peter king

Maybe “meta” isnt’ the right word, but this weekly post where Peter King basically gets his ass handed to him every Monday takes on a bizarre twist whenever you people aren’t happy with the guest effort. Whenever Drew isn’t available for this post, his substitute is typically raked over the coals by the grumpier Kommenters who miss our jeerless leader’s gentle touch. So basically you end up ridiculing us ridiculing Peter King. And if I may address that group right now personally: all of you can get bent. Nobody cares if this post is the only reason that you still visit this site. Well, Drew does, but Drew isn’t here to save you now, is he?

/takes off belt
//makes loud slappy noises with it

Here we go. You coming or what?

The only drama here this week is whether Competition Committee co-chair Rich McKay of the Falcons can be political enough and diplomatic enough to convince 24 teams to change the 36-year-old, sudden-death overtime rule for the 2010 postseason. McKay has six members of his eight-man committee convinced that the time for reform has come, including longtime if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it Indy GM Bill Polian. The committee is proposing to change sudden death to a modified sudden death — one that guarantees a two-possession overtime unless a touchdown is scored on the first possession.

So maybe this isn’t the old World League’s “You need six points to win in OT” rule, but what would happen if one team wins the toss, kicks a field goal, and the other team loses possession. Is that it?

Coaches don’t seem to want it. “…I think it’s just another thing we’ve got to worry about, with all the other decisions we have to make.”

Like managing the clock, for instance? I’M LOOKING AT YOU, ANDY REID! Wait…that’s a walrus.

walrus

I’m on record for not changing overtime. Each team already had sixty minutes to win the game. Let America’s currency succeed where they failed. Yeah, I know they don’t use actual money for the coin toss. Eat my ass.

The NFL Draft’s a month from today, and this weekend has proven one thing to me: Tim Tebow’s going higher than we thought he would.

ONE ABOVE-AVERAGE PRO DAY AND HIS SINS ARE NO MORE! PRAISE JESUS!

I thought it might be good enough to get him into the second round, but who wanted to spend a second-rounder in a very deep draft on a guy you might need to redshirt for two years?

Nobody. Tebow’s not a “conventional first day” pick. And I’m not just saying that because the first day of the draft this year is only one round. Am I the only one totally pissed off by that?

But something interesting has happened this weekend. Most agents are happy to tell you where their client will be visiting before the draft and which teams he’ll be working out for. A top player is usually happy to talk about a conversation he had with Bill Belichick or advice he got on how to throw the ball from Mike Holmgren. Not Tebow’s agent Jimmy Sexton over the weekend.

RETURN MY TEXTS, YOU SNIDE LITTLE SHIT!

What this tells me is that teams interested in Tebow don’t want the other teams interested in Tebow to know how interested they are.

Interesting!

I now think Tebow’s going in the 28 to 45 range, to a team willing to be patient with him at quarterback and maybe to allow him to help the team in other ways immediately.

Help how? Keeping the headsets warm? Doing odd chores around the house? “Timmy, your turn to wash the jocks! And when yer done with that, Coach Del Rio will be waitin’ for his supper.”

And he said he hasn’t decided whether to accept the NFL’s invitation to attend the draft in New York — though he sounded like he wouldn’t.

BUT WHO WILL BE AMERICA’S NEXT GREEN ROOM BITCH? WHO? WHOOOOO?

If I were an NFL team drafting high, I’d be very careful evaluating Eric Berry.

More careful than, say, a lauded college player from Gainesville that will be a career backup in the NFL?

Of the four top-10 safeties this decade, none has had franchise-player impact: Sean Taylor (Washington, fifth overall, 2004), Michael Huff (Oakland, seventh, 2006), Donte Whitner (Buffalo, eighth, 2006), LaRon Landry (Washington, sixth, 2007).

Three of those guys play on horrible teams. And the other guy IS DEAD!

I’m not saying Berry won’t be a great player.

Just using statistics to show you that he has a 25 percent chance of being gunned down in his own home! Didn’t we cover this last week?

Mike Pereira’s successor as the NFL vice president of officiating, Carl Johnson, is sometimes so overwhelmed by the subway in Manhattan that he just walks 20 minutes to work.

This is the kind of guy I want running the most significant crew of officials in American team sports!

Johnson hopes his former full-time job — he managed teams of people in the field for a soft-drink company in Louisiana — has prepared him for some of the heat he’ll feel from coaches angry at bad calls when they call to complain Monday mornings.

How are those two jobs remotely similar? “I’d be a great a conducting a symphony orchestra! I used to be a pastry chef!” What kind of shit-assed personality test made these jobs compatible?

Speaking of Pereira, he’s interested in coaching, believe it or not.

I don’t believe it! Is he qualified, according to the Peter King Job Search Rubric? Can he rebuild a transmission?

Part of the reason he left his job in New York was to be more of a caretaker for his ailing parents in central California.

Sounds like just the kind of guy that needs to be spending 80-plus hours gameplanning. “Off to play the Chiefs, mom! Try not to die until Monday!”

The Players Association is not happy with the TV Networks.

They just mean NBC, right?

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

This is how you resolve a travel dispute that could have been one of the real ugly ones:

This could have been the Laguna Cliffs Marriott all over again!

Late Thursday afternoon, my wife and I got on the train in Boston headed for Providence, had dinner and went to watch the NCAA basketball game between our alma mater, Ohio University, and Georgetown.

A train leaves Chicago, heading east, one hour later…

We had bought tickets to return on the 10 p.m. Acela, which gave us time enough to watch the mighty Bobcats but not the second game of the doubleheader.

And then three people got off the train, and four people got on…

At 9:53, I noticed 15 or so well-dressed travelers come up the stairs from the platform, and thought, uh-oh, those are Acela-dressed people. Still no announcement, and none of the others in the waiting room seemed to notice, but I told my wife to hustle up, let’s get downstairs. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, the Acela was already moving down the tracks. Gone.

Gone! No!

kirk-khan-shout

KHAAAAAAAAANNNN!

We had to get back to Boston; our dog Bailey hadn’t been out since a 7:30 p.m. walk, and we were sure she was just about sitting with her legs crossed by the front door waiting to be let out.

Really? Because I’m pretty sure that she’d be washing your couch with piss.

So we went upstairs to the apologetic Amtrak agent at the counter. He was befuddled by the leadfooted and impatient conductor of the train — though he did say the fine print of our tickets allowed that northbound Acelas were allowed to leave stations early. (Idiocy, if true, and double-idiocy if not announced in the station that the train was arriving early and would be leaving early.)

It’s in the fine print that you obviously should have read! You write stuff for a living!

He refunded our tickets, and we got into a cab for what turned out to be a $127 ride home, figuring we’d try to get it back from Amtrak the next day.

Really? You got your money back for the train ticket AND you want your cab fare paid? Do you want your dick sucked, too? Hey, might as well ask. It’s AmTrak. It’s not like they have any standards. Their trains leave early!

Next day, a female Amtrak agent (forgot her name) listened to my story, apologized four times, said she knew nothing of the rule the Providence agent spoke of, and said she could do one of two things: forward us to someone else who would take our application for payment of the cab fare, and maybe we’d get our money and maybe we wouldn’t, or give us a $100 Amtrak travel voucher on the spot.

Don’t take the voucher, Petey! That’s where they get you!

I took the voucher…

Pussy!

which wasn’t totally justice, considering we still got home a half-hour later than we would have,

I MISSED N.C.I.S.!

but under the circumstances a splendid way to short-circuit a dispute with a regular Amtrak rider (which she didn’t know I was.)

I write for a magazine, too! I got that job after three years of selling potato peelers on the boardwalk!

Ten Things I Think I Think

Oh, balls…

b. It stuns me that in these economic times, the NFL can still print money, getting $720 million from Verizon for the mobile TV rights for the next four years. That’s $22.5 million per team, on average, for a minor part of the media puzzle that no owner could have even imagined would generate a dime 15 years ago.

I would love to be standing next to Pete when flying cars finally come out. I’d bet I could actually hear the man shit his pants. “You mean I can drive while I fly? What a time to be alive!”

d. There’s a rule likely to be approved that would make it illegal for teams to line a rusher up directly over the long-snapper.

I’m pretty sure this is already illegal on field goal attempts.

e. There’s an unauthorized biography of Al Davis in the works by a reputable writer, and I hear Al’s not pleased about it.

f. Come to think of it, who would be pleased about an unauthorized biography?

Besides everyone? Oh, and the author, maybe? “I’m writing this Al Davis biography, but I’m none too pleased about it.”

2. I think the movement of the umpire from the defensive side of the ball (in the middle of the field) to the offensive backfield — as reported by Chris Mortensen Sunday afternoon here — is so that none of the umpires get more seriously injured than they already have been. “Do you know how many times umpires got knocked down last season,” outgoing officiating czar Mike Pereira asked Sunday. “Over 100. Our guys got two concussions, and there were three surgeries — all a result of hits on the umpires. Is there any other official in sports who’s put in the middle of the action the way an umpire is?”

Maybe this guy [roll it to the 0:38 mark]:

b. Looked like Robert Morris, losing to Villanova, got robbed to me. Wouldn’t the Big East be hiding its head in shame this morning if that Thursday afternoon game got called right?

You mean they’re not? Pete, did you even WATCH that Georgetown-Ohio game? Ohio finished 9th in the MAC this season. Ninth!

f. Coffeenerdness: Good Tweet from Marc Schaub, a teacher in Winston-Salem (@marcschaubjr) the other day: “Why do I have to tip the people at Starbucks, but not McDonald’s. They’re all working pretty hard.”

I have no argument here.

k. It took me a long time to love the three-point shot, but I’m a convert now.

“I used to hate whipped cream in my coffee, but I’m a convert now.”

“I used to hate straight-legged pants, but I’m a convert now.”

“I used to hate Punter doing the Peter King posts, but…no?”