Sunday Tournaments 11/26 / football rant

Yesterday I played in all of the big sunday online tournaments as well as some smaller ones. The total buy-ins were about $2000 and I cashed for $650 total for a net loss of about $1350. Although I expect to lose most sundays and hope to hit one big once in a while, this was a particularly poor showing. I had a little momentum going in the biggest one and the 3rd biggest one, but I ended up busting out fairly close to the money. I think I played alright most of the day, but probably not as well as I should have. With all of the great online tournament players these days, I have to be at my best all the time to have the kind of edge that I want. I think I might have gone into "auto-pilot" for a little bit of the day. By that I just mean that I didn't really think through some decisions as well as I should have. I also played some heads-up and netted a $1000 win. That helped bring the day very close to break even, which is good for a sunday that I don't even make one final table.

I actually had to stop playing for a few minutes after the Broncos game because it was so frustrating. Right when it ended I just changed the channel really fast and tried to not really think about how bad it was. I usually don't really get flustered by my teams losing games, but I thought that the loss was so avoidable that it's inexcusable. This was a big game for the Broncos to stay even in the division, and they really were dominating the game at Chicago in the rain, which is not easy to do. Shanahan just got stubborn and said "I'm just going to keep kicking it to one of the best kick returners in history, even though when every other team kicks to him, he runs it back for a touchdown almost every time." Even after the first one, they still had the game in hand until they let him have another touchdown and then got the last punt blocked. You'd think that Shanahan would have figured out to not kick to great return men when Dante Hall used to single handily beat them when he was on the chiefs. I understand kicking to him in a tie game or if you're behind because you don't want to give the ball to the other team at the 40, but when you're up by 14 with time running out, all you need to do is avoid quick scores. So that sucks, but Rockies went to the world series, so it's alright.

I was talking to Zack Marker about Nebraska football and how they give up 60-80 points a game. He said a very logical statement that they players must just not be giving 100% effort. But really if you think about it, there's teams with way less talent that might not be totally motivated by the end of the year that give up a lot of points like 35-42. 60-80 is a totally different story though. I think they must actually be trying very hard. Trying hard to give up so many points, that is. It's like Callahan implemented the Grinell College/Redlands University defensive philosophy where they just give up points as quickly as possible so they can get the ball back sooner. I guess Callahan must have told Shanahan about this theory and Shanahan executed it to perfection by kicking the ball to Hester every opportunity that he could. He was probably on the sideline thinking "my offense looks so great right now. I'm such a genius. Let's get the ball back right now so I can watch that machine move the ball sown the field. Hey Todd!! Kick the ball right to Hester!!!"

Obviously it's not all Shanahan's fault, but he gets to take the responsibility because he's the head coach. While I'm not happy with the teams that I follow right now, there were many great games on this weekend. The SEC games were great (Ark vs LSU and UK vs Tenn) I love watching Arkansas' offense with Darren McFadden who is a man among boys. I wish they didn't struggle so bad earlier in the year so he could win the Heisman. I think Tim Tebow deserves it now which is ok because I like Florida, but I don't like him very much because his demeanor reminds me of the quarterback before Chris Leak at UF. Yep, Tebow reminds be of Rex Grossman, which is about the worst comparison that one can achieve.