Sports

Best Football of the Year

I watched the best football game of the year last night - the Minnesota state championship "Prep Bowl" game between Minnetonka and Wayzata. Sure, I hated football when I was in high school and had to put up with the preening jocks, and yeah, this game featured two western-'burb rich-kid teams. But man, could they play: Big runs and passes, excellent offensive execution, crushing defense including several excellent interceptions, and, best of all tons of enthusiasm by the players. And this wasn't the showy fakery of pro athlete, with their rehearsed post-sack moves and touchdown celebrations. This was just kids happy to have made that tackle or this catch.

Game 7, Inning 9

The Yankees should be contracted this off-season, just to punish their fans. It's the top of the ninth and they're far behind, but already Yankee Stadium is half-empty. What a pathetic display, especially given the Yankee-Sox rivalry, the way last season's ALCS turned out, "The Curse," and the Yankees' perennial excellence. Yankee fans suck. If you're a baseball fan, you've got to love to see them choke on it.

The Greatest Collapse since Hitler's Germany

It's only the top of the fourth in the seventh game of the ALCS, but I am loving the game so far. The Red Sox are up 8-1 right now, and FOX keeps showing the uncharacteristically worry and even shock on the faces of the Yankees, especially Derek Jeter. How sweet this is! Can you just imagine how Steinbrenner must be right now, or what he'll be like after the game?!?

It's Been 86 Years!

Behind great pitching by Pedro Martinez, the Red Sox beat the Cardinals tonight to go up 3-0 in the World freaking Series. Can Derek Lowe win tomorrow and end The Curse? God, I hope so...

Yankees Suck!

No, really, they do. Every year, you hope they tank, and (nearly) every year, they steamroll everyone on the way to the World Series. This year, they're once again destroying the Red Sox. I hope the Cardinals make it to the Series from the National League, because they seem to be the only team that could slug with the Yankees. Of course, the Red Sox supposedly had a more high-powered offense and better pitching than the Yankees, and as of this second, they're down 14-6 in the third quarter seventh inning of the third game of the ALCS. Oh - I take that back: they just scored two more, putting the BoSox down by a touchdown and a field goal. Sigh...

MNF'er, or, "How John Madden is like Paris Hilton."

Another week of regular-season football, another Monday Night Football game. Dallas at Washington is a rivalry that lacks a little bit of edge, since both teams stink. Apparently cognizant of this, ABC did its best to distract the viewer from the game, which actually got pretty exciting toward the end. Viz.
Five for Fighting's awful little segue from halftime to the second half. At least the falseness of the lead singer's falsetto matches the falseness of the game.
The constant hyping of next week's fair-to-middling matchup (Chiefs at Ravens would be a good unstoppable offense/immovable defense game - if it were 2003).
The homophobic "You Got Sacked" feature, in which Torry Holt was made to called for a fake photo shoot and made to put on outfits which were increasingly and stereotypically gay (biker gear, a ballet tutu) while two buffalo-like teammates watched and laughed on a "surveillance" monitor. And CBS has to pay a half-million for a nipple?

And that's just the halftime show. Would the producers of MNF die if they had to recount yesterday's games? Five minutes of highlights and analysis? Please! Last, we have the macrocephalic spectacle of John Madden himself. When was the last time he offered any real insight into a game? I don't doubt that he could do so at any time; given his experience as a coach and a color commentator (and video-game eponym), he probably has an encyclopedic knowledge of the game. But Lord, more than anything, Madden like Paris Hilton: famous for being famous, not for having a demonstrable talent. At least Madden's easier on the eyes than the elder Hiltongenue. Sigh.

It's not Packers-Staleys, is it?

Lambeau Field is My Mecca

Okay, so last weekend I went to Lambeau Field with my friend Kevin to see the Bears-Packers game. This whole thing was Kevin's brainchild, and what a prodigy it was.

I'd never before seen a live NFL game, much less one at Lambeau, so I was a bit excited. Up at four, on the road at five, in the stadium at ten. The stadium and its environs are amazing. We parked in some Ashwaubenonite's driveway, which is What You Do when you go to a Packer game. Our parking spot was included in the ticket price, but I saw lots of kids, dressed in their Favre and Green jerseys, along the streets around Lambeau, holding up signs advertising parking for $10 or $20. The three-block walk to the stadium was fascinating: tons of tailgating was already occurring, even at quarter of ten, and the Green & Gold fans were uniformly happy. We walked most of the way around the stadium before going in, soaking up the un-Frozen Tundra-like 70-degree sunshine.

Lambeau Field itself was recently renovated, and it's spectacular, with wide, clean concourses; numerous concession stands and bathrooms; a few cool restaurant/pub areas; and many interesting displays of Packer history. When we finally emerged into open air, I was struck by the seeming smallness of the football field. Not that it's cramped or shrunken - rather, it feels very intimate and even kinda cozy. Aluminum benches to sit on, relatively gentle inclines to the stairs and the stands, and all the beautiful green grass. When we arrived, a knot of people were standing at midfield; my binoculars revealed that one of them was the great #4 himself. (Here, he's facing the camera, just to the right of the hulk in black - Tony Siragusa, Fox's sideline reporter.) Favre's graying, but he looked, even just standing there shooting the breeze, like a tough, capable athlete. I emitted a little awe.

Kevin and I killed some more time by walking around the stadium, then had an early and delicious lunch - bratwurst and a beer for me, naturally. It's Green Bay, after all. Then, gametime. The stadium went nuts when the Packers were introduced; my ears were already buzzing before Favre sprinted through the gantlet of teammates. Kevin and I had two friendly Bears fans on one side of us and great Packers fans everywhere else.

The Packers looked good on their opening drive, moving crisply upfield and using Ahman Green to slash at the Bears D.

They came away with only a Ryan Longwell field goal. The Bears' opening drive ended with an interception, which sent all of us in the stands into hysterics.

After the Packers missed a missed field goal at the start of the second quarter, the Bears methodically moved 65 yards to score a touchdown on a pass from Rex Grossman to his tight end. The Packers responded sharply, marching steadily downfield towards a seeming touchdown. In one great play, they even ran a left-side sweep for Ahman Green in which Favre served as a lead blocker! Alas, Favre threw an interception at the Bears' six. Hastened onto the field, the Packers defense stopped the Bears and got the ball back to Favre. A mix of passing and rushing seemed to put the Packers on the verge of a touchdown, but then Ahman Green fumbled and, disastrously, the Bears' opportunistic Mike Brown ran it back for a touchdown, making it 14-3 Bears at the half.

A long, long line at the concession stand meant I missed a long run by the Bears' Thomas Jones. Jones capped the drive with a 1-yard plunge into the end zone. 21-3 Bears. Things looked ugly.

But now Favre went to work. Another well-executed drive, blending Green runs and Favre passes, ended with a beautiful touchdown pass to Robert Ferguson, a classic crooked-arm Favre toss that arched high over the Bears defender and found Fergie's hands in the back corner of the end zone. To have seen Favre throw such a beautiful touchdown was a moment of glory for me, and for the now-roaring crowd. (According to the Packers' account of the game, the pass made this game the 25th consecutive contest against the Bears in which #4 threw a TD, surpassing Dan Marino for the league record of consecutive games with TD throws against a single opponent.) 21-10 Bears, and the Pack looked resurgent with the fourth quarter about to start.

At this point, I was pretty much beside myself with excitement. Here it is a beautiful day at Lambeau Field, Favre's heated up, and the Packers are driving to our end of the field. Grossman seemed to fumble and give the ball to the Packers, but that call was overturned and the Packers D had to stop Chicago and force the punt. Favre threw three incompletions, but the Bears then gave the ball right back on an unbelievable gaffe by David Terrell, who fumbled a reverse and put the Packers O back on the field at their own 45. Two plays later, though, Favre threw his second interception of the game, utterly deflating the crowd. On replay, it seemed that the Bears' defender didn't control the ball before hitting the ground, but alas - no review or reversal. The Bears then mounted a weak drive and elected to try a long field goal, which Paul Edinger missed. With 2:28 now to go, there was just enough time for Favre to conjure up two scores for the win. Using five passes, the Packers moved from their own 27 to the Bears 11 but then the drive ground to a halt on an apparent facemask of Favre as he tried a touchdown pass with 1:18 left. #4 stomped off the field, angrily yanking at his helmet to show the referee what a facemask penalty ought to look like. The Bears burned the rest of the clock, and that was the game.

It certainly didn't end the way I'd have liked (though Kevin was pretty happy), but on the other hand I wouldn't have missed any of it. Even the walk back to the car - past all the same tailgaters, now more thoroughly lubricated - was fun, through a leafy neighborhood and amidst scores of Packers fans. A great time, I think, was had by all.

NFL Week 2

Week 2 had a few surprises - the Lions going 2-0 and the Chiefs going 0-2, for instance - but on balance the things that are supposed to happen early in the season did happen. Michael Vick looks like he's going to be his rookie-year self. Kurt Warner's apparently not dead, though he is playing at the Meadowlands. Indianapolis has an early leg up on its AFC Central rivals, having now beaten Tennessee and watched the woeful Dolphins suck it up. New England is playing its usual stifling defense and methodical offense, and is now 2-0.

More than any of those games or results, though, the striking thing about week 2 for me was the high level of hype. Like the advent of Christmas merchandise in the stores, the start of playoff hype (not just the usual preseason "anything is possible" talk) gets earlier this year. Sitting here in the Twin Cities, I was treated to breathless predictions that the Eagles-Vikings game was that chimera, "the playoff preview." If so, it's going to be a disappointing January for Vikings fans, for their team, predictably, got toasted on the road, thanks to Donovan McNabb, who looks like he's going to be great again this year.

On the other hand, the Packers lost, too, falling 21-10 to da hated Bears at Lambeau. Where I was watching. And cursing. More on that elsewhere.

A final note: In preparing for my big trip to Green Bay, I rewatched the Week 1 game between the Packers and the Panthers. I was struck again by the extremely heavy doses of military imagery. At one point in the fourth quarter, for instance, ABC actually cut over to a U.S. Army base in Kuwait, where several soldiers watched the game from their perches on an artillery cannon stencilled "Favre's Backup." Interestingly weird. The thing is, though, that football is much, much less like combat than it is like a kind of colliding ballet. Everything is choreographed down to the last detail, and only rarely does a play "break" in an exciting or meaningful way. The importance of game plans is visible in, say, the prevalence of the highly-scripted West Coast offense or in the attention to minutiae displayed by Bill Belichick in New England. The double emphasis in football on careful planning and on a rules-bound environment in which to execute those plans makes the game totally unlike warfare, where - as events in Iraq bear out day to day - success consists largely in being able to overcome the failure of your plans.

T Minus 13 Hours and Counting Till Lambeau

Just about thirteen hours from now, I'll be at Lambeau, eagerly awaiting the start of the Bears-Packers game. The weather is expected to be an un-Frozen Tundra-like 75 and sunny, but that's fine. The game will be a sellout, of course: every Packer game since the 1960 opener - a game against the Bears! - has been. I'm looking forward to sharing the game with Kevin and 72,567 others. Go Pack go!

T Minus 3 Days and Counting to Lambeau

Okay, so John Kerry can't say the stadium's name right (despite his alleged Francophilia), but I'm just Friday and Saturday away from the big trip for the Bears-Packers game at Lambeau. Reading up on the stadium today, I was amazed and impressed to learn that...
"City Stadium" was dedicated in 1957 and renamed Lambeau Field in 1965
Its present capacity of 72,569 is more than twice the original capacity of 32,500
It is the oldest stadium still in use in the NFL. (The Chargers started playing at their present stadium in 1967, making Qualcomm the second-oldest stadium in the NFL. But then, how many championships have the Chargers won?)
It is the third-oldest homefield in American pro sports, after Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, which are both more than 40 years older.

NFL Week 1

I'll probably lack the drive to keep up, but I'd like to use this venue to track the NFL through its 2004-2005 season. You can't tell much after Week 1, in this or any season, but the key event as far as I was concerned was the Packers' win over the NFC-champ Panthers last night. Favre looked healthy and strong and Ahman Green was his usual dominating presence. But for a few defensive slip-ups late in the game, the Pack really made the Panthers look bad, and Jake Delhomme like the should-be backup QB that he is.

Elsewhere in the league, that ass Terrell Owens scored three TDs in his debut as an Eagle. Donovan McNabb and T.O. are probably, with four quarters gone this year, probably the biggest QB-WR tandem in the league. Their only real competition would be two players I love to hate, Daunte Culpepper and Randy Moss. Culpepper - who possesses the weirdest big-play celebration in the NFL, that goofy arm-rolling gesture that's precisely resembles a basketball ref calling a traveling foul - threw five TDs in the Vikings' game against Dallas (which is a whole team I love to hate, ever since their annual thumping of the Packers in the early 1990s); Moss caught two of those TDs and, amazingly, accounted for more yardage on interference calls than on receptions. It's undetermined as to whether the Vikings paid the referees in cash or kind. The Vikings' win probably makes them the odds-on favorite to win the NFC Central, but then that was the case last year, too. At least the Packers are keeping pace so far.

The pundits are hyping next week's Eagles-Vikings matchup on Monday night in Philadelphia as the game of the season. Might be. I think the Vikings will get hammered in that outdoor game. But really, all I care about in Week 2 is the Packers' home opener against the Bears. I'll be at Lambeau for the game, which is literally a dream come true. More on my genetic predisposition to being a Packers fan later.

Am I Ready for Some Football?

I hate the NFL. The season started in earnest today, and I'm deep into my funk of loathing for pro football - the hype, the idiocy, the cliches, and especially the compelling games.

The season actually started on Thursday with a good game (Colts at Patriots) preceded by a ludicrous hour of pre-game entertainment: Destiny's Child, Elton John, Toby Keith, Jessica Simpson, Mary J. Blige and the Boston Pops. There were lots of pyrotechnics, cameos by various football types, and some flirtation with the Super Bowl's "wardrobe malfunction" - one of the Destiny's Child singers wore a flesh-colored bra beneath her white suit jacket. Beyond all those mediocrities, the show was notable for innumerable allusions and outright references to the military, including especially the old fave, the stadium flyover. In short, the pre-game show was absurd, laughable, and craptastic.

The game was better, and a second game on Saturday was good, too. The main run of games took place on Sunday, of course, and among other events, the Vikings' Daunte Culpepper threw five touchdowns and scored 40-some points for my fantasy football team. That this even matters to me only indicates the deep insanity and inanity of pro football. My Packers play on Monday night against the Carolina Panthers. I can't wait for that game, or for Week 2, or for Wild Card Weekend, or the league championship games. Oh, the promise of a new football season... I hope I'm entertained, moved, and disgusted. I hope later to write about the bizarre link between pro football and the military, a tie that I've never understood and that I'm now sure is completely meritless.

Next week, I'm making a pilgrimage to Green Bay, where for the first and probably only time in my life, I'm going to see the Packers play at Lambeau Field. And not in any old game, either. No, they're playing the Bears, with one of whose fans I'm attending the game. The oldest rivalry in the league, the greatest stadium, the best quarterback in what might be his last season... I predict a 38-20 victory for the Packers and a stomach ache from too much bratwurst for me. I can't wait.

Coach, Don't Speak

In the 9/17/04 sports section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, former Vikings coach and current Cardinals coach Dennis Green is quoted as saying, in an attempt to comment on the fact that the visiting Patriots had ten days to prepare for their game with the Cards but a bye week afterwards, "That really just assured me the sense of humor the NFL has in their schedule."

What? Not only can't this guy win big or even just important games, he's not too good with the irony.