The Week After...Changing Obsessions
It is almost a week since the Great Democratic Electoral Triumph of 2006. (Best cartoon seen on it is once again by Toles.) I've read tons of initial analysis some of which wasn't even spin. I attended a professional political science conference with some insight into results as we can see them so far. No special insights from me beyond one observation I haven't seen. Will this election mean that Republicans will push W to get out of Iraq by 2008? No matter how that is answered, I do warn everyone that 2008 will not be a rerun of 2006.
I am now fully emerged from electoral obsession and returning to more ordinary pursuits.
What will they be? Some work needs to be done as my sabbatical plays out its last too months. In the upper Midwest you have to use these nicer days to make sure all is ready for our long, cold winters. I have birthday and Christmas shopping to complete. Plus, I'll switch my obsessive tendencies more toward my first love...football.
Before I knew what the word politics meant. Before I knew my own address, I was a football fan. My sister claims that when I was 2 or 3 I passed the TV with a football game on and stopped. It was over. I was hooked. I have no idea if this story is true, but I have no conscious memory of becoming a football fan. As far as I know I was born a fan. Yep, pre-programmed as a heterosexual female football fan. I've never been normal. There is a reason I've spent most of my days since the age of 5 in state institutional settings.
We are entering some of the best weekends of football with key college and pro games. I will watch a lot of them. I have a satellite dish mostly because of the NFL package. I had suffered enough watching whatever was the "local option" wherever I happened to be at the time. I don't enjoy trying to watch my favorite team at a sports bar. When I bought my first house I soon got DirecTV and escaped the programming decisions of others.
My first team was the Kansas City Chiefs. They were in the AFL when I started and our next two games are with old AFL rivals Oakland and Denver. Denver is the better team now and that rivalry rates a Thanksgiving night game on NFL Network. However, it is beating Oakland that still brings me the most pleasure. Let me explain with my simple rule about playing the Raiders...
Beating the Oakland Raiders is not only a good idea, it is a moral imperative.
Every true Chiefs fan understands completely. The rest of you can just wonder whose blog you've wandered into and how quickly you can get away.
posted by redbarb at 2:42 PM
5 Comments:
I don't know, crushing the Raiders these days is kind of like beating up the neighborhood bully when he's on crutches. There's some satisfaction, of course (he is the neighborhood bully, after all), but it's not the same.
As a Chargers fan, I have to admit I was pulling for Oakland to knock off Denver last week.
And when I saw that SD had beaten Cincy 49-41 I thought I had traveled back in time. I kept expecting to see Fouts and Winslow and Chandler and the original "46 Defense" (so named because they gave up 46 points per game). I wish I had bet the over line in Vegas.
At this point, the moral imperative of beating the Raiders is like making sure the stake goes through the vampire's heart and lodges solidly into the wood of the coffin. You can't let them rise again. In particular as long as Al Davis sits in his jogging suit and the network makes me look at him 20 times a game, the Raiders are still the Raiders and must be destroyed.
I'm looking for the Chiefs to try to hang a shutout on them. I imagine that it's been a real long time since they've managed that.
We find out today if Trent Green can return to full contact this week. They evidently gave him a long memory and what he called "how long can he do this without losing his concentration and temper" psych test last Thursday. With the injuries the Chiefs face on both sides of the ball, they could use the boost of the return of their starting QB even for just part of the game on Sunday.
Greetings!:
I realize that this is now a somewhat-old thread, and who knows if you will look at it again. Yet, if you do, what do you think about our problematic Redskins? Since you can see what is going on and I cannot, why is our defense so ineffective this year, though I gather they were better against Tampa Bay last Sunday? On offense, it goes without saying that Mr. Portis's absence is _MUCH_ felt, though he did not seem especially effective when he _WAS_ playing. Yet we can presumably put this down at least in part to his incompletely-healed injuries. To me, Mr. Campbell does not seem especially more effective than Mr. Brunelle was, though those who know much more than I have been giving him good marks so far. And this new Offensive Co-Ordinator does not seem to be making any real difference. Though, with seven losses to date, it might now be too late for the play-offs this year, one must hope for at least a similar finish to last year's. The question I cannot exactly answer is: Apart from the obvious negative effect of the injuries, why is this team not the one which went into the second round of the play-offs last year? And will the trigger-happy Mr. Snyder pull the plug on Coach Gibbs at the end of the season if signs of a turn-around are not forthcoming before season's end?
Hoping this finds you well,
J. V.
Problems with the Washington Redskins
Jvaughn, from what I've seen the problem in Washington starts with the owner. He keeps treating the team as if he is playing fantasy football. He loads up on players without any sense of how well they fit together as a team. The result is continues futility. Hiring Gibbs as coach hasn't helped as he hasn't seemed to be willing to take this owner on and just tries to do what he can with what he has. I am spoiled as a Chiefs fan (no not with playoff victories). I am spoiled by an owner who doesn't try to be a football executive. He hires the guys and let's them run it. At times he hasn't hired well, but he has never tried to act like he knows how to run a football team. When the owner is also the GM, who fires the GM when he goes bad? No one and the result is the Redskins and the Raiders now that Al Davis seems to have lost his football skills.
As for the quarterback, all I can say is that the young guy can get better. Burrel is well past his prime and will never be really good again.
One often hears about team chemistry these days, and evidently it counts for at least something! Yet I have not heard about too much dissention on the Redskins, though _MAYBE_ a little has begun to emerge at the end of this disasterous season. I obviously have never been in a locker room with Coach Gibbs, but, based on his public persona, he does not strike me as one who is a tough disciplinarian, though there is debate as to how well tough discipline works now in these days of guaranteed contracts, etc. It is reported that his players love playing for him, but where are the results? Since you say, and you may well be right, that Coach Gibbs does not stand up to Mr. Snyder and at least request some new players of his liking from him, do you feel he is intimidated by him? He seems to always speak well of him. Hopefully we will hear of some meaningful changes after the Super and Pro Bowls, and may the draft also be good to us if we have a significant number of picks which will be well made!
J. V.
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