TMQ Entry: Football Deities

One of my favorite sports writers, Gregg Easterbrook of NFL.com proposed an interesting contest in his weekly column. Often he speaks of the "Football Gods" who influence NFL action with love or wrath based on the teams, players, or cheerleaders acts. F'instance, when a team unnecessarily runs up the score one week, Easterbrook notes how the Football Gods will make them pay for their unsportsmanlike conduct with a humbling loss, a dreadful injury or ugly cheerleaders. I made that last one up.

The challenge was, and I quote:

Devise mythology for the football gods. What are their names? Their powers? Who slew whom and smote what when they came into being? Propose your mythology using the link at Reader Animadversion.

I proposed the following:

TMQ, if there be football gods, one is Paytonus, the god of bravery and humility. Endowed with the strength, agility and power of Bears and kangaROOS (loved those shoes!), Paytonus never avoided head-on collisons with linemen, nor demonstrated fear of flying over goal line piles for touchdowns. He reigns today, anointing Ahman Green, Priest Holmes, and Jamal Lewis with the supernatural ability to break ten tackles, rush for 150 yards, and score three touchdowns in a game and not mug for TV cameras. Does it get any better than Sweetness?

Not bad, I guess. I wasn't selected as a finalist in his next article, http://www.nfl.com/nflnetwork/story/7730428 . The ones eventually selected were, in my humble opinion, pretty weak. In his defense, Easterbrook wrote in to another favorite site of mine, www.FootballOutsiders.com and said that he gets more than 1000 of these in every week per contest. So he can only view so many, and select even fewer in the short time he has dedicated to this writing hobby.

OK, I'll buy that.