If you’re like me, although hopefully with a better mug shot, you can’t wait for the NFL season to begin.
So why wait? Join my rotisserie Miscreant Football League, where the excitement never stops. You’ve got your NFL fever, year-round. Simply get a group of buddies, draft your teams and start scoring points based on the misdeeds of your players.
You can draft retired and currently unsigned players. You can even draft dead players, because you never know when a guy might be implicated posthumously. To help you keep tabs, the San Diego Union Web site has an up-to-date list of arrests and citations involving NFL players.
Here’s a partial MFL points menu (points in parenthesis), and we’re adding new ones as fast as we can:
n Your player is arrested for driving under the influence while driving his car (2).
n He is arrested for DUI while driving a boat (4).
n He is arrested for DUI while driving the Coors Light “Love Train” (10).
n Your player causes a stir by spraying bottles of expensive champagne on patrons at a glitzy Las Vegas nightclub (3).
n When patrons complain of being soaked in champagne, your player explains that he ordered dry champagne (4).
n Your player sends back one of the bottles of Dom Perignon because it smells “corky” (3).
n He causes a stir by spraying bottles of expensive champagne on patrons at a Sizzler (6).
n He causes a stir by spraying expensive bottles of champagne on his teammates in the huddle (8).
n Your player’s agent releases a prepared statement containing the words, “If anyone has been offended …” (3).
n Your player claims he was misquoted in his agent’s prepared statement (5).
n Your player is subdued by police using pepper spray (2).
n He is also charged with assault (3).
n The report appears in a newspaper under the headline “Assault and pepper” (5).
n Your player announces that he is dropping his old, silly nickname, in order to turn over a new leaf and become a solid citizen (2).
n He is arrested for beating up a patron in a strip bar who insists on calling the player by his old nickname (4).
n Your player flunks a drug test at his mansion (2).
n He flunks a drug test while living at a Zen yoga farm (5).
n Your player is arrested for a crime or violation involving a sport utility vehicle he owns (2).
n His legal defense is that the SUV acted alone (5).
n Your player reports to camp 10 pounds overweight (1).
n Oops! He steps back on the scale and makes weight after removing his 10-pound Rolex (3).
n Your player is busted for speeding (1).
n Police search the car and find drugs (4), no registration (5), a loaded weapon (6), O.J. Simpson with a paste-on mustache (8).
n Your player agrees to take a sobriety test, and when police ask him to recite the alphabet backward, your player demands to use his “phone-a-friend” lifeline (4).
n Your player’s roadside field-sobriety test wins the weekly grand prize on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” (5).
n In any auto chase involving your player, points are awarded “taxi-style” — with the meter running, two points per minute of chase time.
n Your player is arrested for carrying a loaded weapon through an airport security checkpoint (3).
n He explains the gun by telling police he picked up his mom’s identical purse by mistake (5).
n He explains the gun by telling police that it helps him get an aisle seat (8).
n For whatever reason, they Taser him (4).
nYour player is arrested for a crime involving dogs (7).
n He is charged with animal cruelty, allegedly forcing 10,000 hamsters to run on little wheels to supply electrical power for his dogfights (10).
n Your player is arrested for reckless driving (2).
n The incident takes place on an amusement-park bumper-car ride (6).
n Your player is arrested inside a topless nightclub (2).
n He is arrested outside a topless club (3).
n He is arrested on the roof of a topless club (5).
n Your player, in court, takes the Fifth (2).
n During an arrest, according to news reports, he “takes umbrage” (3).
n During an arrest, he takes a hostage (10 points per hostage).
n Your player, brought to court for “arraignment,” misunderstands the legal terminology and showers the judge with dollar bills (7).
n Five bonus points for every crime or incident involving your player that takes place in Las Vegas.
n As the player’s legal defense, his lawyer cites the Constitutional guarantee that “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” (5).
n Found “not guilty,” your player sprays the jury with Dom Perignon (10 per bottle).
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