Filed Under » Tennessee Titans

The NFL season is still weeks away, but it seems awfully close to Tennessee Titans punter Brett Kern.

"You can never be completely ready as a punter," said Kern. "There's just too much to it, what with having to kick the ball both far and high. And then sometimes the coach says he wants you to kick it shorter so it doesn't go in the end zone. I probably lost you already with all the technical jargon, huh?"

Kern says for a position like his, six weeks of training camp is not even remotely enough time to get ready for game-speed competition, so that's why he has been putting in long hours of practice honing various techniques.

"Mainly I have been punting," he said. "A lot, though. Like, I just punt all the time. All day with the punting. I'm trying to come up with other things I could do to help me with punting, but all I can think of is more punting."

The Titans open the regular with two home games at LP Field — which Kern calls a "punter's stadium" — but then they travel to the Meadowlands to play the Giants in Week 3.

"There you could punt into wind," he said. "Or with the wind. Or there could be a cross-wind. It's basically a punter's nightmare. But that's why we get paid the big bucks — at least big bucks for someone who only kicks things for a living."

Though he’s been a member of the Tennesee Titans for less than a month, 6thround draft pick and former Rhodes Scholar Myrone Rolle has already made enemies on the team by constantly correcting anyone who doesn’t use the term “American football” to describe the sport they’re playing.

“At first I thought he was just joking around," said head coach Jeff Fisher. "But after he started writing ‘American’ before ‘football’ wherever it appeared in the playbook, and it’s in therea lot, I knew this was going to be a problem.”

Titans quarterback Vince Young has already held two players-only meetings to address the issue.

“It’s one thing to be self-deprecating every now and then, because that’s the kind of British personality we expected from him," said Young. "But it’s whole different thing to say, ‘Oh I didn’t realize we were playing the game where we use our feet to kick a ball into a goal’ 14 times during morning stretching alone. Shut up, man.”

Correcting the language used by coaches and teammates hasn’t been the only problem for Rolle, who has already been reprimanded for using the film room in the Titans facilities to catch up on the latest episode ofDoctor Whoand spiking the team’s Gatorade containers with Earl Grey tea. He has also showed up each morning touting some new British band on his iPod as "the next Beatles."

According to Fisher, the only silver lining for the team thus far was management’s decision to waive linebacker Keith Bulluck this off-season. “Myron would probably giggle like a schoolgirl every time we said his name.”

ADD: Kenny Britt, WR, Titans — Not long ago, having a Tennessee Titans wide receiver on your fantasy football team was akin to setting a starting lineup full of players on their bye week. But then Vince Young came back. And it appears Young spent his blue period learning how to throw a football. In the past two weeks he's thrown it 11 times for 170 yards and two touchdowns to Kenny Britt, the 30th overall pick in April's draft.

People used to make fun of Vince Young's throwing motion. They compared it to Uncle Rico:

Well, guess what? Vince Young still throws that way. But now he really can throw the ball over that mountain. And guess who's waiting on the other side to catch it? It's Kenny Britt. And it's for a touchdown.

So pick up Kenny Britt. And in no time you'll be singing love songs to Britt like this:

(Yeah, I know his name is "Bret," not "Britt." But it's pronounced the same. So shut up. Jerk.)