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Thank you ProFootballTalk... for lighting our way to righteousness.

By Josh Kirkendall

uNPro Football Talk shows their sensitive side. In reference:

...to one of this year's "four months ago" commercials urging fans to "get their stories straight" by frequenting NFL Network.  The spots are generally amusing to us.  This time around, one of the guys in the segment that that the "jury is still out on the Bengals."  (We're paraphrasing, because we haven't personally seen the commercial.  But several members of PFT Planet have alerted us to it.)"

Look, we don't want to get all soapboxy on this.  With that said, does poking fun at a disturbing string of arrests send the right message to the general public?  At a time when it's hard to tell whether anyone really cares about solving the problem, the commercial screams out to the general public:  "We're addressing this very serious situation by making jokes about it.  On TV."

And don't forget that NFLN is owned equally by the 32 NFL teams.  So 1/32nd of that message is coming straight from the very team that has made itself into a mockery.

Bottom line -- for a multi-billion-dollar business that has displayed extremely wise, prudent, and conservative judgment over the years, we're shocked by the apparent lack of sensitivity that the NFL is displaying regarding one of the few issues that could reverse the decades of growth that the sport has enjoyed.

I, for one, am damn proud that PFT explains... no, dictates... to us the difference between a good joke and grumpy-old-man-serious. However, if serious has anything to do with the NFL, then I think that's a tad-bit ass-backwards. The NFL is a sport that, like all walks of life, have unacceptable social behaviors. That, my friend, is not serious. A Texas-size meteor crashing into the Pacific is serious. The realignment of the Earth's climatic system is serious. Letting Carson Palmer roam around New York with Excalibur hunting Kimo Von Oelhoffen is serious -- wait, that's not serious at all.. that's a, dare I say it, a joke? Or the next version of the realistic NFL Blitz video game empire.

I feel better knowing, like meteors punching catastrophic holes into tectonic plates or the Earth's axis flipping over, that the NFL Network making a joke about a matter that PFT deemed serious, is, in fact, serious.

And yet, the boys at PFT, while sobbing in their beer because the league makes a joke -- you know, ha-ha? -- in a small 10 second spot on the NFL Network, remain the Brent Bozell of the NFL. Explaining.. no, dictating... to us the the socially acceptable nature of....... jokes.

joke NOUN:

  1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
  2. A mischievous trick; a prank.
  3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.
  4. Informal
    1. Something not to be taken seriously; a triviality.
    2. An object of amusement or laughter; a laughingstock.

So now we continue truckin' in a world of confusing jokes with serious matters. In all honestly, how do we survive with such diabolical schemes? I feel blessed that PFT guides our way.

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