Whipped Cream Difficulties

Amazingly, Easterbrook did not pull out his 1972 Miami Dolphins autotext this week. Oversight? It finally got through to TMQ that the champagne story was wrong? Will we ever know?

In other news, the first 1,070 words of this week’s TMQ can be summarized thusly: Oregon’s “blur” offense is nothing new, but combines four existing ideas, and executes them very fast. There’s nothing revolutionary about it.

“TMQ continues to believe the NFL is merely talking about concussion safety for show, hoping the issue will go away.”

Tracey. Not really my type.

Sweet and sour plays: Tampa – Cincinnati, Giants – Houston, Texas Tech – Baylor, Tony Romo.

Food is not healthy.

The TMQ obsession with asteroids striking Earth goes on.

Green Bay, New Orleans, and San Diego are all playing erratically, even though they were preseason favorites.

Chicken-<salad> punt: Houston.

(Baltimore’s) defense beats (Denver’s) offense.

Christmas creep goes on.

TMQ loves him some undrafted free agents. TMQ hates coins smaller than the quarter, and dollar bills.

Falcons fly, Bengals fall, the obsession with offensive linemen throwing passes continues.

Speaking of offensive linemen, TMQ also weighs in on the Lawrence Academy story (see what I did there?). I’m sure it will come as a great shock to both of my readers that Easterbrook thinks 300+ pound high-school students playing football is unsportsmanlike and unhealthy.

Wacky disclaimer: Dairy Queen.

Instead of paying college players a “living wage”, how about stipends like grad students get?

More creep.

TMQ avoids mentioning the big Favre story (or is it the little Favre story?), but that doesn’t stop him from Favre bashing. “…like the Jets and Packers before them, the Vikings have become a promotional vehicle for Favre, or rather for Brett Favre Brett Favre Brett Favre, as TMQ once dubbed him.”

TMQ doesn’t like the remake of “Nikita”. And by the way, it isn’t realistic.

Why do four-star generals in the Pentagon need bodyguards in the Pentagon?

Who is the worst team in the NFL right now? TMQ thinks that would be Buffalo.

Hey, let’s bash Randy Moss!

Union of Kentucky 84, Bethel of Tennessee 55. Shenandoah 7, Maryville of Tennessee 6.

Reader comments: Oktoberfest celebrates the start of October, and shouldn’t be part of your creep watch, maroon. NFL Network announcers don’t know the rules. The bounce play goes back prior to 1982. If you think the NFL is bad about concussions, try rugby. The Jerry Rice’s of basketball and cricket. Obscure rules. The free kick. And Rome was founded by the Trojans according to Virgil, so why shouldn’t USC play in the Coliseum, you maroon?

Tune in next week, when, if we’re lucky, Easterbrook will bring up his “pro-nudity, against gambling” theory.

I’m not really feeling the snark this week, for obvious reasons, so let’s just jump into this week’s column.

TMQ believes the 3-4 defense is just a fad, and teams will revert to the 4-3 sooner or later. It takes TMQ 746 words to say this.

Highlight from the stats of the week: “The Lions have lost 22 consecutive road games and now threaten the record of 24 consecutive road losses held by — the Lions.”

Ivelisse is also just kind of okay looking. You know, TMQ used to pick cheerleaders who were not only attractive, but also had some intellectual heft to them. What gives, Gregg?

Sweet and sour plays: Kansas City vs. San Francisco, New England vs. Buffalo (and Tennessee vs. Giants), Pittsburgh vs. Tampa, Buffalo vs. New England again, New Orleans vs. Atlanta, Miami vs. Jets.

NPR no longer stands for anything; it’s just “NPR”, not “National Public Radio”. Same with BP, KFC, ESPN, AARP, etc.

The new Meadowlands stadium is widely hated, according to an unscientific survey of friends of TMQ.

Going back to cheerleaders for a minute, Gregg Easterbrook believes that cheerleaders are being exploited. Not because they’re cheerleaders, or because many of them are scantily clad; no, the problem is that they aren’t being paid for their work. Cheerleaders typically get $50 – $100 per game, and nothing for rehearsals, personal appearances, calender sales, sales of their photos through the NFL.com shop, etc. WCD finds ourselves agreeing with TMQ’s position here; yes, pay the cheerleaders!

Christmas creep. Jersey Bowl. Puzzling plays in the Raiders-Cardinals and Seattle-San Diego games. A ridiculous extended parallel (complete with a quiz, the lazy man’s way of filling column space) between Tom Brady and Samson (the one in the Bible).

Should youth football be banned? TMQ’s answer; don’t let kids under the age of 12 play tackle football.

Devin Hester’s success in returning kicks is due to excellent blocking. And it’s hard to win a game when you accumulate 18 penalties. Ridiculous disclaimer of the week: Bridgestone Tires.

More creep. Crabtree curse. Sparta Trojans. Stop Me Before I Blitz Again!

Yes, Michael Vick looks good, but the teams he’s played against so far have a combined record of 10-28 since 2009.

In concussion related news, TMQ notes that there’s a new kind of mouth guard on the market, which gives a dentist quality fit at a price lower than a dentist fitted guard.

The Colts are back in form. I was hoping we’d be able to get through a season without Colts worship.

Chicken-<salad> punts. Manly-men drives. Wasteful spending on bodyguards (again, Rick Perry makes an appearance).

TMQ is probably the only sports column that would engage in Large Hadron Collider bashing.

Damn! I missed the Indiana University of Pennsylvania – Slippery Rock game! I also missed the Otterbein – Heidleberg game. I wonder if they serve beer at the latter?

College football: style over substance, cupcake watch, chicken-<salad> punts.

Reader comments: Notre Dame and allowing fifth year students to play. Someone else took issue with last week’s comment about Reggie Bush and “nothing ethically wrong”. Counterpoint on military flyovers from a naval aviator. Madden as training tool. NCAA manuals for download. And lots more concussion discussion.

Tune in next week, when we’ll hear TMQ break Ralph Wilson’s balls over the fact that O.J. Simpson’s name is still on the wall of the Buffalo Bills stadium. Really. I’m not making that up.

I figured there were two ways Easterbrook could have started off this week’s TMQ: Stewart Bradley’s concussion, or the Texans beating the Colts. Easterbrook went with the Texans, predicting the end of the world if they beat Indy on November 1st. This kind of shocks me; TMQ spent much of last season hammering the NFL for not doing enough to prevent head injuries. And justly so, in my opinion. But is TMQ abandoning that crusade this year? If so, why?

In another recurring trope, Easterbrook predicts that one of the teams not appearing on “Monday Night Football” this year – Bills, Browns, Bucs, Panthers, Raiders, Rams and Seahawks – will win the Super Bowl. Easterbrook has been right about this three times in 11 years, or about 27% of the time.

Recurring trope #2: the “preposterous punt”, in this case the Vikings punting on 4th and 3 from midfield against the Saints, “a mere half-hour into the 2010 NFL season”.

The cheerleader of the week returns! Excellent! Photo too small, but links make up for it.

Also returning: the sweet and sour plays of the week. (Ravens/jets, Oakland/Titans, James Madison/Virginia Tech, Cleveland/Tampa, New England/Bengals.)

Easterbrook has, for some inexplicable reason, been hammering on the idea that gamma ray bursts are actually the signature of cosmic doomsday weapons belonging to advanced civilizations. TMQ cites a Discover article that “presents slight support for the TMQ conjecture, or at least, fails to falsify the idea”. From the article (actually, a blog entry): “This is a fun notion to mull over, but unlikely nevertheless. It’s inconceivable that any civilization could generate artificially the colossal energies associated with GRBs.”

Easterbrook also thinks that this year’s biggest literary fraud may not be The Last Train from Hiroshima, but…Tony Blair’s biography? As usual, publishers don’t bother to do any verification, they don’t care about the truth of the non-fiction books they publish, etc. etc.

Michael Crabtree has been a curse for the 49ers.

TMQ argues that the suspension of A.J. Green for selling one of his own jerseys, while Georgia makes money hand over fist selling replica jerseys, is just the latest example of the hypocrisy of college sports. WCD agrees that the NCAA’s focus on minor misdemeanors is excessive, and would argue that eliminating college sports is one of the best things that could happen to education. But WCD questions whether this is an example of an athlete like Green getting caught by an obscure and stupid NCAA rule, or deliberately and knowingly breaking an established rule. In a similar vein, TMQ argues that Princeton should be allowed to slide (a tennis player had part of their tuition paid by an “adult friend”) on the basis that the “person who paid was a longtime friend of the student”. So how long term a friend do you have to be before TMQ thinks it is okay? One year? Four years?

TMQ’s obsession with excessive blitzing, and excessive calling of normal plays “blitzing”, returns this week as well. Welcome back, “Stop Me Before I Blitz Again!” We missed you.

Easterbrook objects to Tiffany, Gucci, Brooks Brothers, Chanel, and other high end retailers taking out 9/11 memorial ads.

More cheerleaders! More links to photos!

More chicken-<salad> punts and field goal attempts.

Bonus Slauson Cutoff reference!

TMQ continues its obsession with building planetary asteroid defense mechanisms. While WCD agrees that an asteroid strike would be devastating, we question the actual odds of such a thing, and whether the cost justifies the risk.

Christmas creep.

Football Outsiders is now football insiders, having signed deals with the WP, ESPN, and NYT.

“Helen Mirren trades her fake crown for a fake assault rifle in the upcoming action flick ‘Red.'” Actually, Gregg, I believe I’d call that a submachine gun, not an assault rifle.

TMQ is testing a new prediction method, called The Davis Postulate: “Existing Trends Continue; If Trends Same, Home Team Wins.” This replaces the previous “Transformed Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate”, in which week 1 and 17 games are picked by thinking; the rest of the time, the rule “Best Record Wins Unless Records Equal, Then Home Team Wins” is used.

More creep.

“Adventures in Officiating”, but nothing to say about Detroit. Lots to say about the stupid celebration penalty, though.

Towson 47, Coastal Carolina 45. RPI 6, Endicott 3. Fear the wrath of the cupcakes.

Why do college football teams need police escorts? This is sort of a recap of a TMQ trope that got hammered into the ground last year; excessive usage of police escorts and bodyguards for elected officials. Not that we disagree with TMQ’s point, but it got a little old last season.

That’s a wrap for the first week of the season. No trailer; I suspect either TMQ or ESPN dropped that idea.

Tune in next week when we’ll hear Gregg Easterbrook say, “TMQ wrote the words ‘game over’ in his notebook.”