Sunday afternoon

September 11, 2005 12:30 pm

I am sitting here on my Mac laptop watching the Sunday season opener for the Seahawks. They are losing right now 20-14 to the Jaguars. The Seahawks aren’t really my team. I have had to follow them the most because that is what I have been used to in five years in Seattle. It’s amazing how local teams get all the coverage. I’m a Bears fan, tried and true, even through the worst of it. I have a Bears banner hanging up on the wall. The games start here at 9am in Alaska. Pre-game shows start at 7:30 or 8. That’s really early compared with the fact that I grew up watching the Bears kickoff at noon.

Football is the game that I love to watch the most. I think the most perfect aspect for me is the amount of games. Sixteen games over seventeen weeks. Makes each and every game super important. I have always thought that baseball could cut out games every season. A few years ago, the Mariners tied an almost 100-year-old record of winning 116 games. That still means they lost 46 games—a month and a half’s worth of games. Who can follow 162 games a year? I wrote off the Seattle Mariners this year 2005 really early on in the season. What’s the point? But with football, a team can still make a playoff run with a mediocre 8-8 record. They are still in it. Hockey and basketball have too many if you ask me at 82 games, especially when you factor in the LOOOOOOONG post-season they have. And I love the playoffs in football—one game, one winner, advance to the next round, none of this best-of-seven stuff. Football has only three weeks of post-season and then the crème-de-la-crème of sporting events…the Superbowl. So what I am watching today, the games and the highlight reels and the analysis, will culminate in a final explosive event that almost everyone in the United States watches. I am building up to it for something that feels like another Christmas payoff. Remember that Christmas feeling when you were seven? I feel that every year on Superbowl day after following it all season. And I feel that I can follow all of it, every team, every week. There is really only one day to follow—Sunday. I can devote time on Sunday night to follow it, catch the highlights. With baseball, you have to check in every bloody day. With football, you can talk about a game for a week—with baseball, it’s gone in less than 24 hours, and they start to blend together.

I just like the football season. I find it focused.

Let’s see, what else have I done this weekend? I read the first Sin City graphic novel by Frank Miller—I have the first edition trade paperback from before it was subtitled The Hard Goodbye. I have been talking to the tech guy at work, Sergio, and he reads comics too so he lent me A Dame to Kill For. We rented the DVD and are going to watch it tonight when Amy gets home from work.

She also rented The Punisher movie from last year. I hadn’t seen it yet. I’m debating the issue in my mind on whether I liked it or not. There was some really good stuff in it but some weird aspects to it. I never read much of the comic book series of The Punisher, I only knew the basic story. The movie did that part well. I don’t think Travolta did a good job as a mobster—it just didn’t come off. I think I am going to rate it three stars on Netflix (3 out of 5).

I have been reading The Volleyball Coaching Bible and it does NOT live up to its grandiose name. You’d think something named a Bible would have everything in it, like basic patterns and formations, rules and regulations. No, this is pretty much a coach’s pep talk book, especially a coach that has done this before. Roger Thomas, another English teacher from Bremerton, got it for me as a going-away present because he was the volleyball coach there. I should have gone to those camps that he runs during the summer. I’ll be fine with this. I know how to run the basic patterns after looking at a few graphics on volleyball.com. Yes, there’s a volleyball.com. My assistant coach, Susan, will be running the conditioning parts of the practices and then I will do up a schedule of drills. I can run this—Eric Bergeson taught me a lot when I was assistant coach for soccer under him a few years ago at South Kitsap. I know what to do.

I am still reading The Lord of the Rings and have to snatch it away from Amy because she has started re-reading it too. I am also reading some other Tolkien stuff, especially that History of Middle-Earth series. I am into The Return of the Shadow, showing the process of writing the beginning of LOTR; The Book of Lost Tales I, and The Silmarillion. And I am so glad that we have Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia by David Day for a handy reference. Putting it all together gets to be fascinating. Makes me want to create a world, it really does.

I am losing some of my football picks. Some of the teams are better than I thought they were. I will add them all up later.


Week One NFL

(My picks are in bold)
New England vs. Raiders win
Chicago vs Redskins loss—I bet with my heart on this one
Bengals vs Browns win
Broncos vs Miami loss—Miami got better
Texas vs Buffalo win
Saints vs Carolina loss—stupid to bet against New Orleans today
Jets vs Chiefs loss—Jets usually start out strong, today they don’t score
Seahawks vs Jaguars loss—this is Mike Holmgren’s last year, I guarantee
Tampa vs Minnesota win
Titans vs Steelers win
(I am 5-5 at the Sunday halfway point)
Rams vs 49ers
Cardinals vs Giants
Green Bay vs Detroit
Dallas vs Chargers
Colts vs Ravens
Eagles vs Atlanta

It is a very very rainy day here in Nome, Alaska. Very rainy. A good day for football.