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Sept 30, 2003 My boss offered me an intriguing deal the other week. His wife is a realtor and Well’s Fargo has worked with her company to organize a contest for its employees. A card is handed out each week with that NFL schedule on it and each employee is supposed to pick the winner of each game. The employee who has the most picks wins twenty dollars. At the end of the season the employee with the most wins gets two tickets to the Super Bowl and a Dodge Durango. The deal my boss offered is that I pick the games, it seems that they don’t keep up with pro football. If we win the twenty dollars his wife will split the twenty dollars with me and, if (gasp!) we get the most throughout the year, we get the big prize. I get the tickets and she gets the Durango, I’m still trying to figure out who comes out ahead on that part of the deal. Sounds like a good deal right? And don’t get me wrong it's fun if nothing else, but the thing is its not easy. Last week I got nine out of the fourteen games right. I went on the Internet and did my research. If two opposing teams had the same, or similar, records I looked at the caliber of team they played and other statistics so that I could formulate an accurate prediction. The winner that week got eleven right and my boss has informed me that she guessed! He said that she admitted that she knows absolutely nothing about football! She just went down the card checking teams off at random and won for the week, which the more I think about it it’s probably a more effective way to do it given the unpredictable almost chaotic way that the NFL is shaping up this season. It’s probably hard for anybody to predict the games this year, I can imagine how stressful it is for people who have money riding on it, which could be bad for the bookies, but it’s great for the fans. Surprise is good for a sport. Think back to a couple of years ago when the St. Louis Rams came out of nowhere to win the Super Bowl and then a couple of years after that it was the Patriots shocking those same Rams in that same big game. Wasn’t that a breath of fresh air? Now think back to the late eighties early nineties when it was the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys alternating years with a very small bit of variety thrown in. I guess betting was easy, just put your money on one of three or four teams, but remember it was also about as exciting as watching Art Modell sprout wrinkles. It was going to be those teams, and whatever AFC team that was going to be set up as the sacrificial lamb. You could almost hear the yawns cascading down from the stands each Super Bowl. In contrast the last five Super Bowls have produced five different winners and each one had never won a Super Bowl before. The entire decade of the nineties produced only six and two teams, San Francisco and Dallas won on multiple occasions, with the Cowboys repeating in 93 and 94. All this diversity has to be good for the sport, but it still keeps you on edge. If you go for a team who lost last year it makes you bite your nails thinking that this year just might be theirs and if they are winning at the moment, like the Redskins are, it's hard to label the next game a sure thing. They may beat Tampa one week and lose to the Bengals the next. Nevertheless that's why I think that in this day and age it's good to be a football fan. Yeah sure all the players are spoiled, primadonnas most of whom have criminal records and don't give a rat's patootie about the fans, but at least it's still exciting. Free agency has pretty well done away with the dynasties of yesteryear and the variety is sure to bring in more fans now that a larger variety of teams are on the roulette wheel and have a chance to be the next number one. It's a lot more exciting than the NBA where the champs this year will be, guesses anyone. I give you a hint. They wear yellow and their name rhymes with bakers. So in a nut shell the sports better when it's a 32 way dogfight, isn't it? Now all I have to do is develop some sort of system to call these games. If I do I'll see you at the Super Bowl, I'll be the one in the Durango. That is if the boss' wife let's me talk it. ------------ About the author: Jonathan Farlow is a frustrated writer/librarian and lives in Archdale, NC with his wife Kathy and daughter Sara. Visit his web site. You can read some of his stories there. Feedback is welcomed. Email: jonathan-farlow@excite.com Comment on this column in the forum. Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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