Welcome to Miami (eebee eebee ee Meeyammi).

They have played three games, looking like a bitter chemistry set explosion in a game one loss against Boston, a decent team in game two against Philadelphia, and the Best Team Ever last night in a total dismantling of Orlando. At this point, by game thirty the NBA will just hand them the trophy and disband the league. Hey, it will save us a lockout next year, right?

Death talks about unleashing its sickle.

David Stern was so very stern two weeks ago, when he talked about possible contraction of one of the league’s “lesser” and “total loser” teams, such as Minnesota, Memphis, Milwaukee, and other teams that start with the letter M and don’t end in “iami.” He was just kidding for labor-negotiation purposes, I promise. But this doesn’t bode well for the story of NEXT year, which will probably be played out in the media and behind closed doors rather than on the basketball court.

This week, Mr. Stern again repeated what is hopefully not true, which is that the NBA intends to have a 5-team European division within 10 years. It’s odd – 10 years ago, this idea seemed crazy. Now, with the continued popularity of Eurobasket and the yearly infusion of foreigners into the bloodstream of the NBA, it almost makes sense. But still, it’s a stupid idea.

Dwight Howard Gets Baptized

Orlando superduperstar center Dwight Howard, who has been an outspoken Christian since he came into the league, just got baptized in some giant church in Orlando. Score one for the anabaptists. I’m not usually concerned about the public failings of celebrities (being that there’s nothing special about them), but I hope this extra unnecessary baptism keeps him from fathering love-babies and nakedly pursuing former porn stars. And no, I’m not going to link to the stories. What kind of blog do you think this is?

(The truth is, I like Dwight Howard and root for him. But I root harder for Christianity to be set free from the failings of Christians. Sorry.)

Relevant Players Who Are Ungrateful For What They Have And Want To Be Traded.

“Melo,” or Carmelo Anthony, who can’t stand one more minute of being on a pretty good team in the beautiful mountain city of Denver.

“Iggy,” or Andre’ Iguodala, who hates everything about Philadelphia ever since he got to play with GOOD players in the Olympics.

“Rudy,” or Rudy Fernandez, who would rather be in Spain right now, but if he’s going to be forced to make millions in the NBA, he wants it to be in New York, because he “likes being around a**holes.”

We need something to distract us from the carnage going on in baseball (with the Yankees primed to purchase some more world series rings) and football (with the Packers’ entire second string about to start, and the Brett Favre still existing).

We’ve never needed the NBA more than right now.

Thankfully, the season is right around the corner.  If you close your eyes and sniff, you can smell it.  The gym socks.  The money.  The betrayal of cities by mega-stars.  Yep, that’s basketball, alright.  Isn’t it wonderful?

Which brings us to what we’re doing with the NBA this year.  Every season is like a sprawling, idiotic novel — full of all-too-human characters, surprise twists, strippers, night-time arrests, and ghost-like corruption that shows up, does its business, then disappears so fast you can’t even confirm it was ever there.  It’s hard to find protagonists in such a mess, but we’re going to try.

So let’s start with the BIG background-defining story that happened over the off-season:

BronBron the Destroyer

Lebron-Wade-Bosh in Miami.  Stop for a second and think about how weird this situation is.  I know we’ve all had a couple months to get used to this whole thing, but it bears a refresher:  The league’s best player (LeBron) jumped from his team to the third best player’s (Wade’s) team, along with a fellow U.S. Olympian and budding reality TV star (Bosh) simply because they thought it would be fun to play together and dominate the league.  Think about how anti-competitive that is.  Add a few points for style, sure, but subtract several thousand for ruining the entire economic structure of the NBA.  The whole collective bargaining agreement DEPENDS on players being greedy.  This has never been a problem before.  When a player takes less money to play with friends in an attempt to win championships together, what is NBA Commissioner David Stern supposed to do?

Part of me, and not an insignificant part, wants to root for these guys.  It’s always refreshing to see a guy take less money to stay with his team like Wade did.  If I were a dominant NBA player, I’d see myself totally wanting to play with my NBA friends, and taking less money to do so.  Also, they didn’t go to New York, which is always a plus.  So why do I think they’re the main antagonists in this year’s NBA story?  Well…

Enough has already been said about ESPN’s “The Decision.”  It was a terrible idea for everyone involved — let’s just leave it at that.  But because it was a bona-fide TV “event,” we will forever remember the EXACT moment LeBron James betrayed Cleveland.  We know precisely what that looks like.  It’s impossible to look at LeBron as anything other than a clueless selfish bastard after “The Decision.”  It made him look like the Brett Favre of the NBA, only in his prime and (if this is possible) even less justified.  Actually, the parallels between LeBron and Brett are numerous and interesting.  But we’re not going to bring up that Randy Moss-loving piece of doo-doo here.  This is a family blog.  My mom has to read this.

Bottom line: NBA stars are so far-removed from 99% of NBA fans that it’s nearly impossible for there to be any understanding between the two.  This is a theme that’s going to pop up a LOT.  For example, when LeBron says that his mother told him to “just do whatever he wants to,” so he did, I’ll bet he expected that to resonate with people.  Lots of moms give that kind of advice. But the average NBA fan’s mom would have the good sense to advise their son AGAINST betraying an entire region of fans that idolize him, especially if he grew up there. So this whole “did what would make me happy” thing looked less understandable and more like, as Homer Simpson would say, “Pro athletes — always wanting more.”

And I’m tired of LeBron’s statements since the betrayal, which have ranged from vague threats to media members who (rightly) called him out about this whole situation to the most generic “haters gon hate” talk you could imagine.  If I could pick one thing about America in 2010 that I would change, it’s the emergence of the umbrella term “hater.”  Apparently taking responsibility for one’s actions and apologizing for hurting people are weak, undesirable traits that needed to be done away with.  Too often “haters” are just people who get in the way of one’s selfish insanity or myopia.

ANYWAY.  The Triple Entente (as good a nickname as any I’ve heard — beats The Triple Axis Powers) also decided to gather in Miami, a city that doesn’t care about basketball because drugs and boobies are so readily available there.  Putting this great storyline in Miami is such a waste.  It’s worse even than LA, which doesn’t care about anything but fame but at least has a rich NBA history.

So yes, I’ll be rooting for massive Miami failure just like everyone else.  But can anyone beat them?  The defending champion Lakers have a couple-year head-start in terms of chemistry, and their players have a complimentary skill-set.  They also have the second-best player in the league, and a better coach.  So it’s looking more and more that this will be one of those grim “foregone conclusion” NBA years, where everyone knows what’s going to happen but we still have to play the season.  If Miami meets LA in the NBA Finals, this story’s ending will be a complete failure.  There’s nobody to root for in that pairing, only two bad basketball towns that got good because they happen to have nice climates and beautiful citizens.  Screw warm weather.  They have, as of this writing, invented things like “coats” to deal with the cold.  It’s true, look it up on Wikipedia.  NBA players are such wimps.

But seriously, LA is only this good because of the extremely fishy Pau Gasol trade of a couple years ago.  And we’ve already covered the Miami thing.  So we’ve definitely identified a couple of our villains.  Unfortunately, the story seems stacked decidedly in their favor.  Can anyone stop them?  Will anyone even try?  If they do, will the NBA rig the playoffs so they get a Miami-LA Finals?

In that case, I will hate.  You betcha.

The good news:  I’ve figured out something to get me interested in blogging again.

HOWEVER, It’s really really sportsy.  And possibly a huge waste of time.

Let’s set it up this way:

The LeBron James Betrayal Episode got me thinking about the upcoming NBA season, and how I could not possibly be more cynical about it. For example, these are some of the things I believe about the NBA:

• The playoffs are rigged by the refs.  Therefore, NBA championships mean nothing.  Kinda takes the point out of watching games, doesn’t it?
• The players, almost to a man, don’t care about anything except themselves.
• The owners, almost to a man, don’t care about anything but the money.

And so when the most popular player conceives* and produces an hour-long self-serving TV special just so he can stab his hometown in the back on live TV, and he doesn’t even seem to realize the implications of what he’s doing, there’s something truly noteworthy about that, even when viewed in the cynical context of the regular NBA.  It was like Leborn hadn’t ever considered that his once adoring fans could possibly turn on him, and that to me is amazing.

And turn on him they did, in spectacular fashion.  The world divided itself into frontrunners (those who switched their allegiances with LeBron, and now are Miami Heat fans) and haters (those who now view Lebron as weak and/or disloyal).  Jerseys were burned.  The Cavaliers owner wrote a scathing public personal attack on LeBron, mostly in all-caps.  Everybody had a hot sports opinion on it.  Lebron had become the NBA’s Brett Favre.

This LeBetrayal thing is a story worth following, I thought to myself, if only to see the fun ways the Cavaliers’ fans’ bitterness will manifest itself.  Also, how will LeBron react to being booed in every city?  Will he care?  Will he crumble?  Will he come to regret his decision and how it played out, or is he so far removed from reality that he’ll actually enjoy becoming LeBron the Evil King of Miami?

So I thought about all this, and then I thought, who better to document the NBA’s season of stories than me, a guy who has given up on sports altogether?  There are as many stories as there are players (and coaches and refs and owners and fans), and all of them deserve to be seen in the distant light of cold reality.  I’m not an ex-athlete.  I’m not a member of the media.  I’m not a journalist.  Heck, I’m not even really a fan.  I’m just a guy who knows a little basketball and who has a blog.  If that doesn’t equal “qualified” in this day and age, I’m a woodchuck.

You see, every NBA season is living literature.  You may not have realized that, but it’s true.  There are heroes, villains, falls from grace, redemptions, betrayals, scandals, romances, and yes, even death.  It’s time that someone saw the NBA for what it truly is: A giant cyclical storybook.

Once upon a time, there was a King who loved his rich friends more than his subjects…

*Actually, it was reportedly Jim Gray’s idea, which makes perfect sense.  The lesson:  If Jim Gray suggests you do something that involves him, RUN.

I’m just kidding.  But here’s a bulleted list.  I wish I could make this a mulleted list by giving the dots little mullets, but I just can’t.

• Since we last talked, I shaved all the hairs (more than you might think) from my head.  I’m going with the shaved head look for a while, so you better get used to it.  Thankfully, it doesn’t really affect you, my blog readers.
• The World Cup is here.  I think I wrote the definitive piece on the World Cup and American’s reaction to it four years ago.  Here’s a link to it.  Yesterday, France played to a tie with Ecuador.  I’m a big believer in the Monroe Doctrine as it pertains to soccer, and so I’m very happy that big bad France got tied by the swarthy Ecuadorians.  That’s a good first day.  Also, I always root for the African teams, except of course for South Africa.  We will not forget, South Africa.  We will not forget.
• ESPN has come out with something called “ESPN3.”  We’re moving ever closer to “The Ocho” becoming a reality.
• Man, Milwaukee is Brewer-crazy.  I had forgotten what it’s like to live in a real sports town.  And the Brewers aren’t even good!  I don’t care about the team at all*, and yet I know all about their players and their hopes and dreams and contracts and failures and Steakhouses.  For example, did you know the Brewers have a guy named Corey Hart who’s a total hillbilly?  Also, he’s stick-thin and has an absurd Amish beard.  Also, he totally sucked last year but is currently leading the NL in home runs.  These are some of the things I know, for no dang good reason.
• I’ve developed a lot of theories about God and Life and The Universe and Everything, but I’m not quite willing to share them.  Perhaps if someone were to get me drunk, that would unloose my tongue.  These theories have helped me a lot, actually, in my day-to-day life.  I still hate talking to people, but I’m not as burdened about it now.  And it’s not like my theories are some sort of secret, a la The Secret — they’re right there in the Bible, and other places.  Perhaps I’ll just start a cult and have done with it.  Can you have a cult with no followers?  Isn’t a cult with no followers just a crazy person?
• With regard to camping/hiking, I have purchased:  1) A cool tent, 2) a Wal-Mart brand (technically “Ozark Trail) camping pad, 3) a tarp, 4) a point-and-shoot camera, 5)  a sleeping bag.  Now, if I could only purchase something that stops it from raining.  Any evil geniuses out there with a weather machine I could borrow?
• I like coffee shops.
• The USA plays the England in soccer today in what some people are calling “The Dixie Chicks Revenge Game.”  C’mon USA, think about how much Natalie Maines will hate it if you win!
• What the heck — Nebraska in the Big Ten?  Colorado going to the Pac-10, which might soon be the “Pac-16?”  The Big 12 becoming the “Big Five?”  Nobody wants Rock Chalk Jayhawk anymore?  Things like this are why the NCAA needs a commissioner who manages which teams are in which conference.  They need me to be that commissioner, actually.  I’ll set them straight.  My first edict?  Notre Dame is disbanded for being snooty.
• I’m not delivering pizzas right now, which is weird.  My real job has become a real job, and that means real busy.  You would not believe how busy I am all the time.  That’s ok though, I like it.  It gives me something to do during the day.
• Oh, and LOST ended.  I don’t have time to deal with my feelings on that right now, I got too much to do.

That’s all I got.  Sorry.

*obvs, that’s not completely true.  But it’s baseball, and baseball doesn’t care about me, so why should I care about it?  I’ve been less and less passionate about sports lately, because it all seems so silly.  Also, the Yankees, the Lakers, and the Blue Devils keep winning championships, we might have to disband the whole sport world and start over.  Thank God for the Saints, right?  Literally.

1) I got a job.  As someone once said, I now get up early like a birdie.  “A job” doesn’t really cover it, because I now technically have two (2) jobs.  This might not last forever (I’ve been torn on whether or not to quit delivering pizzas), but for now it’s lucrative and time-consuming.  This is ok.  The only way is ISN’T ok is this: I don’t have time to post blogs anymore.  I only have time right now because I have the day off.  I’m barely even twittering these days, it’s gotten so bad.  It just goes to show you that I’ll stop being social the moment I get an excuse to stop.

Fortunately, this also means I have benefits, something I haven’t had for a long, long time.  My bosses are all great Americans and I love them.  There’s also a chance they might be reading this.

2) I’ve been doing other writing.  That’s the other reason this blog lays silent as a turtle in a box made of sound-absorbent tile.  I just wrote an insane Anti-Oprah short story for the Online Apologetics Conference.  Writing takes a lot of time when you’re as scatterbrained as me.  Seriously, my brain is always melting in 20 different directions for no reason.  I’ll write something, then look back on it and wonder what kind of alien would have written that.  I may just have a split-personality, actually.

3) I’ve decided that life is pretty much meaningless.  “Vanity” and “Doesn’t matter” are also applicable terms.  Yes, I’m ok.  No, I’m not insane.  This is a good thing.  I said “pretty much,” not “completely.”

4) I attended a funeral in Northern Wisconsin and reacquainted myself with church potlucks.

5) I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04, which is nice but a lot like 9.10.  Also, there were two really dumb things the developers did that hurt my first impression of the OS:  They got rid of the volume control in the panel (you have to re-enable it in order to see it) and  they put the minimize-maximize-close window buttons on the left side of the windows.  Seriously?  Even if you think have “big plans” for the right side, you should resist the urge to execute them.  I could hack GNOME to put them back on the correct side, but what’s the point?  They’d just end up on the left every time I change the theme or upgrade something.

Other than that, though, it’s fine.  Not revolutionary, but fine.

6)  Lala.com is closing, having been purchased and destroyed by Apple (or at least it’ll be gone on May 31).  Steve Jobs just bought them so he could take their engineers and technology and use it for evil.  But hey, I get credit in the iTunes store!  Whoopee!  This is like having a Tolltag account and Hitler buying the highway system, closing all the tollbooths, and giving you credit in his Nazi paraphernalia shop.  I stand behind this analogy.  It’s exactly like that.

7) The Milwaukee Bucks made us all Fear the Deer, then backed away like, well, a real live deer.  At least we now have a “The Pack is Back”-style slogan to use to beat people down.

Yeah, duty calls.  Story of my life.  See ya later.

These Danes are happy.

I’m getting a little tired of having to have a point when I type these blog posts.  I mean, I want to be understood as much as the next guy, but it’s just not worth all this stress of having to reason out arguments and make coherent points.  Sometimes I just want to throw stuff out there and see if it sticks, ok?  Having thus disclaimed my entire blog, let me now proceed to write stuff:

Figure skating is really bad, I think, for America.  Those poor dudes and girls are all being forced to wear funny outfits and give up the prime of their recreational lives so that America’s female audience can be entertained.  The men’s and ladies’ singles competitions strike me as especially odd for some reason.  It’s basically a highly organized form of So You Think You Can Dance On Ice.  The girls are all young and growth-stunted, like they’ve been smoking since birth.  It’s all weird and sketchy.  The guys just look uncomfortable, like they have to constantly convince themselves that ice skating is OK.

Also, and obviously, Ice Dancing is not a sport.  It’s barely a competition.  Are we really giving out Olympic medals to who dances the best?  The ancient Athenians are rolling over in their graves.

The Olympics are just another in a long list of things that US women have ruined, a list which also includes the Lewis & Clark Expedition, elections, and our children.  Of  course, I’m kidding.  It’s just that when I see figure skating it makes me really, really sexist.  I can’t help it.

On a more serious note, I find this whole Disney obsession with princesses disturbing in all sorts of ways.  I feel like I’m the only one noticing that these movies are totally corrupting our kids.  It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone or something.  Children are, after all, our most valuable resource this side of soybeans and corn.  Monsanto owns those things, and now Disney owns our children.  What’s the deal with princesses anyway?  To become a princess, you either have to be born one, or have a Prince marry you.  Both of those things are totally random, but Disney is purposely pretending that they’re not.  And in the real world there are no princes, which means Walt Disney might as well be making movies about unicorns.  You can rest assured that if they did, little girls everywhere would be gluing toilet paper rolls to their heads.  I regard this princess thing as equally strange.

Unrealistic expectations = death.  Did you know that people from Denmark are on average the happiest in the world?  Do you know why?  Because they are content with what they have.  They take their 2% unemployment and semi-comfortable life and are content with it.  Maybe Walt Disney should start making movies about that, instead of trying to turn our children against us with toys and false hopes.  And don’t get me started on Barbie.  Yeesh, that girl is insipid and unstoppable, like Speidi crossed with Hakeem Olajuwon.

You know what else?  I don’t think there really was a secret chord that David played that pleased the Lord.  So that famous song is based on a foundation of wrongness, is what I’m saying.  I don’t really care for music, I guess.   It’s pretty, but so are princesses.  A cold and broken kind of pretty.

Also, I don’t like loud noises.  Bah!  I need some peace and quiet.  Where are my ear plugs?  There’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by ear plugs.

Whew.  That’s better.  Sorry, it’s just that sometimes these things just build up in my heart like that magnetic force in the hatch on LOST, and I have to input the numbers and press the button to release them.  If I don’t, the blast doors in my soul shut and weird-looking runes appear in my head.  I can’t carry the metaphor any farther than that, so goodbye.

http://www.thechristianmanifesto.com/index.php/2010/02/21/our-olympic-supermen-superwomen/

The Missing Piece To A Championship For Sure

As I was watching the Houston Rockets build a 40-point lead on the Milwaukee Bucks last night, I was struck by a clear thought:  This team is one player away from contending for a championship.  The Bucks, I mean.  Houston was just getting lucky last night (it took luck to be so open for all those threes).  I got excited, because I knew the trade deadline is today, and the Bucks would surely be wheeling and dealing to bring a player here who could bring all their ill-fitting pieces together and turn them into a team that can compete with the Lakers, Magic, Cavs, and Nuggets.  He would arrive, and everything John Hammond has done up until this point would suddenly make sense.

The player?  John F-ing Salmons.

Take a look at these stats: 42% on field goals.  12.7 points per game.  6’6″ tall.  A five-to-three assist-to-turnover ratio.  The 38th best shooting guard in the entire NBA according to John Hollinger’s PER rating.  Averages over one rebound every ten minutes of play.  There’s only one word to describe John Salmons, and that word is stone-cold-fresh-chillin’.

Sure, the Bucks had to give up two expiring contracts to get him, but when you think about it, he’s totally worth it.  Just the thought of Mr. Salmons standing there as the offense flows around him and jacking up a shot every time he gets the ball makes my basketball pants fly around the room with excitement.  Finally, I understand why Hakim Warrick was signed in the first place.  It wasn’t for the dunking and the cool beard.  Hakim Warrick was here solely to bring us our saviour, John F-ing Salmons!

Watch out, all other teams.  Milwaukee hereby serves notice that they are now members of the NBA Elite, and a perennial powerhouse to be reckoned with at the highest levels of professional basketball skill.

Now, if only they could trade some more expiring contracts for Royal Ivey, they’d be golden.  Wait…what?  Really?  They got him, too?  Somebody start planning the parade right now!  Our Ivey-Salmons yin-yang backcourt will be unstoppable!  You’d need an army to defend two players of that magnitude!

This post was inspired by these restaurant suggestions from Dallas sports media members Gina Miller and Mark Stein, who are certainly entitled to their opinion.  They might even understand you and your taste buds better, as a NBA All-Star person.  But it’s alway good to get a second opinion, right?

Of their suggestions, the only three I’ve experienced firsthand are Miller’s Mi Cocina and Stein’s Snuffers and Fuel City.  Gina Miller must like to drink, because there’s no other reason to go to Mi Cocina.  Nothing wrong with throwing down some girlified cocktails, but be apprised that the food there isn’t that good, and there’s no free refills on soda.  In 2010.  In what is essentially a chain restaurant.

However, Snuffers is almost worth the trip to Dallas all by itself.  If you go there, definitely get the cheese fries.  Then absolutely get the fried pickles.  Then, for the love of all that is holy, get a cheeseburger.  The grease may kill you, but as you shuffle off you’ll be saying “great googly moogly” in a good way.

Fuel city is a gas station, but I implore you to let go of your racist attitudes towards gas station food while you’re visiting the land of Pointless Bigness and Wanna-Be LA-ism.  Seriously, Fuel City has the best tacos I’ve ever eaten.  Go there for the food, stay for the longhorn cattle.

It would probably be best to completely forget that Italian and Asian food exist while you’re in the DFW metroplex.  I ate at a chinese buffet in Grafton, WI (pop. <15,000) on Monday that was better than any I experienced while in Dallas.  There are some nice local italian places, but nothing that will knock your socks off.  You’ll be in Dallas, what –  three days?  Trust me, you’ll want to stick to steakhouses, grills, and Mexican food places of all kinds.  You won’t get steaks or enchiladas like this when you’re back in Cleveland, so take advantage of them now.

With that in mind, if you want the Mexican, I can show you the Mexican.  The first place you’ll need to go is Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth.  I know it’s all the way in Fort Worth, but once you get there, you’ll discover two absolute truths:  1) Fort Worth is way way cooler than Dallas; 2) Joe T. Garcia’s is a great restaurant.  Unless you go there on Sunday morning for the Brunch, Joe T’s offers exactly two dishes: enchiladas or a “family dinner.”  It doesn’t matter which one you pick, but pick the enchiladas.  Then order a Negro Modelo and lie back and experience the coolest meal you’ve had in a while.  But be sure and bring cash, because they don’t take anything else.

If you’ve heard all these great things about Fort Worth and still don’t want to drive there, then grab a consolation prize at Tupinamba’s, especially if you’re looking for something to eat on Sunday at about noon. They have an amazing buffet for Sunday brunch, if you like food.

If you’re looking for a little adventure, head on over to the Chevron station at Park and Greenville in Dallas and order a Pastor Zinchronisaida.  No, that’s not some obscure Mexican religious leader — it’s the most awesome quesadilla you’ve ever had the pleasure of putting in your face.  Seriously.  This guy agrees.

As for the rest of the food there, it’s all pretty much the same.  I’ve heard good things about Bob’s Steak and Chop House, but at the end of the day a steak is just a steak.  If you’re a foodie, then go where They tell you to go.  I’ve given you three restaurants and two gas stations, what more do you want?  You’ll probably be wanting to go to Ghostbar or Douche or Plarb or any of the other places where you can get table service and gawk at NBA stars.  This is not my fault.  Say hi to the Deathstar for me.

The Packers can win the Super Bowl.

I mean, why not the Packers? The NFC is wiiiiide open this year, with the dominant teams fading and the wild-card teams coming on strong. I would not be shocked to see a Dallas-Green Bay NFC Championship game in Lambeau, which would of course be awesome. I’ll ask again, why not the Packers? Why the heck not?

They’ve slowly dealt with all of their huge gaping early-season holes that caused them to start the season 4-4. The offensive line, which was abysmal through eight games, has quietly coalesced into something pretty good. Aaron Rodgers is getting sacked roughly the same amount of times as other quarterbacks now. Also, they’re breaking big runs when coach Mike McCarthy calls running plays. It’s an amazing transformation, and somebody should get credit for it. Ted Thompson? McCarthy? Mark Tauscher?

They’ve also shored up their terrible special teams by squib kicking every kickoff and conceding the territory up to the 30 yard line. It’s not the best solution, but teams aren’t getting big momentum-shifting runbacks anymore. And don’t look now, but did you see embattled kicker Mason Crosby making a 52-yard field goal in the cold last week? If that problem is also solved, look out.

Penalties were a huge problem as well, and the Packers were (and probably still are) the most penalized team in the world this year. At least that’s a bullet point the announcers are still using every week. It’s probably true. Anyway, ever since the Ravens pass-interference-fest, they’ve been a lot better in this area, especially among the offensive line. They’re not spotting the other team 120 yards anymore with holdings and false starts. This dramatically reduces the burden of Aaron Rodgers, who by the way has been better this year than any Packer QB since 1997, the last time Brett Favre won the MVP. Looks like Ted Thompson was right. Since I’m being positive, I won’t make you apologize to him.

Speaking of the Vikings, their QB is imploding (just like he did the last two years), their coach has been undermined, and their team is cursed. The “Who Dats” have all turned around on the once-undefeated Saints, and oh by the way they are also cursed. Arizona has a QB who farts dust, and teams that lose the Super Bowl never get back the next year. It’s unheard-of in the salary cap era. The Eagles are coming on strong, but shh — don’t tell anyone, the Packers have the better quarterback. And the Cowboys? They haven’t won a playoff game since 1996, and their coach is a doofus.

Why not the Packers?