Suggested discussion topics:

• The systematic art of running onto the field naked
• Books to the face
• Unwritten rules of fandom
• Books to the face
• Roger Goodell's upper body strength
• Books to the face
• Laura Ling

But seriously, Ape's one of the most talented and funniest writers to bubble-up from the blog sludge. He's infinitely worthy of your time and money. Show your support.

And now...an excerpt. Enjoy.

V.2 Personal Seat Licenses Are a Bigger Rip-off than Buying a Home

Now that the housing market is dicked and the nation's economy is in the crapper, at what other moment could fans be more receptive to forking over more cash for the right to purchase tickets? I write in reference to the ever-infuriating phenomenon of the personal seat license, a one-time cost, usually in the thousands, which entitles the owner to the right to continue paying for season tickets each year until another stadium is opened and the cost is charged again.

PSLs aren't a new phenomenon, as they're believed to have been around for about twenty years, but they've been brought to the fore with their ever escalating costs. The reason cited by sports organizations as to why they impose these outrageous fees on consumers is that PSLs supposedly offset the expense of constructing stadia, many of which are already paid for in large part by taxpayer dollars. Are fans demanding venues that cost squillions of dollars? Not really, but that doesn't stop owners from launching into a space race against each other for bigger and higher capacity venues. The owners opt for these leviathans then pass the cost on to the fans. The gall is as astounding as it is predictable.

When the Giants and the Jets move into their new $1.3 billion shared stadium in the Meadowlands in 2010, every seat will require a PSL for the Giants and nearly every one for the Jets, with the PSL fee for a few thousand spots in the lower bowl of the stadium reaching as much as $25,000 per seat. The Jets auctioned off 620 PSLs of choice seats in the new stadium and drew more than $16 million for the winning bids. Of course, a fair percentage of those bidding for seats are companies in the business of reselling tickets, which only extends the daily chain of corporate fleecing of the average fan.

About half the teams in the league have policies that require PSLs. That's half a league ready to dry-hump their fans for the sweet release of the green. Why anyone would allow themselves to be fleeced by these organizations, no matter how much you may love their product on the field, is beyond the bounds of reason. Fandom knows no quit, but it does know a shit deal when it sees one.

Imagine the hubris that gives rise to these policies. In what other business can companies force a membership fee on customers only for the right to purchase their product? Demand for the NFL product being what it is, the owners think they're insulated from the cost of alienating a wide swath of their fans, but there's only so long, especially with the looming threat of uncapped player salaries, that these practices can continue without it starting to chip into the all-important bottom line.

The fan experience in the live event is increasingly becoming the providence of the superwealthy and the super-profligate. The new generation of stadia that's been built in the past decade crams more seats in and, with prohibitive prices, marshals loud die-hard fans further from the field. Watching the game on TV is not without its flaws (e.g., Phil Simms, Chris Berman, Tony Kornheiser), but it is certainly a much better value than paying through the nose for attending a game where fans are fleeced on concessions, limited by infantilizing fan conduct policies, and generally treated like unwelcome houseguests in overbuilt plutocrat strongholds.

The practice is an insidious money grab devised by billionaires looking for bailouts on their own risky business endeavors. If some fans are economically secure enough that it isn't a bother for them, great for them. But the owners may find that, in tougher economic straits, there will not be as many people comfortable doling out tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of being bilked on an annual basis. We may love our teams, but that doesn't mean we need to love their scams.

Now, talk to Mr. Tunison down below. He's here to illuminate.

I'm sitting in the VIP green room next to the visitor's locker room in the Rose Bowl listening to Deion Sanders, Marcus Allen and Ronnie Lott casually chat about world travel. I'm not supposed to be in here, but I'm not doing anything to draw attention to myself and it seems to be working. Or they don't care. Either way, I'm doing this in hopes of pulling some sort of interesting bloggy tidbit because, even though it's early in the day, Maddenpalooza is already shaping up to be a pretty dull, overly orchestrated, sparsely attended clunker.

"Every time I see this guy, I gotta ask what country he's coming from," Deion tells Ronnie of Marcus.

Apparently Marcus Allen has something of a penchant for international travel, and has recently returned from China. He explains how much easier it is traveling as a single guy without the encumbrances of significant others who you must coordinate plans with and wait while they trowel on their clown makeup. This segues into a story about Marcus and Ronnie visiting Russia that somehow humorously ends with Lott being passed out in a limo.

Hahahaha! We're all impossibly rich!

I quickly include that this is getting me nowhere and head back onto the field where the opening band From First To Last isn't doing much to whip up the thin crowd of gamers. "Let's make some noise for Favre!" the lead singer exhorts between songs. For the first time in a while, no noise is made for Favre. By now, fellow blogger TheStarterWife has joined me at the event and her misgivings about the turnout, spurred when EA tried to offer free tickets to her entire office the week before, are confirmed.

"It's overbadged," she tells me, meaning half of the people in attendance are wearing badges signifying that they're media, athletes, VIPs or PR staff. The people in the other half are wearing an NFL jersey of some sort.

There's not a whole lot of energy in the venue, even under the large tent where the game is open for playing at any number of flatscreen TVs. About 75 percent of the TVs are hooked up to the Xbox version of the game. The majority of these are being used, but there are still plenty of empty screens. Maybe 20 percent of the stations contain the Playstation 3 version of the game. These consoles are packed throughout the day. About two short rows are dedicated to the Wii version of Madden. They're rarely touched and even when they are it's by obviously neophyte girl gamers and old people. That's because Madden on the Wii is goddamn impossible to play.

Outside the gaming tent, there are a few carnival-type distractions, scantily clad women hawking Slurpees and a main stage where some bad pop-punk music is being performed. The long snaking line for autographs with retired NFL players (Tim Brown, Andre Reed, Roger Craig, Eddie George, Eric Dickerson, etc.) is where you'll find most of the attendees. It has all the expected atmosphere of a sports collectibles show held outside with Good Charlotte headlining. The athletes are mostly surly and depart as quickly as they can. Marshall Faulk tapes some stuff on the field for NFL Network and brushes off any of the commoners trying to converse with him. TheStarterWife tells me she observed Deion leaving in the parking lot with seven copies of the game.

There are some exceptions among the athletes. Jamal Anderson (The Thursday night party did not slake his Madden thirst!) makes friendly with people and brings his kid to the tent to play the game with the crowd. In an event that features appearances from Steve Young, Roger Craig and Ronnie Lott, I purchase a football from the tightly secured Wal-Mart tent so one of the former 49ers can sign it for my father, who's a huge fan. Lott refuses to sign anything but Young graciously complies in the media area. (That's right! I broke a cardinal rule of teh journalisms!)

I continue to wander for a bit, making my way back to the VIP green room area where I start to record Warren Sapp and his kid practicing on Madden training mode. He chats with me a little while he's doing it until he notices the Flip Video camera in my hand. This will not do, it seems. Sapp gets in my face, irate that I filmed him without his permission and demands I immediately delete the video. I do it (because, y'know, he's a very large black man who's amassed his fortune by pummeling people), and he holds the glare for a few seconds after I comply. Turning to the others in the room, he bellows, "You believe this? It's like the paparazzi, man." I know, right? First they kill Princess Diana. Now they film you playing Madden with your kid in a public setting. Monsters! Later on I find out he had a similar freakout with some guys from The Sporting News when they tried to snap his picture (again without permission!) a little earlier. Warren's having a bad day.

The other media people are stationed in the visitor's locker room, where an old guy in an Arizona Cardinals shirt marshals the retired athletes around the various media encampments throughout the room. I miss out on Deion during his brief stay at the event, blowing my chance to ask him about his experience doing a car commercial with (the former!) Pacman Jones and what advice he gleaned from his disappointing 2004 comeback with the Ravens that could be applied to Favre's inevitably sorry one this year. For the most part, I don't have much to ask of many of the players and they don't have anything to say about the game beyond "I don't play it but my kid does." I force a sitdown out of Rod Woodson, knowing he'll give the exact same answers, only because I'm a hopeless Steelers homer.

Busta Rhymes injects some rare energy into the Palooza with an early evening set that goes long by 20 minutes. The audience cares little, finally getting some excitement and charisma from an event that was theretofore largely overproduced and rote. Like the NFL players that were there, it's been years since Busta has been considered anything approaching relevant. He at least gave some effort to those who made him what he is.

Still, Bissinger's concerns should be all of our concerns. Do we want our sports-infatuated kids to grow up reading Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber (don't ask), or would we prefer them to peruse the internet or their local library to read the wonderful work of Red Smith, Shirley Povich, Jim Murray, Dan Jenkins and yes, most definitely Buzz Bissinger?

Foof! That's a doozy. So many things to address in one little graf. I'll start with the "don't ask" aside. I'm guessing this is an oblique reference to my firing from The Washington Post, but who can really be sure? Apparently they don't stress writing for clarity in newspapers anymore. So much has changed in the month I've been gone. If so, you have to find humor in any "professional" journalist who implores readers not to ask questions.

Like Bissinger and Costas, Shapiro shows an embarrassing, even irresponsible, amount of knowledge of the subject he's writing about. Here, he somehow conflates Deadspin, a blog that deals in sports news, analysis and, yes, rumors, with Kissing Suzy Kolber, a site comprised of fabricated sports satire, as if they're the same thing. That would be like decrying the quality of print journalism by linking, say, The Washington Post and The Onion.

WaPo and The Onion are an interesting pairing by the way, because, well, they're business partners. The Washington Post Co. distributes The Onion in the D.C. area and takes in ad revenue for doing so. If profane sports satire is indeed dumbing down our culture so distressingly, should not Shapiro ask his employer why they are in a business relationship with a publication that runs plenty of it?

The claim that the poor generations of tomorrow would be poorly served digesting KSK rather than Shirley Povich is one of those false choices Costas mentioned in his special. Why can't they read both? Why does reading a blog necessarily preclude reading a mainstream publication? As Shapiro states, blogs mostly lack firsthand information. If readers aren't interested in that, it's their choice. For most of its existence, Kissing Suzy Kolber was a site with no promotion and no funding. If an operation like that is taking readers away from your august, well-heeled publication, there's probably a good reason why.

Besides, haven't many already made the claim that our culture's obsession with sports alone is evidence enough of a "dumbing down"? My opinion is that sports is entertainment first, no matter how much significance you wish to attach to it. If a reader shares that opinion, they're likely to digest it in ways that are different than traditional, more pious coverage. The era of newspaper writer and TV producer as the gatekeepers of information is coming to an end, if it's not already over. If you're willing to blame bloggers for the changing sports culture, shouldn't you also level the blame at readers?

Certainly you're not too cowardly to do that, right?

• NBA: The Suns picked the wrong time to go on their first three-game losing skid of the season, falling to the spurs 115-99. Tony Parker had a bit of a game with 41 points and 12 assists. Shaq just wants to get started on his jockey career anyway.
  
• NHL: The golden shin of Evgeni Malkin lifts the Penguins over the Rangers 5-4 in Game 1. The Pens overcame a 3-0 deficit to quiet a certain formerly mulleted Czech who evokes Stanley Cups of yore.
  
• NCAA: Psycho T opts to stay in Chapel Hill. Dick Vitale opts to stay engorged.

Once Tunison "came out," MediaBistroDC did a dopey, sniggering post about it — we are unfamiliar with those! — and, perhaps predictably or perhaps surprisingly, the Post freaked out. Less than 48 hours after Tunison's KSK post, he was fired.

Upon sacking, I was told that I brought "discredit to the paper" with my choosing to drink at bars in my free time. Any good journo knows to keep the flask in the desk.

Getting escorted out of the building by security was no fun, and sharing the elevator with Dana Milbank on the way out was even worse, but none of that compares with the withering scorn of Jean Grey.

We understand the importance of The Washington Post not being "discredited" by its employees doing "embarrassing" things (like, say, drinking at a bar with a mascot). You would never, ever want to see something like that. (And one to grow on!)

Thankfully, today, the name of The Washington Post is safe.

Postie Likes To Post Solo Drunk Shots [FishbowlDC]
Ape Got Dooced [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

(Poor Dan Steinberg: The Tunison defense league has taken over his comments. We do not know for sure whether Mr. Steinberg was directly responsible for Tunison's firing, but, uh, we doubt it. )

Now, at last, is the Jayhawks' chance to extract some measure of revenge against Huckleberry Roy Williams, he who doesn't comprehend the enmity, by denying him another title that he couldn't win them. In this likely shootout, a lot hinges on whether the three-man rotation of Sasha Kaun (Sasha Kaun!), Darnell Jackson and Darrell Arthur can help slow stupid-face Psycho T.

Since Ty Lawson's return, the Tar Heels have looked pretty unstoppable. And that might not change if Brandon Rush decides he doesn't need to play all that well at any point in the tournament. But, hey, it's a Final Four game in the Chalk Bracket with more than a modicum of emotion. That'll have to do.

It's a non-selective Sunday without a great deal of intriguing matchups (sorry those looking for an Avalanche-Stars breakdown), so my attention turns to the grand finale of what has been hailed by a great many pundits as the Greatest TV Show of All-Time. I'm not qualified to make that judgment, but The Wire easily ranks at the top in my list.

There's been a welter of discussions about whether this final season has betrayed the spirit of the show or just plain not worked as drama. I would say, despite some of the ax-grinding nature of the newspaper storyline, that it works just fine.

I have to admit that I'm biased in its favor. I've worked, albeit as a low-level functionary, at the two newspapers skewered in the final season, The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post, and I've been privy to the death rattle of newspapering that's depicted therein. The show's creator, like me, went to Maryland and wrote for The Diamondback. I grew up in the area it covers. I get all the esoteric references. Hell, one of my closest friends is an actor on the show (he's the one who killed Bodie).

Nevertheless, I can say without qualm that's it's been a towering achievement of journalistic fiction. It refused to make many facile distinctions between good and bad, not because it's relativistic but because it's realistic. And with that, it's given us the best testament of a dying city struggling for life.

(Image courtesy New York Magazine)

Otherwise, I'm good to go on weapons grade caffeine.

Tips/handy slaps: XmasApe@gmail.com

Tomorrow's a pretty big primary day for the Dems, what with Texas, Ohio and, to a much lesser extent Rhode Island and Vermont, going a long way to determining who the nominee will be. With Greg Oden and Leigh Steinberg recently publicly throwing their support behind Barack Obama, we're once again confronted with the notion that we're supposed to care what athletes', or for that matter any celebrity's, views on politics are. I mean, other than Charles Barkley, of course. Hold forth, Sir Charles.

That's it for me until this weekend. Tomorrow is the return of your man-king Leitch. Perhaps he has returned with fresh bananas from warmer climes.

Much of your human world continues to horrify and confuse me, most of all your bizarre construct of weekdays. The one you call Will has cast me into my Monday bondage by bludgeoning my mate to death with his advanced human weaponry. How ever did you concoct stick with a nail in it? Sadly, I am now in his thrall until Bubbles the Monkey God sees it right to call me home.

Until then, kindly amuse me by using your opposable thumbs to send tips to XmasApe@gmail.com. I promise not to fling them back at you covered in Sean Mahan's feces.

I've attended a handful of Nationals games each of the three years they've been in D.C. and the composition of the crowd is largely unchanged from the midpoint of their first season on: bored couples, bored families, Hill staffers I want to garrote with piano wire and more than a small smattering of opposing fans. But last year on Opening Day, I glimpsed what, to me, was the first moment of palpable excitement in RFK since baseball returned to D.C. in 2005 and, of course, it had nothing to do with the sport itself.

The team had the 12-foot-tall Teddy Roosevelt mascot president, winless then as now, rappel down from the roof of the stadium in a failed Wile E. Coyote-esque plot to overtake Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson in the presidents race. The crowd ate it up like campaign pandering. It was all people talked about on the way out of the park. New stadium aside, fans still seem more interested in seeing whether Teddy wins than whether the team will finish above .500 (He won't, they won't).

So when DS commenter Becky sent me a link about how the Nats were looking for folks to fill part-time roles as one of the Dead Prez, there was no way my impulsiveness and my recollection of that day wasn't going to win out.

And there I found myself yesterday morning with 30 other people ready to don the wobbly 40 lb. suit of dead white man. Many of them were like myself - nerdy twentysomething dudes who were quietly thinking they were better than the other people there - but there were also quite a number of guys in their 40s and 50s in full Nats regalia (curly W hat, Nats windbreaker, low expectations) and, lo and behold, even two women, one of whom came with a broken arm in a sling.

Broken Arm Girl was quite a hit with the assembled sad sack feature reporters tasked to cover this event, because, well, when you're looking for color for the 12-inch mascot tryouts story you're filing for tomorrow's paper, you'll take anything you can get. Apparently she had broken it earlier in the week in a basketball game hitting the ground after going for a rebound.

"I'm not gonna let one little injury prevent my summer of fun," she told one reporter.

"Well, I don't know. But it's about time we had a female president, right?" she said to another.

It was clear: This girl was out for blood.

There was no Teddy available for us plebeians — he was too busy "training" — so they paired us up by threes for heats as Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson. After watching a few brave souls have a go at it, I was finally ready to suit up as Christmas Abe.

/pause for groans

Whatever preconceptions I had about being able to see while in the costume were immediately quashed. The gauze-like fist-sized hole in the president's neck you're supposed to look through is mostly obscured by the character's jaw, so your field of vision is pretty much limited to your feet. And though you're strapped in, that giant head will lurch wherever it pleases and kill the shit out of your back trying to keep it aloft.

We got up to the starting line and the Nats entertainment coordinator tells us, "Okay, no shtick. I just wanna see your speed out there on the first run." As if my shtick up to that point had been anything other than "please, oh please Lord don't let me fall." Immediately upon starting, the guy in the Jefferson costume next to me falls dead on his face, almost tripping me up in the process, but I quickly recover and bound my way down the right field foul territory from the foul pole to the dugout, finishing a decided second behind that asshole Washington. He'll save children, but not the British children, indeed.

Here's the clip:

Before the return run to the foul pole, one of the staffers tells us he wants full-on speed for the second run but to throw in "a little Chariots of Fire action at the end," which I take to mean running in slow motion and not being an overrated movie from the '80s. After that, we're judged on our victory dances. For some reason, I'm temporarily tempted to try Shawne Merriman's "Lights Out" sack celebration as Lincoln but, afraid again of falling over, opt for some "Choo-Choo" The Hurkey-Jerky Dancer action instead.

Several local TV news teams had arrived at this point, and they wanted to have a word with the guy who fell on his face in the Jefferson costume, because, really, it's not like Broken Arm Girl had broken the arm here. So five minutes ago.

Finally, each contestant was marshaled into a private room to meet with three youngish intern-type people for the interview segment, in which you're asked such probing questions as "What part of the experience did you like best?" and "Which of the presidents do you most identify with?"

Me: "Well, uh, that is, I like Lincoln, because, uh, he's tall and he, um, he ended slavery."

They seemed to buy that.

However, I'll be spending the morning with about 50 other people at RFK Stadium trying out for a 35-game slot as one of the running presidents at Nationals games. Which one would work best for me? I imagine Christmas Abe has a certain ring to it. I'm really just hoping not to fall down in costume, really.

Notch a critical victory in the Davis Cup over Romania? A common American response to winning is to while away hours and hours and perhaps your signing bonus in the strip club. Just ask the G-men.

French tennis players Jo-Wilfred Tsonga and Richard Gasquet, however, they had to go get in on the action last week. Exuberant little assholes. What's worse, they made me write a post tangentially about tennis.

Bug & Cranks also has scans of the fake documents they took the time to draw up.

I like that Kendrick's first question is whether Japan has any decent food. Well, I don't know, it's not Philly, Kyle. Bad form on Myers' part with the "You got punked" stuff. So tired and never even half as funny as a good Dark Helmet "FFFFOOOOOOOOOLLLEEDD YOOOOOUUUUU!"

• At what point is it okay to call in the all-white team? Just ask UNC. [Mister Irrelevant]
• Michael Beasley better than Durant? Wwwhhhaaa? [FanIQ]
• Get your hands on a copy of Mark Cuban's junior year high school yearbook. [Yardbarker]
• Wanna get thrown out of Assembly Hall? Wear one of these. [Bad Idea Blue Jeans]
• Pedro Martinez has a curious diet. [Macrochip]
• Tim Wakefield takes the highway to the dangerzone. [Sox & Dawgs]
• Did early steriod use cause Ronaldo's knee problems? [Steroid Nation]
• A rundown of All-Star Game kicks. [The Sporting Blog]

I'm not well versed in the ways of the ruggers, but I know the sound at the beginning of this clip is a tad unsettling, and that this was possibly a mite bit painful.

Also: HARF HARF HARF HEAD INJURY MAKE LAFF

Kutley Beale Vs. Cory Jane - Slapdown [Green and Gold Rugby]

• NCAA: Ohio State at Michigan, 1 p.m. [CBS]
• Movie: True Grit, 1 p.m. [TCM]
• NASCAR: Daytona 500, 2 p.m. [FOX]
• Movie: Friday Night Lights, 2:30 p.m. [FX]
• NHL: Detroit Red Wings at Dallas Stars, 3:30 p.m. [NBC]
• TV: The Simpsons, 8 p.m. Eh, it's new. [FOX]
• NBA: All-Star Game, 8:30 p.m. [TNT]
• TV: The Wire, 9 p.m. That Templeton sure is a rat. HEY-OOO! [HBO]
• TV: Breaking Bad, 10 p.m. Science and drugs, together at last. [AMC]

One would think someone like, say, Adrian Peterson would be a natural pick. Well, I've got news for you, mister: There are some rumblings that EA Sports is looking toward Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning to grace the latest edition of the game.

If Manning is selected to the cover of the 2009 Madden game Eli would be another quarterback in a long line of past Madden covers including McNabb, Vick, and Culpepper.

Yikes! Some careers those guys turned out to have after that. Good thing Vince Young reversed the Madden Curse this past year with a statistically horrid season that somehow resulted in a playoff appearance.

I'm guessing the squash stick will be the flashy new innovation this year, then.