While Thursday Night Football was the first game of the season, this Sunday is the real kickoff to the NFL season. If you're like me, you were up early. Real early. I was up today at 8:30. I haven't been up that early voluntarily since Christmas 1993. With the coffee quickly on, it was off to the LFFL league page to make sure none of my players suffered any injuries since last night at 2:00 AM when I had last checked before sleep. Thankfully, Greg Jennings didn't fall out of his bed last night.
NFL GameDay Morning starts at 9:00 AM EDT, that's 6:00 AM pacific- where the show is broadcast from. How Rich Eisen puts up with Warren Sapp and Michael Irvin that early in the morning is beyond me. At 11:00 AM ESPN Countdown begins. This year's commercials for Countdown haven't been as funny as in years past, so I have my concerns. Vegas has the over/under of Tom Jackson saying "mmm" in response to any valid point at 34 occurrences in week one. At noon the network pregame shows begin, but I don't feel they're worth mentioning because they're terrible. Dan Marino is a puppet and Boomer Esiason is dick on CBS, and Jimmy Johnson is high on Extenze and Terry Bradshaw is a incoherent cackling mess on FOX. The one redeeming aspect of CBS's NFL Today is the segment where James Brown chats with former GM Charley Casserly. It's informative, but remains to be seen if it will continue this year.
All the pregame, all the coffee, it's just a panacea until 1:00 PM. From then on, it's a dangerous combination of Steelers football and NFL Redzone. If I could die and come back as a TV Network, it would be the Redzone channel. It's the single greatest invention by man since the atom bomb. Oh, and how about Scott Hanson?! The dude is on camera for at least 6.5 hours straight, talking totally off the cuff and unscripted all day. If that's not impressive enough, consider how many times you use the restroom in that period of time, now think about poor Scott Hanson sitting there in a studio, patiently waiting for just the right moment to run off camera toward the john, and hope that no team tosses up a quick 6 from outside the redzone. Also, congrats to the Redzone production staff for going the entire 09 season without leaving Hanson's mic on while he was in the can.
Only 91 minutes until kickoff... time for more coffee and Countdown
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