Whipped Cream Difficulties

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

That is, the start of football season. (Yes, the loser update will return this year.)

And with the start of football season comes the return of the tastefully named Gregg Easterbrook and his “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” column for ESPN.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy Easterbrook’s column. I’ve been reading it since he was over at Slate, and find it to be one of the high points of my week during the period it runs. But I’ve been thinking for a while now that someone needs to highlight and respond to various things in TMQ.

Sometimes, Easterbrook does good work; he spent much of last season discussing the NFL’s response to head trauma among pro athletes, and I felt he was right on target. Sometimes, he uses his column to argue for things like increased Federal vehicle mileage requirements, and I think someone needs to respond to those arguments. Sometimes, he uses his column to go off on various SF TV shows for their lack of plausibility. And sometimes, Easterbrook just goes completely off the damn rails.

So I’m introducing the “Tuesday Morning Quarterback Watch”, to highlight when the man’s right, when I think he’s wrong, when I think he’s completely nuts, and some of Easterbrook’s odd obsessions.

In today’s TMQ:

• Easterbrook argues that the outcomes of sporting events should never be reversed, except if an incorrect call occurs on the final play and a correct call would have resulted in a win for the opposing team. I haven’t heard anyone seriously argue a different viewpoint; I highlight this because I’m wondering if it will be one of his obsessions this season.
• Wacky food and/or drink? Check. In this case, the Friendly’s cheeseburger served between two grilled cheese sandwiches. “At this restaurant, a lunch of Loaded Waffle Fries, Buffalo Chicken Supermelt and a milkshake weighs in at 3,670 calories.” I’m pretty dubious than anyone would order all three of those and try to eat them solo (though I will admit, that Buffalo Chicken Supermelt by itself doesn’t look terribly healthy). And do you really expect healthy food at a place with the slogan “Where ice cream makes the meal”?
• “How long until babe spy Anna Chapman signs to play Natasha Fatale in a big-budget remake of “Rocky & Bullwinkle”?” Well, Gregg (can I call you “Gregg”?), given the utter failure of the last big-budget “Rocky and Bullwinkle” remake, I’m going to suggest that you look for this around the same time as David Letterman’s “Cold Day in Hell Special”.
• Easterbrook kicks LeBron James around, but curiously, not ESPN for broadcasting the fiasco.
• Easterbrook spends 699 words out of an 8,748 word column (about 8%) recapping NYT corrections from the NFL off season. Not sports related corrections; just NYT corrections in general. Dear Mr. Easterbrook; have you ever heard of “Regret the Error“? Or “The NYTPicker“?
• Easterbrook finds an excuse to run a swimsuit photo of an attractive woman. No complaints here…
• Easterbrook kicks Robert Byrd around some more.
• Weasel coach bashing? Check.
• Easterbrook kicks Al and Tipper Gore around some more. I would have held off on the “Al listens to rap music” joke, Gregg; the Onion beat you to it, and did it better.
• Obligatory bashing of SF television shows? Check.
• Wacky lawsuits? Check. I’ll give Easterbrook this: he may lean to the left politically, but he isn’t a blind liberal hack.
• Easterbrook keeps threatening to retire the “Christmas Creep” watch, but hasn’t yet.

We’re fairly early into the NFL and TMQ season. So far, I haven’t detected any trends, but we’ll see how things go.

Oh, almost forgot! In addition to the normal TMQ column, we now have…the TMQ Trailer on Monday! How swell is that? For his first outing, Easterbrook uses the failure of JaMarcus Russell (“Ryan Leaf can relax — JaMarcus Russell has replaced him as the worst draft bust.” Can’t argue too much with that, Gregg.) as a jumping off point to “reimagine” the 2007 NFL draft, based on what we know now. I’m not sure what the point of this exercise is, except to highlight another Easterbrook trope (first-round draft choices, especially quarterbacks, are often overrated; most teams would be better served trading down to get second or third round choices) but it is mildly diverting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Clippings, Sports, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.