In a long overdue move, the Mid American Conference is finally looking to profit from its boom in popularity the last couple years.  The conference is planning to put an official stamp on one of the most fashionable college football trends to develop in the Twitter age - #MACtion.  

The field sprinklers inadvertantly came on during the middle of Sunday's Seattle-Miami NFL game and some creative soul out there made a fabulous video mash-up of the footage, spliced into a popular Buffalo Wild Wings commerical where the same event happens fictionally.  Oh, and there may be a Gus Johnson cameo in there too.

This faux commerical is probably more exciting than anything that happened in the actual game, especially for Seattle fans as the loss might be the difference between making or missing the playoffs this year. The video you see above is what you call "winning the internets."  Great stuff, and very superbly done.

[H/T: Hot Clicks]

This week's Straight Outta Stockton could easily be renamed Straight Outta Aikman as the lead NFL on Fox analyst had a rough time during yesterday's Saints-49ers game.  While a few of those are noted below, I have to pay tribute to the work Aikman is doing to the English language.  Multiple times during Sunday's telecast, Aikman said "I don't disagree" when talking about Jim Harbaugh's call to start Colin Kaepernick instead of Alex Smith.  Aikman could just agree with the decision, but perhaps that's too risky of a ledge to step out on.  Aikman's use of unnecessary double negatives is almost reaching Gruden's "this guy" level.  It's been impressive this season.

"It doesn't mean anything, it's just something."

Those were the actual words NFL Countdown's Tom Jackson used to describe his displeasure with Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler walking into Soldier Field Sunday morning without appearing to talk to someone within ESPN's camera shot.  Jay Cutler has been criticized for a galaxy's worth of things in his career as an NFL quarterback, perhaps more than anyone else who has played the position in recent years.  But even for Cutler, being bashed for something as normal as silently walking into the stadium is new ground.

It was a throwaway shot.  A nothing moment.  And yet, Tom Jackson took six seconds of footage of Jay Cutler walking through the bowels of Soldier Field completely out of context to make a negative insinuation about his character.  Well, then again, Tom Jackson didn't really make any point at all as shown in the quote above.  The footage obviously didn't mean anything, except it meant something to Jackson.  Not even Confucius could attempt to rationalize that statement into a coherent thought.

In the last month, it's become quite fashionable to criticize Rick Reilly.  The anti-Reilly tidal wave has been building ever since he began his highly paid, highly panned tenure at ESPN, but reached its crest in the wake of his "had it first on Twitter" faux pas a few weeks ago.  Heck, even former emplyoer Sports Illustrated named him one of their Turkeys of the Year last week along with Lance Armstrong, the Alabama Teabagger, and other esteemed individuals.

But let's travel back in time briefly to this past August where the 11 Time Sportswriter of the Year was largely flying under the radar and wrote a column totally burying Notre Dame football.  The column was so harsh it took much of the college football and greater sports world by surprise with Reilly saying Notre Dame should be relegated ala a European soccer team, had been "living a lie," and instructed them to "turn in your tiara."  At the time, it created a nice little news cycle for ESPN where Reilly's column and the reactions of ND alum Mike Golic and others who have supported Reilly became a story in and of itself.

We've reached the last full week of the regular season.  Although Matt Millen and Gary Danielson have the top two spots pretty much wrapped up, there's still valuable rankings and Pammy BCS spots on the line.  See this week's actual nominees and vote after the jump...

Each time I think a week is going to go by without the most ridiculous story of the NFL season coming from the New York Jets, I am proven wrong.  This week it doesn't come from ESPN or Tim Tebow or even Bart Scott, but Jet super fan extraordinaire Fireman Ed.

Fireman Ed is stepping down.

Stepping down from what exactly I'm not sure, but he wrote an entire column at Metro.us to explain his "resignation" that has sent shockwaves around the nation.  Shockwaves.  In fact, I'm surprised a national day of mourning hasn't been put in place to give all of us the proper time to cope with such tragic news.  How will we go on with our mundane daily lives knowing Fireman Ed will not be there to loudly spell the world "Jets"?  How will we go on?  How!

Ladies and gentlemen, Fireman Ed...

Ratings are down for the Sunday NFL pregame shows that air on each of the three major networks that air such programming every week, according to Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News.

The Notre Dame-USC matchup on Saturday evening that saw the Fighting Irish prevail 22-13 to win their 12th game of the season handed ABC the best ratings they've had for a game this season, drawing a 10.3 overnight that has crushed any game broadcast on any network this season, besting CBS's Alabama-LSU matchup from three weeks ago, which drew a 7.0 rating, by nearly 50%.

The Big Ten Network continues to be the driving factor in conference realignment as the cash cow looks to expand into larger television markets. Many have found the pilfering of second tier athletic programs to be overzealous while others have been critical of the programming and production quality as well as the lack of competent reporting surrounding major breaking stories.

While BTN certainly improved greatly after not covering the Penn State reporting, the photo above and the video below isn't going in the network's highlight reel. This interview for 'The Final Drive' aired multiple times without the error being caught. Katie Witham thinks she's talking to senior linebacker and captain Etienne Sabino. Unfortunately she's chatting with Evan Spencer, a sophomore wide receiver, who also happens to wear #6.