Who do I still think I am??

This one's about the power.

30DBC PROMPT: "Invalid Item" 

What's up y'all? It's not your average everyday Thursday around here, that's for sure. Not only is football being played, but thanks to the NFL's greediness initiative to ensure all 32 teams get a nationally-featured primetime game, the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills will be squaring off tonight in a mistake by Lake Erie tilt of up-and-coming clubs hoping to make waves in the league.

I'm all for football 24/7/365, especially when it comes to the Bills, but count me among those who think Thursday games are a bad idea.

It used to be that football was played on Sundays (primarily), until Monday Night Football came along and eventually turned the game into an event. It was a big deal when the schedule came out and your team was being featured that week...usually as a reward for a successful season the year before. Monday nights had a certain aura around them...the glow of the national spotlight, superstars rising to the occasion, and (the three most important words the league knows) revenue revenue revenue.

The NFL has since expanded its offerings to Sunday nights and Thursday nights, squeezing out games to capitalize on the popularity of a fixed inventory of contests...under the current 16-game schedule there are few opportunities for a handful of elite teams to face each other. Opening up other days of the week means more exposure for the product. The question is, how much is too much?

The simple risk/reward proposition is that teams playing on Thursday have a short week to prepare, but then have more time off before their next game. I'm sure if you ask any coach that's used to game-planning for a normal Sunday game, he'll tell you the short week is taxing enough and it's not a lot of time to properly install their system for the week. And while the players may appreciate national exposure, their bodies aren't built to withstand that type of a beating without having ample time to recuperate. Based on these two factors alone, that should be enough evidence to come to the conclusion that the product being offered on Thursdays is inferior to what you see on a Sunday. The addition of primetime games now is the equivalent of every player in Little League ball getting a trophy at the end of the year just for showing up...regardless of whether or not your team's any good, they'll get the luxury of a national spotlight at least once a year, which brings us to tonight's game.

In the world of the NFL, does anyone outside of Buffalo's or Cleveland's respective fan bases really care about this game? Neither team was expected to contend for the playoffs. Both teams are relatively young and have few bona fide superstars to market around. You can't tell me the league's schedule makers actually looked at the lineup of games for this week and determined this matchup to be worthy of attention befitting the league's goal of saturating the nation's collective fandom. Casual fans of the game aren't going to be staying up late for this one...even if for some reason it turns out to be an exciting game. In fact, I can point to two factors that would sway anyone toward avoiding this game: 1) The Thursday night games this season haven't been among the best football we've seen, and 2) Bills/Browns games within the last decade or so have largely been snoozefests between two bad franchises. Rather than picking a winner, I can see this game being lost by the team that shoots itself in the foot last. Forget about it being a "Battle For Lake Erie Supremacy"...it's more like the "Struggle Toward Mediocrity". I almost felt bad for the person in charge of having to market this game for the NFL Network, until realized that person's probably making a ton of money.

The NFL is a bazillion-dollar empire. For a few months out of the year they will have you believing they're the only thing of importance. They'll go as far as dictating what types of bags you can bring into their stadiums, where you can park your car, and how you watch the games. This is a league that almost double-charges fans for the right to be able to watch games, if you think about it...out-of-market fans like myself would have to have something beyond a basic cable or satellite package to view the game, unless I wanted to watch it on a computer or smartphone, and even then you'd have to subscribe to another NFL-sponsored package for that privilege. To me, this says the NFL cares more about making every last dollar it can over providing a quality product. The list of things the NFL values more than money? It's blank. Employee safety? Fan comfort? Competitive balance? Consistent rule enforcement? Even the largest consumer-driven corporations at least make an attempt at trying to say they hold these basic ideals close to their black, greedy hearts. The NFL? Nope. The largest-grossing non-profit in the history of business ever would, however, like for you to have a seat cushion emblazoned with your favorite team and the NFL shield, at an unreasonable price for something your ass will make an imprint on for three and a half hours at a time.

So if you're enjoying tonight's game on a thousand dollar tv, or streaming it on a device you paid a few hundred for before your monthly access charge, remember...like I said, the NFL is a non-profit industry that makes billions annually. Non-profit. Billions. Let that sink in.

Go Bills!

BCF PROMPT: "All of the power in the world goes out, including car engines. What changes in your life and how do you survive without electricity?"

Interesting, if only to ask the question, "Why are car engines a part of this?" Maybe once electric cars are the primary mode of vehicular transportation, but to assume that all the electricity in the world includes gas-powered cars, well, that's slightly ludicrous. Google "Buffalo October Storm" and you'll see stories about how a few years ago a freak snowstorm crippled the area, taking down trees and power lines all over the place. I had a car during that time, and could go places (when it wasn't getting stuck on unplowed streets), but since everywhere I could imagine going had no power, there was almost no point.

I've probably told this story before, but I managed once to go an entire spring at 542 without electricity. I was out of work the previous winter and fell behind on the bill. Legally they couldn't shut me off until the weather warmed up, and the lapse plus the delay in getting unemployment benefits led to me either having rent and food, or electricity. Having electricity was secondary to having a roof overhead.

I managed. I had a battery-powered cell phone charger...a week's worth of AA batteries and candles were much more affordable than a few months' worth of electricity. I only shopped for food I could consume when I was hungry, and spent most of my days out looking for jobs. I'd come home, plug my phone in, write a little (my phone at the time had a really easy-to-use internet browser that interfaced well with WDC), sleep, wake up, and do it all over again. I managed quite well actually.

If you ask me, I think the world would be ok without power for a couple of days at best. The most resourceful would survive longer, but eventually anarchy would slowly creep into the collective global conscience. Mob mentality would take place, because it's easier to riot than it is to find a practical solution. All of society's trash would turn Wal-Marts inside-out, screaming, "One day, we'll have power again and this 46" plasma tv will look great in the charred remains of my living room!" Think about it...a nation of disheveled Wal-Marts. Your street looking like the maternity department just puked and gave birth all over it. Your backyard has become the inside of a college dormitory's garbage can during Pledge Week. CNN is out front, using tin cans, string, and empty paper towel tubes to "film" the chaos while you watch it on the cardboard box your fridge came in. A fight has broken out over the last scraps of roadkill. The New World Order has seen the vanishment of politicians who withered and died without their interns and mobile devices. We become living persona of Lord Of The Flies. Everyone who's ever believed in a Zombie Apocalypse is rewarded just in time to see it happen, but not long enough to understand that those people really aren't dead; they're just lost without their iPhones and Facebook. The aggregate weight of the world shifts so much that Earth falls out of orbit and careens toward the sun, burning everyone except the crew on the spaceship of the movie "Armageddon", where Bruce Willis becomes de facto President and Ben Affleck doesn't have to hear shit about becoming Batman because he can live in space with Liv Tyler. In return, the planet doesn't explode, but becomes Hell, and that stupid Aerosmith song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo_0UXRY_rY) plays over and over as the sole remnant of music forever.

On the plus side? No need to worry about Justin Bieber doing anything of significance. or having to deal with all those things you said would happen "once Hell freezes over".

I still can't decide if I'd rather live in that world, or in reality.

MUSICAL BREAK!!

For someone so sonically learned, it's becoming harder and harder to plug in songs that relate to my entries. Let's see if this works...

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

https://www.wgr550.com...My home for Bills games, since the NFL prefers fans who spend lots of money for inferior product.

Still no hockey emoticon. I'll be pissed about this even more when the Sabres start winning. See you in 2017, give or take a few generations.

I'm still open to the WDC "Sports Desk" idea. Give me a few weeks to formulate a plan for it. There's a little interest, and a niche longing to be filled. Maybe a grassroots start is necessary...who knows. I expect one day to see it bloom into something https://www.grantland.com-style. ESPN started as a cable channel showing crap for a few hours a day and rerunning the same highlights show over and over. There's some models. Start small; get better and bigger will come.

Testing out this to see if more than two videos can be posted in an entry. I came across an old entry recently that had three (although somehow two were the same). If you don't experiment, you'll never know.

Donte Whitner was a marginal player on some legendarily lousy Bills teams and a legitimate draft bust before the Bills let him walk as a free agent. He turned that into the good fortune of playing for a Super Bowl contender in San Francisco. Now he wants to be known as "Hitner". This is the ugly side of fame and fortune in the NFL. They create these idiots, and they manipulate them by throwing tons of money at them and then marginalizing their abilities with subjective legislation for rewarding the public's "wow" factor for seeing "big hits" and then penalizing them after the fact. Selective discipline at its best. As long as there's a market for stupidity, the league will continue to let morons play in their league because it puts butts in their "officially branded" chairs. The average fan can't take his or her family out to dinner at a halfway decent non-chain restaurant, but expects them to support a mediocre crybaby talent who's forced to buy up all the "old" jerseys with his name on them because he wants a vanity nameplate on the back of his uni. Way to play for the emblem on the helmet and not the one on your back, "Hitner". Douchebag. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9759786/donte-whitner-san-francisco-49ers-chan.... If I'm the league, I'm seeing a bulls-eye on your back now. At least Chad Johnson (Ochocinco) used to be able to catch balls and make plays...Whitner? Couldn't catch a ball thrown at him and wouldn't tackle his own jockstrap after practice. Now all of the sudden he's concerned about hitting and tackling? Please. He's legally stolen so much money from his tenure as an NFL player that he should be refunding all the bonus money the Bills paid him. What a conceited jerk (says the guy who hasn't won a 30DBC in years but holds on to "Champ" in his handle because, well, I was once, and at least I how flashes occasionally of doing it again, unlike Whitner, who shows why he sucks more than he's worth something). The NFL needs to stop rewarding players for questionable hits. Bigger, stronger, faster players need to see that the league's rules keep up with them instead of turning profits off them and turning them into vegetables shortly after they retire (when they're no longer marketable in their respective adoptive cities). Ugh...I didn't want to vent today, and then I did. Over some ridiculous dude doing stupid things. Yet I can't wash the NFL out from my mouth (and that's something I'm sure they love).

And I'mma shut up now, because I'm going to need a nap before kickoff. Hit me on Twitter during the game (@Fivesixer) if you wanna discuss feelings about the NFL, power outages, or recipes for treats involving Reese's peanut butter cups. In fact, all topics are an open forum. If there's a mutual interest, we'll converse. Otherwise, 'til tomorrow, peace, don't hang the receiver out to dry, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!

*Didn't work.* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saMUmG4HU1E