Playoffs?

It is semifinal week in the OJSFA!

GAME 1:

The White Broncos (10-4) v. OJSFA or Die (8-6)

LINE: Broncos by 25

SERIES HISTORY: Broncos lead 5-4

Thoughts: I'm going to kick Richard's ass. Brady is going to throw 10 TDs for him, all to Deion Branch, who starts for me.

GAME 2: Clown Baby (9-5) v. Schmock's Team (12-2)

LINE: Schmock by 3

SERIES HISTORY: Clown Baby leads 6-5

Thoughts: I'm not sure how either of these guys made the playoffs. Schmock almost went undefeated with Santana Moss as one of his starting wideouts. My brother was a playoff team all year with Knowshon Moreno and Ryan Matthew's failed expectations as his backfield. I think my brother hangs on due to A-Rodg being out for Schmock and A-Peter playing on an ice rink Monday night.

AWARDS

Aaron Rodgers won the MVP award. He was the best player on Schmock's team.

Past Winners:
2006: LaDanian Tomlinson
2007: Tom Brady
2008: Phillip Rivers
2009: Tom Brady

Arian Foster came from nowhere to win the Offensive Player of the Year. He scored the most points. He was on my team.

Past Winners:
2006: LaDanian Tomlinson
2007: Tom Brady
2008: Drew Brees
2009: Drew Brees

PACKERS PLAYOFFS

Check out the ESPN playoff machine. The Packers are totally and completely fucked. They almost have to beat the Pats to have good chance at the playoffs. Or the need the Vikings to beat the Bears with a converted WR at QB. And their fans will be angry, cold and sober.

I dunno, maybe Matt Flynn is good. I can't really imagine them winning. Pats by 17. And Belichick is still a dick.

CREIGHTON BLUEJAYS

Gregory Echenique makes his debut tonight on ESPN3 againt Idaho St. For those who don't know, Echenique is a transfer from Rutgers. He was the number 9 overall recruit two years ago, and the Big East freshman of the year. For a Valley school to get a guy like this is a big deal. I guess Echenique is immediately going to put up 30-20 every night. He is the Stephen Strasburg of the Creighton Bluejays. Good times.

Not So Famous Dave's

I used to love Famous Dave's. In high school, it was a frequent hang out when we had money burning holes in our pockets. I will always remember the time I ate 10 corn bread muffins on a dare. In law school we went there on occasion. I never didn't love it. It has been approximately 4 years since my last Famous Dave's. The nearest one is in Appleton, and we don't get there that often. And my wife doesn't love it. Last night though, we made a stop. And it was fucking terrible. It was historically bad. Like so bad I don't think I can ever go back. The only good things were a) the beer was cold and b) the corn muffin. Everything else was cold and slimy. The service was slow and they fucked up my wife's order. I haven't been that disappointed in a long time. I will just stick to the pulled pork and ribs that my dad makes. They are a thousand times better, and free. Overall Experience: 1.5 out of 5.

I've decided to watch Cards/Saints, try to watch CU/Wichita in spurts or on the computer, go to dinner with the bosses, try to catch most of Colts/Ravens live, and DVR Bucky v. Ohio St for late night viewing/head bobbing. I figure the Badger score will be easiest to avoid.

Sorry for wasting all of your time. Go watch some sports.

I thought this was kind of funny

I was digging around in webmaster tools and found a list of words most commonly used when googlebot crawls our website

Here's the top 10:

1. sports
2. shit
3. sucks
4. people
5. new
6. fuck
7. college
8. nfl
9. shitty
10. baseball

Pretty much sums up the last year and a half of Packers/Brewers sports

NFL Picks!! and stuff

I'm back, making picks using nothing but gut feelings, but not placing any actual bets because I don't have money and because gambling is illegal. Although I hope to make one or two on October 25th in Vegas. Last year I was a respectable, but not great, 134-126-7 against the spread.

Pit (-6), TB (+6), NO (-13), Atl (-4.5), Hou (-4.5), Cin (-4), Car (+1), Ind (-7), Min (-4), Bal (-13), NYG (-6.5), Sea (-8.5), Ari (-6.5), GB (-3.5), NE (-10.5), SD (-9.5)

I HATE three or four of these picks.

Looking forward to real football tonight.

STUFF

Goddamn fantasy football. Already it looks like Pierre Thomas is out because he "cut his leg on a fence" WHAT? What the fuck are you doing trying to leap fences you stupid asshole? It had something to do with his Rottweiler or German Shepard or pit bull or some shit. Jesus christ. Doesn't he understand that I've got money on him? Fuck! Now I have to start goddamn Julius Jones, who I couldn't possibly like any less than I do. Jones prediction: 43 yds rushing, 1 catch for 4 yds, 0 TD, 1 fumble.

Quick movie review. Since I have my free HBO preview I am watching some movies that aren't that new, but that I haven't already seen. I watched "Hitman" the other night. It surprisingly didn't suck dick. Cool shooting/gadgets/gratuitous nudity= not terrible. They didn't really explain why he has a fucking barcode on his head (although I'm mildly familiar with the video game, so I kind of know), so that was weird. I'd give it like a 3.5/5.

Packer preview coming tomorrow.

Big Day

First off, my shitty picks.

Last Week: 9-6-1
Season: 128-121-7

Picks:
Arizona (Ev) over Atlanta
Indy (Ev) over SD
Bal (-3.5) over Mia
Phi (-3) over Min

I plan to do nothing (other than take down the Christmas decorations) all day today. Oh, I mean I am going to do nothing other than watch sports. 1 p.m. UW takes on Penn St. (Easy Win). NFL playoffs start at 3:30. And I might try to squeeze in the gigantic early season Valley tilt between Creighton (12-2, 2-0) and Illinois St. (13-0, 2-0) (close win for ISU).

Nothing else to report really. The wife had a good analogy to describe Peyton Manning and how he is probably a better all-time QB than that guy who used to play for the Packers. "Manning is like a baseball player who hits a ton of home runs, but doesn't ever strike out." I think that is kind of true. He really doesn't make any mistakes.


Now you can all wake up and watch football.

Funny Comments and Weather

Mark Schlereth just predicted that the Titans would win 31-3 today. I laughed out loud. It could seriously happen though. I wholeheartedly disagree with taking the games from Detroit and Dallas. Even though there is the possibility of shitty games, it is kind of cool that a)you can always count on the same two teams playing and b) there is at least a 1 in 8 chance of the Packers playing on Thanksgiving, which I think is sort of cool.

While flipping through the channels just now, my wife stopped on the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. There is some Broadway cast singing a Christmas Carol. She says, "I hate theatre fags." Alrighty then.

Early forecast for Sunday: High of 33, 40% chance of snow, 100% chance of me being hungover

Who Dun It?

If you think for one second that an NFL player (or more likely someone in his posse) didn't have something to do with the steroid dealer that snitched to the NFL and named names about players he dealt to, winding up with a fucking bullet in his forehead, you are wrong.

I love conspiracies probably more than the average person even, but this is the most obvious hit I've ever seen. You know what else? Goodell will never let this get solved.

There is a 50% chance it was Pacman, a 50% chance it was Chris Henry and a 60% chance it was Odell Thurman. Bryant McKinnie probably deserves a percentage or two as well.

A Begrudging Spygate Post

The last thing I really want to write about is "Spygate". I think it is played out, and is now being driven by the media. But there is one aspect of this that really, really, pisses me off. That aspect is Senator Arlen Specter. The guy just won't let it die.

The NFL talked to this Matt Walsh guy, and they were satisfied that he apparently lied to someone about having this Super Bowl tape. And they were satisfied that even if the Pats didn't tell them the whole truth, there wasn't much else there, and the punishment (which was unprecedented) was good enough. Goodell even admitted that the Hoodie lied to him, but he knew it and took that into account when administering the punishment.

So why does Specter feel the need to puff up his chest and demand some ridiculous investigation? Why the fuck should the government care this much about what is going on in the NFL? Specter keeps threatening to remove the NFL's antitrust exemption. This is a stupid threat to make for a number of reasons. The antitrust exemption is basically in place to allow the league as a whole to pool their interests to negotiate TV deals. This is what basically keeps smaller teams afloat, because TV money is where the majority of NFL revenue comes from. If the exemption was repealed, individual teams would have to negotiate their own TV deals, and there would be basically 32 different TV deals. At some point (even though the Packers are extremely popular) small market teams would be forced out of business, because larger markets would get bigger TV deals because they have more people in their markets. The other effect is that the exemption makes it extremely difficult for a competing league because it essentially prevents the networks that carry NFL to carry the new league. In this day and age, this probably isn't that important because there are enough networks (cable and otherwise) that could carry the competition. And anyone starting a league would be insane to try to compete with the NFL anyway. This is a super simplified explanation, and although I once took a class, I am far from an expert on this issue. My point is that this would be a stupid way to deal with this "issue" and a complete overreaction.

Specter is demanding a "Mitchell Report" investigation of this "issue". What did the Mitchell Report exactly accomplish? All it did was out a few people, and make a few legitimate suggestions. It by no means scratched the surface of the steroids problem, and Mitchell had very little power to do a full investigation.

What would a similar report accomplish here? I think it is pretty clear that the Pats cheated. They admit as much, the NFL has punished them. How much it may have affected games is debatable, but no sort of investigation would garner anything that could fix that debate. So an investigation would probably gather a whole bunch of people who may know something, but also may have motive to make things up. In the end, we will be right where we started, we'll have a whole bunch more accusations (maybe even involving more teams taping) and we still won't be able to change anything. And then we'll have a bill for a couple of million dollars that is going to end up on our tax bill.

Does the average fan feel so upset about this that they think the government should step in to get to the bottom of this? Absolutely not. Most people probably hate the Pats a little more, most wouldn't care if Belicheat was given the needle or Brady has his balls cut off, but most realize that continued speculation isn't going to change the outcome of games played 7 years ago. Most people are not effected enough that they consider the NFL to be "fixed" (see NBA) or would stop watching it.

You know what I bet most taxpayers would rather have investigated by the government? Well, probably a lot of things. How about we start by figuring out why it costs me twice as fucking much to fill up my car with gas as it did two years ago? How about we figure out why we could fly a fucking spaceship to the moon in the 1960's, but conveniently nobody can build a car to run on anything but gas and oil? How about we figure out why so few people can afford health care? How about we investigate why Republicans care so much about gay people getting married? Of all things this guy should be worrying about, and making threats about, he chooses this???

At some point, Roger Goodell is going to tell Specter to get bent. To this point they have gone out of their way to at least give the appearance they are cooperating. But I don't believe Specter has the power to unilaterally remove any antitrust exemption. And he'll have to be re-elected at some point, and I imagine his constituents are going to be sick of hearing about this while they are eating Macaroni and Cheese for dinner 4 days a week. Roger is a bad man, and if anyone has as much ability to make someones life as uncomfortable as a Senator could, I believe it is Goodell.

Do I think the NFL probably knows more than they are saying? Yes. Do I think the Pats do too? Yes. Do I think the other 31 teams probably know some things? Yes. The question is, WHO GIVES A SHIT?????

I implore the people of Pennsylvania to use their vote whenever this idiot comes up for re-election, to vote for whomever is running against him.

Seriously. This has to stop.

What are the odds?

If you had asked me before yesterday to name the top 3 least likely NFL WR's to be connected to a shootout, my list would be as follows:

1)Donald Driver

1a) Marvin Harrison

3) Wes WELKAH!

4) Chris Henry....errr.....nevermind

It turns out that Marvin is (very, very allegedly) some kind of urban Rambo. Didn't see that one coming. Next week we are going to find out that my half-brother Eli was fighting Kimbo Slice on the weekends to stay in shape, and that Bill Parcells moved in with his boyfriend.