Hello, fellow football fans. Now that the NFL season has “kicked off,” I thought I would just write up a quick little memo praising America for its continued support of NFL Football. Baseball may have the numbers (thanks to playing 90% more games), but we know the NFL is the true #1 sport in the U.S., and our fans are one of the largest parts of that. So thanks, fans! We here in the front office are convinced that this will be the greatest year in the history of the league, and we know a lot of coaches and players agree.

Sadly, however, there are a lot of “nattering nabobs of negativity” out there, by which I mostly just mean journalists — and, of course, by “journalists” I mean sad little creatures that might once have been human bent on dragging our league down into the gutter where they scramble for life among tufts of hair and discarded Pringles cans. These ghoulish morlocks focus relentlessly on everything that they deem wrong with the NFL, grateful for the opportunity to tear down another national institution to feed their bloodlust.

I know that most football fans are able to look beyond these hyped-up over-generalizations. But, for those who find themselves seduced by unscrupulous inkstained vampires, let’s talk about what makes the NFL great. How many of you saw the game last night? Pretty convincing performance by the Indianapolis Colts, wasn’t it? Not that the New Orleans Saints didn’t give it their all — because they sure did. But the Colts were sharp behind the precision passing of Peyton Manning, the spunky running of Joseph Addai, and the sure hands of Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne. And what about that defense? Coach Tony Dungy must be laughing today about all the people who said his defense wasn’t very good against the run, or the pass, or really anything.

See, that’s all the kind of drama the NFL needs: just two great football teams going at it with each other for sixty minutes. But trust the “bloggers” and “whistle-blowers” to go on and on about what one particular player might have or might not have done with or to some of his canine friends! This whole mess has made the league look bad, and I admit to certain ambiguous feelings about it myself. Yet, as a deep thinker recently pointed out, it would be wrong to blame the player in question — instead, we should show the Judeo-Christian values of forgiveness, absolution, and forgetfulness. Wipe the slate clean, that’s what I say. Not that that is official NFL policy or anything; we no longer exist in that kind of world.

Similarly, why is everyone jumping on the bandwagon and blaming certain other NFL individuals for taking illegal performance-enhancing chemicals? One rarely hears anything about baseball players who take steroids or HGH — why is everyone picking on football all of a sudden? And other writers, who aren’t even science experts, are all aflame to talk about the medical risks of repeated concussive events to the brain. Has no one ever heard about all the studies about soccer players losing brain cells by “heading” the ball all over the place their whole lives? At least our players wear helmets…and gleaming white teeth instead of snaggly orange fangs. (Sorry, couldn’t resist a cheap shot there.)

In the same vein, I’m sick of hearing about the following things, none of which are necessarily endemic to the NFL at all: alcohol and drug abuse, spousal abuse, gun ownership (strip-club-related shooting incidents included), high prices for exhibition games, high prices for regular season games, high prices for Super Bowl advertisements, Janet Jackson’s nipple on the Super Bowl halftime show, Prince’s penis-guitar on the Super Bowl halftime show, poor-quality Super Bowl games, boring Pro Bowl games, pensions for retired players — not all of whom are permanently crippled, thank you very much –, the poor quality of several franchises (especially one located in a desert), the lack of pro football in the nation’s second-largest city, instant replay as the supposed savior of NFL referees, NFL referees in general, Pink’s theme for “Football Night in America,” Tony Kornheiser, John Madden and/or his All-Madden Team, Al Davis, Lee Corso blabbering on about the supposedly unsullied game of college football which we all know is just as corrupt and money-controlled as the NFL ever was, Bill Belichek’s clothes, Bill Belichek nailing any Boston-area MILF with a pulse, Tom Brady and Matt Leinart inseminating anything that moves, Nicolette Sheridan jumping on Terrell Owens, Donovan McNabb’s mom, Matt Hasselbeck’s mom, what’s his name in San Francisco wanting to wear a suit cause he thinks it makes him look like Paul Freakin’ Brown, Paul Freakin’ Brown, the gay pirate that used to be on Tampa Bay’s helmets, projectiles thrown by Philly and Cleveland and New York fans, how nothing could ever be as great as the “frozen tundra” game ever in a million years not even if you tried ah they just don’t make ’em like that anymore, Chris Berman, cheerleaders lezzing up in a bathroom, Brett Favre retiring or not, Deion Sanders on the NFL Network, Adam Schefter on the NFL Network, the NFL Network at all, the influence of hip-hop, “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” Rosey Grier doing needlepoint, Jim Marshall’s wrong-way run, Tom Dempsey’s half-a-foot, the “Sixth Man” trademark controversy, NFL games overseas and in Mexico, the CFL, the Arena Football League, Mark Cuban’s new football league, parity, Matt Millen, Ben Roethlisberger’s motorcycle helmet, the United Way, the new kickoff rules, Kelly Clarkson’s new album, those pictures of Vanessa Hudgens, global warming, or anything having to do with Tiki Barber.

Instead, let’s just stay focused on the great game of football itself. Can’t we just agree to do that?

Please?

Roger Goodell is the commissioner of the National Football League.

Hi, everyone, thanks for coming out. This is going to be my one and only press statement about Michael Vick, and it’s gonna be quick; I have a lot of work to do, as I was pretty much just planning on a long season of clipboard-holding until a few weeks ago. So please forgive my brevity here.

I don’t really have a lot to say about this whole thing. Obviously, what Mike did cannot be condoned, and I am by no means trying to forgive what he did. Let me make this clear, once and for all: Training dogs to fight and kill each other is wrong, torturing and killing animals is wrong.

But I think we need to be as supportive as we can in this, his hour of need. I appreciate the statement Mike made after admitting his guilt in this matter. It shows that he is serious about wanting to grow up, and that he is willing to take the necessary steps to make sure that he never does this again. I am sure that his probable jail time will help him to accomplish his goal of maturity. I know that a period of incarceration — probably no longer than five years and definitely no more than ten — will help Mike look deep inside himself, and help him find the answers he seeks.

I hope Mike’s admission helps everyone get off his back. The man is a legendary talent, truly one of the most amazing athletes that the NFL has ever seen. I cannot hope to compare myself to him, nor will I even try. My style is completely different, both in football and in life; it always has been, ever since I started for good old Central Catholic back in Portland. I’m not a flashy guy like Mike — I drive a 1998 Saturn, my main hobby is jazz piano, and my favorite food is spaghetti. I’m just a humble Irish guy who loves his parents, his new wife Emily, and his cocker spaniel Cecil. Who is treated very well, thank you very much.

Let me tell you about how I got my dog. A couple of years ago, I was pretty low. I was the starting QB for the Lions, but no one thought I was doing a good job. In fact, a lot of people thought I pretty much stunk up the place. It doesn’t really matter whether it was the coach, his poorly-conceived offensive scheme, or my own failings — whatever the reason, we just weren’t getting it done. And boy, were the fans letting me know it. I even got booed when my United Way commercial came on the Jumbotron.

After one particularly brutal home loss, I was driving home, listening to some Cecil Taylor, when I saw something that made me sick. A man was standing on the side of the MacArthur Bridge, getting ready to throw a small bag into the icy river below. Now, very few things get me steamed more than litterbugs — I can’t help it, I grew up in Oregon! But what made it worse was when I realized that something in the bag was moving. I immediately pulled over and yelled at the guy to stop. This mulleted moron swore at me, told me that I was a [crappy] quarterback, and tried again to toss his tiny cargo into the water. I laid him out with one uppercut before he could carry out his evil plan, and opened the bag. Inside was the most adorable little puppy I’d ever seen. From then on, Cecil and I have been constant companions and best buddies. He’s got my back, and I’ve got his. (I hope I can rescue this fine franchise from its darkest days, just like I rescued Cecil that night!)

That’s one of the things that really eats at all of us on the team, the fear that our fans will desert us because of Mike’s troubles. In fact, a lot of us are animal-lovers. John Abraham has five dogs, and he spoils ’em something rotten. Those dudes eat better than I do! Alge Crumpler has a dog AND a cat, and he says they get along really well. Allen Rossum has a pet boa constrictor named Jammer, who eats only these really expensive hairy rats that A.R. imports from Papua New Guinea. And I don’t know if you know this, but Todd McClure has a pet orangutan who does a perfect impression of our awesome owner, Arthur Blank. It’s a real hoot! I guess all I’m saying is that it would be a shame if we were all painted with the same brush that Mike used to paint himself into the corner he’s in, if you know what I mean.

Listen, I know y’all (did I use that correctly?) are used to having a quarterback who can drop back 20 yards, casually evade the entire oncoming defensive front for ten or twenty seconds, then suddenly whip it downfield 70 yards on the fly off his back foot. Mike is a true hip-hop artist of a quarterback — bangin’ highlights, crowd-pleasing stuff all over the place…but then maybe some dull stuff too, diminishing returns, the skits get kind of boring, and nobody really needs to hear another guest spot by Andre 3000. Well, you’re not going to get much of that from me. I see myself as more of a jazz pianist type of guy — I know the basics, and I can improvise a little bit when it’s appropriate, but my main job is just to keep the song going so everyone else can shine.

All I can be is the best Joey Harrington I can be. And that doesn’t necessarily spell doom for the Atlanta Falcons, not at all. Bobby Petrino is busy whipping up some super offensive sets, and our great defense is rarin’ to go. Come on down and “get crunk” with us this year — you might just be glad you did!

Joey Harrington finished fourth in the voting for the 2001 Heisman Trophy during his days at the University of Oregon.

What up, lords and ladies?

I am honored to be elected a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Honored — but not surprised. I always knew that my amazing journalistic career would be immortalized in this way. After all, I covered two different teams in two different cities for two different newspapers. In addition, I joined ESPN in 1995, and revolutionized the way professional football was covered by arguing on TV with Sean Salisbury. So when the Worldwide Leader started to carry NFL games, I knew it was just a matter of time.

Today, that time is up. You probably expect me to do some kind of speech where I’m charmingly self-deprecating about my obvious lack of first-hand football experience, and where I make fun of my own appearance as contrasted with the average ‘roided-out NFL warrior type, and all that. But fuck that shit — self-deprecation is for losers, and I’m no loser, y’all. I’ve got some dark secrets, and I get more ass than Balaam. Plus, according to this ceremony, I am officially more important to the NFL than the careers of Art Monk, Ray Guy, and L.C. Greenwood — combined. So let’s go on a little journey through the fertile valley that is my life and career.

Unlike many of my peers, and everyone else in this room, I never even once tried to play football. I saw early on, while attending school in the rough-and-tumble suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that that was never going to happen. No, what I dreamed of was the opportunity to write about the crazy, deluded humans who are willing to sacrifice their limbs, their leisure, and their individuality for the glory of a game they see as greater than themselves.

Which, you know, is fine by me. Personally, not to put too fine a point on it, American football is a bullshit game. If I’m being honest, I much prefer the real football, the game we call “soccer” here in the U.S. The ebb, the flow, the incredible skill deployed by tiny little men both tall and small — it is truly awe-inspiring, and it is to our nation’s great shame that we have not embraced the world’s most popular game. I felt this way in 1966, when Geoff Hurst singlehandedly lifted England onto his wiry back and blasted them past Germany in the World Cup final. But while cheering madly inside my own head, my little high school self also realized that no one in Pittsburgh or anywhere else in the U.S.A. cared one little dingleberry about it. So it was “Goodbye, Beautiful Game” and “Hello, Hoi Polloi” for this ambitious young man. I started hosting my own little football show on local television while still in high school. Not to sound conceited or anything, but this program was still head and shoulders above any of the pablum being churned out by any other football show before or since.

My college years at Duquesne University were spent, I must admit, in a haze of alcohol and amphetamines. I also spent a lot of time taking dangerous psychedelic drugs and indulging every single sense I had. My friends and I used to go into the hardest ghettos in the city to score our chemicals; on one of these trips, I peeled off from the crowd and checked out some of the offerings at the radical Black Horizons Theater. There, during a performance of “The Revolution Is a Fat Funky Person,” I met my best friend and biggest writing influence, the great American playwright August Wilson. Not that any of you rockheads would know August Wilson from a Wilson football. Still, though, just so you know. Oh, I also managed to eke out a bachelor’s degree in nuclear physics.

I know I’m probably supposed to brag about how hard it was to cover the Steelers for the Pittsburgh Press and then the Seahawks for that shithole paper in Tacoma, but actually two more cake-walking writing gigs have never been had by anyone. In reality, I’m not that great a writer, nor that masterful a prose stylist. But compared to the rest of these mental midgets that masquerade as football writers in this country, I’m Dr. Wolfgang Von Bushwickin the Barbarian Mother Funky Stay High Dollar Bill Shakespeare.

And as for my ESPN career — let’s just, for today, pretend that the last 12 years never really happened. I mean, even I have some kind of shame. Pissing away my credibility gives me no pause whatsoever, but I do occasionally feel pangs for contributing to the largest sports marketing firm to have ever shambled forth like Cthulhu lurching towards Bethlehem. My ability to analyze teams’ strengths and weaknesses has allowed me to pinpoint the same damn things as every other football talking head on the face of the earth, meaning that my life has turned out just as meaningless as any character in Beckett or Camus or Jacqueline Susann. God bless cable television and its nasty little cousin, the Internet: the great leveler, the destroyer of worlds.

And yet it has all been very lucrative, both financially and sexually, and has resulted in the wonderful plaque here in Canton, which thousands of families will now be able to ignore every month on their way to another high-class meal at Denny’s.

In sum: thanks, kiss my skinny ivory-colored ass, and good night.

John Clayton is the 2007 winner of the Dick McCann Memorial Award, given annually to a football writer most people have never heard of.