Football
It's been an exciting last couple of weeks if you're a football fan. The showdown between Texas and USC in the Rose Bowl may have been the most exciting college championship game ever. It was definitely the most exciting I've ever seen. I have finally figured out that college football is drastically different from the pros. All season there are mismatches galore; teams run up scores in a way that would at the very least be considered poor sportsmanship in the NFL, but of course it's because of the way the college teams are ranked.
The difference in a game like the Rose Bowl is that the teams are evenly matched and neither has an ounce of quit in them. If this were a regular season game, and USC's opponent was a 40-point underdog and further, if that same underdog had made the mistakes Texas made in the first quarter, it's very likely they would have folded their tents and all but conceded. But you could tell that thought never entered the Texas players' minds. Hell yes, we're going to go for it on fourth down in the first half (more than once), this is the championship!
The NFL playoff games have been very good as well so far. The big one of course was Pittsburgh at Indianapolis. A wild and crazy game. The worst mistake Indianapolis made was before the game, in my opinion. And that was to 'rest' key players the last two weeks of the regular season, after they had the division title wrapped up. 'Rest' being a euphemism for 'so they don't get injured.' Bad idea. They were undefeated, they were on a roll. You don't want to throw away that momentum, in effect forfeit and lose those two games and then back into the playoffs. I really think other teams around the league are going to look at what happened to Indy and re-think that whole 'strategy.'
And finally, the kicker for the Colts- Vanderjagt (? spelling). I suppose half the people watching when he missed that last field goal were screaming 'you idiot!' and the other half, 'that poor guy.' Even though my upset pick was for the Steelers to win, I'd put myself in the latter category. He makes the kick, he's the hero... he doesn't, and there isn't a hole dark enough to crawl into. Such is the life of a kicker.
The difference in a game like the Rose Bowl is that the teams are evenly matched and neither has an ounce of quit in them. If this were a regular season game, and USC's opponent was a 40-point underdog and further, if that same underdog had made the mistakes Texas made in the first quarter, it's very likely they would have folded their tents and all but conceded. But you could tell that thought never entered the Texas players' minds. Hell yes, we're going to go for it on fourth down in the first half (more than once), this is the championship!
The NFL playoff games have been very good as well so far. The big one of course was Pittsburgh at Indianapolis. A wild and crazy game. The worst mistake Indianapolis made was before the game, in my opinion. And that was to 'rest' key players the last two weeks of the regular season, after they had the division title wrapped up. 'Rest' being a euphemism for 'so they don't get injured.' Bad idea. They were undefeated, they were on a roll. You don't want to throw away that momentum, in effect forfeit and lose those two games and then back into the playoffs. I really think other teams around the league are going to look at what happened to Indy and re-think that whole 'strategy.'
And finally, the kicker for the Colts- Vanderjagt (? spelling). I suppose half the people watching when he missed that last field goal were screaming 'you idiot!' and the other half, 'that poor guy.' Even though my upset pick was for the Steelers to win, I'd put myself in the latter category. He makes the kick, he's the hero... he doesn't, and there isn't a hole dark enough to crawl into. Such is the life of a kicker.
posted by gbj at 2:57 PM
1 Comments:
Well the only team I'm really pulling for is the Seahawks... and of course it's the Holmgren connection for reasons not too dissimilar to yours in regard to the Steelers. I don't have a strong opinion about Hasselback one way or the other. Haven't really seen him play that much.
But it's always great to see a coach come in and rebuild a team, which has happened many times in recent years.
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