A handful of sports items of interest to me:
1) My Giants defied expectations, and pulled out a 21-16 win over the Bears on two late touchdown drives, after sucking for most of the game. Well, OK, the defense was good throughout, though they were aided by the Bears not having a quarterback better than Rex Grossman, but the offense was dreadful.
Eli Manning gets most of the blame for that, somewhat unfairly. Some of the blame has to go on injuries– the second INT he threw wasn’t a terrible throw, if Plaxico Burress was healthy– and some on the coaching staff, who as usual reacted to Manning’s early struggles by going into ultra-conservative mode, leading to lots of sputtering drives. The wild swings in the Giants play-calling (Manning completes three passes in a row, suddenly they stop running the ball; he throws an interception, they stop passing the ball) drive me nuts.
2) The college football season limped to its preposterous conclusion, with Ohio State and LSU backing their way into the title game thanks to losses by West Virginia and Missouri. This is lame even in comparison to other lame-ass BCS “championships.” Meanwhile, the one undefeated team in the nation, 12-0 Hawaii, barely squeaks into the Top 10 of the BCS standings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they didn’t play anybody all that good. Neither did Ohio State. College football: where every game matters, as long as you’re a top team in a power conference.
2) The Dolphins are looking like a credible threat to go 0-16, after making the Jets look good. Now the Patriots need to hold up their end of the bargain, and beat the Ravens tonight so we can have a chance for both 16-0 and 0-16 teams in the same season.
3) Historical note: Prior to the Green Bay at Dallas game on Thursday, much was made of the fact that this was the first meeting of 10-1 teams since the Giants and 49ers in 1990. Green Bay made a good showing, but lost by ten after Brett Favre left with an injured arm.
Not noted in the aftermath was that there’s still a 1990 parallel– the Giants lost that game to the Niners, but came back to beat the Niners in the NFC championship game, en route to beating the heavily favored Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl. Phil Simms got hurt (I can’t remember whether it was in that Niners game, or one of the later games), and backup Jeff Hostetler took over and ran the team through the playoffs.
I’m not making a solid prediction of anything, here, but if it gets to be Green Bay versus New England in the Super Bowl, with Aaron Rogers taking snaps for the Packers, well, history says that New England better be nervous…
5) Ummm…. I’m sure something else interesting happened. What was it?