NFFA News Roundup GREEN UNVEIL OFFICIAL TEAM 'MEGGINGS' Marketers cite demand for ‘metrosexual merch’

Owner Dave Goodrow (left) and Coach Stuart Smalley model The Village Green's latest metrosexual 'manparel' at the team's fashion show at the Goodrow-A-Go-Go.

By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya
FSN Sports

Reflecting what some have called a national trend, the Village Green have become the first NFFA franchise — and perhaps the first pro sports franchise of any type — to offer officially licensed leggings, handbags and other accessories for men.

During an invitation-only fashion show Sunday at the JoJo-a-GoGo, team owner Dave Goodrow and coach Stuart Smalley modeled the bright green men’s leggings (known informally as “meggings”), manpurses and a stylish French beret with the Village Green logo.

“The local market is demanding this,” said Oola Lah, fashion columnist for InFocus magazine. “Maybe these items wouldn’t sell on Charlotte Avenue, but in the Village and certain parts of East Nashville, they’ll go fast.”

It was unclear whether any of the other Nashville teams would follow suit, but sources say that the Green’s announcement took the Cambridge Animals by surprise — and that the Animals would soon unveil their own line of what one insider called “metrosexual merch.” According to this source, Animals owner DTA was “screaming like his hair was on fire” when he saw the video of the Green’s fashion show. “Nobody in this league is going to outqueer the Animals!” DTA reportedly yelled.

Biden rebuffs calls to seize Bakers’ assets

In the wake of repeated calls by Tennessee’s U.S. Senators to seize assets of the 12th Avenue Bakers because of the team’s Russian investors, Vice President Joe Biden said Monday that “confiscation of the team’s property without due process will happen over my dead body, and I’m not planning to be dead anytime soon.”

The unusual public statement came in response to questions from pool reporters, who were waiting for Biden as he left Blair House, the vice presidential residence in Washington. Instead of continuing to his limousine, Biden stopped and chatted for several minutes.

“Look,” he said, “the Bakers are a U.S. corporation with majority ownership by a U.S. citizen who is not in trouble with the law.” After pausing for a moment, Biden added, “Well, at least not in trouble over anything related to this Ukraine business.” Than pausing again, he added further, “At least not that I know about.

“In this country we protect the property rights of U.S. citizens. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution, so Barack – I mean President Obama – and I will call out the troops if necessary to do what must be done.”

Noting that Biden more than once has been a guest at the annual Bacchanal to the Future, one reporter asked the vice president whether he had ever attended parties at the West End “Treehouse” of the Bakers’ principal owner QCurl Sharif. Biden appeared to consider the question for a moment, then replied with a broad grin, “What treehouse?”

Despite repeated attempts by the media to reach him, there still has been no word from Sharif, who left Nashville 10 days ago via a chartered jet reportedly bound for Ukraine. There is no record that the flight ever landed as scheduled in Kiev. FSN will have more details as they become available.

NFFA Roundup RUSSIA TO ANNEX BAKERVILLE? Team disputes referendum; no signs of Sharif

Sergei Lavrov says Bakerville residents voted in favor of Russian annexation.

By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya
FSN Sports

In the latest of a fast-moving series of events, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today announced that residents of “Bakerville,” as the 12 South neighborhood near the Cherry Bomb Café is known, had voted in a Sunday referendum to affiliate with the Russian Federation.

The announcement appears to be tied both to the crisis in Ukraine and the shadowy group of Russian “oligarchs” who reportedly purchased a significant but undisclosed ownership stake in the 12th  Avenue Bakers.

Lavrov said that 92.7 percent of Bakerville voters had opted for annexation by Russia. If the Russian Parliament approved, Lavrov said, Bakerville could become an autonomous zone within the Russian Federation.

Bakers team officials could not be reached for comment. Owner QCurl Sharif has not been heard from since he — along with PR maven Faith Popcorn and an unidentified chimpanzee — boarded a private, Malaysian-owned charter jet that reportedly was bound for Kiev. Sources say Sharif and a reanimated Leo Tolstoy planned to negotiate an end to the Ukrainian crisis directly with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, rumors swirled throughout 12 South. Most fans interviewed on the street by reporters said they had not heard about any referendum on secession and annexation.

“A lot of people want to secede from the U.S. — that’s not exactly news,” said neighborhood activist Roz Tefarian. “But Russia? I don’t know about that.”

Tefarian refused to say whether she had cast a vote. “None of your damn business,” she said.

Other fans were unhappy about the story. “I didn’t hear about any annexation, but if it’s true, I’m done with the Bakers,” said superfan Powers Boothe, who served in 2012 as Co-Grand Marshal of the Bacchanal to the Future.

Still other observers cast doubt on Lavrov’s assertions, given the apparently widespread lack of awareness of the referendum in Bakerville. “I met the dude,” said former Baker coach Snoop Lion. “Lavrov ain’t nothin’ but a little cracker-eatin’ apparatchik. He don’t know what’s goin’ down over here. Somebody fed him some bad dope. This whole thing has kind of a Mojo D smell to it, if you ask me.”

As of press time, Tennessee governor Bill Haz-Mat was said to be considering a request from Nashville mayor Karl Dean to order the Tennessee National Guard to patrol the Bakerville area “to keep order and deter Soviet aggression.”

RGIII shines at Bubbas spring combine

Quarterback Robert Griffin III was the clear standout the West Nashville Beelzebubbas’ pre-draft combine, held last weekend at Colt 45 Stadium.

“We call it a combine because we combine various disciplines and use them as our metrics,” said Bubbas Executive Coach Nicky Satan. “Robert just killed our biathlon drills.”

The Bubbas’ biathlon, as Satan explained, requires participants to run a 40-yard dash, then hit moving, human-sized targets with shots from a handgun, and then run a second 40-yard sprint.

Griffin ran both 40s under 4.5 seconds and hit 9 of the 10 targets, scoring headshots on four of them.

“From what we say today, I’d say Robert’s knee is completely rehabbed,” said Bubbas’ head coach Jerry Glanville. “He was even showing off a little bit with the headshots. He’s got that swagger you look for in this organization.”

Other eye-catching performances came from RB LaGarrette Blount, who ran a 4.6 and hit eight targets, and from DE Jared Allen, who hit all ten.

Green meth abounds in Boston for St. Patty’s Day

The normally rowdy St. Patrick’s Day festivities in Boston turned exponentially wilder on Monday after police discovered that, along with green beer, South End bars were also selling green-tinted crystal meth.

Several thousand revelers had been arrested by mid-afternoon, swelling local jails beyond capacity and forcing police to hold a few hundred detainees temporarily in the parish hall of St. Aloyisius Church on the city’s south side.

Street dealers said that, in the early hours of March 17, food trucks in Boston began distributing a new, particularly potent form of green meth labeled “Blarney Stone.” One dealer showed a reporter an empty plastic bag that he claimed had contained two grams of Blarney Stone. The bag included a tag with the logo of Methlon Enterprises and the slogan “We Rock.”

A company spokesperson for Methlon said she had no comment.

BAKERS ENGULFED BY PROTESTS ‘Russkie connection’ makes team geopolitical lightning rod

Protestors rally against Russian occupation of Ukraine outside the Cherry Bomb Cafe.

By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya
FSN Sports

Enraged over Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine, thousands of angry demonstrators converged yesterday on the 12th Avenue Bakers’ unofficial headquarters at the Cherry Bomb Café, demanding imprisonment — and worse — for the team’s beleaguered owner, QCurl Sharif, and his Russian partners.

The crowd, estimated by police at 5,000, blocked Avenue Q near the venerable café and spilled over into nearby Sevier Park, where hundreds camped overnight before resuming the protests on Tuesday.

“Russia out of Ukraine and 12South” read one banner carried by protesters on the street. “Sharif Is Putin’s Mr. TD,” read another, which bore an image of the owner’s face superimposed over the body of the Bakers’ beloved former mascot, a chain-smoking chimpanzee.

The ownership stake in the team by Russian oligarchs, which has been a source of a simmering controversy for the past year, appears now to have boiled over with Russia’s use of military force against its Eastern European neighbor. While Russian president Vladimir Putin has not been identified as one of the investors in the Bakers’ franchise — details of the partnership have never been released — it is widely believed that Putin controls the investor group.

Team sources also say that Putin has received a VIP invitation to this year’s Bacchanal to the Future. Moreover, Sharif has allegedly lobbied festival organizers to name the Russian strongman as co-Grand Marshal for the event — an apparent quid pro quo for Sharif being allowed to carry the Olympic torch along a half-mile portion of its route through the streets of Sochi on its way to the opening ceremonies of the Winter Games.

Cardinal Giorgio Leonardo, who serves as papal nuncio to 12 South from an office next to the Cherry Bomb, appealed to the crowd for calm. He was joined by former Bakers’ coach Snoop Lion, who briefly addressed the protesters via loudspeaker.

“We don’t need another Orange Revolution,” Lion said, a reference to the popular movement in Ukraine that toppled former president Viktor Yanukovych. “What we need is a Green Revolution! Y’all feel me? We got some of that caviar that don’t grow in Russia! Meet me over by the Satan Tree, and we will smoke the pipe of peace.”

Some protesters did migrate over to the Sevier Park landmark, where community activist Roz Tefarian was handing out what she described as “goodie bags” filled with packets of a product labeled “Herbal Tease” and copies of Lion’s recently published manifesto, “Blunt Speaking.” But the majority of demonstrators remained in front of the Cherry Bomb, where their numbers grew throughout the day.

Some of the demonstrators were members of Nashville’s large Ukrainian community. There were persistent rumors, however, that many of the demonstrators had been paid for their presence by rival owner Mojo D. “He’s a hater,” said Bakers superfan Bill Cheatham of the Corsairs owner, whose team has frequently been involved in turf wars with the Bakers. “I saw people in Corsair T-shirts giving walking-around money today to people standing in line at Pancake Pantry. It’s all a ploy.”

Cheatham’s accusation could not be verified as of press time.

Meanwhile, the protests were not the only problem for the besieged 12th Avenue franchise. Both of Tennessee’s U.S. senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, called for the U.S. government to freeze the assets of the Bakers and their Russian investors. They also demanded that the NFFA strip ownership of the team from Sharif. “It’s time to sever the Russkie Connection,” said Corker. Alexander, meanwhile, is well known in Nashville as a fan of the Village Green.

The Bakers’ primary owner could not be reached for comment, and it was unclear whether he was at his penthouse apartment at the Cherry Bomb.

In response to the senators’ demands and urgent calls for an owners’ meeting, NFFA Commissioner Lorena “MeeMaw” Murrman issued no public response. A league official said Murrman was in Alamo, Texas, preparing for the grand opening of the new NFFA Hall of Fame building and that “she is studying the situation closely.”

FSN will have more details on this story as they emerge.