Football is Fast Upon Us

1. Recently I dreamt that Heisman Trophy winning running back Reggie Bush was violently murdered during a football game and that Sportscenter kept replaying the clip over and over again. Reggie had "broken a big one" as Madden might say, and was shedding tackles on his way to a touchdown when suddenly a defensive back layed a monster hit on him, knocking him flat on his back. This defensive back then stuck his head under Reggie Bush's jersey and began disemboweling him with his teeth. ESPN captured all of this in stunning detail, and it was Chris Berman's "Play of the Week." In my dream, I wasn't disturbed by this so much as I was inexplicably saddened. It felt just like when Dale Earnhardt died: I knew that being disemboweled by Troy Polamolu was a risk every football player takes, but I hated to see it happen, particularly to someone so full of talent and so admired by so many people I felt superior to. I awoke in a cold sweat, and quickly checked ESPN.com to make sure it wasn't true.

2. Speaking of ESPN.com, I have joined a fantasy football league. I do not expect to be good at fantasy football-- in fact a minute ago I was planning on using the fact that I am not good at fantasy football to somehow make my decision seem cooler to people who hate sports (9/10ths of all my friends; that most of them still read the blog even though I insist on writing about this stuff moves me to tears). The fact that I momentarily planned to use incompetence as a rationalization for doing something I am occasionally ashamed of seems possibly the most pathetic thing I've ever heard of, and were I in a different mood I would probably try to turn this into a bit about the rest of the country and its culture/politics and where I fit in that scheme. But I am not in that mood (my four readers collectively exhale a sigh of relief).
I have named my team The Ninja-Pirates, after my group of kids at work who go by that name, and I spend at least fifteen minutes each day debating whether I want Shaun Alexander in my top five. (On the one hand it seems like a smart idea to put him in my top five because he is really good and everyone on ESPN.com says to do that, on the other hand I just don't like Shaun Alexander, possibly because I dislike the Seahawks in general. If I said this was because of their team name and their uniforms you would question my masculinity, so let's pretend it has something to do with their wide receivers.)
Also, I take issue with ESPN for censoring my posts in our league's web forum, something that seems a tad inconsistent in light of the fat that I designed a team helmet that says "Fuck Your Mom" on it. In this way, ESPN resembles every boss I've ever had.

3. I would like to give a shout out to Jon Biscoe, who put the whole Fantasy thing together and at whose house I plan to spend most Sundays for the next five months, watching games and gorging myself on beer and whatever has been most recently barbecued. We did this last football season and I had a really good time, which probably means that when I am forty I will look back on it as one of the defining moments of twenties and wonder why nothing is ever as much fun as that was. If my blog is still up then I would like to remind my future self that even though this was a lot of fun, sometimes I did drink too much and pass out in the recliner. Also there was the time when I broke Jon's girlfriend Amy's patio furniture. So it wasn't all sunshine and lollipops.