Via our friends at Deadspin, here's a video of every time Phil Simms said the word "football" during the Texans vs. Lions NFL broadcast on Thanksgiving day. The video itself is only 2 and a half minutes long, but Phil still somehow manages to say the word "football" more than 50 times. It's like the Family Guy parody of John Madden brought to life, which is appropriate, because a cartoon parody is a pretty accurate way to describe Simms' analysis most times these days.

Enjoy.

[H/T Deadspin]

Because First Take hasn't already eaten away at our souls enough as it is, ESPN is planning to expand the show to six days a week.  God help us.  Occasional debater Rob Parker announced today on his Facebook page that he's taking the lead role in a new Saturday edition of First Take starting December 8th with host Cari Champion and a random panel of debaters.  At least there will be no Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith.  For now.

Houston Texans running back Arian Foster is one of the best and most entertaining athletes to follow on Twitter.  Besides being one of the few athletes to actually say interesting and funny things from time to time, Foster speaks out on relevant topics and engages with followers.

Tuesday, he took that engagement to a new level when he promised to hand out tickets to anyone who could discover his first tweet.  One follower, @RJhegedus, was able to find Foster's first tweet, "Walking into the Twitter house for the first time.  Hello digital world..."

It's amazing how no matter who we are, our first tweets are all pretty much the same.

What makes this social media story even better is the help RJ got from   Twitter heroine Jenny Johnson (the writer who took down disgrace to humanity Chris Brown) to help bring it to Foster's attention.  Eventually, Foster did get in touch with his follower and looks set to make good on his promise.  Foster even gave a second set of tickets to another follower who claimed to have found the first tweet as well.  Only on Twitter could something like this happen.

Here's how the awesome story unfolded...

By now, we're all aware that TJ Simers is one of those columnists that has an idea for a story surrounding a game before the game is even played. With regards to Saturday's UCLA-Stanford game before this weekend's rematch in the Pac-12 Championship Game, Simers' story was that Mora pulled back the reigns after the first quarter and essentially played to lose the game.

The one story I'm most interested in as far as the sports media landscape in 2013 is concerned is the continued rise in competition amongst the major all sports cable channels.  At the heart of this arms race is the planning and possible launch of a new all sports cable channel - Fox Sports 1.  With NBC jumping into the field with NBC Sports Network and CBS Sports Network slowly adding more original shows and live sports, these media companies are looking at taking a legitimate run at ESPN.  

While NBC has gotten most of the press in hopes they could build a competitor to ESPN, the truth is that Fox is in a much better position to chip away at ESPN's dominance immediately.  Monday, John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal filed a report with very interesting new details about the long rumored News Corp. competitor to ESPN - Fox Sports 1.  Thankfully, the article isn't behind the SBJ paywall, so it's worth your time to check out the entire piece.  The highlights paint the picture of Fox making their intentions clearly known - News Corp. sees Fox Sports 1 as not just competing with ESPN someday, but surpassing them...

With a deadline of Friday to get a deal done, Fox and the Los Angeles Dodgers could agree to a TV deal according to the LA Times worth over $6 billion, more than 20 times what the team is making on their current TV deal. This would put the Dodgers at the top of the class in terms of MLB TV rights.

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.