Sunday Night Football was another snoozer but if you stuck with the blowout game, you were treated to an out of character moment for Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth as NBC showed a series of photos of them dresssed up as Troy Polamalu. 

An easy costume and a memorable mental image. At first glance though, is it me or does Collinsworth actually look more like Howard Stern than Polamalu? 

A couple days back I wrote about how the Tebowing trend was reaching critical mass and was potentially in danger of fizziling out before the season ended. Less than a week since the trend's official starting point, it's now find it's way onto the football field as Stephen Tullock capped off a sack on Tebow by getting into the trendy pose. 

Mocksession captured the moment and I'm sure we'll see this on all the highlights tonight and bantered about tomorrow in all the usual places. 

Is this beginning of the end of Tebowing given you really can't go anywhere else from here or is Tebowing here to stay? Can the Tebowing movement continue onward if it's eminent inspiration finds himself relegated back to the bench? These are important questions with no easy answers and another sign that we live in complicated times.

We're into Week 3 Straight Outta Stockton and the analysts of the NFL are taking centerstage in the Dickies.  Brian Billick, Phil Simms, and Jon Gruden are emerging as top contenders.  Dick himself will be in Denver as the quarterback that shall not be named hosts the Lions.  Elsewhere, not too many attractive games on the daytime slate aside from Pats/Steelers in the national doubleheader window on CBS.

We'll try and update the thread as best as we can on Sundays, but you can check the comments below and our Twitter timeline for all submissions.  Then, we'll be back on Tuesdays with 15-20 nominees and you'll vote on our Top 10 for the week.  SOS winners will be announced Thursdays with updated standings.  Below you can find the links to last week's Top 10 and this week's NFL announcing schedule with broadcast maps.

Week 7 Dickies Winners & Standings

Week 8 NFL Announcing Schedule 

_________________________________________________________

"He just plows through guys" - Phil Simms (via steve5643) on Andrew Luck.  Nice image, that is.

[follow]

A lot happened this week, but one of the more interesting stories we snoozed on was Viacom purchasing Bellator. Having a lot of implications for MMA and MMA on television as a whole, we were lucky enough to pick the brain of Sean Malone, editor of Inside The Cage MMA, for his input on how the move will change MMA and sports media.

2011 may very well go down in history as the biggest year for mixed martial arts (MMA).  Despite the sports ever-growing popularity mainstream acceptance has been slow to come for a sport that uniformed politicians have labeled "barbaric" and "human cockfighting."  However, it seems that the winds of change are beginning to blow in favor of MMA as this year has seen some legitimate gains in mainstream acceptance.  The most recent example of this change came this week as media conglomerate Viacom announced that they had purchased a majority stake in the Chicago-based MMA promotion Bellator.  Granted, to the casual MMA observer the UFC is the only game in town and while there is no doubting the fact that the Las Vegas-based powerhouse is the number one global MMA promotion, many mid-tier MMA promotions are beginning to make measurable gains in the burgeoning marketplace.  This is why the news of Viacom's purchase of Bellator is such a big deal; it begins to dispel the myth that the UFC is the only game in town.

With the World Series now done and dusted and the NBA reaching ANOTHER stupidly frustrating breaking point in lockout negotiations, that means one thing - more football than ever before!  Hopefully that means AA Nation (too cliche?  AA Hemisphere?  AA Galaxy?) will be in full force for this week's Pam Ward Chronicles.  PamHawk is on the call for the titanic Wake/UNC struggle while Pammies leader Craig James is at GT/Clemson.  Elsewhere, Stanford and Andrew Luck get the shiny Gameday and ABC primetime treatment with their visit to the Coliseum to play USC.  Leave us comments and tweet us quotes throughout Saturday and enjoy your day of football.

Week 9 Announcing Schedule 

"they have to get Graham on the edge. this isn't baseball." - Lou Holtz (via bjo109) trying to channel his inner Timmy Mac.

"Too much air under it, like your wedge shot." - Mark May (via sctvman) to Lou Holtz after a missed FG.

"that was right down the center" - Lou Holtz (via bjo109) after a field goal attempt that missed the net

"We all love Mark May!" - Lou Holtz (via glokkenspx) umm... no.

"they're looking for consistency. they just don't have it. so, they're looking for it." - Craig James (via bjo109)

[follow]

Yesterday, I learned about Tebowing. I thought it was kind of clever, but maybe that was because the bar was set insanely low by the whole planking movement. I'll give myself a pat on the back for not going on a tangent there.

To me, things in this vein usually has its entertainment value, but erodes quickly.

At first it's a chuckle. Maybe you dig into it a bit more. If you feel like being "that guy" (as in the guy who likes to show off that they're ahead of the curve even if it means you bought a Sega Dreamcast), you send it to people and banter about it in the office, with friends, or on social networks.

But inevitably whatever "coolness" these internet memes have wears off, except for maybe Icing as there is good schadenfreude value there, plus it inevitably leads to drinking.

Usually though, the death kiss of these memes, is the exultation of them by mainstream media. While not really the actual nail in the coffin per se, the fact is that usually within days of being embraced by mainstream media, your Mom or Aunt will then email or worse, write on your Facebook wall, with something like this:

"Hey Honey...... I saw this and thought of you. Totally something you and your friends would do! Have you done it yet? Also be sure to get a flu shot and if you can please call me as I am having problems working the DVR again."

And just like that... you're over it. You're off the bandwagon. Anyone who jumps on after you left is totally uncool. 

While Tebowing certainly has some juice left, in this digital age and the amount of attention it has received, we're on borrowed time here folks. Relish the moment now before you inevitably have to do a house call to check the DVR settings.

Below is what we saw on just 30 minutes of ESPN today...

Here's your announcing schedule for the week with other games listed as well...

[follow]

Perhaps that Fox alert was a tad premature as the Cardinals defeated the Rangers in an epic World Series Game 6 last night.  The events produced some great snafus as well.  ESPN had in their boxscore the fact that Jake Westbrook won the game for the Rangers last night.  That Busch Stadium bullpen phone must be haunted...

According to Sports Illustrated, the Cards forced a decisive Game 6 last night.  Hey, it was so great, why not do it again?

From Mookie at Stupid Sideline Reporters comes this snafu from the midweek League Cup action.  Amazingly, Chelsea was heading into extra time against BOTH Everton and Blackburn!

Can you see what's wrong with this screengrab from Arkansas/Ole Miss...

And finally, congrats to the newest member of the Deadspin fam, Tim Burke, who captured this screengrab at Mocksession of Iowa facing a 1st & Goal... from their own 20.

That was your week in Screengrab Snafus, next time be careful out there!

[follow]

What an awesome game that was.

A game, a series, and a moment to be remembered and celebrated no doubt. 

To the surprise of many, Joe Buck gave the moment a nice touch by giving the walk-off home run a call that paid tribute to his dad's call in a World Series game with similar circumstances almost 20 years ago to the day. Some didn't like the call, but most seemed to think the beleaguered Buck rose to the occasion for this historic baseball moment.

The blogosphere and Twitter exploded with glee as baseball had a crescendo moment in what has been a postseason that has been played under the ominous cloud cover of terrible television ratings and in particular the continued aging of the baseball's post season audience. This postseason, MLB's average viewer is reported to be somewhere around 53-55 years old and has been the subject of endless banter on sports radio as that number has continued to climb at an alarming rate over the last decade. The bottom line, older people continue to watch the World Series but younger people haven't tuned in to keep the stat at a healthy median age.

Enter David Freese's home run which popped up on endless websites including this one. You can find articles just like ours in addition to the Sporting News, Larry Brown Sports, Sports Grid, Cards Diaspora, Big Lead Sports, Midwest Sports Fans and thousands of other publishers as well as social network accounts.  With the general web and many of these sites in particular skewing towards a younger audience (well below median age of the World Series viewer), you would think that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people sharing this moment across the web would be a good thing.

Major League Baseball doesn't agree.

MLB Advanced Media stepped in with their ridiculous policy to not only make the clip only viewable on MLB.com (no embedding although they recently started making some non-baseball clips embeddable after substantial grumblings from the web), but also relentlessly working to rip the clip down wherever spotted. The end result is COUNTLESS articles, links, tweets, etc pointing to places without the highlight people want to see. 

Within hours, the clip is already hard to find unless you intuitively make the journey to mlb.com where you'll get a healthy dose of advertising and help pad their stats.

That's not a bad thing really though. It's their clip, they're making money, and you can't argue with that right? 

I hate to be that smart-ass who goes on these preachy rants, but this is incredibly moronic.

The bump MLB gets in terms of revenue and measurable benefits by the added traffic is just a drop in the bucket for them. Let's say that perhaps they get a half million plays of the video and they're able to make a $5 cpm, meaning $250,000 in ad revenue. Let's say just getting a lot more new visitors to the site is worth something too (because it is) and maybe you put a price-tag on that "marketing" value at some other sexy amount. Very respectable, but still that PALES in comparison at the opportunity spoiled of tapping into a younger audience with that clip.

This is a sport that should be DESPERATELY courting younger people to become interested in the sport. Those within sports media circles talk about this at length and nobody really seems to have a good idea or prediction on how and when MLB's aging and declining audience problem will bottom out. It's believed to be a serious long term problem by most and not just a decade long "fad"...

It might not be the popular opinion, but I thought Joe Buck called a phenomenal Game 6. Sure enough, Game 6 itself was better than phenomenal, but Joe Buck did a fine job (mostly by not detracting too much from the game's significance). Buck capped the game off in walk off style, too -- by paying homage to his father, the late Hall of Fame announcer Jack Buck, by calmly saluting the viewers with the same, "We will see you tomorrow night" call, which is considered by many as one of the best in all of baseball.

Sticklers on time and days be damned, in 1991 while calling Kirby Pucket's Game 6 walk off home run that forced Game 7 of the World Series, Jack Buck probably couldn't conceive the notion that 'tomorrow night,' 20 years later, his son would, in a similarly thrilling game, with similar consequences, honor one of his calls. Well, Joe Buck did, with the old man watching from upstairs, and it was perfectly fitting if you ask me.

Here's Jack Buck's call 20 years ago yesterday:

20 years and a day later, like father like son, here is Joe Buck's call of David Freese's Game 6 walk off home run that forced Game 7 of the World Series:

Tender moment right there.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to call my dad and tell him I love him.

UPDATE: To be clear, I'm well aware that Buck likes to pay tribute to his father with "we'll see you tomorrow night" (or "later tonight" in the 2004 ALCS) whenever he can. I don't see anything wrong with that - in fact, it's kind of nice. But I thought tonight's was particularly cool because of the similar circumstances, almost exactly 20 years later. 

[videos via Jimmy Traina]