"Holiday Break": The Sequel

You know what I need? Another break. And fuck if I didn't earn it this year, right?

Anyway, seeing as how well things went over Thanksgiving, ™ decided to actually come back and see me again. So the whole Week 16 recap, Week 17 preview, and whatever other posts I had in mind are all going to have to wait until 2011.

I know, there will be plenty more thoughts to expand on besides all the fuckin' football stuff that's pretty much been the majority of the content here in the last quarter of the year, but I'm looking forward to having another week off from work to give ™ a little more time in the actual downtown Chicago rather than just the one day we got there the last time she was here.

In the meantime, dear readers, I hope you've enjoyed your own holidays and that you have a happy and safe New Year's Eve as well as 2011. I've already got a great number of things to look forward to in the coming year, but again, that's stuff that I'll expand on when I get back.

This 2010 certainly had its highs and lows just like every year seems to, but during this time away from BMC, I'm guessing it's going to go out on quite the high note and hopefully have me entering 2011 more optimistic than any other year in the past.

See you all in January.

Things I made while offline: "In the Company of Men"

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: An ink & color pencil drawing of characters from the 1997 film "In the Company of Men" 

Week 16 Picks: Un-Sexy Rexy

It was starting to feel like it had been a while since those New York Jets had made some of the league's biggest headlines off the field, but the team—the head coach, no less—sure made up for lost time this week. Never mind that Rex Ryan's team is still fighting for a playoff spot and comes into Chicago this weekend to play our local NFC North Division Champion Bears, who are also still playing for something—namely a first round bye in the playoffs.

And fortunately for us, in addition to, you know, the actual game of football, we're likely going to have some hilarious signs to be keeping an eye out for in the crowd. Assuming, of course, CBS is willing to show them.

Oh, and there's the 15 other games this week, one of which has already occurred as of this writing and was the total mismatch many of us expected. The question, as always, is which game will come back to bite me everyone else in the ass and help determine this week's pool winner.

Thursday Night Pick: Brain not necessary

The league lined up quite the mismatch for their Thursday finale. Once again, I'm assuming this will pretty much be a maximum bet for everybody in both pools—especially if the usual five hypothetical sheets I post each work are any indication. So far, four of those five have the Steelers being the biggest bet of the week, and I highly doubt it will be any less than those four.

So for the second straight week, my first pick is for the most it can possibly be:

16 points

Pittsburgh Steelers (10-4) over Carolina Panthers (2-12)

+42/-12 : +172/191/-19 : -7/+130

And since we have a Saturday game this week (because I guess it can't just be an NBA holiday?), maybe the rest of the picks will be up before that too? To be honest, I'm not totally sure yet.

Week 15 Power Rankings: What was I thinking?

I was among the many who had started the week off in the best possible way, but things went downhill on Sunday and I ultimately continued my steadily decreasing points trend by only ending up with 89 points with my picks for the week. Keeping in mind what I said when I came out on top in Week Nine and my point allocation looked brilliant that week, there were multiple spots on my sheet this past weekend that were quite suspect even going into the games and, as expected, cost me some ground.

In the first game on Sunday, I saw the Giants get out to an early lead and mistakenly assumed I had picked Philadelphia in that contest. I was reassuring myself that somebody this season was due to blow a big lead, and sure enough, that's exactly what New York did. And then I realized I had actually picked the G-Men.

And then I found out that Tampa Bay had allowed the Lions to win their first game on the road in more than three years. Most devastatingly, the same Miami Dolphins I had originally picked to go all the way to the AFC Championship this year as a wild card had their playoff hopes end in yet another loss at home, this one to the Buffalo Bills thanks in part to four missed field goals—which once again, seemed to have been the opposite end of the luck that went my way back when I won Week Three.

A Steelers loss later in the afternoon in addition to wins from the Patriots that night and the Bears on Monday that were both worth far more to others than myself ultimately made Week 15 an unmitigated disaster for me.

Things I made while offline: Jimi Hendrix

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: A pencil sketch of guitarist Jimi Hendrix 

Week 15 Picks: Desperate measures

I don't know which start you'd consider more baffling, but either way it appears that both Tim Tebow and Rex Grossman will be under center for the Denver Broncos and Washington Redskins respectively as those two teams compete to be the national laughing stock for the week. My money's on dear old Sexy Rexy to be the bigger disaster, but I don't believe that's any sort of tiebreaker in either pool this week.

Of course, around these parts, we're a little more concerned with the college stadium that the Minnesota Vikings will be utilizing in order to host our hometown Bears on Monday evening. That whole situation would be extremely laughable (have fun picking which of the 63,000 ticket holders get to come into the 50,000 capacity venue—although the total absence of alcohol sales will probably help) if the field's conditions and the possible injuries it might cause weren't a real concern. The Bears could simultaneously win the division and see their playoff hopes crushed if, say, Jay Cutler were to suffer another concussion.

I'll try to think positive.

Keep on scrolling: Another fantasy update

Your author is hard-pressed to think of something that can cause an immediate loss of interest quite like hearing about someone's fantasy team. Having friends and co-workers recite their rosters with no real purpose other than to gloat about conquering leagues you're not involved in seems quite banal and pointless, no?

That said, the author knows full well that you the dear reader probably also couldn't give two shits about whatever fantasy team he's gone and created after so many years of taking that road less traveled where non-participation seemed cooler. Now the author has multiple fantasy teams, and while he tries mightily not to bring those into the other posts here on BMC that you might actually read, every once in a while, if for no other purpose than to help him remember who he had on such teams in a given year, he likes to keep a recorded entry of how he's done.

This is one of those times. Your non-interest in the remainder of this post is understood.

Thursday Night Pick: Finally going big

Ever since the Thursday games kicked in, I've been betting rather low each and every week. Excluding Thanksgiving—when there were pretty much three mismatches—it's been a single-digit wager most of the time. Yeah, OK ... that really only amounts to three weeks of Thursday bets (two were for four points and the first was just for one), but still, I'm excited to finally max out on the first game of the week instead of seeing everybody else bet double-digits and enter the weekend with a lead.

Aside from when they crapped the bed against Oakland in Week 13 (which I fortunately only lost two points on), San Diego seems to be in fine form to make their annual late charge for the AFC West crown now that they've got Vincent Jackson back and Malcom Floyd should be playing tonight (right? right?) won't play, I guess, but it doesn't really matter since Philip Rivers seems to be able to throw to just about anybody the Chargers throw out there.

The 49ers are making their own late-season move back to the top of the equally inept NFC West, but only seem to be able to win games against teams in that division. So, seeing as the Bolts get to host tonight's game:

16 points
San Diego Chargers (7-6) over San Francisco 49ers (5-8)

+3/+1 : +38/35/+3 : +2/+35

And as usual, the remainder of the Week 15 picks will be up on Saturday night.

"Holiday Break" follow-up: It's a long story (but a happy one)

I had always felt that people who claimed to find love on the internet were creating a sort of forced romance. Of the few people I knew personally who met significant others over the web, it was almost always through an online dating service. And my very first impression of those kind of those kinds of sites was forged by a former co-worker of mine, a nice enough fellow who had been engaged at one time but had things fall apart when his fiancee turned out to be something of a psycho. As a result, he seemed determined not just to seek a new girlfriend, but most certainly find a future bride.

When he spoke openly about testing the waters of online dating, his profile was public, and so of course, other co-workers and I had to check it out. What struck me most after viewing it was the overall sense of desperation that was conveyed in his "preferences." Height? Any. Religion? Any. Nationality? Any.

To me, the whole thing reinforced the notion that this entire approach equated to begging to get laid. It always seemed that a romantic interest was something you discovered unexpectedly, hence the joy of explaining how you met. Using a dating service not only seemed to encourage some dishonesty to make yourself sound more appealing, but forced you to probably place more pressure on yourself to make any potential match work.

So my conclusion based upon the few examples I knew personally—since I was determined never to try it myself—was that romance and the internet were two entirely different things. Any attempt to combine the two was manufacturing an emotion that's best enjoyed when it occurs naturally.

Week 14 Power Rankings: Falling apart

You know nothing makes me happier than knowing that Vikings fans are suffering, so regardless of what else happens over the next couple months, this season's been a real win for me. Those purple-clad ninnies were officially eliminated from possibly getting into the playoffs this past weekend, their quarterback's consecutive game streak ended, and if he never plays again this season, his last pass will still be an interception.

Oh yeah ... and then, of course, this happened to their horseshit home facility. If that spells the end for that hellhole, then good riddance. 1991 still hurts, by the way.

I have to admit that when I first saw that video on Sunday, I thought it was an artist's rendering. But the bottom line would be that the roof collapsing is sort of a fitting metaphor for this Vikings team's season. Their home finale against my beloved Bears this coming weekend will be played in an outdoor stadium with a capacity of 50,000 despite the team having already sold more than 63,000 tickets. Man, that sucks—to be them. But you knew that.

I'm allowed to be this mean since nobody was hurt. And I'm hoping it doesn't turn into some sort of karmic payback and the foundation for my own prediction formula holds up, as last week it helped me earn 101 points.

The Bulls' First Quarter: Reason(s) to believe?

When we last left the Chicago Bulls, I was actually feeling sorry for Vinny Del Negro and there was still hope of landing LeBron James. And while the Bulls didn't make the biggest splash in the free-agent pool this off-season, they did improve exponentially just with the man they nabbed to coach their team while adding a few more pieces to surround their star player with. Thus, there's been admittedly just as much buzz for the basketball team that hasn't made it out of the first round of the playoffs the past two seasons as there is for the United Center's other resident—a hockey team that just won the biggest prize in their sport last year.

After having endured a few years in which so many of us felt we were only a player or two (and a coach) away from contending in the East again, does it look like the Bulls have made that stride forward to being contenders again? I think it's still too early to make any grand sort of prognostications about deep playoff runs, what with Chicago still being the No. 4 seed in the conference and looking up at two relative conference stalwarts and the oh-so-slightly-hyped group from South Beach. But overall, it's not as though there aren't some encouraging signs here. 

Things I made while offline: Jenny McCarthy

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: An ink & color pencil drawing of 1994 Playboy Playmate of the Year
Jenny McCarthy 

Week 14 Picks: Fun in the snow?

After a day of rain here in the Chicago suburbs, it's currently snowing as I type this. The weather this weekend has already been hyped up as being a factor in a number of games, so if you're like me and enjoy seeing football played in this kind of inclement conditions, tomorrow could be a real treat.

I would suppose that some crazy amounts of snow, slush and sleet might lead to some equally crazy bounces, fumbles and assorted other wackiness that might result in a few upsets, but here in Week 14 with only a few weeks to go in the respective confidence pools, where would I dare venture a guess as to which team would benefit?

It seems like a good weekend to sit back and enjoy the action for what it is, keeping my fingers crossed that the way I'm submitting my order of picks in happens to be the safest.

And perhaps if things don't go my way, I can whitewash a Vikings fan or something.

Thursday Night Pick: Could be ugly

Peyton Manning is in the midst of a highly uncharacteristic stretch that has seen him throw more interceptions in three weeks than rookie Sam Bradford has thrown all season. It's so bad that it even caused the bro-in-law to update his blog.

But tonight Manning's Colts get to continue fighting through this miserable Super Bowl runner-up hangover of a season with a Tennessee team that's in their own funk having lost five in a row. Maybe Randy Moss will actually, you know, do something tonight.

I'm not counting on it though:

3 points
Indianapolis Colts (6-6) over Tennessee Titans (5-7)

+27/+5 : +20/19/+1 : -4/-7

The rest of the Week 14 picks will be posted Saturday night, now that the "rolling deadline" appears to be working for both pools.

The Bears' Third Quarter: So much for that 8-8 talk

At the end of the last quarter of the Bears' season, I feared that there was still the possibility the team could finish 8-8. And now with four games left to go, we already know that won't be the case. Thanks to four more wins over the course of the four games since that last update, the Bears have secured a winning season and are leading the NFC North as the team enters its final four games of the year.

I'm not entirely sold that we should begin planning a Super Bowl party quite yet, but at the same time, I can't deny that the Bears certainly deserve to be in the conversation for favorites to come out of the NFC when the playoffs begin. The final four games to close out the year will be perhaps the toughest stretch of the schedule this year (visits to Minnesota and Green Bay while two of the AFC's best teams come to Soldier Field), but Chicago has set themselves up rather nicely by taking care of business in the third quarter.

If nothing else, it appears for the time being that Lovie Smith has saved his job.

Week 13 Power Rankings: A third time is not a charm

Alas, it appears that my strategy of using "my numbers" to determine my picks for Week 13 finally proved unsuccessful after back-to-back triumphs in the first two attempts. While the San Diego loss to Oakland was indeed a swing that worked in my favor, a number of other upsets around the league (with the most notable and costly being Indianapolis falling to Dallas) did not and I ended up with 104 points for the week.

So does this mean an end to using Week 13 for the numbers experiment in future seasons?

Hardly. This particular NFL season has had more upsets on any given week than the previous two (which probably played havoc with a number of the figures used in my math), and besides, I already swore I'd be following the Week 13 tradition until the logic has a losing record. Right now, it's still 2-1 in three attempts, which ain't half bad.

And if nothing else, at least this happened.

Things I made while offline: Janet Jackson

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: A pencil sketch of recording artist Janet Jackson 

The Other Week 13 Picks: Sure hope there's an upset or three

In case you didn't want to scroll down to the post where I put up my picks before Thursday's game kicked off (and I earned four measly points), this is the week that I've submitted "My Numbers" for my own sheet. So the column to the far right represents my own picks as well this weekend (fingers crossed real tight), but here's how the rest of the crowd's picks look as of 11:30 P.M. CST on Saturday night:

Week 13 Picks: Keeping the tradition alive

I tried explaining that line of numbers that appears under each one of my picks every week way back in Week Nine of the 2008 season, but I don't think the explanation was quite as clear as it could have been. So hopefully the little graphic to the left here, based upon the most recent Power Rankings, is somewhat more helpful in explaining how "the numbers" work for me.

It's relevant this week because Week 13 has officially become the one time of the season in which I crunch my numbers and go with with whatever they say, regardless of what my gut might be telling me. The result was first-place finishes in both 2008 and 2009.

So I'm including tonight's matchup for my example of how this formula works.

You couldn't care less: Another fantasy update

Your author is hard-pressed to think of something that can cause an immediate loss of interest quite like hearing about someone's fantasy team. Having friends and co-workers recite their rosters with no real purpose other than to gloat about conquering leagues you're not involved in seems quite banal and pointless, no?

That said, the author knows full well that you the dear reader probably also couldn't give two shits about whatever fantasy team he's gone and created after so many years of taking that road less traveled where non-participation seemed cooler. Now the author has multiple fantasy teams, and while he tries mightily not to bring those into the other posts here on BMC that you might actually read, every once in a while, if for no other purpose than to help him remember who he had on such teams in a given year, he likes to keep a recorded entry of how he's done.

This is one of those times. Your non-interest in the remainder of this post is understood.

Week 12 Power Rankings: Checkin' these twice

There were certainly a number of photo/video moments I could have used to accompany this post as it related to Week 12 in the NFL. The unfortunate dropped would-be game-winning touchdown in Buffalo was certainly a candidate, although a late missed field goal in Cleveland was another near-disaster in terms of possible points lost. Cortland Finnegan and Andre Johnson's entertaining little scrum was also considered, but I just used a punch being thrown yesterday "last week." In the end though, I think that this lovely image sort of relates to how my confidence pool luck has been going as of late, with myself hoping to creep back up into the lead like a warm fart. Sure, it'll cause some people to wince, but right now, nobody really notices.

My picks for the week earned me another 107 points, so they didn't stink too bad. But there were unfortunately some other folks who came out smelling like roses.

Things I made while offline: The Superhero Factory

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: An ink & color pencil drawing of a Superhero-producing factory 

Week 12 Picks: After the fact

I had the best Thanksgiving holiday I've had in quite some time EVER. No, it had nothing to do with football, of course. But I'll elaborate more on that once I catch up on this NFL stuff. God forbid we have the regular schedule of predictions be offset by posts containing genuine emotion.

As usual, the actual holiday games were pretty much mismatches, leaving me concerned more with the weekend's slate of games. As the Power Rankings summary will show, most everybody had the same picks for relatively high amounts for Thursday's three games and it was indeed the Sunday contests that made the difference—with the otherwise forgettable Monday night game determining a winner or two. Like I said, I'll get to those pool summaries in the upcoming Power Rankings post for Week 12, but in the meantime, there were picks to be made the morning of Turkey Day. So for the sake of posterity, this is how the predictions lined up for Week 12.

Week 11 Power Rankings: Somewhat forgettable

As I get started here on catching up on what I missed during the utterly fantastic little break I just took from work and posting here on BMC, I suppose the one thing I wanted to remember Week 11 by was Richard Seymour leveling Big Ben during Pittsburgh's 35-3 blowout of Oakland.

 

I did decently enough with my picks that week to gain another 109 points, but the week got off to a bad start with me being in the minority in picking the banged-up Dolphins to beat my beloved Bears on Thursday night. There were two other rather costly games that weekend that ultimately doomed my hopes and as a result, I wasn't able to finish atop the standings in either pool despite a respectable enough record for the week.

 

Again, it was a week where even a strong straight-up record was going to be offset by the proper placement of bets, and most damaging was the Washington Redskins continuing to be an enigma for me on the year by doing the opposite of what I had expected. I mean, wasn't that Randy Moss fellow supposed to be playing or something?

 

Whatvevs. Not necessarily a terrible week, but not a great one either.

Gimme a moment: Holiday Break

I realize I still haven't even updated my picks from Week 11 (I went 11-5, for the record) and this would be about the time the Power Rankings would be getting posted while I rushed to get Week 12 Picks ready for three games on Thanksgiving and ... oh, well, you know what? All of that's going to have to wait, I'm afraid.

See, now that I've been working again for a whole, oh, four months now, I've decided I'm going to use the upcoming holiday for a little mini-vacation of sorts. I really earned it, of course. And by vacation, I mean I'll be taking the rest of the week off starting tomorrow to help someone pretty darn special see Chicago for the very first time.

Needless to say, I have no intention of taking away from that time just to post my picks to this blog before the deadline. Sorry.

But fear not, for I have screencapped all the results from last week and will post the belated picks after the fact next week when I'm back to the normal schedule. Oh, and hopefully I'll elaborate a little more on what I actually do this week.

In the meantime, enjoy your Thanksgiving, dear readers.

Things I made while offline: The Crying Teddy Bear

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: A pencil (and some watercolor) still-life of a teddy bear holding a rose 

Week 11 Picks: Rolling with the deadlines

So this week was supposed to be the unveiling of the "rolling deadline" in our PoolHost confidence pool, but it appears that instead we're stuck with the picks we entered on Thursday—well, those of us who got those picks in time anyway. Maybe next week, I guess.

As a matter of clarification, the Yahoo pool has always allowed changes for all games right up until kickoff, but I obviously keep my picks the same for all pools I enter just to keep things simple on this blog. I don't need different sets of picks to be citing and making shit more confusing than it already can be. I imagine that after the details get hammered out in the PoolHost pool—namely the amount of the penalty to failing to submit a Thursday pick in time—I'll have more to say. But for now, my picks picks remain the same as I entered them on Thursday night, and we have yet to begin, um, "rolling" these deadlines.

Thursday Night Pick: Letting go

This being the 25th anniversary of the Chicago Bears legendary Super Bowl XX-winning team, we in the area have had to endure even more nostalgic mentions of that group than most regular seasons—which, for the most part, is still remarkably over-the-top. Considering that Bears team was my first real memory of professional sports on television, I've got a soft spot for that collection of characters too. But that said, I'm really quite over it now. And I've been over it for a while. A quarter-century is officially too long a time to still be basking in afterglow.

Of course, the hometown Bears are in Miami tonight, a city which never fails to elicit memories of the one blemish to that 1985 team's record that year. Looking back at that clip I've included here, it's still rather amazing to me that the Dolphins victory that Monday night 25 years ago remains the highest-rated telecast of that long-running program. (Oh, and of course it's even more incredible to see O.J. Simpson in the booth).

That game gets brought up every time the Bears have to face the Dolphins—even though Miami had a more recent occasion in which they ruined a Bears perfect season. But perhaps because Chicago didn't end up winning the Super Bowl that year, maybe everybody just forgot about it.

The Blackhawks' First Quarter: It isn't just Kaner that's hungover

I can't say that the expectations this season were nearly as high for the Blackhawks, even with a Stanley Cup to defend entering this year. As noted in the predictions coming into this season, nobody really liked this team's chances to repeat. A lot of that probably had to do with the heavy roster turnover, but there's also just the simple fact that repeating as champions in the National Hockey League is something that doesn't happen all that often.

Still, the Hawks came out of the gate in quite the sluggish fashion to begin the 2010-11 campaign, and you name the excuse, most everybody will have cited it. In addition to the new faces, there was the short break following the Cup win, the simple number of games they had to begin this year (no other team in their division has played 20 games yet), and of course, the injuries that are basically unavoidable in any hockey season.

So now one-fourth of the way through this season after winning it all, there's still a great deal about this team that remains to be determined. After getting the annual "circus trip" off to an encouraging start last night, here's how the first quarter of the title defense began.

Week 10 Power Rankings: Being a gracious loser

Week 10 got off to a somewhat rocky start with the Thursday night game being back in the mix and forcing me to commit to my picks earlier than I'd been growing accustomed to. I wish I could blame my lackluster 53 points on the scheduling change, but—as has been the story most of this NFL season—instead many people's picks suffered as the result of underdogs emerging victorious over presumptive favorites.

I suppose that my most regrettable pick, in hindsight, would be placing 11 points on the Steelers in a Sunday night game they pretty much got smacked around in, but even had I ranked it lower, I'm not sure it really would have made a difference when considering how the whole slate of games seemed to go.

Again, the best part about confidence pools as opposed to fantasy games remains that at the end of every given week, the participants can only blame themselves for how placed their bets. This past weekend left me with a number of games that I could say I should've gone the other way or should've ranked lower, but in the end, it's not all bad news.

Things I made while offline: Tom Petty

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: An ink & color pencil drawing of musician Tom Petty 

Moving right along: Another fantasy update

Your author is hard-pressed to think of something that can cause an immediate loss of interest quite like hearing about someone's fantasy team. Having friends and co-workers recite their rosters with no real purpose other than to gloat about conquering leagues you're not involved in seems quite banal and pointless, no?

That said, the author knows full well that you the dear reader probably also couldn't give two shits about whatever fantasy team he's gone and created after so many years of taking that road less traveled where non-participation seemed cooler. Now the author has multiple fantasy teams, and while he tries mightily not to bring those into the other posts here on BMC that you might actually read, every once in a while, if for no other purpose than to help him remember who he had on such teams in a given year, he likes to keep a recorded entry of how he's done.

This is one of those times. Your non-interest in the remainder of this post is understood.

Week 10 Picks: Short on time

No graphics or anecdotes this week as it's a little hectic with offline business this weekend, but as previously mentioned, my picks are now apparently being submitted on Thursdays anyway.

Thursday Night Pick: Popping a cherry

So we're back to that part of the NFL season where there's a game on Thursday nights and my usual plan of waiting until late Saturday night/early Sunday morning to finalize my picks will have to change. Considering this is the first year that the one group is using the PoolHost site for that particular confidence pool, this week is going to be test run for whether I'm allowed to alter my picks after submitting them in a moment after I post this. That said, I will still be waiting until later this weekend to post my remaining picks for the weekend's slate of games, but in the meantime, I'm forced to submit my first prediction for Week 10.

The saving grace here is that tonight's game features a pretty even matchup, so while I'm waiting to see how many people might fail to submit a pick, how (or even if) they'll be penalized, and whether I'll be able to modify the rest of my picks, I think that it works out well for this first time through with my Thursday pick only being for a single point. At worst, I'll suffer the most minimal damage possible and wouldn't lose any ground to those who fail to submit picks if the site—as I fear it might—simply allows users to submit the rest of their picks and only deprives them of their one-point bets instead of, say, maximum damage by costing them 14 points as the administrator of the pool used to do in seasons past.

So let's get Week 10 rolling:

The Bears' Second Quarter: They aren't who we hoped they were

I remember a friend and I looking at one of the large posters in a local bar with the Bears' 2010 schedule on it earlier this season when things were still going well, and the nervous feeling I had about how deceptive some of the supposedly easier games were before the much tougher second half kicked in. My prediction at the time was that Chicago could finish 8-8.

So would that be considered optimistic now? When the team's first quarter of this campaign ended, I thought we'd be entering this update with a bit stronger of a winning record than the 5-3 mark the Bears enter their ninth game with. I suppose a .500 finish isn't terribly unrealistic at this point, but considering the fast start to the year, anything less than a playoff appearance would be a pretty crushing disappointment.

And another year without getting into the postseason would also likely mean Lovie Smith is also out of a job. Entering the second half of the year, you can bet that it's the head coach's job that will likely be most talked about if the Bears can't remain in the playoff picture.

Week Nine Power Rankings: What you miss can be just as important as what you get right

Maybe this past weekend would have been the most appropriate Sunday yet to break out that Browns sweatshirt. What's that? I didn't even pick Cleveland, you say?

Well, yeah, I didn't. But I also didn't bet heavily against them, either. So when you consider that New England's loss was the only real upset of the week and it was only one of two games I missed last week (the other being a single point I had gone back and forth on before placing on the Colts), the eight points Cleveland cost me on my picks made my final score of 82 points hold up quite nicely.

In many ways, last weekend served as further proof of why I still love the confidence pools far more than any of the fantasy sports, as all participants are required to play with the same pieces but it all comes down to the order they elect to play them in. And maybe there were some other contests that earned me points in this past weekend's games that helped, but ultimately, my first place finish in both confidence pools was thanks in large part to the minimal damage caused by my mere two incorrect predictions.

Things I made while offline: The Map

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: An ink map of the route from my home (at the time) to art class 

Week Nine Picks: In which the NFL appropriately has two CFL-quality teams play in Canada

On paper, it would appear that the Bears shouldn't have much to worry about when they go up to Toronto this weekend for what counts as a home game to the otherwise winless Buffalo Bills. Yet, here I am feeling increasingly cynical about all the many things that could go wrong and how Chicago will find a way to screw this one up, thus becoming the national joke for the week by becoming the first team to actually lose to the lowly Bills this season.

It won't be the lowest-ranked game among my confidence pool picks this week, for sure, but it will be a game I'll probably be watching through squinted eyes most of the day and feel the queasiest about entering this week's picks.

You know it's a weird week when the Chiefs and the Raiders are battling it out for the top spot in the AFC West. And actually, the Atlanta Falcons are also involved in a game for sole possession of the lead in their division with ... the Tampa Bay Bucaneers?

I never would've guessed that those two games would turn out to be as pivotal as they will be, but who knows what game's really going to turn out to be the one that surprises the most.

Final Thoughts on 2010 MLB Season: Everybody's a fool

Another Major League Baseball season concluded sooner than I had anticipated with an ending that was certainly more exciting for some, but left me pretty lukewarm about the whole postseason. Indeed, we went through October with only one of the seven series played going the maximum number of games—and even that one set that did go to a winner-take-all finale was pretty ho-hum.

Still, I'm sure my bitterness has a little something to do with the fact that my pick before this season began was, of course, my favorite team in the league. And seeing as how their season slowly unraveled until finally falling apart altogether in the Division Series with the eventual World Champions, it's hard to get too enthusiastic about the eventual result—especially when you consider how I felt about Barry Bonds and the Bay Area fans that mostly remain apologists for him.

But looking back, the way this season played out certainly defied most every expert's initial prediction—which is usually the case when the New York Yankees somehow aren't involved in the Fall Classic.

Week Eight Power Rankings: Purple Personnel Disasters

I've long held a passionate dislike for the Minnesota Vikings, so forgive me for really enjoying how miserably this season has gone for them so far. This past weekend offered a helluva twofer on opportunities to bask in the team's continuing struggles as not only did Gramps find himself having to be carted off the field for a couple scratches to his chin, but then the much-ballyhooed reacquisition of Randy Moss essentially blew up in Minneapolis' face.

That was a delicious double-whammy to savor since the Monsters of the Midway had the week off and spared me any further Chicago embarrassment for at least one week. Still, I got to take a little more joy in that purple & gold pain and can hardly wait to see the next disastrous chapter in this sorry Vikes saga.

The Minnesota loss to New England in the late game was one of the couple higher-end picks I actually had right last week. With only 13 games on the schedule, the couple others I missed hurt and I only wound up with 54 points for my picks on the weekend.

As you could probably guess, that unimpressive total score didn't stand out for the week, but it doesn't look all that bad when you put the races for the year into perspective.

Things I made while offline: Athletes Playing Poker

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: An ink & color pencil drawing of various professional athletes playing poker 

Week Eight Picks: FAIL No More

At the end of last season, the St. Louis Rams had been the best team in my "Power Rankings" over the course of the two years I'd been tracking my picks in the confidence pool(s). They were the only team I had never picked to win a single game.

That streak continued almost halfway into this third season of tracking picks here on BMC, but at long last, it appears the week has finally arrived when I indeed actually select the perennially lowly Rams to actually emerge victorious. It's been a long time coming, I suppose, but when you consider St. Louis has already won as many games only seven games into this year as they had won combined in the previous two, it's about time I cave in.

Besides, they're currently 25th in the Power Rankings this year, so it appears the reliability of ending up in the positive by picking against them every single time has finally worn off.

When this is how I'm leading into my picks this week, it's surely a sign the Bears have an off-week. That, or the Brett Favre pecker story has finally, um, gone limp.

Zzzzzzzzz: Another fantasy update

Your author is hard-pressed to think of something that can cause an immediate loss of interest quite like hearing about someone's fantasy team. Having friends and co-workers recite their rosters with no real purpose other than to gloat about conquering leagues you're not involved in seems quite banal and pointless, no?

That said, the author knows full well that you the dear reader probably also couldn't give two shits about whatever fantasy team he's gone and created after so many years of taking that road less traveled where non-participation seemed cooler. Now the author has multiple fantasy teams, and while he tries mightily not to bring those into the other posts here on BMC that you might actually read, every once in a while, if for no other purpose than to help him remember who he had on such teams in a given year, he likes to keep a recorded entry of how he's done.

This is one of those times. Your non-interest in the remainder of this post is understood.

Week Seven Power Rankings: I guess I should doubt myself more often

As usual, I was working Sunday afternoon and my momentary glimpses of the television screens only allowed me to catch scores where it appeared that most games wouldn't be going my way. Since the hometown Bears were the main attraction, DeAngelo Hall's Hall of Fame performance what I had to go on.

Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to learn I was in the lead in both confidence pools heading into Monday night, but unfortunately, I was going to need a Dallas victory—despite the fact that I had a point on the Giants—to secure a first place finish.

And then, of course, this happened.

So, the 75 points I earned last week with my picks ultimately made my fretting look somewhat silly.

2010 World Series Pick: The lesser of two mehs

I suppose that on the one hand, it was incredibly satisfying to see the Yankees get thumped by Texas in the ALCS because it's always fun to watch the Yankees lose. Considering that it feels as though they end up winning, you know, every other year, it's important to take a little joy in those rare occasions when they get flat-out embarrassed.

So now the final series of the 2010 Major League Baseball season is a matchup that I'm fairly certain absolutely nobody had penned in when the first pitch was thrown out on Opening Day. And that's certainly refreshing to get something other than the widely expected New York-Philadelphia World Series that had been a pretty popular expectation coming into October.

There's been some fairly entertaining moments so far this postseason, and I'm willing to bet that we could be in store for a solid final chapter to this 2010 season—even if the television ratings reflect a record number of viewers. I can't say, however, I'm terribly passionate about either team really winning. For me, it's more of a case of holding old grudges.

2010-11 NBA Predictions: Three's Company

I guess it's only appropriate that here in my third year of predictions for the NBA on this blog, all the talk this off-season has focused on the likelihood of either another Lakers three-peat or the "Big Three" in Miami. I fully expect those two teams to dominate a majority of the news cycle throughout this year's basketball season and that Finals matchup to be hyped every chance that the Mother Ship gets. Take one look at all the variety in their staff's picks for which team will be champions this year (or just look at the West), and you'll see what I mean.

Of course, here on BMC, this could also be the third time I forecast a Lakers-Celtics Finals. First year I did it, Boston didn't end up making it that far. Last year, I had hoped that maybe picking Hell-A would jinx their chances, but instead I proved to be right about the outcome—although off by a game for how long the series would go.

So really, who am I crapping about nobody going against the status quo here? While there's murmurs about contraction in the league with too many teams, you could probably count the number of legitimate title contenders on one hand this season. And you might not even have to use your thumb, depending on how close you want to get to that Oklahoma City bandwagon that's been gathering a little steam.

Anyway, while this season doesn't seem as wide-open as, say, the National Football League felt when it kicked off a few months ago, then that almost certainly means I'll improve on my 16/30 correct spots from last year, right?

You're right, Kobe, I won't get overconfident.