The third dictionary definition of the word limbo, following the religious and beach party game versions, is "an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place". This is where we sit currently, similar to the middle of the baseball season. Sure there's a lot going on: football, hockey, basketball; it's just that none of it has much gravity at the moment. Either the season is two weeks old, the local team was out of contention long ago or, in the case of the one thing that should matter, the writing is on the wall. And it's printed in indelible ink.
This was supposed to be the time of year when a potential championship football team (no, not talking about the Gophers) was working it's fanbase into a lather with thoughts of division championships and playoff seedings. Unfortunately it's been anything but a smooth ride, and unless you want to delude yourself, hopes of a Super Bowl are officially dead. Even making the playoffs at this point seems a tall order. The NFC West champ will take one spot, there are currently four 6-win NFC teams and beyond that three 5-win squads. Throw out the Bears and Bucs from the 5-win group, and the Vikes will still have to leapfrog Philadelphia to grab the 6th spot. The good news is they play the Eagles head-to-head, controlling their own destiny; the bad news, that game is on the road, where the Purple is 1-9 over it's last 10 games.
But as I've said many times before, it's a funny league, so let's let's give them the benefit of the doubt and a playoff berth. What are we supposed to do about the aforementioned woes on the road? Playoffs would be nice, and you never know how they will shake out (unless of course T-Jack is involved), but can they even go on the road and beat a single playoff team, never mind three in a row? By my count that's happened a total of twice in the past two and a half seasons: Green Bay in Week 8 last year and a checked-out Arizona team in Week 15 of 2008 (otherwise known as the T-Jack Fluke 4-TD Game). The track record doesn't inspire great confidence that this operation can somehow find a way to string together a Super Bowl run from the Wild Card spot.
So why not just think division championship and avoid all that you say? Well that's certainly a nice thought, but sitting 2 1/2 games behind the Packers for the division lead, that's going to take some doing. I had the Vikings finishing with a 10-6 record after going 4-4 through the season's first half, but their long-term health is a bit worse than I expected, and frankly that one loss is looming pretty huge. 4-4 at this point would mean 6-2 down the stretch gets it done, assuming the remaining losses are outside the division. Now, one has to assume that Green Bay is good for at least 10 wins with their remaining schedule, and that likely means 7-1 is the only way to avoid the road throughout. Not much margin for error there, especially when you consider the key pieces still missing from this team, and they fact they needed a miraculous comeback to save their season against a horsebleep Arizona team last Sunday. There's just not much to talk about right now, winning is simply surviving, call me when you're back over .500 and perhaps I can muster a bit of hope.
Confronting this reality has got me a bit cranky, and when that happens, I finds it's best to head to the complaint department and vent on a couple things that are sticking in my craw:
The death of Sunday Night Football.
The rhythm of the football viewing day was already significantly damaged when NFL Primetime moved from it's perfect Sunday format to the oddly placed Monday version. That show's value was in the fact that it provided the perfect breather from the afternoon action and bridge into the evening, recapping anything you'd missed throughout the day while previewing what was upcoming. The emphasis was constantly on the field of play, with brief bits of reaction as follow up. You could keep tabs on it while cooking dinner, folding laundry, or whatever other mundane task needed to be completed before you started your week, and still follow things perfectly.
Now? Football Night in America (a fittingly terrible title for a terrible show) has totally wrecked that vibe. Between the monologues, human interest stories, interviews and NFL insider mumbo-jumbo, I have absolutely no idea what's going on. Gone are the slickly packaged highlights hitting rapid-fire, replaced by the long-winded ramblings of Bob Costas on lord knows what. I like Costas in certain spots, he can call my baseball games any time, and I hear he does a solid job with the Olympics, but since when does he have anything relevant to say about football beyond "and it looks like the Dolphins will be forced to punt"?
What is this line of thinking that everything in sports needs greater context now? When did the game itself stop being a good enough story? You want to wax poetic on the grand old history of the game of baseball Bob, that's fine, I might not like it, but at least it fits. What doesn't fit is a midget in a blazer giving me a 5-minute speech on the motivations of an NFL football team. I'm sure Costas is a fine human being, but he strikes me as the kind of guy who thinks people care more about what he has to say than the subject he's discussing. Perhaps most viewers are fans, but if so, they must be concentrated outside of everyone I know. The general consensus seems to agree he's pretty well-described by a line from the movie Tommy Boy, "You're a smug, unhappy little man who treats people like they're idiots". Good announcer, bad commentator. Too harsh a critique perhaps, but he hates people like me anyway, so I don't think I'm losing a potential golfing buddy here.
And if it were only one annoying segment, that could be overcome. Problem is, that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's gotten to the point where nothing from this show could surprise me. Story on how the Giants D-line is fighting childhood obesity with a charity cookbook? Check. Feature on the offseason camel excursion Nnamdi Asomugha took across the deserts of Dubai? Why not. Peter King discussing inkblots that remind him of Brett Favre with a psychologist? Roll tape. Meanwhile, I'm just thinking, PLAY THE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE BUCS GAME FOR F**KS SAKE!!!
You want to say I should change the channel? Fine, put Primetime back on in it's old format and I will be ever so happy to do so. The problem is that NBC assassinated the best highlight show on TV in order to get a monopoly on Sunday night, so now we get Primetime Lite with it's nuts cut off on Mondays, after you've already spent a day seeing/reading every twist and turn that took place. And if the argument is this stuff is watered down because they're being forced to fill time, then start the damn games at 7:00 so I can get to bed before midnight.
One rant down, moving on to...
That's enough Tim Tebow
Full disclosure, I've never liked Tim Tebow. I hate the Florida Gators, most running QBs (transcendant exceptions like Michael Vick aside) and players whose aliterative names compel announcers to use both first and last every time they reference them, so natural. Successful wacky spread offenses in college football beget more wacky spread offenses, and pretty soon before you know it, we end up with a professional league full of Alex Smiths.
Urban Meyer had already unleashed his first plauge on my favorite sports team, but doing it with the Utah Utes was somewhat foregivable (unless of course you happen to be a 49ers fan), due to their scrappiness and underdog status. With the move to Florida, a powerhouse at the top of my college football enemies list, I was pretty much locked into disliking anything he did. A bad situation then was compounded with the arrival of America's favorite boy scout on campus, a seemingly endless run of wins and another nail in the coffin of every QBs who could complete a 15-yard out.
Fact is, I was all ready to absolve Tebow of the blame here. After all, it was historical hatred of his university, his system and his cult, er fans, that really got under my skin. What blame could I really put on him for those things? I mean if you think about it, Steve Spurrier is more to blame for how I feel than Tim Tebow, he just showed up and played great football. Then the bomb dropped, he said he was still a virgin...and became truly hateable.
Now you know from my ramblings here that I'm no great shakes with the ladies. My favorite line ever on picking up women came from the movie "A Beautiful Mind", when Russel Crowe's character is trying to break the ice with a girl in a bar, and eventually says "I don't exactly know what I am required to say in order for you to have intercourse with me. But could we assume that I said all that?" I saw that and thought BRILLIANT! If only it were that easy! Well people, for Tim Tebow, for four years, ON THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA CAMPUS OF ALL PLACES...it was just that easy. And he did nothing to take advantage of that. And that is not only indescribably sad, it is an affront to all men everywhere.
Now I'm not say you need to throw down every heifer and bar skank you run across, all of us have our limits (in theory). But when you're among an endless supply of beautiful and willing coeds, able to dictate terms and hold things to the utmost standard, yet choose to do nothing? Well I just don't understand that, I don't understand it at all. Furthermore, I refuse to do what they tell me I should do and applaud you for it, because it's just dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. If you didn't at least use your campus juice to get your buddies laid, you sir are a horror of a human being. When Tim Tebow gets to heaven, God is going shrug and to tell him "You know Tim, you could've banged that cheerleader with the double Ds, no big deal. Tried to tell you, even sent her to your dorm room that night as a sign, sorry bro." And then Tim Tebow will know regret.
So sorry for harping on that, as it's old news, just gets hoppin mad every time I think about it. That was only the foundation of my Double T dislike, the newest reason is because, at the ripe old age of 23, is writing a memoir.
Now I get that fame only last for 15 minutes, and his best days as a football player are probably behind him. I also get that he's viewed by many as some kind of "Dalai Lama meets John Elway" prophet, but seriously, a memoir? Tebow's life story is certainly interesting: Son of missionaries, miracle baby, college football star, blue ball aficionado, but what exactly does the man have to say? At 23-years old, we're pretty much all optimists. Barring a major f**kup earlier in life (like jail time, or marriage), you've got all options open to you and nothing holding you back from whatever you want. Unless they've beaten cancer, escaped a genocide or persevered through some other great handicap, the wisdom of a 23-year old is neither profound nor helpful.
Give me the book by the guy who's been up, then down, then up again, and knows how to make it through those bad days, even if just barely. Give me the book by somebody who's had to do the truly hard work of guiding the life of another, rather than the comparatively easy job of just looking out for himself. Give me a true reflection on the complete picture that is a full life, not some ghost-written fluff tagged with the name of a kid a year out of college.
I usually hate the argument that a given age is required to do certain things, I find it closed-minded and usually incorrect. But in this case, I'm on the old side, you have to have a few years in before a memoir is acceptable. And yeah, I know people will buy it, but that doesn't make it relevant.
Perhaps Mr. Tebow's intentions are noble, and he honestly thinks he can help some folks out, maybe inspire a few lives or even donate a few bucks to charity. But I have to call it for what it seems to be on the surface, an attempt to cash in before his 15 minutes are up. Certainly nothing unique about that these days I suppose.
Still pisses me off though.
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