Thank You NFL for Saving Our Sundays

We understand, you missed this past week in sports because of Fashion Week. Elite athletic competition is nice, but culottes, French cuffs, and DJs whose last names are Sevigny are a bit cooler. No biggie; not judging; I feel the same way. Luckily, I haven’t paid attention to #NYFW since Thom Browne dipped for Paris in 2010. So I have you covered here. You are welcome.

Football:
- Ohhhhh man [takes a long drag on a cigarette]. Did you watch NFL on Sunday? It was on ALL DAY. And it was so good. Football is back! They played football and it was so good and it's going to be so good every Sunday forever. I was, like, watching five games at once.

- More specifically, the following stuff happened:

- A bunch of rookie quarterbacks debuted, the most in a hot minute. Robert Griffin III, AKA "RGIII," had the best start: like, Pro Bowl numbers for the Redskins. It’s only one game, but this is awesome since the Redskins have not had a good quarterback since the Reagan administration. If Griffin is the real deal, the Skin's will get to be a good team, which for a good sport is good. Plus now all sorts of people from places like the Carolinas will be Redskins fans again.

- Andrew Luck, the No. 1 pick from Stanford now banging for Indianapolis, had a decent game for a rookie quarterback, but a rough game for an actual quarterback. His being good is actually a terrible thing, since Lucas Oil Stadium, where the Colts play, is a severe fiscal drain on taxpayers, and if Luck's going to eventually rule—which he will—then hordes of angry villagers won’t get pissed off about the whole thing until he retires. By that point it'll be the future and we’ll be living under martial law anyways, so whatever.

- Mike Vick did poorly, but pushed the Eagles to a win, and wasn't psyched.

Baseball:
- The Orioles went into Sunday in first place in the AL East and the Yankees in second, thanks to an insane end to Saturday’s game between the two teams. Mark Teixeira slid headfirst into first base and was called out, but was actually safe. The umpire who blew the call also chuffed the final during that insane Braves-Pirates game from last year. Because the Orioles got hosed on a call way back in 1997, which coincided with a decade-plus run of second-division O's baseball, the discussion said it was a karma thing, that the bad calls had evened out. But then the Yankees won Sunday! I guess it didn't matter?

- The Nationals, at the behest of the Nationals, and possibly under slight influence from Tom Verducci, have shut down their super-ace Stephen Strasburg for the season. People are losing their minds since they know better. It's a move without precedent, and will be pretty cool to see what happens. Will teams keep taking the long-term approach going forward? That said, the real reason he was shut down is he was cooking fish in the dugout microwave and it was making everyone angry.

- Larry “Chipper” Jones “The XIVth” (one of those is not his nickname) played his final game against the Mets on Sunday. The Braves third baseman, picked first overall by the franchise in like 1990 and a Hall of Famer at the position, always did well in Queens, so well that he named one of his kids Shea, after the Mets' old stadium. He always gets heckled—his Christian name, Larry—by Mets fans. Anyways, maybe because of that, the Mets gave him a goodbye gift.

College football:
- College football is awesome because anytime a talented or well-regarded team loses, or even just ekes out a slim victory, their expectations get adjusted and their championship aspirations are called into question. With that in mind, the following teams officially suck: Arkansas, Michigan, CalTech. Check back next week!

NHL:
- The NHL and NHLPA took the weekend off negotiating a new agreement. The same threat of a hockey lockout is staring us (my fellow Canadians, and all the weirdo Americans who pretend to like hockey because they think it makes them look different) in the face. It’s gotten so bad that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has hired strike breakers to give players bad massages while they're on their four-month communist vacations. He's also hired guys to put boots on their wives' cars as a joke. Pretty funny, I'd say.

College hoops:
- A former Duke player is getting sued by a jeweler for $67,800 in owed jewelry scrill. Pretty normal, except how exactly does a player have five figures to spend on jewelry? In theory, "credit," but the NCAA is likely investigating. If they find something unsavory, like Duke hooking him up with lots of money or something, Duke could vacate its 2010 championship. Probably worth watching.

@samreiss_