It wasn’t long after the Super Bowl’s opening kickoff when my son Joey asked me why I have to watch football games “all day, everyday.” That’s clearly an exaggeration on his part, even on the one day when it’s possible to get completely consumed by coverage of a single game from the time you wake up. I’m not into that though. Not even three years ago when I woke up from a poor night’s sleep in anticipation of the Bears playing in Super Bowl XLI.
As freakish as I am about sports, I’m really not an all-day NFL fan. My habits are strictly dictated by my allegiances, so my fandom is entirely dependent on when the Bears play.
I rarely watch any of the weekly pre-game shows when there are 13 to 16 games to preview; my team is involved in exactly one of those each week. So if all teams/games are treated equally – which they aren’t – then over the course of a two-hour edition of NFL Countdown the Bears’ game would get an average of somewhere between five and seven minutes of coverage each week. (That’s assuming commercial interruptions account for 16 minutes per hour of programming.)
Why would I watch 80+ minutes of coverage devoted to other games with which I have no emotional involvement? Breaking fantasy football news? Like I couldn’t get that with a couple of simple clicks on my PC instead.
Which brings me back to Super Bowl Sunday. CBS had a four-hour pregame show, and that didn’t even include the “Kickoff Show” which was actually the last 30 minutes leading up to the kickoff. I understand that the NFL is believed to be the model professional sports league in our country right now (although you might need to stay closely tuned to ongoing labor negotiations for a reminder that the NFL is human), but not only are there no casual fans watching all that fluff, I have a lot of trouble believing there are many true die-hard football fans who stay glued to their TVs for hours leading up the opening kickoff.
There are only so many human interest stories that can truly be interesting. As humbling as it was to basically be a housewife at the time, concentrating most of my efforts early Sunday afternoon on laundry and cleaning duties, it was plenty more productive than sitting on my couch watching the many stories that stroked the egos of the Manning family and trumpeted the Saints as a shining light around which an entire damaged city could rally.
No thanks.
When gametime did finally arrive, I had the same lack of rooting interest as I did two Sundays ago when we all learned who’d be facing off for the Lombardi Trophy. At that point I was just happy that Brett Favre’s season – and hopefully his career – was over. I had a slight lean for the Colts, but it was less due to a liking for them and more to do with a bit of distaste for the Saints. Still, not enough of a difference to care too much.
As is often the case when I watch two teams about whom I don’t really care, I concern myself more with some of the individual players who are involved. And on Super Bowl Sunday my attention was mainly fixed on two former members of the Illinois Fighting Illini. If I can’t focus my energy on my alma mater, then what good am I?
So my primary concern was not necessarily who was the winning team, but my hope was that Pierre Thomas wouldn’t cough up the ball at a key moment and that Kelvin Hayden wouldn’t get burned deep by Drew Brees for a score. Neither of those things happened. In fact, Thomas made a very positive impact, accounting for about 100 total yards and a touchdown. Go Illini!
But now that the Super Bowl is over, we can move on from football. And for the first time, we don’t have to worry about the formality that is the Pro Bowl, the worst all-star game of all the professional sports.
The Pro Bowl being played the week before the Super Bowl is actually an absurd idea for many reasons, not the most trivial of which is that it obviously precludes the participation of any player from either conference champion. The good news about that, though, is that no one fucking cares. The Pro Bowl is a joke, and so it’s probably good to get it out of the way as soon as possible.
It should be noted, however, that the irrelevance of the game isn’t the fault of the league; it’s the nature of the sport. You can’t put these freakish athletes out on the gridiron together for an exhibition and for a moment think that it’s going to be entertaining theater. It’s just not possible. For a sport that’s built around hitting your opponents and avoiding being hit by them, you might as well just make your all-star game a skills competition. See which QB scores the highest in accuracy drills, see which kicker can drill one through the uprights from the farthest distance, and see which linebacker with a dangerous blend of speed and strength can literally knock the head off of a tackling dummy.
Let’s instead just make it a creative version of the draft combine and those lame College Football All-Star Challenges that are always on this time of year.
Actually, we probably shouldn’t do that either. Let’s just continue pretending the Pro Bowl doesn’t exist.
Back to the point, the football season is over. It’s time to think about where your team stands for the coming season and what can be done to address its weaknesses. The Bears’ 2009 season, for all intents and purposes, ended three months ago, so I’ve had plenty of time to ponder their future. Now I can do it without the distraction of other teams and their annoying success.
Fucking losers.
Showing posts with label football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label football. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The State of Illinois Football: Freaking Banged Up
In the NFL playoffs, a bye is a basically win. And while we all know that college football can’t be compared to the NFL, especially the playoff format, that’s how I’m trying to consider this weekend as a University of Illinois football fan. This mid-September bye week should be like a win.
The Illini's season-opening turd has already been somewhat documented. Coming in as a six-point favorite against a non-conference rival in a neutral site, the Orange & Blue went ahead and played entirely uninspired, losing by four touchdowns. Our best player, Arrelious Benn, named by some as the Big Ten's preseason Offensive Player of the Year, lasted less than a minute before being sidelined due to a sprained ankle. He didn't return. Not long after that, our starting running back also left for good with an ankle issue. And, oh by the way, Jason Ford was only the #1 running back that day because our incumbent starter didn't dress for the game due to his own ankle injury.
Christ, is this football or fucking log-rolling?
Now consider our second game, last Saturday versus Illinois State. On our first play from scrimmage, quarterback Juice Williams, a three-year starter, rumbled untouched down the left sideline on an option keeper. He’d have scored if he didn’t stumble on his own just as he crossed the five. Falling just short of the goal line, it was obvious he was at least somewhat injured. He stayed in the game to hand the ball off for a one-yard touchdown run on the next play, but that was his last play of the night.
The good news was that none of the aforementioned injuries were terribly serious. Although Benn’s absence clearly affected the overall offensive performance in the opener – I admit, probably not a 28-point difference – he and Ford were both back for the Illinois State game. Juice apparently wanted to come back in after his strained quad, but the coaching staff didn’t want to risk it. So all three will be 100% when the Illini visit Columbus, Ohio, one week from today.
But another very key player won’t be. Our lone returning starter at linebacker and arguably our best defensive player, junior Martez Wilson, is out for the year. With a herniated disk in his neck, Wilson was forced to undergo surgery this week. He didn’t play against Illinois State, but the staff was optimistic about his recovery. He even returned to practice earlier this week, albeit wearing a red jersey to alert the rest of the team that he was in there for non-contact purposes only. His appearance in those drills clearly provided a false sense of hope, as the bad news was delivered on Thursday.
So what does this mean for the state of Illinois football? I don’t know, but this might just be a fucking cursed season. Think about it: Best player goes down on the first series of the first game and doesn’t return. Second-best player goes down on our first offensive play of the second game and doesn’t return. Best defensive player is ruled out for the season during an early-season bye week. Fuck. I cringe thinking about what might have happened if we actually had an opponent on the schedule this weekend.
After a rather trying first few weeks of the season, the team must now gather itself to play against perennial Big Ten frontrunner Ohio State. Most people remember the Illini’s win in Columbus two years ago on their way to an unlikely Rose Bowl berth. But what most people don’t know is that Illinois has actually won seven of its last ten there. Ok, that clearly doesn’t mean a damn thing right now, especially for a team that has struggled to stop anyone for the last year and a half.
I don’t know what to expect, but after just a few weeks of the 2009 season, it seems unreasonable just to hope that the starting lineup can remain fully intact. And that's some bullshit.
The Illini's season-opening turd has already been somewhat documented. Coming in as a six-point favorite against a non-conference rival in a neutral site, the Orange & Blue went ahead and played entirely uninspired, losing by four touchdowns. Our best player, Arrelious Benn, named by some as the Big Ten's preseason Offensive Player of the Year, lasted less than a minute before being sidelined due to a sprained ankle. He didn't return. Not long after that, our starting running back also left for good with an ankle issue. And, oh by the way, Jason Ford was only the #1 running back that day because our incumbent starter didn't dress for the game due to his own ankle injury.
Christ, is this football or fucking log-rolling?
Now consider our second game, last Saturday versus Illinois State. On our first play from scrimmage, quarterback Juice Williams, a three-year starter, rumbled untouched down the left sideline on an option keeper. He’d have scored if he didn’t stumble on his own just as he crossed the five. Falling just short of the goal line, it was obvious he was at least somewhat injured. He stayed in the game to hand the ball off for a one-yard touchdown run on the next play, but that was his last play of the night.
The good news was that none of the aforementioned injuries were terribly serious. Although Benn’s absence clearly affected the overall offensive performance in the opener – I admit, probably not a 28-point difference – he and Ford were both back for the Illinois State game. Juice apparently wanted to come back in after his strained quad, but the coaching staff didn’t want to risk it. So all three will be 100% when the Illini visit Columbus, Ohio, one week from today.
But another very key player won’t be. Our lone returning starter at linebacker and arguably our best defensive player, junior Martez Wilson, is out for the year. With a herniated disk in his neck, Wilson was forced to undergo surgery this week. He didn’t play against Illinois State, but the staff was optimistic about his recovery. He even returned to practice earlier this week, albeit wearing a red jersey to alert the rest of the team that he was in there for non-contact purposes only. His appearance in those drills clearly provided a false sense of hope, as the bad news was delivered on Thursday.
So what does this mean for the state of Illinois football? I don’t know, but this might just be a fucking cursed season. Think about it: Best player goes down on the first series of the first game and doesn’t return. Second-best player goes down on our first offensive play of the second game and doesn’t return. Best defensive player is ruled out for the season during an early-season bye week. Fuck. I cringe thinking about what might have happened if we actually had an opponent on the schedule this weekend.
After a rather trying first few weeks of the season, the team must now gather itself to play against perennial Big Ten frontrunner Ohio State. Most people remember the Illini’s win in Columbus two years ago on their way to an unlikely Rose Bowl berth. But what most people don’t know is that Illinois has actually won seven of its last ten there. Ok, that clearly doesn’t mean a damn thing right now, especially for a team that has struggled to stop anyone for the last year and a half.
I don’t know what to expect, but after just a few weeks of the 2009 season, it seems unreasonable just to hope that the starting lineup can remain fully intact. And that's some bullshit.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Kicking Off with the Wrong Freaking Foot
At 11:00am on the first Saturday of the college football season, neither of the TVs in my house were tuned to the start of a game. DisneyXD's animated Spiderman series was on one, while the other was being used for playback of a Sesame Street sing-along DVD. In a perfect world, I might have been halfway between Kansas City and St. Louis, on my way to the Fighting Illini season opener. But this world is clearly far from perfect.
Although I didn't have a ticket, I'd entertained the idea of making the trip to St. Louis all the way up until Friday night. My wife even supported the plan. But when I had to head out of the house at 1:30am to purchase pain relievers for my littlest boy, I knew there was no way I'd be making my solo gameday roadtrip.
Most of the day instead centered around keeping our children happy and comfortable; by late morning it was clear that Joey wasn't 100% either. So the 2:40pm kickoff of the Illinois-Missouri game arrived not with me sitting in the Edward Jones Dome, not with me screaming at the television in anticipation of the start of the season, but with me sitting relatively reserved (at least on the outside) with a somewhat-ill child by my side, while my miserably-ill child was with his mother at our doctor's urgent care office. Not at all what I had in mind for gameday.
By the time Lukas returned home with a diagnosis of two ear infections and mouth ulcers consistent with the 'Hand, Foot and Mouth' disease virus, the Illini were already in a 10-0 hole and my blood pressure likely would have blown the cuff off of my arm. Things clearly didn't get much better as I watched every snap of a game that I now feel comfortable saying was the most disappointing football performance I've seen in recent memory. And I watched it primarily in a silent living room.
I'm usually the person who has a comment for every play, the annoyingly educated fan who call outs individual players away from the ball during the action. It doesn't matter if I'm alone or with a group of people or in public. So imagine the trouble I had trying to watch this game in silence, watching my beloved alma mater appear ill-prepared from the start, lose its best player to injury on the opening series and make the same mistakes as last year's disappointing 5-7 team.
You wanna know how it feels? When someone who usually bursts with emotion is forced to keep it bottled up inside? Physically ill, that's how it feels. My head throbbed, and I felt like I was going vomit.
I didn't watch another snap of football the rest of the day, and I don't look forward to watching any in the near future.
The weekend began with so much promise. The forecast of nice weather, the kickoff of college football with the Illini as a six-point favorite and, of course, knowing there's an extra day off before heading back to work. But it quickly crashed and burned. The late night/early morning trip to the pharmacy -- which was actually two stops instead of one since Walgreens didn't have what I needed -- is the only time I've been out of the house since Friday evening. Now here I sit, monitoring sick children, doing laundry and dreaming of a better outcome.
What could be next? Cleaning the fucking garage? Maybe the basement? At this rate I shouldn't be surprised if I'm called into work on a federal holiday.
Although I didn't have a ticket, I'd entertained the idea of making the trip to St. Louis all the way up until Friday night. My wife even supported the plan. But when I had to head out of the house at 1:30am to purchase pain relievers for my littlest boy, I knew there was no way I'd be making my solo gameday roadtrip.
Most of the day instead centered around keeping our children happy and comfortable; by late morning it was clear that Joey wasn't 100% either. So the 2:40pm kickoff of the Illinois-Missouri game arrived not with me sitting in the Edward Jones Dome, not with me screaming at the television in anticipation of the start of the season, but with me sitting relatively reserved (at least on the outside) with a somewhat-ill child by my side, while my miserably-ill child was with his mother at our doctor's urgent care office. Not at all what I had in mind for gameday.
By the time Lukas returned home with a diagnosis of two ear infections and mouth ulcers consistent with the 'Hand, Foot and Mouth' disease virus, the Illini were already in a 10-0 hole and my blood pressure likely would have blown the cuff off of my arm. Things clearly didn't get much better as I watched every snap of a game that I now feel comfortable saying was the most disappointing football performance I've seen in recent memory. And I watched it primarily in a silent living room.
I'm usually the person who has a comment for every play, the annoyingly educated fan who call outs individual players away from the ball during the action. It doesn't matter if I'm alone or with a group of people or in public. So imagine the trouble I had trying to watch this game in silence, watching my beloved alma mater appear ill-prepared from the start, lose its best player to injury on the opening series and make the same mistakes as last year's disappointing 5-7 team.
You wanna know how it feels? When someone who usually bursts with emotion is forced to keep it bottled up inside? Physically ill, that's how it feels. My head throbbed, and I felt like I was going vomit.
I didn't watch another snap of football the rest of the day, and I don't look forward to watching any in the near future.
The weekend began with so much promise. The forecast of nice weather, the kickoff of college football with the Illini as a six-point favorite and, of course, knowing there's an extra day off before heading back to work. But it quickly crashed and burned. The late night/early morning trip to the pharmacy -- which was actually two stops instead of one since Walgreens didn't have what I needed -- is the only time I've been out of the house since Friday evening. Now here I sit, monitoring sick children, doing laundry and dreaming of a better outcome.
What could be next? Cleaning the fucking garage? Maybe the basement? At this rate I shouldn't be surprised if I'm called into work on a federal holiday.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Fantasies Aren't Always Fantastic
Over the past 12 months, I've somehow become an awful fantasy sports player. I'm hoping to simply chalk it up as a bad year, but things certainly couldn't be any worse than where they stand now.
After reaching the playoffs in all three of my fantasy sports in 2008 (football, baseball and basketball), I've really laid an egg in '09.
I'd like to blame most of it on injuries. My top two picks in fantasy basketball -- Kevin Garnett and Deron Williams -- battled injuries early in the season. And while Williams recovered and posted the kind of numbers that were expected, Garnett's physical woes lasted throughout the year. I knew I should have taken Dwight Howard. So, just like a NBA team battling to earn the most ping-pong balls for the draft lottery, I pretty much mailed it in for the last couple of months of the season. I was that far out of contention.
Fantasy baseball hasn't been much better. I thought my team was built great on paper:
C - Jorge Posada
1B - Carlos Delgado
2B - Brian Roberts
SS - Jimmy Rollins
3B - Aramis Ramirez
OF - Josh Hamilton
OF - Curtis Granderson
OF - Raul Ibanez
Util - Nate McLouth/Milton Bradley/Alex Rios
SP - CC Sabathia
SP - Yovani Gallardo
RP - Francisco Rodriguez
RP - Bobby Jenks
Yeah, looks good on paper, just like the 2009 Chicago Cubs. I'm going to again have to play the injury card a little, considering my corner infielders didn't last much more than a couple of weeks before landing on the shelf. Ramirez didn't get back until around the All-Star Break, while Delgado is still gone.
And why wasn't I told that Josh Hamilton fell off the fucking wagon in January? Sure, it may have been an isolated incident, and I shouldn't be one to blame a guy for having a few drinks, but it may have swayed my opinion of him a bit. Might not have burned a top 15 pick on him. Of course, Hamilton ended up spending some time on the DL too.
My top pick, Jimmy Rollins, just two years removed from an MVP season, was also a royal turd over the first couple of months. Who could have predicted that?
Anyway, so fantasy baseball is fucking done too. And, consistent with the rest of my 2009 performance, my new fantasy endeavor of English Premier League soccer has gotten off to a really bad start. For two weeks in a row to start the season, I've forgotten to register my team. Obviously this one is not of great priority.
But fantasy football can be the great redemption. My draft was this past week, and I'm ready to get things going. There was, of course, an early speedbump. Thanks to a shitty day at work Wednesday, I didn't have a chance to fine-tune my depth chart knowledge as much as I'd hoped, so by day's end I knew I was somewhat screwed for my 6:00pm draft. Therefore, it was time for a new strategy.
I arrived at the Fox and Hound armed with a pen and just one sheet of paper: a list of bye weeks for the 2009 NFL season. That was all I wanted. I'd rely otherwise only on the expertise between my ears. Here's the result, the projected starting lineup for the Galloping Ghosts in Week 1:
QB - Tony Romo
RB - Steve Slaton, Clinton Portis
WR - Chad Ochocinco, TJ Houshmandzadeh, Lee Evans
TE - Jeremy Shockey
K - Neil Rackers (Go Illinois)
D - San Diego
I'll admit that by the sixth round, my brother insisted on giving me a copy of one of his cheat sheets (only because he had an extra one), and there were a couple of occasions when I peeked at my buddy Dan's magazine. But I felt okay about what I'd done.
Other than my perhaps puzzling draft strategy, the night had the usual highlights/lowlights: My friend Dave brought way too much paperwork and got far too drunk, my brother shamelessly drafted a member of the Minnesota Vikings (as a rabid Bears' fan like myself, I always hope he'll have the same no-Vikings and no-Packers philosophy), and my friend Troy made an inappropriate comment about my mother.
Here's to what I hope is a 2009-saving football season.
After reaching the playoffs in all three of my fantasy sports in 2008 (football, baseball and basketball), I've really laid an egg in '09.
I'd like to blame most of it on injuries. My top two picks in fantasy basketball -- Kevin Garnett and Deron Williams -- battled injuries early in the season. And while Williams recovered and posted the kind of numbers that were expected, Garnett's physical woes lasted throughout the year. I knew I should have taken Dwight Howard. So, just like a NBA team battling to earn the most ping-pong balls for the draft lottery, I pretty much mailed it in for the last couple of months of the season. I was that far out of contention.
Fantasy baseball hasn't been much better. I thought my team was built great on paper:
C - Jorge Posada
1B - Carlos Delgado
2B - Brian Roberts
SS - Jimmy Rollins
3B - Aramis Ramirez
OF - Josh Hamilton
OF - Curtis Granderson
OF - Raul Ibanez
Util - Nate McLouth/Milton Bradley/Alex Rios
SP - CC Sabathia
SP - Yovani Gallardo
RP - Francisco Rodriguez
RP - Bobby Jenks
Yeah, looks good on paper, just like the 2009 Chicago Cubs. I'm going to again have to play the injury card a little, considering my corner infielders didn't last much more than a couple of weeks before landing on the shelf. Ramirez didn't get back until around the All-Star Break, while Delgado is still gone.
And why wasn't I told that Josh Hamilton fell off the fucking wagon in January? Sure, it may have been an isolated incident, and I shouldn't be one to blame a guy for having a few drinks, but it may have swayed my opinion of him a bit. Might not have burned a top 15 pick on him. Of course, Hamilton ended up spending some time on the DL too.
My top pick, Jimmy Rollins, just two years removed from an MVP season, was also a royal turd over the first couple of months. Who could have predicted that?
Anyway, so fantasy baseball is fucking done too. And, consistent with the rest of my 2009 performance, my new fantasy endeavor of English Premier League soccer has gotten off to a really bad start. For two weeks in a row to start the season, I've forgotten to register my team. Obviously this one is not of great priority.
But fantasy football can be the great redemption. My draft was this past week, and I'm ready to get things going. There was, of course, an early speedbump. Thanks to a shitty day at work Wednesday, I didn't have a chance to fine-tune my depth chart knowledge as much as I'd hoped, so by day's end I knew I was somewhat screwed for my 6:00pm draft. Therefore, it was time for a new strategy.
I arrived at the Fox and Hound armed with a pen and just one sheet of paper: a list of bye weeks for the 2009 NFL season. That was all I wanted. I'd rely otherwise only on the expertise between my ears. Here's the result, the projected starting lineup for the Galloping Ghosts in Week 1:
QB - Tony Romo
RB - Steve Slaton, Clinton Portis
WR - Chad Ochocinco, TJ Houshmandzadeh, Lee Evans
TE - Jeremy Shockey
K - Neil Rackers (Go Illinois)
D - San Diego
I'll admit that by the sixth round, my brother insisted on giving me a copy of one of his cheat sheets (only because he had an extra one), and there were a couple of occasions when I peeked at my buddy Dan's magazine. But I felt okay about what I'd done.
Other than my perhaps puzzling draft strategy, the night had the usual highlights/lowlights: My friend Dave brought way too much paperwork and got far too drunk, my brother shamelessly drafted a member of the Minnesota Vikings (as a rabid Bears' fan like myself, I always hope he'll have the same no-Vikings and no-Packers philosophy), and my friend Troy made an inappropriate comment about my mother.
Here's to what I hope is a 2009-saving football season.
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