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.

Things I made while offline: Abstraction

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 abstract ink design

Week Seven Picks: Uneasy Rider

Procrastination could've been a double-major for me in college, and what else is there to say about this week's slate of games other than I don't feel terribly confident about a single one of them too many of them. So could you blame me for waiting until the very last minute to submit this week's picks? I could just as easily see me going 2-12 this week—and even that might be lucky.

Then again, maybe that's a fine sign that in the batshit craziness of this NFL season thus far, I might end up getting lucky. Anything's possible, I suppose, but this week's lineup features a number of pretty interesting matchups that is sure to cause a pretty good amount of variety in everybody's picks.

And all of that said, now watch everybody in both pools have the exact same picks.

Week Six Power Rankings: Absorbing a few more hard hits

"Funny" would be the wrong word to use, but here we are again one year after Malcolm Gladwell had an article published in the New Yorker asking, "How different are dogfighting and football?" And now that the NFL is talking about stricter penalties for devastating hits "flagrant and egregious violations" of current rules after a weekend in which those types of hits most of us have come to love football precisely for garnered an awful lot of attention, the Gladwell piece seems even more relevant.

Of course, I consider myself to be one of the more fortunate ones who never played the sport on any competitive level other than pick-up games and my experience with the sport has never placed me any closer to it than being on the sidelines for covering high school games. I suppose that might make me less of a man to the more macho types, but I've seen Alzheimer's and thanks, but I'd rather avoid anything that seems more likely to cause my brain to take on those characteristics.

Of course, you wouldn't know how healthy my brain is by some of my picks this year. Actually, looking back on how I was faring at this point in the season last year, the 71 points I earned with my picks last week brings me to a total that is nearly 100 points behind what I had back then. My brain cites this season being more unpredictable than last, obviously.

Things I made while offline: Dee's Disease jersey

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 and marker design of a jersey for the Dee's Disease fantasy basketball team