Two super teams, one Super prediction

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In late December, after the Panthers lost to the Falcons to fall to 14-1, my son Ben asked who I thought would lose next: the Panthers or the girls basketball team I coach, the Scholars Academy Eagles.

"The Panthers," I said.

Ben was surprised by my response. I'm a huge Panthers fan and a second loss would knock them out of the playoffs. Did I really think that would happen before my team, which was only 5-0 at the time, would lose?

"Yeah," I said. "I'm guessing the Panthers will lose one game next September or October before my girls start our 2016-17 season."

Even my son, a tough critic, had to admit that was a pretty good answer.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be the wrong answer.

On Tuesday, we put our 12-0 record on the line and pretty much got run out of the gym by a quicker team. It was the same team we had defeated in last year's semifinals, but this time our outstanding center, Celeste, was home sick with a cold. Without our shot-blocker -- not to mention one of our best shot-makers -- we wilted in the second half.

Of course, I'm not certain we would have won even if we had Celeste, as we did lose to that team by a single point last season. We are a very good shooting team for this age group but made hardly anything Tuesday, and that very well might have doomed us even if our center had been healthy.

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Meanwhile, the Panthers have not lost again since their setback in Atlanta. They ended the regular season by crushing the Bucs -- sending Lovie Smith into the coaching abyss -- and then scored impressive victories over the Seahawks and Cardinals, teams many regarded as the two most dangerous in the league.

All of that good work has put the Panthers into the Super Bowl against the Broncos. Oddsmakers have established my heroes as 5 1/2-point favorites ... and although I won't place any bets, I certainly would side with the Panthers if I did.

Yes, I'm a fan, but I'm pretty objective as fans go. (Three decades of sportswriting does that to a guy.) I simply see Carolina as the superior all-around team: far more dynamic and balanced offensively, and every bit as impressive defensively. While Cam Newton has matured into being the best quarterback in the league, 106-year-old Peyton Manning hopes to keep his body in one piece for one last hurrah.

The Broncos' strength is their outside pass rush, but even that could end up working in the Panthers' favor. If DeMarcus Ware and Von Miller get caught a little too far upfield trying to get to Newton, he will run wild into the middle of the field. If the Panthers can do a decent job of keeping those great linebackers off of Cam -- and I think they will -- it could end up being yet another lopsided Super loss for the Broncos.

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As for my Eagles, we got to experience one of the things I really like about sports: the quick turn-around.

Wednesday, one day after having a less-than-stellar performance and suffering our first loss, we played extremely well in a dominant 36-10 victory.

Celeste was back to anchor our defense, our leading scorer Sholeh found the touch that had abandoned her the day before, our top outside shooters Ritika and Olivia each swished a 3, and our defense was active and effective.

Plus, the 5th-grader we affectionately call "Rookie" had her best game -- stealing the ball several times, setting some great picks and scoring on three confident, aggressive takes to the hoop. On the third, she used a hesitation dribble to beat her defender, drove, scored and got fouled for an "and-1." The girls on the bench went wild, not just because Rookie made such a nice move but because we had worked on hesitation moves just two days earlier in practice. Which made the bald, old coach pretty happy, too!

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So I was wrong about which team would lose next. But if you ask me the question again ... I'll STILL say next season's Panthers.

I'm not a big believer in an undefeated team "needing" to lose in the regular season to be more psychologically prepared to win in the playoffs, but I do agree with my athletic director that sometimes a loss will re-focus a team.

We have 7 games to go -- 4 in the regular season and then, hopefully, 3 in the playoffs -- and I'm confident this group will run the table.

And the Panthers ... well, a loss Sunday ain't gonna happen.

Yes, I know most of America is rooting for Peyton Manning to go out a champion, but he's got his ring. The Bears helped assure him of that. It's our turn, now.

Panthers 30, Broncos 16.

KEEP POUNDING, BABY!!!
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Today's High Five - Weekend Recap

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5. Syracuse and Pitt here, Texas and Oklahoma there ... more wild shuffling among major conferences and more talk of eventual "superconferences" of 16 teams or more.

It all seems rather silly because big-time college sport really needs only three mega-conferences:

Professional, Semi-professional and Amateur.

Sorry ... I know that's stupid.

As if enough schools could be found to fit the amateur category.

4. Lexi Thompson won the weekend's LPGA event. She was born in 1995.

Yes, 1995.

My electric toothbrush is older than she is. I'm serious.

3. Friday Night Lights had a nice run, and any sports fan -- or TV fan, for that matter -- who has yet to see show should rent its five seasons. That being said, Kyle Chandler, who was just fine as coach Eric Taylor, had absolutely no business winning the best dramatic actor Emmy over the likes of Steve Buscemi, Jon Hamm, Timothy Olyphant, Hugh Laurie or my choice, the amazing Michael C. Hall.

Even Chandler knew it, as he admitted when stunned by the victory. He hadn't bothered to prepare a speech because he felt he had no chance.

And while I'm on the subject ...

One thing we know for sure about the Emmys: At next year's Emmys, this year's Emmys won't win the award for best writing for a variety series. I actually felt sorry for the actors and actresses who served as presenters and had to deliver the pathetic, cliched, hackneyed, remarkably un-funny lines written for them. It was painful to watch.

2. The 2011 Red Sox seem determined to make the 2004 Cubs feel a little less choky.

1. On a day Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton earned exhilarating victories while Jay Cutler was pulverized in defeat, there are all kinds of NFL QB thoughts rushing through my chrome dome.

Cam Newton ... Wow! Another 400-plus-yard game. (And another heartbreaking Panthers loss.)

Tom Brady ... Ho-hum. Only a 400-plus-yard game. (And another routine Patriots win.)

Jay Cutler ... Called out his line after he got sacked six times. Hey Jay, it's not the linemen's fault they suck. You should have called out your GM and coach for giving you such sorry protection.

Tim Tebow ... The best darn blocking wide receiver on the Broncos' roster.

Aaron Rodgers ... Too good. Reminds me of Steve Young and John Elway after Young and Elway realized they could win mostly from the pocket. And no, I'm not the least bit uncomfortable comparing Rodgers to two Hall of Famers.

Kevin Kolb ... Please, please, please stop pronouncing your name "cobb." Or change the spelling.

Matt Ryan ... You don't think he's having a particularly good game; then you look up and he's got 4 TDs.

Mike Vick ... Spittin' blood like a pitbull on a bad day. (Sorry.)

Matthew Stafford ... How good can he (and his Lions) be if he can just stay healthy?

Drew Brees ... If he isn't the most fun-to-watch QB in football, he's in the team picture.

Tony Romo ... Finally comes through in the clutch, and with broken ribs no less. There's a good QB in there somewhere if those obsessed with America's Team will let him be more QB than soap-opera star.

Donovan McNabb ... Man, he got real old real fast.

Peyton Manning ... The NFL's MVP in absentia. With him, the Colts are championship contenders. Without him, they wouldn't win the new NCAA Professional Conference.

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Plain and simple: Favre is fun

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A flick of the wrist, a perfect delivery, another impossible victory delivered by the greatest gunslinger football ever will know.

And that, my friends, is merely the latest example of why sport is a better thing with Brett Favre than without him.

Whether you love him or hate him, whether you are thrilled by his on-field exploits or dumbfounded by his off-the-field foibles, whether you're a Vikings fan or a Packers fan or simply a fan of good soap opera ... you shouldn't wish he'd fade away.

The man is many things, but boring is not one of them.

Personally, I hope Brett Favre plays until he's 50.
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This judge plays hardball

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The Bald Truth

Fourteen years ago, a wise federal judge named Sonia Sotomayor wouldn't let Bud Selig, Jerry Reinsdorf and the rest of the grinches who tried to steal baseball use replacement players to start the 1995 season.

Say this for Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee: She has displayed concern for the greater good, and she can't be bullied by the whiny, rich yahoos in the old boys' network.

The Balder Truth

Anquan Boldin is firing his agent, Drew Rosenhaus.

Word is, Boldin simply wouldn't do situps in his driveway.

Said Rosenhaus: "Next question!"

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Heads are about to roll in the NBA, where far too many people apparently didn't get David Stern's Kobe-and-LeBron-in-the-Finals memo.

Magic vs. Nuggets, anybody?

I mean, is it possible for a series to generate negative TV ratings?

DePaul wins ... and other impossible ponderables

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After going 0-for-2009, DePaul stunned Cincinnati in the first round of the Big East megatourney. Wouldn't it be something if the Blue Demons win their next four games to capture the conference title and then roll to the national championship, too?

And wouldn't it be something if they played Northwestern in the NCAA title game?

And wouldn't it be something if Carlos Marmol could do to the AL pennant winner what he couldn't do to the Netherlands and close out the Cubbies' first championship in 101 years?

And wouldn't it be something if Lovie Smith would ever utter these three words: "I was wrong"?

And wouldn't it be something if Ozzie Guillen could ever utter three words that didn't include two bleeps?

And wouldn't it be something if Tony La Russa would admit that his juicing stars in Oakland and St. Louis bamboozled him?

And wouldn't it be something if Roger Clemens gets to share a cell with Blago?

And wouldn't it be something if people cared as much about their real families as they do about their fantasy teams?

And wouldn't it be something if Kerry Wood, Michael Barrett (or whoever) fessed up to smashing Sammy's boombox?

And wouldn't it be something if those commercials were right and a bald guy really could grow back a full head of hair?

And wouldn't it be something if eating a slice of Craig's Crazy Carrot Cake Cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory actually would help a guy burn off fat?

And wouldn't it be something if every TV show could be as good as The Wire was?

And wouldn't it be something if Bernard Madoff lived long enough to actually serve 150 years in prison?

And wouldn't it be something if the Dow hit 14,000 by the end of next week?

And wouldn't it be something if our elected officials could pass a stimulus bill that didn't include so much pork it's been banned by both the American Heart Association and the Society of Kosher Butchers?

And wouldn't ... wait a second ... now I'm getting ridiculous. Maybe I should just go back to something a little more realistic.

You know, like that DePaul thing.

It was super!

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The List

Seven observations from the Steelers' extremely entertaining Super Bowl victory over the Cardinals:

1. Still trying to figure out how Santonio Holmes made that winning catch for the Steelers one play after not making what should have been the winning catch for the Steelers. I guess he just needed a higher degree of difficulty.

2. Can't say enough good things about the ref for having the cajones to call the Steelers for holding in the end zone, resulting in a safety late in the game.

3. Can't say enough bad things about the officials for declining to order a booth review of Kurt Warner's fumble that clinched Pittsburgh's win. Maybe it wouldn't have been reversed, but it was close enough to an incomplete pass to at least merit a review. Why even bother having a replay system if you don't use it on a close play in the final seconds of a Super Bowl?

4. Throughout another great season, Warner showed why his story is one of the most incredible ever authored by an NFL player. Still, he made enough mistakes Sunday - enough huge, huge, HUGE mistakes - to remind us what the knock against him has been: Put enough pressure on Warner and he messes up. Compare that to Ben Roethlisberger, who kept at least a half-dozen big plays alive because of his ability to deal with pressure.

5. Here's hoping columnists, bloggers and TV yakkers can resist calling the Steelers a dynasty. They're not. I mean, shouldn't you have to win at least two straight titles to be a dynasty? Shouldn't you have to win more than two titles in three decades to be a dynasty? The Steelers of the '70s ... now that was a dynasty. For now, this Pittsburgh team will have to settle for being merely great.

6. As great as Larry Fitzgerald and Warner were in the second half, had the Cardinals won, my MVP choice would have been defensive lineman Darnell Dockett. He pretty much set up shot in the Steelers' backfield.

7. I watched the game with a bunch of Cardinals fans at a house party in Scottsdale. They were having so much fun - until Holmes' TD, anyway - that it made me a little sad that I'm not a fan of any pro team. Then, of course, came their heartbreak at the end. And, again, I was glad I root for great plays, great games and great entertainment instead of individual teams.

A prediction, and other Super Bowl observations

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The Bald Truth

If you're wondering why I haven't posted for a few days (and even if you're not wondering), it's because I'm in Phoenix for a little R&R. As Blago would say, being unemployed can be exhausting!

Anyway, as a detached, objective observer, it's been fun - and more than a little strange - watching Arizona Cardinals fans behave.

Yes, Cardinal Fever has swept across the valley like so many tumbleweeds, but it's hard to take it too seriously. The guy driving in front of me in the Chevy Suburban - a road behemoth that was decked out in Cardinals red and featured no fewer than a half-dozen Cardinals flags - almost surely was not so feverish about his heroes just a few months ago.

The fans here aren't much like Steelers fans (or Bears fans, Eagles fans, Giants fans, etc., etc., etc.). Fans of those teams had little choice. Their fathers and grandmothers and uncles and older sisters worshipped those teams, so they simply had to worship them, too. Through good times and bad, they were Steelers fans (and Bears fans, Eagles fans, Giants fans, etc.) ... period.

Cardinals fans? Most grew up in other parts of the country rooting for other teams. And most kept rooting for their favorite teams after moving to the Valley of the Sun - all but ignoring Bill Bidwell's unlovable losers.

Indeed, fans here had Cardinal Fever only in the sense that they were sick of having to watch that awful team Sunday after Sunday, season after season, when they would have rather been watching their Jets or their Packers or - gulp! - even their Bengals.

This is just a generalization, of course, because I'm sure there are some diehard fans of Arizona's pro football franchise. Just not many.

Now, well, the bandwagon overfloweth.

Perfect weather and a Super Bowl team for a bunch of Cardinal Come Lately fans? Somehow, it just doesn't seem fair.

Scrawl-Line Cubbie Blues

About 1,000 times a day, ESPN runs a little bottom-of-the-screen line stating that the Cardinals franchise's 61-year championship drought is the second-longest in major professional sports.

The Balder Truth

I was dead-wrong about Kurt Warner.

Several years ago, when the Bears were looking for a QB to back up future star Rex Grossman, I wrote that Warner would be the wrong choice. He was too old. He seemed washed up. His wife, Brenda, was a bit of a pain in the posterior. He wanted to compete for the starting job and it would do the Bears no good to stunt Grossman's growth as a QB.

Blah blah blah. I had reasons galore ... and, in retrospect, pretty much every one of them was foolish.

My only solace: I wasn't alone. Bears honchos Jerry Angelo and Lovie Smith, who were paid slightly more than I was to be right about such things, also gave Warner the big thumbs-down. Warner was rejected by numerous other GMs and coaches, too.

What a bunch of dopes all of us were.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

So now here it is ... prediction time.

I really, really want to pick the Cardinals because they are such a cool story. You have Warner, one of the NFL's all-time underdogs. You have a defense that came out of nowhere to become formidable. You have dozens of players who are anonymous to fans outside of Arizona (and, methinks, to quite a few fans in Arizona). You have Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin; it's pretty easy to envision those world-class receivers dancing repeatedly in the end zone.

Plus, there's the whattayagottolose factor. If I pick the Cardinals and they win, wow, what a great upset call. And if they lose, hey, it was worth a try.

Having said all that ...

I can see the Steelers' defense making life absolutely miserable for Warner, smothering him, taking away his passing lanes, roughing up those star receivers, making the Cardinals one-dimensional by completely shutting down the running game.

I also can see Willie Parker running wild against the Arizona D and, as a result, Ben Roethlisberger connecting on game-changing deep passes.

From top to bottom, the Steelers are the better, more experienced, more fundamentally sound team. They are far and away the better defensive team, and defense wins championships, right? As romantic as it is to say "Anything can happen" - the Cardinals' presence in Tampa is evidence of that - the best team usually does prevail on the biggest stage.

And so ...

Steelers 27, Cardinals 17.

Go ahead, Kurt Warner. Prove me (and about a zillion others) wrong one more time.
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Bowling you over with Super story lines

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The List

Angles, angles, angles. The media - from Internet bloggers to MTV airheads and from radio yakkers to good old-fashioned newspaper types (yes, there are a few left) - will be offering up every possible Super Bowl angle from Tampa this week. 

Or will they?

The top five Super Bowl story angles that probably never will surface:

1. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will reveal that next year's Super Bowl, originally scheduled to be played in Miami, instead will take place at Wrigley Field - where everything (even hockey) is magical (except the Cubs).

2. The most popular interview subject at Tuesday's media day will be Jesus, who will explain he has no time to deal with disease, famine, war, genocide, dirty governors and other inconsequential stuff because he's too busy taking care of Kurt Warner.

3. Displaying his altruistic side, Edgerrin James will take his once-famous gold teeth out of storage, turn them in for cash and use the money to feed 12,000 needy Phoenix-area families.

4. Deciding to settle the "who's the best safety?" argument once and for all, Ed Reed and Troy Polamalu will stage an interception contest ... with Rex Grossman as the designated quarterback.

5. Eager to give Pittsburgh a top-flight pro sports team all year 'round, Steelers owner Dan Rooney Sr. will announce that his squad will replace the Pirates at PNC Park from April to October. "Really," Rooney will say, "would the Pirates win any less with Big Ben pitching to Hines Ward than they did with Ian Snell throwing to Ronny Paulino?"

The Bald Truth

Rookie Bulls coach Vinny Del Excuse can't whine enough about injuries to role players such as Drew Gooden and Kirk Hinrich.

What will his excuse be if the team finishes behind the Bucks, who will spend the rest of the season dealing with the absence of All-Star and Olympian Michael Redd?

The Balder Truth

Chicago baseball fans should circle April 13 on their calendars.

One week after First White Sox Fan Obama will have thrown out the season's ceremonial opening pitch at U.S. Comiskular Park (at least the Sox hope so), Cubbie Lover Blago will do the same at Wrigley Field.

Unless, of course, he's in handcuffs.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Obviously, I'm very pleased my Marquette Golden Warrior Eagles - the No. 8 team in all the land! - went into the Joyce Center and took down Notre Dame.

As impressed as I was with Jerel McNeal and the rest of the lads, though, I came away even more amazed by Irish center Luke Harangody.

An all-but-unstoppable bruiser under the basket, the guy has developed an outstandingly accurate - albeit highly unorthodox - jump shot. He also is a rebounding machine.

He'd get my national player of the year vote today. There certainly isn't anybody who can convince me he's anything less than the best big man in college basketball.

It's close, but he's even better than Blake Griffin - I'm talking as a collegian, not as a pro prospect. As for Tyler Hansbrough, who does less than Harangody despite getting far more help from his teammates, it really isn't very close.