Fantasy Football

So the big news yesterday was the the teams arrived in Tampa. They got on a plane from Pittsburgh and Phoenix respectively, and were flown on a chartered plane to humble and warm Tampa Bay, Florida. When they got off the planes, they waved at people and it seemed that just about every single one of them had their own camcorder, because I suppose what’s going on out here is equally as interesting as what’s going on in there.

But there was one person who decided to make some headlines, and that would be Ken Wizzenhunt, which is impressive. Its not exactly easy fitting the name Wizzenhunt into any sort of nifty, relevant pun. But when you get off the plane that takes you to the Super Bowl and proclaim, “We’re going to shock the world”, you leave the hack journalists of the world no choice. Nice job, Ken. You know, your last name is so atypical, one would think it would give him and Ben Roethlisberger a semblance of common ground, and they wouldn’t (reportedly) hate each other right now.

Anyhow, I guess he’s suggesting that they’re going to win the game on Sunday, but is that really “shock the world” material at this point? I think most consider it shocking that Arizona is getting off a plane to play in the Super Bowl in the first place. The notion of it being shocking should they win the game was rendered moot when they knocked off the Panthers, because obviously nothing was going to go according to plan after that.

Anyhow, at least he’s giving everyone (including me) cannon fodder to keep their blogs/columns/whatever active. Because other than a satirical piece on Edgerrin James’ probable vindictiveness towards the Colts about making a title game, we really have nothing in the bank.

So it would seem that Terrell Owens has a reality series coming out (I guess this is different from the one with Michael Irvin?). Ahh, one step closer to VH1 programming, where he is destined to end up. Does anyone even know anybody finds Terrell Owens interesting or irritating or charismatic enough to care about? Isn’t he just some tired head case receiver with a declining career that’s basically going to turn into Dennis Rodman when he retires? What I’m trying to say is, I wouldn’t come within a mile of drafting him next season.

For the ladies...

It would seem that AJ Smith, the Chargers GM who’s best known for controversially running Marty Schottenheimer out of town, and LaDanian Tomlinson are feuding over how they should allocate money for the backfield next season. Specifically, Tomlinson wants AJ Smith to pay him and AJ Smith doesn’t want to have to do that. If you’re a Chargers fan, I’d just like you to know that there isn’t a winnable solution here. I hope your happy about that.

In short, if they end up resigning Tomlinson (or actually agreeing to their of the bargain on the current one, it’s always hard to tell the circumstances with NFL contracts, as only one party has to honor it) then the team is saddled with an aging running back that doesn’t produce effectively as a result of taking a beating for the past five seasons. If Smith ends up cutting Tomlinson and ownership and the fans let him do so without repercusssions, then he’s basically been given carte blanche to do anything he pleases, and given how rash some of his acquisitions have been (trading away Eli, acquiring Chris Chambers, the aforementioned firing of Schottenheimer), you have no idea what he’s going to end up doing to the roster from here on out.

So yeah, I don’t know what to tell you, Chargers fans. Look on the bright side, the odds of an official ripping a win from your team’s hands are highly improbable two years in a row.

Alright, that’s pretty much it for now. If anything substantive arises, we’ll be one of the first people to recycle the news item and offer an opinion on it.