NOTE: Having nothing better to do on a rainy day, inspired by high-quality herbal substances to take an unorthodox view of the Steelers' quandary on the offensive line, I offer the following entirely fictional and irrelevant scenario for people with a warped and forgiving outlook on life.

This story is not intended to deride, embarrass or otherwise defame anyone in real life. If Blitz is uncomfortable with it, then of course it should not be on the site but perhaps distributed privately to those who might find it humorous or at least a harmless way to spend 10 minutes grappling with it. I will leave it up to Blitz ....

In the meantime:

STARTING AT GUARD, IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE:
SOMEONE WE DON'T KNOW YET

In a small boardroom, in a parallel universe accessed only through the warped minds of a few select souls, the three head honchos of the Pittsburgh Steelers are gathered for their annual off-season strategy meeting. In this parallel universe, the Steelers have never won a Super Bowl, never made the playoffs, and have held the No. 1 overall draft pick for 32 of the last 40 years. Only rarely, however, have they made the first overall selection, thanks to a long-held tradition of trading away the pick for aging veterans or a staggering number of lower picks in the annual draft of college talent. This year is no exception, as they hold the No. 23 pick overall despite finishing with a record of 1-15, the only victory (by the precedent-setting score of 4-2) coming at the expense of the New England Patriots (hated in every parallel universe) and their coach, Billy Bettacheet.  This year, however, the Steelers have only six total selections, a significant decline from the 23 draft picks they had in 2007. Twenty-one of those draftees were cut at training camp and now work for FedEx in the Pittsburgh area. Of the other two draft picks, one is a backup center and the other is in Italy studying for the priesthood, in his spare time running a popular web site called Behind the Venetian Blind.

The three men are gathered at one end of a long table. Scattered around the table is the latest in high-tech communication technology: an 8 mm movie camera propped up on one side by three Steelers playbooks (each of them a quarter-inch thick) and aimed at a screen at the other end of the room; several coloring books and a giant pack of 64 different colored crayons. In front of each man is a glass, between them a pitcher of fruit punch flavored Kool-Aid. To one side is a plate of foil-wrapped baked potatoes and a container of sour cream.

At the head of the table is the owner, Art (Fart) Looney III. Fart Looney is wearing bermuda shorts, flip-flops and a brilliant tangerine and lime green Hawaiian shirt festooned with topless hula dancers. He's in his early thirties, lean and tanned after spending most of the last decade as a beachcomber and freelance sand sculpture artist in southern Baja. Like his father, Art (Bart) Looney II, he grew up with the schoolyard nickname 'Toon'. Unlike his father, a big man who worked off-seasons in the steel mills and was five-time wrist-wrestling champion of Pennsylvania before his recent tragic death (choking on the bottlecap of an Iron City beer he had attempted to chew rather than drink), Fart is a skinny guy with an aversion to physical exertion of any kind except scuffling along a beach and sweeping a metal detector from side to side. However, also unlike his father, Fart has a few active brain cells. In that respect he is more like his grandfather, Artie (Smarty) Looney, the scion of the Looney clan who made his fortune nearly a century earlier in potato futures, having correctly predicted the end of the Potato Famine in Ireland. From the day Smarty Looney purchased the Steelers, there had been a bowl of baked potatoes in the Steeler boardroom for all meetings. The sour cream is new, having been Fart Looney's first executive decision.

''Great idea, Fart,'' says the man seated to the left of the owner. ''This sour cream is kinda goopy but adds a certain je ne sais squat to the taters.''

Fart Looney squinted as he watched the general manager of the Steelers dig into his baked potato, the sour cream dripping down his chin and onto his copy of the team's player roster in front of him. Devin Gilgroom had been GM of the Steelers since leaving Duquesne University only 23 credits short of a degree in Recreation Management. He had become friends with Bart Looney while working nights behind the counter of Bart's favorite bowling alley, Spare Time. In the 10 years that Bart had been a regular at Spare Time, the Steelers off-season bowling team had won five NFL championships. Bart found that young Devin seemed to have a lot of good ideas about what was wrong with the Steelers and Bart quickly came to the conclusion that Devin was a bit of a genius about football, maybe even what they called an idiotic savant. The day after a strike shut down Spare Time, Devin was hired as the Steelers new GM.

''That's 'quois' Devin. Not 'squat','' corrected Fart. ''Je ne sais quois, which means I don't know what.''

''Well I don't know what it is either, but it is what it is and by that I mean it isn't what it isn't,'' added the man seated to Looney's right. ''If you don't mind, Mr. Looney, I'm going to go forward to the next potato. This is my kind of eatin'.''

Fart Looney turned his gaze to the second-year head coach of the Steelers, Tenzing (Zinger) Ling. The first Tibetan head coach in the history of the NFL, Zinger Ling had arrived in Pittsburgh 20 years earlier as a teenager. Fed up with the thousands of tourists trekking up and down in front of his mud hut in the Himalayan mountains, Tenzing went for a hike one day and never come back. When he reached Pittsburgh on a January afternoon, he knew he had found a place that no sane person would ever visit just to go for a walk. He slept in alleyways and storefronts until, one cold night, a giant of a man walking past the store  noticed the shivering, emaciated mound of Tibetan misery, stopped and said, 'Hey kid, catch,'' and threw him a No. 75 Pittsburgh Steelers jersey.

From that day forward, Zinger pursued mastery of the game of football with the same misdirected zeal that sent thousands of climbers to their deaths on the slopes of the Himalayan mountains. He sought out playgrounds and neighborhood streets all over the city, picking up the nuances of the game and the local language. He shagged balls at high school and college practices. He wore his No. 75 jersey to tailgate parties and learned about plays from the most knowledgeable fans. For a while, he had a concession stand at Three Rivers Stadium called 'Good Eatin', selling warm goat's milk and Yak jerky sent to him by his grandmother. After games he would hang out at local bars and absorb what the football gurus were discussing. One day, after drinking too much fermented goat's milk during a 37-6 loss to the Browns, he bravely entered a discussion about a Bubby Brister interception and said, ''It is what it is and it isn't what it isn't.'' It was the nearest interpretation he could think of to a famous inspirational message from a Tibetan god symbolizing passive acceptance of earthly body imperfections. The crowd at the bar went quiet, as each man and overweight woman weighed the words and realized the truth of their luckless lives as Steeler fans. From that day forward, at that bar, Zinger always had the last word on arguments about play selection and the stupidity of various assistant coaches.

It was inevitable that one day Bart Looney would wander into that bar, belch his famous beer burp as an introduction ('Hey buddy, just call me BAAARRRRRRT,') and meet Zinger. At exactly that moment of Bart's belched introduction, Zinger knew he was experiencing a life-changing event on the same scale as the day that black and gold No. 75 Steelers jersey drifted over his soaking wet little head. This would be his way up the mountain. He would either reach his Everest, the Super Bowl, or die trying. One thing he knew for sure: as long as he was with the Steelers and a bowl of baked potatoes was available every day, he would never die of starvation. Every day, he thanked the Tibetan gods (every last freaking one of them, in the hundreds), a task which over the first year as head coach resulted in nothing happening at the Steelers practice facility until mid-afternoon. On game days, Zinger would limit his prayers to only the most important 75 Tibetan gods and therefore make it to the field a few minutes before kickoff.

For not the first time since he had met Zinger, Fart Looney closed his eyes and wondered what in God's name (Fart didn't believe in any) his father had been thinking the day he promoted Zinger from team yoga instructor and punt return coach (for Zinger could catch any punt, in any conditions, with one hand behind his back and his eyes closed) to head coach. He couldn't fire Zinger because the Steelers, through Zinger's lifetime deal, were now essentially subsidizing the Dalai Lama and feeding thousands of starving Tibetans every single day. This had been the source of the only good news about the Steelers for the past quarter-century, and Bart Looney had received the Nobel Prize for Peace just two months before his tragic beer bottle cap death. To fire Zinger would cause a firestorm of bad publicity the likes of which had not been seen since Sinead O'Connor had shaved her head, ripped the Pope and done that horrible song on Saturday Night Live.

No, the only way to get rid of Zinger was for the Steelers to win the Super Bowl. According to his contract, Zinger had promised to light himself on fire and proceed directly to heaven should that unlikely event ever occur. Without realizing it, Fart reached into one of the pockets of his Bermuda shorts and tried a few practice flicks of his Bic lighter. A minute later, the smell of burning flesh all too close to the family jewels brought him back to reality and the purpose of this meeting. Yes, it was true that Fart had some of his grandpa's smarts, but not all of them ... especially since finding that bale of Mexican Red washed up on the beach just north of Santa Rosa.

''OWW! ..... Ummmm, okay gentleman,'' said Fart, rubbing his thigh and bringing his singed fingers out of the toasty confines of his pocket. ''Let's proceed to the matter at hand, which from what I understand is to evaluate our team and decide on a course of action in regards to the draft and players we might sign as free agents. Is that right?''

Fart picked up his copy of the roster and let go a sigh of relief. It was the longest he had talked in nearly four years and all those words had exhausted him not just physically, but mentally. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and visualized a stretch of pure, unmarked white beach, the surf gently sliding away with the outgoing tide and the sun warming his back. Ahhh ... his hands itched for the familiar feel of the worn leather handle of his metal detector ...The unnaturally high squeaky voice of Gilgroom brought him back to reality.

''Well boss, you will be glad to know that we are generally in pretty good shape for next season. Most of the starters are coming back, we've got some good-looking kids ready to move up, and we've pinpointed some prospects that will get us out of the basement and into the penthouse of the NFL.''

''Yes, that is as stated the state of the nation,'' chipped in Zinger. ''I couldn't have stated it any better. The dinner table is full and we are ready to satisfy our hunger for material success.''

''Hmmmm,'' replied Fart, bringing out the crooked pair of reading glasses he had found one day on a nude beach near Los Cabos, and focusing on a long sheet of statistical results from the previous season. ''Well, after winning one out of 16 games last season, it would seem to me that coming back with much the same roster, most of them being players over 35 years of age, we should be making a few changes. What about this number here ... our quarterback was sacked 132 times. Is that correct? What's the league average?''

Gilgroom got out the latest copy of Football Digest, leafed through a few pages and put his finger on a line of statistics.

''Well, that is a good point you raise, Fart. That was in fact a record number of quarterback sacks, not only for our team but in the entire history of the NFL. According to my sources, the average number of sacks around the league is about 32. So we were somewhere north of that.''

''North or south or east or west, it is not the direction you go but the destination you strive to reach which is important,'' said Zinger. ''Our destination and our destiny are linked to only one station in the railway of life as we know it in the material world, and that is the Super Bowl. And I, for one, and I can speak also I believe for Mr. Gilgroom so that makes two, am all aboard for that particular train and seated comfortably in the dining car. We are holding a seat for you, Mr. Looney, and there are enough baked potatoes for everyone to eat.''

Fart felt a headache coming on. It had been a couple hours since his last joint and he was coming down fast to a place that wasn't Los Cabos. But somewhere in his Looney soul he felt something stiffen ... no, not that, more like an internal resolve. He looked up at the patrician portrait of his grandfather, Smarty Looney, hanging at the other end of the room and felt a sudden kinship not just to the tubers that had made his family wealthy, but also the roots.

He sat up straight in the chair, fixed his squinty sun-baked eyes on first Gilgroom and then Zinger, and grabbed a brand new red crayon from the pack of 64.

''Let's do this right, gentlemen. Let's start at the top with what seems to be source of this problem with quarterbacks being sacked, the offensive line. Where exactly do we stand and what can we do to improve it.''

''We stand now with four of our starting players coming back and several well-trained as backups who will push themselves and the others to be better football players and human beings,'' said Zinger.

''That's right Fart. We're in good shape for a better season,'' added Gilgroom. ''We've lost our best offensive lineman, but we have a great big kid ready to step in and do a great job. Plus, just about all of our linemen can play another position just about as well as they play their first position, maybe better.''

''Hmmmm ... well, by the looks of things, maybe some of them should be playing that other position,'' said Fart, surveying the names and ages and positions of all the linemen under contract for next year. ''What about our left tackle. According to this we are paying for medical services to correct a problem in his back. Isn't a back injury kind of serious?''

''Well, that's true, Fart. But we only have to put up with his bad back for another season and then he becomes a free agent and then it becomes someone else's problem.''

''Yes, it is so unfortunate that he had failed to master the basic yoga positions,'' added Zinger. ''His limbs became frozen in a knot during the Butterfly Morning movement and his back has not been the same since.''

''So our left tackle has a limited lifespan as a Steeler, and the left guard who was our best player, from what I've heard, has apparently given us the finger. What about our center, this Irish guy.''

''Well, he's not in fact a center,'' said Gilgroom. ''He's a guard who is trying really hard to be a center and after practising getting thrown to the ground for a year, we think he will be much better this season.''

''Whose idea was it that he could be a center?'' asked Fart. ''It says here we went out and scouted and signed him to do just that. Shouldn't we have been scouting and signing a real center?''

''Mr. Looney, sir, we already had a real center on the team who had been trained diligently for that very job for a good long time,'' said Zinger. ''However, we felt his personal growth had maximized to a level which was not consistent with the standards required to reach our destiny, thus we set him free, as does the mother Eagle with a deformed young chick, by pushing him out of the nest. He has not been seen since. Also, we have another young disciple of the very center position of which you speak who is training and studying to someday be capable of being a real backup to the real center, whoever that will be someday.''

''Someday soon?''

''That is now a matter for the gods,'' said Zinger. ''Should they shine on us, it might be only a few years away. For certain, it is no one we know yet.''

''Alrighty then,'' sighed Fart. ''Let's move on to the right guard position, which it says here is played by someone we just signed to a big contract despite a history of injury, illness and generally run-of-the-mil performance on those odd occasions when he is 100 per cent.''

''Well, that is a problem,'' admitted Gilgroom, ''because last year he was healthy but wasn't quite up to his run-of-the-mill standard. In fact, almost everyone ran right over him from Game 1 to Game 16. However, he is a really great guy and we think he can improve back to his usual run-of-the-mill performance, or we can move him to center to replace the other guy who isn't really a center.

''Is there any reason to think he can be better there?'' asked Fart, a note of irritation creeping into his voice.

''Ummm ... no,'' said Gilgroom. ''But there's also no reason to think he would be worse than the Irish guy. Or, if we don't sign someone we don't know yet to replace the guy who gave us the finger, we can move him to left guard. Actually, he might be better than run-of-the-mill there, or at least better than the big guy we've trained for a few years who is kinda slow in a couple of ways ... ''

''Do you have any indication that's the case? That the run-of-the mill right guard might be nearly as good as the guy who gave us the finger, or better than the slow guy, or someone we don't know yet?'

''Ummm ... no. But someone we don't know yet might be better than all of them.''

''OK, if this guy we just signed again last year to play right guard, moved to the left guard, who would play right guard?''

''If I may, Mr. Looney sir,'' interjected Zinger, ''we have an ideal candidate to move into the right guard position, and that would be the person who has played the right tackle position.''

''Absolutely correct Zinger,'' added Gilgroom. ''He did a pretty darn good job for a kid with short arms at right tackle. He's almost certainly much better at guard. And the guy at center who isn't really a center might be a good run-of-the mill guard.''

''This right tackle has short arms?'' asked Fart, a spark of anger giving his voice an edge that sounded foreign to his own ears. ''Does he in fact have two arms?''

''Yes, he most definitely has two short arms, Mr. Looney sir,'' said Zinger in a confident tone of voice. ''I have seen them both with my own eyes, a right arm and a left arm. Both short.''

''Alright then, we have a guy with two short arms who could play one of the guard positions better than our other guys, maybe. But what would happen at right tackle if this short-armed guy moves over? Please don't tell me Dr. Richard Kimble is going to follow the guy with short arms and take over at right tackle.''

''Oh geez you are a hoot,'' laughed Gilgroom. ''Oh no, The Fugitive won't be playing right tackle. We think it could be someone we don't know yet. Or, it could be someone we know but don't have under contract yet. He is huge and used to be our starter, but we also know he wasn't good enough to beat out the guy with short arms, and it will cost us more than we are paying the short-armed guy to get him back. And if it isn't someone we don't know yet, or the guy we know who we don't like and would have to pay too much to, then it could be our left tackle. But only if our left tackle is replaced by someone we don't know yet who turns out to be better than we thought.''

''The guy with the bad back who is leaving in a year anyway might spend his final year at right tackle?''

''Yep, that guy, in fact he might be better at right tackle than left tackle.''

''Because of the bad back? Don't you need a good back to play any of the positions?''

''Yes, sir, that is most very much correct in your analysis again,'' said Zinger. ''But he is very healthy in many other respects and, at right tackle, his infirmities do not so negatively impact his performance as they would at left tackle.''

''And why is that?''

''Because, Mr. Fart sir, as we have seen from many years of studying football, the right-handed quarterback is much less likely to become mortally wounded and leave this earth as we know it, if he can see the defensive player coming right at him, then he would be if he is being pursued by an unblocked defensive player coming from behind him. A big player. Unseen. With many pounds of pressure and much built up aggression and vehemence in his unseen approach. That is a most unfortunate situation for our quarterback to be in.''

''How many quarterbacks have we gone through?''

''We have been so very lucky with this quarterback but before then we went through many, sir.''

''So, Gilgroom and Zinger, let me see if I have this straight. Looking at the offensive line from left to right as the quarterback would if he were upright, which apparently is a body position he doesn't stay at for very long. We have an old guy with a bad back who isn't going to be here long anyway at left tackle, if he plays at all, unless he moves to right tackle only if someone we don't know yet is better than we think. We have a hole at left guard which might be filled by a veteran who is, at best, run-of-the-mill, or by the short-armed guy, or someone we don't know yet. We have a center who isn't really a center but might get better or be replaced by someone who also isn't a center or someone we don't know yet, or even this guy who might someday be good enough to be a real backup. At right guard we have a guy who if he isn't injured or ill is run-of-the-mill, or who might be replaced by the short-armed guy. And at right tackle we have the short-armed guy who might get better, or the left tackle whose bad back might hold up, or by someone we don't know yet. In fact, someone we don't yet might be playing two or three positions.

''That's about it Fart. You got it. But you left out a couple things.''

''And those would be ... ''

''Well, those guys we don't know yet, we may not know who they are, but they are pretty darn good.''

''And what's the other thing,'' interrupted Fart, his hand returning to his pocket and fumbling with the Bic lighter, his mind contemplating the possibility that setting himself on fire might be preferable to another minute in this room.''

''If I may say so, sir,'' said Zinger, ''the other good thing is that our quarterback can run like the wind that blows over Mt. Everest in winter.''

''He can run like hell, huh?''

''Oh yes, most certainly. He is what he is and most fortunately for him he is a most excellent runner ... Now, one more potato for you sir? This meeting has given me a most incredible hunger. We have only six more position groups to which we must give our full attention and be prepared to create the timetable for our journey to destiny and the Super Bowl.''

''And don't forget the special teams Zinger,'' added Gilgroom.

''Special teams? What are special teams?'' asked Fart, the steely resolve of his Looney soul beginning to crack.

''Fart, you don't wanna know,'' said Gilgroom, dumping another gob of sour cream on his baked potato. ''We're really up shit creek there.''