Is it August yet? Monday Rantings

25th of January, and I'm already dreading the year ahead. No, not because I'm in some sort of fear mode because the rocket arm and icy cool veins of J.C. Keller will spell doom to me and other Husker antagonists everywhere. Perhaps global warming will kill us all? Perhaps the Iranians will go nuclear and interrupt the football off-season with a volley of ballistic missiles directed toward the west? Or perhaps, I'm doomed to deal with the Husker hype machine in full swing for another 8 months at least. (Then only to get worse...until Wake Forest and USC put a stop to it all in September.)

In the meantime, I can still dredge out a variety of topics I'm sure you'll piss and whine about.

* All attention will be on the television contract in the Big 12 for next season, but that's not to say there won't be some other interesting things going on. Seems the geniuses at KU and Mizzou have decided to play their annual urine-bomb throwing exhibition/football game at Arrowhead during Thanksgiving weekend. On the surface, this is a great idea. Why not get together two rival fan-bases that have hated each other since the mid 1800's? Why not make it easily accessible to both fan bases so they can share in the "college experience" that makes college football the great sport that it is.

Then again, why don't they just hand out brass knuckles and giant chains with spikes on them at the door for fans to take to their seats? You see, the Chiefs, in all their infinite wisdom, are most likely going to be selling alcohol at the most hate-filled public gathering since Louis the XIV chopped off 5,000 peasant heads in Paris in the late 1600's.

I've seen KU-MU hatred close up...without alcohol, and I personally cannot phathom what alcohol and the close-quarters of Arrowhead will do for "relations" between the schools. For example, at the Jayhawks vs. Tigers game in 2002 at Hearnes Center in Columbia, I witnessed no fewer than 5 cars with Kansas plates in the parking lot get "tapped" by pissed off Mizzou fans leaving the game. (trying to squeeze into the line of cars heading for the exit.) I also saw a 7 year old boy get spit on when he yelled out "Rock Chalk Jayhawk" to the relatively tame "D" section of the arena, a full 30 minutes before the game.

I've said this once, and I'll say it 1000 times. You Husker freaks have absolutely no idea what full-bore, hate-with-every-fiber-of-your-soul is really like. Throw all of these pissed off and hate-filled fans in one stadium...throw in about 900,000,000 cubic gallons of alcohol during pre-game, and you're bound to get the largest sports riot in U.S. history. (And yes, I wouldn't miss that for the world). As much as I love beer and sports, hopefully somebody will come to their senses and either a) call in the National Guard or b) separate the teams with chicken wire cages, like they have in European soccer games.

Seriously..this will not end well. Stay tuned.

* Last week I listed some pop-culture items that I just didn't understand. While flipping through channels the other day...I realized I forgot the mother of them all. Can somebody please tell me why somebody on this earth is paying Howard Stern 136 Gazillion dollars to be unfunny and predictable?

I've been to New York City, and I completely realize that my white-bread, farm-boy persona cannot possibly understand the comedic genius that is the Howard Stern show. But seriously...I listed to him for about an hour during my last trip back east...and listening to strippers (on the radio) isn't exactly thrilling. I'm guessing that part of the show may have improved with the dropping of the all-too-often used (BEEP), but still. Ok...this guy is a mentally challenged midget. OK, this girl has a great rack and talks like an idiot. Ok, this guy will drink urine for a free pizza. OK, this girl is really hot, but has a high squeaky voice. Do any of you get this? Is it just me? Am I so trapped in my small-town, Midwest tainted personal hell that I simply don't "get it" like I should?

Don't get me wrong...local radio in this market is absolutely horrible and always has been. (Pretty bad, when the #1 radio personalities for the past 10 years in this town are two ego-driven stoners with a knack for talking about pot and bitching about George Bush for 4+ hours a day...but still.) However, has Stern woven himself in east coast culture enough that he's worth 900 Quadrillion bucks a year?

Perhaps I'm just too dense to get it. Hopefully one of you can fill me in.

* Speaking of east coast...can somebody stop the hypocritical disaster of prose that is Bill Simmons..the sports guy on ESPN's page 2? I've touched on this briefly in the past, but I think it needs to be repeated.

There is nothing on worse than the New York Yankees and other "big market" clubs like the Bears, Lakers etc...where the team's success is overshadowed by the 9000 other things to follow in the city. Nothing is worse than the arrogant self-indulgence of a jackass fan who thinks it's his teams inalienable right to win. (Sound familiar hicks?) Well....that is except for one person....

That person is big-market fan who is in the exact same boat, yet ACTS like they're some sort of symbol of the downtrodden. Let me explain. The Red Sox and their fans all...not some...ALL act as if their beloved team's meteoric rise to Baseball Championships is a triumph of the human spirit. A David vs. Goliath match of the little guy vs. all of those forces who are against them. Uhhh yeah.

It wasn't David vs. Goliath, it was more like Goliath vs. his evil twin Giovanni. Just as evil and despicable as the original giant...only completely unknown due to their total lack of anything successful in the past. The Sox spent $120 MILLION dollars last season...second only to the Yankees. Does this sound like some triumph of the underdogs to you? The whole time Red Sox fan was wallowing in his own filth, did you remind him that the Celtics had 900 titles as well? Did you mention that the Patriots have won 3 of the past 5 Super Bowls?

I will give Husker fan this...at least you people aren't hypocrites about being assholes. Writers like Bill Simmons are a whole different breed of arrogant, in that they don't even recognize that they've become what they hate. Just the other day, Simmons wrote that it made him sick that he and his team had become exactly what they hated in the Yankees. Of course, that was immediately followed by a very "Husker" like statement of, "You'd trade places with us in a second".

What's my point? Fuck you Bill. You're just one of 500 reasons why I hate the Red Sox WAY more than teams like the Yankees. The world needs villains. What they don't need is whiney, 2nd rate New England citizens with an inferiority complex and the audacity to ask us to feel bad for them.

* Thanks to Peyton Manning for at least making next month's Super Bowl at least a little bit watchable. Tom Brady vs. Rex Grossman would have had a nice 49ers-esque-blowout feel to the Super Bowl that hasn't been around in a while. At least this way we'll see who wants it least...Grossman or Manning. Will Grossman have a QB rating above 40? Will Manning finally pull an Elway and step away from a shadow of underachievement that has followed him wherever he's gone? Guess we'll see.

Oh..and before it gets bad...what's the over under on newspaper articles that talk about the advertisements during the Super Bowl? I'll save that rant for later...but rest assured...NOTHING pisses me off more than ruining a perfectly good football game, with a bunch of lame-ass ads that are neither funny nor productive. Hell, even the one good ad they had for GoDaddy.com last year got pulled because it "might" be offensive to viewers. (Even though E! has 10x more offensive programming on at any hour of the day.)

Stay tuned for that.