NFL 2012 Week 5: NFC North & West (1st Quarter)

I failed to update the NFLuminati Index last weekend when it was the turn of the NFC South and East, and have flailed this week with the NFC North and West, as two of the stupid Westeros teams have already played in some sort of abomination against “professional” football played on an amateur night upon amateur elitist networks not available to the common man who culls his television signals from the sky with divining rods. Fuck you NFL.


I doubt anyone noticed the absence of my posting the lists, as this blog is sometimes mistaken for a Detroit Lions blog, which partially is due to the wonderful work of Neil, who does the Lord’s work there is no denying. I sometimes dream we will be this generation’s HST/Zeta, but also I know that is stupid because we will be this generations me and Neil. Oddly enough I had a memory the other day that when I was in high school I did this weird comic thing called Birdman & Neil, which was a bearded hippie viking dude called Birdman and a stickman named Neil – and they did battle with evil police lieutenants and the first President Bush, all in the name of being high and free. I sort of realized that comic was prophecy apparently, and while that makes me happy, I also wish I had prophesied vast wealth as well, although wealth is a trick of the devil. You may have noticed the weird World Series of Poker post this week. Some shady fake robot emailed me asking if they could make a guest post for $200. I of course said yes. After harassing, they finally paid me, and then my wife was like, “Our electric bill is at cut off two days ago,” and I used the money to literally pay my electricity bill. We live in a culture where the oils of dead animals from ancient ages turn lights on inside my house magically. Isn’t that crazy? Anyways, I did not split the money with Neil like I had planned. So I worked a larger hustle with the robot scam casino demonoid thing, and did a second post at Armchair Linebacker’s brother site called Baseball Feelings, to hopefully get more money, and then be square with Neil, in my soul. I know he would not give a fuck, or he would at least claim to not give a fuck, but I felt wrong in my soul. And of course, after multiple harassings, I have not received my second payment from the robot PR department for some sketchy online poker casino.

The point here is my soul is one thing and money is another. My soul has trouble navigating money, as money is still an abstraction to me. I am too deeply powered by ancient molecules that do not recognize your modern “civilized” abstractions. It can’t be helped. But this line of introspective thinking by my white quartz rock viking altar in the fields behind my compound made me realize that’s what’s missing with the NFL in me now, and why I can move away from it. There is no soul left. Even in the past decades, the soul was low, and the money abstraction was a powerful prism for the entire industry to be seen. But there was still soul. It really seems Roger Goodell has killed it, choked the last little bit of life out of it. I guess it is time to start putting my energies to outlaw goat football even more strongly. I don’t know.

But nonetheless, I figured I would come here this morning and share the NFLuminati rankings, which were done before last night’s game, for this upcoming weekend of NFL foozballs. Not that you’d care, because I hardly mention the Lions and not until the end. If you are an asshole Lions clinger-on, let me be clear – your team is fucked. You may cling to the false hopes of your euphoric dreams of the past two years, but you are clutching lovingly at a dying whore, choking on a turkey bone lodged deeply in her throat. But we will get to that later. Let us start at the top…

#1: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (3-1, 2nd overall) – The 49ers are the defense on my lone fantasty team, and last weekend they scored me 40 points, ultimately winning my game for me. This is why fantasies are stupid, because they make you fall in love with things you should hate. The 49ers are a vile franchise, and this feel-goody aspect to them makes me uncomfortable. So I wish ill upon them all.

#2: ARIZONA CARDINALS (4-0, 3rd overall) – As you can see from my NFLuminati index score, they were still ranked only 3rd, and below the 49ers still. So them losing last night was not as shocking to me as it was to all the assholes being like, “CAN YOU BELIEVE THE CARDINALS ARE THE BEST TEAM IN FOOTBALL? THIS IS AMAZING!” No, it’s not. It’s the new NFL where dumb unexplainable and ultimately unmaintainable bullshit happens regularly. Talk to me in week 15, but even then what you think won’t matter. See Green Bay Packers 2011.

#3: CHICAGO BEARS (3-1, 7th overall) – Did you know Jay Cutler gets his powers from smoking cigarettes? Not normal cigs but organic tobacco grown by Sioux Indian shaman in secret fields buried underneath of Mount Rushmore, where the sunlight enters through the nostrils of white overlords of America. Jay Cutler looks smug, but he is tapped into some really dark native American black magic. This is going to make the Bears fairly amazing at times this year, but not completely, as Brian Urlacher is a cocksucker state trooper wannabe from New Mexico who is uncomfortable with magic shit, and really hates Indians to boot. This year’s Bears team is basically Urlacher and Cutler wrestling psychically for the soul of Julius Peppers, to see who controls the team’s destiny. The problem is mostly all Julius Peppers cares about is getting high and having sex with fat asses. A man certainly can’t be faulted for that, but it gets in the way of psychic destinies every time.

#4: MINNESOTA VIKINGS (3-1, 12th overall) – I still think the rise of the Vikings is a manipulated psychosocial trick to make the name “Christian Ponder” more prominent in time for the Presidential election. Problem is, Mitch Romney is not really a Christian, but a Mormon. Look, I don’t want to get all political, because I honestly could give a fuck if both those dudes’ planes fell out the sky today, but I would rather have a Black Muslim President than a White Mormon President. Sadly, there are no black Muslims running for President, only a mulatto demon puppet and a capital investment cyborg. Who do you hope controls the lifeless predator drones that kill the innocents of faraway lands? Choose wisely, because one day a faraway land will fly ninja assassin robots over America, and these days will not be forgotten.

#5: GREEN BAY PACKERS (2-2, 14th overall) – Once I found out Aaron Rodgers was a Boyz II Men fan, he actually passed Tom Brady on my list of least liked QBs, only behind Peyton Manning at this point. But honestly, if Peyton was wearing the orange alternate jersey of the Broncos in a game against the Packers, I’d probably like him even better than Rodgers. I can’t emphasize how terrible that is for Rodgers. I hate Peyton Manning.

#6: ST. LOUIS RAMS (2-2, 17th overall) – The Rams have already won this week so this record is not entirely true, except I just put it on the internet so now it is true.

#7: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (2-2, 19th overall) – They have the worst uniforms ever now. In fact, those new Nike collars on the jerseys are horrible, horrible things. Have you noticed? Also fuck Nike for giving Oregon 17,000 uniform combinations, making that seem cool, and then every other college is like, “Hey, we should do the same!” but then they have to pay for it. Colleges who win 7 games a year if they are lucky spend more money on embroidering names on the backs of 12 different types of jerseys each fall than I make in a year. You may say, “Well Raven Mack, perhaps you should have chosen your career path more wisely.” But I say to you, I did choose wisely, and the path has not yet unfolded, and don’t come crying to me in the comments section when my menageries of wild corvids are pecking the thoughts from your brains once the wifi power grids have failed you.

#8: DETROIT LIONS (1-3, 26th overall) – I was hoping to build up to mocking you Lions fans in a mean-spirited way here at the end, but I can’t do it. I feel bad for you. You bought it. The NFL demon lords gave you brief hope, just to keep you strung along, after shaming you with the embarrassment of 0-16. And here you are, thinking “We can turn it around! Great things have been built!” And yet the truth is there. Matthew Stafford is no better than 14 other mid-level QBs in the NFL, who can be awesome one week, and then horrible the next, and mostly mediocre the following three. And without a single viable option around him, for as great as he is, Calvin Johnson is impotent, not even as great as Barry Sanders, as he can’t touch the ball as often as Sanders did. Megatron could be Randy Moss famous as a great WR, but instead he will be Larry Fitzgerald anonymous, and then fifteen years from now he’ll get into the Hall of Fame on his third try, and we’ll remember him well. Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he is Art Monked and lives into his 50s before getting to wear that gaudy yellow jacket. Who the fuck knows? I know this though – your Lions are doomed, by the league, and you were played for fools. And I feel sorry for you, because I know that game, and have been played for a fool for many years myself. I know how stupid you feel, even if you’re still not ready to admit it.

NFL 2012 Week 3: AFC North & East (1st Quarter)

We are two weeks into this NFL season, halfway through our first quarter, and the most obvious thing thus far is replacement referees are severely altering the game. There is a lack of confidence evident with them that is making games disruptive at times, and rarely as smoothly flowing as the ever-corporate-minded NFL would like to see, I am sure. And though the term “player safety” has become the NFL’s race card, so to speak, and is thrown out by anyone looking to force their point, there is less worry over player safety with these refs than there is miscreants along the edges of the NFL’s rosters who abuse these unconfident refs to create anarchy on the field. But as I am an anarchist, I support this. Ideally, we need less refs on the field, with more above, and when there were personal fouls, the player had to leave the field for one play, like in hockey. Fuck referees, and fuck the law.
But this is not a world of the lawless, not yet at least, and this is certainly not a league of the unlawful, especially under the iron reign of Herr Goodell. And though our western civilization is in rapid decline, our arctic ice caps in rapid melt, and our human culture in rapid regression, the NFL is successful in this civilization-model, and will hold its course until the bloody end. This means cleaner uniforms and more affordable referees. Player safety has less to do with it than player investment. Being forced by legalities to financially support post-career medical expenses would be a bad hit on the per-player investment by the league, so they will do what they have to do to clear themselves of as much future health care coverage and personal injury liability as they can. And they will continue to expand their schedule until every game is at its own time on a different channel, so that you could conceivably watch every minute of every game, because I am sure there are people who would try to do that, and live blog about it, and think anybody cared. What a ridiculous fucking world we live in. And what an unsettled season thus far, as the real stories have yet to establish themselves, outside of the apparent greatness of the 49ers. But it is far too early to be peaking at an apex, and with free agency and injuries and all the weird bullshit the NFL adds to their team-building algorithms now, no real story may emerge, as the NFL continues its descent to NBA status, where teams can pop up or down with suddenness, and become contenders with the addition of a single star. What a fucking joke.
Of note though is how the AFC has been traditionally been considered the stronger conference over the past decade or so. My first cycle through the divisions, I split it into two geographically connected divisions of the same conference, picking first the ones with the lowest combined records. Last week, that was the AFC. Every year I’ve done this, it would bounce between AFC and NFC in this part of the cycle, but actually, even after shaving off the lower half of the AFC, the other two divisions have a lower combined record than any pairing of geographically connected NFC teams. What this means is, to this point at least, the NFC is kicking the AFC’s ass in inter-conference games. We are in a time of transition it appears, and whereas we talked of Patriots and Steelers and Ravens before, perhaps we shift to Packers and 49ers and Giants now. But even that seems weird. Are there really any good strong teams left? Have we all been castrated into sporting eunuchs, who buy a new shiny dildo to strap onto ourselves and proclaim “I AM THE MOST VIRILE OF MEN!” until it breaks apart, only to hope to have the money to luck out on another phallus afterwards? That’s essentially what the NFL has become. Nonetheless, here is our first quarter of the season stroll through the AFC East and North, the home of the highly-regarded Patriots and Steelers and Ravens, as well as others…

#1: PITTSBURGH STEELERS (1-1, 11th overall) – Last week: beat Jets, 27-10. This week: at Raiders (0-2). Even though the Steelers were forced to help pretend Peyton Manning in a Broncos uniform is worth white people shelling out $180 for an “authentic” jersey that first week in the Sunday night primetime engineered showdown, when allowed to actually play free-form football, they will still dominate. This is exactly what they did against the Jets. The thing I find troublesome for Steelers fans and Steelers futures – and most of this week’s perspective is going to be coming from the straight psychic perspective, which is oft-times engineered by the NFL powers that be – is that there is consensus talking head dislike of Roethlisberger. They tried to assassinate his character after the bathroom drunk sex thing (rightfully so), but this was also a guy who wrecked a motorcycle without a helmet on, and is just plain old throwback mentality where lack of helmets on motorcycles and drunk sex with weakly resisting women is a normal Tuesday night. He regained the league’s graces briefly, but seems to be in the psychic doghouse again. I can only assume this is part of a move further away from that throwback style, where a QB will hold a ball and get hit and make ugly plays. The NFL wants pretty plays, it wants football-style slam dunks, not ugly displays of brutal football.
And yet, the Steelers remain relevant, and a model for others to emulate. I feel at some point will see, perhaps in the Super Bowl but perhaps just in regular season games, Ben Roethlisberger and this Steelers team fighting for the soul of football, in honor of the old Gods, as the shiny, clean new Gods try to take over, through lawyer ball tactics. It is because of that I still like Big Ben. He may be a degenerate piece of shit, but I would rather be surrounded by degenerate pieces of shit than corporate-minded lawyer ballers.

#2: BALTIMORE RAVENS (1-1, 12th overall) – Last week: lost to Eagles, 23-24. This week: hosting Patriots (1-1). I cannot really even think of the Ravens without thinking about how much I despise Ray Lewis. I hate that stupid dance, and I hate his stupid mongoloid jawline. But then I think of how much I love Ed Reed, and his sweet gentle doe eyes, yet hard face. Perhaps Ray Lewis’s change from fur coat wearing stabbing eyewitness to elder voice of the NFL was not simply a matter of self-realization, but actually the positive effects of having a solid bro like Ed Reed around.
The fact I am named Raven and cannot do a google search for anything that might be of interest in relation to my birth name without some crappy Ravens merchandise showing up only adds to my hatred of this team. And yet there is Ed Reed, playing ballhawk like no one else. He is a magical player, a spirit warrior of the first order. Perhaps he could teach me to love these awkward Ravens, and overcome my hatred of them, their uniforms, their retard fratboy QB, and to be honest, my dislike of the entire state of Maryland (except for the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore). Perhaps Ed Reed could teach me to tolerate. Perhaps…

#3: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (1-1, 15th overall) – Last week: lost to Cardinals, 18-20. This week: at Ravens (1-1). It was simply a missed field goal causing them to lose a game, on the surface, but on a psychic level, that was devastating. You are talking the ultimate franchise of the past 15 years, with our generation’s Joe Montana, losing to an NFC West team. The NFC West is psychically regarded as the league’s bottom rung. And there is also the cross-country road game travel factor long-known to be hard to overcome. And yet the Cardinals won. What does it mean? Well, two things. It means the Patriots are being set up to be challenged for supremacy. Secondly, it was a way to make the NFC West gain psychic power. Who is currently the top team in that division? The 49ers, who have also been psychically rubbed golden simultaneous to this Patriots loss. And it could be said that was the ultimate franchise before the Patriots, unless you recognize the ‘90s Cowboys to be one in between those two dynasties. But what this loss meant was we are seeing the slow build to a 49ers beheading of the New England Patriots. Mark my words. It will be interested to see where the league points this Ravens/Patriots game this weekend too, as the loser will be at 1-2, and pushed into the public doghouse.

#4: CINCINNATI BENGALS (1-1, 17th overall) – Last week: beat Brown, 34-27. This week: at Redskins (1-1). The Bengals have relegated themselves to an afterthought again. This week’s game at the Redskins will be a showcase for the NFL’s most poorly-owned franchises. No one will care except for two delusional fan bases who would love nothing more than to pretend they are not what they always obviously are. And I say that to you as a Redskins fan.

#5: MIAMI DOLPHINS (1-1, 19th overall) – Last week: beat Raiders, 35-13. This week: hosting Jets (1-1). Hard to believe the Dolphins were once an NFL glory team under Don Shula, as they have struggled in mediocrity for a long time now. Ryan Tannehill seems to me to be the latest false Marino prophet paraded in those lustrous white uniforms, but yet the NFL is a haggard beast at this point, where mediocrity is sometimes rewarded with default success. The thing I don’t understand is Reggie Bush exploding for a bunch of rushing yards. That doesn’t make logic. Perhaps swearing off Armenian vagina perfumed with celebrity and embracing this Christian God he seems to speak so fervently of lately has benefitted him on the gridiron. Miami seems a strange place to find salvation, but I guess it is when we are surrounded by darkness, we most easily can identify the light.

#6: NEW YORK JETS (1-1, 20th overall) – Last week: lost to Steelers, 10-27. This week: at Dolphins (1-1). Seeing the Jets fail is such a fun thing to watch happen. There is a decent likelihood they get beaten in Miami this weekend, and then the “Tebow! Tebow!” cult will start to grow even in Godless New York metropolitan area. Ultimately, I feel like the whole New York Jets thing is all part of a larger conspiracy to have Tebow cast out of New York City so that the United Nations can be burned by zealots around the same time Zionist-funded farms in Alabama are successful at finally breeding a flawless red heifer, to usher in the rebuilding of the Temple of the Mount. But with that in mind, south Florida is nearly as Godless as NYC area, and a common retirement zone for again NYC area old bastards and bitties, so it would not be surprising to see Sanchez light up the field one more time, like he did the first week, and allow Tebow to stay on ice. Doesn’t really make sense to have a huge prominent Christian athlete discussion this close to Election Day and this far away from Christmas shopping economic tithe season either. They’ll milk Sanchez until late October/early November, for sure. Then just in time for the economic frenzy that is shopping for a bunch of useless shit in honor of the mythical Christ baby, BAM! TEBOW TIME!

#7: BUFFALO BILLS (1-1, 24th overall) – Last week: beat Chiefs, 35-17. This week: at Browns (0-2). You know what, I don’t even want to think about the fucking Bills. Fred Jackson was going to be my big RB in a 20-team fantasy league, and now he’s fucking gimped out and probably lost his starting job to C.J. Spiller. I’ve always loved C.J. Spiller, but I can’t even enjoy it I’m so mad at the stupid Bills, who always fuck things up, even in good ways. Quick – somebody share pictures of Ryan Fitzpatrick looking like an educated viking. Or pics of thuggish dudes in O.J. Simpson throwbacks. I always love seeing that.

#8: CLEVELAND BROWNS (0-2, 28th overall) – Last week: lost to Bengals, 27-34. This week: hosting Bills (1-1). I think most folks expected the Browns to be 0-2, but they’ve played shockingly well both weeks, at least up to just not quite at the level of their competition. They have their most mediocre foe yet this week, so perhaps the Holmgren experiment starts to pay tiny, crappy dividends, which is what enables him to grow mustache hairs. He is some sort of magical being descended from walrus centaurs from my understanding.

ACLB BIG STORIES OF THE DAY

[I am going to do a new thing where I recap the Big 3 Stories of the day, as Neil and myself have shucked ourselves down to the mental cob, and have decided we will write about everything NFL related this year. Of course we will probably bitch and moan and jibber jabber deliriously about the Lions and Redskins, but fuck man, that’s a lot of stupid fuckers writing NFL bullshit inside these interwebs, and me and Neil should just be doing it all. Seriously. Fuck all these weak ass pussy writers.]

BIG STORY #1: SEAN PAYTON’S 2012 SACRIFICED TO ROGER GOODELL’S GODS OF LAW
Don’t get it twisted and think this is too much or too little or overblown or simply about the changing of NFL culture. Because it’s not. I would guarantee you that last season, out of 32 teams, there were 32 locker rooms with some sort of “bounty” system, albeit less organized than what Gregg Williams did. But it’s not like Gregg Williams dreamed that shit up in a cocaine-fueled frenzy somewhere along the Baja Peninsula. Headhunting is part and parcel of the NFL. Unfortunately, so are crippled motherfuckers after they’re playing days are over. And the crippled motherfuckers have started to band together in little pockets, and get lawyers, and the possibility of a class-action lawsuit would have become more and more real the more dudes killed themselves or had dementia or displayed very textbook post traumatic brain injury tendencies. Thus, the NFL was going to be super-militant, so that when these questions come up in the future, in a court room, Roger Goodell can say, “As soon as we knew what was scientifically happening, we had a zero tolerance policy. Our hands are clean.” There will be other perfectly innocent men according to historical NFL standards who will be sacrificed at the hands of this legal maneuvering. But the NFL will not get crushed with liability for every player ever. They’re playing lawyerball, as Hank Hill would say.

BIG STORY #2: TIM TEBOW GOES TO THE JETS (BUT MAYBE NOT)
Hearing about Tebow going to the Jets made me lololol in my brain all afternoon. Here you have the goldenboy Jesusback, going to play with a fat dude with a foot fetish. How would Tebow be able to let his retarded kid charity people stand sideline when Rex is over there cussing left and right and masturbating to old Leg Shows during booth review instant replays? Still though, I thought a Mark Sanchez/Tim Tebow reality TV show, where they shared an apartment, would’ve probably been the only reality show I’d ever want to watch.
But now Tebow is pulling his God card, and had always wanted to go to Florida, where he grew up and played college ball and lived amongst a bunch of right-wing God-believing simpletons in the past. New Jersey is like New Babylon to those people, a purgatory of funny-talking unbelievers. Laron Landry going there made perfect sense, as now he can fully embrace his muscle worship bisexual tendencies. I personally have no problem with that, but I think Tim Tebow would not be down with teammates have R&B workout sex in the showers and Mark Sanchez sneaking his normal three-pack of 16-year-old girls and case of Michelob Ultra into the QB video room. Tebow to Miami makes sense because really they’re one of the last teams left without a chair during this QB musical chairs thing that’s going on. But Tebow to Jacksonville makes even more sense because it means Tebow can still play in the NFL, and be relevant and win a game here and there and be like, “All praise to God, the Christ one not the brown one or freaky Asian one or anything else.” But none of the rest of us will ever have to see it. Still though, Tebow in the greater NYC Sodom & Gomorrah would be my personal preference, especially if he somehow still won and turned the place into a wholesome area. Then I wouldn’t have to cut west through Pennsylvania when going to New England.

BIG STORY #3: RGIII PRO WORKOUT DAY
Half of the Redskins management team went to Waco to be there, because they are leaking semen all over their burgundy and gold boxer-briefs in anticipation of bringing Robert Griffin III to D.C. So of course it makes sense the Colts went to RGIII’s Pro Day too, to confuse the Andrew Luck is natural #1 pick, at least enough to bother me. I do not think Andrew Luck’s spirit warrior nature is strong enough to conquer the complete dysfunction that is Dan Snyder’s Washington Redskins. Then again, I don’t think Robert Griffin III is enough to conquer it either, but he’ll at least be more fun to root for.

The Endless Hypocracy of the NFL Hype Machine

Pictured: Roger Goodell's ideal of exemplary leadership.

So first off, yeah I know I haven't been as active this season as I was last year. I could go all Livejournal and regale everyone of how my life got flipped, turned upside down, but no one who reads this (people do read this right?) gives a shit about that, so on to football REAL TALK.


Last week was another entry in the storied Steelers-Ravens rivalry. All the pregame masturbatory hoo-ha was about how this was exactly like a heavyweight title fight, and I don't think they meant it was like two gangly 7 foot Eastern European motherfuckers engaging in a bro hug for 12 rounds. No indeed, this was all about two teams who are all about beating the shit out of each other and that is exactly what we got. That's when the bullshit began

First, Ray Lewis leveled Hines Ward, who got knocked the fuck out. No penalty was called, and Ward was out for the rest of the game with a likely concussion. Replays showed it was probably a helmet to helmet hit in the technical sense (it was more of a graze than actual contact) but not something you would think was blatant or intentional. Later on, Ryan Clark laid out Ravens TE Ed Dickson with one of those 70s style "DB crushes a receiver with a legal hit that makes you blurt out OH SHIT" kind of moves. However Dickson turtled up in a ball like he was Sonic the mothefucking Hedgehog and in the process what was going to be a clean hit to the chest into a helmet to helmet collision. A completely bullshit personal foul was called, and I'd like to think that was what Clark was trying to figure out when he was out of position for the game winning TD.

The result? A $40,000 fine for Clark and a $20,000 fine for Lewis. Why the higher fine for what was ostensibly the same transgression? Not the "wah, Goodell hates the Steelers" garbage, but what seems to be the actual reason is probably just as idiotic. It appears Clark gets the stiffer penalties because he has a rep as a repeat offender because he's known as a hard hitter which in this era of football is the same as being dirty. This is even more retarded when you consider the entire AFC North is pushed as a rough division where every team beats the shit out of the others and every game is like one of those Old West fights where someone gets punched out and slid across the entire length of the bar. So on one hand the NFL will promote the hell out of the beatings these teams put on each other, but turn around and fine them when they actually knock the shit out of each other.

Even Big Ben took a break from rehabbing his image (possibly emboldened by officially no longer having the most hated penis in Pennsylvania as of this week) to take a swipe at the NFLPA leadership for being such fucking imbeciles for agreeing to a system where King Rog is judge, jury, and appeals process: "Someone needs to stand up and do something like De Smith. He is our player guy, stand up and do something for our players."

It's not like Clark was doing some kind of dumb headhunting move that should be eliminated from football on general principle, he was making a clean (but hard hitting) tackle on someone trying to catch the ball in his vicinity, which to the best of my knowledge is still his goddamn job.

To his credit in a world where everyone goes out of their way to never say anything of substance, Clark seems to be done with the commish's bullshit: "I mean you can appeal, but I'm appealing to the same person," Clark said, alluding to Goodell. "The same man. I know, he's not going to sit across from me because I'm not going to sit across from him unless they handcuff me, which is probably the next step anyway." Which was followed by my my personal favorite quote "This time it's wrong," Clark said, "not that I respected Roger before this."

Preach on, brother. If they want to keep pretending they care about not turning guys' brains into pudding, all while running hype videos comparing games to pugilistic contests designed to do exactly that, then fuck those guys. The Steelers need to bring Mel Blount back as a special consultant in charge of knocking guys the hell out. I want to see guys throwing lariats like fuckin' Stan Hansen out there, if the NFL is going to issue fines then goddamn it let's make it worth the money.