#nfl

Superbowl XLI

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Well, it was a great game. It was rain­ing, ball was slip­pery, and Man­ning final­ly got his ring. But what about the last three min­utes of the fourth… Why did­n’t the Colts kick the ball? For those of us who just had the urge to bet Colts ‑7 and over 47/47.5/48—that was the big ques­tion.

A cou­ple of fac­tors played its part on this out­come. Here’s some that I know:

  • Bad weath­er. It was rain­ing so the ball was a bit slip­pery, and it was too risky to air it out if you are Man­ning and fac­ing Chicago’s defense. This is a plus for the Bears from the get­go as they’ve played in this type of weath­er (as most ana­lyst thought from the begin­ning).
  • Run­ning the ball can run the clock out.
  • Vinatieri was­n’t that auto­mat­ic tonight. I doubt that he was sole­ly to blame. First of all, Hunter Smith could­n’t get the ball in place. But he was­n’t to blame as well… it was pour­ing down hard for Christ’s sake. Also, laces were out if I recall cor­rect­ly. Although, kick­ing the FG would’ve score 3 more points, and still guar­an­teed the Colts a win even if the Bears score a TD.
  • The Mafia and their con­trol of the Vegas/handicapping boards(?)

Mean­while, though you might think that that deci­sion was pret­ty bad (as I did in terms of straight out play­ing to win with excla­ma­tion, we-deserve-this men­tal­i­ty by the Colts), there is… the Human fac­tor. So what fac­tor am I talk­ing about you say? H‑U-M-A‑N fac­tor… like the com­mer­cial. Even though Gatorade was more like­ly in the Colts tonight, they were also very good sports­men.

The sports­man­like con­duct in not try­ing to humil­i­ate your oppo­nent w/ less than three min­utes left was­n’t real­ly the first thing that came to peo­ple’s mind (those who wagered for the over for sure). It was­n’t on top my list when I was think­ing about it for sure (thanks to Ces for shin­ing light on the sub­ject). But it was in the Colts, and espe­cial­ly Coach Dungy’s. Don’t for­get, Coach Smith and Coach Dungy are good friends after all. Ahhh, the Human factor—one rea­son why I love Sports.

Now, if only the rest of us can take the pos­i­tive things that we find in every­day things (like Sports) and tran­scend that ener­gy to the world we live in… what a bet­ter place it would be right?

From my mind to yours, the Human fac­tor.

Web 2.0 and the Super Bowl

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Oh the things you find while Blin­go-ing. Since it’s that time of year again for the Super Bowl, with it comes: the back­yard-BBQ par­ties, the trash-talk­ing between teams, the mil­lions-of-dol­lars-worth of bets, fun­ny & cre­ative com­mer­cials and last but not least, the office Super Bowl Pool. A cou­ple of friends and I have been doing this for the past cou­ple of years now. Too bad, no one want­ed to do it this year. Don’t know why?

Mean­while, hav­ing the feel­ing of just try­ing to get into the spir­it of the Super Bowl (even though the teams weren’t my pick from the start of the sea­son), I asked around MA to see if we are doing one this year. Turns out there was­n’t even one for last year’s. So, I just vol­un­teered not remem­ber­ing how John-John facil­i­tat­ed it.

Any­ways, with a call to J2 and some Blin­go-ing, I found some tem­plates. The best one I found was through:

Num Sum. Easy, Sharable Web Spread­sheets. Keep your records, lists and spread­sheets in one place online. Eas­i­ly slice, dice and share with oth­ers.

It’s FREE. You have the abil­i­ty to share with friends and fam­i­ly that don’t even have an account but with they just won’t be able to update the sheet direct­ly and save it. You may also inter­act with a group or team, and share a sheet for col­lab­o­ra­tion. It’s a nice, FREE and great web app.

Oth­er obser­va­tions that I found while study­ing and using Num Sum was it’s home­page lay­out. It strikes sim­plis­tic sim­i­lar­i­ties with the very-out­stand­ing Base­camp in its ear­ly days. Why not, right? Why not fol­low some­thing that has done very well in per­for­mance.

So, after spend­ing some time to get every­one to join in on the fun, I man­aged to get a 10x10 (100 squares) Pool filled out . The pot is big—$500. It’s $5 per square and you get $75 for the First, Second/Half and the Third. Then a humon­gous sum of $275 for the Fourth/Final, no OT. I was get­ting wor­ried Wednes­day night (after send­ing the email on Mon­day morn­ing about the Pool), that only half of the Pool was tak­en. But alas, every­one came through to chip in for a cou­ple of squares and com­plete it even­tu­al­ly.

After hav­ing indi­vid­u­als pick from a som­brero (lit­er­al­ly, the one from Chevy’s), I got the fol­low­ing num­bers (Steelers/Seahawks): 5/1, 3/5, 5/4 and 4/7. The 5s might be hard to get but there is very great hope on the jew­el “4/7” com­bo: 14 & 7, 24 & 7 and 24 & 17 to name a few. I can’t wait. This should be a fun way for MA to do some­thing togeth­er. Good times.

Update
Here’s the com­plete Pool. Ain’t it col­or­ful? Damn skip­py, it took a while try­ing to get the same back­ground-col­or when some­one want­ed to add a square. I hope Num Sum adds the fea­ture to do some kind of eye­drop­per tool to just pick the same col­or, font-style, size or what have you.