6 comments Gregg Easterbrook Will No Longer Be Outwardly Creepy Towards NFL Cheerleaders, Insists on Keeping His Inner Creepiness Though

There is one more spot in the BotB Fantasy Football league for anyone who wants to join. The league ID is 250429 and the password is "eckstein." (but it will be "Woodhead" next year as requested) I put a message up on the board there about some possible rule changes in the league. If you have an opinion, feel free to chime in. I have also created a College Football Yahoo Pick 'Em league if anyone cares to join that league. The league ID is 5656 and the password is "asu." Though large numbers aren't as necessary in that league, we only have two people and that's depressing.

Gregg Easterbrook officially came back from his TMQ hiatus last week. He revealed his fetish for men without shirts on in sports magazines, in an apparent attempt to tell us he doesn't mind creeping us out when it comes to him discussing scantily-clad women AND men. This week Gregg makes a further movement towards creeping us out by believing he was one of the first people to show pictures of cheerleaders on sports websites, he reveals his favorite Batman movie, and previews the headaches he will cause us by writing TMQ every week.

"The Dark Knight Rises" has accumulated such a spectacular box office take that it could finance the operation of the entire federal government for one second. That's serious money!

As well as a reminder of just how much money it takes to run the government. "The Dark Knight Rises" is also much more entertaining than the federal government is...at least most of the time.

At the end of last season, Tuesday Morning Quarterback promised to reveal his favorite Bat-flick.

And everyone agreed they didn't care if Gregg kept his promise or not.

It's "Mask of the Phantasm," the sole theatrical-release cartoon in the series.

I knew Gregg's favorite Batman movie would be an animated movie. He finds the live-action Batman movies unrealistic and prefers the realistic cartoon version instead. Here's what I said last week when Gregg said he would reveal his favorite Batman movie:

We don't care what Gregg's favorite Batman movie is, but $100 says it is an animated Batman movie.

Gregg becomes predictable after you read TMQ every week.

In the flick, Bruce Wayne and Batman are voiced by Kevin Conroy, whose deep tones are perfect for the character and a refreshing change from the obviously fake synthesized Batman voice in the movie "The Dark Knight."

Because in the latest Batman trilogy Bruce Wayne was a billionaire who could finance extremely expensive cars and planes and rebuild a massive mansion that was burnt down in a fire, but figuring out that technology to throw his voice off so people wouldn't know he was Batman is something that Bruce Wayne wasn't able to do. Yeah, the voice is obviously synthesized in the movie. That's an intended effect so people don't recognize his voice as that of Bruce Wayne's.

Delaney's character is first a love interest, then foe, then a vital ally for Batman: the formula for the Anne Hathaway character in "Dark Knight Rises."

It was the formula, other than the fact Anne Hathaway was never really a love interest for Batman or Bruce Wayne in "The Dark Knight Rises."

Of course "Mask of the Phantasm" is a silly cartoon. The Phantasm can teleport -- it's never explained how -- and the Joker has taken over and booby-trapped an entire amusement park without anyone noticing. But from this columnist's perspective, Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy movies were silly cartoons too, just with pretentiousness and bloodless slaughter added. If you never caught "Mask of the Phantasm," buy the DVD.

I'm sure Gregg Easterbrook went to go see "Finding Nemo" and came away incredibly confused as to how a fish could not only talk, but could speak English. What are the odds Nemo can speak English and all of the other fish, birds, and sharks speak English as well? Sure, it is a cartoon, but these things need to be explained to Gregg.

In Tuesday Morning Quarterback news, all good things must end. Two perennial items are being retired, or at least put into storage to be curated by future historians of sports columns: Christmas Creep and Cheerleader of the Week.

(balloons are released from the ceiling, champagne corks are popped and a parade begins)

I guess Gregg will be focusing on creeping us out by talking about shirtless athletes in sports magazines from now on. He'll probably start a "Cheer-dude of the Week" item that features men without shirts on who could be cheerleaders. I don't even know what Gregg will do, but I would put nothing past him.

The amusement value of noting Christmas creep has worn off.

Five years ago this statement would have also been true.

A decade ago, when TMQ began the Cheerleader of the Week item, many people didn't realize that NFL team websites were posting photos of scantily clad gorgeous women, and selling bikini calendars. Now everyone knows that.

Because in 2002 we were all such Internet virgins that we needed Gregg Easterbrook to point out where all of the good cheerleader pictures were being posted. It was just a public service Gregg was performing and not at all indicative of what a creepy old man he was being by posting these pictures. Gregg believes himself to be the forebearer of the "show a picture of an attractive cheerleader" movement and he provided the answer every week in TMQ for the half-dozen people who were desperately searching around the Internet for pictures of NFL cheerleaders.

Thankfully, Gregg was here to guide his TMQ readers around the Internet. Without him we all would have been lost as to where to find pictures of women wearing very little clothing.

TMQ's Cheerleader of the Week always included biographical sketches, to demonstrate there are NFL cheerleaders who both radiate sex appeal and hold impressive college degrees, work in important jobs or have other credentials that defy cheer-babe stereotypes.

Which is why Gregg would refer to them as "cheer-babes," because he was just trying to help his audience break out of the stereotypes we believe about cheerleaders.

But now that many sports websites run NFL cheerleader photos -- usually just cheesecake pics, with the woman not even identified -- TMQ's take is no longer distinctive.

Now that other sports sites have caught on to the idea of showing scantily-clad women Gregg just doesn't feel as original as he once did. He was the first to do this after all. In related news, Gregg Easterbrook hasn't surfed the Internet very much over the last ten years.

Since NFL cheerleaders are part of the entertainment -- pretty dancing girls have a long history in entertainment, at least as far back as vaudeville -- the cheerleaders will continue to be discussed and shown, as circumstances merit. Just no more regular items.

All one people who liked this regular item are very disappointed.

Now, the Tuesday Morning Quarterback AFC Preview.

Again, this is really more of a review since Gregg doesn't really tell us anything that may or will happen with each AFC team during the 2012 season.

In the 2011 season opener versus Pittsburgh, gaining a 27-7 lead to start the third quarter, the Ravens went for the 2-point conversion and iced the contest.

Because when up 20 points in a football game, it's that 2-point conversion, as opposed to an extra point attempt, which ices the contest. That one additional point makes a huge difference in the mind of Gregg Easterbrook.

The Bills may have paid too much for Mario Williams, who is good-not-great with 53 sacks in six seasons, and has not been a star since 2008. But Buffalo may benefit from overpaying for Williams, because his signing added a sense of excitement to the season.

Other signs remain questionable. Buffalo's defense allowed the most points in the AFC in 2011.

This may be, and I am just guessing here, another reason (outside of adding a sense of excitement of course) why the Bills signed Mario Williams. I think, just maybe, the Bills wanted to improve their defense and saw Mario Williams (and Mark Anderson) as a way of doing this. I like how Gregg seems incapable of seeing that Mario Williams' signing isn't purely for a sense of excitement, but to help out the Buffalo defense from being last in the AFC in points allowed.

Cincinnati Bengals: The big dogs of the AFC North are the Steelers and Ravens, and last year the Bengals went 0-4 against them. That's all you need to know about Cincinnati's 2011 season.

Plus the Bengals made the playoffs with a rookie quarterback. I guess that's an irrelevant story to Gregg that deserves no mention.

The Bengals open at Baltimore on "Monday Night Football." If they are serious about the 2012 season, opening night would be a good time to make that clear.

Incredibly astute suggestion by Gregg. Perhaps the Bengals should try really hard to win the first game of the season. You can't analysis like this anywhere else and that's probably a good thing.

For this season, the Trick-or-Treats entered training camp with $16 million in unused salary cap space, one of the league's highest totals. The mandatory-spending salary floor of the new CBA does not start until 2013, allowing the Brown family, owners of the Bengals, one more season of their preferred formula -- losing cheaply.

Yes, "one more season" of their preferred formula of losing cheaply. This is after making the playoffs two of the last three years of course. I'm fairly sure making the playoffs isn't losing cheaply. Making the playoffs is fielding a competitive NFL team and the Bengals seem to be a team on the rise. Of course Gregg doesn't seem to care about reality and only wants to bash the Bengals because he believes them to be cheap.

This offseason Cleveland spent its banked choices plus used the team's second-rounder in 2013 to get Josh Gordon, who did not play anywhere in 2011. Cleveland bid a second-round choice for Gordon in the supplemental draft. Adam Schefter reported the Browns were the sole team to offer a second-round pick, and that many teams bid nothing, meaning they thought Gordon was not worth a seventh-round selection.

That's not at all what this means. It means many teams didn't have a need for a wide receiver and didn't want to waste their time bidding on a player they didn't have room for on the roster. NFL teams tend to hoard draft picks, so if a team didn't have a need for a wide receiver why offer a 2nd or 3rd round draft choice (which is about the spot where Gordon's value seemed to fall prior to the supplemental draft) for a player they don't need?

In 2011, high-drafted wide receiver Greg Little symbolized recent Cleveland struggles.

What that he is a rookie and had a shitty quarterback throwing him the ball? Yes, that does seem to symbolize the Browns struggles, but it doesn't reflect poorly on Little.

The Browns just didn't play well in 2011, and a highly drafted wide receiver dropping passes that would have sustained drives is an indicator of their year's poor play.

It's almost like Little was a rookie wide receiver, which doesn't impress Greg at all. Nevermind Little finished the season with 61 receptions and 709 yards. If that was an undrafted free agent who did that for the Browns then Gregg would never let us hear the end of this. Because Little was taken in the second round, Gregg nitpicks him and brings up every thing he did wrong during the 2011 season, but fails to mention Little caught 700 yards worth of passes from shitty quarterbacks. "Truth in writing" isn't Gregg's motto at all. "Shading the truth so you can't understand what the truth may be" is Gregg's motto.

The United States military is the most proficient in the world. But when very expensive high-tech equipment fails to function properly in low-stress peacetime conditions, why is it that the contractors who built the stuff never have to pay a refund?

Probably the same reason when Gregg Easterbrook writes a TMQ and nobody likes it, ESPN still has to pay him.

When the stats dust settled on the 2011 season, to TMQ one of the biggest questions was: Why did Denver, with the league's best rushing attack -- No. 1 in yards per game, the only NFL offense of 2011 with more net yards rushing than passing -- constantly punt on fourth-and-short?

Because John Fox is an incredibly conservative coach who thinks of a punt as an aggressive play call? Oh I'm sorry, was I not supposed to answer this question with the actual answer and instead start spouting off mantras about "fortune favoring the bold" or how if a team doesn't go for it on fourth down it tells those players the coach doesn't care about winning the game? Anyone who follows the NFL on a regular basis (as someone who writes a weekly column about the NFL presumably would) knows John Fox is an incredibly conservative coach, so this statistic should not surprise Gregg, yet it does. This reflects poorly on Gregg Easterbrook, but he's too ignorant to even understand why.

Denver had an awesome running game, yet kept booming the ball back to the other side on fourth-and-short. Had Fox shown even a little guts on fourth-and-short, Denver's offense might have been more effective.

Or they could have failed to convert the first down and put more pressure on a defense that was already expected to carry too much of the load. There's always that as well.

The Texans jumped on the season early, at one point being 10-3, then going 1-4 down the home stretch. Three of those four loses were close games, and of course Matt Schaub was injured. There were times in 2011 when the Texans looked like Super Bowl contenders, and times when they looked like a team that lost to Indianapolis, which finished 2-14.

It's weird how the times the Texans looked like Super Bowl contenders mostly coincided with the times Matt Schaub was the team's starting quarterback and the times they looked lost they had a rookie starting at quarterback. It's almost like there is a correlation and Gregg doesn't need to even wonder why there was a difference since it is fairly obvious.

Not only do the Jaguars expect to punt a great deal, the team could have had Tebow, if they'd used that third choice to outbid the fourth selection the Jets sent to Denver. Jacksonville management would rather have a punter than Florida's most exciting football player of the decade. Jacksonville fans, get the message?

The message being that Gregg Easterbrook is an idiot and if the Jaguars had traded for Ex-QB Punt Protector Jets then this would also be essentially announcing they have started to give up on Blaine Gabbert? Think about the pressure Mark Sanchez is under with Ex-QB Punt Protector Jets behind him on the depth chart and Sanchez has been to two AFC Championship Games. Blaine Gabbert was among the worst QB in the NFL last year. Trading for Ex-QB Punt Protector Jets would be giving up on Gabbert prematurely because the temptation to put Ex-QB Punt Protector Jets in the game would be so great. So if the message is that trading for Ex-QB Punt Protector Jets wasn't such a hot idea, then the Jags got the message.

Hoping to discourage celebration penalties, coach Mike Mularkey announced he and the team would donate $500 to charity each time a Jacksonville player who scores a touchdown simply hands the ball to an official...Considering that nearly everyone involved with the Jaguars as players, coaches and in ownership is a millionaire, an offer of a miniscule donation to the underprivileged seems more like self-promotion than altruism. Jacksonville wants good publicity in return for doing just shy of nothing. Jags fans, get the message?

The Jaguars don't have to donate a penny to charity, yet they choose to. I don't read about Gregg Easterbrook bitching the other NFL teams aren't doing anything to discourage celebration penalties while donating money to charity. It's the team that is donating money, no matter how much money, that Gregg bitches about. In Gregg's eyes the Jags would be a better franchise by not donating any money to a charity.

On the release of "The Dark Knight Rises," there was a media flap about the Bane/Bain overlap. Yours truly foresaw this six months earlier, in an item that said, "Let TMQ be the first to identify the Batman angle to the Mitt Romney candidacy."

Of course Gregg leaves out the part where he seemed to believe people were going to confuse the movie character Bane with Bain Capital and this could tip the results of the upcoming election. That was an absolutely ridiculous point of view. It's in Gregg's nature to bring up times when he is correct and hope his audience forgets when he says some historically stupid shit.

The Chiefs' first three draft selections were linemen. As TMQ notes, spending high choices on meat-and-potatoes is central to the continuing success of the Packers and Steelers.

Miami has invested three recent first- or second-round choices in offensive linemen, plus significant free agent money in the offensive line, yet gave up 52 sacks in 2011, close the league-worst.

But, but, but...both teams spent high draft choices on meat-and-potatoes, yet had different results. How did this happen? It's almost like spending high draft choices on linemen doesn't guarantee success, but smartly spending high draft choices on linemen does help guarantee success. Gregg has these rules he creates about draft picks and sometimes forgets the biggest rule in the NFL is that a team needs to draft well.

Not to mention, the Steelers offensive line hasn't looked great in the preseason so far and hasn't been very good for a few seasons now. So I would argue the Steelers' offensive line hasn't really been a key to their success of late.

Despite hours of exposition in episodes one and three of the trilogy, viewers never found out why the League of Shadows was obsessed with destroying Gotham City. To "restore balance"? There was no hint of why a small army of highly skilled, super-competent and, in a few cases, super-wealthy people believed that killing everyone in America's largest city would "restore balance."

Because throughout history we have found a crazy, irrational, homicidal group of people will always act rationally and with a clear purpose. Plus, it's a freaking movie and isn't supposed to be 100% realistic.

Demolition of Three Rivers Stadium required 4,500 pounds of explosives. How could a similar amount have been hidden beneath Heinz Field, as depicted in the movie, without anyone noticing?

I did a lot of thinking about this and most likely Bane and his group were able to do this because they were able to move freely underground. Not to mention it was a freaking movie and it isn't supposed to be 100% realistic. I wish Gregg had choked on popcorn while yelling at the screen and trying to point out to the entire theater how unrealistic this movie was.

Next, Gregg spoils the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it. At least he should put a spoiler alert in there somewhere. I will do it for him.

Spoiler alert if you haven't seen the movie. Stop reading now.

Then there's Miranda Tate plot hole. Bruce Wayne's love interest and seeming benevolent philanthropist trying to save Gotham, Tate is revealed in the last reel to be the sinister Talia al Ghul, leader of the League of Shadows. The big shock is that she has always hated Bruce and always been Bane's boss! But then why does Bane treat her as a captive until the final minutes of the movie?

Because it was part of the fucking plan for Tate to take over the Wayne Enterprises board and drain Bruce Wayne of all his money. Did Gregg not watch the movie? This was pretty much the entire point of everything Miranda Tate did and I thought it was made quite clear. Bane treats Tate as a captive because I'm pretty sure Bruce Wayne/Batman would have figured something was up if Bane greeted Miranda Tate with a hug and their secret handshake. This is just basic knowledge if you have seen the movie. If Gregg paid attention at all to the movie he would have figured this out.

Yet rather than revel in her moment of control of the city she has plotted all her life to seize, Talia spends these months making it seem she is Bane's prisoner. In order to fool who?

In order to fool Batman/Bruce Wayne. I don't know, it made sense to me. She hates him and wanted to kill him and make him suffer. She waited to kill him until the point he knew his precious city was going to be blown to bits in an effort to hurt him emotionally while hurting him phyiscally.

Spoiler alert over now.

The sewers of Gotham City appear to be the most expensive public-works project in American history. And no one except Bane knows about them!

No, other people know about them. They just assume no one is going to be living in them.

Chris Webb of Takoma Park, Md., reports he walked past an outlet of this clothing chain on June 13 and the sign at the door proclaimed, "Fall Transition 2012." He writes, "Summer solstice was still a week away, many kids had just gotten out of school, and already marketers were pushing autumn." At least it wasn't a Christmas display!

Most people purchase their summer clothes BEFORE summer begins in order to (wait for it) wear these clothes during the summer. I know, it sounds crazy to purchase articles of clothing for a specific season to actually wear them during the season. Therefore, purchasing Fall clothing before Fall starts makes some sense. Plus, stores are trying to give shoppers a sense of urgency to buy now. Shoppers know by mid-June if they want summer clothes, they better purchase them now.

Gregg consistently fails to understand the basic way retailers have successfully run their stores and how retailers make a profit.

In the present day, the Titans have the only NFL player named after a planet in Star Wars.

If Alterraun Verner was named after the planet Alderaan then his parents certainly failed to spell the planet's name correctly. I couldn't find any evidence Verner was named after a planet in any Star Wars movie.

Next Week: TMQ's NFC preview.

It is a review, not a preview. What part of this AFC Preview was actually a preview of what may happen this season?