Oscar Nominee Picks: "A new twist," they say

So right after we had a year in which I nailed all 10 Best Picture nominees in only the second year of that category's expansion, the Academy decided to change the number once again. Maybe. It kinda depends, you see.

The number of nominees first got changed two years ago because The Dark Knight didn't get nominated because 10 nominees meant twice as many films could get the bump at the box office in the name of returning to the ceremony to the wider net of its early days. This year, in the name of suspense, the number of Best Picture nominees will not be known until the announcement of all nominees tomorrow morning. Could be 10. Or it might be five. Or anywhere in between.

It's actually an intriguing idea, but there's still some concern about which films really stand to benefit from the new process. For the prognosticators, it's something of a bitch. There's a lot of rankings floating around, with lines usually being drawn somewhere after the sixth or seventh film. Dave Karger of Entertainment Weekly was saying it might just go back to being five this year.

Oh, and as for the actual ceremony itself, Billy Crystal is now hosting after Eddie Murphy dropped out for production issues that seem to have happened so fucking long ago that I can't recall any significant details. Whatever, Crystal should ensure a bit smoother show than last year.

Conference Championship Picks: All things seeming equal

Whereas I typically harbor some pretty severe doubts about the chances of at least one of the NFL's final four teams every year, this seems like the first time in quite a while that I feel like all four could realistically become champions. The strengths and weaknesses of each team have been well-documented, but all that remains to be seen is which teams will play more to their strengths than the others.

While my initially predicted Super Bowl matchup for this year became an impossibility as a result of last weekend's results, my predicted overall winner remains a possibility. And, on that weird-but-irrelevant note, my Super Bowl prediction from last year is now a possibility for this year. As for the Niners, well ... they feel very much like the sort of team that could make me pay for continually underestimating me. Their success this season probably bolsters the idea that not being involved in a confidence pool this season might have been a good idea, as San Francisco probably would have ranked pretty low on the Power Rankings (OK, actually, Cincinnati would probably have fucked with me even more).

Anyway, I suppose that I'm looking forward to today's games more than usual because it seems that the four possible Super Bowl matchups two weeks from now are all more realistic possibilities to me than usually are this time of year. Even from a fan's "rooting interest" perspective, I'm not sure which teams I'm really "pulling for" at this point. If anything, I have a feeling that I'll simply be rooting for some close contests ... seeing as what I recognize now is that football season is coming to a close.

The Bulls' First Quarter: Complaints? What complaints?

Keeping in mind that this is a shortened 66-game season, the fact that the Bulls have more wins in less games played than the team that ended up with the best record in the league last season did at this "point" last last year should be encouraging. But then again, ever since the thrilling victory over the Lakers to open the season, Chicago's schedule has been rather favorable in these first 17 games. The Bulls beat both the Celtics and the Magic, and split a pair with Atlanta, but no World Champs (Dallas comes to town once in the third-to-last game of the season), no Thunder (only one meeting this year .. in April) and no Heat (four meetings this year, with first one coming next Sunday and two in April) yet.

Make no mistake, the Bulls were picked by nearly everybody to return to the Eastern Conference Finals this season, but only a handful had them getting anywhere beyond that. And after the astounding effect Tom Thibodeau had in his first year last season, the expectations are a bit higher. The fan in me simply is just not going to be able to truly imagine a return to the Finals until the Heat are eliminated. Last year, after taking all three meetings in the regular season and holding home-court advantage, Chicago was ousted in just five games. So far, both clubs look good again right now, but even assuming the Bulls were able to take all four meetings this year, what more should I really make of it? "Yeah, and ..."

This post also comes at a time when Derrick Rose is nursing a toe injury that he already said he might have tried to come back from too soon. While turf toe proved to be a lingering, but not all that hampering issue last year, you wonder how much of an issue the star's toe could play this season. Is Rip Hamilton going to be able to step up against some stiffer competition in Derrick's absence?

There is still a ways to go this year, but winning 14 of the first 17 gives you more reason to believe that the team can do better than what was expected rather than worse.

Divisional Playoff Picks: Appropriately Enough, The Eight Division Winners

In the rush to get my picks posted last weekend, I did not indicate how my initial gut reaction was to pick the Broncos. Really. It was.

It was a fitting end to the weekend, really. The one game I dismissed as probably being the biggest blowout turned out to be the closest of any in the first round. The one game I probably could have cared less about ended up being the only one I was really able to watch in its entirety. And, of course, because I (like everyone else) picked the Steelers, it ended up being the only game I got wrong last weekend.

As I've mentioned, I did not participate any confidence pools, and thus, didn't feel inclined to weekly picks this season. So last weekend marked my first bit of predicting since the beginning of the season when I made my stabs at where everybody would finish.

That bit of business, by the way, was an improvement from the miserable performance of 2010. This year, I had 13 of the 32 teams in their correct spots, correctly predicting the finishes of every team in two divisions (AFC East and NFC North), got half the teams right in one division (NFC South), only had one right in three others (AFC South, AFC West and NFC West) and drew blanks on the two remaining divisions (AFC North and NFC East). I had seven of the 12 playoff teams right, two overall seeds correct and three of my four predicted participants in next weekend's Championship games.

And two of those three are also my Super Bowl teams, so I guess that probably gives away two of my picks this weekend ... assuming I'm staying with that original prediction, of course.

The Blackhawks' Second Quarter: You Keep Me Hangin' On

For this quarterly update, I used the photo from a game that came at about the midway point between the last update and this new one, a December 11 overtime win over San Jose that was in the team's "Best Photos of 2011" gallery. That win was back when the Hawks were still in first, and things were going quite swimmingly.

Currently, however, Chicago is in the midst of a three-game skid. And if the playoffs were to start today, the fact that the team is not in first place means they would actually have to open the postseason with the Red Wings. I wish there were some sort of consolatory statement about St. Louis currently had the advantage of having played an extra game or something, but instead, the Blues end up one point ahead of the Hawks after 41 games because of one extra overtime loss. Sorry, that probably doesn't help at all, actually.
 
Still, as it currently stands, there's a lot more to like than dislike about the team. And unless you really believe the Blues can maintain a pace that would amass them something like 115 points (I know I sure don't), it seems safe to assume that Chicago will very likely be contending for home-ice throughout the season's second half.

Wild Card Picks: The most difficult predictions ever

It is nothing short of a total nightmare trying to post this from my phone right now, so this round of predictions is not going to be anywhere near the usual breakdown of regular season numbers it normally was when Wild Card weekend began breaking down various otherwise meaningless numbers. Oh, and I'm typing this in HTML right now. So there's that too. The title to this post has nothing to do with the actual games themselves, but rather with trying the absolute nightmare that is this Blogger interface on an Android phone. I highly doubt I will ever try taking this route ever again.

For now, I'll merely say that whatever improvement I had this season prediction-wise was not really anything to brag about. I'll almost still certainly make note of the specific number of improvements in one of the future rounds when I'm actually typing at a computer. For now though, we'll make do with just getting to the goddamn picks already.

(Oh, and I obviously intend to track the usual other groups of, ahem, "expert" picks, but you'll have to forgive me for not being able to post their predictions this round. I may come back and add them in later, but I really wouldn't count on it if you are that random reader whom has accidentally stumbled upon this site, taken the time to read this far and has absolutely no idea what the hell I've been talking about.)

The Bears' Fourth Quarter: Ugh

I looked back and saw that I ended my Third Quarter thoughts by still clinging to playoff hope. Playoffs, ha!

In actuality, the final four games of the year were a brutal extension of the year's longest losing streak, capped off by a meaningless win in Minnesota that I didn't bother going out of my way to watch. While Josh McCown proved to be definitively less disastrous than Caleb Hanie, it's too bad that the first game was in Green Bay. His dunk on the crossbar in that game is the sort of otherwise empty gesture—it came after a two-point conversion, still down by 18—that should probably best be used as the summary graphic for the quarter. Yeah, the team finished .500. But that was good for a third place finish in the division and a few games out of the playoffs.

Meanwhile, the two teams that finished ahead of the Bears only seem to be getting better. The championship window for this Bears squad has been closing for a couple years now. That Super Bowl appearance? The one they lost? That was five years ago.

I realize that this year took an unfortunate turn with injuries to arguably the two biggest stars on the team, but there's no reason that somebody deserves to be held accountable for the team not being prepared for something like this. While the Bears had weapons to run the ball with, the backup plan for Jay Cutler at quarterback was astoundingly painful. This will not be a year that Bears fans are terribly likely to recall with many fond memories.