Looks Like Someone Has a Sixpack of the Mondays--Super Bowl Holiday Edition

1. Oh yeah...I was serious about making Super Bowl Monday a for realzies holiday. I went Old Testament-style in keeping with the sanctity of this day off. I did as little as humanly possible to demonstrate my level of seriousness. This was aided perfectly by a hangover that severely limited my ability to do too much more than that.

2. On behalf of Hogs Haven, I want to thank Ricky Hahn and his entire family for extending aninvite to The Audible on Super Bowl Sunday. There are super bowl parties and then there are Super Bowl Parties. This was the latter. Someday, when you have the balls to have 350 of your closest friends watch the big game at your house, you will also remember to make sure there is a kickass basement podcast to provide 17 minutes of entertainment (Tim and Kevin--a new record!!). Here are those 17 minutes, and in them, we talk to Ricky and give him a taste of what it's like when a few guys who have been drinking whiskey decide to get real about their Super Bowl feelings. While some of the source content might have that post-game stale flavor, you can get a sense of the crowd and the environment. What was the best thing you ate at a Super Bowl Party on Sunday? (Mine was jambalaya.)

3. I felt like the entire room was rooting for Denver by the way. Was that the experience you guys had too? I didn't realize how little love there is for Carolina. When you take into account the Peyton Factor, my bet is that most parties outside of North Carolina had a decided orange crush bias. My real question is do you think a game like this colors the hearts of fans going forward? By this I mean, do you think this Carolina Panthers team will experience negative fan sentiment next year and beyond? I don't think people hate the Panthers, but I saw people who otherwise wouldn't have cared get pretty rowdy for Denver. Once you root so vociferously against a team, there has to be a little bit of residue there, right? It's why I can never be a Justin Bieber fan.

4. I'm trying to think of a team that I turned against through no fault of its own. The Atlanta Braves come to mind, as I recall (barely) the 1991 World Series between the Braves and the Minnesota Twins. The Washington Nationals were not on the map, so there was no reason for me to hate on the Braves like we all do now. I got behind Kirby Puckett very much like I got behind Peyton Manning on Sunday. By the end of the series (arguably the greatest series in my lifetime), I was so anti-Braves it was silly. I am not saying that I hate the Panthers by any stretch, but it will be interesting to see if the average fan can enter next September not seeing the Panthers as the team that they so gleefully and adamantly opposed. They (Carolina) are going to be good for a long time. They will be playing in huge games for years to come. I wonder if they will become the fan favorite in the same way as Denver, or if they will be seen as the villains, in the same way New England has over the years.

5. Hey, it's never too early to talk some Redskins business. Yesterday was the first day the Redskins could officially cut ties with Robert Griffin III. I waited all day to see if the news would drop. All I got was Riley Cooper coverage. Does anyone besides me wonder if McLovin is actually trying to pull off the impossible: an actual trade sending RG3 to another team? Unless there is a franchise out there that just hired Vinny Cerrato, I am not seeing who would pay more than a half-shilling for Griffin (I would take the half shilling, by the way). These are the times when I legitimately begin to wonder about league collusion. There is no reason for any team to pay a cent for Griffin, and so when a team does, we are left to wonder: why in God's name would any rational human being do that? If you are searching for a long shot plausibility, I suppose you could argue that a team might send something our way to have exclusive rights to negotiating with Griffin. That happens here and there, but it would make little sense here (or there) as the team trading for Griffin would be staring down the barrel of a huge salary commitment. A team signing him off the street would have far less invested. On the skeevy side of things, when a trade goes down in a scenario where NOBODY expects it, you have to look further into the relationships of the teams involved. Dan Snyder paid a pretty penny to get Griffin--arguably the prettiest penny in the history of NFL trades--and there is always the possibility that he convinces a fellow owner to help a brother out and at least allow him to get some value for his investment. The league would be hard-pressed to dole out any kind of punishment, as the above argument could always be trotted out, but...we would know. On the Kirk Cousins front: we are one week away from the first opportunity for the Redskins to designate their franchise player tag. I continue to believe that putting the franchise tag on Kirk is the wrong move, but some of you have made pretty solid arguments ion support of doing just that--as always, thanks for keeping the discourse above board and based on reason. The truth is that the franchise tag exists for a reason, and as long as McLovin knows he can use it if he has to, negotiations have a chance of producing that result--even when it is EVERYONE's least attractive option.

6. Kevin, Tim and I will be recording tonight and we were hoping for some one-ff topics to discuss. We want there to be some kind of Redskins angle, but we appreciate when the conversation turns to...well, pretty much anything. Our show is all about banter...kind of like this column I guess. We look for Redskins conversation starters that lead us down the paths of far sketchier conversations. I was thinking that with the bad weather, tonight would be a good chance to hear from Kevin about his own NFL lineage (his grandfather, "Big Jim" Ricca, played 47 games for the Washington Redskins, and his dad also played in the multiple pro leagues). Instead of asking him to tell stories about the exploits of his father and grandfather, I am more interested in how that shaped his upbringing. What "life lessons" may have been imparted to him that came directly from coaches we are all familiar with (his father played for Jack Pardee in the World League)? Maybe Kevin's family thinks hosting The Audible is the equivalent of him making it to The League? It's kind of the same thing. One thing's for sure--if you ask us to talk about it in the comments section below, we will get to it on tonight's show (after I try and guess what your handle means). As always, all hail McRedskin78!!