NFL Predictions: Week Seven

Atlanta at Detroit (-2.5)

The Lions have started off the season so well I can’t help but wonder if the team got some of that government bailout money being poured into Michigan over the last few years. Regardless, how coach Jim Schwartz handled defeat last week made it seems like he was the first person to ever be disappointed in Detroit. And now instead of people talking about how surprising it is that the Lions are 5-1, it’s become a common predication that by Week 16 the team won’t be any more intimidating than that lion from “The Wizard of Oz.” Seriously, Schwartz, take a little pride in getting the team off to a great start—I don’t think the Lions have started a season 5-0 since going against the Christians. What, too soon? Meanwhile in Atlanta, the Falcons are at a very complimentary 3-3. Their losses have been awful and their wins none too stellar. Their most impressive win this season would easily be beating the Lions in Detroit; conversely, the Lions losing would be their worst lost. Detroit covers.

San Diego at New York (Jets) (+1.5)

This year teams have been running on the Jets like a treadmill. Everybody is just running like a nose during allergy season. Harnessing unnecessary amounts of energy, the Chargers are coming off a bye week and a three-game win streak. Forget the Lions, this is the best start for San Diego in nearly a decade. New York has LaDainian Tomlinson now but I don’t think they use him enough for the long-time Charger to get any “revenge” on his former team, even though that’ll be a go-to narrative for the broadcasters and media. More importantly, Sanchez has face-planted since being rated Forbes’ most overpaid NFL player. Truly, he has soiled the name “Sanchez.” Philip Rivers is going to put up some real numbers for this game. Chargers.

Houston at Tennessee (-2.5)

This game has carried absolutely zero weight in the divisional race in recent, or distant, memory. But we now live in a post-Peyton Manning era. Don’t kid yourself, he’s not coming back this season or next season. Or ever again. Sure, Peyton MIGHT take another snap, but he’s not coming back in the way Tom Brady or Drew Bress came back from their respective injuries. Fortunately, Manning has shown such continued (albeit subtle) disgust with the play-calling and time-management of head coach Jim Caldwell that I think Manning will shrug away offers to be a football analysis and take the far more impressive route of actually coaching teams in the future. 0-6 is bad for any team, but it’s absolutely disastrous for a team that didn’t know it was in a “rebuilding” season a month ago. Manning will reveal a darker side of himself before this is all done and Caldwell will finish the season on the unemployment line. Oh, uh, and Houston gets within the margin. Probably wins, too. You know, for whatever reason.

St. Louis at Dallas (-14.5)

Both teams have more bandages than an army of Civil War re-enactors and this game will be largely over-shadowed in both cities by Game Four of the Texas Rangers-St. Louis Cardinals World Series. During the off-season, I really thought St. Louis was one good receiver away from winning their division this year; which was meant as half a testament to Sam Bradford and half an insult to the NFC (“Is This Even Football?”) West. With the crop of wide receivers that got shuffled around this season, I figured at least one player’s car would get jacked while they drove through St. Louis and be forced to play on the Rams to earn enough scratch for a plane ticket home. But nope. No Sidney Rice, Santonio Holmes, Braylon Edwards, Steve Smith, Plaxico Burress or Chad Ochocinco. Hell, in August, the Rams probably could have picked up Terrell Owens and Randy Moss for a combine twenty-five bucks. What I really hope is that the Rams didn’t get turned down by those last two receivers who felt they had better options—as Owens recently overdosed on pain medications (again) and Moss, more embarrassingly, retired. This all brings me back to the point that St. Louis has more problems than just a receiving corp. Still, with so many unknowns in the air, I have to think the Rams will do what JFK could not and keep from getting killed in Dallas.* Rams within the margin.

Green Bay at Minnesota (+7.5)

Rookie Christian Ponder is getting his first start as the Vikings’ QB and his game stats will be put up again Aaron Rogers—who is rewriting the record books after (hopefully) giving up on ridiculous mustaches styles. While the Packers have won 12-straight games since last year, they spent most of this week talking about how they messed up against the Rams. Green Bay is putting up nearly 33 points per game and haven't allowed the losers to be within a touchdown since Week Two. Rodgers put up a 141.3 rating last time he was in the Metrodome and I have no reason to think he won’t have the Vikings fans eat an equally big piece of “shut-the-hell-up” this time. By the fourth quarter, the Vikings will probably just put their few dozen remaining fans in shoulder pads and have them finish out the game so that the real players can beat the traffic home. Packers cover.

Indianapolis at New Orleans (-13.5)

A rematch of the Superbowl nearly two years ago and both teams are as low as they’ve been since then. While Peyton Manning’s injury has been excessively documented (in this post, no less!), the Saints recently lost their own Payton (head coach, Sean) to a knee injury when a player was tackled into him last week. Now Payton and Peyton will likely be in their respective coaches’ booths and I almost expect/want this game to play out like 22 headless bodies running into each other for three hours. This might be too much fantasy though. More likely, Drew Brees will be able to give all the players some sideline speech about “going out and winning one for the Limper” and everyone will cheer and proceed to crush the Colts like a glue factory. Yeah, the Saints will cover.

Season: 12-12 (I’m so close to being incredible at this!)

*Oh come on, don’t tell me that was too soon.

Awarding the Vice-Presidents: Unbalancing the Ticket (part three)

Four presidents in a ten-year span—each immobilized physically, intellectually or politically. Overlapping that time, due to death and resignations, the country also only had a vice-president for 5 years and 9 months in a 16-year period. All in the shadow of the Civil War that would claim over 600,000 causalities. That nobody cared at the time is a testament of horrifying negligence and a frustration to all who saw absolute disaster written on the wall.

Most Treacherous: John Cabell Breckenridge

Yes, this man, John Cabell Breckenridge, beats out Aaron Burr (who shot Alexander Hamilton) as the most directly violent man elected one “accident” away from the United States presidency. Any political incompetence John C. Breckenridge displayed while VP was overshadowed by his “P,” James Buchanan—who never reconciled his beliefs that South Carolina could not legally secede from the Union but also, that he, as sitting president, could not do anything to stop them. While Buchanan’s reaction to the outbreak of war has been characterized as weak or indecisive, Brechenridge has to be far more appalling as the former vice-president fled into the Deep South in 1861, joined the Southern army, became a major general and eventually promoted to Secretary of War, for the Confederate States of America (CSA). As Secretary, Breckenridge predominately focused on saving CSA government buildings and documents so that their side of the story would not be lost in history. After the official end of the war, Breckenridge and a band of outlaws continued to harass/kill Northern forces like some real-life Josey Wales. Feeling a proverbial noose tighten around his neck, Breckenridge fled to Cuba, then England, then the Middle East until 1869, when he cemented his role as a villain on the show "24" by being granted complete amnesty by President Andrew Johnson.

Least Deserving of a President’s Support: Andrew Johnson

Rough transition, I know, but so was Johnson’s rise in the world of politics. Unlike Abraham Lincoln—who also grew up relatively poor—Johnson became petty, vindictive and just flatly mean-spirited toward his rich and/or educated peers. Also, unlike Lincoln, Johnson remained staggeringly illiterate until sometime after he got married. In 1864, it looked as though Lincoln would not be reelected and so replaced his VP with Andrew Johnson, a southerner who might pacify the fears of southerners thinking about rejoining the Union. Lincoln and Johnson won but things got off to an abysmal start when Johnson became uncontrollably drunk in the Senate Chambers and rambled loudly, and occasionally incoherently, about his life. Oh, and this was during the man’s own inauguration to the American vice-presidency. Johnson defenders—I repeat, his defenders—point out that the Vice-President may have consumed courageous amounts of alcohol in an effort to cure himself of typhoid fever, which can be caused from ingesting food contaminated by feces. So yeah. Shortly after ascending to the Presidency in 1865, Johnson asked all former slaves to just go back to work on the plantations and found himself saved from impeachment by a single vote. He was reportedly buried with a copy of the Constitution but it could have just as well been some pages torn from a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as nobody really gave a fart about Johnson and figured him to be as incomprehensibly stupid in the afterlife as he was here on Earth.

Loneliest: William Wheeler

In 1876, the Republican party had the usual problem of picking a vice-presidential candidate that had always plagued both parties’ conventions—and essentially still does. Eventually, somebody said, “What about Wheeler?” to which everyone else, including Wheeler himself, laughed. The next day he was nominated under the slogan, “Who the hell is Wheeler?”—a slogan later replaced by, “Seriously; who again?” On a personal level, Wheeler was by all accounts affable, quiet and had a level of morality that’d make Jimmy Stewart’s ‘Mr. Smith’ look like Joe McCarthy. However, Wheeler also didn’t drink that much and was a widower with neither children nor immediate family. Wheeler made few, if any, friends in D.C. due to his own political indifference and rarely talked during the senatorial debates he presided over. After four years, he moved back to northern New York and hilariously…no, wait, tragically…died so quietly that people were not actually sure when he died at all.

“Oh come on!”: Thomas Andrews Hendricks

In 1884, Thomas Andrews Hendricks ran as the Democratic Vice-President and in the campaign said that his running mate, Grover Cleveland, should withdraw from the race after a mid-level paternity scandal broke out. Hendricks then decried the Emancipation Proclamation and lambasted the 14th Amendment. After the successful election, the 65-year-old Hendricks demanded that his dangerously unqualified friends be given government jobs; but ultimately he had the good sense to drop dead less than nine months after taking office. Around this same time, President Cleveland became extremely sick and many thought would also die; which would have decimated the stability of the country, as the leaders in the House and the Senate (in line for political succession) had not been chosen yet. Fortunately, Cleveland recovered. Three years later, the Democrats nominated Allen Thurman to be Cleveland’s next vice-president. Thurman was 75 years old.

Richest (probably): Levi Parsons Morton

Levi Parsons Morton was one of the richest men in the country by the 1870s and a precursor to the titans of industry that’d dominate politics thirty years later. Morton, though, owed his financial success to international banking with his company L.P. Morton & Co. To put that in perspective, that “& Co.” stood for Junius Morgan, father of J.P. Morgan. In 1880, Morton rejected the VP nomination, preferring instead to try for Secretary of the Treasury—a position that gets to hire several hundred more experts (or cronies) than the vice-president. Instead, Morton was appointed ambassador to France, which he accepted and hosted numerous parties for the next several years. An incredible benefit of all his parties was that he secured funding for the Statue of Liberty project—which had stalled when too many people asked, “what’s the point?”

Damn you! You blew it up! Damn you all to--no, wait, it just hasn't been built yet.

In 1888, Morton won the American vice-presidency and was generally regarded as a non-partisan overseer, judicial and independent—even from his own party. Obviously such incompetence led to him being dropped from the ticket four years later. As a notable epilogue, Morton ran for governor of New York in 1894, won, served a single term and retired. That gubernatorial campaign in 1894 personally cost Morton some $36,000—adjusted nowadays to over $860,000.

Best “Way to Jinx It!” Moment: Theodore Roosevelt

“Let’s Kick Roosevelt Upstairs” was the unofficial slogan for party bosses and industrialists tired of dealing with the progressive Republican New York governor Roosevelt. Mark Hanna, Chairman of the Republicans, was one of the first and only people to openly acknowledge the possibility that the nominated VP could become President, even though it had happened several times before. Hanna was convinced TR was a madman who was always campaigning for himself. In Roosevelt’s defense, he could not sit still for more than a few minutes and earnestly enjoyed the rigors of speaking tours in the days pre-dating sound systems. Upon the McKinley-Roosevelt election victory, Hanna disturbingly said to the President, “Your duty to the country is to live for four years from next March.” McKinley, though, got the last laugh by getting in the way of a bullet nine months later and died.

Least Alive: James Sherman

VP James Sherman and President William Taft combined for over 530 pounds, but few political successes. In 1912, the presidential election went crazier than a drunk Al Davis and was capped off by the death of the incumbent Vice-President about a week before the voting. While being dead would end most political careers, Sherman’s name had already been printed on posters and ballots across the country. Republican leaders grudgingly said one Nicholas Butler would become the next VP should Taft/Sherman win, but the show was over and the sitting powers lost. Still, Sherman, a dead man, was voted to remain as the nation's Vice-President by nearly 3.5 million Americans (23%). So, you know, pretty good showing.

NFL Predictions: Week Six

San Francisco at Detroit (-4.5)

There is reason to celebrate in Detroit but the turn around seems like too much now. A month ago, 10-6 would have been a great season record for the Lions; now such a record would elicit pity, mockery or at least disappointment. The Lions are looking to go 6-0, which means I have to break out some real history books to find precedent. Ah, yes, here it is. The last time the Lions started 6-0 was in 1956. This was not only during the Eisenhower administration, but still within the first term. Richard Nixon was a young, spunky politician from California. Elvis Presley appeared on TV for the first time weeks earlier. Neither Ron White nor Larry Bird was born yet. The Rams were in Los Angles, the Colts were in Baltimore and no human had ever been in space. This was a time that pre-dated both Hulla-Hoops and Barbie. And, I swear to God, the 5-0 Lions continued their winning streak that year by beating the San Francisco 49ers 17-13. And because history can be creepy, I predict the same score. Niners within the margin.

Buffalo at New York (Giants) (-2.5)

New York could bring in Lebron James, right? I thought that was the talk at some point a little more than a year ago. He isn’t doing anything else right now, besides maybe growing fat from accidentally inhaling fumes from McDonald’s food during his commercial tapings. The Bills have beaten good teams and they had one loss that really just kept them honest. Across the field, the most impressive things the Giants have mustered is some well-organized computer hack into the NFL Statistics Mainframe to doctor Eli Manning’s season QB rating to a suspiciously (Peyton) Manning-esque 102.3. New York football fans wouldn't move up-state anyway. Bills.

Houston at Baltimore (-5.5)

The Titans are flexing and Texans’ Mario Williams is out, which means Houston will sooner choke on their mouthpieces then finally claim a division title. If they sack anybody, it’ll probably be their coach. Conversely, the Ravens have a defense that stops runners from even falling forward. Continuing, the Ravens are rested and studied. With a weakening receiving corp, Matt Schaub will likely throw more TDs to the Ravens than Texans. “Fun” Fact: Houston Texans has never defeated Baltimore in four meetings. Fun “Fact”: Ray Rice will carry at least one Texan into the end zone and then spike the defender in celebration. Ravens by a good chunk.

Dallas at New England (-4.5)

Tony Romo doesn’t realize there are four quarters in a football game. If Dallas had a 10 point lead in the fourth I still wouldn’t pick them. Patriots running back Ben Jarvis Jeremy Green-Ellis (that’s one name) plowed through the Jets last week with a fervor and enthusiasm akin to kid getting a brand new bike. With how Tom Brady has been throwing the ball, maybe Mr. Five Names didn’t think he’d ever get to run and so when he did he made the most of it. I also like that the Patriots are chasing a team in their division for a change. They’re not in any real trouble, but I like seeing at least one drop of sweat from the annual Superbowl contenders. Still…they don’t have a reputation for charity. Patriots cover.

New Orleans at Tampa Bay (+3.5)

In the first week I suggested Drew Brees rename his city Drew Orleans, but now with the added benefit of adding a city nickname: The Big Breezy. Beyond that, the entire state could be called Drew-isiana. Okay, that one is a bit of stretch. Anyway, the Saints have devastated Tampa Bay in their last two trips there by a combined 69-13 score. And frankly, one of my proudest predictions this year was that Darren Sproles would fit into New Orleans like a drunken, thieving sailor—and he has marvelously. The Buccaneers got absolutely embarrassed by the 49ers last week—which was doubly embarrassing because it was the 49ers. Any team with any semblance of pride or perseverance would come back the next week with the unrestrained energy of a “The Price is Right” contestant. But against the Saints? Tampa Bay won’t. New Orleans by at least a touchdown.

Minnesota at Chicago (-2.5)

After extending his contract over the off-season, Adrian Peterson has got to be getting a Barry Sanders-feeling. Minnesota is the worst in what is becoming a rather formidable division and there is no real hope on the horizon. Donovan McNabb is becoming a liability for the Vikings, collapsing like so many Metrodomes before him. Speaking of which, a Minnesota tax hike will help pay for the new stadium but I don’t think the Vikings will be much more motivated to win as a repayment for Johnny Q. Taxpayer—who didn’t even get a chance to vote against the new stadium via some referendum. Meanwhile Los Angeles football fans have gotten a little louder in the last few years, wanting a local team, yet again. After all, the city is likely going to take a double-hit, losing the NBA season for the Lakers and, less tragically, the Clippers. Notably, the Vikings’ stadium contract is up after this year and so there are more than rumbles about the Vikings moving to L.A. This would follow the exact path of the Lakers, who were also originally from Minneapolis—which explains the team name, as Los Angeles boasts only a plethora of automatic sprinkler systems, not lakes.

As a gratuitous side note, I think the Clippers are also not named in honor of the hair stylists in Los Angeles but actually reference the famed hair salons of their original city: Buffalo. So obviously this means the Bears are going to win by at least three. Obviously.

Season Record: 9-9

Awarding the Vice-Presidents: Unbalancing the Ticket (part two)

“I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead and in my coffin.”

--Daniel Webster rejecting the motion to nominate him as vice-president.

Immortalized by Most Obscure Insult: Elbridge Gerry

Sworn into the office of the Vice-President at nearly 69 years old, Elbridge Gerry had little time to wield any new-found power before dying less than two years later in 1814. To the man’s credit, he had already originated one of the most immoral, and thus replicated, practices in American politics. Specifically, as governor of Massachusetts, he helped re-draw the voting districts so that the populations of his political enemies would only win a few areas. Upon seeing one of the obviously redesigned political cheats, a Congressman commented that, “the district looks like a salamander.” To which a friend said, “No, it’s far too ugly. Call it a Gerrymander.” And that’s how you (legally) keep down minorities.

"See! Illinois' 4th district looks like a salamander!

Or at least after I ran over one with my Honda Civic."

Worst Bookkeeper: Daniel D. Tompkins

I don’t know how one measures patriotism; and while I respect the men and women in uniform, I also know that they don’t, nor ever, fought for freedom for free. This is why New York Governor Daniel Tompkins had to personally raise $4 million from residents for militia payroll of a state that was being attacked by the British in the War of 1812. Long story short, America signed a truce to end the war and Tompkins got to be Monroe’s VP. As the second-in-command, Tompkins routinely showed up to the Senate chambers drunk and was investigated for $120,000 of New York state’s budget that went missing during the previous war. Incredibly, the state legislature agreed to let Tompkins off the hook, as ‘these things happen.’ More incredibly, Tompkins felt this forgiveness was not enough and demanded the state pay him ten grand for his exceptional work as governor, on top of his governor's salary. New York fired back and sued the sitting vice-president, though eventually dropped the charges, as staying mad at the always-drunk Tompkins was just too exhausting. For whatever reason (and that phrase is going to get said a lot when talking about American vice-presidents), New York City renamed Clinton Square—after, the previously senile, George Clinton—to Tompkins Square Park.

Most Incredible Flip-Flopper: John C. Calhoun

In the 1820s, John C. Calhoun approached bitter enemies, and presidential hopefuls, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson in an effort to be either one’s vice-president with the seeming casualness of calling, “I got winner!” during a game of beer pong. JQA and Jackson, fully aware of Calhoun’s flagrant political ambition consented, perhaps under the impression that Calhoun would only become president after the president’s death, and who cares about politics when they’re dead? (Well, Zombie Nixon…but that’s for another post.) So JQ Adams (and Calhoun) win the election and Calhoun goes to work immediately bashing the president by writing newspaper editorials under the pseudonym, “Onslow.” I personally took the time to figure out that “Onslow” is actually an anagram for “Owl Son”…though there’s no real evidence that that means anything. Anyhow, Jackson, again “for whatever reason,” allows Calhoun to join his ticket and become the VP candidate for his victorious election in 1828. Unexpectedly, the still-Vice-President immediately started causing trouble for Jackson when Calhoun proclaimed that South Carolina had a right to secede from the Union in 1830. Prez Jackson responded by threatening to hang Calhoun (his own vice-president). Calhoun, knowing Jackson never bluffed in his life, resigned the vice-presidency. To shame the man for displaying neither political principles nor even courage or basic human decency, South Carolina made sure John Calhoun was put on the Confederate States of America $100 bill some thirty years later.

Victim of the Most Nonsensical Outrage: Richard Johnson

Politically handicapped by his personal life, Richard Johnson still managed to rise to the office of the vice-president under Martin Van Buren. Johnson’s critics leveled against him accusations of “outrageous” and “outlandish” behavior. Indeed, they said, he had a total disregard for propriety and morality. How so? Well, he lived with his biracial mistress, Julia Chinn. And, in fact, calling Julia his mistress isn’t really fair, as he treated her as an equal and they enjoyed a common-law marriage. On top of that, they had two daughters who Johnson educated and gave land to as wedding gifts. For failing to denounce his de facto (and deceased) wife and beautiful, married, one-forth African-American daughters, Johnson was dropped from Van Buren’s re-election ticket in 1840.

Most Likely to have been Gay: William Rufus King

The terms “gay” and “homosexual” didn’t exist as words, and barely even as concepts, in the 1850s. This means that historians/bullies will never know for sure if Franklin Pierce’s vice-president William Rufus King and (later president) James Buchanan were a homosexual couple. What is known is that neither man ever married, they lived together for 15 years and wrote several letters to one another that were fit to burn. Former Presidents Jackson and Quincy Adams referred to W.R. King as “Nancy” and “gentle.” Other contemporaries called the VP “James’ wife.” I consider myself fairy progressive and so won’t criticize King for his personal habits—which are still only speculative. However, he does deserve some condemnation for accepting the vice-presidential position after concealing his terminal case of tuberculosis. In a vain attempt to be cured by the Caribbean sun, King took his Oath of Office in Havana, Cuba…and died less than a month later. With a near Tobias Funke-level of ambiguity, James Buchanan would lament that without William Rufus King, he’d now need “some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”

Between Gerry and King, several American Vice-Presidents can be accused of ambition, deception and negligence, as can the political leaders who put them in such potential avenues of near-ultimate power. However, the next few men would prove just how damning voter indifference can be when fate throws a curve ball.

Awarding the Vice-Presidents: Unbalancing the Ticket

“At a convention nearly all the delegates leave as soon as they’ve nominated the president for fear one of them will be nominated for vice-president.”

--unknown, 1906

For the better part of over two hundred years, the President of the United States has been the most powerful man in the world, and the vice-president has been lost to public obscurity as punishment for political foibles or, in more extreme cases, crimes against humanity. Since the creation of the American vice-presidency, the office has been a political white elephant gift and the occupants have been mocked, derided and forgotten—with their only hope resting on the failing heart of their lone superior. While I will continue to mock and deride some of the men whose place in history is so anonymous it has not yet solidified, many more men’s histories will be dusted off and re-remembered in this series of makeshift awards.

The Original Buzz Aldrin: John Adams

Per the Constitution, “After the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice-President.” In one ballot, all 69 votes from the electorates went to George Washington and 34 second-choices went to Adams. The remaining 35 “second-place” votes were spread out and Adams was incontrovertibly the country’s first Vice-President (VP) and in a position nobody really understood. See, the section of the Constitution regarding the VP was almost an after-thought and basically written as everybody was walking out the door at the Constitutional Convention. From the beginning, people figured Adams could handle the ambiguity of the position, though still not the best fit for the presidency itself. For instance, Adams had several polarizing ideas--including that Senators’ positions would be hereditary. Regardless of his aristocratic leanings, Adams—while coming to the slow realization that the VP office can be isolating—has to be credited with having the clarity of foresight, knowing the public’s passion for legends. He is quoted as saying, “The history of our revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. [Ben] Franklin’s electrical rod, smote the Earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislatures and War.” That this is exactly what I know of American history is evidence of the man’s wisdom and warranted cynicism.

Worst Political Foil: Thomas Jefferson

With humility that cannot be understated, George Washington refused to run for a third term as POTUS; though the absence of his diplomatic leadership led to the country’s first (of thousands) political division. Thomas Jefferson was the nation’s first Secretary of State, which also made him the first to resign his post in less than 4 years due to frustrations with other Cabinet members and then-VP John Adams. Adams and Jefferson both desired the presidency more than any other man before them and peripherally resorted to tactics that’d shame (or inspire) modern political operatives. Unlike the first 8 years, this meant the President Adams’s No. 2 man (Jefferson) was also his main political rival. Like nearly every President after him, Adams tried to silence his critics—specifically with the Alien and Sedition Acts—which outraged Jefferson to the point of anonymously drafting critical resolutions decrying Adams and sending them to state legislatures. Perhaps Jefferson was being underhanded, but he never openly supported the Adams administration, and indeed risked incarcerated for his “seditious” writings.

Highest Kill Count (in office): Aaron Burr

As if to one-up the previous administration's frustrations with Vice-President Jefferson, now-President Jefferson allowed Aaron Burr onto his ticket in 1800. Burr, though, spoke his mind openly and was obviously going to be booted from Jefferson’s ticket come re-election. Before then, though, Burr challenged former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel because…well…there’s isn’t a specific reason. Basically both men has been in duels before (though neither had killed nor been shot) and in 1804, Burr was pissed and Hamilton was depressed. Some historians have speculated Hamilton was clinically depressed, as he had recently lost his son—who was killed dueling an Aaron Burr-supporter. To employ every specific legal loophole, Hamilton and Burr arrived at the dueling grounds at different times and neither brought their guns. Moreover, both of their seconds (i.e. best/worst friends ever) turned away from the duel so that NOBODY except the gunmen saw what happened. In all likelihood, Hamilton shot first, but purposefully shot high…indicating he was brave enough to duel but merciful enough to not kill (which was similar to what he did years earlier when dueling—I kid you not—future President James Monroe). Burr likely fired second and, definitely, struck Hamilton in the gut.

Now, this where the story gets stupid. (Thanks for the warning!) The men dueled in New Jersey, not D.C., and the states did not have extradition treaties; this meant nobody short of Batman could arrest the murderous Burr as long as he stayed in D.C. or any other state. Fortunately, Burr claimed unofficial residency in Crazytown and tried to start his own empire in the Midwest, which meant he could be arrested and was brought to trial for treason and murder. And here’s where the story takes an absolute nose-dive: Burr was released on the technically that nobody actually “saw” him shoot and kill (the Founding Father and Mr. Ten-Dollar Bill) Alexander Hamilton.

Pictured: Not an accurate representation; dumb.

Most Senile: George Clinton

While it would be a couple of years before America would have another murderer as vice-president, the voters wasted no time filling the country’s crazy-quota in the federal government. In 1795, George Clinton stepped down from the governor’s office of New York, citing his own deteriorating health and just generally being too old to keep up in politics. Nine years later, at age 66, Clinton decided he could at least be a more competent vice-president than the former VP, and now fugitive, Aaron Burr and joined the Jefferson ticket. Within weeks, Congressmen complained about the vice-president, who physically resided over the Senate, as vaguely outlined in the Constitution. Clinton was called old, feeble, incapable and "lacking any semblance of mind, intellect and memory." Clinton assumed the continuous insults were just his initiation and was outraged he did not get the presidential nomination in 1808. Astoundingly, the party leaders felt the best way to shut-up Abe Simpson--I mean, George Clinton--was to keep him as vice-president for the James Madison administration. A man whose memory was so frail he’d stop talking mid-sentence upon forgetting what he was originally talking about, was one heartbeat away from leading this infant nation. He died in office less than 4 years later and inexplicably gifted with this tombstone engraving: “an Illustrious Example of a Well Spent Life, Worthy of all Imitation.”

Yeah, that might be a sarcastic epitaph. But after reading about the vice-presidents to come, it’s really hard to tell.

NFL Predictions: Week Four

Okay, no more regular weak predictions; it’s time for some real week predictions.

Looking at some of my previous predictions, it might appear that I don’t really “get” football some weeks. However, I am one who “gets” new ideas and this week my idea is to pick against my better judgments. Admittedly, I don’t have enough natural courage to do what feels so wrong, so in order to make what I think are wrong predictions I had to down a couple of beers. I don’t even know if I want this to work.

Carolina at Chicago (-7.5)

Cam Newton should get his first real beating this game. This is Soldier Field, not some cushy home game in Carolina. More damning than that, The Kid Newton (copyright!) can no longer be underestimated and now defenses will be gunning for him, ala Michael Vick. Worst yet, Cam Newton doesn’t have a Lesean McCoy to help him out. On the other side of the field, the Bears have gotten smacked rather solidly by the Packers and the Saints—though those may very well be the two best teams in the NFL right now. Still, bears haven’t been wiped like this since those toilet paper commercials. Chicago has to be better than a 1-3 record; this is a game of dignity for them. Then again, as promised, I’ve been drinking. So I pick the Panthers to get within the margin.

Buffalo at Cincinnati (-2.5)

Are the Buffalo Bills real? I don’t know. It wasn’t too long ago the Broncos and the Bengals jumped out to something like 5-0 starts. Also, while beating the Patriots may count as a double-win in the AFC East, it was still only one game and the extra attention might be a heavier price than the benefits of the spotless record. Cincinnati is no better than Keanu’s team in “The Replacements” so this is the perfect game for Buffalo to lose and have respectable doubters—which is what’s necessary for a great team. And actually, Cincinnati may need to hire actual C-level actors in fill spots in their roster after the latest rounds of arrested Bengals. The team is nearly an endangered species at this point. Why the hell is a professional football player dealing pot? Is there really more money in that? Also, I predict Tony Dungy will jump off the Buffalo bandwagon with grace and speed not seen since the likes of Nastia Liukin. When was the last time anybody gave two snots about a Cincinnati-Buffalo game? More importantly, why is Cincinnati favored? This has the makings of disappointment. Bills.

Minnesota at Kansas City (+1.5)

Both teams lost to the Chargers and the Lions and any Madden ’12 team controlled by a kid over the age of 7. Literally, on the Monday evening news, there was a segment about how sports bar attendance is way down in the KC area. The whole city is just down like four flat tires. After the collapse of last season and the pure, uncut, throttling received by the Chiefs in the first two weeks, in KC there is less hope in winning than in an online slot machine. Even against San Diego, I think most people understood the Chargers were unusually ineffective—almost throwing the game, really. And speaking of throwing, Matt Cassel’s completion percentage is as inflated as Scott Pioli’s ego and just as expensive and helpful. The Vikings have been charitable, giving away their first three games. But I don’t expect anymore sympathy from them. Which, I guess, means I have to pick the Chiefs.

San Francisco at Philadelphia (no lines)

49ers, easy. No, wait. Eagles. No…49ers. Yes. 49ers. Wait. Wait. No. No. Wait. Yes. Yes! Eagles!

New England at oakland (+3.5)

Patriots got beat by the Browns last year and then devastated teams for the rest of the season. In fact, New England’s ability to bounce back from an, inevitably, embarrassing loss is plenty documented. Losing to the Bills after a 21-0 lead? It’s the worst tragedy in the New England area since that tanker spilled millions of gallons of hair gel along the coast—or so I assume happened a couple years back. And now the Patriots are playing against the Raiders? The oakland Raiders? I struggle to even capitalize the city, knowing it is neither a proper name nor a proper place. I don’t think there is a window in the entire range of drinking that can make me pick a proud Raiders team over an embarrassed Patriots team and still type coherently—or even remain conscious. I'm going to get damn close though. Whatever. Patriots.

New York (Jets) at Baltimore (-2.5)

Earlier this week NFL legend Joe “Sideburns” Namath mentioned how the New York Jets are kind of cocky—which is kind of like saying they’re from New York. Those not following football might need to know modern Jets like predicting Superbowl wins in the 1970s vein of Namath, but they haven’t had the decency to keep their promises. For whatever reason, Rex Ryan thought Ol’ Joe’s pointless comments were fighting words and basically told Namath to shut that withered old hole in his face before a pigskin is lodged in there. This basically reinforced the image I’ve had of the Jets for the last two years or so, that they are basically the punk teenagers of the AFC. They are arrogant, unaccomplished, hormonal and distracted by popular magazines and inappropriate shows on HBO. That said, I think they’ll play with a jalapeno this week and get the better half of Baltimore’s Joe Flacco. Lousy Jets. Think they're so great, just because they're actually doing something with their lives. I could have been a football player. Coach just wouldn't gimme a chance. I could've been great. I could've been anything. But now what...

Ah well. I'll get over it. Nothing wrong with a bunch of mistakes. Which the Jets know plenty about; which means they should win. So I'm taking the Ravens.

Say, ex-girlfriends like hearing about football predictions, right? Right? Guess there's only one way to find out.

Season Record: 5-7

The Scopes Monkey Trial: Hatred Trumps Comedy...at first

Recently, the Foo Fighters—led by my supposed doppelganger, Dave Grohl—performed an impromptu, tongue-in-cheek (though not another man’s cheek) roadside concert for the most infamous protesters since the WWI-era National Woman’s Party: The Westboro Baptist Church. While the resulting footage received some clapping approval from fans of the alt-hip-rock band, it further demonstrated the conclusive discrepancy between the sides of cultural toleration and fundamentalists. Indeed, the very flippant, disinterested and somewhat annoyed attitude embodied by the Foo Fighters is why social liberals are doomed until the rise of the next generation. Precedent? Well…it starts back in 1925.

In the wake of “social Darwinism”—a notion Charles Darwin himself despised—the Tennessee state legislature passed a law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Afraid that the La-Z-Boy factory and birth place of Red Holt was not enough to draw tourists to Dayton, local business owners convinced 24-year-old science teacher John Scopes to let his lawyer friends charge him with teaching evolution. Scopes agreed and the ACLU got involved and immediately made a spectacle of the small town. This got the attention of three-time presidential candidate, and eight-time Spelling Bee winner, William Jennings Bryan. Bryan’s moral high-roading got the attention of famed agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow. With as much inflated ego as any psuedo-reality TV show, all parties agreed the trial should be broadcast on national radio. And so we have the battle.

While the ultimate difference in the trial’s outcome was Scope’s confession, the pivotal difference in the public discourse, as much then as now, is that evolutionists saw/see the whole affair as an annoying display of willful ignorance, whereas the conservative right saw/see the trial as a trans-national holy war. The groups’ disparate enthusiasm of the trial as a whole shaped the outcome and how it is remembered today. The 1920s Christian fundamentalists in Tennessee were among the most outspoken against evolution being taught in public schools, going as far as to make this case a battle of two religions. Reverend John Roach Straton explicitly made the connection of evolution being a rival religion to Christianity, commenting, “[The question is] whether religion of the Bible shall be ruled out of the schools and the religion of evolution—with its ruinous results—shall be ruled into the schools by law.”

This holy war thought process turned the trial into an invasion by “this so-called science…with destructive forces which will destroy our civilization.” The fundamentalists felt they were under attack and at the brink of ruin. Many Tennessee natives wrote into their local papers for a call to proverbial, or literal, arms. The raw hatred toward this new science was a held as dogmatically important as the persecution of Christians over a thousand years earlier (fed to the lions, kicked out of England, etc.).

Rather than calling the Scopes Trial a war against ignorance and critiquing the Christian stranglehold on American politics, many intellectuals saw the trial as a joke with plenty set-up but with no real payoff. (Example: So the Pope walks into a bar...) Included in the group of occasionally smug intellectuals was W.E.B. Du Bois, who poked fun at Tennessee with his characteristic eloquence, calling it, “a great, ignorant, simple-minded land, curiously compounded of brutality, bigotry, religious faith and demagoguery.” The Butler Act, forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools, was a state law and did not directly affect other Americans--including Du Bois, who was a writer in Chicago. His and others’ interest in the state law was then more of a philosophical problem or passing conversation topic soon trumped by the Bears drafting Red “Shovel Face” Grange. Though Du Bois felt America’s reputation was being damaged in the international political arena, most European countries, lost in their “Age of Anxiety,” had much more to worry about in the 1920s than one of America’s state’s legislation (i.e. food, etc.).

Bryan and others’ irascible terror followed that if children were taught evolution, they’d actually be taught that there is no God, as if God were Santa Clause. He, and others, concurred that evolution eliminated the miracles of the infallible, thousand year old Bible. What the point came down to was whether the Tennessee people had the right to choose “...the kind of education they want.” This proposal eerily resonated in a lot of congregations, who then wondered if religion was a less informed education. This would have forced people to decide if ignorance is bliss but the inspiration behind Dr. Zaius, Reverend John Norris, stepped forward and bluntly elaborated, “The Bible and Evolution do not agree because the Bible is a fact and Evolution is not a fact.”

Armchair scientists believed, and enough still do, that this means evolution is open to speculation and reasonable doubt. Similarly, gravity could be labeled a theory, as people can only see its effects, but not the actual process. This corruption of science reaches "Stephen Summers" lows in resurrected discussions of the Scopes Trial, or evolution in general, thanks to eighty years worth of scientific advances and the damning isolation of Kansas. Granted the idea of evolution was still relatively new and even unsettling to people in the 1920s. The notion that mankind has physically improved implied that we were still evolving and could benefit the race by dropping the imperfections out of the gene pool. This was the straw man eugenics paranoia—which did not actually create a race of “straw people.”

"If you're a dumb straw man, don't you want to come to Kansas with me?"

Many 1920s commentators believed society was collapsing because of the supposedly lost morals of society, largely due to capitalism, big cities, and science. Of course the largest cities (New York, Chicago, etc.) were the most modern and were censured by religious conservatives. In a “whatever” logic that remains today, some saw that evolution was being taught in these big city schools, and thus explained why these big cities had the highest crime rates. Obviously then Tennessee would fall to crime and weakened morals if they allowed God to be killed in their children’s classrooms. Then the ideological battle was less ideological and stood more as a territorial battle of corrupt big cities invading the lives of regular, kind, patriotic, small town folk. However, the big city “elitists” really wanted to invade Tennessee as much as modern “elitists” want to move to Topeka.

And so after 8 days of court proceedings and nine minutes of jury deliberation, Scopes was found guilty (fined some moneys) and not really vindicated until the 1960s, when social conservatives saw Communist Russia as the most convenient scapegoat for the problems of the world. This can bring us back to 2011, when once again a social battle is being fought and will only end like how all conflict ends: when one side discovers that the conflict is stupid. In fact, that’s how almost everyone has ever won a war: by being the last to figure out that the fight is dumb. And in this case, the Foo Fighters are not likely to win the battle against the Westboro Baptist Church until their music is on the Oldies’ station.

(POST–SCRIPT: I needed to include this late-addition, yet incredible, epilogue.)

The battles fought by Westboro Baptist Church may take a back seat to reality much sooner than I originally thought. And no, I don’t mean with the repeal of DADT or the feuds with Anonymous or Fox News. I mean the Westboro Baptist Church response to the Foo Fighters. The response is a mp3 parody of the Foo Fighters' “Keep it Clean,” called “Try Unclean.” This parody is an audacious, fulminating, stupefying paean/folk song. And best/worst of all…it joins a list, on the Westboro website, of dozens of similarly baffling pop song parodies.

Personally, I have no reservations spreading the message of the WBC when the message has been toned down from protesting soldiers’ funerals. I just hope this reaches history students a hundred years from now.

NFL Predictions: Week Three

So Michael Vick got injured while waiting in the pocket...that's unexpected. More importantly though, he injured his neck. This means the only logical way to salvage the NFL's shortage of star quarterbacks (because let's face it, Tarvaris Jackson is just not bringing it), and capture the unique opportunity presented, is to surgically graft Peyton Manning's head on Michael Vick's body. Or visa versa. Or both. And actually, Sam Bradford hurt his finger, and he has one of the best fingers in the NFL, so there more than enough reason for Roger Goodell to create some kind of super-quarterback after the failed Tom Brady-beta robot.

Just serious.

Detroit at Minnesota (+2.5)

I'm not a believer in the Lions yet. Matt Stafford is good, maybe better than good, but the Chiefs were too good at running the ball in the first half of last week's game for me to think Adrian Peterson won't collapse from exhaustion before he collapses from getting tackled in this game. Granted, Donovan McNabb has been absolutely nowhere these first few weeks, but I think it's a re-learning curve--hurt by the lockout--and not athleticism in question. I also have a feeling too many football fans will be waiting for Brett Favre to come out of retirement for the next 10 years with the same senseless anticipation of “Arrested Development” fans waiting for a movie. All else being even, Vegas generally puts the home team in the hole by three points, which would mean 50% of gamblers think the Lions are at least a touchdown better than the Vikings. Which they're not. Take the points, take the Vikings.

Jacksonville at Carolina (-3.5)

Cam Newton's numbers are a little inflated just by the nature of professional football nowadays. That's not to say he hasn't surpassed expectations; he certainly has. Though frankly, I think getting the Panthers to within a touchdown of besting the defending Superbowl champs is more impressive than the aerial numbers Newton has thrown around. Also, is it me or does his name sound like a candy bar? It's like his name is Chewy Caramel or something. I'm just saying, I haven't wanted to eat an NFL player this badly since Phat Porterhouse got bumped from the B-squad on the '93 Cowboys. Maybe I should just stop writing these predictions when I'm hungry. Food or no, I think Carolina gets their first win--and by more than three points. Panthers.

Houston at New Orleans (-3.5)

This week the Texans finally get to prove if they are serious this year. I can't help but wonder if they're reading the reports of Peyton Manning's neck surgery treatments with trembling fingers.He was supposed to be out for the season, they surely stammered, not just six weeks! The optimists contend, though, that the Texans will win the AFC South and finally strip the Colts of their annual playoff spanking. It'd be an honor, really. Meanwhile, the Saints have assumed they're an elite team for the last two years, regardless of how they actually play. For a first time this season, I'd like to the Saints actually get out too a good start rather than spotting teams 18 points with 3 quarters to go. All this spanking, quick starts and honor seems rather circuitous when I could have just said the Texans aren't serious. Saints.

Kansas City at San Diego (-13.5)

KC lost Tony Moeaki, Eric Berry, Jonathan Baldwin and now Jamal Charles. And lost 89-10 in a two-week span, against the Lions and the Bills no less. Just as bad, San Diego lost their season-opening game to K.C. last year, so don't expect them to overlook the Chiefs. Meanwhile the majority of the Kansas City sports talk show area has absolutely abandoned Scott Pioli and Todd Haley. Personally, I've also stopped giving Matt Cassel a free pass, as he seems to eager to throw that pass 4 yards on a 3rd and 10. Worse, nearly all of his throws more than 10 yards are horribly off-target. Even worse, when the Chiefs are decent for public viewing, Dwayne Bowe has proved himself some incompetent mixture of cowardice in the open field and inability along the sidelines. At this point, Kansas City might be better off trading Derrick Johnson for a sack of magic beans. Really the only thing working for the Chiefs in this case is the college-level spread given out, as I could see the Chargers going into the fourth quarter with a 35-7 lead and then just giving up and allowing two freak plays. Then again, this is a division rival and San Diego was never really with the Patriots last Sunday. Chargers by 15-plus.

Season Record: 3-5 (C'mon baby, let's turn this around!)

Richard Nixon: Worse than Darth Vader?

Darth Vader, the iconic villain in the famed “Star Wars” franchise is the representation of evil, a stand-in for whatever military/political force (hey!) that needs demonizing by a seemingly over-matched rebellion. In many respects, though, Darth Vader while not likely winning the election in 2012, would have been able to take the high road against former, and actual, U.S. President Richard Milhous Nixon. That Vader and Nixon had the same hilariously disarming middle name is not a coincidence. Regardless…

Voice Work:

James Earl Jones (voice of Darth Vader) could transition from iron-fisted, mechano-man villain to the endlessly comforting Mufusa with damn near indistinguishable ease. Nixon, meanwhile, frequently panicked about the sound of his own voice and commonly referred to himself in third person as “RN.” I’ve never actually talked to anybody who referred to his or herself in third person, but I imagine it’d take about five seconds before I smack them—unless of course he or she were Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or Clint Eastwood.

Racism:

Darth Vader was the enemy of the Jedi but, to be fair, being a Jedi was a conscious decision. Moreover, the Jedi were a dangerous cult with fanatical followers. So Vader’s venom, while misplaced, was one of acceptable intolerance. Vader didn’t blindly massacre a civilian population, like Gungans—despite our pleas for such decisive action during "The Phantom Menace." No, Vader went after people that not only made an ideological choice, but whose choice was a direct result of intensified fighting capabilities. Nixon, though would not have dared to individually hunt down Green Berets. Instead, Nixon focused on bashing, imprisoning and financially handicapping foreigners, Asians and Jews. Nixon used the IRS to target Jewish contributors to the DNC, and when such criminal investigations proved insufficient for imprisonment, Nixon cried that the “IRS is full of Jews.” Foaming at the mouth by this point, Nixon would continue his perpetual, racist, diatribes with words I’m not sure are allowed on the Internet.

"Yes! Score one for ol' RN!"

Executive Power:

Darth Vader supported the Emperor’s restructuring of the Galactic Senate into a series of federated systems in Episode IV. Beyond that, Vader’s macro-politics are only hypotheticals deduced from his personal relations. As is, there is some weight to the theory that Nixon actually wanted to restructure the American political system in a similar fashion during his second term—right around when those “Washington Post Jews" started getting deep throated. More influentially, President/Tyrant Richard Nixon formed the White House Communications Office to allegedly give the American public information without the pesky filter of the press corps. In actuality, the Communications Office became the center of Nixon’s continuous campaign. From this point on, no decision was made in the White House without first considering the effects on re-election. This atmosphere of political paranoia, photo-op details and linguistic nuances was unprecedented at the time but has since become so ingrained with the American political system that fictional characters in this world can become prime-time heroes.

The Chief Historian:

Assuming Darth Vader exterminated the Jedi like a bunch of condors, there doesn’t seem to be any real reflection on history in the original Star War trilogy. Indeed, only a few characters actively recall a universe before “the dark times.” Strangely absently from Vader’s political stranglehold is the near obligatory re-painting of history. Stalin and Hitler personally rewrote history to suit their ambitious, fabricating motivations, precedents and justifications. Hell, even JFK was a psuedo-historian in the 1940s. None though, went so far as Nixon--a history major himself--who tried to fabricate historic/legal documents (memos and the like) to implicate the late-JFK to political disasters such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Now, that scenario already was connected to JFK but its origins date back to the Eisenhower administration (a.k.a. when Nixon was vice-president). Nixon’s relation to the Bay of Pigs was a complete non-issue until RN got greedy and tried to pin it all on, again, an assassinated president.

Sowing the Seeds of War:

Admittedly, the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy had numerous scenes dedicated to outlining the ridiculously circuitous route taken by Chancellor Palpatine to become the Emperor. The tariffs, colonization and free-trade arguments were boring to people barely listening and hilariously illogical to more conscious viewers. In either case, that the Chancellor single handedly started the Clone Wars to gain political supremacy was unabashedly evil. Anakin’s/Darth Vader’s motivation for joining the scheme in the fourth quarter ranged between even more boring to even more illogical. So at worst, Vader’s ambition for power is personal and ambiguous. Conversely, Nixon campaigned in 1968 on the promise of having a “secret plan” for ending the war in Vietnam. This promise was a flagrant lie but helped Nixon because Americans (and the South Vietnamese) would not accept a Johnson peace treaty when the possibility of something better was right around the corner.

Ending the War:

The Emperor drafted Vader and put him into the game in a turn around of about four seconds and effectively ended the war later that night. Nixon, though, would come into power and expand the war he inherited. When the story broke that Nixon had authorized the bombing of Vietnam’s neighbor, Cambodia, the President accused the journalists of weakening national security. This charge of endangering American lives is as baffling as it has proven to be repeatable. America was already bombing Cambodians, and the Cambodians kind of knew they were being bombed. Our "enemies" in war don’t get their information, such as a village massacre, from the Washington Post; they get their information from being in that massacred village.

A Case for Honesty:

A man wiser than myself once said the most important quality for any relationship is trust. Accepting this aphorism, Darth Vader really isn’t that unlikable. Kind of a brutal, leader, yes. But he never went behind people’s backs, tarnished somebody’s reputation or hampered their livelihood—again, except for choking more people than Jack Bauer. Nixon, as historian Lewis Gould has noted, could have gleaned information about the fractious Democrats with a casual reading of his day's newspaper. But accepting common (and correct) knowledge would not satisfy Nixon’s obsession with conspiracies and “reassurance that he was always one step ahead of his unscrupulous enemies.”

Most flatly, Nixon did not trust Americans to make the “right” choice in the voting booth. Through his actions, Nixon, the one man, thought he understood people and the world more than every other president, judge, lawmaker and voting citizen the nation had ever seen, combined.

President Nixon may have been aptly, albeit flippantly, punished in his one-part comical and two-part villainous depictions in American culture from “All in the Family” to “Frost/Nixon,” but Nixon’s legacy has inspired copycats, now aware of their predecessor’s undoing (i.e. getting caught). Ultimately, voters accept that “the ends justify the means” even if the ends are as ill defined as the means are undetermined, so long as the voter had elected the politician in question.

It's just too hard for people to admit when they bet on the wrong horse; preferring to instead blame third parties and any number of unforeseen x-factors. We'd die before admitting our follies. And so ultimately we tend to see the person, not the actions, and that’s just an [expletive deleted].

NFL Predictions: Week Two

It's strange to think about how much money somebody could make by betting against me. Then again, I suppose Las Vegas has done pretty well without my contributions. I read somewhere, perhaps in one of the better bathroom stalls I've ever been in, that professional sports writers correctly pick the winners of a game 47% of the time--which is about twice as often as they write interesting articles (take that, Jason Cole!)

Anyways, the answer is simple: writers like picking the upsets; it's something to brag about. But upsets aren't a sure bet, and they're really not even a good, safe or smart bet. And I work with the point spreads because I'm a bad ass. Anyhow, did you see me totally call the Raven's D and Darren Sproles' numbers last week? Genius work.

Chicago at New Orleans (-6.5)

The Bears are coming off an impressive win against Atlanta and the Saints are coming off a frustrating season opening lost. This is the first home game for the Saints and they had an extra three days to prepare. Given that the Saints' last two losses were in Green Bay and Seattle, I wonder if maybe they just don't like playing outside. Unrelated, it’s strange to think a kid could have watched the last three years of NFL football and not know who John Madden is. On the other hand, they likely wouldn’t know who Dennis Miller is, so there’s that. What? The game? The spread seems like a bit much, but New Orleans has to be better than 0-2. The Saints cover.

Baltimore at Tennessee (+5.5)

I don't really understand how Titans QB Matt Hasselbeck is in national commercials and has endorsement deals. Does he have another career I don't know about? Was he on "Celebrity Apprentice"? Wait a minute, was he in "The Expendables" with Steven Austin? Whatever. The Titans may have the fastest man in the NFL in Chris Johnson but that just means he'll run into defenders that much faster at the line of scrimmage. Seriously, 24 yards against Jacksonville?I'm pretty sure Peggy Olson would get that much--and score at least once. Ravens.

Philadelphia at Atlanta (+1.5)

Personally, I don't understand people who think Michael Vick should still be in jail. I mean, he's still getting chased, tackled and otherwise mangled by 250-lb men every week. Isn't that kind of a punishment? Michael Vick will probably be tired and busted up by the end of the season but this is only Week Two. Also, I'm getting an Chris Chandler-vibe from Matt Ryan--which makes more sense if you don't remember who that is. Ryan might be good but I don't see why he's not on a straight path to Whatever, USA. Here's hoping Andy Reid can achieve the unlikely and keep himself more pulled together than Chris Farley in the last minute of an SNL skit. Eagles.

San Diego at New England (-6.5)

I'll wait for this to change to a 10-point spread before thinking of the Chargers. Tom Brady threw for over 500 yards last week. They purposefully let Miami drive the ball to the one-foot line and stopped them on downs so that the Pats could set up the longest touchdown from scrimmage ever/possible. This is the New England home opener. On the other hand, Brady threw his first regular season interception since last October, so he might be slipping. With the Indianapolis Mannings boycotting football, the Patriots will be in the Superbowl. And I still wouldn't root for them unless they were playing against the entire cast from "Glee." Patriots by eleventy-hundred billion points.

Season record: 1-3