DL518: Two Best Things About The Super Bowl? Food And Gambling.

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This is a two-part show, focusing on the two best things (other than maybe the commercials and the actual football) that are associated with the Super Bowl: food and gambling.

FOOD

First, we talk with Sarah Sprague about her amazing annual series 28 Days of Super Bowl Recipes. We talk about how important good food is for a good Super Bowl party and we go over some of her favorite recipes in this year’s edition. Like, for example, Coffee Glazed Pepper Chicken Drumsticks or Sriracha Fried Pickles (!!!).

We talk about how she can make anything into a hot dip and talk about how delicious Spicy Peanut Butter Honey Chicken Tenders must be. I mean SERIOUSLY. Read those words together. Spicy. Peanut Butter. Honey. Chicken. TENDERS. All delicious on their own, combined they make create the greatest Super Bowl snack ever devised. EVER. DEVISED.

So there’s more of that. If your mouth doesn’t water at the end of this segment, you hate football…or food. Oh, and make sure to check out Sarah’s site (through the above links)READ MORE

DL513: Josh Zerkle on Pro Bowl Reform, BEN, Super Bowl Plans & Is Ines Sainz Still A Story?

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Josh Zerkle of With Leather, KSK and the House of Punte Podcast joins the show to preview Super Bowl week. Not the Super Bowl, but the week leading up to the Super Bowl which can be, in a way, as entertaining as the game.

First we talk about the Pro Bowl and give a huge rundown of suggestions for how to make the game better. We cover everything from helmet cams to a skills competition to Zerkle suggesting the game be played between free agent veterans and rookie wage scalers with the winning team getting a bigger piece of the contract pie.

That, and robots. Exploding robots.

We talk a lot about Ben Roethlisberger and if fans really care that he was an accused rapist a few months ago. Is it a big storyline heading into the Super Bowl? Of course it is, because there isn’t much else to talk about this week. But will it be an awkward moment after the game between Ben and Terry Bradshaw, and does Roger Goodell really wantREAD MORE

Running Numbers: The Long, Winding Road(s) To The Super Bowl

You know how there are some crazy football fans out there? (Googles crazy Packers fan and crazy Steelers fan and posts results below):

Exactly. Football fans are total nutjobs. Let’s say one of these wacky fans hopped in an RV and decided to follow their favorite team around all season, week to week, game to game. Which fans would have travelled the furthest to get the Super Bowl?

The Playoffs

Well, with three playoff games on the road against two at home for their Super Bowl opponent, the Packers clearly have logged more miles during the the last month. So far this post season, the Packers have travelled 4,168 miles (according to Google Maps, calculated as round trip from Lambeau Field to the opponent’s stadium) for games at Philly, Atlanta and Chicago. For Pittsburgh? That number is a big, fat zero.

Lambeau Field is 1,150 miles from Cowboys Stadium, which is closer than the 1,242 from Heinz Field to the site of the Super Bowl. Round trip…that’s 184 more miles for Steelers fans than Packers fans. Not exactlyREAD MORE

DL510: Cutler, Twitter, BEN, Rodgers, Jets, Football, Super Bowl

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Where is show 509, you ask? Well, it’s a lost episode, for now.

That said, we’re back with show 510 talking about the media talking about Jay Cutler and spending a good amount of time on the fact that people were quick to rip him for “quitting” without finding out the real story. A product of the immediacy of Twitter, or more a story about the other shoe dropping on a guy most in the NFL really, really don’t like?

And can we please stop with the Philip Rivers comparisons? Rivers was terrible in the AFC title game he played with a torn ACL. It’s also hilarious that Maurice Jones-Drew had the guts to rip Cutler, saying, “All I’m saying is that he can finish the game on a hurt knee… I played the whole season on one…”

Really, MJD? The WHOLE season? In what amounted to a playoff game in week 15, Jones-Drew had six second-half touches (three run, three pass) for 16 yards. The lesson: being hurt and playing poorly isREAD MORE

Call of the Day: “Here Comes Hester! He Might Go!”

Devin Hester scored a huge touchdown for the Bears on a fourth-quarter punt return  in Monday Night’s game that helped the Bears get to 3-0 on the season (Lions fans, I’m sorry for writing that.)

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“Better kick with good hang time and great distance…56 yards, took Hester back to the 39. Picked up a block, and HERE COMES HESTER! HE MIGHT GO! Devin Hesterrrrrrrrrrrrrr…GOT IT! TOUCHDOWN, CHICAGO!”

This was a great call by Tirico…setting up the touchdown by pointing out Hester had nearly scored earlier in the game and reminding the viewer that it’s been a while since the dynamic returner has reached the end zone after a kick. During the call, transcribed above, Tirico was able to do the math of how far the kick travelled on the fly — something many play-by-play announcers have trouble doing even after-the-fact — before jumping into the excited call. He even elongated his call to make sure Hester was definitely going to score, letting the crowd take over after the call.

Then Jon Gruden started talking. Look, here’sREAD MORE