Football and Fluff

It’s time to talk about football. I have been ignoring the NFL for way too long now. It’s also time, as always, to talk about amusing anecdotes that occurred since last week. It’s time for a Football and Fluff column.

Football: The most impressive team in the NFL right now is the Carolina Panthers. They play great defense, allowing less than 19 points per game. They run the ball amazingly well as they are 4th in the league in rushing yards per game and tied for 1st in yards per carry at an amazing 4.8. They have a fearless quarterback who isn’t afraid to take risks, although this could come back and kill the Cats if Delhomme has a bad game. They have a break-the-game-open wide receiver in Smitty and a superb possession receiver with Moose. They have done all of this while playing in a very hard division. If they lock up home field against the G-Men this week, the Panthers are going to be very dangerous.

One amazing thing about the Panthers is that DeAngelo Williams (who is 4th in the NFL in rushing despite sharing the load with fellow stud Jonathan Stewart) has not fumbled the ball at all this year in 224 carries. Having a baller-ass RB who doesn’t cough the ball up is huge, especially in the playoffs. Delving deeper into Williams’ career stats reveals that he has only fumbled twice in his NFL career. That’s two fumbles in 567 career touches. Spectacular.

Fluff: There is nothing more awkward than privileged white kids performing tribal African dance moves, yet choral conductors and music teachers from around the world continue to force this awkwardness upon us. On Sunday, Potts, Emily Austin and I went to the National Cathedral to see a Christmas concert (yeah, cute and trendy as hell, I know). The high school choirs from St. Alban’s and National Cathedral School performed, and they were excellent. Their last song was a native South African tribal song, and actually sounded pretty good. Their teacher however, made them do a little shimmy dance while they performed the song, complete with hand gestures and foot stomping. Every kid on stage looked embarrassed as hell as they did the moves, as they should. It ruined the performance. It works when, you know, Africans do African tribal dance moves. It does not work when rich white kids do them. This needs to stop.

Football: Earlier this week, Trent Dilfer was asked who he thought was the better team, the Giants or the Panthers. I immediately thought he was going to say the Panthers, simply based on the fact that they have won 3 straight games and the Giants have lost 2 in a row. Too many talking heads proclaim that the hottest team at the moment is the best team in the entire league (see King, Peter; putting the Eagles at number 6). They seem afraid to claim that the best team overall is the one that isn’t playing the best right now. Dilfer said that he still thought the Giants were the better team, and even though I thought he was wrong, I admired him having the nuts enough to say what he thought, and not what would make him look good. This paragraph is really confusing. Onto some more fluff.

Fluff: In my current rental car (an awful Chevy Impala), there is a feature where if you pressed the window down button for more than a second, the window would go down all the way even if you let go of the button. Great feature. But to roll the window up you had to hold the button the whole time. Why would someone design a window like that? Who would prefer a window that had an auto feature going down but not up? “I’m in Pychoville and Finkle’s the mayor!”

Football: It’s a joke that Brett Favre made the Pro Bowl over Phil Rivers. Rivers has the best passer rating in the NFL, much less the AFC. Favre is 15th. Rivers has thrown 28 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. Favre has 21 TD’s and 17 picks. The Chargers are 6-8 because Rivers has salvaged whatever he could from the season (and they should be 7-7 if not for the horrible Hochuli call in week 2). The Jets are 9-5 despite of Favre’s anti-heroics. Joke city.

Fluff: Last year in the Ribrary, Schling still made peanut butter and fluff sandwiches. I didn’t even know that stuff still existed.

Football: Adrian Peterson is the clear MVP of the league in my book. He is the leading rusher in football and still averages 4.9 yards per carry despite facing probably more 8+ man fronts than any back in the league. He is so good that he has made Gus Ferotte and Tarvaris Jackson look like decent quarterbacks this season. Without AP, the Vikes would be 2-12 instead of 9-5. Minny is 8-2 over their last 10 games. I wouldn’t want to play them in the playoffs.

Fluff: There is a street near my office named Temporary Road, even though it is clearly there to stay, as it is made with concrete, has a stoplight and gets a lot of traffic. Odd.

Football: Sammy Baugh, the legendary Redskins player, passed away on Wednesday. It wasn’t until I was reading the article about his death that I realized how ridiculously good and versatile he was. In 1943, Baugh led the league in passing, punting and defensive interceptions. What an extreme badass. He still owns the single season per punt average of 51.4 yards. He had one game where he threw for four touchdowns and also had four interceptions. He was also a hardass, playing his whole career without a facemask. He is one person who may have been able to out stone-face me. Sammy Baugh, the Oceanliner salutes you (I’m sure that’s his ultimate honor).

Fluff: This is the preposterous picture on the cover of the most recent J.Crew catalogue.

Seriously? So what this picture is telling me is that these two losers got in their fur-coated canoe and went to the Artic ice cap to get a Christmas tree? And that they did it with no oars? And that after going all the way there they picked out the smallest and pansiest Christmas tree of all time? I’m not buying it. Something fishy is going on here.

Football: In an act of high comedy, Chiefs coach Herman Edwards released a book called “You Play to Win the Game”, stemming from a hilarious news conference he once gave. Edwards’ career record as an NFL head coach is 53-72. What a loser.

Fluff: At a Starbucks recently, the woman who poured my coffee needed to dump some out because she had filled the cup too high. She proceeded to pour out some of the scalding hot coffee directly onto the hands of one of her co-workers who had just finished washing her hands.

Football: Please can it end, for the love of God. Don Banks, NFL writer for Sports Illustrated, referred to the Santonio Holmes controversial catch at the end of the Steelers-Ravens game as “plane-gate”, as in did the ball cross the plane of the goal line. Spygate was bad enough. Plane-gate is freaking terrible.

Fluff: I got nothing. I’m out of amusing anecdotes, that’s it for this week folks. There will be one more Oceanliner column in 2008 before I head down to Florida for Christmas and out to Colorado to ski the week after that. After that, you will have to wait for ’09 for more new and exciting Oceanliner original features. By the way, does anyone have a pair of ski pants I can borrow? Let me know. Until next time, stay safe, keep it real and boogie away.