St. Louis = Not in the Super Bowl

Thank God this Super Bowl is over, if only to stop the constant reporting here in St. Louis (even in the postgame...now with local reaction) as if this Super Bowl was one with "our team" because of the presence of the Cardinals and Kurt Warner.


Sweet. The team that St. Louisans wouldn't support, so they moved to arguably the worst sports market in the country to play in a college stadium over 20 years ago, and the Hall of Fame quarterback that got run out of town. Go St. Louis!

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We Might Have a Winner for Dumbest Story of the Day

Steelers to wear white for Super Bowl.

Psssh. I can't believe they're wearing white. They've played with a loooooooooot of football teams if you catch my drift.

The author tries to draw a parallel between Pittsburgh wearing white in Super Bowl XL despite being the "home team" because Pittsburgh that year was a wild card and had won all three of their playoff games on the road.

This year, Pittsburgh played two playoff games at home, and Arizona is the "home team" so they got to pick. So the Steelers didn't pick white because they thought it was lucky again. The will wear it because they have to.

Long story short. Aside from the color of the Steelers' shirts, the parallels between the jersey selection process for Super Bowl XL and XLIII end there.

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Arizona Cardinals to Unveil Super Bowl Special Helmet

Much like college teams from time to time do in bowl games, the Arizona Cardinals are considering a one-off special helmet for their first-ever trip to the Super Bowl. Our sources deep within the Cardinals' front office have revealed these designs as the finalists that the Cardinals' brass are considering for the game in two weeks.
Rumored to be the front-runner, the "Flying Pig" design is said to have tested very well in focus groups. The design is said to be a living history of the Cardinals organization. The winged pig design represents not only the Cardinals' current state of affairs, but also the team's entire storyline up to this point, starting from their humble founding on the South Side of Chicago, not far from the Union Stockyards. While the stockyards closed in 1971, the Cardinals would continue being regularly slaughtered for the next 36 years, and so the flying pig not only represents the good times, but also every other moment in the Cardinals' franchise history except today.

This design tested very well with both the players and the fans, but its one-fingered salute towards....well...pretty much everyone to come in contact with or make reference to the franchise in the last 40 years or so faces stringent FCC hurdles and must clear that bureaucracy before it can be used on national television in the Super Bowl.

Rumor has it that the team's ownership is a tad superstitious, and is urging a return to the "lucky" helmet design that the Cardinals wore the last time they won an NFL Championship in 1947. The Players' Union and sane doctors everywhere on the other hand overwhelmingly disapprove of this design.
Cardinals I.T. intern Kyle Brecherman, characteristically left with nothing social to do this past Friday spent the entire night creating a prototype helmet featuring the Bizarro Superman design. "It's really fitting of the Bizarro World . Where else would the Arizona Cardinals be in the Super Bowl? My prototype is not only visually striking, but also inspires hope." The 22-year old Brecherman said as he paused for a moment to remove his retainer, "I mean, if the Cardinals are in the Super Bowl, then maybe we really ARE in Bizarro World. If that's the case, my scoliosis, asthma, bad teeth, and complete lack of social skills are only in Bizarro World too! Which means that I'm actually COOL in the real world!" When informed that if his hypothesis was true, then in the real world, Brecherman's mother would no longer think he was cool, and that Star Trek would never have been created, Brecherman immediately broke into tears and became inconsolable.


The dark horse design in this whole process is the cruel and spiteful passing of the "Being the laughingstock of the league" torch from the Arizona Cardinals to the Detroit Lions. The league disapproves of this design, largely due to what is viewed as the Cardinals sadistically disgracing the Super Bowl with the use of anything related to the Detroit Lions. When pressed for further comment, league officials were forced to admit that the Cardinals had a point.

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Don't Know Much About Revisionist History

Some fat piece of shit on Rome is Burning has a strange take on history. Admittedly, it's on Rome is Burning, so you can pretty much expect 1.) The guy to be a fat piece of shit and 2.) whatever he says will be mind-bogglingly wrong.

"I think that the Jets winning in Super Bowl III is a bigger upset than the Giants over the Patriots, because the Jets' were bigger underdogs...."

So far so good...

"and their win pretty much CAUSED the merger." (His emphasis, not mine.)

Kind of odd since the AFL-NFL merger was announced in 1966, and Super Bowl III was played in 1969.

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Turn that frown upside-down!

Cheer up, campers! Don't cry or pout! The birds are singing; the sun is out... It's a beeea-utiful day!

Actually, it's grayer than a bastard here, and the birds are all dead or down in Ecuador. But that wouldn't rhyme, would it? And those are unhappy thoughts! We only care about happy thoughts!

So what your team lost last night? To the guy who came here by Googling "I feel depressed after superbowl lost"--first of all, that's terrible writing, but it's okay because we're all special--remember that it could always be worse. You may be sad that your Pats didn't win, but at least you don't have smallpox or live in Burma! At least I hope you don't; otherwise, that might be a problem! :)

Are you depressed that football season is over? I promise there are still a few things to live for, like warm weather and baseball and dafodils and the 4th of July! Sure, you'll have to wait through several torturous weeks of crippling malaise before any of those things comes around, but in the words of Dido, "It's not so bad... It's not so baaaad." If you start feeling down from football withdrawl during the offseason, here are a few tips:

1) Open up your wallet you cheap bastard, and get the NFL Network. They re-run full games during the offseason!

2) Go buy a puppy and a football-shaped chew toy, carpet a room in your house to look like a football field, and watch the puppy run around it for no less than three hours at a time.

3) Reach for a cocktail, cigarette, or comfort food. They all give you a quick mood boost with absolutely no potential negative long-term consequences!

4) Buy yourself something nice but practical, like a faberge egg, and leave your wife for a younger, hotter one.

5) Get revenge on someone.

6) Balloons!

Most importantly, keep a smile on your face! Research shows that smiling releases neurochemicals in our brains that cause the muscles in the corners of our mouth to go upward, thereby causing us to feel happier! And above all, remember--sadness is a sign of weakness!

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Upset? I THINK NOT, QUEERS

The dynasty lives, HOMOS! Who won Vinnie's Super-Rigged Super Bowl Pool for Suckers for a third straight time? Oh, that's right! It was me, VINNIE.

I RULE YOU ALL, GAYS!!! YOU CANNOT COMPARE WITH MY INTELLECT AND PREDICTIVE POWERS, AND THAT'S CLEAR. YOU WILL ALL BOW DOWN TO ME AND GIVE ME SEX AND BLOW JOBS AND SUCH, MY MINIONS.

I offered you PRIZES, both material and otherwise, yet I still DOMINATED YOUR WEAK-ASS WEAK ASSES because I'm AWESOME!!!! Instead of posting on this blog or removing one of my posts (YOU'D REALLY LIKE TO REMOVE THIS ONE, HUH, QUEERMO??), you now get Vinnie unabridged for AT LEAST a year because I KNEW that the Giants would win and/or lose by less than 12 points and that the Unders would beat the Overs. You all thought my panting man-lust for high-risk QBs, particularly Eli Manning, was crazy, but clearly, I WAS RIGHT. That means more preachiness, more terrible jokes, more unwarranted bravado... more Vinnie-ness!!!!

(By the way, Pat was the only other person who called the Ginats v. spread and under, so the other five of you--yes, five responses were all I got--suck hardcore, and Pat rules like me. And Tom Petty is a moron because he should have played his first-last in reverse order as I called. "Runnin' Down a Dream" is a perfect opening song, while "American Girl" is a perfect closing song. And yes, I even claim to know Tom Petty's music more than he does.)

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Enter to win!

Do it! (Sorry, guys... just thought I'd leave this up-top til Sunday so that we might get a reponse or two before the game starts.)

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More YouTube filler

Like most of our YouTube filler, this only vaguely relates to sports. But for you Conan O'Brien fans who haven't had the chance to watch him in the last week, or who have abandoned him since the WGA strike started, you've missed out on this brilliant gag--Super Bowl-predicting turtle races... with rockets!



And by the way, if you are one of those people who have not been tuning in since Conan came back on the air writer-less, you are missing out. Granted, the shows aren't quite as full or crisp as with writers, but the absolute lack of regard for whether the gags are too silly or frivilous makes for comedy gold. And it proves to me that Conan O'Brien is funnier by himself than Letterman, Leno, and Stewart are with writers (that is, until he takes over the 10:35 slot next year and is forced to do Leno-style humor. So enjoy the 11:35 show while you can.)

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Win a chance to make me look like an ass!

This Sunday--being the Super Bowl and all--will be a fun occasion for us YCS folk, as it will be the fourth annual Patrick Scott Super Bowl Party Extravaganza, which in the past has included such highlights as frozen processed chicken-like nuggets shaped as dinosaurs, cheap and food poisoning-inducing pizza, a fridge stocked with 140 PBRs/JBLs/LaCrosse Lagers/Blatz'seses (photo, Mike?), and a big Alaskan-sized fist through our apartment wall (inside story to be retold upon request).

Sadly, I may not be able to attend for the second straight year because I love my job more than my friends, myself, and my non-existent wife and kids. Nevertheless, I'm determined to carry on my one contribution to this event--The Vinnie Bergl Super-Rigged and Arbitrarily-Scored Super Bowl Pool.

Now, this pool is not rigged by design, yet it is clearly rigged because a) I invented it, wrote the questions, and devised the scoring system, and b) I won both of the years we held it in college. So this year, I'm offering revenge, and I want all of our readers (i.e. the eight of us authors and HOPEFULLY a couple other people) to participate. As a prize I am offering any one of the following:

1) A post on any topic watsoever, to be posted on this blog, so that you can share your opinions to approximately 20 people

2) A free swipe at any one of my future preachy-ass posts, meaning I will remove it at your command

3) A small cash (or otherwise materially valuble--but not very valuable) prize

4) The chance to strap me to a wall and pelt me with oranges for ten minutes for bilking you out of your money (mostly applies to personal friends)

5) A custom prize, within reason. (Unreasonable prizes may or may not be honored.)

Now to the pool. The format is basically the same, just with different teams. It's super fun, as you can tell by the football-themed scoring system. Send your picks via comment or (more conveniently) to our email (yellowchairsports@gmail.com).

TDs (6 pts each)
Winner against the spread (NE -12)
Over-under (54)
Game MVP

FGs (3 pts each)
Most rushing yards (player)
Most receiving yards (player)
Most yards from scrimmage (player, rushing + receiving)
Most catches (player)
Most TDs (player, non-passing)
Most sacks (player)

Safeties (2 pts each)
Most passing TDs (player)
Most passing yards (player)
More total yards (team)
More forced turnovers (team)
More FGs (team)
First team to score

Extra points (1 pt each)
Coin toss winner
Highest scoring quarter
Lowest scoring quarter
First NE player to catch a pass
First NYG player to catch a pass
First song performed by Tom Petty at halftime
Last song performed by Tom Petty at halftime
Beer company with the most commercials - a) Miller b) Anheiser Busch c) Adolph Coors d) Other

Tie breaker: scoring margin NE / NYG by __ (closest +/- with correct winner takes it)

Note: In cases of ties (e.g. yardage, turnovers, FGs, co-MVPs, etc.), no points will be awarded for the category.

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You know what's weird?

...That the Patriots aren't more of an overwhelming favorite on Sunday.

I just saw on the ESPN Bottom Line that NationOfStupidSportsFans (I think that's what they call it) are only 61.4%-38.6% picking the Pats over the Giants. Granted, I know there's a bunch of New York bias in that number, but I'm still surprised it's not more lopsided.

More surprisingly, the spread on the game is only Pats -12. Yes, I realize that's a pretty good margin as far as football games go, and especially as far as Super Bowls go.

But we're talking about a regular-season 16-0 team vs. a regular-season 10-6 team. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I believe that the Rams-Pats Super Bowl in '02--a matcup of 14-2 vs. 11-5 had a larger spread. And I know that the '95 Super Bowl between the 13-3 49ers and 11-5 Chargers was something like 19 at the start of the game (which, incredibly, the 'Niners covered).

At the time, the NFC was much better. But I think most people would agree that the AFC is just as superior now as the NFC was then. So why does a 6-game margin now mean less than a 2-game margin then? Are people just getting wiser, or is the league that much tighter in terms of team-to-team talent? (Data says, not necessarily.)

So what gives?

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YCS Super Bowl Accu-Pickin' is Back!!!

Yes, boys and girls, YCS Accu-Picking has returned. Our super-duper-top-secret-high-tech way to ensure that you get it right on Sunday. But if you use it for gambling and lose, tough shit, as it is well known that the YCS staff has been routed by fate on numerous occasions. Our world and financial fortunes now lie irretrievably broken.

Last year, YCS Accu-Pick proved to be roughly 50% effective. It was an amazing coincidence considering half the staff lived in Bear Country, and half lived in Bear-hating country and picked accordingly.

This year, to no one's surprise, the undefeated Patriots are the overwhelming favorite for the Head Pick (Who you'd put money on). Our panel was more split on the Heart Pick (Who one is rooting for/Gut Feeling). Even the Quarter, YCS's foolproof technology picked the Patriots twice. To see that it wasn't a fluke, it was tested again, and both times it came up Patriots. 4 times landing on heads? That's gotta be worth something there.

So the opinion is pretty universal. Except for Vinnie. Upon learning that no one had picked the Giants, his indie street-cred wouldn't let him follow the herd, even if it was to capitalistic glory to reap no doubt huge financial windfalls. After all, Vinnie already has us licked in every other category, so why follow this band of common street trash anywhere? So Vinnie's being different and picking the Giants. If the Giants win, I have a feeling Vinnie will never let us forget it.

In the interest of full disclosure. Paul has placed his Heart/Head picks with Eli Manning and Randy Moss (the players, not the teams) respectively. Patrick made a heart pick of Patriots, and a head pick for Patriots by 20. Zuch likewise picked "Patriots in a landslide."

At press time, Matt is "in denial," still trying to dig himself out of the pit of despair that Vinnie, Pat, Zuch and I were feeling last February as Rex Grossman flung one final hurrah into the Miami night. Matt is hoping that through some bizarre technicality, the Packers will be declared the NFC Champions, will storm onto the field to the surprise of everyone, leave the Patriots behind, and carry Brett Favre off the field into the sunset and football immortality. When informed of the extremely low likelihood of this coming to pass, Matt has instead opted to pick in the alternative "Terrorist Attack" as his heart pick; ending the 2007 NFL season with one last spectacular round of sour grapes.

So to close, happy Accu-Picking, and a special welcome to our readers from the Department of Homeland Security.

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Yes, I Know It's an Annual Story

But I always thought it was interesting/nice.

Now if only any National Geographic team can snap a picture of someone wearing a Packers 2007 NFC Champions shirt AND a Chicago Bears Super Bowl XLI Champions hat...

PS: On an unrelated side note, why was it necessary for the locker room shirts to read "NFC Conference Champions"? Isn't that implied? Or does it have to be explained that the Giants are the National Football Conference Conference Champions?

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Keep this one in the memory bank

It's today's column by Len Pasquerelli, which basically affirms the optimism of the drunkards in Bears jerseys on last night's local news.

Now here's where I contradict myself yet again. Though I'm usually critical of Chicago sports fans for crying poormouth all the time, I think in this instance they're behaving too optimistically. And I'm not trying to be irrationally pessimistic. I don't claim to get the cart with the one bad wheel any more regularly than the average grocery store customer. There are just a lot of good reasons not to expect a repeat of this season in aught-7.

1. It's like that song "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. You know--"What goes up must come down." Come on; it's the 45 all the kids are buying right now.

Anyway, that principle usually proves true in salary cap-era NFL. Being in the Super Bowl is kind of like being on the cover of SI. You got in the Super Bowl because your franchise is at a peak. And peaking by definition implies the start of a downturn. There's no SI cover curse, and by the same token, the post-Super Bowl hangover is overblown. Much of it is simply the NFL's natural cycle turnin' its turn.

So drop all your troubles by the riverside. Hop a painted pony on the spinning wheel ride that we call the NFL, Bears fans. After two straight division-winning seasons, chances are we'll see leaner days ahead.

2. Don't Super Bowl losers have a particularly horrendous season-after track record? I should really take the time to look this up, but I'm just gonna lazily throw the question out and let Zuch or statboy Mike answer it in the comments.

I guess I'm sorta disagreeing with what I said three paragraphs ago now. But if I'm not mistaken, haven't Super Bowl losers historically fallen off way more than players-as-robots performance trends should dictate? Sure, the past trend is no guarantee the Bears will suffer the same falloff, but forty years is a lot of data.

3. Old guys. Every team has them, and admittedly, the Bears don't have all that many. In fact, they have plenty of young impact players (like Rex Grossman who's still gonna be awesome, and yes, I'm being biased but he's still good so shut up). Mostly, I'm talking about the offensive line. They didn't pass protect very well this year, and none of them are all that young. Fred Miller and Ruben Brown are pretty old in fact.

Also, Thomas Jones is at that point in a running back's career when the persistent beatings slow a guy down considerably. Yeah, I hope he's like Curtis Martin and keeps it up into 30s, but that's rare and unlikely.

4. Devin Hester. I hope everyone enjoyed the exploits of the Windy City Flyer a.k.a. Anytime a.k.a. Hurricane Hes this year because that will no way happen again. That's 30 regular season points you can't at all count on for next year or any year thereafter. Guys like Hester (Dante Hall, Desmond Howard) tend to be one-year wonders--at least in terms of such palpable results. Eric Metcalf is the one modern exception I can come up with.

Maybe I should attempt some research before throwing out these generalizations, but I'll leave it up to you readers to tell me I'm an idiot. All I'm saying is that it's very unrealistic to expect Hester to perform nearly as well or for the return unit to stay in tact, let alone give Hester such good lanes.

5. Robbie "Vinnie's gonna resist the intentionally hokey pun this time" Gould will probably lose some shimmer. (Ha, I lied!) Keeping with the theme of "the special teams were unusually special," Robbie Gould was atypically awesome as well. Kickers are funny creatures. And while Gould could end up the next Gary/Morten Anderson/sen, he could also be the next Mike Vanderjagt.


Hey, sweet. I ran out of talking points at five, a nice round number. I'll pretend that was intentional. Anyway, I'm not predicing anything radical like the Bears finishing behind the Lions next year, but it's crazy biased for Bears fans to think this team is so much better than your average 9-7 team. Such is the way of the NFL, where a couple guys passing their primes or one big free agent loss (i.e. Lance Briggs) can pull a franchise to earth in a quick hurry.

Remember, Chicago--Someone's waiting just for you. The spinning wheel, spinning true. Chew on that.

[Carnival music] Doooo, d-do da-da doo doo, doooo da-da doo doo [brass riff, carnival music, fade out]

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Colts 29, Bearsss 17

One of the kickass things about watching the Super Bowl alone in your parents' basement (shut up, how dare you judge me) is taking in the absurd local news postgame coverage. If you were lucky enough to flip on our beloved NBC5, you caught some pretty good stuff, including:

-A reporter (who happened to be former Bear Dan Jiggets's daughter) live from the completely empty Soldier Field parking lot where people had been tailgating during the game but left before the report

-Peggy Kuczinski's walk-and-interview with Rex Grossman who was glancing around the whole time, clearly trying to shake her

-A live report from some random family's house party in Park Ridge

-A live report from a bowling alley in Hyde Park

There was also plenty of "Woo! Bears! Wait 'til next year" sentiment at the various locales. In fact, it seemed the predominant mood. Not to be a downer, but maybe someone should inform these people how Super Bowl losers historically fare the next season.

Anyway, the best part of the postgame coverage was a scrolling fan feedback thingy at the bottom of the screen. Comcast Sports had some kind of live chat or message board going, and NBC5 had the comments scrolling continuously during the postgame coverage. Not surprisingly, most of the comments were about Rex Grossman, and they often alternated between "fire Rex! Prince would have played better!" and "Rex stilll the man Rex is R qb! -marge, oak lawn."

There was also plenty of "Play Orton!/Griese!" (or as one person spelled it, "Grease"), as well as calls to "bring back McMahon!/Ditka!/Sweetness!" (ummmm.....) along with some general throwback sentiments ("85 bears 4 eva!"). I think my favorite pro-Rex comment was the foolproof defense, "QUIT BLAMING REX. LIKE YOU COULD DO ANY BETTER. THEY TRIED THERE BEST." And of course, the bag of "Train Rex"/"Wreck Rex"/"Gross-man" puns was opened, emptied, and emptied some more.

People also used the opportunity to display their baseball loyalties ("Bears just big Cubs--always wait til next year" "we still love the bears south side represent. go sox"), to propose to Devin Hester, and to demand Lovie Smith's and/or Ron Turner's termination.

Anyway, as much as I've ridiculed the local media for the overblown coverage and the Chicago fans for caring way too much about a friggin' football game, I'll admit it's made for some pretty entertaining viewing--if, for nothing else, its ease of ridicule. Unfortunately, it won't extend a few more days for a parade, but I'm sure we'll still get plenty of coverage of the team plane landing, the team bus pulling into the station, and, quite fathomably, individual players followed home by reporters and adoring fans.

Super Bowl XXXXI was fun while it lasted, but I guess it just wasn't the Bears' year. However, that shouldn't overshadow who the real winners were--African American coaches and capitalism.

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YCS Super Bowl XXXXI Accu-Pickin' is here!

This past season, ESPN introduced their "Accu-score" simulation, which was proven such an effective virtual crystal ball by ESPN.com's...(chuckle) "talent," that all of them bet against it for last week's NFC Championship game. Accu-Score promptly made them all look stupid.

As effective a prognosticator as Accu-Score is, we think we've one-upped the big boys once again here at YCS with our cutting edge "Accu-Pickin'" technology. So if you have a crippling gambling problem, instead of getting help like you should, one of your other options is to see what this fine group of gentlemen thinks about the upcoming Super Bowl. (click for a larger view of the misshapen heads that house the most intelligent brains in sportsertainment.)

In fact, our minds are so in tune with this game, that you may notice that all the YCS staff members who presently live north of the Cheese Curtain in the State of Wisconsin, home to the Green Bay Packers, not only want the Colts to beat the Bears, but think they will as well.

Also, almost all of the residents of the greater Chicagoland area wanted the Bears to win, and picked them as well. Only Pat is hedging his bets.

This means that most of the YCS staff has absolutely no rooting interests clouding their judgment.

But just to be sure, as the great final arbiter, our Accu-Pick System (proven to be right 50% of the time, what are the odds???) has decided that it thinks the Bears will win, but its heart is with the Colts.

So happy pickin' with YCS Accu-Pickin!

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