Friends and family, boys and girls, good citizens of
Madison, Menomonie, Oshkosh and beyond, welcome to the final edition of Chode
Picks for the 2012-2013 NFL season. I
come to you from my humble abode on 1206 Bowen Ct, in a weakened, sorry state
as we kick off the Conference Championship weekend. A combination of a devastating Packer loss, a
loaded week of classes and nearly six full days of sobriety have sapped me of
my usual vigor on this particular Friday night, but I feel more than obligated
to all of you to put together one last viciously wonderful edition of the Chode
Picks before I sign off for the season.
As of right now, my brain is clogged with a slew of memorized arteries,
veins, muscles, disease pathologies, physiological equations and other useless
minutiae that I hope to erase from my mind over the course of the weekend in
order to best serve the interests of this blog.
So bear with me if I seem a little sluggish as we get started this
weekend. I promise to write until my
brain is as empty as Manti Teo’s girlfriend, my mind is as broken as Lance
Armstrong’s credibility, and my hands are as useless as the Packers’ run
defense. Let’s get to it.
First off, an apology.
Last week I said a lot of mean, hurtful things about the San Francisco
49ers, and it’s pretty obvious that afterwards they made it their mission to
ruin my Saturday night in response.
Touche. Even after starting the
game with a defensive touchdown, my beloved Packers simply had no answer for
the 49ers’ tough, physical style of play.
It reminded me a lot of the Rose Bowl in that my team looked outmatched
from the start across the line of scrimmage.
Now against Stanford, this could be attributed to a disparity of talent
between the two teams, but in the NFL, especially in the playoffs, that excuse
doesn’t fly. The Packers are loaded with
young talent, and there’s no team in the league that should be able to
manhandle us like that. So I think most
of the blame for the loss needs to be put on the coaching staff. Whatever the dumbass defensive scheme was
that Dom Capers decided to run against Colin Kaepernick, tear it out of the
playbook, light it on fire and piss on the ashes. Offensively, we’re doing just fine, and if
all of our linemen can stay healthy next season we should continue to have one
of the best passing attacks in the league.
But I think that this offseason Capers and McCarthy need to sit down and
evaluate what needs to change in practice in order to get our defense to play
as fast and as physical as San Francisco’s.
That’s the only barrier standing between us and another Super Bowl. And no, I’m not going to go along with the
knee-jerk “fire Dom Capers” sentiment that so many Packer fans seem to have
adopted. Remember, it was just two years
ago that the best scoring defense in the league led us to a championship. The pieces are all there, and it’s only a
matter of time before they all come together again.
Despite last weekend’s devastating loss however, I have to
consider the 2012 season a success on the whole. A 12-6 record, an NFC North division title
and a playoff victory would be considered a fantastic season for most fan
bases. However, I can’t help but feel
like every season we have with Aaron Rodgers in his prime is an opportunity for
a Super Bowl, and it would be a shame if we only got one title out of him (am I
right, Viking fans?). Whatever. We’ll be back.
On a lighter note, at least I’m not a Broncos fan. In case you missed it, the #1 seed in the AFC
somehow managed to blow a home road game in altitude after Peyton Manning threw
away the season (and probably an MVP award) with an overtime interception,
depriving us of the much-anticipated Brady-Manning AFC Championship game. Apparently the only way you can get Peyton to
deliver in the playoffs is to call Papa John’s.
By the way, do you know who’s won more playoff games for Denver than
Manning? That’s right…
TEEEEEEEEEEEEBOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, I’ve been waiting all season for that. Damn you, Rex Ryan.
Anyways, there’s one other group of people that I owe an
apology: the UW Men’s Basketball team.
You may recall that earlier this season I wrote the team off as too
slow, too unathletic and just not good enough to win consistently in the Big
Ten. After a 4-0 start in the conference
season, punctuated with a win over #2 Indiana at Assembly Hall (ranked by ESPN
as the second-toughest place to play in America), I stand corrected. My bad.
As has been the case for his entire career, Bo Ryan continues to prove
his critics wrong by getting the most out of the limited talent on his
roster. It’ll be interesting to see how
this team does in the NCAA tournament.
On Wisconsin.
Ah, shit. Literally
three hours after I wrote the above paragraph, the basketball team went into
Iowa City and played their worst game of the season, giving up 70 points to the
Iowa Fucking Hawkeyes after holding Indiana to 59 four nights earlier. Are you kidding me? We just lost to the ONLY team in the Big Ten
that’s slower and less athletic than us by scoring a whopping 18 points in the
first half. Eighteen damn points. Now, I’m terrible at basketball, but I’m
pretty sure I could launch half-court shots for 20 minutes and score more than
that. I retract my earlier apology.
I’ll write some more about basketball later, but I should
probably get to today’s NFL games before they’re over. First up…
NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:
SAINT FRANCISCO’S GOLD PROSPECTORS OF 1848 (12-4-1) at
ATLANTA BIRDS OF WAR (14-3)
The 4th quarter of this game just started off
with Atlanta clinging to a 3-point lead over the Niners in a shootout between
Matt Ryan and Colin Kaepernick, who recently became my least favorite person on
Earth, narrowly edging out Skip Bayless and Joe Buck. Did I mention that Kapernick is originally
from Milwaukee? I hate Milwaukee. Except for the Brewers. And Summerfest. Other than that, it’s just a less disgusting
version of Chicago, which I suppose is like being a less stupid version of
Ke$ha. Not a compliment. Anyways, I’m picking San Fran to win this one
because Matt Ryan can’t seem to hang on to the damn ball. HEY MATTY, ARE YOUR HANDS SLIPPERY BECAUSE OF
ALL THAT ICE!?!?!?! Bahahaha. Bad joke.
49ers by 4
AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:
BALTIMORE’S EDGAR ALLEN POE (12-6) at BOSTON’S TEA PARTY
(13-4)
Kind of a no-win situation for New England here. On one hand, if they lose to Baltimore, they
have to live with the fact that Joe Flacco knocked them out of the playoffs all
offseason. On the other hand, if they
win everyone knows it’s because of the rampant cheating they’ve been up to for
the past decade or so, and then they get to lose another Super Bowl to the
49ers (at which point Alex Smith will presumably jump off of the Golden Gate
Bridge). Hooray. I guess I gotta pick the Patriots here though,
since Emperor Belichick always seems to win these games, and despite losing Rob
GRONKowski, New England’s playoff offense always seems to fit together
seamlessly, unlike this transition.
Patriots by 7
Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Lance Armstrong is
a cheater!!! Nobody? Yeah, me neither. If anything, I’m surprised that he decided to
come clean at all. But props to him for
being man enough to face the music after decades of deception. I still think he’s an inspiration, mostly
because he went up against a slew of other riders that were doped to the gills,
and dominated their sorry European asses for seven years in a row. And the whole cancer thing too. But I will agree with what he told Oprah this
week, “I am a deeply flawed person”.
Unfortunately, most world-class cyclists are. For some perspective, I used to work in a lab
where we gave the performance-enhancing drug EPO to rats to treat iron
deficiency, and doing a little research about the drug gives you an idea of how
hard it is to catch the cheaters. In
fact, just a few years ago the International Olympic committee designed a study
where they took a group of endurance athletes, purposely gave half of them EPO,
and randomly tested both groups for the banned substance. The experiment failed miserably, with no
significant difference found between the groups. To put it simply, doping techniques are
light-years ahead of testing techniques, and that’s probably not going to
change anytime soon. By the way, I’d
just like to clarify that the timing of my two marathons correlating with the
part of my life where I had access to EPO and an unlimited supply of needles is
purely a coincidence. Trust me. Hey, speaking of liars…
Props to Ronaiah Tuiasosopo (also known as Lennay Kekua) for
pulling a fast one on the entire country, creating and then killing off a fake
girl that nearly won Manti Te’o the Hesiman trophy in December. After reading most of the interview that Te’o
gave yesterday, there are only three possibilities in my mind about how this
happened.
1)
Manti Te’o is the most naïve person in the world
2)
Manti Te’o is a sneaky, conniving bastard who
nearly tricked us into giving him college football’s most prestigious award out
of sympathy, or…
3)
Manti Te’o is a homosexual, and was pulling off
the most ridiculously over-the-top cover up in modern history
So I’m not really sure where I
stand on this one. I either feel sorry
for the guy (if he’s really that gullible), am kinda disgusted by him (if he’s
a pathological liar), or don’t really give a damn (if he’s gay). Either way, some team is going to waste a
top-10 draft pick on him in April, and regret it almost immediately. On that note, I hope I’m done writing about
Notre Dame for the next lifetime or so.
Well, now that I’ve covered the
most recent wave of sports scandal, I’d like to direct you to something far
more worthy of your attention. You see,
in this era of cheats and liars, there’s one athlete that’s been a model of
honesty and consistency since day one.
Through the good times and the bad, his dependability has given us a
shining example of everything good about sports. He’s the greatest athlete on the planet,
hardworking, humble (usually), and talented as hell, the Sportsman of the Year,
LeBron Mothaf***ing James. That’s right,
we’re going there. Since the only team
worth watching in the NFL stopped playing last week and still nobody cares
about hockey, I’ve switched to full-on NBA fan mode. I’m gonna try to make one last pitch here for
why you should watch the NBA this season, for the following reasons:
-
You live in America. This is our sport. We invented it, and we can’t afford to let
the Europeans steal it, so pay attention, damn it
-
Offseason rule changes have dramatically
decreased the amount of flopping this season
-
Free throws are also at their lowest in the past
decade, meaning faster pace and less game stoppages
-
Love him or hate him, you get to watch the best
player of all time IN HIS PRIME!!
-
Along with LeBron, Chris Paul and Kevin Durant
are also both putting together MVP-worthy seasons
-
The Clippers (!!!) stealing Los Angeles from the
Lakers
-
The Bucks actually aren’t that bad, and they
should make the playoffs
-
If all else fails, you can root against Miami
just to spite me
-
It’ll distract you from an offseason of being
forced to watch the 49ers’ Super Bowl highlights (I guess instead of a Super
Bowl victory, I’ll be forced to settle for an NBA title… again)
Shout out to my friend Biceli, who
celebrated her 21st birthday on Friday night. And by “celebrated”, I mean “drank way too
much, threw up all over at 11:00PM and didn’t make it to the bars”. Maybe next year. Fortunately, the rest of us had fun without
you. And despite my best efforts to hide
my computer from my drunken self, I managed to write a good portion of this
edition that night. Consider it my
birthday present.
Well, I think that wraps it up for
the season. Time for me to start
studying for exams again (Yeah that’s right.
All of you undergrad jerks haven’t even started classes yet, and our
first round of exams starts in eight days.
Sorry, I’ll stop bitching now). I
want to thank you all for putting up with me for another season through the
highs and lows, my immature jokes, narcissistic rants, horribly biased
predictions and everything else that goes into the Chode Picks. I’d also like to announce that I plan on
returning to write again next season, despite all of the horror stories I’ve
been told about the second year of medical school. We’ll see how it goes. And if I’m not too busy this summer, I might
come back and write about the NBA Playoffs again like I did last year, provided
you still want to read about them. Let
me know.
- Chode Out.
