



Oh, boy. It has been too long and I'm very nearly in preseason form over here. The off season is finally over and today we get to see our San Diego Chargers take on the hated* Green Bay Packers in an exhibition game at Qualcomm Stadium that will go a long way toward fueling meaningless arguments about which undrafted free agent is this year's Wes Welker** or whatever. I promise this won't turn into TMoH: Chargers fans again.

There have been a lot of reasons to hate the Packers over the years and while some of the best ones are gone***, plenty of quality reasons live on. For years non-Packer fans suffered as we spent day after day listening to national media drone on and on about Brett Favre. Favre, may he stay retired forever now, was endlessly celebrated for among other things the way he celebrated scoring plays, how he could extend plays by running around while appearing to have fun, and his fantastic commercials***. Aaron Rodgers has tried admirably to fill these roles. If anything his post-touchdown celebration is even more annoying than Favre's were. He's better at extending plays with his feet, but I don't think he looks like he's having enough fun. He should work on that. Finally, his commercial which actually focus on his stupid TD celebration is at least as bad as the ads Favre starred in.

Unfortunately, if we focus on Rodgers too much you get sucked into realizing the biggest reason for hating the Packers right now is just how damned good he is. With Favre you hated the hype, but Rodgers is actually just that good. Oh wait, Rodgers also has stupid facial hair, I guess.

Of course, with the passing***** of Brett Favre, the biggest reason to hate Green Bay is Packer fan nation. Green Bay, which has the population of a decently sized football stadium****** somehow has a traveling fan base capable of selling out every NFL stadium every weekend despite consisting of people willing to wear hats shaped like a giant piece of cheese. The conclusion I'm choosing to draw from these "facts" is that a large percentage (possibly all of them) of Green Bay Packer fans are nothing more than the kind of lousy bandwagon types that root for the Dallas Cowboys or New York Yankees.

I should have written some of these posts during training camp and OTAs because from my own first reading of this I'm not even in preseason form yet. Oh well, it's just an exhibition anyway. Right? That said, how sweet is the new graphic QuesaDiaz designed for these posts? That guy is fantastic.

Oh and another thing, holy crap is the preseason terrible. We're going to get to see maybe a couple minutes of starters tonight but people in attendance paid full price for those tickets and those of us at home are still going to sit through just as many commercials as we would for a regular season game. Despite all that we're going to act grateful we got to see any football at all. The addiction to NFL is strong. I'll probably watch this meaningless exhibition game three times at least by Sunday.

*I personally can't bring myself to hate the Packers because their most recent Super Bowl victory led to my winning a slap bet against 7 of my closest friends (one of whom is still ducking me; don't think I've forgotten).

**Or more realistically "this year's Scott Tolzien," a third string quarterback type that we all wish was still on the Chargers practice squad or something.

***I had a sweet Mark Chmura joke.

****And later his skills with a camera phone and his way with the ladies.

*****Brett Favre may or may not actually be dead.

******Needs citation.