I was talking with a neighbor who owns a couple of bars over the weekend, and I told him that it’s a good thing Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band were playing at halftime of the Super Bowl, because it will give people something to watch. By then, the game should be over. Pittsburgh is going to defeat Arizona easily.
Yes, there is a feel good story to Arizona – first ever Super Bowl appearance; first championship game in over 60 years; the return/end of quarterback Kurt Warner to the big game. To local people from Pittsburgh, the game has more significance because Cardinals Head Coach Ken Whisenhunt, OL coach Russ Grimm, and offensive coordinator Todd Haley, all played or coached for the Steelers, and have Super Bowl rings from 4 years ago when the Steelers last won. In addition, add that All-World wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald attended Pitt for college, and there are more than enough reasons to be interested, and perhaps, even root for the Cardinals.
But, it won’t matter. The Cardinals’ playoff run sets a bad example: make the playoffs and then count on getting hot at the right time, and you can make the Super Bowl. There are better teams who will be sitting at home on Sunday. The Cardinals posted a 9-7 record in the weakest division in football, the NFC West; pounded the surprising Atlanta Falcons 30-24; stunned the surprising Carolina Panthers, who had the NFC’s second seed with smoke and mirrors; and then came from behind to beat the inconsistent Eagles 32-25. They never had to face the NFC best Giants, and the rest of the NFC East: the Giants, Cowboys and even Redskins would beat the Cardinals most days. And that is not to mention the great teams in the AFC: the Patriots didn’t make the playoffs and won 11 games; the Colts, the Chargers, the Ravens, and even the Jets and Dolphins are better than anyone the Cardinals faced.
The Cardinals have played a tough, take away style of defense to make the Super Bowl, but the Steelers aren’t a big passing team. They run the ball hard, and are better than the Falcons, the other big running team the Cardinals faced in their run to Tampa. Plus, Ben Rothlesburger is better than Matt Ryan (Falcons), Jake Delhomme (Panthers) and even Donovan McNabb (Eagles), and shouldn’t make the same mistakes.
But the biggest problem for Arizona is on the other side of the ball. The Steelers boast the number one defense in the game, and were first against the pass. Yes, running back Edgerin James played great in the playoffs, will they be able to sustain a ground attack against Pittsburgh? And if the Cardinals fall behind and have to pass all of the time, can Fitzgerald, Bouldin, et.al, be able to get free? Does Kurt Warner have one more great game in him? Not against this defense – Steelers 35 – Cardinals 7.

Now that “Dollar” Bill Wirtz has gone off to the great mansion in the sky and the team has made great strides both on and off the ice, Cardinals’ owner Bill Bidwell takes over as the worst owner in professional sport. The bow-tie wearing dandy moved the Cardinals across the country, mismanaging the team at every step along the way. Let’s talk about the screw-ups:
Knowing that Chicago was a Bears town, Bidwell moved the Cardinals to St. Louis. A good move? At the time yes. But the team failed to win, and when Bidwell played civic extortion; threatening to move unless the city built him a new, football-only stadium; the city balked. Bidwell moved to the desert, and what did St. Louis do? Built a new-football only stadium and lured Georgia Frontierre’s Rams from Los Angeles to play in the new stadium. Result – two Super Bowl appearances, one win, and the stadium still sells out despite the fact that the team hasn’t been good lately.
Meanwhile, Bidwell moves the team to Arizona with only a handshake agreement to build a new indoor stadium. So, the Cardinals played 18 years in antiquated Sun-Devil Stadium, a building with metal benches instead of seats, which had to make going to games a new level of pain since the heat was often over 100o on the metal.
On top of that, Bidwell’s Cardinals had the highest price of any ticket in the NFL. So, let’s see how many people could sell this: “Come see bad football, in a stadium hot as hell, and pay ridiculously high prices to do it.” Yeah, that sounds like a winner to me!
So, if by fate the Cardinals do win on Sunday (doubtful – see above), if I lived in St. Louis, were a long-time fan from Arizona, or were just a devoted and knowledgeable NFL fan, the sight of Bill Bidwell standing on the stage holding the Vince Lombardi trophy is enough to make you puke. (Also funny will be Commissioner Goodell trying to say nice things about Bidwell, knowing the years of mismanagement.) It could be almost as bad as seeing Michael McCaskey doing the same at the Bears’ Super Bowl win in 1986.

I am always averse to calling for someone to lose their job – there is loss of self-esteem, prestige, and most of all, money to provide for one’s family. Especially now, with jobs being lost at almost every company; people losing their houses in foreclosure; a financial tidal wave sweeping the world – it is hardly the time to call for someone to lose their job lightly. Except in sports, especially coaches: I feel for them, but with the big money going to most coaches, particularly head coaches, and the “golden parachute-style” packages that they receive when they are fired; it’s hard to work up much sympathy for these guys.
Which is why last spring, just after I started this site, I called for my alma mater, Northwestern University, to sack men’s basketball coach Bill Carmody. The team sucked last season and for most of the time under Carmody’s reign. Before this season, Carmody’s teams posted a 103-133 record (.436 winning percentage) and an abysmal 36-94 Big Ten record (.277 percentage). Despite having a reportedly great recruiting class coming in this year, I called for his ouster because his teams weren’t getting it done on the court.
At the beginning of the season, the Wildcats experienced unusual success in the nonconference schedule, going 8-3, but every team fattens up on patsies in the early part of the season. NU opened Big Ten play with four straight losses, and I was just about to return to the call for Athletic Director Jim Phillips to fire him. Until this week, that is; the Cats defeated then-18-rated Minnesota at home last weekend, then went into East Lansing, Michigan and ended number 7 ranked Michigan State’s 28 game home winning streak. This is the first time that NU has defeated a top 10 opponent since 1979 (the Magic Johnson Michigan State team – I remember, I was there), and its first 2 game conference winning streak in nearly that long.
Kevin Coble, NU’s star forward is reaching for an NCAA bid, which would be the first in school history. I don’t know if that is realistic, but the team did save their coach’s job for at least one more year.

There was a report yesterday on various sources (Huffington Post; Yahoo) that reported fascist, backwards asshole Rush Limbaugh slammed Republicans hoping for new President Obama to succeed, saying that they are “drinking the Kool-Aid… they’re afraid of being called racists.”
Limbaugh went on, saying he was “suspicious” of Obama, Limbaugh said the facial expressions of Obama supporters were “frightening.” Maybe frightening to old racists who, like the dinosaurs, see the meteor streaming down from the heavens; in other words, they see their own extintion. Like so many liberals during the past eight years, we bitterly disagreed with the Bush Administration on so many points, but did we hope that the country would “fail?” Obviously no, but that’s what this windbag is saying – he thinks that Republicans should openly hope that the current administration falls flat on its face. And this man calls himself a “patriot?”
So, what would change Limbaugh’s (limited) mind on President Obama? If he were to behave more like that old Republican hero, Ronald Reagan by extending the Bush-era tax cuts, he would consider the new president “a success.” To whom, Rush? The ultra rich like yourself? Obama already said in his inaugural speech that supporting the rich at the expense of everyone else wouldn’t fly going forward. So, he’s already a failure, and Republicans should sit in the proverbial middle of the road with their thumbs in their collective mouths having a hissy fit because they can’t get their way?
Limbaugh and his ilk are like the dinosaurs, and the faster they retire to the mental version of the tar pits, so that we can dig them up and study their fossils; the better.

Both Chicago newspapers are reporting that Sam Zell and his Tribune Company have decided on a buyer for the Cubs: Tom Ricketts and the Ricketts family will pony up $900 million. On the one hand, the Ricketts are local, and reportedly, the new owner met his wife in the Bleachers. The bigger question of course is: what now?
The Tribune Company spent money like water over the past few years trying to win a championship and improve the value of the team. On one front, this has been successful – the signing of Alfonso Soriano and others has kept the old stadium full, drawing more that 3 million fans per season to the world largest singles bar and picnic area.
On the other goal, the results have been mixed – while the team has posted its first back-to-back division titles in team history, the 100-year championship draught remains in full force.
The biggest question is: in these economic times, do the Ricketts have the financial wherewithal to play with the big boys? Tom Ricketts is CEO of bond dealer Incapital LLC, and father Joseph Ricketts is the founder of TD Ameritrade. The family is reportedly worth $1.2 billion, but is paying $900 million for the Cubs. Considering how stocks and bonds have been performing lately, the fortune that you have today, may not be the same fortune tomorrow.
The big money that the Cubs have been dishing out over the past few years – will that cash continue? Can the Ricketts bring a championship tot he North Side? Or will Milton Bradley storm the owners’ seats because of some perceived slight? Stay tuned!

I am very happy to be taking guitar lessons again. For years, I took classes at the insistence of The Indignant Wife at the Old Town School of Folk Music who said I had to take classes or she would throw out my guitar. Anyway, I found a great teacher (Rob Newhouse) who returned to the school after moving away, and he reinstated his Brit Pop class; excluding the original “British Invasion” of the 1960s, i.e., Beatles, Stones, Kinks; we do songs by the Smiths, Elvis Costello, XTC and the like. It’s fun to play and sing despite being the worst guitarist in the room.
That said, many of the other participants in the class are fans of Coldplay. To the lemming-like listeners of WXRT, Coldplay’s 2008 CD “Viva La Vida” finished first in the station’s annual listener’s poll. But, long time readers know that Coldplay was nowhere to be found on my personal list of the best CDs of the year, and I now realize why: Coldplay is as boring as watching paint dry.
They don’t rock; they have few fast tempo songs, which is OK if you have style (late era Roxy Music comes to mind). But Chris Martin’s songs are just wimpy ballads with strange guitar tunings. Maybe it’s me, but most young bands bore me (Vampire Weekend was the only band formed after 1995 to make my own Top Ten List for 2008), but Coldplay is elevator music for yuppies (or whatever the Generation X or Y equivalent would be called).
And why is Chris Martin famous anyway? For being married to Gwyneth Paltrow, a famous, but mediocre actress and one of the least deserving Best Actress Oscar winners in history. They have a couple of kids with strange first names. Hooray! But they win – they have my money: I have all of the CDs, and listen to them occasionally on my iPod, but more than likely, I skip past their songs to something livelier.
So, I’ll play along in class during the Coldplay songs, bored to tears, waiting for a better song to come along.

I’m not going to write much here – the mainstream press and the bloggers are covering the all of the angles of the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States Barak Obama. But I was choked up when he took the oath of office (when I wasn’t laughing at the mix-up between Obama and Chief Justice Roberts), and I was amused when it looked as though Bush was going to throw up when Obama talked about transparency in government; taking back a sense of leadership and moral authority in the world; and lack of intellectual curiosity. While he never addressed the now-former President directly, I hope the bastard was at least smart enough to know when both he, and his ideals and principals were being thrown on the trash heap.