Random Thoughts on Super Boring Sunday

Here are a few random thoughts on the Super Bowl, to help you get through the first of many horrifying Sundays without football. My roommate and I took turns watching each other play Madden. It helps a little, but I realize that option isn’t available to everyone. Also, he’s kinda new to the game and still in the phase where he doesn’t always realize that the clock is running out on the half and he has three timeouts, or that it may not be a good idea to go for it on fourth and ten at the opposing thirty in the first half. Chiefs fans, be forewarned, it’s a little painful to watch.

Anyway, from here on out, I’m going to try to post something at least every ten days or so, although this means that the longer postings you’ve seen in the past are going to be more rare, and that the majority of what I put up here probably won’t be innovative or thoughtful. Enjoy!

- I hate the bye week before the Super Bowl. There’s nothing more pointless and stupid in all of (professional) sports. Compared to the NBA, NHL, and MLB playoffs, the NFL playoffs tend to end up with lopsided match-ups a little more frequently and are pretty much a crapshoot whenever two relatively even teams play. The one advantage is that they don’t drag out forever. Well, at least they wouldn’t without the Super Bowl bye week. I realize that once every three years or so a key injured player is able to play because of this, and that every three or four times this happens, it affects the outcome of the game. So what? Any playoff format with more than two rounds is supposed to be a test of endurance. Winning three or four games, against top competition, without any kind of break, is what championships are about in the modern era. I suppose that it also helps to have an extra week to promote the game except that IT’S THE F*CKING SUPER BOWL, so I’m pretty sure that all that needs to be done is to announce the time, station, and location of the game a couple days in advance. Of course, the NFL routinely botches this part of it by saying things like “coverage begins at 3 PM,” which means the game could start anytime between 4 and 9 PM. I mean, I can deal with it for the World Cable Installation Championships every June, but that’s about all I’m willing to put up with. Plus, I just hate feeling like the NFL season is over when there’s still one game left.

- The Seahawks definitely deserve to be there. And anytime a team logically should be favored (by seeding, record, home field, etc.) and everyone is picking against them, well, watch out for that team. This didn’t really work for the Bears, however. I also would have appreciated it if Seattle hadn’t blown out the Panthers so thoroughly, as everyone is now convinced the Bears would have had zero chance in Seattle. By the way, there’s still no way you could argue that the 2005 Panthers were a better team than the 2005 Bears without citing that playoff game. Did I mention that they scored two long touchdowns on plays where the cornerback slipped? Is there any flukier play in football? I suppose I should give Steve Smith credit for the first one, as he did shove Charles Tillman over. By the way, I’m still a little upset about that game.

- Although I had always been under the impression that Shaun Alexander was an egomaniacal jerk, according to Ryan, a diehard Seahawks fan, he’s actually a devout Christian and does a ton of charity work. Worth mentioning. Although I defy you to find anyone in Chicago who thought Michael Jordan had a serious gambling problem during his prime.

- There’s no more enjoyable and less mentioned subplot than how uncomfortable Matt Hasslebeck is with the fact that he’s bald. I mean, the baseball caps, the do rags, I’m telling you, once you notice this, it’s hilarious. There’s at least a 30% chance that he only chose to be an NFL Quarterback because it’s one of the few professions where you have to wear a hat or helmet almost every time you’re in public.

- Speaking of subplots, everyone who follows the NFL is aware that Jerome Bettis is from Detroit, Mike Holmgrem won a Super Bowl with the Packers, Matt Hasslebeck played for Holmgrem as Favre’s backup, Shaun Alexander is an upcoming free agent, Seattle hasn’t had a champion in a really long time, Ben Roethlisberger is really young, and that Bill Cowher has coached the Steelers for a long time without winning the big one. There is no need for anyone to mention any of these things for the next week.

- Actually, never mind. I just came up with a really fun drinking game to play during the one to six hour long Super Bowl Pregame Show.

- Ok, I’ll admit it: Hines Ward is my favorite NFL player who has never been on the Bears or my fantasy team by a huge margin. He’s one of those rare star athletes who actually looks like he gets up every day thinking, “Holy crap, I get three months off a year and can buy anything I want for the rest of my life from playing football! Are you kidding me?” We need more athletes like that. Also, much to the chagrin of Ryan, who actually owns the place, Troy Polomalu has become something of a cult hero in our house.

- This time I’ll let you know in advance – Steelers 35, Seahawks 24.

Blue Carolina

First off, I’ll just get this out of the way: losing in the NFL playoffs sucks. It’s probably worse than anything else in sports. In every other sport, or in the case of teams that don’t make it to the playoffs, there’s some warning that things aren’t going well. In a football playoff game, an opponent can just roll into town, get a couple of flukey big plays, and shock you. And because injuries play such a major role in defining a football team from year to year, you can be absolutely certain that next year’s team isn’t going to be the same as this season’s edition, even in the rare cases where there aren’t any key free agents. A few things, however, made this one especially painful:

- At the playoff party I was at there were a couple of guys from St. Louis who were vehemently rooting for the Panthers, the excuse being that they were currently stationed in North Carolina. Even though most people have done it at some point, I absolutely hate that Guy Whose Team Isn’t in the Playoffs and is Rooting Against the Local Team out of Spite. Is it really so hard to pull for your friend’s favorite team, or at least remain neutral and just root for a good game? Anyway, despite the fact that I hang out with the other guys at this party on a somewhat regular basis, I had never met these people before and had no warning that such people were coming (if so I might have gone elsewhere). I am giving the organizers of this (otherwise solid) event the benefit of the doubt and assuming that these people were related to someone there. Also, are the Rams really a team that you could justify jumping ship on at this point? I mean, they’ve won a championship recently enough that most people still remember it, they were in the playoffs last year, and there’s at least some reasonable cause for optimism next season. They were talking as if the Rams were the Cardinals or something. The worst thing about these guys is that when the Panthers lose in the playoffs and you attempt to get back at them for it, they’ll act like they don’t even care. In my opinion people like this have no right to derive joy from anything that their old or new favorite team achieves. We need to petition the Sports Guy to add this to his rules for being a fan.

- Steve Smith is really, really, good, but he’s definitely one of those guys who apparently didn’t get enough attention as a kid and is trying to make up for it now by talking trash, inventing goofy celebrations, and otherwise attempting to make you forget that anyone else is on their team. I just hate it when people like this go out and back it up. Invariably they get what’s coming to them (that screen play is eventually going to get picked for a touchdown if they keep running in 6-8 times a game), but you always hope it will happen against your team.

- Another thing that I hate almost as much is when every credible expert winds up taking the same goofy stance, like backing a road team which got mangled by their opponent previously, and it actually winds up happening. It almost makes me feel like these people actually know more about football than I do. Then I remember that almost all of them picked Minnesota and Green Bay 1-2 in the NFC North.

- I still had that invincible sports fan feeling from the White Sox run, the one where you honestly believe that no team you root for can lose an important game, or at least not one that they’re favored in. Fun while it lasted.

- This game brought back bad memories of the Donovan McNabb game from 2001. The similarities were uncanny: home playoff game after the bye, the goofy rash of injuries (Mike Brown in both games, ugh), the offense looking rusty, the team abandoning the run way too early, the defense looking like a completely different unit then they did the rest of the season, and the feeling that the Bears were pretty much getting beat because of one guy having a career day.

- And finally, as mentioned above, the fact that the 2005 Bears season is over. Sure, there are tons of reasons they should be as good or better in the near future – the team is young, every key contributor is locked up long-term, Grossman looked like he's at least going to be the best Bears QB since Erik Kramer, and every other NFC North team looks at least two years away from being remotely competitive or even watchable. But after watching the 2001-04 White Sox, the 2002-04 Bears, the 2004-05 Cubs, and, to a lesser extent, this season’s Bulls, I’ve realized that good young teams don’t necessarily improve just because everyone thinks they should. If anything the tendency is to regress a little bit. At least we didn’t go to the Super Bowl and lose, which given recent NFL history, would have immediately slammed the door on the ’06 Bears chances of being competitive. Maybe this is the fate that awaits the Panthers. If so, I hope the guys from my first point are watching.

iSports: the Sports Fan's Electronic Revolution!

The dedicated sports fan lets few things stand in the way of his sport’s viewing pleasure. Men have been known to sneak portable radios with headphones into weddings, funerals and graduation ceremonies. Monday Night football has made many a man on the east coast have a very grumpy Tuesday morning (when you go to work, does anyone ever say, “somebody’s got a case of the Tuesdays!”?). Few things can get in the way of a dedicated sports fan and his favorite events.

Many relationships have taken fatal trips to the wayside due to too much sports viewing. Let me give two very prominent examples. First, Charlie Sheen’s incredibly attractive wife Denise Richards, while pregnant with their second child, left him citing his propensity to not help enough with the kid, especially while viewing Football. Example number two: Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey. Nick is supposedly an avid USC fan. Although their ongoing attempts at a supposed “three-peat” (and hell no I will not pay Pat Riley to use that term, and see Ek’s previous article on the reason for the quotation marks) lead me to question most every USC fan I now encounter, especially if they are a celebrity, he understandably has good reason to want to watch football every Saturday. They’re a great team, and it’s a great time to be a fan of the Trojans. In fact, one thing that does defend Nick’s claim to being a true USC fan, is that Jessica and he never conceived, meaning that he was either impotent, or a “Trojan MAAAAAN”. Either of which would, in my book, defend his claim to be a USC fan… And I digress…

The only point I wanted to make with the extremely long paragraph above is this. There’s a part of me that hears about guys like Charlie Sheen and Nick Lachey splitting with their wives that makes me say in my head, and a few times I can think of, out loud, “what the heck are you THINKING!” And of course there is the obvious moral problem with it, but HAVE YOU SEEN THESE WOMEN?! But, on the flipside… You gotta respect that kind of sports fan! I mean, the white trash redneck who doesn’t spend enough time with his girlfriend, because their relationship was going nowhere anyways is one thing, but having your sports viewing interfere with your relationship with women of that caliber, that’s dedication my friends! Oh and bye the way, Jessica, I’m still single!

All of these examples aside, even the most dedicated fan occasionally runs into conflicts that are unavoidable. I can think of the last World Cup, when all the games started around 3AM, as an example of when viewing a fine sporting event was difficult. The fact that I had to be at work at 8AM the next morning after every game, made it very hard for me to see more than a few good weekend games and the finals. Living in Europe I often experience the same problem come Bowl Season. In fact, in most recent years, I’ve been in the Austrian Alps for New Year’s, and missed many a fine National Championship or other fine BCS game that I would have gladly sacrificed to see, by staying up toe the wee-hours of the morning. Alas, it was not to be.

Which brings us to our current age of the wonders of technology. TiVo has obviously been a great advance in the delayed-viewing department. However, at times it requires more foresight than many scatter-brained, yet dedicated fans have at their disposal. It’s also not the cheapest thing in the world. All in all though, it is a great way to catch every game, without the scheduling conflicts that live sports viewing often entails (not to mention the commercials, and if it’s an NBA game, the incessant timeouts).

But now, from the wonderful company that is Apple, another solution has arisen, and will continue to evolve. The iTunes music store recently added TV shows and other videos to their purchasable selection. And now, for this fantastic Bowl season, they are offering 15-minute highlights of the BCS games for purchase, for a mere $1.99! This is a major development. It’s not the whole game, or even a slight abbreviated viewing, but it’s the start of something special. Of course it will take a while before all major events are covered in this manner, but think of the possibilities (NFL Network anyone?). Think of all those times you forget to set your TiVo, got the wrong time for tip-off or made an ill-advised previous engagement months prior to the big game. Now, thanks to the wonderful developers at Apple, we may finally have a solution on the way (and can you tell I use a Macintosh?).

All that said, on the eve of the National Championship game (a true championship game this year, thank you Lord!), I plan on watching the game live; even if I could get the whole game through iTunes. Yes it starts at 2AM local time for me, and yes I’ll regret it in the morning. But as great as technology is, and as much as I hope to reap the benefits that iTunes and other similar programs could eventually bring to the table, nothing can replace live viewing. Call me sentimental, call me old fashioned, but I’ll watch this one live with my friends and family, one last time…