TMQ watch: December 31, 2013.

More “we’re just not feeling the clever this week”. Might as well just open the box. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

“…the NFL should switch to a seeded-tournament postseason format.” 465 words down.

(“College basketball also has conferences and divisions to organize regular-season play, then uses a seeded postseason tournament. The result is excitement.” Actually, no, Gregg. The result is a tedious month of March. If college basketball is so exciting, why isn’t Easterbrook writing about it? Other than the 1% of his column he claims to devote to basketball every year, because basketball is 1% as exciting as football. At least, according to TMQ.)

Though my own metric predicts Denver versus New Orleans in the swamps of Jersey, that outcome seems unlikely — my bet is the Broncos fade while a Saints-Seahawks playoff contest, if one occurs, would be held in Seattle, conferring the edge on the Bluish Men Group. So maybe my Authentic Games metric is nuts.

Maybe?

Sweet: Carolina. Sour: the officiating mess that was the San Diego – Kansas City game. Mixed: Green Bay – Chicago.

The process for picking players for the Pro Bowl stinks. Ah, a TMQ evergreen trope. Bad blitzing, another one.

Paging Lawrence to the white courtesy phone, please: 757 words on how unrealistic “Almost Human” is.

…in last year’s big-budget “Prometheus,” the cyborg played by Michael Fassbender had a more interesting personality than any of the people.

Too bad he wasn’t given anything intelligent to do. “I know! I’ll slip the scientist guy an alien DNA mickey!”

…the lead in the 2011 remake of “Wonder Woman,” an NBC series so bad it was canceled before the first episode aired.

Once again, we’ll repeat this for Gregg: “Wonder Woman” was not cancelled before the first episode aired. The network commissioned a pilot so they could decide if they wanted to go ahead with the series. The network looked at the pilot and decided not to go ahead with the series. This is how network television in the 20th and 21st Century works, Gregg. Every year, networks make pilots for potential series; some are turned into television series, others are rejected. If you are going to comment on these things, TMQ, stop being willfully ignorant about what actually happened.

(deep breath)

Sorry. Easterbrook’s continued repetition of this angers us.

Denver. Blur.

Corporate board memberships are among the greatest hustles in American commerce. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that large public corporations pay their directors a median of $244,000 annually, plus lavish benefits, merely to sit in on occasional meetings, often held at luxury resorts.

Damn it, man, you’re going to screw things up for us when we finally get to sit on a corporate board.

Kansas City at Indianapolis: “Both teams protect the football — Kansas City was plus-18 on turnovers, Indianapolis plus-13. So, expect a sloppy contest with lots of interceptions and fumbles.”

New Orleans at Philadelphia: expect fans to throw batteries at Drew Brees. Oh, wait, sorry about that. “…the Saints’ defense may determine who wins this game.”

San Diego at Cincinnati: “…this game has the makings of a laffer.” We hope so. We really dislike San Diego.

San Francisco at Green Bay: Go Pack!

Then there’s New Year’s Eve and Day — bah humbug! Another big holiday right after Christmas. Why not save New Year’s for midwinter, when a holiday is really needed? Or move Christmas to then, since no one knows when Jesus was born.

New Year’s is especially hard on those who are not invited to any of the flashy parties that the media tell us everyone should be at.

Gee, Gregg, we’re sorry you don’t get invited to the good parties, being a contributing editor of The Atlantic and all. But you have a lovely family, from what we’ve seen; maybe you can take comfort in spending New Year’s Eve with them?

(Also, maybe you’d get invited to the flashy parties if you’d stop spouting off nonsense about television shows.)

For those who don’t observe Christmas, New Year’s is fine where it is. For me, it’s always a letdown event — plus means another year of waiting for Christmas Eve to return.

So we should rearrange the entire calendar around TMQ’s depression? Got it.

Chicken-(salad) kicking: Washington, Miami. (Plus: Miami should have challenged the ruling on the field. That ruling being that Miami’s player caught the ball. It actually makes a certain amount of demented sense when you read the item.)

Your columnist believes a reason the federal debt continues to grow, yet hardly anything gets built, is that federally backed construction projects are mired in corruption while strangled by bureaucracy and union work rules. That federal construction projects cost way too much and take way too long isn’t just an accounting problem — it means the public does not receive the improved infrastructure needed for economic growth.

It seems like TMQ does this once every year. And to be honest, he has some good examples of government waste. (Two escalators, five months. $4 billion for a bridge in NYC.)

And I’d forgotten that after Scrooge’s transformation, he offers Bob Cratchit a bowl of “smoking bishop.” This usually is reworded as hot rum punch. Apparently “smoking bishop” was a hot purple punch made with port, purple being the color of bishop’s robe. Given the current foodie obsession with old cocktail recipes, one wonders if there is any high-end tavern in New York City or San Francisco where one could order a smoking bishop.

We wanted to quote this because we, too, were looking at “A Christmas Carol” before Christmas, and we, too, encountered the “smoking bishop”. A curious coincidence, indeed. We did some research and dug up a couple of “smoking bishop” recipes; this one in particular sounds interesting to us, and we’d like to try it before the weather gets hot again.

(We don’t have a punchbowl. Or punch cups. Or really much use for either. But damn it, we want them anyway.)

Help, the NFL is slipping into the zone read.

Ah, the season of coach firings is upon us.

By October, many fans may wish the previous coach had stayed on. But in January, it’s always “Throw the bum out.” Someone must be blamed for a disappointing season — and the owner, who hired the head coach and signed the players, never, ever takes any blame.

Well, we did kind of defend Leslie Frazier, so we’ll give him that one. But is TMQ implying that the Redskins would have been better off keeping Shanahan, the man who TMQ has repeatedly said is coasting on the fact that he was lucky enough to coach Elway? Does TMQ really believe Tampa Bay would have been better off keeping Schiano?

Too bad Wade Phillips is unlikely to get the head coaching post at Houston. Three times he has come off the bench as backup head coach — for the Saints, Falcons and now for the Moo Cows.

Yes, and he did a horrible job coaching the Cowboys. Seriously, it shocks us how many people think Wade Phillips should be given the keys to another NFL team.

No one is sorry to see weasel coach Greg Schiano fired. His first move in the NFL was to establish a bad-sportsmanship reputation by having his players attack the kneel-downs of winning teams. Then he boasted about it, though this tactic never worked at Rutgers and never worked in the NFL. A coach who’s not only a bad sport but boasts about being a bad sport deserves to be shown the door.

Guess not.

As for the deposed Ultimate Leader, during the years Mike Shanahan had John Elway in his prime, he was 54-18, including the postseason. In all other years, Shanahan is 124-126. With each successive season, there seems more evidence Shanahan was just the guy who was standing there when Elway realized his potential, and otherwise is a mediocre coach.

Guess not, again.

The football gods are crazy. Dallas should have been called for defensive holding and leading with the helmet.

And that wraps things up for this week. Next week, playoffs, and we’re kind of wondering if there will be another coach firing or two as well.

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