Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!

Too bad, Eli: The Patriots* got to the best 12th man FIRST. (Update on God)

2012-02-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

Boy, if it isn't one thing with the Patriots*, it's another. First, they steal a bunch of Super Bowls from guys like Kurt Warner (a guy who knows just the right amount of holiness to keep Jesus from wanting to smack you one) by cheating, and now that they've finally made it back to the big game, wouldn't you know it, they turn around and decide to get God all on their side.

And what better way to get The Man to root for you than by having a supermodel pray for it? Man, is there nothing Belicheat doesn't think of?

Here's what's going on: Mindful that the last time Not Actually Anywhere Near As Good As Joe Montana and his New England Cheatriots squared off against The Better Manning, Gisele Bundchen has asked everyone to stop praying for insignificant stuff like world peace and/or an end to hunger because if supermodels can get by on just cigarettes then why can't the poor, and instead to pray for something that really matters, like Tom Brady getting a Pinky Super Bowl Ring:

Reports The New York Post:

In a disgustingly sappy e-mail, supermodel Gisele Bundchen implored friends and family yesterday to pray hard for her pretty-boy hubby to win Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Giants.
...
The note, obtained exclusively by The Post, is hardly the stuff of Knute Rockne.
It’s filled with a touchy-feely request for “positive” thinking that one might expect from a Brazilian catwalk stunner — especially one concerned for her loved one’s safety against Big Blue’s fierce pass rush.
“My sweet friends and family,” the e-mail began. “This sunday will be a really important day in my husband’s life. He and his team worked so hard to get to this point and now they need us more than ever to send them positive energy so they can fulfill their dream of winning this super bowl ...So I kindly ask all of you to join me on this positive chain and pray for him, so he can feel confident, healthy and strong. Envision him happy and fulfilled experiencing with his team a victory this sunday.
Thank you for your love and support. Love, G :)”

In Gisele's defense, she didn't want everyone to know that she felt God had nothing more important to do than making sure Tom Brady didn't continue sucking in important games; contacted about the email, she told the Post it was supposed to be private, so the message she wants to send is: It's okay to ask God to spend His time making sure that your boyfriend wins a game, provided that nobody knows about it.

In Gisele's defense, though:

(A) God is probably pretty good at multitasking. I mean, if I can type this post while I'm supposed to be listening to this Supreme Court justice on the phone drone on and on about ex post facto this and my client going to be executed that... get to the point, already! You'd think we pay you by the hour to geeze up the Court!... then God can probably handle making sure Brady doesn't throw more than, say, two interceptions on Sunday while also keeping the universe from collapsing by continuing to spin out "dark matter," and

(B) She's pretty hot, so I'm 100% certain nobody is going to get mad at her about this. Look at her:

She could have sacrificed a kitten on a Satanic altar and 99% of America wouldn't have noticed it because they'd be willing that top to loosen its grip just a little.

Breaking News! Aaron Rodgers Doesn't Like Even MORE People!

2012-02-01T12:13:00.000-08:00

I know, surprising, right? I mean, The Anointed One has thus far been more or less a friend to all mankind.

In what might potentially be the least important news out of football ever, the 21st century's version of Trent Dilfer who in his lifetime is 1-2 in his first playoff game each year, has spoken out against fellow NFL'ers' lack of effort in a the meaningless flag-football after party that is the Pro Bowl:

"I'll be honest with you," Rodgers said on ESPN 540 in Milwaukee. "I was a little bit disappointed. I felt like some of the guys on the NFC side embarrassed themselves."

The AFC routed the NFC 59-41 in a game that drew boos at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu for its lack of early intensity. Rodgers, who started and played the first quarter for the NFC, didn't name specific players. "I was just surprised that some of the guys either didn't want to play or when they were in there didn't put any effort into it," Rodgers said.

(Source.) The fact that Rodgers (shown above right, giving 100%) even noticed the lack of effort marks him as perhaps the only person in the Western Hemisphere who bothered watching the game.

Rodgers didn't confine his criticism to a local radio show: he put it right out there on Twitter, the same place where America learns who Demi Moore is stalking:

On Wednesday, Rodgers poked fun at his criticism of the Pro Bowl via Twitter.
His tweet: "Just read this quote by Bruce Lee, 'the less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be'. Maybe I was wrong about the pro bowl?"

(Same source.)

After checking out Rodgers' Twitter posts, I saw that Bruce Lee isn't the only philosopher Rodgers likes to plagiarize: He also ripped off this tweet from Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts:

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

Rodgers posted that on February 1, and it was retweeted fifty times. Which doesn't prove A-Rodg is an environmentalist. It just proves that he can search a quote site. But, then, what else does he have to do? We're at least 11 months away from when he'll have to overthrow his receivers and scowl at them next year.

Cry Havoc! And let loose... wait, his name is WHAT? (Super Bowl Hype!)

2012-02-01T03:30:00.001-08:00

As I continue reposting past Super Bowl articles, I also want you to know that the other day, researching a post on what ever happened to all those people jilted by the NFL at the Packer-Steeler Super Bowl, I learned that Jerry Jones, Cowboys' owner's, real name is Jerral.

"Jerral," according to this site, is ranked 1185 on a list of the 1,220 most popular baby names. ("Somewhat popular", the site says.) It peaked in popularity in 1991 or so, when it briefly rose to about 650th on the list. So somewhere, there is a group of about 13 21-year-olds named "Jerral."

Today's recap is from 2010's Super Bowl and appeared first on The Best Of Everything:

WHODATHUNKIT!?: The Three Best Things You Really WANT To Know About the 2010 Super Bowl:

You know what one of the most impressive things about the NFL is, to me?

They can get closed-captioners to do what they want.

There are organizations that you assume have some power -- Wal-Mart, the people who make Zhu Zhu pets -- and then there are organizations that really have power, like the NFL. They don't go around showing how much power they have all the time, not in an obvious way. (Unless you count "suing everyone in sight about everything imaginable" as an obvious way of "showing how much power they have" but I don't count that, because I don't want to get sued by the NFL.) No, the NFL is so powerful that it doesn't need to advertise its power, and it does not need to make blatant attempts to mis-use its power, by, say, using its position as a newly-elected famous Senator to get its daughter a record deal.

Here's a question for you: Let's say you are a newly-elected Massachusetts Senator whose election was so improbable that it made national news and propelled you into the national spotlight, inviting comparisons to another newly elected Senator whose own election from a high-profile state had shortly thereafter springboarded him to higher office. Would you, if you were in that position:

(A) Try to live up to the hype by learning as much about national issues as you could so that you could 'hit the ground running,' or

(B) Use your national position to really push those issues you think are important and 'set the agenda' for a big political year for your party, or

(C) Immediately blow what little credibility you actually had by making your first official act be an attempt to use your office for personal gain by attempting to intimidate American Idol into having your daughter come back on?

If you're Scott Brown, the choice is obvious: Opt for (D), which is the secret hidden correct answer and which is "Use the office for personal gain through American Idol," and also pimp out my daughters and make jokes about how they might be whores."

Here's Scott Brown's idea of an appropriate joke:

But he made it up to Ayla by this past weekend telling Barbara Walters that his daughter's not a whore; instead, she's a disappointed American Idol contestant who would have won but she had never even worn make-up before, so she definitely deserves another chance or maybe the Senate will be investigating Fox a little more closely, if you get my drift.

The NFL does not need to pimp out its 17-year-olds or use its office for personal gain. It's already powerful enough, as I said, to get what it wants, as evidenced by the fact that this past week, I was watching TV while jogging on the treadmill at my health club, and the TV was set to a channel where the people on it mentioned something about the Super Bowl. I don't listen to the TV; I listen to music while I work out, so I had the closed captioning on, and when the captions got to the part of the Super Bowl, they read:

Super Bowl XLIV.

Keep in mind that closed captioning doesn't always spell Obama right -- I've seen it Oh Bamma -- but they used Roman numerals (the NFL's Numeral Of Choice, and the subject of a lawsuit the NFL once filed against Romans, trying to get the numerals called NFL Numerals) to number this Super Bowl.

That's power: Even if you're deaf, or listening to Karen O's All Is Love while you jog:

You'll know it's Super Bowl XLIV, and not Super Bowl 44. Or forty-four. Or Oh-Bamma.

The NFL wants to make sure that people get it right because the Super Bowl is big -- annually, more articles and television news stories are written about the Super Bowl than the next top 10 entertainment and sports stories combined, according to the website "Statistics That Sound About Right".

Don't go look for that site. I just made it up. But that would be an awesome site, wouldn't it? I call dibs.

So the NFL can't just leave things up to chance; they've got to ensure that their army of goons... I mean entertainment lawyers ... keep on top of things and control the message and stay focused and present the best possible story and do all those other things that somehow have completely eluded the Obama administration's capabilities so far, all to make sure that the NFL rakes in billions and billions of dollars... I mean presents you with a quality football game.

Unfortunately for the NFL, I'm not part of their media machine. Not for lack of trying; I'd love to be part of the NFL's media machine, making tons of money while sitting in Miami talking to Joe Montana about whether it's the catch or the throw, as Dan Patrick gets to do this week. Who wouldn't rather be doing that, instead of what I'm doing, which is sitting in my cold office, listening to Karen O's soundtrack for Where The Wild Things Are and getting ready to drive to Merrill, Wisconsin to argue about mortgages?

Not that this

Is bad, but it's no Miami-Plus-Joe-Montana, is what I'm saying.

Because I'm not part of the NFL's conglomerate, though, I am free to present to you the only article about the Super Bowl that's not sanctioned by The Man, that doesn't toe the NFL's corporate line, that doesn't just rehash all the tired press releases that Roger Goodell forces down the throats of those drones and lackeys who call themselves real sportswriters.

I don't do that, because I don't get paid by the NFL to do that.

By the way, Sweetie thinks Roger Goodell is hunky, but I don't see it:

Instead of meekly parroting back the NFL's tired stories like all the other "sports" guys do, I go out on a limb annually and present to you:

Whodathunkit?! The Three Best Things You Want To Know About This Years' Super Bowl (Super Bowl 2010!)

And you can tell I'm not afraid of the NFL, or beholden to them, because I don't use Roman (NFL) Numerals. I call the Super Bowl what I want, dang it!

(NFL, I'm sorry. Please don't sue me. I don't want to end up crying and destitute like the 72-year-old woman sued by the Redskins for not buying season tickets:

Pat Hill: Grandmother, real estate agent, and
deadbeat season ticket holder.

Daniel Snyder: Redskins owner,
billionaire, and the man who decided
to sue Pat Hill. Also, according
to insider knowledge I just made up,
Snyder asked the judge if he
could "eat her heart while
it's still warm."

But enough of this talk of lawsuits and billionaires eating people's hearts! It's time to get to the point of this post, which is those Three Best Things You Want To Know About This Years' Super Bowl (Super Bowl 2010!). Here they are:

After all this time, nobody knows what the stadium is actually called. Where is Super Bowl 2010 going to actually be played? Who knows? Not the NFL, which says it's going to be played at Dolphins Stadium. Trouble is, "Dolphins Stadium" doesn't exist. It's called Sun Life Stadium now, and like everything else in creation, Sun Life Stadium has its own website. Which also doesn't know what the stadium is called. Witness this very first line from the "History" page of Sun Life Stadium:

Entering its 22nd year of operation, Land Shark Stadium, originally known as Joe Robbie Stadium, was the first of its kind to be constructed entirely with private funds.

So, on a page labeled "Sun Life Stadium..."

...the stadium is called something else.

The confusion is understandable: Call-It-What-You-Want Stadium has been, in its time, called "Joe Robbie Stadium," "Pro Player Stadium," then "Dolphins Stadium," then finally it was called Land Shark Stadium to celebrate a partnership with Jimmy Buffett, who not only still exists but who also is the secret force behind this Super Bowl, apparently, given that last week he had dinner with Saints' coach Sean Payton and now he's responsible for renaming the stadium the game is held at.

Don't be surprised to see Jimmy Buffett filling in for injured Dwight Freeney in the second quarter.

I'm not sure how much Jimmy Buffett, or Sun Life, or any other company or person paid to name the stadium whatever it's called this minute, but I suspect whatever it was, they overpaid. An article in the Journal Of Sports Economics (we all subscribe to that, right?) suggests that there's a 1.65% rate of return on the investment... for three days, beginning with the day before the official announcement of the naming rights being bought.

You may be thinking to yourself: How can there be a return on an investment before that investment is announced? Wouldn't that hint that insiders are secretly spreading the word that MegaCorporation has just bought naming rights, and doesn't that mean insider trading, and isn't that illegal?

If you did think that, though, then you're part of the old world where investing and banking was regulated. In the new world, regulators date lobbyists, and Senator-elects get their daughters onto American Idol.

Amongst other legislative priorities.

The bottom line of that article -- the article I mentioned before all the nudity, remember? -- includes several startling conclusions, and by "startling" I mean "not at all startling if you remember that business executives have shoe polish for brains." Those conclusions include:

"marketing executives acknowledge that they have no way to measure the value of naming rights to the firm..."

"companies that own naming rights saw their stock values decline more than twice the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2002..."

"our main finding is that naming rights offer no economic value."

Whew! No wonder Sun Life doesn't want their name on it. The study also includes a table showing that of 12 companies who bought naming rights prior to the study, all twelve had run into financial trouble, including 10 of the 12 filing for bankruptcy. But to be fair, it probably wasn't the naming rights that drove them into ruin; it was the fact that they were run by morons.

I'm sure things will go better for
YOUR company, Jimmy.
(Snicker.)

Did you ever wonder if there truly is a "stadium naming curse?" You probably did now, and, having now wondered that, consider this: The Dolphins were 9-7 in 2005. In 2006, the stadium was renamed "Dolphins Stadium" and they went 6-10. In 2007, renovation of "Dolphins Stadium" was complete and the new stadium was unveiled to the world. The Dolphins went 1-15 that year.

If they'd kept the name, the odds are that the Dolphins would have ceased to exist as a legitimate football playing operation (you know, the way the Buffalo Bills have). Luckily, in 2008, a new guy bought 95% of the Dolphins, and in 2009 the stadium was renamed. The Dolphins went 11-5 in 2008 and 7-9 in 2009, winning as many games in 2009 alone as they did the entire time the stadium was named after them.

Are naming rights truly overrated? If you want to find that out, don't look at some study published by academics. Just take anecdotal evidence, which worked just fine for Ronald Reagan. To do that, you only need to look at the Detroit Tigers, who are a terrible baseball team playing in a city that is so bad off that it is used as a stand-in for the Katrina-destroyed New Orleans in movies. The Tigers, not long ago, lost their own corporate naming rights' sponsor, Comerica. Instead of selling new rights over the fountain at the park, the Tigers donated the spot to the Big 3 automakers. The result -- an outpouring of support by the community and a pretty good year for the Tigers.

What Would YOU Do For Super Bowl Tickets? Remember the lady who tried to trade sex for World Series tickets? Didn't you kind of think her real crime was in making her offer too explicit? What if she'd told those cops, "Look, I just want to go to the World Series, have a beer or two, and, by the way, my friends say I'm really trampy?" What crime would be committed then? If it's no crime to decide to sleep with someone after the date, why is it a crime to let them know up front how the date will end up?

Or is it a question of how subtle she was in letting them know? There are are other ways of advertising the same message, the message that if you take that person out, you'll be getting some:

Last week, this read "Sun Life Stadium."

Anyway, because of that crack police work by Philly cops who apparently think the biggest threat to their city is sleazy Phillies phans...

Book 'em, Danno!

... the world is safe for people who don't want other people to trade sex for tickets. Instead, enterprising Craigslisters are playing on guilt and other emotions to get their tickets. (No, sex is not an emotion.)

Like this guy who wants to take his wife to the game for their 15th anniversary. That's sweet, right? Oh, and also, he's a policeman! So, you know, you kind of owe him your tickets, 'cause of 9/11 and all. But just because he's a cop with a wife doesn't mean he needs a bunch of spam from you. Or, as he says: "I don't want spam or fraud so keep that shit to yourself."

Too bad you other posters didn't think to tell people not to defraud you. Caveat poster!

That guy is almost trumped by the fellow who wants to take his dad to the big game, and feels compelled to tell you that and reassure you that the tickets are not to resell. He even plays on your sympathy by noting he'll trade you his start/finish line Daytona 500 tickets, and pleads: "I hope that everything on C/L is not a scam." Expressing that hope makes it so, I'm sure. (But he didn't warn you not to fraud him, so feel free to at least try.)

Haven't started on your resolution to get in shape for the New Year? Why not trade those practically-worthless Super Bowl tickets for some fitness equipment? This guy owns a bunch of fitness stores -- but can't afford to buy his own tickets, so he'll trade you a Jumpoline for yours.

Those were all from the South Florida Craigslist. Things get weirder if you go elsewhere. This chef will trade his cooking services on Super Bowl Sunday, and says he's "looking to trade my time for anything of value." I know lots of movies that start out that way. Movies I'm not supposed to have watched.

I'm especially not to have watched
them at work.

In New York, you can trade your tickets for a Blonde Ibanez... but don't get excited, it's just a guitar of some sort. Also, in New York, we're back to guilt and emotion:

Looking to turn misery into something happy. Looking to trade a Diamond Engagement ring with platinum setting for 2 Super Bowl tickets. Ring is appraised for $13,000. Willing to meet at any jeweler for exchange if trader wants ring verified. Email me for more details/questions.

Maybe if she'd stayed with the guy who could afford to buy her a $13,000 engagement ring, she'd have been able to get him to buy some tickets to the game, too?

TV Saves The Day, As Usual: The NFL may want to crack down on realtors, as well as on churches that want to show the game, but it certainly has no problem with convicted drug offenders referencing its work. Home Improvement is among the many TV shows that have made references to the Super Bowl or built episodes around the game. In Super Bowl Fever, hijinks no doubt ensued when Tim Allen invited friends over to watch the game... but Jill got the flu! Here's a sample exchange:

Tim (about his Super Bowl party): I've been planning this for a long time, it's a tradition, honey.

Jill: You've never had one before.

Tim: Well, traditions start someplace.

Everybody Loves Raymond went to the Super Bowl, too, when Ray took Gianni to the Super Bowl, but then felt bad about not bringing Debra, so he ends up [SPOILER ALERT!][REALLY?][YEAH, SOME PEOPLE MIGHT NOT HAVE SEEN THIS YET AND MAY CARE][WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE, EXACTLY?][I DON'T KNOW, MY DAD, MAYBE?][OKAY. CARRY ON.] inviting Debra down, and then tearing up his tickets to the game just to show how much he loves her.

Debra then goes on to place an ad trying to trade her engagement ring, and maybe some cooking, for Super Bowl tickets.

Not offered: Exercise equipment.

Charlie Brown went to the Super Bowl, and the NFL had no problem with it. Just like the NFL had no problem with The Girls Next Door airing an episode in which Hef and the girls hosted a Super Bowl party in Arizona.

Why does the NFL let TV get away with so much, when grandmothers, churches, and other so-called innocents are sued into submission for merely mentioning the Super Bowl? Maybe it's because TV has saved the day for the NFL, as shown in the movie Two-Minute Warning. In that movie, which might just be a documentary, a sniper who hopes to shoot fans at the Super Bowl is revealed on television by the Goodyear Blimp camera, leaving the SWAT team -- headed by Charlton Heston -- not much time to try to take him out before he can wreck everyone's day.

[SPOILER ALERT! FOR REAL THIS TIME] They fail. (So I guess TV didn't save the day, after all. But it did show us how cops and the NFL failed to save the day, which is worthwhile.)

That wasn't, by the way, Heston's only brush with Super Bowl fame: He also, as it turns out, played "Cat" Catlan, a quarterback who had previously led his team to the Super Bowl, but now, at age 40, ignores a tempting job offer (executive at an auto-leasing company! Sweet!) and comes back to try one more run for glory with his old team.

That team? The Saints. So after Jimmy Buffet lines up for the Colts, expect to see this as a surprise late fourth-quarter play:

Cry HAVOC! and Let Loose The Hounds Of Super Bowl Hype, 3

2012-01-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I'll post my Super Bowl Whodathunkit!?, as always. But until then, here's some PAST Super Bowl posts from other blogs. This one was from 2009, Cardinals-Steelers, and first appeared on The Best Of Everything.

*********************************************************************

Once again, America's got Superbowl fever, although this year there's a bit of a twist to our obsession with watching a game that starts too late, is frequently too boring, and also should be played on a Saturday.

I could tell things are different this year because when CNN/HLN-- why the change to initials on "Headline News?" Was saying Headline News slowing down the actual delivery of those headlines? And doesn't it take just as long to say "HLN" as it does to say "Headline News?" Maybe a little longer, because "HLN" is full of soft sounds that make me sort of pause between them, or they sound slurry, the way "Saturday" sounds slurry if you pair it with another word. Try that: Say Saturday, and notice that you hit all the consonants. Then say Saturday Night Live. Unless you concentrated, I bet you said something along the lines of Saerday because you were rushing through Saturday to get to Night Live.

Unless you are Chinese, and spoke in Chinese, in which case you said:

星期六

Also, do the people at CNN realize that "headline" is one word? So "HLN" should be "HN."

Anyway, this morning on CNNHN, they did the now-common story about Superbowl ads, and I was about to react the way I do with all now-common stories they put on the news, and say that the Superbowl ads and their costs and stories about them are no longer news. There are certain things that have happened so often that they're not news. I won't round those up right now, because I'll use that for filler someday, but Superbowl ads and their costs are not news anymore. Yet, they are still talked about on the news, and for one reason: the only reason the stories are put onto news networks like CNNHN is because they have to kill time, and they don't have the luxury of putting three or four introductory paragraphs about something that (seemingly)(<<<note: foreshadowing!) is unrelated to their topic.

This morning's CNNHN story on Superbowl ads was, I guess, news, because the story was about how NBC hasn't yet sold all their ad time for the Superbowl, because of the economy or Obama or something. I don't know; I stopped listening and went back to doing my morning stretches as soon as I realized that they'd shown all the clips of previous ads they were going to show.

But while the story was news, it was clearly filler news, not headline news (or, as CNN would apparently spell it, not Head Line News.) And it was more of what we've always heard over and over about the Superbowl. Every year, it's the same things, repeated over and over. The underdog team, the overbearing team. Defense this, offense that. The ads! The ads! Pizza deliveries up! Chicken wing shortages looming! Analysis that is not analysis at all but is merely blather!

On that last note, consider this submission from Don Banks of Sports Illustrated. Don gets paid to say stuff like this, and that alone is proof that our economy is not so bad. If enough money exists to pay Don Banks to shut off his brain before going on the radio and talking, then we're all going to be just fine. Here's what Don Banks, "expert" "sports analyst" had to say about his prediction for this game: While I'm picking the Steelers by seven, I wouldn't be shocked if Arizona wins it.

I listened to that and had to stifle the urge to ram my car into the one ahead of me in rage -- misdirected rage, because I wasn't mad at that guy, I was mad at Don Banks, mad because I can't believe what he said passes for analysis. It's not. It's not. Here's why:

First of all, 7 points is a pretty big margin, and Don Banks thinks the Steelers will win by a pretty big margin. But he wouldn't be surprised if Arizona overcomes that big margin he thinks the Steelers will win by? Let's apply Don's thinking to other areas, for a moment: That mountain looks to be about a mile tall. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually flat ground. If Don Banks had come on the radio and said that, wouldn't everyone be amazed that he can survive in the modern world?

Moreover, saying I think one thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if the other is true, instead is not analysis, it's not a prediction, it's nothing. It actually detracts from the level of discourse. And the sole purpose of it is to allow Don Banks to claim some sort of expertise that the rest of us don't have. If the Steelers win, Don Banks will say I told you so. But if the Cardinals win, Don Banks will say I told you so.

Don Banks was on the radio, and CNNHN had the Superbowl ads on, as I said, for filler. With two weeks between the Superbowl, and more airtime and tv stations and websites to fill with content than ever, networks and magazines are desperate for something, anything to take up time. That's why you get, over and over, the same stories and the same "insight" and Don Banks rambling on like he mixed his medications up today.

I don't know why they bother with that. They could do what you've done, smart readers: They could come to TBOE for the first-ever TBOE installment of

Whodathunkit?

The 3 Best Things You Want To Know About Superbowl XKRISLV

Yes, it's Whodathunkit?, the beloved feature making its TBOE debut, that listing of facts that you want to know about a major event. Let others cover the offensive formations. Let others make predictions-that-aren't. Let others once again talk about Superbowl ads. Here at TBOE, I will skip that and I will provide you with those things you want to know about the Superbowl. So when you go to or have your Superbowl party this Sunday and things are dying down in the third quarter as Arizona takes a 42-0 lead (something that wouldn't surprise Don Banks, I'm sure), try laying some of these facts on your fellow Superbowlians:

(Also, see how I was foreshadowing this? That's literature, baby. Take that, Steinbeck.)

The Romans Couldn't Have Had A Football Team Go Undefeated: Last year, everyone was abuzz about the 18-1 Patriots* and how they almost won-- people hoping or fearing that they would go 19-0 and become the only undefeated NFL team in the 16-game era. As it turns out, that didn't happen. But had the NFL used Roman numerals to show the records of teams, instead of Arabic numerals, nobody would have had to worry. Why?

Because the Romans had no symbol for zero. The Roman numerals everyone knows and loves, I, V, X, L, C, M, and that little fish:

Do not include anything for a "zero." So if the Patriots* had played in ancient Rome, they never could have made a run at perfection-through-rules-violations. At best, they could have gone XVIIII- ... and... and... and what? See how that works?

Roman Numeral Related Party tip: If your Superbowl party gets a little boring as the Cardinals go ahead LII - ... well, let's say the Steelers will have III, try this: See if you can come up with a more ridiculous explanation of how Roman numerals came into existence than these two:

This guy says that Roman numerals came about because shepherds needed to count their flocks and scratched marks into their staves. He claims that the "V" came at the end of a row of IIII, so that "5" was IIIIV, with "10" getting an extra slash-through. He doesn't, though, explain how these marks would be made on what was presumably a thin staff, or why the rest of society would adopt what shepherds were doing. Typically, societal trends are not set by guys who spend 98% of their lives huddling on a hillside surrounded by sheep.

This guy, on the other hand (anticipatory pun intended), says that Romans were smart enough to invent numbers but not smart enough to do so without counting on their hands.

They're both wrong, of course. Roman numerals were invented as a secret code to communicate messages about the human rebellions against the aliens who'd landed in Egypt and built the pyramids, marking the dates and locations of major rebellions to be led by the Illuminati and the Knights of the Temple. It worked -- we drove off the aliens, but must remain vigilant. That's why the NFL uses the Roman numeral system for Superbowls -- to send the message through its broadcast: We remember, aliens.

You're nothing until someone can put mayonnaise on you...

How does America celebrate it's real heroes? By naming sandwiches after them. Maybe you've walked on the moon. Maybe you're the first African-American elected president. Maybe you've won the Nobel Prize. If you're one of those people, you might think hey, I've really done something here. But have you? I think not... unless somebody's named a sandwich after you.

By that standard, the only noteworthy person in this Superbowl is Ben Roethlisberger, who has his own sandwich, the "Roethlis-Burger," served at Peppi's Restaurant in Pittsburgh. It weighs in at more than a pound, and includes ground beef, sausage, scrambled eggs, and grilled onions. It costs $7 -- but american cheese on it is 7 cents extra. It's served on a portuguese roll, for some reason.

Having a sandwich named after him, as I noted, puts Ben Roethlisberger (career accomplishments: (1) not losing a Superbowl, (2) being tall) ahead of Neil Armstrong (career accomplishments: Successfully fooling America into believing he'd walked on the moon), Barack Obama (career accomplishments: singlehandedly restoring hope to America, one person at a time; smiling)(there are, reportedly, 9 sandwiches named after him, but further investigation reveals that none of the sandwiches are, after all, named after him) and ahead of David J. Gross, H. David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for "discovering asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction."

In fact, they don't even serve a Neil Armstrong sandwich at the Neil Armstrong Middle School. How could they miss it? Wonder bread (for the wonder of walking on the moon), swiss cheese (because the moon is made of cheese, and the holes are the craters) and bologna (because it was all done on the same soundstage where they filmed The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis).

Wouldn't it be excellent, though, if you could order a "Gross, Politzer & Wilczek Asymptotic Freedom" sandwich?

Note: Those of you who have been sitting around through this whole article wondering What kind of sandwich best symbolizes Garry Shandling? Wonder no more. It's ham, munster cheese, cucumbers, and tomato.

It can't be long until we see this turned into a movie, too, right? Movie producers continue to plumb the depths of comic books in hopes of capitalizing on the Superhero craze (hint to Hollywood: It's not the SUPERHEROES that are the draw, it's the fact that the movies are GOOD. So if you make GOOD movies, we'll come see them even without superheroes in them. Just make GOOD...oh, never mind. I'll look forward to "Bat-Mite: The Revenge" starring Tom Hanks.) So it can't be long until they realize that the NFL not only easily captures the public's attention once a year, but also has its very own super-hero. I give you:

NFL Superpro!

NFL Superpro was mild-mannered Phil Grayfield, a wannabe-football player turned reporter who happens, one day, to interview an eccentric football memorabilia collector/billionaire inventor -- isn't that pretty much a stock character these days? I remember a guy like that in The Great Gatsby -- an inventor/fan who has invented a $5 million dollar indestructible football uniform.

Apparently, judging by that cover up there, a uniform that is indestructible and can fly. But that's not clear.

Heedless of the fact that the NFL isn't even willing to require its players to wear readily-available concussion-resistant helmets, the inventor has actually produced this suit, only to have something happen involving thieves burning "priceless" NFL memorabilia, a turn of events that requires Phil Grayfield to (reluctantly?) put on the NFL Suit and become... NFL Superpro, thereby guaranteeing himself both an award for the worst superhero name ever (narrowly beating out Super Emeril LaGasse's BAM-Man) and also a lawsuit from the NFL, which won't even let me print a picture of Tom Brady getting sacked on a t-shirt. (Secretly, I did just that, though. Take that, Steinbeck!)

Through 12 thrilling issues of a comic book created for the sole purpose of getting its creator NFL tickets (honestly), NFL Superpro battled villains like "Quick Kick," a place-kicking ninja, (honestly!), and "Instant Replay," an assassin who can cut through time -- a cool power, but not a cool name -- and the most-feared villain in his rogues' gallery...

... Bennings:

And now there's a winner for worst supervillain name. So remember, no matter how boring the game gets this weekend, no matter how far ahead the Cardinals are in the IVth Quarter, no matter how little that surprises Don Banks, it could be worse for you, because instead of watching the Superbowl, you could be reading NFL Superpro.

Bonus: The world's computing power is constantly put to the test with applications that clearly benefit humanity, not by curing cancer or developing new virus-resistant crops, or, God forbid, finding a way to test peanut butter for salmonella; no, it's put to use by the Supervillain Name Generator, and I've done the hard work for you by not only linking to that site, but by generating these names for Kurt Warner and Ben Roethlisberger in the event that either of them becomes supervillains:

Kurt Warner: (Color: red; attack: air-related ('cause, passing); time ('cause he's old)): Best name: Breezeo.

Ben Roethlisberger: (Color: Black. attack: Earth/stone related; Size: Giant): Best name: Obsidian Master.

So that's your matchup for Superbowl XIER&EKXIII: Breezeo vs. Obsidian Master. Bonus points for anyone who at their Superbowl party, upon seeing Warner make a good play, yells Go Breezeo!

Update: Some Guy At Work suggested that Roethlisberger be Rocko The Obsidian Hornet. I like that, so we'll go with that: Breezeo vs. Rocko The Obsidian Hornet Master.

Cry HAVOC! And Let Loose The Hounds Of Super Bowl Hype, 2:

2012-01-30T06:44:00.000-08:00

Continuing my review of past Super Bowl posts...

Here's one that I originally posted on Super Bowl Sunday on the Colts/Saints year:

How will you watch the Super Bowl? Here's some ideas -- plus some oddly specific predictions for the game.

The other day, on the Dan Patrick Show, Jets Quarterback Mark Sanchez was asked how he would rather watch the Super Bowl: In person, in New Orleans, or at home. He said "At home," and explained that his reason was that it still hurt him that he wasn't playing in it.

Then, last night I saw on the news a story about a gathering of men who've never missed seeing a Super Bowl in person. These four guys (I'm not sure if they're a group, or just four guys who happen to share the same trait in common, that trait being an ability to spend a person's college tuition on seeing a game) have made it to all Super Bowls, from Super Bowl 1966 to Super Bowl 2010, where they were treated to a dinner by the NFL. (With ticket prices for Super Bowls in recent years averaging nearly $3,000 apiece, the NFL should've done more than give these guys some prime rib and a pat on the back.)

At the end of that story, which reminded me of the Sanchez interview, one of the men was asked about his prediction for the Super Bowl's score this year, and he said Saints 35, Colts 32; that comment in turn reminded me of an offhand comment Tuesday Morning Quarterback made the other day when he discussed things being "oddly specific" in sports and sports c ontracts. Tuesday Morning Quarterback (whose reviews of Brett Favre and Favre's performance would benefit from reading Malcolm Gladwell's article about how our attitude about a person can indelibly shape our impressions of that person's actions; TMQ's personal dislike of Favre makes him see everything Favre does through negative-colored glasses) commented in that article not only how he had predicted, in the beginning of the season, the teams that would make the Super Bowl, but also commented on the oddly-specific numbers, or numbers he saw as oddly specific, used in sports.

To TMQ, oddly specific includes setting a kickoff time for 5:28 p.m., as opposed to 5:30 p.m., and includes setting a contract at $451,000 instead of some other number.

Those numbers are no more, or less, specific than TMQ's preferred numbers, though: TMQ seems to think that there's something less specific about 5:30 p.m. than there is about 5:28 p.m., and he finds it absurd that someone would be so specific as to make a contract worth $451,000 rather than $450,000.

TMQ, in doing so, engages in the kind of uneducated snobbery he tries to decry; he feels superior to those people he claims are absurd for being so specific -- while not understanding that there's nothing more, or less, specific about either number: $451,000 is no more specific than $450,000. Both are numbers, and both are exact, specific numbers. $450,000 is an exact, specific number, and $451,000 is, too, and, for that matter, $451,929.32 is an exact, specific number, and it's no more, or less, exact or specific: In each case, the number is carried out to the same number of significant figures, and significant figures determine how specific you're being.

5:28 p.m. is exactly as specific -- because it's measured to the same degree -- as 5:30 p.m. What TMQ means is that 5:30 p.m. feels more general, and it feels more general because that's the number we all mentally round 5:28 p.m. to. If someone says something starts at 5:28, we all decide "that's about 5:30" and round it to that. Likewise, $450,000 seems less specific -- because it requires that we remember only two actual numbers plus placeholding zeroes, so we can easily remember it and it seems more general.

But people are oddly specific -- and they like to be oddly specific. Think of a number, right now, between 1 and 100. Got your number?

Mine was 43 (mine's always 43). I can't say what your number was (but feel free to leave it in a comment, if you'd like) I bet it was not a round number: I bet you didn't pick 10, 20, 30, or a number ending in 5, either; I bet you picked something ending in a 3, or 7, or 2 -- an oddly specific number, or one that seems so, anyway (because it's no more specific than 10, or 50). Ask others to do the same: I bet they'll never pick a number ending in a zero or 5 -- and they'll refuse to pick a "round" or not-very-specific number even though they don't know why you're having them pick a number.

TMQ, though, wants to make fun of people for picking oddly-specific numbers, so we can make fun of him for doing so because in the very act of making fun of the rest of us, TMQ has revealed that he's a pseudo-intellectual who doesn't understand the things he wants to mock. Numbers are specific only to the degree of significant figures they use; and people like oddly specific numbers, as evidenced by the score predicted by the Old Man Whose Been To All The Super Bowls; asked to predict a final score, the Old Man said Saints 35, Colts 32.

Why'd he pick those numbers, instead of any other two pairs of scores? After all, there are only a few scores a football game can't end in. A game can't end up 1-0 or 1-1, and that's about it; beyond that, all scores are possible. A game could be 2-0, or 3-2, or 4-3, and so on, with some scores being less probable than others. (4-3, for example, is pretty improbable because it would be one team scoring two safeties while the other scores only a field goal. Such a game is possible, but not likely.)

According to one no-doubt reliable source (an anonymous answerer on Answerbag), these were the scores for some unknown period of time in NFL games:

20-17 210 times
17-14 162 times
27-24 152 times
13-10 142 times
24-17 121 times

From that -- another set of Statistics That Sound About Right, a website I've really got to get around to creating -- it appears that the most common score in a football game, for one team or another, is 17; one team or another scored 17 points 493 times. 17 points is generally scored by getting two touchdowns, two extra-points, and a field goal (but you could get to 17 nowadays through three field goals, a touchdown, and a two-point conversion, or five field goals and a safety.)

The next most common score is 24 -- a team scored 24 in a game 273 times in that probably-not-very-reliable table.

So the most common scores by teams, according to that most-likely-fictional answer, are 24 and 17. If you were going to predict the outcome of the game -- any football game in the NFL-- you'd be smart to pick 24-17.

Which, by the way, was the final score of the first game the Saints lost this year -- to the Cowboys. They lost 24-17 in New Orleans, ending their hopes for an unbeaten season.

(Also, the Jets scored both the most regular scores in their playoff run: they put up 24 in a win against Cincinnati, and 17 losing to the Colts.)

With those articles floating around my mind, I decided to, for today, talk about how you might want to watch the Super Bowl by reviewing my own history of Super Bowls and how I watched them -- doing so because how I watched the Super Bowl in many cases, has turned out to be more memorable than the games themselves, at least insofar as I recall the details.

I don't recall details of almost any Super Bowl I watched since I began watching them back in the late 1980s. I can recall the teams that played, in most years, but I don't recall many specific plays or features of the games (or the commercials). Instead, I remember where and how I watched them, making those Super Bowls Past part of the history of my life, a yardstick whereby I can measure how I've progressed (or not) and see myself through the prism of time... and also give you (and Mark Sanchez) some advice on how to watch the Super Bowl, or not.

And, because remembering where and how I watched the games also brings to mind certain details of the games themselves that do stick out, I'll take my oddly specific memories of some games and provide you with some oddly specific predictions for today's Saints-Colts matchup.

I'll count them down from farthest in the past to most recent, and I'm not reviewing every Super Bowl -- just the ones that stick out in my mind. And I'm using not the NFL Numeral System preferred by the NFL, but the numbering-by-year system the NFL should use, because it makes more sense. Who uses Roman Numerals? It's impossible to remember which Super Bowl was which, using Roman Numerals, unless you count by year and then convert to Roman Numerals, and I don't want to get math involved in my football.

1. Super Bowl 1990:

Teams/Outcome: 49ers 55, Broncos, 10.

Where I watched it: I watched this game sitting in the dorm room where my younger brother, Matt, lived while he attended UW-Milwaukee for about a semester before giving up on college. Matt lived in that dorm with a group of guys who had ridiculous nicknames -- names like Noodles, if I recall, and shortly thereafter left the dorms to live in an overpriced student house off campus, a house they shared with a ferret. I would have driven down to Matt's dorm from my parent's house, where I was still living in 1990, a fact I remember because I recall that in this Super Bowl, I bet against my boss, Todd, at the gas station where I was working, in Hartland. We'd bet on the game, and I got the 49ers. Our bet was that the person whose team won got $2 per point scored. What I recall about the game was that the 49ers just... kept...scoring, and I spent most of the game sitting on the uncomfortable desk chair that comes with dorm rooms, at one point making a call to my boss when the score exceeded 50 for my team.

Advice I can give you, and Mark Sanchez, about how to watch the game: Get plenty of seating, where ever you're going to be. The dorm room had a floor, two desk chairs, and two beds -- for a bunch of guys to watch a game. I staked out the desk chair early on so I wouldn't end up sitting on a bed next to a guy named Noodles, but either way, I was doomed to spend the game uncomfortably.

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: That was the fourth Super Bowl for Joe Montana, and his first against the Denver Broncos, who came into the game with the much-heralded John Elway leading them. Joe seemed to take it personally, throwing for an estimated 53,000 yards, maybe to prove his point that he was the real great quarterback in the game. This year, everyone's talking about how great Peyton Manning is, and not commenting as much on how great Drew Brees might be by comparison. I therefore predict that: Drew Brees will take it personally, and will throw a touchdown pass of 68 yards.

2. Super Bowl 1991:
Teams/Outcome: Giants 20, Bills 19.

Where I Watched It: By this time, I'd moved out of my parents' house and into the mouse-infested apartment on 21st street in Milwaukee -- back when 21st street was still in the kind of terrible neighborhood where a serial killer could kill 17 people and not attract much attention. (That really happened, not far away from the apartment where I watched this game, and during the same period of time.)

I lived in that apartment with my friend Flan, who'd found the apartment and who'd taken the better bedroom. Flan, though, had gone to watch the game at his dad's house. I don't recall why I wasn't going anywhere to watch the game, but I didn't. I watched it at our apartment, alone, in Flan's room because he had a bean bag chair and the better TV and I assumed (correctly) that he wouldn't be coming home that night, so he wouldn't mind my using his room.

That game was before I really cared about the Buffalo Bills -- it was the start of what Cruella De Vil might call my magnificent obsession with them -- but I had them in my first-ever Super Bowl bet with my brother Matt. We'd bet $50 plus a team jersey, and I had the Bills.

I fell asleep in the third quarter of the game -- that was the start of my habit of doing that, too -- and woke up only for the final drive, where the Bills got the ball not-quite-close-enough for a final field goal attempt that went wide right, sending the Bills on to loserville for four years.

That's something funny about championships: Two teams make them, only one wins -- and the loser is often deemed to be terrible, the butt of jokes for years and years. The Bills went to four straight championships, lost all four, and are deemed synonymous with failure. Only in America, and particularly only in football, can you finish second four years running and be deemed a loser. Teams that never make the playoffs get more respect than teams that get there and lose, and America needs to do something about that. As Jerry Seinfeld noted, though, people hate silver medal winners and second place finishers: Silver medalists, he said, are awarded for being the best loser -- nobody lost ahead of them. "Congratulations," he said, "You almost won."

Advice I Can Give You and Mark Sanchez About Watching The Super Bowl Based On This Game: While Flan's bean bag was comfortable enough, and his TV nice enough, it was awkward sitting in someone's bedroom, without their knowledge, watching a game. I'd say not to do it.

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: Not being a big Bills fan -- yet-- I wasn't terribly upset when they lost because the game at least had an exciting ending to it. (I was more upset about the $50 plus the jersey. Those jerseys are expensive.) But I do recall the kick, that being one of the more dramatic moments in Super Bowl history -- and it was destined to be so, no matter how it turned out, because people think in terms of one-play outcomes (but that's for another day.) Missed field goals are a hallmark of this year's playoffs, too, and so I will make the oddly specific prediction that The Colts' kicker will miss a field goal, wide right, from 43 yards out.

(I told you, my random number is always 43.)

3. Super Bowl 1997/1999:

Teams/Outcomes: 1997: Packers 35, Patriots 21/1999: Broncos 34, Falcons 19.

Where I Watched It: I've lumped these two together because they marked the two of the three Super Bowl parties I've ever attended or thrown. I watched the Packers-Patriots Super Bowl with a group of law students at a friend's house, with about 20 or 30 people there, including a bunch of people I didn't know. I watched the Broncos-Falcons Super Bowl at Sweetie's apartment, about a year after we started dating, with a bunch of friends we'd invited over for the occasion.

In each case, the Super Bowl was less than fun; watching a game with a group of people, whether or not they're close friends, means distractions from the game, or, to put it another way, it means not watching the game. When you get a group of people together, they talk and make comments and a part of your attention is diverted from watching the game to conversing with them (and to making sure nobody takes your seat when you get up to get more snacks)(and to making sure that nobody notices how often you get up to get snacks.)

Sporting events are strange that way: While you might get friends together for any number of let's-watch-this type of evenings, only sports are deemed "Things You Can Distract Others From Watching." Imagine if your friends invited you over for a movie night, and throughout the movie you kept talking, about the movie and the things the movie reminded you of and your job and how tired you were going to be the next day, and other movies you'd seen. They'd throw you out.

But invite friends over for a Super Bowl, and they'll talk. And talk. And, probably, keep track of just how many snacks you're eating. The idea, I think, is that you're not supposed to watch sports, really -- it's just a mechanism to get people into the same room, the way "lettuce" is a mechanism to get "salad dressing" into my mouth.

I don't like that -- when I decide to watch a game, I want to watch it, and I mostly only talk (just a little) about the things going on in the game. Granted, a football game doesn't require the same level of attention and focus that, say, the movie Memento does, but still: I want to watch the game, not talk about your dumb job.

Another note: For the Broncos/Falcons game, I invented a pool called "Super Bowl Bingo," a Bingo game featuring squares marked with stuff that could happen during the game or commercials, things like The AFC kicks a 30+ yard field goal. I thought that'd be a fun way to bet on the game with all our friends, more fun than a "Final score" pool. I was wrong. Super Bowl Bingo was a disaster, as it meant that nobody could watch the game -- they were constantly checking their Bingo Cards: Was that a 5-yard run? To the left? Did that commercial have a green car in it? And they talked more -- distracting me from the game.

Advice I Can Give You and Mark Sanchez About Watching The Super Bowl Based On This Game: Don't watch it with others. And, if you do, don't worry how many Seven Layer Bars someone's eating. That's their business, not yours. Also: Make your Super Bowl bets simple.

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: I don't recall a single moment of the Broncos/Falcons Super Bowl -- Bingo distracted me far too much. As for the Packers' Super Bowl, the game began with a first-play, or early-play, long touchdown pass for Brett Favre's Green Bay Packers. But I've already predicted one of those. That game also featured Desmond Howard running back a kickoff for a touchdown, something that's happened in other Super Bowl. There have been blocked punts in the Super Bowl, too, but never a Blocked Punt Returned For A Touchdown, so I'm going to predict this: The Saints Will Block a Colts Punt, and Return the Punt 43 yards for a touchdown.

4. Super Bowl 2007:

Teams/Outcome: Colts 29, Bears 17.

Where I Watched It: This game, I watched at our house with the then-they-really-were-babies Babies!, who'd been born just a few months before. We watched it downstairs in our family room, on the big screen TV we'd splurged and bought for the family (justifying it, back then, by noting that Sweetie really liked to watch movies and The Boy and I liked sports, so it made sense for us to spend a lot of money on a big-screen TV for those purposes. Nowadays, though, Sweetie rarely watches TV downstairs, preferring, if she's going to watch TV, to do it up in our room away from the mess and noise. The Boy, meanwhile, used his own money to buy himself a Playstation 3 and a fancy TV and watches almost everything in his room. Our big-screen TV is mostly used, these days, to watch Little Einsteins.)

What I remember most about this game is that going in, I had my annual bet with The Boy in which we both, at the start of the playoffs, pick teams we think will win -- dividing the playoff teams up evenly and betting a t-shirt on the outcome. I had both the Colts and the Bears before the Super Bowl -- so I was guaranteed a win. But Sweetie was on The Boy's team (I had Mr F and Mr Bunches and Middle), and she likes the Colts, so I let them have the Colts anyway, but they had to give me odds -- if the Bears won, I'd get a sweatshirt, not a t-shirt.

Then, Devin Hester returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, and I celebrated and began rubbing it in: You're going to lose, I taunted The Boy, only to watch as the Bears faded away little by little, leaving me buying Sweetie and The Boy Colts' t-shirts.

Also, midway through the game, we had to go give the Babies! a bath and put them to bed, so I missed a chunk of it.

Advice I Can Give You and Mark Sanchez About Watching The Super Bowl Based On This Game: Have your Babies! bathed ahead of time, and set the game to tape. You may not think you're going to get pulled away from the TV, but what if you are? And you miss the most dramatic moment in Super Bowl history? And the next day, everyone's talking about it and you have to say What? I missed that, I guess. That always happens to me. (It happened, in fact, with the Janet Jackson halftime show -- which I watched most of before going to get more food, missing Nipplegate. I didn't even know anything had happened until after work the next day, when I heard something on the radio while driving home.)

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: Devin Hester's runback, which I'm pretty sure was the first play of the game. That was the fastest score ever to start the game. I'm going to go opposite, here. The longest time passed in a Super Bowl before a score, ever, was 26 minutes, 55 seconds (The Panthers vs. the Patriots*, Super Bowl 2004). I'm going to predict that The First Score Won't Happen Until 2 minutes Into The Third Quarter.

5. Super Bowl 2008:
Teams/Outcome: Giants 17, Patriots* 14.

Where I Watched The Game: Again, I watched it in my own house, with just the family, including the Babies, who were now 1 1/2 years old. The two most memorable things about this game were that, first, I was rooting against the team I had in the bet: I'd ended up with the Patriots* as my entry, and I didn't want them to win, because they're cheaters. I'd never liked the Giants and Eli Manning very much, so I found myself in the odd role of having to root for a team I didn't like, with a quarterback I didn't like, against a team that, if they won, I'd get a t-shirt. (But they'd be 19-0 and I didn't want cheaters to get rewarded, so I rooted against them.)

The other thing I remember is that we had to be very quiet in rooting: Mr F was almost a year-and-a-half, and was becoming a bit of a nervous boy who didn't like loud noises. We didn't know that, yet, as Mr F hadn't been exposed to a great many surprises in his 16 or so months of living. He was, that night, when Eli Manning threw that great pass and David Tyree made that great catch, and we all jumped up and cheered and yelled and Mr F burst into tears and tried to go hide. After that, we all had to cheer quietly, so as great things happened, we'd whisper Yeah! or Excellent! while being very careful not to startle Mr F.

Advice I Can Give You and Mark Sanchez About Watching The Super Bowl Based On This Game: It's very hard to whisper a cheer. Practice it. Or put a movie on for the Babies! upstairs, so they can watch without getting scared. I'm surprised I didn't think of that.

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: The David Tyree catch, of course, sticks out in my mind -- more so than the touchdown reception that put the Giants ahead for good shortly thereafter. It was an improbable, thrilling, spontaneous moment that came at a time of the game when tension was high, earning it a spot in the most-memorable-plays pantheon. How many Super Bowls can you say that about?

In all the Super Bowls I've watched, only a handful of plays stick out: Wide right. Tyree's catch. Santonio Holmes' TD last year against the Cardinals, arms outstretched, toes dragging. Favre's long pass against the Patriots, and his run down the field to celebrate. Don Beebe chasing after Leon Lett to knock the ball out of his hand just before the end zone -- a startling, admirable display of effort in a foregone game. That's about all that springs to mind. So the odds are that there will not be a memorable play in this game -- after XLIV Super Bowls, I can only remember a few great plays, making great plays a statistical improbability in the Super Bowl, but I'll go ahead and predict an oddly specific great play, anyway -- and, like I always go for 43, I'm going to go for my usual suspect here, too: The Fake Punt. I therefore predict that there will be a fake punt for a TD, and that it'll come from the Saints. In the fourth quarter. With 5:33 left on the game clock. On fourth-and-two.

(How's that for oddly specific, TMQ?)

As for where I'll be watching the game, I've applied all my lessons, and here's the plan for the game: I'm watching it at home, on our big-screen TV, with just immediate family. We've got plenty of seating: Two couches and two chairs. We've got snacks ready to go, the kind of food that just needs to be heated up or put in a bowl and the kind of food that can be piled on a plate to reduce the number of trips to the kitchen to get more, reducing the people monitoring me. I've already set the game to tape, ready for Babies!-style distractions of any sort.

Which leads me to my final oddly-specific prediction: I predict that during the game, there will be three spills on the carpet, at least one of which will leave a stain. There will be two times that The Boy complains about me pausing the game to go take care of the Babies!, one of which pauses will be engendered by Mr F being pantless. And there will be three commercials about which Sweetie declares Terry Tate was better.

She's right: He was.

CRY HAVOC! AND LET LOOSE THE HOUNDS OF SUPERBOWL HYPE!

2012-01-29T06:19:00.001-08:00

It's Super Bowl week, the most magical week of the year for football fans -- that week when sports people get to all go to some wonderful, warm, place like...

...Indianapolis?

...and spend the week playing games and talking to famous people and otherwise just proving that they have awesome jobs and that our society really is selfish for not providing at least a base line of benefits and protections because look at how much money we throw at Super Bowl week, but then claim we're too broke to keep kids from starving to death or to repair bridges.

Anyway, with that dose of guilt, I'm going to help Super Bowl Hype by this week reprinting some of my OLD Super Bowl posts, the way the NFL rebroadcasts highlights from old Super Bowls, because if you do it right, "laziness" becomes "nostalgia," and I'm all about that. So all this week, leading up to my Whodathunkit?! post on the Super Bowl, I'll have PAST posts about it.

Here's the first, my post from the week before the Colts played the Saints in the Super Bowl:

Super Bowl Week: 7 Days Of Hype About 11 Minutes Of Action, And It All Begins With My Motivational Speech For You.

I sit here on this extra-cold Sunday morning wondering what the loud thump! was on our roof last night -- a loud thump! that, it seemed to me, came about 11:15 p.m. a time which also, it seemed to me, was the exact time that the loud thump! came on Thursday night, which can only mean one thing:

Pterodactyls.

That's the kind of crazy-sounding-but-spot-on-thinking that almost-consecutive, possibly-at-the-same-time loud thump! noises on your roof at night leads to: it's probably pterodactyls, landing on the roof, drawn by the smell of cookie crumbs and pizza crusts you threw outside onto the porch for the birds and squirrels to eat.

When else would you realize, with utter clarity, that science -- excuse me, "science"-- was wrong, and that pterodactyls still exist, and that they're landing on your roof, the loud thump being caused by the fact that they have only short legs and are more gliders than fliers, so their landing would be clumsy? Of course it would! Of course it would thump! like that! When else would you realize the truth about pterodactyls but at night, when everything's quiet and you've just been reading your electronic copy of The New Yorker, the article about the guy who wants to freeze himself when he dies, and has already frozen his mother and his two wives, in hopes that science someday would wake them up?

It's that absence of everything else -- the absence of television, of 3-year-olds running pantless around the room, of 17-year-olds insisting that going out every school night won't affect their grades even though it clearly has -- that leads to the kind of clarity of thought which lets one know about the pterodactyls.

Absence of information can be as important as access to information (I'm pretty good with a catch-phrase, right?). These days, in the miasma that is our information, it's necessary sometimes to unplug and turn off and just sit.

And think.

And in the sitting, and the thinking, one can put together some actual bits of information that
can help one catch on to some hidden truths, things that nobody else has been willing to say, or think, or talk about.

You know, like the pterodactyls.

Well, SOMETHING is making that noise!

See where I was leading with that intro? The pterodactyls, and the things like them, are the reason I don't like to sit and think. Nothing good comes of sitting and thinking. If God had wanted us to sit and think, he would never have created a world in which cars can be equipped with features to let you read your email. While driving. That way, I could get those funny jokes on the way to work! What could go wrong with that?

I couldn't help it. It was LOLCATZ!

But, today is NonSuperBowl Sunday, the cruelest day of the year for fans of football, because there's no football today, and really no football next week, and after that, there's no football for months and months and months, so if it wasn't for Brett Favre retiring and then not every few minutes, we'd have nothing to do but talk to our families and maybe go up on the roof and see if there's some pterodactyl tracks there. On NonSuperbowl Sunday, the Sunday before Super Bowl Sunday, there's nothing to do because there's no football.

That lack of football is worse on NonSuperbowl Sunday than on out-of-season Sundays because right now, football fans are in football mode. Our bodies, our minds, our radio stations, are set to football. We're used to having games on Sundays, and games on Mondays, and even games on Thursdays and Saturdays now, and so when this Sunday rolls around with its no football none of the time, it's jarring -- but we can't let go of football, because there's always the Super Bowl next week, so we have to keep in football shape, as it were.

As what were?

Keeping in football shape today is tough to do because in the week between Championship Sunday and NonSuperBowl Sunday, the sports news drifts a little, talking occasionally about other sports, something I find annoying when it happens during the football season. Don't you know there's football to talk about? I sometimes ask my radio, in the voice I usually reserve for the kinds of drivers who edge out into the road a little too far before deciding not to make the turn. Why are you talking about basketball? I demand to know, and then go to put on my iPod, only to find that I've left my iPod home, along with my lunch and cell phone, because I had to carry around Mr Bunches all morning, since he was sad and needed me to cheer him up. (Needed me to cheer him up, specifically, by carrying him nonstop, including carrying him while I tried to put on my pants.)

The lack of football talk bugs me even more when there's only one game of actual football left. It seems all the more urgent to talk about football now, to savor it while we still have it. Basketball, baseball, NASCAR... all those fake, boring sports will still be around when football ends. But football is only around for another week.

And yet, the best the media could do this week is briefly talk about Kurt Warner's retiring, mention in passing that the NFL is suing about the dumbest team phrase (yet), The Saints' Who Dat, and then move on to something about Gilbert Arenas. Whose name always sounds to me like it's a place to play basketball. Or, more accurately, several places to play basketball. And the media doesn't even try to do that little bit today, NonSuperBowl Sunday.

Which means it's up to me, again, to do things right, to get the hype going, and to gear me, and you, and everyone else who reads this (nobody else reads this; I'm surprised you're reading it, and got this far. Were you expecting more cheerleader pictures? Fine, here's one:

Happy now? I know Sweetie isn't. Sweetie takes it personally when I post pictures of cheerleaders, even though she shouldn't, because Sweetie is the only cheerleader for me.

When she gets upset about the cheerleaders, I defuse Sweetie by posting pictures like this:

Posting things like that puts Sweetie in a bind because Sweetie wants to complain about the cheerleaders, but she also wants to see Mark Sanchez recreating a scene from Baywatch, even though she will later say I don't even know who Mark Sanchez is.

I'm left to get the hype going because on NonSuperBowl Sunday, the rest of the media is gathering its breath and waiting for Super Bowl Week to begin; they're all sleeping in and leaving people like you and me high and dry and worrying about pterodactyls, or whatever it is you worry about when left with too much time and quiet on your hands. (See that brown spot on your tongue? It's probably the first sign of a deadly disease. Better go look that up.)

I'm going to get the hype going by focusing on me, and you, and what we need to get up for the game, which is an inspirational multimedia presentation featuring some guys and some music and a slogan and stuff.

I was, myself, inspired to create this Inspirational Moment by Saints' Coach Sean Payton's own inspirational moment last week, the one he gave the Saints before their game against the Vikings to pump them up for the game and, you know, really convince them to win.

I'm not sure why football players need motivational speeches and presentations. As I've said before, they should already be really, really motivated because, remember, this is their job. That and all we ever hear from football players is how they're in this to get to the Super Bowl, to get a ring, to win championships.

I mean, we know that's a lie -- none of the players are in it for anything other than money. That's why we all do our jobs: money. It's nice to get awards and win things, but we wouldn't be getting up and going to work because they gave us an award every now and then. We'd just go get the award, take some of the free coffee and maybe a few of those cookies the receptionist brought in, and then head back home. We probably wouldn't even take off our pajamas.

But since football players pretend that they're motivated by more than just money -- money they don't get paid (really) anymore once the playoffs start -- shouldn't they also pretend that they don't need to get motivated to play a game? Shouldn't they pretend that they're already motivated to win the second-to-last game of the season, the game that, if they win, they're in the Superbowl (a/k/a, "the reason they play?")

All valid questions, to which I'll add another one: If they do need motivation, why are they motivated by the smell of a locker room?

See, Saints' coach Sean Payton, to motivate his team, put together a multimedia presentation in which he showed clips of various athletes winning, or at least doing things, and also he played the Aerosmith song Dream On, and then, at the end of it, to (presumably) great flourish, he turned on the lights and there stood:

Ronnie Lott.

(Former all-pro defensive back/four time Superbowl winner/apparent motivational speaker Ronnie Lott, that is.)

And the first thing Ronnie Lott said, standing there in what I assume was the Saints' locker room?

"I smell greatness."

At which point, Sean Payton handed out t-shirts (I told you this was a multimedia presentation) with Smell Greatness on them.

I was going to put a picture of a dirty locker room, then a messy locker room, then a messy laundry room, then, finally, a pile of socks, but apparently there is nothing you can google on the internet that doesn't lead to porn scenarios, so instead, you get this picture:

Presumably, there were no arrows pointing towards the armpits of those shirts, but that would have been hilarious if there had been, and Payton missed a golden opportunity there.

All of that -- Aerosmith's song, the slide show, the not-quite-ironic t-shirts, Ronnie Lott, Motivational Speaker, and the scent of 53 large men -- added up to quite a motivational package for the Saints, as they barely eked out a victory in the NFC Championship Game (and by "eked out" I mean "were handed a victory by five turnovers and a boneheaded penalty.")

Imagine, though, the results if the Saints hadn't been motivated by the smell of greatness/the smell of Ronnie Lott. Imagine if Sean Payton had left it up to the players to motivate themselves, by, say, telling them "Look, it's your job, all right, so just go do it and do it well, and you'll make some money." Would the Saints have been motivated enough by that to not lose a game that the Vikings desperately didn't want to win?

I think not.

Reading that Sports Illustrated article about the Saints' motivational speech yesterday taught me the importance of motivational speeches -- motivational multimedia presentations -- because with Ronnie Lott, Motivational Speaker, telling the Saints that the odor in their locker room was greatness, the Saints never would have made it as far as Super Bowl week (when, I assume, Payton will largely stick with what works, and will hand out Taste Greatness! t-shirts soaked in the flavor of greatness. The taste of greatness can best be described as "a little like lemonade-flavored Powerade, only uncarbonated.")

Thus inspired by just the recounting of the multimedia presentation, I have undertaken today to outline my own motivational multimedia presentation elements, elements that you, the fan and my reader(s?) are free to assemble on your own into your own motivational multimedia presentation to get you, the fan/my reader(s?) pumped up for your part in Super Bowl week -- the part where you have to listen to even more stories about even more players and endure even more predictions about even more things that could happen.

This is the week we wait for and dread all year: the week when the entire world seems to be about football (because football is coming to an end again), the week when the football present- and past-greats come out of the woodwork/rodeo trailer they've been hiding in to talk football and think football and smell football/greatness, and to make critical comments about Tim Tebow, and do all of those things that we love so much during the football season, only more so.

It's a demanding week for a fan. There's so many shows, articles, blogs, pictures, and reporters that we may not be able to keep up with it. But this is what we're here for, right?

(That's the part where you say: Right!)

(And I say "What's that? This is what we're HERE FOR, right?")

(And you say "Right!" again, only louder.)

(And then I say "Why are you yelling at your computer?")

This is what we're here for, but like professional football players who make in one year what I'll make in 10, if I'm lucky, we may need a little more motivation to do what's expected of us, and without further ado (thank God!) I'm going to give you the tools you need to put together, this week, your own multimedia presentation that will serve to inspire you, to urge you on, to make you just a tiny little bit better, and, of course, to put a positive spin on that peculiar odor that you thought was stale graham crackers, but which is actually... greatness.

Here's what you'll need:

First, an inspirational song. Sean Payton chose Dream On by Aerosmith. I'm not sure that was the best message, because while that song does talk about how you've got to lose to know how to win, it also includes this refrain:
Sing with me, sing for the year Sing for the laugh, sing for the tears Sing with me, if it's just for today Maybe tomorrow, the good lord will take you away, yeah

Which is kind of a grim philosophy, and also makes me think "If tomorrow the good Lord is going to take me away, I might not spend tonight playing football, but would probably rather spend some time with my family, or at least make amends for some of the things I've done, things that I'm certainly not going to detail in this blog, at least until the statute of limitations runs out."

The song you pick should be personal to you, a song that motivates you, but it should also have a broader appeal and should focus on your particular role in this week, that role being "a person who watches TV, and probably also eats snacks." (That's my role, at least.) And while everyone can choose their own song, you can also feel free to use one of the ones I'm considering. Here's the songs I'm thinking I might use:

After Hours, by We Are Scientists:

That song has the benefit of having a really good, driving beat, and the right kind of challenging tone: This door is always open/no one has the guts to shut us out. And, to make it perfect for fans, it's really about drinking: I guess there's always hope that/someplace will be serving after hours. So time means nothing when it comes to finding a place to go on drinking, is the message We Are Scientists is sending.

God Monkey Robot, by The Apparitions. "Monkeys make everybody happy," Sweetie once proclaimed, but monkeys, in the form of an allegorical song about human evolution followed by God wiping everything out in Armageddon, can also inspire people like you and me to new heights of fandom:

It's got that line: And the man and the monkey their minds went blank/they were both watching reruns the rating were great, which lets you know your role in the teledrama that will be hyped this week. You're going to watch. (Plus, one of my favorite things to do in Super Bowl week is watch those NFL replays of all the prior Super Bowls, watch and feel nostalgic about the times in the past when I watched those Super Bowls, live. How often does one get to watch a documentary about history, when the history is history that one watched unfold live? Not very often.)(So the point is, that the man and the monkey watching reruns is me.)

and, of course, Common People by William Shatner.

Because it's about common people and how great they are. Common people like you, and me. Not those high-falutin' rich folk like Saints' Coach Sean Payton, who, after winning the NFC Championship, celebrated via a quiet little dinner featuring family... and Jimmy Buffett.

After you have your song, you'll also need a collection of images to put to that song. This is where most of you are going to screw up: You're going to choose sports images, because the Super Bowl is a sport, but remember, this is for you, not for the Saints or the Colts. You're not trying to inspire them; that's for their coaches to do via phrases like Smell Greatness. (We'll get to your phrase in a moment.)

You're trying to inspire you, so you've got to choose images of the things that will motivate you to get ready for the Super Bowl and your role in it. Things like the snacks you'll eat:

Where you'll sit for the big game:

The commercials you'll watch:

And, of course, the cheerleaders:

Simmer down, Sweetie. I haven't forgotten you:

With images like that, you'll be more than motivated for the week ahead, and the game. You'll be motivat-est.

(Note to NFL: You may be ready to sue people over the Dumbest Team Nickname Yet, but back down on me, because Motivat-est is TM Thinking The Lions, 2010.)

Step three of your Motivational Multimedia Presentation is the Inspirational Person who will come in and tell you how great your life will be if you (a) listen to him or her and (b) do what he or she has already done. The Saints had Ronnie Lott, who was an excellent choice based on his ability to repurpose smells for his own motivational motives.

You'll need someone that suits you equally well, for your purposes, remember. The Saints wanted someone who's been to the big game to tell them how great it is to get to the big game. You, of course, have already watched many Super Bowls, so you may think Well, jeez, I know what it's like to watch a Super Bowl, and you'll be tempted to pass on the Inspirational Figure entirely.

That's a mistake -- a big one. You don't know what it's like to watch this Super Bowl, and you probably have never really given thought to how to watch any particular Super Bowl best, have you? I didn't think so. You've never analyzed when the best commercials are, who the best announcers are, how much actual football action takes place in any given football game (eleven minutes or so.) You don't know nothin' about no football.

Or something like that.

So get yourself someone who does. Someone who knows how to really watch stuff. Someone like this guy:

That's Suresh Joachim, and if you want to watch TV, you want to know Suresh. This year, Suresh annihilated the record for most consecutive hours watching TV. It had been only about 50 hours in a row. But Suresh sat and stared at the tube for 69 hours and 48 minutes.

You know what I want to know? What made him break? He'd already been there for 69 hours, 48 minutes, so family, bathroom breaks, boredom, a real job... all that stuff had already been put to the side, ignored, in service of record-breaking TV watching. So what finally made him throw in the towel, stand up, and turn off the TV? What was it, Suresh?

Was it Jenna Elfman? Because that'd do it for me.

Suresh also holds the record for longest time balancing on one foot -- 76 hours and 40 minutes. Which means he was able to stand on one foot longer than he was able to watch ABC television. (He also holds the record for bowling -- 100 hours straight.)

(But you know what that means? The time is ripe for someone to set the record for longest time standing on one foot watching bowling on TV. Ready... set...go.)

Another possible spokesperson? WALL-E. He really liked TV, too:

Now, you've got Suresh and WALL-E speaking to you (and your family.) You've got your song (if you invite WALL-E, I'd go with God Monkey Robot), you've got your inspirational images to set that all to:

So the last thing you need is your slogan. Like the Saints' Smell Greatness, only not stupid.

Ideally, your slogan is short enough to fit on a t-shirt or a hat to hand out to you and your family. (It could also be printed on the tiny purple baseball bats you hand out to your defense, to give them the entirely wrong idea about what it is you're looking for when they play. Gregg Williams, keep in mind: defensive players tackle people. They don't hit them with bats. You who uses baseball bats to make a point? Mobsters. When you hand out bats to your defense, this is the message you're sending:

Which may be what you wanted to send, but don't advertise it, okay?

Your slogan to inspire you for Super Bowl Week and the Super Bowl should follow the time-honored tradition of including a verb and an adjective, ideally both of them inspiring.

If you can't think of any inspirational words, you could always do what one enterprising but still somewhat saddening person did, and ask Yahoo Answers. That person wanted to jump-start a novella and needed some words of inspiration to get going on it -- not the most promising start for a writer, but everyone begins somewhere, and I bet that if Yahoo Answers had been around when F. Scott Fitzgerald got started, he'd have asked for some help getting going on The Great Gatsby (which is the only book Lauren Conrad could remember the name of when she was interviewed recently about her own writing, and so she said she'd read it over and over, even though the odds are that Lauren Conrad can't read.)(The odds are, also, that Lauren Conrad never read The Great Gatsby since she said "It's a fun story.")

That inspiration-seeking writer got these words of encouragement from a spell-check needing helper: "umm ya theres alot sori i dont feel lyk putting all of them." So I don't recommend taking that route for your own inspirational phrase. Instead, just do what I do:

When I want something I say to sound important or majestic or awe-inspiring, I just translate it into Latin. Everything sounds great in Latin:

quisnam ate totus funyuns (Who ate all the funyuns?)

Cheerleaders sceptrum (Cheerleaders rule!)

Dulcis , vos teneo vos reputo Vestigium Consecro est fervens (Sweetie, you know you think Mark Sanchez is hot)

I think, in fact, that est fervens would be an ideal slogan. So I'm going to go with that. But feel free to create your own slogan, if you want.

So there you go. That's how I'll be spending the rest of the day, this NonSuperBowl Sunday of no sports and nothing to do. Later on today, I'm going to go downstairs, dim the lights, put on my slide show of inspirational images:

(It's safe-- Sweetie NEVER reads this far in the sports post), start the inspirational music:

Have my speaker begin, and by the time he's done motivating me (Making me Motivat-est)(TM Thinking The Lions 2010), I won't even need the Est fervens t-shirts, which is good because Sweetie would probably have them printed with this on it:

Do you want to woo hoo? (Thursday Scramble)

2012-01-26T18:15:00.001-08:00

On Thursday Scramble, I take an old post from one of my blogs -- my blogs currently make up 24.8% of the entire Internet -- and repost it to all my OTHER blogs. This post appeared in 2008 on my blog "Thinking The Lions." Thinking The Lions focuses on funny stories about me, and the things I do with my family, and the things I do when I'm supposed to be working, and the things I do when I'm supposed to be doing the things I do. Also, I post poems there on Fridays.

*******************************************************************************************

Always carry the pooping toddler behind you, not in front of you.

That way, when the pooping toddler poops, it will not fall directly into your path, causing you to step in it, which will cause you to think oh my god this is possibly the grossest but most hilarious emergency I've ever been a part of, and which will also cause you to stop, take that sock off, and then continue on your way to the potty chair, which you have left upstairs, and upstairs is an awful long ways away when you are carrying a naked, pooping, and now upset toddler at arm's length.

That's what I learned last night, as I was helping to clean up the kitchen after tacos and smoothies made in the new blender using the high-end "Whole Foods" fruit we had, both of which we had because Sweetie got them for St. Nick's Day.

I'm not sure why "St. Nick's Day" exists, or even if it does exist outside of my family. I always wondered if it existed outside of my family when I was a kid, too, when we would, in the beginning of December, get candy in our stockings. Never presents or anything, just candy, which always included one of those giant, straight-up-and-down candy canes, the kind that would splinter when you bit them, so that if you sat on the brown couch eating them and watching channel 18 -- channel 18 was the only channel worth watching most of the time back then, because it was the only non-network channel, so it showed reruns of shows and cartoons in the afternoon, as opposed to showing "Phil Donahue," a show that by my memories was on at least 17 hours a day on all three networks in the late 70s and early 80s-- if you sat on the brown couch eating your candy cane and watching Channel 18, you would have parts splinter off and fall on your chest and be covered with sweater-fuzz, making them inedible. You would also get little tiny peppermint shards sprinkled down your chest and stomach, giving you a minty smell and a crackly feel the rest of the day.

No other kids ever seemed to get stuff for St. Nick's Day, which was why I thought maybe it only existed in our family, but, then again, I was the kind of kid who never really knew what was going on, either, so maybe everyone was getting St. Nick's presents, and I just didn't know it because I spent most of my time in fourth grade reading the "Emil" books and playing one-on-one football on recesses with Kevin Donnerbauer, the kid with only one thumb, and what time I didn't spend doing that I spent drawing "vipers" from Battlestar Galactica and getting beat up by Dean Larsen. None of which really lead one to conversations about whether or not the other kid celebrates "St. Nick's Day."

When I married Sweetie, I learned that she, too, celebrated St. Nick's Day, and that she celebrated it through presents, which seems odd, since Sweetie is always telling me how poor she was growing up, stories about poverty that make me feel even more guilty than I do most of the time about my relatively-privileged background. I, as a kid, generally got presents like the Millenium Falcon with Actual Cargo Bays for hiding Han Solo, or my "official" Dallas Cowboys helmet, or the Lego set that let me build an actual Lunar Landing Module (which I still remember was called the "LEM," even though I don't remember why it was called the "LEM") or any of the the 1000 other toys and junk my parents got us for Christmas, and that still wasn't enough, as most years there were plenty of junky things we didn't get. Realizing that, that I was so spoiled and privileged and didn't appreciate it, serves the valuable purpose today of making me feel guilty, guilt that I channel into areas that society desperately needs, like "working hard" and "giving to charity" and "telling my own kids how lucky they are that they have so much stuff, compared to how little stuff I had," which is only true comparatively speaking, because I had a lot of stuff, but my kids have more stuff, and they, too, do not think they have enough. Yes, The Boy has a great big TV in his room and a DVD player and a Playstation 3, but he still pines away for an Internet connection that would let him play Playstation online against other players, even though the other player he would mostly play against is his friend, who lives next door, and who would probably come over to play anyway, bringing his own TV and Playstation 3, so that they could harness the awesome power of the Internet to play a game against each other sitting two feet apart.

So the guilt I carry around lets me lay some guilt on The Boy and his sisters for having so much stuff, something that I do to relieve my own guilt and also to make sure that they have guilt when they grow up, so that they will work hard and give to charity and be good people and guilt-trip their own kids, and the Circle of Guilt will continue.

I don't guilt-trip the Babies! yet, because they're too little to feel guilty about anything, and also because they don't really want anything. We have not yet bought them that many toys -- all of their toys except the slide and their car fit into a laundry basket -- but we have bought them toys, and they generally ignore those toys and play with anything else.

Mr Bunches, for example, carries around a small red practice golf ball that Middle gave him. It's made of foam rubber and he has it with him at all times. I've never known anyone to have a "Security Golf Ball" but he does, and he gets upset if he can't find it. He got so upset the last time it was lost (we found it behind the Only Surviving Plant in the house) that Sweetie took precautions and found a second one, a Spare Emergency Golf Ball that is kept carefully hidden in the Babies!'s room. We all also make sure, at all times, that we are aware of the Red Ball: "Where's his red ball?" we ask each other, when moving Mr Bunches from one room or level of the house to the next.

He can't be fooled, either -- give him a different color practice golf ball and he'll throw it aside. Give him a different kind of red ball and he'll squeeze it to test it out, and if it doesn't give a little like The Red Ball, he'll toss that aside, too.

Losing his Red Ball is one of the few things that upsets Mr Bunches. He's pretty easygoing. The only other things I've seen upset him are when someone leaves the room he's in, and being whisked away to poop on the potty chair rather than on the living room floor, where he thought it was okay to poop because, after all, he was naked.

Mr Bunches was only naked because I felt sorry for him and also because I needed both hands free to clean up the smoothie mess that I'd created making smoothies on the blender I'd given Sweetie for St. Nick's Day, a blender that was big and expensive and more big and expensive than a St. Nick's Day present should be, but I tend to give Sweetie big and expensive presents because, like I said, I feel guilty about my privileged background and Sweetie manages to dredge up more guilt by telling me stories about her own unprivileged background.

I might tell a story, for example, of how I had all these Star Wars action figures and I used to set them up in elaborate scenarios in my room in which the dresser with its four shelves was the Death Star, because the books on the bottom shelf could be the trash compactor, and then I might say that I wished I'd kept those Star Wars figures because maybe they'd be worth money, and then Sweetie will say something like this, a story she actually told us:

"I didn't have action figures or dolls when I was a little girl. We couldn't afford them. I had marbles, though, that my grandma gave me. I used to pretend the marbles were people and play with them and make them go shopping."

Imagine hearing that on the heels of your story about having an actual Boba Fett that shot missiles. Then imagine yourself standing in the department store thinking "Should I get her that blender she asked for even though it's very expensive?" and as you think that, you remember that Sweetie, as a kid, had to have her marbles have adventures, things she couldn't even dress up or fix the hair of or whatever it is that girls do with their dolls and toys.

And then imagine standing in that department store, pushing your Babies! in their stroller, and feeling terribly guilty about having been so privileged, and deciding that yes, you will buy her the blender, and you'll also get her some other stuff because she deserves it, but then you get distracted and think How would a marble be a person? And did they have names? Were they, like "Judy The Marble?" Did she make them walk, or just roll them to the Marble Shopping Mall? And then before you can get the blender or answer those questions, Mr F leans over and starts trying to knock over the pile of Christmas dinner plates you're stuck in front of.

Mr F got to try to knock over a lot of things last week, as we finished up the shopping for Sweetie's St. Nick's Day present. Her entire present was that blender that she asked for, and a bunch of high-quality fruit from Whole Foods, and a Whole Foods $10 gift card (which I threw in to top it off, but which is useless because $10 at Whole Foods will get you one grape) and a book of smoothie recipes that had lots of recipes for smoothies made without yogurt, because Sweetie likes smoothies but hates yogurt. Or I should say, Sweetie wants to like smoothies, something she tells us all the time:

"I want to like smoothies," she'll say, "But I just don't like that yogurt."

When I ask why it's so important that she like smoothies, she answers: "Because they're cool."

Finding the blender was the easy part -- the department store had blenders, lots of them, some of them as high-priced as $159. I did not get guilt-tripped into buying that. Marble People or not, I don't buy $159 kitchen appliances. I settled on a tough-looking red blender that had an "Ice Crusher" feature. That sounded good (if not very romantic or Christmas-y) to me. Getting the fruit was also easy. It was the book that was tough, because I had Mr Bunches and Mr F with me in their stroller, and I had to go to three different bookstores to find just the right book of smoothie recipes, which meant three different nights of pushing the Babies! through bookstores, bookstores with shelves that were very close together and packed with books that were ripe for the plucking, so that as we walked down the aisles Mr F and Mr Bunches would reach out and grab books and toss them on the floor, and I would quickly scoop the books up and put them back more or less in the region they came from, hopefully also getting all of the "Teddy Graham" crumbs and smudges off of them. So if you are shopping for a book at any of those stores, the odds are that the book you want is about five feet further down the aisle, and you'll want to wipe it off a little before buying it.

I also could not stop the stroller, because they'd get really antsy then, and start arching their backs or taking off their socks and shoes and throwing them, and if there's anything that gets you judged to be a bad parent, it's having barefoot kids out in a store in December in Wisconsin. Plus, people don't think it's so cute the third time a shoe gets flung at them.

Most of the shopping, then, was done with me handing them "Teddy Grahams" and trying to calm them down and distract them by talking to them and singing Mr F's favorite song ("All I Want Is You" from the "Juno" Soundtrack) quietly as we walked through the aisles, and when that didn't work, I'd try to quickly scan the books as we walked by. When I'd see a book I thought would be good, I'd scoop it up and keep pushing the stroller, checking out the book with one hand and pushing the stroller with the other hand, eventually looping back to drop the book off more or less where I'd gotten it (I could tell by the trail of "Teddy Grahams.")

I had to do that because in public, I'll do anything to keep the Babies! happy, and also because I'm a pushover. I think I'm a tough dad, but I'm not, and I just give in to the Babies! demands no matter what the cost to me personally is. I will let them, for example, out of the cart while we're at the drugstore picking up cold medicine, even though I know that it will be physically impossible for me to hold both of their hands and get out my wallet to pay. I let them out of the cart and hold their hands and then, when it comes time to pull out my wallet, I let go of Mr Bunches' hand for just one second I hope and pull out the $20 Sweetie gave me, but it's no use: Mr Bunches has taken off towards the back of the store, laughing, and I have to scoop up Mr F and tell the lady behind the counter "put the change in the bag" and then I carry Mr F with me while I chase Mr Bunches around the rack of cold medicines in the back of the store, twice, before grabbing him and going up front carrying both boys to grab the bag, which hopefully has my change in it, and head outside.

Even then, I'm such a pushover that I feel bad for Mr F, who didn't get to run around the pharmacy, and I wonder if I should give him a chance, too. But Mr F gets his own special treatment, like when I keep playing The Tackle Game with him even though I'm afraid that he's given me a concussion.

The Tackle Game is Mr F's favorite. He invented it, and as you'd expect of a game invented by a two-year-old, it's pretty simple and also violent. In The Tackle Game, I sit cross-legged on the floor, and Mr F goes into the other room and then comes running at me while I say "No no no no no" in a scared voice (note: I'm not acting) and he then plows into me and we fall over backwards and I tell him he's very strong and how'd he get so strong? Then we do it all again, for about an hour. And I keep playing The Tackle Game under the most adverse conditions, like when Mr F the other night caught me just behind the temple with his forehead, causing him to momentarily cry until I calmed him down by tossing him in the air a few times. He was fine. I, though, was seeing stars and had a splitting headache, one that instantly set in and spread down to my jaw and my neck, and one that I still kind of have, two days later. But I kept playing The Tackle Game, and didn't let on to Mr F that I thought maybe I had a concussion.

That pushoveriness is how Mr F and Mr Bunches ended up running around buck naked on St. Nick's Eve, or the night of St. Nick's Day, or whatever. We'd eaten dinner, which was tacos and chips and non-yogurt-containing smoothies that I'd made using Sweetie's new St. Nick's blender, and I was helping clean up before taking the Babies! upstairs for their bath, and Mr F started getting into the wedding cabinet, which is the only thing in our house anymore that both contains glass and is in arm's reach. It's a curio cabinet with glass doors that's filled with wedding mementos and champagne glasses and pictures from our wedding and things like that, and we'd move it, but it's really heavy and it wouldn't be right to put it in the garage, anyway, so we guard the wedding cabinet using the high-tech method of taking the piano bench and the round table and laying them down in front of it, a giant barricade that completely fails to slow down Mr F, who likes to open and close doors, hard, to hear the bang! they make. Mr F frequently gets into the wedding cabinet doors, which make a satisfying glassy sound. He hasn't yet noticed that every single thing inside that cabinet is breakable, but it's only a matter of time.

While I was cleaning up last night, Mr F got into the wedding cabinet, and I got him out and tried to distract him from that by dropping him on the couch. That's "The Treatment," a game he and Mr Bunches like. In "The Treatment," I hold them and swing them back and forth and say "1... 2... Treatment!" and then drop them on the couch.

And, yes, "The Treatment" is a lot like "Cloverfield," but there are subtle differences that experts will note. Differences like: In "Cloverfield," I'm a monster, who walks around roaring Cloverfield! and then picking them up and dropping them on the couch, while in The Treatment, I am just Daddy, or sometimes Dr Slider, and I do not roar, but I do count. Cloverfield The Monster would never count. He's a monster.

"The Treatment" did not work on Mr F, who headed back to the wedding cabinet, so I took the next most logical step, which was to strip him down to his diaper. You would have to live in our house for a while to understand why that was the next most logical step, but it was. And it worked: soon, Mr F was down to his diaper and we were hollering, as he ran by, "Woo-hoo!" which is what we do when nearly-naked two-year-olds run around our house. (We even call it "Woo-hooing." "Do you want to woo-hoo?" we'll ask the Babies!, who will answer with "guck.")

Then, Mr Bunches wanted in on the Woo-Hooing, so he came over to me and I stripped him down to his diaper, too, but that wasn't enough: he wanted the diaper off.

So I put my foot down. As he pulled at his diaper and looked up at me and made pleading noises that were kind of like words but not really, I said: "No. You've got to leave the diaper on."

He pulled at it more and pulled at my leg.

"No," I said, firmly. "The diaper stays on."

He whined a little, looked sad, and pulled at his diaper, forlornly. So I caved in and said "Fine," and stripped the diaper off, which Sweetie might have objected to but it was my day to be in charge, so she didn't say anything other than that I sure am a pushover, and I then stripped off Mr F's diaper, too, letting them run around naked while we continued cleaning. I figured, they'll get some naked woo-hooing in before their bath, and I can get this cleaned up so that we can just relax," and I went back to cleaning the blender, but within about two minutes, I heard Sweetie yelling that Mr Bunches was pooping, and I rushed out there to see Mr Bunches by the Only Surviving Plant, with Sweetie holding a magazine under his butt.

I picked up Mr Bunches, who looked surprised, and held him at arm's length as we went through the kitchen, where he dropped part of the load and I stepped in it, forcing me to stop and hold Mr Bunches in one arm while I took off the now-needed-to-be-burned sock, at which point Mr Bunches got terribly upset and started crying, so I got the sock off, and got him upstairs into his room and sitting on the potty chair.

By then, Mr Bunches was thoroughly upset and was bawling, and I didn't want him to form some kind of permanent negative pooping attitude -- what if he ended up always being constipated because he was worried that if he pooped he'd get scooped up and whisked around? What if he went crazy because he was so scared of pooping? How would that affect my plans to have him and Mr F star in their own show on Disney so that I can retire? -- so to fix that, I told him it was okay, and then when that didn't work, I cheered.

"Yay!" I said, and started clapping. He looked surprised, but stopped crying and looked at me. "Yay!" I said again, and cheered some more. "What a good boy! Yay! Hooray! Good job!" and I kept clapping while he sniffled and then cheered up and then he gave me a hug.

We cleaned him up and then, still naked, I took him back downstairs to clean up the mess. I forewarned Sweetie and Middle to cheer for him, too, so Mr Bunches walked, naked, into the kitchen, to a standing ovation of Mommy and his sister clapping and cheering, while Mr F looked a little jealous, like he was wondering if he should poop, too.

With a lot of bleach, we got the floor clean, and we got the Babies! up to their bath and got them dressed, and spent the rest of St. Nick's Night playing The Tackle Game and watching their new movies they'd gotten for St. Nick's Day, and I had learned a valuable lesson, which was this:

Next time, put more ice cream into the smoothie.

It's like "Cat's In The Cradle," only with sports [so, about 100% better]. (So They Made A Song About Sports)

2012-01-26T13:08:00.000-08:00

I took my daily walk today and listened to music, and, as usual, I've got thousands of songs on my iPod that I don't even remember putting on there, songs like this tearjerker:

And you thought Rudy was a heartbreaker. All that kid did was go on to rip people off by trying to inflate the value of a sports drink and then rip off investors.

(Allegedly).

That last part is true (allegedly): Rudy "Daniel" Ruettiger used his fame as a guy who got put into a game for a single meaningless play

Daniel Ruettiger, the scrappy underdog football player immortalized in the movie “Rudy,” was charged in a pump-and-dump stock scheme, according to the SEC.

The SEC says Ruettiger founded a sports drink company called Rudy Nutrition, and he and a dozen other people used the company in a scheme to sell shares of the penny stock and rake in $11 million in illicit profits.

The SEC says the group circulated misleading claims about Rudy Nutrition products, including that the sports drink outsold Gatorade two-to-one in a major southwest test. Meanwhile, stock promoters pumped up the stock to inflate its price. For awhile, Ruettiger and a buddy ran the company out of South Bend, Ind., the home of Notre Dame, before it moved to Las Vegas.

Rudy Nutrition is no longer in business. The SEC said today Ruettiger and 10 others have agreed to settle the charges without admitting or denying the allegations. Ruettiger agreed to pay $382,866 in the settlement.

(Source). No wonder Joe Montana dissed him.

If more of our sports stories revolved around kids who played their hearts out for [SPOILER ALERT!] a dad who dies halfway through a game, that being the only way he can see his son play,we wouldn't have these kind of shenanigans later on in life. Who's going to start running scams when their dad can see them from Heaven?

Why Your Team Should(N'T) Go To The Super Bowl: The 49ers (NFL Football)

2012-01-22T04:59:00.001-08:00

Previously, on Nonsportsmanlike Conduct! Why The Giants Should(N'T) Go To the Super Bowl, why the Ravens Should(N'T), and why the Patriots* Should(N'T) go.

Why the 49ers SHOULD Win:

And now, the 49ers! (Which means I finished one of these series. Unless, like, a meteorite strikes between now and finishing typing this post, but if that happened, you'd never read this post because I wouldn't have published it, unless someone came across the glowing crater in Middleton, Wisconsin, and found a tiny pile of meteorite-burnt ashes in front of this laptop sitting next to the small Cars 2 slot-car set on the kitchen table, and decided to see what I'd been working on and then posthumously publish it, which seems unlikely except for the thought of a Cars 2 slot-car set with a tiny reproduction of Big Ben surviving a direct meteorite strike, which scientists figure would almost certainly happen.)

I'm thinking about meteorite strikes because the odds of getting struck by a meteorite are passingly small. How small, I don't know, both because I wasn't able to find an article that said what the odds are and also I got sidetracked by wondering just how "scientists," or whoever calculates the odds of things, do so, because it seems to me that all they're doing in many cases is throwing numbers at a dart board, or maybe just doing what you or I would so, which is "put two numbers together and make those the odds,"

Take this article, for example, which looks like it's from a science-y kind of source, and which says the odds of getting struck by a meteorite are "infinitesimal," and cites as proof of that that only four people are known to have been struck by one and of those, one is suspected to be a hoax.

That's not proof of the statistical probability of anything, though: the fact that something has happened only four times in history may, indirectly, tell us something about the likelihood of it happening again, but it does not correlate to "4 people in every 7 billion will be struck by a meteor, on average."

For proof of the statistical likelihood of getting struck by a meteorite -- nobody can be struck by a meteor, because once it hits something it's a meteorite -- I went to Discover Magazine's blog, where I found this article that scientifically calculated the odds, and I quote:

I’m not even sure how you’d calculate those odds accurately (it would involve the number of meteorites known to hit the Earth, and the area of a single human compared to the surface area of the planet). But they’re really low; only one person I know of in modern times has been hit — in 1954 a woman in Sylacauga, Alabama was smacked in her side by an 8-pounder, and in 1992 a woman’s car was hit. In 2003 a flurry of meteorites rained down near Chicago, and amazingly no one was hit.

That is what passes for "science" these days. "I don't know, but here's a number I made up and some stories." That's probably why all our space probes keep crashing.

Because first, what Discover Blogger means about that last story is "amazingly no one [in Chicago reported being hit," which is not the same thing as not being hit. Unless he interviewed everyone in Chicago and all of them were aware of whether or not they'd been hit and none of them lied, he can't say no one was hit.

Secondly, again, saying "historically, this hasn't happened so the odds must be pretty low of it ever happening" is just wrong. History is a pretty poor guide to the future. Consider these things I just now thought of as impacting on the likelihood that you'll get struck by a meteorite and how that likelihood is greater than it was yesterday:

(8) There are more people alive today than yesterday. As I write this, there are 6,989,446,524 people alive on this planet. That number was 6,984,595,894 on January 1, 2012, so we've added 4,850,630 people already this month, or an average of 220,000+ per day. Assuming that stays constant each day (a big assumption) then yesterday there were 220,000 fewer people than there are right now, which means that more of the Earth's surface area is taken up by people.

There are 5,100,072,000 square surface miles on Earth. So yesterday, your share of our planet's surface was about 1.3 square miles. Today, it's slightly less than that.

(#) That, of course, assumes that people are evenly spread out over the Earth's surface, which they are not. So if you live in China, where there is a higher population, your odds got worse by greater than if you live in Antarctica, where the population probably did not fluctuate much at all yesterday. So if you are traveling today, you may be moving to an area where there are more people, tighter quarters, and hence a greater likelihood of getting hit by a meteorite unless you factor in that

(a) You may be going to a place with more buildings, and if you are indoors in a larger building your odds would go down. Historically, mankind has built more and larger buildings, so despite our increase in population, you actually may face worse odds now of getting struck by a meteorite because you spend more time indoors and in stronger facilities; your building may get struck by a

(4) Of course, the Earth is always moving through space and the Milky Way is, too, so every day we are moving to a place that's more or less likely to contain meteors, and therefore more or less likely to be filled with rocks when your side of the Earth spins into it.

I know a little about this -- very little-- as I used to tutor statistics back in college and so understand concepts of probability and correlation in general. Too bad more scientists don't.

So meteorite strikes are on my mind because odds are on my mind because the 49ers stand one game away from the Super Bowl, which appears to be the latest slap in the face that Alex Smith can give to Aaron "The Anointed One" Rodgers, who famously fell in the draft while Smith was taken first by the 49ers; if Smith wins the Super Bowl he will have as many Super Bowl wins as Aaron Rodgers. Smith already has been determined to be a more accurate passer than Rodgers. So winning against the Giants today will let Smith do something that Rodgers has not -- beat the Giants in a playoff game -- and match Rodgers' total of Super Bowl wins, after the two have been in the league the same amount of time.

But Smith, remember, did not inherit a team that had a lengthy winning record and had just come off a 12-4 season, and while Rodgers has played under two coaches, starting for just one, while Smith has had 3.

Then again, Smith plays in the easier NFC West, so keep that in mind.

Hey, the important thing is,
we both hate Brett Favre, right?

Anyway: the 49ers, after the preseason, were tied for 20th in Las Vegas oddsmakers' minds in terms of the likelihood of winning the Super Bowl. Arizona was ranked equally with them; Miami just below them. This site had them at 40-1, so the fact that they're perched one home-win away from going to the Super Bowl is remarkable, if you think that the Las Vegas odds say anything more than simply "what people think is likely to happen," because Vegas odds aren't statistical probabilities at all: Vegas odds are laid based on getting people to bet on stuff, and if lots of people think something is going to happen, the odds will be low because Vegas doesn't need to encourage people to place a preseason bet on, say, a Packers-Patriots Super Bowl; that's what everyone thought would happen, so Vegas didn't have to do anything to juice the betting.

But Vegas makes its money not by everyone losing bets, but by all the bets being even, and taking a cut of the total betting money. So Vegas doesn't want everyone to win or lose; they just want an equal number of people taking all propositions. When nobody is willing to bet on the 49ers, the oddsmakers just keep upping the odds until a sufficient number of people bet on them.

In other words: the odds are not what the pros think will happen, the odds are what all those people sitting in the stands in weird makeup think will happen.

So it's not maybe so remarkable that the 49ers made it to the NFC Championship; they simply did what lots of people thought they wouldn't do this year -- but the collective knowledge of those people is, simply put, not very good.

That, in the world's longest, most rambling nutshell, is why the 49ers SHOULD win the Super Bowl: because while it will be described as "against the odds," which it is not, and will therefore contribute to the general misunderstanding of both statistical probabilities and Vegas odds, it will also encourage people, in the future, to place more bets on longshots, which will enhance, in the long run, the likelihood that there will be no longshots, which will, in turn, mean that almost every team will be seen as having a roughly even chance of winning the Super Bowl in a given year, which is, of course, the actual statistical likelihood, and therefore the 49ers' winning the Super Bowl will eventually result in people being smarter.

Whew!

(In reality, the probability of a given team winning a Super Bowl based purely on the fact that there are 32 teams, and assuming all other factors to be equal, is 0.031. Probability always lies between 0 and 1.)

Why The 49ers should NOT win: Because the 49ers are letting their fans be subject to risks while charging the city to try to protect them.

The 49ers made the headlines early on this year when a fan of theirs was beaten in the preseason and two were shot at the game. While the incident was blamed on Raiders fans, it's not like 49ers' fans are innocent: 54 fans were ejected from the game against the Saints, a number that is equal to 1/3 of the total 49ers' fans who were ejected during the entire season in 2008.

The 49ers, like many teams, have "BadFan," a text messaging service that lets fans report problems to security via text message. They've had it for three years, and for three years, ejections and arrests have risen each year. That's not just because of the ease of reporting: arrests and ejections don't occur just because someone reports a problem; a problem has to exist in the first place.

What sets 49ers' fans apart from others is that Niners' fans abuse that system: team officials estimate that half the texts sent to the service are "pranks or fakes," something I find amazing.

Not the statistic. I don't find it amazing that a bunch of drunken young men think it's hilarious to text a fake report to security.

I find it amazing that the NFL would refer to a false report to security as a prank. Diverting security resources, especially in a stadium where fans try to kill each other, is not a prank. To have a team official refer to it as such and not have the NFL say anything about that shows that the NFL's so-called commitment to fan safety, like it's so-called commitment to ending concussions, is mostly just PR and not for real at all.

This is especially important because the 49ers want San Francisco to give them a new stadium, and the city provides police officers for security at the games. It's not clear to me from reading whether the 49ers reimburse the city for those costs -- hiring off-duty cops as security guards is a common practice, but the articles don't say that's what's going on -- which means that in addition to making the city poorer simply by having a franchise located there, the 49ers are taxing public resources by not properly monitoring their fans.

That's another subsidy that goes to the owner of the 49ers, Denise Debartolo York, whose personal wealth is estimated at at least $900,000,000.

44% of all NFL fans earn $100,000 per year or more. NFL fans are more likely to have investments that require monitoring, such as stock accounts and mutual funds. Being an NFL fan means you are 59% percent more likely than the average person to have played golf in the past year.

NFL fans are predominantly upper-middle-class, Republican, well-off people. NFL teams, with the exception of the Packers, are owned by multimillionaires. Study after study has shown that having a pro sports franchise costs a city money at worst and provides no net benefits at best to the city.

So why are the people of San Francisco, half of whom make less than $81,000 per year, paying to provide security for the 49ers, when the 49ers don't want to and the NFL isn't serious about it? Fans go to the games -- and the vast majority aren't troublemakers-- and the owners net the money from ticket sales and concessions, while the fans themselves pay for the security to sit in the stadium.

Someone needs to #Occupy NFL Stadiums, I think -- but they'd do so at their own risk, and either way are hiring their own security to sit there.

49ers fans, the majority of whom are people who don't cause trouble, are being placed at risk every game by a woman who is worth nearly a billion dollars but who wants the city to continue to pay operating costs for her business, and she is backed by a league that considers fake calls to emergency responders harmless pranks.

Final Decision: Should win. Because I've decided to say that every team should win the Super Bowl, so that I can claim I was right when one does.

In closing: here is a meteor flying over a football game:

So attending today's Niners-Giants game increases your odds that you'll have to text BadFan and tell them the guy next to you tried to shove you into the meteor's path.

You say you have lycanthropy? I think the playoffs are the least of your concerns.

2012-01-21T14:00:00.001-08:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

January, for many sports fans, is one of the greatest times of year: you begin with a bunch of great college bowl games, move in to the NFL playoffs and head for the Super Bowl, and there's that great savings on prescriptions which is like the best thing in the world...

...wait, did I lose you there? Sorry. Try to keep up. I was simply excited because not only are the AFC and NFC Championship games coming up as I write this, but also I can get a special discount on a new family-sized Walgreens Prescription Savings Club.

Walgreens is letting people, for just $10 a year -- TEN BUCKS, that's less than a dollar a month! -- join their Prescription Savings Club. That ten smackeroos gets everyone in your immediate family covered: You, your spouse, any dependents younger than 22, and pets.

Yes, pets. Maybe even that creepy tarantula that friend gave you. Why do you still have that thing? Disgusting.

Anyway, you, the wife, the kids, the parakeet: all covered for $10 a year, and what you get from that is discounts on over 8000 brand-name medications, and on all generic medications. So if you've got, say heartburn medication or high blood pressure or you have to take garlic tablets to keep your lycanthropy in check, it's all discounted, and after a couple of prescriptions you'll have your $10 back.

The benefits keep coming: discounted flu shots, discounted pet prescriptions, money off on nebulizers (if you use 'em, you know what they are), and even supplies for diabetics.

Frankly, that's MORE exciting than anything the Baltimore Ravens have ever done. Did Ed Reed save you money on your prescriptions? I highly doubt it.

Find out more about the club here:

http://www.walgreens.com/pharmacy/psc/psc_overview_page.jsp

And support Walgreens by liking Walgreens on Facebook and follow Walgreens on Twitter at @Walgreens. And also: Go [insert name of team you personally like here]!

Why Your Team Should(N'T) Go To The Super Bowl: The Giants (NFL Football)

2012-01-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

Previously: Why the Patriots* Should(N'T) Go To The Super Bowl, and Why The Ravens (Yawn) Should(N'T) Go To The Super Bowl.

Why The Giants SHOULD Win The Super Bowl: The Giants have it figured out, don't they? I bet they read my blog.

I'm always going on, shouting into the wilderness, about meaningful games, and about how many games actually count in a sport.

The number of games that count in a sport is the minimum number of games it takes a team to reach the championship. So in baseball, for example, you can reach the playoffs with 81 wins, more or less, and then win 11 more games and you're World Champion. So 92 games count in a season of major league baseball.

Basketball, I think, is down to about 38 games mattering in the regular season, and I don't know how many rounds of playoffs they have -- the basketball playoffs appear to continue indefinitely in an ourobourian loop that annoys me because it means people are always talking about basketball -- but you only have to win 3 or 4 of those games in each series to advance.

In college football, the greatest of all sports when measure by the Meaningful Games Index, every single game counts. Lose one game and you're out of the running for a national championship (although playoff supporters are trying to make it so that 1 or 2 games wouldn't count by having a plus-1 playoff).

In the NFL, 7 regular season games count, plus 4 postseason games. So in a championship season that could involve at most 20 games, an NFL team must win just over half -- 11 -- to be the World Champ. Of course, timing counts: four of those wins must come at the right time.

This is something I mention all the time: that NFL coaches know nearly half the games don't matter (9 of 16 regular season games are irrelevant for teams) and so they don't install their full defenses until week one, making the preseason especially irrelevant. Many NFL coaches routinely rest players in games everyone admits are meaningless, like the Packers' Week 16 contest, which mattered not at all to the Packers but mattered quite a bit to the Lions, who, by losing, went to New Orleans instead of New York in week one (I think. I haven't checked it.)

Anyway, the Giants read this blog, I expect, because they've figured it out. The Giants made the playoffs this year at 9-7, with everyone (including me, until today) saying things like "They're a hard team to figure out. They play up (or down) to their opponents.) They had the worst record of any NFC playoff team, worse than each of the wild cards and 6 wins fewer than the Packers, who they handled easily last week in part because the Packers' players developed an allergy to footballs.

In 2010, the Giants had a better record -- 10-6 -- but missed the playoffs. In 2009, they went 8-8 and missed the playoffs. In 2008, they went 12-4, made the playoffs, and promptly lost in their first game -- the second team in as many years to do that in the NFC (when the Packers lost last week, they became at least the fourth, Atlanta having been the NFC #1 the year before, losing to the Packers.)

And, of course, in 2007, the Giants went 10-6 and "snuck into" the playoffs, beating the previously-undefeated Patriots* after knocking out Then Brett Favre's Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship (and, officially, Aaron Rodgers is not yet as good as Brett Favre because Favre got to back-to-back Super Bowls and The Anointed One didn't.)

At least Favre took them to overtime.

Where's this all going? To ConclusionTown: The Giants only try to win enough games to make the playoffs. They don't really care about records or going on the road (in fact, the Giants appear to prefer the road. If the Giants win at San Francisco this weekend, Eli Manning will be the best road-playoff quarterback ever, moving him ahead of Roger Staubach and some guy named Len Dawson. Since 2007, the Giants have had a winning road record every year, going 7-1 in 2007 and at least 5-3 on the road since then.

So I think the Giants aren't sneaky or underrated or overrated or getting hot at the right time or anything like that. I think the Giants, like everybody, know that most days you do an okay job at work, some days you do a great job, and some days, you're just there. That's the American Way:

The Giants know the season's a long one, so why bother giving 100% every day? Just beat the bad teams -- they beat the Redskins, Rams, and Eagles to open the season 3-0, for example, going on to beat the Bills, Dolphins, the Jets, and the Redskins again, racking up 7 easy wins of their nine total, before edging the Cowboys to get into the playoffs-- and make it to the playoffs, where people will underestimate you and make things even easier for you.

That's what happened at Lambeau, right? The Packers didn't bother showing up for most of the game because they thought they had it in the bag. Atlanta went to New York and didn't bother bringing an offense (probably because coordinator Mike Mularkey was already halfway to Jacksonville, mentally) and Green Bay figured they'd win on personality and so why bother actually tackling?

The Giants have it all figured out, and if they win the Super Bowl, it will be a victory for just trying to make it through the day. And next year, they can simply send a bird to win the game for them.

But I couldn't find a clip of that, so settle for this:

Here's to only trying when it really counts! Here's to the New York Giants!

Why The Giants Should NOT Win The Super Bowl: How can I put this tactfully? Let me see...

... Eli Manning, we don't want to have to like you.

It's not us, it's you.

America has already voted with its feet, so to speak: we love Peyton. There's only room in America's heart for one Manning at a time. Archie had us in thrall, and then Peyton came along.

Can you make the case that Eli's just as good as Peyton? Sure. Can you make the case he's better? Maybe, but this has already taken me a long time and I'm tired of looking up stats. So let's rate these quarterbacks the way I rate all quarterbacks, via two questions:

(c) If you had to start a team from scratch and pick just one Manning to overpay and build a team around, who would you pick?

I say Eli. The question is who would you pick right now and I'd like a quarterback with a neck who doesn't spend all his time talking to Rob Lowe.

Although Rob Lowe is pretty cool.

Anyway: Eli is the guy you'd build your team around. He's younger, looks about as good as Peyton, and wins on the road, which Peyton has trouble doing.

(iv) If you had two minutes left in the Super Bowl and were down a touchdown, who would you pick as your quarterback?

You probably said Peyton but remember, they've already answered that question with Eli-to-Tyree and Peyton-to-That Guy On the Saints.

So Eli is likely the better quarterback of the two, and maybe always was.

But is America ready to like Eli? The way we like Peyton? I don't think so. It's nothing personal against Eli. It's just that we already love Peyton and his funny commercials and his sideline faces and his weird, grandpa pants and we'd really just rather that Eli didn't go messing that up by winning another Super Bowl and giving us funny feelings about him.

Vote: SHOULD win. After all, it's possible to go and win a Super Bowl and still be more or less completely unlikeable.

And I really want a role model to look up to when I half-ass my way through work. Is look up to the right phrase there? How about a role model to look across at? Sounds about right.

******************************************************************************
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... (The I Should Have A Catchy Title For This Post Post)

2012-01-20T05:07:00.000-08:00

It's 7:07 a.m. I'm sitting in a McDonald's in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, drinking coffee and listening to Let Go, by jj:

And killing time until I have to go give a seminar on mortgage litigation at 8:30, and the "colon/semicolon" key on my laptop just broke off, so now I don't have the d or that critical semicolon key and I am a huge fan of semicolons,

Semicolon by brianefp

A seriously huge fan of semicolons.

And I've been up since 3:30 a.m. and this was a long week so I've hit that level of tired where every single thing including this Kinks song (Long Distance)

is annoying me, and I decided to clear out the notes on my phone where I store ideas for things to blog about, so here are a bunch of sports-related things I once thought I'd blog about but then didn't and now did; the bold print is the exact text of my note:

John 3:16 Commercial: Focus on the Family, which I'm kind of certain is generally a group I dislike, aired a "John 3:16" commercial during the Broncos-Patriots* blowout. I didn't see it, as I tape the games to watch at night because during the day I do things that are more important, like play Spider Chase with Mr Bunches, our youngest, which is a game in which I have to pretend to catch a spider and then chase him and put it on him, and then he does the same, which secretly horrifies me because I can't stand spiders, but that's what parenting is all about: letting your kids put imaginary spiders on you instead of watching Tebow's last game this year.

So I don't know much about this commercial. You can read about it here; I have not even read that article. I haven't read it because thinking about Tebow made me recall what I have started thinking every time I think of Tebow, which is this:

How stupid and bad at their jobs are John Elway and John Fox?

Let me give you a breather with the song that's now on my iPod, The New Love Song by Joshua James:

And let me also add that I bought my coffee at 6:53 a.m. and it's now 7:19 a.m. and I took a sip and it burned my mouth, so McDonald's learned nothing from that famous coffee case that everyone thinks was frivolous but which was not.

Anyway, here's why John Elway and John Fox are stupid, in three simple steps:

1. Everyone says Tim Tebow is a terrible passer.
2. Tim Tebow has been on the Broncos for two years.
3. John Elways is widely regarded as a great quarterback, and John Fox widely regarded as a great coach (or at least a good one).
4. Neither of those to geniuses (where's that sarcasm emoticon?) has thought "Hey, let's teach Tim Tebow how to throw!"

I know that's more than three steps but I'm too lazy to go change it.

When The Anointed One Aaron Rodgers came into the league, he learned how to throw the ball a non-Tedford way. Tiger Woods once famously changed his swing and struggled for a year before coming back to his prior form. People can learn how to do things differently.

So the Broncos, with John Elway and John Fox, have this quarterback with phenomenal athletic abilities, and they have a Hall of Fame quarterback in the building and there are other quarterbacks like Jake Plummer and Kurt Warner who are retired and maybe could use some income and nobody apparently has ever bothered to make Tebow learn how to throw the way they want him to?

Have they? Have I missed something? Nobody's saying "Hey, we worked with him and that kid just can't get it", are they? No, they are not.

So what you have is John Elway talking to John Fox at practice and here's how I imagine that goes:

Elway: Look at him. He's awful.

Fox: Yeah, I don't know what to do.

Elway: Well, I mean, if there were someone here who was responsible for teaching him how to play football, almost coaching him, if you will...

Fox: Yeah, and if we had a guy like that and then there were someone who knew how to play his position and had really excelled at it, we could probably work on him.

Elway: What a pity.

Fox: Yeah. Let's go rip him on national TV and then halfheartedly pull it back.

Elway: Sounds good. Have you seen my Super Bowl rings?

Hm. Under Mike Holmgren, Brett Favre went from rocket-armed wild man to an improvisational but more balanced quarterback. Under Darrell Bevell, Favre looked almost disciplined. Under the Eagles' coach, Michael The Dog Killer almost became a pocket passer and has become more accurate. Quarterbacks have learned not to throw sidearm... etc.

Why can't Tebow throw? Because nobody is interested in teaching him how to throw. If the Broncos were truly invested in their supposed starter, they'd have him in quarterback camp. But they're not.

"Hey, thanks for making us millions in
jersey sales and winning those games.
I'm gonna go rip you on national TV now, okay?"

Now up, Real Life, "Send Me An Angel."

QQ Irsay picasso: This refers to a quote by Colts' owner Jim Irsay: the whole quote is:

Anyone can take a hatchet to a Picasso...but pasting back together! Now that's the trick,isn't it!

And Irsay said that after firing Bill Polian at the end of this season. Polian, remember, is the guy who built the good Buffalo Bills' teams when they were good, and built the good Colts' teams, too. But now the Colts are 2-14 and the lack of talent on the roster is almost certainly due to the fact that Peyton Manning's salary keeps the Colts from being able to put more good players on the field, and now Peyton Manning's salary is going to either require that the Colts trade him in order to draft Andrew Luck, which would require that the new team rework the contract, which gives Manning a great deal of power over where he goes, or that the Colts not draft Andrew Luck, which may not be the worst thing in the world because the consensus number one pick isn't always a good idea, but, then, if you draft Greg Oden and he stinks, you keep your job. If you skip him because you suspect he stinks, you lose your job when the team doesn't immediately win, which is why Houston is in the playoffs but they don't have the GM that drafted that defensive end instead of Reggie Bush.

How could you tell
if it was pasted together correctly?

So Bill Polian, who built a team that went to two Super Bowls and won one, is out, and if he's the guy who decided to make the Colts a one-man show, that's a reasonable decision. But Irsay's quote still makes no sense.

1,000,000 to have your team lose: This refers to a poll I heard about where Vanity Fair asked a bunch of people whether they would kill their pet in exchange for a million dollars. Some people said they thought the results would change if you put an actual million cash in front of the person and asked them the same question.

Me, I don't know. I'll take heat for saying this, but a million dollars? To have my pet put asleep? (The poll, I don't think, mandated that I have the killing done brutally or anything.) I'm a fervent believer in people before pets and with a million bucks I could ensure that my kids always have therapy available no matter what our stupid society does about autism and insurance, and I could set up that low cost/no cost legal foundation I wanted to, and I could help people even more than I already do... all for the cost of a cat?

I'd have to think long and hard about that.

Anyway: My thought was what if you could get $1,000,000 but in exchange your favorite sports team would never ever win a game, again, ever?

That seems simpler, doesn't it? A million bucks and the Bills never win another game? (In my case, that's easy: the Bills don't win enough to make it matter if I doom them to losing.)

And it's certainly not as hard a question as killing a pet.

But if you think about it, if you take the million, you doom every player on that team ever to never win, affecting not just their lives but also their income: if they lose all their games, they won't be pro players for long and won't likely get endorsement deals. Front office people will get fired more quickly. The team's income will drop.

And the fans of that team: They'll never get to see their team win, ever. No playoff hopes for them, ever.

So your million bucks is bringing a lot of misery and problems for not just a cat or dog, but for thousands, if not millions of people.

Not so easy, then, is it? Easier than "Would I kill a pet?" But not so easy, after all.

The question of what you would do for a million dollars is important in everyone's life, whether you think it is or not. Half of all households in the U.S. earn more than $49,000 per year. That means in your lifetime, you will likely earn a million dollars (if not more.) So when you consider what you're doing now and did in the past and will do in the future, every day you do it you are answering the question "What would I do for a million dollars?"

On that philosophical note, I'm going to end on Don't You Worry by Jim Noir, and a tip from the How To Do Everything podcast. The tip is this: if you are having a stressful day, try to put on some artsy, techno-noir music like this:

Because, they said, having that in the background as you are stressed out makes it seem more like the stress in your life is not stress but instead is part of an arty, noir-ish movie (like the movie Drive) and that helps your mind interpret it not as stress but as something exciting.

And it worked for me because I'm still in that McDonald's listening to that song and instead of being tired and crabby and semicolonless I'm feeling more adventurous.

Let's finish on a "sports" note, though, and by that I mean a scantily-clad cheerleader:

That's Melissa Rycroft, a cheerleader who was on Dancing With The Stars. I found her picture on "The Hottest Girls Of Cheerleading," and I bet that more readers click that link than the one that led to income stats or the autism redefinition.

But I don't blame you. Not just because I'm listening to the rousing "Power Lines" by The Interiors, a song I can't find on Youtube, but also because if you clicked on the cheerleader instead of the autism link, you showed you were more interested in leering at women then learning about a problem that affects 1 in 100 children and costs our country billions every year, so don't judge me for saying I might put a cat to sleep to make a million bucks.

Cubicle Dwellers! Read up, and do it quick before the boss sees; you could get prizes!

2012-01-19T15:00:00.001-08:00

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Contest Factory for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Do you ever watch TV shows and see people’s offices and think man, I wish I had thatoffice?

I do.

I kind of like my office: it’s okay, a good desk, okay chair, nice computer, lots of decorations and personal touches. But even with that, I find myself watching people on TV and comparing their offices to mine. Michael Scott’s (now Andy’s)? Smaller, not as nice. That Korean gangster on Lost? Way bigger than mine, pretty impressive.

I suppose I can’t help it; even with a nice office, I might want a nicer office, and fear having a worse office.

Then there are those people who have terrible offices; one website I like to go to has “I Hate My Job” posts where people show the awful work conditions they have: desks that are cardboard boxes, loose wiring, tiny cubicles, moldy walls… terrible stuff.

If that sounds like where YOU work, then you might be the winner of the Pimp My Cube Contest – a contest trying to find the absolute worse, most pathetic, messiest, cluttered, cramped, annoying, terrible work spaces.

They don’t want to just point and laugh (the way I would); they want to make things BETTER by taking those worst offices and giving them $1,200 in prizes:

o New high end computer system
o New Desk, Chair and Decorations
o New Entertainment Package with high end stereo, espresso machine etc.

Entering is simple: record a video of your awful office and upload it to contest site so the people at the Contest Factory can watch it, then tell your friends and family and coworkers to vote your office the worst ever. The funnier and better quality your video, the more your chances of winning. The contest will be decided by quality of video, and by votes – so once your video is uploaded, get your friends and family to the site to vote for you.

You’ve got until January 31, 2012 and as of now, nobody has yet entered, so you’ve got great odds. And even if you don’t make the top three can win a second-prize $200 gift card chosen by random drawing.

Thursday Scramble! Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World! (NSFW)

2012-01-19T07:50:00.001-08:00

This is actually chapter 23; to begin the story at the beginning, click here. Or, to download the entire story in book form for free, click here.

WARNING: This scene is graphic!

Rachel, after awakening from her zombie state, fell in love with Bridget, who through the magic of a time warp, gave birth to their daughter Harper. Now, having been disintegrated by Harper to save her from the Bubbles, Rachel has been captured by Bridget's dad. No, that doesn't explain anything, which is why you should read the story.

"Let go of me," I said.

He pushed me back on the bed, his leering face only inches from mine. "No," he breathed. "Do you know what I've been through? I've literally been to Hell, died, had my body reconstructed into this monstrosity," and he pointed down at himself, "All to search for what is rightfully mine."

He paused.

"You."

Another pause, as he loomed over me.

"You, you are mine."

"I got that," I told him, trying to sound braver than I was feeling. He was lying on top of me and was heavier than I felt I could move.

"I created you, Rachel. Not literally. I did not myself carve up the women who would become your parts. I did not myself go and kidnap you from that concert. I did not drag your unconscious body down into the cellar where that mad idiot works doing things only he can do. I did not remove your chip and I did not pick out the limbs that would become the new you and then sew them together into this remarkably sexy package, binding them seamlessly by calling on energy from in between the dimensions."

He looked down at the stump of my left arm.

"Except for that one. I picked out that one, and that one in particular was the one that belonged to me." He stared back into my eyes and then put one of his hands, the one with the delicate nails, onto my breast, began kneading it and pulling it, roughly.

"Do you want to know why?" he asked.

"Don't touch me, please," I managed to whisper.

He took his hand and pushed harder against my breast, and I felt a cold sweat break out. Shifting his weight, he pressed his knee into my stomach, just below my ribcage.

"Don't tell me what to do, you lesbian zombie whore," he said, and my blood stopped in my veins at the threat in his voice.

With a tiny twitch of his weight, he pumped his knee into me. My breath whooofed out of me and tears sprang to my eyes and I gasped. He pinched my breast and then punched me in the face.

"Stop it!" Bridget yelled. I couldn't see her. I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath as my legs were roughly pushed apart.

"You don't know what resources went into creating you, all to have a body that could hold on to that hand and all because that hand was the final ingredient in controlling the thousands of slaves we created," Bridget's dad said.

"Don't do this, Daddy!" Bridget yelled again.

"SHUT HER UP!" Bridget's dad roared and punched me in the face again. Before I could even catch my breath he pushed his knee into my stomach again and I gasped again, feeling emptied of air entirely. His hands were pushing in between my thighs and I wanted to fight him, I did, but I couldn't even catch my breath and my lungs were so empty it caused me actual pain inside my chest.

I heard a crack of metal on a head and Bridget screamed and The Me's voice said "Don't do that!" and there was a scuffle sound as Bridget's dad's hand pushed into me and I tried to fight and he said:

"Don't fight me. You have lost the one thing you were created to keep and since this body belonged to others before it became your demon soulless shell, you shouldn't care what I do to it." He pushed his knee down again and my body felt like it was turned inside out as I struggled to breath. He punched the side of my head and I saw stars.

"I would kill you, but I need the body alive. I must make sure you understand never to oppose me again," he said, and viciously raked his nails over my inner thigh. I would have screamed but I couldn't even suck in air, as he was keeping his knee pushed into my stomach now.

I began to black out.

I felt his hands in me, inside my thighs and on my breasts and one pushing into my mouth and the room went all spinny and then a voice crackled through an intercom:

"It's not here!"

Bridget's dad stopped staring at my pussy and turned his terrible face back to look at mine. Through blurred tunnel vision, I saw him purse his lips.

"That is very bad for you," he said. "But worse for your lovers."

He punched me again in the face, and said: "Kill them."

Why Your Team Should(N'T) Go To The Super Bowl: Today: The Ravens (Football)

2012-01-17T06:07:00.000-08:00

Previously: Why The Patriots* Should(N'T) Go To The Playoffs.

God knows I hate the Ravens. I really do. I'm not even sure why. I think it maybe has something to do with Joe Flacco's eyebrows. Look at them:

And let's remember that Flacco only got his job because the guy the Ravens wanted to start -- Troy Smith -- had laryngitis before a preseason game, giving Flacco a shot. (Flacco previously couldn't beat out Tyler Palko for a starting job at the University of Pittsburgh, transferring to Delaware, and then icing his chances of going in the first round by winning the "Taco Bell Quarterback Scramble" at the NFL Combine that year.)

What's weird is that I cannot find footage anywhere of the Taco Bell Quarterback Scramble, and when I googled it, I wasn't able to find any information on what, exactly, it is, because Googling it produces mainly results telling you that Joe Flacco did quite well in it:

Honestly: If you google that question, the first six results all point to Joe Flacco, so that is now his highest career achievement.

With me hating the Ravens and their quarterback Joe Flacco As Brought To You By Taco Bell, you'd think this post would be a foregone conclusion that I'm going to end up deciding they shouldn't go to the Super Bowl, but remember, I hate the Patriots*, too, so this AFC Championship promises to be a bummer for me no matter what, as either Bill Belicheat's Evil Leave Of Evil gets another shot at a Cheationship (TM) or the league's second-boringest team will get to play another Snoozeper Bowl in my lifetime.

So let's go through the motions, anyway:

Why The Ravens SHOULD Go To The Super Bowl: Two reasons: First, Art Modell is a champion of the free market. Remember, this team used to be the Cleveland Browns, playing in a city nobody cares about and ringing up mediocre results. Then Art Bell did what Americans are supposed to believe in: he decided to let the free market's invisible hand guide him on down to the highest bidder.

Despite that simply being free market economics which all Americans are supposed to love because every single time the government does anything it's socialism, the City (?) of Cleveland's government went all Marxist on us and contacted the NFL, which caved in to overregulation and agreed to give another team to Cleveland, and, further, agreed that New Cleveland Team would be the Browns and would hold all the previous stats and records for the Old Browns and further decreed, in a decision authored by Judge Roy Snyder from Springfield, that nobody would ever speak of this again.

That is: A corporation -- which is a person -- decided to engage in a little free market capitalism, only to result in the heavy-handed mitt of government promptly bloody-knuckling not just that corporation's invisible hand but another one's, too, forcing the NFL and Art Modell's Little Corporation That Could to kowtow to the Cleveland Politburo.

In the years since, the Ravens were sold (in 2000) for $600,000,000 and are now valued at $1,079,000,000, 7% of which (or $80,000,000) comes from the "brand," so the name Ravens and being from Baltimore is worth about $80,000,000.

Meanwhile, the Cleveland Browns, purchased for $530,000,000 in 1998 are currently worth $1,035,000,000, with 8% of that, or $78,000,000, being from the brand.

Which is a mixed bag for capitalism, I suppose: the Browns' investment value has climbed at a faster rate than the Ravens, despite the fact that during that time the Ravens won a Super Bowl and repeatedly made the playoffs while Cleveland's biggest accomplishments during the same period were "repeatedly beating the Buffalo Bills."

And, even more distressing for capitalism, most studies agree that government attempts to lure, or keep, professional football teams are misguided at best. The Cato Institute said that "Our own research suggests that professional sports may be a drain on local economies rather than an engine of economic growth."

What kind of negative impact? Oh, just MAKING YOU POORER!

Seriously: said the Cato Institute:

The presence of professional sports teams, on average, reduces the level of real per capita income in metropolitan areas.

The kind of sport that your city gets determines how much poorer you are:

For example, the arrival of a new basketball franchise in a metropolitan area increases real per capita income by about $67. But building a new arena for that basketball team reduces real per capita income by almost $73 in each of the 10 years following the construction of the arena, leading to a net loss of about $6 per person.

Similarly, in cities that have baseball franchises, the net effect of an existing baseball team playing in a 37,000-seat baseball-only stadium (the average capacity of the baseball stadiums in our sample) is a $10 reduction of real per capita income.

I wonder why that doesn't get trumpeted on the start of NFL broadcasts? Much, but not all, of the problem there comes from government subsidies, and leads the Cato Institute to conclude that

one thing is clear from the evidence on professional sports franchises: owners are reaping substantial benefits in the value of their teams because they are so skilled at the stadium gambit.

That's GREAT, right? That's capitalism! Rich people profiting off government tax dollars that provide no real benefit to the community at large I...

...what?

That's not capitalism?

I stand corrected. Still, the Ravens are a blow for the free market, right? They moved to Baltimore, got named after Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem antagonist, and doubled in value in just over 10 years, just like every single other person's investments did over that time.

Let's just gloss over that lesson and move on to the other reason why rooting for the Ravens to make the Super Bowl is a good thing: Because of Edgar Allan Poe, America's favorite macabre son of traveling actors.

Edgar Allan Poe is, after Steve Jobs, easily our most-misunderstood genius. As the Poe Museum website explains, most of what we believe about Poe (that he's a morbid, mysterious man) comes not from the fact that Poe wrote nothing but morbid, mysterious things, but instead, from an evil biographer trying to defame Poor Edgar.

According to the Poe Museum, Poe is sort of like Reverse Batman: same history, mostly, sans all the superheroing. Poe's parents died when he was three, leaving him to be raised by wealthy tobacco barons. Poe didn't like tobacco-ing, though, and went off to the University of Virginia, where his miserly adoptive father gave him "less than one-third" of the money he needed, resulting in Poe having to resort to gambling to raise funds because that is exactly the kind of story that puts a positive spin on someone. "He's not all macabre! He's just a guy who so despised hard work that when he needed money he tried to raise it by gambling!"

Poe, humiliated and broke, went back home only to find his girl was engaged to another man; he got in a fight with his adoptive father, and that leads to the least likely sentence ever written in the English language. Quoth the Poe Museum:

The heartbroken Poe’s last few months in the Allan mansion were punctuated with increasing hostility towards Allan until Poe finally stormed out of the home in a quixotic quest to become a great poet and to find adventure.

Those two things being synonymous.

Poe would go on to be written out of his will and mugged by a cousin of his, so if you think your family is bad, well, consider that, but soon rose to fame writing scathing book reviews -- (hey, Grumpy Bulldog! You could be the next Poe!) -- and using his newfound fame, married a thirteen year old girl.

Wait, what?

Quoth the Poe Museum:

At the age of twenty-seven, Poe brought Maria and Virginia Clemm to Richmond and married his Virginia, who was not yet fourteen.

I'm finding out a whole lot of things I never heard in English Class. It makes you wonder what the biography that defamed Poe said.

Poe was still not wealthy: he quit his job and moved to New York, then Philadelphia, but wasn't making any money (his first book paid him in 25 free copies, which was explained because at the time, the publishers were really only looking for Young Adult books, the market having been besieged by Ye Hungere Gamese the year before) So Poe became the first Balloon Dad and tried to trick the world into giving him money.

Wait, what?

Quoth The Poe Museum:

Always in search of better opportunities, Poe moved to New York again in 1844 and introduced himself to the city by perpetrating a hoax. His “news story” of a balloon trip across the ocean caused a sensation, and the public rushed to read everything about it—until Poe revealed that he had fooled them all.

So based on the precedent-setting case of Oprah v. James Frey, if you've ever had to read anything Poe wrote, the City of Baltimore owes you $1.77.

Poe celebrated that fame by publishing The Raven, going broke, and having an affair with a married woman.

(Remember: This is the official biography the Poe Museum puts out to ensure that you don't get the wrong idea about Edgar Allan Poe.)

After the death of his wife, Poe began courting other people and believed he was engaged again to his original fiancee when:

On the way to Philadelphia, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days. He was found in the bar room of a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election.

This is easily the greatest thing I have read in a month of Sundays. Poe died shortly therafter, and then one of the authors whose works he'd savaged wrote a libelous biography

in which he portrayed Poe as a drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends.

When, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. So if the Ravens make the playoffs, perhaps America's long national nightmare can finally be over, and we will no longer have to think of Edgar Allan Poe as a "drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends" but can instead remember him as the petulant, slacker, gambling man who married a prepubescent girl while viciously attacking anyone who was more popular than him.

Um.

Why The Ravens Should NOT Go To The Super Bowl: Because I hate them.

This post has been light on pictures of girls in bikinis and such, so let's throw one in here:

And say she's the reason to hope they make the Super Bowl, because otherwise my arguments are less-than-compelling.

And, to appeal to the other half of football fans, here is Christopher Egan:

Chris Egan was to play Poe in the eponymous Poe, a TV show ABC threatened to put on in Fall 2011, only to later drop the idea.

Vote: SHOULD Win. Because then we'll finally get that Poe TV series.

Tomorrow (Or Soon): Why The Giants Should(N'T) Win The Super Bowl.

Why Your Team Should(N'T) Go To The Super Bowl (Today: The Patriots*) (Football)

2012-01-16T08:29:00.000-08:00

As per usual, I ran out of time in my previews, this time only getting through the 8 worst teams in the playoffs before I had to do other things like talk about some guy pretending that Tim Tebow miraculously appeared on his grilled cheese sandwich (the bid for which is up to $25.01 as I write this, because apparently people would rather pay $25.01 for a used Fake Tim Tebow Grilled Cheese than make their own, and, as usual, the fact that there exists people stupid enough to spend money on a stupid thing makes me have to remind you again that we have more than enough money to fund Social Security and Medicare and still provide universal free health care because we live in a society so rich people will pay for Fraudulent Grilled Cheese Souvenirs, and people who say otherwise should go to Hell.)

Anyway, the four teams I had loosely ranked the top four playoff teams, by process of elimination, were the Patriots*, the Packers, the Giants, and the Broncos, and two of them made it past this weekend, so not bad for me, if you count a 16% success rate as "not bad," which I do.

But since only two of the as-yet-unanalyzed teams moved on -- both the Broncos and the Packers falling out of contention due to the incredibly Tebow-like play of their quarterbacks in the divisional round, the difference between Actual Tebow and Aaron Rodgers' Tebow Impersonation being that Actual Tebow wasn't given 40+ opportunities to badly overthrow his receivers and then shake his head in disgust -- I've decided to change it up for the final four and tell you why each team should go to the Super Bowl, and also why they should not go, and in doing so, preview each of the upcoming weekend's two games, only one of which is worth watching anyway.

Before going on, I should point out that Tim Tebow's playoff passer rating was higher than A-Rodg's. The Anointed One, who will likely be voted the MVP this year, finished the playoffs rated lower than His Tebowness, with a worse completion percentage than Andy Dalton, second-last among playoff quarterbacks in average yards per completion, and behind Joe Flacco (and 6 others) in first-down percentage. Some of that is due to the fact that Packers' receivers treated the football as though it caused them actual pain that increased the nearer it got, but part of that is that Rodgers routinely over- and underthrew his receivers and tossed it behind them, all the while grimacing as though he were the only one on the field who was even remotely competent. Whenever Tebow did something stupid in the half-game I watched, his teammates gathered around and he was supportive and supported.

Whenever the Packers did something stupid, they scowled and yelled and frowned and sulked, which is perhaps the difference between being gratified to make the playoffs and hoping for more, on the one hand, and thinking that you are entitled to win and shouldn't have to go through the motions, on the other hand. Possibly one reason so few teams repeat as Super Bowl winners is that once you've spent a year being called a "World Champion" and interviewed and paraded and featured on the NFL's opening night and then run through the season with people saying how you're the team to beat, you may forget that you still have to play the games.

Just sayin'.

So today, it's the lesser of two evils, the AFC Championship Game, featuring the Patriots* vs. the Ravens, the Ravens being the AFC version of the Atlanta Falcons: all boringosity, while the Patriots* manage to be the AFC's version of the Patriots*, a team full of guys who in my mind are forever branded as cheaters, making it impossible for me to root for them.

Before going on to analyze why each team should, or should not, win, let me take a moment to feature a quote from an anonymous guy on ESPN radio on Saturday. I never get the names of the interchangeable voices saying interchangeable things on the radio, so I don't know who said it, but on Saturday, while running some errands, I put on the radio and heard An Anonymous Interchangeable ESPN Guy say:

"I'm more of an AFC guy myself"

Which caused me to immediately turn the radio to NPR and give up for the day on sports "commentary" because what sense does it make to prefer the AFC over the NFC?

I can understand, in baseball, preferring the American League or the National League: the rules are slightly different, so the style of play is slightly different. But at this point, the AFC/NFC divide is as meaningless as the NBA's East/West divide or whatever it is they do on hockey (I think they divide it between "people who don't care about hockey" and "that one guy who does care a little.")

It's not right to say that one conference is more physical than the other -- both the #1 seeds this year featured high-scoring offenses dominated by passing with no defense on the other side. Both conferences featured old-school bruising defenses like the Steelers or the Bears. The conferences play each other all the time. The AFC has been part of the NFL for something like nearly 50 years, so nobody young enough to be on sports radio has any reason to think of it as anything but a meaningless division in the NFL; old-timers could be forgiven for clinging to memories of the AFL, but old-timers aren't worth listening to anyway.

So: Back to the AFC Conference Championship, featuring a match-up between two teams that I dislike so much, I actively rooted for the Generically Named Houston Texans (would it be any worse if they were the Texas Houstons?)(It might be better) on Saturday, to no avail. And now I am trying to muster up a reason to care for one or both of these teams so that I don't end up spending Super Bowl Sunday at Chuck E. Cheese's with Mr F and Mr Bunches which, come to think of it, actually sounds like it might be kind of fun...

...No! Nobody's skipping a Super Bowl on my watch. While it's true that Obama has set himself up as the sole defender of all of our rights so that we exist in a world where for now we are safe from rendition and SOPA, at least until we elect President RonPaul to run President RonPaul's America Circa 2001 (TM) and he has us all spirited away for questioning while shutting down the Internet, but for now I still have an obligation as an American to watch the Super Bowl and complain that the commercials weren't as good as I remember, and so here goes with

Why The Patriots* Should Win The Super Bowl This Year: If you want a good reason why you should root for Brady and whoever else is still on this team to win the Super Bowl, here's one: they could be the greatest team ever in football.

With the Packers opting to not really try against the Giants in the divisional round, their chances of repeating as champs is over, but a fascinating article in the Green Bay Press Gazette pointed out that doubling up on Super Bowl rings back-to-back isn't really that great anyway, and just winning a Super Bowl? Pleh.

Consider this quote from Tedy Bruschi, whose name is ridiculously hard to spell, talking about whether it's a big deal to win more than one Super Bowl. Saying it's not, really, Tedy pointed out:

You want to own a decade...That's the ultimate compliment. To have a decade mentioned in the history of the NFL and to have them think of only one team. That's the ultimate compliment. That's what sets so many different teams apart.

He's not the only one who thinks that. Troy Aikman, who seemed not to say anything calling the Giants-Packers blowout, said in that article:

Yet, there's always the opportunity then for someone to say, `Well, yeah, he won this, but … or this team won one but when you win a second Super Bowl or multiple Super Bowls, it eliminates a lot of those buts.

This, then, is the world we live in: Winning the World Championship is nothing. Winning back-to-back is, well, okay but to be anything anyone would care about, you've got to win a decade, like Steelers in the 70s and the 49ers in the 80s and the Cowboys in the 90s and the Patriots* in the Aughts and that's why you should root for the Patriots* in this Super Bowl: because they can begin again with this decade and if they're good enough, maybe they'll win the Teens too and they'll be the only team to win a score -- that's twenty years -- and they can set the bar a little higher than it's already been set.

In the age of parity, when anyone can win on any given Sunday and new teams make it to the Super Bowl every year,practically, the cool kids have, as the cool kids always do, redefined cool. The Patriots* can do that again by setting themselves up as the first Team Of A Score, or something.

Why The Patriots* Shouldn't Win: For that same reason. Wasn't everyone a little relieved when it turned out the Patriots* were cheating all along and that none of their Super Bowl victories really counted for anything, and we could all say "It's not that they're geniuses or great or anything, they just cheated and if I had a DVD of everyone else's defensive calls, I'd be dating Gisele Bundchen, too." I mean, enough is enough, right? While we, as a society, have been slowly redefining success downward -- handing out ribbons for everything and supersizing our food to the point where 44 ounces is now regular-sized and seeing Dove claim that ordinary people are beautiful despite the fact that we see ordinary people every day proving the exact opposite -- the Patriots* have been going around winning every Super Bowl there is and throwing for record touchdown and record yardages and this year getting to the AFC Championship without even bothering to play defense just for the fun of it, I'd say, except that there's nothing fun about the Patriots* and their whole grimly-determined faces and precision attack and joyless approach to football.

The Patriots* are all about winning no matter what: they are, by now, the living embodiment of everything Vince Lombardi ever thought: it's as if someone took all those Vince Lombardi quotes and his eyeglasses and scary 1960s'-too-large teeth and put them in a beaker with amino acids and zapped it with lightning and the result began spewing out perfect football players who could play any position and can each perform every task on the field, all of them guided by the Hive Mind of Bill Belichick. The Patriots* are success, winning, taken beyond all rational norms to a point where it's sort of frightening, isn't it? I mean, sure, they win a lot, but if there was ever a gray, faceless, post-apocalyptic vision of the future, it's Patriots* football: clean, antiseptic, unfunny, mechanical, perfect Patriots* football.

If the Patriots* win this Super Bowl, it'll feel not so much like a celebration as that moment when Hal says "Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye."

Maybe they're heralding the next phase of evolution, but I don't want to be a Sky Baby.

Which Way I'm Gonna Go With This: Ultra-perfection either way... but at what cost? Then again, a Patriots* Super Bowl means that instead of Napoleon Dynamite in the stands (as he was at Lambeau Field yesterday), we'll get shots of Gisele:

And if Hal had looked like that, Dave would've never left the pod bay. Vote: SHOULD win.

Tomorrow (or soon?) Why The Ravens Should(N'T) Win The Super Bowl.

This is not actually... Aaron Rodgers

2012-01-15T10:49:00.000-08:00

Everyone involved with the Jacksonville Jaguars hates everyone else involved with the Jacksonville Jaguars. (Football)

2012-01-14T12:34:00.000-08:00

You may have already known, but I just found out that the Jacksonville Jaguars have a new owner. I found this out because I was reading The Consumerist, where I get all my sports news when I'm not getting it from The Superficial, and I read how the new owner thinks you're not a real fan of the Jaguars unless you spend a couple hundred dollars to sit outside and watch them from the cheap seats:

Some Jaguars fans are upset about comments made by new team owner Shahid Khan. Others are supporting him.

Khan made the comments during Wednesday's introduction of new head coach Mike Mularkey. "For me a fan is somebody who is a season ticket holder for the Jaguars. So that is a key definition we need to get out. We want to hear from people, we want a huge amount of constructive feedback. We need input, but we need that from fans who are season ticket holders," Khan said.

(First Coast News) So if you like to watch the Jaguars at home, well, you've been out of luck for a long time because most of their home games are blacked out, but the point is, the new owner doesn't want to hear from so-called "fans" who aren't willing to put their money where their mouth is and their butts where the stadium is.

After realizing that alienating the 17 people who still care about the Jaguars might be a bad move for a new owner, the team backtracked, releasing an email from Khan that read:

"All it takes to be a Jaguars fan is to love the Jaguars. And if you love the Jaguars, you're the most important person to me and the entire organization."

(Same source.) The outrage led to "over 100" comments on a Facebook page, so Jaguars Nation was outraged. Although, is it right to call them "Jaguars Nation" when they number just "over 100"? Maybe "Jaguars Province" is more accurate.

Down in Jaguars Province, the fans were outraged, though. Or not:

"Fans aren't season ticket holders, they're anybody who loves football,"

said Traci Soenksen, who obviously confused what the Jaguars have been doing for years with "football". Another fan, Alisha Brown, was quoted as saying:

"In the heat of the moment we all say things that just come to our head, and sometimes going back and thinking about it, we rethink of what we said and realize it must not have been the best thing to say,"

although very few press conferences are held "in the heat of the moment"; I'm starting to see why Khan maybe wasn't too crazy about having these people on his side.

Meanwhile, what Khan was trying to do was head off criticism over his bottom-of-the-barrel hire of a new head coach: He pulled Mike Mularkey from the Atlanta Falcons, where Mularkey had just finished coordinating a 24-2 loss to the Giants. Me and that other Buffalo Bills fan out there remember him as the coach who led Buffalo to their last winning season (9-7 in 2004) before bottoming out the next year and finishing 5-11 with a 24th ranked offense.

Since then, Mularkey offensive coordinated the Dolphins to a 29th-place ranking before sending the league's boringest team, the Falcons, up to the stratosphere of 10th-place on offense.

Mularkey is bound to disappoint his own team, which was hoping that someone, somewhere, would do something to make the team at least credible again: cleaning out their lockers after another futile fall, some players expressed hope that maybe next year the offense might be, you know, good:

Last year at this time, upgrading the defense was a major priority. The team did that in free agency with the additions of Paul Posluszny, Clint Session, Dawan Landry, Drew Coleman, Dwight Lowery, and Matt Roth.

"Hopefully they put as much energy into upgrading the offense this year as they did with the defense last year," said defensive tackle Terrance Knighton.

That would have been a great idea. Too bad they hired Mularkey.

More updates on Tebow, including body-painted women and a sandwich. (Football)

2012-01-14T08:45:00.000-08:00

If you, like me, are all excited to see Tim Tebow take on the much-hated Patriots* (they lose the asterisk when all the cheaters are off their roster and Brady gives back at least one ring) tonight, and if you, like me, are so excited about that prospect that you opted to not spend much time mulling over how Tim Tebow's much-vaunted Christianity can keep him from making an It Gets Better video but still let him golf with Tiger Woods, because apparently God hates the gays but loves the whores, then you, like me, might have opted out of that particular moral dilemma by choosing, instead, to focus on whether or not someone would go to Hell or get sued for claiming that their "Tebow Grilled Cheese" was a random act of God instead of a deliberate forgery in an attempt to glom onto His Tebowness.

Because that's what happened: A complete liar who's looking to get rich and famous in the (sl)easiest way possible is claiming that he "accidentally" grilled Tim Tebow into his grilled cheese sandwich.

Says Zack Johnson, Minor-League Fraudster, on his eBay posting of the Grilled Cheese Scam:

While hastily making lunch today, I slapped together two slices of bread and some cheese for the old standby of the grilled cheese sandwich. I'll freely admit I was a bit sloppy with my butter application and this sandwich was not going to be my best work. I'll also admit my frying pan is crappy and distributes heat very poorly, so I was not exactly expecting a work of art for a sandwich However, upon flipping the sandwich, I was thoroughly amazed by the image staring back at me ... the now iconic "Tebowing" pose of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow! Stunned ... I found myself wondering what the meaning was of this sandwich. A sign from God? A cry for help from my lousy frying pan to be replaced? A warning of doom since I'm a Patriots fan? A ridiculous coincidence? I don't know. But the one thing I DO know is that I must share my sandwich masterpiece with the world, and would love for it to find a good home from somebody who's a much bigger Tim Tebow fan than myself. Happy bidding!

None of which happened at all. Zack Johnson, liar, simply made a burnt grilled cheese and scraped the shape of Tebow into it, and has been written up on local news sites and even Deadspin because people find it interesting and not at all fraudulent, apparently.

The scam is low-key; yesterday, the Fake Grilled Tebow was going for $6.51; today it's up to $24.51, so the publicity is working and overcoming the completely obvious fakery.

I haven't been this befuddled by a Food Shaped Like Something Else since everyone was snookered into thinking a corn flake looked like Illinois when it clearly looked like Manitoba. This is Zack Johnson, liar's first foray into selling fake food items. His previous sales were a DVD and a game. Presumably, he did not pretend to have accidentally recorded The Lord Of The Rings on DVD and then sell it.

If he was hoping to get in good with The Big Guy (Tebow, not God), Zack Johnson, Fraudster, was sadly misguided: Tebow hates people who use His likeness to get rich on eBay.

In the end, potential buyers will have to ask themselves whether they want to throw away $24.51 (plus shipping and handling) on a fake item that will be forgotten about (if not eaten) by next year, or whether they instead would want to honor Tebow like this enterprising young lady who I'm sure makes her father sob into his pillow:

That's Erin Drewes, who is pictured here with His Tebowness:

And who had to be interviewed by Playboy to clear up once and for all whether she was actually Tim Tebow's girlfriend. She is, and was, not. But this girl might have been:

Except that when people discovered her back in 2009, they got all distracted by her hotness and never followed up on things like "her name" and "whether she was actually Tebow's girlfriend."

(Or Tim Tebow Jedi-ed them: "These are not the girls you're looking for.")

Erin Drewes is still alive and well. Or so it would seem. COED Magazine, which is fast becoming my go-to source, put out a call for information about her the other day. And they have pictures of playmates Tebow-ing, so you can get into the spirit of tonight's game, because, remember, being gay is not okay but cheating on one's wife with 27+ women: okay with God!

Go... Tebow?

what is 'the After'?

2012-01-12T07:05:00.001-08:00

the After on Prezi

the After is...

... everything you want it to be.

...a trap

...where all your friends and family wait for you

...frighteningly perfect

the After is my latest book: four years in the making, the After tells what happens to Saoirse following a plane crash that leaves her standing in her perfect kitchen with her perfect family in a perfect world that she cannot stand. Told by William Howard Taft -- yes, that William Howard Taft, who appears on her doorstep -- that she can leave, Saoirse sets off on her own travels through a world almost entirely of her making, trying to find out how to leave and to decide if she wants to.

If you ever wondered what comes next, the After is a must-read. Buy it on your Kindle for $0.99 or in paperback on Amazon.

Click here for a sneak preview of a portion of the book.

Tim Tebow is way better at getting girls than he is at football. (Football)

2012-01-11T09:25:00.001-08:00

Pictured at right:
Christianity.

And keep in mind, I think he's pretty good at football.

In Tim Tebow Dating news, The Superficial, where you should get all your sporting news like I do, is reporting that Tim Tebow is definitely not dating Katy Perry:

With all the pain and suffering in the world, God looked down upon humanity and sent us a champion. – A non-singing and dancing champion, I should say. These miracles are starting to run together. – A champion who really wouldn’t help with all that pain and suffering stuff, but holy shit, would he be awesome at football. And that champion is Tim Tebow, a young man whose righteous path is now set lead him to a promised land of sweet-boobage and honey known as Katy Perry‘s breast because apparently there really is a God, and my tears are his food. Via Hollywood Life

The site says, before going on to quote someone claiming that Katy Perry's parents are in favor of making Tebow their daughter's rebound guy:

“[Katy's] mentioned on more than one occasion how much she likes Tim,” a source tells OK! magazine.”Katy’s mom firmly believes the best cure for heartache is to quickly fall in love again… In her mind, Tebow is the perfect guy for her daughter. He’s handsome, charming, intelligent and above all, a good Christian.”

The Superficial called it correctly:

Keep in mind, absolutely none of this is true,

Because, Christian or not (not), Katy Perry is still just all about getting attention, and mentioning Tim Tebow the week before a divisional playoff is guaranteed to get people to google "Katy Perry and Tim Tebow," as I just did, and that's what Katy Perry and OK! Magazine, which "broke" this "story" want. (As opposed to what Perry's parents want, which is more people for their church; when capitalizing on their daughter's real divorce from her fake marriage didn't do that, they publicly announced that Tebow would be great for their daughter and invited him to speak at their church.)(Is God in favor of publicity stunts and pimping one's daughter out?)

Katy Perry isn't the only gal angling for some Tebow Time: Christian Sorority Girl Britney Salvesen, who attends the generically-named Midwestern State University, posted this video asking Tebow out:

I haven't watched it but it's from a Christian sorority girl, so it's SFW, right?

Britney and Katy probably aren't worried about competition from perennial second-place finisher Lindsey Vonn,

who desperate for publicity that wasn't related to getting silver medals, refused to deny rumors that she was interested in dating Tebow.

If you are keeping track, then, it is no longer necessary to even be good at football in order to become the most popular guy in the Universe.

Or universes: Tebow may not just be a big deal in our world but also in the Marvel Universe, where he's recently been immortalized as a comic book hero:

Lots of people are wondering what powers Tebow will have. Given the half-a**ed job Marvel does on sports-related superheroes, I'm going to guess "Super Handoffs." It doesn't even matter what that means.

On the other hand, if Tebow isn't a walking billboard for proving atheists wrong, I'm missing something: a guy raised in Florida, the weird armpit of America, manages to win college football's highest award, then becomes the starter on an NFL teams despite the fact that the person in charge hates him, advances to the second round of the playoffs against all odds, and now is more or less the next Bachelor despite loudly proclaiming that he's not interested in sex? That has to be Divine Intervention, right?

Oh, before I forget: He's also a Snuggie:

On with: "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8... etc. etc. etc....!": A (Semi)Serious Look At the NFL Playoffs: Team 5.

2012-01-10T06:59:00.000-08:00

I jumped a team: Team 6 was to be The Detroit Lions, symbolized by this:

But I didn't get around to previewing them before they lost to the Saints last Saturday because in Detroit, due to the ongoing fiscal crisis, football games are only 30 minutes long, so the Lions weren't prepared for New Orleans' profligate ways: playing a full 60 minutes of football seemed to surprise the Lions, who, like a comedian forced to go long, used up all the good stuff in the first half.

There's no harm in skipping them, though, other than you don't get to ogle this:

for a whole post, because I was going to set the Lions at 6th Least Likely To Win The Super Bowl, and they wouldn't have made it past this week anyway, because if they'd won, they'd be going to "We're Going To Expand It By Selling You Literal Junk Stocks Lambeau Field" where a full-on effort wasn't enough to beat Former National Champion Quarterback Matt Flynn in week 17.

So, RIP, Lions, and take comfort in the fact that you (z) looked pretty good and (2.7) ended what was the second-longest playoff drought in the NFL, behind only ... *sigh* the Buffalo Bills, who at least will stand a chance of making the CFL playoffs when they move to Toronto next year.

On with Team 5, your Fifth Least Likeliest To Win The Super Bowl team,

The San Francisco 49ers.

The 49ers this year had 8 players named to the Pro Bowl but only two of them were named on offense, Frank Gore and some guy who plays offensive line. So the strength of their team is defense, right?

Well, they did rank 2nd in the league for fewest points given up, right behind the Steelers, who couldn't, Sunday, stop the high-powered passing attack that is Jesus-to-Tebow-to-whoever-is-wide-open-down-the-field. But okay, they were 4th in the league for fewest yards given up, best in the NFC and just ahead of... the New York Jets who, um, finished the season. But they were 6th in the league for fewest yards-per-play given up on average just ahead of... um... the Seahawks so okay I...

The 49ers ran up an "impressive" 13-3 record by playing in a division where the other three teams had 17 wins, lowest of any division except the AFC South, where the 3 bottom-rung teams combined for only 16 wins. The net points for the NFC West was minus 93. The only other divisions with net negative points were the AFC West (a whopping minus 252) and the AFC South (-162). They lost to Dallas and Baltimore and lost to Arizona 2.0 late in the season, but they also barely beat the four playoff teams they beat: they played Detroit, New York Giants, Cincinnati, and the Steelers, and their average margin of victory in those games was 8.75 -- that total being upped by their late-season defeat of the Zombie Steelers; take out that 17 point win against a hobbled Roethlisberger, and their margin of victory goes to 6.

And those were the only good teams they played (being charitable and counting Dallas as a good team.)

Now, they have to go up against the Saints, who, overrated though they are, managed to outshoot the 5th rated passer in the NFL. Can the 49ers keep up with the Saints' offense? Alex Smith and his hypnotic eyes are ranked 9th in passer efficiency, maybe because he throws so little: He's ranked 27th in yards per game and 28th in attempts per game. When he does throw, he rarely throws it long: he's 17th in average yards per attempt, 19th in passes for over 20 yards and 20th in passes over 40 yards.

The 49ers, in fact, rank only 16th in average yards per passing attempt and 11th in total points, only 8th in average yards per rushing attempt. They win, it appears, because they hold onto the ball they're 5th in the league in time of possession per game on offense... but just 9 seconds more than the Saints, on average.

If there's a flaw in the NFL playoff picture -- and there is -- it's that teams tend to be overrated when they face a weak schedule and end up with a good record. Four of the last six Super Bowl winners were not number one seeds, and three of the last four number one seeds lost their first playoff game. Since 2000, four number 2 seeds have gone on to the Super Bowl, 3 of them from the AFC, which means that 1 out of 11 number 2 seeds from the NFC made it to the Super Bowl. (Can you remember which one that was?)

(Hint: It rhymes with Shmampa Shmay Shmuccaneers.)

This year's Overhyped Overrated Top Seed First Game Loser is the 49ers, of course, so the NFC season will begin and end with [SPOILER ALERT!] Saints at Packers.

Symbolic Celebrity 49ers Fan: Over on the message boards for the 49ers, a fan asked about famous celebrity fans, and another fan responded:

The ones I can think of are Dana Carvey, Danny Glover, and Huey Lewis.

What do they all have in common?

Right! They were all last good in the 1980s.

As a father, I would be remiss if I did not point out that Marissa Miller is also a 49ers fan:

Because that is important to know.

What kind of cheap stuff can you buy in the 49ers store to appease your wife for posting pictures of Marissa Miller on your blog?

That's right: I said pictures:

Off to the sale section of the 49ers shop, where, as you'd expect of a city ranked 8th on the list of wealthiest cities in America, there's precious little on sale. Your choices are an "Anthony Davis Replica Jersey" marked down from $84.95 to $59.99, or this handsome plaque of Taylor Mays dancing:

marked down from $29.95 to $24.99, and which is no doubt going to spark conversation in your "fan cave" (49ers words, not mine), conversation like "Who is Taylor Mays?"

He's a safety for the Bengals, of course. But you can, for just $24.99, remember the glorious days when Taylor Mays made 11 tackles for the 49ers, returned a deflected punt for a touchdown, was named the "indefinite starter" for the 49ers and then traded to Cincinnati for an undisclosed draft pick.

Or you could just hang a picture of Marissa Miller in your fan cave.

***********************************************************************

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"1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8... etc. etc. etc....!": A (Semi)Serious Look At the NFL Playoffs: Teams 8 & 7.

2012-01-07T05:27:00.000-08:00

Running out of time to get these in, and I'm bound and determined...

bound and determined...

I wonder why...

NO! *must... focus... DO NOT GET DISTRACTED! {grimaces, wonders why the Grimace was called that} ... I ... am... taking... a serious look at these playoffs.

*whew*

Team 8, the 8th least likeliest to not win the Super Bowl or however it is I'm ranking these teams, is...

... do you know, I had to just go check NFL.com to see who's in the playoffs? Granted, I don't pay all that much attention to sports, or, rather, I pay about as much attention to sports as I do the other categories of entertainment, reading and politics being my two primary pursuits, so yesterday, I spent about an hour listening to short stories on podcasts, and about 35 minutes reading about how Rick Santorum got paid $400,000 to help run a series of hospitals that did exorcisms (and another 35 asking people he follows on Twitter how they could support that kind of evil)

and 15 minutes talking sports with The Boy; in fact, when I started to listen to The Dan Patrick Show I stopped abruptly and instead put American Dad on Netflix in the background while I worked.

Oh: right: focus!

The point is, I guess, that not many of the teams in the playoffs seem to be very exciting, and in fact, the NFL seems less exciting to me, now. I'm not sure if that's just me of if others would agree that perhaps football has gotten a little cold and corporate and seems kind of sterile and less interesting than it used to. It seems to me that the NFL is trying to run the color out of football, that interesting players are going by the wayside and coaches say less than ever and most of the teams appear to be the same; that, combined with the fact that there are only three credible teams in the playoffs at all, those three teams being the only teams that this year both played well and were believably good, makes the whole game seem a little less interesting.

Or is it just me? This year, the stories were:

Aaron Rodgers' Ring Quest, in which a young, determined warrior tries to prove himself in the eyes of his elders [Fantasy/Drama]

Those Bumbling Colts, an ongoing series that saw the only competent person in a football organization sidelined and watching in agony while a bunch of misfits drove his company into the ground, [Comedy]

and over on The Christian Network:

Tebow: Man Or God? Each week, John Elway struggles with his beliefs as he watches a man proclaimed by some to be the Second Coming complete 2 of 8 passes in a regulation football game [Spiritual/Drama].

There were other things people talked about, of course, but did they seem to matter? "Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh," 'Tony Romo Amputates His Own Leg on 3rd Down To Prove His Toughness," "They're Still Playing Football In Arizona, Apparently," these were all midseason replacements that maybe got us to look during slow weeks, but that's about it.

So let's talk Team 8, The Cincinnati Bengals, who, I'll admit, are team 8 because I dislike the Ravens and Steelers so much, I bumped them down. The Bengals' rightful position is 11th, but I moved them up to 8th as punishment for those other two teams, and because I wanted to make a point about Andy Dalton because he was the subject of the single dumbest piece of football analysis ever:

Has there ever been a redheaded quarterback in the NFL who’s really done well? It sounds idiotic, but is there any way that could be a factor? We’ve wondered.

That quote comes from Taki Magazine*,

*they've asked that I link to the article and I ask that you go read something on their site after this so they get traffic, too, because that's how they get paid. The Internet isn't going to stay free forever, you know. Even Google finds it necessary to buy ads, and they own the Internet. When you're reading this site, you're doing so because my advertisers pay me to run it, so click my ads. When I link to other sites, go read them and click on an ad once in a while, and link to the stories you read because links increase traffic. That way, you won't have to swipe your credit card everytime you want to read Dilbert online.

and there's no might about it. It's a dumb thing to even think.

It's 2012. We can cure diseases with pills, people carry tiny computers around with them to communicate with each other, we have planes that can fly faster than the speed of sound, we've even faked a moon landing...

... and people are still reading owl pellets, as it were.

How a grown man in 2011 (when that was said) could imagine that red hair in any way affects athletic performance -- let alone that it would only start to affect athletic performance once the person goes pro -- is beyond me, and it shows why the millions we spend on NFL salaries -- yes, we spend it, because when you support a team you voluntarily pay that team's expenses, so every time you buy a Buffalo Bills' jersey, you're contributing to the mentality that allowed them to pay Trebuchet Fitzpatrick $24 million extra dollars to not win another game this season. (I'm not entirely sure they lost all their games after giving Fitzpatrick what Jim Kelly deemed a God-given right, but they lost all their games that mattered, which is the same thing.)

That's why I bought no Bills gear this year, but I did buy Packers and Broncos stuff, specifically a Tebow shirt. I vote with my money, the way Citizens United commanded me to do.

Anyway, now you know what your front office guys are looking at: hair color. I wonder what that guy would've done if Andy Dalton shaved his head? Or died his hair? Does the Wonderlic test begin with "True Or False: The carpet matches the drapes?"

With that said, Andy Dalton had a good year but he wasn't the reason the Bengals rebounded from 4-12 last year to 9-7 this year; it's dumb to judge a quarterback by his hair color, but it's dumber to think that Dalton was that much better than Carson Palmer was/is. Palmer was 19th, Dalton 20th in passer efficiency this year, Palmer beat Dalton in 1st down percentage (8th to 28th), and completion percentage (15th to 21st), and average yards per completion (4th to 24th). That, despite Palmer joining his team midway through the year. I view Oakland and the Bengals as roughly equivalent in skill level and competition, and the teams finished within a game of each other. Had Palmer been traded to Oakland earlier, Oakland may well have won 1 more game and instead of wondering whether a redheaded quarterback can win a playoff game, we'd be treated this week to stories headlined something like "Carson Palmer: Redemption," and they'd show a montage of videos of Occupy: Oakland with a voiceover saying "The riot-torn streets of Oakland may seem like an unlikely place to earn a second chance..."

And with that, you see, too, how easy it is to do sportscasting.

So are the Bengals a feel-good story of a rebuilding team built around a young quarterback who defied the odds of being redheaded, and does this trip to the playoffs herald a new era in Cincinnativille?

No.

The team's management is still bad, coach what's-his-name is still not much of a head coach, nobody wants to play in Cincinnati, and they only made the playoffs because the other teams all were even worse.

Symbolic Celebrity Fan: Nick Lachey.

Remember Nick? He's a nice guy who seems like I could hang out with him. He dates and marries hot women, he hosts some TV shows here, pops up now and then to grab your eye, but ultimately, he's kind of a blip on the radar, right?

What Kind Of Cheap Stuff can you buy in the Bengals' shop to get Nick Lachey to autograph?

Once a player is traded to another team, the players' former team cannot make new merchandise with that player's name or likeness, but can sell off all the old stuff they had. That matters when a player is popular, like Brett Favre was when the Packers let him go, but not so much when the player wasn't a big deal anymore, which is why you can get that Carson Palmer glossy 8x10 photo poster for a buck:

Marked down from $5. It specifically says in the marketing copy that it's "great for autographs," which is how you'll convince Nick to sign this rather than the affidavit in support of the restraining order. (I framed my copy of that latter one. He knows who I am!)

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Team 7, is a surprise upset pick! It's the team this girl is rooting for....

That girl is "New Orleans Saints Boob Girl," picked two years ago by COED Magazine as "the world's sexiest football fan." I'm not familiar with COED, but I'm sure it helps young women cope with college life, and you should probably subscribe to it right away.

I'm picking the Saints to lose to Detroit tonight, and not just because by doing so Grumpy Bulldog will be required to read this blog every day for the rest of his life -- one good turn eserves another, right? -- but also because I think the Saints might be just a little bit overrated.

Let me explain it this way: Think of the Packers as Obama, the team everyone thought they would like when we got them but they turned out to be sort of offputting, a little arrogant, maybe, and then they dropped the ball against Kansas City, turning perfection into well, okay, then.

That makes the Saints Mitt Romney: the only other person anyone can really see taking charge, but nobody really wants that, do they? We've seen that show already, a couple of times.

From time to time, this season, analysts and fans looked around the way Republicans hid their racism and buried their heads in the sand from time to time, too, and tried to find other people: Bachmann? No. The Patriots*? No. Herman Cain? No. Tim Tebow? No. Anyone but these two? Not likely.

The Saints get a lot of hype because they're not Green Bay, and yet they've really got no shot, either, unless someone drops the ball, here. Romney will be the GOP nominee, and he'll win only if the economy doesn't improve by June. (The single biggest factor in re-election of a president is the economy in the second quarter of the election year.) The Packers will [SPOILER ALERT!] be the NFC's entrant in the Super Bowl, unless they screw it up.

We saw Packers-Saints to begin the season, and so we know how that game plays out: close, but no cigar for the Saints. Forget all the Drew Brees hype: Aaron Rodgers is better, and has better receivers, and a younger defense. The Saints put up a lot of yards, but they're only 6th in time of possession, despite running more plays from scrimmage than any other team this year.

Statistically speaking, there actually isn't that much difference between Detroit's offense and New Orleans. Detroit averaged only 5 fewer points per game, and was close in all other categories -- but Detroit had a younger quarterback who spent part of the year battling minor injuries. The Saints finished the year negative in turnovers.

The Saints defense, meanwhile, finished 24th in yards per game and 28th in 3rd down percentage; they simply don't get people off the field. The Saints' defense, like the Packers, seems built on turnovers: the Saints had a terrible defense, statistically, but outscored their opponents by a net 208 points, which suggests lots of turnovers (the Packers were second in that category.)

Remember Kansas City-Green Bay, this year?

Symbolic Celebrity Saints Fan: Taylor Lautner:

Who, as the werewolf who fell in love with Kristen Stewart in Twilight ended up finishing second fiddle to Glitter Vampire, and had to settle for falling in love with Stewart's daughter...

... who was an infant.

... ech.

Cheap Stuff In The Saints' Pro Shop That Might Help You Forget The Horrible Image of A 20-something-werewolf in love with an infant half-vampire/half-human hybrid:

The Saints have a ton of stuff from their Super Bowl appearance still on sale, ranging from bright-orange shirts to a flag touting the Colts-Saints matchup, so apparently winning the Super Bowl is not something that inspires Saints fans to buy something from that Super Bowl, although to be fair, the stuff that's on sale is mostly pre-game, "Colts v. Saints" type items, rather than "Hey we won" kind of things.

Mostly.

You can, though, get dirt on sale. Selling fans dirt is just as opprobrious as selling them worthless pieces of paper for $62,000,000, but only the Packers do both; as a privately-held team, the Saints cannot commit corporate fraud by selling pretend stock, and have to limit themselves to hawking pieces of the planet we live on.

The Saints have for sale various pieces of dirt purporting to be from the actual field the Colts-Saints Super Bowl was played on, and I was torn between spending $99.95 to get a piece of the end zone or $99.95 to get a piece of the 50-yard line when I saw this:

That's the "Saints Super Bowl XLIV Authentic Sod Collector Set" -- pieces of each end zone and the 50-yard line, so you are practically guaranteed that one of those pieces probably contains some Drew Brees and Peyton Manning DNA from their sweat and/or spit, which means that not only do you have some sod to put on the mantle to impress (?) your friends (?) but you can also, in your spare time when the season is over, begin combining the DNA of those two quarterbacks to see what you get when it's grown.

Spoiler Alert! It's a human version of this robot:

*************************************************************************************

The first review of Santa, Godzilla & Jesus Walk Into A Bar... has been posted, by author Andrew Leon, whose own book, The House On The Corner, is loaded onto my Kindle and awaiting my free time.

Says Andrew:

************************************************

If you've ever wondered what Douglas Adams would have been like if they'd locked him in a room for weeks at a time to get him to write... oh, wait, they did lock Adams in a room for weeks at a time to get him to write. Okay, if you've ever wondered what Adams might have produced if he'd been locked in a room for weeks at a time with only Twinkies and Jolt cola, you should read "Santa, Godzilla... ...It has that same frenetic energy that Adams has only weirder. Yeah, I know; how can you get weirder than Adams?

Does SGJWIB have flying couches or falling whales? No, but it does have carnivorous trees, and that's saying something. It's also saying something that it really is a Christmas story. Or Xmas, as Briane says it. Or, really, an origin of Xmas story. Except a sci-fi, futuristic story that somehow takes place in the past so that it is an origin. You know, "A long time ago in a galaxy..." No, wait. "A long time ago, right here on Earth..."

Somehow, Mr. Pagel manages to weave all of the essential elements of our Christmas traditions into a linear story. There are the trees, mistletoe, Wenceslas... I think he missed the wise men, but he gets a lot of it in there. No, it doesn't always makes sense, but, then, that's why it reminds me of Adams. I mean, if I could fly because I somehow got distracted from hitting the ground while falling, I would totally do that! And SGJWIB has those kinds of leaps.

Here's the thing, if you're not someone that likes Douglas Adams, first, "what's wrong with you?" and, second, you probably won't enjoy Briane's... almost book. However, if you do like Adams, as I do, you should definitely give SGJWIB a try. At a buck, you really can't lose.

The story is wild and crazy enough that there's not much you can say about it in a critical way. It's one of those things you like or you don't like. I happen to like. I'd give it an A except for one thing: the ending. It felt a little like Briane decided it was just time to end the story and, so, just did that. It's rather abrupt. However, he adds in a twist that makes it (mostly) okay. It's one of those kinds of things that Briane seems to like and leaves you wanting to say, "So... what actually happened here?" But he doesn't answer those questions, so you'll have to decide for yourself.

Anyway, it's a fun read, and I give it a B+ to an A-. I need to reread it before I can make a firmer decision than that, but I'm in the middle of something else at the moment and don't have the time. ...like I said, if you like Adams, for a measly $0.99, you really can't go wrong.

*****************************************************************************

Music to my ears! And I didn't even have to bribe him.

If you'd like to order "Santa, Godzilla, & Jesus Walk Into A Bar..." on your Kindle, click here.

If you want the paperback version, click here.

And, remember, at some point in the future, everyone who posts a review of the story on Amazon gets a chance to win an autographed copy of the book!

"1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8... etc. etc. etc....!": A (Semi)Serious Look At the NFL Playoffs: Team 9

2012-01-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

Team 9, the 9th-least-likely to win the Super Bowl this year, or something like that, I get all confused with these reverse-order rankings, is The Baltimore Ravens, for two reasons:

(3.14): They are identical to the Pittsburgh Steelers, as pointed out here, which means that they are equally bad and equally the beneficiary of an easy schedule, but rank 9th rather than 10th, where the Zombie Steelers rank, because the Ravens get a bye and play at home, which puts them marginally ahead of their doppleganger in the AFC North.

(y): They have Joe Flacco.

Grumpy Bulldog, who knows a thing or two about sports and rightfully ought to be writing this blog instead of me but isn't because he does real writing, mentioned once that Tony Romo wouldn't be getting any hype if he didn't play for the Cowboys.*

*This would be a good time for me to remind everyone that in November I said:

Dallas Cowboys: Tony Romo, don't get comfortable. It's easy to look good when the team you're playing against is more concerned about whether they'll soon get overpaid (as is their God-given right?) in weird plastic Canadian money. If there was a bright spot in the 3/4 of the game CBS bothered airing Sunday, it's that the game likely served as the highlight for the Cowboys' season, something for fans to remember when they sit around in January watching other teams in the playoffs and realizing that they're going to be stuck with Rick Perry treating their state like he's Jesse James and Texas is a series of tattooed slutty girls.

Which means that in November I predicted that both Romo and Perry would be spending January in Texas. I'm awesome.

I bring up Grumpy because of the applicability of Romo & Cowboys to Flacco & Ravens. Why does Flacco get so much attention and sometimes so much positive press?

It can't be because of the size of the market. Baltimore is ranked 24th in media markets; Dallas is 7th. (Baltimore is second to Pittsburgh, at 22, in its own football division.) Unlike Romo in Dallas, the media isn't noticing Flacco because it pays to talk positively about things that are related to large media markets. (One downside to the increasing agglomeration of sports broadcasting into two networks, NFL and ESPN, is the increasing reluctance to ever say anything bad about anybody. Athletes learned years ago, beginning about with Sterling Sharpe on the Packers, that they could refuse to talk to people who say bad stuff about them, and so reporters are reluctant to criticize anyone lest they not get the inside scoop. Having your employees report on their superiors does not make for good or reliable news but it does keep the product nice and shiny.)

And there's no doubt that reporters try to get people to like Flacco: the NYTimes said that Flacco was "on the right track," this year, Rotoworld quoted some people saying Flacco was going to go from "good to great," and the National Football Authority (?) said that the season bodes well for Flacco... although that source also said this:

However, the Ravens are lucky enough to play the majority of their games at home, with the Steelers (once), Texans, Colts and Jets coming to Baltimore.

Which WOULD be an advantage, if true. Unfortunately for the "National Football Authority's" credibility, the Ravens, like every other team, played exactly half their games at home.

Flacco this year ranked 12th in yards passing, but 25th in percentage of passes completed. He was 19th in yards per game, 16th in passes over 20 yards, and 18th in passes over 40. While you could say that was a product of the Ravens being a run-first, defense-oriented team, the Ravens ranked only 7th in rushing attempts per game (behind teams like Seattle and Philadelphia, among others), 6th in yards per game (behind Buffalo and Oakland, among others), and the Ravens were 11th in time of possession per game.

The Ravens were 7th in 3rd down percentage of conversions, with all but one team of the top 6 being playoff teams. (The odd man out was the similarly-poorly-quarterbacked Chargers.) Which is to say: The Ravens are 5th worst in the playoffs at converting on 3rd downs, tied with the Texans. And they had more third downs than all but two teams: the Ravens tried to convert on 229 third downs this year, an average of 14 third downs per game. Only Cleveland and Jacksonville faced more third downs this year. (The team that faced the fewest third downs was the Panthers; second lowest was the Packers, both of whom had above-average quarterbacks.)

Average time of possession, more third downs than anyone but converting less than half of them, none of that says "great running game" or even "great defense"... and about that defense: I quickly clicked through a lot of stats on NFL.com and found none where Baltimore's defense was in the top 5. I didn't do a scientific survey or anything, but it seems to me that perhaps Baltimore's vaunted defense shouldn't really be vaunted.

Which brings us back to Flacco, who would be Tarvaris Jackson if he didn't play for the Ravens, wouldn't he? They both average under 7 yards per attempt, they both throw for about 220 yards per game average, Jackson threw 13 interceptions to Flacco's 12 this year, Jackson threw 45 20-yard-or-more passes, Flacco threw 44...

The Ravens might as well be quarterbacked by Tarvaris Jackson, and if you can see Tarvaris Jackson and an AARP-qualified defense winning the Super Bowl, you've been licking too many toads.

Symbolic Season Highlight: From a preseason game against the Redskins:

In the Ravens' 34-31 win over the Washington Redskins at M&T Bank Stadium, Flacco's first complete pass was to Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall, who stepped in front of wideout Anquan Boldin and raced 52 yards for a touchdown.

In true media fashion, the reporter who wrote that up said:

Maybe Joe Flacco needed to throw that interception to get his fourth professional season on track....instead of dwelling on his gaffe, Flacco kept at it, leading the Ravens to three touchdown drives before finishing the night one series into the third quarter.

As for Flacco, here's what he said about it:

"You don't want to get off on a rough start like that, but DeAngelo made a play," Flacco explained. "He didn't even budge - he just sat out there and did a good job."

In other words: Flacco threw the ball to a defensive back who was just sitting there waiting for it, and the press turned that into a positive: it got him going! He's learning from his mistakes!

A stupid interception thrown in a game that ultimately had no impact on anything else: That's your Ravens!

Symbolic Celebrity Fan: Jimmy Fallon?

Jimmy recorded this before Thanksgiving:

And nobody was sure why he did it.

What kind of stuff can you get cheap at the Ravens shop to make people wonder why you like that team?

I didn't even hesitate: This was the first, and least-explicable, thing I saw:

That's a leftover 2010 Playoffs Pennant you can buy for just $3. In those playoffs, the Ravens lost in the second round, blowing a 21-7 lead after Flacco went 16-of-30 for 125 yards, with 1 touchdown and 1 interception. Flacco, by the way, finished this year with a worse passer rating than he had last year.

But the importance of this pennant is the What's Important Now (W.I.N.) slogan: not just a ripoff of the failed inflation-fighting tactic, the W.I.N. slogan was invented by Lou Holtz, who wrote about it in a 1998 book. The phrase was trademarked by a Virginia Tech defensive coordinator, and the Ravens had to make a charitable donation to get the rights to use the term for two months. The phrase replaced past (stupid) slogans like "What’s Our Name?" (2008) and "Play Like A Raven" (2009).

The VT coordinator who trademarked the phrase is Bud Foster, whose "Lunch Pail Defense" has morphed into a charitable organization with souvenirs and everything. Says that site:

The Lunch Pail Defense concept developed by Defensive Coordinator Bud Foster has made the Virginia Tech Hokies legendary! Pulling from Bud Foster’s upbringing in the coal mining areas of Illinois, Foster chose the steel pail as a symbol of the blue collar working-mans ethic of the Hokie defensive team. The battered pail features the word WIN on the front, embodying Foster’s strategy for the game and for life:

“W-I-N (Whats Important Now) To make change; to influence; to use this moment to be better than the last; to achieve greatness in all aspects of your life; win at home. Win at school. Win at business. Win at life.”

Apparently there's a real pail:

In the past, the box was filled with the defense’s mission statement, keys to success, and goals. Over time players began adding turf and grass from playing fields where the Hokies reached victory. Following the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech the Lunch Pail held the names of the 32 victims and was carried into Lane Stadium for a home opener.

Nothing about that says anything about how a coal-mining upbringing allows one to trademark a phrase that another man came up with, but, as George Costanza said, "It's all for charity, so what can you do?"

"1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8... etc. etc. etc....!": A (Semi)Serious Look At the NFL Playoffs: Team 10

2012-01-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

Despite my general dislike of zombies as a pop culture phenomenon -- zombies got played out way faster than vampires did, probably because of their low sex-appeal (zombies have low sex appeal in all cases except for this sexiest zombie story you'll ever read.)-- I opted to go with a zombie theme for team 10, the Pittsburgh Steelers because really, if there ever was a team that was just staggering around using some unknown force to propel it through society, it's the Steelers.

After staggering, hung over and wheezing, through last year's Super Bowl, the Steelers saw an inexplicable amount of credit and hype from the likes of Pro Football Weekly (which wishywashied their way to a commendation of the team) to CBS sports (which said they'd be in the "Super Mix", another wishy-washy, have it however you want it nonanalysisnonprediction) to probably others but I'm too lazy to look them up.

After all that prediction, the Steelers finished 12-4, good for second-best record in the AFC, so how can I say they're a zombie team running on fumes?

Simple: The Steelers' four losses came to Baltimore (twice), Houston, and the 49ers -- all teams ranked higher than Pittsburgh in the playoffs (Houston had 2 fewer wins but won its division).

That, combined with the fact that Pittsburgh finished 12-4 last year, too, but had higher net points (143 in 2010 compared to 98 in 2011) helps mark Pittsburgh, like Atlanta, as a team that made the playoffs mostly because other teams didn't. The Steelers' 98 net points this year put them near the bottom of the barrel of playoff teams, and I view net points as a mark of how good a team really is: keeping your opponents' scores down while yours up is an easy indicator of quality, because a high, positive net point score tends to indicate you outscore your opponents a lot and rarely get blown out. The Saints (208), Packers (201) and Patriots (171) have superhigh net point totals, and while their defenses are regularly maligned, the fact remains that over 16 games, the Saints have outscored their opponents by an average of 13 points, or two touchdowns. That means either their defense is better than it's given credit for being, or their offense is superpowerful.

Low net points is a mark of a weak offense, weak defense, or both. The Steelers won by less than a touchdown, average, this year.

The Steelers have finished 12-4 three of the past four years-- four years is about the longest you can look back in the current NFL, because of the turnover on the teams: the average length of an NFL players' career is 3 years; the average coaching tenure only 2.58 seasons, so after four years the odds are you've got a new roster and a bunch of new coaches on a given team. During that time, 12-4 meant they were the 6th best in the NFL (2011), 4th best (2010), and 5th best (2008), which, again, seems consistent over time.

So again: why a zombie team? Maybe the net points are down, but they're consistently in the top 6 of the league, right?

Right: but because of who they play. This year's 12-4 record was compiled against the NFC West, one of the worst divisions in football, and the AFC South, another of the worst. Playing the Seahawks, Cardinals, Jaguars, and Colts is hardly challenging. In 2010, the Steelers played the NFC South and the AFC North -- again, two bad divisions. In 2008, they played the NFC East and the AFC South again. So while pundits (?) tout the Steelers' record and reaching the playoffs, they fail to account for the effect of playing bad teams.

Here's how you measure that effect. In 2011, the Ravens finished with the same record, 12-4. In 2010, the Ravens finished with the same record as the Steelers: 12-4. In 2009, the Bengals won the division at 10-6; the Ravens and Steelers were 9-7 each. In 2008, the Ravens and Steelers were separated by only 1 game.

In other words, the Ravens and Steelers and sometimes Bengals are essentially the same team, and the strength of schedule is what's making them look good. Witness this year, when the Bengals, 4-12 in 2010 and starting a rookie quarterback, finished only 3 games behind the Steelers.

Chance?

Or strength of schedule?

The NFL playoffs, of course, do not reward strength of schedule (the BCS used to but stopped in 2003); in fact, the playoffs detract from it, giving a home game to division winners regardless of record.

The Steelers, though, have posted the same record against weak divisions each year -- getting no better in terms of wins while enjoying worse and worse competition. They played, in 2009, the AFC West and NFC North, posting a 9-7 record and that year the NFC North had the Favre-led Vikings and the Rodgers-led Packers, while the AFC West saw the Chargers and Broncos post 21 wins between them.

This is a team, in short, that barely beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, barely beat the Cardinals in the Super Bowl, and then gasped its way to a second-place finish last year, only to stagger, undead, into the playoffs this year. The Steelers have shown no ability to improve, and no desire to improve. Like a pro version of the Wisconsin Badgers, they're content to feast on weak competition and provide a little postseason entertainment to their fans without really bothering to contend for a title.

Highlight Of The Steelers' Season: I'm shaking things up by adding another new feature here, a highlight meant to display everything you need to know about the Steelers and why they won't win the Super Bowl. In this case, the highlight for Pittsburgh was when they played the 49ers at Whateveritscalled Park, and the lights kept going out. Big Ben Roethlisberger (who I'm told actually got married this year) threw four picks but knew the real reason the Steelers lost:

"Just wondering how this happens at a professional stadium," Roethlisberger said of not one but two blackouts.

Way to take responsibility! Ben wasn't throwing the ball during those blackouts, but still, it clearly bothered him to have to face two power outages. Ben Roethlisberger, after all, is not one to take advantage of a blackout.

Symbolic Celebrity Fan: Michael Keaton.

Because he's played guys who have come back from the dead, see? Beetlejuice:

And Snow Dad, or whatever this was:

On a related note: I've heard that if you stand in a dark bathroom and stare at the mirror and say Roethlisberger three times, all charges get dismissed.

I would be remiss, though, if I did not also mention that January Jones is a fan of the Steelers, and by remiss I mean "An excuse to post pictures of January Jones."

What Kind of Cheap Stuff Can You Get In the Steelers' Shop, just in case you run into January Jones and want to have something to talk to her about?

While there's lots of cheap stuff at the clearance section -- mostly "terrible towels" and toddler clothing -- this caught my eye:

That's the "Real Tree Jersey," which is marked down from $99.95 to $69.95, and why it exists is a baffling mystery to me.

Was there a dearth of clothing that could emphasize one's love for nature at the same time as it emphasized one's membership in Steeler Nation? Is the irony of a wearing a nature-themed shirt that celebrates a team named for an industrial process that is terrible for the environment lost on Steelers fans? Are the fans anticipating a Hunger-Games-like apocalypse in which they will be forced to dwell in the woods, hunted for their meat, but despite that they still want to remember the good ol' days of NFL football?

Your guess is as good as mine, but not as good as a closing shot of January Jones:

Team 11: The (boring) Atlanta Falcons

Team 12: The Houston Texans.

"1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8... etc. etc. etc....!": A (Semi)Serious Look At the NFL Playoffs.

2012-01-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

Today: The 11th most (least?) likely team to win the Super Bowl:

Atlanta Falcons.

Time was when I said I wasn't going to talk about the Falcons anymore this year, a decision I made three months ago that turned out to be dead bang accurate. I declared the Falcons dead to me on the basis of my belief that the team would do nothing interesting the rest of the season, and despite the fact that the Falcons inexplicably ended up in the playoffs, I was right.

I defy anyone to describe a single interesting thing the Falcons did this year. The Falcons are the single best argument for adopting my "Fan Vote Wild Card" idea, which someday will be a thing, because I am going to become rich (and maybe famous, although I'll pretend to hate that part) and will buy a team -- I'll probably move the Bills back from Toronto to Hawaii, where I'll live -- and I will use my influence as an immensely popular team owner to make the Fan Vote Wild Card a thing.

With that said, though, it's hard to decide which NFC team might be better to put into the playoffs than the Falcons, or, put more accurately, it's hard to decide which team the Falcons are worse/more boring than. The other NFC teams suffer from a similar lack of quality players and/or entertainment value. The Bears finished 8-8 but putting them into the playoffs instead of the Falcons seems futile since the Bears opted to try to make a run with Caleb Hanie rather than sign Brett Favre after Cutler went down. Favre may have been no better than Hanie, skillwise, but he would have been far more entertaining than Hanie and WhathisnameMcCownOrWhatever were.

(Favre, like Tebow, is liked or hated primarily on whether you take sports seriously or view them as entertainment. If you're serious and gung-ho about your sports, you probably hate Brett Favre and Tim Tebow and some of the other lightning rods that pop up in sports from time to time, because you feel they detract from the purity of the game or something. But if what you want to see is Green Bay fans burning things in effigy because the Ol' Gunslinger is wearing Bears colors, then you love Favre and Tebow.)

I view sports as entertainment, which is why I hate the Falcons, the team that brought us the single most boring Super Bowl ever in history; Denver's greatest obstacle in getting Elway his second ring was simply "not falling asleep" when they looked across the line of scrimmage. The Dirty Bird was deadly boring, and still is.

(As a side note: Can you hate Tim Tebow and like most Big 10 football? Wisconsin, for example, is known for its running attack, as are many college teams. But people who love the college game still criticize Tebow despite the fact that he's essentially running his old Florida offense in the pros. Tebow was 126 for 271 this year, playing in 12 games, averaging about 10-for-22 passing. At Florida, Tebow appeared in 55 games, going 661 for 995, or about 12-for-18 passing.)

You can see how exciting Atlanta is, when I spend most of its preview talking about anything but Atlanta. I get the feeling that's what happens all over Falcon Nation, "Falcon Nation" being "three guys with nothing better to do."

To show just how boring the Falcons are, I googled "Atlanta Falcons Exciting" and found this Pro Football Hall of Fame page that details the many exciting things the Falcons have done over the years, including:

-- beginning their history by being purchased by an insurance executive.

-- hiring a former Lombardi assistant as their first head coach

-- beating Minnesota... in season ticket sales by a new team.

WOW! I'm breathless. Or in a coma. Hard to tell which.

Atlanta's 52 net points this year was the 5th lowest by a playoff team. Their 46 touchdowns were also the 5th among playoff teams -- only the 49ers, of playoff teams, scored fewer touchdowns. Aside from that, in nearly every category, they are middle of the road, neither entertainingly bad nor hopefully good.

Now, let's talk Matt Ryan. Ryan was a 3-year starter at Boston College, which doesn't seem to count for much these days, does it? When was the last time Boston College was a power in football, period? I found an article that said they were number 2 in BCS rankings in week 2 of 2007, Ryan's last year there.

Boston finished that year ranked 14th. Ryan had a couple of bad games, Boston College lost 2 conference games, and Ryan threw 19 interceptions, 2nd most in the nation. For that, he was given the "Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award," given to the nation's most outstanding quarterback, and if that isn't a slap in the face to Johnny U, I don't know what is.

That tale of 2007 sounds like it's the Grisham*

*I've decided to use the word Grisham for any storyline that gets repeated over and over with only minor changes to the general plot

for Matt Ryan's career, doesn't it? "Lots of accolades, lots of high expectations, ultimately not accomplishing all those things we thought he would but lets give him more accolades anyway." Last year, the Atlanta Borings were the #1 seed helmed by "Matty Ice," the dumbest nickname ever applied to a quarterback**

**It was nowhere near as good as, say, The Throwin' Samoan, but, to be fair it's hardly Ryan's fault he's not Samoan.

and yet they bombed out against the Packers without much of a fight at all, and then eked through this year making the playoffs not so much out of their own merit as they did by virtue of the fact that Chicago's quarterback got hurt. Had Cutler stayed healthy (or had the Bears signed Favre), the Falcons would be letting someone else lose to the Giants in the first round.

Boringness isn't a virtue in the NFL; nor is being completely overrated, and yes, the Falcons are the second-least-likely team to win the Super Bowl this year.

Their Symbolic Celebrity Fan:

Kenan Thompson.

No, I don't know who he is, either. Bleacher Report says he's a Falcons fan, and according to his biography he's primarily known for being in Mighty Ducks movies and a bunch of other stuff you never saw. Here is his Bleacher Report photo, in which he is comically (?) pretending that a hilariously (?) oversized tennis racket is actually a guitar:

I'm not sure what the business cards thrown about the floor are; I'm assuming they're put there by Kenan in hopes someone will pick them up and book him for a show.

You've never heard or cared about Kenan Thompson, and his career has been marked by quick failures of minor note... like the Falcons and their playoffs.

What kind of weird, cheap stuff can you get from the Falcons' shop?

The actual Falcons' pro shop comes up third on the list when you google "Falcons shop," and since money spent at the team's pro shop goes directly to the team instead of being spread around the league, you can tell just how much effort Atlanta's putting into promoting their team; apparently, Falcons ownership and management are as bored by the team as the rest of the world.

Once you find it, the website itself lets you shop by price range, offering both "Less Than $10" and "On Sale". I went to sale, where I found I could buy this:

That's the "Atlanta Falcons Halloween Light-Up Ghost Figurine," and originally it would have set you back $34.95 but you can pick it up now for only $19.99. The website will only charge you $4.99 if you want 3-day shipping, but you can get it next-day for $19.99 in case your lawn looks too bare between Christmas and Valentine's Day.

Doesn't the Jack O'Lantern look like it's falling asleep?

Team 12 was Houston (and that was before I knew they had Jeff Garcia on their roster!)

God played 20 questions with a minister this weekend, which is why your team lost (or won.) (Updates On God!)

2012-01-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

When you say "with all due respect," you really mean "with no respect," right? So Terrell Suggs better hope that this life is the only one he's got, because he just burned all his bushes (see what I did there?) with God, while also assuming that Denver will beat Pittsburgh and thus he will be facing the Tebows in the playoffs... with God holding Denver's clipboard. Suggs commented on potential playoff hopes by telling ESPN:

With all due respect we don’t need God on our sidelines...Once again God had to save Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos. Hecouldnt even give them two drives? 7 to 3?

One interesting thing about that quote: Yardbarker.com assumed that He meant "Tebow," and inserted the name of the Broncos' QB in its story about this. But other sites left that ambiguous He in there, and when I first read it, I assumed Suggs was saying God couldn't even give Denver "two drives."

In any event, God may have really dropped the ball this weekend, not only keeping the Tebows from having more than one scoring drive, but also finally letting up on whatever curse He had on the Oregon Ducks; after Oregon was given the Rose Bowl trophy because of Wisconsin's own mistakes killing the Badgers' chances (that being an easily foreseeable end to this Wisconsin season, right?), the Ducks' guard Carson York commented that it was nice to finally win one:

It almost felt like there was some sort of magical force keeping us from getting it done in bowl games...Glad we did it today.

So if God wasn't sitting next to John Elway, and didn't go to Pasadena, where was He? Hanging out with Pat Robertson, who got some kinda important news this weekend: telling Pat Robertson who the next president of the U.S. will be.

God in fact dictated a letter to Robertson, who is pinky-sworn to secrecy about the November, 2012 winner, but who was free to talk about the stuff God forbade him to talk about. Said Robertson:

I spent the better part of a week in prayer and just saying, ‘God show me something,’ some things I’ll share with you. I think he showed me the next me the next president but I’m not supposed to talk about that so I’ll leave you in the dark — probably just as well — I think I’ll know who it will be. I’m going to read just as I wrote down as if I’m hearing from the Lord these words. Your country will be torn apart by internal stress, a house divided cannot stand...

NOTE: So God plagiarizes Abraham Lincoln? At least put a cite in the end notes, God.

...Your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country which is at odds with the majority, expect chaos and paralysis. Your president holds a view that is at odds with the majority, it’s a radical view of the future of this country, so that’s why we’re having this division. This is a spiritual battle which can only be won by overwhelming prayer....

NOTE, 2: Whenever someone says something like that, I like to mentally add "and Iron Man." So read that as "which can only be won by overwhelming prayer, and Iron Man."

God stopped talking, then, but Pat didn't stop thinkin', and askin' some questions:

I started thinking, when did we start this place? ... So I’m saying, God, let me give you some suggestions and you tell me if any of them is right, pick one.

I said, is it an EMP blast? No that isn’t it.

Is it a cosmic or solar or radiation blast? No.

Is it Mayan galaxy alignment? No.

Is it Iranian or North Korean nuclear threat? No.

Is it an earthquake or a volcano? No.

Is it a massive power failure? No.

What is it?It’s an economic collapse. And God said, This is not my judgment, they are bringing it upon themselves.

SO: God won't let you know who is going to be the next president, but he will tell you that there's going to be an economic collapse and that's how the world is going to end. With an economic collapse. Which will pretty much lead to the worst Roland Emmerich movie ever, no matter who they get to play the part of President Santorum.

Oops! Did I let the cat out of the bag, there? I only know that because me and Rupert Murdoch hacked Jesus' cell phone. (His password was "Tebow.")

"1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8... etc. etc. etc....!": A (Semi)Serious Look At the NFL Playoffs.

2012-01-03T06:19:00.000-08:00

For years, Nonsportsmanlike Conduct! has entered the playoffs of the major sports -- baseball and football -- using the surefire, etc. system that has, without fail, accurately predicted the winner of each and every postseason event in those sports. (Remember, in a universe in which quantum physics works, all outcomes are equally probable until you observe the experiment, so if my system ever let you down, it was your fault for observing the outcome, not mine for predicting it.)

But I'm changing that up this year, for no better reason than I'm bored with it and so I no longer feel like going through the motions of analyzing the playoffs that way.

Instead, I've been wracking my brains -- why do people say wracking my brains, anyway? Are brains in some cases like pants, plural even when they're single? -- for a new system, a new theme, a new structure on which to paste my unique*

*that's what I call it. Others have called it "stupid," while still others describe my sports analysis as "you have a sports blog?"

brand of sports analysis and quips to help guide you through the playoffs, and over the last 24 hours, I have considered and rejected each of these themes:

4. Which Kardashian is each playoff team most like?

A. The writings of Descartes, and what they teach us about the NFL playoffs.

ii. Cheeseburgers 'n' Stuff (which is actually my idea for a chain of restaurants, but I thought it might work here.)

Cheeseburgers 'n' Stuff, by the way, isn't my only idea for a franchise of restaurants; my other idea was "GIANT," the restaurant that serves GIANT food. At GIANT, you can get all the usual diner fare -- burgers, chili dogs, fries, shakes, etc. -- but the twist is...

... remind me to get back to etc., will you?

... the twist is that you can also get GIANT versions of those -- like, say, a GIANT HOT DOG that is, say, 6" tall and 18" long and comes on a giant bun with ketchup and mustard, kind of like a "party sub" version of hot dogs, so that you and a group of friends could have a GIANT HOT DOG to split. There would be GIANT FRIES -- 5" tall, like a potato log that you slice off -- and GIANT shakes, although I haven't worked those out yet.

I think we can all agree that would be a HUGE hit. (Pun Fully Intended, as is policy around these parts.)

Anyway, the point is that et cetera is not the only Latin phrase that we use to indicate that the list goes on with similar items. Et cetera is properly used with things, and is used only to indicate that the other things on the list are similar: "His head was filled with useless facts, pointless trivia, ill-remembered song lyrics, etc."

When a list of people is used, though, you're supposed to use et alli, abbreviated et al, which lawyers do in captions to court cases: John Doe v. Richard Roe, et al.

When a list of places is used, it's also et al but the al here stands for alibi, which is weird because alibi actually comes from the Latin word alius meaning other.

And now you know.

The other point is that it's kind of hard to come up with a theme for analyzing the playoffs and so I decided to scrap the themes altogether and just take, as the post-header promises, a (Semi)Serious look at each NFL playoff team, going from (what I figure is) the worst to (what I figure is) the best -- that is, I'll be counting them down from 12 to 1, in order of how likely I think they are to actually win the Super Bowl.

Which is the only significant thing in the NFL, now, after all -- these twelve teams, having made it to this point of the season, now have to win out or they're complete losers.

That's how the NFL works: The farther you progress in the season, the worse you are seen as when you lose. Already, just 36 hours after Tony Romo choked his way into ending his season again, the teams that failed to make the playoffs are forgotten. The Colts only won 2 games? Big deal. The Rams only won two games? Rams, who, now? The Buffalo Bills got what, 1 win for their $24 million they paid Trebuchet Fitzpatrick as part of his Jim Kelly-described God-given rights to earn millions? See you in Toronto!

All that matters now is these 12 teams, all of whom did enough to qualify for the playoffs -- and, I'm sorry, but I have to diverge here to make a point:

There are no two ways about this, if you hate the BCS then you love the Denver Tebows being in the playoffs, because either you like playoffs or you hate playoffs, but you ought to at least be consistent. I've pointed out for years that there's no perfect system for choosing a champion, in the sense that there's always going to be room to disagree about which team is best because any system has flaws, including the NFL's system. I like the BCS because it pairs together popular teams that people want to say: I watched the Rose Bowl despite not liking college football much because it was an excellent game.

You're free (and stupid) to hate the BCS, but if you're a playoff booster, then you must accept that playoffs routinely let in pathetic, or seemingly pathetic, teams -- like the sad-sack Giants that ended Brett Favre's tenure with the Packers and then went on to beat the Patriots* in the Super Bowl, or the sad-sack Packers last year who eked into the playoffs and then went on to win the Super Bowl -- and you must not criticize the NFL for letting the Denver Tebows back into the playoffs, where they have as much of a chance to win as anybody (and a better chance than Houston), and you can't criticize the fact that Denver gets a home game. The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament (which I call Mr Toad's Wild Ride to avoid copyright problems) routinely gives high seedings to inferior teams, and every possible modification to the current NFL season would have let in an "inferior" team in recent years.

So: Either quit bashing the BCS, or break out your Tebow jerseys. Or, like me, do both.

Anyway, these 12 teams have now made the playoffs, and the teams that lose in the first round will be seen as losers, despite advancing farther than 20 other teams. Lose in the second round and you're worse. Lose in the Super Bowl, and you're terrible -- say, the Oakland Raiders the year Tampa Bay beat them, or the Vikings and Bills.

The only exception to that rule? The Conference Championships. A team can lose the conference championship and not be seen as awful. Last year, the Jets lost the AFC conference championship, and everyone (but me) picked them to go all the way this year. In past years, the team that has lost the conference championship in either conference has somehow retained an air of respectability that the Super Bowl-losing team did not.

In other words: The Steelers beat the Jets last year to get to the Super Bowl, only to lose to the Packers, and the general feeling was that the Steelers were terrible and overrated while the Jets were the team to beat this year.

Only in the NFL are you better off losing a conference championship than losing the championship, but that's the way it works.

(The exception to that rule? Andy Reid, whose continued inability to (mostly) not make the Super Bowl is seen as terrible.)

On, finally, with the look at the teams, beginning with the Twelfth Likeliest To Win The Super Bowl,

the Houston Texans.

Yep. Houston is less likely to make the Super Bowl than Denver, and not just because the Immutable Rules of Football say that Houston will not be very good.

Houston's wins this year came against the Colts, Dolphins, Titans, Jaguars, Browns, Buccaneers, Falcons, Bengals, and while there are no easy wins in the NFL, those were all easy wins. The Texans' division this year boasted two teams (the Jaguars and Colts) who had negative net points, while the Titans finished at +8 for the season. They were 2-2 outside of their conference and finished the season with 3 consecutive losses, the last two to the Colts and Titans.

Houston's current starter, T.J. Yates, ranked 44th on the list of quarterbacks when measured by rating. He was 41st in yards per game, and, yep, there aren't 41 starting quarterbacks in the league. Their running back, Arian Foster, is 2nd in yards per game but 4th in the league in fumbles among running backs. They ranked 10th in scoring but don't get all excited -- they edged out the Jets and Ravens by just 0.2 points per game.

How are they winning? Probably strong defense: They're second-best in the league in terms of yardage given up per game, and they gave up the fourth-fewest points in the NFL this season... but "strong defense" is somewhat subjective because they played in the AFC South; all three of their division "rivals" finished worse than 20th in scoring this year, which is what happens when your quarterbacks are named "Curtis Painter", "Blaine Gabbert" and "Whoever Plays For Cleveland Right Now."

The Texans were 10-to-1 odds to win the Super Bowl after their week one win. (Bleacher Report.) That was before they were starting an injured rookie who fumbles nearly once per game. If they beat the Cincinnati Bengals (which they won't) they'll face either Baltimore (if Pittsburgh wins) or the Patriots* (when Tebow wins). Which means Houston fans will at best get to celebrate one playoff victory in their lifetime, but in all likelihood, are going to lose to this year's rookie sensation, Andy Dalton, before watching next year's rookie sensation Andrew Luck take over the division again.

Your Symbolic Celebrity Fan Of The Houston Texans: Just because I don't really have a structure doesn't mean I've done away with gimmickry altogether. Each profile will feature a symbolic celebrity fan of the team -- a celebrity fan who helps you understand how the team will fare.

In this case, the symbolic celebrity fan is former President George H.W. Bush; the 41st President of the U.S. lives in Houston, and attended the game at Reliant Stadium on November 6, 2011.

Like this former President, the Texans themselves faced high expectations but always seem to fade when compared to the person standing next to them. (Reagan, the Dallas Cowboys), and, like the former president, the Texans' accomplishments, when they do occur, are quickly buried under a series of almost-laughable failures.

What Kind Of Clearance Stuff Can You Get At The Texans' Pro Shop, If You Are So Inclined? Nor am I going to give up on my love of cheap, weird stuff bought at pro shops. I have a "Rambis" Lakers T-shirt despite not knowing who Rambis might be (I thought it might be a Rambo typo or pun), and my boys have leftover-bin Buffalo Bills' jerseys to grow into, because if you don't mind your kid (or you) wearing anonymous/funny jerseys and stuff, you can be a fan for cheap.

You've got to hunt a bit to get to the "sale items" over at Shop.HoustonTexans.com, but when you do get there, you can choose from a 2010 Season Preview Yearbook, giving you inside information on last year's Texans for only $1.99, or the Houston Texans 3D Player On The Field Pin, for just $4.99,

but why do either of those when you can

Jazz up your personal correspondence with team-spirited flair with these blank note cards featuring vibrant team and football field graphics on the outside with a team logo and name on the inside. Each package contains 13 cards and envelopes with enough space on each to share all the reasons you love the Texans!

Yep: for just $5.99, you can make sure every thank you and R.S.V.P. comes with a reminder that you back the Houston Texans, thereby undermining your credibility wherever you go. Perfect for paying off those bets you made on the playoffs!

"Dear friend, here is the $50 I owe you. The Bengals suck! Signed, George H.W. Bush."

The Oregon Ducks' Uniforms Were Designed By Tony Stark (Football)

2012-01-02T04:34:00.001-08:00

The Oregon Ducks are the latest actually good team to get paired up in a major game against the Wisconsin Badgers, who aren't actually good, they're just Big 10 good, and really they're just Big 10 Mediocre, aren't leaving anything to chance.

Despite the likelihood that the Badgers will in the second quarter give the entire game away, leaving nothing for their fans to do but ponder how they wasted a beautiful morning in Southern California watching a meaningless Packer game, Oregon isn't leaving anything to chance: they've got some superuniforms to wear that guarantee either a win, or at least a fighting chance against Mickey Rourke:

That's the "Black Swan" version of the Oregon Ducks' uniform, meaning that right at the end of 2011 we got our second confusing Black Swan of the year:

I think she was dead all along! Just like Qui Gon!

Black Swan: The Uniform may just look like a uniform, but don't be fooled; it comes from the same type of lab that Red Skull's Hydra team worked in (yep: I'm still on Captain America metaphors). From the official Nike Statement, issued over a video monitor broadcast directly into the Joint Chiefs Of Staff's underground meeting room while the President and his advisers gaped in awe:

This fully integrated uniform system, debuted in its first iteration by the University of Oregon during last years’ BCS National Championship Game, incorporates the pinnacle in performance innovation and design from the world’s most renowned athletic outfitter. The new uniform provides enhanced thermoregulation and more durability with the inclusion of Nike Chain Maille Mesh – a lightweight ultra-breathable material – used in both the jersey and pant.

That Maille is in the original. Oregon may be worried that the Badgers are carrying crossbows. But Nike didn't stop with an "innovation" that's existed since the 16th century (when everything was invented); it went on to make sure that this suit will live on even if the Duck inside dies during the game:

Eleven different materials in the Nike Pro Combat uniform (jersey and pant), and 16 different materials in the complete system of dress – each to address the specific needs of the athlete in game situations.

Got that? There's different materials for each play, now. "Got your third and long socks on, boys? Then go get 'em!" The 11 different systems include:

• ...Nike Chain Maille Mesh integration ...emphasizes improved thermoregulation, including the Nike Pro Combat Deflex padding layer, which is constructed with fabric selected for its ability to help keep the body cool and wick away sweat – making the uniform, and player, lighter and dryer.

• Increased air flow with large open-hole woven construction for more ventilation

Well, they've got to breath, right? There's more, though:

• A redesigned base layer that facilitates ...maximum speed. The base layer in the pant also features customizable protection that incorporates a thin, incredibly strong carbon fiber plate that can be placed on the thigh padding where needed.

• Strategically placed seams, pads and cooling zones that help minimize distraction and optimize protective coverage. Robust padding, without the bulk, has also been added to offer optimal low-profile impact protection specifically throughout the crucial “hit zone” between the knees and shoulders.

• A Flywire collar eliminating two layers of fabric for improved breathability, providing a more stable anchor to keep the jersey in place

There's no word on where they put the rocket launchers, but there's got to be rocket launchers, right? This is Nike, after all.

Here's a shot of a player wearing one of the suits in a walk-through yesterday:

Looks like it'll really test Russell Wilson's mobility!

Wisconsin's not taking this lying down, of course. They've responded with their own ultra-high-tech uniforms, Wisconsin style:

...Wisconsin will have a new look in the Rose Bowl, too. OK, so the Badgers don't have nearly the radical streak with their duds as the Ducks, who will wear this space-age suit in Pasadena. From a distance, you might not even be able to tell much difference in the Wisconsin uniforms. But the numbers feature an interwoven rose display, and the jerseys are sleeker.

An "interwoven rose display"? Watch out, Oregon!

Here's a look at the Badgers' new duds:

In closing, hot girls from each school:

r

Because isn't that what it's all about?

The Scariest Things, You Can't Imagine

A shape-shifting demon torments children while their parents stand by. A widower haunted by the ghost of his wife tries to understand her requests. A baby stolen from his mother by gargoyles returns, full of hatred for the life he's led. A family of children raised by grave-robbing corpse stealers tries to discover a way out. An elderly man possesses the power of life and death in his retirement. These stories present images and people who will haunt your thoughts for a long time after you read them.

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