Tag Archives: packers

Blue-Collar Super Bowl Threatened by Strict Shift Supervisors

sbxlv.pngDALLAS–This year’s Super Bowl, already billed as the most blue-collar Big Game ever, may be jeopardized by supervisors at some of the players’ day jobs. Members of both the Steelers and Packers may miss the game due to employment obligations.

“I wanna get to Dallas ASAP, but my manager’s been riding my ass for months,” said Pittsburgh running back Rashard Mendenhall in a phone interview from a Firestone plant in Beaver Falls, PA. “He’s saying I might have to cover some shifts that weekend, since Charlie in receiving broke his leg and Tony’s on Guard duty this month, and we got this huge shipment of whitewalls coming in. I’d just call in but I used my last sick day the Monday after we beat the Ravens.”

Mendenhall could not address any follow-up questions because his 15-minute smoke break had ended. “You ain’t gettin’ paid to goldbrick,” said Mendenhall’s supervisor, Frank Lichtman, before hanging up the phone.

In total, the Steelers have six players who can’t commit to making a trip to the Super Bowl “until I can swap some shifts,” three who are “just hopin’ my boss don’t pull a fast one,” and two more who say, “it depends on if I can get some overtime this week, man.” This puts a serious damper on the championship hopes of a team already dealing with injuries. Three-fifths of Pittsburgh’s offensive line was lost for the season by a tragic heat-tapping accident down at The Mill.

Green Bay has fewer issues with securing time off, since most of their players work at the team’s eponymous meat packing business. However, an outbreak of e. coli at the facility last month caused several players to lose significant muscle mass. Others have had to play through an as-yet unidentified neurological disease that may be cause by incidental ingestion of porcine spinal fluid when operating the assembly line’s “brain hose.”

Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, now 30 pounds lighter than he was at the beginning of the season, has called on the plant to provide workers with face masks, which could cut down on such outbreaks. Such a move angrily dismissed by his shift supervisor, Chuck Nelson. “You think we’re made a money over here, mister?”

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has asked managers to “take it easy” on Super Bowl-bound employees this week, though he added, “We all know how important it is to get the JL-157 line out the door this week.”

Bears, Packers Resume Rivalry for Some Reason

packersbears.jpgCHICAGO–The entire Windy City is getting geared up for Sunday’s NFC Championship Game between the Bears and the Packers, two teams with decades of bad blood between them, apparently. The Chicago-Green Bay rivalry dates back almost to the NFL’s inception and remains the league’s most enduring, for reasons fans can not recall, exactly.

“I hate the Packers with a passion!” said Stan Cosnowski, a self-proclaimed lifelong Bears fan from Hammond, Indiana. “My old man always used to say, ‘I don’t care if we win two games this year, so long as they’re both against Green Bay’. I haven’t the slightest idea why he said that.”

Sunday will mark the first playoff battle between Chicago and Green Bay since 1941, the outcome of which has been lost to the mists of time. Footage of the contest has deteriorated beyond repair, but NFL Films president Steve Sabol insists “it was a tough-nosed, smash-mouth affair. I mean, it’d have to be, right?”

The most enduring image of the rivalry remains an old black and white photo, taken sometime in the 1930s, probably. In it, a bunch of guys covered in mud, wearing those old-timey leather helmets, fight to try and grab this thing that barely looks like a football by modern standards. The final score of this game remains unknown, but picture has come to symbolize the rivalry’s rich, featureless tradition.

“Bears-Packers is the best rivalry in sports, no question,” said Frank Kennedy, a Bears fan from Berwyn, Illinois. “I think it started with this guy who played for Green Bay a long time ago, some linebacker named O’Leary. After a game he got drunk and set a bunch of buildings on fire and almost burned the whole city down. I definitely read that somewheres.”

But it’s not just Chicago eagerly anticipating this obscurely heated battle. Thousands of “Cheeseheads” will make the trip to Soldier Field as they have for generations, for reasons that remain murky at best.

“You wanna know why I hate the Bears so much?” asked Trevor Lundegard, a Packers fan in town for the game from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. “Good, because so do I. The more I think about these strange emotions, the more they baffle me.”

In keeping with time-honored, unclear tradition, the mayors of the two cities have made a friendly wager. Chicago’s Richard Daley has put up several dozen of the city’s famous deep-dish pizzas, while Green Bay’s Jim Schmitt has promised some of his state’s finest cheeses. Regardless of who wins the bet, both mayors pledged to continue to irrationally despise the other’s football team.

“This as good as it gets,” Daley told a crowd during a Bears pep rally in The Loop. “Two bitter foes squaring off, in a match-up rife with tradition and history, the finer details of which escape me at the moment.”

2010 NFC North Preview, with Michelle Bachmann

With the NFL season about to kickoff, Scratchbomb has asked a few luminaries to give us their takes on the upcoming football season. Next up, the Republican representative for Minnesota’s 6th Congressional district, Michelle Bachmann.

bachmann.jpgI’m so excited for the NFL season to start up again. Football is the great American pastime, because it has so many of the things that made this country great, like helmets and shoving. Granted, I’m not a big fan of its socialist salary caps, but I do like the fact that ungrateful employees can be cut at a moment’s notice with no consequences at all. Someday I hope to bring that kind of forward-thinking right-to-work-ism to the great state of Minnesota!

It was very disappointing to watch the Vikings lose last year’s NFC championship game to the Saints. I thought for sure Minnesota would triumph over a city like New Orleans, which had the nerve to say we didn’t respond to Hurricane Katrina quickly enough after we gave them all that surplus food and government trailers, and even let them crash at the Superdome for a coupla days. I swear, you give some people several hundred inches of water and they’ll take a mile!

These people could learn a lot from Brett Favre, a man who got to where he is from hard work and perseverance and good ol’ hard work. He didn’t ask for any handouts, no siree Bob! All Brett needs is an entire off season to decide if he wants to play or not, and if so, for which team. And of course, he needs a team with a good supporting cast like the Vikings have. A supporting cast that will say “Okay Brett, just take yer time there,” and be okay with not knowing exactly who they should take in the draft.

Brett can’t do it alone, of course. He’s got Adrian Peterson, who’s not only the best running backs in the whole sport, but has a fine, solid Scandinavian name despite being a Black! And Percy Harvin is quite the wide receiver, even if he has a name that sounds kind of womany. But better a womany first name than a Muslim-y first name, like a certain commander-in-chief who shall remain nameless. (Here’s a hint: it rhymes with “Barack”.)

I look up and down this division, and I don’t see another team that has the kind of all-American sticktoit-ivity of Brett Favre. Jay Cutler whined his way out of Denver, but now he’s getting his comeuppance: he has to QB a crummy team like the Bears. That’s what the Chinese call “kar-ma”.

Aaron Rodgers had a good year for Green Bay, but you can’t trust a man with a mustache like that. A clean upper lip means a clean mind! That’s exactly why Obama is clean shaven–he wants us to think he’s on our side. There’s no other explanation!

As for Detroit, they’re getting exactly what they deserve after handing an entire industry over to the evil clutches of labor unions. That’s right–consequence-free bailout money. And also Matt Stafford.

Brett Favre will lead the Vikings to the Super Bowl, just like George Washington led the Union army to victory on the beaches at Normandy. Did you know that the last time I looked in my children’s history books, this historic incident was not mentioned once?! That’s the Obama administration for ya, trying to make us ashamed of all our nation’s accomplishments.