Drew Brees

2012 Pigskin Picks of Profundity…..Week 15

And down the stretch we come!! This is the next-to-last week of the NFL season and thus the inaugural season of the PPP’s. I had another 4-3 record last weekend (I am almost positive that I’ve not exceeded that success rate at all this year), bringing my overall record to 42-61-1. Surprisingly there aren’t a lot of compelling matchups this week. There are a lot of games where one team is already securely in the playoffs while their opponent’s season long ago went in the crapper. And there are a few games where both teams are bad. The one game with a somewhat moderate level of drama is a game I won’t pick because it involves my Steelers and I cannot be impartial. Nevertheless I believe that I have found 7 games worthy of our attention. We’ll see.

 

 

San Diego       at         NY Jets (-2.5)

Has there been any bigger train wreck in the NFL this year than the Jets?? If they have any Jets-Pin-Procompetition it just might be the equally abysmal Chargers, but of course for a variety of reasons the Jets get a lot more scrutiny. I think it’s safe to say that a good many of the personnel for both teams…players, coaches, suits…involved with this game will not be a part of their respective organizations the next time these two meet (whenever that may be). At any rate I think the Jets pull this one out, because how great would it be if, after all the love & hate for both Mark Sanchez & Tim Tebow, it is QB Greg McElroy who emerges as the best field general on the team??

 

Minnesota      at         Houston (-7)

Apparently Vikings QB Christian Ponder married ESPN hottie Samantha Steele this week after houston texans logo2just meeting her like 4 months ago. Not only does that make me question his sanity & decision making skills, but it logically makes one wonder just how prepared he will be to face the Texans’ stout defense. Houston already has their division won but is still battling for home field throughout the playoffs. Minnesota is in a dogfight for a wildcard spot. If Houston had nothing to play for I might roll the dice, but that home field thing is a huge asset so I think they’ll still be sharp and win easily.

 

New Orleans at         Dallas (-2.5)

Contrary to the opinion that I have espoused for months the Saints have not overcome their New-Orleans-Saints-Logo-244x300early season woes and will not be making the playoffs. The Cowboys, on the other hand, are still very much in the thick of the playoff hunt and could even win their division. This is a total vibe game. Logically speaking Dallas has everything to play for plus the home field advantage. However, they are also a hot mess. New Orleans has never recovered from all the offseason bounty hoopla, but they still have QB Drew Brees, and I am betting that he does not want to let his team finish worse than .500. The Voices are telling me to pick the Saints, so I shall comply.

 

Tennessee       at         Green Bay (-11.5)

Will Green Bay lose this game?? No, probably not. Will they cover the spread?? That’s a more Tennessee_Titans_Helmetinteresting question. The Titans have been a real disappointment to me this season. I have always thought that QB Jake Locker was the real deal, and I figured that RB Chris Johnson would rebound from a subpar 2011 and have a monster year. But for some reason things just haven’t gelled in Music City. Meanwhile the Packers just keep on truckin’ and have already clinched the division. It is unlikely that they are going to overcome the Atlanta Falcons for the home field, so what do they really have to play for?? Don’t be surprised if several Green Bay starters get a lot of rest these next couple of weeks. That being said I think the Packers win the game but not by double digits…so the Titans are the pick.

 

New England (-14.5)  at         Jacksonville

So this is what it has come to?? I am reduced to picking a game that wouldn’t be in doubt even if New_England_Patriots_Helmetthe entire Patriots starting lineup just stayed home?? New England is still very much in contention for home field throughout the playoffs, which should be sufficient motivation. Conversely the talking heads on ESPN and elsewhere are already talking about the Jags signing Tebow in the offseason. As much as it pains me to do so I have to go with the Pats to win big & cover.

 

NY Giants (-1.5)          at         Baltimore

The Ravens have already clinched a playoff berth but have also lost three games in a row. The Giants LogoGiants are always dangerous this time of the year because it’s usually when they shake off all that mediocrity and get hot. Winning their last two games would almost certainly net a division title, and since the last game of the season is against the pathetic Philadelphia Eagles one would assume that this would be a game the Giants would be sufficiently jacked for. New York has everything to win & lose…Baltimore knows it’ll either be the lowest seeded division champion or a wildcard, which is kind of like the difference between Burger King & Wendy’s, i.e. not much difference. Therefore, even though they disappointed me last week I’m going to choose the Giants.

 

San Francisco (-1)      at         Seattle

Who would have ever figured three months ago that this would be such a highly anticipated4 game?? Kudos to head coach Pete Carroll, who’s Seahawks have won 5 out of their last 6 games and look likely to make the playoffs if they can just win one of these last two games. Meanwhile the 49ers have won 4 out of their last 6, with only inexplicable stumbles against the Rams that led to a loss & a tie. I know Seattle has the home field here, and that crowd will be amped out of their freakin’ minds. But I also think that most “experts” would agree that ‘Frisco is still clearly the better team. I am an underdog kind of guy so Seattle’s success has been fun to watch, but I think they’re going to have to win next week against the Rams to secure their playoff spot because I don’t believe the 49ers will lose this one.

 

 

 

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2012 Pigskin Picks of Profundity…..Week 9

I am not feeling particularly verbose this week, so neither this intro nor my thoughts on each game will be extensive. I seriously pondered giving myself a bye week because hey…the football teams do it so why can’t I?? But at the end of the day I just couldn’t wuss out. There are several interesting games in both the NCAA & NFL, so you are getting bonus picks, which is quite magnanimous of me if I do say so myself. At any rate, I am 22-38 overall and hoping to slowly improve, so there is no time like the present.

 

 

NC St.                    at            North Carolina (-7)

Intrastate & regional rivalries are one of the coolest things about college football. Both of these teams are having decent years thus far (NC St. is 52, UNC is 5-3) and are in the hunt for a trip to the ACC championship game. When everything else looks fairly even I usually pick the home team, but my vibes are telling me the Wolfpack gets the mild upset this time.

 

 

UCLA                     at            Arizona St. (-6.5)

These are two more solid teams (both are 5-2) in the thick of a battle for the conference crown. Both still have games against USC, a foe they’ll have to slay to win their division. But first they face each other, and my money (proverbially) is on the Sun Devils.

 

 

Duke                     at            Florida St. (-27.5)

I never thought the day would come where I would even notice Duke football enough to pick one of their games. However, the Blue Devils are a respectable 6-2 and actually lead their division in the ACC. It looks like the oddsmakers aren’t buying into it though since they have made the 7-1 Seminoles nearly 4 TD favorites. I have no doubt that Florida St. will win, but I don’t think it’ll be by that much, so Duke is the pick.

 

 

Navy                      at            East Carolina (-3.5)

I had the Pirates at #18 in my pre-season rankings, so at 5-3 they have underachieved yet still have an opportunity to get there with a strong finish. Navy is a pedestrian 4-3, and I think they go down to East Carolina.

 

 

Seattle                 at            Detroit (-2.5)

The Seahawks are better than most expected, while the Lions have underwhelmed those of us who were convinced they were a playoff caliber team. That being said I think Detroit gets the win here.

 

 

Miami                   at            NY Jets (-2.5)

No one has really been impressive in the AFC East (not even the Patriots), but I think it is fair to say that most have been pleasantly surprised that the Dolphins don’t completely suck and have been bewildered by the circus that the Jets have become. I gave QB Mark Sanchez a pass a couple of weeks ago (pun unavoidable) and he came through. Then last week he fought hard before New England pulled out an overtime victory. Miami is riding a 2 game winning streak and I think it goes to 3 with a win this week.

 

 

New Orleans     at            Denver (-6)

Drew Brees vs. Peyton Manning. Does anything else really need to be said?? I think the Saints have things figured out after their atrocious 0-4 start and I’m picking them to get the win here.

 

 

Indianapolis       at            Tennessee (-3.5)

Neither of these teams has a prayer of catching the Houston Texans and winning the division, but this game is vital if they want to stay in the wildcard race.  Injured Titans’ QB Jake Locker is still on the shelf, and Colts’ rookie signal caller Andrew Luck is quietly have a rather decent inaugural season. I’m going with the rookie to get the upset.

 

 

NY Giants (-2.5)                at            Dallas

The Giants have looked impressive in defense of their Super Bowl title this far, and I see no reason why that won’t continue here. The Cowboys continue to be mired in mediocrity, something that is unlikely to change as long as owner Jerry Jones continues to run amok.

 

 

 

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Winning & Musing…..Volume 8.12

Mid-summer provides us with another lull in the sports calendar, with baseball’s annual All Star break insuring that there is virtually no action except soccer for a couple of days, and really who give a rat’s petoot about soccer?? Oh…it’s the most popular sport in the world?? Well this is America, and WE couldn’t possibly care less about soccer. So THERE rest of the world…take THAT!!

 

 

 

Back in November of last year, shortly after Penn St. head football coach Joe Paterno was fired but before his death, I wrote that “in due time I am sure society will find a balance between the success Joe Paterno had & the good things he did versus the mistakes he made & the negative way his legacy has been permanently tarnished”. It looks like finding that balance might take a lot longer than I thought. Since I expressed that opinion a few things have happened. Paterno died. Serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky was convicted and will be behind bars for the rest of his life. And now an inquiry commissioned by the university to find out where it all went so wrong has published their findings. Despite the dramatic parsing of the report by the sports media, the conclusion that the top brass at Penn St…the university president, the athletic director, Paterno, and a few others…participated in a “callous and shocking” cover-up and “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade” is hardly a new revelation. We’ve known that for months now. There is a stubborn unwillingness of some people to wrap their heads around the idea that Paterno…who most thought was such a stand-up guy…would exhibit such a heinous disregard for the safety of children (not to mention the neglect of upholding the law) in favor of protecting the reputation of the school & the football team. I understand that reluctance. However, the facts are the facts, and now they have been uncovered. It is what it is. Paterno’s reputation and legacy are down the toilet and will never recover. It’s time to move forward. Overanalyzing this story on TV and in other media over & over cannot change what happened. I suspect dredging it all up repeatedly just causes further pain to the victims and it does nothing to help those left to clean up the mess get on with their jobs.

 

 

Was anyone shocked that Commandant Fidel Goodell refused to overturn his own decision on the suspensions of New Orleans Saints players allegedly involved in the bounty scandal?? I am not defending the players involved, but the disciplinary process in the NFL…where Goodell reigns supreme and there is no system of checks & balances…seems flawed at best. It is mind boggling that the Players Association agreed to the new collective bargaining agreement last summer without addressing this issue.

 

 

My Pittsburgh Pirates were once again in 1st place at the All Star break, just like last year. I just hope they don’t fold like a cheap suit like they did in 2011. There seems to be an ardent belief amongst those paid to know about these sorts of things that there will not be another collapse, that this team is legit and will be in the fight for the long haul. We’ll see. Two decades of futility have taught this fan to proceed with caution.

 

 

So I guess we have another Olympics starting soon. I do like the summer Olympics a lot better than the winter version. I look forward to watching good quality basketball, and I am comfortable enough with my machismo to admit that I kind of like the gymnastics. Some of the track & field stuff is cool too, and of course the opening & closing ceremonies are usually grand spectacles well worth watching.

 

 

I’ve grown weary of the Dwight Howard drama, as well as the hand wringing over Drew Brees’ contract. This is the kind of crap that sports fans weren’t bothered with 30 years ago. Just play the damn games and entertain us.

 

 

It was odd turning on the MLB All Star Game and seeing Erin Andrews reporting for Fox. I don’t know what the heck is going on in Bristol, but in the past few months ESPN has lost hotties Andrews and Michelle Beadle while hiring guys named Prim Siripipat, Adnan Virk, Dari Nowkhah, and Anish Shroff. I suppose it matters not, as long as we sports fans have our hunger fed. But come on ESPN…replenish the eye candy supply!!

 

 

Speaking of the All Star Game…

It looks like baseball is in the midst of a transition. Guys like Chipper Jones, Derek Jeter, and David Ortiz are on their way out, while youngsters like Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Stephen Strasburg, Arnoldis Chapman, and Starlin Castro are making a fast impact. That’s good for the game and a positive for the fans. The product needs freshened up every once in a while.

 

 

Let me get this straight…the Washington Nationals are in 1st place in the NL East while the Philadelphia Phillies are in last?? Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

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Person of the Month – February 2010

This month’s winner has been decided for awhile, so I have no legitimate reason for being woefully late…again. My intention is always to post the POM somewhere around the last few days of the month. I am an eternal optimist so I will almost always wait until the last possible second, especially with a month like February, which didn’t have any clear cut runaway choice. One never knows when some sort of huge news story might break in the waning hours of the last day of the month. Alas, that did not happen and the person who I had pondered honoring weeks ago ultimately ended up with the prize…such as it is.


Let us hearken way back to the first Sunday of February, which is traditionally one of the biggest Sundays of the year…Super Bowl Sunday. I am a huge football fan, and love love love Super Bowl Sunday. Even when the commercials are dull and unimaginative, the halftime show is bland and uninteresting, and yes…even when the game itself is a lopsided rout…the majesty of the event is such that it is still a grand and enduring occasion that millions look forward to every year. This year the commercials were indeed tedious and the halftime show forgettable, but atleast we were treated to a dandy of a game that darn near went into overtime. Now the “mainstream” media likes to focus on stars like Indianapolis QB Peyton Manning and DE Dwight Freeney or New Orleans QB Drew Brees and RB Reggie Bush. I don’t begrudge those gentlemen of their well deserved success and attention, but I prefer to give a nod to the little guy, the underdog, the overlooked but essential cog in the machine. Football is a team sport, and if even one player fails to execute his assigned duties it may be the difference between winning and losing. Most will say that Super Bowl XLIV was decided by Saints’ coach Sean Payton’s unorthodox yet gutsy decision to try an onside kick at the beginning of the second half, or by Peyton Manning’s interception to DB Tracey Porter that put the Saints up by 2 scores late in the 4th quarter. However, I would like to submit that the Saints would not have won the game had it not been for the three field goals successfully executed by February’s Person of the Month, kicker Garrett Hartley.


I noted elsewhere on this site recently my opinion that the worst sports journalist in America is ESPN’s Skip Bayless, a guy who apparently can’t hack it as a writer so he plies his trade as a curmudgeonly, borderline clueless, shock jock wannabe on a mostly prosaic morning TV show called First Take. There he debates a rotating roundtable of underachieving athletes and forgettable, mediocre sports commentators. Anyway, one of Skip’s ongoing themes over the years has been his honest to goodness dislike of football kickers. He genuinely believes they should be eliminated from the sport. That, of course, is asinine…and Garrett Hartley proved it in The Super Bowl.


Hartley is a product of the Oklahoma Sooners and had a productive if unremarkable career. I personally remember him kicking 3 field goals (due to Oklahoma’s inability to punch it in the end zone) against my WV Mountaineers during a momentous choke job by the Sooners in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl (By the way…completely off topic…how do assclowns like ESPN’s Lee Corso and CSTV’s Brian Jones, both of whom confidently predicted that Oklahoma would destroy West Virginia in that game, still have jobs?? I’m just sayin’…). He was undrafted and signed with the Saints as a free agent, and as a matter of fact, was not even on their active roster until ¾ of the way through the 2009 season. Then he kicked a 40 yard field goal in overtime to give New Orleans the NFC Championship and send them to The Super Bowl. The 3 field goals he kicked in the big game were all 40+ yards, which means they weren’t exactly automatic, especially on the grandest stage in football.


As soon as Super Bowl XLIV was over I said to myself that Garrett Hartley should be the MVP. The final score was 31-17, so it is true that mathematically those 9 points weren’t the final difference maker. However, on a realistic level anyone who watched that game knows that if Hartley would have missed any one of those kicks the whole dynamic of the game would have been altered and a different outcome would have been more likely. Predictably the media fell to their knees to fellatiate the golden boy quarterback instead of giving a second thought to someone as unimportant as the kicker. In this particular case I can’t honestly say that Drew Brees didn’t deserve the adoration of the masses. His performance was superb. But this is my award to give on my blog, so I choose to show some love for an underdog…a little guy…a cog in a machine that in this instance most likely would not have won The Super Bowl without him.

Random Thoughts 18

Congratulations to the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints. The game did not play out like most expected, as Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback Peyton Manning looked quite average instead of like one of the greatest field generals of all time. The victory is good for the beleaguered city of New Orleans and I sincerely hope many benefits are reaped.

The re-entry sequence near the end of Apollo 13 deserves to be ranked right up there with the baptism scene from The Godfather and the “Dad” scene at the end of Field of Dreams as among the greatest movies moments of all time.

I have come to a spiritual crossroads. My faith and belief in God and in my Savior Jesus Christ is still there, but my patience with superficial Christian clichés has run out. I no longer desire church to be a shallow social gathering. At the same time, I see no value in being a humorless Bible thumper who can’t loosen up and have fun…others too easily disregard that person as an uptight, unhappy killjoy. I am on a journey seeking an authentic & devout relationship and I am not sure it is available in the places one would normally assume it can be found. Something inside me has either broken or been awakened (I’m not sure which) in the past few months, and my BS meter when it comes to religion is on high alert.

Even as a diehard conservative I am not really sold on Sarah Palin as a legit Presidential candidate, but the outright vitriol aimed in her direction by histrionic shit stirrers on the left is puzzling. Palin and former President George W. Bush have their flaws for sure, but how some can so completely eviscerate them almost daily while at the same time putting Barack Hussein Obama on the largest pedestal mankind has ever known is completely beyond all logical comprehension.

I would like to nominate ESPN’s Skip Bayless as the worst sports journalist in history. His arrogant and condescending attitude is off the charts, and his opinions are so often dead wrong that he has become a joke. I recently saw him trying to justify the possibility of 13-11 North Carolina being chosen as an at-large team for the NCAA tournament. He was dead serious about the Tar Heels being selected merely due to their history and pedigree over lesser known teams with better records. Not only did the debate prove him to be a complete fool, but it highlighted what can be very wrong with collegiate athletics when so much credit is given to a reputation and a perception instead of actual performance. Call it The Notre Dame Fallacy.

Valentine’s Day has to be the worst holiday on the calendar.

I love it when people act like they understand something when in reality they have absolutely no clue. It really makes them look silly. Mark Twain famously said it is “better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt”. More people should follow that advice. And yes, I see the irony in a guy who writes a VERY opinionated blog espousing that philosophy.

Can we please dispense with the term “pro-choice”?? People who are pro-choice only believe in a woman’s right to choose if she ultimately chooses to have an abortion.

Speaking of BS…..

I accepted long ago the fact that it is very possible that I may someday be one of those people who is dead for several days and whose body is only discovered because the neighbor’s begin to notice a stench. This is because at some point it became very clear to me that very few people legitimately give a damn whether I live or die, which does not in any way make me special or unique…..it’s just the way we human beings treat each other nowadays.  So armed with this awareness, I have very little patience for petulant, bratty adults who act like whiny children in a desperate attempt to have their ego validated. Encounters with so-called adults make me ever more determined to fade into the background in a concerted effort to not draw attention to myself.

I like Nascar and I’m not ashamed to admit it.