While We Are On the Subject

Now seems like the perfect time to wrap up all of our football related writing so let's go ahead and tackle my annual round-up of college bowl games with my usual focus on the interconference competition.  And from that perspective, this was the worst year yet in a long line of really disappointing years of college bowl games.  I guess it wasn't surprising though.  After a string of mid majors embarrassed the champs from the power conferences, the powers that be decided that if you can't beat them, take your ball and go home.  Even though their were small conference teams that arguably deserved a shot at the national title, they didn't even get a single BSC invite.  Boise State in the MAACO Bowl against a 6-6 Arizona State is an embarrassment.  It is amazing that any watches these games.  One thing that can be said for little guy is that they took their lemons and squeezed them into the cuts of the big boys.  In the 4 games that matched a power conference teams with an underdog conference team, the underdogs went 3-1.  What I love about this result is that the argument against including the mid-majors in the bowl games is that their high win totals are artificial.  They just benefit from weak competition.  That the 10th best SEC team would get 10 wins in the Mountain West.  Well, guess what?  The talking heads are wrong again.  These results once again show those tropes to be horribly wrong.  Penn State came within a win of taking the Big Ten and they got destroyed by Houston.  Wouldn't an LSU/Houston match-up have been ten times more interesting than what we got in the championship game?

So what did we learn from a bowl series that just paired mid-major against mid-major and power conference against power conference.  Nothing really new.  The ACC is clearly the red-headed step child of conferences.  They finished dead last in this years games (tied with the WAC) and further secured their basement position in the overall standing for bowl games since I started tracking these things.  My question is how is that the ACC stood strong through all of the conference realignment tumult while real football conferences like the Big 12 were on the verge of death.  The best thing we can do for college football would be to just disband the ACC and give their automatic berth to the Moutain West which is clearly more than just Boise State.  At 18-7, the MWC is second to only the SEC over the last five years.  Speaking of the SEC, I guess I have to give this one to the talking heads.  Yes, the SEC is the best football conference out there, although it does help when you get to play five of our bowl games against the Big 10 and ACC.  If only they had the guts to play the MWC.

One final note on this.  I will be starting the cumulative conference win totals over next year.  There has been so much realignment at this point that the conferences of next year will bear little resemblance to those that were part of my first 2007 round-up.  So crediting 2012 Pac-12 wins to the 2007 Pac-10 would make as much sense as saying, "I can't understand why the Pirates are so bad, they have Willie Stargell and Barry Bonds."  These conferences got plastic surgery, new identities, and entered the witness programs.  I mean West Virginia was last seen crossing the Rio Grande with a fake mustache.  So, we will start fresh.  That is if I even bother to care next year.  College football is horrible.

Final College Football Bowl Standings

Conference	W	L	GB
Big12	6	2	-
SEC	6	3	0.5
MAC	4	1	0.5
C-USA	4	1	0.5
Big East	3	2	1.5
MWC	2	2	2
Ind	1	1	2
Sun Belt	1	2	2.5
Big10	4	6	3
PAC12	2	5	3.5
ACC	2	6	4
WAC	0	4	4

Bowl Season Performance - 2007-2011

Conference	W	L	GB
SEC	30	16	-
MWC	18	7	1.5
Big 12	22	14	3
Pac-10/12	15	14	6.5
Sun Belt	6	5	6.5
Ind.	5	4	6.5
Big East	15	15	7
C-USA	14	15	7.5
Big Ten	18	23	9.5
MAC	7	15	11
WAC	5	15	12
ACC	15	27	13

This blog post is sponsored by Burt Johnson Construction.

I Think There Might Be a Game on This Weekend

With football dominating the national conversation one last weekend, now seems like a good time to revisit my beginning of the season predictions for the National Football League.  Here is what I predicted versus the actual, deeply flawed real life outcomes.

AFC East           Predicted      Actual
New England       13-3             13-3
New York Jets    11-5              8-8
Miami                  4-12             6-10
Buffalo                 4-12             6-10

AFC North
Pittsburgh            14-2             12-4
Baltimore              9-7              12-4
Cleveland             7-9              4-12
Cincinnati             4-12             9-7

AFC South
Houston              9-7               10-6
Indianapolis         8-8               2-12
Tennessee           8-8                9-7
Jacksonville        3-13              5-11

AFC West
San Diego          13-3             8-8
Denver                7-9              8-8
Kansas City        6-10            7-9
Oakland             2-14             8-8

NFC East
Philadelphia             13-3       8-8
Dallas                      11-5       8-8
New York Giants    10-6        9-7
Washington              4-12       5-11

NFC North
Green Bay              14-2       15-1
Minnesota                8-8        3-13
Detroit                     7-9        10-6
Chicago                  3-13        8-8


NFC South
New Orleans          13-3       13-3
Tampa Bay             10-6        4-12
Atlanta                     9-7        10-6
Carolina                  3-13       6-10

NFC West
St. Louis                 9-7         2-14
Seattle                    8-8         7-9
San Francisco         7-9         13-3
Arizona                  5-11        8-8

With a Super Bowl of San Diego over New Orleans.

Overall, I have to say I didn't do too terrible with my first public attempt at playing NFL oracle.  Although both of my Super Bowl picks were wrong, I got 4 of the 6 AFC playoff teams and 3 of the 6 NFC playoff teams right.  I did put both the Giants and the Pats into the playoffs and even on the playoff teams that I missed with, I wasn't embarrassly off.  Probably my biggest mistakes were St. Louis, Tampa Bay, and Cincinnati.  St. Louis and Tampa Bay turned out to be bad teams that capitalized on a weak schedule the year before only to return to form this year.  Cincinnati, I would say, is this year's version of St. Louis and Tampa Bay.  I fully expect Cincy to be a losing team again next year.   On the good side, I picked Houston's first ever playoff appearance.

The one lesson I learned from this exercise was not to try to pick final records based on individual game match-ups because it is impossible to pick the upsets before the season starts.  What you end up with is your really good teams with too many wins and your bad teams with too many losses.  Once you realize the top and the bottom of the league are too out of whack you end up just randomly picking upsets to better balance wins and losses.  And that kind of defeats the purpose.  Next, your I will just pick final records based on realistic exceptions of what NFL record distributions look like.

One final note just because I like to say I told you so.  NFL parity is no more real than Bigfoot and compassionate conservatism.  The conference championship games featured 3 teams that have been the most winning teams of the last decade and the 4th team was one of the most successful franchises of all time that just happened to fall on hard times of late.  And now the Super Bowl is the same exact set of teams that were in the Super Bowl four short years ago.  In fact, in the last 9 Super Bowls, only 3 different teams have represented the AFC in the big game and only 4 teams in the last 11 championship games.  You do see that kind of repetitiveness in a league dominated by parity.  I think it is time to put that one to bed.

My pick for the winner of Super Bowl XLVI - New England Patriots 32, New York Giants 21

This blog post is sponsored by Bach Worldwide.

It's A Trap

Since we are on the subject of ESPN’s “It’s not crazy.  It’s sports” advertising campaign, I have to highlight the cream of the crop which plays more like a documentary than a commercial.  The great disappointment of this ad and the real life events that inspired it is that real life (and copyright law) interjected itself into the delightful story of an internet meme’s attempt to turn the self-righteousness of the Southern football “tradition” on its head.  Wouldn’t it have been great if those prim and proper dance squad ladies that think it is appropriate to celebrate a legacy of slavery with the nickname of their past it's prime ball team had to  now wear a shirt with a prune-faced alien to their Saturday tailgate party.  Ahhh…what could have been.

Solitaire Update

The updates keep coming.  Not much new to report at this point.  I am beginning to pile up some sizable N's for what my normal rate of success is.  Before I can really appreciated  whether any potential strategies that I mentioned in that first Solitaire post has an impact on success, I have to understand what success looks like.  Right now we are settling in on a number of approximately 1 win for every 6 hands of cards.  Although the almost 200 hands played seems like a lot, there still seems to be some real movement in the numbers.  I think to get a true stable baseline, I need to go a total of 1000 hands.  So that is my goal right now.  1000 hands of solitaire with the standard straight ahead strategy.  Then we will see where we are and go from there.

Day 12 - 1 of 10 (203.5)
Day 13 - 1 of 12 (203.5)
Day 14 - 1 of 1 (203.5, 3.52, 48.34)
Day 15 - 1 of 8 (202, 3.49, 48.16)
Day 16 - 1 of 5 (203)
Day 17 - 3 of 7 (202.5, 3.55, 48.05)
Day 18 - 0 of 9 (202.5, 3.53, 48.05)
Day 19 - 3 of 5 (201.5, 3.56, 47.94)
Day 20 - 0 of 5 (200.5, 3.76, 50.58)
Overall Success Rate - 30 out of 191 (15.7%)

This blog post is sponsored by Allinol.

The World's Most Famous Piece of Terry Cloth

Is it any wonder that ESPN made a commercial that celebrated the fanship of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the single greatest and most successful NFL franchise in professional football history?  To be fair, ESPN did make “It’s not crazy.  It's sports” spots for other teams but none of the others were as genuine and real as the Steeler one.   In fact, the Philadelphia Eagle one was just downright sad for the contrived, artificial nature of it.  Whereas taking the Terrible Towel to the far reaches of the earth is completely natural and expected.  Watch any Steelers’ game and it seems like it is a home game, regardless of where they are playing.  I still remember a Monday night game a couple years back at Washington, the home of a once proud franchise with a supposedly devoted fanbase.  Yet, the Black and Gold dominated the screen and it was the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons quarterback that had problems shouting out signals over the roar of the crowd, not the Steelers.  It wasn’t like they were playing in Jacksonville.  This was an NFL town, yet they couldn’t muster up enough hometown fans to make a decent showing against the invading hordes of the Steelers’ Washington D.C. sleeper cell.  This is not uncommon.  Steeler fans don’t just travel well.  They are in every town and in great numbers.  But why is this?  It isn’t because the once polluting steel mill smokestacks created generation after generation of ex-patriots that infiltrated every corner of this country.   Pittsburgh was just never big enough to have that many former residents.   The truth of the matter is the opening statement of this paragraph.  The Steelers are the most successful NFL franchise of all time.  One for the thumb plus another finger on the other hand (you can pick which finger that is).  Eight Super Bowl visits in all.  The Steelers are proof positive that the specter of league wide parity and the death of the dynasty is one big myth perpetuated by college football apologists who still think anyone still cares about their sham of a “sport”. 

If we just look back at the last 10 years of NFL playoff history, yes you will see that almost the entire league did make the playoffs at one point or another (Sorry Houston, Detroit, and Buffalo - no playoffs for you in the last 10 years).  And the system is certainly set up to give better odds at a payoff than any slot machine you will see in Vegas.  Firstly, there are only 4 teams in each division.  So right off the bat you have a 25% chance in making the playoffs.  Not bad.  Once you add in the wildcards, you have over one third of the league participating in the post season every year.  During the last decade, if true parity were in place, you would expect every team to make the playoffs 3-4 times.  Instead, the majority of playoff visits are cluster amongst the a few privileged teams.  The NFL’s 1%.  In this elite group, you are making the playoffs, at worst, every other year.  The 10 most successful franchises (Indianapolis, New England, Phliadelphia, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New York Jets, Seattle, New York Giants, and San Diego) account for 56% of the playoff spots grabbed in the last 10 years despite only making up only 31% of the league’s teams.  The bottom 11 teams (Houston, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Washington, San Francisco, Oakland, Miami, Jacksonville, Cincinnati, and Arizona) captured 12.5% of the playoff spots (about 1 per 10 years on average) with 34.5% of the league’s teams during that same time frame.  People love to point to the yearly turnover of playoff teams as proof of the league’s parity.  But this myopic view misses the larger trends that are obvious with a more macro view.  One that shows that in fact there are dominant teams that over the long term continue to succeed again and again, while the one year wonders quickly return to obscurity.  If you live in Cleveland you can hold onto the dream of parity and the promise it brings to deliver your once in a decade playoff visit.  Or you can face reality and become a fan of real winner of a franchise like Indianapolis that gave you a rooting interest in January for nine straight years.  And that folks is why there are more Steeler fans in Jacksonville than Jaguar fans (The Jaguars really only have themselves to blame for this – they could have drafted TIM TEBOW!).

Solitaire Update

One of the stated goals I had for doing the solitaire update was to encourage more frequent writing on this blog.  Given that it has been over a month since my last blog post, you might say that I missed that goal by a country mile.  Well, yes and no.  I have been dutifully keeping track of my solitaire success and failures and the presence of that card playing log has been a constant weight on my conscience.  A tell-tale deck of cards whispering in my ear to post an update.  The quickly accumulating backlog of solitaire data has in many ways done exactly what it was supposed to do.  It has provided me with the prompt I need to finally get my fingers to the keyboard and start reporting.  And really only 30 odd days between posts is pretty good for me.  So I declare “Mission Accomplished”.

Day 6 - 2 of 13

Day 7 - 2 of 13

Day 8 - 2 of 14

Day 9 - 3 of 12

Day 10 - 3 of 11 (204, 3.5, 48.22)

Day 11 - 0 of 10 (203.5, 3.41, 47.47)

Overall Success Rate - 19 out of 129 (14.7%)

This blog post is sponsored by Merlotte's Bar and Grill.

Anything They Can Do, I Can Do Better (or at Least Equally Poorly)

Predictions are cheap in every sense of the word. There is no risk to one's bank account or reputation because predictions are forgotten almost as quickly as they are thrown off. That is probably why we have become a culture of meaningless predictions. Entire networks have been built around talking heads with dubious credentials predicting the end of the world, the next Enron, or (most importantly) whether Chris Johnson's holdout will result in him rushing for 92 yards or 105 yards in the season opener. And yet, despite all of the super, secret insider knowledge possessed by TV's many Nostradamuses, the great insights spouted by the know-it-alls of the world are almost always wrong. Of course that fact doesn't stop them from being ultraconfident that there next forecast will be right on the money. And why should it stop me as well. I am almost guaranteed to as good as the best ex-jock on ESPN family of networks and if I actually do hit on anything I predict, I can immediately point back to it as evidence of my pure genius. If I am wrong, well no one will ever see this post anyway. So without further ado, here are my predictions for the 2011 NFL season. And yes, I picked Green Bay over New Orleans in the opener (trust me - I am always right).

AFC East
New England       13-3
New York Jets    11-5
Miami                  4-12
Buffalo                 4-12

AFC North
Pittsburgh            14-2
Baltimore              9-7
Cleveland             7-9
Cincinnati             4-12

AFC South
Houston              9-7
Indianapolis         8-8
Tennessee           8-8
Jacksonville        3-13

AFC West
San Diego          13-3
Denver                7-9
Kansas City        6-10
Oakland             2-14

NFC East
Philadelphia             13-3
Dallas                      11-5
New York Giants    10-6
Washington              4-12



NFC North
Green Bay              14-2
Minnesota                8-8
Detroit                     7-9
Chicago                  3-13


NFC South
New Orleans          13-3         
Tampa Bay             10-6
Atlanta                     9-7
Carolina                  3-13

NFC West
St. Louis                 9-7
Seattle                    8-8
San Francisco         7-9
Arizona                  5-11

With a Super Bowl of San Diego over New Orleans.

This blog poster is sponsored by the Nucleic Exchange Research and Development.

Your Tax Dollars

Question : "Would the state’s highest-paid employee consider taking a pay cut to help with the ballooning deficit?"

Jim Calhoun : "Not a dime back"

Congrats to an egomaniacal coach with a shady history and documented recruiting violations on winning the ugliest national championship in decades with a bit of basketball that looked like it was being played by

How about we all agree that we can make due with a state college basketball team that doesn't necessarily win national titles every now while still meeting the lofty standard of hitting 35% of your shots (and your best player is considered to have an outstanding game by going 5 for 19 shooting) and save us all a bit on our taxes by clearing the 1.6 million dollar salary of the untitled Mr. Calhoun and the additional dollars of his very costly coaching staff from the public rolls?

This blog post is sponsored by Acme Corporation.

Bowl Season Round-up 2011

This being the night of the NCAA basketball championship, it makes complete sense to me to post my recurring NCAA football bowl season standings.  Actually, there is a very good reason to pair these two events.  The underlying theme of all of my bowl season posts is that the little guy is being unfairly kept down by they man.  The "experts" that heavily influence popular sentiment insist on repeating the same nonsense year after year that only serves to prop up the status quo and ignore the facts.  Yet once again the Mountain West Conference showed they were just as much a power conference as the SEC and Pac-10 and absolutely shamed the ACC and Big 12.  Despite the best efforts of the talking heads to marginalize these teams and the power brokers to lock them out of the big money games, the mid-major football conferences produced a that rightly deserved to be called national champion.  Numbers don't lie.  Kurt Herbstreet does. 

Then of course this years NCAA basketball tournament did more to make the Sportscenter yakkers look bad than Boise State ever did.  First, the major conference backers were apoplectic at just the thought of the 8th best team in the ACC or Big 12 didn't make the tournament and that the lowly VCU Rams did.  How could the tournament not reward a mediocre team with a vast recruiting advantage in favor of a team tried to get in by winning basketball games?  Shame on VCU.  But it didn't matter, because the tournament organizers banished VCU to the hinterlands of the play-in game.  Unfortunately for Dick Vitale, VCU won that game and then 2 more.  All against the talking heads preferred talking heads.  Their was nothing better than seeing Vitale eating crow after VCU made the Sweet Sixteen.  But even then he wouldn't admit he was wrong.  He claimed that many teams in the ugly step sister NIT tournament could have done what VCU did and predicted they would soon loss.  Only problem is they didn't.  They kept winning.  Virgina Tech and Colorado couldn't make the Final Four of the NIT, let alone the NCAA tournament.  So much for all the insider knowledge Vitale possesses.

The real question I have is why anyone ever listens to these guys?  They are never right.  They don't even seem to be pay attention to what is happening on the field/court (See Joe Morgan).  Why does ESPN pay these guys millions of dollars when I guy off the street would do the same talking head job for $10 and be just as right in predicting games as "The Swami". 

Final College Football Bowl Standings

Conference	W	L	GB
MWC	4	1	-
Big East	4	2	0.5
Ind	2	1	1
Sun Belt	2	1	1
SEC	5	5	1.5
MAC	2	2	1.5
Pac10	2	2	1.5
WAC	2	2	1.5
ACC	4	5	2
Big Ten	3	5	2.5
Big12	3	5	2.5
C-USA	2	4	2.5

Bowl Season Performance - 2007-2010

Conference	W	L	GB
SEC	24	13	-
MWC	16	5	-
Big 12	16	12	3.5
Pac-10	13	9	3.5
Sun Belt	5	3	4.5
Ind.	4	3	5
Big East	12	13	6
Big Ten	14	17	7
C-USA	10	14	7.5
WAC	5	11	8.5
ACC	13	21	9.5
MAC	3	14	11

This blog post is sponsored by Massive Dynamic.

Even if Lebron would have stayed, Cleveland would still be the saddest place on Earth

Yes, "The Decision" has a horrible debacle of excess, ego, and ignorance. Yes, the notion that any other team was being given honest consideration as a final destination was a sham. Yes, the whole fabricated fascination with LeBron's free agency gave the false impression that the NBA was more than the a gussied up version of pro wrestling (aka the outcomes are fixed) that only matters to a dedicated niche population. But in the end, I have to say I respect the final decision that David Stern made and passed off as LeBron's. To see a free agent decision come down to something other than dollars is so rare, I think you have to take notice and give a little golf clap. To take a little less to play with friends and create a unique experiment in how to make up a professional sports team is incredibly interesting and worth watching. And the noise that was made the likes of Jordan and Magic that they would never, I mean never ever (heaven to betsy, how could you even imagine it to be so), give up being the alpha dog and seek out a situation like LeBron has with Wade in order to win a title. That is why Magic demanded to be traded away Kareem and Worthy and why Jordan pushed for Pippen to be sent packing. To prove that they could win a title on their own. Not like that quitter LeBron. Oh, wait they didn't do that did they. And Jordan's days without that strong supporting cast in Washington didn't really work out either. The rhetoric was all so disingenuous. Sure the new Miami Heat haven't set the world on fire yet but I at least am paying some attention to America's fifth most popular sport.

Of course there is the other side of the LeBron equation, Cleveland. That sad little shell of a town. Football team that can be proud that they are now good enough to lose respectfully and a baseball team that is very similar to the Indians at the being of the movie "Major League". I guess the good news is they still have their bustling tourism industry as evidenced by the below video.

This blog post is sponsored by Bromley Marks Pharmaceuticals.

Bowl Season Wrap-up - Slightly Delayed - Again

With the Big12 barely clinging two life, I thought it might be a good idea to finally finish this post that I started back in January. Two years back, I did a round up of the BCS bowl games by compiling the records of the different conferences. I repeated this little exercise with the results from the 2009-2010 bowl season but to make up for the missing year I also did a cumulative record from the past 3 years. So, is there anything here of interest? Well, the not quite departed but surely to be renamed Big 12 has enjoyed both more recent and long term success than the two conferences that stole their teams. But then again, the moves of those teams weren't driven by seeking a more winning tradition. A bigger TV paycheck was the draw. Oh yeah, and academic alliances - and if you believe that I have some picturesque Louisiana beach front property to sell you. In fact, the two teams that bolted weren't the ones really driving that success of the conference so if anything, they left for a conference that gives them a better chance at winning.

But what I think is the most striking thing about the below results and the recent realignment announcements is what is happening with the Mountain West Conference. The success of the MWC puts the Big East and ACC to shame. They should not be begging to be included in the BCS. The Big East and ACC should be begging to remain a BCS conference. And now the MWC has added Boise State, the most successful non-BCS school outside of the MWC. Yet the MWC is still a second class conference. Ahhh, yet another reason to pay very little attention to college sports. They make money like professionals. They chase money like professionals. They give lip service to the student athlete but care for their education as much semi-intelligent individuals cared for the Lost finale. And they treat the everyone like a typical Glen Beck fan by thinking we will fall for the line that they actually care about crowning the best team as champion. As I have said before, I have no problem with the old bowl system. It never gave us a definitive champion but then it never pretended to. The current system that relegates the MWC to the ghettos of college football with the likes of Northern Illinois and Toledo insults everyone's intelligence.

Final College Football Bowl Standings

Conference	W	L	GB
MWC	5	1	-
SEC	6	4	1
Big East	4	2	1
Big Ten	4	3	1.5
Ind	1	0	1.5
Big12	4	4	2
Sun Belt	1	1	2
ACC	3	4	2.5
WAC	1	2	2.5
C-USA	2	4	3
Pac10	2	5	3.5
MAC	1	4	3.5

Bowl Season Performance - 2007-2009

Conference	W	L	GB
SEC	19	8	-
MWC	12	4	1.5
Big 12	13	7	2.5
Pac-10	11	7	3.5
Sun Belt	3	2	5
Ind.	2	2	5.5
Big Ten	11	12	6
C-USA	8	10	6.5
Big East	8	11	7
WAC	3	9	8.5
ACC	9	16	9
MAC	1	12	11

This blog post is sponsored by International Genetic Technologies, Incorporated.

Inexperience Is No Excuse

One of the many joys us parents are able to derive from our children is a continual feeling of superiority. You can stand back and laugh at their inability to execute such simple tasks as tying their shoes or solving for pi. Anytime the world is kicking your butt, just come home and challenge your kid to a game of SpongeBob branded "Operation" and quickly establish that indeed there is one person in the world that you are better than. That is of course until you reach that sad, sad day when your child reaches their physical peak any you have long since passed yours.

This blog post is sponsored by the Every Brown Bear Gets a Sandwich Fund.

Getting Off Lightly

This goalie is darn lucky that wasn't Elizabeth Lambert participating in the shootout. For taunting her with cartwheels, she would have intentionally kicked the ball in his face, then ripped off one of the posts of the goal to beat him with it, and then charged into the stands to roundhouse punch his mother. So consider yourself lucky that you only got embarrassed.

This blog post is sponsored by the Brown Detective Agency.

What's Your Damage, Elizabeth?

Yes, this particular news item is now about a month old but I am not what you would call trendsetter. But I repeat myself. Instead, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to stash this piece of video away in a convenient location for continued reviewing. Our dear Elizabeth Lambert exacted on the BYU soccer team what just about every high school girl imagines doing to her female classmates (but doesn't). Or so Hollywood tells me (that and actual life experience). To see this level of visceral girl-on-girl violence outside of the theaters or an episode of "Cheaters" is an uncommon a site as a well-acted ABC Family Channel Show. There were two parts of the video that I found the particularly interesting but were left relatively unmentioned in the resulting blanket TV reaction. The first was when a BYU player responded with the old "Scoreboard" rejoinder to the Lambert onslaught (very last scene of the below clip). Always a solid comeback to issue to a rampaging sore loser because it is sure to make them angrier. The second was a flailing slap-kick delivered after booting the ball away. Although the hair pull was the action that got most of the attention, for some reason it was the final exchange in the below video that really captured my attention. The hair pull was so quick while this seemed like a more prolonged, directed effort with intent to cause harm. Sure, the fact that this event involved pretty young women led the majority of the attention - anyone with a women in their life knows women can be everything a man can be including hypercompetative and physical. I just can't believe she didn't get kicked out of this game. In the end, though, I take my hat off to Elizabeth Lambert. You finally got people to care about a female sporting event.

This blog post is sponsored by Clampett Oil.

One For The Other Thumb

The great Santonio Holmes accomplished two grand feats tonight. First and foremost, he brought home the Steelers sixth world championship, putting them in front of the coked-up Cowboys and the nancy boy Niners. Second, he kept us from a world that would call Ben Roethlisbeger a Super Bowl MVP. It is really disgusting how lazy the Talking Heads can be when it comes to this perfunctory responsibility. Just give it to the winning QB no matter how he actually played (Exhibit A and B - the Manning Brothers) regardless of how they actually played or, when the QB is a vanilla non-celebrity, give it to the team's media darling and pre-game talking point (Exhibit C - Trent Dilfer and Ray Lewis), again, regardless of what actually happened on the field. It is like the only information these guys had to go on was the final score.

"What - the Ravens won? Well, I bet Ray Lewis had a lot to do with that. He had to. He is an incredible force of nature. At least that is what the teleprompter is telling me. That and he will kill me."

In honor of tonight's hero, I give you the following video. I found it pretty interesting when I first saw it. It details a part of the country that few people see and where Santonio is from. Abject poverty buried in the swamps of Florida. Just an hour or so from one of the richest zip codes in the country, these small towns exist as if they are in another world (say a third world). Of course, you can't be sure how accurate all the "facts" of the story are. In today's world of manufactured news, a good story trumps truth every time. No one doubts that this little nowhere ville is a hot bed of football talent, it is the tale of the rabbit chasing that I have my eye on. I would like to believe it is just as it is reported (in the sense that I like deeply rooted traditions that have real history and meaning - not in the sense that I like poverty and drug addition). But something in the back of my head says most of it is a production for the camera. About as genuine as the tryout episodes of American Idol. If there is one lesson we can take away from this story, it is don't be the bunny.

This blog post is sponsored by the Paper Street Soap Company.

Here We Go

I am willing to risk jinxing it in favor of showing my supreme confidence that Big Ben will not do his typical Brett Favre impersonation and the Steelers will be the defacto league champion by the end of the day (Does it really matter who the NFC puts up - the Super Bowl happens today at 6:30). The only thing that gives me pause is that all of the talking heads seem similarly convinced that the black and gold are moving on and anytime all the talking heads are convinced of something, it invariably doesn't happen. Despite that misgiving - Ladies and Gentlemen, your soon to be six-time Super Bowl champions, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

This blog post is sponsored by Callahan Auto Parts.

If These Walls Could Talk, They Would Scream in Pain

The reason my fantasy football team is so mediocre is because it is filled with interception machines and men that like to beat up on women instead of real studs like Chris Cooley. Just don't get between him in and a football unless you want a hole in your chest.

***On a related note - Can the talking heads finally acknowledge that Brett Farve is an overrated albatross to the team cursed with him and not an elite quarterback?***

This blog post is sponsored by Initech.

Don't Let the Door Hit You on the.......

All I can say is it is about time. The town of Green Bay can finally celebrate their freedom from the tyranny of one Brett Favre. The man that single-handedly robbed the nation of the Superbowl matchup everyone wanted to witness has mercifully decided to hang it up. Sure, there is going to be a portion of the Cheeshead nation that will miss his errant lame duck bombs every Sunday but the Packer organization can finally have a game plan that doesn't involve the quarterback running around like a chicken with his head cut off before closing his eyes and throwing the ball up for grabs. Now, I recognize that the man was one of the best quarterbacks for a 3 to 5 year period but since then he has been little more than a juiced up Don "Magic Man" Majkowski riding on the good will of a single Super Bowl victory (same number as the immortal Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson). During that time he has built up numerous reasons to forget that period of above average-ness and come to see him as overrated and object of scorn. Here are my personal top 6 list of reasons I never want to see him mentioned as one of the game's best.

6. The last play of his career perfectly summarized his career.
5. John Madden's Man Crush
4. Making a mockery of Micheal Strahan's sack record by giving him a fake sack.
3. Addicted to drugs and an alcoholic but noone seems to care
2. His joke of a consecutive games streak record where he would sometimes play a single play and then come out (also hopped up on pain pills).
1. All-time leader in career interceptions just above luminaries like John Hadl and Vinny Testaverde

Update : The fine minds at ESPN see the truth about the overrated career of Brett Farve. At least those people at ESPN that weren't hosting a three hour retrospective/deification of the man.

The one good thing about Brett Favre...best wooden acting by an overrated Quarterback in a comedy classic. (The embedded video appears to be non-functional, so go here to view it)

RU-DY! RU-DY!

What can I say, I am a sentimental fool. I get misty eyed at the end of It's a Wonderful Life and don't even get me started on the end of Charlotte's Web (when all those horridly ungrateful baby spiders start leaving Wilber). Add a sports theme to the mix and you had me at hello. Come on, a boy and his dad connecting from beyond the grave over a game of catch. What stone visage could stand up to that? So, when Samwise Gamgee finally overcomes long odds and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to realize his lifelong dream of playing for Pope-worshiping Golden Domers to the chant of "RU-DY! RU-DY!", I became an instant fan of the movie. And believe it or not, this moment of lilliputian triumph actually happened. Below is the actual, real-life Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger footage and the Hollywood dressing up of that same action.

The NFL Writers Ran out of Good Ideas

The NFL season started with so much promise. Unlike so many past parity-stricken years, there appeared to be at least four truly dominant teams, one of historic proportions. We were on a path to some epic football clashes to conclude the year. But like a TV series (X-Files and hopefully not Lost) or movie (Independence Day because aliens use Macs) that develops a killer hook but does not have the intellectual wherewithal to pull off a satisfying conclusion, the NFL season died a painfully slow death of dashed hopes and squandered potential. None of the great match-ups materialized. Not one. We did not get Packers v. Cowboys, Colts v. Patriots, Cowboys or Packer v. Patriots. Just a bunch of mediocrity mindlessly meandering through the playoffs. At least the Super Bowl provided the hope that we would be able to observe history, even if it required replaying a game from just five weeks prior with a team quarterbacked by a guy that looks like the least intimidating member of a high school marching band (probably plays the French horn). Of course, to be consistent with the rest of the playoffs, the game was an underwhelming snooze-fest involving a Patriots team that came ready for a coronation ceremony instead of a football game. The whole season quickly went from historic to forgettable in the span of 5 weeks. And we won't even get into the 4th down non-holding call that allowed a vastly inferior Jacksonville team to triumph over the mighty and deserving Steelers. The only good thing that came out of this year's playoffs was this YouTube clip. It makes perfect sense to me that Hitler would both be a Cowboys fan and own a T.O. jersey.

Bowl Fever - I Think I Got Vaccinated

This year's completely uninspiring college football season came to a merciful end this past Monday when the LSU Tigers completely humiliated the overmatched Ohio State Buckeyes. The game was unwatchable by halftime which is only appropriate because most of America had forgotten that the college football season was still ongoing by the time they got around to playing the "title" game. I hate to pull an "in my day" but in my day bowl season was actually entertaining. Even though the old system wasn't perfect, on New Year's day, you were assured of seeing all of the best teams in action. But now, New Year's day is reserved for fewer games composed of the second-tier teams and fifth-tier Illinois while all the "big" games are strung out as "events" unto their own. The old system would have given us the much preferable USC vs. Ohio State. Kansas vs. Virgina Tech could be entertaining as one of many games that you flip back and forth from but it ranks as a distant second to a rerun of Ugly Betty when it is the only football on TV. No playoff system successfully crowns the "best" team so we shouldn't concern ourselves with that for college football. Instead let's go back to the time when we had a day of 9-12 bowl games and a really great day of football. One game can be a blow out because one of the many other options will surely be heading to an exciting conclusion. I used to also walk both ways uphill in the snow.

About the only moment of the College Football title game with any suspense was the naming of Pontiac Game Changing Play of the Year Presented by Toyota. In the end, they went with 15 lateral play by Trinity to win their game against Millsaps. As you will see below, it would have been more meaningful if the other team hadn't quit trying at the end. By the time Trinity makes the final run for the goal line, there are many Millsaps players just standing around watching. Apparently they realized they were playing in a game that doesn't matter and no one cares about so if those fools were so determined to win, they can have it. It wasn't worth getting winded over.



Just to finish off this rant, I am also annoyed by the the talking heads insistence that the only worthwhile football takes place in the big conferences and that of the big conferences, the Big East is the weak sister. If you look at the final standings of bowl season as an indicator of conference strength you will see the truth. Not surprisingly the SEC is indeed the class of the nation but number two is the Mountain West Conference and that conference's one loss was a close game in which they lost their starting quarterback against a major conference opponent. Sure Hawaii was destroyed but Boise State and Utah have previously shown that the small conferences belong in the big bowls. I would rather have seen a tough BYU team take on Missouri than a mediocre Arkansas. At the least, the Mountain West teams should get all the bowl games that normally go to the ACC. They were just an embarrassment this year.

Final College Football Bowl Standings

Conference	W	L	GB
SEC	7	2	-
MWC	4	1	1
Big 12	5	3	1.5
Pac-10	4	2	1.5
Big East	3	2	2
S. Belt	1	0	2
Ind.	0	1	3
Big Ten	3	5	3.5
C-USA	2	4	3.5
WAC	1	3	3.5
MAC	0	3	4
ACC	2	6	4.5

Don't Take Your Sports so Seriously

There is no doubt that I am a big sports nerd. I have long been a participant in fantasy sports games and have wasted several years of my life playing sports video games dating back to Intellivision. It is not surprising then that I also utilize sports commentary columns and radio shows to procrastinate at work. I have found though that I am not a big fan of the straight sports news story, instead preferring those voices that mix pop culture and politics with their sports talk. This is one of the reasons that my afternoon commute (all 10 minutes of it) is spent listening to occasional PTI host Dan Le Batard's local radio show. It is 25% sports, 75% nonsense. This is also the reason that I have followed the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column through it's many incarnations. I originally started to read the column on ESPN.com. But when the tastefully named Gregg Easterbrook angered his mousy overlord, he was forced to take his show on the road. Originally starting the TMQ column on Slate.com before moving to the big time at ESPN, Easterbrook was forced to move the vagabond opinion piece yet again, this time to NFL.com. Apparently Mickey has a short memory because TMQ is now back at ESPN. Some speculate that this is due to the departure of Micheal Eisner who was criticized in the objectionable article. I don't care were I find TMQ as long as I can print it up for travel to the porcelain jungle.

Easterbrook holds a position at the left of center political think tank the Brookings Institute, writes for the left leaning New Republic, and has published commentary on Christian theology. So naturally, his TMQ articles are filled with asides about happening in politics, ethics, and as a true geek, the factual errors of science fictions shows. These commentaries are not straight unbiased reporting either. The words of TMQ definitely are meant to advance the agendas of its author. I have learned to take the non-football reporting with a grain of salt. The level of spin added to some stories obfuscates the truth sometimes. For instance, I have found his campaign against the continued glorification of violence in the movies to be right on target but specific descriptions and accounts of scenes in the "Passion of the Christ" did not turn out to be on target when I actually saw it. Same goes for his recent comments on the last Harry Potter. I thought he had one of the most insightful comments yet about the last Harry Potter book when he wondered aloud why the good guys didn't use guns against the evil wizards when it was made clear the wizards were vulnerable to projectile objects. But the remaining issues that he listed made it sound like he hadn't read a page of the book or any other in the series. Although it is a horribly weak plot device, Rowling made it clear in a previous book that the Sorting Hat could produce the Sword of Gryffindor. (On a side note, I liked Stephen King's comment that habit of the kids coming up with a brand new spell every time they were in danger was lazy writing) There were many, many, many problems with the Harry Potter books that should have made them unreadable to adults. TMQ just didn't pick up on them. Despite all that, TMQ is still my third favorite place to catch up on current events. It is also a fantastic way to avoid doing the work piling up on your desk.