Northbound

Chapter Twenty-Two:

“Well, where to begin?” She stood up and started pacing, not bothering any longer to shield herself with her hands. Her breasts were round and full, and they swayed when she walked. “I mean, naked protests aren’t anything new. They have them every weekend in San Francisco. I went to one last year when I was guest-lecturing at Berkeley, and it was just an amazing experience. All those people, gathered together from all walks of life, naked together, all united in a shared desire for peace and brotherhood. Have you ever been a part of that?”

“Peace and brotherhood,” Cricket croaked.

WEEK 4

Arizona 17, Atlanta 3
Dallas 20, Tennessee 10
N.Y. Jets 31, Indianapolis 30
Miami 23, Houston 20
Buffalo 17, Minnesota 10
New Orleans 15, Carolina 3
San Diego 23, Baltimore 10
Kansas City 20, San Francisco 18
St. Louis 17, Detroit 7
Oakland 17, Cleveland 14
Jacksonville 33, Washington 9
New England 31, Cincinnati 10
Seattle 13, Chicago 10
Green Bay 28, Philadelphia 21

Feeling very good about the Seattle-Chicago pick, but we’ll see.

Okay, so I’m wrong. Rich Lowry in NRO on the ongoing questioning of terrorist bastards rotting in Guantanamo:

One hundred twenty-five detainees are still being interrogated. Just last year, an extremist cell of North Africans was broken up in Italy, based partly on information gleaned here. Last fall, FBI sketch artists were able to depict a wanted al Qaeda official from the Konar Province of Afghanistan, thanks to input from three Saudi detainees.

I couldn’t imagine that the detainees of Gitmo still had any useful information to provide, but I guess I was wrong. Still, I’m with the President; it’s past time for the Guantanamo camp to be shut down. I’m still on record for quick tribunals, quicker executions, and throwing the remains to the sharks. But that’s me. If the Pentagon is still getting valuable intel from the bastards, feed them all the Happy Meals they want.

We’re coming in to Week Four, so it’s time to think about survival football. Even with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on their bye week — and everyone playing survival football is looking forward to the Bruce Gradowski Era — there are a ton of good plays this week. Enough so that you have to wonder if it’s worth taking a risk or two this week and going with a run-of-the-mill team.

So far, most of my picks have been just average. I had Seattle the first week, and then Baltimore and Miami. Even though Seattle was a Super Bowl team last year, they’re probably going to take a step back, and with Shaun Alexander out, that will probably accellerate. Baltimore showed they weren’t that good against Oakland, and Miami played like dog chow against Tennessee. I still have lots of powerhouse teams like Indianapolis, New England, and Chicago left to pick. The longer I can hold off picking those teams, the better off I’ll be.

There are seven different matchups where one team is favored by more than five points, and any of them are potential survival moves. I’m looking at them not in terms of who wins this week, though, but whether I can hold off on picking the favored team until a little farther down the line. For example:

Indianapolis (-9) at Jets: The easiest pick on the board. But I’m not taking Indy this week for two reasons. First, I’ve got tickets to the Jets game and I’ll be rooting for them, and I don’t want to ruin that by taking the Colts. Second, they’re at home against Tennessee, a game that ought to be a slam-dunk — and they have Washington and Houston on their schedule later. There just isn’t any need to take Indy this week.

Arizona at Atlanta (-7): This would have been an easy, easy pick if Atlanta hadn’t shown up flat last week against the Saints. As it is, you don’t know which Atlanta team will show up. And the last thing I want to do in this world is give Arizona the chance to ruin my survival season. Atlanta has games with Detroit and Cleveland coming up, and I can wait to take a chance on Michael Vick’s mercurial talents.

Dallas (-9) at Tennessee: No way, no how, am I going to take The Beloved Dallas Cowboys the week of a full-fledged Terrell Owens meltdown. It just can’t be done. And they have Houston at home in two weeks. I can wait.

New Orleans at Carolina (-7): I’d like to have Carolina have a winning record before I pick them against the mighty 3-0 New Orleans juggernaut. I’m just saying. Next week, they’ll be 2-2 and facing Cleveland at home, which is a great time to take them off the board.

San Francisco at Kansas City (-7): Talk to me when Trent Green is healthy. Like when they play Oakland at home.

So that leaves me with Philadelphia, and I’m going with the Eagles over the Packers this weekend. It’s the best home matchup they have until Week 11 (when they have Tennessee) and I don’t think they’re any great shakes on the road. And Donovan McNabb is still healthy. Strike while the iron’s hot.

Dan Steinberg at the Washington Post sports blog gets the absurdity of the Completely Random Arbitrary Picks:

Obviously the experts don’t really know anything when it comes to forecasting athletic achievement. (If they did, these professional experts would not have gone 20-46-12 against the NFL spreads this week, these six professional experts would not have unanimously agreed the Pats would beat the Broncos, and Peter King (5-6-2) would not have done worse against the spread than this guy’s randomly generated numbers (6-5-2).)

“This guy”, he says, meaning lil’ ol’ me.

To be completely honest here, I haven’t run my numbers against the spread, mostly because there isn’t one “spread” to choose from, and I have no intention of going crazy on the math. If the WP thinks I’m doing better against the spread than Peter King, I’ll take their word for it. But I’m not making that analysis because, logically, my random picks ought to do pretty decent against the spread.

Look at it this way. The spread on the Miami-Tennessee game was 11 points in favor of Miami. Tennessee lost by three and covered the spread. Basically, any random pick that had Tennessee winning — which I had a 50-50 chance of doing — would “beat” the spread. But so would any random pick that had Miami winning by less than 11.

I ran a different random season, and of the 272 games that were in the sample, just under 200 of them had the home team winning by 11 points or more. There are a lot more random selections in the distribution where a +11 underdog covers or wins than there are selections where a -11 favorite covers. If I’m beating Peter King at the spread, it’s just due to chance.

The purpose of the Completely Arbitrary Random Picks is to show that the NFL is a lot more random than you think it is, and therefore infinitely harder to predict.

From SI.com’s Truth & Rumors:

This much seems clear: Roger Clemens is still enamored with the idea of wearing a Red Sox uniform before he retires. So if he does return in 2007, he will probably be cashing John Henry’s checks.
– Hartford Courant

I don’t want to hear it. I just don’t. I don’t want to hear any more rumors about Roger Clemens. I especially double-don’t want to hear that he’s maybe thinking about coming to Arlington and playing for the Rangers, because it won’t happen. It won’t. Ever. I’m not listening, I’m not listening, I’m not listening.

Well, didn’t do so good this week, another dismal showing, although I did predict the Saints upset of the Falcons last night. So that’s 4-10 on the week, 17-29 on the year. I take comfort in the notion that everything will even out, and that picking games in the NFL is tough even for the best of us. (Peter King his own bad self went 7-7, making him 25-21 on the year.)

I was quite pleased by Miami holding on to beat Tennessee, so I’m still alive in my survival league. I had a rotten week in fantasy, though, with both Matt Jones and Reuben Droughns out with injuries, and Vernon Davis getting hurt.

Chapter Twenty:

I opened the door, and there Cricket was, wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, lying on top of the bedspread and scratching himself. At least I hoped that’s what he was doing. He had the remote in his hand, but the television was turned off. He looked guilty, just as though he had Mr. Fuzzy in his lap, and I would have bet a large amount of money that he’d been about to order something off Spectravision.

Chapter Twenty-One:

“So what happened to the girlfriend?”

“I don’t know, but she’s long gone.” Cricket, as it turned out, was an even bigger idiot than I was. Donora drove the hearse back to Trenton, I think because she didn’t know that area very well and it was easier to retrace her steps than do anything else. He got her to drive back to the hotel so he could pick up his foot locker. He left her in the car, with the keys, parked in front of the lobby, and you can guess what happened next.

Someone — some unspeakably evil person — stole Crazy Ray’s car – with his prosthetic leg in it — wrecked it, and ruined not only the car but the scooter lift. (He got the leg back.)

So, come on Cowboys fans. It’s the bye week. You’re not having to shell out for nachos or Shiner Bock this week. Send Crazy Ray a few bucks. He’d do it for you.

Here are the Completely Random Arbitrary Picks (CRAP) for Week 3:

WEEK 3

Tampa Bay 34, Carolina 31
Chicago 10, Minnesota 9
Pittsburgh 28, Cincinnati 27
Green Bay 38, Detroit 0
Jacksonville 23, Indianapolis 20
Buffalo 26, N.Y. Jets 9
Tennessee 20, Miami 13
Houston 31, Washington 22
Cleveland 34, Baltimore 23
N.Y. Giants 34, Seattle 31
Philadelphia 23, San Francisco 3
Arizona 24, St. Louis 23
New England 27, Denver 3
New Orleans 17, Atlanta 13

On the year, I have a losing record (13-19), but I feel pretty good about this week; the old random number generator has some plausible upsets (Houston over Washington, Jax over Indy) as well as some real howlers (no way Cleveland is putting up 34 on Baltimore). I have a good feeling about predicting the Philly and Pittsburgh games correctly. (Here are Peter King’s picks, for comparison; he’s 18-14 on the young year.)

In survival football this week, I’m going with Miami, which is a scary pick. The Dolphins haven’t shown anybody a damn thing except that maybe Nick Saban should have gone and had lunch with the President that time. But Tennessee is a 11-point underdog, and they’re more putrid than Miami so far this year. At least Miami lost to the defending world champs at the Ketchup Bottle and got nipped by the pesky Bills. And if I pick Miami this week, I don’t have to deal with them the rest of the year, so there’s that.

Of course, if you’re going to pick an 0-2 team in a game against a putrid opponent, why not pick the Washington Redskins? Reason: the Redskins are on the road, for one thing (also why I’m not taking the Eagles over the Niners). And you have a better QB matchup with the Miami game; David Carr, whatever his faults, is a better signal-caller than Mark Brunell at this point in his career.

It’s also very, very tempting to take the Packers over the Lions, but we really don’t know which team is more putrid at this point in time. I suspect it’s the Lions that are more putrid, but they played the Seahawks mighty tough, so you can’t really pick against them. Same with taking Carolina over Tampa; the Panthers just aren’t strong enough favorites.

It’s a tough week, and I’m not very confident about my pick. We’ll see what happens.

UPDATE: Now I don’t know what to do. The Sports Guy spends an entire column ripping, just ripping poor Daunte Culpepper, and I’m reading the whole thing thinking, great galloping Godzilla, am I mental for taking Miami here? And then he says:

DOLPHINS (-10.5) over Titans
Forget about Culpepper — Miami’s defense covers this spread by itself.

Well, okay then.

Having said that, after taking a second look, he’s taking just three favorites this week — the Dolphins, Carolina, which has the same exact situation (0-2, facing a potentially horrid team with a weak QB) and the Seahawks, who I took in Week One. So that leaves the Dolphins – I’m not taking Carolina on the road without Steve Smith. So there you go.