NFL week 6: Snake in a bag addition

Brutal week for the NFL pool and brutal week for my eyes. We'll get to the pool in a minute, but there's something that's been haunting me since last night. Did anyone else watch the first half of the MNF game last night? Well, if you were tuned in with about 7 minutes left before halftime, you would have seen a tribute to the great QB and coach, Sid Luckman. Now I have nothing against the late Sid, but I have a bone to pick with ESPNs MNF producers.

Of all the footage of Sid available out there, rather than pick some football highlights or show ways in which his coaching ideas changed the game, the decided to pull out of the archives some instructional video from the 70s that Sid filmed for aspiring young QBs. At the opening of the clip we see Sid from behind, bent down as though receiving the ball from a center. The man is wearing white knee socks (literally), a t-shirt, foam-front-mesh-back trucker hat and a pair of loose gray cotton shorts, complete with vertical sweat line in the rear center. Whatever, the man is playing sports and people sweat, fine. BUT. Then he turns and does what seems like an 87-step drop back and the man has NO underwear on. Nothing under those loose cotton shorts. And for way too long he's running sideways facing the camera with his junk just flying around like an angry snake caught in a cotton bag. I swear, if that shit were in 3D I would have tried to save the cat from getting hit.

Damnit ESPN. I have a decent size HDTV and you throw that at me? WTF? Even the booth guys were trying to hold it together after the clip, with Gruden finally acknowledging the elephant in the room by asking Jaws if he had to wear those shorts to the tribute dinner. Did they not have underwear in the 70s? I'm pretty sure it was available. Was it made of wood chips or something, because that's the only excuse I can come up with. Was the producer just trying to mess with the booth guys or was it some nefarious plot to get 90% of the audience to rush to throw Commet in their eyes? Unfortunately, not even that gritty burning can make me unsee that footage.

As for the picks, basically most people did the equivalent of throwing soap in their eyes. Tom@microworld pulled off the win with 9 points, AA came in second with 8 and then there was a three-way tie for third between myself, PiT and CE with 7 points. It gets ugly after that, where a rash of 5s breaks out and there was no Benadryl to be found. The leader board remains largely unchanged. I'm steering the ship (45pts), with PiT as first mate (44pts) and Tom as the head chef (43pts). Alyssa is working as the quartermaster (41pts) and then there's a lot of people swabbing the decks (40-33pts). Cleaning the latrines in high seas is Tideliar (31pts).

Congratulations to Tom for this week and I hope the scars fade soon for those of you watching last night.