You Aren't Ready For Some Football?

Friday Night Footbal, in America, means 'high school.' Where you'll find future NFL players, but not nearly as many as you'll find future Gas & Sip assistant managers, unemployed actors, stock brokers, Realtors, and maybe an occasional loan shark or sports book enforcer.

The guys in the NFL, almost without exception, if you go back to high school, it was the guy who not only played both sides of the ball but dominated it. A running back the Chiefs drafted years ago who didn't pan out, who lost his first game as an NFL player. Went from Pop Warnter through college undefeated. Pretty bizarre place to land your fist loss: even recruits from colege powerhouses have usually lost a game or two by the time they finish college, no matter how talented they are.

The fact that such an obviously exceptional athelete didn't do anything of note in the NFL is a testament to how good the worst (Lyn Elliot) NFL player is. I don't mean how good they are as people: you luck out if they turn out to be something other than total turds. I mean that in terms of the game, they can outrun Maurice Green in uncomfortable shoes, take the equivalent of a car crash and get called for taunting the guy who put the hit on them, etc.

The Chiefs visited Miami tonight, violating the shit out of high school football where anyone cared abut Dolphins or Chiefs (if Native Americans are offended by the Chiefs, should someone tell the aquatic mammals about how the Miami franchise is abusing them?)

The longest game ever played was the Chiefs and Dolphins, the year before the Dolphins went undefeated and the Chiefs started to semi-permanently suck.

So I wonder, what kind of bellweather this is: The Chiefs are the only team in the history of the NFL to travel the same day they played. Basically caught a red-eye for that business meeting and came back with the deal and more.

I'd hate for this sort of historical precedent to also be the precent of almost two decades of mediocrity on account a the Dolphins. It'd make me want to go back to older techniques of tuna fishing...

Of course, my concerns are utterly biased. My first reaction to the change in schedule was that NFL players who are tough enouth to play the same year they had a stroke ought to be tough enough to play through a storm surge/tidal wave and keep their passing game alive in 170 mph winds.

But the NFL was wiser than I, recognizing that while you could give floatees to six-foot-forty dudes who never learned to swim, the stands would be full of drunken, shouting idiots who would forget how to swim and drown.

Would those fans leave a better world in their demise? Perhaps, if you are selling footbal tickets, it's in your interest to keep them alive...

Good to have a historic game though: the Chiefs not only won (unlike the double overtime game way back), but did it convincingly. And they're the only team in the history of the league to travel and play the same day.