While watching the Discovery channel over the last week I have been seeing promos for a new show starring annoying pitch-man Billy Mays. You know that guy don’t you. The fellow with the disturbing dyed full face beard and a voice that is an assault to the eardrums.

You know, the guy that (if you are like me) causes for you to reach for the remote every time he assaults your television screen.

And somehow the Discovery Channel thinks this guy needs more than thirty seconds.  He needs a full half hour.

Are people fascinated by this guy?  Does America love this huckster so much that they are willing to devote 30 minute blocks of their time to wrap themselves in his dyed beard glory?

Is this what we have come to?

If this show succeeds in any way I think it proves a couple of things.  America is getting used to absolute crap on television.  We will watch virtually anything.  ABC could put on a reality show about farm animals and their excrement and it would get a 1.2 share.  America is bored silly.  We used to scorn television commercials.  Now we make reality shows out of their most annoying stars.

Writers cost money.  Production cost money.  Creativity is not cheap.   And the good old USA has given the television industry carte blanche to do away with the need for them.  Jay Leno is going to prime time because it cost a lot less money to set up a few cameras and film Jay talking for an hour than it does to produce a typical hour long drama.

Reality shows are a financial boon for TV networks.  Once we told the networks that we LOVED reality TV with our hefty ratings as viewers, the bottom dropped out.

Cheap television is in vogue.  We asked for it and we got it.  A vast wasteland proudly displayed on our expensive new high definition flat screens.

How long until football starts….

I am an unabashed Monday Night Football fan. It was a part of the generation I grew up in. I grew up loving to hate Howard Cosell. So much so that I shouted a beer soaked string of obcenities in his general direction at a Monday Night Baseball game in Kansas City many years and many beers ago.

I can’t apologize enough for those who were unfortunate enough to be seated near me at the time. But that is another story for another time. I’m here to talk about Chucky.

Love it.

Gruden is just what the Monday Night team needs. After getting torched by his former team once his visor wearing ass hit the door, (And by the way, did the Bucs need any other reason than that visor to fire Gruden…I ask you?) Gruden probably has a lot of pent up aggression and angst. And a strong desire to throw those players that verbally assaulted him under the bus at the first opportunity.

Now that is good television.

Not that the NFL needs anything other than competence from its broadcast booths to sell its product. The game is the thing with Monday Night Football. All the announcers need to do is let the game come to them. Which is pretty hard to do when you have a hard and fast “script policy” like Tony Kornheiser did. But I give Kornheiser a bit of a break. The guy is a writer. He made his way onto radio and onto television, but at his core he is a writer.

Gruden is football.

Say what you want about him, the guy is football personified. Well, except the damn visor.

I will say this, I am once again cautiously optimistic that Gruden will finally be the guy to fill that impossible job of third chair. But Jon, for the love of God please retire the visor. If you show up in week one sporting the visor there will be blood on these pages. The choice is yours. I’m confident you will do the right thing.

No professional sports league does a better job of keeping itself in the spotlight than the NFL.

Even during the six months of down time when nary a game is played, the NFL claims a spot above the fold on your sports page or leading the scroll across your television. Free agency, the draft, minicamps… even a mundane task such as letting you know when teams will play each other (we’ve known the “who” since the end of the season) gets national coverage.

And in between the league’s staged events, the littlest stories of the offseason receive just as much scrutiny. The Brett Favre saga has become the Paris Hilton of the NFL: there’s nothing there, and yet we must have full coverage of every step.

Not that I’m complaining. The NBA lost me long ago (shortly after Dr. J retired), the NHL is good for a couple triple-overtime games each playoffs but without the Wild I don’t have a horse in the race, and 20-plus years of fantasy baseball have proven to me that I’m much more of a Twins fan than a baseball fan.

Hey, what else are we going to do, watch NBA or NHL playoffs or the first couple months of the interminable baseball season?

And yet there will be a few little nuggets, mere mentions in passing during minicamp recaps, that at the end of the season some will look back at and point to as a sign they should have seen (insert fantasy tragedy here) coming. With that in mind, here are a couple of those tidbits I’ve noticed that might help both you and I avoid those “woulda-coulda-shoulda” blues.

Colts Coaching Changes
Who woulda thunk the NFL’s pension plan could play a role in the demise of one of fantasy football’s most reliable offenses? I don’t pretend to understand what exactly the league is trying to pull with its recent changes to the league pension plan; what I do know is that long-time Colts offensive coordinator Tom Moore and fellow veteran Howard Mudd, Indy’s offensive line coach, have been put in a position where if they don’t retire before June the rule changes will take a bite out of their pension plans to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. As it stands at this writing, Mudd has announced his retirement and Moore is contemplating his. Mix in the transition from Tony Dungy to Jim Caldwell at the helm and that’s a whole lot of newness in Indianapolis.

Sure, Peyton Manning will still be calling the plays. But sans Moore there’s bound to be a fluctuation in the comfort level between Peyton and whomever is talking into his ear. Who could they bring in that a) knows this offense as well as Manning and Moore, b) has the cajones to tell Manning anything, and c) can convince Manning he’s worth listening to? A little wrinkle wouldn’t be all bad, but wholesale changes make me less confident that this offense will continue to match its storied output. Worse, Mudd has been crafting a protective wall around Manning out of second-day draft picks and street free agents; if he goes, what happens to Indy’s front line? Again, I’m not saying Pete Metzelaars can’t do the job, but it’s one more tweak to the stability of a unit fantasy folks have come to rely upon.

Neither coach has submitted their papers yet, so there’s a possibility this won’t become an issue. But at minimum it’s a reason not to doze off when the topic in the sports page turns to pension plans, at least where the NFL is concerned.

The Draft’s Big Winner
The NFL Draft is becoming bigger and bigger every year; next year, there’s a very good possibility the first round will be held in prime time on Thursday night—must see TV for every football fan. And when it comes to fantasy football, everyone at your drauction will know who Matt Stafford and Michael Crabtree and Knowshon Moreno are. The more astute will know names like James Davis, Austin Collie, and Shawn Nelson and how they may factor into the 2009 fantasy season.

But unless you’re a true football junkie—and I have to assume if you’re reading this in May you fit that description—you may not be aware that the biggest winner on draft day wasn’t Darrius Heyward-Bey or Brandon Pettigrew or even Donald Brown. Nope, that distinction has to fall to Jacksonville running back Maurice Jones-Drew. Not only does he no longer have Fred Taylor to siphon carries, MoJo was rewarded with a fat contract in the offseason. Then, to protect that investment, the Jaguars added not one but two of the top five offensive tackles in the 2009 draft class: first-rounder Eugene Monroe, who should start ahead of the shell of Tra Thomas on the left side, and second-rounder Eben Britton, likely to leapfrog Tony Pashos at right tackle.

Spending two early picks on the front line signifies Jacksonville’s commitment to the running game, and sans Taylor MoJo should see the bulk of the touches—though Greg Jones and another 2009 draftee, seventh-rounder Rashad Jennings, are around to make sure he’s not overworked. And another sign the Jags are still all about running the football: Troy Williamson is still on their roster. If there were to be any aerial fireworks, the Jags could have easily drafted Michael Crabtree rather than Monroe; instead, they signed what’s left of Torry Holt to provide some semblance of a passing game—but it’s abundantly clear that won’t be the priority.

MoJo’s fantasy stock jumped the day Taylor was released, but it’s apparently cooled a bit since then. However, the addition of a couple big helpers on the front line have me penciling Jones-Drew into the top three in the first draft of my rankings. Let someone else have whatever share of the carries Moreno and Brown and Beanie Wells will get; I’ll roll with the already proven productivity of a guy whose team thought enough of him to put two stud linemen in front of him.

Despite his typical welcome into the booing arms of Philadelphia Eagles fans, I think the Jeremy Maclin 1st round pick by the Eagles will prove to be a wise one. Right now I am salivating at the possibilities the Eagles offense will have with Brian Westbrook and Jeremy Maclin on the field at the same time. Either one of those guys can create nightmares for DC’s around the league, but in tandem they could create major headaches for their division rivals this year.

Eagles fans were understandably disappointed when the Boldin dream did not come to pass, but in the long run I think the Eagles made the right moves, and this Eagles offense could be scary even without a “big name” receiver. Maclin is a player, and I am anxious to see what he will bring to his new team. He might just be the guy they need to pull this offense together.