Watchdog

Newsday's Marcus Henry reports that undefeated Northport is not getting any love in the Newsday football poll, evidently because of its allegedly weak schedule.

Let the word go forth from this time and place:

My alma mater will beat Brentwood Friday to stay perfect, and take its deserved spot in the Top 10, or I will personally show up on Main Street, order a rum raisin cone from Pete's Sweet Shop and eat it in public.

So there!

Neiman Marcus is offering an end zone from Texas Stadium and a party with the Cowboys cheerleaders for a mere $500,000.

Why not? It's a better investment than anything currently available on Wall Street, no?

But it's still not as good a deal as the Mets' dugout from Shea, which last time I checked still could be had for $100,000. (Without a party featuring Mr. Met, alas.)

I have heard that this Ernie Davis bio that hits theaters Friday is good, but Universal p.r. forgot to invite me to a screening, so I have not seen it and thus can't vouch for it one way or the other.

(Yes, young readers, Syracuse used to play home games outdoors.)

Here is the item that got bumped from my Friday newspaper column to accommodate my free ad for WFAN's morning vs. afternoon radio war.

It's a blog bonus! Enjoy:

DirecTV polled “NFL Sunday Ticket’’ subscribers to determine which market has the highest percentage of displaced fans for every NFL team.

For example, the Cardinals are the most popular non-local team in St. Louis, the Rams in Fresno and the Titans in San Antonio, each reflecting echoes of long-ago relocations.

The Colts rule in Knoxville, college home of Peyton Manning, and the Texans in Fresno, college home of former Texan (now Giant) David Carr.

Both the Giants and Jets scored highest in West Palm Beach, hinting at shocking news: Florida is home to many former New Yorkers.

Famously transient Las Vegas ranked No. 1 for Bears fans. And Broncos fans. And Raiders fans. And Chargers fans.

So far, it all makes sense. Then there’s this: The area with the highest percentage naming the Cowboys as their favorite non-local team? Washington, D.C.

Click below for the complete list.

Sirius Satellite Radio, home of Chris Russo, Howard Stern and apparently a lot of other stuff, sent some interesting comments from interviews Wednesday with Lane Kiffin and John Madden, only one of whom said he was embarrassed for Al Davis during his news conference Tuesday.

Click below for the transcripts.

Big-time WatchDog kudos to the first reader to identify what this picture has to do with any of this.

The current ages of the five lead Super Bowl halftime singers in the post-Janet Jackson era are as follows:

Paul McCartney: 66
Mick Jagger: 65
Prince: 50
Tom Petty: 57
Bruce Springsteen: 59

I have to write my Tuesday newspaper column now that I have heard what happened to the Mets Sunday. Sorry for your loss, fans.

Enjoy the hockey season.

Here's the latest via Deadspin on that Bay Area journalist dude who had an amusing on-camera run-in with a Raiders official.

How come cool stuff like this never happened when I was on the Giants beat?

Well, there was that time in '95 when the recently retired L.T. tried to choke my fellow beat writer Ernie Palladino . . .

An interesting story on the complicated matter of switching Chad's name on his jersey from Johnson to Ocho Cinco.

Yes, Reebok would make a lot of money from the new jerseys. But it turns out Chad would have to pay a lot of money to get rid of the old jerseys. Yikes!

Roger Goodell has been on quite an interview binge this month. Now it's the fans' turn.

The commish is participating in a chat on NFL.com at 2 p.m. Thursday.

Click below for the details from the league.

My question for Mr. Goodell: If you expand the regular season and push even more of the playoffs into February, will you fund retractable domes for Lambeau, Gillette and the new Giants/Jets stadium so fans don't freeze off their tushes?

WatchDog kudos to first reader to identify the guy in the picture.

My Tuesday newspaper column includes a chart showing six of the eight most-viewed NFL games of last season featured the Patriots - and all eight featured the Pats, the Giants, or both - which is why the league and its TV partners are sad to see Tom Brady go.

Click below for a list of every sports event over the past 12 months that attracted 30 million or more American viewers, all of which are from the NFL or the Olympics.

Did I mention Tom Brady is on my fantasy team?

Oh, never mind.

What the heck. While we're at it, here's the most famous 1980s sports team video of them all.

But naturally, I have a soft spot for "Let's Go Mets Go." Someone have a link for that one?

People under 30 really should give thanks every day that they were born too late to remember the darkest days of sports team videos from the mid-80s.

Here's one honoring the team that lost to the team that gave us the Super Bowl Shuffle.

It's a good thing WatchDog rules strictly prohibit whining about fantasy league misfortunes.

Otherwise, I'd be tempted to mention which team in my family league has Tom Brady as its starting quarterback.

Sigh.

Joseph Abboud has a new deal to clothe 31 of the 32 NFL coaches, off the field, anyway. (Not Joe himself. Actually, JA Apparel, which owns the brand now.)

You get one guess about the lone exception. Hint: The Abboud line does not include torn hoodies.

(Full disclosure: I own one sports jacket. It's a Joseph Abboud. But I do not have an endorsement deal.)

RIP, Gene Upshaw.

Not to be disrespectful by mentioning something trivial compared to the news of Upshaw's death itself, but this is a sports media blog, so . . .

A story such as this is exactly why ESPN instituted the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. live SportsCenter block, which now will be covering it thoroughly, of course.

And by the way, if Upshaw was such a lapdog for the owners, as many of his critics asserted, why are the owners desperate to get out of the current CBA, believing it is too generous to the players?

OK, I'll leave all this stuff to Glauber now.

Sirius Satellite Radio announced today that Marty Schottenheimer will join the service Monday, co-hosting "Movin' the Chains" from 3 to 7 p.m. Thereafter he will host "The Sirius Blitz" Mondays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and "The Red Zone" Thursdays from 1 to 3 p.m.

I received this information via e-mail from the Sirius public relations department. So the reason Sirius has not returned my calls or e-mails for six weeks must not be a glitch in their computer system.

So what could it be? Hmm.

It's bad enough I have to follow distribution battles involving channels that people around here care about.

I have been intentionally ignoring the saga of the Big Ten Network trying to get on Comcast, even though it's a huge deal to people who do this job in the Midwest.

Like my Tribune teammate (for now) Teddy Greenstein.

Read his stuff if you're interested. Leave me out of it. I'm a New Yorker and don't fully get the college football thing.

Plus, I'm still working on getting the NFL Network on Cablevision, so I'm very busy.

Bridget Moynahan seems to have bounced back nicely from the unpleasantness of breaking up with her boyfriend around the time she became pregnant and around the time he started dating a Brazilian supermodel who once shared a Giants Stadium elevator with me.

Or so she tells our friends at Harper's Bazaar.

I wonder which team Ms. Moynahan was rooting for in Super Bowl XLII?

On one hand, she grew up in Longmeadow, Mass.

On the other hand . . .

Holy Woodstein!

It's painful for a journalist to read this apology from the fellow at the Boston Herald who made a big boo-boo on Super Bowl weekend.

On the other hand, it's good to see such contrition from a guy who (unlike Belichick) did not intend to break any rules and (unlike Belichick) seems genuinely remorseful and (unlike Arlen Specter, R-Comcast) is not wasting taxpayer money.

Plus, I have a pretty good idea of who the dude's source was, and it was understandable for him to believe what he or she said.

Sigh. Weird business.

Holy Petrocelli! Either the Boston sports media world is way more interesting than New York's, or the journalists who follow it closely do a much better job there than here, or both.

Check out the latest Scott's Shots on the never-ending Spygate saga and the unfortunate role in it played by the Boston Herald.

OK, I'm out.

Enjoy "Ugly Betty." See you Friday.

Meanwhile, read our other fine blogs, especially Rieber's so he leaves me alone.

I talked to Terrell Owens today.

Yes, I know I should have asked him about Tony Romo's singing.

Alas, I did not.

Am I linking to this story about the Cowboys appearing on HBO's "Hard Knocks" because it is interesting information or as an excuse to share more exploitive pictures of scantily clad, very young females with body types not commonly found in nature?

I just don't know anymore.

Check out the results of the fan voting for the football flick that will be shown Saturday night at the Tribeca Film Festival.

There is something very, very fishy here. Someone associated with "We Are Marshall" must have voted early and often. Blowout victories over all comers, including "Remember the Titans?"

It couldn't have been Kate Mara. I'm guessing it was Matthew McConaughey.

I mentioned in my Friday newspaper column that Sirius Satellite Radio offers a three-day free trial via the Internet, and that this weekend would be an excellent time to check it out, given the over-the-top lunacy, er, dedication of their draft gurus.

Here is the link for that.

It turns out ESPN and the NFL Network also will cover the draft, and if you don't have the NFL Network you can watch its coverage on NFL.com.

Click below for their raw, unedited news releases on that subject (as well as Sirius') assuming there is room enough for it all in cyberspace.

(By the way . . . Newsday is covering the draft as well.)

I could easily break the all-time WatchDog posting record today if I were willing to get excited about the various networks' announcements regarding their 2008 NFL schedules.

But I'm not going there, because I don't feel like it. Click below for all the details.

I'm still focused on more immediate matters, like trying to figure out which President might challenge Barack Obama's claim of being the best hoopster in the White House should he be fortunate enough to win in November.

I was thinking William Howard Taft for his ability to post up without a three-second lane.

NBC p.r. stalwart Brian Walker suggested Abraham Lincoln for his height. He imagined an all-elbows-and-shoulders Phil Jackson type.

I informed Walker that basketball was invented 26 years after Lincoln died, but I still like the Jackson visual.

Click below for that NFL schedule stuff, scroll down to find your favorite network.

For much of the time I was ignoring Saturday's Yankees-Red Sox game (see post below) I was finally getting around to watching "The Game Plan" with my daughter.

It's that Disney football movie from last year starring Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, with cameos by a half-dozen of my old football writer friends.

I thought it was a well-executed, family-friendly flick, despite the unavoidable sappiness and predictability.

Last week I watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) with Mrs. Watchdog and have decided to move Audrey Hepburn into third place on the list of most attractive female acting appearances in movie history, after Grace Kelly ("Rear Window," 1954) and Jennifer Connolly ("A Beautiful Mind," 2001).

Posthumous congrats!

I am a proud, long-time, former member of the Professional Football Writers of America, who fight for the rights of journalists (and by extension readers/fans), annually hand out coveted awards and hold a meeting the Friday before the Super Bowl during which writers complain about stuff in an entertaining fashion.

With that disclaimer out of the way . . . Check out this amusing list of finalists for the PFWA's Halas Award, which honors an individual who "overcame the most adversity to succeed last season."

It includes the Redskins (for rallying in the wake of Sean Taylor's death; fair enough), Plaxico Burress (for playing through a severe ankle injury and scoring the winning TD in the Super Bowl; fair enough) and Greg Ellis (for coming back strong from a torn Achilles tendon; fair enough).

The other two finalists are . . .

Kevin Everett, for making a triumphant return to Ralph Wilson Stadium Dec. 23, three months after sustaining a dislocation of his cervical spine that doctors said was life-threatening and likely to leave him with permanent neurological impairment.

And Eli Manning, for "playing under intense scrutiny in the largest media market."

Translation: Yo, Kevin, you think you had it tough? Imagine being critiqued week after week by Glauber!

The naming rights to the Cowboys' new stadium could surpass the record $20 million a year secured by Our Mets and Our Nets. (Uh, oh. I think this Dallas Morning News link requires a sign-up. Sorry. Up to you whether you want to bother.)

Fear not, though, New York metro area!

The Jets/Giants Stadium rights will reclaim the mark soon enough.

This is kind of interesting.

Turns out the NFL opener and the climax of the Republican Convention might be in conflict.

Some of the solutions offered on the link above are ludicrous. But can something be done?

"We are aware of it and will be discussing it with NBC," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello (who grew up in Syosset) wrote in an e-mail.

I don't care about "Dancing with the Stars" or about Jason Taylor.

But linking to this article by my old Big East beat pal Linda Robertson of the Miami Herald gives me an excuse to post the picture at right of Taylor and his partner.

It is interesting how athletes keep winning on the show. But Taylor is the first active team athlete to give it a try.

Bill Parcells allegedly is OK with this. I'll believe it when he shows up to cheer Taylor on.

I suppose I should write a story about Brett Favre's prospects as a TV announcer now that he is retired for good . . . we think.

But I don't feel like it. Those types of stories are all pretty much the same.

Plus USA Today took care of it for me. Thank you.

My daughter has outgrown her preschooler-sized Favre jersey, literally and figuratively.

Still, it's nice to know she is a part of jersey-buying history.

Here is John Madden's take on Brett Favre.

In case you were wondering.