Cool Spectacle

It sounds like I'm in the minority here, but aside from some audio problems, I thought the halftime show was pretty damn good. Am I the only person in America who thought so?



Apparently they played a game last night, too. Some dumb team from the cheese state won. Blech.

The Best Thing About the Super Bowl

Look, I'm as excited as the next guy about the big game tomorrow. By all accounts, it should be a tight game with the full complement of jaw-dropping plays by some of the NFL's biggest stars.

But the best thing about the Super Bowl ain't the action on the field. So, like the guys says, who do ya like?

The Pack? The over? First personal foul? Number of coach's challenges? Tails on the coin toss?

Look, you don't have to be a degenerate to get a thrill from a friendly Super Bowl wager and you haven't lived until you've had a C-note riding on the length of the Star Spangled Banner. But the hot action at my regular Super Bowl party the last few years has been on the commercials. And this year, you don't have to close your eyes and roll the dice on best animal gag to win a quick buck on an ad like this one from last year.

Many of this year's much-awaited spots have been leaked in advance and the good folks over at Mashable have a nice catalog of what you might expect to see between whistles Sunday night: sneak peak at the Super Bowl XLV commercials.

So good luck tomorrow night, and don't let them say I never gave you a good tip!

Tweet of the Week

Skip Bayless doesn't seem to like many people, but he sure sweats Lil Wayne. Check these three tweets from the Skipper:
---

RealSkipBayless:

Lil Wayne very good today on show. He and I have 1 thing in common: extreme sports passion. I'm in awe of his creative genius, he of 1st&10.

Wayne will soon be back in Bristol to debate me, round 3. Man knows his sports stuff. Deep thinker. Extremely opinionated.

But did tell Wayne he gave the Steelers little extra motivation by going in HARD on 'em in remix lyrics. He said, "Oh, coulda gone harder."
---

I was surprised when Bayless made mention of listening to Wayne's recent song regarding the Super Bowl. There's no way Skip listened to "Green & Yellow" but only puts him down for giving Pitt motivation... unless... maybe they went out for a "drank" first?

To play in the Super Bowl ...

... this Frenchman would give up his cat, his dog, his hamster and his red fish. It's not just American football anymore.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12357414 (see video at link).

Heresy

The following is Part One of a three-part series by guest contributor Pat Downes.

I’m about to make an outrageous claim:

College football is superior to pro football.

I know my timing is a bit odd. I’m blasting this heretical opinion on the eve on pro football’s highest of holy days, seemingly dissing America’s most popular sport as it continues on its relentless ascent to unprecedented levels of popularity.

And I’m making this claim on the heels of a college football season that began with a rash of agent-driven rule-breaking, saw the deaths of players and student managers at Mississippi State and Notre Dame, and ended with the Heisman and national championship trophies being awarded to an essentially professional team financed by a comically corrupt cadre of crackers.

But even now, with the NFL at its zenith, and college football arguably at low ebb, I’m making this claim: college football is superior to pro football.

I’ve got nothing against pro football. I love the game, watch it regularly, and, like all other right-thinking, patriotic Americans, will be rooting heartily against the Packers on Sunday. And I’m not suffering from any delusions about the relative levels of play. The typical NFL athlete – at any position – is a rare physical and mental specimen in peak condition, and every game is an intricately choreographed wonder. College athletes, on the other hand, are teenagers. Athletically, their skills vary, and ideally (outside of the SEC) they’re part-timers. Moreover, some programs have substantial financial resources and an institutional commitment to the game, and some don’t. You’re simply not going to get the consistently refined product at the college level that you get in the NFL. (There’s also an element of corruption in the college game that threatens the whole enterprise – a subject for another day).

But college football has vast reserves of three things that the NFL lacks: history, variety, and passion.

I’ll deal with the first one today, and tackle the other two in separate posts next week and the week after.

History

College teams were selling out the country’s most important stadiums, inspiring Pulitzer-worthy literature and uniting millions of Americans when the professional game consisted of a handful of dubious characters bumbling their way around near-deserted cow pastures. (I exaggerate only a little).

In the first half of the 20th century, there were four American sports that mattered: baseball, horse racing, boxing and college football. Along with baseball, college football was the most popular. Along with baseball (e.g., Jackie Robinson) and boxing (e.g., Joe Louis), college football had the most significant impact on the culture at large.

The first football game ever played was a college game. It was played just a few short years after the Civil War, on College Field, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers beat Princeton, 6-4. The eastern teams, especially the Ivy League, dominated in the early decades. The game moved west as the 19th century progressed and blossomed in popularity.

A squad from the University of Michigan taught the game to a team from a Catholic school in South Bend, Indiana in 1887 and, in short order, the latter team became so powerful, regularly taking on and beating the WASP-dominated teams of the elite eastern schools, that it formed a rallying point for millions of urban ethnic immigrants (and their children) and became a meaningful part of the story of those immigrants’ assimilation into the American culture.

In every part of the country, even in places where the population was relatively sparse, college football programs developed a following beyond their alumni base and formed a focal point for the development of a regional identity. For many people in many parts of the country, for at least a century, college football was the game.

That history matters today because it stays with us. It forms a thread in the narrative of today’s games and connects our experience with our parents’ experience and their parents’ experience. Pro football may, in some ways, connect us with our fathers, but college football connects us with ancestors we never even knew.

When Alabama plays Auburn next year, the game won’t just be about the matchup of two elite modern-day squads, it’ll be about Auburn’s inaugural victory in 1893, and about Alabama coach Doc Pollard infuriating Auburn coach Mike Donahue with his elaborate formations and shifts back in ’06 and ’07. It’ll be about Joe Namath’s furious comeback in ’64. It’ll be about ’71’s titanic battle of undefeated programs, or ’72’s “Punt Bama Punt” classic. Those stories are as much a part of the game as Saban or Fairley or Newton or Chizik.

In the NFL there are a few games like that, but they’re largely of more recent vintage and they’re rarely incorporated into the narrative of this year’s game. The 1958 Championship Game between the Colts and the Giants is one of those games. They called it The Greatest Game Ever Played. Your father may even recall watching it on TV when he was a little boy. But when the Colts play the Giants these days, you probably won’t hear very much about it – the tabloids will be too focused on whether the Manning brothers exchanged text messages that week.

Terence Mann’s soliloquy from Field of Dreams is one of the great passages in film history: “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.” This sentiment applies with nearly equal force to college football. Does it apply to pro football? Eh, maybe... get back to me in a century or so and we’ll see.

Check back in next week for Part Two of Pat's "Heresy" series, "Variety."

Classic Clips

Once upon a time not so long ago, the heavy underdog New York Giants met the undefeated (and unbeatable) New England Patriots in what I shall hereby call the Greatest Super Bowl of All Time. The media figured a Pats win was a foregone conclusion, but what actually happened was, the Patriots got STOMPED! New England led and the Giants had the ball with less than two minutes left in the 4th quarter when something happened that will never be forgotten... something superhuman...

Lock It Up

My lock of the week is Green Bay over Pittsburgh. With the way Aaron Rodgers has been playing, and how focused the Packers seem, and how focused the Steelers seem to be on the penalties for hard hits, I feel like the Pack is a lock.

Stay away from Heat @ Clippers on Sunday because the Clippers only win at home and Blake Griffin will be pumped up for this one and he's a Freak Monster, then again the Heat are so talented.

Get in on the action and comment or tweet your Lock of the Week. Add #smackjabber #lockitup in your tweet with your pick/s @quazflawless.


Lock It Up 2011 Standings

Lee Feinstein : 3-1
Bill Beck : 2-0
Quaz Flawless : 2-3
ThalerND : 1-0
Dan : 0-1
Matt Summa : 0-1
Pat Downes : 0-2
Ian : 0-2

Flawless Thoughts

A few years ago the Cavs and Wizards were up and comers bound for glory, putting on a pair of memorable playoff showdowns. Now they are competing for longest losing streak. It's sad to see the owner of the Cavs so bitter over a game. I've come across people like that and it's a real downer. Lebron ditching for South Beach was just part of the game, but an owner making the kind of statements Dan Gilbert has shouldn't be part of the game. And now he has apparently snubbed Lebron by not including him in the Heat line of Fathead (a company Dan Gilbert owns) wall stickers. Seems to me the Cavs got the curse that Gilbert cast on James and the Heat.

Super Bowl week is here and the big game is about as exciting a matchup as you could ask for - two great teams with superstar QBs and chock full of defensive stars. Perhaps the excitement will be so great that no one will notice the Super Bowl first that's guaranteed to occur - the absence of cheerleaders. In case you hadn't heard, the Steelers and Packers are two of only six NFL franchises that do not employ cheerleaders. Maybe football fans will have had their fill of that kind of entertainment after watching Sunday's LFL Final... that's the Lingerie Football League (thanks to Lee for putting SmackJabber nation on to that glorious phenomenon last October!).

ManRam and Johnny Damon to the Rays. Exciting, I guess, but it can't make up for the Rays' loss of star power still in its prime. These two aging talents may put a few butts in the seats in April, but considering the way Damon plays the field and Manny, well, is Manny (now including injuries and 'roid suspensions), this SmackJabber doesn't see much impact on the 2011 AL East race.

Clay Mathews was Robbed!!!

"Clay Matthews was ROBBED"...

Those words coupled with an explicit or two flooded my Facebook news feed last night.  I got a few tweets and texts messages, pretty much in the same context.  I agree...

Clay Matthews was ROBBED!

... BUT... There is a case to be made for Troy Polamalu being awarded the 2010 Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) Award.

... BUT... Why can't anyone give us a straight answer in just what it takes to win this award or the MVP award for that matter. Why is there no definition to just WHAT these voters who claim to be smarter than you & I in the world of sports? Really though, I think the players association & NFL ownership have agreed more on a yet to be resigned CBA than these writers have... For YEARS!

One school of thought is that the winner of this award goes to the defensive player with the best statistics; the other is that the award goes to the player whose defensive unit is lost without said player.  What we had here was a race between both schools, if you will...


Clay Matthews is a ______.  I bet the majority of sports fans finish that sentence off with the word "BEAST" or "MONSTER"; and they would be absolutely accurate. The guy is a freak of nature and defensively, there is nothing more fun than seeing him fend off 2 offensive linemen, or an offensive lineman and a running back and then laying the smacketh down on a QB. Nothing! Unless he's doing it against your team and then you're pissed for about 5 seconds. They show the replay, and then you applaud him for BEAST of a play and silently wish he was a member of your defensive unit.

I live in Wisconsin, I watched a lot of Packer games and I would give my 1st born for Clay to end up as the Giants Middle linebacker. Fact!

60 Tackles, 13.5 Sacks, 2 Forced Fumbles, 1 INT (which he returned for a TD) for an undersized middle linebacker who didn't even start in his Senior year as a linebacker @ USC. Fact!

Oh! And he was a walk on... Fact!

You've heard the stories. The commentators won't shut up about it during games in which he played and he deserves the accolades. America LOVES an underdog! We want to see him win because it means maybe even your fat ass can put down the donuts, stop partying like a Rockstar and make it in the NFL.

Troy Polamalu is ____________. Has great hair... Just kidding, the completion of that sentence usually ends with "The Heart and Soul of the Pittsburgh defense". It's pretty much what we're all used to hearing. When Polamalu doesn't play, the Pittsburgh defense get downgraded to the likes of the Chargers defense . They go from an A to a C. (If BoB Sanders ever makes it a full season I'm voting for him being DPOY cos the Colts D is Swiss cheese without him.)

It's ridiculous how much of a game changer he is, not saying Clay isn't but I love watching tape of Polamalu because of how fast he can get from Point A to B to C to D and still make a tackle behind the line or make a key pick.

A quick look at his stats: 63 Tackles, 1 Sack, 1 Forced Fumble, 7 INTs (1 returned for a TD). The one forced fumble came in a game late in the season against the Ravens which helped the Steelers clinch the division.

Troy edged Clay out by 2 votes... 2 stinking votes. That's how close this was, despite Troy missing 2 games & Clay missing 1. Look at the stats, for their positions, both players were outstanding.

The voting breakdown were as follows: 17 for Troy, 15 for Matthews, 6 for Julius Peppers 2 for Brian Urlacher and 1 each for Ed Reed and Haloti Ngata.  I won't get into how (while I LOVE me some Ed) Reed & Ngata didn't deserve votes. It's tough to say where those 2 votes could have gone so I'll save you and myself the speculation.

It's hard to beat out "the heart and soul" of anything. Troy is absolutely deserving of the award and has been a class act about it, tweeting that Clay and others deserved the award over him.

...BUT ...

I'm like you...

I love an underdog and I really wanted Clay Matthews to win!