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With summer winding down, and the Texas Rangers undergoing their annual July/August swoon/fall from pennant/wild card contention, thoughts in the Realm&#153 once again turn to our favorite of all sports:&#160 Football.

Or, as we’re wont to say here in the Lone Star State:&#160 “F’ball, you bet”.

For the Uninitiated&#153, we have a little something here in which we engage every weekend in the fall called the PFW, which stands for “Perfect Football Weekend”.&#160 Every year, I take four teams from the ranks of “hah skrewl” (a little Rush lingo, there), college and the pros, follow their exploits, and chronicle them as best that time will allow.

A PFW is a weekend in which all my&#160 teams win.&#160 (As usual, I don’t give a fat rat’s ass about your&#160 teams – that’s your job. (grin))&#160 From time to time, I’ll even post my teams’ combined record – unless I go .500 or worse, in which case I’ll grouse about said teams’ sorry-assed head coaches. (rueful grin)

This year, instead of the usual four teams, I’ll be chronicling five:

the (Fort Worth) Arlington Heights High School Yellow Jackets,
the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs,
the Oklahoma University Sooners,
the Lousiana State University Tigers,
and the Dallas Cowboys.

The Yellow Jackets, Frogs and Cowboys are the staples of this extravaganza.&#160 The Sooners are a holdover from last year, for two reasons:&#160 Bob Stoops has toned down his arrogance to the point where it’s not all about him and about how great OU is (back-to-back national-championship game thrashings tend to do that to a guy, I’d think), and one can actually see that he’s simply devoted to doing whatever it’s within his power to do to win.&#160 I tend to like head coaches who are driven like that.

The second reason is that Little Willy Callahan, the lame-ass who turned the AFC champion Oakland Raiders into a 4-12 team in the span of one year, is still the head coach in Nebraska.&#160 The Cornhuskers are one of my anti-teams (one of my favorite teams is any team that plays them) until that changes.

The man who should&#160 be coaching the Cornhuskers right now, Bo Pelini, is now the defensive coordinator at LSU – which is why they’re on the list this year, as well.&#160 Pelini’s intensity is awesome; one of these years, some high muckety-muck who runs an athletic program or pro team is gonna see that and make him a head coach.&#160 Won’t bother me if it’s sooner rather than later, either.

So we had our first PFW this past weekend – actually, it started on Monday and lasted the entire week.&#160 TV football on Monday (Bears-Dolphins), Thursday (Chargers-Packers) and Saturday (Cowboys-Cardinals).&#160 Couldn’t give a flip who won – the simple fact they were playing and I could watch made it a PFW.

As it happens, though, I did have to sit through an excruciatingly bad performance by the Cowgirls last night.&#160 If Drew Bledsoe is the best Jerry Jones and Bill Parcells could do this year…ew.&#160 Just, ew.&#160 The switch to a 3-4 defense hasn’t helped the pass rush any, and the swiss-cheese secondary is still just that – swiss cheese – and it allowed a Kurt Warner-to-Larry Fitzgerald touchdown pass (one of five Fitzgerald catches, for a total of 81 yards), plus letting the Cards up from several third-and-more-than-3s.&#160 They did&#160 look decent on run defense, but that’s not saying much, because Arizona’s running game might&#160 instill fear in a middle-school team.&#160 Playing two men down.

But as bad as the ‘Pukes looked last night, Arizona still did their dead-level damndest to let them win the game.&#160 Took a safety on a punt late in the fourth, kicked off to Dallas and let Drew Henson take them down the field with a decent enough two-minute drill.&#160 Dallas, despite not scoring a touchdown, was in position to take the lead with just over a minute left to play.

On fourth down from the Arizona 30, however, a Billy Cundiff field goal from 48 yards – which would have been good, by the way – was called back.&#160 Backup guard Stephen Peterman was called for a false start, pushing the attempt five yards back; the second attempt drifted wide left.

Same Peterman who had one of three holding penalties (four penalties overall) which took the Cowgirls from first-and-10 at the Arizona 15 to fourth-and-50 – yes, fifty – about seven plays later.

It’s gonna be a loooooooooooong year.&#160 Jerry better hurry up, fire Parcells and hire Stoops, so we can start winning again.

The PFW will return Thursday or Friday to analyze next week’s preseason game against Seattle, as well as any other games that might be on TV that weekend.