32 Teams, 32 Haiku: My 2014 NFL Preview

I'm still in summer mode, but for a lot of people football season can't come soon enough. With four days until opening kickoff, I present my annual NFL predictions 17 morae at a time.

(NOTE: the asterisks are for wild card picks)

AFC North
1. Bengals. (10-6) Good, but good enough/in humdrum group, ginger snaps/will be sufficient.
2. Ravens*. (9-7) Without Rice cooking/the rush attack starves; Flacco/better earn his pay.
3. Steelers. (6-10) Aluminum in/the Steel Curtain; Big Ben will/get his clocks cleaned, still.
4. Browns. (4-12) Wow, what a train wreck/Johnny Football = Johnny Bench/until he grows up.

AFC East
1. Patriots. (10-6) Northeast no-brainer/aging Brady has enough/for one last great year.
2. Bills. (8-8) QB confusion/if E.J. falters, Orton/is their only hope.
3. Jets. (6-10) Uh, CJ2K?/Fading star is Band-aid on/weak, battered offense.
4. Dolphins. (6-10) Their O-line woes are/no longer Incognito/I doubt improvement.

AFC South
1. Colts. (11-5) With Nicks in the mix/there's no short supply of Luck/for Hoosier faithful.
2. Titans. (8-8) Big game Hunter is/budding star, but tonight's show/is the hurt Locker.
3. Texans. (7-9) Murphy's law, defined/after '13 debacle/with Fitz, hope for best.
4. Jaguars. (5-11) Coach Gus rubs the lamp/expects genies in Bortles/but he'll keep wishing.

AFC West
1. Broncos. (12-4) Denver doubled down/but after playoff woes, can/they get over hump?
2. Chiefs*. (10-6) Cinderella tale/no more; after career years/expect modest goals.
3. Chargers. (9-7) If health and D can/sing the body electic/they might shock again.
4. Raiders. (5-11) Prowlers of the sea/moving rumors will distract/from nondescript play.

NFC North
1. Packers. (10-6) Losing Raji hurts/Aaron will keep carrying/this good, flawed squad.
2. Bears. (9-7) Offense renaissance/fails to hide a flimsy D/games won't be boring.
3. Lions. (7-9) Where's the chemistry?/So much talent, underwhelms/because they don't gel.
4. Vikings. (5-11) New QB Teddy/Bridge (over troubled) water/don't expect wins yet.

NFC East
1. Eagles. (10-6) "Are you friends or Foles?"/spry Iggles ruffle feathers/but who's their safety?
2. Redskins. (8-8) Memo to Chucky:/even with RGIII, wins/are not child's play.
3. Giants. (6-10) Big Blue is fading/aging team, shaky Eli/hey, how 'bout them Jets?
4. Cowboys. (4-12) "Romophobia"/an irrational fear, since/he's not the problem.

NFC South
1. Saints. (11-5) Something unholy/in Crescent City; "Who Dat"/flies into the Brees.
2. Falcons*. (9-7) Unpredictable/dominant one year, crap next/they're still erratic.
3. Panthers. (7-9) Newton needs targets/after '13 title, can/Cam just run the ball?
4. Buccaneers. (5-11) Mr. Smith, new head coach/will ex-Bear presence get Bucs/all Lovie-dovey?

NFC West
1. Seahawks. (13-3) Still unbeatable/Sherman is a motormouth/Wilson lobs and serves.
2. 49ers*. (12-4) A great connection/Kaepernick to Crabtree makes/for dangerous threat.
3. Cardinals. (8-8) Honey Badger runs/everyone loves a dark horse/not unlike this team.
4. Rams. (4-12) Why oh why, last place?/this deep division, no mas/without a QB.

NFL MVP: Drew Brees, Saints
Offensive ROY: Sammy Watkins, Bills
Defensive ROY: Aaron Donald, Rams
First Head Coach Fired: Jason Garrett, Cowboys
Super Bowl XLIX: Seahawks 25, Broncos 20

Omaha! Omaha! I mean, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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One Last Sports Blog Before My 30th Birthday

This will likely be my last blog post before my 30th birthday, which will be on August 18th. One of my internet guilty pleasures are semi-pointless lists where things are ranked for the sole purpose of starting debates. At first, I decided to rank the ten best (and worst) sports teams I've had the pleasure --or obviously, displeasure-- of watching in my three decades on this big blue marble. (You know that I overthink things.) I have a pretty clear of what teams I wanted on my list, but I also struggled to say something interesting, unique, and insightful about all of them. I'm too young to remember the '85 Chicago Bears or the champion Kansas City Royals team from the same year, but I vividly remember my Blackhawks romping to the Stanley Cup 18 short months ago. On the flip side of that, I remember when the Royals lost 107 games in 2005, the Bears during the Wannstadt years, and Da Hawks in the decade immediately preceding Bill Wirtz's death. For every 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, you have any Bulls squad coached by Tim Floyd or Jim Boylan. I'm scrambling to think of a Northwestern squad (save for women's lacrosse) that can balance out decades of football and basketball mediocrity, give or take the '95 Rose Bowl run.

Any capable sportswriter must learn to write with a neutral perspective, if not necessarily a neutral voice, no matter how tempting it is to be a homer and take sides. I'll never win the Cerulli Award, but I watched enough baseball, football, basketball, and hockey over the years to know what seperates a truly dominant team from a ghastly one. Without putting my favorite teams in consideration, I settled on two smaller lists, written in a perspective that has no other concern for that program or organization, in chronological order from 1984 to now:

GREATEST TEAMS:

• The 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers. College sports were barely in my peripheral in grade school, but overall '95 was one of the best years ever for college pigskin. Northwestern's unexpected rise of prominence following upsets of Notre Dame, Michigan, and Penn State was remarkable, but the Huskers were the undisputed #1 team all season. The Green-Phillips backfield was impossible to stop, the defense was a brick wall, and Nebraska averaged 51 points a game en route to a Fiesta Bowl decimation of Florida.
• The 1998 New York Yankees. Maybe the last "pure" Yankees championship squad: few if any overpriced free agents, no known juicers, and a roster that was mostly homegrown. The year that Mariano Rivera broke out and Derek Jeter cemented his superstar status. They averaged more than two runs per game, and outside of early April they never lost more than two games in a row. They won games with their hitting, their rotation, their bullpen, and their bench. Top to bottom dominant.
• The 2001-02 Detroit Red Wings. As a Chicagoan, I am just as obligated to hate the Wings as any true Bears fan spews vitriol at the Packers. Sweet holy crap, however this team was stacked. This was an alignment of All-Stars and Hockey Hall of Famers that could only last one year, a true fantasy hockey roster if there ever was one. Besides familar faces like Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan, the roster read like a who's who of '90s NHL superstars: Brett Hull, Luc Robitaille, Chris Chelios, with Dominik Hasek in goal. A near-constant offense threat on every line more than made up for the advancing age of the Wings' ringers. Outside of a first-round scare by Vancouver, there was little doubting who would win the West and hoist the Stanley Cup.
• The 2007 New England Patriots. Maybe the greatest sports team to not win a championship. You can blame their underwhelming performance in Super Bowl XLII on both exhaustion and a strong effort by the New York Giants' defense. The fact of the matter is, they went 16-0 in a season where the AFC East was still competitive and their ease of schedule was somewhere in the middle. No one except Big Blue gave them much of a challenge.
• The 2013-14 San Antonio Spurs. Too soon, you say? Granted, the Spurs were the best team in a stacked Western Conference, and in the '14 Finals they disposed a much flashier Miami Heat squad in five games simply by playing the game right. They demonstrated how Gregg Popovich and company put fundamentals first; their formula was a blend of young and seasoned players, a mix of solid shooting with crisp defensive play. Tim Duncan are Manu Ginobili are two of the most low-key future Hall of Famers in the game, with Tiago Splitter --arguably the greatest 30th overall pick ever-- having a coming out party with his solid two-way play against Lebron et al.

WORST TEAMS:

• The 2002 Tampa Bay Devil Rays. A textbook example of a youth movement, and the exact moment people realized the Rays' original management didn't know what they were doing. All the aging, overpriced free agents from their inaugural squad four years earlier had either moved on or retired. This left the Rays with a roster of cheaper, still aging free agents (hi, Greg Vaughn!) thrown together with maybe the most disorganized farm system in recent memory. Top prospect Greg "Toe" Nash never made it to Tropicana Field, a disappearing act that was nearly as fast as his unlikely arrival. Former first round pick Josh Hamilton was still in his cocaine and painkillers phase. Carl Crawford was probably called up to The Show too soon, but his .259 average showed promise. This was the only full major league season of Jared Sandburg, the nephew of the Cubs' Hall of Fame second baseman. It was obvious that Jared wasn't major league material, but the Rays' farm system didn't have any other third basemen, so Sandburg's so-so glove and .220 average made do.
• The 2003, 2004, and 2005 College of DuPage Chapparals (football). If you're from the west suburbs of Chicago and your family couldn't afford to send you to a four-year university, chances are you earned your basic credits at COD before transferring. I was no exception; I earned an Associates in Arts before spending two years at Illinois State. During my 2 1/2 years in Glen Ellyn, JNCO sports were always in my peripheral, and COD's atrocious football program symbolized school spirit or lack thereof. The '03 and '04 Chaps both went 0-11, and the '05 squad won their first game before dropping the next ten. The star running back on the 2003 team shot and killed a guy, than almost got off the hook because of Illinois' "defense of dwelling" statute. (He spent two months in jail for not having an owner's ID.) The intent of JNCO is to assemble a competitive team out of the prep players the major schools overlooked. The COD Chaps were misfits and castoffs, and played with a massive chip on their shoulders.
• The 2007 and 2008 Indiana State Sycamores (also football). Even for a mid-major, the Trees were pitiful. From 2006 to 2009 ISU dropped 32 games in a row, and their winless seasons in '07 and '08 were bookended by 1-10 campaigns. Other schools in the Gateway Conference were clammering to host Indiana State for their homecoming game (including my Illinois State Redbirds) if only because their incompetence guaranteed a home blowout win in front of a sellout crowd. The Sycamores' football program has since upgraded from awful to merely mediocre, but those rough years in the late 2000s still linger.
• The 2012 Charlotte Bobcats. I won't deny the brilliance of Michael Jordan as a basketball player; he's the G.O.A.T. for a reason. As an executive and scout, however it's been a lengthy learning experience to say the least. After dropping 23 straight games to finish the season, Jordan was booed on his home court for the first time ever because of this hot mess, a 7-59 squad in a lockout-shortened season. At least the Bobcats' two lottery picks that season (Bismack Biyombo and Kemba Walker) weren't the busts that many had feared.

This is not a complete list by any means. Maybe it's fatigue from decades of watching NU hoops, but I don't really care about college basketball until bracket time. The 1992 U.S. Olympic "Dream Team" was ridiculously dominant, but everyone and their mother expected them to crush everything in their path. I'm not that concerned with non-team sports, so no NASCAR or PGA. Either way, it's my birthday and I'm feeling super self-indulgent.
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Death of a Clown

(Ed. note: this is cut and pasted from a Facebook status update that I posted on the evening of Monday, August 11th.)

My father and I are comedy geeks of sorts, but our taste in comedians varies significantly. I like Letterman, he preferred Leno. I watch Fallon now, he prefers Kimmel. Only in the last year or so has he come around to "Seinfeld." Yet we both agreed on Robin Williams. What made Williams so unique was his ability to be a self-contained, almost defiant artist and an everyman at the same time. There are very few comedians in this world that can be conceptual and tangential, yet simultaneously so populist. Even if Williams turned into a caricature of himself in later years, he was phenomenal to watch. His rapid-fire riffing was its own kind of improv.

The Robin quote that has popped up most frequently these past few hours has been "You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." What a lot of people don't realize about comedians is that we're all a little mad, whether we're just peculiar or full-blown insane, and that comedy is our outlet, our catharsis, our confessional. Robin Williams was not the first comedic talent to battle depression or drug abuse, nor will he be the last. Some of us turn those demons into art, while others are consumed by it; either we let our faults inspire us or consume us. Unfortunately, Robin rose with the former and fell with the latter. I just hope that his death today is a reminder that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and something that can be prevented. Remember the nearly four decades of laughs, not his ignoble end.

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My Inevitable Gaza Blog Entry

A few days ago, a tiny independent film called "Guardians in the Galaxy" was released in theaters. Toward the end of the film, a CGI-animated talking raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper says something incredibly sage and insightful: "Everyone has dead people. That doesn't mean everyone else in the galaxy needs to die because of it."

In spite of its source, this quote applies quite well to major international story of the past few weeks, the umpteenth skirmish between Israeli and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip. It's the same childlike "he hit me first," avenging-my-ancestors mentality that has dogged the region since the late 1940s. Unlike past conflicts in the Holy Land, this latest round of attacks and never-ending crusades for revenge has spilled out to social media, where everyone and their mother has been posting and tweeting their opinions for nearly a month now. I've been largely a spectator, but the near-constant arguing has left me exhausted. A fair number of friends and acquaintances are either pretending to be experts or sharing links to op-eds that support their opinions.

I am fully aware that this conflict is complex and convoluted, a fight along religious lines that spans centuries, if not millennia. What I don't think people realize is that if any side in this fight was unilaterally right or wrong, the "war" would have ended decades ago. I suppose the reason why I haven't said anything consequential about this controversy until now is because I'm somewhere between apathetic and burned out. Lately, the mere thought makes me feel lethargic. For that alone, I don't plan on commenting until it all dies down... or whenever Israel and Palestine inevitably start throwing rocks at each other again, I don't know.

NOTE: Thanks to Matthew Kovich for inspiring this post.

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Farewell, 3541 N. Clark

In the wee hours of Sunday, July 20th the famed iO (formerly Improv Olympic) theater in Chicago shuttered its doors on 3541 N. Clark, its home since the mid-1980s. It was the concluding chapter in a 4 1/2 year struggle to keep the theater in its Wrigleyville space. Ultimately, the growth of the Chicago improv scene in the past decade, as well as plans to turn the area directly south of Wrigley Field into a massive retail space, spearheaded the move to a new, larger space on 1501 N. Kingsbury, a mile and a half west of Second City. Though this onetime garment factory will not be with us for much longer, its place in Chicago theater history is irreplaceable: scores of comedians, improvisors, and actors learned their craft and performed here, making their way to SNL, MADtv, and even movie stardom. For a lot of regulars on the Chicago improv scene (including myself), it was like a second home.

If the Second City Training Center was the first chapter of my improv story, than iO physically and peripherally dominates the rest of the book. The first show I saw at iO was The DelTones in March 2010; I tagged along with four or five other Level E classmates for some group bonding. Little did I know that three of the performers that night (Tara DeFrancisco, Lyndsay Hailey, and Craig Uhlir) would later become my instructors, or that less than a year later I would be interning at iO on Saturday nights.

On April 30th, 2010 --five days after my first Level 1 class with Tara D-- I was unceremoniously replaced at my job. An almost Sisyphean job search, paired with financial woes and family health issues, made for a very trying summer. For a while, my weekly commute from Downers Grove to Wrigleyville was my only reason to wake up in the morning. As my radio dreams faded, improv class became a badly needed creative outlet as well as my catharsis. This was when I first truly experienced the close-knit improv community and its positive, cream-rises-to-the-top mindset. Eventually, I started taking writing classes at iO and participating in Lyndsay's Hangover Clinic on Saturday mornings. The myriad free shows I attended between 2010 and 2012 were both entertainment and an education. In spite of my personal struggles, for the first time in years, I felt like I was flourishing at something.

Fast forward to August 2011. It was the last night of 5B shows, and after our last set we all headed up to the Annex for pizza and beer. Overall, I thought our seven week run went well, though I thought my overall performance was merely okay. (It also helped that was in a level that was deep with improv talent, as 19 of us would eventually play on Harold teams at one point or another.) One of my teammates, a very diminutive young woman, stood on the chair next to mine to remind everyone that she was hosting a wrap party at her coach house in Roscoe Village. When someone asked for an address, I yelled out the directions I had memorized earlier that day: "Take the Red Line to Belmont, than get on the 77 bus west to Wellington..."

At that very moment, the entire room started chanting "Stu-S-A." I was gobsmacked, blushing, and at a complete loss for words. After a solid minute of cheering and chanting, and I stood up and took a bow, not realizing I hadn't even removed the satchel off my shoulder. I have never received an ovation that like that before or since. I couldn't work up the nerve to say thank you until I posted on Facebook the next day. It's not clear who started the chant; I assume it was the aforementioned girl, though I guess I'll never know now. I still get people from those classes saying "Stu-S-A" from time to time.

With that said, I will be leaving a treasure trove of memories at 3541 N. Clark, and I wish iO Chicago nothing but the best as they move from Wrigleyville to Kingsbury and Blackhawk. My sincere thanks to my instructors Tara D, Kate Duffy, Barry Hite, the incomparable Lyndsay Hailey, Lisa Linke, Craig Uhlir, Noah Gregoupoulos, Charna Halpern, and Nate Herman for their sage wisdom and encouragement, and to all the people I met and encountered in the House That Del Built.

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Seasons of Love: "The Simpsons," Season Five (1993-94)

I'm not sure which is more staggering: that "The Simpsons" was in its creative peak 20 years ago, or that the show is still chugging along, breaking one TV record after another as it survives into its 26th season. Sometimes I imagine an alternate universe where "The Simpsons" ended its run around 2002 or so, made two theatrical movies inbetween, and a revival series is now available for streaming on Netflix. We can spend days dwelling upon the show's current state of mediocrity and how it became a victim of its own longevity, but you can find plenty of articles and discussion board rants elsewhere on the internet. (Given its age, it's amazing that they've kept the original cast intact, and they're still crackerjack.) This is "Seasons of Love," and I want to accentuate the positive.

On paper, Season Five should not have been the The Simpsons' greatest year. The writing staff was in transition, with the remaining charter members of the scribes' room heading for greener pastures either after 1992-93 or during 1993-94. At least one episode (the Sideshow Bob vehicle "Cape Feare") was a holdover from Season Four, and it was the last season in which most of the episodes aired out of production order. One staff writer, Conan O'Brien, learned he was chosen to host a late night talk show and abruptly walked out on his contract midway through the production year. The number of guest stars increased, and one episode featured a principal character going into outer space (more on that later). It was the last season the show aired on Thursday nights, before a short-lived attempt to make the show more family-friendly without overhauling the show's general concept. If you were wondering why some of the 1994-95 episodes seem a little blander than the surrounding seasons, now you know why.

With that said, Seasons Four and Five are two of my desert island DVD sets, and all 22 episodes rank from very good to outstanding. Whittling down my list to five was tricky, so I broke a self-imposed rule and included a "best of the rest" list below. I look forward to your thoughts, if not necessarily the inevitable whining about the current state of the show.

Five Favorites:

"Homer's Barbershop Quartet" (episode 1, 82nd overall). The mythology surrounding The Beatles is skewed mercilessly in this charming season premiere. Writer Jeff Martin is a die-hard Beatles fan and it shows, and George Harrison has a brief but crucial cameo. Arguably the first TV show to do an '80s flashback (or three), Homer's small-time singing group hits the big time with a fluke hit song, but success takes its toll on his young family.

"Cape Feare" (episode 2, 83rd overall). Not only the best Sideshow Bob episode, but a showcase for recurring guest star Kelsey Grammar. Arguably Springfield's most erudite sociopath, Bob's parole forces the Simpsons --who had foiled his plots twice before-- to join the Witness Protection Program. The rake gag, originally written as time filler, is so stupid it's brilliant.

"Rosebud" (episode 4, 85th overall). "Citizen Kane" is the basis, if not necessarily the backbone, of an episode that focuses largely on Mr. Burns. After four years of one-dimensional villainry, we finally learn his backstory: his long-lost teddy bear Bobo represents his youthful innocence, and after the stuffed animal somehow lands in Maggie's arms, Burns schemes to get his beloved toy back.

"Deep Space Homer" (episode 15, 96th overall). This could have been a "jump the shark" moment, but despite the out-there premise the core of the story is Homer's dignity and the family dynamic. A series of coincidences turns Homer into NASA's first "everyman" astronaut, and his gross incompetence threatens to turn his first life achievement into chaos. The scene with the ants is a riot.

"Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song" (episode 19, 100th overall). This milestone episode could have been an extravaganza, but instead the writers chose to focus on the then-underutilized Principal Skinner. When Bart's irresponsibility gets Skinner fired, our guilt-ridden fourth-grader follows up with his nemesis, and an unlikely friendship develops. This is a profound, relationship-based episode, but not without its laugh out loud moments (Groundskeeper Willie in the vents, the Kwik-E-Mart gas station).

Best of the Rest: "Homer Goes to College" (episode 3), "Treehouse of Horror IV" (episode 5), "Homer and Apu" (episode 13).

Your thoughts?

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