John Walters

When Donovan McNabb’s 4^th-down pass fell incomplete (Pass interference? You hush!) last Sunday in the NFC Championship Game, Will Leitch was there to witness it. Leitch, 33, is renowned for being the founder and former editor of Deadspin.

Loyal readers of the web’s most popular sports blog know that Leitch is also an avowed and unapologetic devotee of, as he calls them, “The Buzzsaw that is the Arizona Cardinals.” The native of Matoon, Ill., has never been simply a fair-weather fan of the woebegone franchise that in his youth abandoned him for a fair-weather city.

Leitch, who is now a contributing editor at New York magazine, a columnist for The Sporting News and the founder/emeritus at Deadspin, took our call last Thursday to discuss his passions: The Buzzsaw, feature films, ridiculous wagers that get played out on the web and, of course, Erin Andrews.

Kinetic, amiable and insightful, Leitch is every bit as "palatable" over the phone as Bob Costas found him to be in person. Here’s Part I of our interview:

JW: Let’s cut right to the important stuff. Just a few hours ago the Oscar nominations were announced. What film was not nominated for Best Picture that should have been.

Will: They got it mostly right. “Milk”, “Frost/Nixon”, “Slumdog” and “The Movie With the Implausible Plot that They Got Around By Calling it a Fable” (Benjamin Button). But the last film? “The Reader”? I thought that “Wall-E” or “The Dark Knight” deserved that spot, and I’m not in a minority opinion there.

JW: "The Reader" ... Not exactly a title that leaps off the marquee.

Will: I would have actually preferred to watch someone read a book.

JW: Which film do you see winning?

Will: It’s hard to find a really good rooting interest. You hear “Slumdog Millionaire”, but no one in Hollywood knows anybody in that movie. I can see “Slumdog” losing to “Milk” for that very reason.

JW: You can make the argument that Sean Penn’s career comes full circle in “Milk”. He’s back to playing a counter-culture Californian who spends all of his time in the company of other dudes and who reluctantly learns about government. “Harvey, Anita Bryant is trying to deny us our civil rights!” “Don’t worry, my dad’s a TV repairman. I can fix it.”

Will: If he’d played the whole movie like Jeff Spiccoli, I would have liked that.

JW: Emile Hirsch was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in it.

Will: I think Josh Brolin (also nominated) is better than he is. He’s the best thing in the entire movie. “Milk” feels less like a biopic than it does a “cause” movie. If you saw the documentary “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk”, that gave you a much better window into who Milk was. “Milk” was a bio the way that “JFK” was a bio.

JW: Not a fan of “JFK”?

Will: The most normal character in that movie is Lee Harvey Oswald. That’s never a good sign.

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JW: Let’s go back a day or two. I notice on Deadspin an item in which Rod Marinelli, the outgoing coach of the Detroit Lions, ended his final press conference by saying, “Goodbye, ladies.” Did you laugh?

Will: I kind of thought to myself, Rod, you’re a head football coach in the NFL and your team finished 0-16. There’s nothing writers could have written that’s worse than what actually happened. It’s like Charles Manson complaining about being treated unfairly. “I know I deserve some bad press, but c’mon, guys, stop piling on.”

JW: You are a lifelong fan of, as you call them, “The Buzzsaw that is the Arizona Cardinals.” I’m guessing this dates back to your growing up in central Illinois when they were the St. Louis Cardinals. Do you go back to the Mel Gray-Terry Metcalf era?

Will: I go back to (quarterback) Jim Hart. And Neil Lomax. The most indicative moment of being a fan of The Buzzsaw, I think, would be 1987. We drafted Kelly Stouffer, a quarterback, and he chose to sit out a year rather than play for us. We had an Eli Manning/Elway pulled on us by a guy named Kelly Stouffer.

JW: He’d rather be unemployed than play for the Cardinals.

Will: Yes. It’s one thing when future Hall of Famer John Elway pulls that stunt. But Kelly Stouffer?

Another low point. A few years back (2003), they had the brush fires in San Diego. The Chargers were forced to move their Monday Night Football game against the Dolphins to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, where the Cardinals played. And you know what? It was the first sellout at Sun Devil Stadium in six years. I remember watching on TV, fans had signs that read “Anybody But Cardinals.”

Also on NBCSports.com Rosenthal: Steelers’ struggles could sink their playoff hopes Circling the Bases: Halladay to Cubs? That’s unlikely College Football Talk: Weis to resign? That’s ‘not happening’ Opinion: So far, Nowitzki is NBA’s MVP  |  Fan Ranker Twitter: Follow us @nbc_sports

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