4. Make the first down line red and call it the Great Line of China. Get it, get it? Like the Great Wall. I believe they have a word for this in the corporate arena. It's called synergy. And no one knows what this means, but if you have an MBA you are required to use this word at least every third sentence. Have China sponsor this line for 18th billion yen. This makes logical sense thanks to the fact that just about everyone who is watching a game in HD on a flat-screen TV is doing it on a screen originally made in China. Again, synergy.
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| Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! (Getty Images) |
6. Ask Katie Couric to pay for it with a personal check. Or have me ask Katie Couric. I have no shame. And actually, I used to have a crush on Katie Couric in eighth and ninth grade, so I'm fine with this. She was the only thing I enjoyed about mornings for my early adolescence.
7. Realize that it pays for itself in terms of increased viewers. My brother-in-law Jim isn't even a sports fan but he watches games just because the picture is so good on his TV. "I like to look at the blades of grass. They're so crisp," he told me last time I was in Michigan. Leaving aside the fact that he'd rather look at pictures of blades of grass during a televised game than look at actual blades of grass outside, this is a pretty common position. Viewership for HD games increases by 25 percent and the theory is that many people are willing to watch just because the picture is so good. I picture millions of American men sitting on their couches completely bedazzled by the picture with their tongues hanging out unable to move a finger to change the channel. This bodes well for our country when every channel goes HD in 2009. Every other country in the world could conquer us if they just found a way to beam in footage of an NFL cheerleader locker room. This could actually be the plot for Red Dawn II.
8. Digitally alter every game to make it look like it's snowing. Games where it's snowing outdraw games where it isn't snowing. So we need more snow. This seems like it would be pretty easy to do. Or if you didn't want to digitally alter the screen just buy snowblowers and stream snow onto the playing surface out of view of the cameras. Although, admittedly, some people might question snow in Miami or in the New Orleans Superdome. You'd just have to be smart about it. But ratings would skyrocket. You'd get the benefit of the HD increased viewership with the benefit of the snowfall increased viewership. Again, synergy.
Real World update
Apologies for not writing about this earlier, but how unbelievable was that Tyree and Davis near fight on Real World a couple of weeks ago? For the first couple of minutes all I could think about was how crazy Tyree was and then, out of nowhere, Davis just went certifiably insane. Everyone on earth is up in arms over the NBA brawl, but the Real World near brawl made the Knicks' Nate Robinson look like the soul of moderation. If Nate Robinson had been in the Real World: Denver house he would have been like, "Y'all dudes are crazy," and walked around waving his arms. Of course I loved it. Except for when Davis inexplicably screamed a racial slur to his buddy on the phone. Then he sort of deserved to get his ass kicked. And how about the fact that his buddy didn't even react? Maybe I'm naïve, but I've never been on the phone with someone, drunk or not, when they suddenly screamed a racial slur out of nowhere. Regardless, this season from Denver has success written all over it. Or death. Either way, it's going to be pretty exciting.
Initial rerun
Thanks to all the people who wrote in with comments about my rules for initials. Particularly to Justin, who wrote me asking, "How about political leaders in the 1960s who were known by all three of their initials: JFK, LBJ, MLK, RFK?" This is a great question. I'm assuming all of these guys grew out of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR. In fact, I remember reading in Robert Caro's 4 million page multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson that LBJ made the conscious decision to self-refer to himself as LBJ because he wanted people to think about him in a Presidential fashion like they did FDR. So Johnson had all his shirts monogrammed with his initials, went third-person triple initial in his own comments about himself, and became LBJ. So maybe Vince Young (V.Y.) and LBJ have more in common than just being from Texas. But how weird is it that the three initial businesses just died after three-fourths of the guys above got assassinated and the other got bogged down in Vietnam? Maybe it's time for a triple-initial politician to make a comeback.
Red flag on 'Bama Bangs
The 'Bama Bangs Wikipedia entry is under review. Of course I have no idea what this means. But somehow people are debating whether our entry is significant enough to retain its entry. I think we need a cabal of readers to hijack the discussion and make sure Wikipedia is aware of the seriousness of our scientific inquiry.
Also, if anyone knows how to post pictures on that page, we could probably use a photo.
