Editor’s Note: Griffin Gotta’s weekly MNF and Thursday Night Football coverage on MSF is sponsored for the second straight year by Sadler’s Smokehouse, a producer of premium pit smoked meats that are best described by Sadler’s slogan: Legendary since 1948.
Sadler’s premium meats are perfect for tailgating on Saturday, for grilling out at home on Sunday, or for when you are hosting a group of friends, or even just the family, on Monday night.
With a variety of delicious choices (beef, pork, ribs, turkey, brisket, and more) and availability at grocery stores throughout the U.S., Sadler’s meats are the tasty, convenient choice when you want to watch the big game and eat well while you’re doing it.
Visit the Sadler’s Smokehouse website: Sadler’s Smokehouse
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This game is nothing.
The outcome of this game changes nothing.
The game-changing play that will take place sometime in this game changes nothing.
As I sit here on the Friday after Thanksgiving, the fact that I already put any thought into this game at all, when I should be completing my marathon viewing of Season Two of “The OC” (don’t judge me), makes me a little sad, a little worse a person, and probably, drives me a little closer to insane.
But not as sad, worse, and insane as you, if you so choose to watch this game. Not even the NFL’s Web site can muster a reason in favor of this game’s usefulness:
Under “the storyline” section:
“The team that has dominated the NFC West the past few years meets the team that was supposed to win it this season — with absolutely nothing at stake.”
And under the “why you should watch” section:
“It’s Monday night. There’s nothing else on. And Kurt Warner is off “Dancing With The Stars” now, so maybe he sneaks into the Cards’ locker room and dons a jersey?”
This game forced the person charged with previewing this game for NFL.com to make a “Dancing With The Stars” reference; another unforgivable offense that can be charged to this pile of garbage that even a garbage man wouldn’t pick up.
***Major aside, so as to avoid talking about this game***
During previous summer months in my life, I have worked as a garbage man, riding on the back of a truck, picking up all of the shit that people throw away. One could go deeper than that into the experience of throwing garbage, but for a one sentence explanation, that’s probably it.
It’s a job that can bring a person many lows in a day with few chances to experience exhilarating highs, unless someone gives you a can of soda or you find a life-sized stuffed animal, in my case a bear, hanging out on the curb. Still, there is a certain honor to being a garbage man, or, to paraphrase David Simon, “sharing a dark corner of the American experiment.”
Of course, the dark corner Simon refers to is the one a homicide detective inhabits, and this isn’t to compare the two professions: a detective’s job is all-encompassing; it follows them home and affects actual people. A garbage man’s work is at times terrible, always smelly and alternately physically and mentally tiring, but with enough stops under one’s belt they all begin to blend together and into one big memory that is much simpler to repress. That’s what I tell myself, for my own sake, at least.
Ahem.
This is all to say this: If there is a pile of garbage that doesn’t get picked up, it is either too big or too horrible, with tetanus visibly hanging in the air above it, for two human beings to fathom lifting, much less even touching (maggots are a good sign for this), in an attempt to get it into the back of a garbage truck. At that given time, this pile has to be one of the more truly crappy things in the world.
And for this game, this primetime slotted-game, at this point in the season, with so many teams in either conference still in the playoff race, with so many chances for an interesting storyline, to be played between two teams with no chance for anything in a division whose winner will unspeakably carry that irrelevance on into the playoffs is a huge, ripe, bags-ripped-open-with-fish-guts-pouring-out-and-rusted-metal-spikes-pointing-every-which-way pile of garbage that no sports fan should ever be asked to pick up. It is, at this time, one of the more truly crappy sporting events in the world.
So if you plan on watching, if you plan on preparing to enter the dark corner of American football, please spare me. In the same light that you probably do not want to know the details of what goes on in the back of a garbage truck, please do not let me know how it goes.
Prediction (?).
Any other plan that could be made on Monday Night, 1. Monday Night Football, 0.
[Editor's note: And for those actually interested in this game, I provide the information below...]
San Francisco 49ers at Arizona Cardinals
- 49ers-Cardinals Date: Monday, November 29
- 49ers-Cardinals Kickoff Time: 8:30 pm
- 49ers-Cardinals TV Network: ESPN
- 49ers-Cardinals Announcers: Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski, and Jon Gruden
- 49ers-Cardinals Point Spread: 49ers -1
- 49ers-Cardinals Over-Under Odds: 39.5
**OC photo courtesy of http://www.theocshow.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=471
**Garbage photo courtesy of http://www.boston.com/travel/blog/2008/05/
Twitter: twitter.com/griffingotta
Email: griffingotta@gmail.com
