GAMEDAY CREW BACCHANAL BOUND
Reluctant Woody remains stuck on billboard
By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya, Fantasy Sports News
For the first time ever, the crew of NFFA TV’s popular GameDay will set up this weekend not at one of the league’s stadiums, but at the annual Bacchanal in Centennial Park.
The two-day festival — officially dedicated, according to the event website, to “love, music and whatever” — coincides each year with the second meeting of two of the NFFA’s founding franchises, the West Nashville Beelzebubbas and the 12th Avenue Bakers. The game is set for West Nashville’s Hell Stadium near the campus of Tennessee State University.
Although the game itself is meaningful for the first time in league history — both teams have clinched playoff spots and are jockeying to be the No. 3 seed, behind the East Nashville Black Dogs — much more attention, as usual, will focus on the Bacchanal, whose confirmed live performers this year include Taylor Swift, the Drive-By Truckers, Wayne Newton, Robert Plant, Allison Krauss, will.i.am, Lewis Had the Weed, Morphine, Dr. Dre, David Bowie, Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson and Jack White.
The GameDay crew includes Terry Bradshaw, Shannon Sharpe, James Brown and a new panelist, Serious George, the famed football oddsmaker who is also a cousin of the late QCurl Sharif confidant Furious George. “It’s the logical choice for us,” said Bradshaw. “There is no place that matches this for excitement on a football weekend. If I survive, it will be something to tell the grandkids about.”
Sharif, whose Grey Goose Stadium has been regularly snubbed as a GameDay location, was less impressed. “To bring this media circus to the Bacchanal is gilding the lily, if you ask me,” Sharif said. “But I’m down.”
One celebrity who apparently won’t be attending the Bacchanal or the game is sportswriter Larry Woody, who remained trapped atop the 12 South billboard where he had vowed to maintain a lonely vigil until the Bakers recorded another losing season. He revised his goal to a “non-losing” season when it became apparent the team could finish no worse than 7-7 this year. Then on Sunday, following the Bakers’ second straight loss, he spray-painted “Mission Accomplished” across the face of Willie Nelson on the board and attempted to descend by ladder. But he was driven back by repeated gunfire from the neighborhood, where Bakers superfan Bill Cheatham has organized a vigilante group he calls “Sheriffs for Sharif” to defend the team and its owner. Police refused to respond to Woody’s 911 calls for help. “I heard a bunch of pops last night,” said 12 South precinct captain Delbert “Vice” Roy. “But knowing the crazy kids around here I’m sure it was just firecrackers.
“One of these days,” he added, “we’re gonna go bust Woody for trespassing, but we’ve got more pressing priorities right now.”
The two-day festival — officially dedicated, according to the event website, to “love, music and whatever” — coincides each year with the second meeting of two of the NFFA’s founding franchises, the West Nashville Beelzebubbas and the 12th Avenue Bakers. The game is set for West Nashville’s Hell Stadium near the campus of Tennessee State University.
Although the game itself is meaningful for the first time in league history — both teams have clinched playoff spots and are jockeying to be the No. 3 seed, behind the East Nashville Black Dogs — much more attention, as usual, will focus on the Bacchanal, whose confirmed live performers this year include Taylor Swift, the Drive-By Truckers, Wayne Newton, Robert Plant, Allison Krauss, will.i.am, Lewis Had the Weed, Morphine, Dr. Dre, David Bowie, Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson and Jack White.
The GameDay crew includes Terry Bradshaw, Shannon Sharpe, James Brown and a new panelist, Serious George, the famed football oddsmaker who is also a cousin of the late QCurl Sharif confidant Furious George. “It’s the logical choice for us,” said Bradshaw. “There is no place that matches this for excitement on a football weekend. If I survive, it will be something to tell the grandkids about.”
Sharif, whose Grey Goose Stadium has been regularly snubbed as a GameDay location, was less impressed. “To bring this media circus to the Bacchanal is gilding the lily, if you ask me,” Sharif said. “But I’m down.”
One celebrity who apparently won’t be attending the Bacchanal or the game is sportswriter Larry Woody, who remained trapped atop the 12 South billboard where he had vowed to maintain a lonely vigil until the Bakers recorded another losing season. He revised his goal to a “non-losing” season when it became apparent the team could finish no worse than 7-7 this year. Then on Sunday, following the Bakers’ second straight loss, he spray-painted “Mission Accomplished” across the face of Willie Nelson on the board and attempted to descend by ladder. But he was driven back by repeated gunfire from the neighborhood, where Bakers superfan Bill Cheatham has organized a vigilante group he calls “Sheriffs for Sharif” to defend the team and its owner. Police refused to respond to Woody’s 911 calls for help. “I heard a bunch of pops last night,” said 12 South precinct captain Delbert “Vice” Roy. “But knowing the crazy kids around here I’m sure it was just firecrackers.
“One of these days,” he added, “we’re gonna go bust Woody for trespassing, but we’ve got more pressing priorities right now.”
