Is This Some Kind of Sick Joke?

For a moment I thought I was watching a replay of the Tuck Game. How on earth do the refs find "irrefutable visual evidence" that Murphy dropped the ball, when he clearly had full control through one foot, two feet, and a hip on the ground?

I try, I mean I REALLY try, to resist the urge to declare a vast NFL conspiracy against the Raiders. But how can one expect me to watch this kind of complete bull crapola without thinking so? I just don't understand how anyone could even think to review that call (Norv never would have wasted a red hanky on that), let alone found irrefutable visual evidence to overturn it.

I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it at all.

Why Jerry McDonald is still the best

Because as good as David White has been since the end of last season, nobody knows his readers like Jerry Mac:

...although there was no mention of the abolition of Walt Coleman.

That's called playing to your audience.

Open Wounds

Like a fool, this morning I sat in front of the NFL Network's replay of the Tuck Rule game as part of their NFL's Greatest Games series. With every sip of coffee and every carefully chosen comment spliced into the program, my blood pressure rose. Why don't I just get over this? Well, that's not how it works.

The NFL coverage follows the standard line. Terrible rule, but correctly applied.

Bullshit.

By rule, when Brady's left hand touches the ball, the act of tucking is complete. To overturn a call requires indisputable visual evidence. Such evidence does not exist. Not to mention the fact that Walt Coleman never invoked the Tuck Rule - or any approximation of it - in explaining the overturn. Obviously, someone in the NFL office pored over that rule book that night to prepare a defense when the controversy hit the next day. I can just see the intern racing through the office at 2 AM exclaiming, "I've got it! I've got it! Rule 3, Section 21, Article 2, Note 2!"

So now Randy Moss comes back to Oakland, returning to the site where he stole Al's money and spent a lot of time moping around instead of playing football. This one I've mostly gotten over. Is Randy Moss a big baby and the furthest thing from a leader? Sure. But during his stint he was merely the ultimate poster boy for a destructive culture that rewards raw talent, eschews discipline and does nothing to foster heart.

Charles Woodson used to shut down Moss with his physical play. If Nnamdi ever hopes to overtake Champ Baily in Pro Bowl voting, he'll do the same.

Don't Call it a Comeback: John's Picks

Now that my colon is no longer a semi-colon, I'm coming back to rock the picks. We haven't tallied up a score in a while, and I think dobolina is off being a new dad or something, so it will just be me vs. Dan vs. Sllaacs. We'll get a new score after this weekend.

Okay, party people.

So. The Tom Cable Era begins. Yes, the press conferences may be bland. I don't give a good Gosh Darn It, as long as the product on the field isn't dull. Or shit, go ahead and be dull, just win a goddam football game, okay? I think the Saints are a better team, and should win the game at home in the dome. But it's also a homecoming of sorts for JaMarcus, who dominated in his last appearance there, in 2007 Sugar Bowl. So, the Aints win, 27-24.

Rush Limbaugh's favorite quarterback also happens to be my fantasy QB. I didn't pick him out of a "social concern," in fact the auto-draft did it for me. I was quite happy with him for the first three weeks of the season. Now, he promises to bring it. And since Chris Dennebaum--the biggest Philly Phanatic I know--is getting married this Sunday, I think the Iggles join the rest of the Philly sports renaissance going on right now. JTO may throw for 300 and 3 TDs, but so does Donovan. 35-28 Eagles.

Seattle sucks. I mean, they really, really suck. They Art Shell Suck. They suck so bad, Walt Coleman's mother called up Paul Allen and asked if she could audit some team meetings and improve her deep throat technique. I mean, they're not as bad as the Lions or the Rams, but they still suck. Green Bay 37-6.

In a rematch of last year's AFC Championship game, I think the Patriots will beat the Chargers. They're not that great. They almost lost to us. The Chargers don't look like they can score points to me. So there. 18-14 San Diego.

Two Minutes of Walt Coleman.

Good old Walt Coleman is calling the Philly @ Chicago game. During an official review of whether or not a play was a forward pass or a fumble, we got this exchange from Al and John:

Al: Not to bring up the Immaculate Reception, John, but what do you think sticks in Al Davis' Craw worse, the Patriots or the Steelers?

John: Probably the Patriots, because it happened more recently.

This is paraphrased, obviously, but pretty close. I still hate that mother fucker. In fact, when I depose Al Davis and become the maximum ruler of the universe, Walt Coleman will replace Goldstein in the Two Minutes of Hate.

Why? John talks about the reasons for this blog. (EXPLICIT CONTENT)

Super Bowl Sunday, 2003. What should be one of the greatest days in my life as a sports fan has started out poorly and is quickly becoming terrible as the game started and goes on. I’ve had more than a few Captain Morgan and Cokes, supplied by our gracious hosts in honor of the “Pirate Bowl,” Raiders vs. Bucs. The Raiders are getting their asses kicked. To make matters worse, my friend Jonathan, whose living room we’re sitting in as we’re watching this debacle, is a Bucs fan. Rich Gannon throws an interception which promptly is returned for a touchdown. Chucky Gruden is shown on the sideline making one of his cute, smug faces for the camera. I desperately turn to my wife of barely six weeks, The Professor, who is wearing one of my Raiders sweatshirts, and say, as nicely as I can, “Can you take off my sweatshirt?” The Professor, who loves me very much, grew up a 49ers fan, but she’s rocking Silver and Black to support me.

“No, why?”

“Aren’t you wearing anything underneath?”

“No, why?” Then the lightbulb goes off. My wife is a beautiful, sensitive, patient woman, and I’ve just crossed the line. “Are you trying to say I’m a jinx or something?”

“Well, it’s just that, well.”

“Goddamit, Johnny. You motherfucker. I KNOW you’re not calling me a jinx.”

I stammer, whine, go to the kitchen mix another drink, and pace back and forth across the tile floor, desperately smoking a cigarette. The Raiders will go on to lose the game, and the final score will not be close. And when I wake up Monday morning, on the couch, freezing, with nothing but my 1980s-era vintage Oakland Raiders sheets to cover myself, and a hangover so bad I’m begging for a Bloody Mary and shotgun, I’m wondering how I ever let myself get so worked up over another stupid game involving the fucking Raiders.

This is not the first time I’ve had to rethink my level of enthusiasm. That was after the AFC Championship game in January 2001. The Raiders were playing at home against the Baltimore Ravens. The Raiders had beaten Miami 27-0 in an old fashioned ass whipping the week before. When Baltimore beat the top-seeded Tennessee Titans, that gave the Raiders home-field advantage for the right to go to the Super Bowl. All week before the championship game, none of my fellow Raiders fan friends could concentrate on anything else. We had all been at the Miami game and we’d all shared in the ecstatic party atmosphere of that victory. I paid $160 for a ticket to the game in the third deck. Before the game, the tail gaiting was spectacular. One guy hired a full mariachi band from Jalisco to come up and play on the back of a flatbed truck. We were so sure the Raiders were going to kick Baltimore’s ass just like we’d kicked Miami’s ass. But it didn’t happen. I had to sit there, stunned, as that sweaty fat fucker Tony Siragusa sat his unshapely, 720lbs-ass on Gannon, separating his shoulder and forcing him to leave the game. Then Shannon Sharpe, taking a break from being the Broncos mascot to whore himself out to the Ravens, took a pass 97 yards for the game’s only as the Ravens won 16-9. Walking out of that stadium felt like somebody close to me had died. I was depressed for the next week. I swore to myself I wouldn’t care that much about a stupid football game ever again. How could the outcome of a contest pitting grown men against each other in which the object was to advance a pig’s organ over some goal line be the cause of such soul-wrenching anxiety?

I really didn’t need this shit.

Then the following season, right after the first game, came 9/11. Like everyone else, I took an inventory of what is and isn’t important in my life, I rearranged my priorities and all that. Football and the Raiders moved way down the list. I still went to games and cheered loudly, but I wasn’t losing any sleep over it. Not until January 19, 2002, anyway. We all saw it. Woodson came on a blitz, hitting Tom Brady and knocking the ball loose. Biekert landed on the ball. I was hosting a party to watch the game, a group of about 12 Raiders fans. We went absolutely buck wild. “Back In Black” by AC/DC was turned on the stereo, everyone was jumping and dancing and yelling because the Raiders had won and amazing victory.

But no, wait just a goddam minute here. If there’s less than two minutes remaining in a half, a league official in the replay booth signals to the on-field referee if he feels a play should be reviewed. In this case, he thought it may have been an incomplete pass attempt; maybe Brady’s arm had been moving forward or something. Then, that son of bitch Walt Coleman, pissed because as a child his mother put food on the table by sucking the syphilitic cocks of French sailors on leave, took out his frustrations on the Raiders by making up some bullshit about a “Tuck Rule,” an obscure, arcane rule that nobody had ever heard of and still cannot properly explain, giving the Patriots the ball and a chance to maybe win the game. They ended up kicking a field goal to tie the game, and went on to win in overtime. Once again, I was left with an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, wondering how I let myself get so caught up in a stupid game.

Which brings us back to that Super Bowl, which my wife now refers to as “That Night,” and how I once again found myself wondering if it’s worth it. And the last four seasons: Callahan coaching the “Dumbest team in America,” Norv coaching scared, and whatever the fuck it was Art Shell was doing last year with his Rocky Mountain Bed-and-Breakfast offense.

But I still care. And that’s why we’re starting this blog. Maybe Kiffin will bring back some of that feeling from early this decade. That’s all I want, for the Raiders to matter again. Baby steps. This blog will cover it. The posts might be sporadic until training camp, spiking around draft day and picking up during training camp.

Stay tuned.