Super Bowl Pregame
Posted: February 1st, 2009 | Filed under: Other Sports | 34 Comments »
– So, here’s the final Bruce prediction in order:
1. Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
2. Working On A Dream
3. Glory Days
4. Born To Run.
I’m still hoping for a surprise of some kind, but it’s the Super Bowl and they have outlawed surprises here. To prove the point, I just bought a bottle of water (a bargain for 5 bucks) and had this conversation:
Woman: Here you go.
Me: I’m sorry, can I have the cap also?
Woman: No.
Me: Why not?
Woman: Because you can throw the cap. It can be a projectile.
Me: Um, I could throw the bottle too.
Woman: Sorry.
To be fair, the woman seemed about as baffled by the whole thing as I was. So … I don’t see Bruce changing up anything on the fly.
– I might have a longer post coming up about this, but I’m absolutely fascinated by the chokehold Rafael Nadal has on Roger Federer these days. This is a rare and beautiful thing in sports. Tom Watson had this amazing ability to stand up to Jack Nicklaus. Joe Frazier took Muhammad Ali to places no one else could take him. And here’s Roger Federer, who already has his case as the greatest tennis player who ever lived, and there’s a player out there who he cannot beat.
Of course, the one thing people are going to have start considering more and more is that, in actuality, Rafael Nadal is the greatest player in tennis history.
– You know what would be great? If the Kansas City Royals announced tomorrow that they just signed Manny Ramirez and Ben Sheets. Convinced them each to come for one year, big money, mercenaries, and then they could go back on the market when the economy is a little better. And owner David Glass came out and said, “I expect to win this year. Or else.â€
I don’t know. It would just a be a different story to write in Kansas City
– More Royals talk: I have asked a few baseball people what they would think about the Royals signing Tom Glavine. It seems that Glavine wants to pitch one more year, and Kansas City might be a good place for that. Low tension. Big park. A new league. A young team.
They didn’t think it was a fit. One said that he thinks Glavine wants to play his whole career in the National League, and he also said: “The American League with those offenses might not be the best place for him these days.†Another two said that the Royals don’t want to go down that path of signing an older player. “Tom’s stuff is really down,†one of them said.
However, all of them said that that Glavine would have been a better signing than Horacio Ramirez.
– OK, 09/09/09. See if you can beat my record of 11 seconds on first effort. However, I do want to say, that I lost three or four seconds because I was confused by the format. I did it in 6 seconds on second try.
– Yeah, I think Pittsburgh wins this game, and I don’t really think the game will be close. But I hope to be wrong — hope it’s a good game. And if Arizona does win, they’re the most absurd Super Bowl champion right? I could write that column.
– OK, so I’m thinking about doing the whole Twitter thing. I have sort of dipped my toe in the Tweets … but Margo is Twitter obsessed, and she insists that I start doing it. I’ll see how many followers I get … I think I have like nine now. The Twitter account is JPosnanski, if you really think I should do it.
– I just watched the Barack Obama Super Bowl interview on NBC. I don’t have any comment on what he said, but did you notice that halfway through his microphone went out? I’m utterly blown away by this. I mean, seriously, if you cannot get a working microphone for an INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES on SUPER BOWL SUNDAY, then, really, what chance do any of us have?
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Perhaps the Prez’ mic went out when he was about to talk about his cabinet members and paying their taxes!! I could scream about now. Can you say “REVOLUTION!”?
You have to remember that more than half of their head-to-head matches have come on clay, and that it wasn’t until last year that the whole “changing of the guard” came about- but if you go by the CW that a tennis player’s prime is ages 22-26, then last year is just when Roger started to decline and Rafa started to peak. I know there’s a case to be made, but I’ll still take Roger as G.O.A.T. …for now:
“Of course, the one thing people are going to have start considering more and more is that, in actuality, Rafael Nadal is the greatest player in tennis history.”
This isn’t true yet, but if he stays healthy, it will be true when it’s all said and done. I’m not sure what the chances of that are.
If the game is to guess how many pitchers would be a better fit in KC than Horacio Ramirez well I think anybody but Brett Tomko & Albie Lopez would qualify.
I was thinking during the Obama interview that the sound guy can join the thousands who are unemployed.
What is the big deal about Twitter? Is it really that great or just the flavor of the month?
I think the whole no cap/no lid thing is so that you don’t put the lid back on the bottle, then throw the bottle. The girl seems to have misunderstood what they told her they did that for. I cap or bottle alone isn’t a good projectile because even with liquid in a bottle, the liquid would just squeeze out. Put that lid on, and John Elway can have a bad day @ Arrowhead. lol
I can just imagine Joe’s tweets: “Joe is writing. Joe is ALWAYS writing.”
“I’m still hoping for a surprise of some kind, but it’s the Super Bowl and they have outlawed surprises here.”
I hate to think that Prince’s medley of non-Prince songs wasn’t spur-of-the-moment.
I still think it’ll be:
Prove It All Night
The Rising
Born To run.
If it has to be four, insert “10th Ave Freeze-Out” before BTR.
Leading off with “10th Avenue” – so far, so good, Joe.
Second: OK, you don’t hit the exacta (or is it perfecta?) but you’re 2 for 2…
I thought it was so you couldn’t either throw the bottle still full of liquid or … uh … fill the bottle with something else and then throw that.
I guess I have seen too many futbol matches and wrestling events in Latin and South America, and am all too familiar with people being doused with cups of …. stuff (you know, number one).
Looks like you got ‘em all, Joe.
Kinda liked the Glory Days retrofit for the football game.
4 for 4….this man knows his Springsteen
Joe got the set right, just the order wrong.
All hail Bruce (and Joe).
Ok Joe. We’ll expect a column soon covering your exclusive interview with Bruce.
“throw that Hail Mary”, eh?
-1 for rhythm, +10 for Catholicism…..
That ref throwing the flag was WEAK. Sorry.
A Nadal/Federer match has become perhaps the most “don’t miss” sports matchup there is today.
The thought that the historical rankings of Federer and Nadal are presently reversed has also crossed my mind. Both are clearly great players, Nadal just appears to be the one opponent who can throw Federer off his game.
33 seconds. (I am a slow typist) I also lost an hour or two of sleep doing other random sports quizzes. I hope I forget the name of that site tomorrow!
Dang. I think I would have beaten your time, if only I could spell “Concepcion.”
Yeah, I agree with the people above who say it’s just too early to crown Nadal. Wait until he’s finished with his peak and his major total starts approaching Federer’s. Also, his two big non-French Open wins have both been epic five setters that could easily have gone either way, so it’s certainly not like Nadal is dominating Federer. Federer actually won one more point than Nadal last night. Give Nadal time. In five years we can really compare the two and have the all-time great argument.
6 seconds? Now I know how you get all your writing done. It takes me 6 seconds to type “rose”.
[...] This is exactly what I was talking about yesterday. Replace “Kansas City” with “Cincinnati,” “Royals” with “Reds,” and “David Glass” with “Bob Castellini”: – You know what would be great? If the Kansas City Royals announced tomorrow that they just signed Manny Ramirez and Ben Sheets. Convinced them each to come for one year, big money, mercenaries, and then they could go back on the market when the economy is a little better. And owner David Glass came out and said, “I expect to win this year. Or else.†[...]
I worked at an outdoor concert venue selling beverages (and occasionally food), and we had the cap rule, too. The cap rule was always required for beer, and frequently was for water and soda. Some bands (like Green Day, those jerks) actually asked us to pour the drinks, even bottled water, into new cups. This made my job infinitely harder and really pissed off the customers.
Apparently Chad Kroger, the lead singer from Nickelback, once got hit in the face with a water bottle that someone had screwed the cap back on. I think he probably deserved it, but the rationale was to avoid the recap-and-throw, I think.
How the hell did you get the prediction right? Wow!
Wow! I’m impressed Joe. Every song! But did you predict the nationwide sliding kneeling belly bump?
StumbleUpon is the way to go. I’m an addict. Maybe I’ll give Twitter a try, too.
I’ve always been a Federer fan (still am), but I’m coming around to the idea that Nadal may just be better. As for all time ranking, we’ll have to see, but Nadal has now shown he can win majors on every surface, has 6 slams at age 22 1/2 (I think they showed that Federer had two at that age), AND appears to be getting better with time.
The set list was leaked all over the web. Not that hard to figure out.
I got 43 seconds my first try. About 15 seconds of that was spent trying to spell Geronimo, and another 20 seconds was because I inexplicably forgot about Griffey. If it’s any excuse, I was one year old in 1976.
So does anyone else wish the NFL had bothered to review Warner’s “fumble” on the last play (sure his arm was hit before it was coming forward, but he had a grip on it until its release, that is a pass), if for no other reason than we would have gotten one last pass in the end zone, where the two best athletes on the field last night (Fitzgerald and Polamalu) would have been going head to head for the ball?
Brent, I thought the same thing. It probably was a fumble, but I’d like to hear the NFL explain why we would spend 5 minutes checking that play in the first quarter of a meaningless game in week 3, but in that situation, the final play of the Super Bowl…nothing. Why bother with instant replay if you don’t use it in that situation? Again, it was probably a fumble, but check it out.
No disrespect to JoePo, but I’m with John in that getting the set list right loses a little bit of luster when Joe predicted the four songs that he himself reported as being leaked earlier this week. If Joe had been trumpeting (no pun) Tenth Avenue Freeze out before the leak, THAT would have been something — I personally didn’t even believe it AFTER the leak because I found it so out of place, which makes me, well, wrong.
In any case, I was a mite underwhelmed. Bruce is still Bruce — I was just expecting a little more bang for his buck. “Glory Days” felt like quite a whimper of an ending, and as far as his repertoire goes, it’s not that great a song. Ah well.
On caps for bottled water.
Last summer, on a muggy night, I caught the US National soccer team at Giants Stadium. Being prone to dehydration, I brought to nalgene bottles of water.
You see, I looked up the rules online and saw that I could only bring tranluscent plastic bottles. So that’s what I did. But I was made to throw them out at the gate. I made a small fuss, but got nowhere.
Then, I went to buy water — way too expensive, of course. I learned that I could not get water in bottle with caps. They’d take the caps off right there.
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I understand their reasoning. A full capped bottle is going to hit pretty hard. Without the cap, it is harder to throw, and by the time it get to its target — or hits anything — it’s lost a lot of force.
I understand why the nalgene bottles are not allowed, even though they DO pass the rule listed online. Those are hard plastic.
But here’s the problem: people get dehydrated. If people buy three bottles of water, the uncapped ones will get knocked over. Murphy’s Law, you know.
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But its a stupid policy. I could bring caps in with me. I could bring large bottles (1L or 1L), pocket the caps in the parking lot and then put it back on once I get to my seat. If I am really determined to throw bottles of water, then I can do it.
You might claim that they are not worried about the pre-meditated throwers, but rather then spontanious throwers. To which I say, “Really? Is that really such a safety problem, the spontanious throwers of capped water bottles?”
What really has happened is a bunch of minimally thoughtful people had a couple fractions of good ideas and ran with them. And these factions of good ideas have spread, regardless of the overall stupidity of the policies.
Poz-
Federer can’t beat him now, but he’s coming out of his prime while Nadal is entering his. Five years ago, when Federer was Nadal’s age, he started an absurd 11 for 16 run in majors. To be sure, Nadal has owned Roger for the last year, but let’s have Nadal go on a little run of dominance before we start the best of all time talk.