2007 NFL Playoffs

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

My problem with the Colts in this game is that they haven't played good football in about 2 months. They ended the season rather poorly, including losses to all three divisional opponents, and have looked ugly on offence in the playoffs. Say what you will about the Patriots, but one of the reasons for their success is that they rarely make game-changing mistakes. To win this game, the Colts will have to actually beat the Patriots. The Chiefs & Ravens beat themselves. If the Colts don't play better tomorrow than they have the past two weeks, they won't win.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

Hawk, maybe I went too far to one extreme there, but don't you see how straddling certain pairs of cities doesn't really work? Liking Chicago and Milwaukee/GB teams, or New York and Boston, or LA and SF. It just doesn't seem right, though I suppose I shouldn't shoo away Bulls fans downstate or in eastern Missouri. That wouldn't be fair.

 

Still, I maintain that the Packers/White Sox contingent is a disease. Matt Young is a hard case to figure out, because most Packers/Sox people are the old-time true-believer South Siders who still hate anything to do with the north side's Bears, even though they haven't played at Wrigley since the 1960s. Ugh.

[Hawk 34 0]

Hawk, maybe I went too far to one extreme there, but don't you see how straddling certain pairs of cities doesn't really work? Liking Chicago and Milwaukee/GB teams, or New York and Boston, or LA and SF. It just doesn't seem right, though I suppose I shouldn't shoo away Bulls fans downstate or in eastern Missouri. That wouldn't be fair.

 

Still, I maintain that the Packers/White Sox contingent is a disease. Matt Young is a hard case to figure out, because most Packers/Sox people are the old-time true-believer South Siders who still hate anything to do with the north side's Bears, even though they haven't played at Wrigley since the 1960s. Ugh.

 

I wasn't disagreeing. I was just making a case for when it is right to randomly choose a team to support but I backed your claims when I said being a bandwagon fan and using the "I watched them on TV" card was persnickety as any reason there could be. I don't get liking half of a city for sports purposes but rejecting the other half. Adpot the whole city or leave it alone.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

I really liked watching the 49ers beat the Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX, but I don't think any of that has stuck with me other than a belief that the 49ers shouldn't be in the basement of the league.

[Guest Smues]

I've never understood this whole "You're supposed to like a city, not certain teams" thing. I've always thought you like who you like for the teams they are, not where they are located. I'm highly certain this thinking is caused by growing up 300 miles from the nearest professional team, but still. I've never really even thought about the cities, just the teams. I love the Braves, yet I hate the Falcons and don't care about the Hawks. I loved the Jordan led Bulls but hated every other Chicago team. I grew up in Spokane so I'm supposed to like WSU, Gonzaga, and all the Seattle pro teams, yet I like UW and Duke for college and don't have any particular love (or hate) for the Mariners, Sonics, or Seahawks.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

It's just harder for me to process the whole adopt-a-team thing because I never had to do it. Because of proximity and family, the four Chicago teams are the teams I like. There's also an element of regional pride to it, I guess. I think highly of the city of Chicago. I have no opinion on San Antonio, so it would be harder to be a Spurs fan.

[snuffbox 0]

I don't personally know many people here (Southwest Wisco) that won't be cheering for the Bears if they make the Super Bowl.

[MFer 0]

Let's see...

 

Bears/Saints-I'm taking the Saints on this one. Home-field isn't that big a factor to me. The Bears got shitted on by Carolina last year and almost lost to Seattle last week so New Orleans can most certainly come into Soldier Field and win. I don't care about all that dome-team bullshit. I really can't see them stopping the Deuce from running loose. Bush probably will have a tough time against a fast defense, but he'll break off a couple long ones. Brees should do well. Grossman will be good but I think Chicago needs more than good from him. He'll probably hit Berrian deep on one but that'll be about it. Jones/Benson will be fine but running the ball isn't gonna work in the long run when they need to score points. For me, it comes down to the fact that Chicago's D isn't playing as well as before. Saints 28 Bears 17

 

Colts/Pats-I hope New England wins but I just have a feeling the Colts are gonna pull this one out. Besides the fact that they're playing at home, the Colts D has improved a bunch. I don't think they'll play the way they did against the Chiefs and Ravens, but they won't be like they were in the regular season either. Peyton's thrown a bunch of picks lately but still very accurate. He'll make the necessary adjustments. I don't think either team will run the ball that well. This is as good a chance that the Colts will have to win an AFC title. I'm not anticipating that they're gonna blow this one. Obviously it would make for great drama if it came down to Vinatieri. We'll see. Colts 30 Pats 28

[cabbageboy 0]

I'm not going to make any outright predictions here because I have one matchup I very much want to see, but I have no idea if it will happen or not. I want Colts vs. Saints in the Super Bowl. The one ominous aspect of these games preventing me from flat out picking it is my own ranting on various threads about point differentials. If you go by that, NE is +148 and Chicago is +172 and thus that sounds like the feasible Super Bowl. Colts were only +67 and the Saints were +91, so it'd be a pretty mediocre Super Bowl matchup in terms of the quality of teams.

 

I think if the Saints win, then the Colts will win. It's hard for both road teams to pull it off in these games. Conversely, if the Bears win, the Patriots will win.

[The Niggardly King 0]

I really liked watching the 49ers beat the Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX

 

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

I don't personally know many people here (Southwest Wisco) that won't be cheering for the Bears if they make the Super Bowl.

You're not in the southwest part of the state. Southwest is like, Platteville. Of course, to me, just like anything south of Kankakee is downstate Illinois, anything north of where I-94 links Madison and Milwaukee is Up North. Unless I'm just being presumptuous and you are not speaking from the La Crosse-Eau Claire environs today?

[Guest Vitamin X]

I agree with Smues and the like here, being a fan of a team nowhere near L.A.. At first, I used to rationalize that Green Bay wasn't a big city, so fans from all over, not just Milwaukie or Wisconsin, could be a fan of a small town team trying to make it big in the football world, and being a football fan in L.A., you usually just got the best teams playing that week, and when I got into football, the Packers were on TV all the time. I always felt mercurial with the Lakers, I went to their games as a kid and loved Magic/Kareem, then the lovable losers in Divac/Van Exel, but when Shaq arrived, I started to dislike them and a lot of the idiot fans. I actually cheered for the Blazers in the `00 WCF. But I was also in the rebellious teenage mode and felt like being contradictory, so who knows. Anyways, while you do feel a lot closer to the team where you grew up, there's strange exceptions like what happened with me and the NFL, or if you move around a helllll of a lot, not really feeling any sort of connection to any city, and so you watch a team, you like the way they play, and you stick around rooting for them.

 

Also, the way a lot of pro sports leagues are now anyways, there's no real loyalty between cities and teams, or the players and teams, so it's hard to really give a shit and stick with a team forever (unless they're the Packers because the fans are the owners) because they can and have just packed up and moved. Browns fans can understand that one. If you don't like the way your team is run, or certain players on your team, or the way the franchise has treated its fans, why continue to subject oneself to disrespect unless there's something you REALLY like about that franchise?

 

This is why I don't get Lions or Cardinals fans.

 

Hawk, maybe I went too far to one extreme there, but don't you see how straddling certain pairs of cities doesn't really work? Liking Chicago and Milwaukee/GB teams, or New York and Boston, or LA and SF.

 

I wanted to make a point here also, in regards to LA/SF. This only applies to football, of course. Since L.A. doesn't have a football team, many fans in the area were by proximity, Niners fans since the L.A. market receives all Niners and Rams games on FOX (primarily Niners over Rams) as well as Raiders and Chargers on CBS (Chargers over Raiders). It's not just because they're a winning franchise, but outside of baseball, SF and LA don't really have any kind of sports rivalry. And Sacramento doesn't count as the SF area, folks, so Kings-Lakers is a no-go.

 

If Portland had more pro sports teams, we would probably have a hell of a rivalry with the Seattle teams, although Sonics-Blazers isn't that bad, it seems.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

A lot of good points there. Green Bay does have a huge following beyond the Badger State, and I think a lot of that is because they're the smallest city in sports, as well as having that Farve guy. I still don't like cherry-picking your allegiances, though.

 

Oh, and re: LA football, the Los Angeles Rams need to come back. Put the Jaguars in St. Louis, so they can be in a division with Houston and Indianapolis. But bring back the Rams, with the cool bright blue and yellow uniforms. I'm surprised LA adopted the 49ers. I always thought there was more of a North-South rivalry in California.

[Art Sandusky 0]

The Jaguars are in a division with Houston and Indianapolis.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

I meant the city of St. Louis. That way, you have a St. Louis-Houston rivalry in football as well as baseball, and a local rivalry with Indy. That probably makes more sense than San Francisco and Seattle.

[Slayer 0]

I will admit VX had a good point about maintaining loyalty to a team vis-à-vis the lack of loyalty players show to teams and teams show to cities, and I generally don't take issue with the concept of cherry-picking, given my own team affiliations (mostly derived from family and friends as a youngin').

 

Where I take issue is people cherry picking from the historically successful franchises of their respective sports. It's a lot different when you're the fan of a historically bad/unlucky franchise because, really, who would really claim to be a fan of said franchise if they weren't? I'm not going to question, say, an Arizona Cardinals fan in North Dakota... but if you're cherry picking good franchises all over the map (as one person I knew who claimed fandom of the Yankees, Celtics, Cowboys and Canadiens), you're gonna come off as a tool, especially if the franchise success is recent and the fandom was never notable before said success. A good example of this is the exponential explosion of the Yankees fanbase outside the Tri-state area over the last decade.

[snuffbox 0]

I don't personally know many people here (Southwest Wisco) that won't be cheering for the Bears if they make the Super Bowl.

You're not in the southwest part of the state. Southwest is like, Platteville. Of course, to me, just like anything south of Kankakee is downstate Illinois, anything north of where I-94 links Madison and Milwaukee is Up North. Unless I'm just being presumptuous and you are not speaking from the La Crosse-Eau Claire environs today?

 

I live about an hour to the south of LaCrosse, 3 below Eau Claire. That would be a little over an hour south of I-94.

 

I used to live in La Crosse, Madison, and Baltimore at diferent times but I'm back where I've lived most of my life...southwest Wisco.

[cabbageboy 0]

Maybe several people from the NY area moved to other parts of the country? I can't think of too many people in my area that are Yankees fans, unless it's the occasional person who moved here from NY.

 

Louisville is a difficult town to figure when it comes to pro sports since the city has no major league sports, but plenty of teams in the general region. I don't think the NBA has a real clear cut team here, since this area is all about college hoops. NFL? Well, some like the Bengals, some like the Colts, some like the Rams, maybe a few like the Bears or Packers. The Browns had a bit of a following when they had Tim Couch, but not really nowdays. I'd say the Colts right now might have a slight edge in fan support here, but if they started sucking and the Bengals improved then it could switch.

 

MLB is the most difficult to figure, since Louisville has had the AAA franchises of St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati all in the past 15 years. And of course there are Cubs fans due to their national exposure on WGN. Since the Reds are the current parent team to the Louisville Bats, I suppose they have the most fans. Personally I hate the Reds, was a Cubs supporter for years until I finally got fed up with the Dusty Baker Era, and have always liked the Cardinals reasonably well but not enough to be my favorite team. As in I'm not sure it's possible to like BOTH the Cubs and Cardinals.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

Three hours, guys. I'm probably going to refrain from posting here during the game, like last week.

[bob_barron 0]

Same here. I'll be too nervous to type anything probably.

[snuffbox 0]

Is it snowing there, Czech?

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

Snow/sleet mix at Soldier.

[vivalaultra 0]

I haven't posted in a football thread since my conception here, and I don't wanna come off as a bandwagoner, but I've been a Saints' fan since...long before I was an Astros' fan. I've been a Saints' fan since the early 90s, when I lived in South LA about 50 miles out of NO. I remember in 4th grade every class after the Saints had played, the whole class would get bonus points if they Saints had won. Needless to say, we didn't get that many bonus points. Even after the move to Texas, I've still been a Saints' fan, despite getting very few games on TV in preference of the lousy Texans. With that said, I'd just like to say how utterly unbelievably awesome it would be the see the Saints win today. I'm predicting same score as the last Saints' game. 27-24, Saints.

[bob_barron 0]

Good to have another fan here.

[Guest Princess Leena]

And vivalaultra gives more reason for people to hate the Saints here.

[vivalaultra 0]

Wait...I'm...hated?!?!?! I just thought I was quirky.

[The Man in Blak 0]

I haven't posted in a football thread since my conception here

 

vivalaultra, the first TSM Baby.

 

I picked the Saints and the Colts to win before the snow and the sleet came through, but now I'm waffling a bit on that NFC pick. weather.com has it at 31 degrees, but feeling like 22, due to the wind chill.

[Hawk 34 0]

I get that the media needs something to talk about but the whole "first black coach in SB" angle is getting too much focus. I'm sure Wilbon will make it a Black Vs White thing if Chicago plays New England or Indy plays New Orleans.

[snuffbox 0]

I have big $1 bets on today's games. I picked duh Bears & the Team I Dont Like.

[KingPK 0]

Snuffy the Greek.

 

I'm pretty comfortable with the picks/scores I made earlier, but I wouldn't be outright shocked to see the other teams pull it out.