Grid Effect

Did anyone watch anything even partially interesting last night? We watched the Cavs-Celts game, and that had its moments. Especially that end of 3rd quarter score of 53-52, that was interesting, or typical of the shoddy play that we’ve come to expect from the NBA’s eastern conference. These Celtics manage to get less and less inspiring as the time passes. It’s almost like no one other than them was taking the regular season seriously and just biding time until the playoffs began. But alas, they won the game and that is the bottom line, though if you’re a Celtics fan, you’re confidence has to have certainly wavered.

Obviously, we’re completely miffed here. We can dissect the playoffs or pretend to have watched a reality series last night. We’d do a nightly preview, but we already did one for Wednesday two weeks ago and virtually nothing has changed.

Here we are. Even a broken clock is right twice a day or some other more fitting analogy. That link, in case you’re wondering, is a press release of sorts about the new season of Hard Knocks. It goes without saying that this should be a significant improvement on last year’s somewhat uneventful profile of the Kansas City Chiefs.

For those who are unaware of the show or just simply uninterested with the NFL (meaning you’ve probably stopped reading this by now, but what the hell?), Hard Knocks is a miniseries that gives their audience and insiders look at an NFL preseason, or at least whatever the team at large is willing to sign away on. And I have no idea what the makeup of these contracts between HBO and the organizations are (this is the sixth or seventh year they’ve done this), but since this year’s team is the Dallas Cowboys, my guess is that Jerry Jones might want to maintain some executive control.

Glad to see Owens and Dallas fans can set their differences aside for money and wins.

The Cowboys, comprised of probably the most embarrassing tabloid romance in football (Tony Romo-Jessica Simpson), the most emotionally unstable player (Terrell Owens), the Nicky Santoro of the league (Pacman Jones, and that’s assuming he is reinstated), the most aggressive owner and passive successful coach (the aforementioned Jerry Jones and Wade Phillips) and a slew of other characters that includes Roy Williams, Terry Glenn and Tank Johnson. The latter of which has a rap sheet like Paulie Walnuts.

The NFL has been mired in legal issues as of late, and the front office led my commissioner Roger Goodell has been doing everything it can to weed out the bad seeds and demonstrate that they are serious on reprimanding professionally those who break the law. Thing is, they can barely keep up. Essentially the entire Bengals roster is behind bars, and if not they want to leave or are indifferent to their team’s issues. You can go to this website and it reads more like a police blotter than a comedy blog.

It’s also hard to take this new initiative seriously, considering the mess that Paul Taglibue, the current commissioner’s predecessor left behind. The worst instance comes in the case of Leonard Little, who killed a woman while drunk driving and as of last season was still getting considerable playing time for the Rams, who reside in St. Louis where he was convicted of manslaughter. This wasn’t on Goodell’s watch, but it’s hard for the casual fan who doesn’t follow these timelines to overlook when an authority figure says he’s trying to clean up the league and a few days later a murderer is blitzing the quarterback.

So while we’re looking forward to Hard Knocks, Goodell and whoever may give a shit within the Cowboys might want to intervene on the cutting room floor, because when they show Johnson, Pacman and Owens (to be fair, Owens has never been associated with any illegal activity, his insanity has been strictly law abiding) pouring Cristal on a stripper in one of their dorms, it’s just going to being throwing gasoline on a fire. For a league that has already dealt with murder trials, dogfighting, a litany of DUI, possession and domestic abuse cases, a hazing incident gone awry is about the last thing this empire needs.