Uncertainty the Only Certainty

Now I know I’m a baseball fan. It’s all I can do to muster any enthusiasm for football anymore. It’s totally unpredictable.

This week it was Dallas and Buffalo who came back from the dead. Teams I expected to come back from the dead didn’t. There was the dreadful Minnesota totally striking out against the Bears, a real juggernaut. There was Brett Favre running around, getting hit, dropping the ball, then running around, throwing on the run, getting intercepted. And then there was Washington on Monday night, Washington, I thought, with that defense that gives up yards but not points. Surely they’ll stop Michael Vick. You know what happened there.

And then there were the “good” teams, such as the Steelers, getting lambasted by Tom Brady, and our Giants, ballyhooed all week for being the best team in the NFC, decidedly NOT covering the best wide receivers in the game, Dez Bryant and Miles Austin, Roy Williams and Jason Witten. Oh, and they didn’t get to the quarterback either. After all, it was only Jon Kitna. You know how that one turned out.

Of course I belong to one of those Yahoo football groups, making picks for each week’s games, just the winners, no point spreads to make things more difficult. This year, the spreads aren’t necessary. Anything can happen and usually will, but only when you’re absolutely SURE of a very different outcome.

Being that I’m one of those analytical types, I need to put this uncertainty into some kind of box. Surely there are underlying reasons for it. I’ve got it narrowed down to two basic factors. Coaches and players. Not bad, huh?

The Cowboys changed coaches after losing became a way of life. Boom! They won, convincingly. You wondered how they could have looked so abysmal all those other weeks. You wonder if they’ll go undefeated for the rest of the season. You wondered how they ever won with a lily-livered coach. You wondered why it took Jerry Jones so long to act. You wonder much the same thing about that Bengals coach, Marvin Lewis. What’s the owner thinking? Oops, there’s another factor, owners.

A subset of owners might be stadiums, new stadiums, and seat licenses, especially unsold seat licenses, to be exact. The Jets sure stocked up on players this year, LaDainian and Santonio and the rest. The Giants actually went out and bought a secondary, not that it looked that way last Sunday. Of course, Kitna had all day to throw. Jerry Jones too had that gigantic edifice in Big D built to accommodate all those rabid Cowboys fans. He figured they had as much talent as they needed, so he didn’t need to go crazy, especially on defense. He figured, as Wade did, that any sorry bunch of bodies could comprise a well thought out system of defense. Heh-heh.

Another factor seems to be the betting line itself. Maybe it’s the Internet betting that’s made the spread more important. Those heavy favorites just never seem to pan out, except when they do, once again totally inexplicably.

Let’s recap. There’re coaches and players and owners and stadiums and the betting line itself. Oh, and maybe the fact that there’s a whole TV network dedicated to football, 24/7, and endless analysis, if you could call it that, of everything you ever wanted to know about, well, mostly about Brett Favre, or Chad Ochochinco or T.O. Oh yeah, there’re those reality shows too, starring the aforementioned, of course, but there are others too, like for Shawn Merriman, I understand.

Of course there’s ESPN too, not that I watch those guys anymore. I wonder, does anybody? I mean…why? There’s a baseball channel and a football channel and teams with their own channels. There’re even channels for tennis and golf, for Pete’s sake. (Pete’s a bigtime golfer and tennis enthusiast, take my word for it). If it’s a sport, chances are it’s got its own channel. Horseracing and soccer, of course, and even fishing and fitness and wildlife and, omigosh, as I write this, there’s a woman getting into dressage. Honestly.

Maybe I should just stop trying to pick game winners and just concentrate on my fantasy team. There’s quite enough uncertainty there alone. Replacing Drew Brees on his bye week with Brett Favre was my brain-fart of the season. And to compound that mistake, I had dumped Jon Kitna for him. After all, he’d be facing those ferocious G-Men. And surely Jahvid Best would finally start producing against the lowly Bills, right? Surely he’d be a better start than Miles Austin, who never did establish any kind of rapport with Kitna. Romo used to love him but not Kitna. He loved Dez Bryant. And besides, they were facing the feared G-Men.

Luckily for me, my other players played great, Percy Harvin and Ahmad Bradshaw, Brandon Lloyd and Knowshow Moreno. But the really fortunate thing was my opponent’s decision to take his chances that his running back, Clinton Portis, listed as questionable all week, would actually play on Monday night, even if Skins coach Mike Shanahan had been saying for days that he wouldn’t play. After all, isn’t it true that Shanahan’s the biggest phony in the NFL, except for Belichick maybe? Shanahan saying he wouldn’t play only kind of guaranteed that he would. Of course we know how that one turned out.

Oh yeah, one more factor, a big one, injuries, even after you figure out the enigmatic code that basically says “doubtful” players are the only ones who won’t play. “Questionable” guys figure significantly in their team’s fortunes week after week, hence my opponent’s hesitation to go with anyone else in that spot. (Yeah, he would have had to drop a player with a bye to replace him but still…).

There are just so few things you can count on. That uncertainty might be the biggest winning factor of them all, the only thing on which you can rely.

I’ll take baseball anytime, and especially those Mets.