The Ravens announced earlier this week that they’ll be passing out tens of thousands of rally towels at M&T Bank Stadium prior to Sunday night’s blood feud with the Steelers. Being that they’re made by Under Armour, you know they’ll have that special illegal immigrant craftsmanship.

This tactic is far from new; teams do this all the time when the Steelers visit for nationally televised games. Can’t let those TV cameras pick up a home crowd flecked with twirly yellow spots! The Broncos tried to shake up the tradition a few weeks back with orange pom-poms, which was, uh, an interesting approach. Anyway, it’s just particularly hilarious to see it from the Ravens, whose fans, despite failing to grasp the crushing irony of doing so while dressed in white trash fabulous purple camo pants, rant unremittingly about how stupid Terrible Towels are. And it’s true – towels as sports fan accessories are dumb. I freely admit that. BUT NOW YOU TWIRL THEM TOO! Welcome to the club, you unoriginal Old Bay bumf*cks.

As for the game, Troy Polamalu is still out. Terrell Suggs probably won’t play. Who knows what condition Roethlisberger will be in. Neither team has played particularly well the last month. Should be quite the marquee event. I got a media credential from The Sporting News to cover this game, meaning most likely I’ll be watching it from the press box at M&T Bank, which will probably not be all that great, given that whole “no cheering in the press box” thing. And they won’t let me toss live grenades into sections of dicksmacks who take their whining about the refs to such an outrageous extent that they actually show up at the stadium dressed as blind officials. The joys of access!

But man oh man, do I want to be there to glory in Ravens fan misery and referee blaming should Pittsburgh win. I can’t tell you how much it burns me that I missed it last year. Because there’s nothing more amusing than the contrast between the typical fake hard-ass pregame Ravens fan spiel of “WE’RE GONNA FUCKIN’ TEAR BIG JEN WORTHLESSBERGER’S RAPIST HEAD OFF AND GET HIS DECAPITATED CORPSE TO SHIT IN MIKE TOMLIN’S PRETTY GAY MOUTH RAWR HARM CITY BABY” and the predictable postgame keening of “Waaaaaahhhhh! We only lost ’cause of the refs! Just like the Patriots game! And the first Bengals game! And, fuggit, every game we’ve ever lost! The Rooneys paid off the entire crew! This game is rigged! Bandwagon fans! Bandwagon fans! Any fan who hasn’t spent 14 grueling years rooting for their team is a bandwagon fan!”

And even if the Ravens prevail, I get a new towel to torch. Win-win!

Last November, the Pittsburgh Steelers rolled into Raljon with thousands of Terrible Towel waving fans in tow and kicked the living bejesus out of the Washington Redskins. The Skins brain trust immediately went to work to remedy the most glaring shortcoming. Did they adjust their pass-rush schemes? Tinker with their zone blocking? No, that would require actual football acumen. Rather the following week, the team handed out towels of their own. The move was widely ridiculed and relegated to the dustbin of failed promotions—or so we thought.

But this weekend, the Steelers are coming back to DC. So in an effort to avoid embarrassment (in the stands, at least) the Skins are bringing the idea out of mothballs and will distribute 50,000 of the “Redskins Rally” towels to fans. The team is eschewing their traditional burgundy and gold for the presumably cheaper white. Because nothing says “stand brave and fight” like waving a white flag above one’s head.

Says Coach Zorn:

“I think it’s fun that we’re doing the same thing. It’s a preseason game, but you know what, we’ve got great fans. I think Dan wants to continue to show his support and his enthusiasm for this team, for this community, so I think it’s all in … good fun. He’s competitive. We’re competitive. Now, I don’t know if there’s going to be battle of the towels or whatever. But it’ll be fun.”

You know what’s a good way to reveal that you don’t think something is a very good idea? Keep repeating how “fun” it is over and over. Unless, where Zorn comes from “fun” means “horribly unoriginal and embarrassing”. In that case, I completely agree. Seriously, there are several characteristics of the Steelers worthy of emulation– but flourishing your jizz mopper is not one of them.

[ credits: Jason Reid & Steinz at WaPo, USA Today ]

 
[ UPDATE: Drew didn't have time for a proper "This Week in F--k You" column, but he did send in this video edition. Check it out. Warning: some NSFW language. ]

The Football Fan’s Manifesto tip contest turned bad publicity stunt that will only cause me pain and likely not lead to any additional sales has come to a head. I can’t close the poll for some reason but here are the results at midnight, when I said I would end the voting. And the piece of merch that’s going to be fried will be a Terrible Towel. You people are some suckers for symbolism, I guess.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I definitely don’t want to burn a towel. The ghost of Myron Cope will never forgive me. But compared to what I could have lost, this is a huge relief. Hell, I have three of them and can get more at about $5 a pop (which goes to public schools the Allegheny Valley School, so I can be smug about my meager outlay). A few canny dickbags in the comments mentioned that the Hines jersey, though a crappy replica, holds the most sentimental value for me. And they’re 100 percent right. It’s not even close. It’s by far the most valuable item to me of all the things I offered up for sacrifice. Broggel nerr smire foll week if he have buln that jelsey! Yet still you picked a towel. YOU FOOLS! I spent all afternoon panicking that I was gonna have to lose the Hines jersey. After all, I wore it in that picture that got me shitcanned from The Post. I wore the thing under another jersey during the Super Bowl because I was freaked out because I wore it during Super Bowl XL and my superstitions were running on overdrive. It’s a priceless piece of Apeiana! You could even have made me destroy one of the other jerseys or the Fathead, which set me back far more money than one of several Terrible Towels. Still, I’m gonna have to destroy a towel and probably will never hear the end of it from fellow Steelers fans this year. You’ll get your video next week, jackals.