Football and Blogs

As most regular visitors to this site probably know, I'm a huge fan of the honorable Tony Kornheiser. PTI is appointment viewing for me, and his daily radio show is the only sports talk show I can handle.

Throughout this football season I've heard him complain about a new assignment thrust onto him by his third employer, the Washington Post. He's now being paid to sit at home and watch the Redskins game, and periodically post comments about said game to a blog operated by his newspaper.

I had yet to check this out, mainly because we rarely get Redskins games in this market. The Vikings, Packers, Chiefs, and Broncos seem to be the only teams that are aired (don't get me started on why we were forced to watch the Jets/Broncos game when the Colts were playing the Bengals). So about halfway through the Redskins game I logged onto Mr. Tony's blog. Here's some of his insights:

Posted at 01:31 PM ET, 11/20/2005
Don't they have cameras that filter out the shadow on the field? Watching this game is like watching hockey on TV and losing the puck when it leaves your line of vision. The players go in and out of the shadows and you lose them! We can master the gastric bypass and we can't get the shadows out of a football game? By the way, my set just flipped out of HD and into regular TV, so something is wrong with the telecast.

Posted at 01:37 PM ET, 11/20/2005
Maybe Clinton Portis should less time worrying about his new stupid costume every Thursday and spend more time practicing onto the football.

Posted at 01:45 PM ET, 11/20/2005
I know Norv is a genius with playcalling, but he didn't look like a genius there, did he? He had LaMont Jordan gain 14 yards on four runs to the 1 and, for reasons known only to Norv, the Raiders then passed twice. One incomplete, one pass interference on Randy Moss and they were left with one more stupid incompletion and a field goal. That's terrible playcalling. He should have handed it to LaMont Jordan.

Posted at 02:25 PM ET, 11/20/2005
Kerry Collins is terrible. No....let me amend that. Kerry Collins is REALLY terrible. Does this guy have any idea how to throw a short pass? Does everything have to go 35 yards through the air, and end up nowhere close to a receiver? This is a really bad game, isn't it?

Posted at 02:39 PM ET, 11/20/2005
Do you want to know how stupid the Raiders are? They declined a penalty that would have pushed John Hall's kick back five yards. They declined it, in order to not give the Redskins another third-down opportunity. Without any timeouts, the Redskins probably wouldn't have run another third-down play. So they let Hall kick from 45 and he made it. How do they defend that call???

Posted at 03:05 PM ET, 11/20/2005
Talk about poetry. The Raiders get totally hosed on a third-down long pass-interference call on this guy Schweigert. It was a terrible call because Schweigert was going for the ball and did not even make contact with the receiver. So here is the poetry: on the next play, Clinton Portis fumbles the ball away. This is his second fumble today and, for all the yards he gains, they are negated by his inability to hold onto the ball. Again, stop spending so much time worrying about your costume. As someone who wears costumes, let me tell you, it's easier to wear the same costumes week after week than always look for new ones.

Posted at 03:20 PM ET, 11/20/2005
Again, this is how stupid the Raiders are: They have a sure field goal in front of them when, on second down, they get a personal foul penalty for 15 yards, taking them out of field-goal range. Then, on third down, their quarterback gets sacked, so they face fourth and 28 and they have to punt. There's nothing really worse than a bad team that's also a stupid team. Oakland should be no worse than tied right now and they probably -- going back to the failure to use LaMont Jordan in the first quarter -- should be ahead. Instead, they're behind. Because they're stupid.

Posted at 03:53 PM ET, 11/20/2005
This guy Joe Avezzano, the special teams coach for Oakland, has the look of the crazy old man in the New England lighthouse who comes out to warn the town that monsters are coming.

Posted at 04:24 PM ET, 11/20/2005
This is TERRIBLE loss. A TERRIBLE loss for the Redskins. They lose to an inferior team. They lose late. And they lost to Norv Turner, who probably is having the greatest day of his life. At 5-5, the Redskins may be out of the playoff hunt right now.

Ok, so there's nothing really groundbreaking here...but it's better than what we had to deal with from the real announcers. And I think this is a great idea...if you're publication has a witty, sarcastic writer with nothing to do, force them to publish their thoughts in real-time.

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