3-way tie for last
“3-Way Tie for Last” was the name of a brilliant 1985 album by seminal San Pedro-based punk band Minutemen.
For football fans, this season’s National Football League’s AFC West race essentially is a three-way tie for last.
Yes, three teams are tied for first, but each of those teams stinks and deserves to be in last, and the three are only tied for first because the last-place team is so putrid.
That last-place team, the Denver Broncos, has such horrible quarterback problems it recently tried to bring Johnny Unitas out of retirement. When the Broncos found out Johnny U was long dead, the Broncos still offered him a 10-day contract.
The team is so desperate it even contacted me about a tryout, and I haven’t played quarterback since 1980, when I was at the helm of a flag football team that went to the semifinals in intramurals at Fresno State. (Even back then the scouts’ book was mixed on me: “strong arm, relatively mobile but makes bad decisions and tries to squeeze in too many throws into tight windows. Also, has tiny, Trump-like hands, so he tends to throw helicopter passes when his pathetic little paws get sweaty or wet.”)
The Broncos are awful, but so are the three teams ahead of the No-Trick Ponies.
The Chiefs got off to a brilliant start but have been in the Kansas City barbecue joint toilet ever since. For a few games the Chiefs couldn’t score many points and lost.
On Sunday, against the horrid New York Jets, the Chiefs scored oodles of points, but the Notorious New York Nincompoops in Green and White scored a few more and the Chiefs lost again to even their record at 6-6.
The Carson Chargers, led by Antonio Gates, who is so old I recall he was on my intramural team at Fresno State in 1980, barely eked out a win Sunday over the Cleveland Browns, who last won when Rick Santorum was considered a realistic presidential candidate.
The Browns are so consistently bad that if pro football was European pro soccer, they would have been relegated four or five divisions by now.
Yet the Chargers, with Philip Rivers as usual throwing more tantrums than good passes, barely beat the Brown Sadsacks to even their record at 6-6.
Then there are my Raiders. As I’ve written in this column often, I’m a lifelong Raiders fan. I bleed silver and black, and there’s been a lot of silver and black blood around my house for the last decade-plus.
But after a playoff appearance last season, this was supposed to be the Raiders’ year.
Many allegedly knowledgeable prognosticators had the Pride and Poise Boys as favorites to make the Super Bowl.
Ha! We Raiders fans knew better. We knew our heroes didn’t do enough to fix the problems with a secondary with more holes than a typical teenage girl’s jeans.
What we didn’t know is the vaunted Raiders’ walrus-sized offensive linemen wouldn’t do much worthy of vaunting and that it’s equally vaunted receiving corps would display the hands of actual walruses.
On Sunday, the Raiders barely beat the Giants, despite the Notorious New York Nincompoops in Red, White, Blue (and are those pants gray?) being one of football’s worst teams and deciding to play Geno “I Was Even Worse for the Jets Than the Butt Fumble Guy” Smith at quarterback.
So here’s what it comes down to in the AFC West: one team is going have to go to the playoffs and represent the western half of the country.
And we football fans in the West should be horribly embarrassed by that.