Unless you want this Godless thing tearing through your cheerleader dreams to haunt your nightmares you’ll sign up for our free fantasy football game through Draftstreet.com. I don’t really know what one thing has to do with the other, but I’m no theologian, and I’m going to threaten you with it anyway.

If free money for doing almost nothing isn’t enough (it is seriously free money, why aren’t you doing this) I’m playing, and I challenge you — yes, challenge you — to defeat me. My newfound Texans fan powers will lead my running back, Arian Foster, to 400 carries for over 8,000 yards this week. Hopefully that’ll make up for my quarterback, because I used all my money on Foster and ended up drafting Jake Plummer. Whoops!

Our Explanation Blurb™, in case you haven’t read it:

The game happens this weekend, and it’s going to work a lot like our baseball games; you’ll sign up (for free, again, I’m not going to make you pay for anything) and pick your team, choosing two QBs, two WR, two RB and so on until you’ve exhausted your salary cap, and the team with the best performance in this Sunday’s games wins money. So do the next five top teams. That’s right, we’re paying out to the top 6 teams from a $250 cash pool.

It’s easy as hell, and I drafted my team in about 40 seconds before posting this. Uh, maybe that’s why I never win. But I still could win, and that’s awesome. The game happens on 10/16 and includes the Monday game, so go ahead and do this immediately. And remember, participation gets you

1. Free money
2. No Spongebob nightmares
3. The ability to laugh at me thinking Jake Plummer still plays football
4. Fame and fortune (on the Internet)

So it turns out the Amarillo Sox mascot like to f**k all night.

Things turned sour for Lee as the Sox mascot was supposed to look like a sock but looked nothing like Lee had requested. Instead of a soft looking sock-type mascot from nearly head-to-toe, the foot portion of the sock stuck straight out about 2 feet at the waist.

“It was not the way I wanted it,” Lee said. “I’m very disappointed in the lady who did it, and I’ve told her so. She is going to fix it to the changes we want. I want to say on the record, if we offended anybody, I apologize.”

The Sock, clearly designed by Kyle Farnsworth, has caused a bit of an uproar on the Internet, the one place where things that look like dicks get raised up to glory. Places like Deadspin and Off the Bench are throwing up stories about it, and sure, his two-foot bumblebee cock is pretty hilarious, but as the sports comed-o-sphere authority on terrible Minor League mascots I feel the need to establish precedent.

The problem isn’t that he’s a sock, or that he’s got a big piece jutting out from between his legs. I think it’s the fact that it’s pointy. The Salem Red Sox of the Carolina have not one but TWO anthropomorphic sock mascots (“Lefty” and “Righty”) and nobody flees the games for fear of being f**ked. Here’s a picture of me with one of them. Click it to see a larger version. You know, at uh, at your own risk.

So what can Amarillo learn from this? Well, first things first, move the protrusion to the hip and not the crotch and it won’t look so much like somebody’s junk. Then soften it, and maybe add a Santa Claus face. Oh, and look less like a pervert in a tarp.

For the discerning Minor League Baseball fan, the South Atlantic League is clearly the league of choice. You can quote me on that. Who cares if it is the only Low A league in that region? Who cares if their logo looks like it came straight from an early 90s PC game? I love the Myrtle Beach Leisure Suit Larries. Maybe Maniac Mansion has a team in the SAL. Who cares that their old logo had Jon Arbuckle on it because they made it with that old Garfield comic strip maker? SAL is the league of choice, even if a league named “SAL” would probably play better in New York.

The A Guide to Recognizing Your Mascots series continues today with the South Atlantic League, culturally appreciated by everyone south of Pennsylvania. I wouldn’t expect you Philadelphia Philistines to enjoy reading about golfing bees and transsexual crawdads.

Before you continue, make sure to catch up with leagues somehow even lower than this via the Guide to Mascots tag. Believe it or not, things are about to get worse. But at least we’ve got a good chance of making it through this league without running into any bears.

An important thing I’ve learned about writing on the Internet is that 98 out of 100 people reading your work live in the U.S. Northeast. That seems like an exaggeration, but nope, it’s all New York, Pennsylvania, D.C., New England. Person 99 lives in Los Angeles and is usually too busy with “life stuff” to read your stuff, and person 100 is my Mom doing Farmville on Facebook. That’s it. When the Internet finally expands to the Midwest, it is going to be pretty cool (read: boring).

With that said, today’s Guide to Recognizing Your Mascots covers the New York-Penn League, a league so white and privileged that Williamsport, Pennsylvania, gets a team. Williamsport is totally the mid-Idaho of Pennsylvania. You’ve got Pittsburgh to your left and Philadelphia to your right (or vice versa, depending on which way you’re standing). Pick a direction and live there. The league is divided into the McNamara Division, the Pinckney Division and the Stedler Division, but I don’t know what any of those words mean so I just glossed over that.

In case you’ve missed the previous installments, please peruse your Pioneer, Appalachian and Northwest Leagues before continuing. When you’re ready, please click through to continue.

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I’ll admit that these new mascots for the 2012 London Olympics are a bit buggered, but I’m not taking it nearly as badly as BBC blogger Robbo Robson, who’s doing everything he can in this post to maintain his English sensibilities and avoid swearing. Emphasis mine:

OK. First of all, why do we need to spend a shedload of cash on mascots for 2012?

What are they going to do exactly? Flounce about being really flipping annoying. Couldn’t we have just used Timmy Mallet?

Incidentally, if there are some poor saps getting paid for dressing up as Wenlock and Mandeville, then can’t we make some lunched-up, fizz-sorted, pin-striped city bankers do it while we toss IOUs at them or, even better, rotting fruit.

Whoops, I thought he meant “gays” on that last one. Anyway, these things look like they fell out of a Pixar movie. But I like how Mandeville’s crotch is completely blue. That takes me back…

Here’s a mascot eating a cheerleader. I’d make a bigger deal out of this, but occurrences like this are well-documented throughout history. Because they’re competing forces, see. Back in the dark ages only mascots existed, and then there was a big cheerleader uprising, full of blonde hair and their shiny poms and those little kicks that they do, and for a while they drove the mascots into hiding. But it appears that the worm is about to turn again, as the mascots seem poised to strike. Maybe the cheerleader should have told the Raptor that she was his king. Or does that only work in Maurice Sendak books? –Hot Clicks.