The Eagles' Jeffrey Lurie Wants To Double Down On Super Disaster

Duper Mole Fun Day

As I write this, we are two days from the purely theoretical start of spring in central New Jersey, some 60 miles south of where the next rhymes with Duper Mole will be held in 10 months. (Hey, if you want to talk to the NFL's lawyers, be my guest. I blanche in the face of demonic evil.) Outside, it's something like 40 degrees and raining, which is to say, it's just about the most miserable combination of weather that you can get without the weather being, well, worth complaining about. I drove in sleet and hail tonight to my gym, and didn't even think that much of it. No one in New Jersey complains about this weather, any more than they complain about everything else, because we're used to it. We also secretly think that we deserve this, since we chose, on some level, to live in New Jersey. (My excuse? Working in New York, family in Philadelphia, relatively cheap real estate. It would have all worked out if I didn't buy at the top of the market, and have since seen my house and any hope of prosperous old age lose 27% of its value in the last 6.5 years. Good times.)

It is, in short, no place to visit. Sure, there's shore-based entertainment in the summer. and it's close enough to New York, which is fun in any weather if you are loaded with cash and have a thick skin... but New Jersey is now, and always has been, a place to be from, rather than to go to, if you catch my drift. It does not need the Duper Mole and the fact that it has one is, to be blunt, a terrible idea that should never, ever, be duplicated. When Joe Flacco calls something retarded, take his word for it.

But now that it's going to happen, we get to duplicate the mistake, with more Eastern teams trying to get in the act. The Eagles and Jeffrey Lurie said he's going to push for the game if it's a success. (Seriously, Jeff, don't you have someone dramatically younger than you to go marry?) It's been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Daniel Snyder in Washington wants anything that anyone else in the world owns. Once we go for NY-PHL-DC, New England and Chicago can't be far behind, and Baltimore needs to be in the mix, since they are the DC-area team that's actually, well, won a few of these things in this century.

And some part of me, the part that roots for bad ideas to be met by trainwrecks and who knows that his laundry is never going to play for one at a time when I might have the scratch to actually attend, is all good with that. Put the damn thing in Pontiac, Michigan: I hear the Silverdome comes cheap these days. Give it to London so that the sodden turf can turn the game into a quiet puntfest for NFL fans with passports. Go to Toronto and cement that market as the disinterested home of the new Bills. Try it in Mexico City (wait, scratch that, we wouldn't want a game in February to be pleasant to watch for the spectators) and pat yourself on the back for setting attendance records and kidnappings. It's all good.

Better yet, make sure to elongate the already tedious media and meet-up process for a full two weeks by running the Pro Bowl on the same field and conditions the week before. Let's see how many guys beg off when it's not in Vacationland Oahu, or when they are trying to catch passes in a meaningless stat stroke in 40 mph wind and precipitation.

That way, we could have the well and true absolute turd that finally hurts actually awful NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. He's already wrecked so much and just keeps getting bigger salaries and more power; I've almost lost hope that he's ever losing the job. The signature event compromised by weather issues that people could see coming from years and years away might be our last hope. The man sailed past scab refs and neutered kickoffs and Thursday Night games and much, much more, after all.

And after we've had the Worst Duper Mole Ever, maybe we could finally move this thing to what it should have always been... an annual event in a Dedicated Once A Year Stadium in Las Vegas (what, you don't think the NFL can't afford something that spectacularly wasteful? Have you not been paying attention to the game for the past 30 years?), with the conditions absolutely pristine and the world's finest criminals ready to do what they do best every February.

Seriously. You'd rather spend February in Houston, Jacksonville, Indianapolis or New Jersey than Sin City? What on earth is wrong with you, seeing how even the locals in all of those garden spots are getting the hell out at that time, assuming they can possibly afford it?

Anyway, seriously, please... Vegas. A place with no home team, no shortage of hotels, and no end of ways to separate corporate swells from their money. A place that's just close enough to California to drive all of the NFL teams there nuts for having to put up with old stadiums for 365 days a year, while your pleasure palace sits fallow. And a place where you could put a real bet down on your team, just by booking a room to coincide with the game every year.

In the meantime, root for hail. Not now, but in 10 months. Lots and lots of it. Aimed at anyone with enough money to deserve it...