The first game of the Redskins season will also be the first of the NFL's 2008 season. Per NFL.com:
The NFL's Thursday night season opener will match the Super Bowl-champion New York Giants and the Washington Redskins, with the game possibly starting an hour-and-a-half earlier to avoid clashing with the Republican National Convention.
The game is now scheduled for 8:30 p.m. EDT on Sept. 4 -- the concluding night of the Republican convention -- and will be televised by NBC. League spokesman Greg Aiello said Wednesday that the NFL is talking with the network about changing the game's starting time to 7 p.m.
Which will give us a few extra days of rest for Week 2, so we'll be better prepared to open the season 2-0 (because we're going to win, see?). Story also up at
Redskins Insider,
Big Blue View, and
Hog Heaven, among others (sorry if I'm leaving you out).
As Michael David Smith notes, the timing could be bad for the Republican Convention:
The NFL will most likely back down and move the kickoff to 7 p.m. in an effort to have it finished before John McCain gives his convention speech, although if the game goes long, it could be the least-watched speech in the half-century plus that the conventions have been televised. Barack Obama will be hoping for overtime.
I am not a political animal so I haven't the foggiest idea what impact, if any, this game has on Presidential politics. But regardless, since I'm a fanatic partisan -- of the Redskins, that is -- I plan on claiming causative influence on behalf of the Burgundy and Gold irrespective the subsequent political results. The nation's life is in our hands, dude.
Fugg it, here's what everyone else says:
Redskins 360
Tandler's Real Redskins (new site, update your links)
Beltway Braves
Bucktown still hates the Giants
Unrelated: Go vote for Redskins > Chiefs Update [2008-3-27 13:24:25 by Skin Patrol]: Nevermind it is too late to vote; I have no idea who won.
Unrelated: Had to add this, it's as funny as I am (apparently) insensitive... which is to say very
Unrelated: Owners propose new tuck rule -- Jame Gumb approves
Back on topic, we're facing the reigning World Champeens of the only sport that matters on National Television in the first bit of real NFL that starved and depraved fans will have had for months longer than is permissible under the Constitution's 8th Amendment. I quote Amsterdam Vallon, edited only so slightly, from one of my favorite movies, Gangs of New York (which apparently has no fewer than 87 errors -- and they gave this guy an Oscar? Amateur hour!):
Amsterdam Vallon: When you kill a [Giant], you don't stab him in the dark. You kill him where the entire court can watch him die.
Also they're a much better road team anyways, so their court is an appropriate ambush locale.
