Happy New Year to one and all. May all your dreams for the new year come true. With the last day of the regular football season I am left wondering how it all could have passed so quickly. What happened? Did I doze off in week one - no doubt due to some gross over-indulgence in little green bottles - and Rip Van Winkle my way to week 17? However that may be, now having lurched back into consciousness, I see that the Northern California trees are being tossed by the wind, and the rain falls at an angle, and the temperature is 58 degrees. It is not a good day to play football in Oakland, a weird and gloomy place even at the best of times. Kerry Collins wants to exact revenge on the New York Football Giants but the rest of the team is not feeling very bloodthirsty right now, for their bags are packed and flight reservations have been made. The football gods are fickle and their moods changeable, and they could decide to spark the silver and black into a scoring frenzy, if for no other reason than just because, and if Randy Moss decides to play today he could take advantage of the New York corners with Collins revengeful bombs. It could happen. But Strahan and Umenyiora will be straining every fiber to do Kerry damage, so while it could happen, like my plans for dinner and a movie with Drew Barrymore, it probably won't. Oh, well. This sports blogging thing has been great. There are lots of very talented and knowledgeable writers out there, and it has been instructive to me. As the song says, "I don't get around much anymore.." so this has been great fun. Cheers all.

Who would take that bet? The Gmen are 2 and 7 against the Raiders and have lost the last four, The last road win against the silver and black was in 1986 in LA, but that was when the Big Blue Wrecking Crew could really wreck something, not the present Giants, who tend to lose games they're picked to win, particularly on the road. The game is not sold out so there will be no local TV exposure, but the fans in Oakland are used to that and usually listen to the home games on the radio. Point to New York, for the crowd noise shouldn't be a factor except from the guys who wear the black plastic skulls and Darth Vader outfits. And the weather will be windy and cold, though about 15 degrees warmer than it would be in the Meadowlands, so the Easterners should feel at home with the conditions. The numbers tend to favor the Giants as well, for they have scored 6 more points than they have given up on average, while the Raiders have given up 6 more points than they scored. Another point to the visiting team. Tiki Barber leads the league in yards from scrimmage, 2,127, and Burress, Toomer, and Shockey - if he can play - make nice targets for Eli, even when he throws them end-over-end. (It should be noted here that Eli's pass to Burress on the first play of the game against Washington was perfectly thrown but dropped in the end zone) Usi Umenyiora and Michael Strahan should be able to harrass Collins, who is notably immoble and has been for years. But, if Oakland can protect Kerry Collins for even a little bit, he can throw the long ball to Randy Moss, Just as Patrick Ramsey did with Santana Moss last Saturday, and put points on the board. Add to that the fact that New York has a patch-work line-backing corps that may not be able to stop the run, and the plot becomes as thick as, well... thick stuff. All things considered the Giants are favored in Oakland this coming Saturday, but the Giants are already in the playoffs, so I say take the points and the Raiders to lose by less than a touchdown.

The way the New England Patriots play the game of football is a study in the methodical deconstruction of an opposing team. They do not hurry, they are never frantic, they merely proceed to apply the details of the game in a so systematic way that the other team is often unaware that their efforts to resist are doomed. And it isn't just a matter of being physically overpowering, for in many cases they are not the bigger, faster, or stronger, body of men. There is something of the science of martial arts in their approach to the game as they weigh the strengths and weakness of an opponent, and then strike in a precisely calculated way. Another analogy can be made to the game of chess, for frequently the stronger player with the more complete game will seek out small advantages of material and position until, and this can happen early on when there are still many pieces active on the board, the other player's game is essentially lost. Many players who have just been check mated will often say, "Oh, I was so close. One more move and I would have had you!" overlooking the single telling point that the move that they did not have had been subtly wrested away from them some time before and unnoticed. Clearly, the New England Patriots invest a great deal of time on the details of the game, and the deliberate and repeated practice of alignments and play execution in the end reduce everything to a machine-like efficiency that becomes, well, boring, sometimes, to watch. Everyone, the other team, the fans, the commentators, are lulled to sleep by the small points of field postion, the time on the game clock, the score, and hardly notice that an offensive lineman is playing fullback, and a line backer is in at tight end. For sheer drama no one is better than the Colts. For gritty and exuberant determination we look to the Bears. For the complete understanding of the game of football, though, we must go to New England. The mystery is clearly in the details.

Like my first wife's coffee, to the irreducible, the tough, and the gritty. Those are terms that most likely would be applied to Da Bears, who play the game with viscious enthusiasm and who seem offended if the weather isn't bad enough to make a Lapplander weep. The Colts are talented and Peyton's ability to run the game is marvelous to watch, but, offensive wizard that he is, pressure has revealed flaws in his attack. Denver probably won't be there at the end, though a very good team, and neither will Jacksonville, but then there are the Bengals, who could easily win it all. And who can discount the Steelers? An AFC match-up of New England and Pittsburgh would be a great game to watch, particularly in the snow and the cold of January. Seattle is very steady, a sound, well-coached football team, but they will probably will not come through to February. The Redskins could beat them if they can maintain the high energy they've recently shown. And there's no Panthers, no Bucs, and certainly no Giants, for they're too immature, too inconsistant, to win, though they are very good at coming up with explanations for their losses. "We came out flat and never got anything going." "We were unable to match their intensity." "It doesn't matter how we get into the playoffs anyway" The job of a coach is to prepare the team to play. Who could argue that point? If a team can't get up for a critical game, if they can't focus on the essentials, it is the coach who we must look to for answers. For the team with the toughness of Chicago, the intelligence of the Colts, and the ability to rise above all adversity, the choice must be New England. They were largely written off in the beginning of the season; lost coaches and injuries had taken their toll, said the experts, but now, from out of nowhere, they're back, and this is a team that does its best work when the conditions are impossible. There is an old saying among the tough guys in the military that goes, "When the Chaplain goes over the hill with the guidon, it's just getting nice for me." So, when the point of the irreducible is reached, and all the chaff has been blown away, it would be great to see the Patriots and the Bears in the superbowl. But, I have been married, and have been for many years a New York Giants fan, so I am doubly armored against disappointment, and will comfortably watch the Colts and the Seahawks in the superbowl if it comes to that.

Erma Bombeck wrote that, "Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead." People will say things like that when faced with something they don't understand. I couldn't watch an entire Oprah program, either, and I didn't make it through the 24 series because the bad guys were a step ahead of Jack Bauer at the close of every episode. Football isn't like that. The teams change with each passing week, getting better and sometimes worse and it's really hard to predict who will suddenly, and out of nowhere, have a great game and totally tilt the scales in favor of a team that had been picked to lose. The best at picking winners that I found - I haven't examined all the sources - have been the Yahoo Users, with a percentage of 70 percent correct. At this point in the season they have gone 157 - 67. They have been notably wrong in a few cases, picking the Giants by 93% over the Vikings, San Diego over Miami by 96%, Tampa Bay over San Francisco by 92%, and again 92% of those fans picked Atlanta over Green Bay. Nevertheless, a 70% success rate is admirable indeed.
Tomorrow the Giants will meet the Washington Redskins in a critical game in the NFC East. In their first meeting of the season the Redskins were routed by the score of 36 - Zip, a score that couldn't have been due to crowd noise, for Giants fans are not known for loud support, having spent so many years enduring inexplicable disasters at critical moments, they now sit quietly waiting for the next fumble, or foul, or false start. No, 36 to nothing is an indication that one team badly outclasses another team at every level of play. The point spread, though, is Washington by three, the regular spread for a home team against an evenly matched opponent. And this thinking is supported by the vaunted Yahoo Users selection of the GMen by only 55% of the votes, practically a pick'em vote. Washington has improved over the past weeks. That was made clear by their dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys last week. Tomorrow they will depend on crowd noise and pressure on the young Eli to disrupt the Giant offense and play field position, hoping to win one of those 9 - 3 ball games. The Giants defense is better than that and I expect the result to be more like Giants 20 - 13. The only other factor that has me worried is that Joe Theismann has picked the Giants to win, and he's the fellow who said, "Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is sombody like Norman Einstein."

Brett Favre has been the great American sports hero over the past fifteen years, but on Monday night he was pushed around and knocked down until his once-potent long passes became desperation heaves into double and triple Raven coverages, leading to four picks. John Madden told us that Brett was still able to run around and throw the ball, "..and do all those types of things that he has always done," but on that night it was hard to see that what he said could be true. At last he sat down. He wasn't injured but he was frustrated that the team, a storied franchise going back to the earliest of days, couldn't play better. Even the greatest QBs are rendered helpless when the O-line struggles, and the Ravens turned vicious at the first sign of blood in the water, turning the game into a sad show, even for those who were not Green Bay Packer fans. Brett's abilities may not be eroded, just as Madden said, but it could be that after fifteen years of professional football, and the grind of preparation which is now nearly year round, he has just grown tired. I believe that part of him wants to play, to compete and win, and another part has had enough. Any day-worker knows the feeling when he drives to the job and looks for a parking slot while half hoping that he won't find one, until one day he stops looking and just drives away. Perhaps Brett will do that, this year or next. It's inevitable, of course, that he would leave at some point, but when the day finally comes it will be like those movies when the hero rides away in the end, for we will then all wave goodbye wishing that somehow we could see it all over again.

Statistics are fine, for they can be hefted on paper and comparisons made, and sometimes a winner can be correctly chosen, but we have now reached a time when the outcome of the NFL season is balanced on a knife edge, and winners are determined by the undefinable quality of team spirit. Evenly matched teams meet with nothing to choose between them when viewed on paper, for strengths and weakness are in balance and anything can happen. Anything, that is, until that electric moment when the ball is first put in play and the sheer energy of one team overpowers the other. That's the way it was on Sunday when the Chargers galloped through perhaps the best team in the National Football League, the Indianapolis Colts. And so it happened again when a very good and well-coached team from Dallas had their lunch eaten by the Washington Redskins. As the clock slowly counted out the seconds of the embarrassment, the song, "Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys," was played again and again over the P.A. system until Coach Gibbs signaled for it to stop. In the end Parcells walked off the field without the usual handshake from the opposing coach, leaving Gibbs to give only a little wave of goodbye. No doubt the Redskins hope to bring the same spirit to the coming game but the quality is ephemeral and hard to generate. Few teams are able to produce high levels of the stuff for consecutive weeks and frequently a rout is followed by a collapse. There will be a chance to evaluate this phenomona next Saturday when the Giants go to Washington for a critical game. Then there is the matter of a team being wounded by a bad loss late in the season, and certainly a thoughtful coach like Holmgren is looking carefully at the Chargers successful game plan in anticipation of the coming game against Indianapolis. Are the Colts damaged? Can they pull all the threads of success together again for a game that doesn't mean much to be played in the cold rain of the Northwest? The energy genie can lift a team to another level of effort and in week 16 every coach will be looking for a lamp to vigorously, and hopefully, rub.

Saturday end-of-the-season football, with two meaningful games to be played...Tampa Bay at New England and then Kansas City in the Meadowlands. I'm on the edge of my seat. Many fans tend to be critical, even angry, about the way players have played, coaches have coached, and the way officials have called the plays during the year. I suppose that's part of the business of being a fan, like the razzberry from the stands in baseball, but for some reason I don't get it. If I was a psychologist, I would suggest that such criticism is due to some deeply rooted feeling of insecurity, of not being breast-fed as an infant, or, in the case of some teams, of not having gone to a play-off game in five years or more. The roots of human behavior are clouded in mystery and we cannot know why people act the way they do. What is known, though, is that positive support, even if one never leaves their easy-chair, will tend to result in a positive result. How amazing is that? If you can drum up the courage to believe in something, it will, more often than not, come to be true. Well, I don't know, but I suspect that if the beer is cold and the effort is made, the team will win. I have my supplies on hand; a case of Beck's, a bottle of Jameson, and a large T-bone steak, and so armored I expect that the Patriots will win. As for Kansas City, it is hard to win in the Meadowlands in December, even with Eli throwing them end over end and to guys in the other color uniforms. We have football, and adequate beverage, and all's well in the world. More or less.

Cab drivers and barbers are the repositories of great knowledge and the wise man will listen carefully when riding or getting a trim, for often much is revealed to illuminate the human condition, and the state of the National Football League as the season comes to a close. On my way to the barbershop the driver had told me, as though he had the information from an inside source, that, "..Griesen will do fine, and Eli will have a good game." I reflected on this bit of special news as I took my seat in the big leather upholstered chair. Louie, the barber, flourished his white protective cloth with a snap and fastened it about my neck. "Just a trim, Louie," I said.
"Sure enough," he answered, taking up scissors and a long black comb.
"Enjoying the football season?" he asked, the scissors snipping behind my ear.
"I am, I am. Though we have some injuries this week that might cause problems."
"Ah, yes," he answered, "The New York Football Giants, that's what Cosell called them. They were named after the baseball team, you know, and at one time there was a football team called the New York Yankees...1928 I think it was."
"Oh," I said, adding the fact to my large personal store of Things I Had Not Known. "Saturday game this week. Kansas City is in town," I added.
"Aha," said Louie, and then all was silent, leaving me with the snipping of the scissors, the barbershop aromas of after-shave and hair tonic, and the droning of the brown plastic radio in the corner. It would be cold and clear on Saturday, it said.
"Saturday, the 17th," said Louie.
"Yes, that's right."
"The Giants are 3 and 4 since 1925 on games played on December 17th," he said.
"Well, that's bad news, Louie," I answered, wondering if I was being put on..
"And, there was a tie. In Cleveland, in 1950."
"You don't say," I said.
"But," he said, unsnapping the cloth and giving it a quick snap. "The Giants have played the Chiefs 7 times in the regular season since 1974, and have won 6 of the 7, only losing in 1983."
"That's amazing, Louie, I must say. You're a real Giants fan."
"No, sir, I can't say that I am. I lost interest when Namath's knees went bad.
"The Jets! Well, how did you come to know all that Giant trivia?"
"Oh, I took a cab to work this morning. The fellow seemed to know everything."
Outside on the sidewalk there was the smell of snow in the air. It was cold but I turned my coat-collar up and walked away past the line of waiting taxi-cabs.

In America, more than anywhere else in the world, we believe in the inherent rightness of change. Every game, every undertaking, is viewed as subject to review and improvement. In other cultures there is frequently a tendency to take circumstances as they are, to adapt and accept a thing for what it is.We don't do that here.
Sometimes we make improvements to the point that the original idea disappears in the fog of technological upgrade. Artificial turf is one example, and now regular grass, or something very much like it, is the preferred football playing surface. The desire for a perfectly flat field and, for that matter, the domed stadium, hints at an apparent national distaste for the outcome o####ame to be influenced by natural irregularities; the torn and frozen turf, the wet ball, or the unpredictable gust of wind, such as that which caused Sean Landeta to whiff a punt some years ago while a New York Giant playing at Soldier Field. Anyone who watched the Bears/Steelers game last Sunday where the field became bog-like between the hash-marks, and snow obscured the action, and the Bus took on a new identity as the Magnificent Mudman, couldn't help but admire the struggle of man against man, but of man against the elements as well. Surely this is football played in the best spirit of the game. It is good that we consider our lives as changeable, that we are not necessarily bound by circumstance, but when it comes to the game of football, the very shape of the ball and the fact that we choose to play it in the dead of Winter, identifies for us what the game is all about and the way it is supposed to be played. We may still engineer our world to suit us, for that's the way we do things, but football, except for the seven dollar beer and the six dollar polish, should remain one of those things we leave unimproved.