Diatribes on Tailgate Parties and Adolescent Psychology (Mailbag Part 3)
Look: you folks ask the questions. I just answer them. Even the ones about race, religion, child development and Joe Flacco parades .
This is Part 3 of the Week 4 NFL Mailbag. Parts 1 and 2 covered a variety of on-field questions about teams, coaches and players. This one covers all of my subscribers’ attempts to get me cancelled.
A quick apology: I know I missed a few questions. And I skipped a few about officiating, because I have no idea what is going on, and I didn’t get responses to some emails I sent out in search of explanations.
Will South Jersey hold a Joe Flacco day when he retires? – Geoff Filinuk
Yes! There will be a parade past Collingswood High School!
Oops, I meant Audubon High School, which Flacco attended. Collingswood never produced any sports heroes. Gosh, that must really stick in the craw of many Collingswood graduates.
Speaking of bets, what’s the silliest prop you’ve ever seen? – Luis Guilherme
I know a guy who bets “Every Team to Score a Touchdown in the 1:00 PM Window” almost every week. The moneyline varies based on the number of games.
On the one hand, I like that the bet forces the bettor to pay attention to every game. It makes the RedZone Channel even more fun for those who watch it. But the prop rarely hits. The moneyline never looks all that appetizing. And the poor fellow ends up walking away from his seat at the bar in front of an 80-inch television showing a 31-31 tie late in the fourth quarter to the back corner TV to see if the Falcons can punch one in while down 27-0 to the Panthers.
Inside-joke answers to the last two questions aside, modern sportsbooks go out of their way to craft wacky five-legged parlays with sucker’s moneylines. The goal is to get thousands of bettors to shrug at their phones and say, “Five bucks. Why not?” And it works. But the bar for silliness is really high.
Mike, what are your current announcer power rankings? Which broadcast teams do you enjoy, who do you dislike, who do you think is underrated? – Ken Raining
I pay as little attention to announcers as possible. I know Tom Brady has a weird nasally voice. I respect Al Michaels, who I have gotten to know over the years. I enjoyed Tony Romo until he started trying to say 30 things at once. But announcer chatter is aimed at a casual audience, and it can often be detrimental to forming my own opinions about what is happening.
Oddly enough, I find preseason announcer chatter more useful, because it helps stay abreast of the local storylines. If the team-compensated preseason color commentator gushes about the fifth-round pick, it’s usually coach-approved gushing, which means the kid really will make the team. But national color commentators think like rightsholders, careful to be deferential to coaches, owners and veterans, at least until all hell breaks loose. It doesn’t entertain or inform me enough to turn the volume higher than “background noise.”
What’s your perfect tailgate menu before a game? And which stadium/team treated the reporters the best when you traveled? – KeithTNC
I have not tailgated in two decades. Occupational hazard. I miss it. I used to be a glutton! A sausage, peppers and eggs sandwich on a good Italian roll usually kicked things off. Noon beers. Afternoon beers. Sunset beers. Burgers. Kielbasa. The best “tailgates” were often just cookouts at a buddy’s house with a satellite dish. If your schedule, budget and digestive tract make all-day tailgate Bacchanals possible: cherish every opportunity!
The Eagles put out a serious spread for writers: omelet bar, carving station, you name it. The Ravens used to offer crab cakes for playoff games, the Patriots mini-lobster rolls. I don’t like seafood, but when in Rome!
The Giants, meanwhile, throw a pile of chicken tenders at the media like they are hosting a kindergarten birthday party on a tight budget.
I am SURE I have mentioned this many times before, but teams used to let the media eat in the team cafeteria during training camp. I think most of them stopped years ago. When I covered the Giants in 2011, I could get a salad, some sort of pasta salad, an “avocado chicken”-type of entrée and as many cookies as I could fit on my plate, then walk past Justin Tuck and Mathias Kiwanuka to sit at the table behind them. By a few years ago, those lunches devolved into little boxes with turkey wraps and chips in them in the media workroom.
Nothing gold can stay. And this concludes my complaining about free food for today.
Has the role of religion (especially Christianity, and ESPECIALLY especially evangelical Christianity) in football changed in the time you’ve been watching the sport? And has that change made any difference to the way football is played/coached/managed/enjoyed? – Will Schultz
Yowza. This escalated quickly.