Ok, So I've Had Better First Weekends Than That

I'm guessing when I said last week that this was by far the least research I had ever done before filling out my NCAA bracket that I must not have been lying. The first four days of the Tournament this year were outlandishly exciting, but also, uh, not what I predicted. On the first day alone I lost three teams from my sweet sixteen, one from my Elite Eight and wound up a mediocre 9-7. While that didn't inspire much confidence, at least my Final Four was still intact.

You know, until the second round, when my National Champion spit the bit against Butler on an utterly bizarre series of fouls in the games final seconds. But that's cool -- it's only the second year in a row that my eventual champion was sent packing in the round of 32.

Now don't get me wrong. Butler, obviously, has some experience, so I suppose in general, it's not really that crazy for them to be making another deep run in the NCAAs, but I have to be honest. I thought I'd do a wee bit better than this At this point my bracket is so shot that I have nothing to watch for except pure love of the game, which, really, is utterly silly.

Then again I'm still alive in my survivor pool, so at least there's that.

Of course, that I'm watching basketball at all after Northwestern's utterly bizarre loss in the NIT quarterfinals last night/this morning at Washington State, might just be a testament to my own intestinal fortitude. This was a game that featured a shockingly intense student crowd for an NIT game, the Wildcats doing something they've done maybe once in my life ever by rallying from a double-digit deficit to take a lead in the second half on the road, a potential walk-off foul after a game-tying goal tend in the final ten seconds and then someone missing both of those potential walk-off free throws which prompted this statement from me.

I then realized that if God was a Wildcat, Northwestern would have been to the NCAA Tournament once in the past seven and a half decades, making my statement patently ridiculous.

The Cats would go on to lose in an equally as bizarre overtime that nearly saw them get the ball back down 1 with 20 seconds left simply because the Washington State player lost his handle on the ball, before Alex Marcotullio missed not one but two three-pointers to tie the game at the final buzzer to end what is -- I'm not making this up -- the deepest postseason run Northwestern has ever had.

Seriously, why do I watch college basketball anymore? Or at least why Northwestern?

Oh, and the winning team had a player who had been suspended and had his suspension lifted within 12 hours.

Fun times.

So that's how college basketball has treated me in the past week, but fortunately I get the distraction of Aussie Rules Football finally being back this season after Carlton topped Richmond by 20 points this morning. Of course the season doesn't really start until Geelong has its first bounce tomorrow morning against St. Kilda, which I'm sure you're all waking up at 4:30 a.m. for.

Ok, I can sense that I'm losing all of you at this point. Perhaps it's time to go. Hopefully this weekend's basketball goes better than last.

Apparently, I'm A Masochist. Who Knew?

If being a Mets fan has made anything clear it's that I, apparently, have an insatiable lust for pain. Yesterday I realized that hadn't changed when I got an e-mail from the team offering five-game flex ticket packs for the upcoming season. Typically, I ignore these e-mails because the tickets are too damn expensive, but I was blinded by a huge segment of block text said "NO ORDERING FEES".

You know those things: the transaction fees that enable teams to needlessly add five bucks onto every ticket, but in actuality are complete nonsense.

So I, foolishly assuming I was about to get a deal, promptly bought a Mets flex package for this season, a season that is sure to be disappointing just like they all are. For any evidence of that, look no further than yesterday's spring training opener against Atlanta that ended in a 5-5 tie.

Yes, a tie. In baseball.

Sister kissing is an unusual phenomenon in this sport, which, as we've seen, could theoretically go on forever in a regular season game, but in the spring training no one really has the patience, which means when a game is tied after nine innings, the managers debate whether or not they really care to bake out in the sun much longer. In this case, Terry Collins and Fredi Gonzalez decided that 10 innings would be enough, and it seemed like it would be for Atlanta after they took a 5-3 lead in the top of the inning. Of course, then former-Met killer Willie Harris, who was signed this offseason with the apparent idea of "even if he sucks he won't kill us anymore", smacked a two-run homer to tie the game in the bottom of the 10th, and that was how it would stand. Were it not for my discovery that my supermarket now sells Sunset Wheat, this would have been the highlight of my week.

Considering that this was the second rally by the Mets to tie the game I'm pretty sure Saturday's tie marks the high point of New York's 2011 season. It's all downhill from here.

And when it goes downhill, I'll be there to watch six times. I made a point to pick games in my plan, since it gives you the option of choosing, that were generally in the first half of the season so that my delusions of the Mets still having a chance wouldn't have been shattered yet. Highlights include the Subway Series opener the first weekend of July, a meeting with the defending-champion Giants and Ike Davis bobblehead day on July 19th against St. Louis.

Now comes the hard part. Finding six people dumb enough to go to each game with me.

In other news, some of you might have noticed that the Oscars are tonight and I, something of an Oscar junkie as you can see from some of my zanier columns in the past, am as excited as always even though I somehow managed not to see half the Best Picture nominees this year. I bring this up because I came across a rather startling discovery this afternoon involving one of my favorite films of all time, L.A. Confidential. For those of you who have seen L.A. Confidential you know that it is, well, incredible in every way. As such, it is a constant reminder to me that the Oscars are total bunk since L.A. Confidential lost Best Picture in 1997 to some boat movie.

Either way, what I did not realize is that one of the stars of the film, Guy Pearce, who so deftly pulled off a turn as the film's protagonist Lieutenant Edmund Exley, is also a tremendous sports fan. This I should have assumed because he's also Australian and Australians love their sports. And most importantly, they love their footy.

And Guy Pearce loves his footy.

But almost more important than the fact that Guy Pearce loves his footy is that he loves one footy team in particular. And it's the right one. I was entirely unaware that Pearce grew up on his mother's deer farm in Geelong, where he endured a rough 40 years of his life before he finally saw the Cats get their first championship since four years before he was born. As far as Geelong fans go, apparently Pearce is one of the more famous ones, something that the club has noted on its own website for no apparent reason other than to say "We have a celebrity that roots for us."

Pearce is apparently such a big fan of the club that he was the no-brainer choice to narrate a special video segment on the most crucial moment of Geelong's 2009 Grand Final victory over St. Kilda.



It makes one wonder if Pearce had a bet on the match with Eric Bana, a diehard St. Kilda fan who was shown on TV in the crowd of the Grand Final that day about every four seconds or so.

In any event, it's nice to know that the main man of one of my favorite films shares a bizarre team in kind with me. Unfortunately, Pearce isn't up for any Oscars tonight, nor did L.A. Confidential take home the big prize 14 years ago, but the 2007 and 2009 Grand Final victories are far more meaningful anyway.

Besides, it could be worse. He could have been duped into buying Mets tickets.

Apparently, Donovan McNabb Grew Up In Australia

Some might consider it unfair that I spend so much time making fun of Donovan McNabb. Not because he's a bad quarterback. He's not. In fact, he might just be a great quarterback and I was overjoyed to see that the Eagles traded him this offseason until I realized he would still be in the NFC East with the Redskins. No, his on-field skills are not to be argued. My mockery has come from an amusing incident two years ago when, after the Eagles tied the Bengals, McNabb admitted in a postgame press conference that he had no idea there were ties in the NFL.

This is, of course, patently ridiculous, but what you might not have known, and that McNabb perhaps did, is that not only are there ties in Aussie Rules Football, but they are, apparently, pretty pervasive. As McNabb opined, "I'd hate to see what happens in a Super Bowl ... if they settle with a tie." This was met with quite a bit of criticism because a) you should know the rules in the NFL if you're a perennial Pro Bowl quarterback and b) it is ludicrous to end the Super Bowl in a tie.

But that's not the rule down under. As I've mentioned more than once, over the last few years I have developed a big fandom for Aussie Rules over the past two years, and Friday night was the sport's big day, as Collingwood and St. Kilda met for the 2010 Grand Final. Bizarrely, and to protect how "unique" the championship game is, AFL rules actually stipulate that should the Grand Final end in a tie after regulation is finished, it will be ruled a draw and an entirely second Grand Final will be replayed a week later.

Leading up to Saturday morning's title game, only two Grand Finals had ever ended in a draw -- once in 1948 and once in 1977.

Well Saturday morning, AFL fans were treated to a wild championship bout, as St. Kilda rallied from 24 points down at half time leading to a frantic final few minutes. And when the dust settled, a lot of Magpies and Saints were kissing their sisters.

I am a big proponent of not judging a sporting culture I didn't grow up in, which is is why, among other things, I thought it was ridiculous when soccer fans called for the banning of vuvuzelas at this year's World Cup. Still, I can't help but think that this is a wholly bizarre quirk of the Australian sporting culture. The idea of ramping up and playing an entirely second, unplanned championship game replete with pregame entertainment, broadcast rights issues and ticket distribution is just a crazy concept, particularly when the Grand Final, which is played annually at the legendary Melbourne Cricket Ground in front of roughly 100,000 fans, has taken on Super Bowl-esque proportions.



Perhaps the eeriest part of this entire affair is that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard apparently saw it coming. Gillard, who has struggled in recent weeks to pull together a governing coalition after national elections turned in a hung Parliament, joked at the traditional Grand Final breakfast that the two teams could not return a draw because, "A week without a premiership football team - I'm not sure our nation's strong enough to take it."

After predicting something that unlikely, I'd like to take the Prime Minister with me to Vegas.

In any event, even if Australia isn't tough enough to take it -- because apparently they didn't spend this offseason in Arizona with the Collingwood footy club -- they're going to have to, and if the Grand Final ends in a draw 30 years from now they may have to again. For the time being, the head honchos of the AFL say the Grand Final replay is here to stay. And not everyone seems too happy about it. St. Kilda boss Ross Lyon, who I suppose can still claim a better result than a year ago when the Saints lost to (cough) the Geelong Cats in the Grand Final, said afterwards that he thinks there should simply be extra time tacked on to determine a winner. St. Kilda superstar Nick Riewoldt also thought the notion was peculiar while Collingwood captain Nick Maxwell went a step further, calling a replay an "absolute joke".

At least Geoff Ogilvy appreciated it.

One would think the outcry might prompt a comprehensive review of both the logic, the cost and the embarrassment of having a drawn Grand Final, but I imagine that issue will, for the time being, be tabled and discussed more thoroughly a few months down the line when heads have cooled. But in the interim this is just a strange, strange situation that millions of AFL fans in Australia and whichever ones persist elsewhere around the world will have to deal with. Let it not be forgotten, however, that for some of us there is a silver lining in all of this.

We get to watch more footy before the year is out. In the end, that ain't half bad.

NFL Picks Week Three: In Which I Actually Watch the Giants On TV

Yes, it's true. This weekend is a slight change of pace from my apparently typical tradition of actually going to see the Giants play in person. I should note that prior to this season, that was, in fact, not usual at all. In fact, last season when I saw the Giants at home, in Kansas City and in Washington was a marked change from having simply watched them on TV every week for the past 18 years. The fact that I actually went to the new Meadowlands Stadium to open up this season and flew out to Indianapolis after a disastrous day of airport shenanigans was even more unusual.

And while none of you are probably going to watch what is actually the biggest football game of the weekend, I'm strangely looking forward to watching on the TV since football, really, is better presented that way, and it won't involve the stress of shlepping around public transit and dealing with arcane airport security rules. I am wary however because, as some people may have noticed, this week the Giants play one team that provides them an extremely bizarre kryptonite when they play once every four years.

Oh, the scourge that is the Tennessee Titans.

I ought to mention that I don't really dislike the Titans. I enjoy Jeff Fisher, a solid ground game and tough, physical defense, and those aspects have been a part of the Titans' game plan for more than a decade now. However, the two times the Giants have played the Titans in their current incarnation in the Volunteer State have ended in heart breaking disaster. I remember where I was, what I said and what I was thinking both times the Titans had a scrambling intangibles-full quarterback lead an improbable comeback to dash the best-laid plans of Big Blue.

Don't believe me? Let's take a look at the evidence.

Case one happened on December 1, 2002, when the Giants, gunning to improve their place in the standings ahead of the postseason, carried a 12-point lead early in the fourth quarter, only to see it disappear on a touchdown pass from Steve McNair to Frank Wychek and a game-tying two-point conversion with nine seconds left. Tennessee eventually pulled out a 35-32 victory with a field goal in overtime. Perhaps the only thing more remarkable than the loss is the fact that it wound up not being the biggest gut-punch Giants fans would suffer that season.

Case two, by far the more devastating, happened on November 26, 2006, when the Giants took perhaps the most brutal loss in a 2-6 stretch that some them drop from 6-2 and a Super Bowl contender, to 8-8 and relying on a stunning 200-yard performance by Tiki Barber in the season finale against Washington to earn a wild card berth. Big Blue seemed fully in control until a 21-point lead evaporated with 10 minutes left, as an unnecessary heave by a young Eli was picked off by the pre-lost soul Pac-Man Jones, turning the tide. The climax of all of this, of course, was the two pronged decision of Mathias Kiwanuka to inexplicably let Vince Young go when he had him sacked on fourth down, and Manning's second unnecessary heave that was picked off in the final minute, leading to a game-winning field goal that handed Tennessee a 24-21 win.



Mercy. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of pain is in store this time. In the end I'm hoping It'll be a more positive result, or at least not as disappointing as it was last night when I found out the Giants have a 5,000 square foot museum in the new stadium that was never publicized until after I already plopped down $150 to see them beat up Carolina in the season opener and left without walking around. Of course, at least that situation is, one day, fixable. My other major disappointment this week came when the Twins clinched their division about two weeks earlier than I wanted them to, as I was hoping the White Sox would keep it close enough for me to witness the celebration when I'm at Target Field on Oct. 1.

Biggest non-shock of the week? The Mets were finally eliminated from postseason contention. A stunner.

Enough of my own depression. On with the picks.

Last week: 7-7-2
Season: 13-15-4

NY GIANTS (-3) over Tennessee
San Francisco (-3) over KANSAS CITY
MINNESOTA (-11) over Detroit
NEW ENGLAND (-15) over Buffalo
NEW ORLEANS (-4) over Atlanta
Pittsburgh (-3) over TAMPA BAY
CAROLINA (+4) over Cincinnati
BALTIMORE (-11) over Cleveland
Dallas (+3) over HOUSTON
ST. LOUIS (+4) over Washington
JACKSONVILLE (+3) over Philadelphia
Indianapolis (-6) over DENVER
ARIZONA (-5) over Oakland
San Diego (-6) over SEATTLE
NY Jets (+2) over MIAMI
Green Bay (-3) over CHICAGO

Are you comfortable with all those picks? Because I sure ain't. But it means a whole lot of nothing. The only thing that really matters is getting the chance to watch that Redskins-Rams blockbuster.

Who doesn't want to see those Goliaths?

NFL Picks Week 1: Justifying Ineptitude With An Elementary Gambling Lesson

Happy first day of football season everyone! Yes, tonight is the big night the Vikings and Saints kickoff the 2010 NFL campaign with a rematch of last year's NFC Championship and I, for one, could not be any more excited. For those of you who used to read my old, horrendous Xanga from about six years ago, you know that I have an awful tendency to show how inept I am at predicting football games by making NFL picks every week and then tabulating my record for the course of the season.

This is a terrible idea.

Vegas, you see, sets the lines. And Vegas is awfully good at splitting the action. People often misunderstand the concept behind a Vegas betting line and assume that when the Giants are favored over the Panthers by, say, seven points, which they are this week, that it is an assumption that the Giants are a touchdown better than Carolina and should win by that amount. But in actuality that's not the case. The purpose of a betting line isn't to provide a more-than-likely prediction for the end result of each of Sunday's games. The point is to split the action.

Vegas isn't trying to give you an indication of how much better one team is than the other with any certainty. They're trying to create a situation in which half of the population believes Team A will win by X or more points and the other half of the population believes it will win by X or fewer points. So, really, the Giants aren't likely to win by seven points or more on Sunday. Half of the population just thinks they will.

Of course, half of the population thinks they won't. So, really, it's a 50/50 shot either way, which means that picking any game, with any certainty, at least at the pro-level, is more or less a coin flip.

Now of course there are betting strategies that enable you a better than 50% chance at making money, and various parlays that can help you reap a profit on a more likely scenario than a standard betting line, but for those of us who can't be bothered to really investigate betting with any real intensity or who simply don't care enough to do so, like myself, it is really, really, really unlikely that you're going to do better than 50% over the course of 256 regular season games by any margin that is statistically significant.

And yet, I still make these picks every week, just to open myself to unnecessary criticism. With tendencies like that, it's a wonder I haven't decided to get into politics yet.

So, now that I've prepared you for the explanation of why I'm inevitably going to be wrong nearly half the time this season, I think it's time to talk about all the big games this week, particularly the biggest footy match of them all, the semifinal between Geelong and Fremantle that bounces tomorrow morning at 5:30 ET. After last week's gut-wrenching loss to St. Kilda, the Cats face a win-or-go-home matchup with the upstart Dockers that could send them home or send them one step from another Grand Final appearance.

After a shoddy performance last week, much of the hope lies with young Joel Selwood, who wears the best number in the world, coming back into form and hopefully putting the Cats back on track for a potential showdown with Collingwood next weekend. It hasn't helped that coach Mark Thompson has had to fend off speculation all week that he'll leave Geelong for his old stomping grounds of Essendon, but after an emphatic "No" this week, hopefully that has been put to rest ahead of the biggest match of the year.

Still with me? Probably not. If you are, however, tune into ESPN3.com tomorrow morning when you wake up to watch some breakneck footy.

And now time for my NFL picks -- that is to say, the football you actually care about. Lines are accurate according to ESPN.com as of Thursday morning.

Last Week: 0-0-0
Season: 0-0-0

NEW ORLEANS (-6) over Minnesota
NY GIANTS (-7) over Carolina
Miami (-3) over BUFFALO
Detroit (+3.5) over CHICAGO
TENNESSEE (-6.5) over Oakland
NEW ENGLAND (-4.5) over Cincinnati
Atlanta (+2.5) over PITTSBURGH
TAMPA BAY (-3) over Cleveland **
JACKSONVILLE (-3) over Denver
Indianapolis (-2.5) over HOUSTON
Arizona (-4) over ST. LOUIS
Green Bay (+3.5) over PHILADELPHIA
San Francisco (+3) over SEATTLE
Dallas (-3.5) over WASHINGTON
NY JETS (-2.5) over Baltimore
SAN DIEGO (-5) over Kansas City

**If it were possible for both teams to lose against the spread, that would be my pick.

And there you have it, kids. My almost certain to be completely right in every way predictions for Week 1 of the NFL season. Get ready for the excitement. Kickoff is just nine and a half hours away.