Football is In the Air!

A football. Here's a big tip for you: if you become a professional football player, you get paid millions of dollars to run into angry men and beat your wife!

A resounding sigh of relief swept over America this week as the football season began and people instantly realized that soon - very soon - they would be able to stop pretending like they give a shit about baseball. For all you historians out there, the United States officially ceased to care about major league baseball in 1995, the year that the average baseball player's annual salary topped $38 billion. I believe this event triggered some sexy section of neurons in the average American's brain to realize the average American could work every hour of every day of their life and still not have enough money to pay their home team's career .264-batting average second baseman a single game's salary. I really hate to sound anti-sports or anti-capitalism or anti-Zionist conspiracy here, but I simply can't rally behind a system which awards large checks to large men who hit a small ball with a medium-sized stick, on average, once every game. My theory here is that instead of giving these people a shitload of money, somebody should instead give me a shitload of money. If some old, decaying, cranky white billionaire wants to throw his piggy bank around while buying and selling ball-tossing mutant South American folks, I propose he'd get a lot more from his money if he awarded me $8 million for one year and I, in exchange, went over to his mansion and allowed him to drunkenly hurl beer bottles at my face for a good portion of an evening. Do you realize how much shit you could do with $8 million a year? More importantly, do you realize how much shit I could do with $8 million a year? I would finally be able to start filming my dream TV program, a reality show about an undercover NYPD cop who must choose from 30 lucky bachelorettes while he solves crime and deals with his wisecracking 12-year old son and dopey brother, the first openly black gay female in the Navy's Air Force Army Investigation Team which solves crimes involving undercover NYPD cops in the ocean.

I grew up (and still live) in the Kansas City area, so I know at least an iota about professional baseball and football although I may not exactly know what an "iota" is. The residents here were hardcore Royals fans until roughly 1988, at which point they all converted into Chiefists and decided to root for a completely different team in a completely different sport with a completely identical tendency to lose important games. You can't travel down a busy road in this city without seeing the home team colors of either the Royals or Chiefs, although that's mostly because it's kind of hard to walk anywhere and fail to see the colors red or blue unless you're color blind or dead or somebody jammed Pixie Sticks into your eyeballs and let their sweet, sweet nectar flow directly into your brain. Regardless, rednecks throughout the state proudly display their "GO CHIEFS" signs from their cars, homes, clothing, and children's foreheads, as there's nothing more exciting than telling the world that you, in fact, like a particular sporting team. Most of these diehard fans know that when they encounter a random person in public, the first question that person begins to ponder is, "does this human I have come into contact with enjoy a sports team?" Their second question is, "am I able to determine which political party they support simply by looking at the hundreds upon thousands of bumper stickers plastered across their Ford truck's rear bumper?" This second question is also an excellent way to figure out of a person is a "proud Wiccan" or high-ranking member of the Historical Klingon Battle Recreation Society, which meets in the woods every other Saturday and takes photos of each other that probably should not ever be viewed by normal people under any circumstances.

A football. Er, a man in a football costume. Well I assume it's a man, I guess a woman could be under there too, although I'm not really sure why.

Despite all this blabbering and jib-jabbering, the 2003 football season is upon us and in full force, as teams from various cities throughout America compete against each other to be crowned the Stanley Cup and given an opportunity to talk about how important children are to them during the Miss America competition. New to the National Football League this year are the Houston Texans, a Texas team that is from Texas and full of Texans that want you to remember Texas is Texan and if you forget that these Texas Texans are from Texas, then they'll helpfully remind you that they're from Texas. Needless to say, nothing good has ever left (or for that matter, stayed in) Texas, so most professional sports analysts and professional sports overweight sloppy gamblers agree that the Houston Texans aren't new this year, and actually played the previous season, which is frankly news to me. The launch of the Houston Texans last year began the NFL's "Expansion Project" which will result in the creation of additional NFL teams including the Irvine Short Asian SUV Drivers, New Jersey Flammable Lakes, and the Portland Drunken Assholes Who Sit Behind Me On a Flight and Talk Nonstop About Their Various Sexual Escapades In a Voice So Loud It Can Be Overheard In Passing Aircrafts. I may not be able to predict how these teams may do in the upcoming years, but I can provide you with a checklist of various events which will occur sometime this season:

John Madden will be recorded saying something tremendously intelligent and remarkable, such as "what this team really needs to do is put some points up on the board" or "this team is looking to score right about now" or the ever-popular "this team would like to increase the number of points currently credited to them, preferably to a value which is greater than their opposing team, therefore resulting in a victory over their opposing team and OH GOOD LORD AM I FAT AND OLD." The other commentators will then respond with a line from their John Madden Reply Handbook, which includes such awe-inspiring quotes as "that's right John" and "you couldn't be more right, John." Then Madden will excuse himself from the booth and sneak out to deep fry a turkey and put it inside a cow and deep fry the cow while putting it inside a funnel cake and dipping that in the horrible white shit Outback Steakhouse gives you to dip your fake Australian fried onion thingy in.

A defensive lineman will be arrested for beating his wife. The news anchor who breaks this story will fail to mention if she deserved it or not, although the lineman will suggest that during his subsequent press conference where he admits that he probably wasn't acting in the best interests of his team when he decided to throw her through a plaster wall and douse her unconscious body with gasoline.

One team will accomplish a breathtaking upset of another team during Monday night football. Representatives from the winning team will chalk their victory up to Jesus Christ, although He will not be available for interview and all scientific attempts to provide a direct link between The Savior For All Us Good White People and winning a football game will prove inconclusive. This is because the scientists are all pagan non-believers and will burn in hell for all eternity with all the filthy homosexuals and Martians.

A football. Er, a team of football players who all know what it's like to play an away game at Flavor Country.

Somebody will predict the Super Bowl matchup by using a computer program or console video game such as "NFL BLITZ FEVER FRENZY ULTRA PLATINUM EXXXTREME FOOTBALL NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE 2004 VERSION 2003." According to them, the New York Jaguars will beat the Green Bay Rangers 3-2 in 11 innings. They will then proceed to topple their previous Minesweeper high score, although they will cheat to do so. If they use a console to predict this score, then they will be denounced by rabid fans of rival consoles who will refer to them with such names as "fag" and "big fag."

A white place kicker with a mullet will come out on the field and break some record that was previously held by a slightly different white place kicker with a mullet. Both of these men drive Camaros.

Somebody will get injured while playing on an Astroturf field, causing the commentators to explain how Astroturf has injured and killed more people this year than World War I and II combined and how the ghosts of the dead haunt the field to spread misery and pain to all those who dare set foot on the cursed ground. Then the National Association of Sports Announcers ("NASA" with less exploding people) will announce a jihad against Astroturf and begin a cross-country spree of death and destruction, burning down and murdering anybody even remotely associated with Astroturf.

A brash young upstart rookie quarterback will learn the importance of hard work and dedication after he and his comically inept teammates lose the first few games in blowout defeats. Rival teams will mock them and their situation will go from bad to worse in a matter of games, ultimately climaxing when the rookie quarterback gets drunk and his girlfriend leaves him and he tries to drive his car into a train. After he hits rock-bottom, he will then rebound stronger than ever, inspiring his teammates to band together and win, guiding them in the direction of success. Their team will make it to the Superbowl and play their rivals, eventually winning by one point with two seconds left in the game, thereby presenting a true "rags to riches" story and brightening the hearts of elderly people and really old young children across the globe. The role of the brash young upstart rookie quarterback will be played by Keanu Reeves, while the rival team's defensive end will be played by the rich jock preppy guy from "Revenge of the Nerds" who hasn't succeeded in dying so far.

The referees will throw a tiny yellow flag and then claim the home team engaged in an activity dubbed as "pass interference." Many fans in the stadium will proceed to express their displeasure of this call by chanting the word "boo" very loudly, sometimes with their hands cupped to the sides of their mouths. Despite this united act of protest, the referees will fail to reverse their call, although one of them will feel kind of bad about it later that evening when he's getting drunk off his ass in the hotel bar.

Gatorade will proudly show off a new advertisement in one of the commercial breaks after a large black man calls for a timeout but before they cut back to an old white man shouting into a headset on the sidelines. This commercial will display real people, like you and I, together with fake people, like Larry Bird or Larry Bowa. The one thing uniting us and bringing every type of person together will be our common bond of neon-colored sweat which flows out of our skull every time we do anything more physically exhausting than opening up a book.

Please keep in mind that while I may not be an expert on football, I am pretty much an expert on what happens during the football season, so you should implicitly trust and place your blind faith into every single word I've written here. If you mistakenly think that some of these events may not come true and the football year may not be everything I proclaimed it to be, please keep in mind that nobody's paying me $8 million to write this shit, so therefore I have the freedom to take some "creative liberties," which include the creative liberty to write outright lies. If you would like to pay me $8 million to write something for you, please email me and I'll work out a package deal to allow you the ability to additionally throw beer bottles at my head.

Repent, For a Terrible Game is Upon Us

Hey all you godless infidels, Taylor "Potemkin Punch" Bell here with an all-new review! Well, actually it's about 60% new and the other 40% is made from old alarm clocks and packing tape. This week's game is another ass kicking Christian game, and it has made me see the light!

After exploring my wonderful town I set out into the big, scary forest and wandered around slowly, almost as nervous as an altar boy during Holy Communion who has to bend over in front of the priest with his eyes closed and his mouth open. Fortunately after I fought my first battle I learned I had nothing to fear, since combat is the usual lazy "choose to fight, use an item or run" system that Squaresoft is desperately hoping people never get tired of. And if you take some damage during a battle, don't worry, you get automatically healed up to maximum after every encounter. The graphics don't help compensate at all, since everything is made up of horribly animated sprites that would have looked bad on the Commodore. Also your character's feet are completely transparent, and for the sake of my own sanity I'm not even going to ask why.

Check this shit out, pagan! Also, go Dolphins.

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)