I like to think it all begins a little something like this...

It's a blustery evening in Cincinnati, Ohio and Marvin Lewis has just finished putting his surprising Bengals through a light Thursday practice. Chad Johnson sits quietly in front of his mammoth locker, clad only in a jockstrap and iPod, gently polishing his gold teeth. He loves those teeth, but he's not concentrating, merely passing time. He checks his phone. Nick Lachey has called 17 times. Finally rookie wide receiver Chris Henry enters the room. Chad pops the earbuds out of his ears.

"Yo, Chris, can I see you for a second?"

Chris nods and Chad pulls him aside, out of earshot of the rest of the receiving corps.

"I'm gonna need you this weekend," Chad says.

Chris nods. Nothing more is said.

This is the moment the young Chris Henry has been waiting his entire career for. He looks around and quietly steps out into the hallway. With only the equipment manager around, he does a little Jerry Maguire dance. This is it! Chris Henry has officially been invited to be Chad Johnson's next endzone prop. He doesn't know the assignment yet, he even has a few ideas of his own, but he can be sure they won't be necessary.

And such is the life of second string, Z-receivers in the NFL. For the guys who catch the 3rd and 8 out routes, the guys who are the check-off on send the house blitzes, this is as big as you get. Your resident superstar has just invited you to join in his glory as the first guy to arrive for his choreographed celebration.

If you watched last night's Monday night game, you were probably wowed by the Ravens Randy Hymes one-handed stab in the end zone, but I was more impressed with the flock of Ravens who flew to his side to share in his end zone freak-a-leak. Who are these people?

Imagine Chad Johnson without an innocent by-stander to plead to following his unsuccessful attempt to revive the football, or his Tiger Woods putt without a caddy. It just ain't the same. No the endzone props are the unsung heroes of the touchdown celebration as we know it.

We haven't quite reached "Any Given Sunday" levels yet. Nobody has tried to go LL Cool J and gun down his teammates, watching as they all fall down like toy soldiers, but we're not far off. There is obviously some premeditating going on in NFL locker rooms across the country.

I can only hope that, as "Brokeback Mountain" continues to garner critical acclaim, Keyshawn Johnson will make the bold move and ask one of his fellow Cowboys to dance. Patrick Crayton played college football in Oklahoma, I'm sure he'd love to two-step.

Sharing the spotlight isn't for everyone. Deion Sanders often used his 4.2 speed to sprint away from any potential accomplices, assuring he had the dancefloor all to himself. That's why the call him PrimeTime.

But the current crop of NFL receivers seem more than willing to pull their entire posse on stage for the awards ceremony. And I say, the more the merrier. Chad Johnson's Michael Flatley impression was nice, but imagine if he had included all eleven Bangles a la "BASEketball." I would've paid good money to see those lineman kick.

Until then, however, I hope the second- and third-string receivers of the world realize that I appreciate their unselfishness and hot feet. They may not grab the headlines, but they have won my heart. Tonight...I just wanna dance.

Discarded Titles: The Not-Quite-Fast-Enough to be Primetime Players, I Would Like to Thank..., Come On for a Cameo.

I look forward to Paul Lukas' "Uni Watch" column every Monday and upon finding out that there actually was a column devoted solely to uniform talk I thought two things: a) why didn't I think of that? and, b) what took me so long to find it? This guy should've been dashing my dreams for months by the time I read my first column.

But as I've become a regular reader, I'm starting to realize that I disagree with Mr. Lukas on just about every uniform issue there is. For instance, I was watching the Cowboys-Redskins game on Sunday and I thought to myself, "It sure is nice to see those boys from Texas clad in the rarely seen blue jersey. It sure looks nice with their silver pants and helmets, much better than the plain white one they wear every other game, home or away."

Not Lukas, he dislikes the blue jersey so much that he opted to base his entire column around it, opining that the blue Cowboys jersey may be the best "misfit" uni of all time. He also disparaged the Redskins for opting for all-white, while I have always enjoyed the blizzard look, even when Nebraska did it in 2003. (Their away uniforms represent the only thing I like about Texas Longhorns football.) On the flip side of that, Lukas is a frequent detractor of the monochrome look, which I like in most cases. (Seahawks being the exception, but I was a major supporter when the Bears and Broncos went all-navy a few years back for a single, glorious game.)

Lukas is just a tad too traditional, but very thorough. He doesn't seem to like anything that falls in the "so ugly it's great" category, which includes the all-red Cleveland Indians uniforms from the 70's, the Nuggets Lego-Rainbow jerseys from the mid-80's and black-hot pink-neon blue color scheme of the Omaha Racers, formerly of the CBA. So maybe there's room for both of us in the athletic haberdashery world, I can play the Snow Miser to his Heat Miser, the juke to his big hit, the Donnie Osmond to his Marie.

Discarded Titles: Cowboys left Moanin' the Blues, All-White is All-Right, I Can't Fight this Feeling Anymore.

P.S. Big Thanks to the students of Hemingfor Public Schools for their comments.

It's that time of year when young men's thoughts turn to plasma screen TVs, digital cameras, and Lauren Graham's performance in Bad Santa. But for me, each year as the big day approaches, the hot stove is just beginning to heat up...and I'm not talking baseball.

As my mother struggles to hold on to any slivers of childhood her growing brood has left, one tradition still survives on the Hi-Plains. Every year, upon returning home, I can be sure that the latest installment of the Hallmark Hoop Stars Christmas Ornament series will be awaiting me under the tree.

Since 1995, I've been wheeling and dealing as the GM of my very own Yuletide dream team. With the arrival of Carmelo Anthony this year, I'm only one player away from filling a full 12-man roster. In future years, I'll be forced to utilize the Inactive List when considering the stars' placement on the All-Tree Team, but with only an 11-man squad this year, the challenge is finding enough bulbs to go around to keep all the prima donnas happy, a task even Jerry West would dread in this unparalleled time of joy.

#1 - Shaquille O'Neal - 1995

I had every intention of making an effort to follow the NFL this year. I always have been and always will be a college football guy, but living in the northeast, where Boston College is the only serious entry on that front, I need to be fluent in professional football. Just to be a good conversation partner, you know? It is undeniably America's premiere sport, with the sheer ridiculous showmanship to rival soccer in Europe, which is what I really wish I was a part of, but I don't live in Manchester. Thus the NFL is the next best thing, so I've been earnestly rooting for the Bears this year instead of passively keeping an eye on their performance.

But my simmering NFL fever was dealt a severe blow today as I watched the Colts date with History end without even a kiss and saw Peyton Manning on the sidelines late in the game. The problem wasn't Manning himself, but his freaking hat! If the NFL is the number one sport in the land, why can't they outfit their players in decent hats? Seriously, NASCAR has better hats than the NFL and, as you can see here, that says a lot. The hat pictured above is the OFFICIAL sideline hat for the 2005 season and it's hideous. Joe Gibbs still wears his classic script-R hat, why can't we just stick with something like that, maybe something understated. How about not putting a graphic on every square inch of cap space?

Admittedly, with his horse face and old-man haircut any hat is going to look ridiculous on Peyton's watermelon sized melon. But when you combine his huge head with something like the hat above its enough to make children cry and birds stop singing. I fear we're now immersed in the darkest period in NFL fashion history since the Zubaz era.

If you'll take a look at the beautiful britches below, you'll notice that these pants must be part of the second generation of Zubaz haberdashery as they feature a postively sinful snakeskin effect instead of the traditional, often imitated zebra design that set the world on fire in 1991. Also notice that the Zubaz logo is placed directly over the crotch, perhaps the only documented incident of a company placing their logo over the nether regions. God forbid a young man become "excited" at the notion of supporting the Green Bay Packers while still sporting a fashionable giraffe print, that logo may become illegible.

The point is, the NFL's fashion woes are not a recent problem, but really I just wanted to get a picture of these bad boys up. I have to admit, I did have a Bears Zubaz hat, but if you recall, the Monsters of the Midway were exempt from the ridiculous animal prints, instead receiving a navy and orange motif based on their rarely used Bear head logo. So while I did have a Zubaz article, I never had a piece of Zebra-stripe gum on my head, so don't call me a gum head.

Discarded Titles: Is that a snake ON your pants, or are you just happy to see me?, PETA and Peyton Friendly, Go Faux It!, I See A Darkness.