1) I’d like to recognize the master of public relations, Roger Goodell, and his Big Ben suspension. I’ve been hearing some questioning as to why his suspension is most likely going to be reduced to 4 games instead of the initial 6. First, Goodell has set a precedent for shortening suspensions in the past with Michael Vick and Pacman Jones. So, you can’t play either the quarterback card or the race card. Second, it’s my belief that he never had the intention of suspending him for 6 games. In his mind, the offense only called for 4 games. He set it at 6 games initially to set Roethlisberger up for success and get him on the right step to public image recovery. Now he can say that Big Ben has realized the err of his ways and begun the path to turn his life around. In reality, behaving like the other 99.9999% of people who don’t rape girls for 3 months in no way deserves a suspension to be cut by a third. But by setting the suspension high in the first place, it gives Goodell the opportunity to release a statement saying how much Ben has reformed his life and is no longer an asshole. This helps not only Ben, but also the Steelers, a team with arguably the largest nationwide fan base (maybe behind the Cowboys), recover from an ugly offseason. Which, in turn, helps the NFL make more money. Goodell is pushing David Stern (who I believe won the 2008 NAACP Image Award for his work instituting the NBA dress code) for Marketing Commissioner of the Year.
2) Eli Manning is an enigma. He has the largest gap between ‘how interesting a person should be’ and ‘how interesting a person actually is’. He is the youngest sibling of the number one family of football (although I think the Colquitt’s could make an argument here). He was the number 1 overall pick in the draft. He refused to sign with the team that drafted him, forcing one of the biggest draft day deals in the past decade. He quarterbacked the Giants to the biggest Super Bowl upset in history. Yet, I have no emotional tie to the guy at all. And I know that we shouldn’t really have any emotional ties to professional athletes, but the fact of the matter is that we do. Except for Eli Manning. He could suffer a career ending injury tomorrow or win the MVP this year (30 to 1 by the way), and I wouldn’t care at all.
3) The NFC West has to be the worst division in sports. When a team led by Alex Smith is the heavy favorite to take the division this year, you know you’ve reached the bottom of the barrel. I’ve tried to buy into Charlie Whitehurst in Seattle, but it’s tough. The Rams are a couple years from relevance. And after catching his sideline interview in the Cardinals 2nd preseason game, I’m kind of rooting for Matt Leinart to do something. You could tell that he still thinks he hasn’t been given a fair shot. And really, this year he may be right. Switching starters after giving one guy 5 series against first team defenses and another guy 10+ series against second team defenses may not be fair. But, this is Leinart’s 5th year in the league and he’s already lost the starting job once in his career. If he doesn’t have it, then there’s no point in wasting the first four games of the season, then doing the inevitable and putting in Derek Anderson. You might as well start the season with Anderson. Either way, things aren’t looking bright.
On the plus side for Leinart, in retrospect it seems he was correct when he controversially decided to stay for his senior season at USC. At the time, he was coming off a Heisman winning year and would have potentially been the top quarterback drafted. Think about the ridicule he would be getting if he were the #1 overall pick and played like this. However, by staying the extra year at USC, he fell in the following year’s draft and avoided the pressure and scrutiny that comes with being the top pick. Although, any negative press would have been short-lived, as Leinart would soon have Purple Drank Russell to take the public ire away from his lackluster performance. And, of course, the other positive in staying 4 years at USC: he was able to hang with 98 Degrees front man Nick Lachey (and his tribal body art) for another year. If only he could bring this type of foresight to the west coast offense, this whole paragraph would be a mute point.
4) In my mind, I’ve had a recent revelation when it comes to gambling. Now, this may end up not working or it may be the way everyone else already approaches wagering, but it’s new and exciting to me. In a previous post, I discussed my plans to force a love affair with the Premier League. Well, my efforts to dive in head first have, of course, including betting. And three weeks in, I’ve been cleaning up. My first inclination (and probably the correct inclination) is that my winnings have been luck and things will even out over time like always. But, then I had a couple beers and a more philosophical answer started to swirl around my mind. I had no preconceived thoughts on any of these teams. I didn’t know (or care) what Didier Drogba did 3 years ago. Which team won the title in 2006 means nothing to me. All I’ve been looking at is the most recent data: the statistics from last year and the first few games this year. The facts that Liverpool hasn’t shown me much and Man City and Arsenal have looked solid are all I have to go by.
I started to think about NFL bets. I’ve been looking too far into the past. Pittsburgh always beats Cincinnati; that’s just the way it is. Going into last year, they won nine of the previous eleven match-ups. I had that thought in the back of my mind for their two games last year. I knew that the Steelers were without Polamalu and couldn’t stop anyone. And I knew that the Bengals found a running game with Cedric Benson and had looked good all year. But come on. It’s the Steelers. They’ll pull it together against the Bengals. Looking back on this, it seems idiotic and it is idiotic. It just took me a while (and an undisclosed amount of monetary losses) to figure this out. It isn’t that I have too much information, it’s just that I use the wrong information. So that’s what I’m going to change this year. If the Lions have played well for a few weeks and the Vikings haven’t, I’ll take the points. And if this doesn’t work, I’ll start betting against the Pakistani cricket team.
5) I was excited to see AMC’s gruesome twosome Breaking Bad and Mad Men roll at the Emmys. When Breaking Bad first came out, it had one the best premises for a TV show that I can remember (If you don’t know, it’s about a high school chemistry teacher who gets diagnosed with cancer and begins manufacturing meth so he can leave his family the money when he dies.) But I didn’t see how they could make it into a lasting series without it feeling drawn out. I mean the guy has terminal cancer, if he just makes a miraculous recovery then I’m out. But thats exactly what happened and the show has gotten better because of it. Now he’s too deep into the game to get out and the end that he initially planned on (death by cancer) isn’t going to happen. It’s a ridiculously good TV show and it took home the two dramatic actor awards. I heard about halfway through this last season that Aaron Paul (plays the chemistry teacher’s former student/ drug connoisseur/ side kick/ best friend/ love interest (I made that last one up)) had entered he Emmy discussion and I wasn’t sure what the buzz was about. Then I started to pay attention more to his role. He deserves whatever accolades he gets. Just this past season he went from a guy coping with the death of his girlfriend, to a rehab patient, back to a drug dealer/manufacturer, and finally to a killer in the season finale. I’m a huge proponent of Mad Men, but Breaking Bad takes it to another level.
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