Guest Rant: Everything I Know About Football from Someone Who Knows Absolutely Nothing About Football

I recently discovered my coworker – the lovely Cecilia Tomahawk – knew almost nothing about Packers or the NFL despite having lived in Wisconsin her entire life. At first, I thought she was joking but after a few simple questions, it was quite clear her personal Packerpedia was remarkably limited. You could fill the internets three times over with the amount of football knowledge Ms. Tomahawk doesn’t know, so instead, I asked her to tell me exactly what she knows – or thinks she knows – about the sport. Here is what she said.

Everything I Know About Football from Someone Who Knows Absolutely Nothing About Football

By Cecilia Tomahawk

·         Football players’ uniforms include some intensely tight pants. They’re super tight and look flipping uncomfortable.

·         During a football game, which team players are on is indicated by the color of the stripe down the side of their intensely tight pants.

·         Televised football games are things that occur between installments of me watching Amy Poehler and Alec Baldwin in commercials.

·         When football games are televised in bars or restaurants, I’ve noticed that there is a direct correlation between the local team playing well and the number of free shots I receive. The general mood of the crowd seems to be affected directly by this as well.

·         When family and friends gather to watch football games my older female relatives are perpetually in search of some heroic romantic figure who goes by the name Donald Driver – although, wait a minute, is he around anymore? I think he left.

·         “Fantasy Football” is a misleading term, if you ask me. It leads a person to believe that the activity so named will be fantastical, intriguing or exotic in nature. It does not imply that people will systematically form fictional teams in their minds and then proceed to lose money in fantasy football leagues.

·         There are things called brackets that people set up so they can track which teams are winning and losing at various points in the season. This is actually not the first type of brackets I was familiar with, however. In college a large group of my friends would play a game that we called Brackets. It was highly entertaining because we would pit random things against each other like Peanut Butter vs. Jelly, or Batman vs. Oprah, or Battleship vs. Connect Four. And I enjoyed it because we conducted lengthy, passionate debates that ended in clear winners and losers with the winning items moving up in the tournament.

·         I love the Puppy Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday, but I don’t like to admit it because there’s nothing more clichéd or stereotypical than a girl yelling, “Oooh! Puppies! They’re so adorable!” in the middle of a football game.

·         This March, my best friend picked her teams for her office bracket using the construct of whose team mascot would win in a fight. I think this is genius. Though now upon second thought, that applied to college basketball and not professional football. I still think it’s a good idea, but do NFL teams have mascots? I honestly don’t have a clue.

·         Clay Matthews’ hair is too long. Some of the ladies definitely disagree with me on this, I know. But it’s not a good look, man. You need to cut your hair.

Thwarted!

As dorky as it sounds when I say/type it, I play fantasy football… and I like it!

Fantasy football offers the same kind of love/hate relationship as, say, a bottle of Wild Turkey. Sure, it tastes amazing and can make you feel on top of the world. But too much and you’ll get angry and incoherent and later wake up in the frozen food section of the grocery store by the chuckling prepubescent teenager snapping pictures of you on his camera phone.

Last year I had just about enough of it. Despite my best efforts, I somehow ended up in three leagues and was talked into joining a fourth – with friends from ten years ago who I hadn’t seen for at least five. What’s worse – only half of these guys actually cared to check their lineups more than twice/season. Total slackers, agreed, yet I was committed.

The thing you have to understand is that with four fantasy teams, you essentially have every player worth having. In other words, you root for everyone and thus no one at the same time – this is a TERRIBLE place to be. I became so frustrated by the situation that I chugged a beer, ran into the garage and tried to lift the back end of my Tercel off the ground (I swear it moved).

Then came the revelation. The only way to undermine this stupid league, get guys I wanted, and avoid all responsibility was simple – I had to draft ALL Packers.

However, this turned out to be much harder than anticipated.

All the rankings seemed to agree that Jennings, Rodgers and Grant were the top 20. With the 5th pick in a 12-team league, I was in a baaaad spot to get all three. I knew I could snag #85 and #12 but the big question was, would #25 come back to me in round 3? After my “reach” for Jennings in the first followed by Rodgers in the second, the chat smackers were onto me. Yet Grant was still on the board and suddenly only two picks away! But wouldn’t you know it, the f#@$*#g Muffin Tops grabbed Grant and followed it up with a heartbreaking, “How you like me know Greenfeeld!?” (He is a notoriously bad speller).

I sank into a minor depression as I went to my next best available, Donald Driver, and it was a piece of cake to get the rest of my guys. Yes, I had all Packers but it was just incomplete with Brandon Jackson and John Kuhn in my RB spots. Believe it or not, I did finish 4-9 (that’s with a bye week!) and I did the math and would’ve gone 7-6 and made the playoffs had Grant fallen to me…sigh. This quote from American Beauty (1999) seems to sum things up nicely.

“I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.”

Franklin's Grade for Seattle vs. Green Bay

I noticed that everyone enjoys doing a grade of recent Packers games, I mean, this guy even grades the graders…consider my MIND. BLOWN, dude. So, anyway, I thought I would throw my two cents in. I give the Green Bay/Seattle tilt an A+. But like most stuff here at the Ranter, I have a little different take on things…

Many important factors went into this highest of marks.

1) The Company in My Living Room: Unfortunately it is few and far between these days, but my Packer game viewing partner was none other than Robert Greenfield. Yep, that’s right, Robert made the journey across the land of cheese and beer, and spent the weekend maneuvering the enemy territory of Minneapolis.

2) The Topics of Conversation: In addition to being able to watch the game, Robert and I were able to discuss the results of our fantasy football draft that had taken place earlier in the evening. Not much tops watching a Packer game and comparing the rosters of my squad,“The White Outs”, and Robert’s, “Fields of Green and Gold”. (FYI – The White Out’s is better)

3) The Food: Robert and I decided to go whole hog on the meal for the game. Actually, we went whole cow and destroyed two steaks that dripped with juicy goodness. Mrs. Greenfield, just so you don’t worry, even through the meat-drunkenness that soon followed, we still ate our veggie kabobs.

4) The Libations: Generous helpings of beer and single-malt always lead to high marks.

5) The Game: Truth be told, the conversation, the booze, and the meat sweats kind of overshadowed the actual game for me. However, if I can see Aaron Rodgers pilot a bombing run right into Greg Jennings’ outstretched hands, and I can stand and give a guttural, “HI-YO!” at the top of my lungs to start the game, then I’m happy. I’m easy to please, I know.

6) The Grading Process: The fact that so many other people I read and respect give out grades for each game, means I don’t have to. And let me tell you, I am nothing if I don’t have the ability to shirk off work.

Hmmm....interesting, I might have just convinced myself to bump it up to an A++ at this point, and it’s only a meaningless preseason game....it was a damn good Saturday.

For Your Consideration...

Have you ever noticed that after pretty much any play – good or bad – McCarthy’s nose is buried in his sweet, laminated, color-coded spreadsheets? He’s worse than those fantasy guys, who spend more time in laptops and cell phones checking for updates rather than watching the game go down right in front of them.

It’s kind of sad that’s the game has turned into – a series of over-calculated risks instead of the exciting choose your own adventure. Well, if that’s the case, have I got some fantasy candidates I’ve encountered over the years that could probably do just as well, if not better, than MM these days.

Wiener Koins. This team has been a fantasy juggernaut for years. He doesn’t always draft the greatest (see Mason Crosby in the 6th …“kickers win games!”), but is unparallel in his amazing waiver pickups. He captured the crown by adding unsuspecting free agents that suddenly go off. This bodes extremely well for helping TT find those diamonds in the rough that he supposedly is known for but hasn’t actually found any. (That’s right Ted, I said it.)

Donkey Skids. Despite a penchant for peach schnapps and a tendency for crapping his pants in public, Donkey Skids is an otherwise very formidable opponent. He’s more than willing to mortgage the future by trading up to go after the first- and second-round studs. It pays off, too. He takes home the crown about every other year. How great would that be, Packer fans!

Multiple Scorgasms. This mechanical engineer turned inventor sets the gold standard for draft devices. You can have your Excel spreadsheets – Scorgasms stopped using those in the 90s. His boards are now a battery-operated combination hologram/Rubix cube, constantly morphing based on the dynamics of the draft. I’m 100% convinced his draft cube could someday coach the Packers by itself.