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Posted 8 months ago at 01:56. 1 comment
Kev and I went to Pittsburgh last weekend to take in the Steelers game. We stared down the worst snowstorm in 60 years and said, “We’re too stubborn to change our plans!” This year’s pilgrimage was especially meaningful for me because I’ve been a Steelers fan since the early ’80s when the only NFL football you could get on TV in Canada were games that featured either the Steelers or the Cowboys.
We used to do this every year: pick an NFL team, preferably within crashing distance of someone we knew, and then go see a game. We’ve been stymied the last few years by the logistics of choosing a city and a time that worked for the 3 or so other participants that normally joined us in this venture. We were almost stymied again this year until Kev and I realized that the logistics for just 2 people were much easier to figure out.
Things that were reaffirmed to me this past weekend:
- If you can’t establish a running game, especially outdoors in winter, a) you suck, and b) you’re not going very far in the playoffs.
- Going to NFL games is a lot of fun, and a completely different kind of fun than going to CFL games or even hockey games.
- Traveling over the winter holidays for fun should only be attempted by trained professionals. Do not try this at home!
- Weather happens. Deal.
- Acting nice to airline staff gets you on to flights you might not otherwise get on. This works exceptionally well if the people in front of you in line try to blame the airline staff for the weather.
Kev and I will definitely be doing this again next year, and we’ve even picked a city: Seattle. As much as we love travel delays, we’ll be aiming for a game much, *much* earlier in the season though. Hopefully this will be enough warning for our slacker friends who were unable to join us this year.
Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 16:05. 0 comments
I’ve been doing some research ahead of my final fantasy football draft this year — for the one league in which I consistently do well — and every so often I come across a little gem in some of the predictions and analysis:
When Chester Taylor wore down at the end of the season, I had to put a wide receiver in my flex spot, which is the equivalent of dropping the soap in prison. — D.J. Nestrick
Ref: Lessons Learned From A Dismal Season 28 Aug 2007, fftoday.com
Current Tunes: Sloan - The Lines You Amend | Filed under Football
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 09:56. 0 comments
The FIFA U-20 World Cup got off to a slow start in Ottawa goal-wise, but yesterday more than made up for it. 10 goals in all, and Argentina certainly seems to be the class of our pool.
Despite my long-standing bias against South American theatre troupes…er, football teams, I find myself compelled to cheer for Argentina. Their fans are awesome — our section features a bunch of guys in Mexican wrestler masks playing large drums — and their play on the field has been inspired.
It might also help that chanting “ARGEN-TINA!” is only a short leap from “ARRRRGGGGOOOOOOS!“
Current Tunes: No Doubt - Artificial Sweetener | Filed under Football, Ottawa
Posted 2 years, 1 month ago at 10:55. 1 comment
Zidane’s headbutt-to-the-sternum was probably the only foul that would justify an Italian player rolling around on the ground clutching their ankle.
Current Tunes: Dinah Washington - What A Diff'rence A Day Makes | Filed under Football
Posted 2 years, 1 month ago at 08:50. 1 comment
Given the remaining teams, is it wrong to want to start cheering for the refs?
Posted 2 years, 2 months ago at 08:51. 1 comment
For football fans who don’t have a T.V. in their office, allow me to recommend the Joga.com companion, a Firefox extension that allows you to follow all of the ongoing World Cup action from your desktop in near-real time. Everyone at Mozilla has been working hard to get this out as close to the start of the World Cup as possible, although some of us have just been testing the extension and reaping the benefits of having it installed, rather than actually doing any of the heavy lifting.
I do have one piece of configuration advice to impart though. When installed, the extension changes your browser chrome to something more patriotic and supportive of your home country’s football squad, and it decides what this should be based on the locale of your browser. In this part of the world, that locale is going to be en-US, or U.S. English, more often than not. I was a little surprised to see my browser taken over by the Stars-n-Stripes after installing the extension for the first time. Luckily, there’s a little flag icon in the bottom status bar that you can use to change your favorite team, and hence, browser chrome. I’ve got mine set to Netherlands right now for the aforementioned reason.
Current Tunes: Ecuador vs. Costa Rica | Filed under Firefox, Football
Posted 2 years, 2 months ago at 09:40. 1 comment
The World Cup starts today. Here’s a list of teams I’ll be cheering for, and any bent reasoning that may apply:
- Germany: Sure, they’re the home team, but I’ve also spent more time in Germany than any other country, with the exception of the US. Nothing personal, but I refuse to cheer for the US.
- South Korea: Semi-finalists 4 years ago, I’m interested to see whether they can improve on that performance.
- Netherlands: I like orange.
Current Tunes: Down By Law - Heroes & Hooligans | Filed under Football
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago at 12:42. 0 comments
Thoughts on the Superbowl:
- It was great to see Pittsburgh win. I’ve been cheering for the Steelers since the mid-eighties, so I’ve never actually seen them win a title before, despite them having done it 5 times now as a franchise.
- After watching Slash run what seemed like one long trick play for most of the nineties (guess the trick was on us), it felt somewhat fitting to win the way they did.
- how did I ever watch this thing before Tivo?
- did anyone else expect the two cowboys in the new Budweiser ad to go all Brokeback Mountain? Now that would have been funny.
Posted 3 years, 6 months ago at 09:16. 1 comment
One of the side effects of playing fantasy football is that much of the the joy of watching football dissipates once the official NFL playoffs begin, unless of course one of your favorite teams happens to have qualified. Once the Steelers got eliminated, I lost any remaining desire to watch football.
The only category in which the Super Bowl failed to disappoint this year was in being a disappointment. With the advertisers being reigned in in the wake of Nipplegate, even the ads weren’t worth watching this year, although in Canada, they never are anyway.
OK, so it’s no secret that I hate the Pats, but I will give them there due: you can’t argue with results, modern dynasty, yada-yada-yada. Neither team had a very good game though, IMHO, but the Patriots were better able to capitalize on mistakes down the stretch.
Memo to the Patriots defense: today, I saw a few too many Patriots defenders get up off the ground after making less-than-spectacular plays — essentially just doing their jobs — and flapping their arms in derision of Terrell Owens. Now I won’t pretend that T.O. isn’t often an ass, but here is a guy who worked like a dog to come back from an injury just to play in the biggest game of his career, and despite your “defense”, he still pulled down 9 catches for 122 yards. Nice coverage, boys.
Since his team has already mastered everything else, maybe Bill Belichick can teach his defense a little something about sportsmanship in the off-season.
…
In reference to the title of yesterday’s entry, it comes from the not-small advertisment for Black Watch Chewing Tobacco which is on prominent display in downtown Almonte. Gotta love rural Ontario!
Current Tunes: Steve Lawler - Essential Mix - 2003-10-05 | Filed under Football, Ottawa, TV
Posted 3 years, 6 months ago at 10:20. 3 comments
I feel that I have to say something about the Steelers and their season that just ended today in the AFC championships. If nothing else, it helps me justify to my wife all the football I watched over the course of the year. See, it wasn’t just about the beer!
Patriots: Hate ‘em, not only in that good, wholesome sports rivalry way, but also in the less dignified screw-you-for-showing-the-rest-of-the-league-how-a-franchise-ought-to-be-run way.
Roethlisberger: Man, I don’t envy this guy. That might sound a little strange, considering he went 14-0 as a rookie starter in the regular season and took his team to the conference championship, but his performance was getting worse as the year went on, not better. Pittsburgh fans have always been fickle at QB (I blame Slash), so my fear is that people may start immediately calling for Maddox next season if Ben loses a few games.
Thanks to coach Cowher to putting together another excellent, if somewhat unexpected, season.
Current Tunes: Tragically Hip - Trickle Down | Filed under Football
