Let the disorganization commence...

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Although I was mainly watching the Super Bowl last night for the football, my interest was unexpectedly drawn to the advertisements. Surprisingly, I thought they demonstrated an appalling lack of creativity, humor, and intelligence, and some were just downright insulting.

As it has been for the last few years, USA Today's "Ad-Meter" is the source for determining the winners and losers of the high-stakes advertising spots (as well was an easy way to watch all the commercials in one place). The ratings are compiled by 250 volunteers in California and Virginia, who watch each commercial live with handheld meters to gauge their response to the ad.

Of the 63 total ads, this year's big winner was Mars/Snickers' football farce featuring Betty White and Abe Vigoda, which earned an average score of 8.68 out of ten. The big loser was Go Daddy's truly awful "massage" ad with Danica Patrick, which earned a score of 4.20.

While I thought that Snickers' ad was fairly funny, the rest of the ads rounding out the top ten were not even close to the standard of the past few years. One of the many Bud Light ads (this one featuring a house made out of full cans of beer, yuk, yuk) inexplicably grabbed the #3 spot, with an average score of 7.91. Another head-scratcher was a Doritos (a company who somehow grabbed the #2, 11, 14 and 17 spots) commercial featuring a dog who put his shock collar on his owner. That's it. This had an average score of 8.27, leading me to wonder if these 250 people were seeing the same thing I was.

Another disturbing trend was the slew of commercials either (a. Belittling women, b. Suggesting men need to "nut up," c. Exalting men who are crude and drink beer.) And then there was Jake Gyllenhaal as "The Prince of Persia." That image was permanently burned in my retinas.

Seriously, we had a Dockers bit about men without pants (not kidding), a CareerBuilder ad (#51) about office workers wearing only underwear (I wonder where they got their ideas from?), a Bridgestone bit (#42) where a man gave up his wife instead of his tires, Jim Nantz for FLO TV suggesting that a man dragged to the mall by his wife during "the Game" needed to be "a real man," (#36) two unbelievably coarse and crude Go Daddy spots (#60 and 63, thank god) featuring women tearing off their shirts, a Dodge ad (#23) suggesting a car is a man's only true refuge from all things female, and a scathingly unfunny ad from Motorola (#19) with Megan Fox taking a picture of herself, which somehow caused a bunch of men to slap each other (and people got paid for coming up with that!)

The NY Times has a nice write-up of the evening's highs and lows, and I agree with many of the points made there.

However awful most of the commercials were, there were a few very nice ones. Google had a very innovative and clever ad (#43, somehow) telling a love story through only Google searches, Monster.com had a hilariously irrelevant bit (#10) about a violin-playing beaver with lofty dreams, there was a series of shocking Denny's ads featuring screaming animated chickens (#18, 27, 38), I chuckled at a wry spot from Kia (#34) about a group of stuffed-animals with grand Vegas plans, and, my personal favorite was an inspired ad from Audi (#6, deservedly) about the fictional "Green Police," who are, of course, completely out of control in their environmental passion (Cheap Trick FTW!)

Overall, they may be just ads, but I'm not very comfortable about what these commercials say about America, and what we value.

And Jake Gyllenhaal, for the love of god, please cut your hair.

As some may recall, I wrote two similar mid-season posts (which can be found here and here) and this post will serve as a final review of the positive bits of the 2009 season. Whether or not you pessimist nerds who know nothing about any athletic endeavor requiring teamwork under physical stress like to admit it or not, it wasn't all bad. I'll be depressing y'all soon with the dark brother of this post anyway. Enjoy it while it lasts.  There are eight nominees, four from each approximate half of the season. Enjoy!

THE BEST GAMES (CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

1. May 12th, 2009 – Giants 9, Nationals 7 – Pablo Sandoval hit a walk-off 3-run HR on a 2-2 pitch with two outs, complete with iconic bat-flip, and the Giants scored 7 of their 9 runs with two outs. This was the runaway winner at the season's halfway point.

2. June 12th, 2009 – Giants 3, Athletics 0 – Tim Lincecum pitched a complete game shutout and the offense was good enough. Scott Hairston was not present.

3. June 29th, 2009 – Giants 10, Cardinals 0 – Tim Lincecum pitches a complete-game 2-hit shutout, running up his record to 8-2, and the Giants offense exploded, touching a mysterious white pentagon many times.

4. The first two games of the Astros series, July 3-4th, 2009 - Giants 22, Astros 0 - Tim Lincecum and Ryan Sadowski (remember when he was good?) combine for 14 shutout innings, the Giants offense becomes suddenly potent, as Pablo Sandoval and Travis Ishikawa each go yard and 27 hits are produced. The Astros sputter in every possible way, creating a perfect storm of delicious baseball.]

5. August 17th, 2009 - Giants 10, Mets 1 - Joe Martinez (gamer) pitched 5 effective innings, and received the win. The Giants beat up on the Mets mercilessly. Aaron Rowand was 4-5. 

6. August 30th, 2009 - Giants 9, Rockies 5 - AKA the "Renteria grand-slam" game. His salami changed a 5-2 downer to a 6-5 thriller. He went 3-4 with 5 RBI. The wild-card race was tied after this game, and we had just swept the Rockies at home.

7. September 15th, 2009 - Giants 10, Rockies 2 - After this game, the Giants were on a 3-game win streak, and the Rockies were on a 4-game losing streak. The Giants trailed by only 2.5 games in the Wild Card. Todd Helton went 0-3 with 3K's. It was all so good...

8. October 4th, 2009 - Giants 4, Padres 3 - Admit it. The Giants may have been out of the playoffs, but the final game of the season was a fun one. Pablo Sandoval got his 25th home run in dramatic fashion, as it proved to be the winner in extra innings. Jeremy Affeldt finished his excellent year with 2 shutout innings. And the Giants finished 14 games over .500. 14.

SPECIAL CATEGORY

The Jonathan Sanchez no-hitter. For so many reasons.

via i763.photobucket.com

via i763.photobucket.com

I consider myself an obsessive NFL fan. To point: once, when I discovered that a game I really wanted to watch would not be on TV at my house, (we didn't get NFL Network at the time) I successfully convinced my brother (doesn't like football) and friend (just got off work) to come with me to a sports bar in West Newton (Massachusetts) to watch just about 2 hours of the game. On a Thursday night. And the Packers lost, after all that.

The point here is this: I rarely let anything stand in front of my obsession.

You can imagine how shocked I was, therefore, to discover that I'd completely missed the best innovation to come to the NFL since instant replay. I'm speaking of the unspeakably awesome new NFL channel: NFL RedZone.

Whoo boy.

Basically, NFL RedZone combines everything one could like about football, and takes away everything one could dislike. From 1-8 on every Sunday afternoon, NFL RedZone provides a 100% commercial free blast of distilled awesomeness.

Normally, the flow of watching an NFL game on TV can be tedious. For a game with only 60 minutes of clock, most games take over three hours. You've got to put up with endless commercials, penalties, long replay reviews, inane commentary, and Shannon Sharpe trying to speak the English language. It's not always pretty.

I know I sound like I'm on the payroll here, but the service really blew me away.

I started my first NFL RedZone experience at 1 pm. sharp last Sunday. Energetic studio host Scott Hanson informed me that there were 6 games currently going on, and that I would be updated on each and every one of them thoroughly. It's whip-around style coverage that shows you every important or awesome play either live, or a few short seconds after its occurrence.

I saw Randy Moss tiptoe his way to a beautiful touchdown against the Bills live. Seconds later, I saw the incredible Browns return man Joshua Cribbs return a kickoff 100 yards for the TD, whirling and cutting his winding way. Also live. WOW.

Did I mention there are no commercials? That it's in crystal-clear HD? For seven straight hours?

Phil Taylor of Sports Illustrated wrote his column last week in praise of the channel, humorously noting that, "During his seven hours on the air he [Scott Hanson] gets only a two-minute bathroom break and, if he's lucky, a bite or two of a sandwich." Hanson aptly sets the stage before each switch, and one always knows what's going on in all the games currently on.  The people behind this channel are intense and seriously pumped about it, and it shows.

This channel is carried by most cable providers in their basic package (it's channel 899 Hi-Def, for those of you who have Comcast), and actually has been around since Week 1 (September). I can't believe I missed it until now.

For the big fans out there, it's still no substitute for seeing the entirety of your team's game. I watched the Packers/Steelers game last weekend on boring 'ol FOX. And what a game it was...(that still stings)

However, whenever a commercial came up, and for the entirety of halftime, you know where I was. 899 all the way.

As a whole, RedZone offers unequaled coverage, excitement and distillation of the NFL. It seems almost too good to be true, and I hope it's around for some time to come.

I consider myself an obsessive NFL fan. To point: once, when I discovered that a game I really wanted to watch would not be on TV at my house, (we didn't get NFL Network at the time) I successfully convinced my brother (doesn't like football) and friend (just got off work) to come with me to a sports bar in West Newton (Massachusetts) to watch just about 2 hours of the game. On a Thursday night. And the Packers (my team) lost, after all that.

The point here is this: I rarely let anything stand in front of my obsession.

You can imagine how shocked I was, therefore, to discover that I'd completely missed the best innovation to come to the NFL since instant replay. I'm speaking of the unspeakably awesome new NFL channel: NFL RedZone.

Whoo boy.

For those who haven't already heard, basically, NFL RedZone combines everything one could like about football, and takes away everything one could dislike. From 1-8 on every Sunday afternoon, NFL RedZone provides a 100% commercial free blast of distilled awesomeness.

Normally, the flow of watching an NFL game on TV can be tedious. For a game with only 60 minutes of clock, most games take over three hours. You've got to put up with endless commercials, penalties, long replay reviews, inane commentary, and Shannon Sharpe trying to speak the English language. It's not always pretty.

I know I sound like I'm on the payroll here, but the service really did blow me away.

I started my first NFL RedZone experience at 1 pm. sharp last Sunday. Energetic studio host Scott Hanson informed me that there were 6 games currently going on, and that I would be updated on each and every one of them thoroughly. It's whip-around style coverage that shows you every important or awesome play either live, or a few short seconds after its occurrence.

I saw Randy Moss tiptoe his way to a beautiful touchdown against the Bills live. Seconds later, I saw the incredible Browns return man Joshua Cribbs return a kickoff 100 yards for the TD, whirling and cutting his winding way. Also live. WOW.

Did I mention there are no commercials? That it's in crystal-clear HD? For seven straight hours?

Phil Taylor of Sports Illustrated wrote his column last week in praise of the channel, humorously noting that, "During his seven hours on the air he [Scott Hanson] gets only a two-minute bathroom break and, if he's lucky, a bite or two of a sandwich." Hanson aptly sets the stage before each switch, and one always knows what's going on in all the games currently on.  The people behind this channel are intense and seriously pumped about it, and it shows.

This channel is carried by most cable providers in their basic package (it's channel 899 Hi-Def, for those of you who have Comcast), and actually has been around since Week 1 (September). I can't believe I missed it until now.

For the big fans out there, it's still no substitute for seeing the entirety of your team's game. I watched the Packers/Steelers game last weekend on boring 'ol FOX.

However, whenever a commercial came up, and for the entirety of halftime, you know where I was. 899 all the way.

As a whole, RedZone offers unequaled coverage, excitement and distillation of the NFL. It seems almost too good to be true, and I hope it's around for some time to come.

P.S. (Baseball Note) There is some suggestion that this could be the NFL's answer to MLB.tv, a service I know is popular with non-Californians here. The parallel is obviously not perfect, as with NFL RedZone there is a whole lot less flexibility and choice, and, also, RedZone costs nothing but your usual TV bill, whereas MLB.tv can run up to 120$/year. It's worth noting (again) that you really do get a good sense of what's going on in every game watching RedZone.

Comment Starter(s): Are services like RedZone and MLB.tv good for their respective leagues? Does this eliminate or lessen the need for illegal online streaming? How do you prefer to watch your sports?

As we can see by looking at this incredibly helpful and cool website, the playoff race has simplified quite a bit. The Packers and the Cowboys currently hold both wild card spots, and the 49'ers and NY Giants are the only two teams still mathematically alive. It would take a minor miracle for the Niners to get in, and the Giants don't have a much better shot (given that Dallas looked pretty resurgent last night). I'm going to maintain my position that I'd rather play the Cardinals than the Eagles in the first round, so, with that in mind:

1. The Cardinals are in Detroit. They'll win anyways, but definitely root for the Cards to hold on to that #4 spot if you're of a similar mindset to me.

2. The 49'ers are in Philly. Root Eagles. This will secure the #3 spot for the Eagles, and eliminate the 49'ers.

3. The NY Giants are in DC to take on the 'Skins. Root Redskins. This Redskin victory, combined with a Packers win, would guarantee a Packers playoff berth. It would also, for all intents and purposes, eliminate the pesky Giants. It's a win-win, folks.

4. Go Pack Go!

This week finds the Packers in a fairly comfortable playoff niché, locked into second place spot in the NFC Wild Card, and having won 4 straight games. Here are the current Wild Card standings:

1. Philadelphia Eagles 8-4 (7-2 in conference)

2. Green Bay Packers 8-4 (6-3 in conference)

3. NY Giants 7-5 (5-3 in conference)

For those astute readers who are wondering about tiebreaking procedures and why the Eagles are currently behind the Cowboys, look no farther than this passage, copied from expert Joe Ferreira:

• Dallas is the NFC East Division winner over Philadelphia based on head to head (1-0).
• Philadelphia earns the No. 5 seed over Green Bay based on conference record (7-2 to the Packers' 6-3).

This is a very good website for checking out the total playoff picture. 

Now here's how a Packers fan should root today to improve our playoff hopes:

1. The Falcons are at home to take on the unbeaten New Orleans Saints. Root for the Saints. The Falcons are already practically dead in the water at 6-6, but a loss would put them at 6-7, and, realistically, completely out of it.

2. The Bengals are at home against the hated Vikings. Why the heck not, root Bengals. A Vikings loss combined with a Packers win would make the former 10-3, and the latter 9-4. It'll never happen, but it would be awesome to win the division.

3. The Cowboys are at home against the Chargers. Root Cowboys. Honestly, I'd rather play the "Amazing Disappearing Offense" than the Eagles in the first round of the playoffs, and the best way to ensure that is the Cowboys wining the overrated NFC East. The Eagles are less dangerous to us as a fellow wild card team. However...

4. The Eagles are in the Meadowlands to take on the Giants tonight. In a tough one, I'm going to have to root for the Giants. Even thought it would be nice to knock the G-Men out of the race (7-6), I still don't see them as a major threat at 8-5. An Eagles loss allows a hopefully victorious Packers team to move up to the # 5 spot (wild card leaders), and that is some nice insurance to have. All that being said, this is two NFC East teams beating up on each other, neither outcome would be bad for the Pack.

5. I really don't need to say this, but, the Packers need to take care of business in Chicago. Go Pack go!

It's Sunday morning, and so this weekly feature returns. The current NFC Wild Card standings (drumroll please...)

1. Philadelphia Eagles 7-4 (6-2 in conference)

2. Green Bay Packers 7-4 (6-3 in conference)

3. NY Giants 6-5 (4-3, or .571 in conference)

4. Atlanta Falcons 6-5 (5-4 or .555 in conference)

You can ignore pretty much everyone else except the 49'ers, who, in recent weeks on this blog, have been cited as possible threats to the Cardinals in the NFC West. If the season ends, say, with both the Cards and 49'ers at 10-6 or 9-7, this could complicate things. Overall, though, it looks pretty good for the Pack.

Here's how you should root this week:

1. The Eagles are in Atlanta to take on the Falcons. In a tough one, I'm going to have to recommend rooting for the Eagles. An Eagles win would make Atlanta 6-6, and all but out of the picture with both Michael Turner and Matt Ryan seriously injured. This is a good thing. It also makes the Eagles 8-4, and will maintain their current first place standing in the WC race, as the Packers are playing an AFC team. Even if they win, they will still be trailing in the conference record tiebreaker, you see. Oh well. There are other weeks to try to take that top spot.

2. The Giants are at home to take on the Cowboys. Cowboys all the way in this one. A win would make them 9-3, making them de-facto favorites for the NFC East title. The Giants would be 6-6, having lost 6 of their last 7, and practically out of the playoff picture, much like the hypothetical Falcons.

3. The Vikings are in Arizona to take on the Cards. Root for the Cards. A win (as Brandon already explained) would make them more likely to rest their starters against us in Week 17. We want them to run away with the divison, on that note....

4. The 49'ers are in Seattle to take on the Seahawks. It'll never happen, but root for Matt Hasslebeck's crew. This, coupled with a Cards win, would effectively end the NFC West "race." 

5. Packers need to win. Obviously.

If all this happens, we'll be sitting quite pretty. Now, so to not set myself up for disappointment, I'll point out that a loss to the Ravens would not be the end of the world. It doesn't effect our conference record, which is the primary tiebreaker, and our remaining schedule is fairly soft. That said, I think it would be a big win, and we should come out prepared to win this game on extra rest/planning against the inconsistent and banged-up Ravens.

The Eagles are really our only threat in this race, and I'm feeling pretty good. Now watch me get burned when the Packers flame out and lose three in a row.

I'm going to make this brief, because dishingoutdimes' " The Playoff Hunt - Where We Stand After Turkey Day" kind of usurped me.

It was obviously a good thing that the Packers won, and also a good thing that the NY Giants lost.

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I'm proud to present to you the second installment of this weekly feature. So now, with no further ado, here is the current NFC wild card race:

1. Atlanta Falcons (5-4)

1. New York Giants (5-4)

1. Green Bay Packers (5-4)

1. Philadelphia Eagles (5-4)

(Bears, 49'ers @ 4-5, Panthers @ 4-6)

Wow, what a pile-up! We have seven teams between 4-6 and 5-4 in the NFC, leaving the race practically wide open. The division leaders in the NFC are a combined 29-7, so I don't think many of the Wild Card teams will be catching them.

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I am pleased to present you with the first installment of this weekly feature, which will take a look at the Packers (fading) playoff hopes, and who you should root for to make the postseason more likely.

This week, the Packers come into a crucial game with the Cowboys at home on a 2-game loosing streak (and with a 4-4 overall record), with painful losses to the Vikings and Buccaneers. Their wins have been against the woeful Bears, Browns, Lions and Rams. It doesn't look good.

As far as their playoff hopes, here's the NFC Wild Card standings as of now (top 2 finishers get into playoffs):

1. Philadelphia Eagles (5-3)

2. Atlanta Falcons (5-3)

3. NY Giants (5-4)

4. Green Bay Packers (4-4)

Also Rans: Chicago Bears (4-5), San Francisco 49'ers (4-5), Carolina Panthers (3-5), Seattle Seahawks (3-5).

Really, not too bad. They are one game off the lead, with a few bad/OK teams lurking behind them. I'm just assuming the division is out of hand, given the Vikings are 7-1 and we have no games left with them.

Now, here's what Packers fans want to have happen this weekend.

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