Here's some things any spectator can watch while eating popcorn, even those who don't know a third down from, I don't know, a cat maybe?

But the "showboating big-mouthed attention whore" villains are just the start. There's "frat boy bully from a movie" Philip Rivers, for instance.

Seriously, just look at that face. When he isn't taunting opposing players, officials, or fans, he can often be seen yelling at his own teammates, because, according to many commentators, he is a real "competitor." I understand. You can't swear on the air. He is probably one of the biggest "competitors" in the NFL. But that's just my opinion, and opinions are like "competitors," everyone has one.

The point is, reality TV makes you wait an entire season to see Snooki get punched in the face. You get to see Rivers get crushed by multiple 300-pound men on a fairly regular basis every week and no one gets arrested.

Of course, it wouldn't be TV for stupid people without the heroic side of the overly simplistic and exaggerated morality play. Take the Saints in last year's Super Bowl, who got the same weepy, soft-focus, treatment that on reality TV is reserved for the last two people left on American Idol (and probably done by the same video production team.)

It was a great story, but you don't need to single handily heal the wounds of Hurricane Katrina to get the hero treatment. Before the Saints, you had Kurt Warner, whose supposed true life story of personal struggles, dark tragedies, repeated rejections and persistence got boiled down to one retarded sound bite: "A bag boy dreamed hard enough that he became a quarterback one day."

Not that we can blame them. Favre's return to Green Bay, as the star quarterback for their hated rivals, drew more viewers than the simultaneous World Series baseball game. He was booed heartily, at the stadium and through television screens everywhere, but unfortunately won.

Audiences were satisfied, however, when he lost to (and was injured by) the Saints in the NFC championship game. The only way it could have been more perfectly scripted was if Farve had revealed at the opening Coin Toss that he was Saints Quarterback Drew Brees's father.

He learned his lesson: Don't wear sweatpants to a nightclub, you lazy slob. But he also had to serve time for carrying an unlicensed gun, and everyone knows prison can be tough, so he hired a prison coach to get him up to speed. Seriously.

But of course the real gold in the world of celebrity scandals is the sex scandal, and holy shit does the NFL deliver. You may remember the 2005 Minnesota Vikings "Sex Boat" (also a 1980 movie). The title is a little inaccurate, there were actually two boats. Seventeen Vikings players rented two boats and a metric ton of hookers, took the hookers on the boats and had a lot of sex. It was a simple plan.

The police first heard of it when a nearby homeowner called to say that "seven black men" were urinating in her yard. The team and NFL yelled at them a lot but all that came out of it was some fines and misdemeanor charges.

And then you have the lovely sideline reporters. Now, I'd never suggest that the NFL employs these women purely to facilitate sexy scandals, but it certainly hasn't hurt.

Sideline reporters are mostly women because football watchers are mostly men. Sideline reporters stand on the field near the players and ask them insightful questions during the game, like "How does it feel to be winning?" or "How does it feel to not be winning?"

Worst case scenario: male viewers have a nice-looking lady to look at. Best case scenario: a drunken NFL legend tries to kiss the reporter.

More recently, former sideline reporter Jenn Sterger was allegedly the victim of Brett Favre sexting, which blew up big time despite fairly sketchy evidence, because there was a sexy lady (yay), there was Brett Favre (boo) and there was the thought of someone sending someone else pictures of their dong while wearing nothing but Crocs (haha).

Note that even though the draft takes place over three days, the circus leading up to the draft goes for weeks or months, including the six-day NFL scouting combine, where potential draftees perform meaningless physical and mental tests while reporters and team officials nod knowledgeably at them.

There is so much time spent building expectations that fans are prepared to literally crucify anyone who doesn't live up to them.

For years, the draft bust poster boy was Ryan Leaf. He was actually a #2 (insert your own joke) but most people considered it a toss-up between him and #1 pick Peyton Manning, whom, if you follow football, commercials or cereal at all, you know to be a ridiculously successful player with a funny face.

Long story short: Leaf did not wait for the pressures of success to cause him to flame out, but began to flame out immediately, before the season even began.

Not only did he have the attitude of a spoiled kindergartener, which is honestly par for the course in the NFL, but even worse, he couldn't play. After a couple more teams tried him out and confirmed that he was indeed broken, he was put out to pasture at age 26. Last year--11 years after standing on top of the world--he was arrested for breaking into someone's house.

Seriously, how can the media be chasing down Gossip Girl's Michelle Trachtenberg and asking her if she's fat...

...when people are counting on Terrence Cody here to actually tackle a moving target?

And finally, there's the Oakland Raiders. Some longsuffering East Bay fans actually follow the Raiders as fans, but most other people watch them for pure entertainment, because they encompass pretty much everything on this list so far.

The main villain is the owner, Al Davis, who was once a decent and respected man and is now a reanimated corpse bent on destroying all he once loved.

He drafts players apparently at random and keeps firing coaches until he finds one that agrees to coach his players to run smack into each other.

Or fall down for no reason.

The self-sacker there is JaMarcus Russell, who was, you guessed it, a #1 draft pick. He out-Leafed Ryan Leaf by being even more incompetent--and strangely serene about his incompetence--attributing it week after week to bad calls or bad luck, and saying he didn't need to change anything. He was given a $61,000,000 contract. There are no accidental zeroes there.

He obliged on the quirky scandal front with a rumored "purple drank" habit--a substance media outlets everywhere were delighted to explain to older white people.

It goes without saying that Russell also became fat, a subject I admit I've milked for cheap laughs. In my defense, fat people are funny.

The Raiders have been surprisingly quiet on sex scandals recently, probably because catastrophic failure is a turnoff to most women. However, backup quarterback Kyle Boller did his best to bring scandal into the family by marrying Carrie Prejean who you might remember as the former Miss California who came out against same-sex marriage and then someone found a teen sex tape of her. Funny how that happens.

The Raiders even have heroes, with possibly the best punter and kicker in the league in Shane Lechler and Sebastian Janikowski, both coincidentally in positions that minimize contact with the rest of the team (they get on the field for one play, kick a ball and get off). They are heroes for remaining with this depressing team so long (10 years), although I'm sure their record-breaking salaries ease the pain.

Sure, a ton of people really dig the drama they make up on Gossip Girl or stir up on Jersey Shore, but come on, you can't beat a team being driven into the ground by a reanimated corpse.

Check out more from Christine, in Political Cartoons: The Lowest Form of Communication and 'Plus Sized' Clothes: Translating the Baffling Euphemisms.