PIF: And So It Begins...

Dear Loyal NFL Fans,

Tonight is the night. Despite threats to the contrary in the offseason, the National Football League 2011 season is beginning on time with the last two Super Bowl Champions facing off tonight. What does this mean? It means most of you are frantically setting your weekly fantasy rosters, tweaking and fine tuning like our jobs and lives depend on it. Chat windows are popping up everywhere with exchanges like this one between me and Beau:


me:  what do you think, Tomlinson or Green-Ellis?
Beau:  for?
me:  fantasy
flex player
our league
Beau:  oh dude.
you know I know nothing about football, right
me:  This is going in tonights PIF
Beau:  well then, I'd go with LT because the other guy has a hyphenated name, and I just don't trust hyphenated named people.
me:  Beautiful

I'm willing to bet that this Balki Bartokomous-esque approach to fantasy football works. Perfect Strangers. It was this show backinaday. Anyway, this can't be good for Maurice Jones-Drew or Mike Sims-Walker. How about if you guys drop your mother's feminist statement of a last name and cease perpetuating the stereotype that black NFL players never seem to come from a traditional nuclear family. But I digress.

You're reading because Week 1 is a fresh start and no one ever predicts it right. But yet all over the internet and beyond smug jackasses make these "bold predictions" about a season that hasn't even come out of the womb yet. Tonight, the NFL's water breaks, and by Tuesday the afterbirth of media attention will turn each slightly unexpected outcome into the next big news story. This is what happens when sports updates fancy themselves "news". But if MSNBC can fancy themselves as such, who the fark.com am I to tell ESPN they can't?

The following predictions should not be the basis for any wager involving cash, first born children, or body parts:

Saints at Packers ***THURSDAY NIGHT SPECIAL***
The last two seasons' Super Bowl champs! Fuck yeah! this is how you start a season. Green Bay QB knows that the best way he can piss on the legacy of Brett Favre is to win more Super Bowls than him, which I think is better motivation than the Saints' "Waaahh are city is still broken from a rain event we had six years ago" bullshit. I mean that's all they're going on these days.
Packers 27, Saints 24


Falcons at Bears
I hate Atlanta.
Bears 21, Falcons 10


Bengals at Browns ***WEEK 1 MISERA-BOWL***
Seriously, are any of you coal breathing hicks in Ohio watching the NFL? you have the Buckeyes, a real football team with a winning tradition. Both of these teams are most famous for games they lost. Neither represents a particularly palatable metropolitan area. Although I have to hand it to Cleveland. They built a franchise in the '50s because Paul Brown wasn't afraid of having a few brothers on his team. Now they boast the only white 1,000 yard running back in the last quarter century. Racially progressive, Cleveland... who'd have thought?
Browns 31, Bengals 17


Bills at Chiefs
I'll buy you a house in Buffalo if you can name three starters on their defense. Seriously. Beer at Arrowhead Stadium costs more than a house in Buffalo.
Chiefs 30, Bills 10


Eagles at Rams ***UPSET OF THE WEEK***
ZOMG THA E-GULLS R LEGIT! MUUFUCKIN DREAM TEAM SON! Nope, I've seen this movie, and it goes straight to DVD. You may be able to buy a championship in baseball and basketball, but the Redskins have been trying this move for years and it doesn't work. Eagles QB Ron Mexico (thought I forgot about that. I didn't.) has one good year passing and all of the sudden he's Johnny Unitas with a criminal record (and herpes). And all these high priced folks they landed in the offseason? Jason Babin,  Nnamdi Asowhatsit, Cullen Jenkins, Donald Lee, Vince Young... This all looks like something out of Daniel M. Snyder's evil playbook of schemes to sell jerseys of past-their-prime NFLers. Eagles are and will always be the Italian Army of the NFC. They'll keep saying they're gonna go all the way, and then they get their asses handed to them by Ethiopia.
Rams 20, Eagles 18


Lions at Buccaneers
I got nothing for this one. Go looking for a link on Cracked.com and tell me you don't wind up reading like 8 articles before you get back to what you were originally doing.
Lions 24, Buccaneers 21


Titans at Jaguars ***BLOWOUT OF THE WEEK***
The Jaguars will be in Los Angeles before the season is over. God they're terrible.
Titans 45, Jaguars 10


Steelers at Ravens ***GAME OF THE WEEK***
Having Ed Reed in your defensive backfield is like having the Konami code on your team.
Ravens 23, Steelers 21


Colts at Texans
No Peyton Manning! For the first time since PIF began insulting your intelligence in 2002, Peyton Manning will not be starting for the Indianapolis Colts. He has a strained media whore muscle or something. So recovering alcoholic aging journeyman Kerry Collins will be digging a giant hole to bury the Colts' season until Peyton unfucks himself. FTR, replacing Peyton Manning with Kerry Collins is like replacing a fine aged scotch with... a recovering alcoholic.
Texans 34, Colts 13


Giants at Redskins
New York plays Washington ten years to the day removed from the devastating terrorist acts that shocked a nation. There's going to be a fuckton of America behind this game. You know what? Bin Laden is fish food. We've systematically dismantled al-Qaeda's leadership. New York and Washington have recovered to become easily two of the best cities to live in or visit in the entire hemisphere. So it doesn't really matter which one of these teams wins.
Winner: AMERICA


Seahawks at 49ers
Well, if it isn't a blossoming rivalry in the festering cesspool of a division, the NFC West. Proving that you don't even have to be mediocre to win this division, Seattle last year finished with a losing record despite making it to the second round of the playoffs. Pete Carroll's team returns this year to to try and French Army his way back into the playoffs. Does new 9ers shot caller Jim Harbaugh have anything to say about it? No. No he does not.
Seahawks 28, 49ers 17


Vikings at Chargers
Man, I just don't care about this game at all.
Chargers 33, Vikings 27


Panthers at Cardinals
Like every date I've been on in the last year, I have very low expectations for this one.
Cardinals 10, Panthers 9


Cowboys at Jets
If the AMURRICA factor in the Skins-Giants game is going to be a force, you can bet your "Never Forget" bumper sticker that the Jets will be running high on emotion. "America's Team" has no idea what they will be getting into on this September 11th freedom fest in the Big Apple. I love the irony that drips from this statement: the Jets are going to topple these Cowboys.*
Jets 31, Cowboys 20
*fuck you, al-Qaeda


Patriots at Dolphins ***MNF***
The Patriots have hands down the whitest offense in football. QB- Tom Brady, it doesn't get much whiter. Offensive line? Five white guys. Here's where it gets tricky: WR- yes, there are big name guys like Dieon Branch and big egos like Chad Ochocinco... but last year they were the only team that started two different white guys at wide reciever, Julian Edelman and Wes Welker... and Welker is milky white. RB- Officially they have BenJarvus Green-Ellis as the starter, but FB Danny Woodhead has made appearances at tailback with Rob Gronkowski filling in at FB. That leaves Aaron Hernandez at TE. And he's almost white. I challenge you to find another team that can put a full eleven offensive players in an NFL game and have them all be vanilla.
Dolphins 27, Patriots 19


Raiders at Broncos ***MNF x 2***
Holy Jesus balls, what have I done?! I'm predicting MADNESS on Monday night! Two kinda shitty teams will UNLEASH upon an unsuspecting audience more points than the total number of Raider fans who have finished high school!
Raiders 51, Broncos 35


So not only is this week 1, it's the tenth anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks in new York and Washington. And as your resident war veteran, I want to relay a message to all you good Americans. Enough with the Drowning Pool song. You know the one. If you think you're showing support for our troops with a montage of war scenes to the soundtrack of a death metal chorus of "Let the bodies hit the floor," you are an asshole who hates America. That's not commemorating the fallen of an act of war committed on our soil, that's redneck blood lust that basically compares the most humane and dignified military in the world to Ghengis fucking Khan. I hate you all, I hate that song, God Bless America. See you next week.

-DM

Tragic Plane Crash Shakes Hockey World

- photo via AP

Just now from AP:

TUNOSHNA, Russia (AP) — A private Russian jet carrying a top ice hockey team slammed into a riverbank moments after takeoff Wednesday, killing at least 43 people in one of the worst plane crashes ever involving a sports team.

Both Russia and the world of hockey were left stunned by the deaths of so many international stars in one catastrophic event. Two other people on board were critically injured.

[...]

The plane was carrying the Lokomotiv ice hockey team from Yaroslavl to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where the team was to play Thursday against Dinamo Minsk in the opening game of the season for the Kontinental Hockey League. The ministry said it had 45 people on board, including 37 passengers and eight crew.

The Emergency Ministry said Czech players Josef Vasicek, Karel Rachunek and Jan Marek, Swedish goalie Stefan Liv, Canadian coach Brad McCrimmon, Latvian defenseman Karlis Skrastins and defenseman Ruslan Salehi of Belarus were among those killed. Slovakian national team captain Pavol Demitra, who played in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues and the Vancouver Canucks, was also among the dead, officials said.

NHL Tragedies

Derek Boogaard was found dead in his home on May 13, 2011 from a lethal combination of alcohol and painkillers. He was 28 years old.

Rick Rypien was found dead in his home on August 15, 2011. The cause of death was determined to be suicide. He was 27.

Yesterday, August 31, 2011, Wade Belak was found dead in his home. It was released today that the death was suicide. He was 35 years old.

All three of these men were NHL players and their combined number of career Penalties in Minutes (PIM) is 5,583. That number includes games played in minor leagues. Total NHL PIMs is 2,078. Total number of goals scored in the NHL between all three players in the entirety of their careers: 20.

Call them what you like: Enforcers, Goons, Fighters. It is an unofficial and controversial role in hockey. [Note: Rick Rypien has been mentioned in this blog before, with a video posted of him yanking a fan out of the stands.] The debate about whether fighting should be allowed in hockey is ongoing. Recently the NHL has shown less tolerance for head injuries, but fighting has been around as long as the game of hockey. Nothing gets the fans on their feet and cheering quicker than when two players throw down the gloves.

The off-season in hockey is only about four months long, yet this short period of time has seen a great deal of tragedy in 2011. This pattern is troubling, and while it does not appear that the deaths are immediately related, it does shine a brighter light on the enforcer role, and further the debate of the place of fighting in hockey.