The NFL is still in lockout mode, and there's no indication that it'll be ending anytime soon, but we are all very desperate for some football news. Shouldn't Rex Ryan have come out with his vanity CD of sweet jams for makin' whoopee by now? Finally yesterday, we got some "real" news: the NFL announced the 2011-2012 season schedule, or as one Times reporter put it, "the worst tease in the history of sports."
The Jets will open up their season at home against the Cowboys on Sunday Sept. 11, which means that Ryan will be facing his brother Rob, the defensive coordinator for the team. “I feel honored that we’re going to be playing right there in our stadium. It’s obviously going to be an emotional night for everybody, not just in New York/New Jersey, but in the whole country,” Ryan told reporters yesterday, adding that he would tone down his trash talk leading up to the game.
The regular season kicks off Thursday night, Sept. 8, when the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers host the New Orleans Saints in Green Bay. The Giants meanwhile will play their first game of the season against the Washington Redskins, on 9/11 as well. The Jets and Giants are also scheduled to play each other in the regular season, in the second-to-last game of the would-be season.
There are a couple signs suggesting the season may actually happen: as NBC points out, "Intentionally or not, the league has loaded up Week One, and that should give both sides every incentive to get something done sooner rather than later." And according to Daniel Kaplan, NFL reporter for SportsBusiness Journal, a breakaway group of NFL players (as many as 70) unhappy with the way negotiations between the players union and owners have been going have allegedly made motions to hire their own lawyer.
But the most important thing that gives us hope that the NFL season might yet arrive as planned: Rex Ryan. Because according to catchphrase enthusiast Bart Scott, Ryan is the second coming of President Obama:
It's how (Ryan) talks and says what he's thinking and how he lets us be loose and talk. People don't think the president is supposed to be black either. They think a president is supposed to look a certain way. It's the same thing with Rex. He doesn't look and act the way other coaches act. And we love him for it."
