Well, the time comes when the lights need to be turned on and the party must end. We had a good run of 10 weeks, as we watched the league’s worst teams flop around like wounded ducks as a few of them tried to convince us they weren’t losing on purpose for the 2012 NFL Draft’s top prize – Stanford QB Andrew Luck. Unfortunately, our party is pretty much over and we can stick a fork in this Suck for Luck campaign. Barring a miracle – and by that I mean the sudden desire to win – the Indianapolis Colts will have the first pick in the next draft.

And that’s fine, because that’s what their fans and ownership openly pined for to very little criticism. Apparently the Colts are allowed to lose on purpose, so let’s all tip our caps to the eventual team that will make Luck the No. 1 pick. In the meantime, we’ll take one last rundown of the power(less) rankings – and don’t worry, we’ll still review each game in our own fun way in the coming weeks – while I try to decide if I want the Miami Dolphins Whiffin’ for Robert Griffin III or Playing Lames for LaMichael James. Maybe Losing Whack, Son for Justin Blackmon?

Decisions, decisions.

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Viewer warning: Starting about when Meredith Marakovits says she “tucka loaka round”, this video clip from P.J. Whelihans in Downingtown becomes extremely Pennsylvanian.

Feast at least part of your ears on the continually-distraught “Angry” Greg Ryan, Philadelphia Eagles fan and local celebrity drinker whose impassioned commentary on his favorite downtrodden football team’s performance during their 21-17 loss to the Arizona Cardinals borders on “It’s Still Real To Me, Dammit” and draws the most amazing look of “this f**ken guy” from Meredith. She should win a cable Emmy for her face during this.

Highlights of the video include the impossibly-disgusted way he says “deh Cleveland Browns”, his extended ship allegories and that amazing moment at 2:01 where she asks him if he’ll keep supporting the team and he’s forced, if only for a moment, to reevaluate his entire life. The highlights of the video’s YouTube page are those crazy comments about the FBI has declassified documents about how many Super Bowls Michael Vick would’ve won by now had it not been for George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Also, how creepy is the Comcast team at the end? The “what Meredith doesn’t understand is that there is no next week” comes off sounding less like football talk and more like ominous prognostication. Don’t look at me like that, I don’t root for the Eagles.

[h/t Cosby Sweaters]

Somewhere between a 1,100-yard, 11-scores season and a cursed Madden cover, Cleveland Browns running back Peyton Hillis turned into Steve Urkel and started f**king up everything about his life and the lives of those around him. As Shutdown Corner helpfully explains, he’s rushed for fewer yards this season (211) than Cowboys rookie DeMarco Muray did a single game (253) and has missed more games (three) than he’s been in and scored (two).

If that wasn’t bad enough, The Cleveland Plain Dealer is now reporting that Hillis’ brother and agent confirmed he’d attend an event hosted by the Cleveland Boys and Girls Club for the benefit of 50 children who had to be bussed around from everywhere to meet him … then never showed up.

Former Browns center LeCharles Bentley explains, via Twitter:

I’m guessing #ManPlease is the diplomatic, semi-professional equivalent to #areyouseriousbro. When a guy with both “Le” and “Bentley” in his name is condescending on you for being hoity-toity, something’s wrong.

And if we’ve learned nothing else from Cleveland-area sports public relations disasters it’s that no-showing a Halloween charity party for underprivileged children is one thing, but not swiftly explaining why you did it so people don’t think you’re an irreparable IR creep (Hillis’ people aren’t talking and Bentley won’t expound) is another. Another thing we’ve learned from Cleveland is to always assume the worst, and to know that it never gets any better.

[via CBS Sports]

Have you seen the episode of “Modern Family” where Luke gets taken to a psychologist and left in a parking lot, and when his parents realize what they’ve done they start freaking out, but he rolls up in a limo and it turns out he’s smart and can find his way home? Good, now imagine that Claire and Phil Dunphy are alcoholic football fans, the psychologist’s office parking lot is Cleveland Browns Stadium and the limousine is the police.

From Dave Nethers at Fox 8:

According to police reports, Anna and Earnest Fugate of Circleville had come to the city’s muni-lot where they started arguing while “partying” before the Browns-Dolphins game.

Earnest then went on to the stadium, leaving their 9-year-old foster son with Anna, even though she was “obviously intoxicated,” “acting loopy, bumping into other people,” according to police.

“Anna then gave the boy to two strangers, who were heading into the game with game-day tickets,” according to the report. The two strangers turned him over to a security guard at the stadium.

A police lieutenant later stopped the Fugates’ vehicle as they were trying to leave the muni-lot together, without their foster son.

“When asked why they were leaving without their child, they shrugged,” the officer reported. “When asked why they did not report the child missing, they laughed.”

Anna and Earnest, who I’m picturing wearing a denim vest, have been charged with misdemeanor child endangering and pled not guilty, because honestly, how dangerous is it to hand your foster son over to some strangers in a football stadium parking lot and drive around drunk without him? If they’re convicted, they could do time. Now a family is going be broken, and a 9-year old knows how to fill a Mountain Dew bottle with urine and throw it at somebody.

No word on whether or not Anna caught her dress in an escalator at Browns Stadium and had to get naked in front of people, or if Ohio is going to pass some kind of law to keep people like this from adopting.

[h/t Shutdown Corner]

Former Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle and 11-season NFL veteran Orlando “Zeus” Brown was found dead in his Baltimore home today at the age of 40, and nobody is quite sure why. Via CBS News:

Fire spokesman Battalion Chief Kevin Cartwright said firefighters were called about 11 a.m. Friday because Brown was unresponsive at his home near the Inner Harbor. Cartwright said Brown was dead when firefighters arrived. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said firefighters called police, routine procedure in such cases. He said there were no signs of trauma or suspicious activity.

The Ravens learned of Brown’s death during practice.

“We send our condolences to the family of Orlando Brown,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “Everybody knew what he meant to this organization. We’re forever grateful for what he did for the present team. We can’t express enough sorrow for his loss.”

Brown has a lot of interesting notes about his NFL career — he’s one of only two players to have played for both the pre- and post-Baltimore Ravens versions of the Cleveland Browns and is most famous for accidentally hit in the eye by a penalty marker weighted with BBs thrown by referee Jeff Triplette during a game in 1999 and having to sit for three seasons because of it. He settled with the NFL for a reported amount of $25 million and started up the first Fatburger franchise in Maryland. The fact that I can keep going with this should tell you how interesting of a guy he was, and how shocked his friends and family are that he’s suddenly gone.

Bill Belichick, the man who signed Brown, coached him for three seasons in Cleveland and probably thought dressing as a rollerskating pirate as the only thing he was going to do on the Internet today, released a statement through the Patriots moments ago.

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Josh Cribbs is living through this lockout the best he can. He’s working out, training hard, and doing what he can to be completely screwed over by the new kickoff rules, but he’s done it all while keeping a low profile. Until now. What started out as a simple trip to get a haircut has turned into one of the biggest athlete scandals in the history of professional sports. Josh Cribbs… got a parking ticket.

But this isn’t just any ordinary $15 parking ticket. Cribbs says that this ticket is undeserved and is a clear, shining example of a corrupt Cleveland police department that he must now wage war against to save the people of Cleveland, lest they forever be subject to unfair parking fines.

“I was at the barber and I went outside to put a quarter in the meter. I saw I had a parking ticket. But there was eight minutes left on the meter, I was highly upset,” said Cribbs.

“I wrote, ‘not guilty!’ I made sure to take pictures with time stamps,” laughs Cribbs. “I got a lot of response. People saying the Cleveland Heights Police Department is notorious for writing out tickets, people who have been wronged.”

“Well, since this is a lockout, I have the time to fight for Cleveland, fight for the blue collar workers here, and I think it’s wrong and I am trying to stand up for those who can’t,” said Cribbs. (Fox 8 Cleveland)

As Cribbs points out, it costs $50 to fight a $15 parking ticket in Cleveland, so he’s taking it upon himself to save thousands of his neighbors $35 each. But this isn’t simply a case of a hero taking down the corrupt law. Not if the police have anything to say about it.

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