Is there any professional sporting league out there that even comes close to being as narcissistic as the NFL? It’s honestly past the point of ridiculousness now that we are nearing the Super Bowl. Every catch, every tackle, every blind-drunk fan is immediately thrown into a poorly edited commercial extolling the “most epic game ever.” NFL, stop beating off in the mirror while listening to The Cure, you’re creeping the rest of us out.

Yet far worse than the actual NFL is the sports media and their unwavering devotion of airtime to even the most inconsequential of football related events. With an entire week between games, it’s amazing that ESPN analysts even manage to come up with new stuff to talk about. Except that they don’t. By Wednesday, their programming is more worn out than Sammy Sosa after the amphetamine ban. A conference on the economics of plastic surgery hosted by RuPaul would be more engaging.

I think what is truly frustrating, aside from the recycling of cue cards, is the complete absence of debate involving useful information in the so-called sports literati. As a stat geek (I’m currently working on beer pong stat-tracking software), I could care less about Terrell Owens crying like a pussy baby or Tony Bromo going on vacation with some singer. Not only do neither have anything to do with any sort of sport, let alone the one they are paid for, they are so far from having a tangible effect on any game that I’m assuming Rasheed Wallace dropped off a few pounds of Acapulco Gold in the ESPN writer’s office during his last commercial filming.

If the NFL is as much of a manly man league as everyone makes it out to be, let’s see someone back that rep up with some tough facts. How about the fact that Eli Manning, not exactly the toughest cat on the block when it’s sunny, morphs into a wobbly goat as soon as it gets cold? This week he was kept nice and toasty playing in a dome, and that’s his only chance of winning in January. No one mentioned that shit, but I’ll just assume that I’m smarter than the entire sporting community.

What really needs to be recorded is what I like to call the “Fuck YEAH!” average, or in layman’s term, the celebration paradigm. It is something I came up with a few years back when that lineman no one remembers scored a touchdown and then played the wildest air guitar I’ve seen since the last time I combined Professional Bull Riders with Motley Crue. Simply put, top players get stoked way harder than the ones that suck. Conversely, wimpy players hiding behind the curtain of talent are easily exposed for who they are by what they do post-play.

Take, for example, the Pinnacle of Manliness, the one and only Brett Favre. I’m surprised he didn’t blow out his shoulder with the obscene amounts of testosterone-fueled fist pumps he threw down in the stomping of the Seahawks. In fact, I’m fairly certain that Favre set yet another record, this time for the highest Fuck YEAH! average ever recorded in a playoff game. In fact, the Packers easily lead the playoff teams in that category. Compare that to the weak-ass choo-choo train motions that Manning obviously stole from the rejected dancers on the “Soul Train” DVD box set, and it’s no problem figuring out who is winning next weekend. And I didn’t even spend a whole week rambling about it.