Shame on Suh

As Thanksgiving day 2011 comes to a close, I just thought of something else I'm thankful for.  I'm thankful for having a Detroit Lions team that does not disgrace the game so badly that the TV talking heads are forced to opine the merits of taking away the one Lions tradition that does not involve poor drafting or poor play.  If there's one thing I hate worse than always having a bad team, it's watching pre-game shows where everybody tells me how bad my team is.  Hey, thanks Dan Marino- but I already knew that Matt Millen flushed the whole freaking franchise down the toilet.

In case you didn't watch the Packers-Lions turkey day tilt this afternoon (and if you're reading this blog, there is really no reason why you shouldn't have), then you missed the time when Ndamukong Suh morphed into the WWF version of the Incredible Hulk. 

Much has been made this season about the Detroit Lions being a dirty team and Suh being named the dirtiest player in the league (in a recent poll done by the Sporting News.  I guess).  For the most part, I don't have a huge problem with, as Brian Urlacher put it, the Lions playing to 'the echo of the whistle'.  This is about changing a losing culture, and if they have to go a little too far the other way- well, that's fine.  People just need to know that they can't mess with the Detroit Lions. 

In that regard, I love what Suh brings to the table.  He is a physical freak- with python-like arms, a non-stop motor, and running back athleticism.  He has an impossible to pronounce/spell first name mixed with a phonetically pleasing last name which helps him to appeal to...well, whatever demographic that sort of thing appeals to.  His arrival in Detroit has coincided with the Renaissance that has been Detroit football the last couple years.  It's like a breath of fresh air, which is no trivial thing when you're living in a cesspool like Detroit.

Of course, you have to take the bad with the good, and in this case, our dominant defensive lineman/philanthropist is also apparently a delusional homicidal maniac.  During the past two seasons, he has almost ripped the heads off of two QBs.  He also did a pretty fair 'Hulk Smash' impression on Jay Cutler's back last year.  The worst part of this is that he doesn't seem to realize this- or he does realize and just doesn't care.

Today's incident seriously upped the rhetoric from the 'Suh/dirty player' camps, and as much as it pains me to say this- the pundits just might be right about this one.  I think what puts elevates this incident over the others in terms of 'Okay, maybe Suh is a little bit of an angry douche-bag' was when he unsuccessfully tried to tell the world that he was the victim here. 

Before watching Suh wade through probably the worst apology/defense since Tiger Woods tried to tell us his golf clubs had attacked him, his shenanigans reminded me of the Bad Boys.  Sure, they played rough, and they may or may not have broken some rules (as well as basic laws of human decency), but they were our team and it actually made us feel closer to them.  People were backing us into the same corner, and as long as that corner wasn't anywhere near Bill Laimbeer, we were just fine to bunkerize ourselves with them. 

It's been the same thing for Donkey-Kong Suh.  With each incident, each act of competitive violence, it was just justified in the context of being a 'competitor'.  Yeah he tried to rip his head off- but it's Jake Delhomme.  He'd have done the Browns a favor!  And so what that he tried to forearm shiver Jay Cutler into a greasy paste?  He was just trying to make a play!  Besides, sometimes I just think your hands end up really close to someones head in football and you just have to violently tear them away.  Completely natural. 

But today was somehow different.  And I really think the difference lies in the level of self-deceit apparent in the post game comments about the incident.

Understand that football can be a violent game and with all that adrenaline and testosterone and pressure, it makes sense that dudes would get pissed off once in awhile.  I'm not begrudging Suh that.  Sure, his stunt gave the Packers a first down inside the 5 after we had just stopped them on a third-and-goal, which was exactly what our team needed after the Packers apparently performed some sort of ritual exorcism at halftime and rid them of the first half sucktitude.  The fact that he got ejected was just icing on the 'We're screwed' cake.  Okay, so maybe I'm a little bit begrudging.

But if he just would have came out afterwards and been like 'Man, I don't know what happened- I was just really really hungry and I didn't think I could wait until after the game, and I just kept thinking about turkey, and I was pissed that I couldn't eat until after the game and- well, I let my hunger get the best of me and I behaved in a way that was detrimental to my team, the fans, and this great organization.  I'm sorry, and I'll accept whatever punishment that comes my way'.  I would have accepted that.  Lots of dudes get angry and do stupid stuff.  Especially when turkey is involved.

That's not what he did though.  He came out and basically blamed the refs for throwing him out for just trying to get up.  He appealed to his 'true fans' and God (I'm assuming God.  He said 'the man upstairs'.  Which, given his apparent assessment of reality, could be some guy that he actually thinks lives 'upstairs') and basically accused anyone who tries to spin this into the 'Suh=dirtiest NFL player' narrative of being some sort of self-serving jerk-nalist.   He tried to justify the kicking action by saying he was 'trying to gain his balance'.

HULK...TRYING TO...MAINTAIN....EQUILIBRIUM...

Some of the TV talking heads were talking about the possibility of a suspension and I have to say I agree with them on this.  I'm sorry, he can create a persecution-free layer of protection in his mind, but it's pretty plain to see that there was some malicious intent there.  At the very least, suspend him for a game and send him to some ballet classes where they can help him with his balance so that he doesn't accidentally kill someone next time he falls down.

And seriously, I think a suspension would do him good, if for no other reason than to hopefully get him to acknowledge that 'Hey, I can still be a tough guy who stretches the rules just as long as I don't obviously break them'.  We were joking about Suh before the game, and the ripping off of other players heads (figuratively speaking) and in that moment I sort of pictured that very thing literally happening- and it didn't surprise me at all.  And it makes sense.  Suh is not the first guy with that kind of strength and that built up passive rage (while seeming to lack the ability to comprehend his actions from a second-person perspective) that we've come across...

HULK SHOW YOU ROUGHING PASSER!!!!!

Please, Ndamukong- get some self control before you really hurt someone and throw a potentially Hall-of-Fame career down the toilet. 

PIC-
Hulk 1- http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4127/4835814723_cce53fd3c3.jpg
Hulk 2- http://www.riverglassdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/hulk-smash1.jpg

Freecell football. Yeah, it's pretty much what you think it is.

Here at youshouldknowjasonparks.blogspot.com*, we strive to bring you a smorgasbord of interesting content to make you think, (hopefully) laugh, and shake your head in amazement/disgust.  My expressed goal is to bring it with each and every post.  Sometimes that means I write about my thoughts about God.  Sometimes that means I keep you up to date on my Fantasy Football team.  Sometimes that means I deliver some ideas about humanity in the world we live in.  But today, for the first time ever, I'm going to talk to you about my absolute favoritest card game that I play on the computer- Free Cell.

If you haven't played Free Cell then please stop reading this blog right now, go over to the program menu, click on the game menu, highlight Free Cell, and get ready to have your mind blown.  Free Cell is like solitaire if solitaire was King Leonidas played by Patrick Dempsey if Patrick Dempsey was Patrick Swayze.  Yeah, it's like that.

The thing I love most about it is that it requires a good amount of strategy and planning.  In solitaire, you're at the complete mercy of the deck.  All you know is the cards on the top- most of the deck is a complete mystery.  And the stock too is completely blind- so to me it's much more of a game of chance than it is strategy (although there are elements of both, to be sure).  So when I win a game of solitaire I feel good- but I also feel like I was more like a mouse in a box, led by a series of pre-designed pellet droppings to an already determined outcome.

With Free Cell, it's all on me.  Everything is laid out there.  Win or lose, it's most likely due to some sort of human error I made instead of some random placement of cards.  In fact (and when I say 'fact', you should know I'm taking my facts from Wikipedia), there is only one unwinnable Free Cell game out of 32,000 (from the original Windows), while the estimated number of unwinnable games in solitaire is between 8.5-18%.  Basically if I lose in solitaire then it's 20% likely that I had no chance before the game even started.  Meanwhile a Free Cell game will pretty much always rise and fall based on my abilities (which I should tell you are substantial).

And I like that.  I like the feeling of being in complete control of my game destiny.  That means that when I win, I win because I was smarter than a stack of computer generated playing cards.  I was able to use my mental faculties and precognition to triumph over my inanimate enemy.  If I lose, it's because I made a wrong choice or got ahead of myself- no mystical force leading me astray.  No computer defense to accuse of cheating.  The only person to throw the controller at is myself.

But hey, the point of this blog post wasn't really to trumpet the superiority of Free Cell over solitaire (ATTENTION- FREE CELL IS SUPERIOR TO SOLITAIRE).  My point is to let you know that I am challenging myself to my own Free Cell football league.  Yes, my efforts to incorporate football into every facet of my life knows no bounds.

Let me explain what I'm doing.  I'm going through a series of 16 game 'seasons', if you will.  At the end of each 'season', I advance to the playoffs depending on how many victories I achieve.  9-11 wins gets me in the Wildcard round, and 12-16 gives me a first round bye.  If I make it to the playoffs, then I follow the NFL playoff format until I win the 'Super Bowl' or lose (whichever comes first).  My first 'season' I went 12-4  but lost in the equivalent of the conference championship game (note: the only way that I could make this possibly cooler is if I somehow managed to clone myself into any multiple of four and set up equal divisions that I could compare records against and actually set up a literal playoff tree against myself.  Science, get on this please).  I was devastated to be sure- so I went out and made some impressive moves in free agency and drafted shrewdly to fill some needs.  I'll let you figure out what that means.

Last 'season', which I finished tonight, I went 11-5.  Not my most impressive finish, but considering I started 1-4, it was quite a feat- especially since I won the Super Bowl!  That's right, I managed to overcome a 1-4 start to finish with a playoff berth and like the Green Bay Packers of last year, I won four straight games to reach the pinnacle of my trade.  Move over, Freddie Mercury- I am the champion, my friend.

Rest assured faithful reader, I'm not going to be bringing you frequent updates of my Free Cell successes and failings.  This will probably be the only time you have to read about these shenanigans.  But I did think that the world needed to know that I take my Free Cell as seriously as I do my Fantasy Football.  Which is to say that I take it way too seriously.

*I suppose that hyperlinking to a website that you're already at is a little superfluous.  It's like giving you a map to a door, and the door is in the middle of the room that you're already in.  But that's okay because it's just nice to know that there's no place like home.

Super Bowl Weekend...which is much more like Super Bowl Two Weeks

I blogged about the Wild-card round. I wrote about the Divisional round. You read my thoughts right here about the Conference Championships. Shoot, I even spent time on the Pro Bowl. So what makes you think I wouldn't spend time on the biggest game for futbol americano?

Let's get it started in here.

-Green Bay vs. Pittsburgh
So I decided to watch a little bit of the pre-game show this year. Not the whole thing- after all, doesn't it start at like 6 in the morning? I did watch a couple hours of it at the in-laws house though, while munching delicious turkey.

And I had an epiphany. Maybe it was the MSG in the turkey, or maybe the fact that I actually sat down to watch a Super Bowl pre-game show, but I realized as I was sitting there watching it that it is probably the biggest waste of time in TV history (or so I thought...until I saw the half-time show). The red carpet "show"? LAME. Seriously, why do I want to watch a bunch of famous people coming into the game and then listen to them blabber about football? The only reason you are there is because you're rich and famous. Woopdy doo. And their "insight" was no more "insightful" than much of what I say right here- and in some cases, it was less so.

I also have mixed feelings about the whole Danica Patrick godaddy.com line of ads. Obviously she's a very attractive woman, and she needs to make money too. It just seems like such a shame that someone who, in my eyes, has done a lot to show that women can be successful, high-profile athletes in male-dominated sports (yes, for this argument I am considering race-car driving a "sport") would cater to the lowest common denominator by appearing in sexually provocative (although non-explicit) commercials. But that's just me. I'm sure millions of dudes out there would disagree- even if they are being led to a watering hole with no water in it.

Unfortunately for me, I missed the absolute best moment of the Super Bowl- the National Anthem-because we didn't get snacks and such until right before the game (BTWs- don't go to Wal-Mart right before the Super Bowl- they only have like two check-out lanes open and they are all out of the really good stuff).

Now understand that I'm not violently opposed to Christina Aguilera getting the gig to sing the Anthem. I just don't get into that type of singing as much. I enjoy a good, traditional Anthem, and the occasional acoustic rendition. I pretty much detest the pop-star diva amped up version. But that doesn't mean that I don't think that people who sing like that shouldn't get a shot at it. She's had a good career, she can sing well, she's American- sure, why not? Well, now we know why not. Because she obviously doesn't know the song.

If there is one part of the Super Bowl that should go off without a hitch, it's the National Anthem. The football game itself is prone to the mistakes that normally would occur during a football game. The half-time show is a mistake anyways. But the National Anthem? It's you and a microphone and a song that you've probably sung hundreds (if not thousands) of times. So how do you mess that up? Especially during these very politically charged times that we live in- Christina, you have to nail the Anthem! America is counting on you! The Stock Market is counting on you! The military is counting on you! Don't you dare let us down! (BTWs, it was awesome that the cameras went immediately to a group of troops that looked like they were going to do a Code Red to Aguilera as soon as she got off stage)

Going into, and for much of, the game- I really didn't have a rooting preference. I'm not much of a Packer fan or a Steeler fan, but I do appreciate the legacies that both franchises have created over their respective histories. Living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I know many Packer fans. MANY Packer fans. In fact, here's an interesting theory I came up with- I believe that all Michiganders (except the transplanted cheeseheads) are band-wagon Packer fans, and this phenomenon exists on a scale. The closer you are to Wisconsin, the less of a bandwagon fan you are. I'm just saying.

So my rooting interest was very much influenced by my situation at work tomorrow. A couple of the parents of the kids I am in charge of are very big Packer fans. I definitely did not want to go to work after a Packer loss- because that would have just killed the air of positive small talk that I have worked so hard to cultivate. But also, I would be expected to be empathetic to the plight of their beloved Pack- and as a Lions fan, I just don't have enough pain and suffering to give to anyone else's team. Plus, I think that Packer fans could use a dose of humility- and who better to give it to them than a team with a sex addict at quarterback? (Note: I have no idea what the connection is there)

I hate to be a hater- and admittedly, I wasn't 100% sold on Black-eyed Peas as a half-time performer- but oh my goodness. That was the worst half-time show I've ever seen. It's even worse than those MTV "all-star" half-time shows they used to do before the nipple slip. I mean, there was lots of cool lights (probably too many, which is why they put some of them on the costumes)- and a neat stage- and all sorts of dancers- and even a guest appearance by Usher (dude can dance). But what the heck was going on? I mean, there are four members of the Peas, correct? But only like two of them were actually doing any significant singing. What do the other guys do?

The truth is, the NFL is in a long-term rut for half-time shows. I can't even remember the last time there was a decent half-time show. I understand that they want to make the Super Bowl an event the whole family can enjoy, but all that the Black-Eyed Peas did was put on a show that had entire families saying "What the heck is this crap?". You know what I think they should do? They should make half-time like the half-time of a normal game. You know- where the talking heads sit around and talk about the actual game- the game we're all watching. It couldn't be any worse than seeing lots of shiny lights, pyrotechnics, and crappy music.

They could cut the pre-game show down by about five or six hours- the only thing that the pre-game show brings to the table that hasn't been beaten to death over the previous two weeks is the red carpet and live music- and I'm sorry, if I wanted to see the red carpet and live music I'd watch the Grammy's. Just think about it, NFL.

At the beginning of the 4th quarter, I decided to root for the Packers (sorry Josh). I did this for a couple reasons:
1) Our friend Zach came over to watch the game. He is from Wisconsin, and so by birth he is a Packers fan.
2) My dread of having to pretend to care that the Packers lost joined forces with my desire to have something to small talk about at work tomorrow.
3) The Packers were winning. Like most Packer fans from Michigan, I figured that now was as good a time as any to jump on the bandwagon.

Man, the economy must really be bad. Pretty much the only commercials were car ones and movie trailers. Even the beer companies came up lame. Speaking of lame- again, most of the commercials were duds, although there were some very clever ones. I had never heard of Car Max before, and probably never will again- but they definitely had my attention for about a minute of Super Bowl Sunday. Good work, Car Max.

I'm sorry Fox- I've never seen Glee, but I can tell you it's not a comedy. And how do I know it's not a comedy? Because I've never seen it. Do you know how to spot circular logic? It's easy- the logic is circular.

Oooh, new show on Fox. Terra Nova. Looks like Avatar, but in the past (I originally thought that they were doing a sort of Star Wars prequel to Avatar). Even has the same military dude in it. PASS.

I had a feeling that tonight was going to be a good, good night. What a great game- coming right down to the wire, and when Green Bay failed to score a touchdown on that drive- well, I got a little nervous. I mean, Big Ben has been here before, and ripped human hearts right out of their cages, right on this stage- and it was like they scripted it. Fortunately the Pack's D was able to overcome Chuck Woodson's injury (which, again, felt scripted) and stop the Steelers to "bring the Lombardi trophy home".

Greg Jennings was the first Packer on the scene to be congratulated by Pam Oliver. "To God be the glory" is the first thing he said. I knew it! I knew it! I totally knew that God intervened in this game. His fingerprints are all over it. If I were the Steelers, I'd as Commissioner Goodell to look into this. I know these are serious ramifications- but if we thought the Patriots were cheating when they engaged in Spy-gate, imagine how the world would feel if they found out that the Packers had elicited help from the Divine? Would we have to go back through all the Super Bowls? How many championships has the Lord directly affected? What should we call this- Heavens Gate? Greg- I'm just playing. To God be the glory indeed- but don't forget to thank Big Ben, who basically handed you guys 14 points.

Anyways- from beginning to end, Fantasy Football to Madden NFL Superstars (best game on Facebook, if you're my friend you should totally play it) to these playoff blog posts, it's been a great and fun season. I hope that there is season next year for me to dip my shenanigans into- and if not, I'll figure out some way to brag about my exploits in virtual football. Until next time- I love you. And I love me. Hence, the title of my blog.