Steelers Kick It Off for Real

As we have been told repeatedly, the Steelers kick off their 80th season in the National Football League tonight against the Broncos in Denver.  Since the team is celebrating this milestone season with those horrid throwback Three Stooges-style uniforms, I thought I would celebrate it with their old logo, one that I always thought was a pretty cool one.

When last we saw the Steelers playing a game that mattered, the Vaunted Dick LeBeau defense was being picked apart and shredded in Denver by that master of the quarterbacking arts, Tim Tebow.  Tonight they return to that same stadium and the Broncos have replaced Tebow with Peyton Manning, a slight upgrade in the position.  So, I don't have high hopes for how Rooney U. might fare in tonight's contest.  

As for how they will do over the course of the season, I think that they are a good enough team to win more games than they will lose, but will they be good enough to make the playoffs from a division that sent two other teams, the Ravens and Bengals, to the playoffs last season?  On the plus side, they have a great quarterback and a corps of very good, if not great, receivers. The offensive line was supposed to have been beefed up via the draft, but injuries have reared up among that corps, so will Roethlisberger continue to run for his life and get beat up continually?  I am also concerned with the running backs.  They are counting on Isaac Redman to replace an injured Rashard Mendenhall.  Redman has been okay as a short yardage guy and a fill in in the past, but it's still a question, in my mind anyway, if he can do it over the long haul. 

On defense, younger guys need to step up to replace guys like James Farrior and Aaron Smith, while guys like James Harrison and Troy Polamalu  are another year older.

Maybe this is a season where the team just takes a step backwards while retooling for another sustained stretch of Super Bowl caliber seasons down the road.  With a QB like Ben you can never count them out, and the Bengals can always be counted on to be, well, the Bengals, so you never know, but let's call it a 9-7 season with the team missing the Playoffs.  Hope I'm wrong.

Oh, one more thing, in my limited writing on the team during the practice game season, I continually talked about how everyone has been talking about Todd Hailey and the New Steelers Offense.  I'm done kicking that one around.  Let's see how the team actually plays on the field during the season.  I will leave the Glorification and/or the Bashing of the Offensive Coordinator up to the experts who call into The Fan everyday.

As for the rest of the NFL, last year I thought that I would boldly cover my butt by naming a group of eight to ten teams, one of which would be the eventual Super Bowl winner.  How could I be wrong if I did that, right?  However, I failed to include the New York Giants among that pack of sure fire Super Bowl contenders.  Amazing.   As for this year, what the hell, I'll be bold and predict that the Green Bay Packers will defeat the Baltimore Ravens in the Super Bowl.

I am also anxiously awaiting to see who the NFL will choose to be the halftime act at the Super Bowl.  Early line favorites are The Beach Boys, Hall and Oates, and Duran Duran.  Since the Super Bowl will be in New Orleans, possible dark horse candidates to perform could be Louis Armstrong and Al Hirt.  The fact that both of those guys are dead shouldn't stand in the way of the NFL, considering what can be done with holograms these days.

As always, watch, but don't bet, and enjoy the football season!!

The NFL, MLB, and Bob Walk

No one will argue that the National Football League stands head-and-shoulders above all other North American sports institutions in terms of popularity, marketing, the ability to read the pulse of its fan base, and in a myriad of other ways.  There are many reasons for this, and allow me to offer just one.


NFL followers do not obsess and whine incessantly whenever a team with roots in the original NFL, say the Pittsburgh Steelers, play a regular season game against a team from the original AFL, say, the Oakland Raiders.  They look at it as a part of the schedule and, in many such instances, they embrace and look forward to such contests.


NFL fans do not feel that the climactic event of its season, the Super Bowl, is tainted just because the two teams in it might have previously played each other in the regular season.  In fact, such games hold the possibility of becoming historic in the sport.  The Super Bowl between the Giants and Patriots that followed the 2007 season springs immediately to mind.


The NFL makes rules changes every year, some of them quite significant - there is talk of eliminating kick-offs, although this has not been adopted - and the fans accept these changes as part of the natural evolution of the game and do not rend there garments because the NFL punjabs are tampering with the very heart and soul of the game.


What causes me to mention this are the diatribes that Pirates announcer Bob Walk has been delivering of late against Inter-league play (been with us since 1997) and the designated hitter (been with us since 1973; that FORTY SEASONS now). Now I happen to like Bob Walk a lot.  Loved him when he pitched so nobly for the Bucs back in the day, and think he is a very good and insightful announcer, but he really needs to get off of this particular 




bandwagon and shut up!  I don't think he realizes that with the move of the Astros to the American League next year, two 15 team leagues means that there will be inter-league play every day next year (remember when three NFL teams moved to the "American Conference," which was the old AFL, in 1970 when the leagues merged? Worked out OK for football, I think).


As for the designated hitter, 2012 represents the FORTIETH season that it has been with us. What the American League adopted as an experiment in 1973 is now in use in every professional and amateur baseball league in every country on the globe where the game is played, except, as we all know, in the National League.  Sorry, but when it comes to the DH, it is the National League and it's adherents who look  like the goofballs by refusing to adopt it, and the completely ludicrous concept of MLB playing it's Championship Event each season under two sets of rules is so completely wrong that I can't even begin to find the words to address it.


Hey, those who know me know I love baseball - and the National League - first among all sports, and I love the "old school" nature of it (for example, I saw nothing wrong in Cole Hamels "welcoming" Bryce Harper to the big leagues with a fastball to the ribs!), but baseball shoots itself in the foot so often by clinging to the past, it sometimes drives me crazy.