They might not love its broadcast team, but they love to watch them some footbaw: Monday’s Cowboys-Eagles pointfest notched the most viewers of any event in cable history. You read that right. Highest in history.

The game earned a 13.3 rating, representing nearly 13 million homes and 18.6 million viewers. With so many story lines, viewers tuned in early and stayed late, as the game was decided in the final 4 1/2 minutes.

As SportsByBrooks reminds, that means a regular-season football game beat the audience for the series finale of “The Sopranos,” arguably the most culturally important television show of the late-90’s and early oughts. Everyone watched “The Sopranos,” and everyone talked about it the next day. It was a really big deal. And a little old Week 2 football game with minimal implications just came along and put Tony Soprano’s neck under its steel boot.

Challenge the NFL at your peril, cable television. All your viewers are belong to Roger Goodell. Or something like that.

Fool me once, strike one. Fool me twice? Strike three. And that’s where DeSean Jackson stands after his incredibly egregious “touchdown” “celebration” (it was actually neither in the end) last night against Dallas. In case you missed it, please observe Exhibit A:

As you can see, Mr. Foster is clearly a fool. No one in their right mind would ever (ever, ever, ever) think that dropping the ball before the end zone was an awesome celebration. Or even praiseworthy. Besides, you lose your chance for a cool celebration right then and there. Although, perhaps DeSean was just worried he might do something stupid with the rock. He does have a history.

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Tony Kornheiser took high school Spanish, and he would like you to know that:

Whoa! Nice, Tony! A dry-cleaning related comment during Hispanic Heritage Month — well done, sir.

(Quick stupid aside: I feel like this would be more offensive if it weren’t so incongruous. For one, I’m not sure it’s a particular stereotype of Hispanic people that they work as dry cleaners. It is a particular stereotype that they work as cleaners, and as wage-level workers in general, so yeah, that’s kind of offensive. But what’s even weirder is Tony posited that the Hispanic announcer was the one in need of dry cleaning. Semantics! It’s totally cool, right?)

Given Kornheiser’s apology, apparently not. But this little hiccup of a quasi-racist statement wasn’t even Kornheiser’s worst mistake last night. His silliest? Sure. But his worst gaffe was in saying that the Cowboys considered this game — in Week Two– a “must win”:

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At long last, Cowboys cornerback Pacman Jones’ suspension is coming to an end, as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell informed the team of his reinstatement today.  For an entire year, Pacman sat idle, staying still in the corner, camping near the power pill, waiting for the ghosts to come after him so he could chomp the pill and devour them and send their eyeballs to purgatory.

Word is, Pacman received the news while eating at Hooters.

Jones was at Hooters when he got the phone call informing him that his suspension is over, Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News reports.

Jones told Watkins, “It feels good man, you know, to get a second chance and I just have to take advantage of it. First and foremost, I don’t want to let myself down, definitely my little girl down. I’m thankful for Jerry [Jones], the fans in Dallas and my teammates for believing in me. I need to keep doing what I’ve been doing to get reinstated staying with myself and my teammates and staying away from those knuckleheads and just stay focused.”

So here we have a story about an athlete receiving a phone call so significant that we are noting where he was when he heard it.  It’s almost as if he’s being drafted.  I don’t have to have been there, or claim any credible sources, to get a good idea of how it went down: Pacman, sitting at one of those high tables with uncomfortable wooden stools.  At the table with him are his friends, family, and the waitress, who pulled up a chair to disingenuously flirt with him.  Pacman is in the process of pointing and laughing at an ironic construction-style sign on the wall that referenced female anatomy when the phone rings.  The table falls silent.  Pacman listens for a few moments, hangs up, and bursts into joyful tears.  Hugs all around.  He dons a hat that says, simply, “REINSTATEMENT.”

I want a hat like that.

With help from Scouts Inc., ESPN.com has compiled a list of each NFL team’s “best play” and illustrated the routes through interactive flash animations.  They’re all interesting, and a few are pretty funny.  The Cowboys animation seems to depict quarterback Tony Romo faking the handoff and then just tripping and falling backwards.  The play suggested to the Falcons seems to require that head coach Mike Smith print it out, hand it to the opposing offensive coordinator, and say, “Listen, this will only work if you guys hold up your end of the bargain.”  And in the Steelers’ animation, the opposing running back appears to see safety Troy Polamalu throttling toward him, say, “i quit i quit i quit,” and conveniently slow to a halt.

If I had the know-how to put these sort of animations together, I’d replace some of them with the following scripts.

Kansas City Chiefs: Offensive line ambles toward the sideline, makes arrangements to buy condominiums in Florida or Arizona.  Running back Larry Johnson takes handoff, plows through for -1 yard, makes the face a two-year-old makes after soiling himself.  Punter Dustin Colquitt, who starts the play at fullback for the sake of expedience, just trots a few yards back and waits for the long snap.

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