Football picks recap: Week 3

Compared to last week, all three contestants did a good job with their picks this week. We could've had a 9-for-9 week if not for a couple of "sure thing" picks that sure didn't pan out. Our assessment of Week 3 follows:

The Good: Went 3-for-3, and no team has a better record than the Vikings.
The Bad: We're going to have to hear him gloat about it on Thursday Wednesday. A lot.

The Good: Still has the best overall picks record of the three contestants (8-for-9). Prayer is good, too.
The Bad: It would've come down to a tiebreaker, except that the Lions decided to actually play football for the first time in two years.

The Good: He got two picks right, which is two more than he got last week. He's also becoming very well versed in John's gospel.
The Bad: Where do we start? The Bengals won, the Falcons lost, and Lou has yet to win a week, going 4-for-9 overall.

Football picks recap: Week 2

As a service to listeners of The Catholic Guy Show everywhere, Lino Watch has decided to become the unofficial and unsolicited online home of the weekly football picks contest between Lino, Lou and Father Rob. The picks, the pressure, the prayerful punishments... you can now find it all in the box to the right. We'll update it every Thursday with the new picks, and we'll do our best to update the winners and losers as the games are played.

That being said, here is our assessment of Week 2, in the style of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

THE GOOD: Father Rob Keighron. Not only did he get his first two picks right, he doesn't even need tonight's game to be declared the winner: his beloved New York Giants came in and spoiled the Cowboys' opener in their new stadium, simultaneously knocking Lino out of the running. It doesn't get much better than that. (UPDATE @ 11:30pm ET: It does get better… how's 3-for-3 sound?)

THE BAD: Lino Rulli. He bet against the Giants (you need to listen to the priest, Lino), and he didn't give the Jets enough credit for being able to shut down Tom Brady & Co. He can use his down time at jury duty today to contemplate it all and to pray the rosary.

THE UGLY: Lou Ruggieri. Three picks, three losers. Bummer. Where's that Bible? You've got some reading to do.

BREAKING NEWS: She's baaaaaack!

Lino announced on the program this afternoon that Maureen McMurray, recently married former producer of The Catholic Guy Show, is former no longer. Yes, you read that right… after Lino swore up and down on many occasions that Maureen would never return to the show (especially after her ill-fated stint at NPR), Lino has somehow lured her away from Martha Stewart Living Radio to replace the recently departed Jared Rizzi as his producer.

For those of you who listen on XM 117 or otherwise began listening to The Catholic Guy Show after Maureen left, you have much to look forward to:

• An uncanny knowledge of Catholicism and Sacred Scripture
  
• The ability to produce a great Catholic radio show through inadvertent sabotage (especially when it involves Lino asking questions of single Catholic women).
  
• A virtual guarantee that any prize you may win on Let's Make A Catholic Deal will show up weeks or months after you won it, if it shows up at all.

This also means that Father Jim Chern will be tasked with resurrecting the Maureen Fan Club! We just checked, and maureenfans.com is available again if you want to snag it.

So now that Maureen is back at The Catholic Channel, it's time for her to get in shape! Lino has already outlined an exercise regimen for her:


UPDATE @ 5:20pm: Maureen's official start date hasn't been determined yet, but it'll be at least a couple of weeks from now. Just in time to coincide with Lino's other big announcement, which he says is coming in two weeks. Suspense, anyone?

BREAKING NEWS: Jared Rizzi leaves The Catholic Guy Show

Well, it looks like we were right about Jared. At the end of today's show, Lino announced that Jared was leaving his position as producer of The Catholic Guy Show and would be moving down the hall to one of Sirius/XM's political channels to produce a show there. Jared then came on the air briefly to confirm everything and to say goodbye.

We're sorry to see Jared go and are glad that everything worked out well for him. Still, a 30-second goodbye? And what was with the huge silent treatment of this over the past few weeks? C'mon Lino, Jared deserved better than that.

Silence can be deafening

Since our last post about Jared's absence from the show there have been a couple of subtle changes on air. Both Lino's traditional opening line at the beginning of the show (I'm Lino Rulli, The Catholic Guy, here with Lou and Jared…), as well as his line thanking everyone at the end of the show (Thank you Lou, thank you Jared…) have quietly vanished, replaced with witty banter. If you have really good ears, you might also want to listen to the "Heeeeeeey" at the beginning of each show. How many voices in that chorus have you heard since August 18th? If your answer is "two", then you should have no problem passing your next hearing exam.

To add more to what is quickly becoming a conspiracy theory, Lino in a show last week made mention of "my producer" working on something that a caller asked about without mentioning Jared by name. And the couple of times that callers have actually mentioned Jared's name on air, Lino has artfully steered the conversation away from that direction. Smooth.

All circumstantial evidence, you say. Well, here's some more circumstantial evidence we uncovered: a job listing on the Sirius XM Careers web site advertising an open Producer position for The Catholic Guy Show. The only caveat is that this job wasn't posted recently, but back on June 23rd. For all we know the powers that be might've just been trying to bring a second producer on board. Then again…

So what is one to make of all this? We said in our last post that we were not suggesting something fishy was going on. Given the events and discoveries of the past few days, however, we are now changing our position… and our new position is this: we believe that Jared is no longer a part of The Catholic Guy Show.

We freely admit that we have no concrete proof of this… nothing on Lino's Facebook/Twitter pages, Jared's Facebook page, or anywhere else we could search on the Internet says anything about this subject. And if it turns out that we're wrong, we will gladly retract our statement and apologize humbly and profusely for making it. That being said, we can't simply ignore the evidence we've seen so far.

More importantly, we can't ignore the silence surrounding it. There may be perfectly legitimate and important reasons for not mentioning Jared's absence. Contractual requirements. A personal request not to say anything. Timing an announcement to coincide with the introduction of a new producer somewhere down the road (which is exactly what happened last October when Jared replaced Ryan Stewart). If any of those is the case, then we absolutely respect that.

But barring any of the reasons above, we're left to wonder why a constant on-air presence who brought a lot of laughter and creativity to the show has met such an inglorious end. Tom Falcone and Maureen McMurray got whole shows dedicated to them. Ryan didn't get a sendoff, but he was always a behind-the-scenes guy, and in any case was just moving to a different show on the same channel. Even phone screener Christine, who was never one to make a fuss about stuff like this, got a 15-minute farewell at the end of her last show.

Jared Rizzi? We'll probably find out what really happened at some point. In the meantime, though: silence. The deafening kind of silence that speaks volumes on its own.

Have you seen me?

"I'm the Catholic Guy, Lino Rulli, here with Lou and Jared…"

Is it just us, or does Lino's opening phrase ring a bit hollow lately? As far as we can tell, we haven't heard a peep out of Jared on the air over the past couple of weeks. The last time we remember hearing Jared's dulcet tones was on the August 17th broadcast (otherwise known as The Day Lino Retired but Didn't). Since then: bupkis.

We're not suggesting that there's something fishy going on, but we're still left to wonder why Jared's daily presence on the air has suddenly vanished without even a mention on the show.