An Obligatory Glance at My Staggering Mediocrity.

It’s over.  Now we must suffer the seven month punishment that is the NFL offseason.  Careful readers will recall that at the beginning of this most surprising NFL season, I made twenty-four bold predictions about what was to happen, and promised to revisit them at the end of the season and prove myself horribly wrong.  Here, for your enjoyment, is that line-by-line revisitation, each with its own analysis, and a running score:

1. Tom Brady will not lead the league in touchdown passes, nor will the New England Patriots have the top-ranked offense in the league in scoring or total yards.

Tom Terrific gets injured, I start out with a correct prediction.  Tommy’s knee explosion wasn’t what I was predicting, but you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.  Score: 1

2. The Patriots will rank outside the top 12 in pass defense, but will still win at least 11 games.

Pats win 11 games, rank eleventh in pass defense.  So close.  Score: 1.5

3. Donovan McNabb will start 16 games this season for the Eagles.  Asante Samuel will not.

Correct, and correct.  Also interesting to note: when Donovan McNabb starts 16 games, the Eagles go to the NFC Championship game.  Unfortunately, when McNabb starts the NFC Championship game, he loses.  Score: 2.5

4. The New York Jets, who ranked 26th last year, will rank in the top 15 in total offense this year.  Thomas Jones will have 1,300 yards, and the Jets will be in the playoff race until the last two weeks of the season.  Brett Favre will start all 16 games, and come back for the 2009 season.

Had the Jets not taken an enormous turd for the last four games of the season, this would’ve been spot on.  With that turd, they ended up 16th.  So close again.  However, Jones had 1,312 yards, the Jets could have made the playoffs, and Favre started all 16.  Will he come back?  Even if he doesn’t, I’m still 2-for-4 on this prediction.  Score: 3

5. Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers will win at least 9 games, and sweep the Bears for the first time since 2003.

Whoops. Score: 3

6. Marion Barber will make Dallas Cowboy fans forget how excited they were about Felix Jones.  Jones will finish with under 500 yards and 5 touchdowns.

Again, when injuries help my predictions come true, I don’t complain. Score: 4

7. Matt Ryan will do exactly what every other rookie starting quarterback does: struggle.  Michael Turner will have about three games where he looks superhuman, and thirteen games where he looks average.  The Falcons win no more than four games.

Whoops again. Score: 4

8. Chad Pennington will improve the Miami Dolphins threefold.  Meaning they’ll win three games instead of one.

Man, this predicting stuff is hard.  A side note, however.  After the Dolphins drastic turnaround in 2008, come this August, every NFL talking head on the block is going to be writing some article predicting who’s going to turn it around in 2009, and here, I’ll predict that prediction: The Kansas City Chiefs.  Mark my words.  I’m not saying they’ll turn it around, I’m just saying it’ll be trendy to say they will.  Score: 4

9.  The Minnesota Vikings will be .500 at best, and miss the playoffs. (Shocked?  Think about this: Remember who the trendy preseason playoff pick was from last year?  Anyone?  The San Francisco 49ers.  Everyone said Patrick Willis was a beast, and the Niners would surprise everyone.  They went 5-11.)

Okay, I’m contending this one.  Due to the mediocrity of the NFC North, the Vikings made the playoffs by default.  The only reason the Packers didn’t wipe the floor with everyone was their defense disappeared in the fourth quarter.  I’m still not right, but I don’t necessarily think I’m wrong.  Score: 4

10. The Patriots will lose the first playoff game they play.

This is technically correct.  The Patriots played a playoff game against the NFL’s playoff seeding system, and lost.  Winning 11 games loses to winning 8 games.  That’s a playoff loss.  Score: 5

11.  Jason Campbell will pass for over 3,000 yards, and still be ignored.

Zing!  A winner!  3,245 yards, and anyone who lives more than 15 miles from DC probably couldn’t name the Redskins QB.  The trend continues next season.  Score: 6

12. The Cincinnati Bengals will finish at .500 and miss the playoffs only because of the difficulty of their division.  Chad Javon Ocho Cinco will have a career year while wearing a shoulder brace all season long.

In this case, an injury bit me in the ass.  Would Carson Palmer have led the ’08 Bengals to a .500 record?  In this case, it just doesn’t matter.  Score: 6

13. The Dallas Cowboys will NOT be in the Super Bowl.  Wade Phillips will be fired, and Jason Garrett will be the coach of the 2009 Dallas Cowboys, who will also miss the Super Bowl.

So Wade Phillips didn’t get fired.  But he didn’t get fired because everyone assumed he would be fired, and Jerry Jones didn’t want to look like he took his business decisions from the fans, even though in this case, he should’ve.  I’m giving myself the point here, because with the mess this team is in, there’s no way they go further than the divisional round next year, and that’s being generous.  Score: 7

14. J.T. O’Sullivan will be no better a quarterback than Alex Smith.  After this season, (if they don’t already) Niner fans will be wishing their team had used their number one pick on Aaron Rodgers.

Correctamundo!  J.T. was replaced far before the season was over, and A-Rod proved he could fill the shoes of Brett Whatshisname, even in winning only 6 games.  Score: 8

15. The NFC West will not be decided until the week seventeen game between Seattle and Arizona, and Arizona will win.

Again, this isn’t necessarily wrong.  I was predicting a Cardinals playoff appearance, not a Seahawks collapse.  Let’s go halvsies.  Score: 8.5

16. Matt Leinart will not start a single game for the Arizona Cardinals.

Another winner.  Who knew Warner would have the season he had?  That’s right, I knew.  Score: 9.5

17. The worst record in the AFC South will be 8-8. Again.

Okay, so it’s wrong.  8-8 was the best record in the AFC West, though.  Not that that means anything, but it’s interesting, in a pathetic way.  Score: 9.5

18. The Super Bowl Champion New York Giants will end the season dead last in the NFC East.

Did I say dead last?  …he he, I meant, first place, which they’d have locked up by week 15!  It’s a simple misunderstanding, right?  Score: 9.5

19.  The Oakland Raiders, despite Al Davis’ best efforts and ridiculous spending, still won’t break 5 wins.

Correct.  Replace the words ‘ridiculous spending’ with ‘new puppet coach,’ and you’ve got a legitimate 2009 prediction.  Score: 10.5

20. During the regular season, the Jacksonville Jaguars will lose twice to the Indianapolis Colts, then will reach the AFC title game, where they will lose to them again.

Wrong, wrong, wrongeddy wrong wrong. Score: 10.5

21.  Darren McFadden will not win the Rookie of the Year award.

Winner winner, chicken dinner.  Thank you, Matty Ice.  Score: 11.5

22.  Adrian Peterson will not win the league MVP award.

Yeeee-haw!  This is where I start my late-season prediction push!  Score: 12.5

23.  Peyton Manning will.

Sadly, MVP awards don’t always make for Super Bowl appearances.  Score: 13.5

24.  The universe will return to normal, and an AFC team will win the Super Bowl.  More specifically, the Indianapolis Colts will win, and this, not Super Bowl XLI, will be Peyton Manning’s career-defining performance.

Yikes.  Well, I got the AFC part right, even if everything else about this prediction was as wrong as a brown belt and black shoes.  This one’s a wash.  Score: 13.5

…so there it is.  Thirteen-and-a-half out of twenty-four.  That’s good enough to make the playoffs in the AFC and NFC West.  And should I remind you what happened to the winner of the NFC West?  That’s right, they lost the Super Bowl.  Oh well.

Plaxico Burress and the Culture of Celebrity

I committed a cardinal sin of manhood today.  I, in a bout of frustration and disappointment, turned off SportsCenter.  This, to the stereotype that has come to constitute “man” in America, is unacceptable.  The American man, if he watches no other program on television, still watches SportsCenter religiously.  I typically fall into this demographic, but as of recently, I’ve started to become put off by the way in which sports is presented in today’s culture.

A friend of mine used to be a sports reporter for a local sports radio station here in Denver.  He had a press pass to the locker room for every home Rockies game and Broncos game, and would spend his days at work hanging out with professional athletes and coaches talking sports, and getting paid.  This, to the stereotype I previously described, is the ideal career.  But when I pressed my friend to tell me more, he said something to me that has changed the way I view the sports media:

“Honestly, Andy, I got tired of it really fast,” he said to me. “Covering sports, when it’s all said and done, is really only about one thing: criticism.  These guys go out and lay everything they have on the line every day, they’ve been playing this game since they were little kids, they’re living out their wildest dream, and now I go in there and pick at all the things they do wrong?  That’s not something I want to do as a career, and that wears on you, physically and emotionally.”

I thought about this as I turned off the television today during hour 122 of the great Plaxico Burress watch.  This saga, in case you aren’t familiar with it, involves a scenario in which a star wide receiver from the New York Giants took an unregistered and thus illegal weapon into a nightclub and proceeded to accidentally shoot himself in the leg with it, ending his playing season in both the physical and legal sense.

This, admittedly, is news.  It also is news that pertains specifically to the sports world, which makes it the perfect fodder for the number one sports news program in the country.  So why was I upset enough by the perfectly logical covering of this news to turn it off?  Well, quite simply, I don’t care.  I couldn’t care less about Plaxico Burress’ legal troubles.  And when you put something on television that I don’t care about, chances are I’m not going to watch it.

Please don’t misunderstand my apathy.  This doesn’t mean I don’t care about Plaxico Burress all together, it just means that I don’t care about this particular aspect of his life.  To put it quite simply, Plaxico Burress provides a service for me, that service being that he catches a ball on television while I watch and am entertained.  My interest in his life both begins and ends there.  What he does outside of that is of little to no interest to me, because that is all I pay him to do (and yes, I pay Plaxico Burress.  I pay my cable bill, and part of that money goes to the various networks that broadcast the NFL.  Those networks pay the NFL for the rights to those games, and the NFL takes that money and pays its players, ergo, Plaxico Burress is, in a convoluted way, providing a paid service for me).  I wouldn’t want to hear about my dentist’s custody battle, I just want him to clean my teeth, tell me to floss more, and send me on my merry way.  Now, if I have a relationship with my dentist, something that extends beyond him putting a metal hook in my mouth and me paying him for it, then I might be interested in hearing about his legal and family troubles.  But I do not have a relationship with Plaxico Burress, so quite frankly, his life is his business, and I don’t care to hear about it.

And herein lies one of the greatest conundrums in American culture, that being the question of why we care about celebrities beyond the roles that they play in movies, or music, or sports.  I spent a great portion of one summer in college picking up and putting away stray magazines in a bookstore, and that summer, just from reading magazine covers I could tell you more than I’m comfortable to admit about what celebrities were dating, cheating, having babies, getting married, getting divorced, shaving their heads, or anything else.  Following the everyday lives of famous people is a multi-billion dollar industry, and yet the people who primarily pay for this news, who buy the magazines and read the gossip columns and watch Entertainment Tonight, have never met the people they seemingly admire (or despise).  It says a lot about me (and arguably, about the culture in which I live, but that’s passing the blame) that I know the name of Tom Cruise’s baby, but I don’t know the name of the guy who lives downstairs from me.

The somewhat fascinating part is that I didn’t actively seek out any information about Tom Cruise’s baby, I just gained it by participating in everyday American life, by standing in line at the supermarket or by reading the newspaper.  Logic and free market economics tell us that no product is going to exist if there isn’t a market for it, so the question that I have is about the existence of that market, and the people that allow it to flourish.  Grocery stores exist because people need food to survive, the post office exists because of the need people have to mail things.  Every industry fills a need, so what need does the gossip industry meet?  Why does ESPN think it’s a good idea to spend hours and hours talking about Plaxico Burress’ personal life?

There’s a number of possible answers, but none really satisfy me.  The first is that the average person needs an escape from their actual life, that they don’t see their own life as thrilling, but they see the life of Plaxico Burress, or Britney Spears, or whoever else as exciting, and thus they somehow attempt to live vicariously through those people by following their lives.  Another possibility is pure schadenfreude— that somehow people are better able to deal with the stress in their lives by watching the lives of those who are far more stressed than they are, i.e. gun-toting wide receivers with impending court dates.  It this twisted yet plausible scenario, people somehow take joy from watching other people (people they specifically do not know personally) fail.

Both of these may be explanations, but to me, they aren’t logical or sensible explanations.  If I have two apples, and someone gives me three apples, it makes sense that I now have five apples, which is more apples than I started with.  But if I am feeling stressed or depressed about my life, and I look at pictures of celebrities in unflattering swimwear, or watch three hours of Plaxico Burress walking to a courthouse, nothing about that equation should sensibly equal me feeling better about my life.  Nothing in my life has changed, other than the fact that I have less time left in my day.

This is why I say this question will baffle me the rest of my life.  There is simply no logical explanation for anyone to watch or discuss the personal life of someone they do not personally know, and yet there is no doubt in my mind that the trend will continue, and grow exponentially, as it has over the past few decades, with absolutely no sensible explanation.  As long as there are famous people, there will be non-famous people who care too much about them, and I will remain confused.

Two Dozen Steadfast Predictions for the 2008 NFL Season

Yes, it’s coming soon.  Back on February 7th of this year, I wrote a post that claimed that with the ending of Super Bowl XLII, thus began the longest seven months of the year for me.  Well rejoice, eager fans, for football has arrived yet again, as it promised it would.  For a football fan, the days preceding football season are the equivalent of the days preceding Christmas for a five-year-old (except that for a football fan, their Christmas is five months long, and has a Christmas in it).

And like that eager five-year-old might spend the days prior to Christmas guessing what joys Santa might bring him on Christmas morn’, I have compiled a handful of predictions as to what the gods of the gridiron might bring me in the next five months.  Most prognostications are rather bold, some not so much, and it’ll be up to you to determine which of the following fit into each of those categories.  And since I am posting this onto the world-wide interweb, and that makes it permanent, I will return at the end of the coming season to rate my predictions for their relative truthiness (though no. 13 will take more than just this season to come true).

1. Tom Brady will not lead the league in touchdown passes, nor will the New England Patriots have the top-ranked offense in the league in scoring or total yards.

2. The Patriots will rank outside the top 12 in pass defense, but will still win at least 11 games.

3. Donovan McNabb will start 16 games this season for the Eagles.  Asante Samuel will not.

4. The New York Jets, who ranked 26th last year, will rank in the top 15 in total offense this year.  Thomas Jones will have 1,300 yards, and the Jets will be in the playoff race until the last two weeks of the season.  Brett Favre will start all 16 games, and come back for the 2009 season.

5. Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers will win at least 9 games, and sweep the Bears for the first time since 2003.

6. Marion Barber will make Dallas Cowboy fans forget how excited they were about Felix Jones.  Jones will finish with under 500 yards and 5 touchdowns.

7. Matt Ryan will do exactly what every other rookie starting quarterback does: struggle.  Michael Turner will have about three games where he looks superhuman, and thirteen games where he looks average.  The Falcons win no more than four games.

8. Chad Pennington will improve the Miami Dolphins threefold.  Meaning they’ll win three games instead of one.

9.  The Minnesota Vikings will be .500 at best, and miss the playoffs. (Shocked?  Think about this: Remember who the trendy preseason playoff pick was from last year?  Anyone?  The San Francisco 49ers.  Everyone said Patrick Willis was a beast, and the Niners would surprise everyone.  They went 5-11.)

10. The Patriots will lose the first playoff game they play.

11.  Jason Campbell will pass for over 3,000 yards, and still be ignored.

12. The Cincinnati Bengals will finish at .500 and miss the playoffs only because of the difficulty of their division.  Chad Javon Ocho Cinco will have a career year while wearing a shoulder brace all season long.

13. The Dallas Cowboys will NOT be in the Super Bowl.  Wade Phillips will be fired, and Jason Garrett will be the coach of the 2009 Dallas Cowboys, who will also miss the Super Bowl.

14. J.T. O’Sullivan will be no better a quarterback than Alex Smith.  After this season, (if they don’t already) Niner fans will be wishing their team had used their number one pick on Aaron Rodgers.

15. The NFC West will not be decided until the week seventeen game between Seattle and Arizona, and Arizona will win.

16. Matt Leinart will not start a single game for the Arizona Cardinals.

17. The worst record in the AFC South will be 8-8. Again.

18. The Super Bowl Champion New York Giants will end the season dead last in the NFC East.

19.  The Oakland Raiders, despite Al Davis’ best efforts and ridiculous spending, still won’t break 5 wins.

20. During the regular season, the Jacksonville Jaguars will lose twice to the Indianapolis Colts, then will reach the AFC title game, where they will lose to them again.

21.  Darren McFadden will not win the Rookie of the Year award.

22.  Adrian Peterson will not win the league MVP award.

23.  Peyton Manning will.

24.  The universe will return to normal, and an AFC team will win the Super Bowl.  More specifically, the Indianapolis Colts will win, and this, not Super Bowl XLI, will be Peyton Manning’s career-defining performance.

…so, whaddaya say?  Am I nuts?  Who cares.  It’s Christmas!

An Open Letter to the Packers Brass

Dear Mr. Thompson, Mr. Murphy, and Mr. McCarthy,

First, my apologies to you as I’m sure you have much on your plate at the moment, but you need to hear this lound and clear: you have done a horrible, horrible thing for your franchise.  What you are doing right now will quite likely go down in history as the worst management move by the Packers organization in its storied history.  No matter what happens, Mr. Favre will remain the face of your franchise for decades, and you will be a member of the brain trust who turned him away.

I most certainly understand your difficult circumstances, and watched the retirement press conference with the rest of the nation and believed it just as sincerely as you did.  I was on board with Mr. Rodgers, and will continue to be a fan of your franchise despite your actions.  I can understand how you can now feel vilified by Mr. Favre, forcing you into a corner from which you cannot escape.  But I must remind you, it is a corner you constructed yourself when you first told him a month ago you didn’t want him back despite his desire to play.

It seems to me that you don’t understand that sometimes we all have to swallow our pride and take one on the chin simply because it’s the right thing to do.  Perhaps taking back Mr. Favre for another year would not have been the wisest “business decision.”  But you must remember that your industry is an entertainment industry, and therefore your successes are subject to those you claim to entertain.  Unfortunately for you (and yet rightly so), your fan base approves of Mr. Favre more than it approves of you, and it would’ve served you well to align yourself with his camp against your better judgment for the long term.

But now it’s too late, and you’ll likely have to take some heat.  The way I see it, there are three scenarios you should currently be praying for: first, that Mr. Favre sticks to his word and stays retired.  Secondly, that he signs with another team that you do not play this season, and that team ends the 2008 season with a far worse record than yours.  The third and perhaps most unlikely scenario is that you win the Super Bowl with Mr. Rodgers as your quarterback.  Any one of these three options might lighten the sentence you will carry against the most loyal sports fan base in the nation.

Just don’t count on it.

Sincerely,

A Disappointed Packer Fan

Why Brett Favre Needs To Stay Retired

“…the itch”

Two little words that started a frenzy in the sports media yesterday.  It seems as though an unnamed source of ESPN’s Chris Mortensen told him that Brett Favre has “the itch” to play again, despite his announcement that he was retired in early March.  And, it was those two words which then caused the surge of articles, radio shows, and talking heads all to ask the same question: is he really going to come back?  Is he?  Is he???

My opinion?  If he knows what’s good for him, no, he’s not.

The first thing I’d want to do is look at the legitimacy of the report itself.  Chris Mortensen is an excellent sports journalist, and his name is regularly attached to dozens of huge breaking news headlines throughout the sports world, but Mortensen knows quite well that we’re in the midst of the slowest time of the football year.  Minicamps are over, training camps don’t start until the end of the month, so what is there to talk about?  Up until Brett got his little itch, it was nothing but too many player arrests and a few minor contract signings.  Mortensen also knows that nobody draws attention to the NFL like Brett Favre does, and if sports journalism is a business, which it most certainly is, then a nice, juicy Favre story right in the middle of the NFL doldrums is going to drum up quite a bit of business for ESPN, which just so happens to sign Mortensen’s paychecks.

Now don’t get me wrong–I’m not at all saying that Mortensen’s report is in any way false.  I’m just saying that perhaps it’s a bit more inflated than the actual circumstance requires.  Mortensen’s article on ESPN.com about Favre’s itch is over 1,000 words long, and only seven of those words are from the mouth of Brett Favre.  “It’s all rumor” are the three that stand out to me. (“no reason for it” are the other four, which is Favre’s response to the media speculation surrounding his return)  Sure, Mortensen’s got quotes galore, from Favre’s brother, his mother, his coach, his agent, whoever.  But I’d venture to say that the person who knows what Brett Favre is thinking most is Favre himself, and as he said, “it’s all rumor.”

And it better be.  Favre would be doing himself, his teammates, and his many, many fans a massive disservice if he decided to come back.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Favre fan, and will tell my kids and grandkids with great pride that I was lucky enough to see him play his greatest game live.  But in early March, Brett told everyone he was leaving, and so he needs to stick to his word and leave.  Ever since March 5th, the Packers organization and its fans have been preparing for life without Brett Favre, and it wouldn’t be fair to those people for him to come back with what would essentially equate to a big ol’ “gotcha” attitude.

In all honesty, the Packers may have a better shot at winning if Favre came back, and that’s fueling a lot of the fire surrounding his potential return.  But for four months, the Packers have been preparing for the future, a future that revolves heavily around Aaron Rodgers, and to postpone that future after all the preparation that has already been done is unfair to Rodgers, and it’s unfair to the teammates that have already begun to rally around him.  Watch any sports movie, and you’ll find the same moral: the team that functions best off the field functions best on it.  Bring Favre back, and no matter how much your chances of winning improve, you’re looking at a divided locker room and a very unhappy Aaron Rodgers.  To me, that doesn’t spell winning.

The Packers are smart enough to know all that, and my guess is that if Favre actually did reach out to contact them, they probably told him that outright.  Now, Favre needs to take that advice and just stay retired.  An option perhaps worse than coming back to the Packers would be coming back to some other team, which would be Favre’s only option if the Packers did tell him no.  A lot of folks can remember Joe Montana playing the last of his career in Kansas City.  Did that tarnish his legacy in San Francisco?  Depends on who you ask.  But that was Joe Montana, and while he is a legend in his own right (perhaps even a bigger one than Favre), to most football fans, Favre in any uniform other than a green and gold one borders on blasphemy.  And considering two of the most quarterback-needy teams in the league (Minnesota and Chicago) are in the same division as the Packers, Favre would do himself a big favor to leave himself off the market.  Can you imagine seeing Favre play against the Packers for two games next season?  The suicide rate in Wisconsin would skyrocket.

So do us all a favor, Brett, and stay retired.  You told us you were done, so stick to your word.  And just because we may say we don’t want you back doesn’t mean we didn’t love you when you were around, we just want what’s best for the team, and what’s best for you, and that means that the next time you step on that Lambeau turf, we’ll hope to be honoring your legacy as we say goodbye one last time and retire that iconic number four.

Belicheater?

I doubt many people today recognize the name Charles Van Doren. Charles Van Doren started out like anyone else, just a regular guy. Eventually though, he would grow to be seen as a genius, a man whose knowledge of seemingly any subject far surpassed all of his peers. Van Doren would find a way to utilize that knowledge to come into great wealth and popularity during the 1950s, only to be exposed as one of the biggest examples of fraud ever.

Van Doren was a game show contestant, and a very successful one, a regular Ken Jennings of his day. He stayed on the NBC game show ‘Twenty-One’ for a solid three months, accumulating $129,000 and annihilating every challenger that faced him along the way. And as he became a regular staple in the homes of Americans, he earned their admiration, their respect and their trust as a television personality. So much so, in fact, that immediately after he was defeated, he was offered a position as a correspondent for the Today Show, a move which seemed to imply that Americans loved Charles Van Doren so much that they simply didn’t want to lose the chance to watch him on TV.

The problem was, Charles Van Doren was a phony. Turns out the producers of ‘Twenty-One’ liked him on TV just as much as the American people did, and they had been feeding Van Doren answers to the questions he would be asked beforehand (which he eagerly accepted) so all he had to do was pause, look slightly puzzled, answer the question, and occasionally pat his brow with a handkerchief.

The funny thing was, Charles Van Doren certainly could have done very well without any help at all. He had a B.A. in Liberal Arts, a Masters in Astrophysics, and a Doctorate in English, and he was a member of a notoriously scholarly Ivy League family. In simpler terms, he was just plain smart. And Van Doren tried out on his own, which would imply that he thought he could hold his own on the show to begin with. So once the facts came out that proved he had been fed the answers the whole time, the question became: can a man still be considered a cheater if he doesn’t necessarily need the edge he gains from cheating, and should that act of cheating be held against him?

The National Football League now has a Charles Van Doren of its own, and they’re trying to figure out just what to do about it. Bill Belichick, as we all have known for quite some time, was heavily involved in the Spygate scandal, and now, with the testimony of Matt Walsh, the league is discovering that Spygate just may be a bigger deal than they once considered. True, no completely new information was uncovered by Walsh’s testimony, but it served to solidify what we had already assumed: that Bill Belichick knew he was cheating, he knew he was doing something other teams weren’t, and he did it anyway, all the time wanting no one to know about it. And this went on for at least eight years.

But Belichick, like Van Doren, is respected as the best at what he does. Winner of three Super Bowls in four appearances, two time coach of the year, and one of two head coaches in history to coach their team to a perfect regular season record. It’s an impressive resume, to be sure. But this one black mark, in my opinion, is enough to wipe it all off the board.

Gregg Easterbrook, author of the column Tuesday Morning Quarterback, thinks the best solution is a year suspension for Belichick, and I tend to agree with him (his article is found here, and it’s worth a read). Yes, Belichick was fined a significant amount of money (that really may not have been that significant considering his multi-million dollar salary) and the team had to forfeit a draft choice (which Easterbrook accurately points out punishes the fans more than it punishes Belichick) but that simply isn’t enough. If NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to keep the NFL clean, he’s got to set boundaries that are clear, or else those boundaries will continue to be pushed. If consequences are strict and enforced from the beginning, then coaches and players will certainly think twice before they consider pushing those boundaries. Essentially, to save the league’s reputation, Roger Goodell needs to make Belichick his scapegoat.

My assumption, though, is that Goodell doesn’t want to punish someone who is such an important figure in the eyes of the league and the fans. The words ‘Belichick’ and ‘genius’ have been tossed around together so frequently since the Patriots won their first Super Bowl that people are really beginning to accept the designation. Meanwhile, Belichick has achieved godlike status among fans, players, and his fellow coaches. I think Goodell believes it would be too detrimental to the league to take a character of Belichick’s status out for a year, and that’s why he chooses not to.

In all honesty, I think it’d be better in the long term for the league if he did suspend Belichick, and maybe even take it one step further. Think coaches would think twice about anything close to cheating if Belichick, a surefire first-balloter, was banned from the Hall of Fame? You bet they would. In my opinion, leaders need to be held to a higher standard, that’s why being a leader is such a tough job. Right now, the NFL is the most popular and profitable sports league in the nation, and that could easily change if it gets bogged down with too many preventable scandals. The problem remains, though, that Belichick is just too big of a personality, too well respected and too beloved, and perhaps that allows him to exist above the law.

That’s why we make excuses for him. That’s why we will come to the conclusion that the tapes didn’t really help all that much, that they didn’t need the tapes to win, and that it’s really not a big deal. But an ace up your sleeve is still cheating even if you win with a king-high flush. That ace up your sleeve still means that particular ace is now out of play for the other 31 people playing the game, which gives you an unfair advantage, which is cheating, no matter which way you slice it, and that must be addressed.

*****

After being uncovered as a cheater, Charles Van Doren was promptly removed from his correspondent job at ‘The Today Show’, a move the network made to save their own face and disassociate themselves with the monster they essentially created themselves. Then, just as quickly as he was removed from that job, he got a new one: chief editor for the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Today, he’s a well-respected author and college professor, and is not questioned regarding his time on ‘Twenty-One.’

Time will only tell if the world is as forgiving to Belichick as they were to Van Doren, but my guess is that it will be, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Sure, there will be chanting fans and mocking signs held up at a handful of games next year, but the truth of the matter is, the Patriots are good, and they most likely will continue to be a winning franchise in the next few years, and that glory will likely land upon to two men: Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. But the question of the Patriots’ talent is not the most important one. The real question that only time can answer is whether or not Belichick’s actions will give way to more questionable behavior that is let slide by a far too tolerant league, and a new generation of Americans are given the message that a good reputation can substitute for integrity, and that succeeding by any means– cheating included– is, to put it plainly, acceptable.

It was always more than just football…

He retired today.

When I was growing up, on the north side of my house was a stretch of lawn, a modest 10 yards wide and about 40 yards long. After school, two neighbor friends of mine and I would go out and toss a football around. We’d play this game we called Interception, where one person was the quarterback, one was the receiver, and one played corner and tried to intercept the pass. It had this elaborate scoring system, and it was difficult to keep track of your points, but still,we played it because it was a good game for three people, and it fit the size lawn I had. Mostly, though, we played it because it was fun.

During the game, you’d rotate positions so each person got a chance to play each spot against each other. I was never very good at corner, and I liked receiver but I wasn’t all that fast, so I lived for playing quarterback. With such a short field, long touchdown passes were a lot easier, and because we played so often, we all got in such a rhythm with each other that it seemed fluid– we knew where each route was going, how each pass would hit our hands. We played as long as we possibly could, continuing well after the sun had set and the ball was just a dark shape flying through the inky blue twilight. By the end of the evening, when our parents would call us in for dinner, we would be tired, and often sore, but above all we would be content.

Over the past decade-plus I spent watching Brett Favre play, I was often reminded of those moments I spent in my yard. Watching Favre play reminded you that football was a game, and that it was supposed to be fun. With the stage of sports currently darkening, and supposed “heroes” falling left and right to steroid scandals, paternity suits, misdemeanors and the like, we’re losing more than just a talented football player, we’re losing one of the last great role models in sports. Who now is left for young kids to look up to? Tom Brady? Perhaps, but his GQ-modeling, supermodel-dating lifestyle is less than realistic. Peyton Manning? Maybe, but how many more years does he have left in his tank? Favre’s retirement is not only the end of his career and the end of an era for the Packers, but it’s the end of an era for the NFL as a whole.

During the seventeen years he played, Favre led the NFL to become the most popular and most profitable sports league in America. It was his face that sold the sport, his games getting the best ratings on TV, his picture showing up in magazine advertisements left and right. He was iconic, and the NFL will look staggeringly different without him. In each sport, there are players who define their era, who stick out above the rest not only because of their talent, but because of the impact they had on their sport as well as the culture around them. Baseball has had Ruth and Gehrig, DiMaggio and Williams, Maris and Mantle, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, and Cal Ripkin Jr. The NBA had Wilt and Russell, then Kareem, then Bird, then Jordan. Now the NFL has Jim Brown, Unitas, Walter Payton, Marino, Montana, and now, Favre.

He’d never claim to be the best. He’s had his great moments, but he’s had bad ones, too. Most fans will tell you Montana was better, Marino was better, maybe even Elway was better, and they’ll tell you that it’s only a matter of time before Manning and Brady pass all the records he just set this season. But when it comes down to it, they’ll also say that given the chance, they’d likely want Favre leading their huddle down by six in the fourth quarter. He was fearless, he was talented, and he was the ultimate leader. Now, he’ll become an icon and a legend.

X Thoughts on Super Bowl XLII

Well here we are, three days from the Pro Bowl and forced to spend the next eight months talking about free agent signings and creating tension by pretending that Brett Favre won’t come back next season. So, while it’s on a bit of a delay, here’s my X (ten) thoughts about last weekend’s Super Bowl to serve as a closing of what turned out to be a fairly dramatic season.

I. Let’s get the superlatives out of the way right off the bat. This was the greatest Super Bowl victory I can remember in my life. The earliest Super Bowl I remember watching was Giants-Bills in Super Bowl XXV, when I was six years old. That game, I changed who I was “rooting” for accordingly with each lead change in the game. Turns out by the end of the game, “my” team won. Anyway, since then, I haven’t seen another Super Bowl as exciting as this one, including the two in which my beloved team competed. Rams-Titans comes close, with Kevin Dyson tackled at the one on the last play of the game, but nothing tops 1) David Tyree’s incredible gravity-defying helmet-catch, 2) Eli Manning as MVP, or 3) 18-1.

II. As long as we’re on the topic of superlatives, in my opinion Bill Belichick is now the biggest sore loser in the history of sports (a title previously held by Brett Clark, the barrel-chested sixth grader who drop-kicked a basketball about 200 yards into the parking lot after I had three clean steals against him in middle school P.E.). I don’t care who you are, what your record is, or even if you were pretty sure the clock had expired, as a coach you do not abandon your team on the field before the game is over, even if you’re just one Eli Manning patella away from defeat. Yes, if put in his position, we’d all be disappointed to lose the perfect season, especially to a team you were favored to beat by two touchdowns, but football genius or not, that’s no excuse for being a plain old bad sport.

III. Eli Manning is the shit. With 2:42 left in the 4th quarter, and his team down by 4, I said, out loud, “Eli, here’s where you make or break your career.” He did it, and with style. Eli Manning could never complete another pass in his career, and he’d still be the quarterback who beat the perfect Patriots.

IV. Steve Smith (the #12 version) is not the shit. At least not yet. While he is young, and has a lot of time left to prove himself (which I think he eventually will) the only flaw on Eli’s passing stats for the entirety of the playoffs was a catch that went straight through the inexperienced hands of Steve Smith and into the waiting arms of Ellis Hobbs. From that point on, Steve Smith became a drinking game. Anytime he touched (or should have touched) the ball, my jolly friends and I heartily sipped our respective libations to the rousing and communal yells of “SMITH!!!” At least he was good for something.

V. If the MVP award could be split multiple ways, it should’ve been given to the entire Giants defensive front seven. Anybody who can make the Pats’ oft-heralded offensive line look like tissue paper deserves a heck of a lot of credit.

VI. From this point on, any Super Bowl watched without the aide of TiVo or some other DVR device is completely subpar. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but in a year where 98% of the commercials sucked outright, (anyone remember when Super Bowl commercials were more like this?) I’d much rather rewind and watch incredible plays four times in a row, pause the game for a fajita break, and then use that built up time from all the pausing and rewinding to fast-forward through the twelfth consecutive commercial for “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

VII. My favorite postgame quote is as follows:

“As Mike Tyson would say, ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.’ ”

That quote courtesy of Michael Strahan, describing how the Giants disrupted the Pats’ game plan. A perfect description of how the Giants pressured Tom Brady all night long, sacking him five times and forcing one fumble. During the regular season, it took until week 6 for the Patriots to give up 5 sacks. During the Super Bowl, it took just under an hour. Punched in the face is right.

VIII. Perhaps the greatest non-football clip from Super Bowl XLII was about 10 seconds long, shortly after the Giants locked up the victory. The Fox cameras panned to everyone’s favorite big brother up on his feet in his private box, clapping and cheering for li’l ol’ Eli. Not only was this a heartwarming scene in itself: the more experienced, more famous, more loved and more heralded brother cheering on his smaller, less famous, mouth-breathing little brother, but it proved hysterical, as is typical of every non-football related clip of Peyton Manning on television. It seems as though some young brunette lady, possibly Peyton’s wife, Eli’s fiancé, or some other female friend of the family, was excited about the victory as well, and wanted to share in the moment with Peyton. She went in for the high five not once, but twice, only to be ignored/rejected both times by Peyton, who visibly could’ve cared less about this gal who was forced to slyly attempt to withdraw both of her rejected high fives on the most watched national television program in America. It’s much funnier than can be described in words, so much so that we rewound and watched it on the DVR probably six-to-eight times.

IX. In some respects, the Patriots ultimately benefited from losing this game. Just hear me out on this one… the Patriots, in losing this game, escaped an eternity of “asterisk conversations” that would have tarnished their “perfect” season. Had the Patriots won, every sports fan in the nation would have pointed to Spygate as the big, smudgy fingerprint on their Lombardi trophy, and everyone who didn’t live in Boston would claim that the Pats weren’t really perfect at all, because they were nothing more than big, fat, juicy cheaters. Thankfully, they don’t have to worry about that anymore, because now the Patriots have two things tarnishing their perfect season.

X. There simply is no comparison to watching football with people who both care about and know about the sport. I love my current roommates, but each of them will tell you they are not passionate NFL-enthusiasts, at least not in the same vein as I, and thus I spent a lot of time watching football by myself this past season. Thankfully, the friendly folks who opened their homes and hearts to me this weekend were as nutty about it as I was, and that was one of many reasons this will likely be the most memorable Super Bowl of my 23 years.

So finally, as someone I know would say, “this one’s for my homies.” To the nine people I was privileged enough to spend this past weekend with: I couldn’t have asked for a better time. When I desperately needed a break from real life and a less-than-exciting job, you all delivered in the best way possible. To tell you the truth, when I think back on Super Bowl XLII, I first will think of you, not the game, which is a bigger compliment than it sounds coming from “Mr. Football” (thanks, Joy). Anyway, I appreciate all of you more than you know, and just want to say thanks from the bottom of my heart for an incredible and memorable experience. Let’s do it again real soon. Anybody got dibs on next year?

Warning: May Contain Football-Like Substance

For those of you who were concerned, yes, I am recovering. It’s taking time, but I’ll pull through.

I’m talking, of course, about the 23-20 loss my beloved team took this past weekend in the NFC Championship game. If you don’t care at all about football, then skip this post, and come back in mid-February, when I’ll have new things to think about. That being said, here’s my opinions concerning the game, which will likely end up being much longer than I’m intending at the moment:

1. If you have to find one person to blame the loss on (even though it usually isn’t one person’s fault) blame coach Mike McCarthy. It pains me to say that, because I respect the heck out of the guy, but he called a downright terrible game. I’ve never seen a worse-called game than this one. Ever. Ryan Grant runs for 201 yards in the snow one week, and to reward him, the next week you only give him 13 carries the whole game? That’s ridiculous, even if he only got 29 yards on those 13 carries.  If you listen to game analysis, you’ll likely hear a lot of people saying the Giants stopped the Packers running game, and that’s how they beat them. That’s not true. The Packers stopped their own running game because they didn’t run enough. You can’t expect to wear down a defense if you only run at it 13 times. In a cold weather game, you have to run the ball, plain and simple. Even if you average 2 yards a carry, like the Packers did, if you run on first and second down, you’re looking at third and six, which is much more manageable than the third and nine the Packers averaged. No one, not Brett Favre, not Tom Brady, and certainly not Eli Manning can win when their team averages nine yards to go on third down.

2. In my life, I’ve probably watched over 100 Packer games, and it didn’t take half that experience to tell that Brett Favre was damn cold. He’s 38 years old, for goodness sakes. Experience watching him is what tells me that when Favre is cold, he’s uncomfortable, and when he’s uncomfortable, he forces things, and when he forces things, he throws picks. Corey Webster now knows this better than anyone. Yet another reason to run the ball. Nothing against Brett, I would’ve just saved the heavy passing game for the warm Arizona desert, which sadly now isn’t possible.

3. Al Harris needs to shut up. He’s a big bunch of talk, but he can’t consistently back it up. Yes, he’s going to the Pro Bowl, and yes, he’s one of the best corners in the NFL, but this year, he faced only two big, physical receivers: Terrell Owens and Plaxico Burress. Their combined stats for the two games in which they faced Harris: 18 catches for 307 yards. Harris is considered one of the best because he plays bump and run, and plays it well, which means he’s shoving scrawny little receivers left and right, knocking them off their routes and throwing off their timing with the QB. But when the receiver is big enough to shove you back, you’ve got yourself into quite a pickle, and it becomes time to back off and simply cover your man, which Harris couldn’t do Sunday. So Al, until you fix that, keep your mouth shut and play the game, you’re only baiting big guys to push you around like Owens and Burress did.

4. As long as we’re on the topic of corners, the Giants did a good job taking Charles Woodson off his game as well. Woodson, like Harris, plays man-to-man bump and run, and the Giants used a whole lotta motion to freeze that. This was a very smart idea. Whereas the Giants knew real fast that Harris wasn’t going to be a problem, they used motion to neutralize Woodson, because when you use motion, you end up with a receiver who can’t just line up straight in front of his man, and you take away the option of bump-and-run, essentially forcing any corner to become a pure cover corner. The difference was that Woodson, who was on Amani Toomer most of the game, did a decent job of it, limiting Toomer to four catches.

5. For a defense that was on the field for 40 minutes in minus-23 degree temperatures, the Packers still looked fairly decent (outside of Harris) in the fourth quarter and overtime, keeping the Giants out of the end zone and tightening up towards the red zone. That being said, it’s very rare that a team that’s as much in control of the clock as the Giants were on Sunday will lose. Also, the Packers badly lost the field-position battle, which doesn’t help things any. So if you’re the Packers, how do you move towards winning the time of possession and field position battles? Well, you run the ball, of course (are we seeing a theme here?).

6. I am 99.8% sure that Brett will be back next season, and yet that .2% still makes me nervous.

7. I am not at all sure that the Packers will be any good next year, which makes the loss that much more heartbreaking. The Packers hadn’t been in an NFC Championship for 10 years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes them another 10 or more to get back. I’m not discrediting my team here, I know there’s a heck of a lot of talent on that roster, a lot of salary cap room, and not a lot of guys slated to become free agents. All those signs point to a really successful season next year, right? Well, ask the Saints, Bears, Jets, and Ravens how they feel about maintaining success in the NFL from season to season, and they’ll tell you it isn’t always that simple.

8. …Only 11 days until the longest seven months of the year.