PantsCast February 9 2011

The final football podcast of the season. We look over the Super Bowl memories and I provide some post game audio I collected from the game. We review the commercials, fan reactions, plus another episode of snort happy kids in this week's "What's Wrong With Humans."

Click Here for the Nonsense.

PantsCast February 3

The week before the Super Bowl and SportsPants brings you audio from the Super Bowl media day he attended. Plus, things that make an interesting Super Bowl party and an idiot who just couldn't be without his cell phone on What's Wrong With Humans.

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Post Super Bowl PantsCast

Who Dat won de Super Bowl?

Yep, it's over and discuss what happened on the field, the effects of this game on the legacy for the losing quarterback, and those commercials. Good or suck? It's all on the Post Super Bowl PantsCast!

Playoff PantsCast Super Bowl Edition

Yes, it works now. If you tried this link and it went nowhere...well, just thank the "geniuses" at Apple.

It is time for the big game and we have a PantsCast to match! I don't want to oversell it, but this might be the best thing anyone has done ever.

That includes the Magna Carta, but doesn't include the outdoor smoker.

Check it out!

Newer and Younger

Here's a few coaching stats following the Super Bowl that you may or may not know:

Out of the 43 Super Bowls that have been played:
there have been 20 times when both head coaches have been at their first NFL coaching job
20 times when at least one of the Super Bowl head coaches have been at their first job
and only 3 times when neither Super Bowl head coaches were in their first job (Bill Belichick vs. Tom Coughlin last year, Belichick vs. weepy Dick Vermeil in 2001, and Dan Reeves vs. Mike Shanahan in 1998)

Basically if the Super Bowl didn't involve the Bill Belichick or Dan Reeves exception (coaches good enough to get the the Super Bowl yet not able to stay with original team), it usually involves first time coaches.

This begs the question: What in the name of pigskin are Jerry Jones and Alex Spanos doing?

Both owners should have seen some pattern over the past few years as to who was winning Super Bowls, you don't make multi-million dollar decisions without researching them first. Yet here are these two owners who got out and put the fate of the Dallas Cowboys and San Diego Chargers in the hands of coaching retreads who have yet to even MAKE the big game, let alone win it.

I understood the first retreads Jones and Spanos brought in. Bill Parcells and Marty Schottenheimer are known for their ability to build teams into winners. Both coaches are also known to be short stays wherever they go due to boredom or control issues.

So when the inevitable happened, Parcells retiring for the 129th time and Schottenheimer butting heads with management, both football teams should have been ready to move on with a coach to take the talented teams over the top.

Instead, both Jones and Spanos came up with a hire that installed zero confidence in the fan base. Wade Phillips and Norv Turner had only minor success at other stops and while Turner has shown some post-season ability with the Chargers, Phillips has failed over and over again with the Cowboys.

In either case, both teams very well have missed their window of opportunity to make it to the big game. The Chargers could still make it, but LaDanian is fading fast and the Chargers can't keep finding Darren Sproles and Michael Turner type studs to replace him. If Turner can't bring it all together in the next two years, San Diego will begin the slow decent into rebuilding mode.

The Cowboys are even worse off since Jones has decided to be in charge of the draft again which means there will be zero talent coming in. The Cowboys had their big chance last year, but they kept screwing around with the Giants and it eventually cost them.

The point is, whether it's real or perception, head coaches tend to make impressions early with teams and if it doesn't work out, they're damaged goods. It's not a coincidence that only Dan Reeves has made it to a Super Bowl with the third team he's coached (Atlanta). Either the coaches don't have the ability to coach big games, or players don't believe in him due to past failures.

I know it's not easy to go out and just "find" some kind of Mike Tomlin coaching virtuoso, but you have to try and find someone who the team and fans can rally behind. If the new coach brings a hint of failure with him, the players are less likely to accept him.

Both Phillips and Turner are on their third team and had little post-season success at the first two stops. The odds aren't good for either Dallas or San Diego making the Super Bowl.

I guess that shampoo commercial was right: you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

X Right, 238 Schlong

What is it about the Super Bowl recently that has turned it into a vessel for sexing us up? I know it has the attraction of a world audience, but the Big Game has had that since the 1980's yet only in the past four years have we had this issue.

The gold standard for Super Bowl nudity remains "Nipplegate" when Janet Jackson brought the FCC hammer down on every media program for the next few years. All of that for one gorgeous boob.

Now we have a new entry into the sexy Super Bowl reference section. This one reached a much smaller audience, but was a stronger dose of human yum-yum play.

Apparently the local cable affiliate in Tucson, Arizona gave viewers an unexpected bonus during a replay of Larry Fitzgerald's long touchdown reception. As a replay of the big play was shown, viewers were treated to up to 30 seconds of porn.

The best part about the story are the shaken residents reviewing the assault on their privates. From what I gather, the porn scene had some girl sitting with her hands down a guys pants. People stayed with it because they figured it was another GoDaddy.com commercial or something. Then the guy stood up and dropped his pants to reveal his chaff and then all hell broke loose.

Angry e-mails flooded the cable company as horrified people told the tale of how their third grader was in the room and saw EVERYTHING and how they were canceling their subscriptions to the cable company first thing Monday morning.

The thing that blows...my mind...on this is that they had just been watching grown men slam into each other for 4 quarters. They are watching replays of guys grabbing each other's face masks and fore-arming each other in the throat. And this was okay.

Then sex pops up and everyone freaks. I guess we are just a country founded on anger and violence.

I understand it's awkward with kids in the room watching. I'd feel awkward too if my kid asked me about it.

"Daddy, what are they doing?" "Uhhh, well, she's looking for her wallet and he gets up and he wasn't wearing a belt and his pants fell down. Wow, he must be embarrassed, now let's go pick out the clothes you're going to wear tomorrow. NOW."

30 seconds of porn is not going to turn kids into drug using whores though. In fact, I'm guessing that kids would think nothing of that scene if parents didn't freak out about it so much. It's like when a toddler falls down bumps their head: if you just react like it's no big deal, they go on. If you swoop in and freak out, the kid cries.

So just chill out down there in Tucson. Of all the things to worry about in this world, 30 seconds of a twig and berries shouldn't destroy your life. It will just force you to decide if you want to be truthful with your kids or if you want to create a wonderfully elaborate story to completely hood-wink them for a few more years.

A Dose Of Reality From Telemundo

Yesterday, we got to witness the circus sideshow that has become Super Bowl media day. There was a time when this day represented a chance for serious journalists to pursue multiple storylines and get quotes from coaches and players to create 2 week's worth of articles.

Today it's more of a chance for television and radio personalities to do their own jokes and use the players as a yielding part of the entertainment. What it has become is the media's own Super Bowl to see who can come up with the best shtick. And leading the charge are the media stations that pander to our Hispanic brethren.

Perhaps it's the fact that American football isn't a religious experience to the Spanish speaking crowd. Maybe American journalists would screw around more if they ever actually covered soccer. All I know is that stations like Telemundo and TV Azteca have turned the week leading up to the Super Bowl into a light-hearted affair. And to them I say buen trabajo.

In the past, the media had taken themselves WAY too seriously at the Super Bowl as they tried unearth some ground-shaking story that might win them an award or something. Media members were so tight that Ferris Bueller could do his whole turning a lump of coal into a diamond trick with them. And the questions still sucked, it's just that players didn't have as much fun.

Ask Doug Williams if he enjoyed being asked how long he had been a black quarterback. I'm sure he enjoyed the 205 questions he got about that. Players got ridiculous questions all the time, but they were asked without a hint of humor.

Today we've got the same types of questions, but they are mixed in with stupid stunts and pranks. Players seem to enjoy themselves so much more now because they know half the of the questions asked to them don't mean a thing.

Last year, Tom Brady was treated to the Telemundo bride who kept asking him to marry her. This year, the players had fun with the Hispanic female host who simply went around measuring biceps and comparing them to her waist size. Then there was the Telemundo bride dressed in drag. I'm not sure what that was all about, but I guarantee you the coaches and players got a good chuckle out of it.

Though they seem to lead the charge, stations like Telemundo aren't the only ones having some fun on media day, there are plenty of honkies in on the action too. Entertainment Tonight had lineman participating in a dancing contest, there was the sports fiddler who wore overalls and played a fiddle every time he asked a question. Jay Leno sends some of his staff to do Super Bowl bits. They aren't funny, but what can you expect from Jay Leno? Half the time, media members just interview each other for better sound bites and the players are left alone.

And people ENJOY it. It's a game. I'm sure Steelers kicker Jeff Reed would rather do a joke series about his bleached afro than answer how kicking in Tampa is different than kicking in Pittsburgh. Do you think Dominique Rodgers Cromartie had some fun with questions about who would win a fight between his allegedly mammoth johnson and Gary Coleman? I'm sure he'd rather joke about that than answer questions about the difference between covering small college receivers and Santonio Holmes (the answer is that the small college receivers can't carry as much pot with in their uniforms since they don't have the money to buy it.)

The Super Bowl media still has its resident grouches and arrogant ego-maniacs that think of themselves as the sports version of Woodward and Bernstein. But fewer people are listening to these people, especially when guys like Chris Mortensen keep screwing stories up in his desperate effort to be the first one with the scoop.

Super Bowl media day is changing and it's becoming more fun to deal with (now if they could only get rid of Deion Sanders...... ) For that I must think the Spanish speaking stations for giving us perspective before the big event. It’s just a game and we should remember that because in Nigeria, police are holding a goat because people claim it robbed a bank. You can bet the goat isn’t having nearly as much fun as they are at media day.