Friday Fun: Video of Football Coaches Going Off – The Remix

We’ve been light on posts today as I work on the redesign of the site. But here is a little Friday fun for you. 

There is nothing as entertaining as football coaches going off:

The Greatest Name in NFL Draft History and a List of the All-Time #1 Overall NFL Draft Picks

Yesterday, I attempted a serious discussion about the history of underclassmen QBs who have been picked in the first round of the NFL Draft. Needless to say, the history of such QBs is far more infamous than it is famous; and unfortunately for many NFL fans, a number of teams appear poised to draft Matthew Stafford, Mark Sanchez, and Josh Freeman (all juniors) in the first round of the 2009 Draft.

With yesterday’s post I feel like I made a pretty significant deposit into the “serious sports talk” bank account that we like to maintain here at Midwest Sports Fans. And that can only mean one thing: it’s time to become a “real” sports fan for a moment and dabble in something juvenile, immature, and sophomoric.

Thus, it gives me great pleasure on this fine Wednesday morning to present you with the greatest name in the history of the NFL Draft:

That’s right. Dickless Riffle. A back out of Albright chosen with the 12th overall pick by the Philadelphia Eagles. (So…do you think when Eagles call T.O. “dickless” that they are really just paying homage to their old time second-round pick? No? Okay, me either.) I defy you to find another name that even comes close to packing the humor, irony, and complete ridiculousness of this one.

It should be noted that I looked for secondary confirmation of the existence of Dickless Riffle. However, all I was able to find was another website that had essentially just copy/pasted the Wikipedia table for the 1938 draft. So I’m trusting Wikipedia that Dickless Riffle is not just someone’s idea of a joke inconspicuously slipped into a random draft chart from the Early Era of the NFL, found only because of freak sports bloggers who research this stuff at 12:30 in the morning.

As you will see below, the genesis for this post was actually something legitimate and informative. We have created a table listing the #1 overall draft pick for every professional football draft since 1936. During the course of going to the Wikipedia page for each individual draft to get all of the information I needed for the table, I stumbled across more than a few interesting names. Without question, Dickless Riffle is the greatest.

How in the hell do you get a name like Dickless? I have to assume that it did not have the same context back then that it does now. Or perhaps his name was Richardfewer and he just wanted to shorten it. Or perhaps his parents really wanted a girl and simply could not accept the fact that little Dickless had man parts, so they gave him a name in hopes that it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It would make a great band name, don’t you think? Or a stage name for an effeminate male singer who wears tight pants and hits high notes with ease. I can see the marquee now: Dickless Riffle and the Morsels of Tenderness, like tonight at The Vogue.

And I’ve officially taken this too far.

Anyway, before we jump into the all-time list of #1 overall NFL draft picks, here are a few other names from the Early Era of the NFL that I thought were…entertaining:

• Bill Shakespeare (1936 NFL Draft – Round 1 – Pittsburgh Steelers)
• Dick Crayne (1936 – Round 1 – Brooklyn Dodgers)
• Pepper Constable (1936 – Round 8 – Philadelphia Eagles)
• Dick Plasman (1937 NFL Draft – Round 3 – Chicago Bears)
• Byron “Whizzer” White (1938 NFL Draft – Round 1 – Pittsburgh Pirates) — Is this guy related to Onterrio Smith?
• Kelly Moan (1938 – Round 7 – New York Giants)
• Dick Nardi (1938 – Round 8 – Detroit Lions)
• Dick Johnston (1938 – Round 11 – Washington Redskins) – one letter away from being the polar opposite of Dickless Riffle.
• Bill Daddio (1939 NFL Draft – Round 5 – Chicago Cardinals)
• Dick Farman (1939 – Round 16 – Washington Redskins)
• Dick Favor (1940 NFL Draft – Round 3 – Philadelphia Eagles) – The question becomes what is the difference between a Dick Favor and a Dickless Riffle? They sound like complete opposites to me.
• Cary Cox (1940 – Round 11 – Pittsburgh Steelers) – Umm…once again, the complete opposite of Dickless Riffle. But it would certainly help out with a Dick Favor.
• Earl Fullilove (1941 NFL Draft – Round 19 – Washington Redskins)
• Jack Hunt (1942 NFL Draft – Round 13 – Chicago Bears)
• Dick Wildung (1943 NFL Draft – Round 1 – Green Bay Packers)
• Bob Coutchie (1943 – Round 21 – Brooklyn Dodgers)

Yep, that seems like a good one to end on.

My goodness, who knew that the old school NFL drafts were such a rich source of humor? I had no idea. Anyway, I have to cut myself off there as actual work beckons.

Before I go, here is the all-time list of #1 overall NFL draft picks. My apologies for diverting so far off track from what this post was originally intended to be. But come on — Dickless Riffle? It was just too much ignore.

NFL Draft History: All-Time List of #1 Overall Picks

Button Maker Madness: Funny Sports Buttons Make the Games More Fun

I need a quick break from March Madness posts, and a little light comic relief in the middle of fun but busy day at work. Thus, we are going step through our sports portal here at MSF into the world of buttons.

Buttons, you ask? What do buttons or a button maker have to do with sports?

Well, quite a bit actually — if you are sports-obsessed, creative, open-minded, and have a good sense of humor.

The genesis of this post actually came from a sports button I saw this past weekend. I was out on Saturday in downtown Dallas, the same night that Texas was taking on Duke in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Now, as you might imagine, there is a pretty large contingent of Longhorns fans here in Big D, and they were out in full force on Saturday supporting their team. One such person, in the midst of head-to-toe burnt orange apparel, was wearing the button you see pictured to the right.

I was actually surprised to find a picture of it online. I figured he might have made it himself, but it looks like he ordered it — meaning there are probably plenty more krzyzewski krzucks buttons floating around (especially in Chapel Hill, no doubt).

But it got me thinking (dangerous, I know), what a great idea. Making positive buttons in support of your team or, what would be even more fun, making derogatory but funny buttons about the opposition or your rival. The possibilities are literally endless…but we’ll get to that in a second.

I looked around online for a bit to find some places where you can buy funny sports buttons. There were a few, but certainly the overall selection was limited.

What if, as an IU fan, I want to make fun of Matt Painter and the plaid-clad Paint Crew in West Lafayette? (I know that they wear black during games, but go to West Lafayette some time. Plaid as far as the eye can see.) How about a button that says Purdue basketball: 2009 Sweet 16 participants — Still Zero Banners or something like that. I couldn’t find one.

What if, as a White Sox fan, I want to call out the Chicago Cubs for over 100 years of futility? Curses are made to be broken — except in Wrigley. 100+ years and counting! I couldn’t find anything like that one either.

No, if you wanted to really get creative and go custom you’d have to do it yourself. The nice thing is, it does not seem like it would be all that hard to make some buttons.

Do a google search for “button machine” and there are 69 million results. Damn. Not wanting to spend too much time researching button machine products this post, I just clicked on the first one: American Button Machines. (It could be different for you…Google and their tricky geotargeting!) So let’s say I wanted to start my own little sports button making operation. What would it put me out to get started, as cheaply as humanly possible?

It appears that there are all different sizes of machines — 1 inch button machines all the way to a 3.5 inch button machines. I’m thinking 1″ would be a little too small for a sports button to be readable and have impact, but 3.5″ might be overkill. Conservatively, and hoping it was less expensive, I went with the 2.25 inch button machine. From the looks of it, you can buy just the button machine, a beginner button system, and a professional button system. I am certainly not a professional, but I have no other supplies on hand for button making. Thus, I clicked through to the beginner button system.

And here’s what I get:

• Free shipping (Whoo-hoo! More money for beer, err…flowers for my girlfriend I mean.)
• Free design CDs (Whoo-hoo! Free! Don’t know if I’d use ‘em, since the whole purpose would be for me to make my own button designs, but hey, it’s free!)
• 2.25 inch professional button maker
• All the necessary button supplies to make 250 buttons
• An adjustable circle cutter
• Instructions
• Price: $339.95

Not too shabby. Comes out to about $1.36 per button if I only make 250. The way I look at it, if someone was selling the buttons I described above, I’d easily pay $2-$3 for one. (Hmm…perhaps a business idea? Anyone want Midwest Sports Fans buttons to show off your love for our modest little piece of the sports blogosphere?) And if I want to make more buttons, I’d just have to dole out a little more cash for the supplies, but I’d have everything else.

So getting everything together to make the sports buttons would be pretty easy. Then it would just be all about coming up with funny ideas. And all that would really involve is grabbing a 24-pack of High Life and a handle of Jack, rounding up KVB and Ryan Russell (you remember them right? From when they used to post? Jackasses…) and then throwing ideas back and forth.

In fact, I bet I know what Russell’s very first button would be, and you can see it over there to the right. I found that one during my half hour scouring the Internet to see if there were any other funny sports buttons out there like krzyzewski krzucks. It clearly shows that Jesus holds the city of Pittsburgh in the same regard as people from Cleveland do.

Of course, Cleveland haters (and to be more specific, Browns haters) certainly can get their licks in as well as you can see to the left. Just in case the text is too small for you to read get glasses or a higher resolution web browser it says: “The only bowl the Browns will ever be in.”

Very freaking funny. But, as you can see, I am even willing to display ideas for sports buttons that disparage my own team.

And at the end of the day, that’s the beauty of it: sports buttons are another avenue for trash talk. Sure, you can make a “Go Browns!” button or something else positive and generic like that. But one of the best parts about sports is the endless banter and trash talk between friends of opposing teams. Wouldn’t it be fun, as a Browns fan, to sneak into one of your Steelers fan friend’s closets and pin a “Pittsburgh sucks” button on his most dapper dress coat? A couple weeks later you’d get a random phone call from your friend on the way to a work event cussing you out…and then you’d laugh about it over beers later.

If you need a little more help revving up the creative, trash-talking juices, below are some other funny sports buttons I found floating around on the web. There are a bunch of different places where you can buy these. Just do a little googling and I’m sure you’ll find out pretty easily. But don’t copy these, since that would be totally lame. Instead, refuse to be reined in by the limits of what is available and buy your own button maker. (And for the record, it doesn’t make a difference to me one way or the other to be who you buy it from, but hopefully the links out to American Button Machines help. Hey…they’re first in Google. They must be good, right?)

Other sports button ideas:

Show some love for our buddies over at Waiting For Next Year with a button like the one below (which, incidentally, is not from from their site, but very well could be.)

Are you a White Sox fan? What better way to show it off than with one of Hawk Harrelson’s greatest catch phrases ever — “He Gone!”

And even better for a White Sox, a sports button that explicitly calls out Cubs fans for being exactly what they are: worse than hookers:

Feel like showing your kinship with Roger Clemens and all of the other cheating liars in baseball? A sports button like the one below would do just that.

Not a fan of students in East Lansing? Call them out with a button like this one (or make up your own and substitute in your rival school):

Cleveland Cavaliers fans, want to show off one of the most popular reasons for why LeBron should be the MVP over Kobe? I think this button pretty much says it all:

Okay, so you know that guy in college who thought he was cool because he was really good at beer pong?

And he and his best friend took to calling themselves “Team Diablo” because an exasperated and frustrated drunk dude one night said “How did you guys get so good? It’s like you made a deal with the devil!” after losing again and again?

Yeah, well being good at beer pong is meaningless and that guy was a complete tool. So give him the button below to mock him. He’ll think you mean it, but you’ll know the truth.

(By the way, and this is totally unrelated to this button description, but no one who knew me from college is allowed to comment on this post.)

The button below I am just posting because I saw it and I cannot imagine why anyone would wear it. Unless you’re ARod. For some reason he seems like the kind of guy that would pee in the pool. Anyone else think this?

And finally, the funniest sports button I found while perusing the web. And I post this one as an homage to KVB, who probably had something similar in mind when designing one of the logos for Flash Sports Tonight.

So there you have it — the fruits of my procrastination from work and desire to post something completely unrelated to March Madness.

Now the only question is, what are you going to put on your sports buttons? The comment section is wide open for ideas.

Who knows — I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to get the button maker system, but if I do maybe we’ll have a little content to see who can come up with the best sports button ideas.

And of course, the funnier and more trash talk-related the better.

BCS Declares Palin Winner of Presidential Election, Obama Number 3

As I was listening to the Dallas area sports radio station 1310 The Ticket, the hosts of BaD Radio read a mock story on the BCS rankings for World War II. A quick Googling of the title of the report led me to the results of the BCS rankings for World War II, posted on Bleacherreport.com, with a big win for Germany. Inspired, I wondered what would happen if the BCS were applied to other walks of life, specifically the US election. The results may surprise you.

Sarah Palin Wins Presidential Election, Barack Obama Third

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants, the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Sarah Palin to be the winner of the 2008 Presidential Election.

“Palin started with some important early victories beginning with her election as Mayor of Wasilla, and followed with decisive conference wins in the election for Governor of Alaska and the nomination for Vice President. Her only losses came against Katie Couric and Tina Fey, however considering her strength of schedule, the computers determined her season worthy of a true number 1.

When asked about the number 3 ranking for Senator Barack Obama, the BCS commissioner stated “Obama really only had 2 major victories. Those victories were over Hillary Clinton in the Primaries and John McCain in the general election. The BCS computers don’t consider head to head victories like humans do. Those victories are still only viewed as a single game with equal weight to other games.”

President-Elect Sarah Palin commented on her massive upset. “It was tough after those two late losses to Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, but I defeated Romney for the Vice President nod, and he was ranked as the BCS number 2 in preseason.”

Romney, after the high expectations in the preseason, dropped out of the top 10 and ended up narrowly beating Senator Barney Frank to finish at 11. Senator Frank, who was unable to overcome the shattering losses to the Economic Crisis and Papa Bear Bill O’Reilly, was unable to remain in the top 25.

John McCain’s ranking of 5th has also come under question. The BCS commented “John McCain had a major loss to Senator Barack Obama in early November. If the loss had come earlier in the season, say September, McCain maybe could have recovered, however, similar to Texas Tech, McCain just lost too late in the season.

As expected, Senator Joe Biden finished in the number 2 spot, making him the Vice President of the United States.

For those who missed it, here is the replay of the crucial Franks loss to O’Reilly in week 7.

Authors Note- Obviously, none of this is true, but nevertheless, be thankful that the flawed BCS is only used for college football.