The Manning Debate

So, I’ve found that one of the easiest ways to construct a blog post is to find another blog post somewhere and rip it to shreds. So, that’s what I’ll do since I’m lazy and don’t really have any free time due to work. If by “work” I mean “checking ESPN.com, cnnsi.com, and, yes, Foxsports.com while sitting at a desk in the building where I am supposed to work,” which I do.

So, I came across this blog by “Ben Tseng” predicting a Giants upset and was prepared to go to town on him like Mo’Nique on a plate of honey barbeque Buffalo wings. But, “Ben” gets out of the gate quickly and we definitely agree on one thing -- the only thing better than having one baseball wallet is having two baseball wallets and the requisite amount of rubbing mud.

And, I also agree with “Ben” that this should be a very close game. The Giants have a lot of weapons. Their d-line scares me, their receivers, especially Plex, scare me and, as hard as this is to admit, Eli Manning scares me. I mean, is there any question at this point that you’d rather face Peyton in a big game than Eli?

Hmmm… maybe we don’t disagree as much as I thought. In fact, maybe instead of ripping this guy, we’ll use another time honored Super Bowl Week tradition - making an outlandish claim and then shouting loudly to back it up. Ready? Here goes:

Deep down, in places that Bill Polian doesn’t talk about at parties, do you think he’d trade Peyton for Eli straight up?

I think he would! You’re an idiot if you disagree! Seriously though, just look at this year and see for yourself.

So, before Week 17, it was going down as a typical year for Eli - tons of picks, lots of bad throws, and tons of just really big sacks. Does anyone love taking tons of huge sacks more than Eli Manning? Resisting obvious joke, we’ll just go with… Eli loves huge sacks.

But, in Week 17, he showed up against the Pats and had himself a ballgame before taking a huge sack (loves ‘em!) and throwing a killer pick. Then, in the playoffs he seemed to build off that performance and outplay Jeff Garcia (speaking of loving… never mind), Tony Romo, and Brett Favre. All the while, supposedly dating a pretty desirable chick and singing drunken, Bon Jovi karaoke. Not bad.

Meanwhile, Peyton goes through the season racking up his typical stats on the way to Canton. He gets credit for holding the team together through tons of injuries and puts a real scare in the Pats. Everyone’s thinking that after winning the Super Bowl* he’s really turned it around. I myself was thinking that the Colts would give the Pats a game in the conference finals.

Then what happens? He lays ANOTHER playoff egg against San Diego. Peyton is lucky LaDanian Tomlinson is such a wuss or else the failure spotlight would be firmly on the Indy QB, rather than the mysterious, dark-helmeted fixture on the SD bench. After his Super Bowl win* last year, Peyton will probably escape any sort of criticism for choking in big games from here on in, but is there any question that this guy hates playing in big games?

So, sure maybe the Colts go 11-5 with Eli instead of 13-3 (really 14-2 since they threw away that last game), but maybe Eli gives you a little better shot in the playoffs? I can’t believe I’m saying this, and I obviously have no stats to back it up, but I think he does. Also, Eli just turned 27 (happy birfday!) while Peyton will turn 32 before next season and has a lot of miles on him.

You’d have to at least think about it, right? Age difference considered? Anyone? Bueller? (Yeah, went with the Ferris Bueller joke there. It reminds me of the time I was teaching a Princeton Review class a while ago and used the same joke and was greeted with a room full of blank stares because all the kids were like 2 or 3 when the movie came out. Yes, I have been old and out of touch for upwards of 10 years. That makes me feel good...)

Either way, Eli scares me in this game.

(* Rex Grossman was the starting QB for the opponent)

What I learned from "The Bachelor"

I know most people stopped watching The Bachelor a while ago. Um, I mean, I would never consider watching a show as crazy as the Bachelor. Wait, wait, I mean The Bachelor? Never heard of it.

OK, so, I watched a little bit of the Bachelor this fall. In my defense, my wife's sister's friend's sister was one of the chicks. It's practically like I had a relative on the show, I had to watch. And, I begrudgingly have to give this bachelor credit, he played these chicks like a well-tuned fiddle and came out smelling like a rose. The most dramatice rose ever (inside Bachelor joke? Yeah, I did.)

So, word on the street is that this bachelor was the most attractive since that Jesse Palmer douche. As an aside, it always irked me when Palmer (a 3rd-string QB for the Giants at the time, now out of the league) was on the show, all the Entertainment Tonight type shows were going with the "Who's the better QB catch, Jesse Palmer or Tom Brady?" Let's see, one is a two-time Super Bowl MVP who dates exclusively supermodels and the other is a bench warmer who has to go on a reality show to get chicks. Tough call there.

Anyway, so this year's Bachelor apparently owns some bars in Austin, TX, has a twin brother, and is looking to possibly get into acting more. If you think Mike has a southern drawl, you should hear this guy. He served up the accent and country bumpkin sayings ("I hayve to foller mah heart") and the chicks ate it up like an ice cream buffet that they would make themselves throw up later as to not gain weight. They even didn't seem to mind that he and his brother were a little too into the whole "let's try to switch it up and pretend you're me" routine, which got old to every other set of twins in about the 3rd grade.

So, this guy is narrowing it down, the chicks are all over him, and he's loving every minute. When it gets down to three chicks left, he eliminates one because he didn't feel he got to know her well enough. Country bumpkin translation: She wouldn't screw him and the other two chicks did.

Now we're down to two. He has to make a decision on who to propose to. First chick, a Phoenix Suns dancer... no proposal. So, every chick in America is assuming it's going to be Girl #2. She comes up and... no proposal! That's right, this guy went on the Bachelor, a show whose only purpose is to find this guy a wife, and he manages to come out with no ring!

Let me get this straight: The guy just got about 4 months of free publicity for his bar business, got exposure to any number of casting agents and the like, played up his Southern charm, and didn't propose to anyone! Genius. I mean tell me every chick in Austin isn't lining up at his bars right now in the hopes of getting drilled by him and possibly his brother.

Touche' Bachelor guy, touche'. All along I thought you were Verbal Kint and it turns out you're Keyser Soze. Now I need to find a new coffee mug.

View from the bandwagon

Here's the deal, as a self-important, somewhat stuck-up Boston sports fan, I often find myself deriding fans in other, less sports savvy cities as some form of "band wagon jumpers." You really only need to look as far as Colorado Rockies fans for an example. They couldn't give away tickets all year, then once the team goes on that crazy run, all of a sudden every lame fan in Denver is wearing purple and knows how to spell Tulowiski.

Here in Boston, we're born with our fandom ingrained, so I thought. In the depths of 2003, I often wished that I could drop the Sox and become a fan of another team, which would be akin to suddenly being able to make myself 6 inches taller or make my eyes blue or something. At one point that winter it seemed entirely rational when I thought, "if we could somehow just turn back time, I'm sure Grady would pull Pedro to start the 8th." I died more than a little that night, as did my sister-in-law who came very close to getting a shoe in the temple when I came home and threw said shoe across the room in frustration, unaware she was sleeping on the couch.

So, bandwagon fan? Not me.

But, this recent C's resurgence has me wondering. Take Tuesday night. My (much) better half was away for the evening, and I had hatched quite the plan: Get out of work a little early, get take-out BBQ, and check out the C's game. I'm all of a sudden a C's fan after years of only watching them as an excuse to grab my baseball wallet (happy, Mike?), get out of the house and drink some beers.

Likewise, when the Sox's season cratered in 2006, I took that opportunity to completely and totally drop out of the nightly torture that being a Sox fan can entail. In all of September I watched about 5 games. Being a season-ticket holder, I would arrive in the 4th and leave in the 7th, the very act that I enjoy mocking LA fans about so much.

So, bandwagon fan? You know, I don't really know.

I'm still pretty confident in my Sox fandom. My two-packs-per-game smoking habit whenever the playoffs roll around attests to that. But for the C's? Yeah, I am a bandwagon fan. And I'm OK with it. I can enjoy the team winning without feeling like someone is repeatedly kicking me in the grapes while telling me my whole family died except for my wife, who he's sleeping with, when the team loses. It's actually pretty nice. I imagine that's why people become fans in the first place? That following sports is actually fun? Crazy.

To bandwagon fans out there, I guess I never resented you, or thought you were lame. I was just jealous. Although, that won't stop me from ripping you to shreds once baseball starts up again.