February is the Cruelest Month

With 216 days to go until the 2009 NFL season begins, I find myself, as I do every February, suffering from football withdrawal. Chills, cold sweats, angry outbursts, stomach pains, extreme fatigue and total lack of motivation will be my future unless I quickly find a new hobby or a crack pipe.

My first activity will be to challenge Bill Simmons. Calling the first three quarters of Superbowl XLII a "snooze fest" totally blows my mind. Sure, there was a stretch of painstaking penalties that made you wonder which referee on the way to the stadium had run into Nicki the Icepick, a 250 lb horse of a man with a ticket in his hand that spelled 'Pittsburgh -7' in blood... but Billy were you even watching the game? Did you see Darnell Dockett's blowout performance, Warner's arm rocket its way through an 83 yard touchdown drive or any of Big Ben Balboa's third down conversions, so perfectly pitched under pressure they almost looked choreographed? And where were you for the last minutes of the first half when Roethlisberger's would be game blowing interception was followed by Warner's actually game blowing interception in the end zone as Harrison ran the ball back 100 yards for a Steelers touchdown??? Billy, I generally heart your BS report, but this one was truly, well, BS. You really lost all credibility when you knocked the Troy Polamalu/Joe Greene throwback commercial. It was genius - I laughed, I cried, I would have shattered a glass bra.

Still I wonder what will be become of me. It's too late for me to become an amateur porn star for my ten seconds of fourth quarter fame. For those of you out-of-the-know salty sports fans, this Sunday it was actually acceptable to wish you lived outside New York, specifically in the Tucson area, where after a Fitzgerald TD, cable rewarded its local fans by accidentally airing thirty seconds of hard core porn. They even threw in some full frontal male nudity for the bored girlfriends and wives that had spent the evening cooing over Bruce Springsteen and refilling the cheese dip.

But adult entertainment aspirations aside, I ask please for advice on how to make it through the winter. No suggestion is too ridiculous. Right now all the future seems to hold for me is sitting on the couch with Michael Phelps as we get blazed, munch out on what remains of Mike Holmgren since Ed Reed ate him, and watch LT paralyze an unsuspecting Lisa Rinna on Dancing with the Stars. For the love of god, your country and all that is holy, will somebody please make sure she knows who Joe Theisman is!

Meanwhile... send suggestions, send blankets, send kind words... let us brace the cold winter together.