Totally Random

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What do Oakland Raiders fans eat during home games?

The stereotype includes steel nails and raw, just-sacrificed animal flesh, but according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Raiders fans are served the second-most vegetarian-friendly stadium food in the NFL.

PETA praised the Raiders for a menu that includes veggie dogs, veggie burgers, baked potatoes, peanuts, popcorn and pretzels.

‘Raiders fans have enough to worry about -- they don’t need to be thinking about the clogged arteries and cruelty to animals that come with eating meat,’ PETA Assistant Director Dan Shannon said in a news release. ‘The best way that fans can tackle their health problems and score some points for animals at the same time is to give these great vegetarian options a try.’

San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium topped the list, perhaps predictably. But surprising runners-up included Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field at No. 3 and Green Bay’s Lambeau Field -- supposed home of bratwurstmania -- at No. 5.

Trivia time

When did the franchise now known as the Arizona Cardinals last win an NFL championship?

Watch out, Romeo

Romeo Crennel is still employed as head coach of the Cleveland Browns, through you’d never have guessed it by listening to Marty Schottenheimer being interviewed on Sirius NFL Radio on Monday.

Schottenheimer talked about the possibility of returning to the Browns as general manager if Bill Cowher were hired as head coach.

‘That would be very interesting for a couple of reasons,’ Schottenheimer said on ‘The Sirius Blitz.’ ‘You know, Bill and I have remained very, very close friends throughout our NFL careers, and it goes back to when he was a player [for the Browns] and I was an assistant. I would be less than candid if I didn’t say that that is, at the very least, intriguing. But there are so many movable parts there it would be like a Rubik’s Cube.’

And nobody has pried the Rubik’s Cube from Crennel’s fingers, yet.

The invisible man

During his Monday new conference, Detroit Lions Coach Rod Marinelli was asked about his unrelenting optimism in the face of an 0-13 season, and if he sees something in his team that others are missing.

‘It’s the invisible, I guess,” Marinelli said. “No, that’s what I’m saying. I believe in the invisible. I do. I think you go out and you have faith in what you do. If you don’t have it, you’re nothing.”

This Sunday, the Lions play the 9-4 Colts, winners of their last six games, in Indianapolis. The Lions’ chances of winning that one, to borrow a phrase, would appear to be invisible.

Trivia answer

In 1947, the Chicago Cardinals won the NFL championship.

And finally

Florida Gators Coach Urban Meyer, speaking to the Tampa Tribune, on the BCS computers, which had Florida ranked third behind Oklahoma and Texas: “I kept hearing about the computer. The way I know about computers is you push ‘on’ and sign on the Internet every once in a while and do a spread sheet every once in a while. Other than that, I don’t know what goes into it.”

-- Mike Penner