The Pittsburgh Steelers win Super Bowl XLIII!!!
Today’s the Day!
Is there any better feeling in the world than waking up on Super Bowl Sunday… and knowing that your team is in the big game? Nah, I didn’t think so!
Coach of the Year!
Who’s the Motorola NFL Coach of the Year for 2008?
Yeah, you know who it is:
Who’s awesome?
Congrats, Coach Tomlin! Just lead us to victory on Sunday, OK?
Read more here (IRONY ALERT: link is to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article)
More Random News
– The North Carolina legislature, never one to shy away from taxing anything that moves, is considering taxing digital downloads like music and movies. This is hardly surprising, as North Carolina has the highest tax rate in the South. Unfortunately, the $12 million that such a tax would allegedly take in is only a squirt of water in the $20 billion bucket that is the state’s current budget deficit.
– Speaking of deficits, the United States Post Service has such an operating deficit that it’s considering dropping a day of mail delivery as a cost-cutting measure. What may surprise you about this is the actual day the USPS is considering: Tuesday! Yeah, I thought it would be Saturday, too.
– Travel site TripAdvisor has come up with a list of the worst hotels in America, based on the ratings users leave on the site. The “winner” is Hotel Carter, a budget hotel located near New York’s Times Square. You should check out the reviews of the place: not only does almost everyone rant about how awful the place is, many have also uploaded pictures of the bed bug bites they recieved whilst staying there.
– In sports news, although the Charlotte Bobcats (the team) are showing signs of life, the Charlotte Bobcats (the business entity) are still struggling. Amusingly, while the Bobs have beaten several good teams lately (causing local media and bloggers to start talking about how the Bobcats are “for real” this year), the team is actually only 1 game ahead of last year: 18-26 this year vs. 17-27 last year. But then again, what do you expect from a team with an absentee owner that doesn’t even know his way around town?
– It seems like there have been a million articles published about the Super Bowl this week, but so far I’ve only found that this one could hold my interest. It’s all about how the Steelers and Cards are a lot alike in business terms. It’s a good read – you should check it out!
– Lastly, Davidson phenom Stephen Curry hit a 75 footer in last night’s game. Check out the video here.
A Modest Proposal
Perhaps the biggest sin in American sports fandom is bandwagoning – the act of becoming a fan of a team when they’re playing well, but then ceasing to be a fan once they’ve cooled off.
We all know bandwagoners… like your hypothetical friends “Dave and Cindy”. Dave and Cindy don’t especially care about the NFL. They’ve never owned a piece of NFL apparel in their lives, nor had they ever even considered buying any. They express no desire to watch regular-season games with you, and might even be hostile to the idea of watching a game in the first place. But then your local sports team makes it to the playoffs and suddenly Dave and Cindy want to come over to your house to watch the game. They’re wearing matching team sweatshirts, have officially licensed pom poms in team colors and even have a pair of team flags on their car. Dave sits on the sofa and tries to converse with you using things he’s cribbed from the sports section of your local paper. Cindy sits with your missus and cheers at the appropriate times. Unfortunately, as soon as the playoffs are over, Dave and Cindy completely forget all about your team… until the next time they go to the playoffs, in which case Dave and Cindy will be back wearing their sweatshirts and waving their pom poms.
Over the years, several unwritten rules have been developed in the “Man Code” to prevent bandwagoning. The biggest rules are thus:
If you are born in a city with an professional sports franchise, you must be a fan of that team if you’re going to be a fan at all. If you move to a city that has a team in the same sport, you are allowed a five-year “grace period”, in which you may root for your original home team, before you are required to become a fan of your “new” team. If you move to a city without a team in that sport, you are allowed to continue cheering for your original home team; if a team is created after you move, you are allowed to keep cheering for your original home team. If your home team moves, you are absolved of any allegiance to them, and can root for any other team you choose.
It’s silly, isn’t it? The problem with bandwagoning is, as I see it, not with the first part of the definition (“becoming a fan of a team when they’re playing well”), but the second (“ceasing to be a fan once they’ve cooled off”). After all, every sport needs new fans, and if a team on the other side of the country makes you an NFL fan, well… fine by me.
Girls and Football
I just had to post this! Nextround.net has this awesome list of things “your girlfriend” said during the NFC\AFC Championships.
Here are a few of my favorites:
“I thought the Cardinals were in St. Louis. Is St. Louis in Arizona?”
“I thought you said Matt Leinart was on one of these teams.”
“You really don’t see that many black guys named Larry.”
“Which guy did you say would draw me a picture of Jesus?”
“THAT’s who Kendra is going to marry? He can’t even catch.”
“What did you mean when you said you thought it would be a Pennsylvania Super Bowl? None of these teams are called Pennsylvania.”
Just for fun…
Enjoy this pic I quickly threw together:
This pic also cracked me up:
Edit: here’s a cleaned-up version of the above pic:
STEELERS WIN!
The Pittsburgh Steelers knocked off the Baltimore Ratbirds last night 23-14 to win the AFC Championship! My team is now off to Tampa, where they’ll face the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII!!!
Here we go Steelers, here we go!!!!!
“Dear Tennessee Titans fans…”
Dear Tennessee Titans fans,
I couldn’t help but notice you folks waving light blue towels during your playoff loss to the Ravens. I find that interesting, since you made fun of Steelers fans a few weeks ago for their Terrible Towels. In fact, there was a little “incident” you might recall involving a Terrible Towel and Keith Bulluck, Jevon Kearse, Bo Scaife and LenDale White. So, to defend the honor of the Steeler Nation, I will post this:
Take that, jerks!
In other news, the Steelers team I’ve been waiting to see all season finally showed up on Sunday, as the Steelers smothered the Chargers 35-24 (the game wasn’t nearly as close as the score would indicate; the Chargers scored a TD late in the game, when the Steelers had their third-string defense in). The Steelers fired on all cylinders: the defense held SD to 15 total rushing yards, the offense kept the ball for 14:43 of the third quarter… the Steelers even had a punt return for a TD:
All in all, a great game for the Steelers! I can’t wait for this Sunday’s game against the Ravens. You just know this thing is gonna be a brawl, right? A street fight for the ages? Hell yeah!
Bring it on!
Football Notes
– What a crappy weekend for football. The Falcons apparently got shell shocked in the second half of their game; I wouldn’t know – I had friends coming over that night and I was out running errands… and listening to the game on the radio! Ewwww! But then our friends came over, and I could only watch the last couple of minutes of the San Diego-Indy game (I still have it on the DVR, however). So then, my friends and I started to drink. Since I was at home, I really drank. So I didn’t get up until 15:30 on Sunday… just in time to tune in and see the final minutes of Baltimore smacking down Miami. So the only game I really got to see was the Philadelphia-Minnesota game… only the batteries in my remote died, and when I replaced them, my DVR went crazy, so I lost a large chunk of the third quarter. You can bet that I’ll have the situation under control next weekend!
– Speaking of betting, all of next week’s home teams are favorites: Tennessee is favored by 2½ over Baltimore, the Panthers are favored by 9½ (yes, 9½) over Arizona, the New York Football Giants are 4 point favorites over Philadelphia, and the Steelers are 6 point favorites over the Chargers.
– The New York Giants baseball team moved to San Francisco in 1957. I was born in 1971. There is, therefore, no reason whatsoever for me to say “New York Football Giants”… but I like saying it anyway, even if it is pretentious.
– Congrats to Pittsburgh Steeler James Harrison for winning the Associated Press 2008 Defensive Player of the Year award! Silverback is the fifth Steeler so honored, and he joins the august company of other winners Joe Greene (1974), Mel Blount (1975) , Jack Lambert (1976) and Ron Woodson (1993). That’s pretty good company to have! Harrison had 16 sacks, 7 forced fumbles, and 12 special teams tackles on the league’s best defense this year. Read more about it here.