Fifty Per Cent

My pro football predictions this past weekend were not as stellar as my forecasts during the wild card round.  During wild card week, I picked four out of five games correctly (counting the college championship game). This past weekend I got the two games on Saturday right, but was incorrect for the Sunday games.

The good news is that my New England Patriots are still alive. The not so great news is that they have to play a nemesis, the Denver Broncos in Denver where the air is thin and the Patriots have had no mazel.

Everyone is counting out Peyton Manning. I agree he looks a little frail as if the years have caught up to him, but do not count out Manning until he is down and out. The man has a head on his shoulders and can read defenses as well as anyone. Manning did not have a great game against the Steelers. He will be the real Manning on Sunday. Also his receivers will not drop passes like they did against the Steelers. Manning will be a force. Also, I read a few minutes ago that the Patriots placed one of their defenders on IR (injured reserve)--which means the player, Jerod Mayo--a team captain, will not play against the Broncos.  He is an effective defender so this is not good for my Patriots.

But we are in it, and that is exciting.  I have a professional job, have written several textbooks, and in general am more responsible than the average bear, but I am acting like a young boy in grade school this week, trying to get all the information there is to be had about the upcoming game.  Yesterday instead of listening to a CD from the sixties as is my wont, I had the car radio on sports talk all the time I drove in the car.  It was comforting to know that some of the callers on the talk radio, are far more zany than I could ever be.

The enthusiasm is not about betting. It is about passion. One can have passion about a number of things. True love, of course.  But sports is something else many are passionate about--which is a, if not the, central message of my book, the Madness of March: Bonding and Betting with the Boys in Las Vegas.

As it relates to writing and Bonding and Betting with the Boys, my brother and I will be off again to Las Vegas soon--but this time not for March Madness. We will do our due diligence somewhere for the tournament in March certainly, but in a few weeks we are going to observe the bettors on the weekend of February 5-7th--Super bowl weekend.

In the book, I relay my interaction with a March Madness bettor in Las Vegas who had been there for a Super bowl and described how crazy he found it to be.  We want to see what it is like ourselves. Unlike the March Madness first weekend, the Superbowl is just one game, yet the strip is supposedly wild with fans who wager on anything from who will win the flip of the coin, the length of the singing of the national anthem, which team will first be penalized, how many yards a quarterback will throw in the first quarter--let alone who will win the game. It should be a lark to observe the scene and then write about it.

My predictions may be fueled by my heart, but I am going with the Patriots over the Broncos in the early game this weekend. The late game, I think Carolina will win, not because they are so extra but because I don't think Carson Palmer is so extra, and Larry Fitzgerald while unbelievable, is not super man.  So Carolina wins--not sure it will be pretty. The Patriot game, no doubt, will be beautiful.