TOP 10 THINGS I DIDN'T MISS ABOUT NFL FOOTBALL

We're about 1/4 of the way through the NFL season, and I'm already tired of it. I didn't realize how exasperating it can be, as I filtered out all the shit and just remember the Giants Super Bowl win. But getting there is quite a shitty road. Because everyone loves Top 10 Lists, here's another one, Top 10 Things I Didn't Miss About NFL Football.

10. Chris Fucking Berman. Not only has his shtick worn out its welcome, but he's also appearing in NutriSystem commercials. Good God, just shut up already.

9. Joe Fucking Buck. I wish the FOX robot would take the baseball bat he's armed with (cross promotion with MLB! Kill me now!) and slug that smug prick in the face.

8. Owners thinking they're part of the team. You don't know anything about football, you just have a lot of money and own a bunch of amusement parks and oil drills. So stop sticking your face in front of the camera, Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones, and fuck off.

7. The media thinking I care what football players have to say, or what they do off the field. The Giants' Plaxico Burress didn't answer his phone for 2 days, was suspended two weeks (one of them a bye, which is horseshit), and they still pummeled the Seahawks? Who cares? Just catch passes, or throw them, or do whatever it is you do on the field. I don't give a shit about the rest of it.

6. Every media outlet slobbering over the Cowboys. At this point I'm rooting for Tony Romo to break his arm on a pass to T.O. as the ball explodes and the leather shards permanently blind him. It's also amazing to me that the Giants STILL they don't get any respect or attention. What do they have to do, win the first game on the moon?

(UPDATE: I wrote the above sentence weeks ago, before Romo broke his pinky and could be out for up to 4 weeks. Thanks!)

5. Football Night In America. Lousy name, lousy show, brought to you by lousy NBC Sports. While the team of commentators (Costas, Collingsworth, King, Tiki, Jerome, etc.) are mildly irritating, nothing is worse than the has-been dream-team of Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann. The latter is especially glib and unfunny in the role he's rehashing for NBC, as if he's saying, "Kick me off MSNBC's political reporting for being too smug a prick about McCain, eh? Why, I'll be so insufferable doing football highlights they'll HAVE to reinstate me!" I think it's all a ploy to make Madden seem brilliant by comparison. It's working, because it's actually enjoyable to listen to him after all of NBC's jackassery. (Oh, and the John Williams theme music makes me constantly look over my shoulder to see if there's an evil Darth Someone about to stick a lightsabre in my Jar-Jar Binks.)

4. So many abysmal teams with ancient, boring QBs. Kerry Collins, Gus Frerotte, Kurt Warner, Brett Favre, Jeff Garcia--the 2008 NFL season is going to be known as The Year Of The Old White Guy. Do you mean to tell me there isn't one college QB from the past 10 years that are better than Gus Frerotte, Ryan Fitzpatrick, J.T. O'Sullivan and Sage Rosenfeld? Speaking of, check out this craptastic play by Lions "quarterback" Dan Orlovsky:



Where the hell did you think you were running? We're not in Canada! Good God, you suck.

3. The commercials. Good Lord, they're interminable. Kickoff, then 4 minutes of commercials, 3 and out drive, punt, more commercials, a couple of plays, timeout, more commercials--FUCK! While watching a game is excruciating, I can't imagine even GOING to a game any more, it would seem endless. At least if I'm at home or at a bar, I can find something else to do to pass the time.

Not only are the commercials never-ending, but they're also incredibly fucking dumb. After watching a lot of Discovery HD over the summer, the plummeting collective IQ of the marketing campaigns saved just for football fans feels like a spike driven into my frontal lobe Here's the trifecta of ubiquitious and annoying ads I have to endure.

* "How will I know if my beer is cold if the little Coors mountain doesn't turn blue?!?" I don't know, maybe you can tell because IT'S IN YOUR FUCKING HAND? How about you break the bottle over your head and feel it that way? Assholes.

* Budweiser American Ale. An American style ale brought to you by a Belgian owned company! Woo hoo! I know they're probably referring to the style, but I'm not buying it, literally and figuratively. In fact, I would love if people revolved and stopped buying their shit, but that will probably never happen as long as they keep putting out groundbreaking products like light beer with lime flavoring in it. Go get fucked, A-B.

* Heineken wants you to believe that because the city of Amsterdam is great, this means that their skunktacular beer must be great. However, they use "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis as the background music. Why did they choose a song by a band from Scotland to tell you how great the Netherlands' biggest city is? If Amsterdam was so DAM GOOD, they should at least have one good band, no?

2. Monday Night Football. I can avoid listening to ESPN talking heads during the week by just not turning the channel on. But when your team plays on Monday night, and the radio feed is 30 seconds ahead of the action, what can you do? Seriously, the commentators are atrocious this season, constantly undermined by chatty jackass Tony Kornheiser. ESPNABCDISNEY needs to bring back Dennis Miller. And no, I'm not kidding.

1. Instant replay. They just don't seem to get it right. Personally, I would love to see it removed from all sports, and have the referees just say, "Fuck you, I'm calling it on the field". Instead, they're afraid to make a call (or in the case of Ed "Herculis" Hocholi, a little overeager), and they huddle up to make sure they're all making up the same story. Because no matter what they call, someone will complain about it.