Today, with a nod to the geniuses at McSweeneys, Friday Night Lights character Tim Riggins, fullback for the Dylan Panthers, tells Yankee captain Derek Jeter to back away from his girl, Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly), in an installment of Short Imagined Monologues.

Derek, bro ... how are ya? Hey put down the moisterizer for a sec. Let's have a chat.

(Extends hand.)

Tim Riggins, fullback, Dylan Panthers. Saw you the other night on TV. Can I just say, bro, you look really manly in those skin tight pinstripes. It was sooo tender the way A-Rod caressed your neck after your little speech. I'm rooting for you two kids to make it, I really am.

Have to say though, bro, I was kind of surprised to see you with your arm around my girl, Lyla. 

It's weird that a guy who looks like a muppet could have so much success with the ladies. To be honest, I'm proud of you, Deej. Mariah Carey before she went crazy is a quality score, bro.

Personally, I wouldn't listen to the crap she puts on records just to feign interest, but maybe that's the biggest difference between you and I.

Also, I don't throw like a girl.

Jessica Biel ... Scarlett Johansson ... Jessica Alba ... all that I can respect, D. I'm not sure it's on par with hooking up with the hottie single mom next door, then serving as the surrogate dad to her adorable son, Bo. But maybe I'm wrong. You probably have more time to do that kind of thing now that your team missed the playoffs, bro.

(Spills beer on his shirt.) 

It's a real shame, though, to see a good Christian girl like Lyla hanging out with someone who can't even field his position anymore. Are you really going to show up at her cheerleading competitions, bro? Are you going to have the time to hang out with Mr. Garrity, and drive him home after he drinks to much at the pre-game booster BBQ? I'm skeptical, bro. Real skeptical.  

Way I see things, If I can steal her away from my crippled best friend, I like my chances at being able to steal her back from you. Clear eyes, full hearts can't lose, right? Isn't that what Coach Taylor is always saying?

You see, like it or not, bro, she and I have the whole Texas Forever thing going on. Here's to God, and football, living large with good friends in Texas. And to beating the crap out of losers like Mike Mussina! When is that guy ever going to win 20 games, bro? He's about half as smart as Saracen and twice as girly.

Now, I'm going to need to ask you to tell Michael Kay and Suzyn Waldman to shut the hell up because I'm extremely hung over right now, and my head is killing me, but once I sleep this off, you're entering a world of pain. 

Oh, and tell Giambi I said the pornstache is clutch. 

PHOTOS: Riggins (NBC promotional material); Jeter/Minka Kelly (The Big Lead)

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Even though Tristan Wilds' performance as Michael Lee in Seasons 4 and 5 of The Wire is probably one of my favorite things about the entire series, I can't quite bring myself to watch the reboot of 90210, which stars Wilds as Dixon Wilson. Sometimes, though, my TiVo records programs it thinks I would like, and a few nights ago it recorded a promotional bit for the new season of 90210. I decided to watch it for a few minutes, and in an interview, Wilds described the Dixon Wilson character he plays on the show as "Ferris Bueller smashed together with Fresh Prince and Zack Morris."

"I want people out there who watched The Wire to know that this character, Dixon, is sort of like Michael, but somebody saved him right when they needed to," Wilds said. 

What made me chuckle, though, was a part of the interview where Wilds discusses the fact that his character on 90210 is going to be a star lacrosse player. 

"(Lacrosse) encompasses the best of all sports," Wilds said. "Hockey, football, baseball, basketball. You have a little bit of everything in there with one sport. It's kind of nice."

I suppose this could symbolize how lacrosse has continued to body-check its way into the mainstream, although it also strikes me as something cooked up in a production meeting: How can we come up with a different take on the "African-American kid comes to an all-white school for rich kids and dominates at sports" theme that is sort of a tired storyline in teen dramas.

It would be fun to see Dixon Wilson's crazy stick skills, watch him doing front flips like Mike Powell or stutter-stop moves like Kyle Harrison. (What I suspect, though, is to see a lot of quick edits and maybe him flying from behind the net once like Gary Gait.) You can wager that the sports storyline will also be quickly forgotten by the 90210 producers, as it is on every teen show outside of Friday Night Lights (and even FNL seemed to forget about football for most of Season 2, sadly).

I suppose this is, in part, because television producers don't think sports storylines will be a huge draw for their target audience, but it also might be that most actors are really bad athletes and it's hard to make it look credible. I still cringe every time Matt Saracen throws a football on Friday Night Lights, even though his character is one of the best on the show. Ben McKenzie's character, Ryan Atwood, played soccer on The O.C. for about half an episode before that was forgotten. The basketball on One Tree Hill is only a little more credible, if only because awkward white kids with sketchy ball-handling skills often do get recruited to play at Duke University.

For the sake of lax, I really hope he can pull it off. But it makes me laugh to think that, on his last show, they probably had to teach him how to hold a gun. On his current show, someone most likely had to teach him how to cradle and shoot left-handed.

Wilds photo: Getty

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Here at The Life of Kings, we take some things very seriously: Literature, football, golf and television, just to name a few.

My colleague, Childs Walker, and I have been discussing recently that it truly feels like we are in the Golden Age of television. In my opinion, it has replaced movies as the more satisfying storytelling device, with shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, LOST, The Office, How I Met Your Mother and Arrested Development taking the medium in directions no one had previously imagined. But only one show has used the sports as backdrop to explore many of life's truths in a dramatic and funny way: NBC's Friday Night Lights, which just officially announced today that it is returning for a third season. 

There are a lot of reasons you should watch Friday Night Lights if you don't already, and very few of them have anything to do with high school football. It features the best acting on television, and the fact that neither Kyle Chandler (who plays Coach Eric Taylor) nor Connie Britton (who plays Eric's wife, Tami) have been nominated for an Emmy is a outrage. The Taylors' marriage is easily the most realistic happy union on television, and a reminder that domestic bliss is more often about sarcasm than it is serenades. Eric Taylor might be the best TV dad since Steven Keaton on Family Ties. I tried for months to get my wife to watch the show, and each week, she scoffed at the possibility that she might enjoy an hour-long program about high school football. At some point, though, I tricked her into watching an episode titled "It's Different For Girls" in which the school turns on head cheerleader Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly, above) for hooking up with her boyfriend's best friend while he's in the hospital. It's hard to believe the best episode of Season 1 was primarily about cheerleading, but deep down, it was actually a razor sharp examination of the sexual politics of high school. By the end of the episode, my wife was hooked. The show now regularly brings her to tears.  And makes her laugh.

Friday Night Lights had what was, in my opinion, almost the perfect first season. Sports had never been given this kind of intelligent stage. Just like LOST, the show was more about human interaction than it was about being stranded on an island or playing a football game. High school kids didn't talk as though they had a graduate degree in English Lit., the way they did on most TV shows. Quarterback Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) spoke with all the same ums, and uhs, that an actual sophomore with self confidence issues would use. His girlfriend, Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden), was beautiful, smart, flaky, vexing and infuriating, the way high school girls exactly are sometimes. Lessons didn't always get learned, and characters didn't always "grow" from their experiences, just like in real life. And all of it played out on the beautiful canvas of West Texas, with its rich browns and grays to convey the proper mood and sense of place. The music was perfect, too. I never imagined I'd hear Wilco's "Muzzle of Bees" on a mainstream television show, but FNL proved me wrong. Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki), the the leggy blond from the wrong side of the tracks, was so sexy it practically should have been illegal.  

The show wasn't quite as strong in its second season, as it tried to prop up sagging ratings with a murder storyline that seemed like a complete betrayal of the show's ethos. And the football wasn't as prominent either, which allowed the show to drift away from what made it different from so many dramas on television. At its best, FNL was always anchored by its football scenes. We always knew where the team stood and how its ups and downs were affecting Coach Taylor's mood and family life. Some of that was lost in Season 2, which is why true fans were so terrified that it would be cancelled before we learned the fate of the show's loveable, loud-mouth running back, Smash Williams (Gaius Charles), one of the best young actors on television.

NBC, though, should be applauded for sticking with the show. Of all the networks, the Peacock seems to truly weigh a show's artistic value when it makes the decision to cancel or renew, and an age where it's so much easier to recycle reality garbage than it is to take a chance on quality scripted drama or comedy, that's admirable.

If nothing else, tune in when the show returns for the adventures of Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), the Dillon Panthers fullback who stumbles through much of life half drunk, never quite certain of his purpose and never sure how to get there. Kitsch plays Riggins with a goofy detachment, but he never fails to let his character's big heart shine through. 

Even when Riggins screws up, you can't help but root for him, just like the show.

PHOTO: NBC.com

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