Superfan Kahn's Final Thoughts for the Season

Alas, all things must come to an end.  The Bears had a good season, and exceeded most people’s expectations.  So congratulations to the Chicago Bears for even making it into the playoffs.  I must admit I am really disappointed right now that the Bears didn’t win today, but I expect the Bears to be an early favorite next year to win the NFC North.  They already have 21 of the 22 starters under contract for next year.  Thank you Bears for the exciting season and giving me something to write about.  Here are some final thoughts for this season.

• Is Steve Smith really that good, or does he just look that good against the Bears?  I don’t understand how a known threat can get so wide open all the time.  If the defenders are falling down, that’s definitely the time where you tackle the receiver as you’re going down and accept the pass interference penalty, instead of the touchdown.
• Today’s game had the potential to get out of hand really fast, but credit the Bears for keeping it fairly close and allowing themselves to have a shot up to the final possession.
• The comparisons of this year’s defense to the ‘85 Bears can officially stop now.  After this game, it was clear that they are most like the 2001 Bears.  I sure hope the 2006 team isn’t like the 2002 Bears though.
• After a slow start, the Bears’ offense actually looked halfway decent.  21 points should be enough to win most games for the Bears.
• Even if the Bears would have won this game, there were so many injuries piling up that I think it would have been hard for them to win next week.

On a side note, can you believe some of the calls that were going the Colts’ way in their game against the Steelers?  I counted at least three botched calls that ended up going Indy’s way.  There was an obvious pass interference on Indy early in the game that didn’t get called.  Then there was a crazy non-call on something that should have been an off-sides or false start.  Finally, there was the huge reversal of the interception by Troy Polamalu that gave the Colts life toward the end of the game.  I swear the officials really wanted the Colts to win this game.  Even with all the help from the officials, and the Steelers at the end, it was fitting that Indy’s “idiot kicker” missed a very makable field goal that would have tied the game.  Even the supposed best teams lose early in the playoffs, so Bears fans, try to take comfort in that. 

 

Go Bears!

I can not wait until Sunday at 3:30 CST when the Bears play the Panthers in the PLAYOFFS!  My biggest fear is that this game turns out like their playoff game against the Eagles in the 2001 season.  However, I really think the outcome this time will be a lot better for the Bears.  Anything less than one playoff win for the Bears this year will be a disappointment.  Like I told Holly yesterday, to put it in perspective, the Bears are just two wins away from the Super Bowl!

On a side note, the Packers hired a new head coach.  He really loves Brett Favre too.

Bugs!

If this doesn’t give you the creeps, I don’t know what will.  A woman in Sweden had a spider crawl into her ear while she was sleeping, and nest there for nearly a month!  She thought it was just wax build-up until she heard a scratching sound.  I might start sleeping with ear plugs in.

That also reminds me of a story that one of my college professors told us on the first day of class.  It has always stuck with me.  One day a fly was buzzing around his head, and it ended up flying into his ear.  The fly ended up getting stuck in there.  He claimed that the fly’s leg got caught between two of the bones in the ear, but according to this diagram, that requires the fly to get past the ear drum as well.  Anyway, the fly was stuck in his ear and the buzzing was driving him insane.  Can you imagine how loud and annoying that would be?  So he called up a friend of his that was a doctor and had him remove it with a pair of tweezers.  Now whenever a fly is buzzing around my head, I always think about this story and cover my ears.  I’m sure the odds are very small for the fly to get into the ear, but it does happen!

Quick Thoughts 1/9

• Let there be light!  The sun came out in Rochester on Saturday for the first time since December 22nd.  As far as the weather guys can tell, that’s probably a record for the most consecutive days without sun here.
• The Wild-card games are over in the NFL now, and that’s a good thing.  Most of the games weren’t even close, and that means unless you liked one of the teams playing, they weren’t very fun to watch.
• The Bears play the Panthers next Sunday in Chicago.  If this game is played like their first meeting during the regular season, I will be one happy camper. 
• I found this pretty funny.  Yahoo! columnist, Charles Robinson, said at the beginning of the season that if the Chicago Bears win their division, he’ll eat his laptop.  So now he’s taking suggestions for how to accomplish this feat.  At least he’s looking like a man of his word. 
• Today’s lyrics: “Can you see, like a child?  Can you see, what I want?”

Follow-up

Remember when I talked about submitting a picture of Payton to the Chicago Tribune?  It’s been published!

College Football Finale

Did you see the Texas/USC football game last night?  That was definitely worth staying up until the end.  USC really blew it though.  I think Pete Carroll made a couple really big coaching mistakes on USC’s final possession.  There were less than three minutes left in the game, and USC was up by five.  It was second down and close to ten yards to go.  Texas still had three time-outs (or times-out as Keith Jackson kept saying).  Conventional coaching says you run, but USC ran a pass play and it fell incomplete, stopping the clock and allowing Texas to keep a precious time-out.  USC picked up most of the yards on a third down run, setting up fourth and short from near mid-field.  This is where another big mistake was made.  USC went for it on fourth down and was stopped short of the first down, giving Texas the ball at close to mid-field.  If they would have punted, they probably could have pinned the Longhorns deep and forced them to go the length of the field to win.  If there ever was a time to play conservatively, this would have been it.  I think these decisions were ultimately what cost USC the game.  It also didn’t help that USC had to use their final time-out before the Texas two point conversion.  With 19 seconds left and one time-out, a lot more is possible than with 19 seconds and no time-outs.  All you folks out there calling for Dan McCarney’s job hopefully can rest a little easier after seeing some of the coaching decisions Pete Carroll, one of the best, and most respected coaches in college football made.  It happens to the best of them too I guess.

So congratulations to the Texas Longhorns, a team I’ve never really liked, but rooted for last night since they were representing the Big 12. 

Was it just me, or did Keith Jackson really seem confused a lot of the time while calling the game?  I generally consider him one of the best college football announcers, but he was not on his game last night.  He confused the end of a quarter with a team calling a time-out, and really had no clue what was going on when field goals and extra points were kicked.  Keith all you have to do on the kicks is watch the officials under the goal posts.  At least twice he called kicks incorrectly.  There were other mistakes too, like reading the Aflac Trivia Question incorrectly, and totally skipping over the important part of the question which was “Which three players have won the Rose Bowl best player award TWICE.”  He totally missed the part about winning it twice, and consequently, Dan Fouts was answering with people who have won it just once.  Obviously there would be more than three people to win the award in the “Grandaddy of all bowl games.”  It could have been worse though.  It could have been Brent Musburger calling the game.

The first thoughts of 2006

Happy New Year everyone.  I’m refreshed and ready for another year of blogging, so let’s get to it.

• A big congratulations to the Chicago Bears who are the number two seed in the NFC this year.  Everyone was shocked that they had such a good record.  Not me.
• The Bears will play Tampa Bay if the Bucs win, otherwise, they play the winner of the Giants/Panthers game.  I like the Bears’ chances against any of those teams at Soldier Field, and expect the Bears to win at least one playoff game.  Anything less will be a disappointment for me.
• At the very beginning of the season I was asked if I wanted to go to the Bears/Vikings game on New Years Day at the Metrodome.  I declined, and after watching the game this past Sunday, I had no regrets on that decision.  This isn’t because the Bears lost, but for those who don’t know, the Bears’ starters only played the first quarter.  Chicago treated this game like another pre-season game.  I can understand the decision, but it would have been nice to sweep the division.
• It’s a new year, so that means fresh new intentions on trying to lose weight and getting healthy.  Somehow over the past six months, I gained back the ten pounds I had lost from the previous year, and a little more.  My goal is to lose 25 pounds this year.  I think the big key to making this happen, at least initially, is to be more active.  In the past, I’ve been amazed at how easy it is to lose weight by just walking more.  One easy way is to get up from my desk in the afternoon, take a fifteen minute break, and take a walk.  It helps to reduce stress, and if I make the loop out to the manufacturing end of the plant, the round trip is almost a mile.  That’s the start of the plan for now, but I think it’s time to dust off our treadmill too.  The key is to not lose any progress I might make when we go on our cruise at the end of the month, and that will be a challenge.
• Have you tried sudoku puzzles yet?  They started running them in our newspaper, and now both Holly and I are getting hooked on them.  Here’s the best website I’ve found so far for doing them online. 
• Today’s lyrics: “Well I know you can’t work in fast food all your life, but don’t sign that paper tonight, she said. But it’s too late.”