Oh, I Think So

The Bears beat the Browns in their final pre-season showing.  Fingers crossed that they can do some more beating when the new season starts, one week from today at home against the Falcons.  Go Bears!  Final cuts were made yesterday and I really have to plead ignorance on the cuts.  I do wish those cut the best of luck in their future endeavors.  Football ain't the be all and end all, y'all, and I hope the lack of it doesn't screw with your heads and the rest of your lives. The time of the football pool is back and one I'd neither seen nor heard of surfaced this week.  First, you are fully advised which team is home and which is away and you pick who might win that contest.  Second, you have to list your confidence in that pick from 1-16, with 16 being pretty darn confident who you chose to win will, in fact, win and 1 being not at all confident.  Third, you turn your form into the guy and he enters it into his home computer.  Fourth, all t...

Y'all!  It's still the pre-season! The Bears LOST against the NY Giants last Monday at the Meadowlands. The Bears LOST against the Tennessee Titans last night, Saturday, in Nashville.  Here is the thing that amazes me about yesterday's game:  I'd no idea they were going to be playing last night.  Oops.  Some fan I am. Yesterday was a busy day.  In the morning, I went to an archery class and shot off many arrows at a target.  I got all the arrows onto the target sheet but I am pretty much the same kind of archer that I am a bowler, i.e. not consistent but with archery getting a slight edge. After archery, I went over and fetched my pal so we could have a nice cheap hot-dog-and-soda lunch at Costco and gossip about things that interest only us.   I deposited him and drove out to the Westin by the airport to donate blood. The Blackhawks sponsor regular blood drives and they give out stuff like tickets to the Blackhawks family fan day (...

As Bears training camp draws to a close, Lovie Smith, Supreme Coach of All Bearness, on Friday stated that he thinks this is a really good team.  Well, seriously, what else is he going to say?  "Wow, there is some running and tackling stankiness going on out there and I just know they're going to tank all season long."  He won't say that.  I will, however, agree that this might be a really good team.  They won their first pre-season game last week which, frankly, bodes well, even though last year they sort of stank up the general rosters of football in the pre-season but did pretty well for themselves in regular season play.  Of course, next week the inner naysayer could emerge and there would be general complaining and misery anew. The Bears play a Monday-night game tomorrow against the New York Giants at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.  Let's have a stroll down Memory Lane.  Last year, in regular season play, the Giants decimated the Bears and ...

It was pre-season game #1 against the Buffalo Bills and the Bears WON!  Yes, WON!  The offensive line = lackluster (is anyone at all surprised?) but the defensive team looked good (again, I am sure none are surprised).  I watched exactly ten seconds of this game, for the score in the first, second, and third quarters.  I was doing some thrilling stuff instead. Family members treated me to a 5:15pm showing of "Attack the Block," a sci-fi import from the UK about a 15-year-old gang leader who saves London from an alien invasion.  It is horrifying, gross, touching, and funny all at once.  Race to see it! Then we went to their home where I was treated to a terrific meal of fresh sausage, made by a real butcher in his shop on Milwaukee Avenue and not by a machine in a factory in a different state.  There were beans with carrots, there was cabbage with apricots.  If you got this meal in a restaurant, you'd be bragging to your friends about the tasti...

Bears Family Night is an annual tradition.  Fans buy tickets and go to Soldier Field to watch the Bears practice in the mothership, at Football Ground Zero, on a summer evening in Chicago.  A breeze can blow in off Lake Michigan and the evening ends with a fireworks display.   Fans were excited to be attending on Friday, August 5. Except that is not how it played out. The playing field was in such bad shape that it would have been dangerous for the practice to take place.  See that word?  Dangerous.  The sod has all shrunk up and there were gaps in the grassy playing surface.  Running players -- or even someone who was not looking down -- could trip in the gaps, fall and twist something or break something or worse.  Dangerous. Attending an event of this nature is not cheap.  There is the cost of parking (roughly $20) or public transportation.  There is the admission ticket.  Food has to be purchased for each member. ...

Tight End on a stick off to Carolina New dad and kickball champion Greg Olsen has been traded to the Carolina Panthers.  Upon arrival there, he was given a four-year contract extension.  This means newly unengaged QB Jay Cutler's fave bitch (yeah, tight end/wide receiver, whatever, I am going to beat this line until it's no longer a line) was traded for a handful of beans, a baking-soda-powered submarine, and a sixth-round draft pick next year.  Greg was a pretty good Bears players, so I am puzzled by the trade.  There is some sort of purge going on at Bears Central or in Bourbonnais or somewhere in Bearsville and when the dust settles, I am hoping we have an offense that is recognizable as such. Remember last year?  Jay Cutler, the Hesitatin' QB, who can't seem to let loose of the ball or find any of the guys who was supposed to catch it when he threw it, whose offensive line can't seem to cover him, getting sacked multiple times?  Getting a concus...

It was reported today on the radio that the NFL Players Association has agreed to the terms of the NFL owners and so will be back to it pretty soon with a nice ten-year contract.  In next week's blog I will report on more details. ---------- In my job, work teams sometimes build relationships with vendors such that the vendors invite a team to be their guests.  My present team is comprised of some very hard-working people and not a single person is lazy about getting the job done.  Our client is extraordinarily parsimonious, the client employees act like they are entitled to most everything, and vendors really get sick of this sort of behavior.  A new vendor is on the scene, a generous and classy vendor, and we were invited to stay a night at the vendor hotel, check in early, check out late, were treated to several meals, and were taken to a baseball game at Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs. An Astros pitcher doing his job When I was a teenager, I was insanel...