Chad Ochocinco wants to change his name to another clunky foreign translation of “Eight Five”. This time it’s Japanese, making it “Hachi Go” which sounds too much like Hibachi for Maj not to murder Chad in a defense of Gilbert Arenas’ honor. OchoHachiCincoGo also responded to the $30,000 fine for the poncho and sombrero he wore on the sidelines last week by saying he was going to blow the horn of Vikings mascot and Drew’s bear of choice, Ragnar, on Sunday. Also, he wants to punch Shawne Merriman in the mouth, but that will have to wait for next week.

Chad’s antics are temporarily overshadowing a pretty huge game. A few weeks ago, it seemed inevitable that the Vikings would have the second seed in the NFC sewn up. A loss here leaves them only a game up on Arizona, which owns the tiebreaker after dominating the Vikes last week. The Bengals, meanwhile, want to keep pace with San Diego in their hunt for the AFC second seed. The two teams play next week in what will likely decide whether it’s Marmalard or true Bengals hero J.T. O’Sullivan who gets the first round bye.

Also, it’s possible it could be a Super Bowl preview. Which makes us wonder what stunt Chad would pull if Cincy makes it to the Super Bowl in Miami? Remember that he’s from Dade County, so he would likely want to put on a show for the kith and kin. Since he’s turning Japanese, seppuku would be fitting if the Bengals come up short. Or, alternatively, he could get one of those comfort women Japanese guys like so much if they prevail.

The freshly KSK nicknamed Zulu Cthulhu can help the suddenly adequate Vince Young take down the unbeaten Colts this weekend, but for now he’s gotten himself entangled in a pointless wager with an NBA player. Yes, the gauntlet has been thrown – the Celtics Rajon Rondo and Chris Johnson must meet in a footrace for the ages. And by that, I mean one Zulu will win easily.

Chris Johnson had a 40 time of 4.24 at the 2008 combine. Rondo is reputed to be one of the fastest players in the NBA, though according to Shoals’ back of the envelope calculations of other quick NBA players running the 3/4 court sprint, he doesn’t stand much of a chance. Before we get to any of that, I’d like for us to pin down just how much money is at stake.

The tweet says two grand, but Johnson was quoted thusly in the Nashville City Paper:

“He called me and told me what Rondo was saying. So I went on Twitter and said, that’s easy money,” Johnson said. “That’s cool if he wants to lose $200,000. I had to go public with it. He must be stupid. It won’t be no close race.”

There’s a chance he misspoke or the reporter heard him wrong. If not, damn, that’s raising the stakes.

Let’s not forget that while Johnson might be technically speedier, he fails to take in account that the LEGENDAHY BAHSTAN FAITHFUL CAN WILL OW-AH DAAAHHHKKIEEE TAH VICTAHY! Ow-ah suppaht can shave AT LEAST fo-uh seconds awf his time.

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!

Yesterday it was announced that Tony Dungy will head the Players Advisory Forum, a group that will serve as a intermediary between players who want to bitch and the league executives who want to ignore them. Already committed to the cause is a religious nut (Kurt Warner), a phony dickbag who conveniently adopted religion to cover for his sordid past (Ray Lewis) and Brian Dawkins (Brian Dawkins).

Now, Dungy has already played guardian angel for Michael Vick. He’s trying to do it again with some college football coach. But what’s his angle? If there’s anything I distrust, it’s a guy with a savior complex. I search for greed and self-interest in the basis for every action. Why? BECAUSE EVERYONE IS GREEDY AND SELF-INTERESTED!

Therefore, I must conclude that Dungy is starting a cult. A big awesome football cult. I bet he’ll call it the Indianapolis Cults (ba-zing?).

Now, I have no problem with cults. One of my uncles is actually in one. Growing up, I’d only see him at holidays, but he seemed a fairly normal and affable guy. As a teenager, I began picking up on the fact that in-laws commented that they never knew where his income came from, and they joked that he was probably a drug dealer (he lives in Miami, which is for drug dealers what D.C. is for lawyers). Then finally when I was about to graduate high school, they dropped the bombshell on me that he joined a cult right after he got out of college. “Who’s the cult leader?” I would ask. At the time he joined, it was some Indian kid who was anointed a deity at birth, which sounds like a pretty sweet deal for the kid. I’m guessing he’s a grown-up deity now. “So what does he do for the cult?” I would press. They didn’t know entirely, but they’d answer, “well, he mostly flies around on The Guru’s jet.”

I know Waco gave cults a bad name, but my uncle got a good arrangement at this benign cult where he would just fly around everywhere on jets and party with crazy cult floozies. My conclusion: CULTS. ARE. AWESOME.

Sadly, I never got in on the lazy floozy banging cult life. Instead, I became a layabout blogger. But this cult sounds like it could work. Add football to the equation, and I want in on the ground floor of Dungy’s football cult. I imagine hating the gays will be a big part of it, which I can’t say I would be crazy about. Me and the gays got no beef. But if they got a sweet jet, then shit, all bets are off, gays. Sorry.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of me saying Ray Lewis is going against Dungy’s former team this weekend. But Terrell Suggs is out, so even though the Ravens were already boned against the Colts, they’re extra boned now.

This week we’re highlighting the very obscure, totally non-showcase match-up between Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. I doubt any NFL-related TV shows will explore this particular angle of the Colts-Patriots game on Sunday, so it’s good that we are.

Pey-Pey and Dreamboat have met in a lot of big games this decade, so they have a “rivalry” even though I doubt there is any actual animosity between the two of them. Brady has won most of the contests, but Peyton has had the advantage the last few years. They’re both really good and shoo-in Hall of Famers.

Peyton is a robot who gesticulates too much at the line of scrimmage and, according to Peter King, is possessed of anal traits. Early in his career, it was fun to mock him for being without a championship and gay for Kenny Chesney. But then he went and won a title while the Chesney jokes got old. Now he’s just a really good quarterback who appears in a lot of commercials. The worst I can say about him is that Colts fans, even though Peyton has won multiple MVP awards and is generally thought to be the face of the league, act as though he’s somehow ignored and underappreciated. Because they’re all Midwestern diptards with nothing else in their lives, but that’s not really Peyton’s fault, is it?

Tom Brady is a smug asshole, but then he leads an almost cartoonishly perfect life. Would you or I be unbearable were we lavished with such gifts? Probably. I’m already kind of a dick and I don’t have anything on Brady. As quietly as one can do something on the overexposed Patriots, Brady has “quietly” returned to his dominating pre-injury form in the last few weeks, regaining the timing with Randy Moss that was clearly missing in the Pats first few games. That doesn’t make him or his fans, many of whom wanted Brady traded last year then complained that he wasn’t traded when he struggled some out of the gate this year, any less obnoxious. He cheated on Bridget Moynahan, he wears Yankees hats in public while he plays for a Boston (er, sorry, “New England”) team, earlier this year he blew off the Matron Saint when she tried to get a post-game quote from him. He’s a dick. You can nail him and Pats fans for the Spygate and 18-1 stuff, but then the amount of irrational hate the Steelers have received in the last year has actually made me identify with the Massholes some. Did I actually write that? Oh well.

I think the first time Peyton and Brady ever met kind of captures their respective personalities perfectly.

Already a two-time Pro Bowler, Manning nevertheless introduced himself: “I’m Peyton Manning.”

“And I said, ‘No (expletive),’ ” Brady said yesterday, laughing. “We were both getting warmed up and he was probably on his 100th throw of the day, two hours before the game. It was a pretty quick meeting.”

Robot, meet dickhead.

Elisha and Marmalard will forever be inextricably linked as the top two quarterbacks selected in the 2004 NFL Draft, but more so because they were swapped for one another because Eli Manning is a prissy little bitch who refused to play in San Diego. Also, they’re both tremendously unlikable people. Eli has already had to play the Chargers since that fateful draft day (he lost), but that was back in 2005 when Breesus was still at the helm of the offense. “NOW IT’S LASERFACE’S TURN TO INFLICT NUTPUNCHING ANGUISH ON LESSER MANNINGS! TELL ME THAT’S FLIPPIN’ SWEET, SHARTBOTTLE!” Anyway, WHO YA GOT?

Last year, the Lions set the benchmark for failure to which all future failures will be compared, at least until the NFL expands its schedule to 18 games and some woebegone franchise (Redskins?) finds a way to lose that many games in a season. This year, the Rams look every bit as bad – possibly even worse – than that Detroit team from a year ago. Other than a matchup at currently winless Tennessee later in the season, this Sunday represents the Rams’ best chance at getting in the win column, seeing as how six of their final eight games pit them against teams with a .500 or better record. As fate would have it, it’s the Lions who could be the guardians of another epic NFL fail. So, WHO YA GOT?

Contestants

Same Ol’ Sorry Ass Rams____________________2008 Detroit Lions

Point differential through seven games

-151_________________________________-98

Number of times shutout

Twice_______________________________Zero

Is there an inconvenient crisis among the prominent industry in town that will lead to innumerable painful bailout jokes associated with the team’s horrid play?

Thankfully not (but they’d still like jobs)______________Oooohhhhh yeah

Are they responsible for Nelly or Kid Rock?

Nelly_____________________________Kid Rock

Pictoral approximation of failure

Medical failure analog

Kidney failure________________________Rectal prolapse

Meager redeeming quality

Avoided Rush Limbaugh as owner (through no fault of their own)______Suckered Dallas into paying big for Roy Williams

Finishing move

Laying down and dying quietly (on top of an animal)_________________Necrophilia fodder

They wrote books you probably didn’t buy. They like teams you probably don’t like. They’re gormless lazy fapwits who spend many days without pants formulating idiotic one-note caricatures of football players and coaches, all who yell and cuss a lot. It sometimes reaches a kind of crude brilliance, but mostly it doesn’t. But now their teams face one another in regular season battle reeking of quasi-LeBronish import. IT’S A FIVE-THROWGASM GAME! [Quick aside: I will be at this game because, unlike Drew, I don't rely on Gawker (which has its head so far up the ass of some midlevel ESPN employee that no cares about - much better than getting a flight booked correctly) for getting around]. Anyway, WHO YA GOT?

The unbeaten Giants travel to the Superdome Sunday to play the undefeated Saints. It’s a supremely consequential game that could play a large part in the eventual make-up of the NFC playoff picture. But let’s not that allow all that meaningful subtext to get in the way of petty grudges one player holds against the team that made him a star. But it’s not just any former player – it’s a heroic douchebag that the more obnoxious members of the Giants fanbase still cling to as though he invented chin strap facial hair and chain smoking. Meanwhile, that player is promising to have his best game of the year against his former team. Since he’s already has two TDs in one game, he must be promising three. Will he deliver. WHO YA GOT?

Last year, Josh McDaniels was tasked with making Matt Cassel look like an adequate quarterback, and by employing the daring strategy of exploiting a stacked receiving corps, he was able to accomplish just that. Having done so, it was certainty that some foolish team would be willing to let him run their team into the ground. That team turned out to be the Broncos. As with so many of his other underqualified underlings, Bill Belichick was content to let him out into the world to destroy another franchise’s hopes at competency. But McDaniels has stubbornly flouted the established Belichick disciple model and found a measure of success (or at least taken the credit for the success Mike Nolan’s defense has gotten him). Is McDaniels crazy enough to try to beat his former master. Knowest he nothing of fealty? Anyway, WHO YA GOT?