Surf's up: Random musings - 7

a)  So, last night the result of an NFL game was determined by the shoddiness of replacement referees.  Ho-hum.  The debacle could have been avoided had any of the Green Bay Packer defenders followed the first rule of defending Hail Mary passes - KNOCK THE BALL DOWN!

Take a look at the replay - no less than three Green Bay defenders had the chance to ice the game by simply batting the ball away.



Yet, all of them went for glory and tried to intercept the ball.    See for yourself.

Serves you right.  You don't have my sympathies.

b)  VVS Laxman retired a few weeks ago and it hasn't sunk in yet.  I am still not in the mood to write my eulogy but am getting ready for it.  Until then, here are two must-read articles about the good guy of Indian cricket.

First, Peter Roebuck is no longer here to write about VVS, but when he did (in the aftermath of 281) it was fantastic.  Poetry in prose.

As Laxman took guard he found himself surrounded by the din of the crowd and the biting resolution of his gum-chewing, green-capped opponents near at hand. Habitually, he cuts an impressive and impassive figure upon which hostility falls like raindrops upon a bear. He stood his ground.

Laxman was about to play the innings of a lifetime, one of the greatest knocks the game has known. His effort has not shrunk in retrospect for it was not a mere protest against fate but rather a purposeful pursuit of an impossible dream.

Second, check out Siddhartha Vadyanathan's piece, not so much for what he wrote but for some of the videos link to in the comments section.

c)  If you are a famous sportsperson, maybe even the best ever in your sport, winning a match is not the end of your day's work.  Here's Roger Federer's grueling post-match interview schedule.  I used to wish I could play like him.  Now I don't, for I do not want to have to do all the additional things that come with that gift.

d)  Roger Federer is the Most Interesting Man in the World.  Stay thirsty, my friends.

e)  Very rarely do I burst out laughing when I read a straight-forward sports article about how someone can help Tiger Woods get his game back on track.  But this one did.  Johnny Miller is soooo modest, it makes me blush to hear about all the great things he has to say about....himself.

Bonus: Here's Johnny's unvarnished thoughts from a different article:

The drive I hit on the last hole at Oakmont in 1973 at the U.S. Open was special. I'd hit every green that day, and my average birdie putt was about 10 to 12 feet. To this day, I've never seen a major championship round of that precision, with tee shots and iron shots, by anyone. That sounds like bragging, but I've seen a lot of rounds. 

f) If you have a few minutes, take a look at some of the photographs submitted to National Geographic for the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest 2012.  Which is your favorite one?

g)  And finally, one last look as VVS walks off into the sunset.  A big part of cricket's allure died that day.

(Copyright 2011, AFP)

Quick release

It did not take long for Kurt Warner to decide that he is done playing professional football. With that, another of the fellows I rooted for and followed assiduously has left the stage. Gah!

(Sports Illustrated)

From the time he became the QB of the St. Louis Rams in 1999 till his final playoff game against the Packers, Warner found a way to throw touchdowns and win games. He played in 3 Super Bowls, winning one. The top three passing marks in Super Bowl belong to him. It is a measure of his greatness that the last plays made by him in all three Super Bowls were touchdown passes to give his team the lead (twice) or tie the game. In 2001 and 2008 his defenses could not stop the other teams from scoring or the fellow would have had multiple championships to add to the one he won in 1999.

I trolled the web looking for tributes to the QB and this one by Seth Wickersham, I felt, best captured the essence of the man.

Here are some of the highlights of his great career.

6 of one or glass half-full?

If you are a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, do you praise Brett Favre for playing well enough to get you within a few seconds of the Super Bowl or do you want to burn him in effigy for that (all-too familiar) bone-headed interception that effectively finished the season for you today?

That across-the-body, into the middle of the field, off-balance throw he made was one you'd expect a 19-year old QB to make, not a QB with 19 years of NFL experience. Sheesh! What a way for him to end his career. Or was it the end? As far as I am concerned, I am going to studiously avoid any news article between today and next Fall that mentions the word Brett Favre. The likes the Peter King are more than welcome to genuflect and pander to the ego of this fellow. I'm just glad I did not have any of my hopes tied to him.

Word play

No other quarterback in the NFL has as complete a command of the offense as Peyton Manning does. Playing for the same offensive coordinator and the same team for his entire career has a lot to do with the fact that he is free to call the offensive plays at the line of scrimmage.

Here's a short video of some of the odd things he says in the huddle and while audibling a play at the line. Pretty fun when you consider that every game tape of his is screened for any signals the opposition can pick up on.

It must be the water

A few weeks ago Jeff Fisher, the coach of the Tennessee Titans, was in hot water for his antics at a charity dinner. At that point in time his team was winless (0-6) and he tried to lighten up by doing this:



Since then the Titans have gone 7-1 while the Colts (led by Peyton Manning) are the only undefeated team left in the NFL at 14-0. So, Coach Fisher, you were right - it WAS the jersey. By channeling your inner Manning you found the path to victory. By the way, should you naysayers point out the solitary loss on the Titans' record. That loss was to the, you guessed it, Indianaoplis Colts!

The secret to success is not hard work, it is Peyton Manning.

Stealing words from my mouth

True story (I swear): I wrote up a long, sarcastic article about the love-fest between ESPN, Peter King (of Sports Illustrated) and Brett Favre. I made the mistake of not putting it on my blog before the writers at The Onion came up with a similarly-themed article.

If you know anything about the Brett Favre situation, you will find this article just hilarious. Sarcasm drips from every sentence and the opinions (not) expressed are the views of millions of NFL followers around the globe. Here's a sample:

"I was looking at a newspaper, and it said, 'Favre Sacks Former Team,' and at that point I realized we really missed one," ESPN president George Bodenheimer told reporters. "I just want to apologize to our viewers. Had the Favre-Packers connection dawned on us sooner, fans could have enjoyed the same quality sports journalism they have come to expect from ESPN: driving storylines into the ground and exploiting every one of their subplots to the point of nausea."

ESPN news director Vince Doria said that if he or any of his colleagues had realized Favre would be playing against his former team, the network would have begun overhyping the week-four matchup the moment the quarterback signed with the Vikings.

(...) "We kind of blew a golden opportunity," Doria said. "Endless explanations as to what Brett Favre meant to the city of Green Bay, restating over and over how he left the Packers on poor terms, and airing at least 50 segments featuring wild and irresponsible speculation about his motives for returning to the NFL. It would have been perfect."

He'll always have Green Bay

How many times can a man change his mind? If you are Brett Favre ... hmmm ... one loses count.

It is totally up to the fellow to decide whether he wants to play or not. It is not my business nor my place to tell folks when to hang up, but I wish the media would not fuel the fire everytime he has an urge to express himself.

Folks like Don Banks and Peter King need to just not report or dissect every little shrug of the shoulder and should leave the "legacy" part to history. If Brett Favre does not care about his legacy being tarnished, why should we. It's his legacy, his life, his fame, let him decide!

As far as my personal opinion is considered, Favre's best years were in the mid-to-late 90's. Since then he has been more about reputation and less about stellar play. I have seen him make too many mistakes to think of him as a dependable QB. Mistakes he got away with for being a "good bloke" would have cost less-heralded players their careers. Here's a good deconstruction of the myth of his prowess. (Surprisingly, it is by Sal Paolantonio).

The truth is, Favre did little over the past decade to earn the gushing praise heaped upon him by our fawning brethren in the media.

After beating the San Francisco 49ers in the 1997 NFC Championship Game, Favre won just three of his last 10 playoff games. Eli Manning had more postseason wins in a 29-day span this past season than Favre had in his last decade with the Green Bay Packers.

Yes, Favre won a Super Bowl -- 11 years ago! But as his career arc spiraled downward, the blind adulation only got worse.

Favre's passer rating in his last 12 postseason games was a pedestrian 77.8. In his last five wild-card games, he went 2-3 with more interceptions (nine) than touchdown passes (seven). In his last three divisional playoff games, he went 1-2 with seven TDs and seven interceptions. That's a 3-5 record with 14 touchdown passes and 16 picks.

In two of his last four postseason appearances, Favre threw two of the most unthinkable playoff interceptions in NFL history, both in overtime -- to Brian Dawkins of the Philadelphia Eagles in 2003 and to Corey Webster of the New York Giants in January. In fact, Favre is the only quarterback in NFL history to throw overtime interceptions in two playoff games. In his last nine playoff games, Favre threw 18 interceptions.

(...)

Indeed, a decade after his last moments of glory, the football hype machine continues to paint Favre as a hallowed icon of Americana, a symbol of all that is right with sports, a Wild West gun-slinging good ol' boy. There's Brett on the farm! There's Brett with his family! There's Brett on the cover of Sports Illustrated! There's Brett throwing another overtime interception!

Favre was among the best in the game, once upon a time. Those days are long gone. Only the idolatry remains..

In fact, this photograph is how I will always remember him, holding his head after another dumb interception. How apt.

Dulling the pain

As the days go by, Arizona Cardinal's loss in the Super Bowl may be expected to diminish in intensity but that has not been the case for me. It still rankles, so I can only imagine how hard it must be for one of the central pieces in the drama, Kurt Warner. Warner is 1-2 in Super Bowls and could well have been 3-0, if his teammates on defense had just made one stop each in the two losses, but it was not to be.

Bill Simmons, the self-proclaimed Sports Guy on ESPN, has been off his game for quite some time now (as long as the Boston teams were losing, he was in his elements, but now that winning is a regular occurrence, his writing has degenerated pretty badly). He gives some glimpses of his former self in this semi-diary of the last minutes of the Super Bowl.

Gridiron Barnum

Approximately 10 years ago I started watching football with AB. Until then I used to blindly believe whatever the talking heads told me to believe in. A combination of skills I began to develop as a PhD student and AB's tutelage made me a more discerning viewer to the point where I no longer watch TV with the volume on. I am content to make up my own mind about what's going on.

Around the time I began picking up the game, I changed the way I followed it - I began picking players to keep track of, rather than teams. It is a trait that has spilled over into all the other sports I watch, including cricket. That way it did not matter to me which player was on the field, I had a rooting interest in almost every match. With the advent of fantasy football, a new spin has come about as now I have players to root against, too, especially if they can influence how my fantasy opponent does against me.

One of the players that I have been rooting for in the last decade is Kurt Warner, formerly a Super Bowl winning QB of the Saint Louis Rams. This year, aged 37, he has had a renaissance of sorts, with a stellar year so far as a member of the Arizona Cardinals. I have always admired his ability to stand in the pocket, see the rush coming his way, but still hang on until the very last milli-second before releasing the ball downfield. The best example of this came in the Super Bowl the Rams won in 1999. Here's when the player and his team caught my fancy (a bonus is the attention given to another favorite of mine, Marshall Faulk):



Peter King of Sports Illustrated tends to verge on the hyperbolic side of reporting, but this tribute to Kurt Warner is great to read as he praises the actions of a guy who is more than just a football player, while nominating Warner for SI's Sportsman of the year award.

The genial gunslinger

Kurt Warner and I share the same number - 13 - on our sports jerseys. The similarities, however, end there. Kurt has worked his way into the role of an NFL quarterback with much more determination and humility than I probably would have shown.

Karen Crouse of the NY Times documents Warner's generosity and humble nature in this article.

Sometimes, good guys do finish first.

Marshall law

The first college football game that I actively followed was the WVU-Marshall season opener in 1997. That game featured a whole bunch of future NFL-ers including Randy Moss. WVU's game plan was to shut the lanky receiver down but only succeeded in slowing him in a hard-fought 42-31 win. A few years later I watched Randy play for Minnesota against Detroit at Ford Field. He had put on a few pounds of muscle and the blinding speed was still there, but only when he chose to turn on the after-burners, that is.

Last year, he migrated to New England and had an enormous impact on a Patriots team that was about 30 seconds from having an undefeated season. For years, Randy has been a headline away from controversy. So it comes as a pleasant surprise when a reporter takes the time to explore the man behind the number. It is a surprisingly touching story of a man who knows his roots and is hell-bent on maintaining them, no matter what anyone else thinks.

(The article is in 4 pages, so click through them).

Two sides of a coin

My favourite gridiron football player (National Football League) has always been Troy Aikman. Others like Barry Sanders, Emmitt Smith, Kurt Warner, Randy Moss, and Marc Bulger have occupied my interest but I still rate Aikman as being higher than any of the others. He was the reason I started watching the NFL during the mid-90's.

This past weekend, at the early age of 39, Aikman was voted into the NFL Hall of Fame on his first attempt. While his numbers are not as gaudy as John Elway, Brett Favre or Dan Marino, I have no doubt that he belongs there with them. He was known for his clutch play (not as impressive as Joe Montana or Tom Brady but close enough) and ability to stay calm under the most intense of rushes.

Here is a nice piece about the man, his main accomplishments, and how he got to where he is today.

Not surprisingly, there is a set of individuals who feel that Aikman benefited from the system he was in, the players he was surrounded with, and most crucially, good fortune. Here is a typical article that espouses this point of view, this time by Skip Bayless.

I don't mind the other point of view, actually. Those folks are entitled to their opinion as much as I am entitled to mine, especially as they make some very relevant points along the way.

What I find interesting is the cause-and-effect aspect of all this. Was Aikman lucky that he was surrounded by talent? Or was his presence the glue that made the talent stand out? If he had played on another team, would he have won so many games? Or conversely, would he have been touted as the hero who turned the fortunes of a different franchise by his play? We can never separate the two entities and discussion like this will go on forever.

Either way, Aikman is rightly in the Hall of Fame and I am glad I got to see over half of his glory years at the helm of the dominant Cowboy team.