A Road With So Much Dust and Sand

Yup, I'm Already Anxious About The Super Bowl

2012-01-30T23:29:00.003-05:00

Some of you might have noticed that I didn't post any sort of update over the end of last week, and given that my Giants are in their second Super Bowl in five seasons, you'd think I'd be a little more eager to talk shop. Well, I've been busy with a few things, but most of it revolved around being too enveloped in anxiety to think rationally or logically about Super Bowl XLVI or what I should write about it. I did, however, realize that it's been an awfully long time since I actually used this blog for what it was originally supposed to be used for -- actually posting chapters from this book I'm supposed to be writing. We're long overdue for one and with the Giants back in the biggest game of all and facing the New England Patriots one more time, it seems like an appropriate time to break out the full story of perhaps the game I've most anticipated attending of any I've ever been to -- and how it fulfilled pretty much everything I could have hoped for.

So, without further adieu, here is an excerpt, for the first time in a long time for my big opus, the story of when Frankie Williams and I trucked up to Boston this past November to see the Giants visit the Patriots, in a chapter I've cheerfully titled "Patriots Facking Football". You'll have to bear with me. Even though I've edited it down some, it's pretty lengthy.

Originally written November 8, 2011

For whatever reason, the number 42 has a tendency to show up more often than most. In the most obvious of sports terms, 42 was the number worn by Jackie Robinson. In my favorite book, Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is determined to be the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. And perhaps most notably for my purposes, 42 was the number of what so far has been the greatest night of my life.

That night came on February 3, 2008, when a group of friends and I watched in my basement as after more than a decade of watching our hearts pounded repeatedly by the New York Giants, they finally reached the pinnacle in the biggest game there is against the greatest team I ever saw in the most dramatic way possible, defeating the undefeated New England Patriots 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII. Some might question that this was actually the greatest night of my life, but they need to understand the unique culmination of events. Not only was the game as riveting as it was, but it was something I had waited for since I was eight years old when I finally caught of whiff of professional football. The Giants were the first team I fell in love with and my childhood dedication, so strong that I made my mother drive me around to multiple malls so I could get a 1997 NFC East Division Champions hat, was repaid with continual heartbreak in utterly brutal fashion. The Giants postseason collapse in 1997 against Minnesota, the 24-point blown lead in the postseason against San Francisco in 2002, the Jay Feely misses three field goals with a share of the NFC's best record on the line game against Seattle in 2005, the blown 21-point lead in the final ten minutes against Vince Young and the Titans in 2006 and worst of all Super Bowl XXXV against the Ravens.

It all stung.

After experiencing all of that, the Giants finally won it all in a dramatic run that could not be anticipated nor predicted, and I witnessed it at home with my friends whom I had experienced all those painful blows with. It also happened while I was still in the midst of a difficult personal period and it proved the right lift at the right time. At the end of the evening a friend of mine text messaged me and asked "Be honest, what was better? This or losing your virginity?" My response was "This was better, and it's not even close."

Who enjoys their first time anyway?

Given all this it seems strangely appropriate that as I journey to see 122 different teams, No. 42 would happen to be the New England Patriots in the first game of any meaning between the Pats and Giants since that night in Glendale, Arizona. Because of the NFL's rotating schedule system, I had known New York's next visit to Foxboro was going to be during the 2011 NFL season and as a result I looked forward to it for nearly four years. That it happened to be No. 42 on the list was done without planning or organization. It just happened that way.

When the schedule finally rolled out, it seemed a little hectic that the two games I pegged for trips this season, to New England and to San Francisco, would be on back-to-back weeks. This complicated things for several reasons considering that I worked Sundays and it was difficult to get the time off, and that it fell the same weekend as Northwestern's first ever visit to Nebraska following the Corn Huskers' move to the Big Ten for the 2011 season. A number of my friends were heading to Lincoln for the game and I was considering doing the same myself. At one point I was contemplating an utterly hectic -- and expensive -- itinerary that would have had me flying from New York to Lincoln Friday night, from Lincoln to Boston Saturday night after the football game, and then taking a bus from Boston to New York Sunday evening so I could be back in the office for work Monday morning. In the end, there was simply too much coordination involved on too short of a notice to make it all worked and resigned myself to missing the game in Lincoln, a matchup which happens every two years, so I could attend the Giants and Patriots in New England, a matchup that happens every eight.

I did have the considerable issue of finding someone to go with me as my friends from Boston had either moved away from the city or balked at the ticket prices. In the end I was able to convince my friend Frankie to bite the bullet. Frankie and I had traveled once before on a weekend trip to Montreal with some friends in 2005, a jaunt that included my first experience with casino losses, arguments about the legality of drinking in cars if you weren't the driver and an odd run-in with border guards on our return to the U.S. in which Frankie said just about everything wrong thing you could even though we had nothing to hide.
Frankie and I have known each other since we met at Fairview Lake YMCA camp in 1996 and with 15 years in our back pockets I know what to expect from him and he knows what to expect from me. There are few secrets between us that one doesn't know about the other. We laugh at all the same inside jokes that no one else in their right mind could possibly consider funny, we have a similar sense of humor, similar sports allegiances and on more than one occasion we've pursued the same woman. Somehow we're still friends in spite of that last one.

Amazingly I later found, Frankie had also never seen the Giants play in person before so he was more than eager to jump at the opportunity. Frankie also, however, forgets things constantly. More than once I've invited him to a BBQ only to have him ask me what I was up to that night when the day finally arose. With that kind of tendency, Frankie would reaffirm to me multiple times how excited he was for the game, which he genuinely was, and then would ask me again each time when, exactly the game was. He had finally remembered about a week and a half before we were ready to go, but I half expected him to forget the day of. Fortunately, as I waited for our bus to Boston on Saturday morning, he arrived just two minutes after me ready to go. Our plan had originally been to take a bus up early Sunday, take a train directly to the game, and then work the operation in reverse once it was over. However, that Sunday was also the New York Marathon. Because I am a Jew born to New York-bred parents I am prone to a significant amount of anxiety and neuroticism when it comes to travel. Fearing the Marathon might cause these best laid plans to run astray as they often do, Frankie and I decided to take the bus up a day early and stay with his friend Dan for the night.

This was further complicated by my desire to make sure I got to at least see the first quarter of the Northwestern-Nebraska game before the Huskers put it too far out of hand, and as a result we took an 11 a.m. bus from New York to Boston when a 4 p.m. one probably would have sufficed. That weekend most eyes in college football were actually on Tuscaloosa, where No. 1 LSU was taking on No. 2 Alabama in a game that was hyped more in SEC country than General Sherman's burning of Atlanta. I was far more preoccupied with my Wildcats, who had watched a promising season more or less go down the tubes with a shocking loss at West Point, which I got to see in person, blown double-digit leads to Illinois and Michigan, and a loss to Iowa in which the Cats statistically dominated.

When Frankie arrived at the bus stop with me he naturally cared about none of this – or at least not the Northwestern aspect – and he seemed more concerned, like me, that waiting on line at a MegaBus stop in New York City is the human equivalent of being herded like cattle. Really. They have everyone wait in narrow chain-link-divided lines and then when your bus is boarded they yell and prod you in an unfriendly manner to board and everyone slowly shuffles in. Frankie and I grabbed seats on the bus behind a quartet of college girls. One in particular felt a little too comfortable discussing her sex life loud enough for all of us to know that her roommate was shocked that she was contemplating premarital intercourse – which the girl had already had unbeknownst to the roommate. Fascinating stuff indeed.

Most of the ride was spent playing Scrabble on our smart phones and arguing over just how old the girls in front of us were while I re-watched Super Bowl XLII in my head. The Giants had a daunting task in front of them if they were to repeat the magic. Not only was New England one of the dominant franchises in the NFL – they had won a record 126 games over the previous 10 seasons – but they were coming off a loss at Pittsburgh and if beating the Patriots in general wasn't a tough enough proposition, doing it as an NFC team in New England when the Pats were coming off a loss made it even tougher. New England lost its first game against an NFC team in Gillette nine years ago and hadn't lost one since. The Pats hadn't lost a regular season game at Gillette Stadium, a building where they boasted a 63-12 regular season record since it opened in 2002, in 20 games. Tom Brady hadn't lost a regular season start there since losing to the Jets five years earlier in 2006, a span of 31 games. Oh, and the Patriots hadn't lost two regular season games in a row in 27 games.

They were good. If the Pats had risen from the role of lovable underdog champions after defeating the heavily-favored St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI ten years earlier to League-wide Darth Vader, Gillette Stadium was their Death Star. Luke Skywalker and the rebels may have pulled off the unthinkable, but that was fantasy. This was reality and I wasn't sure Eli Manning had the force on his side enough to do the same. Eli had stoked the flames of the game in the preseason when a radio interviewer asked him if he viewed himself as "an elite quarterback" like Brady. Manning said that, yes, he did believe himself to be "in that class", a reaction that prompted scoffing from nearly all corners of the NFL universe. Sure Eli had won the most important meeting between the two, with a thrilling last-minute touchdown drive, no less, and if you watched him on a weekly basis, you knew he had a preternatural calm in the fourth quarter that had bred several rallies. But the numbers were the numbers. Eli had thrown 25 interceptions in the 2010 season. Tom Brady threw 25 in the previous four seasons combined. Brady also stalked the field with a quiet confidence that made him appear as if he was the John Wayne of the NFL, knowing he was the man in just about any situation and you probably didn't have the talent to stop him nor the stones to try. Tom Brady looked like he could save Natalie Wood in The Searchers. Eli looked like a child on The Andy Griffith Show.

This weekend would be Manning's chance to prove he was one of the League's best and lost in all the amusement over the season's first eight weeks was the fact that Eli was playing, well, like he was an elite quarterback. He had engineered multiple fourth-quarter comebacks already during the season and his wide receiving corps seemed to be in tune despite no longer having Plaxico Burress from the Super Bowl team, nor slot receiver Steve Smith who had signed with the rival Eagles in the offseason. Instead, Hakeem Nicks, Mario Manningham and Victor Cruz were lining up for passes and they and Eli seemed to have plenty of chemistry. This combined with the fact that he had kept the interceptions dramatically down and was facing a Patriots pass defense that had quietly been among the worst in the NFL gave a spark of home to those traveling from New York.

When we finally arrived in Boston I had nothing on my mind, however, other than finding a place to watch the Northwestern game. This would be kiboshed, however, when Frankie volunteered to have us meet Dan and his friend James at a restaurant in Chinatown that would have no TVs. I decided to handle it calmly and instead follow the game painstakingly on my phone. As I found through twitter, ESPN and a deluge of text messages, something crazy was happening in Lincoln. The Wildcats were winning. And I was missing it.

As I frantically tried to engineer the group toward going to Dan's apartment so I could see the fourth quarter, the even more shocking impediment came about that Dan did not have cable. I somehow managed to get a tip from my friend Paul, who was not a Northwestern grad, nor in North America that the game was streaming online. Even if Dan didn't have cable, he at least had a computer with an internet connection. I got to the computer in time to see the end of Northwestern's stunning 28-25 win in Lincoln.

I was walking on air. And Frankie and Dan did not care one bit. Instead they were far more concerned with what we were going to do that night, and the answer was go to a party in Arlington that was being hosted by Dan's rock climbing friends. I point out that they are his rock climbing friends because it became very apparent from the first moment you walked into the party that these people loved rock climbing. Yes, Dan had his rock climbing gear prominently displayed on a wall of hooks in his apartment, but that merely seemed like an effective use of storage space. At this party, not one conversation occurred that did not include some reference to or discussion of rock climbing. There was a brief period where we instead watched funny YouTube videos on a large projector screen, but nearly every other bit of chatter involved climbing in the morning, how many days in a row they had climbed, how five times a week was not enough to climb or how if they left right now they could get to Tennessee by morning to climb.

The walls of the house were decorated by framed pictures of people rock climbing, a number of books on their bookshelf were dedicated to rock climbing and their coffee table had past issues of Climbing Magazine lying on top of it. Worst of all, due to their love of rock climbing everyone was in far better shape than I was. There was so much rock-climbing talk that I was almost distracted from the fact that they had not just one, but two cats, which everyone seemed to adore except for me, the cat-allergic stranger. One other attendee was also allergic to cats, and an asthmatic at that, but because she loved animals so much so just had to nuzzle the first kitten she saw when she arrived. She then wondered why she was having such a strong reaction.

After the party we moved on to a bar, which refused to open up their kitchen despite our arguments that with daylight savings time ending that weekend – albeit in the wrong direction – they should still be open. The bar also sold us a round of drinks before announcing that it was almost 2 a.m. and so they were closing and couldn't get us out of there fast enough. It's times like this where I miss the 4 a.m. closing times in New York. After grabbing some very mediocre pizza, Frankie, I and Dan's friend James all went back to Dan's apartment to pass out, only to find that Dan had very little in the way of sleeping arrangements. He had no extra pillows or blankets, which meant that Frankie slept on the futon in a sleeping bag while I slept on an underinflated camping mat in a sleeping bag liner. Dan assured me that the liner added 10-15 degrees to a standard sleeping bag, but on its own the added heat was, shall we say, underwhelming. In addition, the temperature in the room dropped to about 60 degrees for some reason and my attempts at fiddling with the thermostat were futile. I eventually covered myself with my coat in an attempt to add some warmth only to find that it had gotten covered in cat hair at the party.

I don't want to seem ungrateful, but let's just say I've had a better night's sleep before.

Of course, by the time I woke up I wasn't thinking about it much anymore. It was game day, after all. Dan and James had left early for their early Sunday morning climb (Because who wants to sleep past 10 a.m. on a Sunday?), and shortly after Frankie and I packed up our stuff and headed out for some brunch before the game. We ended up at the East Coast Grill, a creole-infused restaurant that Frankie had been to before and was keen to try again. Judging from my chicken fried steak and garlic greens he was on to something. I was also excited to find a plaque outside the restaurant noting that it stood on the former site of Jake & Earl's Dixie BBQ, "a favorite hangout of local patriots destroyed by a regiment of British troops in the spring of 1775." That kind of revolutionary war history is the thing I find most interesting about Boston, but, and perhaps my history is failing me, something seemed very anachronistic about a dixie-themed BBQ joint in colonial Massachusetts. Wasn't Dixie a civil war term that wouldn't come into the vernacular for decades?

I had mostly forgotten about being perplexed by the time Frankie and I got to South Station. Gillette Stadium, or as it's sometimes called "The Razor", isn't in a particularly convenient place for Bostonians. It sits in Foxboro, Massachusetts, some 20 miles or so southwest of the city, and for those who wish to go there using mass transit, the options are slim. In fact, the only real way to get there is by taking a commuter train that doesn't exist unless there's a special event happening at the stadium. The Massachuetts Bay Transit Authority doesn't typically run trains to Foxboro, but for Pats games, they do run a train to Walpole that then moves onto the much older, slower, seldom-used tracks leading to the stadium. The train has operated on and off over the years, but has experienced a significant uptick in recent seasons due to its relative ease, it's relatively cheap cost (a round trip ticket was $15), the enormous cost of parking at the stadium (upwards of $40), and the fact that if you stuff it in a brown bag, you can drink easily without worrying about being behind the wheel.

As we arrived at the station, we began to spot a few Giants fans lingering and knew we wouldn't be alone that day. We were also greeted by a merchandise stand selling shirts that said "Giants suck, too!" on them, an amusing fact to me considering the Giants played the Patriots all of once every four years and had no real reason to create thoughts of a rivalry before the Super Bowl four seasons ago. In fact, until the AFL came to be and after the Boston Redskins pulled stakes for Washington in the 1930s, most of New England was Giants' territory as Big Blue was the nearest of any team in the NFL.

Because Gillette did not allow bags into the stadium and had no bag check facility nearby since it's in the middle of nowhere, Frankie and I checked ours with the Greyhound bag depot, but not before the attendant made a point to tell us the cost would be $30 instead of $5 once he saw our Giants jerseys. While that bluster was all in good fun, I did get a nasty stare from a teenage Pats fan passing by me on the escalator moments later.

Frankie and I had some time to kill before the train and spent it walking around downtown and investigating the local Occupy Boston protest. Anyone who remembers the cultural climate of the United States in the fall of 2011 will probably mention the movements to "occupy" certain institutions in major U.S. cities, and later cities around the world, that the common people, or "the 99 %" as they referred to themselves as, believed were integral to creating divisions in society that left most of the money and power controlled by a very few. This was spawned mostly by the statistics that a dramatically disproportionate fraction of the money earned by workers were, in fact, paid out to merely the top 1 % of Americans. This was mostly symbolized by those who worked in the financial industry and thus the protests started with "Occupy Wall Street" in New York City – though it was first suggested by an activist in Canada – and then spread from there. The people occupying various cities had developed almost a mini society complete with democratic representation and food distribution in a somewhat remarkable organic development.

On the surface, the idea that too much money and power was in the hands of too few is not terribly unreasonable. However, "Occupy Wall Street" lacked a coherent message or any sort of specific demand. In addition, many people who occupied Wall Street by sleeping in nearby Zucotti Park were simply there because they had nothing better to do or to join the party. In many parts of it, drug use was widespread and public sexual displays weren't uncommon. As well, recently released prisoners were rumored to be coming down to the demonstrations simply because there was free food there. In many ways it was both a meaningful, sweeping sign of political change and completely disorganized, cacophonous clusterfuck.

In Boston, the protesters had settled in across the street from the Federal Reserve, and as Frankie and I took a walk around, we noticed a few obvious things. For one, numerous signs were clamoring for different things. Some touched on public acceptance of gays, others on the need to fund public education, still more complained about student debt and many of them touched on what many felt was an unfair tax code that tremendously favored the rich. Amidst the tents in Boston were an independent media group, a functioning library and a generator room. Perhaps most notable for both Frankie and I, however, was that as a group of people who had gone weeks without showering were wont to do, it smelled awful. There was definitely a sense that some people were there just to be part of the show, and out of desperation, and there was a group of people holding hands in a circle that I can only believe were some sort of cult. Perhaps most telling for me was that one man was begging another resident for a cigarette, and was told that he could have a cigarette for $1.

Capitalism never sleeps.

After killing some time along the River Charles, Frankie and I finally got ready to board our train amid the mass of Patriots fans and the occasional person in a Giants jersey. The train ride itself was uneventful until the switch at Walpole, at which point it lurches along very slowly in the middle of a forest and you get the idea that trains are not supposed to run here. When you finally arrive you have to walk along the train tracks through a very dark and dreary stretch that just turns into a long column of people walking slowly and, for lack of a better comparison, looks like a group of immigrants shuttling from one train to the next in Eastern Europe. On the plus side, however, it did give me an opportunity to take a picture of one fan who had bought a beautiful authentic Patriots jersey and gotten it personalized with the name "Lord of Beer." Because, clearly, when you spend over $300 on an authentic football jersey, you want a name that is dignified on the back.

Eventually, Gillette Stadium appeared from out of the thick of the forest, rising up from the asphalt as parking spots and nothing else surrounded it for miles. As we walked closer to the stadium we passed an enormous snow pile, remnants of a very surprising nor'easter that hit the eastern U.S. weeks earlier. From the outside, Gillette appears to be a very nice and modern, if unspectacular, facility. It is clean with glass windows across large swaths of the outside, and is relatively easy to get into – or at least far easier to get into. It's only major problem is that being in the middle of nowhere it has just about nothing around it. Patriots owner Bob Kraft has tried to remedy this by helping to fund a massive shopping and dining complex known as "Patriot Place", as well as several apartment buildings that sit right next to the stadium, though whether or not these places are particularly well-trafficked during non-game days remains to be seen. Attached to the side of the stadium is a museum called "The Hall", where one can learn about Patriots history, see who is in the team hall of fame, view mementos of historic moments in franchise history and stand in a room with the three Lombardi trophies the Patriots have won while steel blue, red and white confetti rains down on you. As cheesy as it seems, that last one does sound like an awful lot of fun. Unfortunately, the museum actually charges money for entrance unlike the ones you'll find at most stadiums, and on this particular Sunday, for no real reason the museum was closed, rendering the whole thing moot.

Frankie and I simply went inside to check out the stadium and find our seats, but first I received many knowing glances of contempt from the security as they saw my Giants jersey beneath my overcoat. For some reason, they were all under the impression that I was wearing the coat because I was trying to hide my Giants fandom and not because it was a cold afternoon in New England. One jokingly told me, "You better hide that Giants jersey" as I walked by. Finally, at the station where you get patted down before entering the building, security noticed my jersey and said the words that anyone would fear while passing through an inspection.

"Full body search for the Giants fan!"

Fortunately, he wasn't serious. I passed through with ease and Frankie and I began our walk around the stadium. The concourses are nice and wide, there is plenty of space to walk, and the building is very clean, but beyond that, as is the unfortunate case for so many football stadiums, there isn't much else of note unless you happen to be in the more expensive seats. Patriots logos are everywhere, though unfortunately they are of the current "Flying Elvis" variety and not the far superior throwback Pat Patriot version.

For a relatively large football stadium, the seats are fairly low down and the view relatively intimate. Sightlines are great, there is a lot of open space and standing room, and, generally, it is a pretty well-designed building even if there is nothing too exciting about it one way or the other. It features two massive video screens at either end of the seating area, and in one end it features an iconic tower – or at least the stadium's official logo would leave you to believe they want it to be iconic – that represents, well, I'm not sure. Frankie and I couldn't decide if it represented a lighthouse, a fog horn or something else entirely. The top of it is a caged in cone with video screens inside of it that flash the Patriots' logo across and light up whenever something exciting happens in the game. I was unable to find any retired numbers lying around, but I did notice that in one corner of the stadium, the Patriots hung positively massive banners for each of their three Super Bowl titles for all the world to see.

The Patriots also have a similarly massive banner commemorating their perfect 16-0 regular season in 2007, the only such feat in NFL history, but one that is somewhat tarnished by the fact that the Patriots didn't actually win the Super Bowl that year because You-Know-Who spoiled the party. As a result, that banner is at the opposite end of the stadium in a different color, where it won't sully the grandeur of the Super Bowl titles. Rather than being out in the open it hangs underneath the upper deck stands in plain view, but not exactly the same plain view as the others. It almost appears as though they are sheepishly trying to hide it, which begs the question of why they would bother making a banner to celebrate the accomplishment in the first place.

On the way to our section and as we hunted down some food before the game, we passed a stand called "BBQ Blitz", which featured a stunningly muscular pig with a Patriots helmet on and horns coming out the top of it ramming into the words "BBQ Blitz". It is bizarre for several reasons and is right up there with the stir fry stand in Safeco Field known as "The Intentional Wok" for my favorite of any silly-named stand I've seen in a stadium. The food, however, did not win me over, and instead Frankie and I opted for what wound up being a very tepid and lukewarm serving of buffalo chicken tenders and fries.

The teams were still doing warm-ups as we arrived at our seats – or rather, Frankie's seat. In an attempt to keep costs low on the trip, I bought two single tickets that weren't actually together. Most upper deck seats were going in the neighborhood of $200 for this game, an enormous increase above face value. The two seats I found were not next to each other, nor were they even in the same section, but they were only $140 a piece, which was actually roughly face value for the tickets even though they weren't in the bottom bowl.

After moving around a little bit, Frankie and I settled into two seats that looked safe to take, and while we would spend the entire first quarter eyeing every person who walked up the stairs to make sure they weren't ticketed for our seats, we wound up not having to move again. As cheerleaders did their pregame routine to Aerosmith, Tedi Bruschi came on the jumbotron to deliver ESPNBoston.com's "Tips of the game". A long-time Patriot who was on not just New England's Super Bowl winners, but also the ill-fated 1996 Drew Bledsoe-led squad that lost to Green Bay in Super Bowl XXXI, Bruschi is generally considered a good guy and also had the uplifting story of returning to the field late in his career despite suffering a stroke. For all the above reasons, he was given a hearty reception by the crowd when he appeared on screen, and while they were right to do so, I was amused by this because Bruschi had actually picked the Giants to win the game earlier in the week. Similarly, the stadium bizarrely began playing Bon Jovi before the coin toss, which made significantly less sense considering that Jon Bon Jovi, the quintessential New Jerseyan, is a Giants fan and season ticket holder. When the enormous American flags came out for the pregame national anthem, an even more bizarre music choice was made as the speakers blared "The Imperial March" from The Empire Strikes Back. It was a disconcerting choice to represent the U.S. given how many felt about American foreign policy, though I suppose it was an appropriate choice given how many felt about the New England Patriots.

Given the potency of both teams' passing offense and their relatively weak secondaries, I had assumed this would be a relatively high-scoring and entertaining game. Most fans and prognosticators had pegged the winning team to score somewhere between 25 and 35 points, with the loser not being far behind. Over the course of the first half we learned that predictions, on the whole, are pretty stupid. What ensued over the first 30 minutes was a surprising comedy of errors in which both teams struggled to move the ball into any semblance of field goal range, and in some cases struggled simply to keep possession. Giants' punter Steve Weatherford would prove his worth to the team by punting eight times and landing five of those kicks inside the 20-yardline.

The Patriots meanwhile were experiencing much of the same, with the exception being that Tom Brady was making some very uncharacteristically poor decisions. Over the previous decade, few in the League were more trustworthy with the ball in their hands than Brady. He threw often, and well, making dangerous targets out of players like Troy Brown, Deion Branch and Jabbar Gaffney. That isn't to say he had no one of quality to throw to in his career. In 2007, his top target was Randy Moss, arguably the most physically gifted receiver in the history of the game. For the last several seasons, he's had the short in stature and long on dependable security blanket over the middle that is Wes Welker. The point is that more often than not, when Brady throws the ball, it winds up in the hands of a Patriots receiver.

For whatever reason, that wasn't happening today. In the first half, Brady threw an interception (he would add another pick and a fumble in the third quarter) that riled up the Boston faithful in an unseemly kind of way. The middle-aged fans in front of us were on the verge of outrage, verbally butchering Brady's faults at every path and seemingly ignoring his track record. At one point, one of them angrily yelled out, in a phrase that could not have been more comically crafted to stereotype the South Boston accent, "THIS IS NAWT PATRIOTS FACKIN' FOOTBALL!" As I tried my best not to laugh, I couldn't help but wonder how short the memories of these fans must have been. This was the golden boy. Tom Brady had won them three Super Bowls, two of them on last-minute drives. He had been one of the top passers in the game for a decade and was destined to the end up in the Hall of Fame. Oh, and he hadn't lost at home in 31 starts, a span that stretched across five seasons. Surely they could give him a break considering the game was still scoreless.

It soon became clear that the people in our section were far more entertaining than the people on the field so far. Prime among them was the couple behind us who were not in their ticketed seats and were clearly very drunk. This manifested itself in the girlfriend constantly voicing her anxiety about being caught by stadium security and her boyfriend's increasing desire not to listen to her. They did prove very helpful in the second quarter, however, when someone passing behind us spilled a beer all over the back of Frankie's chair and his overcoat. The woman quickly came to the rescue with a pile of napkins she had stowed in her purse, though we would later find out that in doing so she accidentally knocked her digital camera out of her purse and under Frankie's seat.

Later in the game, long after the couple had moved to their actual seats, Frankie discovered the camera and asked if it was mine. When I told him it wasn't he flipped it on and found a picture of the woman who had been behind us performing mock cunnilingus between her fingers. As much as we might hope to return it, Frankie and I both realized that searching for one person you didn't know in a sea of 70,000 was completely pointless. Instead we turned our attention back to the game which continued to be as lively as a morgue until the Patriots finally put a drive together late in the second quarter. As the final moments of the half ticked off, New England wound down the clock and with seconds to go lined up for a gimme 27-yard field goal. Sensing the inevitability and eager to avoid the wait at the bathroom, I made a quick line towards the exit. As each of us stood at the urinal listening to the radio broadcast, all of us wound up amazed when we heard that Patriots' kicker Steve Gostkowski had shanked the chip shot wide. It was a surprising, but strangely appropriate ending for the first half.

Many stunned and frustrated glances were passed around in the rest room and I had a smile on my face as I washed my hands. That smile turned to confusion as I went to the hand dryer and saw that it had a message on it stating "Do something patriotic. Install Patriots high-speed, energy-efficient Xlerator hand dryers in your restrooms."

As I returned to my seat, Frankie and I settled in for the second half still bewildered by the unexpected lack of points. Fortunately for us, Brady had picked up where he left off in the first, as he threw an interception on the opening drive of the half. The Giants responded by marching down the field and notching a field goal for the first points of the game. It was around this time that Frankie and I noticed the woman who had left her camera frantically looking under the seats in each row of our section. Frankie got her attention and gave her back her camera, which prompted an emotional reaction that was, shall we say, not exactly an appropriate level of relief. The woman broke out in tears of joy and then gave Frankie a massive, intense, tight bear hug. And she didn't. Let. Go. Frankie began rubbing her back in an attempt to assure her that everything was ok, but mostly so that she would release him. It took a while before she finally obliged.

Meanwhile, the Giants had recovered a Tom Brady fumble on the ensuing drive and Brandon Jacobs scored a touchdown on a 10-yard scamper to give New York a surprising 10-0 lead. New York was slowly wresting control of the game, but after Aaron Ross muffed a punt on the next drive and the Patriots recovered the stadium came alive. New England quickly marched right down the field to put its own points on the board, but a solid defensive stand kept it to a field goal. This gave the Pats some legs though as they stuffed New York on a three and out to force Steve Weatherford back on the field, but then the Giants got a gift when Julian Edelman bobbled his own punt return giving New York the ball. This shouldn't really be surprising since Edelman's hands appeared to have had a life of their own lately. A week earlier he was arrested at a Halloween party for allegedly reaching under a woman's skirt and grabbing her crotch.

Sexual mishaps aside, this could have been the turning point of the game, and an anxious crowd at Gillette knew it. With the fourth quarter nearing, the Giants had a very real chance of scoring another touchdown and putting the Pats away with a 14-point lead, something that seemed insurmountable with the way the New York defense was playing. Manning brought the Giants down to the two yardline and with the game possibly in the balance, Eli's old habits reared their ugly head as he lofted a duck into the corner of the end zone which was picked off on a marvelous play by New England defensive back Kyle Arrington.

Tom Brady had his opening and the legend took advantage. The Patriots marched 80 yards for a game-tying touchdown in just two minutes and 41 seconds, setting off a frenzy and prompting the old man in front of me, who an hour earlier was criticizing Brady's "facking awful" decision making, to offer up a mocking high five to me. When I opted not to offer my hand he simply patted me on the chest with a huge smile as if to forget that not only had the Giants dominated most of the game at this point, but it was still tied with almost the entire fourth quarter to go. One fan behind me, seeing that I was coincidentally wearing a Boston Bruins winter hat I got at work – this was an accident I swear – began enthusiastically patting me on the shoulders, which made things a little awkward when he realized I wasn't actually a Patriots fan. With the energy ratcheted up around the stadium the Giants obliged the crowd by punting on the next drive allowing New England to take the ball back down the field for a go-ahead field goal to take a 13-10 lead.

This, however, is when the fun began.

Time was starting to run down and Frankie and I both realized that with just a half hour to reach our train once the game ended, navigating the crowd could make it a close call from our seats. We decided that late in the game we'd do our best to move down to a standing room section near our exit so that we could avoid some of the masses and resolved to do so once the Giants finished their next drive. At this point, it occurred to me that the Pats fan behind me who was mistaken because of my Bruins hat might have been on to something. With the sun setting on the late afternoon game, it had gotten markedly colder at the stadium and I had been unwilling to remove my hat.

But what if it was bad luck?

Yes, superstitions are stupid, but if there was a man on the sidelines who could understand, it was Eli Manning. In NFL Network's "America's Game" documentary recounting the 2007 Super Bowl Champion New York Giants, Manning tells the camera in an interview "I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious." Ironically, the line is later referred in the documentary with hallowed reverence, but research has since shown that Manning pulled the line from an episode of The Office as a joke. Either way, he has a point and I'm not in disagreement. Sometimes, the irrational seems rational.

I took off my hat.

With the Giants starting their drive with the ball at their own 15, Eli started to work the field. Bit by bit New York chewed up yards and chewed up time until Manning capped the drive with a 10-yard touchdown pass to Mario Manningham on third down, giving the Giants a 17-13 lead with 3:03 to go. After the touchdown, Manningham, ever the hothead gave New England a lift with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that gifted the Pats 15 yards, but it may have wound up working to New York's advantage by leaving time on the clock for another drive if New England made quick work of the defense with a shorter field.

As Frankie and I moved down to the standing room section in the end zone, it was now Brady's turn. The Pats marched down the field in the quickest nine plays you'll ever see, dicing up New York's secondary and getting to the 14 before starting to stall. Suddenly, Brady was forced with 4th and 9, and with 1:40 to go and not enough timeouts to force the Giants to punt the ball back, this was the game. As Brady faded back he had what felt like an eternity to throw. For much of the game the Giants had given him the same treatment they gave him in the Super Bowl four years earlier, bringing nonstop pressure and forcing him to dance in the pocket. The only way to make him make mistakes is to make him uncomfortable. If the Giants front four could do it one more time they'd have the win, but Brady stood in, cool and collected, and delivered a strike to Rob Gronkowski to put the Pats up 20-17.

Madness.

Patriots fans at this point assumed they had it won. One in particular, a drunk oversized, red-bearded man turn to me with a smile and tried his best Michael Jordan shrug as he said, "Sorry, bro!" The taunt reeked of cockiness that was unfamiliar for someone who was used to watching his team with anxiety rather than confidence. But I also had faith in Eli, who seemed to make fourth quarter comebacks his M.O. for most of this season. I also knew we were witnessing something special. In 1994 John Elway and Joe Montana delivered a stunning duel on Monday Night Football at Mile High Stadium in which the two legends, arguably the two best quarterbacks of their time, went back and forth in the closing minutes until Montana got the last laugh in the closing seconds. Color man Dan Dierdorf said afterward, "Lord, you can take me now. I've seen it all." Brady's history proves that he belongs in that same echelon. Manning had not yet done the same, but he was starting to show he belonged among the elite and this was his opportunity. We, as fans, were watching a very similar game to the one 17 years earlier in Mile High. These were two of the top quarterbacks in the League dueling. Two of the true heavyweights of the position were trading blows in an amazing display.

And Manning would get to throw the last punch.

At this point I started feeling stitious again. Because of the mass of people in front of me, I had watched the Patriots drive on the enormous jumbotron, making sure that I wasn't blocking the view of the man behind me, also a Giants fan. When I asked him if he was blocked, the man, who stood at 6'6", nearly a foot taller than me, laughed and said, "I can see over you just fine, buddy." Don't feel bad for me. I'm used to it. Regardless I realized that if the Pats moved the ball with ease while I watched on the screen, it was probably best if I craned my neck around the crowd and watched the field instead. I turned around. Off came the Bruins hat again. I looked at the red-breaded fan and calmly said, "It's not over yet," and Eli took the field.

Manning had become accustomed to almost excessive preparation over the years and as such, was phenomenal in the no huddle. New York started to move the ball, but soon was left with a third and 10 at its own 39-yardline. Giants and Pats fans alike will remember the David Tyree play well from the Super Bowl. As Manning slipped out of a certain sack on third down and winged it down the field, Tyree pulled the ball down in against his helmet despite having Rodney Harrison all over him, setting up the winning score. It's been called the most miraculous play in Super Bowl history. Tyree, who wore No. 85, called it "fairytale stuff." He would never catch another pass in the NFL. This time on third down Eli looked down the middle of the field again, and threw a strike to tight end Jake Ballard, the man who now wore 85 for the Giants. Ballard made a spectacular catch 28 yards down the field, and just like that, anxiety began to set in at Gillette.

On the next play Eli saw the entire right side of the field was wide open, and tucked the ball under, running for 12 yards to pull New York easily within range of a potential game-tying field goal. Manning then tossed a ball up for Victor Cruz in the left side of the end zone, and Cruz was taken out by a Pats' defensive back, drawing a pass interference call. With the Giants having the ball at the one yardline the result appeared a fait accompli, but after an incomplete pass and Brandon Jacobs getting stuffed at the goal line, New York was suddenly on third down at the 1 with 19 seconds to go. Eli took the snap, saw Ballard in the left flat of the end zone and hit him. Ballard pulled it in as he rolled to the ground.

Giants 24, Patriots 20.

I, Frankie and the small group of Giants fans around me in front of the jumbotron erupted. High fives were everywhere. Other Giants fans joined the mosh pit. Patriots fans angrily shuffled out by the thousands, one of whom angrily rammed his shoulder into one of us on his way out and pretended it was an accident. The incident was unfortunate considering most of the Pats fans had been perfectly pleasant all afternoon, but none of us could have cared less at that moment. It was all about the football. I still told anyone who walked by me that with 15 seconds left the game was not over, much like I told my friends after New York took the lead with 29 seconds remaining in the Super Bowl four years earlier, but after one incomplete pass by Brady and a botched attempt at the Annexation of Puerto Rico it was.

I try to keep myself calm and collected in most cases, but there was no helping it this time. I was bouncing and jumping everywhere I went. This felt too good. I high fived every Giants fan I saw as we left the stadium, and Frankie and I literally ran to the train after we hit the exit not because we were worried about missing it, but because we had so much energy and no other way to burn it. After looking forward to this game for four years, it was everything I could have wanted it to be and more. A stunning victory as two great quarterbacks went back and forth in the final minutes and mine pulled it out. I was positively euphoric.

It was, without hyperbole or hesitation, the greatest football game I have ever seen in person. Period.

As Frankie and I sat on the train the emotion and excitement of what had just happened started to settle in. I was physically and mentally exhausted. We returned to South Station, got our bags, I ate a celebratory McRib at McDonald's, and then we jumped on the bus back to New York. The man across the aisle from me was watching that night's Ravens-Steelers game on his phone and I caught the final minutes, amazed that we live in a world now where we can watch football on a cell phone on a fast-moving bus. That will probably sound quaint when my children read this.

I should note that when I say the bus was moving fast it was moving very fast. We made it to New York in three and a half hours, which makes me somewhat nervous about how fast the driver was barreling down I-95, but I made it home a half hour earlier, which I suppose, in the end, is all that matters. The earlier I got to bed the better, and I was as spent as could be. It was an exhausting – and expensive – whirlwind trip, and as a result, I was sure to be spent when I came into work eight hours later.

But it was worth it. It was worth every facking penny.

So The Giants Are Going To The Super Bowl. In Case You Hadn't Heard.

2012-01-24T10:28:00.011-05:00

Like most of you, I spend a little too much time refusing to accept that I've grown up and am now responsible for myself. As a result, I still haven't changed my home address to my current apartment in New York City on several things, meaning that when I recently joined the Packers season ticket waiting list, I used my childhood home in New Jersey. As a result, when I waited anxiously to receive my confirmation letter assuring me that I was officially on the list, I knew the first person to receive it would actually be my mother. I did think it was somewhat odd however that the letter had not yet arrived, and so when in the middle of last week my mother informed me that I had received mail from Green Bay, Wisconsin, I immediately became tight-lipped.

You see, I mailed off the request to join the list in late October, so the fact that it wouldn't arrive until right before the Giants faced the Packers in the playoffs at Lambeau was somewhat curious and potentially ominous in my mind. As a result, I kept it quiet for fear of embiggening my sense of foreboding anxiety. But with that game out of the way and my mother giving me all of my old mail on Saturday afternoon, I felt better when I opened up the letter. Of course, I still was a bit wary since the Giants had this thing called the NFC Championship Game Sunday night.

True to my word I was curled up anxiously on my friend's couch throughout Sunday night's festivities, which constituted, in no uncertain terms, the single most uncomfortable, torturous, emotionally exhausting football game I have ever watched with a vested interest in my entire life. And yes, that includes Super Bowl XLII. This was a game that for three hours was a hard slog between two great teams that refused to give an inch, didn't make mistakes and didn't need the great equalizer of horrendous weather to put either side at even money -- though they got it anyway. The word "epic" is bandied about a little too frequently these days, but this game, with the brilliant performance of Eli Manning, the relentless speed and pressure of what is an absolutely scary 49ers defense and an inability to settle the matter in the given 60 minutes was absolutely, uncompromisingly epic.

I have never felt so drained after watching a game, a fact that was of much relief to my 60-year-old father who assumed his exhaustion afterward was a sign of age. To get cliche, this was a 15-round heavyweight bout with a Super Bowl trip on the line, and when it was all said and done, I collapsed on the floor ecstatic, but mostly just relieved, that it was the Giants who got to throw the last punch. Elizabeth had her own interpretation of the moment.

The best part about that video, of course are the choice words very clearly mouthed by Giants punter Steve Weatherford, who was holding for kicker Lawrence Tynes on the game-winning field goal in overtime. Weatherford had every right to yell and scream given the gravity of the situation, but on this particular Conference Championship-winning day even more so because Weatherford was easily the second-best player on the Giants after Manning -- and an argument could easily be made that he was the best period.

For the final minutes of regulation and the overtime period, much of this game became a field position chess match between Weatherford and 49ers Pro Bowl punter Andy Lee. Weatherford had 12 boots for an impressive 46.4-yard average, just ahead of Lee's 10 punts with a 45.5-yard average. Those kicks were an enormous factor in a field position battle that was all the more crucial given the rainy weather, but even more pronounced than that was Weatherford's game-saving hold on the winning kick after a low inside snap came from Zack DeOssie. This, it should be noted, happened despite the fact that Weatherford was still wearing his wedding ring on the play. His wife ought to appreciate the dedication.

It's hard to know whether or not Weatherford's punting was so good that he managed to induce both of the game-turning fumbles made by hard-luck Niners return man Kyle Williams, a player whose nightmare of a game is among the most tragic things I've seen on an NFL field (other than major injuries) in quite some time. Predictably, the fans have been a kind and understanding group, but Williams can at least be grateful that his horrifying day came just after the equally tragic shanked kick by Billy Cundiff that would have put the Ravens and Patriots in overtime in the AFC Championship Game.

But even if Williams' misfortune played a crucial role in the game turning, due respect must be paid to Manning, who has thoroughly proved throughout this season that not only is he among the best quarterbacks in the game after being much maligned throughout his career for not living up to expectations -- despite a Super Bowl victory -- but he is one tough son of a bitch. In addition to his 32-for-58, 316-yard two-touchdown performance, Manning stood strong in the pocket and got the absolute crap kicked out of him throughout the game. As the Niners' stellar defensive front beat up the Giants' offensive line, Manning faced 20 hurries, 12 knockdowns and 6 sacks. On one notable play at the end of regulation which went for naught, Manning fled the pocket and stood tall to deliver a strike down field to Ahmad Bradshaw nanoseconds before three San Francisco defensive linemen collapsed on top of him.

It was as gutsy a performance as you can have -- way more gutsy than the fraidy-cat curled up display I put on on my friend's couch -- and as a result Eli now gets to reap the benefits along with the rest of the Giants in Super Bowl XLVI against New England. Yes, it's a rematch of Super Bowl XLII, yes it's Boston and New York again, yes it's Manning vs. Brady.... again. But that's all stuff we can get into later. For now I'm going to try and bask in the glory and relief of this one.

And maybe feel anxious again for two more weeks.

If You're Looking For Me Sunday Night, I'm the One In the Fetal Position

2012-01-20T13:12:00.003-05:00

I've seen the New York Giants play many big and important football games in my day. Those games include countless playoff games, countless de facto playoff games in the regular season, two NFC Championship Games and two Super Bowls. The results, generally, have been positive. I have had my heartbroken by the Giants on numerous occasions, but overall, I'd have to say that my fandom has been rewarded in the 18 or so years that I've followed to team intimately. I must admit that my outlook would probably be significantly different were it not for the wondrous night that was Super Bowl XLII, but given what some fan bases have to deal with, in particular ones in this same city, I have hard time complaining when I take in the long view.

In the course of my years as a fan, however, I don't think I've ever come across a game in which I'm less certain of what to expect than the game that will kick off at 6:30 p.m. Sunday night. As the Giants get ready to take on the 49ers in San Francisco in the NFC Championship Game, I have anxiously oscillated between complete confidence and utter uncertainty. The one thing I know for certain is that I cannot wait for Sunday and that's more or less been the case since the Giants capped off their impressive upset of the Packers last weekend.

Really.

I don't think 10 minutes have gone by since Sunday night that I haven't gone over the various matchups, positives, negatives, historical implications or weather reports in my head. I'm trying to distract myself for two hours right now by watching The King's Speech finally, but since I'm writing this blog entry, it's clearly not taking. I'm still far more interested in Jake Ballard's knee than George VI's voice, and there's really not a whole lot that will change that before Sunday. Or ever, frankly, but especially this week.

Having seen the Giants already play in San Francisco this season -- in person no less -- I have spent most of the week feeling cautiously optimistic for a few reasons, even though the Giants lost that game. For 1) New York's defense is far healthier, and better than it was then. 2) Ahmad Bradshaw and Osi Umenyiora were among several regulars that did not play in that game. 3) Eli Manning is playing football right now at a higher level than he has ever played in his entire career. 4) Statistically, the Giants dominated that last game anyway with more yards, first downs and time of possession. 5) Were it not for a flukish interception that resulted in two Niners touchdowns in a span of 61 seconds in the fourth quarter, New York probably would have won the game. 6) The Giants very nearly tied the game anyway, getting down to the San Francisco 10-yardline before a fourth down pass was batted down in the final minute. 7) This came after Mario Manningham dropped a game-tying touchdown catch seconds earlier.

So for all these reasons, I'm feeling good. But there's a caveat.

The Niners are playing better, too. And their defense is looking as good as the Giants' offense. Oh and the weather is supposed to be awful. So those things, one would think, all play in the 49ers favor, although a potential mud bowl of a game, it has been pointed out, could potentially slow down the San Francisco pass rush and put their defensive backs at a severe disadvantage when trying to mirror routes and cuts made by Hakeem Nicks, Victor Cruz and Mario Manningham.

But all that said, I might still feel far more comfortable if the weather were nice. And frankly, I'm not even sure that would make me feel the least bit comfortable at all. As I followed the twists and turns of the past week I've simply come across one more cause of worry after another, like WHAT WILL THE GIANTS DO IF ELI HAS A COLD? Or the flu?! Oh, and then there was this fucking thing. Essentially, I'm just a big ball of anxiety. Moreover, seeing that many prognosticators are starting to fall on the Giants' side of the ball isn't making me feel much better about things. Even video games are conspiring against me.

So yeah. I'm nervous. If that wasn't clear. Let's take a look at my picks.

AFC Championship Game
(2) Baltimore (+9) over (1) NEW ENGLAND
I know. The Pats' offense looks really phenomenal. And I know, they went 13-3 and were generally dominant throughout the regular season. But this is a game I actually am less certain about the outcome of than I am about the NFC -- I'm just significantly less invested in it. And the reasons I'm less certain of it are the following ones. Baltimore's defense is phenomenal. It's offense is mediocre, but Ray Rice can control a game if he's given a chance. And as good as New England's offense is -- and it is that good -- its defense is that bad. The Patriots gave up the second most yards in the League this season. They gave up the most first downs per game this season. And even after being berated by a New England fan at work this season that the Patriots have improved significantly since the early part of the season, a look at their scehdule doesn't really back the claim up, as they gave up 24 points to the Colts, 27 points to the Redskins and 24 points to the Dolphins over the season's final five weeks. They gave up 353 yards passing to Dan Orlovsky, whose greatest claim to fame is quarterbacking the 0-16 2008 Detroit Lions. They gave up 463 total yards to the Redskins. They surrendered three touchdown passes to Matt Moore. Oh, and speaking of their schedule, New England has still not beaten a team with a winning record this season. Really. Not one. So I might be going out on a limb here. Call my crazy. But the facts are there. I'm taking the Ravens. With no confidence at all.

NFC Championship Game
(4) NY Giants (+3) over (2) SAN FRANCISCO
I have already hashed, and re-hashed, and re-hashed for you and myself in my brain just about every permutation this game can take on. If I do it anymore I think my head might explode. Just know that I am, cautiously, taking my Giants. After all, I've picked them in every game so far this season out of sheer ignorance and bias. It's worked so far. Why stop now?

See you all next week. If I make it to Monday morning, that is.

So I Had A Pretty Good Weekend If You Didn't Notice

2012-01-17T09:12:00.003-05:00

Let's put it simply folks. There are roughly nine different sports teams in the world that I pay fairly close attention to. They are in no particular order of significance, the New York Giants, New York Mets, New York Knicks, New Jersey Devils, Chicago Blackhawks, Northwestern University football team, Northwestern University basketball team, Southampton FC and Geelong FC.

Of those nine, six of them currently play a sport that is still in season, and all six of them played this past weekend. In an unfortunate -- and fairly embarassing -- performance in Oklahoma City Saturday night, the 'Bockers were unable to come away with a victory against Kevin Durant and company, a team that, given its very legitimate championship aspirations, isn't so much a shame to lose to as it is a shame to lose to them in the complete and utter manner the Knicks did.

However, if we can look past the unfortunate performance of the Knicks this past weekend, we can see the following: The Devils, in a Saturday afternoon in Winnipeg, rallied to beat the Jets for their fourth win in five games. The Blackhawks rebounded from an overtime loss in Detroit Saturday to knock off the Sharks, who might be the hottest team in hockey, Sunday evening. On Saturday, Southampton waltzed into Nottingham Forest and came away with a 3-nil victory that keeps them tied with West Ham atop the nPower Championship standings and inching closer and closer to finally returning to the Premier League. And perhaps, most notably of all these teams, my dear alma mater, Northwestern, still seeking its first elusive berth in the NCAA Tournament, pulled off the signature win it may have needed to beef up its tournament resume, shocking No. 7 Michigan State at Welsh-Ryan Arena Saturday night, just days after barely falling to No. 13 Michigan in Ann Arbor in overtime.

So so far we're doing pretty well.

Oh, right. Then there's the Giants. Now, when I said earlier that I listed those teams in no particular order, there is one spot in the hierarchy that I should probably make exceedingly clear. I began rooting for the New York Giants when I was eight years old. While I had declared myself a Mets fans a few years prior, the efficacy was minute at best. Big Blue, on the other hand was the first team I ever fell in love with. Seeing them succeed, in many ways, is what makes me go between the months of September and January. And this weekend they succeeded in a big damn way, absolutely stunning the 15-1 No. 1-seeded and consensus best team in football Green Bay Packers Sunday night at Lambeau Field in a 37-20 victory that was not just a playoff victory, but utterly and completely dominant.

And as a result, I spent the rest of the night listening to "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie on repeat because the New York Giants are headed to the Bay Area to face the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game.

Now, I need to try and keep myself in check because thoughts of excitement and glory are starting to run away with my rational side this week, but frankly, it's hard not to get excited about the way the Giants are playing, because in many facets they look as though despite their 9-7 regular season, they are the most complete, confident football team left in the NFL postseason. And considering how closely they played the 49ers earlier this season in a game they could, or perhaps should have won -- trust me, I was there -- I'm feeling pretty good about the trip across the country this weekend for New York.

Earning that trip to San Francisco comes as a thanks to just about everyone on the team, which put together what might have been one of the best efforts I've ever seen from it. But there are certainly a few obvious game balls to give out -- namely to Hakeem Nicks, who was unstoppable when he caught the ball, Eli Manning, who was brilliant once again, tossing for nearly 300 yards in the first half alone, and perhaps more than anyone else, Ahmad Bradshaw, who may have made the two smartest plays of the game. The first of those came in the final minute of the first half when Bradshaw, after hitting his cutback lane inside, immediately raced the Packers defense to the right sideline to stop the clock with six seconds left, setting up Manning's unbelievable hail mary pass to Nicks, which may have been more responsible than anything else for taking the wind out of Green Bay's sails. The second came in the fourth quarter when the Giants, holding a 10 point lead in the closing minutes, were driving down the field and Bradshaw made another cutback to the right side to pick up a huge amount of yardage, but this time stayed in bounds to allow the clock to roll.

The defense, too, had a solid performance, forcing four turnovers, getting four sacks and featuring a bravura performance out of Osi Umenyiora, who appears at long last to have his legs under him after nursing injuries most of the season. And what may be becoming more and more apparent is that Tom Coughlin is, simply, a tremendous, tremendous coach. Once players buy into his system, he manages to push the right buttons and instill the necessary confidence to force deep playoff runs against teams that New York probably should not be beating. He did it four years ago, and now it is looking eerily similar, as this group, much like the 2007 squad, is overcoming a relatively mediocre regular season to crest at just the right time.

This is not to say the 49ers are slouches. Their tremendous season of rebirth cannot be overlooked, and considering that they've already beaten the Giants this season, it's foolhardy to consider this game a walk. Indeed, it's anything but and the Niners are the early favorites according to Vegas, particularly with their home field and their incredible win over the Saints on Saturday. I'll withhold any predictions until this weekend, but we appear to be in for a good one.

In addition to that, we may be in for a familiar one. The Giants and 49ers have some impressive collective postseason history, meeting 7 times in the past 30 years, with the winner going on to win the Super Bowl four times. This meeting, the eighth, ties the mark for most postseason meetings between two teams in history. The last time they met -- and indeed the last time San Francisco had won a postseason game before this past weekend -- was an afternoon I'd rather not remember when the Giants completed one of the greatest collapses in postseason history, allowing a 24-point lead to slip away before a disastrous final botched field goal that was so insanely botched by both the Giants and the refs that it should never be spoken of ever again.

Instead, I'd like to remember the last time they met for it all in the NFC title game. That one came 21 years ago when I was too young to actually remember it, as the Giants ended the 49ers hopes of a first-ever Super Bowl three-peat by knocking out Joe Montana, containing Jerry Rice, inducing a fumble in the final minutes by Roger Craig and setting up Matt Bahr to pound his fifth field goal of the day through the uprights as time expired in a classic 15-13 upset at Candlestick Park.

There are many sporting events I wish I saw or was old enough to remember in my life, and that was unmistakably one of them. For now, I'll just have to settle for the helpful denizens of YouTube who make sure to have footage of every seminal sports moment from my youth online in perpetuity for free, including the thrilling conclusion to Super Bowl XXV a week after that NFC Championship Game, in which the Giants upset the Bills in an almost eerily similar finish with the two notable exceptions that the Bills were the ones setting up a game-winning field goal, and that they missed.

I wouldn't mind having another memory like those last two this Sunday against the 49ers, one that I'll replay in my head for far too long than is acceptable for a mature, professional adult, particularly one in my line of work. And really, on the whole, I just wouldn't mind having another weekend quite like this one.

NFL Divisional Playoff Preview: When Hockey and Musicals Collide!

2012-01-13T14:18:00.002-05:00

I'm not going to deny that I was way too excited about something special this week, but in case we haven't yet discussed the magic, I'm going to explain some of the details right now. See the woebegone Atlanta Thrashers are no more in the NHL this season after packing up and moving to Winnipeg. In doing so they took on the old moniker of the long-since departed Winnipeg Jets. That, in and of itself, is not terribly significant. However, what happened this Thursday night was, as for the first time the reborn Winnipeg Jets faced off with the now 21-year-old San Jose Sharks.

.....

If you don't quite understand why this is exciting, I suppose I'll have to spell it out for you. The Jets are playing the Sharks. Yeah, that's right Broadway nerds. Thursday night in Winnipeg, for the first time in 15 years in the NHL, we had a fucking rumble. And if you want to know just what happened, here are the full highlights of the showdown. Tony! Bernardo! Maria! What a night in Winnipeg!

Ok, ok. So that wasn't exactly what happened at the MTS Centre last night. In actuality the action looked less like a bunch of jazz and tap dance vets and more like this, but what man with a rudimentary fandom of West Side Story wouldn't get excited about the two namesake gangs facing off on a sheet of ice? I've listened to "America" and "Tonight, Tonight" far too many times on childhood car trips not to get excited, and as the preview I wrote for the game this week, well, I might have gotten a little carried away with the subtle in-text references to the Sondheim and Bernstein masterpiece.

Yeah, I'm not sure if you caught them, but there are 11 references to the show in there. Someone really should have kept me under control. Either way, I had been looking forward to writing this preview for about six months, so considering all the anticipation I thought it turned out quite well. The game, too, was, well fine I guess. All things considered, I didn't really have a horse in the race, but no one was fatally stabbed attempting to defend their sister's honor from a group of delinquent xenophobic teenagers so there's that. My only disappointment, really, is that the game didn't feature any moments where the players spontaneously broke out in song like they did in the classic film "Score: A Hockey Musical". But you can't have everything.

When it comes to not having everything of course, there are more pertinent concerns on my mind for the coming weekend than whether or not Sharks center Joe Thornton can carry a tune. If you know me and you don't already know that those concerns are whether or not the Giants can upset the Packers in their divisional round playoff game Sunday afternoon, well, you're completely oblivious to all that matters in my life.

But I'll forgive you.

Just know that I'm trying to fight the urges to compare this Giants team to the championship squad of four years ago, although with the defense finally healthy and looking like it's peaking at just the right time, and the fact that the Giants scored 35 points on them without Mario Manningham already this season and with a horrendous defense at the time -- well, those facts all make it hard not to get excited. So should the Giants lose, even as fairly significant underdogs, I'm probably still going to be enormously disappointed. By try not to let that bother all of you as you watch the previous three games this weekend. And I do hope you enjoy them, because I will probably be coiled up in the fetal position in my living room the whole time in anticipation of Sunday evening.

It will not be my proudest moment. Unless they win. On with the picks.

AFC Divisional Playoffs
(1) NEW ENGLAND (-14) over (4) Denver
You know, I don't really root for the Patriots often. I don't particularly dislike them, even if their arrogance in 2007 made beating them in the Super Bowl that much sweeter, but I don't generally care to see them win either. But yesterday Sportscenter said the word "Tebow" 160 times in the course of an hour. Really. 160 times. One hour. I'm counting on you to make it stop, New England.

(2) BALTIMORE (-9) over (3) Houston
It was a nice run, Texans. Really, you did a pretty decent job of finally getting into the playoffs, and getting a win no less. But, it's time for the big boys to play. Even if Joe Flacco is playing quarterback for them.

NFC Divisional Playoffs
(2) SAN FRANCISCO (+4) over (3) New Orleans
Call me crazy -- and you probably should considering how dominant the Saints were over the last half of the season -- but I actually like the 49ers here, despite common wisdom. They're home, they play efficient football, the Saints won't get to play on a speed track like they do in the Superdome and after a slow start against Detroit -- with some mistakes to boot -- New Orleans should be wary of facing a team that actually has a defense. A really good one at that.

(4) NY Giants (+9) over (1) GREEN BAY
I should spinelessly note that this isn't necessarily saying the Giants are going to win. Clearly, I want them to and I do think that they way the defense is playing, the talent on offense, and the sheer mediocrity of Green Bay's 32nd-ranked defense by yardage mean they certainly have a chance. But either way, it's going to be far closer than some of the Wisconsin-based prognosticators might think.

Good lord I hope so anyway. Enjoy the weekend, people.

What You Don't Need To Win A BCS Title? Touchdowns, Apparently.

2012-01-10T08:43:00.000-05:00

Yes, yes, I know. Trent Richardson scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter and so the BCS National Championship Game wasn't without six-pointers last night. But at this point I should note that with a missed PAT after the score, even that was screwed up.

You can save all your salvos about great defense and the toughness of the SEC. Frankly, I'm pretty tired of it. I don't care if both of these defenses were great -- and make no mistake about it, the Alabama defense is great -- but anyone who watched last night could tell you that the offenses were absolutely, utterly, without qualification, completely pitiful. Seriously. They were bad. They were unbelievably, ridiculously bad. LSU last night gained less than a 100 yards of total offense, and I don't care how good the defense you're playing is, no No. 1 team should have an offense that gains under 100 yards in any game let alone a national championship game.

So here's my big point with all this complaining. The BCS sucks. Really, it does. It's a heartless, monopolized cabal that obfuscates suggestions, ignores criticisms and when someone makes a good suggestion for fixing the system it performs the rhetorical equivalent of pointing into the distance, yelling "Look over there!" and running away. It is a pitiful, pathetic, obstructive organization that not only prevents college football fans from getting a logical champion but also works against its own self interest for reasons I can't begin to comprehend because a college football playoff would bring in a ridiculous amount of money.

Have they seen what kind of money the NFL television contracts bring in? The BCS conferences seem intent on holding the current system as it stands -- despite multiple challenges that are currently gaining steam due to restrictions of interstate commerce inherent in the system -- because they want the money to stay within the power conferences. Will the little guys get a taste of the cash more regularly if the current system is swapped out for a playoff? Probably. Will the big guys still get more actual money if this happens anyway? Certainly.

But before I get into why the BCS is stupid and how it could easily be changed to something more equitable, entertaining and ultimately more profitable for everyone, I'll explain why last night's game in particular, well, sucked. We were told these were the two best teams in the country, and indeed their defenses were phenomenal. But the offense was terrible, and in the case of LSU this was almost certainly not solely a result of the defense being great. I said all that earlier. Here, however, is the issue. The No. 3 team in the country in the final polls was Oklahoma State, a highly entertaining team with an offense to match that lost one game all season and did so on the road in double overtime.

Oh, and their coach is a man.

Why should this team, which arguably had just a strong a claim to the championship game as any other, not have gotten its shot? Why should we be deprived the chance to see if Alabama's incredible defense can lock down Oklahoma State's which topped 50 points six times this season? Why shouldn't we get the chance to see if Oklahoma State's offense can score on the vaunted Crimson Tide defense? Why was this not even a possible result of the games on the field in college's postseason? Instead we were treated to a boring, slobberknockery clusterfuck of a game in which the score in the fourth quarter was 15-0 with no one even getting a whiff of the end zone.

This is what we get with the BCS. Some of the national championship games have been great, but many have been less than exciting and rarely have they been satisfying or clearly resolved which team was the best in the country. And yet the BCS continues to insist that it is the best system we've had yet and the best we possibly can have -- though ESPN is reporting all day that they are meeting this afternoon to finally discuss some fundamental changes.

That said, I'll believe these changes when I see them. In the meantime, I'm going to clarify why we need a new system by presenting every stupid argument BCS head Bill Hancock typically comes up with, and explaining why each of them are utter nonsense.

1. Did you know the BCS is the only system to have matched up the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the country every year?

Really? Says who? I'm pretty sure those rankings they have over time become more and more based on subjectivity than anything else, and if we look back in history, there are plenty of instances in which the BCS probably didn't get things exactly right. First and foremost, lets take a gander at the end of the 2003 season. If the BCS was so spot on by pairing LSU with Oklahoma -- a team that was thumped in its conference championship game by Darren Sproles and Kansas State -- then why was there a split national title between the Sugar Bowl-winning Bayou Bengals and USC, which had beaten up Michigan in the Rose Bowl? This may be the only split national championship since the BCS was instituted, but it certainly isn't the only instance of controversy. Why not take a look at 2004 one year later, when a grand total of five teams finished the season undefeated, but three of them (Auburn, an SEC team no less, Utah and Boise State) all had to watch USC beat the living crap out of Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl? Maybe we should take a look at 2000, when Washington didn't get a bid to the title game despite beating No. 2 Miami and No. 5 Oregon or having the same 10-1 record as No. 3 Florida State. Oh, and did I mention that No. 3 Florida State got the honor of getting whipped by Oklahoma in the National Championship despite being ranked lower than Miami, which the Seminoles lost to in the regular season, in both the AP and Coaches' polls. Maybe we should talk about Tulane in 1998, Marshall in 1999, Boise State in 2006 and 2009, Utah in 2004 and 2008 or TCU in 2010, all of whom had perfect regular seasons and didn't sniff the BCS Championship.

So yeah. No. 1 and No. 2. No doubt about it.

2. Making a playoff would render all of the other bowl games completely meaningless, and that wouldn't be fair to the student athletes who are having a once in a lifetime experience.

Let's ignore for a second that a playoff could potentially make more bowl games impact the National Championship rather than one of them. Raise your hand if you knew that Marshall doubled up Florida International in the 2011 Beef 'O' Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl. Now put your hand down because you are absolutely lying. You didn't watch this game. I didn't watch this game. It didn't matter. It was meaningless. All of the games that were played other than last night's were, too.

3. The bowl system is what makes college football unique!

A drooling problem and a particularly pungent body odor issue are what made Billy in my third grade class unique. It didn't make him good.

4. Having a playoff during the month of December would be an unfair distraction to the players during finals.

Oh, so you're saying the reason Northwestern has never made it to the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is because the Wildcats have finals in March due to the quarter system and no one else does. Well that makes me feel quite a bit better about my alma mater. The fact of the matter is that we shouldn't pretend college football is something it isn't. College football isn't an idealized scholastic enterprise by dedicated students seeking to build pride for their educational community. The major programs are essentially a minor league feeder system for the NFL and big business as well. Everyone knows it. Let's not pretend it isn't. And let's not pretend that most of these student athletes are in particularly challenging majors, either. But if we really want assume that these people are in challenging courses that require dedication to their studies, why are there bowl games throughout the month of December when these players should presumably be studying? Why is the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament played over the course of a month when many athletes should be studying for finals or midterms? The inconsistency of this argument causes it to hold very little water.

5. Opening up a playoff to multiple teams would devalue college football's regular season, which is the best of any sport.

Well, they may be right in that college football's regular season is the best of any sport in America due to, if nothing else, the potential zaniness and sheer enormity of the schedule. But let me get this straight. The current system is the best at preserving the sanctity of the regular season because every game matters. This season the BCS produced a national champion that didn't win its conference championship, didn't win its division championship, and lost to the very team it beat in the national title game at home during the regular season. Now I have no problem with this happening if the championship matchup is produced organically by what happens on the field, but this was a cherry-picked faceoff that one could argue had already been decided on Nov. 5 in Tuscaloosa. In fact, many made that very same argument in 2006 after No. 2 Michigan lost to No. 1 Ohio State in their season finale. And I haven't even brought up the 2007 national championship game which featured a two-loss LSU team instead of a one-loss Kansas team. This season's championship game more than any other crystallized why this argument is completely bogus.

6. Everyone talks about how great a playoff would be, but no one wants to talk about any of the questions it would raise. How many teams would play in it? How would you determined who gets in? How would you seed the teams? These issues just complicate the system and are simply too subjective, potentially unfair and mysterious.

Well, they're difficult questions to answer when you refuse to try to answer them. And it's particularly unnerving that you refuse to try to answer them when a clearcut, viable solution, is really quite easy to make. For one, there are 16 Division I-A college football conferences. Even Bill Hancock himself has argued that any playoff would have to involve all 16 conference champions. Even I think that's a bit too grandiose at the start -- and also somewhat unnecessary, but really Hancock is just trying to confuse the issue and make it too difficult to approach.

So let's do this: There are six power conferences in Div. I-A college football, the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, PAC-12 and Big East. Make an eight-team playoff that grants automatic berths to the regular season conference champions and two at large bids as determined by the BCS formula. Seeding, too, is determined by the BCS formula, because if it's good enough to determine who the only two teams that can compete should be, surely it can determine the top eight. The first round games can be played at the home fields of the top four ranked teams. The Final Four, a third-place game and the National Championship Game can be played at the sites of the BCS Bowls on a rotating basis. The rest of the bowl games can still be played since they'll be as meaningless as they always were, the play on the field determines your National Champion, and with the added emphasis on winning your conference the regular season becomes even more important because virtually any loss can knock you from playoff contention.

There. Playoff. Done. If you want to get fancy, add in four more at larges to cover multiple undefeateds from non-automatic qualifiers and give the top four teams byes, I'm fine with that too. The point is a playoff is logical, easy and should happen, while still maintaining the tradition of the bowl system and allowing the big boys to harvest much of their money.

What's more is that the other BCS games that have been great over the years will actually matter. In 2006 Penn State beat Florida State in three overtimes in the Orange Bowl. In 2007, Boise State gave us maybe the greatest ending to a bowl game we've ever seen with its wild win in the Fiesta Bowl. This season, Oklahoma State topped Stanford in an overtime thriller of its own at the Fiesta Bowl. These games were all phenomenal, and none of them had any impact on whom the national champion would be.

What if they did?

But that makes too much sense for college football. Remember that next year when you're watching highlights of last night's borefest of a game. Hopefully by then, the NCAA will have gotten the picture. But don't put your money on it. The BCS won't be putting its money on it either.

They'll be too busy counting it.

An NFL Playoff Preview That Mostly Doesn't Talk About Football

2012-01-06T13:00:00.000-05:00

It's very odd that I'm doing it this way, particularly considering that I love football and, well, I only really like basketball, which is what this is will sort of focus on, but as a newsman you need to understand what is prescient and newsworthy at the time. And since almost none of you will care both about the news I'm going to tell you for my future trips or my certain to be incorrect NFL playoff predictions, I'm going to talk about what I want.

Deal with it.

See, I've never been to Texas. Well, that's not exactly true. I've been to Dallas on multiple occasions -- once in 1998, once in 2005 and once in 2011. However, on not one of these occasions did I take a single solitary step outside the delightfully enormous Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. I will say that it has some delightful amenities, namely a McDonald's where the mcnuggets are twice the size of normal mcnuggets (because everything is bigger in Texas), and a terminal in which TVs dot the concourse every five feet, which enabled me to sprint to my gate without missing a moment of the fourth quarter of Tiki Barber's 200-plus yard rushing effort against Kansas City in 2005.

So really, it's a great airport.

But what lays beyond DFW nobody knows. Or, well, at least I don't know. But if all goes according to plan, I will find out this March, when I boldly step outside the airport so I can see the Blackhawks visit the Stars on March 16 and then see the Mavericks host the Spurs one night later. I'm pretty excited for a number of reasons, but since I haven't actually booked a plane flight or put in for time off from work yet, this is still very much a pipe dream. But as I slowly pull the pieces of the plan together, the very first piece of the puzzle came into play last night when I came home and found out that my four tickets to the Mavs-Spurs game had arrived.

Considering the opportunity to see two teams that are so good in a rivalry that's not half bad -- and that I get to see the Hawks the night before -- I'm pretty excited. Particularly since I now have a satellite in Dallas since the intrepid Nomaan Merchant has relocated there. When he first told me he would be moving to Dallas, I asked him how long he expected to be there and Nomaan said, "Long enough for you to see the Giants visit the Cowboys, if that's what you're asking."

He knows me well.

Hopefully I can put a Giants-Cowboys game on the docket somewhere, but in the meantime, knocking out the Stars and Mavericks in one weekend is a good start. Speaking of the Giants, however, I may or may not have mentioned that they have a playoff game this weekend against the Atlanta Falcons. I could tell all of you that this first ever postseason meeting between the teams is the first ever "Allison Hall 2050 Bowl", as my freshman-year roommate at Northwestern, Sam, is a resident Atlantan who has returned to his hometown now that college is over.

That's him on the right looking devious, like all enemies of the Giants do. That picture comes from our last night Freshman year when we were packing up our belongings. See Sam learned many things that year, and almost certainly the most important was learned form me when I taught him the ins and outs of buying an authentic NFL jersey on eBay. Sam succeeded with flying colors. Flying red colors as it were, because this was the year that the color red, Madden 2003 in Mike Trawicki's room and Mike Vick all conspired to turn Sam into a full-fledged Falcons fan.

Unfortunately for Sam, that Falcons jersey didn't exactly represent the most upstanding citizen. Sam told me years later that he was considering using it as a pooper scooper for his pigeon Simon. Since then Matt Ryan has given Sam a quarterback he can be proud of, but I wouldn't suggest that he's gotten too proud of him since Sam seemed somewhat in the dark that the Giants and Falcons would be playing when I spoke to him this week. And perhaps more pertinently, I'm hoping Ryan doesn't make Sam too proud this weekend.

I'm more than a little anxious. I do think the Giants are playing better at the moment and given that the Falcons are not exactly used to this weather, I'm slightly confident that my team will win the day .... but I have seen them blow up these chances on more than one occasion so I'm hardly that confident. As for the rest of my picks, well, I'll probably be right about those ones. Because it would be just like my lot in life to be spot on with every game except for the one I care about. You know, other than that Texans-Bengals barnburner they've got going on.

Let's see how it goes.

Last week: 10-5-1
Season: 116-116-13

AFC Wild Card Playoffs
(3) Houston (-3) over (6) Cincinnati
Man, did NBC luck out when they got this matchup or what? Whew. This is, quite possibly, the least interesting matchup of teams in a playoff round, uh, ever. Seriously. I'm not sure if we've ever had Jacksonville play Cleveland in a playoff game, or perhaps Jacksonville playing Arizona in a Super Bowl, but that's pretty much the only one that could be duller. Also, you know who isn't better than Houston? Cincinnati. I mean, Houston is pretty beat up, so I go back and forth on whom to pick, but, hell, whomever wins this is losing next week anyway, so let's just pick one.

(5) Pittsburgh (-9) over (4) Denver
Ok. Ok. .... Ok. If Tebow wins this one, against this defense, I might convert. Also, did anyone see that Ryan Clark literally can't play in Denver's thin air for fear of losing organs? That is some home-field advantage.

NFC Wild Card Playoffs
(3) New Orleans (-11) over (6) Detroit
Detroit is a fun team. They're a really fun team, in fact. The defense is tenacious and the offense, when it's clicking, is really explosive. It's almost like they're the poor man's version of another team that has a slightly better head coach and championship experience. If only that team existed somewhere so that we could make an apt comparison. Oh wait, it does.

(4) NY Giants (-3) over (5) Atlanta
So yeah. I'm anxious and uncomfortable and generally sweaty in regards to this game, but I don't think I've picked against the Giants once this year when the spread was involved, and as you saw above, I finished with a .500 record, so..... I've got like a 50% chance of being right here. Right? Good lord I hope so.

Enjoy the football, people.

The New York Giants Won A Professional Footbal Game Last Night

2012-01-02T11:37:00.000-05:00

I enjoy football, which I've probably mentioned once or twice. The only problem with this is that the I follow a team called the New York Giants. True, it could be worse. After all, I need to look only at the other tenant of the Giants' home stadium to know that it's perfectly easy for a franchise to go 43 years (and counting) without a whiff of a championship. Or I could be a Cardinals fan and go six decades. It's clearly not the worst station in life.

Oh, but the Giants have a way of making pain real in a particularly special way, and the last three seasons were delightful examples of that. In 2008, the Giants seemed destined for a second Super Bowl title in a row until Plaxico Burress got his own leg in his sights. Literally. After that cataclysm, the Giants started off 2009 5-0 and looked like world beaters again before a late collapse caused them to miss the playoffs for the first time in five years. In 2010, Big Blue had its own destiny in its hands before getting dismantled by Green Bay in the second to last game of the season and thus losing control of its fate. The Giants would miss out on the postseason despite beating Washington in the final week and going a solid 10-6 that season.

So this year, when the Giants went 6-2 to start the year punctuated by a thrilling victory at New England that yours truly was in attendance for, it seemed like there were two distinct possibilities. A) New York was back and ready to make a solid run at the division title and deep run in the playoffs, or B) the inevitable collapse was on its way.

Four losses in a row later and it seemed pretty obvious which option was the likely outcome, particularly with a defense that looked more like a dairy product from Geneva than a professional football team.

Oh, but this season was a bit of a surprise, and with a little help from those lovable Choketacular Boys from Dallas, New York was able to make a run and force a winner-take-all de facto NFC East Championship Game at the Meadowlands on the final night of the season. While it was technically still a regular season game -- also the 100th meeting between the Giants and Cowboys all time -- last night's showdown was, more or less, a playoff game, and as the closest thing to a playoff game Giants fans have had in three years, I was pretty excited about it. While there were moments of anxiety, particularly in the third quarter, most of the game was a thorough dismantling of one of Big Blue's biggest rivals -- including a first half that was far and away the most complete first half the offense and defense played all season.

At the end of the night, the Giants had laid a whuppin' on Dallas and claimed their first division title in three years.

Now, I don't want to get too far ahead of what the team has accomplished, which, in its most immediate, clearest sense, is a 9-7 record and a playoff berth by the grace of its mediocre division rivals. The next step is a first-round playoff game against the Atlanta Falcons next Sunday -- the first time the teams have played in the postseason if I'm not mistaken -- and Atlanta is no slouch either. The Falcons' offense is just as if not more potent than New York's and the defense might have been better for most of this season.

But to anyone who saw the Giants dismantle the Cowboys last night, the offense looked as potent as its been all season, while the defense finally appeared to be healthy and dominant at stretches for virtually the first time this year. With those things considered, it would be very easy to get carried away and start talking about this win being the spark plug for a potential Super Bowl run, much like the club's narrow loss to the 16-0 Patriots in 2007. In fact, some people are already doing it. But I refuse to be among that crowd. It's about as premature as giving birth to a baby two weeks before it's conceived, particularly considering the various other items on the sports landscape I'll have to deal with before then, including multiple bowl games and a particularly big hockey game this afternoon at 3 that all of you should be watching.

It is hard to not get excited though.

It's very possible that I'll be singing a much more morbid tune in seven days time, but for now, Big Blue is looking good with its first postseason berth in three seasons. And I wish it was already Sunday at 1.

NFL Picks Week Seventeen: Getting Ready for the Last Year of Earth

2011-12-30T14:29:00.000-05:00

Oh yes, people, 2012 is almost here, and if you're one of those people who truly understands the significance of the impending Mayan cataclysm next December then, well, surely there are better things you could be doing with the last 11 1/2 months you've got here than reading this drivel.

But here you are! Thank you for your readership!

So while we wait for the end of days to come, I suppose that means I've got one more year with which to see the last 88 teams on the list, a trek which would be, uh, exhausting to say the least. I don't think I'm going to be able to make those 88 trips before the year is off if I'm going to balance my time between traveling and maintaining a job. Theoretically, I suppose I have enough money saved up to make it through the last year of life without employment, but I'm going to keep my gig and hedge my bets.

You know, just in case the world doesn't end next December.

If it does, though, I did manage to have a pretty decent 2011 as far as taking advantage of my time is concerned. It wasn't quite as busy as 2010, which wound up being a surprisingly hectic year with its international vacation and three cross-country trips in the month of August alone. Some of you may recall that I encompassed all of this in one particularly large entry on December 31, 2010, which recounted the total number of plane flights, airlines and other great things I tallied up over the previous 12 months. Well, we'll get to that list here in a second -- I wouldn't want to deprive of reading my obnoxious bragging -- but first I should talk about my personal sports fortunes over the past 12 months and as I look at them they're, uh, not particularly inspiring.

In fact, 2011 was actually one of the worst years I've had in sports as a fan. Looking at my big four (that's the Giants, Mets, Devils and Knicks if you aren't aware) a grand total of one of them played a postseason game this calendar year and in a bizarre twist of fate that was the Knicks, a team I'm so used to being bad that when they finally started being good this season I was so confused I likened it to when I first realized I was attracted to women and didn't know how to handle it. None of those teams won a playoff game. My college team had an uninspiring Bowl loss and then failed to make the NCAA Tournament yet again. The Chicago Blackhawks squeaked into the playoffs through the back door on the final day of the season, nearly got swept in the first round of the playoffs and then after rallying to force a Game 7, lost in overtime because of an inept giveaway in the defensive zone by journeyman defenseman Chris Campoli. In fact, the two teams I do like that actually had major accomplishments this season (Southampton FC and Geelong FC) don't play in the same hemisphere that I live in and I've never seen them in person.

So yeah. As far as on-field/ice/court accomplishments are concerned, 2011 was not one of the better years that I've had. In fact, it was one of the worst, and it's a far cry from ten years ago when the Mets, Devils and Giants all made their respective championship rounds (and the Knicks actually made the playoffs) in a 12-month span.

On the plus side, 2012 isn't looking half bad so far. The Devils are playing pretty good hockey of late and would be in the playoffs if the season ended today. The Knicks, despite their slow start, are likely poised to be one of the top teams in the East this season. The Blackhawks have the best record in the Western Conference. Southampton is off to a great season and appears poised to gain promotion back to the Premier League after a decade-long drought. Geelong, the reigning champions, will be gunning for its four Grand Final win in seven seasons. The Giants, with a win in Sunday night's massive de facto NFC East title game, can snap what has been a more-painful-than-most two-year playoff drought, and finally, the Mets, well, the Mets haven't been forced to fold financially yet. Considering the year they've had off the field, that's a victory in and of itself.

So we'll see what the New Year brings for my sports fortunes, starting with Sunday night -- though I should note that with Northwestern's Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas showdown tomorrow afternoon, 2011's chances of improving are not done yet -- but for now, with a grand total of 34 hours left in the year, it's time to take a look back on what happened to me in 2011.

2011 In Review

-- I saw 7 new professional sports teams (Philadelphia 76ers, Washington Capitals, Detroit Pistons, Detroit Red Wings, New England Patriots, San Jose Sharks, San Francisco 49ers)
-- I saw games in 7 new stadiums both college and professional (Palace at Auburn Hills, Joe Louis Arena, Gillette Stadium, HP Pavilion at San Jose, Candlestick Park, Alumni Stadium (Boston), Michie Stadium)
-- I saw sporting events in 14 total venues (Wachovia Center, Prudential Center, Citi Field, MetLife Stadium (nee New Meadowlands Stadium), Madison Square Garden, Nassau Coliseum, Verizon Center, Palace of Auburn Hills, Joe Louis Arena, Gillette Stadium, Yankee Stadium, HP Pavilion at San Jose, Candlestick Park, Michie Stadium)
-- I did one Sailgate
-- I saw four Giants games, the most I have ever seen in a season. I saw them on the road three times, though of of them was "on the road" against the Jets.
-- I saw one Giants game from the sidelines
-- I did not see a Major League Baseball game outside of New York City all season, the first time that has happened since 2000
-- I visited 19 different cities (Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Foxboro, San Francisco, San Jose, Colorado Springs, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague, Antwerp, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Munich, Aachen, Brussels)
-- I spent time in 6 countries (United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria)
-- I dragged a 25-pound bag of chocolate through four different countries in a span of 24 hours via three different modes of transportation (train, bus, plane)
-- I flew on a plane 16 times
-- I had one transatlantic plane flight aborted 90 minutes after it had already left the east coast of the United States
-- I stayed in 2 hotels, one of which expected two people to stay in a room that could not not have been more than 10 square feet
-- I stayed in one party house looking over the city of Colorado Springs
-- I passed through 10 airports in 3 countries
-- I saw one thrilling national sports moment in an airport bar as I walked off a plane
-- I saw one disappointing national sports moment in a bar of internationals in Berlin
-- I attended two weddings
-- I saw one cousin and one high school friend get married
-- I ate at one In-N-Out Burger
-- I did not eat any Giordano's stuffed pizza. This was, by far, the worst part of the year.
-- I won 0 fantasy leagues, though I did make the considerable accomplishment of drafting Cam Newton with my last pick in my keeper league. I only got my money back in one of those leagues.
-- I wrote 76 entries in this blog
-- I branched out a little

Whew. It wasn't as hectic as last year, but it wasn't terribly light either. I'm not sure what 2012 will have in store, but given that my five-year reunion at Northwestern is coming up this October, I can guarantee that, if nothing else, my consumption of Giordano's stuffed pizza will absolutely increase. In addition to that, potential plans for the new year include a visit to Dallas in March to see the Stars and Mavericks, a trip to Pittsburgh in April to see the Pirates and Penguins (and PNC Park at long last), a trip to Toronto to see the Blue Jays, a trip to Cincinnati to see the Bengals, a trip to Baltimore to see the Ravens and maybe, just maybe, a trip to Australia to see the sights down under and catch Geelong FC at the MCG.

It should be a packed 12 months. And given that it's going to be the last 12 months according to the Mayans, well, it better be. If not, though, that's fine. I'll just have to make myself even busier for 2013.

Here for the last time in 2011, are my weekly NFL picks.

Last week: 7-8-1
Season: 106-111-12

GREEN BAY (+4) over Detroit
San Francisco (-11) over ST. LOUIS
NY Jets (+3) over MIAMI
MINNESOTA (-1) over Chicago
NEW ENGLAND (-11) over Buffalo
NEW ORLEANS (-8) over Carolina
PHILADELPHIA (-9) over Washington
Indianapolis (+4) over JACKSONVILLE
HOUSTON (+3) over Tennessee
ATLANTA (-12) over Tampa Bay
Baltimore (-3) over CINCINNATI
Pittsburgh (-8) over CLEVELAND
DENVER (-4) over Kansas City
San Diego (+3) over OAKLAND
ARIZONA (-3) over Seattle
NY GIANTS (-3) over Dallas

Fingers crossed that that last one turns out how I want it to. Happy New Year, everyone. Bring on 2012.

NFL Picks Week Sixteen: In Which A Friendship Endures Its Greatest Test

2011-12-22T14:21:00.001-05:00

See everybody? This is Bert (or Birt to Starbucks baristas). You have seen Bert before in such fantastic moments as the U.S.'s dramatic win over Algeria in the 2010 World Cup, the last game ever played at Giants Stadium, our trip to see the Flyers nearly two years ago and, of course, that time we both wore bags over our heads at a Knicks-Cavaliers game because we were too embarrassed to be seen at the Garden. Bert also made a spur of the moment trip with me and our friend Deek to see Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009, and he's generally a fun guy -- one who really likes to cut a rug sometimes.

Bert's a good guy. I like Bert. Really I do.

But here's the thing. This Saturday, our friendship which has lasted well more than a decade will be tested in ways it has never been tested before. That is because we will be attending the Giants-Jets game this Sunday at MetLife Stadium. Now, this in and of itself is not a terribly crazy development. Bert and I have been to several football games together, and I have already been to three Giants games this season alone, but here's the catch. I don't know if any of you readers have become aware of this yet, but I happen to really like the New York Football Giants. Like a lot.

This is all well and good, but they are a team that has a tendency to break your heart from time to time, the notable exception of Super Bowl XLII aside. Bert doesn't have a great deal of Giants-related heartbreak, but boy oh boy does he have a lot of Jets-related heartbreak. Bert might follow the Gang Green more intensely than anyone I know does in regards to any team, and his fandom ranges from fear of jinxes, to robust spontaneity as seen in a trip he and I had planned for the AFC Championship Game last year that were botched by my own ability to manage my work schedule, costing me $300 in the process.

So knowing that the Giants and Jets will be facing off this Saturday and that we will be in the crowd together clearly lends itself to some potential anxiety and certainly some disagreement, but that alone isn't a particularly contentious point. We're both mature responsible adults -- sort of -- and we know that in the end we will live and we have, in fact, see the Giants and Jets face off in person before as we did in 2007.

On that day, an unseasonably warm afternoon at the old Giants Stadium, we witnessed Plaxico Burress turning the Jets secondary into his own personal rag doll as Big Blue went on to a 35-24 win over their intracity rival, capped by this pick six by Aaron Ross. Bert was disappointed, sure, and while I was excited about the win, I was also disappointed by the pretty unfortunate behavior by many of the fans there from both side, but it was an odd kind of victory. Not in that it was unenjoyable, but the Giants-Jets rivalry may be the most unnecessarily forced one in the NFL.

To wit: The Giants and Jets play each other in a game that has any consequence whatsoever once every four years. The odds of that game having any major or significant impact on the season -- or at least more so than any other -- is pretty low. People can discuss the fight for back page attention all they want, but any real animosity is purely trumped up false bravado for a game that is no more significant than when the Giants play the Cleveland Browns.

The only real cause for potential tension between the teams could probably be the surprise defection of Burress, who signed with the Jets this offseason after briefly flirting with a return to the Giants after being released from prison this summer. Even that doesn't seem to spring any bad blood as could be seen when Plax met his old mates at the two teams' annual preseason game and everything seemed like a David Bowie album.

Where it gets interesting for me and Bert, however, is the fact that while the game was exciting and fun, it was a completely different situation from this time around. In 2007, New York and New York met in the fifth week of the season, which was a long way away from any major playoff implications or life-or-death scenarios. This time around it's nothing of the sort. With just two games remaining and both teams steeped in an extremely tight postseason race, this could very well be for all the marbles. In the case of the Giants in particular, a loss will eliminate them from playoff contention unless they get help against Dallas from -- heaven help us -- the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Jets aren't walking quite the same tightrope act, but it isn't much different.

These stakes are remarkably high, significantly higher than four years ago and quite possibly the highest they've ever been when these two teams have played. What this guarantees is that the two of us will be quietly and awkwardly trying to have a good time for the first three quarters and then uncomfortably restraining our own emotions so as not to impact the other when the inevitable confrontation of result becomes apparent. It's kind of like when two friends know that one is keeping a secret from the other that will eventually need to be discussed, except it's really a secret for no one. The awkwardness will pervade and it just might break the solid bonds of lifelong friendship for the two of us.

Well, ok, that's probably a wee bit dramatic. But it is clearly the only thing mildly resembling a wedge that has ever occurred between us and the results will go a long toward deciding the particularly reason that each of us will be getting drunk afterward. In the end, it doesn't get any bigger than that. Who will win? Will the Giants survive the weekend?

Will we?

All those questions will be carefully and tentatively answered in just 48 hours. The anxiety for the future of our friendship is building.

And on a lighter note, here are this week's sure to be wrong predictions.

Last week: 6-9-1
Season: 99-103-11

Houston (-7) over INDIANAPOLIS
NY Giants (+3) over NY JETS
Denver (-3) over BUFFALO
CINCINNATI (-4) over Arizona
TENNESSEE (-8) over Jacksonville
Oakland (+2) over KANSAS CITY
NEW ENGLAND (-10) over Miami
PITTSBURGH (-17) over St. Louis
WASHINGTON (-7) over Minnesota
CAROLINA (-8) over Tampa Bay
BALTIMORE (-13) over Cleveland
San Diego (+2) over DETROIT
Philadelphia (+3) over DALLAS
San Francisco (-2) over SEATTLE
GREEN BAY (-13) over Chicago
Atlanta (+7) over NEW ORLEANS

NFL Picks Week Fifteen: So Let Me Talk About Hockey For a Few Minutes

2011-12-17T18:58:00.000-05:00

In the midst of all your holiday parties and your fervent non-hockey watching, some of you might have missed last night that the Devils made Scott Niedermayer the third player to have his number raised to the rafters at the Prudential Center. I know to many of you the name probably sounds strange, and even for the die-hard hockey fan, Scott Niedermayer was about as unassuming as a superstar defenseman of his caliber could be, but for a Devils fan who grew up watching the brilliant dynasty that brought home three Cups in nine years, seeing Niedermayer's number retired is an appropriate and special moment.

Yes, Niedermayer left the Devils for the opportunity to win a Cup with his brother in Anaheim, which he did four years after defeating his brother and the Mighty Ducks in seven games for the Devils' last championship, but that move is in many ways not only one that both sides have since said didn't mean to happen, but one that was a rare divorce for New Jersey and a star player that did not involve malice. Everyone seemed to acknowledge that Niedermayer was hoping a move west would bring a championship home for his brother, and actually took less money to do so.

Niedermayer, who is arguably the finest defenseman of his generation, is still always going to be a Devil for many of his fans however. His remarkable coast-to-coast goal against Detroit in the 1995 Final is the stuff of legend in New Jersey, and may have been the singular moment that transformed the organization from Mickey Mouse to NHL dynasty. And perhaps more noteworthy, he is one of just five players who was in uniform for all three of New Jersey's Stanley Cups along with Martin Brodeur, Ken Daneyko, Scott Stevens and Sergei Brylin. Daneyko and Stevens have already had their numbers brought up to the rafters. Brodeur's will join them some day.

To understand Niedermayer's greatness, his use of speed, his smooth skating, his offensive ability and his shut down defense is to understand how the nuances of the game when perfected by one individual can be a remarkable display of hockey brilliance. Niedermayer's amazing career will land him in the hall of fame one day, but even that may not quite do justice to just how good someone who spent most of his career out of the media spotlight was. Niedermayer won four Stanley Cups, the last of which with Anaheim gave him a Cup as a captain as well as a Conn Smythe Trophy, but even that doesn't show just how winning followed him wherever he went. In addition to his Cups and his Conn Smythe, Niedermayer was a Norris Trophy winner and is the only player in hockey history to win every single professional or amateur high level hockey championship in North America. In addition to his Stanley Cups Niedermayer has won a Memorial Cup, a World Junior Championship, an IIHF World Championship, an Olympic gold medal and the rarely played World Cup of Hockey (nee Canada Cup).

The list of accolades is simply astounding, and no coincidence whatsoever.

And so as a fan who grew up watching Niedermayer spin his masterful plays from the back it's a happy day to see the man get his due from a franchise that almost painstakingly avoids making icons. I actually had to turn down tickets to the game for personal reasons, but to be there must have been something special.

When Brodeur gets his moment in a few seasons, barring something unexpected, I will be in the crowd for a night that will likely close the book on New Jersey's run of NHL dominance -- though I still cross my fingers that the next one isn't too far away. Also, it should be noted in case no one saw, the Devils actually did win last night. In fact the Devils are actually in the East's top eight at the moment and sit just three points behind Pittsburgh with a game in hand -- and eight points behind Philadelphia atop the conference. Maybe New Jersey has a playoff berth in it yet this season.

At least, as a fan, I certainly hope so. After all, for most of my youth the Devils were the best I had.

Meanwhile, one of my historically less successful teams, the Northwestern Wildcats, announced this morning that the university had signed a landmark agreement with Under Armour to fully outfit all of the school's varsity athletic teams. This is a bigger deal than it seems in that UA is a major player in collegiate apparel and could have a significant impact on the school's reputation for recruits. I do however cross my fingers that Northwestern's classy, dignified, subtle purple Northwestern sleeve-striped jerseys don't get forsaken by UA for some of its more wild and experimental -- and by that I mean awful -- uniforms.

Here's hoping.

Lastly before I get to my picks -- and on a side note, I'm going to include that I picked the Falcons over the Jaguars before Thursday because I'm, you know, not an idiot -- I will point out that trips in 2012 are finally starting to shape up. While I'm still eyeing a weekend in Dallas in March for the Stars and Mavericks, I am excited to say that an hour ago I bought tickets for opening day for the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 5, which will not only finally take me to one of the widely agreed upon best stadiums in the country in PNC Park, it will also have me headed to the Consol Energy Center that night for Penguins-Rangers.

I am excited. Very. Let's do some picks.

Last week: 9-7-0
Season: 93-94-10

TAMPA BAY (+8) over Dallas
ATLANA (??) over Jacksonville
BUFFALO (-2) over Miami
Seattle (+4) over CHICAGO
INDIANAPOLIS (+7) over Tennessee
KANSAS CITY (+15) over Green Bay
Cincinnati (-7) over ST. LOUIS
New Orleans (-8) over MINNESOTA
NY GIANTS (-7) over Washington
HOUSTON (-6) over Carolina
Detroit (-2) over OAKLAND
DENVER (+9) over New England
NY Jets (+3) over PHILADELPHIA
ARIZONA (-7) over Cleveland
SAN DIEGO (+3) over Baltimore
Pittsburgh (+3) over SAN FRANCISCO

There it is. Happy weekend, everyone.

Girl, Eli's Coming. You Better Hide.

2011-12-12T14:02:00.002-05:00

I suppose that after last night's game I could have also given this entry the title of "I'm down with JPP", a common thread running on the twitters last night, but considering that I like Three Dog Night more than Naughty By Nature and that song is far more inappropriate -- and you all know how I'm a stickler for propriety -- I've made my bed and I'm sleeping in it. Also, to put it more finely, Jason Pierre-Paul has never been the object of scorn for not getting angry enough on the sidelines after a missed tackle. He's always been considered an athletic freak who is always a project that needs time to develop -- and has managed to develop much quicker than anticipated with room still to grow.

And don't get me wrong. JPP looks every bit the tremendous stud defensive end GM Jerry Reese envisioned when he was drafted and more. His athleticism is nearly unparalleled among men at his position, he had an almost obscenely good game last night and when he learns how to play the run he may very well be the best defensive end in the League.

But this is about Eli, a player who was dogged by criticism and unreasonable expectations throughout the beginning of his career and even after he led a stunning Super Bowl-winning drive -- perhaps too early because people assumed greatness had arrived when it was still marinating. But now, after his game-winning drive against New England earlier this season, and his near late-game rallies against San Francisco and Green Bay despite having little healthy talent to help him on both sides of the ball, and finally after last night, there can no longer be any doubt.

Eli has arrived -- and he is among the greats in the NFL.

As the Giants trailed Dallas by 12 points with less than four minutes to go last night at Jerry World with their season on the line, Manning led a late touchdown drive in the fourth quarter like he had done so many times before, and then after a tremendous three-and-out forced by JPP and the defense, he did it again. One drive went 80 yards and lasted 2:27. The second went 58 yards and lasted 81 seconds. And that drive might have ended sooner were it not for a dropped touchdown pass by Mario Manningham that was as perfectly thrown between a cornerback and a safety in a clutch situation as any pass could be. On the night he had two touchdowns, one interception off a tipped pass and 400 yards passing.

The fourth quarter, however, is where his true greatness lies. His numbers this season have been the best in the League in the game's final 15 minutes, and as you can see, he has displayed a preternatural calmness that allows him to perform remarkably well under late-game pressure throughout his career.

Last night's game was noteworthy for multiple reasons, the most obvious of which is that after a four-game losing streak that was potentially quite debilitating, the Giants are now in control of their own destiny for the NFC East crown. But it also had plenty of other moments of note such as Brandon Jacobs' shocking athleticism, and what might be the game that propelled Pierre-Paul onto the national stage by capping the win with a game-winning field goal block in addition to the other numerous big stops he made and a safety he recorded in the first quarter.

But Eli's performance at this point should be no surprise. He has done it time and time again, in this building, no less, where he has never lost and left a permanent mark after winning the first game ever played there. At this point, it's clear to even a moron that Eli is among the very best quarterbacks in the League. Last night's win, with two late touchdown drives while New York's season was on the line should solidify it for anyone who was still thinking otherwise.

Besides, even the Cowboys should be happy that Eli gave them a distraction from one of the more amusing anniversaries in Cowboys history. At the very least, with two of Eli's fourth quarter comebacks coming in Dallas' building, surely they are not going to be among the nonbelievers of his penchant for late-game coolness and heroics. And perhaps, if they are, they can get another lesson on the last Sunday if all goes well for Big Blue. The only difference is this time, the division title and a playoff berth is likely to be in the balance.

If it's close in the fourth quarter, I'll put my money on Eli.

NFL Picks Week Fourteen: You Know, Nassau Coliseum Is Kind of Fun

2011-12-09T12:42:00.000-05:00

Don't get me wrong. Let me state clearly that Nassau Coliseum, for all its history, is not a nice building. It is old, it is crumbling, it feels like the concourses are part of a disused bowling alley from 1987 and it is a woefully inconvenient place to get to if you have no car to take you there. But you know what? Sitting in a seat and watching a game there is really a pretty good time. I won't lie, it helps when stubhub enables you to get seats with a view like this at half the price, but despite the fact that the place is, in many ways, highly decrepit, it's actually a pretty good time. The place has character, it's intimate, and it's kind of cramped in that "just like Fenway Park but without the charm and still somehow good" kind of way.

Don't ask me how it works. It just works.

I've only been there twice now, but I'm starting to like it a little more than I did the first time, though I wouldn't mind it if the pulled pork sandwiches were served a little quicker. I ended up missing most of the second period while waiting for the enormous line of five people to trim down. It did enable me, however, to talk to a charming group of 18-year-olds who decided to call the ice girls "sluts" as I walked by. This led me into a long half-sober dissertation to them about how if they want to go pursue women sexually, how can they criticize women, in principle, for doing the same thing. This stumped them for a half second, but then they eagerly told me that they were "sluts" because they worked for the Islanders, not because they were dressing scantily. This ignores the fact that a) they are wearing outfits required by their job, not by choice and b) it is completely different from their previous argument of, "Yeah, but they're sluts because... you know, look at them, they're sluts."

Once I realized a moment later that they were not yet alive when Wayne's World and Jurassic Park came out I decided the conversation was over and happily took my sandwich back to my seat. This was also after the woman behind me in line asked me if she could have my pickle when I asked them not to put one with my sandwich.

So my point is, the game was really pretty fun, and it had a particularly awesome end when the Blackhawks won in overtime despite blowing a two-goal lead in the second period. That particularly satisfied me of course considering I consider myself something of a Blackhawks fan after working for them (though the Devils are still my team) and living in New York rather than Chicago does not afford me very many opportunities to see the Hawks. This year I am fortunate enough in that they play in all three New York-area arenas during the course of the season, and with the NHL's impending realignment for the 2012-13 season that will continue.

But until next season it was almost never the case annually, and my chances to see the Hawks were few and far in between. This must have been rough on the Hawks fans that live in the New York area, which given the roughly 50/50 crowd at the game last night, must be a fairly large number. Throughout the arena -- and in particular the men's room -- there was a great deal of loud humming of "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellies, which if you're unfamiliar, is the Blackhawks' goal song, much to the ire of rivals.

Now, however, every team in an opposition conference will visit every other team's building once per season, which means the Hawks will play in the Prudential Center, Madison Square Garden and Nassau Coliseum every single year. It's a whole new world, and frankly, a refreshing one considering previously I've had to travel with some frequency to see my Blackhawks. In fact, last night I came to a stunning realization that I've now seen the Blackhawks in six different NHL arenas which, bizarrely, is more than I've seen the Devils in. I've only managed to catch New Jersey in four different places and that includes the Brendan Byrne Arena where there is no longer any hockey team.

Chicago on the other hand I have seen in the United Center, Madison Square Garden, the Prudential Center, Nassau Coliseum, Joe Louis Arena and the Verizon Center. My hope now is that I will add a seventh arena to that list this March because the NBA lockout is over, which means that with the release of the NBA's 2011-12 schedule I can look for schedule quirks that allow me to knock out multiple teams in one shot. Direct your attention to March 16 when the Blackhawks visit the Stars and the next night the Mavericks host the Spurs what should be a dandy of a game. Having never been to the American Airlines Center -- or outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport while in Texas for that matter -- this is looking like a pretty sweet trek.

But more details on that one when it arrives. For now, I will simply get on with the football picks for the weekend. Before I get to those, yes, I know I didn't get them in before Pittsburgh and Cleveland last night. Yes, I'm going to still say I had Pittsburgh before the game because what sober person wouldn't take the Steelers at home against the hapless Browns?

Got it? Great. Here we go.

Last week: 13-3-0 (That's more like it)
Season: 84-87-10

PITTSBURGH (???) over Cleveland
NY Giants (+3) over DALLAS
Houston (+3) over CINCINNATI
DETROIT (-10) over Minnesota
New Orleans (-4) over TENNESSEE
Philadelphia (+3) over MIAMI
NY JETS (-11) over Kansas City
New England (-9) over WASHINGTON
CAROLINA (+3) over Atlanta
Tampa Bay (-2) over JACKSONVILLE
Indianapolis (+17) over BALTIMORE
DENVER (-4) over Chicago
San Francisco (-4) over ARIZONA
Oakland (+12) over GREEN BAY
SAN DIEGO (-7) over Buffalo
SEATTLE (even) over St. Louis

Have a good weekend, everyone.

So This Is Like The Opposite Of A Hat Trick Night, Huh?

2011-12-05T23:36:00.000-05:00

Some of you who know me may have noticed that a few years ago I started taking note of what I liked to refer to as "Hat Trick Nights". They are an obnoxious concept to be sure, but they're pretty fun, and essentially the idea, which you could probably piece together if you know what a hat trick is, is that on any given date that three teams you root for all win, you have a hat trick night. Bizarrely, I've found that hat trick nights happen both more frequently and less frequently than you expect, though it is easier when you like two different teams in a particular sport as I do in the NHL. The New Jersey Devils are my primary team with no equivocations, but given my brief internship with the Chicago Blackhawks in college, I have a soft spot for team No. 2.

That makes it easier to have a hat trick night in general, but without a doubt, the easiest night to have one is on a Saturday in the month of October or November. Why? Because on any given Saturday during that span I might have the Devils, Blackhawks, Northwestern football, Knicks, Mets or, hell, even Geelong FC or Southampton FC playing. That's a lot of chances to get three wins.

However, I've noticed lately that Hat Trick Nights have been in short supply. The Devils have been a streaky, mediocre outfit, the Mets did not make it to October (again), Northwestern forgot how to win for a solid month of the season and the Knicks, well, I can at least say they didn't lose any games even if they didn't win any either. So despite the fact that Southampton is off to a superb start in the nPower Championship and Geelong won its third Grand Final in five years, this has been a rough season for cumulative victories -- particularly if we choose to limit it to just North America.

But this Sunday something truly special happened -- and by special I mean "awful". This just my have been the denouement of Hat Trick Nights as I know them because while it isn't uncommon for multiple teams I root for to lose in a day, nor unusual for three of them to lose in a day, it is unusual that I have three sports-related events happen to me in one day that all quite so awful.

Allow me to count the ways.

The first big craptacular moment of the day came when Northwestern tipped off at 4 p.m. ET against Baylor. Normally a Northwestern basketball game is nothing to get excited about, particularly considering they are the only team in the six major NCAA conferences never to have reached the NCAA Tournament. That's a drought that spans more than seven decades. The next longest? 21 years.

So yeah, we're good.

Every year these days we flirt with being a bubble team, however, and with expectations high, many felt this, at last, could finally be the year, and with a home game Sunday afternoon against No. 7 Baylor, this was our chance to show we could play with the elite. An when all was said and done, the Wildcats proved that, uh, yeah, not so much. On the plus side, Northwestern did accept a bid to play Texas A&M in the legendary Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas in Houston on December 31. Even more exciting about this was that for a brief period the Boston Herald had a story up quoting Northwestern coach Randy Walker, which is a hell of a get for that reporter considering that Randy Walker's been dead for over five years.

Next up came my Giants, who looked like they had everything breaking for them on a day where they just had to win. This wasn't easy of course, because as I noted last week, the Giants were playing the undefeated Green Bay Packers in a game that may or may not determine if New York goes to the playoffs. In New York's bid to spoil a third perfect season in the last 13 years, the Giants gave the Packers everything they had and were it not for several minor breaks -- and perhaps one particularly tough to swallow incorrect call -- the G-Men might have ended Green Bay's dream of 19-0. Unfortunately, however, when New York managed to tie the game with 58 seconds left, that meant there were 58 whole seconds for Aaron Rodgers to make short work of the Big Blue defense. And he did so easily. On the plus side, because Dallas lost, the Giants, on a four-game losing streak and at 6-6, somehow control their own destiny for the NFC East crown.

Of course, while those two games were frustrating or disheartening, the real pain in the day came in the early hours of the evening, when word broke that Jose Reyes, homegrown Met and perhaps the most exciting player in the history of the franchise, was leaving for the beautiful new stadium, horrendous new uniforms and, oh yeah, $106 million of the Miami Marlins. Now to be fair, this is a player who has averaged some 90 games out of 162 a year over the last three seasons. He has a tendency to spend a significant amount of time on the DL, had an unusually high BABIP last year when he became the first Met ever to win a batting title and also bases his game around speed, something that won't exactly be improving as he gets older -- and he's already 28. For a rational thinking baseball fan, it's very easy to see how that contract could become a massive albatross after the first two years and from that perspective, I'm quite happy the Mets avoided committing so much money on such a risky investment. But that doesn't change the fact that Reyes was electric, dynamic, originally a Met and, most of all, fun. When Reyes was on, when he was healthy, he was so much fun to watch sprinting around the bases.

Even though my brain tells me the team is better off in the long run not committing that much money to a player with his injury history and style of play, losing Reyes physically hurts if you're a Mets fan.

And so when that final capitulation on the day fell, it occurred to me that days like Sunday, December 4, 2011, are the kind that you dread as a sports fan. Perhaps this was simply a hubristic payback for all the other times I had bragged about my hat trick days. Or perhaps it was just an unfortunate luck of the draw. Either way, I hope it's a feeling I don't have to suffer for quite some time again.

And if I wind up with a Hat Trick Night this weekend, well, that might make me forget all about it.

NFL Picks Week Thirteen: All Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating? Maybe?

2011-12-02T13:30:00.000-05:00

So, some of you, or more likely, anyone who actually bothers to read this, probably knows that I've been experiencing a bit of angst over the last few weeks. No, not for anything that's actually happening in my life -- that's going along just fine, more or less, even if I haven't made any progress on the whole marriage thing, for which I will apologize to my grandmother when we see this play tonight. No, no, this cause for angst is almost entirely the result of three awfully frustrating weeks for the New York Giants, two of which I got to witness up close in person.

See, after that super duper win over the New England Patriots a month ago, Big Blue was 6-2 and looking like a surefire bet to take the NFC East and possibly challenge a Green Bay team that is the clear class of the League for conference supremacy. Then San Francisco happened. And then Philadelphia happened. And then this week New Orleans happened. Now the Giants basically have to beat the 11-0 Green Bay Packers Sunday afternoon or, come January, absolutely nothing will happen.

So facing the top team in the League when they're undefeated and it's do or die time is pretty much a death sentence, right?

Well.... maybe not. See, Green Bay is just the second defending champion in NFL history to start its title defense with wins in its first 11 games, which has got everyone talking about the prospect of the League's first 19-0 season. The only other team to complete that feat was the 1998 Denver Broncos, and while the Broncos were clearly the best team in the League that season and took a second consecutive Super Bowl title, a funny thing happened in Week 15 on the way to perfection. That week the Broncos came to the Meadowlands to face a New York Giants team that was in the midst of an otherwise unremarkable 8-8 season -- and at one point they were four games under .500 that season.

The Broncos, meanwhile, were coming off the emotional high of saving their perfect season a week earlier with a wild 35-31 win over division rival Kansas City, and facing the Giants seemed a minor quibble on the road to history. After all, the Broncos had John Elway, Shannon Sharpe, Terrell Davis, Rod Smith and Steve Atwater. Ten Broncos would be elected to the Pro Bowl that year. The Giants had Kent Graham, whose biggest claim to fame is sounding like the love child of Superman's alter ego and a delicious breakfast cereal.

So of course Denver would keep steam rolling along against the hapless G-Men, and everything was going according to plan in the fourth quarter when Denver had a 16-13 lead late in the game despite not playing in the same manner they usually do. And then Graham, in what would almost certainly be the greatest moment ever in his career -- by a hefty margin at that -- launched a home run pass that was hauled in in the end zone by a 24-year-old wide receiver named Amani Toomer with 48 seconds remaining. Thus ended the Broncos' run at perfection.

Interestingly, it would not be the last time that Toomer would haul in a game-winning touchdown against the Broncos at Giants Stadium -- although the second time was with a far better quarterback -- and Toomer, for his part would eventually become the most accomplished wide receiver in Giants history. The Giants, meanwhile, have had runs at ending perfection since, nearly toppling the 15-0 2007 Patriots in the final game of the season and then, uh, handling their business when they got a second chance a month later. Perhaps you've heard. Perhaps it was vengeance for denying Pats fans the opportunity to watch the Giants make history nine years earlier.

So, really, what I'm telling you all, is that the Giants have a knack of facing teams on their way to a perfect season and spoiling it for them. Which is to say, they've done it twice. Either way, I feel good about this week, particularly since the Packers' defense is not exactly wowing the world these days and Ahmad Bradshaw might be back. My excitement over this is almost certainly misguided and likely to be dashed Sunday evening, but my hopes are still high.

And hey, even if those hopes aren't to be met full on, at least I can revel in the fact that Philadelphia lost again last night, meaning the Dream Team's dreams are probably dashed. It does, however, also mean that once again I have failed to get my weekly picks in in time for the Thursday game. Of course I blame that entirely on the fact that I spent most of yesterday putting together this fine piece of journalism, which includes my favorite comment I've gotten from a reader in a while, mostly because it proves he clearly didn't get my point. Of course I know parallel lines don't intersect. That's why the line is clever.

Yeash.

In any event, I'm going to give myself credit for picking the Seahawks because a) I accepted losses after the fact in two Thursday games already, and b) I was going to pick Seattle because Qwest Field is a tough place to play and I really believe the Eagles are a bunch of quitters. So yeah. Here's to a recovery this week.

Last week: 3-11-2 (This was probably my worst week in history)
Season: 71-84-10

SEATTLE (???) over Philadelphia
NY GIANTS (+7) over Green Bay
Tennessee (+3) over BUFFALO
Kansas City (+7) over CHICAGO
Oakland (+3) over MIAMI
Denver (+1) over MINNESOTA
NEW ENGLAND (-21) over Indianapolis
PITTSBURGH (-7) over Cincinnati
TAMPA BAY (-3) over Carolina
NY Jets (-3) over WASHINGTON
HOUSTON (+3) over Atlanta
Baltimore (-7) over CLEVELAND
ARIZONA (+5) over Dallas
SAN FRANCISCO (-14) over St. Louis
NEW ORLEANS (-9) over Detroit
San Diego (-3) over JACKSONVILLE

There you have it. Happy Friday, everyone.

NFL Picks Week Twelve: My Night As A Sideline Photographer...'s Assistant

2011-11-23T00:25:00.001-05:00

So there was an amusing bit of irony last week in that I said I was not, in fact, following Eli Manning wherever he goes around the country. This was because my plans for the Giants game, for the very first time this season, involved sitting on my couch with a beer, wearing quite possibly just my underwear, and relaxing in front of my HDTV.

Then on Saturday night, something unexpected happened. My friend and fellow Israel travel buddy Brian Garfinkel, who accompanied me and some friends to see the Knicks and 76ers last year back when they actually played basketball, offered a particularly exciting proposition. See, Brian has a pretty exciting Sunday occupation in that he's a sideline photographer for the Philadelphia Eagles. Every week he gets to be one of those guys on the sidelines with a tan vest on taking one picture after another through an absolutely enormous telephoto lens, and sometimes when he travels he can scrounge up an extra press pass for an assistant. Approximately 22 hours before kickoff, knowing that I am bigger Giants fan than is healthy, he sent me a text message and asked if I wanted to be his assistant for the night. I found a way to make it work despite having to be in the office Sunday, and when I arrived at (ugh) "MetLife Stadium" there was Brian waiting for my with my press pass.

I have one previous experience working at an NFL game, a Bears-Seahawks game in Chicago five years ago where I was exclusively in charge of setting the play clock after each down (side note: don't ever trust that play clock when watching on TV), and spent the entire game in a truck where the production was happening. Never before had I spent a night working on the sidelines. I figured it would be a pretty wild to see the players that up close and indeed we were close. As you can see from this shot I took on the first offensive play of the game, we were only a few yards from the action at any given time.

The interesting thing is that watching from such a low angle makes football, well, very difficult to watch. As people who generally watch from the stands or on television, most of us are used to seeing the players spread out rather than bunched together. As a result, what we can see from the naked eye at that angle can look sort of like a total visual cacophony. Brian's a little better than I am, however, what with him being good enough to get paid for it and all. As a result, while my pictures, at their best, looked like this, his pictures look like this. He's really good, you see. And if I learned anything Sunday night it's that the job is not easy. Not even a little.

Most of my help involved carrying around cameras for Brian, and periodically running memory cards to the photo room for him, though, amazingly, most cameras were equipped with the ability to transmit those photos directly to another photographer in the photo room for uploading and editing, so if the stadium you're in happens to have a properly function wi-fi network or G4 or something else technological that I really didn't understand, transmitting photos is a snap. Amazingly, when I asked Brian after the game ended if it would take him a while to get the photos up on the site, his answer was, "They're already up there."

In addition, these guys are in pretty good shape. My entire lower half has been sore for the three days I've had to walk around since being on the sidelines. In addition, my knees were absolutely killing me 30 minutes after we started kneeling on the sideline. Brian always does his job while wearing a set of knee pads he bought at Home Depot for, he says, $10 or so. It looks kind of goofy, but it doesn't take long for you to realize why the extra padding is necessary.

In the end, I resigned myself to not being able to shoot photos like the professionals, but I still managed to get at least a few cool shots for my own personal collection.

Oh, and I also got to watch the whole game from the sidelines. That's pretty sweet.

Or at least it would have been were it not for the fact that the Giants lost a potentially crucial division game to their most hated rival, which they probably should have won and could well prove a season-costing victory if they don't get their heads put on straight for New Orleans next Monday. But I prattle on.

In the end I'll still fondly remember the opportunity to walk on the field that my favorite team walks on every week, and the chance to check them out up close as they did pregame warmups and, you know, played a football game. I always find warmups to be some of the most interesting part of any sporting event because it provides you with an up close and personal opportunity to watch the players incidentally show some personality when they don't know that anyone is watching. Touchdown celebrations are an orchestrated performance that everyone sees. Wisecracks on the bench or incidental banter with fans in the front row, of which I saw plenty, are a different animal entirely.

The view point also afforded me the chance to get some pretty cool shots that help reflect the almost intimidating grandeur of what it's like to perform on a field in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 80,000 people. And if you think that's a load of bullshit, which it probably is, well then at least I got some close up shots of Northwestern legend Mike Kafka, who is currently No. 3 on the depth chart for the Eagles. Oh, and in case you hadn't heard, Kafka's Wildcats became bowl eligible this week.

In the end of the night I came to the realization that while I love watching and writing about sports, I am almost not certainly ever going to photograph it professionally. But if Brian or any other photographers ever need an assistant again, I'll gladly volunteer my services.

On a side note, some of you probably noticed that it's Thanksgiving tomorrow, which happens to be my favorite holiday, and not just for the turducken. Or the Turbaconducken. It also means football, and for the first time this season I'm actually getting my picks in in time for the Thursday game. Here it goes.

Last week: 6-7-1
Season: 69-73-8

DETROIT (+7) over Green Bay
Miami (+7) over DALLAS
BALTIMORE (-3) over San Francisco
ATLANTA (-10) over Minnesota
CINCINNATI (-8) over Cleveland
Tampa Bay (+4) over TENNESSEE
INDIANAPOLIS (+4) over Carolina
ST. LOUIS (even) over Arizona
NY JETS (-8) over Buffalo
JACKSONVILLE (+4) over Houston
OAKLAND (-5) over Chicago
SEATTLE (-4) over Washington
New England (-3) over PHILADELPHIA
SAN DIEGO (-7) over Denver
Pittsburgh (-11) over KANSAS CITY
NY Giants (+7) over New Orleans

And there you have it. Enjoy Turkey Day, everyone.

NFL Picks Week Eleven: I'm Actually Staying In New York This Weekend

2011-11-18T11:45:00.001-05:00

I know that the past two weeks might have given you the indication that I'm just a traveling road show intent on trailing Eli Manning to whatever he chooses to go. I suppose, considering that the Giants are home this weekend, it doesn't really break that trend, but I assure you I'm done traveling. At least for the forseeable future. I'll prove it next week when the Giants go to New Orleans. In any event, I am back from San Francisco and while the Giants couldn't pull out a victory for me, I still had a good time, managed to knock two more teams off the list, saw several old friends and met some very interesting characters in the airport while waiting for my redeye.

They were, in order, the 45-year-old Giants super fan who traveled around the country to see them each weekend even though she lives in Florida. She was easily the most sane and easy-going of the bunch. Next was the 26-year-old from Florida, who was already drunk when she sat down, told us about her pseudo-ex-boyfriend and geriatric next door neighbor who brought her cookies at the most inconvenient times and who offered to give me xanax and aderall for the ride home. I declined. Finally, there was the girl who told us about how her ex-boyfriend once sent her a lifesize ice sculpture of Buddy Christ because he once accidentally called her "Jerry" during sex and then tried to cover it up by calling her "Jesus".

So yeah. Those are the fun people you meet when you're waiting for your redeye.

Also, there was a football game and a hockey game, which were a pretty good time, and at some point I'll have a more succinct and fully thought out writeup of those two events, but if I can give you any advice on attending either a San Jose Sharks or a San Francisco 49ers game in the future, it will be these items.

A) Go see the Sharks. San Jose was shut out 3-0 by Phoenix the night I was there which was a bit of a drag, but it was still a great atmosphere and the building is really tremendous for one that is almost 20 years old. Also, even the zambonis have fins.

B) If you ever plan on going to a 49ers game while they are still at the Stick, I suggest, urge, caution, warn, scream from the tree tops, etc, that you do not drive a car to the game. If there is a mass transit option available to you, and there are some, do not under any circumstances not use them. The reason for this is two-fold. The first is that you won't have to pay the $30 it takes to put your car in a vacant dirt-and-gravel lot. The second is that getting out of the Candlestick parking lot, given the stadium's location, takes about two hours, to say nothing of the pain in the ass that is parking their in the first place.

It's almost as if the city of San Francisco said in the late 1950s, "Let's find the most remote, worst possible location in our city for 80,000 people to shuttle in and out with ease, and let's put a football stadium there." And true to form, they did just that, putting the stadium on a relatively small parcel of land that juts out into the bay and basically has only one exit point. Getting out is just plain super.

Either way, however, once you're actually inside, the stadium is a pretty fun place to see football, the sightlines were surprisingly good considering the building's orientation as a multi-use facility that now has permanent temporary seating, and despite the relatively small number of food options, which is to say, nonexistent food options, the stadium serves one hell of a kielbasa.

So, really, Candlestick is a pretty good stadium once you're inside with a tremendous atmosphere if the 49ers happen to be competitive. According to my friend Evan, this was the first time the Bay Area fans had any reason to get excited about the red and gold in about 10 years. Looking at the records it's hard to assume otherwise and the fans were, in fact, excited. As a Giants fan, however, one of the New York variety, I just would have preferred that they all left a little less excited than they came in. Alas. Fortunately, it was still a good game, I made some progress on my life plan and, if nothing else, there was In-N-Out Burger at the end of the day before I caught my flight home.

Another exhausting, but productive weekend in the books.

As for this coming weekend, some of you will notice I was a little lazy on my submission of picks for this week, and that I didn't even include an early tweet with my guess for the Thursday night game. Sue me. I would have taken the Jets because I'm so thoroughly convinced that Tim Tebow is a non-NFL-level starting quarterback who cannot make NFL throws that every quarterback needs to make, but hey, we all make mistakes. Mine was not realizing that total flukes can happen twice. I refuse to live in a world where a quarterback who goes 2-for-8 in a game passing can really win consistently.

But I digress. Here's this week.

Last week: 3-13-0 (Good lord that was ugly)
Season: 63-76-7

NY Jets (???) over DENVER
NY GIANTS (-6) over Philadelphia
Jacksonville (-1) over CLEVELAND
DETROIT (-7) over Carolina
Tampa Bay (+15) over GREEN BAY
Buffalo (+1) over MIAMI
Oakland (-1) over MINNESOTA
WASHINGTON (+8) over Dallas
BALTIMORE (-7) over Cincinnati
ST. LOUIS (-3) over Seattle
SAN FRANCISCO (-10) over Arizona
ATLANTA (-7) over Tennessee
San Diego (+4) over CHICAGO
NEW ENGLAND (-15) over Kansas City

And there you have it. Happy football, everyone.

NFL Picks Week Ten: So I'm Just Following The Giants Around the Country Now

2011-11-10T23:20:00.001-05:00

Alright, I must be honest and admit that I may have dropped the ball on you kids. When I say I dropped a ball, I of course don't mean literally. I'm as sure handed as Rey Ordonez circa 1999. Instead I didn't plan my time out too well and as a result I have very little time to appropriately write a blog entry in anticipation of my trip to San Francisco this weekend.

Yep, that's right. I'm on the move again. A week after jetting up to Boston for the unbelievably exciting adventure that was the Giants at the Patriots, I am now taking a slightly longer route to see Big Blue as I head to the Bay Area to watch them visit the 49ers Sunday morning. Of course, one of the keys to doing all of this relatively quickly is to do multiple teams in one trip if at all possible -- and this weekend it's possible. Not only will I be checking the 49ers off the list Sunday morning but I will also be in the stands for Saturday night's game in San Jose between the Sharks and the Coyotes, my first ever visit to HP Pavilion, also known as the Shark Tank.

The Niners play in Candlestick Park, which apparently is also known as "awful", but I'm still pretty excited for it, the Sharks, and the surprisingly large number of friends I'll be able to meet up with over a trip that amounts to about 55 hours.

It's all about planning.

Lastly, I need to submit my football picks which are, well, way too late. The Chargers and Raiders already kicked off about two and a half hours ago and I didn't have my choices in, but in the interests of attempting to be fair, I made sure to put my pick (which doesn't look so good at the moment) somewhere where it could be verified.

In the interests of getting this over with and actually being packed in time for me to get some sleep before my flight tomorrow morning, I'm pretty much going to skip through the rest of this nonsense and go straight to the picks. Here we go.

Last week: 7-7-0
Season: 60-63-7

SAN DIEGO (???) over Oakland
NY Giants (+3) over SAN FRANCISCO
ATLANTA (+1) over New Orleans
Pittsburgh (-3) over CINCINNATI
CLEVELAND (-3) over St. Louis
Buffalo (+6) over DALLAS
INDIANAPOLIS (+3) over Jacksonville
KANSAS CITY (-4) over Denver
MIAMI (-4) over Washington
PHILADELPHIA (even) over Arizona
TAMPA BAY (+4) over Houston
CAROLINA (-4) over Tennessee
Baltimore (-7) over SEATTLE
Detroit (+3) over CHICAGO
NY JETS (-1) over New England
GREEN BAY (-14) over Minnesota

Off I go to California.

So, Uh, That Might Have Been The Best 30 Hours Of My Life

2011-11-08T14:52:00.001-05:00

Suffice it to say that I did not make it any secret that I was pretty excited about going to New England this weekend to see the Giants face the Pats. It's a game I had been looking forward to for about four years and not only did it cross a team off my list of 122, but it wound up being of pivotal importance for both New York and New England. It would have been high demands to expect this game to deliver on absolutely every way that you would want it to, and it certainly couldn't live up to the last time these two played a serious game of football, but I had high expectations.

Unfortunately, the scheduling of this weekend's game came with one unfortunate catch. Saturday was the first time ever that Northwestern would be visiting it's recently anointed Big Ten brethren in Nebraska, and I was oh so interested in watching -- and possibly attending -- the game. But these two games being on the same weekend presented some challenges. For one, attending a football game in Nebraska and then immediately flying from Lincoln to Boston before heading back to New York would be exhausting. For another, it would be crazy expensive. As a result, I resolved that a reasonable solution could be worked where I simply stayed in New York to watch NU vs. NU with my friends before taking a bus to Boston either Saturday evening or Sunday morning.

But then the New York marathon just had to happen on the exact same weekend. And NU-NU had to be put in the afternoon time slot. Grumbles all around. In the end I accepted that the best answer was to take an early bus on Saturday with my friend Frankie, who would be attending the game with me, and simply watch Northwestern at a sports bar or Frankie's friend's apartment upon arriving in Boston. This was scuttled when Frankie and his friends wanted Chinese food and his friend didn't have cable.

After a flurry of text messaging and ESPN iPhone app reloading, I made it abundantly clear that not only was Northwestern somehow leading No. 10 Nebraska on the road but that I needed to find some way to watch somehow. Eventually, an online stream filled the void, and while I was wistful that I wasn't there in person or watching at a bar with any NU alums, I was bouncing off the walls most of Saturday night after the Wildcats stunned the Huskers 28-25 in their first ever conference visit to Lincoln. It was a hell of a start to the trip, and all I could think to myself was, "I don't know that this could really get better."

Silly me.

I'll have to do a full and complete update on my weekend trip to Boston when I write the chapter out for the book, but to put it simply, I never thought I could see a football game in person that was everything I could have hoped for and more.

Despite some slight anxiety about where to check our bags or where Frankie and I could sit together (to keep costs down we had bought singles in different sections), we managed to not only find a place to sit, but also find a tremendous view. And despite a first half that was just an extended punt-a-thon that resulted in an utterly shocking 0-0 halftime tie, the second half presented some of the most exciting football I've ever seen period.

Really.

Putting aside even the fact that the Giants won the game, what I got to witness in the final five minutes was akin to when John Elway and Joe Montana had their legendary showdown at Mile High Stadium on Monday Night Football in 1994. It was two of the top quarterbacks in the NFL going toe-to-toe, trading blows to see who would be the last standing when the clock hit zero.

I had relocated to the end zone standing room section for the final few minutes and was in a frenzied crowd both for Brady's remarkable drive to put the Patriots back in front, and Eli's thrilling last second touchdown pass to Jake Ballard in the corner of the end zone, a moment earlier similar to his Super Bowl-winning throw to Plaxico Burress in Arizona -- one of many eerie similarities. Burress may not have been there -- though some tried their best to mimic him -- but the win was still a rich one for a Giants fan.

Oh, and former Giants players, too.

It was in no uncertain terms the greatest game I've ever been witness to in person, one I'll remember until I die or suffer from dementia. As I left the stadium I felt like my feet were nowhere near the ground and I high-fived every Giants fan I passed through the exits. I typically tend to avoid trying to be obnoxious, particularly in the other team's barn, but after a game this good, in a game this hyped, with players this talented -- not to mention the Pats fan who started mocking me after the Patriots took the lead with 1:35 to go -- it was hard to control.

This was about as sweet a win as I've ever witnessed.

Not only was the win so exciting that I was bouncing the entire trip back to New York, but it was so draining that I spent most of Monday just looking wistfully toward my bed in Queens. A potential program-altering win like the one Northwestern had Saturday and a stunning, thrilling, in-person win like the Giants had over New England a day later made this one of the best trips I've taken in a long while -- and maybe ever.

Doubtlessly, it will be a tough one to top. Fortunately, it won't take long for me to see if it can be since I'll be headed west Friday morning for the Giants' upcoming showdown with the 49ers. We'll see if San Francisco has the mettle. Three days and counting.

NFL Picks Week Nine: I'm Reliving The Greatest Night Of My Life Sunday

2011-11-04T12:44:00.000-04:00

My friends, the date was February 3, 2008. Justin Bieber was not yet legal, Michael Jackson was not yet dead and the United States was still under the "leadership" of President George W. Bush. We were young. Naive. We didn't know just how good life could be.

And then it happened.

I sat in my basement on that incredible night with 10 close friends and watched as the New York Giants, the first team I ever cared for, the first love I ever had, the team that had broken my heart with one painful loss after another over the previous 15 years, pulled off the greatest upset in NFL history, against the greatest team in NFL history in the most dramatic fashion humanly possible. Super Bowl XLII was everything I thought it could be and more, and if you read this blog with any frequency you know just how amazing a moment it was for me. Congratulations came in from old friends -- and exes -- ranging as far away as California and Australia.

Any bad memory I ever had related to the Giants was forgotten. Gone was the 1997 postseason collapse against Minnesota. Gone was Emmitt Smith's brilliant division-clinching win in overtime with a separated shoulder. Gone was the brutal postseason drubbing to San Francisco in 1994. Gone was the blown 24-point lead against those same 49ers in the playoffs eight years later. Gone was Jay Feely's three missed field goals against Seattle. Gone was Mathias Kiwanuka's missed sack of Vince Young and a 21-point lead that evaporated in less than 10 minutes. Gone was Super Bowl XXXV.

All of it had been superceded, overwhelmed and replaced by the greatest win in the history of the franchise. The pain was worth it. The joy was that good. There was nothing that could replace the moment that was Eli's thrilling last-minute drive, David Tyree's helmet catch, Plaxico Burress' end zone touchdown. Nothing could replace 18-1.

I bring this all up now because, some of you might have noticed, that there have been a lot of Super Bowl rematches this season. In fact, a shockingly large amount. Of the 45 Super Bowls that have been played 20 of them will be rehashed this year. Given the amount of Super Bowls that have been played, some rematches are inevitable, but 20 is an awful lot. And none of them will be bigger than this Sunday's showdown at Gillette Stadium between the Giants and Patriots.

Sure, I might be viewing that through some rose-colored lenses, but the Giants and Pats are both fighting to maintain leads in their divisions and this will be the very first time the two teams have met in a competitive setting since that wild night three and a half years ago. And perhaps most importantly -- in fact, no perhaps, absolutely most importantly -- I will be there.

That's right, kids. This Sunday, in a game that I have been looking forward to perhaps more than any other over the past four years, I will cross team No. 42 off the list as I take a bus up to Boston -- and a train down to Foxboro -- and see the New England Patriots for the very first time in a game that not only has far-reaching implications and is between two of the marquee franchises of the League, but also one that will rekindle memories of a night that probably defined my sports fandom more than any other. There are simply no words for how excited I am for this game. And not just because the Giants seem to pick up more accolades by the day.

What's more, despite the fact that the Patriots are favored and almost certainly a better team overall, the Giants -- at least in my mind -- are uniquely well-suited to match up well against them. The Steelers gave a blueprint last week for defeating them, which essentially revolved around clogging the middle of the field where the under routes are run by the likes of Wes Welker and putting enough pressure on Tom Brady to disrupt his timing. The Giants happen to feature, according to Brady, the best front four in the League. The Patriots' defense, meanwhile, has given up passing yards and points by the bucketful this season. Eli Manning happens to be having what may be the finest season of his career throwing the ball.

Even people with deep connections to the Pats think a repeat upset is possible.

So yeah, you could say I'm excited -- so excited that I haven't even spent that much time thinking about Jose Reyes' free agency, the Mets changing their outfield walls for next season, the Devils' thrilling shootout win in Philadelphia last night or the fact that the World Series actually ended last week.

Team No. 42 comes off the list in 48 hours in Foxboro, Massachusetts. And I can't wait.

Last week: 5-7-1
Season: 53-56-7

NY Giants (+9) over NEW ENGLAND
NY Jets (+2) over BUFFALO
DALLAS (-12) over Seattle
Atlanta (-8) over INDIANAPOLIS
KANSAS CITY (-5) over Miami
Tampa Bay (+9) over NEW ORLEANS
San Francisco (-4) over WASHINGTON
HOUSTON (-11) over Cleveland
Cincinnati (+3) over TENNESSEE
OAKLAND (-9) over Denver
ARIZONA (-2) over St. Louis
SAN DIEGO (+6) over Green Bay
PITTSBURGH (-4) over Baltimore
PHILADELPHIA (-8) over Chicago

NFL Picks Week Eight: So I Was Watching Baseball Last Night

2011-10-28T12:02:00.001-04:00

Now, before I say anything about whether or not we might have been witness to the greatest baseball game ever played last night, I should note, as I did earlier this week, that I'm pretty partial to this one, and I probably will continue to be so until the Mets win the World Series again. Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the Mets' last World Series championship, and it was curious to note that that World Series ended on October 27, the same date that saw the conclusion of the 2004 World Series and the 2006 World Series. The running vein through those two games is that both of those World Series were the last two to be played in St. Louis.

And as Texas had a chance to clinch the World Series last night, guess where we were?

So that was one of the curious tips that I figured we might be in for the end of the baseball season last night, and as the Rangers pushed the Cardinals down to their last strike in the bottom of the ninth inning, I assumed I was right. But then something crazy happened. Dave Freese hits a two-run triple in the ninth to tie it, Josh Hamilton hits a two-run homer in the 10th to put Texas back on top, Lance Berkman ties the game in the bottom of the 10th, Dave Freese clocks a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 11th, and we'll see you tomorrow night.

As I said earlier, I don't want to necessarily say this was "the greatest baseball game ever played", but seriously, given the stakes, the craziness, the multiple storylines and potential heroes, the fever-pitch-level drama, and the fact that leading up to the ninth inning this was still a pretty damn good game in what has been a great series, and, well, calling this the greatest game ever played wouldn't necessarily be the dumbest thing anyone has said this week.

To put it plainly, this was one of the greatest games I've ever seen in any sport at any time. Granted, that is a large category of events, and I would hesitate to call this the greatest, but sweet lord what a game it was. As I sat there I couldn't help but think at how absurd it was and how I could never imagine a team battling back from the last strike of the World Series in consecutive innings, nor could I imagine seeing a team score in the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th innings to stave off elimination.

That's because it had never happened before. Ever.

Last night's game, albeit with some sloppy defense and tons of questionable moves by Tony LaRussa, who started burning his bullpen in the 4th inning and would have been forced to pitch Chris Carpenter or a position player if the game went on much longer, was one that I will never forget, and not just because Fox chose to use graphics at some very questionable moments. This was a game that was unforgettable for its dramatic moments (Freese's heroics), its clutch, redemptive potentials (Josh Hamilton's brush with Kirk Gibson-like fame on his 10th-inning homer), and the incredible plays that may wind up forgotten (Mike Napoli's pickoff of Matt Holliday at third base). Oh, and let's not forget just how volatile the shifts in momentum were throughout the whole thing.

The only thing that could make it even better and equal the 1986 Game 6 quality would be a flash of pre-emptive celebration, much like the Mets flashing "Congratulations Boston Red Sox" on the scoreboard moments before the game-winning rally.

OH WAIT. WE HAD THAT, TOO.

So basically, this game had everything we as fans could want for plays, questionable tactics, great drama, a thrilling conclusion, potential history and a premature celebration. Really, in the end, what more could you have wanted from a potential clinching game of the World Series? I'm not sure there's anything that could have made this any better and it basically makes me itching for Game 7 to start, you know, right now.

Now, truth be told, I was somewhat disappointed. I'm rooting for Texas to win, which is odd since I generally don't root for anything in Texas, be it a football team or a Presidential candidate, but I would like to see a new team win it all, I'm still bitter about, uh, this, and I think that this can be somewhat avenged by a Texas championship given that the Rangers have 2006 Mets Darren Oliver and Endy Chavez on their roster. Add to that that owner Nolan Ryan's lone World Series title came as a member of the 1969 New York Mets and I have even more incentive. Also, I love Jewtacular second baseman Ian Kinsler.

So yeah, I'm still rooting for Texas, and maybe, just maybe they'll come through tonight. But regardless of who wins, we all have gotten a number of treats in this series. And last night was the biggest one. Hopefully we get one more tonight.

Oh, yeah, there's also football this weekend. Here we go.

Last week: 6-6-1
Season: 48-49-6

NY GIANTS (-10) over Miami
Indianapolis (+9) over TENNESSEE
New Orleans (-14) over ST. LOUIS
CAROLINA (-4) over Minnesota
BALTIMORE (-13) over Arizona
Jacksonville (+10) over HOUSTON
BUFFALO (-6) over Washington
Detroit (-3) over DENVER
PITTSBURGH (+3) over New England
SAN FRANCISCO (-9) over Cleveland
SEATTLE (+1) over Cincinnati
PHILADELPHIA (-4) over Dallas
San Diego (-4) over KANSAS CITY

Enjoy Game 7 everyone.

A Fun Little Experiment I May Never See The Results Of

2011-10-25T14:00:00.000-04:00

If you love sports as a child, and, well, I kind of did, then your lifelong dream is to play for your favorite sports team. If you're a Jewish child like myself, then some might argue that you have a slightly different dream as Arn Tellem did when he told Sports Illustrated in 2002, "Bar mitzvah age is when a Jewish boy learns he has a better chance of owning a professional sports team than of playing for one." But failing the chance of playing for your favorite sports team or of owning it there is always that dream of simply getting to watch your team in person whenever you want.

That is, to say, owning season tickets.

Now, when I was 20 I put myself on the Giants season ticket waiting list and expected to get my number called sometime in 2025. As I wrote about earlier this year, it didn't quite turn out that way, and when given the opportunity to buy in 15 years earlier than I expected, I eventually declined due to the enormous cost and my own muted desire to bother selling all of the tickets. However, New York has tons of things to do what with it being the greatest city in the world and all. Some other cities may lack the comparative excitement.

This brings us to Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Green Bay Packers are the essence of everything that is great in the NFL. Their tradition is rich and fundamentally steered the game for decades, their legacy permeates all aspects of American football right down to the Super Bowl Trophy, and, as I've said before, seeing a game at historic Lambeau Field just might be the most incredible game-day experience in American professional sports. Also, the football team is pretty good these days.

So naturally, any youngster growing up in Wisconsin would hope and pray for the chance to have season tickets one day at Lambeau Field, but if you aren't aware, much like so many other fanciful aspects of childhood, the dreams of getting those tickets any time soon is pretty much nil. The waiting list for Packers season tickets is roughly 55 years depending on who you ask these days, which prompts many parents in Wisconsin to put their newborn children on it so they might get the chance to enjoy season tickets by the time their children are out of school and they can begin dipping into their IRAs.

I always knew the venture took a while, but it didn't quite dawn on me just how long it was until Darren Rovell posted a video on his twitter account yesterday of him being told by the Packers Ticket Office that he was likely to die before he ever got offered season tickets.

I, fortunately, am a full 7 years younger than Rovell -- a fellow Northwestern alum, on a side note. As a result of this I decided to put together the little experiment you all saw before the jump. Let the record show that today, October 25, 2011, I David Kalan did mail in my form to become a member of the waiting list for season tickets to the Green Bay Packers. I don't really have any intentions of buying tickets, but considering the expected wait time right now would put me as a season ticket holder somewhere around 2066, when I'll be 81 years old, I'm curious to see if I can get them before I shuffle off this mortal coil. If I do, I may just purchase them for the hell of it since I'll be rich and could fly to Green Bay on a whim and all.

Of course, as Rovell points out, he joined the list five years ago and is likely without a chance, so that makes him only two years older than I am currently at the time he signed up. We'll see how it goes, but it looks like my hopes are slim unless there are some handsome medical advances. In the end October 25, 2011, could be a date that lives in season ticket infamy.

However, in these times of sports-related woe and want, mainly the NBA locket, horrid play of the Mets and Northwestern not only having a highly disappointing season but exacerbating it Saturday night by getting bitten by the "these uniforms are awful" bug, it's important to remember the good days, and October 25, is certainly one of those.

That, my friends, is because today marks one of the greatest moments in the history of not only one of my favorite teams, but sports itself. That's right, folks. It's the 25th anniversary of Game 6, when the Mets rallied from two runs down and two outs in the bottom of the 10th of what could have been the end of the 1986 World Series, to cap one of the greatest games every played relived here in its entirety on RBI Baseball.

Yes, that might just be the greatest moment in Mets history, and maybe it came as a result of someone making a life-altering mistake, but if history and Curb Your Enthusiasm have taught me anything, it's that Bill Buckner will be fine. In the meantime, on this 25th anniversary of the Amazins' historic triumph, I will cherish the moment -- and I will still cherish it when I'm 81.

I just may get slightly distracted if I also wind up getting Packers tickets in the mail that day.

NFL Picks Week Seven: The Bye Week Rears Its Ugly Head. Again.

2011-10-21T13:13:00.000-04:00

Should I even bother watching football this weekend? It's a plausible question considering the Giants are on their bye and as I've said before, I utterly detest the bye week. But it exists, such is life, and let's be frank. There's pretty much no shot in hell that I won't be dedicating Sunday to watching NFL football even if the Giants aren't going to be playing. I mean, after all, they're guaranteed not to lose, which means it'll be a pleasant Sunday. So at least I've got that going for me. And in addition to that the rest of the weekend isn't half bad considering that Northwestern is playing Penn State Saturday night and there's this other thing going on called the "World Series of professional base ball".

That World Series is starting to shape up like a good one, too, considering that both Games 1 and 2 were decided by one run and Game 2 featured a ninth-inning comeback for the Rangers, the first in a World Series game in 10 years. Even more notable is that the Rangers' rally Thursday night has put them in the driver's seat as far as home field advantage is concerned. Of course, for this to really take impact, they'd have to sweep Games 3 through 5 at Rangers Ballpark at Arlington this week, which I don't really anticipate happening. The first two games have been too close for this series not to come back to St. Louis -- after all, when has a series opening with consecutive one-run games not gone longer than five and therefore given the impression that the series was a total blowout even though every game was obscenely close? That never happens. And fans of the losing team certainly won't hear misplaced, ill-defined bragging for the next decade as a result.

But I digress.

I'll take Texas to win this series because I simply think they're the better team in general, but I also think there's an accountability factor evident in the fact that the entire team spoke to the media after their tough Game 1 loss, while the Cardinals apparently did not do the same after Game 2 slipped away. Perhaps I sympathize with the World Series-covering media, but baseball players make quite a bit of money. Speaking to the media in both good and bad situations is a requirement that comes with said money. So, in other words, I think the leadership and good ethics evident in the Rangers' behavior will lead them to victory.

But that's just a guess.

I may be pretty far off in my ability to properly prognosticate and this is probably due to a few reasons. The first, and most important really, is that predicting sporting events is super duper hard. Let's be honest. You never know what will happen. This is why gambling works. Another reason is that my brain is kind of in a bit of a haze this morning and there are two reasons why that is the case. Primarily, if you take a look at the, uh, gruesome New York Post cover to our left, which I wasn't sure if I should actually publish, the headline makes light of the fact that A-Rod isn't, you know, what he used to be instead of spending more attention on the fact that a terrorizing totalitarian dictator's brutal reign came to an end yesterday. Why? Because by a sheer fluke of happenstance, the rebel soldier who killed Gaddafi was wearing a Yankees hat at the time. Personally I just think that was what was available at the outlet in Sirte.

He's probably a Red Sox fan.

The other reason my head is hazy? I found out this morning from the folks at Deadspin that tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of Pardon the Interruption, a revelation which makes me feel all kinds of old -- even more so than the fact that I think this Columbus Blue Jackets lawn gnome I bought yesterday is totally freakin' awesome. Aren't those items that geriatrics collect? I suppose it falls in line with my bobblehead collection. In any event, PTI's 10th anniversary is just nuts, though I probably should have figured it out considering I remember watching it in Mr. Urban's history classroom back at Millburn High School. On the plus side, ESPN cobbled together a totally sweet montage of sequences from the first episode that include hilarious mentions like about how the Islanders are for real because of Alexei Yashin and Michael Peca. Also, they spend a solid three minutes talking about Northwestern, which makes my heart swoon.

So for all of these reasons, my head is woozy making my second World Series prediction this year the one likely to be the second wrong one. It also means my NFL picks are likely to be wrong, too, but I'm making them anyway. And not for nothing, but this is a particularly fun week because even though the Giants are off we have not one, but two recent Super Bowl rematches, and the winners of those games could not look any better off than their opponents than they already do. Here goes.

Last week: 6-5-2
Season: 42-43-5

CLEVELAND (-3) over Seattle
Atlanta (+4) over DETROIT
Houston (+3) over TENNESSEE
MIAMI (-1) over Denver
NY JETS (+3) over San Diego
TAMPA BAY (+1) over Chicago
CAROLINA (-3) over Washington
OAKLAND (-6) over Kansas City
Pittsburgh (-4) over ARIZONA
St. Louis (+13) over DALLAS
Green Bay (-10) over MINNESOTA
NEW ORLEANS (-14) over Indianapolis
Baltimore (-9) over JACKSONVILLE

Of All The Annoying Losses I've Experienced This Is The Most Annoying

2011-10-18T13:48:00.001-04:00

See everyone, the wording here is key. Annoying doesn't necessarily imply heartbreak or devastation, because as I watched Northwestern's 41-31 loss to Iowa Saturday night, I wasn't heartbroken or devastated or even surprised really.

But I was annoyed.

The reason for this is that this was not a game where Northwestern ever held a lead, nor was it a game where you ever got the feeling they were going to win or on the brink of doing so, unlike last week's loss by the Giants to the Seahawks. No this was a loss of a different sort, because in general the Wildcats never looked like they were going to pull it out. I never convinced myself that it was the case and I never felt overly confident that it would happen.

But holy lord it should have. And here's why.

Yes kids, that's the boxscore for the game, and I don't really expect you all to look through it like I have because it's an irritating and tedious process, but if you actually bother to take the time you'll notice some pretty remarkable discrepancies, and said discrepancies will leave you with the remarkable impression that Northwestern actually didn't just play better than Iowa, but the Wildcats pretty much dominated the Hawkeyes in nearly every metric you can find.

To wit: Northwestern had nearly doubled up Iowa in the following categories by the time the game ended: first downs (29-17), total offensive plays (92-50), and time of possession (38:23-21:37). NU outgained Iowa by 116 yards, had 15 more pass completions than Iowa had passing attempts, converted 16 third downs to Iowa's one third-down conversion and had more scoring opportunities in the red zone. By just about any way you want to look at it, Northwestern had the advantage in just about every facet.

So, uh, how the hell did the Cats lose?

Well, that's a complicated combination of factors, by which I mean, there are really just two factors period. One a fluky mistake and the other utter ineptitude. The first, and probably most impactful event that happened during the course of the game is almost certainly a 98-yard pick six that came at just about the most inopportune time. With Iowa leading 3-0 in the first quarter, Northwestern was driving through the Iowa defense like it was swiss cheese before Dan Persa threw an ill-advised pass which was picked off and brought 98 yards the other way to make the score 10-0.

Granted, this did not make the lead insurmountable, and in fact Northwestern did rally from a 17-0 deficit to tie the game in the third quarter before falling behind again, but the game's complexion was undoubtedly changed from a potential dogfight -- one where the Cats would have the upper hand -- to a 60-minute version of Catch-Up in which NU would never get the upper hand once. Of course, that one play's influence probably could have been obviated if Northwestern didn't have one of the worst pass defenses in all of Division I college football.

See, that can hinder a team, even if its offense is averaging a nice 28-plus points per game. Now, as annoying as this game was I suppose one could argue that Northwestern was due for a flop in Iowa City considering the Cats hadn't lost at Kinnick Stadium in nine years and have had numerous exciting, dramatic wins over the Hawkeyes in the past decade dating from when I was in college all the way to last year's upset of the heavily favored Hawkeyes that cost Persa his Achilles tendon.

But did it have to happen now? When Northwestern has blown double-digit leads in each of its first two Big Ten games and suffered an embarrassing flop against an Army team they should have beaten by about a bajillion points considering the Black Knights had a grand total of one completed pass all day? I never in my life thought I could see a team catch nearly every bad break available and wind up 2-4 and all but done in the conference title race when, just as easily, that team could be 6-0. In many ways, it's remarkable, and probably a plight I know all too well having watched both this team, the Giants and the Mets for all my life. More than anything though, this whole season is starting to feel kind of like this week's game was. Annoying.

Seriously. This game was really, really annoying.

NFL Picks Week Six: So I Took A Little Time Off Because I'm Famous

2011-10-14T14:52:00.000-04:00

Six or so of you out there actually read this junk, and as a result, you might have noticed that I didn't write at all this week, something I'll attribute to the increasingly hectic schedule I live in because of the fame I've gotten as a result of my recent TV interview. This fame is, of course, a total nonsensical figment of my imagination. I am, in fact, not famous at all. Even though I was on TV. If you're looking for an actual cause of the fact that I did not write all week, it probably has far more to do with the fact that I crawled into a hole for a little while after the Giants' irritatingly frustrating loss to the Seattle Seahawks this past Sunday.

Perhaps you didn't see it, but let's look at a few statistics here. For one, the Seahawks have the notable disadvantage of being a West Coast team that endures exhaustion, travel, and the treachery of time zones whenever it comes East. This disadvantage seems particularly pronounced for the Seahawks, so much so that they hadn't won a game in the Eastern time zone in some four years or so before this past Sunday. To boot, the Giants have sort of owned Seattle in the past few years, and by owned I mean, beat the utter crap out of them last year in Seattle even though the 10-6 Giants spent the playoffs at home while the 7-9 Seahawks got to the second round, which, you know, makes a lot of sense.

Add into that that the Giants played pretty poorly through most of the game and caught a few bad breaks, most notably on the fluky interception that sealed victory for Seattle, and it was a bit frustrating. That frustration is only partially salved by the fact that Philadelphia lost again, which is complicating for me because a) it was a golden opportunity for Big Blue to take a three-game edge in the standings and b) if the Bills are actually good, it makes me antsy that the Giants have to play them this week. Those are words I never thought I'd ever say.

But hey, it's cool. Because even though the Giants wasted a totally awesome catch by Victor Cruz and any number of other myriad botched opportunities, sometimes you just don't win. Because come on, the Seahawks are good. After all, they got to play half the game with this guy at quarterback. Just look at that mustache. It's almost as bitchin' as the fact that he only has three career interceptions. IN HIS ENTIRE CAREER. That's almost as small a total as his career touchdown passes. Because, you know, Charlie Whitehurst has three touchdown passes. In his entire career.Three. In nine games. In six seasons. He's played in nine games in six years. And he beat the Giants.

I mean, I don't want to give the impression that I'm bitter. Good for him. But this is a team the Giants should have beaten. Add this in with the fact that Saturday night Northwestern blew a 10-point second half lead at home to Michigan for its third frustrating loss in a row and you get the idea that maybe I didn't really want to think about football this week, which is hard to do since I always think about football.

Dems da breaks.

On the plus side, I did go to my first Devils game of the year, a highly entertaining 2-1 shootout win over the L.A. Kings last night, so there was the bright spot of the week as far as sports go. Also, it was just kind of fun to get back to a hockey game after a layoff of several months, and seeing my Devils look competitive after what was an utterly bizarre Jekyll and Hyde season last year was another positive.

Of course in hockey, it's an awfully long season. In football it isn't quite so lengthy, which is why every loss can be just so antagonizing. But who will lose, you say?

Well, let me tell you. Maybe.

Last week: 7-5-1
Seasons: 36-38-3

NY GIANTS (-3) over Buffalo
ATLANTA (-4) over Carolina
Indianapolis (+7) over CINCINNATI
DETROIT (-5) over San Francisco
GREEN BAY (-15) over St. Louis
Jacksonville (+13) over PITTSBURGH
Philadelphia (-2) over WASHINGTON
OAKLAND (-7) over Cleveland
BALTIMORE (-8) over Houston
NEW ENGLAND (-7) over Dallas
TAMPA BAY (+5) over New Orleans
Minnesota (+3) over CHICAGO
NY JETS (-7) over Miami

And there you go. Happy football, everyone.

NFL Picks Week Five: So Basically I'm A Huge TV Star Now. In Canada.

2011-10-07T13:44:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure how many of you noticed yesterday, but with a doubleheader on VERSUS and a third game in Toronto, the NHL season kicked off yesterday. As many of you have been made aware, I rather like hockey. Quite a bit. So as many of you can imagine, I'm pretty excited about the prospect of seven months of regular season -- and then two months of postseason -- hockey kicking off last night. Of course, the two teams I am partial to, New Jersey and Chicago, don't get the party started until Saturday and tonight respectively, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth watching, and indeed, Vancouver and Pittsburgh delivered a thriller last night that went to a shootout.

Now, those types of thrilling matchups are to be expected, but what is sometimes unexpected is that if you write a story like this, you might get an e-mail from a producer at CTV News asking if you can go on TV to do an interview. Now, I'm not entirely sure how anyone could think I'm really an expert on these things, either hockey or TV, but having never been on TV before, I figured it was worth a go, and so there I was at 3 o'clock yesterday at ABC News headquarters in New York waiting to do a live interview with a Canadian cable news channel to talk about hockey for three minutes.

The whole adventure started off pretty uncomfortably as I went over my answers several times in my head before arriving at the studios and going into not one, but two incorrect lobbies before finally finding my way to the correct studio. Other fun included staring awkwardly off to the side throughout the interview because the white dot they told me to stare at was off center, appearing as stiff as could possibly be partially because I was sitting in an awkwardly high chair and partially because I was nervous as all hell, accidentally calling the blue line the d-line because I watch too much football and having my earpiece that I needed to hear the questions fall out of place 10 seconds into the interview.

Rockin' right?

Otherwise, the whole thing didn't turn out so bad for a first-time television interviewee. If I ever do it again, hopefully it'll run a little smoother, but regardless of how you feel about it, you can see the final result right here.

With my first totally awesome TV interview out of the way, I could give you a long tirade about my predictions for the upcoming NHL season, and I have a few of them, but I also have quite a bit to do today with DVR catchup, NHL Premiere games, two decisive MLB games, the Blackhawks' season opener, exercising and, oh yeah, stuffing myself before preparing to not eat for 24 hours. Also, I've been distracted by my excitement over the master of the Grand Slam Single being named manager of the White Sox.

I can't wait until the first time the White Sox play the Rangers.

In any event, because of all these pressing matters, I have elected to forgo most of my prediction-centric fun so I can fold some laundry -- though I really do like the Sharks to win it all -- and instead I'm going to go straight for the picks for this week's football games, which, let's be honest, is all you people are reading anyway.

Last week: 7-9-0
Season: 29-33-2

NY GIANTS (-10) over Seattle
Philadelphia (-3) over BUFFALO
INDIANAPOLIS (-3) over Kansas City
MINNESOTA (-3) over Arizona
PITTSBURGH (-4) over Tennessee
CAROLINA (+7) over New Orleans
Cincinnati (+3) over JACKSONVILLE
Oakland (+6) over HOUSTON
Tampa Bay (+3) over SAN FRANCISCO
San Diego (-4) over DENVER
NY Jets (+9) over NEW ENGLAND
ATLANTA (+6) over Green Bay
DETROIT (-6) over Chicago

There it is folks. An easy fast to all who are observing.

This Might Be What Christmas Is Like

2011-10-03T00:13:00.002-04:00

Being that I spent this week celebrating Rosh Hashanah, on Friday night I will be observing Yom Kippur, and that today is the 13th anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah, or as I am calling it either my Bar Mitzvahversary or my Bar Mitzvah's Bar Mitzvah, those of you who don't already know me can probably figure out that I am, in fact, not Christian. In reality, I am very, very Jewish -- or at least neurotic -- and as such, I have never celebrated Christmas nor understood the joy that is opening up presents on December 25th.

That said, I have a hard time believing it could feel any better than the random combination of events I saw today on gridirons across America. Those events involved three teams in three cities with remarkable outcomes. For the first one we go to Philadelphia, where the Eagles, playing in front of their home crowd in what was, arguably, a must-win situation for the "Dream Team". Philly responded how you might have expected, by jumping out to a 20-point lead against the lightly-regarded 49ers. And then they did what the Eagles historically have done fairly well and proceeded to give up 21-second-half points to San Francisco, handing them a 24-23 loss and sending Philadelphia to a 1-3 record that leaves them in the NFC East basement.

This was the first great thing to happen to me on Sunday.

Meanwhile, at the same time the Eagles were doing their best New York Mets impression, Dallas had jumped out to stiff 27-3 lead against the undefeated Detroit Lions. I know what you're thinking. "The words 'undefeated Detroit Lions' make no sense to me in that particular order.'" It's ok. That's the natural reaction. But sure enough they are, in fact, undefeated. Regardless, the Cowboys, with a 24-point lead in the second half seemed to have all the cards in their hands, but then they realized that when quarterback Tony Romo didn't have the cards in his hands it was because he was too busy putting the football in the hands of Detroit defenders. Romo threw three picks in the second half, two of which were returned for touchdowns and one of those run back by linebacker Bobby Carpenter who was a groomsman at Romo's wedding. Suddenly there was a game in Dallas, and at that point, Matt Stafford and Calvin Johnson decided to show up and lead the Lions to an eventual 34-30 victory.

As a lifelong Giants fan, it's easy to imagine the relish with which I viewed both of those collapses, but then with the clock striking 4:05 ET, it was time for my team to put on their own display in Glendale, Arizona. University of Phoenix Stadium is a special building for the G-Men in that it's a place they've never lost and have one particularly noteworthy victory, but despite stretches in which the Giants dominated the Cardinals, with time running down in the fourth quarter, it appeared New York was going to go home with a sour taste in its mouth. But then, Big Blue and Eli Manning did something that they have an underrated knack for doing and rallied to score two touchdowns in the final four minutes to erase a 10-point deficit and turn it into a four-point lead. Of course, as I noted to one person, when the Giants scored the eventual winning touchdown with 2:39 remaining I couldn't help but think, "too much time is still on the clock". Fortunately for me and all the Giants fans out there, the defense held strong -- and we may have caught a lucky break or two, also -- and New York held on for a big 31-27 win in the desert that leaves it tied for first place with... the Washington Redskins? Sure, whatever.

So let's recount what happened today, shall we?

The two teams I dislike more than any other in football, maybe in all of professional sports, both blew leads of at least 20 points -- at home no less -- and in the meantime, my favorite team made a rally from 10 points down on the road to grab a tie for first place.

So back to this talk about Christmas. I don't know what Christmas is like really, but it can't feel much better than this, a day of football so good that it almost made me forget Northwestern blew an 18-point lead against rival Illinois yesterday. Almost. But even given that, the Sunday I experienced cannot be soured, particularly because it bookends a highly successful weekend that I termed "football-palooza" and event celebrated with several, but most prominently one Maggie Hilliard, who was eagerly treated to copious beer and an enormously impressive win by her Wisconsin Badgers. And did I even mention that there was non-football-centric excellence to make the day even better?

The other bookend? Well, that came Friday night, or more accurately Saturday morning, when, as I have previously mentioned multiple times, Geelong took the opening bounce against Collingwood in the 2011 AFL Grand Final. None of you really care about this quite like I do, but if you know me, you know it happened, and considering that I surprisingly bumped into a crowd of rowdy Collingwood fans before the game on the subway Friday night, you know that I'm not the only person who cared. And as such, you're probably wondering, "Dave, tell me, did Geelong win the Grand Final?"

Uh, yeah, they fucking did.

In the end the game seemed a bit of a blowout, but as the highlights of the full game indicate, it was actually a pretty tense nailbiter for the first three quarters. But then the Cats, as great teams do, imposed their will on the Magpies and brought home their third championship in five years.

So yeah. It's been a pretty good weekend, and, I suppose, a nice prelude to my Bar Mitzvah's Bar Mitzvah. If you wish to participate in my Bar Mitzvah's acceptance into manhood in the eyes of the almighty, checks can be written out to David Kalan. If you aren't willing to play that part, you can sign this petition and we might all be better off.

Elliott Kalan: Tomorrow's Andy Rooney Today! - watch more funny videos

Either way, try to enjoy this past weekend of football as much as I did. Then again, really, I'm not sure that's possible.

NFL Picks Week Four: I'm Oh So Excited For The Football Down Under

2011-09-30T13:32:00.000-04:00

I have spent much of the last 48 hours trying to come to grips with the fact at 10 p.m. Wednesday night I resigned myself to Boston and Atlanta's postseason future and wound up missing, arguably, the single most exciting, dramatic night baseball has ever seen. For someone who utterly loves baseball, this is a tough pill to swallow. I've managed to survive somehow and I attribute this to a few factors.

A) Fortunately, as exciting as this was, it wasn't the World Series. So at least I didn't miss out on seeing the final champion-crowning moment, something I prize each season.

B) Northwestern is back this weekend, with a little something extra, against No. 1 rival Illinois, which I will watch as part of a football-palooza with Wisconsin-Nebraska Saturday night.

C) I'm still pretty jazzed by the Giants' win over the Eagles on Sunday, and excited for their game in Arizona on Sunday.

D) Perhaps most importantly, there's one more football game Friday night, well Saturday morning technically, that I'm more than a wee bit excited for even if none of you care.

Yeah, that's right, kids. A mere 14 time zones ahead of New York City, the Geelong Cats and the Collingwood Magpies are about to go head to head in the 2011 AFL Grand Final, the championship match of Australian Rules Football. Now, my adoration developed over the past three years for Aussie Rules Football is well documented here, as is my particular affection for Geelong FC. But since I started this blog in January of 2010, a mere 20 months or so ago, Geelong has endured an almost unbearable championship drought. I say unbearable only because I'm in my infancy with the game and I may need a championship inspiration to keep my interest.

Then again, knowing that I kept up with Southampton FC for the past decade despite a financial collapse and not one, but two relegations, perhaps I'm stronger than I think.

Regardless, Geelong is taking on the defending-champion Pies in search of their third premiership in five seasons, and I can't wait to get the party underway. The Cats are coming off of a fairly impressive win in the Preliminary Final last weekend against West Coast, and seemed primed to take it to Collingwood tonight, a team that lost just twice this season.

Both of those losses, however, came against Geelong.

Why else should you all be rooting for my Cats tonight? Well for one, I like them. That's a pretty good reason all things considered. In addition to that, this season was widely expected to be something of a rebuilding campaign after the offseason defection of star Gary Ablett Jr. and two-time premiership coach Mark Thompson. The current head coach, Chris Scott, looks so young that I could be his father, and there's a certain amount of adorability, his twin brother Brad Scott is also a head coach, manning the post for the North Melbourne FC.

Given the dramatic change many talking heads were skeptical that Geelong could reach similar heights as the season began, and I myself was worried. Now, however, some talking heads are singing a different tune. The fact that the team has managed to come this far given those obstacles is an inspiring feat. Add into that that Geelong's current run of success comes on the heels of snapping a nearly half-century championship drought in 2007, and that the team is a lovable small market club taking on a team that is essentially the most disliked in the entire competition and, well, you get it. Geelong is the feel-good favorite and the fun team to watch.

And watch is the key word here, because you can actually watch this game even if you think it's a mystery showdown in a country half way around the world with no media presence in the United States, and that's because ESPN 2 will be broadcasting the game live tonight at 12:30 a.m. Now, I don't really expect most of you, or any, really, to bother staying home on a Friday night to watch the bonanza, but that's exactly what I'll be doing with my Geelong jersey on. And I. Can't. Wait.

Anyone who actually wishes to join me is welcome.

I'm sure none of you will however, because a) it's on pretty late and b) there's a postseason tournament in America you're probably far more interested in as Major League Baseball's 2011 postseason starts off at 4 p.m. today. Given that the Mets' ineptitude has left me mostly checked out over the past four weeks, I won't bother you with my ill-founded logic for why I'm picking who I'm picking as I make my playoff predictions. You can take them all with a grain of salt, but here they are regardless.

American League
ALDS
Tigers over Yankees in four
Rangers over Rays in five
ALCS
Tigers over Rangers in seven with Verlander pitching three times.

National League
NLDS
Philadelphia over St. Louis in three
Milwaukee over Arizona in four
NLCS
Milwaukee over Philadelphia in seven

2011 World Series
Milwaukee over Detroit in six

Yep, that's right. I'm taking the world famous Seattle Pilots to win their first ever World Championship this fall. This is mostly because a) the Brewers are lovable and b) I have a number of friends from Wisconsin. Go Crew.

And now that your attention span is completely spent, it's time for this week's NFL picks.

Last week: 9-7-0
Season: 22-24-2

NY Giants (-1) over ARIZONA
carolina (+7) over CHICAGO
Buffalo (-3) over CINCINNATI
CLEVELAND (-1) over Tennessee
Detroit (+1) over DALLAS
Minnesota (-2) over KANSAS CITY
ST. LOUIS (even) over Washington
PHILADELPHIA (even) over San Francisco
New Orleans (-8) over JACKSONVILLE
Pittsburgh (+4) over HOUSTON
Atlanta (-6) over SEATTLE
GREEN BAY (-13) over Denver
New Orleans (-5) over OAKLAND
SAN DIEGO (-9) over Miami
NY Jets (+4) over BALTIMORE
TAMPA BAY (-10) over Indianapolis

Enjoy the weekend, everyone. Go Cats.

The Best Playoff Race I'm Not Paying Attention To

2011-09-28T13:27:00.000-04:00

Last night a friend was talking to me online and hanging on every pitch of the Red Sox game against the Orioles, with great anxiety and discomfort. When this happened an odd feeling struck me as I, as a Mets fan, haven't felt this feeling in three seasons, and I miss it. There has been nothing whatsoever meaningful about the Mets after August 15th since Shea Stadium existed and as a result, I have had a tendency to be largely checked out of baseball by the time September 30th rolls around. That doesn't mean I don't pay some attention. I check the scores and watch the postseason enthusiastically every fall, but I have probably only watched two Mets games in the past six weeks and as a result had almost no idea until 48 hours ago that two things were happening. Given how much I love baseball this might be the second most unbelievable conclusion I've come to this week.

A) The Braves and Cardinals and the Rays and Red Sox are wrapped up in two of the wildest postseason races in modern baseball history.

B) Today is the last day of the regular season. On a Wednesday. Huh?

The peculiarity of baseball's regular season ending in the middle of a week as opposed to its traditional Sunday end date is a query for another time, but this all means that tonight we're going to be set for an absolutely crazy night of baseball score watching which I will probably miss out on because I'm going to be eating apples and honey instead. But still this is a fun, fun experience that I'm pretty much stunned I haven't been paying close attention to.

For what it's worth the Red Sox' collapse should, it come all the way through, could be on par with some of the greatest collapses in baseball history, a pain that my friend Katie informed I could not possible understand last night before I pointed out that I have experienced exactly that. Twice. Still, it's worth noting that the Sox, apparently, have been some 7 games or so worse this September than the Mets were in 2007, an almost unthinkable feat, while the Rays have managed to blaze through the AL East this month and tie the Sawx going into the final day. It'd be an amazing feat in and of itself, but is doubled in remarkability by the fact that the Cardinals are doing the exact same thing in the NL with one game to play.

The Mets, meanwhile, have other plans.

Even if I won't be watching every pitch tonight, I will be checking scores eagerly to see who comes out on top in the AL and if the hated Braves can complete their collapse in the senior circuit. I still will wonder how I wasn't paying attention however, and if I can come up with any reason why it's probably because football season started and the Giants maybe, just maybe, might not be as bad as all the naysayers seemed to think as evidenced by their tremendous win over the Eagles this past Sunday at the Linc.

In an unexpected twist, Eli Manning, who I keep telling people is far better than he gets credit for, was named the NFC offensive player of the week, while the Eagles, the Dream Team, have suddenly found themselves with an injury-prone star quarterback and a record that puts them in the NFC East cellar. Granted it's only the fourth week of the NFL season and the Eagles, surely will turn the ship around from 1-2 and make their way toward an NFC East title or at the very least a Wild Card berth, but this is a team that never expected to have two losses so early, and certainly not one to the banged up Giants.

I ain't complaining, and while I don't think the Eagles will be shut out of the postseason a la the overhyped Cowboys last year, I do think they were indeed overhyped and that their enormous trophy case will remain about as full this winter as it was last. The Giants may not necessarily be adding to theirs, but they just might be more competitive this season than a lot of my friends were saying.

That said I wouldn't mind having another football team in a championship game this season, and I say "another" because the one I follow in Australia just happens to be playing in the biggest game of all this Friday night/Saturday morning as Geelong is set to take on Collingwood in the 2011 Grand Final. There are several stories of intrigue ahead of the game, namely the big concerns over Stevie Johnson's knee, Collingwood's attempt to repeat, and the bizarrely intertwined history between these foes over the past few seasons. Indeed it was Collingwood, that Geelong barely got past in the 2007 Preliminary Final en route to the Cats' first championship in 44 years. Last season, Collingwood topped Geelong in the Preliminary Final on the way to its first title in 20 years.

This year many seemed to believe the Magpies were on a crash course with their second Premiership in a row, and indeed they have looked phenomenal, losing just two matches all season. But it's worth noting that both of those losses, including a tight thriller in the 8th week, and an utter blowout in the season finale, were to Geelong. The Cats have typically played second banana to the Pies all season, but they've gone toe to toe it's Geelong that's shined, and that, in my American thinking, should give them the mental edge heading into the Grand Final on Saturday, no? If as an American football fan, you must have a comparison to something you understand, it's eerily reminiscent of the relationship between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Tennessee Titans in 1999.

You all may have to hear more about this on Friday before the game itself happens, but to put it mildly, I'm excited. Frankly, more so than I am about the end of baseball's regular season tonight. If anyone's free Friday night at 12:30 a.m., you're more than welcome to join me on my couch.

NFL Picks Week Three: See, Marlins? This Is How You Fucking Do It

2011-09-23T12:22:00.000-04:00

Surely five or six of you read my long screed yesterday about the disastrous new Marlins logo that was leaked this week. It is with cognizance of that catastrophe that we get a breath of fresh air as another leaked logo came out today that is about as brilliant a recognition of a team's roots as the Marlins switch isn't. This morning it got out that the Toronto Blue Jays, who have struggled over the past decade or so with forging a brand identity (just look at all the different word marks), are going to be returning to a slightly modified version of their classic pre-1997 logo. It hasn't yet been announced what the uniforms will look like -- or even that this is in fact the new logo, though there are strong indications that it is -- but with a return to this slightly more stylized version of the Jays' old logo, one would have to assume that some variation on their early 1990s home unis and maybe the 1980s powder blue road unis that were brought back as alternates a few seasons ago might be in the mix.

Unlike our friends in Florida, who, really, can never seem to get anything important right anyway, this is a tremendous job by the Jays to bring back a logo that is not only aesthetically pleasing and universally loved, but also brings with it the weight of history and accomplishment as it presided over Toronto's two World Series Championships in the early 1990s. This is how it's supposed to be done.

On a side note, Joe Carter's walk-off home run to win the 1993 World Series, since you were wondering, is the earliest baseball moment that I vividly remember watching.

A return to this logo just might be the most exciting thing to happen in the Rogers Centre (nee SkyDome) since Carter touched 'em all, although there have been some other highlights like Jose Bautista's power stroke, Roger Clemens' Cy Young seasons or the numerous times some couple "accidentally" had sex in the outfield hotel without realizing they could be seen inflagrante delicto by about 55,000 people, which are artfully recounted, along with whether or not the Jays actually won the game, here.

This is phenomenal news on the whole and it brings with it even more phenomenal news in that we're almost at the weekend, and that means what? Yeah. Football. Now, granted, this Saturday's college bonanza will be less exciting for me than usual, because a) I'll be working and b) Northwestern has its bye this week. Now that could be good news considering it gives an extra week of rest before what appears to, at long last, be the impending return of quarterback Dan Persa, but it also allows Northwestern to stew for a bit and think about what it did last weekend when my highly anticipated Sailgate to West Point went, uh, not as planned.

Sure the Wildcats took a tremendous blow to their season and reputation when they took a stunning loss at Army to a team they should have probably beaten by two touchdowns or so, a loss I would place entirely on the shoulders of defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz who refused to move away from the 3-4 and start blitzing against Army's triple option even if they gained 200 yards on the ground in the first half. Seriously, when a team is 1-for-7 passing for the entire game I think you ought to clog the line of scrimmage and make the team throw the ball.

But I guess I'm not a coach for a reason or something.

In any event, the experience was still great despite the unfortunate result. For starters, you know, I got to drink on a boat at 8 a.m., and there really is not breakfast better than an everything bagel with cream cheese and a Blue Moon 22 oz. tall boy. The day also brought a splendid infusion of purple to Army's campus, an up close and personal look at the young cadets in action during roll call, one of the most bucolic settings for a sporting venue I've ever seen in Michie Stadium, which sits in the middle of the gorgeous, reservoir-like West Point campus, and perhaps most importantly, the glorious return of Shea Stadium. It's back!

All in all, it was a great day and a great experience, even if it left a sour taste in the Wildcats' mouths for the next two weeks. And while I don't get to watch these Cats this weekend, at least I get to see my other Cats in what is really the biggest football match of the weekend. AUSSIE RULES FOOTBALL ALERT. After watching Collingwood rally past Hawthorn in a ripper in this morning's Preliminary Final, Geelong will take on West Coast at 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning ET for the right to face the Magpies in the 2011 AFL Grand Final, which is next Saturday. Collingwood's comeback victory was so draining that even coach Mick Malthouse, who would have been coaching his last game had the Pies not rallied, was unbelievably emotional at the game's conclusion.

Of course, I'm not fan of the Pies. I'm a Geelong supporter, which I admit is somewhat odd since two of my favorite teams are nicknamed "the Cats", an animal I'm highly allergic to. Regardless, I will be pretty excited for the game tonight, and while the Cats are considered favorites to get past the West Coast Eagles and get to their fourth Grand Final in five years, one can never take these things for granted. I certainly won't having too many years of rooting for the Mets and Giants in my system.

And speaking of the Giants, they play this weekend, too, in a pretty big divisional showdown with the Eagles who may or may not be starting Mike Vick, depending on who you ask. While it almost certainly would be better for the Giants not to face Vick, if he sits out he will likely be replaced by Mike Kafka, who looked admirable in the few minutes he played last week against Atlanta and also, you know, is a graduate of Northwestern University.

I have been asked by many friends if my loyalties would be torn seeing my college quarterback against my professional team. The answer to this is, of course, absolutely not. I heart Kafka and wish him nothing but the best -- so long as it's in another uniform -- but let's be serious. The Giants are my team and have been for two decades. My loyalties aren't going to be divided in any sense, even if it could be a bit awkward if he engineers so thrilling victory for the Iggles. Heaven forbid. Still, I will not be confused or uncomfortable.

I mean, come on. He's no Brett Basanez.

Of course Basanez isn't playing professional football right now. He'll be watching like the rest of us. And when he does watch, here's who I think will win.

Last week: 8-8-0
Season: 13-17-2

NY Giants (+5) over PHILADELPHIA
New England (-9) over BUFFALO
CINCINNATI (-3) over San Francisco
CLEVELAND (-3) over Miami
Denver (+7) over TENNESSEE
MINNESOTA (+4) over Detroit
NEW ORLEANS (-4) over Houston
CAROLINA (-4) over Jacksonville
NY Jets (-4) over OAKLAND
Baltimore (-4) over ST. LOUIS
SAN DIEGO (-15) over Kansas City
Green Bay (-4) over CHICAGO
SEATTLE (+4) over Arizona
Atlanta (+1) over TAMPA BAY
Pittsburgh (-11) over INDIANAPOLIS
DALLAS (even) over Washington

There you have it. Have a good weekend everyone. Go Cats.

Dear God, the Marlins Can't Possibly Be Serious Can They?

2011-09-22T13:46:00.000-04:00

Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy the exploits of Crockett and Tubbs as much as the next guy, and I'm sure those delightful pastels were really in in Miami when it was 1983, but I don't think I'm alone in thinking the Florida -- soon to be Miami -- Marlins may have overreached a wee bit when they developed the new logo that was leaked this week. The Marlins have been fairly mum on whether or not the logo is real and all will be answered in about six weeks when the team unveils its new branding strategy on Nov. 11 in preparation for the franchise's move into its new baseball only facility next season. I can understand wanting to make a bruhaha over the whole thing. After all, a new ballpark means a new era, and considering the Marlins' usually quite tepid attendance they really can't be faulted for wanting to rebrand the organization and start anew.

But let's look at a few things. Firstly, let's look at that new logo. You may say that the first thing you notice is the new color scheme or the interesting use of perspective in its color shading or the subtle marlin-esque shape emanating from the top left. But really, the first thing you're likely to notice, above all else, is that it is terrible. Like, seriously. It's really really bad, and if you glance at the official logo for the new ballpark, which has the same blue, orange and yellow, it seems fairly clear that the new Marlins logo is probably real because of the cross-branding opportunity.

Here's the next thing. The current Marlins logo, is actually, one of the better ones in Major League Baseball in my opinion -- at least among teams that came into existence in the last 30 years. It gets the point across, it's not overly complex, the colors make sense for a franchise named after a fish in southern Florida, and the marlin itself actually looks pretty dignified. Even the word mark is solid. There's no reason to dramatically change any of this. Logic would seem to dictate that the only thing you'd really need to do is replace the F with an M, kind of like this. See? Problem solved. The uniforms themselves are also pretty solid, considering the color scheme and the eloquent design.

Lastly, however, and most importantly, while there have been minor tweaks, like the addition of black as a major accent or even dominant color in the early 2000s, the uniforms have been relatively unchanged in the franchise's existence. And this is worth noting because in the franchise's existence the Marlins have won two fucking World Series Championships. The owners may think a rebranding is necessary to signify the new ballpark, but your old uniforms have history to them. If you have a history of winning in a certain design, you don't make changes, or at least not ones this drastic. See the Yankees, Red Sox or Cardinals if you need any clarification.

So yeah. This is a bonehead move. Like big time. I'm not a Marlins fan and even I'm offended by the assault on our sense that one commentator claimed looked like a child birthed from the 1980s Houston Astros and Denver Nuggets. The Marlins organization has six weeks to come to its senses. Here's hoping they do.

In other far more positive news, I received tickets to the next trip on my schedule yesterday, and it's the one I've been most excited for all year and that I've had planned on the books for about four years at this point. The rotation of the NFL's schedule makes it easy to know when the Giants' AFC road games will be happening. For instance, I informed my friend Susie in Kansas City a full two years before the Giants visited the Chiefs that in 2009 I'd be coming to town. This is also how I know that next year I will be going to Baltimore and Cincinnati to see the Giants play the Ravens and Bengals. And it's how I knew several years ago that this season the Giants would be visiting the New England Patriots. And come hell or high water, I was going to be there.

So it was with great anticipation and excitement yesterday that my tickets for the November 6 showdown arrived. I haven't yet determined how I will be getting up to Foxboro -- these are details that can work themselves out later -- but I do know I will be there and in the words of Bart Scott, can't wait. The best part about all of this, perhaps, is that after anticipating that I had paid a staunch $30-40 markup on the tickets, but lo and behold, they arrived to reveal that I had, in fact, paid face value.

It's the little victories in life.

And so I will be in Foxboro, Massachusetts for the first meaningful game between the Giants and Patriots since the greatest night of my life, and it's once again shaping as if the Pats will be the heavy favorites. Maybe, just maybe, once again the Giants will come through with a massive upset.

Or maybe not.

I guess you can't have everything in life. We'll just have to wait and see. Fortunately, however, as a Giants fan, I do know this: At least we'll always have a decent logo.

NFL Picks Week Two: Set An Open Course For The Virgin Seas

2011-09-16T11:17:00.004-04:00

That's right people. I'm breaking out my finest Styx album (That's Edge of the Century, in case you're wondering) to tell you that this weekend, or more specifically, tomorrow, I am sailing away. (Get it?). Of course, I'm not sailing away along the river Styx nor am I going to be gone for any extended period of time -- it's only about 14 hours that I'll be gone and only about six of them will be set at sea, but I will be sailing. And tailgating.

One might just say that I'll be sailgating. Anchors aweigh.

For the two of you who read this that don't really see what I'm getting at, I will spell it out pretty clearly. I will be part of a four-boat, 600-person armada that is drunkenly sailing up the Hudson River tomorrow morning as we go to see our beloved Northwestern Wildcats meet the Black Knights of Army. This isn't part of the professional sports team journey that this blog is supposed to chronicle -- and really doesn't -- but it's one of the trips I have been most excited for, well, probably ever. In fact, the only thing I can think of that comes close in excitement and novelty for me is probably last November's trip to see the Wildcats at Wrigley Field in Chicago, which had a multitude of exciting aspects.

This one is a little different, it's really just a brief day trip, but the sheer novelty of it all, a floating tailgate up the hudson to see a game at what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful settings in college football -- that would be Michie Stadium -- is just too cool not to be excited about. Wouldn't you be? I'm pretty pumped up, even if I am about as sour on college athletics as can be after reading this masterpiece of investigative sports journalism, but it's going to be fun, damnitt. It might just be the second greatest thing I've heard of in the past few months, (or the third), and for that I can thank the wise people over at Lake The Posts for putting the whole thing together.

I'm going to bring a camera along with several cases of beer to make sure I have some rational way to document this whole thing -- my memories may get hazy after a while -- but out of respect for our armed forces I'll probably try to maintain a stable sense of decorum between when we arrive and when the cadets march in three hours later. It should be a grand time had by all and I'll try my best to document and report the goings on to you next week, as well as more details about the Wildcats (hopefully) 3-0 start even without starting quarterback and Heisman hopeful Dan Persa, who still hasn't been announced as able to play on Saturday. Of course, in the non-conference schedule, why risk it.

Because of all that, that is easily the most exciting football game of the weekend for me across all platforms, though I suppose that's only because the Giants don't play til Monday. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to be all about the NFL football on Sunday. Because I totally am.

Speaking of which, I still have picks to make. Hopefully they'll be better than last week's. And here they are.

Last week: 5-9-2
Season: 5-9-2

BUFFALO (-4) over Oakland
DETROIT (-9) over Kansas City
Baltimore (-7) over TENNESSEE
INDIANAPOLIS (+3) over Cleveland
Tampa Bay (+3) over MINNESOTA
NEW ORLEANS (-7) over Chicago
NY JETS (-9) over Jacksonville
PITTSBURGH (-15) over Seattle
WASHINGTON (-4) over Arizona
Green Bay (-10) over CAROLINA
Dallas (-4) over SAN FRANCISCO
Cincinnati (+4) over DENVER
Houston (-3) over MIAMI
San Diego (+7) over NEW ENGLAND
ATLANTA (+3) over Philadelphia
NY GIANTS (-6) over St. Louis

There you go. Enjoy the football everyone. Time to hit the high seas.

Wait, They Were Still Technically In The Race?

2011-09-15T12:54:00.000-04:00

I know what you're thinking. I was shocked, too. Yesterday afternoon I received what would otherwise have been the potentially devastating news that the 2011 New York Mets were officially eliminated from playoff contention.

It's ok. We know it hurts. Let it out.

Ok, I'm good. And actually, like most of the human race, I had no idea that the Mets technically could still have made the playoffs. Of course, we have to use the term "technically" pretty prominently here, considering making the postseason would have required the Mets to run the table for the rest of September, and for the Braves and about five other teams to lose out, which -- and I'm not doctor -- probably isn't going to happen. Just a guess.

And so we write the final chapter of a year that started with so much promise and so many possibilities. So much promise, in fact, that at the time of its beginning I actually forgot pitchers and catchers had reported that week. Yes, it was an ambivalent six months or so in Flushing this season, and right on cue the Mets celebrated their early offseason with their fifth-straight loss, a 2-0 whuppin' from the world beaters that are the Washington Nationals, and the news that the best person the pitching staff, for obvious reasons now that any chance of a playoff berth has been snuffed out, will go the entire year without stepping on the mound at Citi Field.

This is all a pretty tragic development considering there was so much uplift Tuesday when the Mets hosted Star Wars night at Citi Field, a tremendous display of cancer-fighting nerdery. That the good vibes coming from wookies and storm troopers traipsing around the stadium should be sullied by the Amazins' tremendous ineptitude is a shame for everyone who lovingly wears the blue and orange. On the plus side, we can get cheered up slightly by the fact that Dr. Sean McNamara was walking around the field for some reason before the game. I imagine he was there to help the Mets players change their appearances in case they were too embarrassed to be seen with the uniform on.

But even in this torrent of the Mets letting down their fans, Dr. McNamara and George Lucas in one week is the optimism that comes with a new season, and almost like clock in hopes of distracting dismayed Mets fans from the fact that one season had just ended, Major League Baseball released its preliminary 2012 schedule yesterday morning in a flurry of team-specific e-mails which, as someone who has bought tickets from multiple teams I got about six of them. Of course I was only interested in one of them, and if there's one great way to stop thinking about the 2011 season, the first on in years in which I didn't see the Mets somewhere on the road, it's figuring out how to get back on the horse and see what city I want to follow them to in 2012.

So, people, where am I going?

As we found last year, the plans don't always come through. This season's schedule included a trip to Texas that I was rather keen on attending, but that, alas, did not come to pass. Apparently it's difficult to convince someone to sit outside for three hours in Texas in June. I can't imagine why.

This season has far fewer moments of intrigue for me on the Mets road schedule, namely it does not include the rather convenient double of Arizona to San Diego, which I was tentatively planning on for this season, nor does it include trips to Pittsburgh or Colorado at convenient times. One of just two out of town series against the AL is in Tampa Bay, a place I've already attended a game in and am in no way inclined to make a return trip just yet.

But there is one semi-jewel on the slate in the form of a mid-May weekend jaunt to Toronto where the Mets will face off with the Blue Jays in a rare visit to the Rogers Centre (nee Skydome). I have decided that in no uncertain terms this will be the road series for the Mets that I work feverishly to attend, and there are plethora of reasons as to why it's an ideal spot.

For one, I have never actually been to Toronto. And I hear it's one hell of a place. For another, it's in mid-May when the weather should be gorgeous, even in Canada. In addition to all of that, Toronto, in case you hadn't heard, is home to the Hockey Hall of Fame, which I've always wanted to go to. So for all those reasons and more, including a need to continuing progressing this silly journey of mine, I've staked out Toronto as the place I plan on making a baseball trip to in 2012.

But it is important to note that 2011 is not yet over. In fact, really, 2011 is just getting started. There are several trips remaining to be made, including a big one this weekend that I'll get into tomorrow, but it is really November when the fun starts. Not everything is set in stone yet, but the end of the season is expected to take me to New England for the Giants and Patriots on Nov. 6 before I head out to San Francisco the next weekend to see the Sharks and 49ers. In addition to that I'm still toying with trips to either New Orleans or to Denver that could leave me with as many as six pro teams not yet knocked off the list and yet to be seen this calendar year.

And to make things even more exciting, my tickets to the Sharks-Coyotes game at HP Pavilion on November 12 arrived this week, with pretty sweet stubs featuring the immortal Ryane Clowe. If you know your hockey, he's actually pretty good.

So now I begin the process of counting down the days until I hit the road again for another exciting round of sports ventures. The fun, and the exhaustive planning, never really stops.

Unless it involves the Mets. In that case it pretty much stops about this time every year.

Week One: Yes, Virginia, There Is A Season

2011-09-08T00:16:00.001-04:00

Unless you live under a rock, you're well aware that there was way too much angst this season about a lockout canceling the NFL season. When I say too much angst, I don't mean because angst would be an inappropriate response. To be sure, angst, is a mild way of putting how the sports world would react if the NFL season were actually imperiled, but to any rational, thinking person, there was never really a chance that this would happen. The differences in CBA negotiation were not big enough to warrant it, and there was simply too much money to be lost if the sides didn't make an agreement.

I haven't read the agreement yet, nor will I, truth be told, but I'm fairly certain there's a clause in it to prevent the kinds of uniforms Boise State, Georgia and (holy crap on a stick) Maryland wore this weekend. Now, Boise State's giant Bronco helmet logo actually isn't half bad, and these duds weren't nearly as horrendous as the weird gray and blue ones they wore against Tetris-ified Virginia Tech last year. As for the Terps, I happen to actually be a huge fan of the Maryland state flag and love that it's been subtly incorporated into the uniforms of the Ravens and Orioles.

But the key word is subtle. These things are the very definition of eyesore, and depending on who you talk to, may or may not have been stolen from a Baltimore-based roller derby team.

As I've said before, this is one of about a thousand reasons that college football, love it as much as I do, just will not measure up to the NFL for me. Uniform stability is right up there with quality of play, quality of organization and reasonable means of determining a champion. And so, given my love for the NFL, it is with great joy that I get ready to watch some very exciting football this weekend. No, not just Friday morning's Qualifying Final between Geelong and Hawthorn -- though that will be awesome -- but professional American football, which kicks off Obama style on Thursday night with Green Bay and New Orleans and then reaches a high point for me Sunday afternoon when the New York Gia play the Redskins on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I'm calling them the New York Gia because half the team, apparently, is already injured.

Despite those injuries, I will be making may plans to see the Gia this season on multiple occasions. I've already got my flight booked to San Francisco, am working on going up to New England to see Big Blue face the Pats, and am very seriously considering trying to find someone to go to New Orleans with me to see the Giants play the Saints as it's a Monday night game and those are far easier for me to take off work for than the Sunday variety.

Until then, however, I'll just be watching on TV. Again I will be picking games each week against the spread in my inevitably failed quest to beat Vegas -- it's a good thing I don't actually bet on sports -- but before I tell you who will win this week I suppose I need to tell you who's going to win in general.

And with that in mind, it's time for my almost certain to be wrong 2011 NFL Season Predictions.

AFC East

1. NY Jets - This is by far my most unreasonable pick of the season, but I think New England is overrated and the Jets tend to overachieve under Ryan. 12-4.
2. New England - But don't underestimate Darth Belichick. I'm sure he'd have something up his sleeves if he wore any. 10-6.
3. Buffalo - The new uniforms are an incredible upgrade. Step 2 is upgrading the team. 5-11.
4. Miami - These boys can't swim. 4-12.

AFC North

1. Pittsburgh - Honestly, who wants to disagree with me on this? Yeah, I didn't think so. 13-3.
2. Baltimore - I say this a lot, but people probably won't give the Ravens their due for being as dominant as they have been for the past decade if they don't win another championship. 11-5.
3. Cleveland - The Peyton Hillis Speedwagon just keeps on rolling. Right to a sixth win. 6-10.
4. Cincinnati - No quarterback? No problem. Oh wait, lots of problems. At least until Andy Dalton grows up. 1-15.

AFC South

1. Houston - Oh my lord, it's finally here. I don't know what to say. Really. 11-5.
2. Indianapolis - This team is so well-rounded and complete, and they never fail to make their presence felt. Huh? His neck is sore? Are you sure? 7-9.
3. Tennessee - Matt Hasselbeck can really add another dimension to this offense if he doesn't throw his back out while moving his walker. 6-10.
4. Jacksonville - Oh man. I've got a great idea. Let's tell the coach that his future is on the line this season if he doesn't make the playoffs. And then, let's cut his starting quarterback five days before the season. 4-12.

AFC West

1. San Diego - Fact: The Chargers had the No. 1 offense in the NFL last season. Fact: The Chargers had the No. 1 defense in the NFL last season. Fact: The Chargers missed the playoffs last season. So... regression to the mean, right? 12-4.
2. Kansas City - You have to expect the Chiefs to come back a little from last year, but they're poised to take over this division when San Diego's window closes. 8-8.
3. Denver - Go ahead. Bet against Kyle Orton. He'll win more games than you expect. Not many more, but definitely, like, one more. 6-10.
4. Oakland - So this is some fun, the Raiders were the only team in the League to go undefeated in their division last season, a feat that will be tough to duplicate. Against the rest of the League the Raiders won... twice. That, too, will be tough to duplicate. 5-11.

NFC East

1. Philadelphia - IT'S A DREAM TEAM. But definitely one of those dreams where you wake up right before finding out who the murderer is or that hot girl in your apartment building takes her clothes off. 11-5.
2. NY Gia - Get it? Because they're injured! Whatever, I'm still optimistically blinded by my fandom. And so are most pundits if you look at the predictions. 10-6.
3. Dallas - Now that the Cowboys aren't hosting the Super Bowl anymore, do you think people might stop considering them Super Bowl contenders? 7-9.
4. Washington - I'm pretty sure every defensive player in the NFC East got aroused when they found out Rex Grossman was the starting quarterback. 4-12.

NFC North
1. Green Bay - Um. Yeah. These guys are really, pretty good. 13-3.
2. Detroit - And you know what? So are these guys. 9-7.
3. Minnesota - I have never been this clueless about where to put a team maybe ever. There are so many variables and a decent amount of talent. Not enough though. Really, if the roof stays in one piece they should consider the season a success. 7-9.
4. Chicago - These guys are almost as confusing as Minnesota. But just almost. 5-11.

NFC South

1. Atlanta - I'm willing to bet that playoff loss to the Packers sticks in Atlanta's craw more than just a little. 12-4.
2. New Orleans - These guys are looking to rebound from a tough postseason loss, too. Too bad they play in such a tough division. 9-7.
3. Tampa Bay - That Josh Freeman is pretty awesome. At least he better be for the sake of my fantasy team. 8-8.
4. Carolina - Cam Newton is going to be getting a really talented side kick soon. Only problem is he's getting him because the Panthers will have a top 5 pick. Again. 2-14.

NFC West

1. St. Louis - Sam Bradford has a lot more weapons than people think. The Rams just might scare some people. 9-7.
2. San Francisco - Welcome to the show Jim Harbaugh. This team probably won't fare as well as Stanford did last season, but most of your rivals are just about as good as USC normally is. 7-9.
3. Arizona - So Kevin Kolb is expected to be quite the elixir for this team, but I'd really love to know when everyone made the communal decision to decide that Kevin Kolb is really, really good. 6-10.
4. Seattle - The Seahawks won the division last year. The division did not have any teams with a winning record. Seriously. Not one. 5-11.

AFC Playoffs
Wild Card weekend
(3) NY Jets over (6) New England
Still can't justify this. I'm still sticking with it, though.
(5) Baltimore over (4) Houston
Man the Texans are just so happy to be here. So very, very happy.

Divisional weekend
(1) Pittsburgh over (5) Baltimore
Cities will be destroyed during this game. There's simply no other way to describe the certain destruction that awaits.
(2) San Diego over (3) NY Jets
The Jets love to over achieve, but I have a feeling their run of AFC title game appearances is about to end. It was a good run, though, wasn't it?

AFC Championship Game
(2) San Diego over (1) Pittsburgh
I mean, seriously, how due is this team. Really. They've got to break through one of these years, right?

NFC Playoffs
Wild Card weekend
(6) New Orleans over (3) Philadelphia
You know a few weeks ago I was taking a girl on a date and I told her I hated the Eagles. She thought this seemed like a bit of a strong word and said, "I can't imagine hating anybody unless they, like, killed puppies or something." To this I responded, "You know, it's funny you should mention." True story.
(5) NY Gia over (4) St. Louis
I would sign up for this first round matchup in a heartbeat. Right now.

Divisional weekend
(6) New Orleans over (1) Green Bay
Really, they could be the best No. 6 seed in history
(2) Atlanta over (5) NY Gia
Well, it was fun while it lasted, folks.

NFC Championship Game
(2) Atlanta over (6) New Orleans
You know, I'm not going to lie. It makes me feel kind of gross picking the same Super Bowl matchup as Sports Illustrated.

Super Bowl XLVI
(2) San Diego over (2) Atlanta
But I'm not picking the same winner. Let's be honest. For the Chargers? It's about time.

So there you go kids. My official certain to be wrong NFL season preview. Good ol' Stan Humphries will be so proud of his old team. Maybe.

And now that you've gone through that exhausting read, perhaps you'll go a little further with this week's picks. Here. We. Go.

Last week: n/a
Season: 0-0-0

GREEN BAY (-4.5) over New Orleans
Atlanta (-3) over CHICAGO
CLEVELAND (-7) over Cincinnati
KANSAS CITY (-6) over Buffalo
Philadelphia (-6) over ST. LOUIS
TAMPA BAY (-1) over Detroit
Tennessee (+3) over JACKSONVILLE
Pittsburgh (+3) over BALTIMORE
HOUSTON (-9) over Indianapolis
Carolina (+7) over ARIZONA
SAN DIEGO (-9) over Minnesota
SAN FRANCISCO (-6) over Seattle
NY Giants (-3) over WASHINGTON
NY JETS (-4) over Dallas
New England (-7) over MIAMI
DENVER (-3) over Oakland

And there you have it. See you all at kickoff tonight. Thank God it's football season.

And So It Begins

2011-09-01T14:57:00.000-04:00

Here we are people. At long last, the fall is here. Well, not technically, but the calendar has turned to September, there are far fewer opportunities to BBQ and most importantly football is starting, which is refreshing after mostly being consumed with seasons that aren't real. So as far as I can tell, it's fall now and once the leaves start to change colors I'll have that confirmed for me. In the case of football, I am about as excited as I am every year, which is very, and even though the New York Giants won't be starting the regular season for 10 more days -- they actually have a preseason game yet to be played tonight in New England -- I am still ready to defend their underrated postseason chances.

I won't be doing that here, after all with this much time until the NFL season kicks off and my propensity for procrastination, my NFL preview will have to wait until next week. I will however opine on yet another season starting for my beloved Northwestern Wildcats. And next week you just might here me talk about the Geelong Cats' hunt for a third premiership in five years, but we'll get to it when we get to it.

Back to Northwestern. College football was never my biggest thing growing up, but covering it for and attending a Big Ten school dramatically changed me in my undergrad years and now I really can't get enough of it. In fact, it's almost downright upsetting to me that there are only 48 hours each Saturday and Sunday in the fall with which I can jam in my football viewing. There needs to be more. Either way, college football technically starts tonight when my sister's alma mater, Wisconsin, hosts UNLV and Mississippi State takes on Memphis, but for me it all comes down to Saturday, the opening for my Cats at Boston College.

The town of Evanston is getting particularly excited this year, so much so that they probably should clean out the water supply, and why shouldn't they? Northwestern continues to be on the upswing under coach Pat Fitzgerald, who has built on the foundation laid by the late Randy Walker -- and to a lesser extent Gary Barnett -- to make the once moribund program consistently competitive. No, we haven't touched a Big Ten title in about a decade or so now, but NU has played in more bowl games in the past decade than it had in the previous century. In two of the last three seasons Northwestern should have won an Alamo Bowl matchup with a team that nearly played in the BCS National Championship Game the year before, and should have won an Outback bowl against a team that won a BCS National Championship a year later.

Northwestern has also managed to play in January 1st bowl games the last two seasons. Really. Look it up.

This season in particular is bringing about quite a bit of excitement because Northwestern was 7-2 last year and fresh off a big upset of Iowa when their season hit a three-game tailspin before a TicketCity Bowl loss to Texas Tech. The big difference between Northwestern before and after was that the last four games of the year featured a team without starting quarterback Dan Persa, who had developed into a duel threat with the highest passing efficiency in the nation until he tore his ACL while tossing the game-winner touchdown pass against the Hawkeyes.

In 2011 hopes are high for another strong season and Persa, while not yet at full strength, is back and being heavily pushed by Northwestern for a potential Heisman shot. The chance is unlikely but it hasn't stopped the campaign from getting into full swing, taking the form of billboards, twitter hashtags and a very peculiar but inventive dumbbell campaign to sportswriters around the country.

Word is that Persa may not be at full strength for the opener this Saturday and that Kain Colter may be getting some or most of the snaps, which could have a deleterious effect on Persa's already slim Heisman hopes, but Colter looked decent in limited time last season using a very similar skill set to Persa, and even if Persa isn't at full strength this Saturday in Chestnut Hill, I can tell you one person who will be. Me.

Ok, so I may not be completely at full strength come game time after several hours of tailgating in the Alumni Stadium parking lot, but the point of the matters is that, as I said earlier this week, I will be in the stands and ready to cheer at Northwestern's opening game of the season at Boston College. Many other Wildcats, as well as a high school friend and B.C. alum, are traveling up to the Hub this weekend for the action and verily, there will be much rejoicing. Some of you may be familiar with that friend, Christian, whose curling exploits were detailed here in February of 2010 and whom I traveled to Philadelphia with in February of this year to see the Knicks play the 76ers.

He should know what he's getting into, but he may be overwhelmed by the sheer nerdery that will ensue amidst a bunch of drunken Northwestern alums calculating the rate of change of volume of their Miller Lite cans as they empty into a funnel. Then again, I'm not really sure anyone is prepared for that. The main point is that college football is back and hot damn will it be awesome.

Also, this trip here marks the start of my fall of sporting adventures that will also take me to West Point in two weeks, to San Jose and San Francisco in November, and possibly to Foxboro, Mass., and Pittsburgh. The possibilities are endless.

The great thing about the start of college football season, of course, is that right now for my Wildcats, too, the possibilities are endless. Hopefully come Saturday night, they still will be.

The Joy Of Cheap Plane Flights

2011-08-29T14:51:00.001-04:00

For the first time in a long time I haven't spent chunks of the summer following the Mets around the country, which means two things. The first is that 2011 is likely to be the first year I haven't seen a Major League Baseball game outside of New York in, oh, 11 years or so. The second is that it's been a surprisingly long hiatus for me without seeing a sporting event of any kind outside of the New York Metro area. Since April, in fact.

Now that doesn't mean I haven't traveled at all. Most of you know that I spent nearly three weeks traipsing around Europe. But something has been lacking in the sports travel department since I saw the Red Wings host the Blackhawks at Joe Louis Arena on April 8. My goal is to make up for all of that this fall with several jaunts to see pro teams around the country -- and by several I mean three.

Putting all of that together is still up in the air, but I know that one of those trips isn't because I managed to book myself a flight to San Francisco for the second weekend of November this year, which puts me squarely in the stands for a showdown between the Coyotes and Sharks on Saturday, November 12 and even more excitingly for me, the Giants and 49ers on November 13 at Candlestick Park. I rather enjoy trips to the Bay Area where I have several friends and at this point know that city at least mildly well, but I'm particularly intrigued to see my Football Giants and the building that stole away the baseball variety.

But what makes this even better? Part of the trick to doing this whole cockammamie thing is finding ways to cut costs, preeminently the need double up sporting events in the same trip and if possible stay with friends for free. I'll have both of those taken care of but the last crucial fixture is to get transport as cheaply as you can do it, and managing that trick on a cross country flight is not the easiest thing.

Generally if you can get from east coast to west coast and back for $400 or so you're shooting par, so when I found that I could make my way from Newark to San Francisco for the grand sum of $253, I knew I had won. It make require a transfer in Atlanta on the way there and a stopover in Detroit following a redeye on the way back, but every little penny counts. I can stand one day of work with sleep deprivation in the name of pushing the journey forward.

Also, given that I spent most of this weekend cooped up in my sister's apartment courtesy of "hurricane" Irene, it would really feel good just to go, well, anywhere. I will be the first to say that I was fortunate in that Hurricane Irene did not affect me in nearly as dramatic a way as it has others -- my hometown of Millburn, NJ for one took on some pretty major flooding -- but I did have to evacuate my apartment for, what proved to be, no reason, and it also through a major kibosh into that most sanctified of all pre-fall activities, the fantasy football draft.

Initial my keeper league had scheduled a date to select players six months in advance because we knew getting all of our schedules coordinated would be a trial. The date we settled on just happened to be when a hurricane was barreling into town. A live draft turned into an online draft and even that was nearly not thrown together in time. It's amazing that I experienced a hurricane and an earthquake in the same week and the rain was the one that caused me the most logistical issues.

Hopefully there won't be some natural disaster that causes issues for me when I head to the bay area or when I go on my next sports-centric trip this weekend. What trip is that, you ask? Well, you probably didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway. College football, at long last, will be back in five days, and when it is, I will be in Boston to see Northwestern open up its season in Chestnut Hill against B.C. This is a big season for Northwestern with all of us hoping that Heisman hopeful Dan Persa leads the Cats on an impressive, potentially Rose Bowl-worthy campaign. That's all likely a pipe dream, but at least it's a dream I can still have for now, and it all starts on Saturday in Boston.

I will be there. I will be in purple. I will be excited.

Hopefully it doesn't rain.

So Last Night Counted Right?

2011-08-23T10:31:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has seen a lot of sporting events with me would know that I have a tendency to get antsy during blowouts. Don't get me wrong, they're fun. And I'd rather be on the long side of one than the short one, but whenever I see the Mets pile 11 or 12 runs on some unsuspecting team I can't help but wish they were saving some for the next day. Particularly considering that 2006 is really the only year I've ever seen the Mets have an offense that seemed somewhat relentless.

When it happens in football the scoring doesn't seem quite as effortless and I don't get quite so nervous that the offense is being wasted, though as New York's big blowout in Seattle last season proves, the effectiveness of an offense from one week to the next can really be meaningless. But it was a special breed of uninteresting meaningless when the Giants absolutely walloped the Chicago Bears last night to the tune of 41-13 at New Meadowlands Stadium. Sure it was fun, and I never mind seeing the Giants reach the end zone, but it was also, you know, the preseason. And wins in the preseason and a quarter will give you 25 whole cents.

As the Giants ran up the score, I watched with a pretty mild strain of apathy, which certainly wasn't helped by the other fact that makes the preseason unbearable, you guessed it, injuries. And boy did the Giants get a fun one last night. The secondary is going to have to do some reshuffling after lynchpin cornerback Terrell Thomas tore his ACL last night in a flukish collision with Jason Pierre-Paul with all of 22 seconds remaining in the first half.

The Giants season isn't over, but Thomas' injury far outweighs the specter of victory, which was noted by one columnist who pointed out that Chicago left embarrassed, but they also left healthy. I would have taken that gladly. Such is the nature of the curiosity that is preseason football, an utterly meaningless affair that we still watch with full dedication because we are just so damn football deprived. In some senses I feel like an addict.

I imagine the side effects of actual addiction are worse than the disappointment of a frontline player being lost for the season, but it still makes you wonder if preseason is a sensible product to subject your better players to given the physical grind of the NFL. It almost seems as though keeping starters out in general, such as San Diego used to do with LaDainian Tomlinson, might be the wisest idea. That, however, is somewhat foolhardy. Freak plays like the one that sidelined Thomas could happen in any game at any time, which makes cherry picking games in hopes of avoiding them a tricky and borderline ridiculous process.

Still, things could be worse. The entire world could know that you almost missed your at-bat because you had to run to the toilet. Really, if you're reading the game story of a baseball game, and the word "bathroom" is in the headline, it must be the Mets in August.

In any event, when the dog days of August are pounding down on you, it's important to remind yourself that the season won't be over because of one injury. Losing Terrell Thomas is a devastating blow to be sure, but the Giants have made a habit of losing impact players before the regular season.

In 2007 the significantly now less venerated Will Demps was lost for the season before it started, and New York won the Super Bowl. In 2008, I assumed the hopes of a repeat were done when Osi Umenyiora was lost for the year, and while the Giants didn't win it all again, they went 12-4 and took the NFC's top seed, spending much of the season as world beaters. Last season New York still won 10 games despite a significantly battered secondary that spent most of the season without Corey Webster and Aaron Ross.

Essentially, what I'm convincing myself of, is that the season is far from over. In fact it hasn't even begun. And I'm still excited and optimistic for Big Blue's 2011 campaign.

Now if Eli Manning, Ahmad Bradshaw, Hakeem Nicks and Justin Tuck all go down next week in New England, maybe I'll change my tune. But it hasn't happened yet. I'm still holding on.

Zach Parise Has Been One-Upped

2011-08-17T13:41:00.000-04:00

As I wait patiently for the Giants' next preseason game to come around -- and it's still five days away -- there is very little to hold my interest. At least not with the Mets' season being pretty much done midway through August, although they did have some exciting news this week. More on that later.

Because of the dearth of interesting stuff going on I struggle from time to time to focus on all that the world of sports is presenting me with, though the impending start of Northwestern's football season, which is just 17 short days away, does give me something to get excited about. Unfortunately, though, that's pretty much all of it. Or so I thought.

Thank the lord for Jeremy Roenick.

Roenick is one of the greatest American-born hockey players of all time and a man who is known for his emotion, honesty and, I can assure you, a pretty good quote just about any time you talk to him. Also, he was really good. And in video games he was really good. Anyone who wants to get an idea of just how good Roenick was in NHL '93 need only troll around on YouTube for any number of clips of his electronic prowess. But more than his abilities on the ice, his abilities in the virtual world are immortalized by two phrases:

"It's not even so much me as it's Roenick. He's good."

And:

"There it is, Mikey. Check it out, his head's bleeding."

Both of these of course come from the indie film classic Swingers, starring the underrated Jon Favreau and an astonishingly thin Vince Vaughn. One of the most famous scenes from the film involves the main characters playing NHL '93 and after Vaughn displays Roenick's electronic prowess, he then checks Wayne Gretzky from behind to make him bleed on the ice.

So why bring this up now?

Well, as you all saw last week when I talked about Zach Parise's very silly commercial, I love when athletes show some personality. I should note, this is not simply limited to hockey. But in this case, hockey does it again as Roenick shows a good sense of humor -- and some pretty decent acting ability -- in this bit right here.

Yeah, that's the exact same scene from Swingers updated with Roenick himself in the mix and, amazingly, not playing as Roenick, though he does make a few amusing references to how great a human being Jeremy Roenick happens to be. This is great and there needs to be more of it. Sure there was no real reason why this video had to happen, but it did.

And we're all better off for it.

Lastly, if I can take it back to the Mets for a few minutes, because really, why keep this happy, they had the best news this week that they've had all season when it came out that there will be changes to the uniform set next year. As someone who owns, roughly, 10 or so Mets jerseys from the current set, this is a bit angst-inducing as I have hundreds of dollars worth of clothing that's about to be out of date -- some of them already are -- but it seems the changes to the home uniforms are coming mostly for the franchise's 50th anniversary and thus may not be permanent.

That's all well and good, but the coolest thing, by far, is that the Mets may be introducing a standardized version of their all blue Los Mets jerseys from this year's Hispanic Heritage Night. The blue and orange duds can't be the official alternate this coming season due to deadlines for submitting uniform changes, but they're likely to be broken out a handful of times and will probably assume the full-time alternate duty in 2013. They are crisp, they are clean, they are the franchise's traditional colors and they are beautiful.

Bizarrely, I cannot wait to spend $250 on one of them. Granted, it's not so much money that it will change my life. As Roenick knows, though, it just might be enough money to make my head bleed.

ATTENTION EVERYONE FOOTBALL IS BACK

2011-08-13T16:54:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I know. The NFL preseason actually started two days ago and whether or not you consider preseason football to actually be "football" is a debatable concept.

Whatever.

The New York Giants are strapping on their helmets tonight in Charlotte, North Carolina to play the Carolina Panthers and for at least seven minutes of game action or so, there will be an actual NFL football-like substance on the TV, and after going eight months without seeing Big Blue on the tube, I'm pretty excited. Not break out my jersey for the occasion excited, but excited nonetheless.

Tonight will be a spectacular 7 minutes in which some of the Giants' starters will sort of play halfheartedly against a Panthers team that is doing the same thing despite being sort of a minor league outfit to begin with. The final score will be irrelevant and the last 50 minutes or so of game play will feature people that won't even be on the roster come opening day, but it's still professional NFL football, damnit. No one can take it away from me.

The Giants do have some interesting things tonight such as get their first looks at a few players in new positions, namely Mathias Kiwanuka, who is moving back to linebacker. Linval Joseph and Jason Pierre-Paul will also be getting some time on the defensive line that should be worth noting, but on the whole, yes, this game will be utterly meaningless and less than entertaining. But if the Giants want to hear Barack Obama make subtle jabs at the debt ceiling negotiations next summer at the White House, this is where it all starts.

At least at the White House, we can probably comfortably assume the Giants players would all know who the chief executive is.

The other big excitement comes from the first brush with NFL football for rookie linebacker Mark Herzlich, who the Giants signed as an undrafted free agent out of Boston College this summer. Most undrafted free agents aren't particularly noteworthy and the ones that are don't become so until they've defied the odds and become a significant NFL player, such as former Redskins and Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce. Herzlich overcame odds to make it to the NFL, but rather simply being undrafted he also had to beat bone cancer.

Regardless of where you're coming from, those are some pretty significant odds to overcome. Many people have concluded that Herzlich would have been a high-round pick had he not had a run-in with cancer, but now that he's on the field, it'll be interesting if he can play at an NFL-caliber level. Doing so as a mere mortal is difficult enough. Doing so as a cancer survivor exponentially so.

Of course, beyond Herzlich's debut and a few other players getting some time on the field, there is little else of interest going on in tonight's game and I, personally, am unlikely to watch the entire thing, but I will be watching from the beginning. And then possibly into the second quarter. Maybe.

Then again, if the Giants' official twitter feed is to be believed, all of the photos being tweeted must indicate that this is the most important football game ever played. So there's that.

Lastly, in a bit of irony, the Giants' first preseason game happens to start on the opening date of the British Premier League. I'm not sure just how many of you take a keen interest in the other kind of football across the pond, but with ESPN's premier league contract and Fox Soccer Channel, it's almost as if you have as much access to British soccer in the U.S. now as you do of, say, basketball. That's a good thing. Of course, the Premier League may have just started today, but the tier right below it, the Npower Championship, has been going on for a week. And with two games played, look at who's atop the table.

That's right. It's those awesome Southampton Saints. With any luck they'll still be near the top come May. And with some more luck, maybe they won't be the only football team of mine at the top of the standings this season.