The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, this is Josh Levine, and this is Slate's sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen for the week of January 5th, 2015.

On this week's show, we all talk about the opening weekend of the NFL playoffs,

wherein the Arizona Cardinals put together a historically

terrible offensive performance, and the Dallas Cowboys got a rare playoff victory with a bit

of referee assistance. We'll also talk about Oregon and Ohio State's victories in the inaugural

college football playoff semifinals, and whether Alabama and the rest of the SEC were

inflated, overrated beneficiaries

of pro-southern bias.

Sports Center anchor Jay Harris will join us to talk about the life and career of his ESPN

colleague Stuart Scott, who died of cancer over the weekend at age 49.

And in our bonus segment for Slate Plus members,

will assess J.J. Watt, the most dominant player in football and a man who, like Chip Hilton,

plays for mom and apple pie in Spanacopoda. Joining me in Washington, D.C., Stefan Fatsis.

Maybe. We'll get to it later. The author of the book's Word Freak and A Few Seconds of Panic and the Friday Sports Correspondent friend Pairs, all things considered. I think I actually just jumped a gun and wanted to make a Spanicoe put a joke about you, but I just couldn't wait. Hi, Stefan. Hi, Josh. With us from New York, it's Mike Pesca, host of Slate's daily Podcast, The Gist, with Mike Peska and a man who eats appropriately ethnic desserts.

How are you, Mike?

Profideral and Coogel.

What are desserts that Mike Pesca eats?

Yeah, those are ethnically appropriate desserts.

That's my new game show, the $64,000 pyramid in which the question is revealed before

the answer and then the question is repeated back after the answer is given.

Right, right.

...