Super Bowl Predictions – 2007

Jan 22 2007

Dear Hank,

I think the Redskins are definitely out of the running to win this year's Super Bowl, pending, of course, acts of God or Satan.

What if one of the teams selected for the Super Bowl couldn’t play? What would they do? Select the runner up in that conference? What if the team that couldn’t play was in the NFC, the conference the Redskins were in and what if the runner up couldn’t play, etc. etc. etc. Eventually they’d get to the Redskins. So yes there is still a chance. Don’t give up hope yet. The latest nationally unknown recording artist hasn’t sung yet. (btw How many of you noticed that the young lady singing the National Anthem in the NFC playoff got at least one of the words wrong?) and even if she has song the game isn’t over yet. What if the Bears came out and played the first half, got a huge lead and then at half time catastrophe struck and they had to go through finding another team to finish the game. It could be the Redskins! And if Rex Grossman was on his game and Urlacher was on his maybe they would jump out to a commanding 45 point lead and then something happened and they had to fly the Redskins in to finish the game. They could win, maybe.

Remember, hope is the one human quality that we have that animals don’t. We all live in hope (okay, someone lives in Blue Ball.) And as long as we have hope we can dream…the impossible dream; perhaps.

And btw the NFL should ban Peyton Manning from making commercials. At least I haven't seen him asking that kid to sign his vegetables recently.

Later

When I look up at the sky I have a profound sense of loss. Here I am on Hatteras Island in winter time. There aren’t many people around; at least not when you compare it to the summer. When I go out at night and the sky is clear I can see the constellations and the stars that make them up.

But I remember as a boy growing up in Ridgefield Connecticut looking up at the sky at night and seeing the Milky Way. I remember seeing The Big Dipper and The Little Dipper with Draco The Dragon running in between. Now, I can see The Big Dipper. I can see the end of the handle of The Little Dipper – the North Star, and I can see the two stars that make up the end of the dipper of The Little Dipper. If I work hard at it I can see some of the other stars that make up The Little Dipper and on a really clear night I can see some stars in between the two constellations. Using my imagination I can try to recall how Draco is configured, but I’m not sure; the stars don’t help. They are too dim.

In late evening I can see Signus The Swan. She swims down the Milky Way. The constellation looks more like the top of a crucifix because the stars of the neck (or bottom of the cross) are much fainter than the four that make up the head, wings, and connecting point. But when there is no ambient light and the sky is clear there are thousands of stars behind Signus and she swimming in this bath of millions of points of light.

I miss the stars. I miss the Milky Way. It gives one a grounding that orients oneself to the earth and the universe. It lets you know just where you fit in. It lets you dream big and shows you how small you are.

January 11, 2007

Dear Hank;

It’s a new year and I’m sorry I haven’t written much but I’ve been busy.

I don’t want to bore you with my New Year’s resolutions. I’ll wait until I’ve achieved any of them to do that.

But it is time to stop and wonder about the year just past and what bodes for the future, as well as talk about football.

The most interesting piece of news is that Britney Spear fell asleep at 1 am New Years Day. She was in a night club and fell asleep. This caused front page news along with denial of rumors that she had a ‘total collapse’ after a hard night of partying. I collapsed at 11:38pm, I have to hand it to Britney for being a real trooper and making it that far into the night.

Let’s talk sports – the most amazing thing is what is not being reported. Can you believe no one: well, hardly anyone, has given much air time to speculating about Terrell Owens?

The last time we got a good spat of TO speculation was when he almost fell asleep and his publicist called 911. That led to a week of speculation as to whether it was a suicide attempt. That was the same week that Nicole Smith had two men claiming to be the father of her new born baby. I ventured that it was TO himself that was the father. In this way we could meld the world of sports non-events with celebrity non-events then both Entertainment Tonight and Sports Talk Radio could be having the same discussion and if you missed it there the tabloids could pick it up so you could catch up while waiting in the super market line at check out.

What I love about Sports Talk Radio is that they run with one story for the whole day. By the end of the day you don’t know anymore then you did in the first five minutes but it sure has been fun. Every once in a while they tell you something new but not often.

The latest one is the speculation as to whether Brett Favre will retire this year. This started when he played his last regular season game at Lambeau Field for the Packers. He’s played 16 years in the NFL. His contract is up. He can renew or not, either way is okay with the Packers and he says he’s not sure what he’s going to do but he’ll make a decision soon and his wife is sick of hearing about it.

Those are the facts; on yeah, he’s having ankle surgery for something. He probably had it yesterday.

So how long can you mull this over? Well, the Monday night football crew managed to do it for the whole game: every break, every other play, before the game, after the game and I’m sure the guys on Sports Talk picked it up the next day. I think that Brett was out with Britney and they fell asleep on the sofa in the night club, but don’t worry nothing happened because they were too exhausted. But Brett will be coming out with a line of panties sold by Victoria Secret and Britney will have an autographed football and official NFL jersey in a brilliant move of crossover marketing. Remember you heard it here first. I can’t wait.

Now on to the Redskins – I don’t think they are going to make it to the playoffs and win the Super Bowl – if I remember correctly I said this in pre-season. During pre-season the talk on Sports Radio was that the offensive coordinator, Al Saunders, had a 700 page play book and that it would take the team a while to get adjusted – like two years. Then when things started to fall apart they started to say they didn’t have the right personnel for the offense of Al Saunders Wait a minute, if you’re so brilliant as an offensive coordinator wouldn’t you adjust your play book to take advantage of the personnel you have? Apparently, not. Here’s the interesting thing (#1) near the end of the season they only put the plays in that the new quarterback, Jason Campbell, was comfortable with Brilliant! Only put in the plays that the team might actually be able to execute. How much are these guys getting paid? The Redskins have 22 coaches. I want to be a coach, I could have told them that week 1 and they could have won some games. Oh wait maybe I’m being too harsh because in a game no one thought the Skins were going to win they looked pretty good and I think they won it. The commentators were saying how brilliant Al Saunders’ playbook was and how he gave the defense so many different looks that he kept them confused. Of course it was a team that hadn’t done well all year and probably was confused coming out of the locker room trying to find their bench but he was brilliant – they said.

Now here’s nugget (#2) that was very interesting to me. Early morning Sports Talk Radio the two morning guys had on a scout for the NFL. This fellow had scouted for three different NFL teams. This was when Marc Brunell was still the starting quarterback and the question was why not switch to Jason Campbell. This scout said he was never that impressed with Campbell. He said Campbell had one good year at Auburn but he had two outstanding running backs that year. He said that he was not impressed with Campbell’s accuracy especially on mid-range passes and that overall he wasn’t that good a quarter back.

I watched the Campbell play, once he became the starting quarter back and I think that scout’s assessment was correct. One of the things I learned early in my career was that when you made a prediction usually the first one was correct and everything after that was second guessing that swayed you from the more accurate first prediction.

I predict that the Redskins will stay a so-so team as long as they keep the quarterbacks they have and the offensive coordinator they have. This is probably good for two to three years of conversation.

Later Dude,