Random Comments

Okay, I really have nothing to say today. It's not writer's block. It's just a lack of anything of import to say. So I guess I'll just make a few random comments.

Random Comment #1: I really wish we'd move on and forget about the "Balloon Boy." It's pretty obvious now that the family did this as a hoax to get attention. The best way to handle them, then, is to ignore them. I quit caring about this story about the time the kid threw up the next morning on the news shows. "Yup," I though, "it's all a fake! Let's move on to something else."

Random Comment #2: How about them Bengals? I read all week about the "resurgent" Cincinnati Bengals, who'd made it to 4-1 and were just one unlucky play away from 5-0. But what I'd been saying all week, and what I heard Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis say in a pre-game interview, is that they were just 4 plays away from being 0-5 as well. And no, when I say they're four plays away from being 0-5, I'm not talking about the plays at the END of the game, those touchdown passes from Carson Palmer that supposedly "won" the games. Wins don't happen on the final play, even in games that come down to the end. It's always some other play earlier that keyed the win.

Yesterday, for instance, I read in multiple places that the Bengals lost the game with 6 minutes to go when one of the Bengals' tight ends fumbled. That's nonsense. The REAL moment the Bengals lost the game occurred a few minutes earlier, right at the end of the 3rd quarter,  when Jonathan Joseph broke up a pass and almost intercepted it. If he HAD intercepted the pass, he'd have run the ball all the way back for a touchdown, and the Bengals would have been down only 28-24 instead of 28-17. This would have given them the confidence and momentum to come back. Had that interception been made the game would have been won 31-28 by the Bengals. The previous four weeks those kind of plays were made (In fact, Jonathan Joseph was the person who made those plays a lot of the time). It just didn't happen Sunday.

I was talking with a friend last week about the Bengals, and I held my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart and said to him, "The NFL isn't like college or high school. The difference between the best teams and the worse teams is about that much, but that's all it takes to go from good to bad or vice versa. And if a team lets up--even just that much--they're going to look like a bad team." And that's what I think happened to the Bengals Sunday.

Random Comment #3: What a Lousy Fall Break! Yesterday was my first day back at work after a week off. But I actually worked both Monday and Friday. AND I was sick all week long. AND the weather was absolutely awful. AND other stuff happened I don't feel like talking about in a public place. So it was a lousy week. My only consolation is there isn't a whole lot that could happen that could make this week much worse.

Random Comment #4: Oh crap! Where's there some wood I can knock on?