When we last left sign-adhering cum landfill Peter King, he was recommending a book written by his close friends (you know the Normans, don’t you? Delightful people. We had a party with them, the Whiteleys, and the Bowers last week!) and arranging “tweetups” (his word) all across this lofty country of ours.

And now, we have arrived at Peter’s final column before his month-long vacation. Stupid growing popularity of the NFL. Twenty years ago, Peter’s vacation lasted FIVE months! Now he has to WORK! Maybe even use his CAR! But fear not, dear KSK readers. For Peter reveals this week that SI.com will be using guest MMQB editors for the next month, whom we shall also cruelly mock (starting in two weeks. I need a rest from this man’s column, as do we all.) In the meantime, what new things will our favorite doucherocket learn this week? Will the smell of a Potbelly sandwich shop make him feel like he’s really in Bavaria? And what does droppinaduece think of all this? Read on…

It’s happening to Derrick Brooks.

Menopause. Tragic, really.

I don’t care if the guy gets wheeled into a locker room with two broken legs. Derrick Brooks is a football player’s football player, one of the best students of the game I’ve ever seen. He keeps voluminous notes, he watches hours of tape on days off, he calls his coaches after midnight in the off-season to brainstorm. (True story. Ask the new Seattle defensive coordinator, Gus Bradley, formerly the Tampa Bay linebackers coach, about Brooks calling late one spring Saturday night with an X-and-O idea.) ’

Oh, I will. Oh, wait. Actually, I don’t know Gus Bradley. YOU do. Oh, I get it! You’re casually name-dropping a person you have access to. I love it when you do that.

Say, why won’t any team pick up Derrick Brooks?

“I’ll tell you the real reason,” his friend Warren Sapp said over the weekend. “Because it’s not the same for the veterans anymore. The NFL doesn’t need us. In this NFL, the old vets don’t factor in. The kids don’t listen to nobody. Nobody! My last year in Oakland, I’d try to talk to some of the kids. Tommy Kelly, Terdell Sands. But they had no interest.”

No one wants to listen to what Warren Sapp has to say? GTFO! I thought Warren would plenty of valuable advice for newbies:

-“If you’re fat like me, you should also grow a goatee.”
-“People will vote you for the Pro Bowl if you’re on TV a lot!”
-“The sausage and egg biscuits at Mickey’s D’s are freshest at 8:45AM sharp.”

“The game’s different now. Look at Vince Young. Why wouldn’t he listen to Kerry Collins? I’m sure Vince thinks, ‘Nobody’s been through what I’m going through. Nobody’s been through my kind of pressure.’ Are you kidding me! Kerry Collins, fifth pick in the draft, has all the ups and downs, gets benched, makes those racist comments, has the alcohol problems, moves from team to team, comes back, has success … Vince Young should suck up all the knowledge Kerry Collins has to offer!”

Okay. That seems fair.

“There’s no better role model for him.”

Let’s not go nuts, Warren.

I have heard that Collins went out of his way last year to try to help Young when the struggling quarterback was having his quasi-breakdown. Young had no interest. Maybe Sapp’s on to something. If he is, it’s a sad commentary on the kids of the NFL.

And you should see how many of them wear Ugg boots!

Brooks told me he wants to play one more year. His gut feeling is he’ll get picked up.

Again, just a gut feeling. I’m not going to actually look further into it. Maybe Jason LaCanfora will do some digging. Good for you, Jason.

Roger Goodell sent a stern letter to the 32 teams last week, in effect telling coaches and those in the front office to have fun this summer, but legal fun.

There’s no kind of fun like legal fun! LET’S ALL HAVE SOME COTTON CANDY! AND LISTEN TO “BREATHE” BY U2, THE SONG OF THE MILLENNIUM!

Goodell sent these words to each team:

True words?

I want to use this opportunity to remind all NFL personnel — both players and non-players — that the prohibitions on alcohol-related misconduct, including DUI, apply to everyone. DUI is a serious matter which poses great risks to both those who drive under the influence, and innocent third parties. This truth was tragically underscored in Mr. Stallworth’s case. In the past few years, I have not hesitated to impose discipline, including suspensions, on club and league employees who have violated the law relating to alcohol use. Every club should advise its employees of their obligations and our commitment to hold people accountable for alcohol-related violations of law. Please ensure that your employees are aware of the resources available to them, including Safe Ride and similar programs. Let’s make sure that the 2009 season does not bring more tragedy or embarrassment to ourselves and our employees.”

AND NO SECONDS AT THE FUCKING WAFFLE BAR.

Brett Favre is throwing the ball with the old zip, evidently.

Ol’ Brett still gets it to the free safety faster than anyone alive! That reminds me, this is a good time to check out what’s going on at our favorite Twitter site, Biloxi Jim:

Well, g’night all my friends, family, and haters. I’m going to play a poker tourney online and then hit the bed12:31 AM Jun 21st from web

@OGOchoCinco Sounds like a lot. My son is competing for the QB job on his Varsity team. doning good so far. His recievers ask me stuff.

Oh, I bet they do. Things like, “Hey Coach Jimbo, how do you not spell ‘receiver’?”

Cleaning my office, just sent off about 10 packages that sold on eBay. I sell coffee, tea, coffee filters etc… check me out erwinfamily0712:45 PM Jun 20th from web

HE SELLS COFFEE?! WE MUST ALERT PETER POST HASTE!

Back to the column…

Bob Papa and I had the coach of the high school where Favre is throwing, Neville Barr, on our Sirius NFL Radio show the other day. Favre’s been throwing at Oak Grove (Miss.) High School, and Barr said: “He looks good. He said it was still a little uncomfortable, but I thought he threw the ball well. He had a lot of velocity and zip on it.” It’s a matter of time, as we all know. Only a setback in his throwing will stop him from being at Vikings camp.

Again, that’s just a guess. Light: broughted.

Doesn’t the Eli Manning contract seem long overdue?

Um, no?

“With all due respect, after we win I definitely will not be stomping on any towels. That’s just utter disrespect … A proud organization, the Steelers Nation. But I’m not too worried about it.”
–Tennessee linebacker Keith Bulluck, on the towel-stomping Titans, talking about the opening game of the 2009 NFL season, Tennessee at Pittsburgh, on Sept. 10 in Pittsburgh

THAT’S UTTER DISRESPECT!

“When he’s been out here in shorts without a live rush he’s made very good decisions, thrown an accurate ball and hasn’t turned the ball over. But his foot speed is not very good. He’s slow getting to the launch point and he’s got a very slow and long delivery. So you have to weigh that. Sure he’s been completing a lot of passes, but will he be able to get the ball out?”
–Tampa Bay quarterback coach Greg Olson, on Byron Leftwich, thought to be the favorite for the starting job heading into camp, but now appears to be lagging behind.

I like this quote because you know what Olson really means when he says Leftwich’s foot speed is slow. It means, “GOOD FUCKING GOD, THIS FATTY GOES ABOUT AS FAST AS THE HOUR HAND ON A CLOCK.”

“I just told him that unless he’s picking up my mortgage for the month of July and August, he can’t stay. He’s not living for free. I don’t need another kid around the house.”
–Cincinnati quarterback Carson Palmer, after receiver Chad Ochocinco said to make up for lost time in his professional relationship with Palmer he wanted to live in Palmer’s southern California home prior to training camp

No farty party, then?

Stat of the Week
This week’s sign the Green Bay Packers miss Brett Favre: The Packer Pro Shop and Atrium stores at Lambeau Field saw revenue decrease by $6.5 million, from $50.2 million to $43.7 million, from Favre’s last season, 2007, to the first post-Favre season, 2008.

Oh no! Only $43.7 million? Without Favre, they’re practically drowning! They should sell Austin Wood jerseys to make up the difference!

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me
Warren Sapp will appear as Forrest Whitaker’s brother in a movie called “Family Wedding” that begins shooting this week in Los Angeles.

There’s no way this film doesn’t have the prefix “Tyler Perry’s” attached to it. See, all these crazy black people get together for a wedding. But it turns out the groom is beating up the bride. And the bride’s sister is a crack whore. Then there’s a dance number! Then Madea comes in and hits someone with a log! Then the evil dark-skinned blacks get their comeuppance! Critics are going to love it, or at least pretend to love it so they don’t sound racist.

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

Why does this road have no signs to direct me to Peet’s?

OK, I’m out for four weeks after tomorrow’s mailbag column. I wanted to give notice about the Tweetups I’ll be doing, and where they will be happening, between now and the start of the season. (Define, Tweetup, you say.

I said no such thing.

All right. It’s a meeting between me and fans — or non-fans planning to pelt me with tomatoes — at which you can ask me whatever you want to ask, or at which we can just commune. I don’t know. I’ve never done one. We’ll see how they go.)

Sounds fun.

The schedule:

• Monday, July 13, 4-5 p.m., at the Los Angeles Coliseum, with Los Angeles Times NFL writer Sam Farmer. We’ll be there for an the annual highlight of the offseason in California, “NFL 101/201 — Get Ready for Some Football: An Intimate Evening with NFL Legends,” hosted by NBC’s Andrea Kremer. Guests at the event, which runs from 5-9:30 on the floor of the Coliseum, can catch passes from NFL players, walk through an NFL locker room set up by Green Bay equipment man Red Batty, and mingle with NFL players (Carson Palmer, Nnamdi Asomugha, Justin Fargas, Shaun Phillips, Jordan Palmer) on the field. There’s also a panel discussing NFL issues hosted by Kremer and featuring Joe Theismann, Warren Moon, Palmer, officiating czar Mike Pereira, Raiders exec Amy Trask and me. (Ticket info: Contact Aubrey Walton at awalton@lasec.us)

A penal with Peter King AND Joe Theismann? Where do I not sign up?

• Monday, Aug. 3, 5:45-7 p.m., at Joseph Bruno Stadium, Troy, N.Y.

• Monday, Aug. 10, 5:45-7 p.m., at Victory Field, Indianapolis, with injury expert/statsman/baseball guru/football savant Will Carroll. Meet us before the Indianapolis Indians game at the cool ballpark in downtown Indy. Will might even show you his IPhone.

And I’ll show you my Macbook Air!

• There will be a Boston Tweetup after my training camp tour ends in late August or early September. Not sure of the date or site yet.

But you can bet your ass it’ll be at the South End Buttery. (Picco on Tremont St. will be closed that day)

One last thing: Why the minor-league venues? We wanted to do them in public places with easy access for fans.

And easy access to toilets as well. If you’re attending these events for any non-ironic reason, you’re likely someone who spends at least 3 hours a day on a toilet, pushing out 15 pounds of used spicy shrimp.

We’ll see how these meetings go, and if they work in places like this, we’ll do some more. If only three or four people show up, we’ll have them on my back deck in the future.

It’ll be so nice, with the trees and the talk.

I think the most amazing thing I’ve heard in the past month, and I’ve confirmed it with someone close to Roy Williams, is that the Dallas receiver was never on a consistent weightlifting program in his life before this off-season, when he got after it at Valley Ranch. “I’m serious,” this acquaintance of Williams told me. “Roy never lifted before. Now that he has, and now that he’s serious about making himself a great football player, especially with T.O. gone, I think he’s really going to have a good year.”

“He’ll be awesome now that he’s kind of trying!”

I think I know I’m late on this one, and I’ve opined on it in other forums, but I don’t think this is a good sign for Joe Buck’s new show on HBO: The show ends, and a lengthy Brett Favre interview has been overwhelmingly overshadowed by a silly set of uppercuts from a comedian HBO poohbahs have barely even heard of, and I said to myself: Joe Buck just got the interview that everyone in the media has wanted for the last three months, and all people are going to be talking about is how Artie Lange hijacked the show. Sad.

MY BRETTY DESERVED THE SPOTLIGHT! NO ONE EVER PAYS HIM THE ATTENTION HE DESERVES! LOOK AT ALL THE JERSEYS HE SELLS!

The Favre interview should have been headline news all over America. Instead it was page two.

Oh, no! Page 2? GAHHHH! What have you done, Artie Lange? YOU FUCK?! I wanted to read about Brett Favre, but now I have to TURN A WHOLE OTHER PAGE TO DO SO. THIS MAN NEEDS HIS OWN WEBSITE! WE HAVE TO SAVE PRECIOUS FAVRE NEWS TO HELP THESE NEWSPAPERS SURVIVE! I CAN’T TAKE IT!

This is worse than the Bataan Death March.

I think I owe a bit of clarification to the contract I quasi-ripped in this space last week

The semi-LeBronish contract, if you will.

I think what impresses me about the first United Football League draft is how many players there are out there trying to resuscitate their careers. Look at the Orlando roster: Brooks Bollinger, Mike Doss, Rien Long, Chris Perry (the former Bengal top pick), Rob Petitti (the former Parcells find), Zack Pillar, Larry Tripplett, Seth Wand, Jermaine Wiggins. I have no idea if this league will last — and I have no idea if Orlando can sign these guys — but at least it’s serious about getting players who’ve been there and done that.

Yes, who knew a fledgling professional football league would try and target people who have already played professional football? It’s an amazing story. Seth Wand? This league isn’t fucking around.

I think as I head off on a short break before hitting the training-camp trail, I’d like to wish Jim Johnson, the defensive coordinator of the Eagles, well as he continues to fight melanoma. A year ago, I had a JV melanoma removed from my right arm.

YOU DIDN’T RESPECT THE SUN!

And while I’m at it: Max out on the sunscreen this summer.

Make sure to get inside your eyelids, children!

Make this a sunscreen summer.

And an exfoliant autumn!

Too many young people are letting the sun beat down on them too much — or laying in tanning beds too long. Respect the sun. It’ll kill you.

You can never hear it from Peter too many times. In fact, he got on the horn with the movie “Sunshine” yesterday, and it said, “Look, just respect my subject matter. It’s very hot.”

An observation from a golfing neophyte:

Oh, this is going to be bad.

I stood 10 feet behind Tiger Woods at the teebox…

I WAS CLOSE TO TIGER WOODS! ASK GUS BRADLEY HOW CLOSE I WAS!

…on the 389-yard par-four second hole and watch him line up, address the ball and hit a shot on the hole, which has a slight dogleg left. The idea is to get the ball far out on the fairway, but not too far because then it’d be in the low rough, and if you can, get it to fade a bit to the left so you’ll have a shorter shot to the green. I had a perfect view, from exactly behind Woods, and Woods’ shot looked absolutely straight as it gathered lift and flew into the distance. Then, near its height, the ball started ever-so-slightly curving left. And it dropped left a bit, landing maybe 150 yards from the hole, in position for Woods to par it, which he did.

My point is not that Woods made a textbook shot. My point is that of eight threesomes we saw, there was only one shot that wasn’t very good or better than Woods’ out of 24 golfers. I’m talking guys the casual fan has barely heard of — Bo Van Pelt, Simon Khan, Ian Poulter. It got me to thinking what an incredible golfer Woods is. If all these guys can make individual shots as good as Woods, and yet Woods wins so many majors and so many other tournaments, he’s got to be the most mentally tough, consistent guy on the tour. When you don’t see much golf, that’s something that impresses you.

So let’s sum that up for you folks at home:

1) Pro golfers are very good at golf.
2) Tiger Woods is impressive because he’s very good at beating other pro golfers.

Feel like you learned something today? Great.

Ben Roethlisberger shot an 81 at Bethpage on that great idea for the pre-Open show on NBC, the Roethlisberger-Michael Jordan-Justin Timberlake round of golf.

They couldn’t have squeezed Tiki Barber and Jerome Bettis in there?

Four-game lead, Boston. Do not get cocky. The Rays are coming. The Yanks are the Yanks.

And the Orioles are the Blue Jays.

Uncle. Uncle! The first day of summer brought weather more like the first day of spring in the northeast — heavy mist, fog, 58ish degrees, strong winds. I thought I moved to Boston, but apparently the truck brought our stuff to some combo platter of Seattle and Juneau.

Whoa hey yo. No one told me Boston had shitty weather! You city folk have been keeping that from me the whole time! I had to go to weather.com to find that out for myself!

Coffeenerdness: I’m in coffee nirvana when Equator Coffee is being served. Check it out. San Rafael, Calif.-based, and good and dark. Try the Zulu blend.

Oh, so the BLACKEST coffee they have is called ZULU?! THASS RAYCESS! No wonder Biloxi Jim sells it on his Ebay page.

I don’t know who Jon and Kate are, and I pray to God I never learn.

They’re boring, self-involved people. You’d adore them.

I do, however, know good books.

That James Patterson can spin a yarn!

The column will be off for the next four Mondays, but I want you to look for some surprise MMQB authors over the next four weeks. Who? That’s a surprise. You’ll have to log on each Monday to learn.

Ooh, have Don Banks do it! He’ll compare Rich Kotite to Andrew Jackson!

I’ll be back Monday, July 27, the day before I leave for my training-camp jaunt.

And we’ll be here, Zulu blend in hand.

Tags: Big Daddy Drew, FJM style, fun with peter king, shaka coffee

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