NFFA TOWER BOMBED League founder Jorgé Linardo still missing; multiple claims of responsibility

Authorities are investigating whether suspected bomber Anthony Quinn Warner had ties to the London Bakers after learning he lived in Bakertown and once had a ceramic statue of the team's mascot Mr. TD in his front yard.

By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya

FSN Sports

 

At the beginning of its championship weekend, the NFFA was literally rocked early on Christmas morning by a bomb attack that left the league’s founder missing and heavily damaged its downtown Nashville headquarters.

 

Shortly after 6:30 a.m. on Friday, an enormous bomb detonated from an RV parked in front of the NFFA Tower on Second Avenue. The explosion blew out windows in the building, along with an enormous hole in the first- and second-floor facades. Structural engineers have been on the scene for the past 24 hours to assess whether the building’s integrity has been compromised.

 

Worse than any damage to the building, sources are concerned that the NFFA may have lost its founder and guiding spirit, Dr. Jorgé Linardo, who was known to have been inside the league’s offices approximately an hour before the explosion.

 

“We’ve always kept this on the down low because of El Jefé’s modesty, but every Christmas Eve he likes to drive around town in his old red Saab and deliver packets, er, packages to people, shouting ‘Let it snow!’ and then tossing back his head in silent laughter,” said Beelzebubbas owner Mos’ Ded, who told police he was with Dr. Linardo most of the night. “We wound up at the Tower a little after 5, but we came in through the parking garage entrance on First Avenue and wouldn’t have seen whether a suspicious RV was parked out front. I left him there so I could go back to Club Gitmo to take Saddam and [former commissioner Jim] McMahon to Waffle House for breakfast, which is another of our little Christmas traditions. That’s the last I’ve seen and heard from Jefé.”

 

The search for Linardo continued into Sunday after police found what they believe are human remains in the blast area.

 

“I am shocked that anyone would engage in such a dastardly and cowardly act against the greatest sports league in world history,” said NFFA Commissioner Bernie Sanders, who had been at the official residence in the Towers just two days before the bombing. “Let me say this: We will work tirelessly to bring those responsible to justice. They will wish they were dead.”

 

“Reap what you sow,” tweeted President Donald Trump, who was ousted from his ownership position of the Village Green two years ago. “Looks like SOMEBODY finally stood up to these suckers and Losers.”

 

The Cambridge Animals were quick to claim that JTA, one of the sons of team owner DTA, was responsible. Unlike his younger brothers Wilder and Zuma the Animal, JTA has not been directly involved with team operations. DTA did not suggest why he believed that his son had organized the bombing. Some observers suggested that JTA might have been attempting to create a distraction for league officials that could benefit the Animals in their attempt to overcome the so-called Curse of Brady and claim their second NFFA crown.

 

But investigators also had to look into multiple other claims of responsibility from parties known to harbor a hatred for the league. Trump’s tweet added to suspicions that the bombing had been organized by white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys (the name with which Trump unsuccessfully attempted to rechristen the Green after he became majority owner). But sources in Russia also were claiming that Vladimir Putin was behind the attack, due to his long-standing grievances against Sharif and Linardo. “Remember,” said a source within the National Security Agency, “that Putin tried to poison Sharif, and that was after he thought his troops had killed SirQ in Ukraine. He hates Linardo and Biden for being close friends to Sharif, and apparently it really stuck in his craw that Sharif and Ded just held the wildest Bacchanal ever in Putin’s back yard” (this year’s event took place in Odessa, Ukraine).

 

“This is really a case of round up the usual suspects,” said the NSA official. “James Dobson and Focus on the Family once put out a fatwa on Sharif. Senator Marsha Blackburn and her acolytes once attacked a sacred site for the Bakers in Sevier Park. The North Koreans were involved in several anti-NFFA intrigues. A bomb attack like this has all the hallmarks of an action by the Southern Baptist Convention, who learned their craft from the IRA. Maybe someone wanted to punish the league because one of its franchise owners admits bringing the coronavirus into the US from China, and another owner put Covid-19 on his roster, and then another one gave him asylum at Club Gitmo. There’s no shortage of people out there who would love to bomb the NFFA. Hell, even one of the owners once tried to bomb the NFFA. We’re going to be very busy looking into potential suspects.”

 

On Saturday, however, a prime suspect emerged from a surprising corner: a Nashville neighborhood known as Bakertown. Neighbors reported seeing an RV fitting the description of the vehicle that contained the bomb in the driveway of Anthony Warner. The RV, along with Warner, was last seen at Warner’s home on Christmas Eve.

 

Then investigators began noticing an odd string of circumstances that connected to the London Bakers. First, Warner moved to Bakertown the year after the Bakers became one of the NFFA’s founding franchises; neighbors said that he once had a ceramic figure of the team’s mascot, Mr. TD, in his front yard. In addition, said a police spokesman, Warner’s middle initial was Q; was it just coincidence, the spokesman asked, that the Bakers’ owner is also named Q and that the team’s old Nashville headquarters was located on Avenue Q? Another bit of circumstantial evidence: Though it was not previously reported, the music that blared from the RV during the countdown to the explosion was Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” which is known to be a favorite of Baker fans, who have made it a tradition to stand and sing it together at the end of the third quarter of games at Wembley Stadium.

 

Online conspiracy theories, which received an airing on Fox News, suggested that the NFFA Tower was not the primary target. Theorists claimed that hundreds of Dominion voting machines were being analyzed in the AT&T Building across from the NFFA Tower; they further alleged that AT&T had won a secret contract to purge the machines of software that would indicate they had been used to carry out fraud in the recent presidential election — and that Sharif, who has claimed to be QAnon, ordered one of his minions to carry out a suicide bombing on behalf of his friend Biden so that it would appear that the NFFA was the actual target.

 

“I’m incredibly impressed by the way the conspiracy buffs have thought this out,” Mos Ded told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “But I can guarantee you nobody in the NFFA ever dreamed up anything like this, because if we had, we’d have already used it to blow up Fox News. You’re barking up the wrong tree house with Sir Q. And I think we all know why.”

 

Faced with the barrage of media speculation and police scrutiny, the usually loquacious Sharif refused to speak with reporters, referring all requests for comment to the law firm of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, LLC.

 

“He’s lawyered up,” said one league official who requested anonymity on the grounds that she was not authorized to speak publicly. “That’s always the smart move in the NFFA. It’s going to get a lot hinkier before it gets better.”

ANIMALS' QUEST Cambridge must overcome Curse of Brady, winningest franchise for a second title

Can the Animals beat the Curse of Brady?

By R.E. Porter

Associated Web Press

West Nashville Beelzebubbas owner Mos’ Ded was talking with a longtime league observer earlier in the week about the title game between the Cambridge Animals and the East Nashville Black Dogs. “There are two main storylines this weekend: whether the Black Dogs can win their fifth championship and whether the Animals can defeat the Curse of Brady to win their second,” Mos’ Ded said. “The Black Dogs have a much easier path.”

A trip to the league archives shed some light on the Curse of Brady which supposedly prevents any team from winning a championship with Tom Brady as its quarterback. The curse itself dates back to the second week of the 2011 season, but the bad blood behind the curse goes back much further, back to the 1960s when London Bakers owner QCurl Sharif and Cambridge owner Dave the Animal first met while living in a Kolkata orphanage. As it would turn out, that orphanage was the birthplace of one of the NFFA’s longest-running and fiercest rivalries, a rivalry that came to a boil on the night of the 2011 NFFA draft when the Bakers picked New England quarterback Tom Brady with the third pick in the first round.

As anyone who follows the NFFA even a little knows, both Sharif and DTA are notorious homers, with the Bakers drafting a lot of Tennessee Titans and the Animals drafting a lot of New England Patriots. When the Bakers selected Brady, DTA became enraged. Brady was supposed to be an Animal and had been the previous season when the team captured their second Jorge division title. But what would become known as the Bobber rule was passed during that 2010 campaign, limiting the number of consecutive seasons a player could be one of a team’s keeper players. With the introduction of the Bobber rule in 2011, all players returned to the draft pool which prevented the Animals from keeping Brady and enabled the Bakers to draft him.

When Brady went off for 72 points in the first week of the 2011 season and led the Bakers to a 63.5-point blowout of the Atlanta Smack Daddies, DTA simply couldn’t take it. Some would later say he lost his mind. But insane or not, prior to the second game, DTA put a curse on the Bakers which haunts them till this very day. "I made mother[expletive] Tom Brady," the Cambridge owner, a self-proclaimed fantasy quarterback guru, boasted at the time. "I wasn't about to have Q profit from my genius."

 

The second weekend of the season, the one immediately after DTA put the curse on the Bakers, Brady went for 60 and the Bakers scored 200 points, but incredibly they lost, becoming the first team in league history to score 200 and lose, as the Fidalgo Island Sea Hogs scored 208.5. That would be the first of ten straight losses for the Bakers on their way to a 2-12 finish. 

Since 2011, the Bakers have not had a single winning season, although they have finished 7-7 four times in that stretch. That was good enough in three of those seasons to earn the team a trip to the playoffs, only to lose in the opening round.

But the curse that DTA unleashed in 2011 turned out to effect not only the Bakers. As Mos’ Ded noted, “Sometimes these curses take on a life of their own,” and that’s exactly what happened with the curse DTA put on the Bakes. There were a number of unintended consequences, including the spawning of two other curses involving the Animals and Mos’ Ded’s Beelzebubbas franchise, the Mother of All Curses and the Grandmother of All Curses.

But back to the Curse of Brady: one of the consequences DTA did not intend when he put the spell on the Bakers was that Brady himself would be accursed, but that’s exactly what happened, although it was not immediately apparent.

When Sharif realized the curse on the Bakers was “fo’ real,” as coach Snoop Dogg later put it, he appealed to Shiva to end the curse, but to no avail. So feeling he had no other choice, he dealt Brady to the Animals just before the start of the 2012 season in a six-player blockbuster trade which was the largest in league history in terms of number of players involved. According to news reports at the time, new Animals GM Wilder the Animal, DTA’s middle son, was the team’s point person on the deal.

Brady was the starting quarterback for the Animals from 2012-2014, a stretch in which the team posted disappointing records of 7-7, 4-10, and 6-8, and missed the playoffs all three seasons. Just before the trade deadline in 2014, DTA sent Brady to the Beelzebubbas for quarterback Drew Brees with the tacit understanding, at least in DTA’s mind, that the teams would reverse the trade and send the quarterbacks back to their previous teams prior to the 2015 season. When Mos’ Ded instead traded Brady and linebacker Paul Posluzny to the Bakers for quarterback Peyton Manning, DTA felt doubly betrayed. Feeling he really had no other choice, that the Beelzebubbas had asked for it, DTA unleashed the Mother of All Curses on the West Nashville franchise. Being from Texas, Mos’ Ded countered with and the Grandmother of All Curses.

Mos’ Ded was probably the first person (if you can call the ghost of a ghost a person) to notice that Brady himself was accursed, that no team had ever won an NFFA championship with Brady as their quarterback. “All of this stemmed from his feeling that somehow he’d been cheated out of the opportunity to get Tom Brady back on his team this year,” he told Al Jazeera America shortly after the conclusion of the 2015 season. “But look. He never made it to the championship game all those years when he had Brady. And this year he does it without him. Coincidence? Not when you consider that Brady really did nothing for the Bubbas during our stretch run last year, and then the Bakers had him and didn’t even make the playoffs. I know that Brady and DTA have a special relationship — some would say ‘extra special’ — but I think Dave missed the forest for the trees.”

Will the Curse of Brady remain undefeated? We'll find out this weekend. With the curse in their corner, oddsmakers see the Black Dogs as slight favorites to become the first franchise with five championship rings.

ONE FOR THE THUMB Black Dogs, Smack Daddies both in pursuit of a fifth NFFA ring

The Smack Daddies, Animals, Goats, and Black Dogs vie for the 2020 NFFA title.

By R.E. Porter

Associated Web Press

When East Nashville travels to Atlanta this weekend for the opening round of the 2020 NFFA playoffs, it will be a clash of the two franchises tied for the most league titles with four apiece, and each one will be aiming to be the first to get to five. 

Combined, the Black Dogs and the Smack Daddies have won nearly half of the league championships, but it’s been awhile since either franchise hoisted the trophy with the Dogs getting their fourth ring in 2016 and the Daddies winning theirs in 2013.

On the other side of the championship playoff bracket, the Cambridge Animals host the Sylvan Goats, and the Animals will be looking for their second ring after winning their second consecutive Jorge division title, their fourth overall. The Goats will be seeking their first NFFA championship, although the franchise did win two titles as the Fidalgo Island Sea Hogs in 2007 and 2009 when the team was owned by franchise founder, Triki Bobber.

Other playoff news and notes:

• The high-scoring Smack Daddies secured the number one seed for the second time in the last three seasons, but so far they have not turned that into a title. Their three championships in the playoff era all came as a wild-card team. (There were no playoffs in the NFFA’s first two seasons, 2002 and 2003. The playoff era began in 2004.)

• With their fourteenth playoff appearance in the seventeen-year playoff era, the Black Dogs extended their league record for most playoff appearances.

• The Animals, who won their only title in 2015, are making back-to-back appearances in the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. 

• Goats owner Bronko Nagurski became the first owner in league history to make the playoffs in the first two seasons of ownership.

• When the Village Green knocked the Buena Vista Ballers out of playoff contention last weekend, it ended the Baller’s eight-year streak of making the playoffs.

PERFECT SEASON FOR DADDIES? Georgia officials demand hand recount of NFFA scores

Georgia governor Brian Kemp speaking Wednesday morning about the hand recount he's ordered of the scores of all games involving the Atlanta Smack Daddies.

By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya

FSN Sports

Did the 2020 Atlanta Smack Daddies become only the second team in NFFA history to record a perfect season? Unquestionably, say team officials, and their contention now has the backing of a bipartisan group of leaders in Georgia.

“The Daddies are 14-0, it’s not in question and it’s not even close,” said Governor Brian Kemp at a press conference Wednesday morning. “The official record says 12-2, but the official record is a product of fraud, aided by vote tabulation machines built by Hugo Chavez and Donald Trump.” Kemp was flanked by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Stacey Abrams. Smack Daddies VP of Community Affairs Alge Crumpler, standing next to Abrams, nodded approvingly as Kemp spoke.

The governor said that he and Raffensperger have ordered an official, hand recount of the scores of all games this season played in Georgia or involving an NFFA team based in Georgia. The Smack Daddies are the only Georgia-based team in the league.

After his formal statement, Kemp took several questions from reporters, one of whom pointed out that the official score in the Smack Daddies’ two losses involved margins of defeat of more than 30 points each. “Here’s what I know,” Kemp replied. “When I went to bed on Sunday night, when [Smack Daddies owner] Lex Dominica went to bed, the Daddies were ahead by a mile. And then somehow they’re behind when we wake up? And their opponents are known purveyors of fraud like the Animals and communistic university radicals who openly use Satanic symbols like the Goats? This league even has an owner named Q who is at the heart of so many Deep State plots. Isn’t it obvious what is going on here?”

In Nashville, protestors wearing Smack Daddies’ “I’d Hit It” sombreros gathered in front of the NFFA Tower chanting “Stop the Steal” and “Hey, hey, NFFA, No Fraud Football Allowed today!”

League commissioner Bernie Sanders could not be reached for comment.

BREAKING: Ballers to challenge NFFA 2020 season *note: updates previously leaked story

The Ballers' legal team: Alice D. Tripp (undated photo), Sydney Powell, Bill Barr

By Soren Bernyn
FSN

Well, it wouldn't be another NFFA season without another whiny, frivolous lawsuit from a sore loser...

True to form, the Buena Vista Ballers have secured the services of attorney Alice D. Tripp to challenge the results of the 2020 season - Tripp's statement to the media alleges "widespread fraud, collusion, cheating and - in the instance of Village Green owner Dave Goodrow - buggery, fornication and pornography." She was able to produce evidence only of the last charge.

She is joined in her efforts by disgraced litigator Sydney Powell, who has intimated that there could be an alien influence at work. To cap it all off, the legal team will also include soon-to-be-former US Attorney General William Barr, who shrugged and said of the move: "meh, I got nothin' else going on: why not?" Tripp and Powell have already filed an injunction preventing Judge Naomi Morningstar from presiding; legal scholars predict that last season's lawsuits against the Ballers will have to be fully adjudicated first (by Judge Morningstar, ironically).

Reached in Cabo, Ballers' coach Mystery Mike Tyson said "Mojo D has got to learn to let that shit go - humiliation is a very freeing experience, and he needs to lean into it." Asked to clarify, Mystery Mike added: "swept by the Bakers, man: there is nothing more humiliating, except losing a playoff berth in the last game of the season to the worst team in the league. Yeah, Mojo done lost his mojo - time to move on."

Stay tuned: NFFA lawyers are just warming up...

JORGE CROWN, WILD CARD SPOT STILL UP FOR GRABS Four teams remain in contention

The Cambridge Animals brain trust (L-R: WTA, ZTA, DTA) hopes to make it back-to-back Jorge division titles with a win at home this weekend over the London Bakers. 

By R.E. Porter

Associated Web Press

NASHVEGAS—As the NFFA enters the final weekend of the regular season, half the playoff picture is clear, but the other half is a mad scramble.

What we know for certain is the 11-2 Atlanta Smack Daddies are the champions of the Linardo division and have secured the number one seed. If the Daddies defeat the Sylvan Goats this weekend, they will tie the 2007 East Nashville Black Dogs for the second-best regular season record in league history at 12-2. (The 2008 Black Dogs own the best regular season record with a perfect 14-0 campaign.)

The Goats (8-5) also are headed to the playoffs as one of the wild card teams. Regardless of the outcome of their game with the Daddies, they will be the number three seed and face the winner of the Jorge division.

Now this is where things get murky. Currently, the 7-6 Cambridge Animals are leading the Jorge division by a game over the 6-7 London Bakers and the 6-7 Black Dogs. The Buena Vista Ballers are also 6-7 and in contention for the final wild card spot. The 3-10 Village Green and the 5-8 West Nashville Beelzebubbas have both been eliminated from playoff contention, and the Green have clinched the first pick in the 2021 draft, winning what some have dubbed the “Patrick Mahomes Lottery.”

Here are the various scenarios for the final two spots:

The Animals control their own destiny: if they are victorious against the Bakers this weekend, they will finish 8-6, win the Jorge division title, and nail down the number two seed. If the Animals lose to the Bakers, they will be tied with the Bakers at 7-7. If the Black Dogs defeat the Beelzebubbas this weekend, they will also be 7-7 resulting in a three-way tie at the top of the Jorge division. With their head-to-head records being identical, the Black Dogs would be awarded the division crown by virtue of winning the second tiebreaker, which is record within the division, and theirs would be better than either the Animals’ or the Bakers’ division record. If the Animals lose to the Bakers and the Dogs lose to the ’Bubbas, the Animals will win the division by virtue of having a better record within the division than the Bakers.

With their loss to the ’Bubbas last weekend, the Bakers were eliminated from the race for the Jorge division crown, but like the Animals, they control their own destiny: if they win this weekend, they will clinch a wild card playoff berth and be the number four seed based on tiebreakers. If they lose to the Animals, the Bakers will be eliminated from playoff contention.

Unlike the Animals and Bakers, the Black Dogs do not control their own destiny. To have any chance at all, they have to beat the Beelzebubbas this weekend. If they do that, and the Bakers also beat the Animals, the Dogs as previously mentioned would win the Jorge title by virtue of having a better record than either the Animals or Bakers within the division. If the Bakers lose, the Black Dogs can earn the final wild card berth and number four seed with a win and a loss by the Ballers.

The Ballers hope to land the final wild card berth and number four seed, but they need to not only win their game against the Green, but they need the Animals to defeat the Bakers. If the Animals lose, the Ballers are eliminated. If the both the Ballers and Animals win, the Ballers will get the final playoff berth regardless of the outcome of the Black Dogs and ’Bubbas game. The Ballers can still make the playoffs even with a loss, if the Bakers and Black Dogs also both lose.

When the dust finally settles, whichever team earns the final wild card spot will have the unpleasant task of facing the high-flying Smack Daddies in the opening round of the playoffs.