Peter King: Commissioner For A Day, Aimless Cheesedick Savant Columnist For A Lifetime

Peter King has probably not bombed any foreign embassies lately. At least that we know of. He may not have ever hid beer in a well to lure children into it. He probably has more post-coital know-how than to wipe the excess semen off his wife or other partner, instead of simply handing over a towel or sweaty t-shirt, and then walking rubber-leggedly into the kitchen for some juice.

No, the reason Peter King is pissing us off is because the NFL's best football writer is spending less time writing about football. Last time I checked, Starbucks didn't own a team, nor does any team have a player named "Katrina." I don't give a fuck what he's been eating. Just tell me if Carson Palmer will be ready to start the season and get out of my life.

Anyway, these are excerpts from King’s recent “Commissioner For A Day” which, inexplicably, has just been sitting on the SI site for about a month, not unlike a dog turd on blacktop, begging to be scooped up and disposed of by someone who understands the need to address something of that sort.

Expand the regular season to 18 games.
Of course, you'd have to pay the players more because they'd be performing for two more games, but that's for another day. I'm only the commissioner for a day, not a mathematician.

Yeah, this sounds like something you might hear from a guy that went to Ohio University and bitches about air travel as if he's the first one to do it (Ever wonder how much legroom Lindburgh had, motherfucker?). No, you don't have to pay the players more because they are working on what we working folk refer to as "salary." That means you earn a flat sum, regardless of the amount of labor you have performed. But, don't worry, Peter, we would never mistake someone that goes to Starbucks like you do as anyone who knows how to add or subtract.

Make long field goals more valuable: Simple: Any field goal 50 yards or further is worth four points...

I think Peter wrote this after watching a CFL game and hit the bong with Ricky Williams. Why do this? So you can tie the game when you’re down by four? To make David Akers more significant? Instead of driving the kicker to Blueberry Hill and jerking him off in our convertible, let me suggest another train of thought:

When your team is down by four points, score a fucking touchdown.

The NFL actually did consider a tiered system of 1, 2, and 3 points for field goals a few years ago. The plan never made it out of committee because the powers that be could not determine that the long kick was more valuable than moving the ball downfield. It’s not. Rewarding the team that has a good kicker and an offense that can’t find the red zone is not worth an extra point for me.

Take NFL Sunday Ticket off the dish and put it on digital cable.

N/A. I don't have either one, so I don't care. Sounds like more bitching, though.

Put more mikes on players and officials, and put the game on a seven-second delay.

Delays are bad because I can’t hear the goddamn players cuss at each other, which may be why neither of my two most favorite football-viewing moments were NFL games. The first was the an old World League game when a Barcelona Dragons linebacker was caught by surprise by a draw and, in an effort to seek help from his fellow defenders, exclaimed, "Aw, shit!" It was live TV, and we heard it. The more recent was the XFL game where quarterback Ryan Clement was used as a Slip-N-Slide by a defensive lineman, and separated his shoulder. You heard the shoulder snap. You could hear him screaming into the turf. Clement was miked up and fucked up in the same game. Top that, helmet-cam.

But I do agree in that the NFL's presentation is very stale, very Republican. Change it up; put one game a year on HBO, no delays, no announcers, just the sounds on the field. And we’ll drown Dan Dierdorf in a bucket at halftime, and then use his flesh to construct the game balls that will be used during the second half of the game. We can use the money saved on announcing to row in Pakistani children to help stitch the balls under the stands. "Sew, very young one. Sew like THE WIND!"

Let players wear the numbers of their choice -- with an asterisk: Allow players to purchase the number they wish for $250,000. One-time fee. That $250,000, which players could write off, would go into a pool to benefit 10 charities to be agreed upon by the players' association and the league. And once a year, the league would cut an equal check to each charity. So imagine a player changes teams, or a draft choice comes on a new team, and he wants to wear an odd number. Reggie Bush with number 5, for instance. Imagine you've got 20 of those guys per year. And new commissioner Roger Goodell appears in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans to hand a check for $500,000 to Habitat for Humanity, which guarantees to build 100 homes in 30 days with the money. Gee, the more I write about this, the more I like it.

Well, I fucking hate it. And I doubt I'm the only one. I see two things very wrong with this. First off, I actually like the NFL's number policy. I do, because if I were to ever fall into a coma, like Mason Storm, I could wake up 10 years later and, watching an NFL game in my hospital room before the Senator’s goons try to kill me, understand that No. 88 is a wide receiver, that No. 99 is a defensive end, and that No. 77 is way too large to be wearing all that white (and after Labor Day. Sigh).

As far as the Katrina stuff...look, this is classic Petey King. He can’t pay attention to non-football shit in real-time, so months go by, and the media hype for some particular popular event peaks, then bottoms out. Then about two months after that, Peter King writes about it. Then he goes down there to try and solve that thing, and cue the outrage and shit and blah-blah. Now he feels that soliciting his readers as The NFL Columnist will be call to action that will summon those previously unwilling to bring assistance to that troubled land. Bullshit.

And a hundred homes in 30 days? Oh, right, you're just commissioner for a day, not a contractor.

Prohibit the moving of the Saints for five years: Make this a "for the good of the game" issue. It's ludicrous to think of kicking a city when it's so down. Now's the time to be a good neighbor and a loyal corporate partner, not greedy.

Wrong. There’s never a bad time to be greedy. This does not help the game. There’s no reason Tom Benson shouldn’t be allowed to do what Georgia Frontiere did, what Bill Bidwell did, what every other owner in this League does: get the best deal for your team. Shit, the only reason the team hadn’t already left was because the city was paying the team to stay. And now the city’s payments are coming up light, so the team must find the city in the local bowling alley, punch the city in the face and, before the city can get up, give it a couple kicks to the ribs. Then as the team walks away, it turns and points at the city, now laying in the fetal position on the lane, and screams, "You better have my money next week! No more extensions!"

And, honestly, will we ever get a better chance to get rid of The Worst Logo In Sports, that ridiculous fleur-de-lis? I'm still waiting for the Saints to announce the signings of Dino Bravo and the Fabulous Rougeau Brothers. Let the San Antonio Banderases begin play in 2007, and shut the fuck up about it.

Put two computer chips in the football, and make the goal line, in essence, capable of sending a signal when the football touches the plane of the goal line: Let's just call this "The Ben Roethlisberger Rule."

Hey, he's just commissioner for a day, not a computer technician. Something about the phrase "computer chips" just screams, "I know nothing about computers." Is Peter still typing up his columns on that old Underwood? Andy Rooney would be proud. Besides, I think there's already a Ben Roethlisberger Rule, and it currently reads something like this:

1. Wear a helmet, shithead.
1a. Grow a goatee. Those never look bad or anything. Especially with a visor.

Still, he's got a point. If we can make that first-down stripe appear on TV, they've gotta be able to do something with this. We need it. This would be the League's best goal-line innovation since getting Lawrence Taylor to stop snorting it.

Make the Super Bowl the best two out of three: Ha! Made you look. Just kidding. I may be commissioner, but I'm not that stupid.

So, really, you only came up with nine changes. Nice job, Reilly, way to phone it in. And the jury may still be out on your last point there.

Look, I understand the excuse that these assholes assemble lists like these "for a good debate," much like a radio host will take the unpopular side of an issue to build his audience on ire and animosity. But, largely, these are not good debates. This is an English paper written on the bus, something hastily thrown together at the last minute, only to have something to turn in. It brings to mind a remark CC made to the other KSKers over email earlier in the week.

"First Scoop Jackson, and now this. Remind me again why we write a blog for free and they get paid."