my new favorite football player
My middling level of interest in nfl football often slides to only wanting to hear this Sunday night radio highlight session, with the announcer making — basically purposefully bad– strained puns off of team names and player names (usually the quarterback). Sure, there’s always a lot of “stories” that grab my interest — last year I was on the edge of my seat rooting for every NFL West team to lose week in and week out and doing a little jiggy after after that epic final game of the season where the league had designed the schedule to slot in a defacto division championship game and treated football fans to the sight of the Seahawks making the playoffs at 7-9.  So far this season, I’m a big fan of the commentary suggesting that sans Peyton Manning, the Indianapolis Colts should just float the season away and go 0-16 and grab Andrew Luck in the draft– which would make an interesting race indeed: one that might interest this season’s iteration of the Seahawks — and one that the Colts have the upper hand due to not playing in the NFC West. The last time such a race developed — for Peyton Manning — it only took 13 losses; we’ll see if the bar of excellence has been upped to 16 in the interceding decade and a half.
But for my interest in NFL pun and cultural referencing concoctions, this one intrigues me to no end. I stumbled onto this headline, and I think I’ve found my new favorite football player.
Kafka, Eagles fall to Falcons, 35-31.
This one might take the football commentary of Dennis Miller to handle. Kafka is the emergency third-string back-up quarterback for a qb who, pretty predictably actually, has fallen to injury — the controversial and rehabilitated Michael Vick, and came in for a spell. He is, reportedly, “ready to go” for next week. I’m sure a Lit Major can tell me what he’s doing to prepare himself.
I would say that the headline writes itself, but I can’t think of anything. I hope he stays long enough where something clearly and immediately recognizable as Kafka-esque will take place on the field — something I can’t quite come up with right now (maybe an unannounced regulatory rule change in the middle of the game?) , but I’m sure it’ll be in the Highlights Reels from here to Eternity.