Since the Super Bowl is this weekend, I am left with no choice but to make this the one week out of the year that I care in the slightest about professional football. (I reserve the right to revise this opinion the instant D.J. Shockley becomes the starting quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, but, until then, my hometown N.F.L. team remains the sorriest franchise in pro sports.)
If you expect me to care about a televised event with the prefix "Super" in the title, it had better danged well feature Teri Hatcher back when she was ten or fifteen years younger.
In honor of the culmination of the N.F.L. season, I now bring you a previously unpublished transcript of what the Superfans had to say when predicting this year's college football bowl games:
Superfans (raising glasses): Da Dahgs!
Swerski: Who da ya like, Todd?
Todd O'Connor: Definitely da Dahgs, Bill.
Swerski: What's yer prediction?
O'Connor: I expeck How-are-ya to be competitive. I say, Dahgs 62, War-yers zip.
Swerski: Ahright. Pat, who ya got?
Pat Arnold: I think it'll be a much closer game. I say, Dahgs 58, War-yers 6.
Swerski: Six, huh? Two field goals or a touchdown wit a missed extra point?
Arnold: Neither, Bill. I say Mark Richt gives up tree safeties runnin' out da clahk.
Swerski: O.K. Carl, what if we change da game a little? What if, insteada bein' footbahl playerss, da War-yers were, ya know, like, ack-shul War-yers and da Dahgs were ack-shul Bull-dahgs?
Carl Wollarski: Definitely a more competitive game. I say, gen-you-wine canines 49, real live island death machines 10.
Swerski: Good call, Carl. Todd, whattaya think?
O'Connor: How 'bout Mark Richt? Is he a Bull-dahg?
Swerski: No, it's a human Richt.
Wollarski: Oh, then I wanna change my answer. I thought it was a poochie Richt.
Swerski: How 'bout we make Richt a human Richt but Willie Martinez a frothing pit bull?
Superfans (raising glasses): Da Pit Bulls!
O'Connor: Wit a human Richt an' a crazy-mad Ol' Yeller kinda Martinez, I still like Jer-ja. I say, Bull-dahgs 58, War-yers zero . . . but I like How-are-ya to crahss midfield tree, maybe four timess.
Swerski: You make a bold prediction, Todd. O.K., dass all da time we have. Here at da Superfans, we all like da Dahgs.
Superfans (raising glasses): Da Dahgs!
All right, we're done making fun of Hawaii . . . really.
Go 'Dawgs!