Football Week 9: Monday Night Edition.

       Tonight is pretty much it for my Saints.  If they win, they can at least dream of making the playoffs, if they lose, well, they may as well tank the rest of the season and get themselves a decent draft pick.  This will probably be my statement/lament for the rest of the season.  I would like to see them rally after pretty much every roadblock has been put in their way this year.

       Tonight they play the Eagles, probably my second least favorite team.  Actually, I hate the Cowboys fans the most and the Eagles actual players the most, so we can quibble over where that would place them on my overall hate-o-meter.  A few years ago, there was this fan in the Superdome stands.  For me, it was love at first sight (they even put her in Maxim magazine after her fame swept through the interwebs).  Anyway, if you are out there, Heather, my offer of marriage still stands. 

        Needless to say, with all going on the last week or so here after Sandy, I have not had time to scan new pages and I do not have any more Saints cards scanned.  So I will have to pick a page and find some vague tangential connection.  Ahhhh, here we go:

Like I said, I hate any player who suits up for the Eagles.  Well, here are four players who are pretty damn despicable no matter what uniform they wear (and most of them now wear the uniform of their state's DOC).  Lawrence Phillips took a boatload of talent and threw it all away in a series of domestic disputes and then got a long stretch in the pokie after an assault with a deadly weapon.  Somehow, Pacman Jones is still in the league and not in prison, proof that if you are a viable player, the NFL will always look the other way.  Not only has Jones shot up more than one(!) strip club, he ruined a fantastic nickname like 'Pac-Man' forever.  Maurice Clarett was both impetuous and well armed - to the tune of getting kicked off a national title team in college and then going to jail for armed robbery.  In there he also flamed out in the NFL without ever playing a regular season snap; hell, he never even suited up for a preseason game.  I also read that he has been trying to clean up his act.  I'll believe it when I see it.  Last but certainly not least is the immortal Rae Carruth.  Rae showed flashes of talent for the Panthers for a couple of years, but then he ran into a problem, he got a girl pregnant.  His solution to this problem was certainly creative and unique: he decided to have her killed in what looked like a carjacking.  Classy guy.  He'll be in prison until at least 2018, and really, how he escaped the gas chamber for that one, I will never quite understand.

Not shown: Mark Chmura, OJ Simpson, Lawrence Taylor (though he soon will be), Jim Brown, Donte Stallworth, Leonard Little, and Ray Lewis.  Also not shown, tonight's starting quarterback for the Eagles, the worst of the lot, Michael Vick. Since I love dogs more than any person on this planet, I cannot reiterate my hatred for him enough and I will not even try.