My segues will suck today, per usual. But hell, I watched Antonio Pierce on Sportscenter this morning attempting to segue out of the Penn State story and into the week's NFL action and he looked very uncomfortable doing it.
At least you can't see me squirm.
Any question about Green Bay? At 8-0 they're sitting pretty atop the NFC North with the 6-2 Lions nipping (somewhat) at their heels. Who's gonna beat them? Probably not Detroit. Other than Detroit, the NY Giants are the only other team on the schedule that could give the Packers trouble.
Those Giants are sitting atop the NFC East at 6-2, two games up on the Cowboys and (most likely) the Eagles. Yesterday's win against my Pats was pretty big, but I'm thinking that Philly will continue to rise out of their early season malaise and take the division. Forget about Dallas, too self-destructive. The Redskins? Grossman is no soothsayer or Oracle, G'night guys.
They keep telling us that the NFC South is a good division, and maybe the Saints and Falcons are good teams - we have the remaining season to discern that. Tampa's 2010 season was a surprise and this 2011 season has got to be a disappointment, they aren't making the playoffs this year. Carolina's QB is the goods, but forget this year. Go with New Orleans to take the division.
The NFC West is a joke, at 7-1 the easy money's on San Francisco. No other team comes close, at 2-6 Seattle and Arizona aren't picking up 5 games on the 49ers.
Alternatively, the AFC has some real logjams, and obviously all of the teams involved aren't making it to January.
In the AFC East there's the Jets, Patriots, and Bills are knotted at 5-3 with the Pats-Jets game next weekend looming large. The Patriots cannot defend against a high-school squad. The Jets? They're pretty good on D and have the talent to field a good offensive team yet somehow don't. I think Buffalo's a bit of a fluke, their early season success won't continue into January. I'm afraid that the Jets are gonna take this division.
Similarly, the AFC North is the home of badass football, with Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincy all sitting at 6-2. The upcoming schedule will sort things out, and no one knows if Cincy's for real. I hear that their defense is good, and see on highlight shows that Andy Dalton is the kids the Redskins should've drafted this year, but ya gotta be skeptical about those Bengals. I'd love to pick the Ravens but they've laid a few eggs (pun intended) the past few weeks. The Steelers are the best choice out of the 3 teams knotted up, but Baltimore's fully capable of de-throning the reigning AFC champs.
There's some division called the AFC South that used to include the Colts. Apparently the Houston Texans are sitting at 6-3 and most likely to win this division unless 4-4 Tennessee goes on a tear.
Nah. Texans.
What is it about the West? The NFC West is awful save for the 49ers and the AFC West is wildly inconsistent. KC, San Diego, and Oakland are 4-4 and Denver is 3-5 and maybe heating up. KC got clobbered by Miami yesterday - nope. San Diego seems to sleep through half of every game (too much beach time?). Oakland might be the best choice here, especially if Palmer gets comfy in the Bay Area.
It's one of those seasons where I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see a re-match of the Packers-Steelers Super Bowl. I can't imagine any other NFC team pushing the Pack out of the picture, unless it's Philadelphia. The AFC is the more interesting conference, it's not a stretch to see Pittsburgh, Baltimore, or the Jets making it to the Big Game.
We'll see.
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I was about 10 or 11 when I fell in love with football, all thanks to the Redskins being a good team and my grandfather's ardent support of them. I had it planned out. I was gonna play ball locally and in high school then play for Penn State and get drafted by the Skins. It was all figured out.
Well, except that I wasn't good at football.
The Penn State thing? I guess that came from them being pretty good at the time, I can't recall. The luster wore off and that was that.
This weekend, the luster wore off in Happy Valley and their sainted Coach Joe. Mike Wise at the Washington Post wrote a decent opinion piece about this story in today's paper. More interesting, and sad, was the actual Grand Jury indictment of Paterno, Penn State's AD, and pretty much everyone involved in the cover-up of the alleged child sexual abuse of D-coordinator Jerry Sandusky.
In law school, they teach you that "you can indict a ham sandwich." It means that a grand jury hears testimony that is not obstructed by the rules of evidence. There's no defense counsel present to object to anything. So, the allegations are just that....allegations.
Of course, common sense thinking will make the average person say "where there's smoke, there's fire." Usually, I can put on my lawyer hat and intellectualize a case.
......but when there's kids involved, I really can't.
The word is evil. That's the one that comes to mind when you read the Indictment of Mr. Sandusky. You give a person a little bit of power and some of those empowered people will abuse it. He was a respected part of the Happy Valley institution. I'm willing to be that there are encomiums that have been heaped upon his name during some of his teams stirring victories. And, oh by the way, he was so great with the kids.
No, perhaps, we know why.
Paterno and the AD are going to deny direct knowledge even though the indictment indicates that they had knowledge of.....something. I'll never understand how a man in Paterno's position could pass the information he'd been given "up the chain" of command and then believe in his heart that he'd done all he could.
This is so much worse than Ohio State or Miami - that was about money, greed. Whatever crimes were committed weren't anything like the alleged abuse of the young boys at Penn State. If any of this - if even a part- is true......the storied Penn State football program may (perhaps should) become a distant memory.
'cause there'd be hell to pay
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