Fantasy Football

Nothing really to speak of with fantasy football, but if you happen to catch Joe Buck Live last night it was probably a little more “newsworthy” than an offensive lineman holding out at camp. If you didn’t watch it, the entire hour (at least the segments when sports were discussed) was basically about the NFL. And let me just say, that having a prolonged conversation with Brett Favre probably couldn’t go much better, but it was still one of the more stinted and awkward conversations I’ve seen in awhile.

The Packer legend kicked off the hour (at least after Buck’s “hilarious” monologue), and for roughly twenty minutes we got to listen to Favre hem-and-haw over his relationship with the Vikings and the likelihood of him coming back to the NFL. It was a great third of an hour filled with non-answers and boyish “charm”, which apparently these days just means you can’t confidently form a complete sentence. He did give one direct answer when he said he wouldn’t play for anyone else other than Minnesota, which is a euphemism for “I don’t need to play for a team that I regard as having no shot of winning a Super Bowl with or without me.”

He seemed even more disinterested than the audience.

The second segment — after another vexing interlude from Buck that was a field interview with David Wright, a guy who plays baseball for one of the New York teams, it would seem — was with Michael Irvin and Chad Johnson, and they chose this segment to chastise Chad Johnson for having the audacity to attempt to entertain people, by conflating his on-field antics with operating outside the law like so many of his peers on the Bengals. Irvin talked about him like he wasn’t even in the room, and Joe Buck even ran a segment about athletes and celebrities off-the-field dalliances being documented by TMZ and other media outlets.

The segment could have painted the founder of The Smoking Gun to look a little more creepy than they did, but I’m glad they found some restraint. I actually found him to be refreshing in a segment that desperately needed some logic thrown into the mix. For god knows what reason, every mainstream pundit/columnist desperately wants the illegal discretions of professional athletes to be kept discrete (unless of course it involves steroids), and that’s something I’ve never really understood. Why is the reputation of a stranger who gets a DUI so important to them? It felt like they were painting Smoking Gun guy as the arch-villain and Ari Fleischer, a PR guy for several athletes, as the hero; protecting the reputation of occasionally amoral athletes.

Anyhow, Johnson –who mailed in an appearance for Hard Knocks and HBO synergy– had the good sense to bring up the fact that the only thing he’s guilty of is being a tad self-aggrandizing to the majority of NFL spectators (though Bengals fans probably love that degree of celebration when they’re winning). When Joe Buck pressed him to admit he’s been detrimental to at least his own team (and somehow this is related to the topic at hand of illegal activity), Johnson held his feet to the fire and asked for examples. Naturally, Joe Buck didn’t have any.

Who would've thought he'd be vulgar?

The real carnage came when Artie Lange came on set and basically just eviscerated Joe Buck during the television and “overtime” segment that they post online (and have subsequently removed). Outside of a few off-the-cuff remarks from Lange to Irvin, basically none of it had to do with football, but it warrants mentioning because it made the Bissinger-Leitch dust up on Costas Now from a little over a year ago look like a Bill Moyers interview.

In short, a complete and colossal failure that is now making headlines everywhere because Artie Lange basically asked Joe Buck if he likes to perform oral-sex on men. As a result, that show in September will probably air according to plan.

Probably it for today, back with some more tomorrow. Maybe Denis Leary will ask Al Michaels if his second favorite website is lickingscrotums.com