NFL 2012 Week 7: AFC & NFC West (2nd Quarter)

Here, let us go into this new week of the NFL football NFLuminati rankings and analyze from a chaotical perspective those teams what which inhabit the West divisions of our beloved American blue state and National red state Football Conferences. Sometimes I wish there was no inter-conference or inter-divisional play and you only played six straight weeks of your own divisional games to start the year. Then the worst half of each division would be eliminated for the year. That would leave 8 teams in each conference, who would play once against the other 6 teams in their conference but also another home-and-away with their divisional rival who was also still in it. That would be a total of 14 games. Then you eliminated the worst four from each conference, which would leave 8 teams total, who would play all four teams from the opposite conference. All games would count from beginning to end, but like that last third phase would be 3 points per win, and the second part of your conference would be 2 points, and your first 6 divisional games would only be 1 point. After the four games only against the other conference, the top four teams with the most points would be seeded and play a single elimination tournament called the American Bowl and National Bowl and then the Super Bowl. And at halftime during the Super Bowl, instead of some stupid concert, all the owners of teams who did not make it to the second round could fight each other for necklaces they wore featuring their star players, so a tough owner could make his team way fucking better in the 15 minutes of the halftime of the Super Bowl. And then the NFL would be perfect, finally. So yeah, the West division teams. Let us dally through this nonsense…

#1: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (4-2, 2nd overall) – Look, knee-jerk football pundits, I know the 49ers lost at home to a Giants team, but that does not mean you say the 49ers are crap. They are still one of the most forceful teams in the league, and even more so when most teams are more up-and-down than some sort of tasteless reference to oral sex on the back seat of a Greyhound bus. But the 49ers still will manifest their destiny, as they are one of the few up-and-downers with identity. As humans, when caught up in the ebb and flow of emotions, when we also lack self-esteem or sense of self, we are more prone to terrible sudden declines that destroy our world. This is a lot of the NFL right now. However, the 49ers have strong sense of self, and Jim Harbaugh has a huge dick. They will be okay.

#2: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (4-2, 7th overall) – The Seahawks, on the other hand, are a great example of the prone-to-sudden decline pattern. I have Russell Wilson as my back-up fantasy QB (and he’ll have to start this week). Sure, be blew away the Patriots, but mostly he has been inconsistent and questionable. I guess that’s to be expected from a rookie QB. But shit man, the Seahawks are 4-2, and people are getting caught up in “the possibilities” when really they are just benefitting from Beast Mode by osmosis. Beast Mode is a tricky demon though, and it will fail you. Trust me, I am half-beast myself, trying to contain that side of my soul by carving alexandrine quatrains into tree stumps as a hobby. But I know Beast Mode, and it gets so wrapped up in itself being Beastly at times that it completely forgets the rules of civilization, thus ignoring a key civilized man’s law, and then fucking over the successful application of Beast Mode, a the man’s law enforcers then reprimand Beast for Beastly. Essentially that is the psychic tap dance of the NFL, and the Beasts have been losing that dance for a long minute, which is why Marshawn Lynch is so fucking great. Too bad about the new Nike uniforms being so ugly though.

#3: ARIZONA CARDINALS (4-2, 8th overall) – By my patented NFLuminati scoring system, the Cardinals are actually the 8th best team in the NFL right now. What that should tell you is the NFL is a horrid festering product where any team can beat any other team any given day of the week, literally now that they play games on almost every day of the week.

#4: DENVER BRONCOS (3-3, 9th overall) – Peyton Manning and his cripple-neck had himself a miraculous comeback against the most worst head coach in the history of the NFL, who somehow still has a job even though he has done nothing but never succeed in prominent times where success seemed inevitable. And you motherfuckers still act like this shit ain’t fake. That Broncos/Chargers game was like Hulk Hogan grimacing at the Iron Sheik’s cobra clutch then jumping up and winning the belt. Complete and utter bullshit, and the perfect lead-in to “NEVER COUNT OUT OL’ PEYTON MANNING” memes galore the next day. Man, fuck the NFL sometimes. Sad thing is some team from the AFC West will have to make the playoffs, so that’ll probably be the Broncos and fucking Peyton fucking Manning. But hopefully somebody will paralyze him. And I know in today’s internet age, people say inflammatory things to be inflammatory, but I can guarantee you, I would not feel even a quibble of doubt if Peyton Manning were paralyzed. Only problem is he is rich so he’d get some sort of Hemi-powered Stephen Hawking wheelchair and end up coaching the Colts or some asshole team like the Browns to multiple Super Bowl titles.

#5: ST. LOUIS RAMS (3-3, 14th overall) – I think of all the NFL teams, the Rams are the ones I’d like to ride around in a donk with, getting blunted as fuck, scoping out jogging ass bitches wearing those black legging/tights things that chicks be just wearing like regular pants nowadays. I’m not complaining at all, just noticing, often and regularly.

#6: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (3-3, 24th overall) – Hahaha, oh man, somehow even when everybody on earth knows the Chargers are fucked and are gonna screw up and be exactly what we all know Norv Turner and Philip Rivers are gonna be, they find a way to convince us that maybe it won’t go that way somehow. And then it goes EXACTLY that way. It is like laughing at that same joke you’ve busted your gut at nine times already – you can’t really lose your shit any more, but you still take great joy in the joke continuing, and you also feel the inner-glow of glee from the length of joy the running joke has given you. I might actually be sad when Norv Turner is finally fired, just because that’s probably it for Norv Turner – Head Coach. Such a thing has brought so many lulz to so many otherwise sad souls for such a long period of time, it seems a shame that it has to end.

#7: OAKLAND RAIDERS (1-4, 25th overall) – I would like to say that even though they are not a good team, I fully support the Oakland Raiders. Raiders fans are my people, and them almost beating the Falcons (who are #1 on this NFLuminati list right now) was a great moment, but also further proof inside my paranoid mind of the actual truth of the NFLuminati effect, as the Raiders are a storied team in black, and the Falcons are a new school imposter, whose history in black is not even a full part of their history as a team. So essentially the Raiders game was close enough but still a loss to give the Falcons the false rub of Raiders black fear, to make our collective minds think, “You know, maybe these Falcons are real. I mean, John Abraham was almost like Jack Tatum there for a couple plays.” But he wasn’t, and they’re not. The NFL is manipulating your consciousness. The Falcons suck, and Jack Tatum’s ghost would paralyze Tom Brady and smile for eternity were he a ghost, which he is not as he is fucking 71 virgins in Valhalla as we speak. I know this because I talked to his personal assistant through a thrift store Ouija board last weekend. Also of note is that apparently when Orientals go to Heaven, they become personal assistants for the rest of us. But that is their idea of Heaven, so it’s cool. The only slaves in Heaven are apparently those who like to be slaves. I asked the personal assistant through Ouija board if perhaps this was the result of psychological conditioning, that would make people desire slavery against their own personal benefit because they had been demeaned into such a position, or manipulated to think such a way. The personal assistant bolted on me though, and then the next person medium on the other end of the Ouija board didn’t want to answer my questions about such sociopolitical issues, as they just wanted to know if Beyonce still had a fat ass or not. It was uncomfortable answering Us Weekly type shit to the beyond, so I took my hands off the little dialer doohickey and broke the connection to the other world.

#8: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (1-5, 31st overall) – Be patient, because the Chiefs have all the makings of eventually being the worst team in football this year. Thus far, everything has broken just right to make such a thing happen, and the soap opera can only get better. The great thing is there is no Andrew Luck to reward them for their poor effort this year.

NFL 2012 Week 2: AFC South & West (1st Quarter)

Our first week of the professional football has come and gone, and the coolness starts to fill our American air, and it is an election year, so we are fat with self-importance, and ready to plop down on our luxury furniture and make ourselves sick over the games we have no control of. And again, I hope to give you these weekly updates, cycling through two divisions a week, meaning we travel through all corners of the NFL four times over the course of the regular season. Just as an NFL game is broken into four quarters, most NFL coaches break the season down into four quarters, so essentially everything we know after that first week (and used as talking points on this list) is utterly useless in the overall scheme of things. Even the most shocking and devastating of victories or losses is nothing more than the season-length equivalent of an opening drive TD in a regular game. So take all that to heart, and realize that what you think learned last week may just be early season deception and trickery. Still though, my formula for power scoring these teams is in effect, and though there’s not quite enough body of work for the formula to be correct the first couple weeks, it is all I have to go by, so I use it to rank these teams of the AFC South and AFC West, two of the lowlier divisions of the professional footballs.

#1: DENVER BRONCOS (1-0, 5th overall) – Last week: beat Steelers, 31-19. This week: at Falcons (1-0). I for one do not believe the Peyton hype, and expect the Broncos to be as high mediocre as they were last year when that retarded blessing from Heaven Tim Tebow was their QB. That would be good enough to win the AFC West, with or without Manning. But I am also a lifelong Manning hater, so perhaps I am being cruel towards the gimp-necked corporate hick. They held tough with the Steelers and prevailed in the end, and though I think them not a true Super Bowl contender in the long run, if they can hang with the likes of the Steelers, that puts them head-and-shoulders-and-fused-neck above the likes of their horrible AFC Western compatriots.

#2: HOUSTON TEXANS (1-0, 7th overall) – Last week: beat Dolphins, 30-10. This week: at Jaguars (0-1). Mostly this season, the Texans have been known for giving dumbasses who think they are smart a joking point with Arian Foster being vegan. In this election year, chock full of social media, it has become painfully clear that we all are way fucking stupider than we think we are. This goes for you, and also me. Americans lack even the most basic ability to think critically, and yet we feel entitled to worship and respect and awe from the rest of the world. Even in regards to football – our version is a cruel and barbaric sport, and if our elite athletes realized they could make ten times the money playing world football, and at a far less significant rate of self-destruction, they’d all jump at the chance. But we are a nation of mongrels and retards and oversized dimwits. I am fine with that, but I do not appreciate the pretend notion we are something more noble. American football is brutal, and it should be. When the Houston franchise chose their sterile “Texans” moniker and their even more sterile color scheme, they chose their destiny as frauds in the eyes of the football gods. It only makes sense Arian Foster would be their star player, the prancing vegan. They should have chosen an ominous color scheme and an evil name, that could never be mistaken for nationalist or state pride. Think of how Earl Campbell played the game of football, perhaps Houston’s finest football athlete of all-time. It was brutal. He took years off of other people’s lives, and he is respected highly for doing so. That is America. Not this Houston Texans bullshit. They will crumble, even if they toy with success, although sometimes, with the recent shift in NFL philosophy under the black Lord Goodell, I am not sure if they now worship a new set of Football Gods, and have turned their collective backs on the old ones.

#3: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (1-0, 10th overall) – Last week: beat Raiders, 22-14. This week: hosting Titans (0-1). Dear San Diego Chargers fans, and the rest of the AFC West, and all football fans in general, I have two words for you in rebuttal for your excitement regarding the Chargers after one week of football: Norvell Turner. I rest my case. As good as you will ever get this season or next, it will be like all the ones before it, and never as good as it could have been. You are wasting one more year of Philip Rivers, as we speak.

#4: TENNESSEE TITANS (0-1, 21st overall) – Last week: lost to Patriots, 13-34. This week: at Chargers (1-0). I will be honest and tell you I’d like this Titans team offensively if Chris Johnson wasn’t disappearing in modern NFL star RB fashion. At this rate, in two years time he will have shriveled up into a Seahawk or something, and a good proof for the philosophy of always having at least two RBs, with one in the wings, because they fade fast nowadays. But Jake Locker has shown promise, and though knocked out the game last week, the Titans probably have the top back-up in the NFL in Matt Hasselbeck. They didn’t look so great against the Patriots at all, at home, and now travel across the country to go play the Chargers. But Mike Munchak seems one of those angry at the world, “Let’s go kill them all and rape their women!” type head coaches that players love so much. I expect the Titans to step up and pester the Texans in the AFC South this year.

#5: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (0-1, 28th overall) – Last week: lost to Bears, 21-41. This week: hosting Vikings (0-1). The Colts did not look so great, nor will they any time soon. This is a very much not good team, even with the Freaks & Geeks kid as their QB. What does that mean for the rest of us? Hopefully some good crazy Jim Irsay tweeting rants, but beyond that, not much.

#6: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (0-1, 29th overall) – Last week: lost to Falcons, 24-40. This week: at Bills (0-1). I think the Chiefs will show improvement facing a lower-tier team in the Bills. The verdict’s still out on Matt Cassel, and honestly after this much time it has to be considered a hung jury and he should be thrown out. But he’s shown some good chemistry with Dwayne Bowe and Tony Moeaki over his limited healthy action, so maybe they get it rolling on offense. The Chiefs are kind of the quiet trendsetter over the decades in the AFC West, where when they are good, the division is good, and when they are bad, the division is as well. They need to get it together, so that this division does not further become the Land of the Lost and Wasted and Misfit Fantasy Toys.

#7: OAKLAND RAIDERS (0-1, 31st overall) – Last week: lost to Chargers, 14-22. This week: at Dolphins (0-1). I honestly feel bad for Raiders fans. Al Davis was bad as a deteriorating old man, but he is worse as dead, because his offspring is not him. And once the ownership inevitably decides to sell the team so that someone can come in and restore Raiders greatness, the NFL would never ever in a thousand million years sell to a firebrand free spirit like Al Davis again. Ever. So ultimately as a Raiders fan, proud of the dark and ominous history, you get diminishing returns on what is left of this Raiders team, and have to wait for something to shift it into the next era. However, whatever that shift is, it will most likely be a corporate-acceptable and business-savvy shift, and not one that truly understands what being a Raider is all about. I feel sorry for Oakland, because this new football God being worshipped does not respect a place like Oakland, nor a fan base like Raider Nation. They will be starved by this new money-hungry God until what is left of Al Davis’ family abandons ship and leaves what is left to be picked through by venture capitalists.

#8: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (0-1, 32nd overall) – Last week: lost to Vikings, 23-26. This week: hosting Texans (1-0). The Jaguars will be mostly irrelevant this season, as there’s not much there. But rest easy, because Shahid Khan will soon make himself known as one of the craziest NFL owners out there, easily replacing the seat vacated by Al Davis, and these Jaguars – perhaps in a new city, perhaps in new uniforms – will become something amazingly loltastic. This terrible season of 2012 will be the previously planted garden withering and bearing no fruit, which will drive Khan into hysterical bursts of drastic change. That’s when they will be fun to watch. I predict that will start happening around the end of November.

Chuck Bresnahan, Enormous Jackass

Let me say this right off the bat: I have NEVER, EVER been a fan of Choke Bresnahan and his horrible defensive scheme. He was horrible in his first stint as the Raiders defensive coordinator, and even worse in his second go around. His insistence on using a 4 man pass rush and sticking his corners in man coverage made him a favorite of Al Davis, despite the fact that his preferred scheme hasn't won jack shit in the NFL in the last decade. He likes to "think outside of the box" by doing such bold things as asking his linebackers to cover wide receivers. As you can imagine, these sort of things nearly always end up with said receiver standing in the endzone with the ref raising both of his arms in the air. His corners routinely play 10-15 yards off of the line of scrimmage, even on 3rd and short, resulting the opposition being able to put together long drive after long drive.  Rather than working a scheme that suits his players skills and limitations, Chunk repeatedly tries to shove the square peg into round holes. Aaron Curry is a good athlete who can make plays against the run but is awful in pass coverage. Guess who the dip shit D coordinator has covering tight ends or receivers? Mike Mitchell is terrible in pass coverage, so guess who repeatedly got raped by a gimpy Antonio Gates on Sunday? Kameron Wimbley is strictly a pass rushing linebacker. Guess who was constantly getting burned in coverage? This shit went on all season, and despite the fact that it was OBVIOUS that his crackpot scheme wasn't working, Chuck stood firm. Chuck Bresnahan, you are the reason the Raiders are sitting at home right now. Your bullshit prevent defense lost the game in Buffalo. Your reluctance to step on the Lions throat helped Matt Stafford bend your defense over and cornhole them in front of your own fans with less than 2 minutes left, ruining Thanksgiving in the process. Either of these games would have put the Raiders in the playoffs.

I am not a vindictive man, but I hope Chuck Bresnahan never works in the NFL again. This was a season dedicated to the memory of Al Davis, and rather than honor that memory, Chuck Bresnahan dropped his pants and squeezed out a 2' coil of shit on his grave. Happy New Year, Chuck. Might want to brush up on your interview skills. You're going to need them.

Drunk Daddy is Back

Football fandom is supposed to be fun. It's meant to distract us from our miserable lives, not reinforce the worst qualities of them. It's supposed be something light hearted, not a soul killing experience. Football is supposed to supplement our enjoyment, not an emotional burden. And yet that is exactly what football has become for me. You see, it's the Holiday Season, and Raider Fan's alcoholic dad just fell off the wagon. Now some of you reading this are probably saying to yourselves "How dare this clown make fun of a real issue like alcoholism! My father is an alcoholic!". I'm not mocking alcoholism. Far from it. My dad is a recovering alcoholic, so I've been down that road. Here's the thing: I'm drawing an illustration using an extreme like alcoholism to prove a point, and you're going to have to deal with it. So do us all a solid and turn in your outrage badge for a few minutes and revel in my malaise. Or don't. I don't care.

I've made the comparison of being Raiders fan to having a drunk for a father before, but for some reason I'm at a point now where it actually affects me more than it used to. It's almost as if I actually expected better. You know how it goes: things were good when you were little then one day dad gets laid off and loses it. Rather than deal with things like a man, Dad chooses to crawl into the bottle. Lies are told, promises are broken, words are said. Mom gets good at making excuses and soon is able to predict when Dad is about to blow. She sends you to bed and turns the volume up on the TV, but you can still hear her crying as Dad rambles on and on before passing out on the couch in a puddle of his own piss. The next morning he shows his shame and tells you that it won't happen again and that he loves you and Mom and he's going to change. You give him a hug but you know deep inside he's the same bitter prick and the next time he hits a bump in the road he's going to come unglued again. You know this, and you're 7 years old. Did I mention you're 7 in this scenario? Yeah, you're 7 and you already know Dad is seriously messed up. A week later the car breaks down and Dad downs a bottle of Kessler and takes a bat to the car. Mom grabs you and you head off to Grandma's house for an indefinite stay.

Weeks go by and there's no sign of Dad until he shows up on Grandma's front lawn at 2 in the morning, screaming at Mom before hopping into his car, backing over the mailbox and fishtailing out of sight. At this point you know Dad is beyond repair. He can't change. He won't change. Mom knows this too, so she hires a lawyer. You sit in his office and tell this total stranger who Mom says is cool all the crazy shit your dad has pulled. The lawyer calmly writes it all down and says some things you don't understand to Mom and you go back to Grandma's house. A couple days later Dad is on the front lawn again, but it's different. The car is properly parked. He's not jumping up and down. In fact, he's on his knees. He's not screaming. He's speaking to Mom with kindness in his words. There's tears in his eyes. Her eyes, too. Mom wipes the tears away and smiles as she tells you to go inside and back your bags because we're going home. Things are going to be normal again. Well, normal for us, at any rate.

On the way home Dad tells you about how much he missed you and how hard he's working to change. He's got a new job working at the plant. He's going to meetings. He's going to church. Everything is going to be better. Except it's not, and you know this, but you play along anyway. Man, you are pretty damned cynical for a 7 year old. For the first few weeks it looks like maybe Dad really did turn the corner, but inevitably the cracks start to show. You start to notice unusual quantities of mouthwash in the house. Dad starts missing a few days of work. Sometimes he comes home really late. Mom doesn't want to believe the collapse is coming, but she knows it is. Still, she put on the brave face because Christmas is coming and she's having the family over to show just how far dad has come in his recovery. Christmas Day arrives and Dad says he got called in to work some overtime. You know his plant is closed on Christmas. Mom knows the plant is closed on Christmas. She knows the collapse is at hand, but she packs a lunch for his fictional overtime anyway and kisses him as he walks out the door and reminds him that dinner is at 5. Your entire family shows up for dinner. 5 o'clock comes around without Dad. Then 6 o'clock. At a quarter to 7 Grandpa says "to hell with it" and starts to carve the bird just as the door flies open and in walks Dad. The REAL Dad. Drunk Dad. Even from 15 feet away you catch a whiff of his trademark scent, Kessler, and you sit back and get ready to enjoy the show. For a 7 year old you sure have a demented sense of humor. Dad starts yelling and screaming as mom hands him a plate of food that he promptly throws at the wall before punching out Grandpa, knocking over the Christmas tree and yet again passing out on the couch in a puddle ofhis own piss. Then you're back and Grandma's house where the whole idiotic cycle will start again.

This is what being a Raiders fan is all about. I can't give up because you never give up on Dad, but we're 2 losses away from spending the rest of the winter at Grandma's house until Dad shows up on the front lawn towards the end of summer and Mom takes him back again. And so on and so forth.

In which I fall in love with Carson Palmer

Carson, babe, I know I MAY have insinuated you might be a douche bag in a previous post, but I didn't mean it. In fact, since that day I've gone out of my way to make excuses for your mistakes. Like, at least 4 or 5 of your INTs have been a result of timing/familiarity issues and not from bad reads or bad throws. It's not your fault that the defense decided to let Timmy and Tebowettes walk all over them in the 2nd half last week. It's not your fault that Darren McFadden is carved from balsa wood. You are clearly better at throwing the football than Jason Campbell is and ever will be. The team is starting to get used to you, and you to them. Things are starting to come together. I understand why you're in my life now. I'm not afraid anymore! Look, Carson, what I'm trying to say is that I... I'm in love with you.

Let it sink in...

OK, there, I said it. You are everything I've ever wanted in a Raiders QB. You have a rocket arm. You complete passes. You have a chip on your shoulder. You're everything I've been looking for since the day Jim Plunkett walked out of my life. You're everything Jamucus Russell was supposed to be. You're the quarterback I wanted. You're the quarterback I needed. I went through the motions with Campbell, pretending to be happy, but the spark was never there. I was just happy he wasn't Jamucus. Aaron Brooks, Kerry Collins, Rich Gannon, Jeff George, Jeff Hostetler, Jay Schroeder, Donald Hollas, Todd Marinovich, Andrew Walter, Josh McCown, they all broke my heart. I wanted to love them, but they just never loved me. You, you're different. You make me want to be a better fan. You make me believe in the passing game again. I never thought the vertical game could feel like this again. I had forgotten how great it feels to know that your QB is going to put the ball where his receiver has a chance to catch it literally every time it leaves his hand. You have restored my faith in the forward pass, and for that I will always love you.

I don't know what the future holds, but I have no fear so long as you are my gunslinger. Thank you Carson Palmer for showing me that it's OK to let love open the door to my heart.

NFL 2011: Week 10 - AFC South & West (3rd Quarter)

Sort of neglected these NFL Illuminati lists the past few weeks - been busy with real life bullshit but also didn't really care too much. But we are halfway through this season, just now entering the beginning of the third quarter of the regular year of foozball games, so I figured I'd dust off my notebook and jot down my gibberish regarding teams again. This week, we bounce through the AFC West and South divisions, because of all the geographically connected divisions of the same conference, they combined for the worst overall records. And yet at least two of these teams (meaning probably two of them) will make the playoffs. Which is fine. I live in Virginia, where they expanded the high school playoffs of the smallest sized schools for this year, and in one division there's actually a 1-9 team that made the playoffs. No shit. So we are not to that point in the NFL, thus you should stop bitching when you are all like, "Nobody from the NFC West 2010 should have made the playoffs, and because of this one time thing we should make crazy weird rule changes that make it so only the teams that ESPN and NBC put on night games make the playoffs, with like a Michael Vick wild card rule where famous players have to make the playoffs too." Because that's what you'd do, you ignorant fucks...
#1: HOUSTON TEXANS (6-3, 11th overall) - The Texans are basically an Arena League team at this point, who will be smited by superior football franchises once they actually make the playoffs. I'm still pissed a new team in Houston didn't embrace the recreational abuse of codeine as popularized by DJ Screw and have purple uniforms. Not gay purple like Baltimore but gangsta candy flake purple helmets with gold face masks and shit. Instead they look like a post-9/11 PR firm came up with their shit, which they did. Stupid fucking NFL the corporate years.
#2: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (4-4, 16th overall) - I thoroughly enjoy the continued professional shortcomings of both Norv Turner and Philip Rivers. One day, they both will be gone, and we'll have to look back and fondly remember all those wasted Chargers years together, over codeine cough syrup. You and me.
#3: OAKLAND RAIDERS (4-4, 19th overall) - I've been reading a lot about Wilhelm Reich and his orgone accumulator theories and it really makes me sad Al Davis never embraced these philosophies. I don't think Carson Palmer would've been acquired by the Raiders had Al Davis received the healing touches of an orgone accumulator. He'd still be alive and Cyborg Jim Plunkett (created through genome mapping and the use of Tesla coils combined with Silicon Valley technonerd input) would be leading this team to it's fifth Super Bowl in a row. And Kenny Stabler would be the coach.
#4: DENVER BRONCOS (3-5, 20th overall) - I like Tim Tebow being successful because he'll only be mildly successful but it will be enough to make the Broncos stick with him and the racist wealthy miscreants of Colorado to love upon him and it'll keep the Broncos from being a top-quality football team for years to come. But let's be clear - I don't like Tebow. Who the fuck believes in Jesus God in 2011? Hasn't this dude ever taken mushrooms, or read Kerouac, or really blinked hard enough for his eyelids to swipe away the blank look for four seconds to be like, "Oh shit, titties trump jesus."
#5: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (4-4, 21st overall) - I don't have anything to really say about the Chiefs because I'm thinking about Christy Canyon movies after thinking that "titties trump jesus" line. I went into a porn movie place the other week, and make no mistake about it, almost every dude who works in a porn movie store (about 75% to be precise) is a kind of composite of a Robert Crumb drawing of a Charles Bukowski story but brought to life (it needs that double filter). But I asked the dude after thumbing through about 19 shelves of strange gonzo amateur 8 hour fetish themed weirdness if they carried any classic porns, with stories and hair on the pussy and real titties, and he said, "No. They got those parody ones, which are as close as you'll get. That's the thing about classics - they ain't making no new ones." And I agreed and bought a canned Dr. Pepper for a dollar because I have a hard time looking through porn videos for like half an hour and not actually buying anything.
#6: TENNESSEE TITANS (4-4, 22nd overall) - I haven't actually seen a picture of Mike Munchak so in my mind the head coach of the Tennessee Titans looks like the Count from Sesame Street, just really serious about football, and not obsessive compulsive about counting.
#7: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (2-6, 25th overall) - Jack Del Rio is a serious about football dude, and yet he is not doing well as a head coach, though he may somehow keep his job because he coaches in Jacksonville, where most people don't know there's a football team. I like seeing the sidelines of a Jaguars game because they have a high black dudes with dreadlocks concentration factor, and being they are from Florida it makes me think of Ozone magazine and weird local rappers who get one page interviews where they talk about how they started a blunt paper company because nobody was making cantaloupe flavored blunt wrappers. I can understand that type of thinking.
#8: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (0-9, 32nd overall) - Peyton Manning should own like 10% of the Colts, and instead they're talking about dumping the dude on the side of the road to draft Andrew Luck. That would mean Peyton Manning would go somewhere else, and he's a pretty smart dude, but also probably past his prime but really famous, which means that he stands a good chance of being the Washington Redskins starting QB next year. That would crush me, like deep down crush my spirit and soul.

Exit Campbell, Enter Palmer

Well, that just happened. OK, here's the deal: Kyle Boller sucks. A lot. Tyrelle Pryor is nowhere near NFL-ready, and probably never will be, at least as a QB. Trent Edwards wasn't willing to come back to Oakland after being cut in training camp instead of Boller. Like Boller, Edwards sucks. David Garrard needs back surgery. The free agent options for replacing Jason Campbell are limited to guys who won't win you a damned thing, and Hue Jackson's Raiders aren't having that. This is a must-win season. There is no tomorrow. The decade of futility must end now. For the first time since the Super Bowl bed shitting against Tampa Bay (aka Barret Robbins' Bogus Journey) this team has a chance to go to the playoffs. Those chances went to pot when Campbell broke his collarbone. Depending on who you talk to, JC is either out for the season or will be back in 6 weeks. The Raiders can't wait for his healing process. Kyle Boller as your starting quarterback is a white flag on the season. A move had to be made. So here we are, Carson Palmer is now an Oakland Raider. As a fan of the Raiders I am fine with this. Sure, they probably overpaid, but he's better than the alternatives and you don't usually get to actually UPGRADE at the quarterback position mid-season. And believe it or not, Palmer is an upgrade over Campbell. I actually was starting to like Campbell as a game manager, but he wasn't able to win you a game on his own. His inaccuracy on deep balls (particularly sideline passes) kept Hue from truly opening up the passing game. When you have speedsters like Denarius Moore, Jacoby Ford and the suddenly HOLY-SHIT-HE'S-FINALLY-NOT-TERRIBLE-AT-FOOTBALL Darrius Heyward-Bey at receiver, you kinda need a dude who can complete deep passes. Throw in the fact that the Raiders have 3 compensatory picks coming in the draft next year and the fact that this team probably isn't good enough to win a playoff game this year, losing a 1st and possible 2nd rounder for a proven NFL QB isn't the end of the world. From a pure football sense, this is a good deal for the Raiders.

BUT

Carson Palmer seems like a, um... uh, how should I say this? Carson Palmer seems like a total douche bag. Should that matter to me? No, so long as he performs on the field. But I would be doing you readers a disservice if I turned a blind eye to the rather obvious telltale signs of his douche-dom.

1- HE WENT TO THE DOUCHE FACTORY, USC.

After a decade of irrelevance following the departure of Todd Marinovich, Palmer blazed the trail for the modern douche bag, frat boy, date rapist USC QB. Matt Leinart, John David Booty, Mark Sanchez and future high draft pick Matt Barkley all owe everything they have to Palmer's smug ass. Hell, even Matt Cassel, Palmer's equally douchey USC backup who never started a single game in college, is pulling down a ridiculous NFL paycheck. That's power, right there.

2- HIS FIRST NAME IS A LAST NAME

For years this has been a scientifically proven method in the field of Douche Discernment. The only people who have last names for first names are super villains, corrupt CEOs and douche bags. The only exception to this law of nature is the fictional Parker Lewis, who was a chill ass dude who fought for both nerds and Kubiaks alike.

3- HE HAS A BROTHER WHOSE FIRST NAME IS ALSO A LAST NAME

His brother is horrible at football, so his douche-dom is especially unwarranted.

4- HE DID AN AD CAMPAIGN SHOVING A HOTDOG INTO HIS MOUTH IN A MOST SEDUCTIVE MANNER

I don't even know what to say here.

5- HE RETIRED WHEN HIS INCOMPETENT OWNER REFUSED TO TRADE HIM

Granted, his wife is an heiress to some Silicon Valley billionaire and he's already made a ton of NFL money, but that is a straight up bitch move. I don't want to be lead into battle by a guy who I know at any moment can just go "Eh, screw you guys. I'm going to take my wife to Cabo," and just leave you high and dry. At the very least, it makes you question his desire to play the game.

Obvious douche bag tendencies aside, I am all in favor of the trade. A QB who can actually complete passes in exchange for a couple 1st rounders from a franchise that hasn't successfully drafted and developed a QB since Kenny Stabler? Sign me up, Clyde.

NFL 2011: Week 6 - NFC & AFC West (2nd Quarter)

I do not feel much like writing because I've been freaking out on datura seeds the past week or so. You might not have noticed but I completely skipped last week's team updates, which would've been a leisurely stroll through the NFC North and East. Now we are already into the second quarter of the NFL season, and the lowest cumulative W/L records, geographically, fall yet again upon the West divisions. Therefore this week, we go West young man, where you can get a job watching for wildfires on a tower all summer long, where you mostly read Chinese poetry and smoke opium and try to find girls with etsy sites to abort babies with. I mean, you don't have to really, because there is nothing more noble than having yourself like five children by three hip mama subscribers (I wonder if anybody who reads this site even knows what Hip Mama even was? How about Hippie Goddesses?), all of whom get along well and once a month you have a Sunday "soul food" dinner together, all your kids and former ol' ladies, and you are not involved with any of them, but occasionally still become physically intertwined with all of them because you can't help it - you are a man, and your internal philosophy rolls off your tongue like verbal cunninlingus for their soul, and the true goal should be to have all of you living together, not in these godforsaken college towns with their public libraries and Trader Joes. No, you need to get out in the middle of nowhere, where the all of you can get down to getting down and being what you are truly meant to be - a beautiful cleansing pox upon this bullshit fucking country we live in. Fuck Occupy Wall Street - Occupy Dirt Roads, in ragged houses with chicken flocks and herb spirals and communally benefitting etsy sites where all your ol' ladies can work together - through screenprinting and wool knitting - to create a harmony of living.
Wait, we are talking about football, right? Okay, let's talk about it, and how these teams and their western styles where you escape your past because there is no past, and let's see how they occupy the psyche of the NFL at large...
(Again, my apologies, but the datura seeds can go badly if you are not careful, and I am not sure if I'm in that zone or not...)
#1: OAKLAND RAIDERS (3-2, 5th overall) - Harpo's beautiful piece on Al Davis made me sad, which was only compounded when I saw Marc Davis on the NFL pregame shows, and thought to myself that he did not look like a solid chip off the old block. Al Davis was an outlaw visionary, a Vollis Simpson for the football world (I am going to work in as many obscure bullshit things as possible, in the hopes you will google search them... or perhaps I will put google search links into this thing!). Hue Jackson breaking down on the field after the win, and just the Raiders in general have me fearing this could be a special run by them. I also fear how the NFL is engineered and they've always oppressed Al Davis in recent decades, including using the franchise and a bullshit tuck rule to create the Legend of Tom Brady. There's no way they'll let the Raiders be a successful franchise. Which means hopefully the Raiders locker room is like part Major League/part The Longest Yard (original, with Burt Reynolds), and Coach Hue has his boys fired up to break the plans of the NFL and win an outlaw AFC West title that's pre-ordained for the corporately acceptable San Diego Chargers.
#2: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (4-1, 6th overall) - I do not care so much for these San Diego Chargers, and never will, for they have Phillippe Rivers, who is my least favorite starting QB in the NFL now that Peyton Manning is crippled and receiving experimental European aborted fetus treatments to his neck. They also have Norvel Austin Turner as their head coach, who is my least favorite dude ever to have coached anything ever. I hate him so much I could fill a composition book with hate poetry in iambic pentagrammatical format about it all. They have started better than normal, but they will still crumble like usual. It is just how things must be - a fickle team for a fickle locality.
#3: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (4-1, 10th overall) - Jim Harbaugh is all on his, "Yall hate us and don't properly respect us" trip for this 49ers team, much like how Mike Singletary did it when he first came in. Let's be real here - the new NFL is home to much mediocrity and shady successes. San Francisco has not blazed a 4-1 path by destroying the upper echelon of the NFL, so they are not exactly a great team by any means. Are they good? Of course. Good teams should beat down mediocre competition, regularly and easily. Are they great? Probably not. But that doesn't mean they can't win the NFC West, since somebody has to win it. The 49ers being good means that perhaps we won't have a 7-9 division winner this year, which would be nice. But still, going from good to great takes a bit more than a funky new coach with spunky philosophies. It takes winning games in late January. That is foreign territory to this 21st century San Francisco team. It's what makes a team legit good, and not just like another Atlanta Falcons or whatever.
#4: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (2-3, 20th overall) - Oh man, the Seahawks don't even have real players and yet they are beating people. Why is this? Who knows? It's probably some sort of NFL Illuminati debt owed to Steve Jobs or Paul Allen, or some sort of shady bullshit. But it is happening. And as much as I hate the Seahawks, those lime green jerseys are the pimpest shit ever. If you're thinking of Christmas presents for me, one of those would be ideal. It's a shame Lofa Tatupu is not playing for them still, because that's the one I'd like. Who's good on that team now? That guy that stole the doughnuts maybe?
#5: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (2-3, 25th overall) - The Chiefs are blowing their Suck for Luck role by beating the other equally shitty teams they've been playing in recent weeks. You'd think Scott Pioli would know better. The Chiefs have had most of their best players all get injured and yet are still playing tough, which is a good sign for real football fans because we do not need the NFL slipping into NBA-style sucking for top draft pick territory, making mediocrity compounded by lack of effort into something shitty and un-football-like. For years, teams have been like, "It sucks to get the top pick because of all the guaranteed money you have to pay them, and then they might not be any good." And then they do a new deal this summer and now teams are like, "AWWW YEAH, WE GONNA SUCK FOR LUCK!" Fuck owners of things, they just ruin the things they own with their capitalistic desire to possess shit. The true energy of a football franchise or an acre of land or even the laborious efforts of a man can never be truly "owned" through monetary exchanges. Although there are studies being conducted now that your free will may actually be pre-determined by the neurological make-up of your brain, which means we don't have free will like we thought. Which means eventually your mind, which is supposed to be the one place that can't be infiltrated, if it's purely a physiological thing, will become public domain for the protection of the greater public. This means maybe you don't have free will and your mind is not a protected area of freedom. Why do I tell you all of this? Because I am a scientist, and see these things from inside the belly of the beast. I have walked dark hallways in underground facilities surrounding the Distric of Columbia where cages full of monkeys who are having things done to them are turned to face the wall because they creep me and the guy I'm working with up there out too much. And then we talk about Widespread Panic. "Send your mind" indeed.
#6: DENVER BRONCOS (1-4, 27th overall) - It is Tebow time, which is hilariously perfectly Colorado. Remember when people were like, "Arizona sucks because they hate Mexicans and are racist and didn't want to admit Martin Luther King Jr. built pyramids on the moon and shit, so fuck Arizona"? Well, Colorado is worse, but has a better PR department, plus money from ski resorts. But in case you don't know it, fuck Colorado. Tim Tebow is perfect for that place.
#7: ST. LOUIS RAMS (0-4, 29th overall) - I just saw a TV commercial for some sort of car that was like a Glee version of "Crazy Train" so I'm a little shook up right now and can't think straight. St. Louis Rams? Shiny and artificial turf like Ozzy songs in car commercials. Freaks me out, and I'm sure the evil spirit of Aleister Crowley is a little crooked over this as well. Doesn't corporate America know that I first smoked weed while listening to a copy of Blizzard of Ozz I stole/borrowed from my uncles? And fucking weed is all chemistry-laced and freaky nowadays too - just as corporate as anything else. That's why I was picking jimson weed by the railroad tracks. You have to keep it earth-bound in this fucking world where everybody thinks their wi-fi all day every day. Fuck you cyberbotted assholes.
#8: ARIZONA CARDINALS (1-4, 31st overall) - Kevin Kolb is like Kurt Warner, but without Christ. Somehow that makes me think better of Kurt Warner, which should really go to show you how fucking pathetic Kevin Kolb is. Nothing should ever make a man of my personal character ever think anything good about a fake ass, superficial, conservator of false Christ prophets like Kurt Warner. Fuck.

Al Davis Goes to Valhalla

"In football, I root for the Oakland Raiders because they hire castoffs, outlaws, malcontents, and fuck-ups, they have lots of penalties, fights, and paybacks, and because Al Davis told the rest of the pig NFL owners to go get fucked... Someday, the Raiders will be strong again, and they will dip the ball in shit and shove it down the throats of the wholesome, white, heartland teams that pray together and don't deliver late hits." -George Carlin

PROLOGUE

I have often thought of this day and what my reaction would be. There were even times where I hoped this day would come sooner rather than later. Now the day is upon us and I am not entirely sure how I should feel. Allen Davis, the maverick owner of the Oakland Raiders, has passed away at the age of 82. Death has a way of making a deity out of absolute assholes (see: Steve Jobs) and I have repeatedly used this blog to voice my displeasure against Al and the trail of bad decisions he has made over the last decade, so I will do my best to not turn this post into a wankfest for him. I will try to keep this even keeled, and to keep from becoming an Al Davis apologist.

ALLEN "AL" DAVIS

JULY 4th, 1929- OCTOBER 8th 2011

Al Davis is the reason the NFL is the money making machine it is today. Not "a reason". Not "a contributing factor". He is THE reason. When other owners were content to sit around and count their money, Al was on the field evaluating talent. When other owners were sitting on their yachts, Al was in the film room with his coaches. When other owners were willing to accept what the commissioner was going to give them, Al demanded more. He sued the NFL often. Sometimes he won. Other times he lost, but the fact that he had the balls to do it empowered other owners. Al's lawsuits were the first dominoes in the chain of events that lead to teams being able to slap the logo of the company of their choice on their jerseys, opening the flood gates for teams to sign with the apparel maker who offered them the most money instead of the one the NFL commanded them to. Every time Jerry Jones looks up at his one billion inch HD TV hanging from the roof of his monument to his tiny penis, he should give a nod to Al. Every time Dan Snyder signs a free agent to a laughable contract, he should pay his propers to Al, who was doing it before it was cool. Al's swashbuckling ways made being an NFL owner profitable. Profitability attracted billionaire prospective owners. And the league grew by leaps and bounds into the juggernaut that it is today.

Al Davis was a classic contrarian. When the NFL was a white faced, buttoned down operation, he was the first to hire Latino and black head coaches and draft black QBs. When NFL playbooks consisted mainly of power running plays, Al's teams threw the ball. When owners wanted their players to be squeeky clean Stepford Wives in pads, Al hired miscreants. All other NFL owners would have been terrified to see Eazy E, Ice Cube and Dre wearing their gear while rapping about murder and hoes. Al Davis actually PROVIDED THEM with hats and jackets. For decades this rebellious, counter culture intuition served the Raiders well, as they won 3 Super Bowls. Catchphrases like "Commitment to Excellence" and "Just Win, Baby" were thrown around. Things were great. Ultimately, Al lost his golden touch and things fell apart. The NFL had evolved, and despite being the impetus of that evolution, Al Davis was left behind. Al assumed his style of football would always win in the NFL. He was wrong. The days of man coverage and 4 man pass rush have come and gone, yet the Raiders still cling to it. To be a great receiver in the NFL you need to be big, physical and have great hands more than you need a good 40 time. The Raiders still only consult the stopwatch before drafting receivers. Al Davis did things his way and his way only, and when it blew up in his face the finger was always pointed at someone else. Marcus Allen. Mike Shannahan. The City of Oakland. The City of Los Angeles. Jon Gruden. Tom Cable. Lane Kiffin. Al Davis was never wrong, and those around him dared not say otherwise, lest they find themselves being shown the door. Al's final years were spent surrounded by spineless yes men who watched as he threw money at Javon Walker, drafted JaMarcus Russell and Darrius Heyward-Bey and hired Lane Kiffin and Tom Cable despite anyone with a functioning brain knowing these were all terrible ideas. Yet even while in the grips of senility, he was still capable of making great decisions and finding diamonds in the rough. When he traded a 1st round pick to the Pats for aging defensive end Richard Seymour, I was the first person to scream out in terror. Turns out that trading for Big Rich was exactly the jolt this team needed. When he drafted Jacoby Ford and Jared Veldheer, I rolled my eyes. Now, Ford and Veldheer are both integral pieces to the future of the Raiders. Denarius Moore on the surface was nothing more than a stopwatch pick. In reality, he's going to be a solid NFL receiver. This is what makes me so conflicted about the death of Al Davis. Even in the midst of insanity, he was still capable of brilliance. This isn't a blind squirrel finding a nut. Al had become that old TV with the rabbit ear antennas down in your basement. The picture has faded and most of the time you get static, but when the antennas were turned just right you ended up getting perfect reception and for a few moments it was just like old times.

There were times when I thought I'd treat the death of Al Davis as a holiday. I thought I'd sing and dance, like I did in the middle of a classy Malibu restaurant the day I received a text saying JaMarcus Russell was released. I thought I'd hug my children and tell them our Raiders were headed back to relevance. I thought it would be a reason to celebrate. I feel none of this. Yet I don't feel sadness, either. As someone who lost a sister at the age of 22 to cancer, I don't get misty over people who die after living long, fulfilling lives. That's a rule I live by. Yet it's not that, either. I do feel a tinge of sadness because at the end of the day the team I have rooted for since I was 4 is the very projection of Al Davis, and his contributions to football are countless. The Silver and Black was once feared and respected, and that was all Al's doing. But I also have a great deal of anger towards Al for taking that once feared team and piledriving it head first into the ground through his own arrogance and refusal to hand over the reigns. I suppose there's also a sense of relief that perhaps now the insanity is over. Maybe now there will be some back and forth dialogue between ownership and management. Perhaps now there will be more Darren McFadden's drafted and fewer DHB's.

When all is said and done, we Raider fans are forced to remember Al Davis for all that he was. Outsiders will probably only remember the barely coherent, disheveled old man who still used overhead projectors during press conferences and made bad decisions. Those of us who were there and saw it all know his legacy is more than that. He was a brilliant man who was fatally flawed. He was a bright shining light that eventually grew dim. He was a mad scientist hellbent on world domination who eventually became a feeble old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. He was the bold, swashbuckling pirate who gave way to the aged, arthritic old fart who pissed and shat his pants. You cannot cling to the achievements of young, brilliant Al Davis while dismissing the hardships the decisions of his later years brought upon the franchise. Likewise, you cannot point out the fossil in the all white jumpsuit while looking past the visionary with the shrewd eye for talent that won 3 Super Bowl rings. Al Davis was both of these men. They both existed at different eras of the same life.

After reading through this I suppose I am an Al Davis apologist after all. As much as I'd like to say his death is good for the franchise, I'm forced to accept the reality that his life was what made the franchise. With equal parts of respect, anger and awe I say goodbye to Al Davis. I will always respect you for building a winner. I will always be pissed at you for ruining that winner. I will always be in awe of you for being able to be the biggest presence in every room you walked into, no matter how old and decrepit you became. Your legacy is firmly written in the blood of your enemies, and the heads of your vanquished foes will forever line the walls surrounding Raider Nation, the country you built. Your "Commitment to Excellence" will live on, albeit without your input or meddling. Your eye for finding gems in the NFL scrapheap will be missed. Your insistence on being right when clearly you were not will not be missed. As the doors to Valhalla fling open, the horn shall sound to welcome the arrival of a Raider. Take your seat at the table of the Immortals, and feast on meat and mead with Tatum, Dalby, Alzado, Matuszak, Blanda and all the other warriors who preceded you in death. Rest in peace, Raider.

Sebastian Janikowski Appreciation Post

When Al Davis used the 17th overall pick of the 2000 NFL Draft on a fat Polish place kicker the first thing that went through my mind was how this must be a joke that involved a solar powered flashlight or a screen door on a submarine. I was soon proved wrong. Sebastian Janikowski was very real. He was horrible his rookie season, making only 68.6% of his field goal attempts. He put together 4 solid seasons after that only to have a 3 year stretch where he was awful to the tune of 66.7%, 72% and 71.9%. If this were literally any other place kicker on the face of the Earth you can rest assured that I would be the first man out rallying villagers and handing out torches to drive the Polish SCUD Missile out of Raider Nation. Yet I couldn't make myself do this. There is one very specific reason why I have stood by my pudgy ball launcher.

I am in love with Sebastian Janikowski.

Somewhere along the way I was able to look past the missed kicks and DUI arrests and games missed because of gout. I was able to work through the absolute blob that he has become and how he slowly stumbles after kick returners on the rare event that one of his kickoffs doesn't end up in a different zip code. I closed my eyes and opened the door and let Seabass date rape his way into my heart. And now, that love and faith is being paid off because Sebastian has gone from "Fat, gouty freak who I defend for no reason other than him being fat and gouty" to being one of the best kickers in the NFL. Every week when Seabass waddles out onto the field, everyone watching the game knows something magical is about to happen. Look no further than opening night in Denver when Janikowski tied Jason Elam and Tom Dempsey's all-time record by blasting a 63 yarder that would've been good from 65. The NFL did Seabass a solid by moving kickoffs up to the 35. The only time you're going to see a kickoff being returned against the Raiders is if Seabass allows it. Of his 17 kickoffs through the 1st 3 games, 4 of them have been returned, and 2 of those were on squib kicks. Oh, and he's now consistently in the 80% range when it comes to accuracy. Seabass is no longer one of Uncle Al's Oddities. He's a damned good kicker. Of course, he'll still get accused of false imprisonment and sexual misconduct from time to time, but that's just Seabass being Seabass. Shine on, you crazy Polock son of bitch!

NFL 2011: Week 3 - AFC North & West (1st Quarter)

At my riverside hiking spot by the abandoned freight trains, I found a patch of jimson weed, and like any good-natured spirit-walker, I've been chewing on datura seeds a lot lately, to get my mind attuned to the level of reality above the electrosmog cyber clutter of our new-spangled bullshit world. This has caused me to be tortured by visions of our not-so-distant future lately, which isn't entirely bad as I've written about five short stories this week in a genre I call Recession Apocalypse, but it also leaves me up at 5:00 am on a Saturday morning, freaking out over things that don't yet exist, and yet excited about the vast societal changes we'll all be seeing. For example, the future of the NFL. In these very clear visions I've been having, which can only mean they are more prophecy than dream, the NFL is the one sports league that really survives the financial decay the world continues to spiral through, though it happens in fairly bizarre fashion. The NFL of the not-so-distant future is larger - roughly 48 teams - but actually smaller, as only 16 teams stay in the actual NFL, comprised of two 8-team conferences. The other around-32 teams play in regional NFL divisions of six to ten teams, and it fluctuates, and teams fold and start up, and the desire is to move up to the main tier of the NFL. That main tier, they play home-and-aways with every conference rival, plus four games out against the other conference, and then two against second-tier teams. I remember in my visions being at a Redskins game in the second-tier playoffs, and I got the sense from the people I was surrounded by that making it back to the first tier was the most important thing, but the second-tier playoffs were generally considered the best, most exciting shit to watch every year. So I figured I'd share with you what I know the future of the franchises I'll be covering in this week's Illuminati index to be. I am cavorting through the AFC West and North this week, and trying to keep separate what's real and what's envisioned, so forgive me if the two cross over into each other...
#1: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (1-1, 10th overall) - The Chargers have one of the more fickle fanbases, and I can't really blame them. If I was in the sunshine with a bunch of hot bitches around all the time, I probably wouldn't care either. It is unfortunate there is such a military presence around that area though. The military is something you can appreciate for doing whatever the fuck it is they do, but you don't want them around you physically or else it compromises your quality of life. Anyone who tells you otherwise has been fed too much brainwashing musical MSG pop country music over the course of their life. The Chargers, however, as the world plummets in mainstream economy, start to market themselves to their Mexican fans, especially just across the border in Tijuana, and eventually are the favorite football team of various drug lords, who secretly pay star players slush funds to complement their official contracts to play for San Diego. They are also believed to be behind the disappearance of Phillip Rivers, whose body never was found.
#2: BALTIMORE RAVENS (1-1, 14th overall) - The Ravens, in my future visions, are still a first-tier team, but not one of those solid "always going to be first-tier" teams like the Steelers or Cowboys. I mean, realistically, the Ravens have a very short history, being their Browns back catalog was usurped from them via legal means, and they have won one Super Bowl in that short time. But you cannot deny that when you look at the Ravens, they feel like an upstart that has yet to prove themselves, even as they are widely considered a Super Bowl contender right now. Sure they punked the Steelers in week one, but then they lost to the Titans, who were supposed to be mediocre at best. That is not the week-to-week swoon of a dynastic franchise, now is it? And something is not quite right about Joe Flacco. He has a strange look in his eye, which is not Gunslinger Eyes, but some sort of Delaware-based interbreeding retardation factor. I fear that will ultimately hold this team back, not matter how scary Ray Lewis and Ed Reed make it in the locker room for anybody who doesn't make them win. (By the way, Ray Lewis's pre-game dance is still the stupidest thing ever, and makes me embarrassed for Ray Lewis, since he doesn't seem capable of being embarrassed for himself.)
#3: OAKLAND RAIDERS (1-1, 15th overall) - The Raiders, in my futuristic visions, end up willingly moving to the second-tier, because Al Davis - who is still alive like 30 years in the future - thinks the NFL multi-tier system is complete bullshit, and hates the owners who make up the main cartel of the top-tier. Of course, Raiders fans are the most appropriate fanbase for a soccer-like regionally-based rivalries and influxes of riotous revelers from visiting teams. In fact, there becomes a group of degenerate vagabonds known as Raiders Nomads who travel with the team to games, making the Raiders one of the largest draws as an opponent, but with dangerous side effects. In one of my visions, Salt Lake City - which had a second-tier team at that point - was partially destroyed by riots brought into town by Raiders fans, as Oakland Raiders/Utah Leaders was considered a natural philosophical war by Raiders Nomads, who took it upon themselves to burn the town since it had little alcohol and pillage it of buxom young purish women, who would eventually be systematically broken of their prudish values.
#4: PITTSBURGH STEELERS (1-1, 17th overall) - The Steelers will always be a first level franchise, especially since 30 years from now it will be revealed that through genetic research at Carnegie-Mellon University in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, the Rooney family had cloned their patriarchal original Art Rooney, and raised him in a completely sheltered private school/football-centric world, creating a Liberal-Minded Football Hitler, so to speak, who continues to lead the team for another generation, which a couple more little Art Rooney clones are raised in a group of three to replace him, so as to compensate for the fact that one, through environmental conditions, will end up being slightly superior to the other Art Rooneys v3.0s, thus further solidifying the team's well-being.
#5: CINCINNATI BENGALS (1-1, 22nd overall) - Obviously, my visions were spotty, but I do remember on four instances reading newspaper agate results of NFL games from the previous weekend, and the Bengals never showed up, so I guess they don't exist in the future. They hardly exist now. Only the Bengals could somehow be happy with the fact a great proven QB like Carson Palmer is being frozen out and some rookie hype job like Andy Dalton has performed better than expected as a rookie starter. The Bengals fanbase is the most demoralized group of football fans that could possibly exist. Prostitutes and porn starlets laugh at Bengals fans' self-esteem levels.
#6: DENVER BRONCOS (1-1, 26th overall) - Probably the most shocking tidbit from my future NFL visions was where in the future Colorado becomes this totally racist state, using rising violent crime trends to pretty much banish blacks and Hispanics from the state. John Elway ends up being owner of the Broncos, and institutes a whites only rule for players. When the NFL attempts to force him to not do such a thing, he legally sues the NFL to force every NFL team to have at least one white WR, one white RB, and one white defensive back, claiming it is the same as the Rooney rule for interviewing coaches. Somehow, he wins, and for about four years, every team has to have one white dude (legal standards are eventually set at 67% white, to stop the ginger trend some teams were using to satisfy the rule) at all three of those skill positions, in what ends up being known as the Jason Sehorn rule. Because of this though, the Broncos sort of suck, although they do develop the most brutal running game seen in the NFL since the early '70s, under offensive coordinator Peyton Hillis. Also Bill Romanowski was their head coach, which was pretty awesome. I mean, all the racist stuff is bad, but just getting to hear Romanowski ramble on and on about Romanowski things as the head coach of an NFL team, that was pretty entertaining.
#7: CLEVELAND BROWNS (1-1, 27th overall) - In the future, Cleveland was sold for scrap to Canada, so the Browns moved to Montreal and became the Bleus. This year's Browns team was supposed to be taking a step towards being better, but after two weeks it is a little too obvious that this is still a fairly shitty team. Colt McCoy's brief shining star looks to be just another Chris Simms-style piece of shit from Texas, and although Peyton Hillis will keep the drunken racists of northwest Ohio properly consuming alcohol and bratwursts on weekends throughout the fall, he is no credible threat to build an offense around. Again, as I always do when I write about the Browns, I feel sorry for Joshua Cribbs. In a more forward-thinking NFL, he could be a QB/RB/WR hybrid to build a new-fangled offensive machine around, but instead he gets forced to just do kickoff and punt returns, to give him touches, and get concussed into early dementia and out of the league without ever really getting a shot to earn whiteboy money like a traditional starting QB.
#8: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (0-2, 32nd overall) - The Chiefs are a joke, as are every Bill Belichick coaching tree coordinator who goes on to coach his own team. You know why this is? It's a behind the scenes Illuminati battle for power between Belichick and the Bill Walsh cartel. The Walsh cartel still holds immense power, and though they tried to placate Belichick's movement by allowing an Eagles loss to the Patriots in the Super Bowl a few years back (Andy Reid is one of Bill Walsh's main purveyors at this point), Belichick is a greedy motherfucker and through controlling the motivations of marketing machine Tom Brady (notice how Tom does very few endorsements? the NFL hates that), he's trying to strong-arm his way into a bigger role, and get the Patriots to at least a fourth Lombardi Trophy. The NFL will never allow a fifth one though, at least not under Belichick, because the five that the Bill Walsh system got in San Francisco is the high watermark for a reason. Even the Steelers, who have six, only got four under Chuck Knoll, then had to wait two decades for a return. The problem is there's not credible Walsh disciple to hand over power to at this point, as Andy Reid is a fat fuck loser, and Denny Green has had too many high-profile failures, though Green was always the hope to get it. Brian Billick at one point was being groomed for the position, but overheard these plans and became too full of himself, thus is blacklisted from coaching again. How this all relates to the Chiefs? They made the playoffs last year with a Belichick-fueled coach, GM, and QB, but the NFL can use HAARP beams to injure any player it wants at any point. Usually ACL and MCL tears can be pinpointed and caused to happen with EMF guns that look like digital cameras from luxury boxes, and the NFL has systematically obliterated the Chiefs roster to make them an impotent shit storm this year, not only to demean the Belichick coaching tree further, but also to put the Chiefs on the spot for the first pick in next year's draft, because Andrew Luck was kept back at Stanford for another year by the Walsh NFL Illuminati machine to get further grooming to be the figurehead warrior to battle Tom Brady. Did you notice that it was always Manning vs. Brady as best QB, but now Manning has conveniently been sidelined - perhaps permanently - by a mysterious neck problem? And Andrew Luck will storm into the league next year and become Tom Brady's immediate nemesis in a couple of years, in order for the Walsh group to publicly wrest control back from the Belichick group as Tom Brady falls victim to age, and maintain their iron West Coast grip on the NFL's behind-the-scenes controlling power.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #4: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS

PERTINENT DATA: 9-7 last year; 11 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): The Chargers are a weird team. They always seem like they should be a lot better than they are. Well, actually it’s not really that weird when you consider that Norv Turner is the coach of this team. How does that dude still have a job? Consider this: last season the Chargers finished first in the NFL in total offense. They also finished first in the NFL in total defense. Think about that for a minute. That means that they gained more yardage than any other team in the league last year – more than the Packers, more than Michael Vick and the Eagles, more than Tom Brady’s Patriots, more than Peyton Manning’s Colts, more than that ghost team led by Red Grange that mysteriously appeared in late November and ran wild over everyone until the Ghostbusters showed up and killed them and caused all of New York City to be covered in Marshmallow goo (Wait, that was just Marshmallow goo . . . right?) The Chargers were better offensively than all of them. Everybody. There was not a football team in the world that moved the ball more than the Chargers last season. That’s impressive enough on its own. Then when you consider that they gave up less yardage than anyone else – less than the Steelers, less than the Packers or the Ravens or anyone else, real or imagined by my diseased brain – that shit becomes damn near remarkable. That’s a well-oiled machine right there, right? Yeah, about that . . . that no doubt 14-2 team went 9-7 and missed the playoffs. 9-7! And missed the playoffs! How in the fuck does that even happen? Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner Norv Turner, Norv Tuner, Norv Turner.
That’s how that shit happens. So yeah, the best case scenario for the Chargers is what it always is: Norv Turner finds all his shit in a box outside his office just before the season starts or he falls down a manhole or is carried away and sold into prostitution by Tijuana drug lords or he’s eaten by wolves or angry Chargers fans. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. As long as he’s not the Chargers head coach. That’s their best case scenario.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Norv Turner doesn't die and coaches the Chargers all season long, especially in the playoffs.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Neil): I am torn between Antonio Gates and Bob Sanders, and I am torn for stupid reasons. The truth is that I don’t really know that much about either dude personally. Shit, for all I know, Antonio Gates could have hooker parts buried in his backyard and Bob Sanders might spend all his downtime flashing old ladies on the street and strangling stray dogs because it gives him an erection. I don’t know. What I do know is that Antonio Gates started off as a middling basketball player and then stumbled ass backwards into a Hall of Fame career as an NFL tight end. That is some American dream shit right there, vaguely dumb and undeserved, but what the hell, he got his and good for him. Some will say you should hate him because he stole a job from dudes who had been training since birth to be NFL players but, really, fuck those dudes and their stupid dreams. The world is a brutal and cruel place, unfair and without mercy or reason and Antonio Gates managed to win and I can’t hate on a man for that. That may sound cynical as hell, but just remember that I am optimist at heart and that’s what makes my optimism so compelling. I think the world is everything I just said but I still believe in a thing called love and in the power of hope and, what the hell, that probably just makes me a damn fool, but the world needs more damn fools who smile at the abyss and think despite their own savage reason that they can jump that fucking thing and it needs more dudes getting by like Antonio Gates despite the rules and crazy orders of this fucked up world. He gives hope to a freak like me. His path to salvation was strange and unnatural, but fuck normal and natural. I don’t even know what I’m rambling on about. Fuck it. This thing is a disaster but who cares?
Meanwhile, Bob Sanders is a little dude who will end up retarded and drinking his meals through a straw and getting his ass wiped by a nurse by the time he’s 40 and I can respect a man like that. There is something about him that is vaguely loathsome and annoying, but I am in a weird mood right now. I don’t know what’s happening. I both hate and love everything at the same time. I want to hug my enemies and gnaw on the bones of my friends. I want to shake hands with a snake and punch Mother Theresa right in her whore mouth. What am I even saying? I don’t know. I think I might be in the midst of a psychotic break but I can’t be sure. I’m going to stick myself with needles for a few hours and hang out in the woods speaking with the spirits of the ancient Indian warriors who used to roam these lands. I’ll be back later. Don’t go away.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Raven): Unfortunately, with Shawne Merriman gone, there's no over the top obvious dumbass to hate upon, so you have to go for the less obvious, namely Phillip Rivers, who somehow continues to get the PR that he is an upper echelon QB. I guess he might be, but I actually know of three different people that have interacted with that guy in real life, him being a college boy from N.C. State, and Piedmont Carolina/Virginia being my main stomping grounds, and all three of them pretty much were like, "That guy is like the worst fucker ever. What a dick. Fuck him." So he and Norv Turner go well together. In comparison, Jim Kelly, who is not really on my list of favorites or anything, I know a dude that did valet parking or something and Jim Kelly pulled up one time, and the guy took the keys and Jim Kelly was like, "Your tip's in the ash tray buddy, sorry, I gotta roll," and when my friend got in the car, there was a big ol' fat joint for my boy. Now that's classy. Fuck you Phillip Rivers.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Scott Mruczkowski, because I will always give daps to big ugly white dudes with the "cz" consonant combo in their last name, in honor of the ever-living warrior viking spirit of Justin Strzelczyk.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): Okay, I’m back. I ended up waking up in the sand dunes, covered in beach grass, and I’m pretty sure that I was taken by a vengeful Potawatomi warrior spirit, angry because I have stolen his lands, and that he was trying to build some sort of pyre and then he and his friends were going to burn me alive. Horrible, horrible . . . but that is the risk you take when you commune with the ancients. I’m back home now and I feel better. Frightened, but better. I am more sure of my own sense of morality, my own sense of right and wrong and I have decided that no one on the Chargers is especially worthy of your love or affection. I have spoken. But, wait, we’re past that part in the preview, aren’t we? This is the In a Perfect World Section and so I guess I should tell you that in a perfect world Norv Turner would be chased out of San Diego by furious Chargers fans and then he would be forced to move into the guest house of his old boss, Jimmy Johnson and then he’d come home one night to find Jimmy fucking his wife in the pool and then they’d get in a fight but because Norv is such an ineffectual toad, Jimmy would just laugh at him and Norv would be kicked out and forced to wander the streets and try to comprehend how he came to such desperate straits, and he would live out his days sobbing in a shitty motel room, paying a raggedy old hooker to burn him with cigarettes because at least pain is a feeling and it reminds him of his own tragic failures both as a man and a football coach and deep down, Norv understand, only all too well, that it’s important to never forget the truth.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): The AFC West is terrible, so 13-3 and home court advantage for the Chargers is gonna happen, which will make their divisional round playoff loss even more funny, as all those fucking SAN DIEGO! SUPERCHARGERS! fans will have two weeks to hype themselves into a frenzy that this year is finally the year. Chargers fans are kinda easy to hate for some reason. They are NFL fan bottom feeders.