FifG Game of the Week: Atlanta Falcons vs. San Francisco 49ers

Atlanta Falcons [2-1] vs. San Francisco 49ers [3-1] (Sunday 4:05 p.m., FOX)

Why it’s good football:

Well, mostly because there are a lot of really, really bad games this weekend. It’s a little early to tell how well the Falcons will play the year after a surprisingly good season for rookie QB Matt Ryan and rookie coach Mike Smith, but playing a game against the maybe-surprisingly-good 49ers will put the NFC into better perspective.

Why you might care:

You loved The Super Bowl Shuffle. Mike Singletary is the coach! Fun!
(See 1:23)

Football is just like Pop Culture!

Anyone watch the new 90210? I never watched the original, but somehow the idea of Beverly Hills 90210 made me nostalgic enough that I decided to watch the new series. Which is odd, if you think about it, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyhoo, I watched every episode of 90210 last year, even though I thought the show was dull as dishwater. Like, nothing happened, the characters were all annoying and whiny and not even hot enough to want to watch based on looks alone. But so propelled by the memory of knowing that the original show aired when I was younger, I continued watching.

Apparently the execs at CW understood that the show was bad, too, so mid-season they hired a new executive producer Rebecca Kirshner (Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). With the new producer at the helm the show got rapidly weirder (Silver is a manic depressive who secretly films a sex tape with her boyfriend and shows it to the entire school?), hotter (Liam!), and if not much more enjoyable at least more compelling.

FifG is pro-Team Liam and Team Dylan.

But then this year? This year the show is good! Not, like, Friday Night Lights good or Lost Season 1 good, but like trashy, soapy good. Which I value highly. I actually look forward to seeing Annie mope and stew over killing a homeless man. And Adrianna’s love triangle pitting adorable Persian school-journalist Navid against the 30-year-old-not-so-convincingly-playing-15 Ken Doll lookalike. I even like bitchy Naomi this year, despite the fact that she might not be the most gifted actress ever.

Last year, the 49ers hired Mike Singletary 7 games into the season. The team had been floundering in past years, but last year they started improving under the wacky coach. (Who, it should be mentioned, dropped his pants at one team meeting to show that they were all in it together or something. Not all in his pants together, but in the team.) And this year, well the team is playing pretty good football. Last week against the Rams, the 49er defense alone scored 3 touchdowns. Running back Frank Gore has rushed for an average of more than 6 yards per carry (though he’s injured now), and 4th year tight end Vernon Davis has 3 touchdowns already and seems to be fulfilling his early promise.

Boyfriend/Husband/Dad/Other will be so impressed!

Conversation Starters:

-Do you think rookie DE Peria Jerry’s injury will be the downfall of Atlanta’s d-line?

-When do you think Michael Crabtree will start playing? What kind of impact do you think he will have on the 49ers offense this year?

-Do you think Atlanta running back Michael Turner is worn out this year after his 376 carries last year?

Fun Facts:

-Speaking of Michael Crabtree, this rookie just signed his contract this week, because his advisors told him to hold out for top-5 draft pick money, despite the fact that he was picked 10th. Not what you might call a “savvy business move.”

- The Falcons averaged 152.7 running yards per game last year and only 92.3 so far this season.

Player Pronunciation:

Jonathan Babineaux (ATL): jon-uh-thuhn ba-bih-noh

Dre’ Bly (SF): dray blie

Cute football player(s) of the week:

Zak Keasey, Fullback, San Francisco 49ers

John Abraham, DE, Falcons

With former Cute Football Player of the Week, Matt Ryan

FifG Game of the Week: Pittsburgh Steelers v. Arizona Cardinals

Arizona Cardinals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (Sunday 6:28 p.m., NBC)

Why it’s good football:

It’s the Super Bowl! Duh.

Top team in the AFC vs. the top team in the NFC. Can’t beat that!

Why you might care:

It’s the Super Bowl! Duh.

Because, come on, if you’re going to watch one football game a year, this is it. There are great ads in between plays. There are parties with delicious food stuffs. Plus, everyone talks about the Super Bowl for at least one day after the fact, and you want to be a part of the conversations, don’t you? Be an American! Watch the Super Bowl!

Football is just like Pop Culture!

Maybe you are wondering why the man in your life is so excited about the Super Bowl when he is neither from Arizona nor from Pittsburgh and has never mentioned either team or any player from either team in conversation ever before this week.

Here’s the parallel.

I, like many women, love Sex and the City. I watched the whole series (granted, mostly on DVD since I didn’t have HBO for most of the show’ s run), and I will watch almost any episode that I click onto on TBS or TNT or wherever they play it. (Though they recently played the one where Carrie dumps Aidan again, and I couldn’t watch. Too sad. She should have married Aidan. I should have married Aidan. Oops, Digressing, digressing.)

So anyway, I saw the ads for the SATC movie, and my first thought was, Oh no! Why? But I thought, hey, maybe it’ll be better than I think. Then I saw the previews, and, well, it didn’t look so good. But I thought, hey, who can judge from 30 seconds?! Maybe it’ll be better than I think. And then I read the reviews, and those weren’t so good either. And at that point I didn’t even bother to assume it would be better than I thought, but guess what? I saw the movie. In the theater.

But why, you may ask. Why did you see the movie when it looked bad and the reviews were bad and the previews were bad and you didn’t want the characters to live on in some phony way that would likely ruin much of the experience of the TV show?

I will tell you why:

I am a woman. I love Sex and the City.

I had to see the movie.

Similarly, if you are a man (or woman, of course) and you love football, you have to watch the Super Bowl.

You have to.

Painful, but not as painful as paying $12 to see the movie.

Boyfriend/Husband/Dad/Other will be so impressed!

Fast Facts:

-People, please go to espn.com or si.com for fun facts. There are twenty million, zillion, trillion, jillion fun facts out there for this game. There are so many fun facts out there that I am overwhelmed. Maybe I’ll give you a couple that pop up a lot.

-Larry Fitzgerald (Arizona wide receiver, #11) is the son of a long-time Minnesota sports reporter who gets to cover his son in the big game. Pretty cool. Larry Fitzgerald always wears pretty blue dress shirts at his press conferences, so I like him.

-Ben Roethlisberger’s team won the Super Bowl 3 years ago, but his passer rating was the lowest for any Super Bowl-winning quarterback (22.6). (For the record, Kurt Warner won the Super Bowl MVP trophy and passed for over 400 yards when he and the St. Louis Rams won in the 1999 season.)

Conversation Starters:

-So, who do you think will win?

-Should Carrie have ended up with Big after all the crap he’s pulled?

-Hey, do you like these cupcakes I made? Aren’t they pretty?

Side Note:

I was in Tampa last weekend (I know, great timing, but my dad’s birthday was last weekend), and I did not see a single person wearing a single Arizona jersey. Well sure, you might say, it was a week early!

True, but guess how many Steelers jerseys I saw? Hint: A lot.

There were Steelers fans EVERYWHERE. On the street, at the mall, in Target, in restaurants, in cars with waving flags, you name it, there were Steelers fans. We drove to the Cracker Barrel parking lot in Haines City, FL to deliver my brother to his friends who live in Orlando (and their super cute baby), and guess who was there? In the parking lot walking to their vans, in the rocking chairs escaping the sun, in the general store buying candy… MORE STEELERS FANS! It should be something like a Steelers home game in Tampa. For realz.

This could be a preview of the crowd in Tampa.

Player Pronunciation:

Chike Okeafor (ARI): chee-kay oh-kee-fuhr

Deshea Townsend (PIT): deh-shay town-sehnd

Cute football player of the week:

Troy Polamalu, Pittsburgh, Safety

Kurt Warner, Arizona, QB

It's his second time here, but seriously, the interweb readers are obsessed with this guy. So a second win is deserved.

Ok, getting older, but still cute, no?

Self-validating Bulger update

Ok, remember how I wrote about Marc Bulger being benched?

I totally didn’t even think about the fact that the other Rams players would be upset about the benching, too. So in the analogy Bulger was the likable manager of a bunch of ineffective employees who was fired and replaced with an old guy. Here’s the latest development: The employees are mad that the boss they liked was fired, so they become even less diligent, thus making the new boss’s position even more precarious. Because a boss who is competent but not phenomenal would have a hard time taking over a crumbling office under the best circumstances. But when the employees resent that he’s taking over, so much the worse.

Good luck, Rams.

Bonus Conversation Starter of the week:

-Do you think the Rams will be the first team since the Bucs of 1976 to go winless this year? What about the Chiefs?

Poor dude

Poor Marc Bulger. First he gets sacked (knocked down before he can throw the ball) 11 times (which is a lot) in his last game, and now this.

Bulger was, until today, the quarterback for the St. Louis Rams. The coach announced that he’ll be benched in favor of Trent Green, a guy who’s been playing professional football for 15 years.

I feel sad for guys in these situations. It’s like if there is a company that has been failing. They have tons of incompetent workers who would rather click refresh on Perez Hilton’s site 5,000 times a day than do any work. The boss is sort of a quiet guy, but when he tells his employees they need to get to work, they say stuff like, “Oh totally! I’ll get to that once my nails dry!” or “Um hmm, ok. By the way, my boyfriend Jimmy says hi… What’s that, Jimmy? Haha.” Anyway, the company can’t afford to fire all of the employees, but they can fire the quiet boss who isn’t getting any production out of the workers. So they do that and bring in some guy who’s worked in like every company in the industry already but never really moves up the ladder. And then they’re like, ok! Make this work! And if it works, that’s great, but probably it won’t, and now the company is still crumbling and everyone is mad that the new boss wasn’t any better AND the first boss is sad and out of work. And maybe his self-esteem is ruined and he can never find a job again.

Sad, right?

At least Marc Bulger won't have to deal with this anymore.