1. They just don't make face masks like Rickey Jackson's anymore. When I was younger, certain players were easily identifiable by certain types of equipment that only they used. Brian Cox, for example. Cox always had that giant trapezoidal neck support sticking out of the back of his collar. Jim McMahon always has a dark visor. Nick Lowery had the grandfathered-in single bar facemask with full mustache visibility. And Rickey Jackson had his face mask. Look at this thing. Now THAT is a fucking face mask. It's like a goddamn jungle gym. Rickey Jackson had, bar none, more squares on his face mask than any player in history. This was during a time when face masks could vary wildly. A lot of linebackers and lineman had gargantuan face masks. Some of them had flat bars going across. Some, like Daryl Talley, had the little circular dip to protect their eyes, rather than the straight bar going down. I assume Talley also did this so that his face mask wouldn't produce an Opti-Grab effect and leave him cock-eyed.

Those days of individual uniform variance have been all but crushed by The Ginger Hammer and others in the league offices, which is bullshit. I'll never understand why players have to have their socks all the way up, or whatever other sartorial retarderies the league foists upon them. It's not like they're causing any confusion as to which team they're playing for. "Whoa! That face mask is too big! He might be a Chief!" Fucking stupid. I think this may all be Rickey Jackson's fault. I think someone in the league office looked at his face mask and said, "That's it. They've gone TOO FUCKING FAR." And then BOOM! Uniform helmets. Oh, and Rickey has also been accused of owing over $177,000 in back child support. Maybe he needed the extra facial protection, lest his ex-wife try and claw his eyes out.

2. Yahoo still owes fantasy players for the great Marques Colston TE debacle of aught six. In easily the biggest technical snafu in fantasy history, Colston was listed as a hybrid WR/TE by Yahoo during his rookie year, during which he scored 8 TD's and caught 70 balls. Pretty good numbers for a wideout. Stellar fucking numbers for a tight end. Everyone knew damn well that Colston was a pure wideout, but Yahoo chose to keep him as a TE option all year long, deciding to NOT piss off Colston owners by pissing off everyone else. Goddamn Yahoo. Fuck you, fuck your exclamation point, and fuck Marques Colston.

3. People who don't live in New Orleans really need to stop calling it N'Awlins in a jokey manner. While I'm sure the town of New Orleans is lovely, it bears total responsibility for any co-opted Southern Gothic kitsch now permeating the American landscape. That includes people who can't talk with a Cajun accent attempting to do just that. It also includes any House of Blues franchise, as well as the 4,000 varieties of inedible designer hot sauces with names like VOODOO FIRE and ASSKICKERZ. It also includes a good amount of teenage goth culture. There wouldn't be half as many fat kids dressed in all black out there if it weren't for those fucking Anne Rice books, and I also wouldn't have to hear about Twilight every fucking five minutes if gay little Lestat had never existed. I gar-onnn-teee it. See how annoying that is?

4. SHOCKEY! SHOCKEY! SHOCKEY! Oooh, loogit! It's the failed white Dennis Rodman. Hopefully, Shockey has been able to stay hydrated while in camp. Not that it will matter, given that Billy Miller will probably end up taking 80% of all snaps. Between Shockey and Reggie Bush, the Saints have quite a collection of players that are well known but not terribly good. (Fun prediction: Pierre Thomas runs for 1,300 yards and 12 TD's.)

5. It's hard to defend the pass when you have no cornerbacks. Corners Mike McKenzie and Jason David are gone (though any Saints fan will tell you the team is vastly improved with David nowhere near the field), leaving coverage duties to Randall Gay (snicker), Tracy Porter, and Jabari Greer. Ballhawk safety Darren Sharper offers some help for the Saints' pass defense (23rd overall in the league), but the team's best defense against the pass is still letting Drew Brees' throw for a zillion yards and praying the offense doesn't turn the ball over. Like last year, that may not be enough.

Wanna be part of the Deadspin NFL previews? It's simple. Just email me here and give me some reasons why the team you hate most sucks. If it's because you dated a fan of the team and she turned out to be some crazy bitch who keyed your car, all the better. I'll throw any good material into the post and give you proper credit.

If you're unfamiliar, AutoSummarize is an aggressively useless tool that, with a few clicks of the keyboard, will summarize for lazy fifth-graders whatever report they just plagiarized out of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It will also reduce a fulminating columnist's prose to its purest essence.

Here is Mariotti's latest, at 10 percent:

This is the decade when sports stopped being about sports. Am I blaming sports bloggers and their commenters that a very disturbed person secretly videotaped Andrews as she was standing nude in her hotel room, then posted the five-minute video on the Internet? Unlike one of the Erin-consumed leeches — who admitted this week, "I have never met Erin Andrews,'' — I have met her as an ESPN colleague. I've seen Katie Couric wear shorter dresses. I'm a girl that loves sports. How can she return to a hotel room without wondering if someone's peeping? How can she live wondering 24/7 if someone is leering? I wouldn't blame her if she left the sports business and entered the entertainment world. A blog said I was with a "semi-hot blonde'' at an NBA party; she was a public-relations person for a player marketing a charity game. A blog recklessly ran items that weren't remotely true when I left the Chicago Sun-Times.

OK, I think I see what he's driving at. Let's take this down to 5 percent, though:

This is the decade when sports stopped being about sports. Am I blaming sports bloggers and their commenters that a very disturbed person secretly videotaped Andrews as she was standing nude in her hotel room, then posted the five-minute video on the Internet? I've seen Katie Couric wear shorter dresses. I'm a girl that loves sports. How can she return to a hotel room without wondering if someone's peeping?

Still, there's a lot of noise in there. Here's Mariotti, at 1 percent:

This is the decade when sports stopped being about sports. I'm a girl that loves sports.

Hmm. Well, that's interesting, and it certainly adds a personal dimension to Mariotti's deeply felt rage at "the sex-and-objectification culture" invented by blogs and only blogs (none of them affiliated, mind you, with his "respectable, globally regarded site"). I'd point out that this "sex-and-objectification culture" could also be attributed to Renaissance painters and probably anyone with a penis during the Pleistocene Era, but that'd be unfair of me. He's just a little girl who loves sports, not history.

Lesson of Erin Andrews: Grow Up, Boys! [Respectable, Globally Regarded Site]

They're partying like crazy at the University of Florida today; which come to think of it, only means that it's Friday. But in Oklahoma pour the unfathomable tears of sadness. Poor band clarinet girl. Poor Sooners. Poor Curly.

Meanwhile, headline writers who enjoy lame puns are also celebrating. Chomp goes the dynamite!

National Championship Puns Come Sooner Rather Than Later [Real Clear Sports]