"Here you go, kid. Nice haircut."

Each week during the NFL season, I’ll be slinging my random, sometimes nonsensical thoughts about what’s going down. Will I talk about your team’s crazy dealings? Probably not, because I have an east coast liberal media elitist bias. That’s right, only Ivy League flag football will be discussed here.

And speaking of flag football…

1) Terrelle Pryor’s New Number

While quarterback for THE Embattled Ohio State University, Terrelle Pryor wore the number 2 on his jersey. When the Oakland Raiders drafted Oryor in last week’s supplemental draft and when he finally agreed to terms with them and showed up to practice, Pryor asked his new team if he could wear the No. 2 again.

About that – nobody is ever wearing No. 2 for Oakland again. Because JaMarcus Russell was the biggest No. 2 of them all.

Raiders coach Hue Jackson dictated what jersey Tyrelle Pryor will wear with the Raiders. He wore No. 2 at Ohio State, but will wear No. 6 with the Raiders. Last Raiders quarterback to wear No. 2 was mega-draft bust JaMarcus Russell. It’s conceivable Jackson wanted to avoid linkage between Pryor and Russell. (Bayou Buzz)

This might be a first. I can’t think of any other teams that have ever unofficially retired a number because a player was so terrible that they think it’s cursed. This could only be better if they forced rookies to spend the night in Russell’s foreclosed mansion. “It’s haunted by the spirits of lost calories,” they’ll warn.

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Nobody in the NFL knows how to handle the fights and shootings that went down Saturday at Candlestick Park. Yesterday, 49ers owner Jed York used them as an excuse to push the 18-game season, because “people without season tickets” were the cause of violence. Today, Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that the NFL and local police “strongly support” ending the annual preseason contest altogether.

Though the two teams haven’t told each other that they don’t want to play the game any more, the NFL source said that there is no way the game will be played next year, the year after and maybe longer than that.

It’s likely that the discontinuation of the annual games won’t be announced—the match-up will just disappear from the preseason schedules of both teams next year (when it was due to be held in Oakland) and will not re-appear.

Is it weird to anyone else that “more football” and “no football” are the only two plans of action?

As it was astutely pointed out by Chris Chase over at Shutdown Corner, a guy in Raiders gear shot a guy in an anti-49ers shirt, so is there a problem with 49ers fans and Raiders fans or just sports fans in metropolitan California? Is taking football away from football fans the answer? Does every away team who shows up and witnesses fan violence have to leave forever? Do we build an invisible, semipermeable dome over San Francisco, or play 49ers games in a walled-off high-rise for the rich citizens?

That’s an exaggeration, obviously, but how hard is it for somebody in the NFL front office to say “hey, maybe we shouldn’t feed these guys beer all day and let them roam around unsupervised in the parking lots”? I don’t feel comfortable thinking we need a police escort every time we’re in public, but Jesus, it’s better than dying for football.

Saturday’s preseason NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders involved fights in the stands, two parking lot shootings and a beaten and unconscious in a Candlestick Park bathroom. Philly sports fans took the opportunity to say “YOU GUYS ALWAYS TALK ABOUT PHILLY FANS BUT DERP” and everyone else approached it from a place somewhere between disappointment and disbelief. The beating of Bryan Stow outside Dodger Stadium on baseball’s Opening Day has cast a national spotlight on irrational fan behavior, with the question always boiling down to, “How does this kind of thing happen?”

49ers owner Jed York has decided to become the Biggest Dick You’ll Read About Today by answering that question — he believes there is not enough football, and is willing to use fan shootings as an excuse to push for a longer season. From a horrible interview with KNBR by way of the Sacramento Bee and Pro Football Talk:

“I think when you have a preseason game, when you don’t have your regular-season ticket holders coming to a game, I think that plays a big factor into it,” York said. “I think that’s another reason why the NFL is looking at, you know, trying to revamp the preseason schedule.”

PFT explains why this is horrid in the simplest terms.

The violence at Candlestick Park on Saturday is a time to have serious conversations across the league about how to keep fans safe, not a time to make specious arguments in favor of an 18-game season.

…leaving everyone else free to ask, “How f**king disconnected are you from real life that you think ‘letting poorer people attend the football games’ is the reason why people are shooting each other and beating each other to death in your parking lot?” Extending the season to limit the amount of people without season tickets in your stands is specious, sure, but it’s also a huge statement on class difference, the condescending attitude of owners claiming to be part of a system and only looking out for themselves, and just the biggest pile of sh*t-smelling ignorance ever.

So in meaner terms, do what Pro Football Talk suggested. Really think about how to protect and take care of these people, and don’t wait a tossed battery, a Mountain Dew bottle full of Big Dawg’s acid piss or a fan dying from gunshot wounds to show up and justify your agenda.

[h/t Jimmy Traina]

Welcome to Week 2 of my new weekly Random NFL Thoughts installment. Feel free to join in the conversation in the comments, even if to tell me how completely wrong I am.

If you have the pleasure of following Indianapolis Colts GM Jim Irsay on Twitter, then you know two things – 1) He’s a huge music fan, and 2) He’s possibly a lunatic. Irsay has a tendency of Tweeting random song lyrics in a way that the average person – and especially the average Twitter user – might not catch on to very well, if they even get him at all. In the case of the latter, he comes across as a complete psychopath.

But in between those lyrical Tweets, he openly talks about Colts football with fans, and since the lockout ended, the only topic regarding Indy football has been Peyton Manning’s neck. By all accounts, the guy who just signed a contract that guarantees him close to $100 million over the rest of his career will not be ready for Week 1. Manning hasn’t seen a snap in the preseason, but that should’t really be a problem for one of the game’s elite QBs if he’s actually going to start the season opener. He can just kick off the rust and run with it. Either way, Irsay wants to f*ck with us.

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What should have been a celebration between two teams with the worst quarterbacks in the NFL turned into a day of utter embarrassment to the league, the teams, and sports fans in general. On Saturday, the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Oakland Raiders 17-3, thanks to two running backs that we’ve never heard of and some field goals. Both Alex Smith and Jason Campbell were as underwhelming as we’ve grown to know them, and their backups were also terribly unimpressive. Thankfully, nobody in the stands noticed, because they were busy beating the crap out of each other.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, there were multiple assaults reported at the game, including but not limited to:

• A man wearing a “F*ck the 49ers” shirt was shot “two to four times” in the stomach in the parking lot and was only discovered after he fell out of his truck as he tried to drive away. San Francisco police have a suspect in custody, and it was reported that he was wearing a Raiders shirt. That means that Raiders fans were attacking Raiders fans, either over something unrelated or, quite possibly, through a misinterpretation of apparel.
• Another man was found shot in a parking lot after the game, and he also had some wounds on his face. It wasn’t reported if he was wearing any specific team apparel and it shouldn’t matter.
• A 26-year old man was found beaten and unconscious in a Candlestick Park bathroom, with “life-threatening injuries.”

After the jump, we have a video of another fight in the stands, including fans of both teams fighting each other.

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Former Tennessee Titans wide receiver Randy Moss announced via his agent yesterday that after 13 seasons he has retired from the NFL. Or you could perhaps say that no teams wanted to bother with the 34-year old pain in the ass anymore. Either way, one of the most exciting, explosive, and maddeningly arrogant athletes to ever play pro football is done.

Now the poets of the printed word can spend the next few months celebrating or denigrating the man who once gloriously disgusted Joe Buck. Peter King called him a first ballot Hall-of-Famer while Michael Rosenberg asks the standard questions. Mike Florio gave Moss the clap. I mean, 10 claps. And you can be sure that the rest of the cliche clan will be close behind.

Too bad it’s all premature.

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