They call this day Black Friday.

Some will tell you that this day's name derives from the teeming hordes of shoppers that descend, locust-like, on various retail locations across the country to begin the epic task for Christmas Shopping, blacking out the sky with their crazed bargain-hunting and demands for gift boxes. Today, however, this day has taken on a wholly new significance.

Today, my friends, is the day we mourn the death of professional football.

For so woeful, so VERY bawful, were the 3 games to which we were all subjected yesterday that it seems this great sport of ours can no longer insist on its own relevance, and must instead fade, ghost-like, into the shadows of days past. Observe:

Up first, while many of you were perhaps fortunate enough to still be en route to the home of a loved one and thus thankfully removed from a television, was a painful (although entirely predictable) 47-10 Titans win over the now-0-12 Lions. I valiantly attempted to watch this game, and it was SO AWFUL that it actually destroyed my will to watch any more football for the rest of the day. And it didn't just, like, quickly and painlessly snuff out my will to watch football, either. It ground it slowly and methodically into the pavement, like a cigarette butt under a cowboy boot, as my soul writhed and gasped out pleas for mercy. "NO MERCY," roared the Lions. It was somewhere around Rob Bironas' second FG in the 3rd quarter (this would give the Titans a 41-10 lead) that I peeled myself away from the TV and crawled weakly back to dinner, feeling sure that I would never again know happiness. Whom would you rather have as your starting quarterback: the current incarnation of Vince Young, or the current incarnation of Daunte Culpepper? Discuss, in an essay of 350-500 words. Extra credit will be given for use of the phrase, "would rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty corkscrew and feed them to a tank full of emaciated piranhas."

Even God cannot help you now, Calvin.
As it turned out, though, the fact that the televised embarrassment billed as a Lions game deterred me from any and all other planned football-watching was actually a boon. The mid-afternoon game, an equally lopsided match-up between the Cowboys and the irredeemably awful Seahawks, was just as dismal an affair. Despite enjoying nearly equal possession time with their opponents and amassing a respectable 322 net yards gained (by contrast, their hapless Detroit counterparts managed just 154), Seattle was unable to score a single touchdown and instead strung together three utterly meaningless field goals and a scoreless fourth quarter for a demoralizing 34-9 loss. All this, too, despite earning a total of 19 first downs! Was there some kind of invisible force field blocking the Seahawks from crossing the goal line?! It baffles the imagination, truly. Poor Matt Hasselbeck was sacked a whopping 7 times as his O-line apparently got their holidays mixed up and were running aimlessly about at the line of scrimmage looking for candy eggs. Or something.


Meanwhile, the Cowboys turned in 4 touchdowns as Tony Romo went 22 for 34 with 331 yards and 3 TDs. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. So it goes.

Please don't get failure on me.
Surely, one would have thought, the evening's avian altercation between the division*-leading Cardinals [*note that I refer to the NFC West as a "division" only in the loosest sense of the word -- Ed.] and the newly reinstated Dovovan McNabb and his Eagles would provide something akin to a worthwhile match-up. True, the Cardinals do not have what some football experts refer to as "defense," but the Eagles have been nothing if not dreadfully inconsistent thus far this season, and it strikes me that... oh ye gods.



Yes, Philadelphia walked away from this fray with a convincing 48-20 win to complete the day's Trifecta of Turf Tragedies thanks to an offense that managed to put up double digits in every single quarter and a defense that allowed Old Man Warner and his redbirds to control the ball for just a hair over 20 minutes. Brian Westbrook alone had 2 rushing touchdowns, 2 receiving touchdowns, and 130 total yards gained. In other words: the Detroit Lions could (and should, probably) scrap their entire offense in favor of just a center and Brian Westbrook, and would probably have a better record.

Just to put the day in perspective for you: yesterday's winning teams outscored yesterday's losing teams 129-39.

I come to bury football, not to praise it.

Labels: histrionics, worst single day of football ever?