The NFL is my first true love. As a lad, I remember rushing home from Hebrew School hoping I could make the 1:00 p.m. kickoffs while I ate Stouffer's french bread pizza. In college, I remember waking up hungover in a frat house figuring someone else would clean out all the empties as I poured myself some hair of the dog, checked my fantasy lineups and made Stouffer's french bread pizza as I saw the 1:00 p.m kickoffs. Today on Sundays I wake up for my morning jog, drink some fresh brewed coffee and make a Stouffer's french bread pizza because it's better than the bar food at the dives I go to for watching the 1:00 p.m. kickoffs.

So here is my labor of love, the 2012 NFL GIF preview. Are you ready for some Stouffer's french bread pizza?!

-- NFC East and South

-- NFC North and West

-- AFC East and South

-- AFC North and West

PREVIOUSLY:The 2012 College Football GIF Preview

Dear George Will,

Hi, Bobby Big Wheel here.

In case you forgot, you met me once while I was in college. Of course, Bobby Big Wheel isn't my real name, so I'll forgive you if you don't remember. You seemed like an awkward guy when you walked into the room, but you perked up a bit when I told you that I was from Hartford. That's because a) you knew a bunch of stuff about a minor league baseball team called the Hartford Laurels, who left town when my dad was one year old, and b) you had gone to Trinity College, which was five miles from my house growing up. That's important, because Trinity College has a Division III football team. Now, Division III football can be plenty fun, but it really doesn't compare to the Division I version. If I may use a baseball analogy (I'm guessing that'll work for you), Trinity is like the Hartford Laurels and Alabama is like the New York Yankees. So I'm not sure you have much experience dealing with a major college team.

Now, that'd be fine, except you felt the need to weigh in on major college football. And Georgie (can I call you Georgie?) I think you're out of your element on that one. Your thesis is that college football is the result of misguided progressivism and that it is also a "blemish on American Life." I wonder if your fellow conservatives Bud Wilkinson, Lou Holtz, Joe Paterno, and Tom Osborne feel the same way. That aside, your article reads like a thesaurus, so let me sum up your argument:

• Football became popular because it served progressive goals of specialization and sublimating the individual to the whole.
• Progressives liked how football trained managers (oh and that Walter Camp's progressive brother-in-law was totally racist).
• Other colleges wanted to play football like Harvard, Yale and Princeton because it'd make them more prestigious.
• Progressives led to Alabama playing Michigan in Dallas to open the season.

Let me tackle these one by one:

College football became popular because it served progressive goals. No. College football became popular because it's awesome. I know that you're a baseball person so it's hard for you to accept, but people like football because it's a lot of fun, not because it served progressive goals of specialization and sublimating the individual to the whole. Though I guess you could say football is more progressive than baseball because it's willing to change its rules to make the game more fun. Still, politics have nothing to do with college football's popularity. Justclickontheselinkstoseewhycollegefootballisawesome.

Progressives liked how football trained managers. I got news for you Georgie, progressives would HATE how football trains managers. See, those progressives were all about an eight-hour work day. But when our own Spencer Hall visited Mississippi State (to further the baseball analogy, the Pittsburgh Pirates of college football), he found their coach working 15-hour days during the offseason. Managers in college football are rewarded for the ability to withstand drudgery more than anything else. Again, this isn't a political thing unless you're one of those Marxists who wants to mandate the hours that people work. Those guys hate college football. As for Walter Camp's racist brother-in-law, you got me there! You know who else was racist? Everyone else in the 1920s.

Colleges thought football would make them prestigious. Ever been to France, Georgie? In France, they have this test called the Bac that basically determines where you go to college. Students don't have much of a choice. Goddamn socialists making decisions for other people. But in America we have a free market for colleges. Hooray capitalism! Of course, that means colleges have to market themselves to 17-year-olds. You haven't been a 17-year-old for a while, so let me remind you that the three things 17-year-old guys love most are 1) trying to get laid 2) trying to get drunk and 3) sports. As long as that's the case, college football will be a draw for colleges, and schools will spend millions of dollars on their football programs. So, unless you want to make America more like France (ew gross) college football is here to stay.

Progressives led to Alabama playing Michigan in Dallas to open the season.Georgie, I think you'd like Jerry Jones. He made a ton of money in the oil business and bought the Dallas Cowboys from a guy who wanted to sell to anyone but the Japanese. Then he saw a bunch of other teams getting new stadiums and decided he wanted one too. Did he ask for a government handout? Well, only $350 million or so. But he still invested $850 million of private sector money in that stadium. The Cowboys only play eight home games a year, so Jerry pays colleges a bunch of money to play football games there to help get a return on his big investment. As long as you think that capitalism is rad (I do! F---yeah Roth IRAs!), then neutral-site games are here to stay.

OK, Georgie, I think I've proved my point. College football has a lot of problems, but you didn't really do a good job of explaining why they are the progressive movement's fault.

Instead of trying to blame college football's problems on your political opponents, why don't we try to agree that reform is the best option? That the college football players who don't receive monetary compensation for their work (much like those factory workers that progressives championed 100 years ago) should get a stipend. That we shouldn't let athletic directors be the thrall of corrupt bowl organizations, who unfairly receive 401(c)(3) non-profit taxation status. That neutral site games usually suck because they're not on college campuses.

But those are pretty apolitical. In fact, you might even say that the progressive movement (and that pending election in November) have NOTHING to do with college football's problems.

But if you want to denigrate college football to prove that progressivism sucks, that's your prerogative. You should tell that to all the swing voter Ohio State and Florida fans.

Best Regards,

Bobby

P.S. My Republican uncle gave me one of your books as a gift and I never read it.

Follow @SBNationCFB

While we’re here, let’s watch some of the many fine college football videos from SB Nation’s YouTube channel:

I grew up in Connecticut in the '90s. If you want to know what Connecticut was like in the '90s, go there now. One of the state's nicknames is "The Land of Steady Habits" (we need new marketing people) and that holds true. This resistance to change is perhaps best exemplified by Bradley International Airport, the shabbily gray-carpeted entry to the state that can only call itself international because of the occasional flight to Toronto. Whenever I'd fly home I'd always see an ad for a local bank on my way from the USAir gates to baggage claim that was essentially a giant picture of Jim Calhoun. For years, he was my reminder that I was back home. Now, according to reports, he's stepping down after almost 30 years as UConn's head basketball coach.

There are those who will celebrate this news as the elimination of another bad guy in college basketball. Calhoun has received plenty of criticism of late for his handling of the Nate Miles scandal, his "nawt a dime back" tirade and his leaving a team on the cusp of a postseason ban that could cripple the program. But as someone who grew up with this team, I'll miss him.

Jim Calhoun took over a basketball program that had only been to the Elite Eight once in 47 years and won three titles there. No other modern coach built up a national program out of so little. It's not like UConn is located in a great college town - the joke is that they call it Storrs because they finally have a second one. It has trouble attracting the best in-state students as well, which means that it is not afforded the same reverence by the state that the University of Michigan or even the University of Kentucky receives. And tiny Connecticut is not an ideal recruiting base.

Calhoun's 1996 Big East championship team had no state natives, and the player who played high school basketball closest to Storrs was South Carolina's Ray Allen. Yet, in spite of all of this, Jim Calhoun managed to turn UConn into a national power over his 26-season career in Storrs.

For the longest time, Calhoun could do no wrong in my eyes. I was 5 when his 1990 squad that was unranked in the preseason came within a Christian Laettner backbreaker of making the Final Four for the first time. The next nine years were marked by a frustrating inability to make it beyond the Elite Eight. Sweet-shooting Ray Allen arrived in 1993 and from then on we expected the team to finally get over the hump every year.

But in 1994 Donyell Marshall missed some key free throws and the Huskies lost to Florida in the Sweet 16; if they won they would have a faced 9-seed Boston College team that they swept during the regular season.

In 1995 they lost to one-seed UCLA in Oakland.

In 1996 UConn was the one-seed coming off a stirring Big East Tournament victory but it lost to Mississippi State after the Bulldogs bullied Allen into a terrible shooting night.

In 1998 it was 1-seed UNC in Greensboro.

When the 1999 NCAA Tournament came around most Huskies fans were shellshocked into thinking that the team would lose again. And barely two years earlier our beloved Whalers had decamped for North Carolina, so state fandom was in a bit of a rut. But the 1999 team had a cold-blooded points machine in Rip Hamilton and a pudgy freshman point guard named Khalid El-Amin who drove the team past Gonzaga into the Final Four. The team beat Scoonie Penn's Ohio State Buckeyes in the national semifinals during my sister's bat mitzvah ceremony (my parents brought a portable TV so my alumni uncle and I could watch the game in a hallway). After the game, drunk relatives asked me if I thought UConn could win and I told them I was honestly just glad to be there.

But Jim Calhoun wasn't glad to be there. His team was a 9.5 underdog in spite of its 33-2 record, so perhaps we shouldn't have been so surprised they were game for a fight. Duke had Trajan Langdon, but Ricky Moore's lockdown defense forced him into a key turnover to end the game. UConn had 10 fouls to use on Elton Brand in the form of Jake Voskuhl and Souleymane Wane (though they only needed 7). Khalid El-Amin helped hold William Avery to a 3-12 night. And Rip Hamilton was omnipresent, running Duke defenders ragged to the tune of 27 points. UConn was the biggest underdog to ever win an NCAA Title, not just in point spread, but in where the school had come from in the span of a decade.

Jim Calhoun was an underdog too. He was playing baseball in high school when he was called out of the game so he could be told that his father had just dropped dead of a heart attack. He took odd jobs as a grave digger and working in a shampoo factory to support his family and eventually attend college. He started coaching at Northeastern, taking the team from Division II to Division I and feuding with BU's Rick Pitino over the same shrinking pool of players to recruit.

Then he took over a moribund UConn program whose main selling points were getting to play national powers like Georgetown and St. John's. Nothing ever came easy for the guy, so he never let up. And when he won the state a national title only two years after the Whalers left he was elevated into that Bear Bryant/Adolph Rupp stratum of college coaches who won college championships in states without a pro team. It made him the face of the state; the guy who greeted you when you came to the airport. We knew he could be tough (his hero was Bob Knight, not Dean Smith) but we saw him as curmudgeonly and not cruel. In 2006 he endorsed Democrat Joe Courtney the week before the election and Courtney ended up beating incumbent Rep. Rob Simmons by 83 votes. I'll go to my grave believing that Calhoun made Courtney a congressman.

Calhoun won two more titles, never taking his foot off the gas. He had gotten to the top by fighting, and he'd stay at the top by fighting. But a national title can change a coach from an underdog to a bully even when the coach himself doesn't change. Calhoun won two more titles at UConn, but now the Huskies were the bad guy, throttling Georgia Tech in 2004 and Butler in 2011. The 2006 team that lost to George Mason was the Goliath to a David, and the team itself was surly and marred by Calhoun's first major scandal; only suspending Marcus Williams for half a season after he stole a laptop when the same offense netted A.J. Price a yearlong suspension. His 2009 team had to go to Detroit for the Final Four to face a Michigan State team that was the poster child for laid off autoworkers. Calhoun had just told a reporter that he wouldn't give any salary back to help close the state budget deficit. UConn was the bully again and they lost. Somehow, Jim Calhoun became the bad guy even though he was the same as he was in 1986.

And with all of that he lost some support in the state. I haven't seen any reliable polls on his popularity but my PBS liberal parents certainly didn't like his tirade, and his years of indifference toward the state's media horde made him seem more crank than curmudgeon. Now that he's retiring I'm kind of relieved that he didn't hold on for too long, even though I wish he could stay for one last year to help see the school through its sanctions.

I left the state in 2002 with no intention of coming back. All that it had to offer me was a yearly Barenaked Ladies concert and a liquor store that didn't card. And I didn't want to go to UConn because the last thing I wanted was four more years of high school (at least 30 people from my grade went there).

But my UConn fandom was stickier. That's because I loved the Huskies as a child, and when you love a team as a child it's hard to let it go because you don't care that they didn't love you back. And people from small places need something to brag about when they move to the big city. My fellow Connecticut expats and I can go on about Tate George's miracle, Ray Allen's circus shot in the Big East Tournament and Kemba Walker's ankle-breaker against PItt. UConn is ours, and by connection Jim Calhoun is ours. I'll always have to forgive Jim Calhoun, even when he's at his worst.

I was back in Connecticut a few weeks ago and now that most of my 20s are behind me it didn't seem like such a bad place. Sure there are no bars but it's pretty and sensibly priced. It's a perfectly fine place to raise a family. But it's not an easy place to live until you've hit the complacency of middle age. When you're a restless kid you need something to keep you entertained when you're living out in the sticks. So I'll always owe Jim Calhoun for building the UConn Huskies into a pillar of my childhood, a totem of my state. He'll always be an ad on my way to baggage claim, a reminder of home.

At approximately 11:45 p.m. on September 24, 2012, Twitter became a delightful bilefest with all sorts of enmity directed at Roger Goodell. And I'll admit it, the Ginger Hammer is an easy target. He's an entitled son of a Senator who makes way more money than us and seems to make the wrong decision at every point where Paul Tagliabue made a right one.

Picking on Goodell is like picking on Dick Fuld or Jimmy Cayne; yes he's the figurehead for everything that's wrong but his only problem is execution. I'm as guilty as any of you as aiming my fire at Goodell, but the real enemy here is the owners. They're the ones whose greed is driving this mess, whose intransigence will ensure we get more joke games in the future and who have shown that they don't care what you think about their product as long as you keep watching. And in the end, we're powerless to stop it.

If you've ever worked at a big corporation you know that money talks. The people who have the money are the ones who call the shots, and your role as an employee is to carry out their bidding. The NFL is no different; Goodell is the NFL's errand boy. And my guess is as far back as 2010 the owners told Goodell to hold the line on a new CBA with the referees. Goodell, either out of hubris or incompetence, did not put proper contingencies in place.

Unlike the MLB, which can just replace striking umpires with AAA refs since they run minor league baseball, the NFL has to grab new referees in the normal course of business from other organizations like the SEC or the Big 10. If Goodell had come into the 2012 season with replacement refs from major college football conferences instead of the Lingerie Football League then the Seattle Screw never would have happened. But, for whatever reason, Goodell came into 2012 unprepared. And keep in mind, this isn't the first time that the commissioner's failure to prepare for a labor stoppage cost the NFL; the 2011 lockout ended when Goodell found out that the players had a contingency fund that he hadn't counted on. Once again, Goodell failed to secure the necessary leverage in a negotiation.

Goodell would end the referee lockout today if he could. He's been with the league for nearly 30 years, he doesn't want to see it embarrassed like this. But the owners, his bosses, are the ones that are calling our bluff. The owners have wisely figured out that they can skimp on ref pay and see the same TV revenues. When Jerry Jones was confronted about the Seattle Screw he feigned ignorance. That's all that we will see from the owners as long as the locked out refs think that they have leverage.

The league's only hope is that a coalition of the old-timey football families like the Rooneys and the Maras decide that it's in the best interest of the game to have decent refs. But the new owners who paid a lot of money and want to see big returns aren't going to be as easy to displace. We're stuck with the scab refs for a while.

However, our venting won't get rid of Goodell. He's signed through 2018 and those penny pinching owners would at the very least let him ride out his contract unless he either pulls a Petrino or triggers some type of out clause in his deal. We need to remember that Twitter, sports blogs and the Internet in general are a small place. We didn't get Conan his show back, we didn't topple Ahmadinejad, all we did was get Betty White to host SNL and Pitbull to go to Alaska. We don't matter in this fight.

When I was a kid and the Whalers were losing I'd switch the channel and switch it back in the hope that it would help the team's odds. In college I once threw one of my friends out of my dorm room because I thought he was bad luck for the Giants. But over time you learn that fandom is about surrendering control, that you have no bearing on the outcome of games. And that's the harsh lesson that we are all seeing now. As Steve Young has already noted so eloquently, the fans will keep coming even if the refs get Earl Hebner-bad. And he's right, what else are we going to do on fall Sundays? Most of my social calendar in the next few months involves football somehow. As I wrote elsewhere:

[F]riends cycle in and out of your life. I spend a lot of time with my coworkers now, but who knows if we’ll still be doing the same in 5 or 10 years? But I have noticed that of all the friends I’ve made; high school, college, law school, work; the ones who’ve stuck have been sports fans. We always had that. Especially the football fans. They’re always guys I can go to the bar with, catch a game, and let the action take over for lulls in the conversation.

I'm guessing the same holds for a lot of you too. We've tied our lives to something that we cannot control, and now it's going haywire and there's nothing that we can do about it. I think a lot of frustration with modern American life is that we increasingly we feel that we have no power over our lives, not our jobs, not our government, not anything. Everything has been institutionalized and commoditized, just look at Darren Rovell's Twitter account if you're not convinced that you're just a statistic.

Our NFL fandom is an item on a balance sheet and the replacement refs are just another symbol of our powerlessness. Complaining isn't the least we can do, it's the most we can do.

"No one man should have all that power." Warrior-poet Kanye West wrote that about doing NFL Power Rankings; having the ability to make or break teams based on pithy rankings is best left to professionals. That's why I've never done them before: I don't think I can handle that type of responsibility. I mean, Shad Khan would probably read them and think "Wow, Bobby Big Wheel thinks the Jaguars stink? I should probably fire Gene Smith because he drafted noodle-armed Blaine Gabbert."

But thanks to the expressive power of GIFs, I can capture teams with such precision that, finally, I can bear this burden. Below please find my September NFL GIF Power Rankings.

1. Houston Texans (4-0)

Already tired of hearing about how well these guys are doing.

2. Atlanta Falcons (4-0)

So far so good for the Red.

3. San Francisco 49ers (3-1)

Don't ask Jim Harbaugh about that Vikings game.

4. Arizona Cardinals (4-0)

Live it up, guys, Kevin Kolb is still your quarterback.

5. Baltimore Ravens (3-1)

They're in the drivers seat in the AFC North.

6. New England Patriots (2-2)

Their record is misleading.

7. Chicago Bears (3-1)

Jay Cutler: franchise quarterback.

8. Green Bay Packers (2-2)

These guys sure were steamed at the scab refs.

9. San Diego Chargers (3-1)

Competition doesn't look too fierce in the AFC West.

10. Minnesota Vikings (3-1)

Nobody was expecting this out of Christian Ponder.

11. New York Giants (2-2)

Looks like a Super Bowl hangover for the Giants.

12. Philadelphia Eagles (3-1)

Why I don't give much credibility to a win over the Browns.

13. Denver Broncos (2-2)

Peyton feels right at home with these guys.

14. Cincinnati Bengals (3-1)

Again, nobody cares if you beat the Browns.

15. Pittsburgh Steelers (1-2)

They're happy that baseball season is over in PIttsburgh.

16. Seattle Seahawks (2-2)

Told you Russell Wilson wasn't tall enough.

17. Washington Redskins (2-2)

Alfred Morris looks like a steal.

18. Dallas Cowboys (2-2)

The dirt bike is Tony Romo.

19. St. Louis Rams (2-2)

You hope that Jeff Fisher magic carries over but it might not.

20. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1-3)

Greg Schiano lives his life in one direction.

21. Detroit Lions (1-3)

They weren't ready for their closeup.

22. New York Jets (2-2)

They're remarkably calm for the situation that they're in.

23. Buffalo BIlls (2-2)

They gave HOW MUCH to Ryan Fitzpatrick?

24. Miami Dolphins (1-3)

Uncool Dad Joe Philbin is still figuring this head coach thing out.

25. Indianapolis Colts (1-2)

Future's bright so they can deal with the present.

26. Carolina Panthers (1-3)

Cam Newton just cares too much is all.

27. Jacksonville Jaguars (1-3)

You need to be patient with a young quarterback.

28. Oakland Raiders (1-3)

Talent requires discipline.

29. Tennessee Titans (1-3)

Chris Johnson just needs to be properly motivated.

30. Kansas City Chiefs (1-3)

Chiefs fans can't catch a break

31. New Orleans Saints (0-4)

Much like an interim interim coach, this is not a good idea.

32. Cleveland Browns

That new Browns owner doesn't like what you've done, Holmgren.

Major shoutouts to the fine Redditors who found most of these, and the Internet's Josh Kurp, who found the infomercial ones.

Hello readers. October has been eventful one for Penn State, as Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to 30-60 years in prison, which essentially amounts to a life sentence. Also, last week, Mike McQueary sued Penn State for firing him under the state whistleblower law. I'll delve into each with help from my friend the inquisitive non-lawyer that I made up.

So Jerry Sandusky is going to spend the rest of his life in prison?

Yes, unless he has a successful appeal. But, as I wrote back in July, that's unlikely. Unless Sandusky lives to be 128, he will die in prison. He might have been sentenced to 30-60 years, but there is no way that he will only serve a minimum sentence if he is still alive come 2042.

So that's it? Nothing else is going to happen to him?

Well, his wife will be bankrupted by all the civil suits, if you want an extra measure of revenge. But rape is not punishable by the death penalty in Pennsylvania. And I know some of you on the Internet say you hope that Sandusky becomes a victim of prison rape, to which I say that retribution is an ineffective form of justice what with an eye for an eye leaving everyone blind.

But what if Pennsylvania changed it so raping a child were punishable by the death penalty?

That would violate the Constitution for two reasons. In 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that giving the death penalty for raping a minor is unconstitutional because it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The Kennedy case also involved a particularly gruesome incident, so it's unlikely that ruling would be reversed for Sandusky.

Also, the Constitution prohibits ex post facto punishments. That is, you cannot make a law against something (or, in this case, increase the punishment for something) and apply it retroactively. This rule doesn't always apply in civil cases, but in criminal ones it does.

Guess that's it for Sandusky. What can you tell me about McQueary?

I can tell you that he is suing Penn State for violating the state whistleblower suit as well as defamation and misrepresentation. I can also tell you that the defamation and misrepresentation suits are unlikely to succeed, not in the least because the law firm that McQueary hired specializes in employment law. If he were truly serious about those claims then he probably would have hired a different firm. Though the claims themselves are pretty flimsy, the choice of law firm does indicate which claims he's serious about.

McQueary's attorneys are trying to throw up as many allegations as possible and seeing what sticks, trying to make life hard on Penn State and hoping they settle. The meat of this lawsuit is the whistleblower allegation.

OK, but you need to tell me what a whistleblower suit is.

We do not want employers to punish employees who report them to the authorities or testify against them, because we want people to tell the truth in official investigations without fear of retribution. That's why in Pennsylvania an employer may not discharge, discriminate or retaliate against an employee when the employee is requested by an appropriate authority to participate in an investigation or reports them to an appropriate governmental authority. Basically, the employer has to act like nothing happened.

And Penn State didn't act like nothing happened?

McQueary's complaint certainly makes a good case that he was discriminated against after participating in the grand jury investigation. He was the only Penn State assistant coach who was not given a chance to reinterview with Bill O'Brien. As soon as Sandusky was indicted McQueary lost his university privileges. Penn State is paying Tim Curley's and Gary Schultz's legal bills but not his. This all points to a pattern of discrimination against him, and the main causal link to this discriminatory treatment was his participation in the Sandusky investigation.

So what does McQueary get if he wins this suit?

He's asking for damages that he already incurred (loss of pay, early withdrawal from his retirement account, legal fees), front pay and other damages resulting from his termination. If McQueary can show that the termination caused him damage in his search for a new job he might get a decent award from a jury, but it will be hard for him to receive front pay, because Bill O'Brien mostly brought in his own coaching staff even though he interviewed McQueary's colleagues.

But McQueary should have gone to the investigators 10 years ago! Why does he get to use this law to protect himself now?

Well, now you run into the problem that a lot of laws have. They were written by people who have trouble predicting the future. That's a problem common to all of humanity, so I'm not singling out state legislators here (though as a New York resident I do not hold state legislators in high regard). When Pennsylvania wrote this law they could have created an exception for an employee who only participated in an investigation after not reporting the underlying crime to authorities in a timely manner. But it is hard to foresee an unjust situation quite like this one.

It's October, so I know you're burned out on politics and want to stick your head in the sand for a month so you never hear Mitt Romney singing off-key again. But this is one of those moments where you need to realize that state legislatures, those bottom of the ticket races that you mostly either ignore or write in Batman for, have real-life effects on things that you have an opinion on. In this, as in many cases, the cure for outrage is greater civic engagement.

Check the national college football scoreboard right here, and look through SB Nation's many excellent college football blogs to find your team's community.

Follow @SBNationCFB

The Wolverines had just beaten the Spartans on a last-second field goal when I jumped onto the Michigan Stadium field.

I had only rushed a field once before, and that was for a team I actually cared about. Yet as students started piling over the rail onto the field, I was one of the first. This is the story of why, and why you should always support students storming the field.

Michigan fans celebrating the win on the field twitter.com/MaizeBlueNews/…

— Matt Pargoff (@MaizeBlueNews) October 21, 2012

The story begins on Friday. My day job is stressful and this week is no exception. I nominally took Friday off from work so I could travel to Ann Arbor and see my sisters (one of whom goes to UM for grad school). But in reality, I worked the entire time I was below 30,000 feet. LGA-PHL-DTW meant I had a call in LGA, a call in PHL and a call in DTW. I yelled at someone over the phone as my flight to Michigan was boarding and overpaid for in-flight Internet so I could email him to apologize for yelling. What I hoped would be a weekend away from things was spiraling out of control.

But Saturday was a minor miracle. Things at work died down after a few morning phone calls. And the AT&T cell network in Ann Arbor collapsed under the weight of thousands of gameday texts, so I was unable to check my e-mail. Instead of worrying about work, I shrugged and let myself enjoy the festivities.

I spent most of the afternoon before the game filling up with Keystone Light and hot dogs. The highlight of the tailgate was either when people started dancing "Gangnam Style" on top of a dilapidated bus or when the nice new buses carrying the team passed our spot. We cheered loudly, but the players were locked in, staring ahead with headphones on. Also, I felt ridiculous because I was wearing yellow (sorry, maize) and yellow makes me look like a muppet. At UVA I wore a shirt and tie to games. Wearing a maize hoodie made me feel like a Juggalo.

My sister got us tickets in the student section near the front row, so I had a great view of an ugly game. In case you didn't watch, Denard Robinson lived up to his reputation of sporadic accuracy and Andrew Maxwell lived up to his reputation of being a first-year starter. Considering Michigan State had just lost to Iowa, a team whose offense is charitably described as an offense, it would have been an upset if the Spartans won in Ann Arbor.

But the Spartans lost. The Wolverines put together a drive that led to a last-second field goal from a kicker who must have been thinking about Olivia Wilde and looks like he just got back from Sturgis. After the game, the players ran to the student section to celebrate the program's 900th victory and winning the Paul Bunyan Trophy, the only rivalry trophy that looks like a wrestling action figure. One of the players even jumped into the stands in front of me. When he was in that bus, we weren't even a blip on his radar. Now, he was partying with us.

Someone near me yelled, "Let's rush the field!" Now, there are many factors that go into this decision, if you want to be logical in an illogical moment. In favor of rushing the field:

• It was an exciting, last-second finish.
• It was the program's 900th victory, more than any other program. Not even the craftiest Alabama SID can con Michigan out of that.
• It was a rivalry game. While Ohio State is Michigan's main rival, the Wolverines still share a state with the Spartans. There are a lot more families/offices/churches with split affiliations, so the rivalry is more congenial, but in many cases more personal as well. I saw a lot of Spartans and Wolverines tailgating together, and the only real vitriol I heard was when a drunk-by-noon Spartan yelled "Michigan is GAY!" at me (I declined to attempt reasoning with him). This is a civil feud, emphasis on "civil."
• Not only was this a rivalry game, but a rivalry game that Michigan had lost four years in a row. That's a lot of pent-up bragging rights that went unbragged. I can relate when it comes to losing to your safety school that's also an in-state rival.

Charles Tillman is a man

When you call an athlete a "man" it usually connotes that he's grown into his role and plays like a true pro. Grit, hustle, determination; all the sportswritery words apply to him. Charles Tillman is a man. Quarterbacks don't throw in his direction any more. He leads the league in forced fumbles with seven (three players are tied for second place with four apiece). Tillman made Calvin Johnson look like Alvin Harper on national TV. Even President Obama knows who he is; he singled out Tillman as a reason why the Bears could win the Super Bowl in his Monday Night Football interview with Chris Berman. The president sure as hell doesn't know who I am (Biden does though; he's a former Deadspin commenter too). So yeah, Charles Tillman plays like a man.

Charles Tillman is a man

Charles Tillman is a man in that other sense, that he's got a Y chromosome and he's reached adulthood. Adulthood, of course, doesn't always align with age. Plenty of Peter Pans out there are older than Tillman but wouldn't qualify as men, but Tillman certainly does. He's spent years honing his craft to reach the top of his profession. He has a charitable organization that, unlike a lot of athletes' charitable foundations, isn't just a front to employ lazy relatives and helps over 80,000 critically ill children per year. He's also a husband to one and a father to three. Sounds like a man to me.

Charles Tillman is a man

Charles Tillman is a man whose wife is pregnant with a baby that is due on Sunday. The Bears play the Texans on Sunday night, but he might miss the game to witness the birth of his child. That's because his daughter Tiana was born with an enlarged heart and after that ordeal Tillman decided that family would come before football. Tillman, like me, is one of those people who was lucky enough to have a father who is his role model. And he also knows that family, not football, will be there for you if you hit rock bottom.

It makes sense that Tillman would prioritize family because he understands just how great a father who loves you unconditionally can be. That unconditional love can manifest itself in many ways. Some men think it requires working even when it means missing time with your family so you can support them. Tillman takes a different stance. But he's a man, so it's his prerogative to decide whether he attends the birth of his child or plays a football game.

Charles Tillman is a man

Charles Tillman is a man who wants to see the birth of his child. Set aside the fact that seeing the birth of a human being that you created is a fantastic and rare experience, he may just want to go to support his wife. It's easy for a man to get a woman pregnant. A lot of fun too. It's hard for a woman to carry a healthy baby to term. From what I gather, it's not a lot of fun. The least a man can do is show up for the painful payoff of that pregnancy.

Charles Tillman is a man

The fact that Charles Tillman is a man seems lost on Mike Florio. The Pro Football Talk impresario thinks that players should not miss games to witness the birth of their children. His reasoning is easy to debunk:

• Football players sign up to be available no matter what 16 days a year. Football players miss games all the time due to injuries and illness, which are side effects of being human beings. I suppose you could argue that Tillman is making a choice to miss a game whereas injuries involuntarily keep players out of the game. In that case, please note that Dennis Dixon, Philip Rivers, Robert Marve and many others have played football on torn ACLs. It's often possible for an injured player to suit up, but most would rather recuperate so they will be in peak playing condition for future games. For all we know, Tillman wouldn't be able to focus if he knew his wife was in labor during the game.The decision is his. Deal with it. Until we replace football players with Cleatuses, ownership and fans need to deal with the fact that players will miss games because they are, in fact, people.
• Players should only engage in "family expansion activities" when they are unlikely to produce a child during football season. Seriously, Florio called sex "family expansion activities." Most people get over their hangup of calling intercourse "sex" around the age of 9. Anyway, football season lasts from early September to early February. I'd love to hear Florio's plan to keep men in their 20s who are beloved by attractive women from having sex for five months, but I imagine that it involves pixie dust.
• Players' wives shouldn't give birth between September and February. My birthday is in August, and after a few glasses of white wine my mother will gladly tell you about how awful it is to be nine months pregnant in the middle of summer. In Mike Florio's world that doesn't matter because the football team, not the actual women giving birth to children, is paramount. It never even crossed Mike Florio's mind that a woman might want to have a say in when she gives birth.
• Teams shouldn't suffer the consequences of players fathering children. Never mind the fact that Lovie Smith supports Tillman's decision and arguing that the Bears don't want him to play a game instead of seeing the birth of his child is a moot point. Federal law (the Family Medical Leave Act) requires employers to offer employees up to 12 weeks unpaid leave to attend to family matters such as Tillman's. And the Thirteenth Amendment makes it so that you cannot force someone to work for you. Florio is a lawyer, so he should know that Tillman has a legal right to miss a game to see the birth of his child. Teams hire men, not fungible pass defending units.

Charles Tillman is a man

And Mike Florio doesn't care. He's made a career out of stirring shit, and not even attempting to report news in a measured manner. He even tracks player arrests with a "Turd Watch" because he's the only lawyer on the planet who thinks that an arrested person is automatically guilty (and that being guilty of any crime makes one a turd). His commenters largely agree with him, mostly because they, too, like the way the floor feels on their knuckles as they walk.

Charles Tillman is just another vehicle for Mike Florio to get pageviews by saying controversial stuff while hoping people who think he's full of shit come back to the site because he does a good job of purveying intelligence (please note that @NFL_ATL gives you the same intel as PFT* but has none of its crap agenda). Florio has the power to make reckless and hacky statements, but the next time that he pulls his head out of his ass long enough to write one he should act like a professional and remember that when he writes about a football player he writes about an actual person.

In other words, Mike Florio needs to start acting like a fucking man.

*And of course, our own fine NFL feed, @sbnfootball --ed.

Hello cyberfriends, welcome to Takeaways, the Monday column that gives you the main takeaway (football joke) from every game. It's like Monday Morning Quarterback with a word limit and without the upper middle class travel complaints. Anyway, here's the rundown from the week so far:

Colts 27 – Jaguars 10

TAKEAWAY: You’re better off watching Parks & Recreation than Thursday Night Football this year.

This lady says it all:

At least give us a Packers game or something, NFL Network.

Patriots 37 – Bills 31

TAKEAWAY: Bills suck.

I get to cheer against the Bills because I went through a really nasty breakup with a Bills fan. And I have to say, it’s fantastic. Rooting against a team that is pathologically incapable of making a good decision means you have between nine and 13 great Sundays per year. So for all the single fellas out there, I recommend dating Bills, Browns and Cardinals fans. Even if they don’t dump you, it’s not like they’ll have high expectations for you while you're together.

Bengals 31 – Giants 13

TAKEAWAY: The Giants offensive line sucks.

You know that David Diehl is awful because a) his Pro Football Focus rating in 2011 was a staggering -48.1 and b) in spite of that, noted Babylon 5 fan and ersatz football watcher Gregg Easterbrook named him his 2011 MVP. The Giants inexplicably played Diehl instead of the competent Sean Locklear at right tackle this week and by the end of the game Bengals defenders were drawing straws to play on the strong side. Further proof that TMQ is a greater waste of space than that NHL arena in suburban Phoenix.

Broncos 36 – Panthers 14

TAKEAWAY: Peyton Manning is still better than Cam Newton.

Can you imagine if Cam Newton had outplayed Peyton Manning? A certain segment of the population would have freaked out. "What if he were in a Buick Verano commercial? He’d listen to Un-American Hip Hop instead of Outlaw Country!"

Vikings 34 – Lions 24

TAKEAWAY: I still can’t tell if Christian Ponder is a franchise quarterback.

Christian Ponder is one of the most tentative quarterbacks I’ve ever seen. If he were in charge of the Romney campaign he would have spent heavily to shore up Georgia and Mississippi and forced the candidate to take bold stands against teenage alcoholism and the perverted arts.

Ravens 55 – Raiders 20

TAKEAWAY: This game confirmed our belief that only one of these teams can make the playoffs.

The Ravens ran a fake field goal while up big on the Raiders. I imagine it’s because John Harbaugh likes to remind people that he used to be a special teams coordinator. Like how President Obama is always talking about how he was a community organizer. We get it man, you didn’t take the gilded path on the way to your current gig.

Saints 31 – Falcons 27

TAKEAWAY: These teams hate each other.

Saints-Falcons is secretly one of the better rivalries in the league. It doesn’t make the same conversation as Steelers-Ravens, Giants-Eagles or Patriots-Jets, but fans throw shade at each other all day on Twitter and the games get chippy toward the end. Too bad that Monday Night Football grabbed Steelers-Chiefs (the Haley Bowl, I guess) instead of this.

Buccaneers 34 – Chargers 24

TAKEAWAY: Movember Philip Rivers is just as maddening as September-October, December Philip Rivers

The Floatmaster General, per usual, looked very good when he was not throwing passes to guys on the other team. Otherwise, this was an uneventful Cities Where Fans Have Better Things To Do Bowl.

Titans 37 – Dolphins 3

TAKEAWAY: Can’t predict ball.

Coming into this game, the Dolphins were the feisty overachievers and the Titans were the jokes whose Cryptkeeper owner was looking to clean house. Now Dolphins fans are acting like this:

This result flew in the face of what everyone thought about the teams. If you’re a curmudgeon you could say it’s why games aren’t played on paper. If you’re not, you could say it’s part of what makes football so much fun to watch. Inasmuch a blowout can be fun.

Cowboys 38 – Eagles 23

TAKEAWAY: Andy Reid is pretty much done.

The last public execution in the United States was a nightmare. The Kentucky county sheriff who was supposed to be in charge of it was a woman and she was pressured into letting a man perform the task for her. She ended up choosing a random Louisville police officer to do it and he showed up drunk to the execution. Meanwhile, a crowd of 16,000 showed up and its barbaric screams for blood were broadcast across the country. This is why you can’t count on Kentucky to do anything right, because Kentucky is America’s D student.

So we don’t get public executions any more. The closest we get is Nick Foles costing Andy Reid his job on national TV, and everyone without a 215 area code laughing at it.

Seahawks 28 – Jets 7

TAKEAWAY: The Seahawks' pass defense could be really good.

Preach, Fry:

Rams 24, 49ers 24

TAKEAWAY: Tie game!

Tie games are like unicorns, so you better enjoy one when you get one. Also, ties make those tiebreaker scenarios in December a little easier to figure out. The scenario to get the top seed in the NFC will be pretty clear by Week 15. Fuck yeah, tie game!

Texans 13, Bears 6

TAKEAWAY: Jay Cutler got knocked out, so get ready for pizza-stained sportswriters to question his toughness.

Remember the 2010 playoffs, when Cutler sprained his MCL, his coach refused to put him in the game and a lot of guys who wear khakis thought it gave them the right to question Cutler's toughness? Oh, ho ho, now that he's got a concussion, considered by many in the free buffet-press credential complex to be a "head owie," expect someone to really stick his foot in his mouth this week. If Jay Mariotti still had a job, he'd be my first guess as to who does it.

What to do when MNF sucks

TAKEAWAY: Monday Night Football is terrible this year, so here's a suggestion of what to do when it's on.

I recommend husband and wife duo John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey at the Cafe Carlyle tonight. Their soulful interpretations of jazz standards are sure to be more enjoyable than Steelers-Chiefs.

Have you ever been to a not-quite sports bar? There's one in my neighborhood that masquerades as a non-sports bar with a nice cocktail list, a menu that uses adjectives like "rustic" and a decent beer selection. But come Sunday they put football on their TVs because they can't resist the football fan dollars. So here's to the people who let me watch these games while I was drinking craft beer. Really dug those artisinal buffalo wings, bro.

Bills 19, Dolphins 14

TAKEAWAY: The fundamentals of these Dolphins are still strong

The Bills only won because Miami's special teams weren't ready until 9:00 on Thursday. The three times the Bills actually made it to the red zone they had to kick field goals. Ryan Tannehill had a bad night; as rookies are wont to do, but he's still further along than Brandon Weeden (faint praise but cut the former wide receiver some slack on his learning curve). As long as players would rather live in no-income tax states full of scantily clad women instead of Buffalo, the Dolphins will have a leg up in this rivalry.

Cowboys 23, Browns 20

TAKEAWAY: The Browns secondary doesn't deserve the Browns front seven

Tony Romo is fun to watch when he's under pressure because he runs like Phoebe. That made Sunday's game a delight, as the Browns front seven is quietly fantastic and kept him scrambling for the entire game. Romo took seven sacks but also completed 70 percent of his passes because the Browns pass defense, sans Joe Haden, was a joke. On the game-tying drive the secondary gifted the Cowboys most of the yards that they needed on two huge penalties. The Browns linebackers and defensive line should petition the president to secede from the rest of the defense.

Falcons 23, Cardinals 19

TAKEAWAY: Larry Fitzgerald is allowed to demand a trade

I know we hate athletes who demand trades because we pretend that athletes don't have crummy bosses or annoying co-workers. But it's just way too sad to see Larry Fitzgerald run a perfect route and have his arms extended for a ball thrown five yards out of bounds. He's like Jerry Rice if Babe Laufenberg were the Niners quarterback in the '80s.

Packers 24, Lions 20

TAKEAWAY: The Packers are making the playoffs

Thank God because I couldn't deal with an offseason of this type of complaining:

via cdn.memegenerator.net

Cincinnati 28, Chiefs 6

TAKEAWAY: Start any fantasy defense that's playing the Chiefs

Brady Quinn is in the Chiefs' quarterback rotation. REPEAT: this team is so bad that it might need Brady Quinn but it wants a control group (Matt Cassel) to determine if he is Kansas City Chiefs material. You are guaranteed to get a few sacks, at least two turnovers and a bonus play (Intentional grounding safety? Blocked kick? Tune in to CBS to find out!) if you use the defense facing the Chiefs on any given Sunday. By the way, that's a movie reference for all the Phillistines out there.

Falcons 23, Cardinals 19

TAKEAWAY: The Cardinals are an adorable family-run business

The Arizona Cardinals have had a lot of high first round picks owing to the Rumsfeld-quality level of their onfield output since moving to Arizona in 1988. The only quarterback they've used one on has been Matt Leinart. Naturally that would make them gunshy, but after sending Ryan Lindley (nickname: "Who?") in against the top team in the NFC you'd think they'd focus on improving the position in the next draft. But the Bidwills care not for common sense or your persnickety suggestions on how to run a team, so enjoy the Donovan McNabb era next year, Cardinals fans.

Jets 27, Rams 13

TAKEAWAY: Don't move to New York

If you live in New York and you don't want to pay for Sunday Ticket then this was the only football game you could watch on Sunday between 1:00 and 4:00 yesterday. It might be a conspiracy by the sports bar-industrial complex. On the list of reasons why you shouldn't move to New York, "being subject to the whims of Jets fans" is up there.

Redskins 31, Eagles 6

TAKEAWAY: Hahahahahahaha

I'm a Giants fan so this is how I feel about the Nick Foles era:

Buccaneers 27, Panthers 21

TAKEAWAY: The Bucs are above average this year

Franklin Delano Bluth lookalike Josh Freeman led this team back from an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win in overtime. The Bucs are better than the Saints this year owing to the substitute teacher situation in New Orleans. That should change in 2013 as the Saints return to competence, but we should let the Bucs enjoy being the second best team in their division while it lasts.

Texans 43, Jaguars 37

TAKEAWAY: Andre Johnson had 273 yards receiving and Matt Schaub had 527 yards passing

You know a receiver did a good job when you can say stuff like "I can't even remember Randy Moss doing something like that." And Schaub, owing to those new overtime rules that let him break half a bill, was 27 yards short of Norm Van Brocklin's single game NFL record of 554 passing yards. Also I had no idea that NFL teams were allowed to play West Virginia back in Van Brocklin's day.

Saints 38, Raiders 17

TAKEAWAY: Do you smell what Stan Humphries is cooking?

Every year you see the graphic in early October: the 1992 San Diego Chargers are the only team to make the playoffs after starting 0-4 (fantasy football era only). Well, the Saints are 5-5, have their interim coach instead of their interim interim coach, and are a game out of the last playoff berth. The main argument against them: they lost to the fucking Chiefs.

Broncos 30, Chargers 23

TAKEAWAY: Philip Rivers is out of his element

Who is the best quarterback Philip Rivers has had to face in his division? A pre-concussion Trent Green? A pre-Laguna Beach Jay Cutler? No matter. He's got to play Peyton Manning twice a year now and Laserface is no match for the budding pizza magnate.

Patriots 59, Colts 24

TAKEAWAY: Stop trying to make this a rivalry game, NFL

Non-division rivalries ebb and flow in the NFL along with teams' sustained success. The Cowboys and Niners were rivals in the '90s but the Cowboys' string of irrelevance makes those matches just another conference game these days. So when CBS tries to pretend that Colts-Patriots games now are of the '00s vintage you can ignore it.. Focus your hate on your division rivals, Pats and Colts fans.

Ravens 13, Steelers 10

TAKEAWAY: Steelers fans will buy anything in black and yellow

In case you missed Sunday Night Football (why do you hate Faith Hill?) the Steelers wore their ghastly bumblebee uniforms. That's because Steelers fans are stupid and will buy anything with Steelers colors. It's how the Penguins got people to come to games after Mario Lemieux retired. If the Soviet colors were black and yellow then Western Pennsylvania would have been one of their oblasts.

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT INSTEAD OF WATCHING MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL

Bears-Niners would have been great in the NFL's pre-litigation era. Alas, both of these teams' starting quarterbacks are concussed so even the dumb guy in the office* knows to bet the under. I suggest you do a walking tour of Grand Central Station before it becomes a holiday-season nightmare. That's right, I said holiday. Come at me, Fox News.

*If you just thought, "Hey there's no dumb guy in my office," then I have bad news for you. You're the dumb guy in the office.

Last night the Miami Herald reported that the NCAA told former University of Miami players that, if they did not participate in its investigation of booster Nevin Shapiro, they would be guilty until presumed innocent. Naturally, this raised a lot of late-night Twitter ire. After all, defendants in American criminal courts are innocent until proven guilty. The NCAA just seemed un-American.

Actually, the NCAA behaves just like a certain pre-1865 American institution: the plantation. Taylor Branch proved as much in his evisceration of the NCAA. The players are "compensated" with free housing and schooling but have no due process rights. The pre-1865 plantations were eventually replaced with sharecropping. Sharecroppers often worked on de facto plantations, but eventually they were able to assert their rights thanks to the Thirteenth (anti-slavery), Fourteenth (citizenship and due process) and Fifteenth (voting) Amendments.

College football players don't enjoy those rights with respect to the NCAA. They don't have the right to earn a wage. They don't have the due process rights. Mark Emmert is an overpaid buffoon running an inept organization, but the unpaid players that he throws into his NCAA violation starchamber have no way to assert their rights against him. When your "wage" is the ability to live and study at a university for free (a right that can be taken away at a moment's notice) then you have no leverage against your superiors. I don't think the NCAA needs to give players the rights that citizens have with respect to their government; I'm just illustrating how due process is tied to the right to earn money.

That's why you should contrast the Shapiro investigation with the Saints bounty scandal. NFL players, as workers and not "student athletes," were able to form a union that could collectively bargain with the league. When Roger Goodell tried to suspend them on the basis of dodgy evidence (though it was certainly better evidence than the word of a convicted felon) the players took him to court and the suspensions were eventually reduced or overturned because of their collectively bargained rights. When players are paid they can organize. When players organize they can assert their rights to due process.

That's because the NFL represents modern America; the boss still has his odds stacked in his favor against the workers but he can't treat them like slaves. In America we eventually got rid of our plantations. But much of the Caribbean and Central America kept their plantations well into the Twentieth Century. That's why you hear tinhorn dictatorships referred to as banana republics. Guilty until proven innocent is a common banana republic feature.

Fulgencio Batista would do an excellent job running the NCAA. He'd love to find unpaid players guilty in a kangaroo court based on allegations from a jock-sniffing criminal. But if you started paying players, threw out the arcane NCAA rulebook and gave college football players the right to collectively bargain then we wouldn't have to deal with this bullshit every few months.

I've seen near universal outrage at the NCAA's actions in the Miami investigation but there are still plenty of people who think college football players should not be paid. And I'd be the first to admit that paying college football players would change the sport irrevocably. But if you want to keep the Banana Republic of Emmert in charge that means you have to put up with bullshit. Because progress isn't free; it comes at a cost. Clutching your pearls because you're afraid college football will change too much is an insult to everyone who gets treated like a slave by the NCAA.

You can't disentangle the issues of paying players and the issue of giving them due process rights. So if you're outraged at the NCAA's actions in the Shapiro investigation then you should also be outraged that players don't get paid. Guilty until proven innocent is un-American. So is forcing people to work for free.

So do you want the NCAA to be a banana republic or you want it to be America?

Bob Costas is a total pro. In "Those Guys Have All The Fun," an ESPN producer noted that Costas was one of two people (the other being Keith Olbermann) that he could always count on to deliver a segment flawlessly.

So of course the brass at NBC, in appreciation of his years of hard work, gave Costas a valedictory by letting him deliver a halftime address during Sunday Night Football on whatever's rolling around in his brain. Unfortunately, Costas is an old-timey baseball person, so more often than not it involves talking about Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle or some other player who a) retired before I was even born and b) has nothing to do with football.
Costas has also been in the media bubble for too long and has no idea how regular people talk about sports. He has a habit of injecting black-and-white moralism into situations that don't call for it and of talking down to his audience because he assumes that he knows more than us; he still equates access with knowledge. His halftime segments may be a nice way to thank Costas for all he's done at NBC, but it's also a miserable way to condescend to your audience.
Bob Costas, you've had a hell of a career. But get your baseball out of my football.

Texans 34, Lions 31

TAKEAWAY: Thanks for getting Mom to turn on the TV, Lions

Most years this is a crap game because most years the Lions are a crap team. This usually means I miss the end of the Lions because I come from an early Thanksgiving dinner household. But this year we got to put on the game during the meal because it went to overtime. So I'd like to thank the Lions for being good (well, competitive) because not watching football when it's on is a terrible waste. There are kids in February-August who have no football, so you'd better fill up on what you can get. For this we say thanks.

Redskins 38, Cowboys 31

TAKEAWAY: Your mom likes Robert Griffin III

Thanksgiving and New Years Day are like the two times my mom watches football all year, so this was the first time she'd ever seen Robert Griffin III. At the risk of sounding like a geriatric Hollywood producer, whatever "it" is, RGIII has got it. Lord help me if I'm ever back home for a Giants-Redskins game and she starts comparing him to Eli.

Patriots 49, Jets 19

TAKEAWAY: This was a great game to watch after Thanksgiving dinner

Once Thanksgiving is over you're drunk and sluggish with turkey meat, an exciting football game is the last thing you can handle in such a state. You need the football equivalent of Billy Madison. So thanks for the LOLs in this one, Jets. Running into your own lineman's butt is hero work in my book. So is making Fireman Ed quit; he's the most annoying New Yorker not named Andrea Peyser or Pam Geller.

Dolphins 24, Seahawks 21

TAKEAWAY: Of course the sprinklers went off during a Dolphins game

Stephen Ross is sneakily one of the more incompetent owners in pro sports. His "sell celebrities a tenth of an LP interest" scam is a joke. He tried to hire Jim Harbaugh. When Harbaugh said no, he decided the team would play a whole year with a lame duck coach, and he actually let the team appear on Hard Knocks. So it makes perfect sense that if the sprinklers went off in the middle of the game, it'd be a Dolphins game.

Colts 20, Bills 13

TAKEAWAY: T.Y. Hilton is good at football

If you are of small school weeknight football (sidenote: if you aren't then what's wrong with you?) then you already know T.Y. Hilton is a bawse return man/receiver. So you weren't surprised when he had touchdowns of the punt return and conventional varieties. Also, let's all start hating Colts fans again once Chuck Pagano is feeling well because they only had to suffer one year bad of quarterback play. Even I had to slog through the Kent Graham/Danny Kanell/Dave Brown triumvirate.

Broncos 17, Chiefs 9

TAKEAWAY: Poor Chiefs fans

At least last year Colts fans knew they'd get Andrew Luck and the year before that the Panthers got Cam Newton. Meanwhile the Chiefs get...Jarvis Jones? Manti Te'o? Enjoy wasting a first round pick on the most fungible position, doods.

Bengals 34, Raiders 10

TAKEAWAY: Outlaw Raiders back y'all

I was nervous for a little while after Al Davis died. The Raiders hired a defensive coordinator as their new head coach? They didn't take Usain Bolt in the first round? They didn't trade three first-round picks for a guy coming off a PED suspension? But when the Raiders threw down with the Bengals toward the end of this game, it came as a relief. The NFL is a happier place when the Raiders and their Juggalo fans are getting into fights.

Browns 20, Steelers 14

TAKEAWAY: Browns had eight takeaways and still barely won

Eight turnovers! That's how many turnovers my high school would have when we'd play the state champion. And the Browns still barely won because Pat Shurmur just wants to get fired at this point. C'mon Jimmy Haslam, use your truck stop money to cut Pat a severance check so he can book a villa in Zihuatenejo before rates go up in the winter.

Rams 31, Cardinals 17

TAKEAWAY: The new injured reserve rule will fuck with your fantasy team

What? Beanie Wells was playing? He had the "IR" tag next to him in fantasy!

Chicago 28, Minnesota 10

TAKEAWAY: I love the Jay Cutler era

He tied his own lineman's shoe during this game! He's truly America's first meme quarterback. I could see him doing any of the following:

• Petting a cat on the sidelines
• Playing keepaway with Mike Tice's hat
• Mooning Joe Buck for real
• Getting mic'd up just so fans can hear him call refs "brochacho"

Keep doing you, Cutty.

Atlanta 24, Tampa 23

TAKEAWAY: The Falcons are setting up their fans for another disappointing postseason

I'm not a mathematician, but unlike Peggy Noonan and Mitch Albom I realize that numbers aren't witchcraft. And when Atlanta keeps eking it out in close games it doesn't mean they "know how to win" but rather they are "so lucky they're pooping horseshoes." The comeuppance will happen in the playoffs; my guess is that another 9-7 Giants squad will be the ones who do them in.

Jacksonville 24, Tennessee 19

TAKEAWAY: Blaine Gabbert will be your team's next backup quarterback

The Chad Henne Era is upon us! Let's celebrate with an incredibly NSFW song.
Heart u, Dead Schembechlers

Niners 31, Saints 21

TAKEAWAY: Jim Harbaugh is an evil genius

Every interview with Harbaugh makes him seem like a bit of a preening jerk (or at the very least like Mark Cuban if he wore a collared shirt) except he's played this team like a goddamn Stradivarius for the past two years. Now he's perfecting a midseason quarterback change for a division-leading team. This is going to be worse than when Belichick was racking up titles.

Ravens 16, Chargers 13

TAKEAWAY: I'm gonna miss Norv Turner

Who else is going to coach a team that loses because it can't stop its opponent on fourth and 29? Other than Mike Sherman, that is.

Giants 38, Packers 10

TAKEAWAY: The Giants defensive line is looking fresh

For all the hand-wringing over Eli's elbow owie, I was mostly concerned with how listless the Giants defensive line looked against the Bengals and Steelers. Apparently all they needed was the chance to play against a third string left tackle because they looked fabulous last night. Up next: the Redskins offensive line which, typical of the D.C. area, consists mostly of statuary.

What To Do Tonight Instead of Watching Monday Night Football

Panthers-Eagles will be a dud, so it's time for you to shed that turkey weight off at spin class, tubby. I'll be there because my Thanksgiving strategy is gravy makes everything taste better (note: strategy has worked for the past 28 years in a row).

Rather than wait for columnists to bait readers into blind Internet anger, we at SB Nation believe in setting the curve ourselves and doing so honestly. On Troll Tuesdays, we attempt to construct the most obnoxious column on earth. Today: only one man can save the University of Southern Mississippi football program. You may know him by his nickname: "America."

The University of Southern Miss fired its coach Ellis Johnson today. He'd only been there one year. Firing a coach after he's only been there one year should be big news, right?

But if not for this column you'd probably never hear about it. Because really, how often do you hear about Southern Miss football news?

NEWSFLASH: Southern Miss football is small potatoes. But here's an idea: If the Golden Eagles have an itchy trigger finger with all these coaches, maybe they should look at the gunslinger that made them matter in the first place.

That's right: Southern Miss needs to hire Brett Favre.

Call up Wrangler and see if they make headsets.

It's time to decide whether they want to be Small Time or Big Time, and time's running out. Sure, Southern Miss might go after some hotshot coordinator who runs a spread (which doesn't work outside Boise State), but why go running through a thousand different neighborhoods when the answer is right there in the backyard throwing a football and grinning.

Did you know he's spent the past few years roaming the sidelines coaching high school ball in Mississippi? Don't act surprised. This is a man who bleeds pigskin. He's forgotten more about football than you ever knew.

But brains only get you so far. A coach needs to have heart, and timing.

Favre has both. He has so much heart Lance Armstrong looks like the Grinch in comparison.

If he were a truck, one part would never need to be replaced: the clutch.

So what if he's never been a college coach before? Bill Belichick wasn't born with a headset on. Neither was Mike Ditka, and Ditka epitomized football first as a tight end and again as a coach. (How do you spell football? D-I-T-K-A.) Why couldn't Favre be the next Mike Ditka?

As Sean Salisbury once said, "You give me a leader, and I'll show you a winner. You give me a coward, and I won't show you Brett Favre!"

Why make this complicated?

Thanks to Ellis Johnson's buyout Southern Miss doesn't have a lot to spend on a new coach. After two decades in the NFL and countless dollars from endorsements Favre doesn't need the money. Never did, really. Give Favre a piece of land, a playbook, and he'll find a way to have some fun.

Something tells me recruits would flock to a guy like that, too. A guy who lives for fun. Maybe not the me-first types who demand gold cars and scholarships for their friends, but Southern Miss doesn't want them anyway. You don't win championships with me-first guys.

You win them with players who don't care about how many stars are by their name.

Let the SEC powerhouses pile up the superstars, and while websites rank all the stars ask yourself: How many stars did Favre have coming out of high school?

But football's not the reason Favre makes sense.

Southern Miss needs an identity. As Chris Berman once said, "I don't care whether people are Packers fans or whatever, I'll reiterate what we said, rooting for Favre is like rooting for America." Does that sound like someone you'd want representing your university?

I can hear the critics now: A coach needs to have integrity. And it's true, some people might question whether Favre can coach a team after his little scandal on the Jets. After all, a scandal did in Joe Paterno. But there's a big difference between the two.

Do you know who broke the Paterno scandal? A newspaper.

Do you know who broke the Favre scandal? A blog.

Are you going to trust a bunch of bloggers, or the greatest football player of all time?

Every man hits a little turbulence, but not everybody flies through it. In the end, it's up to Southern Miss.

Go deep, or go home.

I know what the Gunslinger would do.

Back in August my friend had an aneurysm. When I found out I spent a few hours freaking out then told my boss that I couldn't do any work for the rest of the day and went home. When I got home I watched Workaholics in my underwear for a few hours. Eventually that night I hosted a trivia competition at my friend's bar, got drunk off gratis beer and gave my number to the pink-haired bartender. None of this was planned, it just happened.

When there's a tragedy in your life you don't know how you will react. You just try to go about your life however you can and deal with it as you go. If I found out a co-worker had shot and killed his girlfriend then killed himself in front of my boss I'm not sure what I'd do. Maybe I'd host a trivia competition that night. Maybe I'd sit around in my underwear watching my DVR. I really don't know how I'd cope, and I don't know what the best way to honor the deceased would be.

So I don't know if the Chiefs did the right thing by playing on Sunday. Neither do you. Neither does anyone else. When you're hit with a tragedy you just try to cope with it on the fly. That applies to the Kansas City Chiefs just as much as it applies to you or me.

ESPN has its "embrace debate" culture where it assumes that on every issue someone is wrong and someone is right. Is LeBron James a choker? Is Tony Romo a fraud? Vote on SportsNation to find out! But sometimes nobody is right. Sometimes there's no answer. Sometimes things are awful and you just need to go about your life. Admitting you don't know the answer to something is nobler than pretending that you do.

On that note, here are the takeaways from every game this week!

Falcons 23, Saints 13

TAKEAWAY: Thursday Night Football is dogshit

My colleague Andrew Sharp made the case before this game that Thursday Night Football is crap. Then Drew Brees played like he'd taken a Tylenol PM before kickoff. The solution is obvious: only have teams play on Thursday night if they have a bye the week before. The NFL could even schedule byes all year instead of just in the middle of the season (they've done this before when the league's had an odd number of teams). It's not like it'd be any worse (or less greedy) than the current situation..

Bills 34, Jaguars 18

TAKEAWAY: In a weekend of games that felt like they had no meaning, this was one of them.

The Bills are mathematically alive in the same way that Mitt Romney had a 9.1 percent chance to win on election night. So bully for them for beating up on a contender for the first overall pick. Good news, Jarvis Jones, you get to play in Jacksonville eight times instead of just once come next year!

Seahawks 23, Bears 17

TAKEAWAY: The Seahawks won a rematch of one of my favorite games ever.

Sure, the Seahawks-Bears 2011 playoff game wasn't all that memorable for its onfield product. But I'd like to remind you that Jim Cornelison brought the mother-loving house down with his anthem before that game.

And that crowd. That crowd is so damn drunk. I love you, Chicago.

Colts 35, Lions 33

TAKEAWAY: Jim Schwartz just updated his LinkedIn profile and would like to add you as a connection.

The Lions have been dysfunctional all year and this week saw a player suspended for sabotaging the offense and the second-most heartwrenching loss of the football weekend (sup Mark Richt). Bad feelings in Detroit right now. So Jim Schwartz should start working on something beyond "Wayne Fontes ain't walking through that door" for his year-end review with the GM.

Packers 23, Vikings 14

TAKEAWAY: Adrian Peterson is a goddamn national treasure

Adrian Peterson was put on this planet to plow through the front seven and he's not going to let a torn ACL or the Houston police department stand in his way. He makes running for 200 yards look so easy. Running backs usually age like mayonnaise so let's enjoy AP while he lasts.

Chiefs 27, Panthers 21

TAKEAWAY: Who cares?

FACT: Nobody cared about this game.

Patriots 23, Dolphins 16

TAKEAWAY: Stupid sexy Patriots

After they lost to the Cardinals (reminder: that happened) I started wondering if this would be the year that the Patriots finally collapsed. The year that Brady fell to earth, the year that poor drafting on defense caught up to them, the year that they seemed human. Nope. They're steamrolling through a mediocre AFC East again, even with Rob Gronkowski out with a broken arm. Hopefully this offseason Robert Kraft puts his actress girlfriend in charge or something.

Jets 7, Cardinals 6

TAKEAWAY: LOL

THE GREG MCELROY ERA IS ASCENDANT!

Rams 16, 49ers 13

TAKEAWAY: Hooray quarterback controversy!

Last week I said Jim Harbaugh would handle the brewing QB controversy flawlessly and now I'm going to flash that Men in Black memory eraser in front of you. Wait, first let me use it on myself to get rid of those ex-girlfriend memories. No I didn't see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, why do you ask?

Texans 24, Titans 10

TAKEAWAY: Go home Bud Adams, you're drunk

Speaking of exes, right now Houston is winning the Oilers breakup. Bud Adams strolled into town looking awful (being 89 will do that) but his team looked worse. So good on you, Houston, for losing weight and asking out that marketing intern after getting dumped.

Broncos 31, Bucs 23

TAKEAWAY: The Broncos defense could be good

After a few weeks nobody really doubted that Peyton Manning would lead a good Broncos offense. But they've had the fifth-best defense in the league through Week 12 according to Football Outsiders and they just held Doug Martin to 56 yards on the ground. Hate the idea of Peyton Manning hoisting a Lombardi Trophy as John Elways looks on? Too bad, it could happen.

Steelers 23, Ravens 20

TAKEAWAY: You lost to Charlie Batch, Baltimore

Seriously, guys.

Browns 20, Raiders 17

TAKEAWAY: I feel bad for whoever cared about this game

Thanks for adding to a Sunday full of football ennui.

Bengals 20, Chargers 13

TAKEAWAY: Could Philip Rivers be done in San Diego?

Somewhere in the recesses of my brain there's a thought from 2007 wondering if the Giants shouldn't have traded Philip Rivers and a pick that became Shawne Merriman for Eli Manning. This is why 23-year-olds whose football experience consists of two sacks against Pi Kappa Alpha are not NFL GMs (exception: that guy who ran the Panthers). Anyway, if the Chargers get rid of Norv and A.J. Smith, you have to wonder if whoever replaces them will want to keep Rivers.

Cowboys 38, Eagles 33

TAKEAWAY: I feel you, Eagles fans.

I became an Eagles fan on Sunday night because the Giants are still derpy enough to lose the division to the Cowboys. And boy was I let down. So I now understand your years of heartache, not winning championships and bad quarterbacks, Eagles fans. Now let's throw batteries at police horses together.

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT INSTEAD OF WATCHING MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL

Actually, I suggest you do watch MNF this week as Robert Griffin III either turns me into a blubbering mess on Twitter (that's @BobbyBigWheel for you) or perishes behind his Potemkin village of an offensive line. Either way, it's going to be a party!

Josh Brent is 24. Have you ever been 24? If so then you probably know that you were a dumbass back then. I'm 28 and I'm still a dumbass most of the time. I'm guessing that I'll stop being a dumbass sometime in my 50s.

Drinking and driving is one the most dumbass things you can do. Getting into a car with someone who's been drinking isn't malicious but it's still pretty dumbass. Jerry Brown's death is a tragedy and a harrowing reminder of the fragility of life and the folly of youth. It doesn't have anything to do with football; instead it's a side effect of being young and stupid.

Remember that you're not invincible, dumbass. Here's what you need to know from each game this week.

Broncos 26, Raiders 13

TAKEAWAY: This game was the poster child for why Thursday Night Football should be moved to Saturday

This game was boring and I have a bye in my fantasy league (I drafted Adrian Peterson because I am smarter than you). So I watched Parks and Rec, 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The League instead. But if it were on Saturday night I would have watched football instead of the Knicks game. Of note, I'm a male, aged 18-34 with disposable income (advertisers covet me) and I have a cable package. Get your shit together, NFL.

Rams 15, Bills 12

TAKEAWAY: Chan Gailey hates C.J. Spiller and winning

C.J. Spiller had five yards per carry in this game and is pretty clearly the Bills' best running back. He had one carry in the fourth quarter; which the Bills led until a last minute touchdown by the Rams. Chan Gailey hates good running backs and not losing. My guess is that he picked up this malady at Georgia Tech.

Cowboys 20, Bengals 19

TAKEAWAY: Football is stupid

The Cowboys didn't win this for Jerry Brown or DUI victims or anyone in particular. They won this because, much like the Giants last week, the Bengals suffered from an inability to convert long drives into touchdowns. The dead practice squad linebacker and incarcerated nose tackle had nothing to do with it.

Browns 30, Chiefs 7

TAKEAWAY: Romeo Crennel is not making a good impression on his ex.

"Hey, Romeo! I haven't seen you in forever, how are things?"

"They're good! I landed on my feet after you dumped me. This is Kacie by the way."

"Kacie, so nice to meet you! What does that tattoo on your neck mean?"

"Back when I was doing porn they told me Chinese lettering helped out so I just got a bunch of random stuff. A delivery guy told me it means 'mother horse looks at sun' but I dunno."

"Well that's just awesome!"

Colts 27, Titans 23

TAKEAWAY: Flip 'em the bird, bro!

via my buddies over at Deadspin

I once had a beer thrown at me for flipping off a section full of Redskins fans while wearing a Rodney Hampton jersey so I can't really judge. That said LOLOLOLOLOL Colts fans are the worst.

Vikings 21, Bears 14

TAKEAWAY: Adrian Peterson is still a boss

I think that's my takeaway from the Vikings game every week but it bears repeating. Adrian Peterson is a man-beast who runs like he hates everyone who isn't wearing the same jersey as him. So let's all hope he breaks Eric Dickerson's record because Eric Dickerson was boring.

Chargers 34, Steelers 24

TAKEAWAY: Let's hope the Steelers don't make the playoffs

Seven Steelers defensive starters are on the wrong side of 30. So we shouldn't be too surprised that, come December, some of them look like they're playing at half speed against a normally punchless Chargers team. Somebody has to get the sixth seed in the AFC but I'd rather the Bengals try to beat someone by throwing for 400 yards than see the Steelers wheeze through the playoffs.

Eagles 23, Buccaneers 21

TAKEAWAY: Who cares about the game, check out this kid

via @dhm

He's gonna run shit once he gets to high school. Count on it.

Redskins 31, Ravens 28

TAKEAWAY: The Redskins still shouldn't have drafted Kirk Cousins.

Process over results, folks. Drafting a backup QB over someone for one of the worst secondaries in the league is a bad move. In case you follow any Redskins fans on Twitter they complain about DeAngelo Hall at least three times per game. And I'm sure Rex Grossman could have put this one away (it's possible; the Ravens secondary looks lost without Lardarius Webb).

Panthers 30, Falcons 20

TAKEAWAY: Regression to the mean is the meanest regression

A few weeks ago I said that the Falcons weren't as good as their record suggested because they got lucky in a lot of close games. And not even Ron Rivera couldn't screw this game up for the Panthers. Take it away, Most Interesting Man In the World:

via Meme Generator

Jets 17, Jaguars 10

TAKEAWAY: No

If you watched this game you should have gone outside instead. I don't care that it was raining; a head cold is the price of progress.

49ers 27, Dolphins 13

TAKEAWAY: Colin Kaepernick's tattoos were good this week

Oh hey he just really likes the Bible. But if the Niners lose to the Patriots or the Seahawks then they're just proof that he's a glory boy clownfraud.

Giants 52, Saints 27

TAKEAWAY: David Wilson made me forget about Doug Martin for a day

Last year in the draft I loved Doug Martin and hoped the Giants would draft him to replace Brandon Jacobs, who signed with the Niners when the Giants offered him no salary but a per diem for 2012. Then on draft day the Bucs traded up to pick Martin in the slot before the Giants. The Muscle Hamster's rookie campaign has forced me to ask "What if?" a lot, but maybe Wilson will vindicate himself before long.

This is your reminder that grading any draft less than three years after the fact is a fool's errand.

Seahawks 58, Cardinals 0

TAKEAWAY: We're back to the old Cardinals

Via @BlueOsprey, this Cardinals fan knows what's up

It's good that the Cardinals suck again. It restores order to the force.

Packers 27, Lions 20

TAKEAWAY: We're almost back to the old Lions

The old Lions were sad sacks; the Schwartz version is a little feistier. But it's heartening to see them at the bottom of the NFC North (call it the NFC Norris and I'll garotte you).

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK INSTEAD OF WATCHING MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL

I have a fantasy bye and I don't like the Patriots so I think I want to go to trivia night. It's in Brooklyn, which means only your interesting friends will show up.

Last week David Roth brought up an excellent point at VICE: the Raptors have the worst mascot in sports (non-racist division). That got me thinking, what would happen if teams in the three major sports (call me when you have a season, NHL) named their teams after tropes or motifs from popular movies at the time?

The Raptors debuted in 1995 but Jurassic Park was released in 1993; there is a bit of a lag time because it takes a while for a team to start playing once it is formed. So I looked at the most popular movies from two years prior to these expansion moves (post-1960 because I'm not a goddamn film historian).

MLB

Most popular films of 1959: Ben-Hur and North by Northwest

Expansion teams in 1961: The Texas Chariots and the Los Angeles Biplanes of Anaheim

Hey, these aren't so bad! Chariots and Biplanes are nice and fight-y.

Most popular films of 1960: Spartacus and Psycho

Expansion teams in 1962: The New York Gladiators and the Houston Stabbers

One home run and one strike out (get it? because they're baseball teams.). Also I bet those fascists at the FOP wouldn't like a team named Stabbers.

(All graphics from @LSUFreek, who's a goddamn warrior-poet sent from the future)

Most popular films of 1967: The Graduate, The Jungle Book, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Bonnie and Clyde

Expansion teams in 1969: The Montreal Plastics, the San Diego Dancing Bears, Seattle (later Milwaukee) Black Boyfriends and the Kansas City Outlaws

We're all over the place on this one. Still, it'd be fun to have a group called the Plastics 35 years before Mean Girls.

Most popular films of 1975: Jaws and The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Expansion teams in 1977: The Toronto Sharks and the Seattle Crossdressers

Have you ever been to a Halloween screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? This would make baseball games way more fun.

Most popular films of 1991: Terminator 2 and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Expansion teams in 1993: The Colorado Death Robots and the Florida Bad Accents

Best get on Skynet's good side while you can.

Most popular films of 1996: Independence Day and Twister

Expansion teams in 1998: The Tampa Bay Spaceships and the Arizona Tornados

"Welcome to Tampa Bay!" doesn't have the same ring as "Welcome to Earf!"

NFL

Most popular films of 1964: My Fair Lady and Goldfinger

Expansion teams in 1966: The Atlanta Cockneys and the Miami Assassins

I have seen one of these movies and I had to look the other one up on Wikipedia for ideas. Guess which is which.

Most popular film of 1965: The Sound of Music

Expansion teams in 1967: The New Orleans Nazi Haters

Hey, a name that holds up!

Most popular film of 1966: The Bible: In The Beginning

Expansion teams in 1968: The Cincinnati Gods

Cincy is a pretty churchy town but even then this is pressing it. Also, they might run into some Fourth Commandment issues.

Most popular films of 1974: Blazing Saddles and The Towering Inferno

Expansion teams in 1976: The Seattle Beans and the Tampa Bay Buildings

"Excuse me while I whip this ball down the field," yeah these don't work.

Most popular films of 1993(non-Jurassic Park): Mrs. Doubtfire and The Fugitive

Expansion teams in 1995: The Jacksonville Crossdressers and the Carolina One-Armed Men

So in my alternate reality we don't have teams in two leagues named the Rangers but we do have teams in two leagues named the Crossdressers. America knows what it likes. Also, they should have been the Carolina One-Armed Men during the Delhomme era.

Most popular film of 1994: The Lion King

Expansion team in 1996: The Baltimore Scars

FACT: Jeremy Irons is the star of every movie that he's in.

Most popular film of 2000: Mission Impossible: II

Expansion team in 2002: The Houston Spies

Still better than the Texans.

NBA

Note: I only did this for teams that joined after 1970 because there was a ton of expansion in the '60s and you don't want me naming teams after Doctor Zhivago.

Most popular films of 1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Funny Girl and The Love Bug

Expansion teams in 1970: The Cleveland Hals, the San Diego Streisands and the Portland Beetles.

And once the Streisands move to L.A., Billy Crystal will go to all their games!

Most popular film of 1972: The Godfather

Expansion team in 1974: The New Orleans Mafia

Three 6 Mafia > The New Orleans Mafia > The Utah Mafia.

Most popular film of 1978: Grease

Expansion team in 1980: The Dallas Beauty School Dropouts

Don't worry, Dallas Beauty School Dropouts eventually become Dallas Widows To Wealthy Oilmen.

Most popular films of 1986: Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee

Expansion teams in 1988: The Miami Wingmen and Charlotte Knives

And if they were the New Orleans Knives now they wouldn't have to change their name unless some liberal do-gooder made them.

Most popular films of 1987: Three Men and a Baby and Fatal Attraction

Expansion teams in 1989: The Orlando Infants and the Minnesota Rabbits

I didn't think you could get any worse than "the Magic" but that's pretty close.

Most popular films of 1993: Jurassic Park and The Firm*

Expansion teams in 1995: The Toronto Lawyers and the Vancouver Other Lawyers

Remember how the dinosaur ate the lawyer in Jurassic Park? Highlight of the movie.

Most popular film of 2002: One of the Lord of the Rings ones

Expansion teams in 2004: The Charlotte Hobbits

Hey! Say it fast enough and you can barely tell the difference.

*The fifth-highest grossing movie of the year. I already used Mrs. Doubtfire and The Fugitive and the fourth highest-grossing film in 1993 was actually Schindler's List but NOOOOOPE, not touching that.

Well, we got some mixed results here, but I think in the end we can come up with a pretty ironclad rule. Don't name your team after a movie.

The Christmas Song Octagon now invites Bobby Big Wheel into combat. He will attempt a victory by submission on anyone who does not recognize the messed-up grandeur of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" the holiday anthem for everyone who might be somewhat excluded from holiday cheer, or perhaps spending it in prison.

I grew up Jewish, so my Christmas was different than yours. I didn't get to decorate a tree, sit in Santa's lap, eat gingerbread men or put up Christmas lights. Instead, I got to celebrate Hanukkah, a store brand Christmas that doesn't even try to replicate the original. And I had to do my best to remain detached from the fun that everyone else was having.

But if you live in America there's no way avoid Christmas; you can't turn on the TV or the radio or even talk to your friends without it coming up. So for me Decembers were always melancholy because any time I left the house there would be buildup to a day that, to me, consisted of watching a movie and eating Chinese food. In America there's no way to avoid celebrating Christmas unless you're a hermit (this is why I LOL at the War on Christmas). This meant I had to develop my own Christmas tradition to help cope with December.

Enter David Letterman. As a young wiseass I recognized a kindred spirit instantly (he later supplied my yearbook quote) and would stay up late to watch his show starting in the sixth grade, when my parents decided they'd rather get to bed on time themselves instead of make sure that I did. And I soon found out that the last Late Show episode before Christmas, concludes with Darlene Love singing "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."

If you have any Taylor Swift fans in your household, play Baby Please Come Home for them so they know what a real breakup song sounds like. (Yes: this is directed at the parents of 11-year-old girls, and also Andrew Sharp.) The Spector wall of sound mixed with those holiday jingling bells makes the song a total punch to the gut. When you stagger back up to your feet the saxophone solo knocks you back down. There's a reason Martin Scorsese only needed 15 seconds of the song to show you what a paranoid freak Jimmy Conway was.

You can see how the song appeals to unsentimental types like Letterman and me. It can be more than just a breakup song, it is for anyone who wants to celebrate but you can't feel anything. It's a song for everyone who's left out on Christmas: Jews, malcontents, drunks, loners. Finally, a Christmas song about what it's like to feel lost on Christmas. In the movies and on TV everything gets wrapped up by December 25. But life doesn't work that way. For some people, it's just another day.

So fuck your "Little Drummer Boy" and "Jingle Bells" and "Deck the Halls." Even if you do have a Rockwell Christmas my guess is that you haven't batted 1.000 over your entire lifetime on December 25. There has to be at least one Christmas when grandma was sick or your parents were fighting or you'd just been dumped. "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is the song for those Christmases. And when you do have a good Christmas, it can be a reminder of just how lucky you are.

So I invite you to watch the Letterman Christmas show with me this year on December 21. Dave's guest is Jay Thomas, who will come on and tell his Lone Ranger story (it's hilarious) then he and Dave will try to knock a meatball off the Ed Sullivan Theatre Studio Christmas tree with a football. Finally, Darlene Love will come on and belt out "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" like she's still 23. It's the perfect Christmas. I don't get a tree, I don't get presents and I don't get a ham. But I do get Darlene.

For some actual bowl game coverage, here's the full schedule, along with picks for each game and watchability ratings. But that's boring!

Hello sports connoisseur, Robert "Bobby Big Wheel" Wheel here. I know that you're a busy guy or gal these days, what with all the Christmas shopping and closing deals before the end of the fourth quarter and mistress stuff. And that means you probably don't know which bowls this season are worth watching.

The answer, of course, is all of them. We're about to enter eight months of hell that contain no football, and there'll be a night in July when you're at the bar trying to talk yourself into caring about a late night Mariners-Astros game, and you'll wish that you had watched the Holiday Bowl when you had the chance.

But I want to make sure you know what you're in for, so here are my GIF previews of each bowl. Part 2 is below, and here is the link to Part 1.

Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl

Andrew Maxwell still needs some more experience.

Music City Bowl

Mike Glennon's last chance to show off for the pro scouts!

Sun Bowl

Mr. Kiffin, we'd like you to meet our friend named Juarez, Mexico.

Liberty Bowl

WOOO, MEMPHIS BOWL GAME! (the city not the school because lololololol that'll never happen)

Chick-fil-A Bowl

Les Miles and Dabo Swinney are coaching against each other and nothing is outside the realm of possibility.

Gator Bowl

Northwestern will find out that CLANGA is, in fact, SEC as hell.

Heart of Dallas Bowl

Never change, Purdue.

Outback Bowl

Steve Spurrier doesn't know the meaning of the word "mercy."

Sugar Bowl

The Florida offense personified.

Capital One Bowl

Poor Taylor Martinez.

Rose Bowl

Jim Delany's the only one who's excited for this one.

GoDaddy.com Bowl

POINTS ON POINTS ON POINTS.

Orange Bowl

Thanks for playing, NIU!

Fiesta Bowl

It's a hell of a consolation prize.

BBVA Compass Bowl

The victim is Pitt. The truck is going to Birmingham every year.

BCS CHAMPIONSHIP

Because college football is almost always stupid, but we should cherish the few brief moments when it's great.

Here's Part 1!

Look through SB Nation's many excellent college football blogs to find your team's community.

Follow @SBNationCFB

For some actual bowl game coverage, here's the full schedule, along with picks for each game and watchability ratings. But that's boring!

Hello sports connoisseur, Robert "Bobby Big Wheel" Wheel here. I know that you're a busy guy or gal these days, what with all the Christmas shopping and closing deals before the end of the fourth quarter and mistress stuff. And that means you probably don't know which bowls this season are worth watching.

The answer, of course, is all of them. We're about to enter eight months of hell that contain no football, and there'll be a night in July when you're at the bar trying to talk yourself into caring about a late night Mariners-Astros game, and you'll wish that you had watched the Holiday Bowl when you had the chance.

But I want to make sure you know what you're in for, so here are my GIF previews of each bowl. Part 1 is below, and here is the link to Part 2.

New Mexico Bowl

For when you want to see ALL THE RUSHING YARDS.

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

MACtion comes to the Mountains!

Poinsettia Bowl

Ain't no party like a BYU party.

Beef O'Brady's Bowl

I found an idea worse than a bowl named after a dumbed-down Benningan's, in St. Petersburg, between Ball State and UCF.

New Orleans Bowl

Cajuns be ragin'.

Military Bowl

The Clawfense rides again!

Belk Bowl

Stick to basketball, Duke

Holiday Bowl

Art Briles will never not coach in an awesome bowl game.

Independence Bowl

"Hey Louisiana sounds fun...OH MY GOD NO"

Russell Athletic Bowl

Logan Thomas should know better by now.

Meineke Car Care Bowl

"Jar Barf" is what I call a Tommy Tuberville offense being run by an interim head coach.

Armed Forces Bowl

RICE ALERT! RICE ALERT! DO NOT TOUCH! COULD LEAD TO DECAPITATION!

Pinstripe Bowl

That's not how you drop into coverage, West Virginia cornerbacks.

Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl

Look through SB Nation's many excellent college football blogs to find your team's community.

Follow @SBNationCFB

In case you're not familiar with the story of Jack Pinto, click on that link and get back to me when you're done crying your eyes out. It hits close to home for me because I was once a 6-year-old Giants fan in Connecticut. I just can't make sense of the tragedy or how football can help anyone. All I know is that I spent 10 hours yesterday watching football and forgetting about the real world's problems.

This was the third Sunday in a row that the NFL played against a backdrop of tragedy. So my Christmas wish this year is a simple one (also I'm not sure I get one because I'm Jewish): that next Sunday we don't need to watch football to forget, but that we need to watch it because it's the fantasy football championship.

Bengals 34, Eagles 13

TAKEAWAY: Good riddance, Thursday Night Football

The Bengals thrashing an underwhelming Eagles squad was the perfect denouement for Thursday Night Football. All year the games have been marred by sloppy play from poorly rested teams and paled in comparison to not only superior offerings on Sunday but the FX and NBC comedies that were on opposite the games. Good riddance.

Falcons 34, Giants 0

TAKEAWAY: The Falcons sure shut me up

All year I've been saying that the Falcons weren't good as their record because they piled up close (read: lucky) victories over bad teams. Welp, that's done after this beatdown. When I say that I've made every mistake that a 28-year-old man can make football prognostication is included in that category.

Packers 21, Bears 13

TAKEAWAY: The Bears' inability to sustain drives is concerning

The once 7-1 Bears looked hopeless trying to drive down the field yesterday. Jay Cutler looks rattled after a year of playing behind an offensive line held together by duct tape and WD-40. Though the Bears didn't look the worst this week of the teams in the NFC wildcard logjam (sup Giants) their offense really needs to pull it together if they want any hope of making the playoffs.

Redskins 38, Browns 21

TAKEAWAY: Drafting Kirk Cousins was a bad idea

Process over results, people. The Redskins lucked into best case scenario territory with Cousins because they can flip him for a higher draft pick in the offseason. But the fact remains that a) Rex Grossman might have led the team to victory (stop laughing) and b) it's a bad idea to draft a second quarterback when you desperately need young talent in the secondary. Just because a bad move worked doesn't mean that it was the right decision, and I still doubt the Redskins front office will surround RG3 with enough talent to ever win a Super Bowl.

Vikings 36, Rams 22

TAKEAWAY: Adrian Peterson is the best

I say it every week and every week it's true. Up top, Adrian:

Dolphins 24, Jaguars 3

TAKEAWAY: Chad Henne isn't bad, the Dolphins defense is just really good

Fret not, Jags fans who thought that Chad Henne was the answer for a solid two weeks. Anyone could lay an egg against this Dolphins defense that's secretly one of the better ones in the league (12th according to Football Outsiders). Considering that your best option in the draft is Mike Glennon (lolwut) you're best off riding with Chad Henne going forward.

Saints 41, Bucs 0

TAKEAWAY: Doug Martin is why you learn mean, median and mode

Doug Martin's mean rushing yards per game is 89. His median rushing yards per game is 72. More than half of his rushing yards came in just four games. The Muscle Hamster's had a nice year but he's not a reliable workhorse just yet. So congrats to LeGarrette Blount for somehow staying relevant.

Broncos 34, Ravens 17

TAKEAWAY: Replacing Cam Cameron with Jim Caldwell is not the answer

Pictured: Jim Caldwell yesterday

Texans 29, Colts 17

TAKEAWAY: Let's thank the Colts for making the Texans sweat a little bit

Seriously, by Week 3 it looked like the Texans would run through the AFC South like (checks simile list) Garfield through a plate of lasagna (throws out simile list because it was written by Rick Reilly). So kudos to the Colts for making this division look somewhat competitive and forcing the Texans to sweat a bit in Week 15.

Seahawks 50, Bills 17

TAKEAWAY: You're welcome, Canada

Congrats to the good people of Toronto for getting to see real football without rouges and teams that didn't borrow uniforms from the WAC. But we gave you the Bills because Western New York is practically part of Canada anyway and we didn't want to see this tire fire in person.

Cardinals 38, Lions 10

TAKEAWAY: Chip Kelly could do wonders with the Cardinals

He could make $5 million per to build an offense from scratch and a defense that's already set. The Lions actually outgained the Cardinals by more than 100 yards but the Cardinals had four takeaways (now is when you nudge your date because I said the name of the column) that led to three touchdowns. And even Darron Thomas would be an improvement over Ryan Lindley.

Panthers 31, Chargers 7

TAKEAWAY: Remember how Cam Newton was broken?

He's basically done the same as he did last year, statistically. Ignore the deep background stories about him pissing someone off at the Pro Bowl and recognize that he's the same player that he was last year, and that your use of a first-round pick on him in fantasy was not a waste.

Cowboys 27, Steelers 24

TAKEAWAY: Ben Roethlisberger pulled a Neil O'Donnell

Apologies to the Steelers fans who had flashbacks to O'Donnell beelining footballs to Larry Brown in the Super Bowl. I'm sure Mike Tomczak would've kept things under control yesterday.

Raiders 15, Chiefs 0

TAKEAWAY: Never watch a Chiefs game

At least when the Giants are bad they're entertainingly bad. My heart goes out to Chiefs fans who have to suffer through truly miserable games. As if real life doesn't have enough pathos, you have to put up with this? Nobody would blame you if you watched DVR'ed Jayhawks games instead.

49ers 41, Patriots 34

TAKEAWAY: I wish Bob Costas had brushed some dirt off his shoulder

Seriously, two weeks ago people were pissed because he said that America has too many goddamn guns. If I were him I'd just say "toldja" and dropped the mic. Also this was a very entertaining game that was especially great because it ended with the Patriots losing. Everyone goes to work happy on Monday when the Patriots lose on Sunday.

WHAT TO DO INSTEAD OF WATCHING MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL THIS WEEK

I'm actually glad Jets-Titans is on Monday Night Football this week. Whenever the Jets play a shitty game during the regular season that means CBS has to show it in NYC instead of a good game. But you'd be better served going holiday shopping this year. Courtesy of @BrodyLogan I found the perfect gift for my mom already. White ladies be drinking wine, yo.