(Bill Simmons)
My stepdad is a complicated man.
On the one hand, he's a man of routine. Falls asleep at 8:30 every night, wakes up around midnight, then heads into the basement and watches weird TV shows for the next three hours. Does all his reading in the john. Wears those old-school white T-shirts, tucked into his tighty-whities for reasons only known to him. Every time a celebrity dies, he calls me and does Clemenza's "Oh, won't be seeing him no more" routine from "The Godfather."
Clemenza enjoys some wine after discussing the death of Johnny Ramone with the Sports Guy's stepdad.
On the other hand, he's a man of the moment, the kind of guy who buys a motor scooter "just in case there's a gas shortage or something." During my 15th birthday dinner, he drove us home with his head sticking out of the sunroof. When my buddy Geoff and I were fledgling filmmakers in high school, my stepdad agreed to wear a blonde wig and stab me to death in a movie called "Psycho Stepdad." At a New Year's Eve party right before Y2K, he sneaked into the restaurant's basement and turned off all the power at midnight, waited a few minutes while everyone panicked, then turned everything back on and returned upstairs, grinning from ear to ear.
In 20-plus years, I haven't figured him out yet. And that's what makes those rare moments of lucidity so surprising, when he turns into the Italian Confucious. For instance, three of the four most important lessons I ever learned in life came from my stepdad:
1. The only person you can count on in life is yourself.
2. You can't be happy with someone else until you're happy with yourself.
3. Don't lie and don't break your word.
(Note: The fourth lesson came from my Aunt Jen, who taught me, "If you're interested in a girl, always meet her Mom because all girls end up eventually turning into their Moms, with no exceptions." We may need to have Bill James figure out a formula for that one.)
Here's why I'm telling you this: My stepdad turned 60 last March. When we were discussing this milestone recently, he mentioned how he had reached a point professionally where he wasn't surprised by anything anymore. He had negotiated every possible deal, handled every possible client, been involved in every possible business situation. He could see things happening before they happened, just by reading the signs and remember a time when he had been in the exact same situation. And his brain was still working as well as ever.
"It's nice," my stepdad said. "It's a nice time. I can't explain it. Only someone my age would understand. You reach a point where you can just see everything coming before it happens."
Well ... isn't that the goal of every football gambler?
You reach a point where you see almost everything coming, where you've wagered on every possible game and suffered every possible result. You build a template of time-tested rules that prove themselves over the seasons, then abide by those same rules. You target every omen and trend from week to week, almost like the gambling version of an anti-virus program. You develop an innate sense of where the general public is headed with certain games, then quietly move the other way. Your experience becomes the ultimate weapon.
I'm not there yet. For example, in last week's column, I jinxed myself with the following section: "I can't stand the slate this week -- too many road favorites, two many weird matchups, not enough lively home dogs. If someone offered me 9-7 right now, I'd probably take it."
So what happened? I finished 9-7, learning a valuable lesson in the process: Never go out of your way to ask for mediocrity. But that's the thing about gambling. You wager, you learn, you wager, you learn. Eventually, you might even end up like my stepdad -- great at your job, satisfied by your craft, completely at peace, as good as you're ever going to be.
(With the added bonus that you'll be spending every winter in St. Bart's.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"For the cost of a cup of coffee, you can help Jeff George be an NFL quarterback."
So what do we make of Week 3? Other than that it looks like a train wreck?
Up until this season, Week 3 was easy -- just take the remaining 0-2 teams and anyone playing their first home game. That's 10 wins right there. But the league feels broken this season; I can't remember this many shaky offenses at the same time. Arizona, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Dallas, the Giants, maybe Pittsburgh, maybe Cincy ... that's over one-third of the league. The scoring situation is SO dire, Len Pasquarelli even wrote his annual "Give Jeff George a chance" column six weeks earlier than usual.
Do you realize that the 2-0 Jags have scored 20 points, amassed 401 total yards and converted three of 23 third-down conversions? That Garcia and Vinny combined for six INT's last week? That 21 of the 32 teams are averaging less than 20 points a game? That Dallas leads the league in total yardage, yet the Cowboys have scored 36 points?
From a fantasy standpoint, it's been a disaster -- we could be remembering the Great Roto Drought of '04 some day, much like the Irish remember the Great Famine. From an NFL standpoint, teams like the Colts and Vikings gain gambling value because you need to score 25-to-35 points to hang with them, and only eight-to-10 teams have the horses. For example, the Titans would lose to Indy nine out of 10 times -- they need to be near-perfect just to compete.
And so I'm re-thinking everything on the fly. Maybe the Ravens CAN win 10 games with a terrified Kyle Boller throwing to semi-pro receivers. Maybe Dallas CAN win 10 games with a decomposing backfield. Maybe the Steelers CAN win with a rookie QB who's so young, even his teammates are openly deriding him. I'm prepared for anything this season: Three 14-win teams; an 0-16 team; a 12-turnover game; Lamar Gordon averaging minus-1.0 yards per carry; the Ravens D outscoring its offense; Rich Gannon winning the MVP; Pat Summerall correctly pronouncing "TJ Houshmandzadeh," maybe even Mike Martz or Dave Wannstedt outcoaching someone else in a game. Anything's possible. Anything.
As Michael Conrad would say at the beginning of "Hill Street Blues" every week, "Let's be careful out there."
Onto the Week 3 picks ...
Home teams in caps
APPETIZERS
MIAMI (-1) over Pittsburgh
Note to everyone in Pittsburgh: You weren't going anywhere with Tommy Maddox. End of story.
So maybe this works out for the best. Rothlissbsvdgtehger comes in sooner than expected, takes his lumps for a few weeks, then makes strides in December when they need him most. Why couldn't this turn out like Bledsoe with the '93 Patriots? Same body, same cannon arm, similar talent -- what am I missing? Remember, Bledsoe struggled for the first three months, took his lumps for a 1-11 team and eventually led them to four straight December wins. No reason this couldn't happen for Rothlissbsvdgtehger. It's all for a greater good.
With that said, you can't ask for a scarier situation than ...
A) A rookie QB making his first start on the road
B) Going against an 0-2 team with a top-five defense.
I'm cashing in this week ... but I'm keeping my eye on this Rothlissbsvdgtehger guy. You never know.
One other Miami note: About six weeks ago, Dan LeBatard wrote a column wondering why Dave Wannstedt still planned on running an offense that revolved around Ricky Williams, even though Ricky was busy walking the earth like Jules in "Pulp Fiction." As Dan pointed out, great coaches adapt to what they have. Wannstedt wasn't adapting. I remember reading it and thinking, "Wait a second. Maybe he's a lousy coach, but even Wannstedt isn't dumb enough to run the same offense without Ricky."
Well, he's dumb enough. One offensive TD in two weeks. Forty rushing attempts for 90 yards. You would think he'd revamp the offense and center everything around Chambers, Booker and McMichael, consequences be damned.
You would think.
CINCY (+3) over Baltimore
Speaking of coaches, Marvin Lewis is one of those guys who seems competent enough, but then somebody mikes him for an entire game, and he's just screaming, "Come on guys, let's get it going, this is our time!" -- 840 times over the next three hours, and you can't look at him the same way ever again. Poor Marvin needs to watch some Marty Schottenheimer tapes, maybe even steal the "We need to protect our house!" and "Look at me ... look at me, son ... look at me!" routines. It's just not working right for him now.
As far the Sports Guy's take on Deion's comeback ... well, you get the point.
(By the way, I think I speak for everyone here: We don't care about Deion's comeback. Really, we don't. We don't care. We just don't. We really don't care. Please leave us alone. We don't care. We don't care. We just don't care. Seriously, we couldn't care less. Nobody cares. I don't care, you don't care, we don't care, nobody cares. None of us care. Stop writing about him. Stop interviewing him. Stop arguing about him. Stop running features about him. Nobody cares. NOBODY cares.)
My stepdad is a complicated man.
On the one hand, he's a man of routine. Falls asleep at 8:30 every night, wakes up around midnight, then heads into the basement and watches weird TV shows for the next three hours. Does all his reading in the john. Wears those old-school white T-shirts, tucked into his tighty-whities for reasons only known to him. Every time a celebrity dies, he calls me and does Clemenza's "Oh, won't be seeing him no more" routine from "The Godfather."
Clemenza enjoys some wine after discussing the death of Johnny Ramone with the Sports Guy's stepdad.
On the other hand, he's a man of the moment, the kind of guy who buys a motor scooter "just in case there's a gas shortage or something." During my 15th birthday dinner, he drove us home with his head sticking out of the sunroof. When my buddy Geoff and I were fledgling filmmakers in high school, my stepdad agreed to wear a blonde wig and stab me to death in a movie called "Psycho Stepdad." At a New Year's Eve party right before Y2K, he sneaked into the restaurant's basement and turned off all the power at midnight, waited a few minutes while everyone panicked, then turned everything back on and returned upstairs, grinning from ear to ear.
In 20-plus years, I haven't figured him out yet. And that's what makes those rare moments of lucidity so surprising, when he turns into the Italian Confucious. For instance, three of the four most important lessons I ever learned in life came from my stepdad:
1. The only person you can count on in life is yourself.
2. You can't be happy with someone else until you're happy with yourself.
3. Don't lie and don't break your word.
(Note: The fourth lesson came from my Aunt Jen, who taught me, "If you're interested in a girl, always meet her Mom because all girls end up eventually turning into their Moms, with no exceptions." We may need to have Bill James figure out a formula for that one.)
Here's why I'm telling you this: My stepdad turned 60 last March. When we were discussing this milestone recently, he mentioned how he had reached a point professionally where he wasn't surprised by anything anymore. He had negotiated every possible deal, handled every possible client, been involved in every possible business situation. He could see things happening before they happened, just by reading the signs and remember a time when he had been in the exact same situation. And his brain was still working as well as ever.
"It's nice," my stepdad said. "It's a nice time. I can't explain it. Only someone my age would understand. You reach a point where you can just see everything coming before it happens."
Well ... isn't that the goal of every football gambler?
You reach a point where you see almost everything coming, where you've wagered on every possible game and suffered every possible result. You build a template of time-tested rules that prove themselves over the seasons, then abide by those same rules. You target every omen and trend from week to week, almost like the gambling version of an anti-virus program. You develop an innate sense of where the general public is headed with certain games, then quietly move the other way. Your experience becomes the ultimate weapon.
I'm not there yet. For example, in last week's column, I jinxed myself with the following section: "I can't stand the slate this week -- too many road favorites, two many weird matchups, not enough lively home dogs. If someone offered me 9-7 right now, I'd probably take it."
So what happened? I finished 9-7, learning a valuable lesson in the process: Never go out of your way to ask for mediocrity. But that's the thing about gambling. You wager, you learn, you wager, you learn. Eventually, you might even end up like my stepdad -- great at your job, satisfied by your craft, completely at peace, as good as you're ever going to be.
(With the added bonus that you'll be spending every winter in St. Bart's.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"For the cost of a cup of coffee, you can help Jeff George be an NFL quarterback."
So what do we make of Week 3? Other than that it looks like a train wreck?
Up until this season, Week 3 was easy -- just take the remaining 0-2 teams and anyone playing their first home game. That's 10 wins right there. But the league feels broken this season; I can't remember this many shaky offenses at the same time. Arizona, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, Dallas, the Giants, maybe Pittsburgh, maybe Cincy ... that's over one-third of the league. The scoring situation is SO dire, Len Pasquarelli even wrote his annual "Give Jeff George a chance" column six weeks earlier than usual.
Do you realize that the 2-0 Jags have scored 20 points, amassed 401 total yards and converted three of 23 third-down conversions? That Garcia and Vinny combined for six INT's last week? That 21 of the 32 teams are averaging less than 20 points a game? That Dallas leads the league in total yardage, yet the Cowboys have scored 36 points?
From a fantasy standpoint, it's been a disaster -- we could be remembering the Great Roto Drought of '04 some day, much like the Irish remember the Great Famine. From an NFL standpoint, teams like the Colts and Vikings gain gambling value because you need to score 25-to-35 points to hang with them, and only eight-to-10 teams have the horses. For example, the Titans would lose to Indy nine out of 10 times -- they need to be near-perfect just to compete.
And so I'm re-thinking everything on the fly. Maybe the Ravens CAN win 10 games with a terrified Kyle Boller throwing to semi-pro receivers. Maybe Dallas CAN win 10 games with a decomposing backfield. Maybe the Steelers CAN win with a rookie QB who's so young, even his teammates are openly deriding him. I'm prepared for anything this season: Three 14-win teams; an 0-16 team; a 12-turnover game; Lamar Gordon averaging minus-1.0 yards per carry; the Ravens D outscoring its offense; Rich Gannon winning the MVP; Pat Summerall correctly pronouncing "TJ Houshmandzadeh," maybe even Mike Martz or Dave Wannstedt outcoaching someone else in a game. Anything's possible. Anything.
As Michael Conrad would say at the beginning of "Hill Street Blues" every week, "Let's be careful out there."
Onto the Week 3 picks ...
Home teams in caps
APPETIZERS
MIAMI (-1) over Pittsburgh
Note to everyone in Pittsburgh: You weren't going anywhere with Tommy Maddox. End of story.
So maybe this works out for the best. Rothlissbsvdgtehger comes in sooner than expected, takes his lumps for a few weeks, then makes strides in December when they need him most. Why couldn't this turn out like Bledsoe with the '93 Patriots? Same body, same cannon arm, similar talent -- what am I missing? Remember, Bledsoe struggled for the first three months, took his lumps for a 1-11 team and eventually led them to four straight December wins. No reason this couldn't happen for Rothlissbsvdgtehger. It's all for a greater good.
With that said, you can't ask for a scarier situation than ...
A) A rookie QB making his first start on the road
B) Going against an 0-2 team with a top-five defense.
I'm cashing in this week ... but I'm keeping my eye on this Rothlissbsvdgtehger guy. You never know.
One other Miami note: About six weeks ago, Dan LeBatard wrote a column wondering why Dave Wannstedt still planned on running an offense that revolved around Ricky Williams, even though Ricky was busy walking the earth like Jules in "Pulp Fiction." As Dan pointed out, great coaches adapt to what they have. Wannstedt wasn't adapting. I remember reading it and thinking, "Wait a second. Maybe he's a lousy coach, but even Wannstedt isn't dumb enough to run the same offense without Ricky."
Well, he's dumb enough. One offensive TD in two weeks. Forty rushing attempts for 90 yards. You would think he'd revamp the offense and center everything around Chambers, Booker and McMichael, consequences be damned.
You would think.
CINCY (+3) over Baltimore
Speaking of coaches, Marvin Lewis is one of those guys who seems competent enough, but then somebody mikes him for an entire game, and he's just screaming, "Come on guys, let's get it going, this is our time!" -- 840 times over the next three hours, and you can't look at him the same way ever again. Poor Marvin needs to watch some Marty Schottenheimer tapes, maybe even steal the "We need to protect our house!" and "Look at me ... look at me, son ... look at me!" routines. It's just not working right for him now.
As far the Sports Guy's take on Deion's comeback ... well, you get the point.
(By the way, I think I speak for everyone here: We don't care about Deion's comeback. Really, we don't. We don't care. We just don't. We really don't care. Please leave us alone. We don't care. We don't care. We just don't care. Seriously, we couldn't care less. Nobody cares. I don't care, you don't care, we don't care, nobody cares. None of us care. Stop writing about him. Stop interviewing him. Stop arguing about him. Stop running features about him. Nobody cares. NOBODY cares.)
