The Eagles vomiting all over themselves? Who couldn’t guess that would happen? That was an embarrassing display of NFC East football…shameful, in fact. Buncha lollygagging mama’s boys…

Kudos to the Patriots, natch. Troy Aikman was 100% correct when he said that their accomplishment here in the Naughts is greater than what the Cowboys did in the previous decade. It’s happening in the era of the salary cap. That makes it completely different, and more admirable as a team accomplishment. It doesn’t diminish the record of the Pokes, but it certainly exceeds it. That ain’t easy to say.

Isn’t it interesting, too, that the student is schooling the teacher? More evidence that Bill Parcells is a pointless waste of time, a placeholder here in Dallas. I drank the Kool-Aid, and thought the Brobdingnagian Tuna still had something…it’s clear he’s just padding his stats, though.

Of course, this is the time of year where I would normally turn full focus on the NHL, except those a-holes are having a labor squabble that is likely to last the rest of this year, and probably another one. All so they can expand to places like Nashville and Shrevesport. I know we’re not a hockey town here in Dallas, but we became one in fairly short order. Well, whatever — eff em. Bring back my Freeze so I can afford to go to a game again and I’ll be happy. Anything to avoid being forced to generate fan-love for the Gangstas in Undies.

Bah. Pitchers and catchers report in a week or three, but my beloved team has done jack-shit in the Hot Stove part of the season. They’re going to get creamed, as per usual. Still and all, three hours at the Ballpark cures one hell of a lot of TFG surliness. Can’t happen soon enough.

PS viz Commercials: Jack in the Box rules over them all. Has for a long time now. All hail the ping-pong ball head.

And in the vein of talking sefl-interested football, I can only say GO EAGLES!

Not that I lurv the Iggles or anything, but I do want the Patriots to fall short of the Pokes record-setting 3 Super Bowls in four years. That’s petty, I know, but feel free to tell me that.

I mainly want to see if Philadelphia, the City, can avoid laying waste to the eastern seaboard if they do win their first Big One. I’ve bashed the Philly fan in the past and been called on the carpet for it, but let’s be honest here…Philly is a thug town, and the inhabitants seem to take great civic pride in being a thug town. Not everyone from there is a thug, of course, just like not everyone from Dallas is a wine-swillin’ Manhattanite-wanna-be.

I’ve not decided where I’m going to watch this game, either. I might get together with my old pard Otis for a little bit of it, but I sincerely don’t wish to be surrounded* by idiots who shush everybody when the stupid commercials come on or piss themselves because Paul McCartney is playing Band on the Run for the 1,000,000,000th time. So I will likely end up watching from the comfy La-Z-Boy here at TFG HQ. The Wife is sick with a brutishly nasty cold, too, so I have to spoon tequila into her at regular intervals.

* Sometimes I wonder if I’m turning into a real Woodrow Call sociopath. People are just starting to bug me more and more and more, and I don’t have the liberty of whacking the idiots with a Navy Colt, or just riding off when they speak to me.

I just knew Jarvis would have a whiny post about all the freedoms we’ve lost since last year’s half-time show, and he doesn’t disappoint. Of course, he starts off with an outright lie:

: So it has been a year since Janet Jackson sort-of exposed her breast

There was no ’sort-of’ about it — the boob in question was exposed. That’s a fact. Very conveniently ignored and pranced around, but a pure fact.

Therefore, the rest of his self-aggrandizing, self-promoting, self-important, self-enriching words should be read with that in mind. Don’t forget that Jeff runs a freakin’ media company. The lowering of community standards, such as they are, will directly affect his pocket-book by continuing the death spiral to the lowest common denominator in all things broadcasting. He might very well be the passionate defender atop the ramparts of the First Amendment that he plays on his blog, but you will never in a million years convince me that it ain’t also about Jarvis and his mediot buddies and their bank accounts. And by the way, don’t miss his next appearance on the teevee, where he’ll use more swears to prove that we really be a hip and happening nation and we should have boinking on the tube for free, like they do over in Ye Olde Europe.

As far as community standards go, I sincerely could not care less what you watch on your teevee. I just want the sluts and hos and trash-mouths and boobies and weenies and so forth — out of my sports. I watch movies and I watch sports. Is it all possible to keep the former from bleeding over into the latter? Is it at all possible to keep the greedy, grasping, mindless, tentacles of hipster youth culture out of my one mindless escape from the gutter that is the media-driven real world? It doesn’t look like it. The earth rolls on, after all, and I’m just a dude typing away. But do yourself a favor and consider this from Jeffie the Media Mogul, who is oh-so-concerned about 1A:

And today we’re sure to see the dullest Super Bowl commercials and half-time show in history.

Such a crying damn shame that we have to play a damn football game today at all…

In what has become a regular Pro Football Hall of Fame tradition, a Cowboy was elected out on the last ballot. This year, it was Micheal Irvin. Prior years have featured no-name guys like Cliff Harris, Rayfield Wright, and of course, the barely-noticed & rarely-mentioned Bob Hayes. Next year, it will likely be Troy Aikman. In order to vote a Cowboy out this year, the voters had to reach all the way back to the 1930s for Bennie Friedman, a QB for the powerhouse Michigan Wolverines, and dead for 22 years.

It’s become a cynical pleasure to watch the HoF machinations from afar since they occur at Super Bowl time. Because everybody knows who’s the best Super Bowl team in NFL history, right? Everybody knows who’s the best NFL playoff team in history, right? Do I have to go through it all again? Yet, somehow, there are only five Dallas Cowboys worthy of being put in the Hall of Fame. Even though this decade’s dynasty team is only now TRYING to TIE the standard set by the Cowboys of the 90s (that would be three Super Bowl victories in four years.)

The Cowboys bias from the media has become downright laughable. Laughing at the mediots is nothing new in this blog, of course. I’ve always held sportswriters a notch or two above the usual suspects, because their maunderings had to have some relation to what actually happens / happened. It’s dead easy to see the fakes and charlatans when you’re talking NFL or MLB or what have you, and being a good writer by itself just isn’t enough. But when you can somehow justify to yourself NOT putting Bob Hayes in the HoF…well, it sure ain’t about football, now is it? The “journalists” once again manage to show their collective ass.

Well, eff ‘em, I say. We’ll watch the same sad a-holes do a job on Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Deion Sanders, Larry Allan, etc. from the great Super Bowl teams of the 90s. It’ll be the same job their forebears did on the Cowboys Super Bowl teams from the 70s. The ones who will suffer, besides the individual players, will be the future generations who care enough about a sport to bother with a Hall of Fame. They won’t be getting the full story, and for that they can thank, once again, a bunch of mediot journalists.

It should be noted that, in a shocking departure from HoF tradition, the voters did not elect a Pittsburgh Steeler to join his FIFTEEN teammates. There may yet be hope for the Pokes.

Maybe, if you want to believe the FrontBurner, chronicler of all things chronicle-worthy in Dallas. No, this isn’t celebrity drinking news, celebrity boobs, celebirty restaurants, or fellow journalist celebrity-making, it’s hockey news.

There’s no question that I’m extra-depressed this winter with no hockey. And I’m sad to say, that if/when they come back, I’ll still be a fan. Not quite as much of a fan, but a still a fan. Jeez, I used to pay to see the Freeze in the stock-barn at the Fairgrounds. And I’d do it again, if I could.

* It only took four tries to get this posted.

I’m feeling bad for my pard, Craig, with the Steelers loss. It was a fairytale season, with Ben Mumbleerger at the QB, and I really thought they had a shot at beating the Pats. In fact, and this is heresy in Dallas, I was pulling for the Steelers to win it all.

As far as the NFC, it’s just an(other) opportunity for Philly to fall flat on their face. I didn’t think the Michael Vicks would get past them this week, since the game was in Philly, outdoors, in the cold.

I’m not sure how I feel about the Super Bowl. I guess I’d like to see the Philberts win, if only for McNabb alone. McNabb is probably my favorite QB in the NFL, and his success would please me. Winning without Terrell Owens’ ginormous ego hogging up all available limelight would be nice, too, but it’s unlikely to shut him up completely. However, the dark cloud of failure that has hung over Philly fans for as long as I can remember is always enjoyable, in a Cowboys fan kind of way. But as the poor sisters in the NFC East, Lombardi Trophy-wise, I’ll give them one out of the pure-dee goodness of my heart. I’ve mellowed with age.

But I still wish it was the Steelers.

I’ve avoided talking sports here for several weeks. After the greatest baseball playoffs in the history of baseball, it’s kind of hard to get motivated about the secondary sports. I hate basketball, not passionately, certainly, but, outside of dull civic pride, there’s nothing about the mutants that interest me…even the point guards are taller than my tallest friend. Professional ice hockey, and my beloved Stars, chose this year to shove the dagger in my heart, twist it to create a large wound channel, and then pull it out to watch laughingly as my love spills on the floor…I mainly wish the Dallas Freeze were still around so I could take the kids or the wife (or both!) to see some stick/puck.

My first love — the Cowboys, the Pokes, the Silver&Blue — are in the grip of a carpet-bagging New Jersey egomaniac who’s managed to squander every bit of goodwill & trust he generated last year. There’s not a single significant move The Brobdingnagian Tuna has made this year that I can point at and say, I understand that. The slavish devotion to Vinnie Interceptaverde has befuddled many smart men in Texas, and I’m talking about men who had blocking-dummy teething toys and pigskin diapers. I fear that Jerry Jones, impresario of the Cowboy Star, has met his match with Parcells.

The key differentiator here, though, is that Jones still has the Unspoken Option — FIRE HIS ASS. While I don’t want to see another Krazy Kampo situation (or Goofy Gailey, or Silly Switzer), I want a damn coach who’s on the same page with at least one-half of the populace..at least then, I can figure that I’m just a big dummy who doesn’t get something. That ain’t happening here.

Therefore, let me be the first to get out of the gate on this one: fire Parcells so he and Vinnie can have plenty of quality time together, and hire Mr. Bob Stoops. As much as it pains me to admit Okie superiority at anything short of double-wide landscaping, the Boomer Sooners have been untouchable for a half-decade. I want that kind of football mind at the helm of my beloved hometown gridironers. Give Stoops the same leeway that Parcells enjoys today, and I’m convinced that we’re in the Super Bowl in 5 years or less.

Crazy? Sure — but Jerry Jones fired Tom Landry, the greatest football coach in the history of football. If you can fire Cowboy Tom and bring in that fat-cheeked, nacho-eating, Heineken-drinking, boat-loving, Miami-living, hairspray-using, sooooie-pig Jimmy Johnson…well, Bob Stoops ain’t no thing.

Who’s with me?

Yes, that logo sucks. Because I suck. I need a graphics staff, badly. I’m a blue-sky, big-picture, long-range man.

It’s the fourth quarter, we’re down by 21 points, and there’s still a 41 year-old QB jogging out there. I’m convinced that Parcells took this head-coach job (and Jerry’s $48 billion) for the express purpose of padding Vinnie’s career passing stats. This sucks, greatly. I even told my mom tonight, as we discussed start time for dinner on Turkey Day, that it doesn’t matter what time the Cowboys start on Thanksgiving, nobody will give a damn.

Enough with the freaking U2 / iPod commercials, too. Vertigo is a not-that-great pop song that nobody would have noticed 30 years ago. Alice Cooper, the 2004 Alice, could kick this Bono’s ass. The Van Zandt boys would make him their #5 stage roadie, in charge of keeping fresh bottles of Jack close to hand on the Marshall stacks.

Well, it’s a nice win for the Boston Red Sox, but by gosh, the idiots on the teevee are bound and determined to completely ruin it.

But that Jeanne Zelasko — looks like she could stretch the owl shirt.

Thank you, Fox, for bringing us a decent interview with Tony LaRussa. I believe now that he is a human, and I congratulate him on his accomplishments.

Best blog line of the night: At least it wasn’t Philly who won. Those fans would have taken out at least a third of the US before they passed out. [Link inserted by me, because Al's the first guy I thought of when I read it]

Prima facie evidence while I’ll never be a BlogBigWheel: IF YOU HAD YOUR CHOICE, people of Boston, would you rather see your team win the World Series or your Senator win the Presidency?
I would hope my lifelong pals Otis or the Senator would just shoot me between the eyes if I ever asked such a ridiculous question. Presidents are about nickel a dozen — I could round up 10 guys who would do a better job than these guys in about, oh, a half a day. World Series, on the other hand, don’t just drop in your lap every day (unless you’re the @#$%ing Yankees with %$#@ing Steinbrenner’s checkbook).

Eric Celeste says that Gary West is gone from the Morning Snooze.

Since the folks at Lone Star Park are screaming about it, we might as well say that one of the layoffs is Gary West, the paper’s horse racing expert. Given that this is the week of The Breeder’s Cup at Lone Star Park, this strikes many as odd. In fact, the hot rumor is that Lone Star Park is so angry, they’re trying decide how best to voice their displeasure. Hmmm. Advertising seems to get their attention, don’t it?

I’ve never linked to West from here, but I read his column every time I find it in front of me (on those rare occasions when I buy a paper since I have to go to damn convenience store of some shape because the Snooze has obviously removed every paper box in the city). This bothers me, because horse racing should be an important part of this city (we’re in, ya know, Texas, dipshits). It’s important enough that the Breeders’ Cup is here this weekend. If I had two thin dimes to rub together didn’t have to work at the ranch, I’d be there this weekend, guaranteed.

Let me guess who’s up next — Ray Sasser’s excellent, nay, superlative Outdoors reporting, and Ed Knocke’s Rodeo reporting. We’re far too World Class to have guys writing about shooting defenseless deers or riding cute little calves. That’s what they do Out West, anyway…this is where the East peters out, remember?

What won’t be gone from the News? Gushing bullshit about crappy new fusion restaurants that will be closed in a year, gushing bullshit about crappy new clubs that will be closed in half-a-year, gushing bullshit about major music acts that come through town and play at the big (advertising) venues, gushing bullshit about new handbag shops or shoe stores that open in the Park Cities. In other words, a vastly expanded Texas Living (bwahahaha! more like Connecticut Living) section. Oh, and gushing bullshit about how vital it is to build intern-designed, machine-stamped Spaniard “Bridges to Nowhere” around the completley non-existent Trinity River Greenbelt so we can revitalize a high-dollar, non-smoking, uninteresting, crime-ridden, over-regulated downtown.

They’ll probably keep that guaranteed-insomnia-cure Blackistone around, too. That’s one guy who can happily take a hike up to Green Bay or over to Flagstaff and write about school board discordance. If they lay a finger on Gerry Fraley, though, I’m storming the gates.

- A good one from the mid-day boys at the Ticket, Bob and Dan: You’re a BoSox fan. We all know it’s been 8,0000 years since your beloved team (and the team of your dad, and his dad, and his dad, ad nauseum). They are now 3-0 with a damn good chance to win the elusive Ring tonight. Is there some small part of you that is wishing they would lose the next two so that the win, the Serious win that everyone you know & love has been clinging to life waiting for, happens at Fenway?
TFG ANSWER: If I were a Sox fan, I would beat you within an inch of your life if I found out you were doing this.

- Another from Bob and Dan: You’re a BoSox fan living in Dallas, so you only get to see this on the teevee. In the meantime, your Significant Other (non-married) has purchased tickets sometime in the distant past to see 80s angstmeister Morrisey and the show is tonight. The S.O. is getting really pushy and crabby about you joining them at the concert. How do you handle this?
TFG ANSWER: I hope you enjoy the show, & the rest of your life. Dear.

- What were the betting odds that Boston would sweep?

- Seriously, did anyone believe that the Cards would roll over and play dead like this? I mean, even with LaRussa at the helm? I’d completely forgotten about his leaden touch until I read Gerry Fraley in the paper today. His last trip to the World Serious ended at the wrong end of a sweep, against the Cincinattis in 1990. By the way, all you whiny Reds fans, that wasn’t that damn long ago. Two years before that, it was the Bulldog and the greatest World Series home run of all time* (that I’ve seen).

- What are the betting odds that, after 101 years of zero comebacks from 3-0, that we see our second one here in naught-four?

- How many Fox Sports executives are actively praying. likely for the first time in years, for the above conjecture to come true?

- No matter what, I suspect that I will be missing hockey something fierce very soon now. That’s a big sports problem. I just can’t get gen up any enthusiasm for this basket-ball stuff.

* Did you know that was Gibby’s only at-bat in the 1988 Series? I did, but I forgot.

Boston police to use different pepper-spray gun in wake of Red Sox fan’s death

Boston police are giving up the pepper-spray gun that killed a college student during a rowdy Red Sox celebration, switching to a weapon that fires the pellets at a lower velocity.

In a brief news conference outside Fenway Park about an hour before Game 1 of the World Series between the Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, police said pellets fired by the new weapons will make less of an impact than those shot by the guns used earlier this week by officers.

Call me clueless, but WTF is this? Pepper-spray pellets? What genius came up with this idea, and why? If I had to guess, I’d bet “lawsuits over tear gas.” Ultimately, you’re responsible for your own drunken sports-idiocy, of course, but…high-velocity capsicum pellets is one of the dumber things I could think of. And just to be monkey wrench, lower velocity pellets probably won’t break open and have the expected result when they get to their intended target.

Let’s ask Farmer John from 1932 what he would recommend for a crowd of drunken idiots: “Why not rock salt?” Probably more lawsuits, Farmer John. He looked puzzled, then walked off.

You know, I’m 44 years old, and you would think that after roughly 36 years, I probably should have figured out what to do on the night off before the World Serious starts. I feel lost, though. Pray, my friends, for another Game 7 to carry us right up to the Election Day and drown out all the wonky baloney from the poli-sci dorks.

For the cost of a few pixels more, here’s how my thinking goes on this year’s Big Clash, as stolen from the comments over at Kevin Whited’s joint, where he was bemoaning the fate of the Houstons:

Bummer, but for the love of all that is holy, ENJOY THE RIDE!!!!!!! The Astros were road-kill at the All-Star break. What an outrageous comeback! You got to sit in a seat in a Championship series!

As a Ranger fan, I didn’t want Houston to be the first Texas team in the WS, but I was fully prepared to support Ol’ Swampy if they made it. Crikey, I would have even gone and bought an Astros hat. I guess now I’ll have to find my Cards hat, since I will be cheering for
a) payroll sanity
b) Red State America
and
c) continued failure for the Red Sox Nation (since that seems to give them so much to live for)

And I don’t think I’d change a word of that. For all my bitching about the Yankees and their payroll, the Red Sox are only sofa-change behind them. We here in DF&W Metroplex had a brief flirtation with Payroll Insanity, and now that sorry sissy-slapping bastard is gonna be sitting in his vault of gold dubloons watching the Serious on the teevee like every other schlub in the world. I don’t know if I have a point here, except that I’m glad Alex Rodriguez continues to find ways around a ring.

The Red State thinking goes like this : if all those Red Sox Nation liberals hadn’t elected JFK to the Senate for all these years, we wouldn’t have to deal with his elitist no-goose-carrying ass today. The Democrats would have nominated someone worth getting heated up against, instead of the traitorous Man from Global P.L.A.N. with his secret CIA hat and “seared, seared” false memories.

Yep. Give me the heartland Cardinals, favorite team of my forebears from back in the day when they were the farthest-west team in the Bigs.

As always, top honors for nailing the ALCS to the wall go to Colby Cosh for Keep telling yourself it’s just a game

So when the time came for the ultimate slice of excrement-flavoured birthday cake to be served, after a century-plus of big-league ball, there was no other plate you could really want it to end up on. 26 world championships in baseball, and one all-time undisputed title in the art of choking. Seems more than fair.

That was simply historic. If you saw it, I’m sure you know that, before tonight, it had never happened in the history of the greatest game ever invented.

I’ll have more to say tomorrow, but for now, I’m just thrilled to pieces that I got to see it, every pitch, catch, throw and run, slurping down Shiners, in a tavern, with my old pal, Otis. Pretty cool. The only way it could have possibly been better would be to a) be there, or 2) have The Kid with me.* I hope she watched it.

* Or, of course, if it had been the Rangers it would have been The Best, but…well…just…but.

NEXT DAY THOUGHTS:

#1: Don’t forget that the Curse of the Bambino was that the Red Sox would never win World Series again. All they’ve done so far is slay their biggest dragon, the hated damned Yankees. Still a few games to win to kill the Curse, boys.

#2: But it was sweet beyond words to see the slaying of that dragon on the field at Yankee Stadium.

#3: It was super-quadruple golden to see the slaying come in the form of a never-before-seen four-game comeback against the hated damned Yankees.

#4: My pal Otis says A-(hole)-Rod jinxed the team with that little sissy slap the game before this one. AR was pretty stout in the first three games, then vanished in 4-7. Eeeeeexcellent. “Me and 24 kids” vs. him and a handful of other modern-day bucaneers…hope you’re happy, bub.

#5: Let’s not hear any hosannas for the plucky BoSox — they’re the 2nd highest-paid team in baseball history, and everybody knows who’s Numero Uno in that department.

#6: Someone please explain Francona’s decision to bring Pedro Martinez into the game. I have my theory: that Francona knew Pedro would be a big whiny mess if he didn’t get his name in this historic box score. I thought it was a crazy, silly, needless move that let the crowd get back in the game that only massaged an ego that needs some serious re-calibration.

#7: The Red Sox sure do like their hair, don’t they? What once was kind of funny is now kind of tired schtick. “Look at me — I’m a white guy with cornrows.” Did I detect JeriCurl in the trainer’s bag, as well?

#8: Will Curt Schilling provide the world’s first opportunity for an internal medicinal use of duct tape? You get the feeling he’d be perfectly fine with that.

#9: So — now they’re in the Serious. If they lose, is the season a let-down? Or is beating the Yankees in the ALCS enough for everybody? As a ballplayer, I sure hope it’s the latter. As a fan, I think I’d be fairly happy with the pennant, but I still would be crushed if they don’t take it all.

Whew…now to get some rest before ANOTHER Game 7. Great baseball year, eh?

ONE LAST THOUGHT: Don’t let the Yankees spin it — this was the biggest choke job in sports history by the highest-paid team in sports history. When you allow something to happen that hasn’t happened in 101 years, there’s only one word for it: BIGGEST. OK, two words: BIGGEST EVER. Check out Michelle’s NYY 2004 Playoff t-shirt.