11-5 yet again, that seems to be my cruising altitude as the season ends.
Yearly record is now a more-respectable 144-82.

Week 16’s Hurriedly trying to beat the Christmas deadline for mailing in my Picks.
Minnesota over Green Bay – Pack still isn’t running -Vikings clinch division today
Kansas City over Oakland – Chiefs still not dominant by any stretch, but win a close one
Tennessee over Denver – As long as Plummer is an idiot, I’ll ride Volek and Bennett at home
Atlanta over New Orleans – Why are the Saints favored at home in this one? With the Owens injury the Falcons can steal the home field advantage – and they will do so!
Pittsburgh over Baltimore – Steelers lock in #1 seed against nearly-done Ravens
Carolina over Tampa Bay – The Panthers remarkable still have a playoff shot – and go for it
Cincinnati over NY Giants – Bengals win battle of Palmer vs. Eli and save some respect
Detroit over Chicago – The Bears scored 5 points at home vs. Texans? Just give it up already
Indianapolis over San Diego – Chargers clinch division, but won’t run the ball enough to win
Jacksonville over Houston – Fueled by win over the Pack, the Jags lock in the wild card
Buffalo over San Francisco – Without McGahee, the Bills take a narrow one against pathetic 49ers
NY Jets over New England – Jets on a roll – take them to push the Pats down and get a wild card
Arizona over Seattle – Again…I refuse to pick Seattle again this season
Dallas over Washington – Narrow loss to Philly fuels Dallas victory this week
Miami over Cleveland – Foolish Dolphins win, give the #1 pick to Cleveland or San Francisco
Philadelphia over St. Louis – Losing Owens hurts, but the Rams have just given Martz away

There you be – 16 games. Hopefully 16 winners, or at least 10 again.
MIN, KC, TEN, ATL, PIT, CAR, CIN, DET, IND, JAX, BUF, NYJ, AZ, DAL, MIA, PHI

11-5 was a bit of a letdown, but still not too bad, leaving me at 133-77.

Week 15’s Franticly Purchasing from Overstock.Com Predictive and Reliable Picks.
Pittsburgh over NY Giants – Sweep of NY teams as the G-men flounder
Washington over San Francisco – I don’t think the 49ers can win two games straight
Atlanta over Carolina – Best game of the week sees Falcons derail Panther playoff run
Chicago over Houston – Texans just don’t win on the road
Jacksonville over Green Bay – The Pack just isn’t putting it together
Minnesota over Detroit – Vikings have something to play for; Lions don’t
San Diego over Cleveland – Chargers clinch division with victory over pathetic Browns
NY Jets over Seattle – How can you pick the schizo Hawks? I can’t.
Philadelphia over Dallas – I predict pain. Great pain. And lots of points
Buffalo over Cincinnati – Bills ride McGahee towards the future
St. Louis over Arizona – Last week’s home loss to 49ers? Even the Cards looked bad there
Tampa Bay over New Orleans – If they don’t let Griese throw it, Bucs beat the Saints
Tennessee over Oakland – Billy Volek and Drew Bennett will impress on Sunday
Kansas City over Denver – Denver nearing Seattle as the team I loathe picking
Indianapolis over Baltimore – Even the Ravens’ D won’t keep Peyton from the TD record
New England over Miami – Pats catches an improving but still defective Miami team

There you be – 16 games. Hopefully 16 winners, or at least 10 again.
Summary: PIT, WAS, ATL, CHI, JAX, MIN, SD, NYJ, PHI, BUF, STL, TB, TEN, KC, IND, NE

You know what’s absurd? That Atkins guy? He died from slipping on a potato.

The only thing harder than figuring out my cholesterol level is trying to calculate the NFL’s QB rating formula. My cholesterol? If you told me I had a level of 500 I wouldn’t know if that was good or bad, high or low. Change it from 500 to 50 or 5 or .05 and I still don’t know any better. If you don’t know the range of values or have some idea of how they are distributed, the number is meaningless.

Same with the NFL’s QB rating formula. The formula is primarily based upon four factors:
• Percentage of completions per attempt
• Average yards gained per attempt
• Percentage of touchdown passes per attempt
• Percentage of interceptions per attempt

Here’s how you calculate your very own QB rating.
Take completion percentage and subtract 30. Multiply by .05. The result is a point rating.
If the point rating is less than zero, count it as zero.

Next take passing yards divided by passing attempts and subtract 3. Multiply by .25. Again, if the rating is less than zero, count as zero. If rating is greater than 2.375 count as 2.375.

Next take touchdown passes divided by passing attempts and multiply by .2. Again, if the number is greater than 2.375, count it as 2.375.

Finally, take the number of interceptions thrown and divide by passing attempts, then multiply by .25. Multiply by .25 and then subtract that number from 2.375.
Again, if the final number is less than zero, treat that number as zero.
(see Leaf, Ryan, http://www.nfl.com/players/playerpage/12506)

To complete the formula, take those four numbers, add them, divide the total by six and then multiply that result by 100.
Make sense? I didn’t think so. Here’s what’s even weirder. A quarterback can complete 30% of his passes for 3 yards per attempt and still maintain a QB rating of 0.

Does this really matter? No. But it still annoying the heck out of me. I’m just saying.

Some people are living on the edge. I’m subletting from a guy who lives on the edge.

There are some things that have always bothered about certain superheroes.

For starters, Superman, with his gifts, should be able to whip all the other superheroes added up. Ignoring that for now, here are my problems with Superman.

First, why is it when a bullet bounces off his chest that his shirt isn’t ripped? I mean, does the Man of Steel also have Undershirts of Steel? There should be a hole in his shirt. There should be a hole on all parts of his clothing. If Superman is chasing a bad guy and the villain shoots him in the back, shouldn’t there be a big hole back there? Or on the leg? Or a hole in Superman’s shoe? What is Clark Kent gets shot in the foot? Don’t you think someone will notice that there’s no bullet hole in his Chuck Taylors? I think someone would have caught on by now. Lastly, what if he gets shot in the forehead? Somebody ought to notice Clark Kent taking one, literally, on the chin, and walking away like nobody’s business.

Second, does Superman fly? I think he really just floats, or levitates. Flying is to ‘float, wave or soar in the air’. I think Superman just floats. Flying would probably imply some sort of propulsion system and Superman doesn’t need any gimmicks; he ain’t Batman. I believe Superman levitates, omnidirectionally, and occasionally at a high speed. Is that flying?

Third, the whole secret identity. I know it’s been done before but anyone who couldn’t figure out that Clark Kent was Superman is one step above being a vegetable.

Fourth, Superman is cool because he has an arch-enemy, namely Lex Luthor. Heroes are often measured only by the magnitude of their opponents. Superman had other enemies, but have you even heard of Darkseid or Parasite or Doomsday or Brainiac? Nowadays you call someone Brainiac when they spill ink on themselves.

So what am I saying? I’m Superman may be a tad overrated.

13-3 week, hurt by the Hawks’ MNF collapse. They stink. My 122-72 does not.

Week 14’s Furiously Predictive and Reliable Picks.
Jacksonville over Chicago – The Bears are trusting Chad Hutchinson? Don’t annoy me
Dallas over New Orleans – Saints are done, Boys are not
Arizona over San Francisco – A couple lucky breaks and the Cards win this stupid division
Atlanta over Oakland – Falcons can out-play the surprisingly good Kerry Collins
Indianapolis over Houston – Texans good at home, but not that good
New England over Cincinnati – Pats catch Bengals on post-Ravens letdown
San Diego over Tampa Bay – Chargers all but seal division fate with victory
Buffalo over Cleveland – Bills push Browns closer to early first-round pick
Minnesota over Seattle – Sealamers are done for the season
Detroit over Green Bay – Improving Lions exploit Pack defense, poor running game
Carolina over St. Louis – Is it possible to never pick an NFC West team again?
Philadelphia over Washington – Don’t think beating the Giants impresses me, Washboys
Baltimore over NY Giants – With Eli at the helm the Yorkers are officially in Eliminated
Denver over Miami – Only Miami’s pathetic team could make me want to choose the Broncos
Pittsburgh over NY Jets – Jet playoff chances hurt by tough Steeler running game
Tennessee over Kansas City – I’ve just plain given up on the Chiefs

There you be – 16 games. Hopefully 16 winners, or at least 10 again.
Summary: JAX, DAL, AZ, ATL, IND, NE, SD, BUF, MIN, DET, CAR, PHI, BAL, DEN, PIT, TEN

I like jersey girls.

Not the movie and not some chick from Exit 27 – I like girls that wear jerseys.

Imagine a bar. Any bar. A woman walks in. Any woman. If she enters and sits, the guys in the place will wonder who she is, if she’s waiting for someone, is she wearing a wedding ring, will she kick my ass if I say the wrong thing, et al. It’s natural to do that; we all do. She might be just popping in for a post-work drink. Maybe she’s meeting friends or a date. Maybe she’s an edgy drifter looking to bash someone’s skull. Probably one of the first two.

However, if she’s wearing a jersey, a Tiki Barber Giants jersey or a Chad Pennington top or a silver and black Mark Van Eeghan retro #30, everyone in the room immediately assumes she either knows what she’s talking about or knows someone who does and they like that.

Yesterday I wore my Jets jersey. The bank teller wanted to know if I thought it’d be the year for ‘his’ Jets. Today I wore my John Randle Vikings jersey. Two guys in a car parked outside the bookstore yelled out “Vikings! This is our year!” and drove away happy.

You adorn yourself in a football jersey and, like magic; you emerge from your cocoon of a home with a family. A family of strangers, of outsiders. A family of people who you might not even speak to on the bus or waiting in line. People who would normally have nothing do you with you and that’d be okay on your side. But walk into that same room and wait in that same line wearing your Chiefs jersey and every other Chiefs fan sees one of their own, a like spirit. Immediately the talk begins with favorite games, players, stats and stories.

“We’re you at the overtime game last year?”
“Did you go to that game when it was so cold?”
“How many games have you seen?”

The laughs come quicker and the feelings don’t bruise so quickly. Jabs that might result in a punch to the face instead are taken as light banter and friendly jest. If the guy next to you has been through the same hell you have felt, seen the same heart-breaking losses and aggravating penalties, if that woman you didn’t know three hours ago is cursing the referee with the same zeal you exhibit – you’ve found yourself a Jersey Girl.

A playoff system will work for college football. The only absurd notion would be to try and get everyone, even anyone, to agree on it. The way I see it, if you only have a 2 team playoff, you aren’t gaining anything. The real problem is excluding good teams from the BCS bowls to begin with. If #1 Oklahoma loses the conference championship to a 7-5 Iowa State, the Sooners are automatically booted from vying for the national title and that’s a mistake. With a playoff system, legitimate teams would still have a shot. Do we really want a playoff made up of teams that weren’t even ranked, but won their conference championships?

Here’s how you have a 16-team championship. I know 16 is a lot, but if this will work, than certainly a smaller one would work better.

First, abolish the conference title games, which only exist to place teams in the BCS bowls, which won’t exist with a playoff system intact.

Second, no automatic bids awarded for conference winners; all teams will be chosen by a selection committee. However, stipulation could be made that any conference champ winning 9 or 10 games must be included.

Third, you must include the smaller conferences in some way. This means the Mountain West, C-USA, the MAC, the WAC and the Big East. If the small leagues aren’t included, then the NCAA should expect a lawsuit where the have-nots attack the haves for not including them in the bowl system. If smaller teams are required to play against bigger teams in a bowl system, then they must be given a chance for the big bag of bowl-game cash at the end. At a minimum allow smaller conferences to have play-in games to be in the Field of 16. If you don’t think 9-3 San Diego State and 9-3 Toledo are good enough to both be in the top 16, then lets them have a play-in game and take the winner. If every school in the country doesn’t have at least a shot at the playoff system, it won’t be worth dirt.

Assume the selection committee picks the following conference champs: ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, C-USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-10, SEC, and WAC.
That’s ten teams. The remaining six will be at-large bids chosen by the committee.

Play the first 8 games the first weekend after finals are over, say four games on the 11th and four on the 12th of December on a Friday and Saturday. Use existing bowl games as the first round playoff games. Seed teams 1 through 16 and then play #1 LSU against #16 Marshall in the Sun Bowl. #8 Michigan faces #9 Virginia Tech in the Alamo Bowl, and so on.

The next 4 games could be played on Saturday the 19th, at the next best four venues.

The two semifinal games can be played the day after Christmas or on the 27th, in the Fiesta and Rose Bowls (rotating with Sugar and Orange); the final game can be January 2nd or 3rd.

In 2003 the Motor City Bowl featured the MAC #1 against the Big Ten #7. That’s pretty good I guess. However it might generate more interest or revenue if the Motor City Bowl was guaranteed to have the #1 ranked team in the country once every eight years. Instead of a 6-6 or 7-5 7th place conference finisher the bowl game would be guaranteed a marquis name. If not a marquis name, at least a conference champ.

We want conference champs in the bowl playoff system, don’t we? I thought so.

There are so many college football teams, big and small, I just wonder sometimes how anyone keeps track of them. Its even tougher to track are the venues they plan in.
Just as a test, here’s a list of stadiums and the teams that play in those stadiums.
As a test for yourself, try to match the school with the stadium. Answers are at the bottom.

Stadiums
—–
Ross-Ade,Sanford,Gerald J. Ford,Martin,Rice-Eccles,Kinnick

School
—–
Utah,Georgia,Iowa,Purdue,SMU,Washington State

I don’t normally try to follow these things, but I’m amused by the number of people who probably couldn’t even get half of these correct. I didn’t pick obscure teams either.

Was that too difficult for you? How about this? Name the Memorial Stadiums

Stadium and School
—–
War Memorial Arkansas
War Memorial Clemson
Memorial Illinois
Memorial Indiana
Memorial Oklahoma
Memorial Wyoming

There are more Memorial Stadiums, but I once again stayed with major universities.
You’ve probably heard of them by Memorial, but which are ‘War’ and which are not?

Did you get them? Do you have any idea? Do you care?
I hope you do. Part of my goal with these columns is to educate in all fields; failing that, I’ll educate myself and the readers can just follow along by themselves.

Correct answers?
The correct teams, in order, are Purdue, Georgia, SMU, Washington State, Utah, Iowa
The two ‘War Memorial Stadium’ schools are Arkansas and Wyoming.

Why does college football stick with absurd notions?

The Top 25 voting polls are overrated and prejudiced. How can we expect an impartial vote when the people making the votes, the coaches, are too busy doing their job coaching their teams to be watching everyone else as well. These coaches probably just have an assistant coach or grad assistant or their neighbor’s pet dog Wondermutt make the vote for them.

I can’t blame the coaches for being too busy, but I can blame them for not giving up the vote if you don’t have the time to cast it seriously. I say seriously because a BCS bowl bid is worth tens of millions of dollars, from recruiting to boosters to TV exposure to cash for the game itself, these votes are pivotal and to waste them by giving away slots in the top 25 willy-nilly is just ludicrous and almost criminal.

If the beat writer for the Charlotte Observer wakes up Sunday morning and sees that Hawaii beat San Jose State 35-31, how is he supposed to cast his vote? Will he or she actually look up the box score and see that the #23 ranked Rainbow Warriors led 31-3 into the fourth before the third and fourth string defense gave up mop-up touchdowns? Or will they see it was a see-saw battle with clutch plays and impressive last minute drives? No, probably not. The voter says “Hmm, they were ranked 23 and they won and the team ahead of them lost so I guess I’ll make them 21 or 22 this time” and that is the limit of the thought process.

How do we fix this problem? The same way the NCAA handles the basketball tournament: nominate a selection committee. Whom would you have more faith in? A group of 75 writers guaranteed to see no more than 3 or 4 games, or a panel of a dozen writers or fans or college football maniacs devoted to watching every single game involving a team in the top 40, starting at 10 AM Saturday and ending late Saturday night?

For basketball the selection committee considers many factors: strength of schedule, quality wins, road wins, strength of conference, et al. After picking 64 teams for the hoops tourney, the occasional gripe comes in for whomever finishes 65th or 66th but for the most part the panel gets it right. Why can’t we do this for football as well?

If Kansas State wants to get fat on the easy-schedule hog playing games against Morgan State, Stanley State, Morgan and Stanley State, et al. then their schedule strength, ranking dead last out nearly 120 teams, should be held against them. Unfortunately, we can’t count on the voters to do this because, well, I’m not blind and I can read the previous year’s polls. Voters traditionally vote for an unbeaten team regardless of opponent. We can fix this failing of the voters by using a selection committee instead.

A committee can watch every game, represent every conference and team fairly, consider factors too difficult for coaches or writers to use – in summary, a selection committee would be a vast improvement over the current system.

Now if we can just get all the writers and coaches to relinquish their votes. That’s not such an absurd notion, is it?

The Colts won’t win the Super Bowl.
Why? Because they remind me of the movie “Van Helsing”

See, ‘Van Helsing’ was supposed to be a great summer blockbuster. Instead, it mostly busted. Good, but never really great. Nice idea, but the execution never quite follows through to the end. The film, like the Colts, is filled with great performers, but not necessarily great performances. Both the Colts and the movie give the impression that they should have been far better than that truly are. And for that, we, the fans, have suffered.

The Players
Peyton Manning: Van Helsing.

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Our hero is a mighty warrior, skilled, resourceful. Peyton Manning seems to be able to avoid the toughest pressure and get the job done. One look at him, like Hugh Jackman and you think, ‘Well, he seems pleasant enough’ only to discover an arsenal of weapons, slings and arrows coming from all sides. Hugh, like Peyton, seems destined to come close to success, but not quite make it. Like the playoffs, Peyton has had victories (see Chiefs, 2003), but in the end he fails, like the movie, in the big game, never quite going over the top.

While some might describe Jackman’s performance as close to being over the top, I think he did quite well to get as far as he did. The material fails him; the game plan fails them both, but the promise of a fine performance is enough to draw you into the arena

Marvin Harrison: Kate Beckinsale

<%image(20050107-kate.jpg|301|450|Kiss me Kate)%>

Reliable, but not quote number one on your hit list, both Kate and Marvin fare quite well. Both are nice to look at and both accomplish a great deal. But in the end, would you describe either as the single best thing you’ve ever seen? Marvin Harrison is quiet, reliable, just doing his job and doing it very well. Since he is never flashy or outspoken, though, he’ll never stick out in anyone’s mind as the best of the best. Harrison is always considered for the top 5, but rarely considered the big kahuna.

Same goes for Kate; she’s dependable, very capable and you know going into it that you’ll get her very best and she’s not going to phone it in (we’ll lay the blame for ‘Serendipity’ on the insipid plot and spare her the criticism). Kate will always rank in someone’s top five, as both a performer and as a beauty, but there are probably not many who call her number one with any consistency. Both Kate and Marvin are cursed by their own skills, forever (possibly) doomed, in the movie and in the post-season to be very good, but never #1.

Tony Dungy: Count Dracula.

I’m not saying that Dungy is a vampire or that he’s susceptible to light nor that he cannot see his own shadow (though I’ve never been with him in a men’s room or jaywalking at noon in Alaska) but Dungy does seem to have a small curse hanging over him. He’s a good coach, a very good one in fact; he, while working as defensive coordinator for the Steelers, was a whisper and some name recognition away from becoming the first African-American NFL head coach. For some reason, though, despite great teams, he’s never made the Super Bowl. That doesn’t make him inferior, maybe just unlucky. Same goes for ol’ Vlad. He’s really not such a bad guy. He doesn’t do the bloodsucking himself generally; he’s more of a team coordinator – he’s got the big plans. Those plans involve breeding fanged young and strolling about in spectral form, flying about and causing public panic, but for the most part he wants what Dungy wants, what most people want – to be on top.

Colts Defense: Dracula’s Three Witches

The parts are interchangeable and for the most part, completely unremarkable. When one of them gets injured on impaled, another pops in their place, looking exactly like the predecessor. They make little or no difference in the final outcome, but they take up time in between appearances of the main players.

As you can see, the similarities are eerie and shocking, yet easy to see once you know where to look for them. The Colts in 2004 will be just like ‘Van Helsing’ of 2004 – lots of big stars, and lots of hope but ultimately unsatisfied when the credits roll.