Illegal Procedure

My suggestion follows the photo.

SASQUATCH ANGRY!!!

If the Bills are desperate to win, why did they hire Dick Jauron?

Not only can you “kick back with the Manning quarterback snacks,” but you could (in theory) kick back with the Manning quarterbacks proper, as their conference championship weekend involves sitting on the couch just like yours does. I hereby nominate the Van Pelt family (Brad, Bradlee, and famous long-snapper Linus) as “football’s new royal family.”

I’m voting for Denver and Seattle, though I think either game could go either way. I’m almost convinced that the Steelers will win in Denver, but since it’s a road game, I’m going with the safe bet. I think either Pitt. or Denver will beat who ever advances from the NFC.

I’m not surprised that some Wisconsin resident is operating FireTedThompson.com. Thompson’s track record doesn’t look so good, and I know of no Packer fans who are optimistic about Thompson’s coaching hires, including deceased Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy at head coach and West Allis, WI native Jeff Jagweedzinski at offensive coordinator. (Of course, hiring local boys has always worked out well in the past for Green Bay.)

Rather, what surprises me is that no one is operating FireTheGuyWhoDesignedFireTedThompson.com. While yellow-on-green is generally recognized as the gold standard for Web readability, my eyes were bleeding after thirty seconds looking at that site, and I now have an uncontrollable desire to eat cheese.

• Washington @ Seattle: Seattle. Easy pick after the lackluster showing by Washington’s offense last week. To be fair, Seattle’s defense is not as good as Tampa Bay’s, but I think their offense more than makes up for it.
• New England @ Denver: Denver. This is the matchup of the week, and not just because I’m a Broncos fan. New England has a 10-game playoff streak, and Denver has a 10-game home streak, as well as a 10-game home streak in December and January. Two great coaches: Shanahan the offensive mastermind vs. Belichick the defensive genius. Denver’s power running game vs. New England’s power passing game. I think Denver is the overall better team, but Brady is the X-factor, as always. I would pick New England in Foxborough, BTW.
• Pittsburgh @ Indianapolis: Indy. This is likely the best defense Indy will have to play for the rest of the postseason, and you better believe they are dissecting the film from the San Diego game. Still, I’m confident that Indy will win and Joey Porter will eat his words.
• Carolina @ Chicago: Tough call.  I’m sure Chicago won’t make it to the superbowl with such a lackluster offense, but they really pasted Carolina the last time these teams met.  I think I’ll take Carolina anyway; they are playing a lot better than they were when they got pounded by the Bears.

I’m publishing this a bit late, but only by Carolina/Chicago pick wasn’t done before Sunday morning.

Stewart Mandel at SI.com thought it was ridiculous that the soundtrack for EA Sports’ NCAA Football 2006 included tracks from various Gen-X era college rock acts like the Pixies and the Pietasters. Mandel wonders “what the programmers¹ were thinking,” since he “highly doubt[s] there is an abundance of Pixies and Pietasters fans among the college football video-game-buying public.”

¹ As an aside: Stewie, it seems unlikely that programmers were thinking much about the soundtrack decisions at all. We at IP.com — Pixies and Pietasters fans all — are unwilling to pay list price for this year’s sports-based games, and we don’t have a copy of NCAA Football 2006 handy in order to check the credits. However, since the mid-80s or so, programmers have typically had very little to do with art direction or soundtracks on video games. In fact, contemporary video game productions employ teams of 50-100 and have multimillion dollar budgets. In a large video game project like an EA Sports title, the programmers are focused on mundane details like ensuring that players can’t run through one another — not on whether or not there’s more than one song Stewart Mandel can recognize on the soundtrack.

I’m not interested in debating Mandel’s assertions about what sort of music is likely to be preferable to video-game football fans. Instead, I’m more interested, in the process involved in choosing incidental music for NFL games. Sure, there are the standards: Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” Guns-n-Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” Todd Rundgren’s “Bang on the Drum,” and AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” (third downs only!) are popular in stadiums. ESPN’s Sunday Night game emulates the stadium experience: at commercials, Bristol typically features hard rock like AC/DC (even “Thunderstruck!”) and KISS, probably to damage viewer hearing to minimize the impact of Theismann’s inanity.

The over-the-air networks, though, seem to draw from a deeper well. In 2002, Fox used the riff from Bad Brains’ “Re-Ignition” when they were showing stats. That’s bizarre, since I highly doubt that there are an abundance of Bad Brains fans among the NFL-watching public, but cool. This year, CBS has been all over the map, using everything from the Thievery Corporation to late-period Minor Threat, none of which really strikes me as a priori football-appropriate. However, it all seems to work when I’m watching a game.

Put that in your pipe, Mandel.

Not to be outdone by regional rivals Green Bay, the Minnesota Vikings made a hire yesterday that makes the Packers‘ hire of Mike McCarthy look marginally less ludicrous. (McCarthy, as you may recall, was fired as the offensive coordinator in New Orleans before taking the reins for an unspectacular season in San Francisco.)

Minnesota coach Brad Childress has made it clear that he is all about three criteria:

1. “Midwestern values,”
2. “character,” and
3. “hiring people who have worked at the University of Wisconsin, in Philadelphia, or with Donovan McNabb.”

So it came as no surprise when he hired Virginia Tech QB coach Kevin Rogers to serve in the same capacity with the Vikings. Rogers is famous for having coached Donovan McNabb at Syracuse as well as for bringing character and Midwestern values to the quarterback position in Blacksburg.

The “breaking news” on ESPN.com is “Bush Going Pro.” They didn’t become the flagship network for nuthin’.

By now, you’ve probably seen that the Green Bay Packers are expected to hire Mike McCarthy as their next head coach. At first, one wonders why a team would interview defensive stalwarts like Jim Bates (whose defense ranked 7th) and Ron Rivera (whose defense ranked 2nd) before giving the position to a man who was responsible for the play of a unit ranked last in total offense and last in third down conversion rate. (McCarthy can also claim “credit” for the performance of rookie standout Alex Smith.)

If one looks at McCarthy’s resume, though, it appears that his brief stint as the Packers’ quarterbacks coach may have contributed to his standing in the Green Bay front office. Brett Favre and his agent publicly lobbied for Steve Mariucci, via a veiled threat that Favre would be more likely to postpone hanging it up if the Mooch was at the helm. The Packers didn’t interview Mooch, though. (To be fair, since the Fords are paying him to do nothing right now, he’d be tough to hire at this point.) The McCarthy hiring, then, raises two interesting possibilities:

1. Ted Thompson wants to extend an olive branch to Favre (by hiring his former position coach) and also have a quarterback specialist at head coach to supervise what is sure to be a challenging grooming process for Aaron Rodgers.
2. Thompson doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether or not Favre returns but wants plausible deniability for the fans: “Well, I brought in his old coach. I don’t know why he decided to retire!”

Draw your own conclusions, but I’d give these two possibilities roughly even odds.