With the Super Bowl not even half a week behind us, the NFL season once again comes to a close. And once again, out of all professional sports, the NFL off-season is the most active of them all, with trades, drafts, signings, and the occasional crimes against human decency. So, while most of us start to draft excuses to avoid spending too much time with our SO's on Sunday afternoons, football life goes on.

And what better way to start the off-season than to look back on the past season with...another awards show!

Most awards recognize outstanding excellence in a particular field. The MVP, the Rookie of the Year, the Emmy for Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special. These, however, seek to acknowledge merit and achievements both obscure and questionable. In fact, "Obscure and Questionable" is my middle name. Onward!

The Doug Flutie Award for Breakthrough Performance...But Not By A Rookie: Every so often we see a player who's been languishing in the league without a shot at stardom, riding the bench while others get the reps and the glory. Then, one day something comes along to change that. An injured starter, a trade, a free agent signing few people pay attention to and with that, a star is born. This year's winner, though, started out as a star. Heisman Trophy, top draft pick; he had it all if not for being stuck in Purgatory, aka Oakland. But this year, he was tied for the regular season lead in interceptions with 9 picks to his credit, resurrecting his career. Our winner this year is...Charles Woodson (CB, Green Bay Packers). Obviously there's somewhat of a stigma attached to attaining the highest individual honor in college football in that said success doesn't translate over to the pros. After a quiet period, Charles Woodson is back and better than ever.

2008-2009 Winner: Michael Turner (RB, Atlanta Falcons)
2007-2008 Winner: David Garrard (QB, Jacksonville Jaguars)
2006-2007 Winner: Frank Gore (RB, San Francisco 49ers)

The "Who 'Dey?" "Who Dat?" Award for the League's Best Obscure Team Up Until the Playoffs: You know how it is. Other than your local teams (and unless you pony up for packages on cable and satellite), more often than not you'll end up seeing teams the networks think are the best. Sometimes teams that don't make the playoffs get all of the attention while some teams just calmly slide into the playoffs and finally make people take notice. But not in the case of this team. Everyone and their cousins know about this team, if not by now then certainly by what's been happening to them over the course of their history. Said history was mocked by futility, a few blowups by one of their ex-coaches and a derisive contraction of their name. But all that paled in comparison to one of the worst natural disasters in American history that almost completely washed away their home town. After that, there was some doubt as to whether or not they'd even be being there, but in the four years since, they've gone from the bottom of the barrel to the highest of highs. Obviously if you haven't figured it out by now, our winner is...the New Orleans Saints. Of course, even during this regular season, they weren't obscure as they vied with their eventual Super Bowl XLIV opponents for best record in the league, but they did so quietly, often overshadowed by their eventual NFC Championship adversary, the Minnesota Vikings. The Saints marched into the playoffs proudly and calmly and took home the top prize. Just don't dwell too much on what Sean Payton was doing with the Lombardi Trophy the night after the big game.

2008-2009 Winner: Arizona Cardinals
2007-2008 Winner: Jacksonville Jaguars
2006-2007 Winner: New York Jets

The "Don't Believe the Hype" Award for the League's Highly Overrated Team: Great expectations usually result in great disappointment. When you have a team with star talent, you're expected to make noise in the league. The good kind of noise, not the whining and complaining you generally associate with losing teams like the Raiders or the Rams. Sometimes, though, the hype just goes to a level that's way beyond eleven. Then again, great expectations aren't unusual for this team, a storied franchise that's one of the few that could claim to be a team of a particular decade and with two Super Bowl wins in this past one. But, this year things did not go so well for them and all those expectations imploded; where last year they were champs, this year they were looking up as two of their division rivals made it to the post season. Of course, I'm talking about...the Pittsburgh Steelers. 2009 was a good year for the Steel City, with their football team claiming victory in Super Bowl XLIII and their hockey team grabbing the Stanley Cup (ignore the Pirates; just please ignore them). But, thanks to a combination of age and injury, the Steelers followed up their championship season by missing the playoffs completely. That's how the cookie crumbles.

2008-2009 Winner: Dallas Cowboys
2007-2008 Winner: Dallas Cowboys
2006-2007 Winner: San Diego Chargers

The Jim Mora Award for Spontaneous Press Conference Combustion: I both love and hate this category. I love it for the sheer insanity (PLAYOFFS?!) and quotability (I'M A MAN! I'M FORTY!) of it. On the other hand, I hate it because sometimes there's always a chance of not finding a winner in the ranks of the NFL, hence my bending the rules and looking to the college ranks two years ago. Head coaches are getting more and more media savvy, more level headed even after getting their butts whooped ten minutes before the press conference begins. It's also true of this year's winner, who didn't exactly fly off the handle and scream, but made an exasperated statement that embodied the futility he was experiencing at the time. This year's winner is...Rex Ryan (Head Coach, New York Jets), who claimed that his team was not a playoff team, but that obviously didn't end up being the case. Much like last year's winner, Rex's deflating criticism may have in fact turned his team around, netting the Jets a spot in the playoffs and an appearance in the AFC title game. Maybe we'll start seeing more of that kind of talk next season and hopefully with more yelling. Special props go out to DJ Steve Porter, who's "Press Hop" video attracted enough attention (and a ton of page views from *Legion*) that Inside the NFL commissioned a second one entitled "You Play to Win The Game." Kudos, good sir.

2008-2009 Winner: Mike Singletary (Head Coach, San Francisco 49ers)
2007-2008 Winner: Mike Gundy (Head Football Coach, Oklahoma State University)
2006-2007 Winner: Denny Green (Former Head Coach, Arizona Cardinals)

The Guiding Light* Award for Soap-Operas that Never End: Once touted as a revolution in media, there is one unfortunate side-effect of the 24 hour news cycle; you got to report stuff for 24 hours. For channels like CNN and FOX News, it means wall-to-wall coverage of whatever Barack Obama or Sarah Palin are up to. For ESPN, particularly when we're in the doldrums of the off-season, where the only other sport of note is baseball that still has miles to go before the penant race, it means constantly hounding NFL teams about this, that, and the other thing. Occasionally, we find ourselves tormented by an ongoing story that torments our every waking hour. Even if nothing is really going on with it, we're still being beaten over the head by speculation and rumors. This past season was no exception and this story will likely continue to haunt us through the winter, spring, and the summer. Said story is...Tim Tebow. Yes, no need to qualify that any further; just the name should be enough to remind you of the endless coverage of his final college season, his place in the forthcoming draft, and the brouhaha about his Super Bowl that turned out to be much ado about nothing. I don't recall this much scrutiny given to a college athlete before, with analysts and players weighing in and with opinions all over the place. Some see him to be a savior, others a one-trick pony who won't translate over well to the pros. Either way, I'm getting sick of it and it doesn't show any signs of stopping. And Tim's resemblance to *Legion* ain't helping, either.

2008-2009 Winner: Brett Favre
2007-2008 Winner: New England Patriots chasing the '72 Miami Dolphins
2006-2007 Winner: Terrell Owens

* = Sadly, last year, CBS cancelled The Guiding Light, but its memory shall live on in this award

The Carolina Panthers Cheerleaders Award for Best Oogaba of the Season: This is another one of those awards that occasionally you have reach real far to find a winner, but at the same time, the effort is well rewarding, at least for me. Wardrobe malfunctions, cheerleaders getting rained on, bathroom hookups, and scantily clad women braving the frigid elements; sometimes you forget that there's a game going on. And surely this year's winner was quite the distraction even in spite of the team's ride to the Super Bowl. I'm talking about...the New Orleans Saints fan with underboob (visual evidence here [NSFW]). Nice thing about playing in a dome is that the fans can show up dressed however they want and this fan certainly seems all set for Mardis Gras.

2008-2009 Winner: San Diego Chargers cheerleader whose nipples inadvertently slipped out, AFC Wild Card Game
2007-2008 Winner: Three Green Bay Packers fans wearing bikini tops, Week 17 and NFC Championship Game
2006-2007 Winner: Tara Conner and Katie Blair (Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, 2006). See this thread for details.

The Dick Cline Award for Bad Decisions in NFL Broadcasting: Television revolutionized the NFL and the NFL gave a little back to it. After all, no single program annually draws as much attention (and calls for proclamations of national holidays the following Monday) than the Super Bowl. That isn't to say that it's all been good; for every couple of good Super Bowls, we get Heidi Bowls (to which the name of this award is in reference to). But football games only last a couple of hours and networks have to fill time to keep butts in the seats at home, hence the hours upon hours of pregame coverage even during the regular season. Then there's the Super Bowl, which doubles the length of just about everything, including commercial breaks and...the halftime show. Now of course we live in the post-Janet Jackson era, where networks are now conscious that they need to appeal to (and not piss off) a broad range of demographics and thus we've been stuck with "safe" choices. Outside of Prince, they've been all...tame, for lack of a better word, but this time around it went from tame to pathetic. Of course, this year's winner is...CBS for tapping The Who to perform at the halftime of Super Bowl XLIV. It wasn't all bad for CBS, obviously. This past Super Bowl was the most-watched program in American history, finally eclipsing the twenty-seven year record held by the final episode of M*A*S*H. They even had one of the most talked about ads of late by way of Davide Letterman, Oprah, and Jay Leno. On paper, the halftime show seemed to be a good idea; thanks to CSI, The Who's been rolling in royalty money by way of the network and the edited version of "Won't Get Fooled Again" firing up after David Caruso delivers a sharp one-liner is now a cultural phenomenon. But in execution, it all just seemed to fall apart. The Who have not aged well and perhaps now is the time to rethink the restraint the halftime shows have been showing in the last six years or else the networks are going to risk losing viewers for the hour or so between the 2nd and 3rd quarters.

2008-2009 Winner: ESPN
2007-2008 Winner: NFL Network
2006-2007 Winner: NFL Network

Rat Boy's Rat of the Year Award: Finally, the granddaddy of them all, the one award that you really, really don't want to have any part in (though Nick Saban seems to be doing well right now). This award recognizes the worst of the worst, the most egregious acts that can possibly be committed by anyone affiliated with the National Football League, except in this case. True, we've had a few eyebrow raisers over the past year and I was tempted to have this award revolve around the whole Pete Carroll-to-Seattle and Lane Kiffen-to-USC deal, but that's been done. Although our winner this year has next to nothing to do with football, what he did could have implications for high profile players. That man is...Tiger Woods (Golfer). Work with me here. Tiger's been the face of professional golf for over a decade and has been long believed to be the model for professional athlete's in general. But as we all know, he was hiding something from both the general public and his wife Elin, so I don't see the need to rehash all that here. In short, the squeaky-clean Tiger Woods had been behaving just as any other boorish, out-of-control professional athelete we've ever heard of and look what it cost him. His reputation, (most of) his sponsorships, maybe even his marriage. With fame and money comes temptation and Tiger clearly succumbed to that temptation and sets a cautionary tale for all celebrity athletes including those in the NFL. Too often we've seen what abusing the lifestyle has resulted in and what Tiger's debacle proves that no matter what the public persona of a person is, everyone is still one (or about ten in Tiger's case) misstep from pissing it all away. It's acts like that will get you the Rat of the Year Award.

2008-2009 Winner: Al Davis, (Owner, Oakland Raiders)
2007-2008 Winner: Michael Vick (Former QB, Atlanta Falcons)
2006-2007 Winner: Nick Saban (Former Head Coach, Miami Dolphins)