The days are getting shorter, and the leaves, albeit
not in Los Angeles, where there are only palm fronds, are dropping hints that
they may soon began changing colors. There can be no mistaking that football
season is nearly upon us. I believe that, as a result of international
expansion, this may prove to be the most interesting National Football League
season since the very long-eyelashed Vince Ferragamo played quarterback for the
Los Angeles Rams, not very notably.
The most sweeping change follows the league’s decision
that team names should relate specifically to the represented locale. Thus, the
Detroit Lions rebranded themselves the Detroit White Flight, and the Seattle Seahawks
the Drizzle. Many traditionalists are irate about decades-old names being jettisoned,
others about the fact that many teams opted for singular names in the mode of the
National Basketball Association’s Miami Heat and Utah Jazz. “If this is progress,”
says Arizona Cardinals fan Hank Lumley, “fuck progress.”
The NFL’s first Mexican team, the Tijuana Infection,
shocked everyone when they were able to trade an aircraft carrier full of
cocaine for Carolina’s second-round draft pick. Observers believe that
Dentifrice Hawkins, out of Eastern California University, might prove one of
the most exciting rookie running backs since William (Hannukah) Hairston in
2003. Hawkins figures to plunge, dash, and scamper into a lot of “holes” created
by the Infection’s first three picks in this year’s draft, offensive tackle
Clandustin Thompson, from the University of Phoenix, nose guard Langoustine Washington,
from Ole Miss, and cheek guard Copurnickus Clydesdale, from Budweiser.
Whose advertising agency, by the way, is putting the finishing
touches even as we speak on a raft of television advertisements designed to perpetrate
the meme that beer-flavored soda pop is the preferred beverage of Regular Guys who
have no interest whatever in dressing up in ladies’ clothing, or in pretentious
restaurants.
In Miami, and probably in yours too, new head coach Shlomo
Horowitz has promised to make the Retirees a much more physical team. “Given
our talent,” he told reporters last week, referring to himself plurally, “it
just didn’t make sense to remain a primarily intellectual or spiritual team. We
think our fans are going to respond to our new smashmouth, gouge-eye,
twist-testicles style of play.”
The first franchise in the Caribbean, the Turks and
Caicos Loopholes, are understandably excited about their mid-June acquisition of
two of the league’s pre-eminent point guards, Madagasker Johnson and Lubricious Atkins (formerly
Ahmad Rashid), who, with three, now leads the league in conversions to and back
from Islam. Up in Alaska, heretofore unrepresented in American professional
sports, defensive coordinator Chuck Moorman, in response to questions about his
new team having to begin their first season playing last year’s Super Bowl
champs Bible Belt Hypocrisy and the always tough Heartland Boredom, shrugs, “We’re going to play them one at a time.
“I mean, we’ve been spending a lot of time discussing
how it might be possible to play both games simultaneously, but the best idea anybody's come up with is making the field twice its customary width, and hoping that our
defensive unit is needed against the Hypocrisy, for instance, while the offense
is on the field against the Boredom. But the head of operations at Formerly Jerry
Sandusky Field says it isn’t possible.”
In New York, the newly rebranded Concussions (formerly
the Giants) continue to hope they’ll be able to come to terms with All-Pro middle linebacker and team chaplain Deuteronomy Jackson. “We admire his trying
to be his own agent,” a team insider has told this column, “but his short-term
memory at this point is that of a 104-year-old lifelong pothead recently
dropped out of a third-story window onto his head.” Another team insider
foresees disaster if the deal can’t be completed soon. “We owe our making the
playoffs three years running to the orgies of sanctimony Deut leads in the locker room before
every game. In his six seasons with us, I’ve lost count of the number of
rookies he’s taught to drop ostentatiously to their knees and bow their heads
in prayer after scoring a touchdown, say, or making an interception.”
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