Bill Williamson is a Big, Fat Hater

On Friday, Bill Williamson ranked the NFL quarterbacks, 1-33.

"What?" you ask? There are only 32 teams?

Not only that, but he has JaMarcus ranked at 30, ahead of Derek Anderson, Kyle Orton, and Shaun Hill (49ers should be even more pissed than me).

But that's not what bothers me. Everyone knows I'm a JaMarcus apologist, and I will continue to be one until he's drummed out of the league. But that's not was has me so upset.

Not even the fact that he has Jay Cutler in the top ten, even though Jerry MacDonald broke down why Cutler's overrated just the other day. Besides, if I'm a JaMarcus apologist, then Bill Williamson's whatever the sports world's equivalent of David Gregory dancing with Karl Rove (just subsititue Pat Bowlen for old Turd Blossom).

What really pisses me off is that he has two players, Matthew Stafford at #20, and Mark Sanchez at #22, who have not even been drafted yet.

That's just dumb.

Hater of the Week, Super Bowl Addition: Charles P. Pierce

I thought of naming Jerry Mac and/or Adam Treu for bringing up the game that almost got me divorced, but instead I'm going to Slate.com this week for the Hater of the Week, perhaps the first time it's been given to someone who wasn't hating on the Raiders.

Ladies and Gentleman, I present Charles P. Pierce, and let his words speak for themselves:

This simple fact is that the very presence of the Arizona Cardinals in the
Super Bowl is at best a fluke and, at worst, a disgrace. They played in a landfill of a division. They won their two playoff games because Jake Delhomme of Carolina turned the ball over six times and because the Philadelphia Eagles all looked at the newspapers last Sunday and discovered they were in the NFC championship game again. The Cardinals are a glorified Arena Football League team with a soft defense and a running game unworthy of the name. They are in the position that they're in because the NFL rigs its season worse than any carny rigs his wheel. For all the macho posturing of its principal propagandists, between the jiggering of the schedule and the conniving of the draft and the socialistic revenue schemes, and the desperate grab for any mechanism that will flatten out the differences between really good teams and really bad ones, the NFL is the league that comes closest to the biddy soccer league philosophy of making sure that everyone gets a trophy.

That's what the Arizona Cardinals are: the National Participation
Ribbon.

He doesn't stop there. He has words for Thom Brenneman (which I appreciate; it's a scientific fact that 75% of men who spell their name "Thom" are douche bags, compared with 100% of men who spell their name "Geoff"), Tim Tebow, and Brett Favre.

Good Work, Chuck.

Still in the Top 10

ESPN.com Page 2 has a ranking, 1-32, of all NFL Franchises since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970.

The Raiders come in at #6, just behind the Donkeys. Sllaacs Niners are #3 behind Dallas (1) and Pittsbugh (2). This is mostly because they were so dominant in the 70s and early-80s.

We crush dobolina's Packers, though, who come in at #14.

Could be Worse, Part II

Ike jacked up Reliant Stadium, causing the Texans/Ravens game to be postponed even past Monday night. Five pieces out of nine from the retractable roof just flat-out disappeared.

My fantasy squad is impacted, because I have Andre Johnson at WR (he put up some nice numbers in my win last week) and Baltimore as my D. I had to replace Johnson with newly un-suspended Brandon Marshall, who hopefully will be picketed by MADD on Sunday.

Picks Review

Dobolina: 4-0

Dan: 3-1

Sllaacs: 2-2.

John: 2-2.

NFL.com is Emo

About six weeks ago, I DVR'd a Morrissey Concert on HDNet. It was "Morrissey: Who Put the 'M' in Manchester?" and it was recorded on his birthday in 2004. I recorded because I know the Professor is a big Morrissey fan. Okay, after spending my high school career sneering at the kids in the Theatre Department who wore leather jackets and pompadours, I've grown up and become a fan myself.

What I didn't expect is that my daughter Lily would become obsessed with him. She watched the concert one day, and it's her favorite. Morrissey is her favorite. Her favorite song is "The Headmaster Ritual," which she calls "I don't want to go home, I just want to stay," as in, "Daddy, I want to hear my favorite, 'I don't want to go home, I just want to stay." It's a pretty morbid favorite song for a girl who just turned 3 last week. It's also kind of cool, because everyone else I know with a 3 year-old is still listening to Raffi.

Anyway, so we're watching Sunday Countdown on ESPN, and they show that new NFL.com commercial that has somebody else (Seal?) singing "Every Day is Like Sunday." And Lily heard it and was like "WHO'S THAT!?" because she knows that song and it wasn't Morrissey singing it. It's easily the 2nd stupidest song ever used in a commercial after Wrangler used "Fortunate Son" in a jeans commercial.

Just like the Wrangler ad cut off the lyrics from "Fortunate Son" just after "...born to wave the red white and blue," leaving out "But when the band plays 'Hail to the Chief,'/ they point the cannon at you," the NFL.com spot leaves out all the stuff where Morrissey is begging for Armageddon and nuclear bombs to destroy the seaside town, leaving just "Every day is like Sunday."

Although, not to go all Dave Zirin here, but the "armageddon" and "nuclear bomb" references are not that out of place in the context of the NFL, with all the football-as-war metaphors, and the Air Force and Navy Jets buzzing the stadiums after the National Anthem. But "every day is silent and gray?" Not so much, unless, as the Professor helpfully points out, you live in Los Angeles, as Morrissey does, where there is no NFL team. In terms of NFL Football, every day is indeed silent and gray.

I always wonder who proposes these songs to the guys in charge of marketing at these companies. And looking at the choices, you'd think that corporate executives have never listened to the goddam radio in their lives.

Blackout WTF?

Tacked on at the end of David White's Raiders Notebook this morning was an attempt to explain the blackout for tonight's Raiders/49ers preseason game at the Coliseum:

Briefly: The television lineup gets a little complicated because the Raiders and 49ers run on different stations. The Raiders' broadcast will show on Channel 36 at 10 p.m. today and 7 p.m. Saturday. The 49ers' broadcast will be live on Sacramento's Channel 13 and Monterey's Channel 46, but taped on Channel 5 at 11:35 p.m.

Are the blackout rules different in the preseason than they are for the regular season? This it's weird, because the Monterey and Sacramento stations are showing the game live, which if normal blackout rules applied they would be unable to do. Also, isn't there a rule that a team's road games cannot be blacked out in their home market? So why is the 49ers broadcast being shown even later than the Raiders broadcast in San Francisco/Oakland?

This is retarded. Wikipedia has an explanation of blackout rules, but I can't verify if it's correct.

I was only planning on watching the first part closely, to see how JaMarcus looks, and to see if our defense can tackle anyone yet.

Instead, I'll watch the Olympics.

Walt Coleman Sucks Bob Kraft's Leathery Nutsack

And yes, before you even ask, I'm still fucking bitter.

Espn.com asked coaches around the league to vote on the best and worst referees in the league. Mike Carey and Ed Hochuli both got 8 votes for "best" referee (they also got 3 and 4 votes, respectively, for "worst" ref) in the league.

Gerald Austin had the most "worst" votes with 6. Jeff Triplette, who actually blinded a guy with a penalty flag, only got also got 3 "worst" votes. Austin and Triplette are the only refs to receive zero "best" votes.

Walt Coleman, whose mother is a prostitute famous for contracting syphilis (she was even a model for an anti-VD ad in the 1940s) after a strenuous bout of irrumatio with a Canadian stevedore, received 2 votes for "best" referee.

I will bet you $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 that one of those votes came from Bill Belichick.

According to Mike Sando, who also wrote the survey piece, Coleman has worked games involving every team BUT the Raiders since the he shat the Tuck Rule out of his hopefully now cancer-ridden anus. All 31 teams.

As for the second vote, I remember reading an article a while back that said Jon Gruden told someone that Walt Coleman was his favorite referee. When asked why, he said, "Because Al Davis hates him." I don't know if this is true, and I've been unable to find a link, but I hope it's not true, and I really hope that his vote is not the 2nd vote.

I don't really have any hard feelings toward Chucky, despite the ass-whupping he gave us in the Super Bowl. But if, say, he DID vote for Walt Coleman as the best referee in the game, then he is a traitorous, sell out, Mike Shanahan-esque punk, and I hope his wife screws a Hooters bouncer and then goes home and gives Chucky crabs.