth.

Do these broadcast companies realize that the companies who advertise with them actually want people to see their commercials? As soon as I saw Marnio’s bubble head roll into frame during that late game yesterday I flipped channels instead, luckily happening on Smokey and the Bandit on CMT.

Buford T. Justice  [to his son]

“There's no way, no way that you came from my loins. Soon as I get home, first thing I'm gonna do is punch yo mamma in da mouth!”

“Thanks for the Jinx”

More often than not it seems as if a player is on a hot streak, and the announcer knows it, he/she will say something about the streak and the streak quickly comes to an end.

This happened again yesterday in the Cards/Eagles game when Joe Buck mentioned Philadelphia place kicker David Akers streak of consecutive converted field goals in post season play. To Buck’s credit, Akers made the first kick after the streak was mentioned, but the jinx was in and Aker’s next kick sailed right.

Now I’m not (too) superstitions, and I know it’s the announcer’s job to comment on the game, but I wonder if they feel bad after using their voodoo on players?

This isn’t always the case. Never did an announcer’s utterance of Cal Ripken Jr.’s consecutive games played streak send the Iron Man to the DL after chopping a toe off in a freak lawnmower accident. But how many no-hitters have been ruined in baseball or shutouts in football have been whisked away after a talking head has mentioned it?

I have no remedy for the announcers Black Magic, I just think it’s interesting (and I’m probably alone, selah.)

“The good from Sunday’s games”

Sometimes people tell me that I’m too negative (and then I tell them civilization will end in 2012.)

To prove those people wrong (true derelicts of society that they are) I’ve come up with a quick list of good things from championship Sunday.

Ken Whisenhunt will face his old team in the Super Bowl, I got to catch up with my favorite podcasts (Smodcast and the Mediocre Show) during the second half of the late game as I tuned Troy Aikman out, Willis McGahee looks like he will be alright and I’m not hung-over this morning.

I didn’t say it was a long list.