Monday Night Football came to Music City USA last week, and I was there to catch all of the craziness. It’s just not the same as a normal football game.  People get hyped up about the Monday Night deal, and the crazies come out.

I saw Kansas City fans staking out their tailgating spots downtown late Friday night.  Well, they were either Chiefs fans or homeless people in Chiefs jerseys.  Hard to tell, really.  These two dudes looked like they had hitchhiked in.

Then, on Sunday, I spent an hour following John Madden’s tour bus around Nashville trying to catch a glimpse of the big man.  I guess I was secretly hoping that Madden and Al Michaels would have a bus full of cheerleaders hanging out with a keg.  Or maybe a few steaks and a Blooming Onion from Outback Steakhouse, which sponsors the Madden Cruiser.  I figured I could show them around town, try to get Madden juiced up on shots of Jagermeister, and have him tell me some crazy stories about the NFL and life on the road.  Surely he has interesting things happen to him all the time.  He refuses to fly, so he’s on the road for days at a time getting from location to location.  And he loves to eat, so they’ve got to be stopping at food places out in the sticks.  Anybody that famous, I’m sure, gets approached by all kinds of wackos.  I was almost one of them.

Alas, I did not get my chance to meet Madden.  His bus just tooled around downtown, stopping occasionally for directions before pulling up in front of the Country Music Hall of Fame.  I waited about 10 minutes more before giving up and going off for a few beers at a sports bar that gets NFL Sunday Ticket.  It’s probably just as well, because I probably would have stammered something dumb-sounding and awkward.  He’d probably roll his eyes and brush me off, and all I’d have to show would be an autograph on a McDonald’s napkin and a boring story about mid-level stalking.

I didn’t have my full wits about me at the time anyway.  I was still recovering from a severe hangover brought on by a long Saturday that lasted until about 4:30 a.m.  Things started with a three-pitcher lunch with my old friend The Hollow Man.  This is a real person, not a character from a Kevin Bacon movie.  The only thing hollow about this guy is his moral code, and possibly his soul.  After a few hours of beer, I switched over to a product I’ve recently fallen in love with, Wild Turkey Rye Whiskey.  It’s fabulous, really.  The only thing is, it doesn’t mix well with red soda (we’ll get to that later).  After a few whiskey drinks, we went out to try to find him a revenge date to take to the wedding of an old girlfriend’s sister.  Don’t ask me what compelled him to accept that invitation; I don’t know.  We stumbled from bar to bar, generally making asses of ourselves and getting progressively more obnoxious as the hours passed.  The night ended with us hanging out with two middle-aged Swedish dudes at the second-worst strip club I’ve ever been in.  I made it home and into bed without major incident, but didn’t quite make it all the way to the bathroom later when I had to hurl.  That’s when I realized you should never mix with red soda (or Kool-Aid, for that matter).  Sunday, I had just about gotten back to normal when the hard labor of scrubbing the carpet woke my buzz and my hangover back up.  Hence, my compromised condition at the time of my Madden stalking.  Needless to say, we didn’t find that date for The Hollow Man.  You win some, you lose some.

Speaking of that, how ‘bout those Saints!  Beating the Cowboys isn’t exactly something to pound your chest about, but you take what you can get when you’re a Saints fan.  My man Deuce McAllister found the end zone a few times too, which is icing on the cake.  I’m not crazy enough to bet on New Orleans any more, but I still feel compelled to watch them, even though I know Aaron Brooks will send me into fits.

Amazingly enough, the Saints are still technically alive for the playoffs at 5-8.  They’re jumbled up with about five other 5-8 teams just below the cutoff line in the NFC.  Or, more accurately, they’re still in the running to get destroyed by Philadelphia, the only good team in the NFC.  But that’s the way the cookie crumbles these days in the NFL.