Yemas de Santa Steve Jobs: iPhone scores a Buffalo Win! (Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!)

Yesterday was the unveiling of the new iPhone (TM!), now featuring 100% more plastic.

I like to start these posts with a sexy picture related to the topic.
This is one of the pictures that comes up if you google "Sexy iphone."
I don't know what kind of deal she made with what kind of supernatural entity,
but I'm very afraid.

I felt like the unveiling of the new iPhone -- now made of the same kind of material (TM!) that your kids' toys are! -- was the perfect time to talk about the Buffalo Bills and the new sports-related phrase that I have come up with: The "BUFFALO WIN."

Or, if you must have some hype,

Buffalo Win 

Longtime readers know that I am a fan (?) of the Buffalo Bills, the only football team to have not gone to the playoffs in this milennium, and longertime readers know that I also am not a fan of Steve Jobs, who I consider to be improperly canonized given that while he may have been an innovator, he also (publicly) was a complete jerk who managed to make even the simple act of buying a sofa some sort of stupid, egotistical, phenomenally annoying zen koan, apparently taking 8 years to purchase a couch, about which task his wife said:

“We spoke about furniture in theory for eight years...We spent a lot of time asking ourselves, ‘What is the purpose of a sofa?’” 

That kind of stuff drives me nuts.  The purpose of a sofa is to sit on, and if it can serve a secondary purpose of not necessarily showing stains from the time Mr F put macaroni and cheese on it, then that sofa has achieved everything it ever dreamed of in life.

Well, almost everything.

Steve Jobs, privately, drives me nuts because it was apparently at his insistence that all Apple devices not use certain kinds of programs, which means we spent money on an iPad to help our boys learn to talk but that iPad won't play "Curious George" games on the Internet because of some gripe Steve Jobs had, and it means that iPad doesn't have buttons that are intuitive or easy to use, because Steve Jobs had a fear of death, or something, and, also, I have had to pay more than $9.99 for books for the past several years because Steve Jobs was so ticked off that Jeff Bezos' Amazon was working that Jobs got Apple and other companies to violate antitrust laws by price-fixing books.

Steve Jobs: Genius icon Robber Baron One Percenter.

Anyway, that's why the unveiling of the new iPhone (now made of material less durable than that Pepsi (TM!) can you're holding!) was the second-best event this week, an event so noneventful that the only people who really paid attention to it are the people who still know all the characters on Mad Men -- hipsters (and Slate) who speak only SEO and exist in a tiny loop of buzz reinforced by NPRs Pop Culture blog and Tumblr.

McKayla Maroney is not impressed with the Movember Iphone Eli Manning Is Looking At.

The iPhone's biggest feature -- besides now being made of the stuff which used to be used to pack it in for shipping -- in fact was that because it is so cheaply made, now regular folks can afford it!  This complete downfall of Apple went unremarked on in every single article about the new iPhone.  Or so I'm guessing. I didn't read any articles about the new iPhone, opting instead to get all of my news about it from Twitter, which means that while I think I've got the basics of it, I'm a bit confused about why Jimmy Kimmel twerked on one, or whatever.

But let's assume that the 43,000,000,000,000 words written about the new iPhone (shown below)

Can also be used to flip burgers (TM!)

didn't mention the fact that Apple has officially lost, because people don't like to make the Major Powers (Apple, the NSA, J.K. Rowling) mad by pointing out how stupid they are (NOT YOU JK ROWLING PLEASE DON'T SUE!), so it's up to me to point out that Apple has officially lost.

Or, to put it more hypefully,

Apple Has Officially Lost! 

Apple's whole thing all along has been how sleek and beautiful and high-tech and SUPEREXPENSIVE UNAFFORDABLE YOU CAN'T GET ONE SO SHUT UP all their stuff has been all this time: while ostensibly trying to put an iPhone in everyone's hand, what Apple was really doing (besides trying to figure out a way to get Iran or North Korea to nuke Samsung because lawsuits only go so far, know what I'm saying?, here's a couple of billion for your coffers, third-world despot) was trying to convince you that you wanted an iPhone but couldn't afford one.  Apple was like Cadillac, or maybe Rolls Royce, or maybe something else that was expensive (Starbucks coffee), marketing itself as something everyone would have, if they could afford it.

That was the real appeal of Apple, right? That's why they had commercials reveal that Zooey Deschanel is so breathtaking

...Wait for it...

-ly stupid

Finish a sentence, will you!

that she had to use a computer to tell her if it was raining while she stood in front of a window.

Stars! They're just like us!

WHICH IS DEPRESSING!

The point was that the stars could afford iPhones, no matter how terrible Suri was at actually working, and iPhones could therefore be smaller, less functional, less affordable, and more easily tracked by the NSA than all other phones, because none of that mattered: they were expensive and if you had one, it was like having a Mercedes.

Which no longer is the case, because now anyone can own a Mercedes, or at least the hood ornament, which is probably why Apple made the plastic phones come in all sorts of colors: it's the only way to tell the Sneetches apart anymore, and it's how Apple can try to have their elite image while still allowing Kmart shoppers to get this blue light special: Even though they are marketing cheap, plastic phones, now, Apple wants people who only Tweet about "Downton Abbey" on an iPhone to know that there is still a way to tell if people really have an iPhone: if you have a colored one, it's cheap and plastic, so that'll be the new code among the tiny minority of people who still think Apple will be a company in 2020 (it won't, because Steve Jobs cannot have enough temper tantrums at enough minimum-wage baristas from the afterlife to keep his company going): if you have a colored iPhone, you've gone through Sylvester McMonkey McBeans' machine and are not really one of them.

Instead of that, I suggest that Apple instead embrace my new concept, the "Buffalo Win" (REMEMBER THAT'S WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT?)

The "Buffalo win" concept came to me this past Sunday, when I was not watching football because I had better things to do.

Pictures like this don't just find themselves, you know.
Also: Rashida Jones shows up if you google "Zooey Deschanel."
Not that I'm complaining.

The Buffalo Bills, who had a chance to make one kind of history this past week -- by starting Jeff Tuel, their backup quarterback who wasn't even drafted and would've been the first undrafted rookie to start a regular season homeopener -- ever! -- as well as being a powerful image of a team that actually lost all hope of the playoffs even before the season officially began -- instead failed to make any kind of history other than the kind of history I made up.

I sincerely apologize for that sentence, but I'm assured it's grammatically correct.

The Bills played, instead, their quarterback "E.J. Manuel," who I'm told was the least qualified quarterback to go in the first round of the NFL draft -- YAY, BUFFALO?-- and gave me even fewer reasons to try to watch the game against the Patriots* (*they cheat), not that I could've anyway because no station was showing it in my market.

So instead, I opted for the equally-exhilarating course of putting up shelves in my spare room and following the game on Twitter, and then got (briefly) (almost) excited when the Bills led with six minutes left in the game.

It was at that point, though, that I had to load my two youngest into the car to get them to the swimming pool I'd promised them in exchange for accidentally dropping a screwdriver on one's head, and so I missed the final six minutes of the game on Twitter and got into the car and put on ESPN radio and learned that the Bills had lost.

AS EXPECTED.

But they did BETTER than expected, commentators said, and fans said that E.J. looked "solid", which is good because it's very very tough to be a quarterback if you are in a gaseous or plasmatic state, and overall the feeling was that things were looking pretty good for the Bills.

Aside from that 0-1 record thing, BUT WHO IS COUNTING? OTHER THAN THE NFL?

Later that day, the same thing would happen with the Green Bay Packers, who put up a better than expected fight -- and only one illegal bounty hit on Colin Kaepernick YAY! --

Later, Mathews would run over Kaepernick in the parking lot, and explain he "hadn't heard the whistle."

The Packers, who have now lost to the 49ers in consecutive games, to end and begin their seasons, weren't about to admit defeat just because they had been defeated:  fans and commentators and even people who know about football.  Bleacher Report (NOT in that last category) said that despite the loss, the Packers proved "capable of dealing with anyone", which is not to say "capable of beating anyone" and found solace for Packers fans in the idea that the game wasn't over even until just after the game was over:

The Packers will not face a better opponent all season, and yet forced the Niners to play more than 60 minutes to beat them (the pass falling incomplete well after the clock expired).

The Packers didn't give up -- even after the game was officially over and the 49ers were heading off the field! NEVER SAY DIE!  I heard that Green Bay just scored a touchdown yesterday morning.  TAKE THAT SAN FRAN.

So we've gone, as a country, from honoring McKayla Maroney for adequately summarizing how to feel about not-winning, to deciding that losing isn't losing, it's almost-winning.

For the first time ever, parents are correct when they say it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game, and even though somewhere the ghost of Vince Lombardi is barely restraining the ghost of Steve Jobs, that's where America -- its tech gadgets and sports, at least, which are America -- is headed.

To the "Buffalo Win."

I came up with the concept of calling an almost-win a Buffalo Win when Drew Magary on Deadspin pointed out that Buffalo Bills fans are the only fans who routinely wear "Conference Champion" t-shirts -- the point being that if your team was an NFC or AFC champion, then either it also won the Super Bowl (which means that the conference championship isn't that big a deal) or it lost the Super Bowl (which means that your team is Buffalo).  So why celebrate a conference championship? Because you almost won.

Bills fans, Magary said, also wear fans celebrating Frank Reich.  You don't remember Frank Reich: Frank Reich led the single largest comeback in college football, and then went on to lead the single-largest comeback in pro football, and then went on to lose the Super Bowl, and now is selling plastic iPhones at a kiosk in the Buffalo Galleria.

(Actually, he runs a chain of successful boot shops, and invented a stand to display footballs that also looks like a football field!)

I heard he also designed an Escher Staircase display for fine art, but it requires 13 dimensions to
work properly.

The point of all that being: Frank Reich's probably doing okay for himself.  Also: Buffalo fans are pioneers in the field of making losing seem like almost winning.

A viewpoint I can get behind: Why should we have just winners and losers? I mean, besides the fact that if we don't keep score and everyone's a winner all contests immediately become meaningless? And why shouldn't we celebrate almost winning? That way, Peyton Manning can continue to be considered great!

We need to expand our thinking, create new jobs, as it were.  Don't you want new jobs? Why should we limit ourselves to just wins and losses?  How will we ever measure those near-wins that increasingly are the best anyone can do and all anyone shoots for?

So with that in mind, I came up with the concept of the Buffalo Win.  A Buffalo Win, as you've gathered by now, is when your team doesn't actually win, but does better than people expected or, barring that, at least looked good losing.

The "Buffalo Win" will revolutionize society.  Take my own occupation, lawyer.  Well, it's not actually an occupation. I mean, it doesn't occupy me very much.  I spend a lot of time blogging.  Like now.  But that's beside the point.  The point is, if the concept of a Buffalo Win takes off there will be even less pressure on me than there is now, and I already exist in what is essentially a pressure-free life where I can spend my weekends trying to bake eponymous foods, like Yemas de Santa Teresa, which I recently made and which are essentially just condensed egg yolks rolled in sugar. I do not recommend them.

You'd think a dessert popularized by impoverished nuns and named in honor of a Saint who
reportedly had the power to levitate would at least have nougat.  

If "Buffalo Wins" -- note the similarity to "Buffalo Wings," similarly an idiotic concept that caught on among amazingly stupid people with disposable cash sports fans -- catches on, lawyers like me will not have to worry about whether a jury is crushing so hard on our client that they decide to forget about the whole "murdering our child" concept, and instead will simply tell our clients "Hey, we got a Buffalo Win! You're going to prison."

Under this thinking, Tea Partiers don't have to take solace only in the fact that gerrymandering means they will control the House of Representatives for another 20 years despite the fact that they embrace a failed, racist philosophy founded on "hating the black guy people elected," and can instead celebrate Mitt Romney, their Buffalo President!  The Academy of Motion Pictures Whatever could hand out Buffalo Oscars -- that's what it means when a picture tells you it was nominated for an Academy Award, after all: when you see "Nominated for Best Picture" on the DVD cover, it means (A) that picture lost and (B) for some reason you're still buying DVDs. Have you not heard of the Internet?

Buffalo Wins are a way to embrace losing and cushion the blow of being second best, at best, and even if you think you're not already using the idea, you're wrong.  Obama's recent attempt to bomb Syria because if you don't use those missiles they expire, only to back down and say "Okay, well if you promise to give us whatever chemical weapons you have leftover, we'll pretend this never happened"? That's a Buffalo Win for interventionism!

So I propose that from here on out, we no longer have just "wins" and "losses," but we add this third category: Buffalo wins.  You can still lose, but under this method losing would be largely confined to those teams or persons that do horribly, or are Danica Patrick, which is the same thing, really.  Sports pages, financial sections, whoever else keeps tally on things (accountants? I don't know) should immediately start toting up whether a team got a win, a Buffalo win, or a loss.  We'll all be better off for it, and at the very least, Apple's CEO will get another six months on the job, during which time we can look forward to the release of the cardboard iPHone.

Pictured: Your kid's Xmas present, 2014.

OUT FRIDAY: GET IT FOR FREE On 9/13:

A contemporary horror classic, "Temporary Anne" presents the terrifying tale of a woman who avoids eternal damnation by sending others to take her place, scrambling to avoid the minions of Mephistopheles while searching for a way to allow her ravaged body to serve her indomitable will. The frightening images -- demons made of ice, babies' souls consumed -- will stick with you for as long as Temporary Anne exists -- which is FOREVER.

Get it on Amazon for $0.99!  And watch for the blog tour where you can win free copies of this book and all my others.  The tour will be:

1. Life Is Good: Friday 9/13

2. Strange Pegs: 9/16

3. Laws Of Gravity 9/18

4. The Blutonian Death Egg 9/20

5. Nigel G. Mitchell Author, Blogger, Geek 9/23

6. Jessica Bell Author/Musician 9/26

7. Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, Speculative Fiction Author 9/30

8.  Jess' Book Blog 10/3

9. Lara Schiffbauer's Motivation For Creation 10/7

10.PTDilloway.com 10/10

How I watched the Super Bowl, in years past, because I am fascinated by me and so I assume you are, too. (Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!)

Continuing my review of past Super Bowl posts...

Here's one that I originally posted on Super Bowl Sunday on the Colts/Saints year:

How will you watch the Super Bowl? Here's some ideas -- plus some oddly specific predictions for the game. 

The other day, on the Dan Patrick Show, Jets Quarterback Mark Sanchez was asked how he would rather watch the Super Bowl: In person, in New Orleans, or at home. He said "At home," and explained that his reason was that it still hurt him that he wasn't playing in it.

Then, last night I saw on the news a story about a gathering of men who've never missed seeing a Super Bowl in person. These four guys (I'm not sure if they're a group, or just four guys who happen to share the same trait in common, that trait being an ability to spend a person's college tuition on seeing a game) have made it to all Super Bowls, from Super Bowl 1966 to Super Bowl 2010, where they were treated to a dinner by the NFL. (With ticket prices for Super Bowls in recent years averaging nearly $3,000 apiece, the NFL should've done more than give these guys some prime rib and a pat on the back.)

At the end of that story, which reminded me of the Sanchez interview, one of the men was asked about his prediction for the Super Bowl's score this year, and he said Saints 35, Colts 32; that comment in turn reminded me of an offhand comment Tuesday Morning Quarterback made the other day when he discussed things being "oddly specific" in sports and sports contracts. Tuesday Morning Quarterback (whose reviews of Brett Favre and Favre's performance would benefit from reading Malcolm Gladwell's article about how our attitude about a person can indelibly shape our impressions of that person's actions; TMQ's personal dislike of Favre makes him see everything Favre does through negative-colored glasses) commented in that article not only how he had predicted, in the beginning of the season, the teams that would make the Super Bowl, but also commented on the oddly-specific numbers, or numbers he saw as oddly specific, used in sports.

To TMQ, oddly specific includes setting a kickoff time for 5:28 p.m., as opposed to 5:30 p.m., and includes setting a contract at $451,000 instead of some other number.

Those numbers are no more, or less, specific than TMQ's preferred numbers, though: TMQ seems to think that there's something less specific about 5:30 p.m. than there is about 5:28 p.m., and he finds it absurd that someone would be so specific as to make a contract worth $451,000 rather than $450,000.

TMQ, in doing so, engages in the kind of uneducated snobbery he tries to decry; he feels superior to those people he claims are absurd for being so specific -- while not understanding that there's nothing more, or less, specific about either number: $451,000 is no more specific than $450,000. Both are numbers, and both are exact, specific numbers. $450,000 is an exact, specific number, and $451,000 is, too, and, for that matter, $451,929.32 is an exact, specific number, and it's no more, or less, exact or specific: In each case, the number is carried out to the same number of significant figures, and significant figures determine how specific you're being.

5:28 p.m. is exactly as specific -- because it's measured to the same degree -- as 5:30 p.m. What TMQ means is that 5:30 p.m. feels more general, and it feels more general because that's the number we all mentally round 5:28 p.m. to. If someone says something starts at 5:28, we all decide "that's about 5:30" and round it to that. Likewise, $450,000 seems less specific -- because it requires that we remember only two actual numbers plus placeholding zeroes, so we can easily remember it and it seems more general.

But people are oddly specific -- and they like to be oddly specific. Think of a number, right now, between 1 and 100. Got your number?

Mine was 43 (mine's always 43). I can't say what your number was (but feel free to leave it in a comment, if you'd like) I bet it was not a round number: I bet you didn't pick 10, 20, 30, or a number ending in 5, either; I bet you picked something ending in a 3, or 7, or 2 -- an oddly specific number, or one that seems so, anyway (because it's no more specific than 10, or 50). Ask others to do the same: I bet they'll never pick a number ending in a zero or 5 -- and they'll refuse to pick a "round" or not-very-specific number even though they don't know why you're having them pick a number.

TMQ, though, wants to make fun of people for picking oddly-specific numbers, so we can make fun of him for doing so because in the very act of making fun of the rest of us, TMQ has revealed that he's a pseudo-intellectual who doesn't understand the things he wants to mock. Numbers are specific only to the degree of significant figures they use; and people like oddly specific numbers, as evidenced by the score predicted by the Old Man Whose Been To All The Super Bowls; asked to predict a final score, the Old Man said Saints 35, Colts 32.

Why'd he pick those numbers, instead of any other two pairs of scores? After all, there are only a few scores a football game can't end in. A game can't end up 1-0 or 1-1, and that's about it; beyond that, all scores are possible. A game could be 2-0, or 3-2, or 4-3, and so on, with some scores being less probable than others. (4-3, for example, is pretty improbable because it would be one team scoring two safeties while the other scores only a field goal. Such a game is possible, but not likely.)

According to one no-doubt reliable source (an anonymous answerer on Answerbag), these were the scores for some unknown period of time in NFL games:

20-17 210 times
17-14 162 times
27-24 152 times
13-10 142 times
24-17 121 times

From that -- another set of Statistics That Sound About Right, a website I've really got to get around to creating -- it appears that the most common score in a football game, for one team or another, is 17; one team or another scored 17 points 493 times. 17 points is generally scored by getting two touchdowns, two extra-points, and a field goal (but you could get to 17 nowadays through three field goals, a touchdown, and a two-point conversion, or five field goals and a safety.)

The next most common score is 24 -- a team scored 24 in a game 273 times in that probably-not-very-reliable table.

So the most common scores by teams, according to that most-likely-fictional answer, are 24 and 17. If you were going to predict the outcome of the game -- any football game in the NFL-- you'd be smart to pick 24-17.

Which, by the way, was the final score of the first game the Saints lost this year -- to the Cowboys. They lost 24-17 in New Orleans, ending their hopes for an unbeaten season.

(Also, the Jets scored both the most regular scores in their playoff run: they put up 24 in a win against Cincinnati, and 17 losing to the Colts.)

With those articles floating around my mind, I decided to, for today, talk about how you might want to watch the Super Bowl by reviewing my own history of Super Bowls and how I watched them -- doing so because how I watched the Super Bowl in many cases, has turned out to be more memorable than the games themselves, at least insofar as I recall the details.

I don't recall details of almost any Super Bowl I watched since I began watching them back in the late 1980s. I can recall the teams that played, in most years, but I don't recall many specific plays or features of the games (or the commercials). Instead, I remember where and how I watched them, making those Super Bowls Past part of the history of my life, a yardstick whereby I can measure how I've progressed (or not) and see myself through the prism of time... and also give you (and Mark Sanchez) some advice on how to watch the Super Bowl, or not.

And, because remembering where and how I watched the games also brings to mind certain details of the games themselves that do stick out, I'll take my oddly specific memories of some games and provide you with some oddly specific predictions for today's Saints-Colts matchup.

I'll count them down from farthest in the past to most recent, and I'm not reviewing every Super Bowl -- just the ones that stick out in my mind. And I'm using not the NFL Numeral System preferred by the NFL, but the numbering-by-year system the NFL should use, because it makes more sense. Who uses Roman Numerals? It's impossible to remember which Super Bowl was which, using Roman Numerals,  unless you count by year and then convert to Roman Numerals, and I don't want to get math involved in my football.


1. Super Bowl 1990:

Teams/Outcome: 49ers 55, Broncos, 10.

Where I watched it: I watched this game sitting in the dorm room where my younger brother, Matt, lived while he attended UW-Milwaukee for about a semester before giving up on college. Matt lived in that dorm with a group of guys who had ridiculous nicknames -- names like Noodles, if I recall, and shortly thereafter left the dorms to live in an overpriced student house off campus, a house they shared with a ferret. I would have driven down to Matt's dorm from my parent's house, where I was still living in 1990, a fact I remember because I recall that in this Super Bowl, I bet against my boss, Todd, at the gas station where I was working, in Hartland. We'd bet on the game, and I got the 49ers. Our bet was that the person whose team won got $2 per point scored. What I recall about the game was that the 49ers just... kept...scoring, and I spent most of the game sitting on the uncomfortable desk chair that comes with dorm rooms, at one point making a call to my boss when the score exceeded 50 for my team.

Advice I can give you, and Mark Sanchez, about how to watch the game: Get plenty of seating, where ever you're going to be. The dorm room had a floor, two desk chairs, and two beds -- for a bunch of guys to watch a game. I staked out the desk chair early on so I wouldn't end up sitting on a bed next to a guy named Noodles, but either way, I was doomed to spend the game uncomfortably.

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: That was the fourth Super Bowl for Joe Montana, and his first against the Denver Broncos, who came into the game with the much-heralded John Elway leading them. Joe seemed to take it personally, throwing for an estimated 53,000 yards, maybe to prove his point that he was the real great quarterback in the game. This year, everyone's talking about how great Peyton Manning is, and not commenting as much on how great Drew Brees might be by comparison. I therefore predict that: Drew Brees will take it personally, and will throw a touchdown pass of 68 yards.


2. Super Bowl 1991:
Teams/Outcome: Giants 20, Bills 19.

Where I Watched It: By this time, I'd moved out of my parents' house and into the mouse-infested apartment on 21st street in Milwaukee -- back when 21st street was still in the kind of terrible neighborhood where a serial killer could kill 17 people and not attract much attention. (That really happened, not far away from the apartment where I watched this game, and during the same period of time.)

I lived in that apartment with my friend Flan, who'd found the apartment and who'd taken the better bedroom. Flan, though, had gone to watch the game at his dad's house. I don't recall why I wasn't going anywhere to watch the game, but I didn't. I watched it at our apartment, alone, in Flan's room because he had a bean bag chair and the better TV and I assumed (correctly) that he wouldn't be coming home that night, so he wouldn't mind my using his room.

That game was before I really cared about the Buffalo Bills -- it was the start of what Cruella De Vil might call my magnificent obsession with them -- but I had them in my first-ever Super Bowl bet with my brother Matt. We'd bet $50 plus a team jersey, and I had the Bills.

I fell asleep in the third quarter of the game -- that was the start of my habit of doing that, too -- and woke up only for the final drive, where the Bills got the ball not-quite-close-enough for a final field goal attempt that went wide right, sending the Bills on to loserville for four years.

That's something funny about championships: Two teams make them, only one wins -- and the loser is often deemed to be terrible, the butt of jokes for years and years. The Bills went to four straight championships, lost all four, and are deemed synonymous with failure. Only in America, and particularly only in football, can you finish second four years running and be deemed a loser. Teams that never make the playoffs get more respect than teams that get there and lose, and America needs to do something about that. As Jerry Seinfeld noted, though, people hate silver medal winners and second place finishers: Silver medalists, he said, are awarded for being the best loser -- nobody lost ahead of them. "Congratulations," he said, "You almost won."

Advice I Can Give You and Mark Sanchez About Watching The Super Bowl Based On This Game: While Flan's bean bag was comfortable enough, and his TV nice enough, it was awkward sitting in someone's bedroom, without their knowledge, watching a game. I'd say not to do it.

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: Not being a big Bills fan -- yet-- I wasn't terribly upset when they lost because the game at least had an exciting ending to it. (I was more upset about the $50 plus the jersey. Those jerseys are expensive.) But I do recall the kick, that being one of the more dramatic moments in Super Bowl history -- and it was destined to be so, no matter how it turned out, because people think in terms of one-play outcomes (but that's for another day.) Missed field goals are a hallmark of this year's playoffs, too, and so I will make the oddly specific prediction that The Colts' kicker will miss a field goal, wide right, from 43 yards out.

(I told you, my random number is always 43.)


3. Super Bowl 1997/1999:

Teams/Outcomes: 1997: Packers 35, Patriots 21/1999: Broncos 34, Falcons 19.

Where I Watched It: I've lumped these two together because they marked the two of the three Super Bowl parties I've ever attended or thrown. I watched the Packers-Patriots Super Bowl with a group of law students at a friend's house, with about 20 or 30 people there, including a bunch of people I didn't know. I watched the Broncos-Falcons Super Bowl at Sweetie's apartment, about a year after we started dating, with a bunch of friends we'd invited over for the occasion.

In each case, the Super Bowl was less than fun; watching a game with a group of people, whether or not they're close friends, means distractions from the game, or, to put it another way, it means not watching the game. When you get a group of people together, they talk and make comments and a part of your attention is diverted from watching the game to conversing with them (and to making sure nobody takes your seat when you get up to get more snacks)(and to making sure that nobody notices how often you get up to get snacks.)

Sporting events are strange that way: While you might get friends together for any number of let's-watch-this type of evenings, only sports are deemed "Things You Can Distract Others From Watching."  Imagine if your friends invited you over for a movie night, and throughout the movie you kept talking, about the movie and the things the movie reminded you of and your job and how tired you were going to be the next day, and other movies you'd seen. They'd throw you out.

But invite friends over for a Super Bowl, and they'll talk. And talk. And, probably, keep track of just how many snacks you're eating. The idea, I think, is that you're not supposed to watch sports, really -- it's just a mechanism to get people into the same room, the way "lettuce" is a mechanism to get "salad dressing" into my mouth.

I don't like that -- when I decide to watch a game, I want to watch it, and I mostly only talk (just a little) about the things going on in the game. Granted, a football game doesn't require the same level of attention and focus that, say, the movie Memento does, but still: I want to watch the game, not talk about your dumb job.

Another note: For the Broncos/Falcons game, I invented a pool called "Super Bowl Bingo," a Bingo game featuring squares marked with stuff that could happen during the game or commercials, things like The AFC kicks a 30+ yard field goal. I thought that'd be a fun way to bet on the game with all our friends, more fun than a "Final score" pool. I was wrong. Super Bowl Bingo was a disaster, as it meant that nobody could watch the game -- they were constantly checking their Bingo Cards: Was that a 5-yard run? To the left? Did that commercial have a green car in it? And they talked more -- distracting me from the game.

Advice I Can Give You and Mark Sanchez About Watching The Super Bowl Based On This Game: Don't watch it with others. And, if you do, don't worry how many Seven Layer Bars someone's eating. That's their business, not yours. Also: Make your Super Bowl bets simple.

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: I don't recall a single moment of the Broncos/Falcons Super Bowl -- Bingo distracted me far too much. As for the Packers' Super Bowl, the game began with a first-play, or early-play, long touchdown pass for Brett Favre's Green Bay Packers. But I've already predicted one of those. That game also featured Desmond Howard running back a kickoff for a touchdown, something that's happened in other Super Bowl. There have been blocked punts in the Super Bowl, too, but never a Blocked Punt Returned For A Touchdown, so I'm going to predict this: The Saints Will Block a Colts Punt, and Return the Punt 43 yards for a touchdown.

4. Super Bowl 2007:

Teams/Outcome: Colts 29, Bears 17.

Where I Watched It: This game, I watched at our house with the then-they-really-were-babies Babies!, who'd been born just a few months before. We watched it downstairs in our family room, on the big screen TV we'd splurged and bought for the family (justifying it, back then, by noting that Sweetie really liked to watch movies and The Boy and I liked sports, so it made sense for us to spend a lot of money on a big-screen TV for those purposes. Nowadays, though, Sweetie rarely watches TV downstairs, preferring, if she's going to watch TV, to do it up in our room away from the mess and noise. The Boy, meanwhile, used his own money to buy himself a Playstation 3 and a fancy TV and watches almost everything in his room. Our big-screen TV is mostly used, these days, to watch Little Einsteins.)

What I remember most about this game is that going in, I had my annual bet with The Boy in which we both, at the start of the playoffs, pick teams we think will win -- dividing the playoff teams up evenly and betting a t-shirt on the outcome. I had both the Colts and the Bears before the Super Bowl -- so I was guaranteed a win. But Sweetie was on The Boy's team (I had Mr F and Mr Bunches and Middle), and she likes the Colts, so I let them have the Colts anyway, but they had to give me odds -- if the Bears won, I'd get a sweatshirt, not a t-shirt.

Then, Devin Hester returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, and I celebrated and began rubbing it in: You're going to lose, I taunted The Boy, only to watch as the Bears faded away little by little, leaving me buying Sweetie and The Boy Colts' t-shirts.

Also, midway through the game, we had to go give the Babies! a bath and put them to bed, so I missed a chunk of it.

Advice I Can Give You and Mark Sanchez About Watching The Super Bowl Based On This Game: Have your Babies! bathed ahead of time, and set the game to tape. You may not think you're going to get pulled away from the TV, but what if you are? And you miss the most dramatic moment in Super Bowl history? And the next day, everyone's talking about it and you have to say What? I missed that, I guess. That always happens to me. (It happened, in fact, with the Janet Jackson halftime show -- which I watched most of before going to get more food, missing Nipplegate. I didn't even know anything had happened until after work the next day, when I heard something on the radio while driving home.)

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: Devin Hester's runback, which I'm pretty sure was the first play of the game. That was the fastest score ever to start the game. I'm going to go opposite, here. The longest time passed in a Super Bowl before a score, ever, was 26 minutes, 55 seconds (The Panthers vs. the Patriots*, Super Bowl 2004). I'm going to predict that The First Score Won't Happen Until 2 minutes Into The Third Quarter.

5. Super Bowl 2008:
Teams/Outcome: Giants 17, Patriots* 14.

Where I Watched The Game: Again, I watched it in my own house, with just the family, including the Babies, who were now 1 1/2 years old. The two most memorable things about this game were that, first, I was rooting against the team I had in the bet: I'd ended up with the Patriots* as my entry, and I didn't want them to win, because they're cheaters. I'd never liked the Giants and Eli Manning very much, so I found myself in the odd role of having to root for a team I didn't like, with a quarterback I didn't like, against a team that, if they won, I'd get a t-shirt. (But they'd be 19-0 and I didn't want cheaters to get rewarded, so I rooted against them.)

The other thing I remember is that we had to be very quiet in rooting: Mr F was almost a year-and-a-half, and was becoming a bit of a nervous boy who didn't like loud noises. We didn't know that, yet, as Mr F hadn't been exposed to a great many surprises in his 16 or so months of living. He was, that night, when Eli Manning threw that great pass and David Tyree made that great catch, and we all jumped up and cheered and yelled and Mr F burst into tears and tried to go hide. After that, we all had to cheer quietly, so as great things happened, we'd whisper Yeah! or Excellent! while being very careful not to startle Mr F.

Advice I Can Give You and Mark Sanchez About Watching The Super Bowl Based On This Game: It's very hard to whisper a cheer. Practice it. Or put a movie on for the Babies! upstairs, so they can watch without getting scared. I'm surprised I didn't think of that.

Specific detail of the game I can recall, and apply to today's game: The David Tyree catch, of course, sticks out in my mind -- more so than the touchdown reception that put the Giants ahead for good shortly thereafter. It was an improbable, thrilling, spontaneous moment that came at a time of the game when tension was high, earning it a spot in the most-memorable-plays pantheon. How many Super Bowls can you say that about?

In all the Super Bowls I've watched, only a handful of plays stick out: Wide right. Tyree's catch. Santonio Holmes' TD last year against the Cardinals, arms outstretched, toes dragging. Favre's long pass against the Patriots, and his run down the field to celebrate. Don Beebe chasing after Leon Lett to knock the ball out of his hand just before the end zone -- a startling, admirable display of effort in a foregone game. That's about all that springs to mind. So the odds are that there will not be a memorable play in this game -- after XLIV Super Bowls, I can only remember a few great plays, making great plays a statistical improbability in the Super Bowl, but I'll go ahead and predict an oddly specific great play, anyway -- and, like I always go for 43, I'm going to go for my usual suspect here, too: The Fake Punt. I therefore predict that there will be a fake punt for a TD, and that it'll come from the Saints. In the fourth quarter. With 5:33 left on the game clock. On fourth-and-two.

(How's that for oddly specific, TMQ?)

As for where I'll be watching the game, I've applied all my lessons, and here's the plan for the game: I'm watching it at home, on our big-screen TV, with just immediate family. We've got plenty of seating:  Two couches and two chairs. We've got snacks ready to go, the kind of food that just needs to be heated up or put in a bowl and the kind of food that can be piled on a plate to reduce the number of trips to the kitchen to get more, reducing the people monitoring me. I've already set the game to tape, ready for Babies!-style distractions of any sort.

Which leads me to my final oddly-specific prediction: I predict that during the game, there will be three spills on the carpet, at least one of which will leave a stain. There will be two times that The Boy complains about me pausing the game to go take care of the Babies!, one of which pauses will be engendered by Mr F being pantless. And there will be three commercials about which Sweetie declares Terry Tate was better.

She's right: He was.

Why I Picked Who I Picked In The NFL Playoff Bet I made against The Boy. (Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!)

The NFL Playoff season is starting today, and while I was not that into the NFL this year, I am a little bit excited about the playoffs.

A little bit excited.  JUST A LITTLE BIT. (Sweetie never reads this blog.)

I wasn't that into the NFL this year, for a combination of reasons that boil down to:

1. Tim Tebow wasn't playing and that cost me $10 in a bet I made with one of my associates, whom I'd bet that Tebow would be starting by Week 5.

2.  Packers fans sure suck, don't they? The Packers went 11-5 this year, and all anyone in Wisconsin can talk about is how Worst Call Ever "cost" the Packers a first-round bye.

3.  The Buffalo Bills sure suck, don't they?  I have already accurately predicted that Chip Kelly would not go to Buffalo, because Buffalo is where coaches go to die.

So I didn't have much to root for or watch this season, other than Russell Wilson, who I have a love/hate relationship with because while he is good and I feel strangely happy for his level of success -- strangely because why should I care, honestly?  But Russell Wilson plays for a team owned by a man with no soul (Paul Allen) who may have success in this life, but if there were a religion that promised that in the afterlife, Paul Allen would spend all eternity doing some sort of horrible menial task while having his liver poked, I would join that religion in a heartbeat.

So I'll talk about those things a little herein while I discuss my annual bet with The Boy and how I picked the teams I'm now officially rooting for in the playoffs.

The Boy and I make a bet every year except last year for some reason, on who will win the Super Bowl.  Our bet is a t-shirt of the team that wins, bought by the loser for the winner.  (If you particularly hate the team that won but got stuck with them, you can opt out of that team's shirt.)  To make it more fun, we pick our teams at the outset of the playoffs, to give us a rooting interest in every game of the playoffs, even though I will only watch at most 2 games per week, and possibly not even that.

My picks are NOT based on any expertise or insider knowledge.  I played football once, in the sense that I played defensive line on my 8th grade flag football team and once "sacked" the quarterback in a game.  YAY FOR ME.  Other than that I have never played football.

Nor do I really understand it, not the way experts pretend to and people who play it actually do.  I'm a casual observer of sports, at best, and that casual observation dropped way off this year to the point where I was stunned to learn that the Minnesota Vikings were in the playoffs.  And also that they were still considered a professional team.

BA-DUM BUMP!  Don't forget to tip your waitress.  You've been a great crowd.

Some champion. Can't even grow a moustache.

We pick this way: One person picks first, the next person gets to pick two teams, and then we alternate.  This year, The Boy picked first.  So here's how the picks went down, in order, and why.  PLUS THOSE OTHER THOUGHTS.

The Boy picks Green Bay Packers.

NOTE: I'm a nice guy.  I told The Boy,  who loves the Packers, that he did not have to take them first, that I would not pick them anyway, because I'm a nice guy and don't want to make him root against his team. We're living in a society here, people.  There's a moral code.  Also: I don't like the Packers.  Not really.  Get better fans, Green Bay, and Aaron Rodgers? A little less smugness.

Anyway,  The Boy took the Packers, anyway, and so I took

 Denver Broncos, and Seattle Seahawks.  (Pick first or pick two is a great way to negate the power of picking first.)

I took the Broncos, honestly, because I want to win.  I don't particularly care for St. Peyton Manning, either (although I didn't think that God would hurt him as Divine Retribution for taking Tebow's job, as Pat Robertson did), But the Broncos, from what I remember or possibly imagined, are doing very well this year and The Boy said that the Broncos have home field advantage throughout the playoffs.  I wanted to try to make sure that I had at least one team that had a really good shot at being in the Super Bowl AND which I wouldn't mind rooting for there.  So I get to root for St. Peyton's Broncos, but in my mind I'll be imagining it's Tebow.

As for the Seahawks: they've got Russell Wilson. That and I would like it if the Seahawks win the Super Bowl so that I get to see Packers' fans heads explode with outrage.  But the replacement refs! Worst call ever!  We were robbed! *pause to eat cheese* This sucks!  

If you think that is mean, consider that (A) The Packers played horribly in that game but blamed the refs rather than their own incompetence for losing, and (B) the Packers dropped four other games, too, including a winnable one in Minnesota last week and (C) At least one Packer fan told me that she was "pretty sure" that no kids were starving in Wisconsin when I questioned on Twitter why Wisconsinites were devoting so much energy to protesting a call in a game but devoting very little energy to making sure kids do not go to bed hungry.

See why I don't particularly want the Packers to win?

The Boy picks New England.  So apparently he's not above wanting to get a team into the Big Game -- as you legally are supposed to call the Super Bowl unless you have permission from the NFL --  either.

I chose Houston Texans.  For a long time I said that one of the immutable rules of football was that Houston would never be very good.  Then they made the playoffs and won a playoff game last year, but I brushed that off as "Oh, they just beat Cincinnati, and the Bengals have a red-headed quarterback so it's not like it was even a contest."  (More on that in a minute.) 

Then Houston was all good this year for a while, then they lost to the Packers, but then they were good, or something.  I don't know.  I just heard they were good.

Actually, HERE is the thing about Tebow.

Here's the thing about Tebow:  Why would you not play him, at some point?  I'm not talking about winning or losing.  That's not what football is about.  Football is about keeping the fans happy, and the media interested.  In that sense, it was a great idea for the Jets to trade for Tebow.  In the past few years, the Jets have made a point of getting the most controversial quarterback out there, and the media coverage and fan interest have no doubt helped their bottom line.  Tebow's Jets jersey was the number two overall selling jersey this year - behind only Manning's Broncos jersey.  That trade in QBs benefitted both teams.

Once the Jets' season was done for, fans began to turn on them -- even that one superfan of theirs, Fireman Ed or whoever-- announced he was not rooting for them or some such.  At that point, you have no real hopes of making the playoffs, so why not give the fans what they want?  Give them Tebow Time, and pump up their hopes and interest a little.  Deadspin noted in one article this year that ESPN's hyping of the mere possibility of Tebow playing allowed a Monday Night Fooball game to equal a baseball playoff game in ratings.

Fans think football is about winning and losing.  Owners ought to know otherwise, and coaches, too.  Once winning is no longer relevant -- once you're out of the playoffs -- your sole goal is to give the fans a reason to watch.  The Jets blew that one.

The Boy picks Indianapolis Colts.

I told him "I will let you take that one back, if you want."  According to Bill Barnwell on Grantland, the Colts have no real business making it into the playoffs.  Their feel-good story (winning because of #Chuckstrong) is more a product of weak competition and some luck, with a small "L".  Andrew Luck, who gets a lot of credit, has a quarterback rating of 76, which puts him below Jacksonville's Blaine Gabbert, among others.  You know Blaine, right?  14 quarterbacks threw for more touchdowns than Luck did, including Trebuchet Fitzpatrick of the Buffalo Bills.  (Luck did throw for more yards than Aaron Rodgers, a stat I include because I don't like Aaron Rodgers.)


I picked San Francisco, mainly because it gave me a chance to try to spell "Colin Kaepernick," who I think is their quarterback.  Alex Smith was their quarterback until he was benched for having a concussion and then lost his job for not being as good as the guy who took over for him while he was having a concussion, and we had some fun one day talking about whether that was fair or not: should you be replaced or passed over because you got sick and then someone did you job better than you?

Yes.   I don't even know why it's a debate.  Look, sorry, you, but this isn't "Oh, you were sick so we decided to go to Great America anyway."  It's a business.  Look at it from, say, a lawyer's perspective. What if two lawyers are working on a case, and the first lawyer, the lead guy, gets laryngitis and can't argue before the U.S. Supreme Court so the other guy handles it, and he wins, and his firm says "Nice job, Phil, you're a partner now."  (I don't know why I said it was Phil.  I suppose because he really needs it.  His wife left him, and his car broke down, and everybody likes Phil, he always brings that crazy-good dip of his to the office luncheons.  Phil is okay with me.)

Is that fair to Phil's now-forgotten, passed over colleague?  Yes.  Half of luck is being in the right place at the right time.  Kaepernick, around whom San Francisco's playoff hopes now revolve...

... it's a Copernicus joke! In a sports post!...

I'd like to take HER to a heliocentric universe. (Doesn't have to make sense. She's hot.)

... was in the right place at the right time. If Alex Smith feels bad, he can salve his wounded ego with his multimilliondollar signing bonus for going to Miami next year.

The Boy takes Atlanta Falcons.

The Falcons are the single most boring sports franchise ever to exist.  I will not discuss them as I begin to fall asleep when I do so.

I take Washington Redskins. At this point in the process, it's mostly trying to avoid teams we hate and don't want to root for.  So I went with the Redskins 'cause they've got this RGIII guy.  I'm not sure who he is or what he does, but his being a third means that he's probably way more advanced than any other RG model some other team has.

The Boy picks   Baltimore.

I can't stand talking about Baltimore and The Intensely Overrated Joe Flacco's Eyebrows.  Flacco got his job because Troy Smith had laryngitis.  THAT IS A TRUE STORY. Let's discuss instead the Tiers Of Respectability, a concept I came up with yesterday driving back to my office from a hearing, and which explains why nobody will coach at Buffalo.

The "Tier Of Respectability" denotes how prestigious a coaching job is in football.  Tier ONE teams are high-prestige NFL teams. Those teams are Green Bay, Dallas, either New York team, Chicago, San Francisco, and New England.

Tier TWO teams are the most of the rest of the NFL teams.

Tier THREE teams are the bottom rung of the NFL: Buffalo, Jacksonville, and San Diego, plus some elite college teams: USC, Stanford, the big-name SEC schools, and any team that has consistently finished in the top 5 in the polls.

Tier FOUR is all other college programs.

In the coaching world, you can always move DOWN a Tier Of Respectability when you quit or get fired; to move UP a Tier Of Respectability, you have to win, or at least make a respectable run at it.  So consider Wisconsin's Brett Bielema: multiple bowl games, once a shot at the National Championship, almost, and Bielema was able to move from Tier FOUR, Wisconsin, to Tier THREE, Arkansas.

Chip Kelly, meanwhile, was a Tier THREE coach at Oregon, which consistently finished well in the polls.  He moved up a Tier to Tier TWO, at Cleveland (I heard. Maybe not?)

If Kelly wins at Cleveland, he'll have a shot at a big-time job in Tier ONE, but if he loses, he can drop to a bottom-rung NFL team or any college program other than an elite one.  That's how this works.

How that factors into the Bills' coaching search is this:  In Buffalo, you have GOT to win or your next head coaching job is at best at a second-level college program.  A listing of the Bills' head coaches over time proves that:  Wade Phillips was their last coach with a winning record.  He went on to coach the Falcons and then the Cowboys, moving up to Tiers TWO and ONE, respectively.   Philips had a 0.500 record at Denver, a Tier TWO job, which let him move down to Buffalo when he left there.

Other Bills coaches moved down to coach Buffalo and then lost and were not yet made head coaches of any other team.

Daughters: Your dad will overlook the tattoos if your boyfriend is an NFL QB.

So if you are a coach looking at Buffalo, you know that your only hope of staying at an NFL head coach level is to win, and nobody has won in Buffalo since 1999 or so.  It is where coaching careers go to die, which leads me to suspect that there is something wrong with the organization, not the players.  It's something in the front office that is killing the team, the way the Lions have been mostly terrible for years (sorry, PT) and Jacksonville has and San Diego has and so on.  It's not a lack of talent on the field; there's something in the DNA of those organizations and until they, Wolverine-like, graft something onto the creature to make a new, stronger, thing -- as the Packers did in 1992-- they're going to be mostly moribund teams.

I pick Cincinnati Bengals, thus sticking The Boy with the Vikings.  Andy Dalton is the Bengals quarterback.  He has red hair.   If you want to know how much intelligence, exactly, it takes to work in a front office in the NFL, consider that once, a front-office guy for the NFL in all seriousness said that Dalton's red hair might show that he could not play at an NFL level.  

 Given that, it is apparent that every year, Americans spend billions to subsidize a program -- the NFL -- which uses that money to provide seemingly-gainful employment to those whose inability to function in a way that benefits society -- NFL executives -- would otherwise see them institutionalized and bereft of any happiness.  So when you buy those Tebow jerseys, remember that you're helping those less fortunate than you keep their make-work jobs so they have something to do all day.

HERE ARE MY PREDICTIONS for the games.  Many 'pros'  pick games and say the exact score.  I go one better by not only picking the winner, but making one oddly-specific prediction for each game this weekend.  So:

TEXANS will beat the Bengals, but in doing so will see a field goal missed by their kicker when it bounces off the left upright.

PACKERS will beat the Vikings, but Aaron Rodgers will fumble the ball with 5 minutes remaining in the first half.

SEAHAWKS will be the Redskins, and will call "Tails" to win the coin toss.

COLTS will beat the Ravens, and Andrew Luck will celebrate by proposing to his girlfriend, in the third quarter.

This is Andrew Luck's real-life girlfriend.

You'd expect me to make a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reference in this post but I COMPLETELY AVOIDED THAT. Until I wrote the title. (Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!)

Drew Magary's Jamboroo on Deadspin is funny in a vulgar kind of way; reading it makes me laugh and then feel guilty about laughing, like how I used to feel when I  watched a Jackass movie with the kids, or how I felt when, in an attorney meeting earlier this month I said "GFE," and everyone stared at me blankly and then I had to explain that it stands for  "Google F***ing Exists," which is another, Dan Savage-y way of saying "Why are you asking me instead of just looking it up?"

When I said that in the meeting I did not, mind you,  swear; I said "Google Effing Exists" and yet some of the people still acted as though I had sworn, which was just like the time I said a guy was a "dick" and Some Guy At Work said he never hears me swear, which I guess means people think I'm a Mormon or something.

Anyway, I was reading Jamboroo today and Magary after a story about how he threw up in public said this about one of the games:

Giants at Ravens: One of the stupidest NFL cliches is when a team wins the coin toss, elects to receive the ball, and then one of the analysts is like, "Coach Harbaugh wants his offense to set the tone for this game," or some other stupid bullshit like that. I can't stand it when my team wins the coin toss and then takes the ball. You should always defer. Here's evidence from SI's Jim Trotter back in November:

Since the start of the 2010 season, flip-winning clubs that have opted to receive first are 185-209 (.470), versus 140-115 (.549) for those deferring.

Obviously, deferring doesn't guarantee that your team will end up with more possessions than the other team by the time the game is over. But announcers act like getting your offense on the field first in the first quarter is some kind of amazing confidence builder. It's not. You're just eating your dessert before you have dinner. In fact, once the giddy rush of having the ball first wears off, you have to sit there knowing the OTHER team gets the ball first in the second half. And if that team has the ball at the end of the first half and goes right into another possession after halftime, it crushes your spirit. DEFER, dammit. Always defer.

Let me first say that I do not understand how Magary is ranking the games, and nor do I care.   People rank games in lots of ways and for lots of reasons, all of them stupid.  Here is how to decide how good (meaning you should watch it) or bad (meaning the opposite) a game is, in three easy steps:

1.  Do you care about one of the teams in the game, or at least one of the players?
2.  Does the game matter in the scheme of things, meaning will it affect that team's/player's chances to get into the playoffs and/or championship?
and
3.  Is the other team any good?

The answer to all three of those questions has to be yes or the game is not worth watching.

And if the answer is "yes" and at any point the game gets out of hand, the game is again not worth watching.

So by that standard, very few games are worth watching for me, although last week I did put the Green Bay-Chicago game on the radio to listen while I Christmas shopped but that was only to see if maybe the Packers would lose because I'm sick of them this year.

Anyway, I was reading Jamboroo today and I got to that and I wondered is that true?  Should you always defer? Because it would seem on the one hand that it would be important to get the ball first in the first half, there being only a limited number of possessions in a game.  You can guarantee, I suppose, that there will be at least two possessions per game, that being the minimum: if Green Bay gets the ball at the outset, and holds it for 30 minutes, and then kicks to Chicago at the start of the second half, and the Bears hold it for 30 minutes, that's the minimum number of possessions in which case it wouldn't matter at all if you deferred or not.

Looked at another way, it matters a lot: wouldn't you want the ball first,  I always figure, so you can score and put pressure on the other team to keep up?

Looked at a third way, if you can defer and then stop the other team and get possession, then you've guaranteed yourself two possession to their one, because you get possession from stopping them, and then you've got a guaranteed possession at the start of the second half.

And then there's this: wouldn't you decide that based on which aspect of your team you think is the best? If you've got a great defense (or them a bad offense) defer and play the odds and get that guaranteed extra possession; if the alternative, then take the ball and score first.

So I figured someone somewhere has done a study of this, right? I mean, if there are cards that tell coaches when to go for 2 (which they should do all the time no matter what because if they did they would get better at it and would force other teams to get better at it or fall behind) and if Bill Barnwell on Grantland can always be saying something like "Going for the first there would improve Seattle's odds of winning to 6.3%" which seems scientific but I don't know where that math comes from, then someone somewhere must have studied whether teams should defer if they win the coin toss, right?

This is still America, I mean.

The first article I found when I googled "study should teams defer" was this one on something called "Total Packer", which said:

Deferring the decision to the second half after winning the coin toss is the correct decision about 95 percent of the time for any team. The reason is simple: knowing that you get the ball first in the second half is a tremendous psychological edge. It calms the nerves when you’re behind and it makes a small lead seem even larger.

Which is awesomely unscientific in that it does not explain

A.  why the other 5% of the time deferring wouldn't calm the nerves, and
B.  why you wouldn't get an edge from knowing you get the ball first in the first half.

That lapse in judgment could be explained by the fact that Packer fans are never ever ever objective about the Packers.  If Aaron Rodgers were to be caught eating puppies for breakfast Packer fans would start publishing blogs about how puppies are a known sports energy factor and anyway puppies don't have souls.

The Packer blogger went on to cite (and attack as nonsense) an article by John Clayton on NFL.com from 2011 that argued that deferring doesn't make sense:

 To support my theory, the team that received the opening kickoff was first to score 59.8 percent of the time. Even more telling is the team that received the opening kickoff scored 34.8 percent of the time on that first possession, netting 53 touchdowns and 36 field goals.

If a strong offensive script can fulfill a long week of practicing and scheming and produce a lead on the opening possession 34.8 percent of the time or eventually provide field position to get the first score almost 60 percent of the time, why give that up?

Clayton's theory is just as he said in that second paragraph: you practice all week and script the first 15 plays, so why give that up?

(As an aside: I always heard that the reasons for scripting the plays were first to take emotion out of the beginning of a game, and second to test how the defense reacts to them in order to adjust throughout the rest of the week.  You could therefore run your first fifteen plays whether you receive the opening kickoff or not.  There's no rule, John Clayton,  that says you can only run scripted plays if you get possession first.)

(Sports nonsense is the nonsensiest nonsense of all.)

 Clayton goes on to add, immediately after that quote:

 For supporters of the deferred kickoffs, 55.8 percent of the teams that deferred the kickoff won games.

I mean, so there's that.  It reminded me of the time, on King of the Hill, that Dale Gribble had to testify and said "If all you're going on is my testimony, forget it.  I'm just not credible as a witness."

Another study showed that teams that win the coin toss win 52.8% of the time, which is essentially meaningless: teams that correctly call the coin toss win almost half the time, so teams that lose the coin toss win almost half the time.

The rule that allows a team to defer to the second half has only been in place since 2008.   Officially, the rule right now is that if you win the coin toss, you to choose both 1. whether to kick or receive, and 2., which goal to defend, and winning the toss gave you the right to defer option 1 until the second half -- meaning, technically, that a coin toss winner who chooses to defer could still get the ball, because deferring means that you are letting the other team choose "kick, or receive."  So someone could turn the tables on Drew Magary and when his teams defer, they could opt to kick to that team (but would be giving up a possession.)  Pre-2008, the rule was that you got to choose only whether you wanted to kick off, or receive, right then. 

I wasn't, in the end, able to find a study that showed whether it makes sense to kick or receive when you win the coin toss, except for this fact: in the old NFL overtime rules, teams that won the coin toss won the game only 40% of the time. 

That seems significant to me, in that the old rules were sudden-death, single-possession rules in which winning the toss would mean you could opt to play offense first and in a sudden death situation you almost always want your offense on the field, making it seem a natural to opt to receive.

Except that those teams won only 40% of the time.

Which proves this: the coin toss and option to defer or not is almost meaningless in light of the many, many other factors that play into winning a game, since winning the coin toss is nearly imperceptible in its impact on the outcome of the game in regular play, and winning the toss correlates with losing the game (under old rules) in overtime.

There is another logic that goes into play, though, and that is playing to fan's expectations.  In 2002, the Detroit Lions played the Chicago Bears.  In overtime, Detroit's coach Marty Morninwheg opted to receive after winning the toss because he wanted the wind at his kicker's back.  Chicago scored on the first drive of overtime, and Morninwheg was fired.

Had Morninwheg opted to receive,and his team failed to score, and Chicago won, the odds are at least as good as a coin toss that Morninwheg would've been back the next year (or maybe not; he went 3-13 that year.)

But fans failed to blame Detroit's defense for not stopping the Bears, instead blaming the coach for not making the right call -- just as Packer fans never blamed the Packers for giving up 10 sacks to the Seahawks and ending up in a position where the Worst Call Ever could affect them, and so the coin toss decision will continue to be seen as a hugely important one, and defensible or indefensible based not on its impact on the game but on how you want to view the evidence.