Super Bowl Reflections

  • I read a lot over the past week about "the media" attacking Jacksonville, the site of the Superbowl. Evidently, it was the smallest city ever to host a Superbowl. Personally, I don't see the relevance of the size of the city. I'm still an advocate of rotating the Superbowl around the entire league, and letting the teams play in cold weather every once in awhile. However, I'm not holding my breath on that coming to fruition. One thought stuck in my mind as I read the attacks on Jacksonville, and the rebuttals--look out next year!! The site of next year's Superbowl: Detroit!
  • I wasn't surprised that tonight's game was a fairly good one. The Patriots usually play in close games, outside of the shalacking they gave to the Steelers (which really was still a game in the 4th quarter.)
  • I don't know if I've ever seen worse clock management in a big game than the Philadephia Eagles displayed midway through the 4th quarter. Play after play, they would catch little dink passes over the middle for a few yards, and then get into a huddle. I'm sure people in Pittsburgh could hear the people in Philadelphia screaming at their TVs for Donovan McNabb to light a fire under his ass and get moving. The Eagles actually forced the Patriots to punt with about 50 seconds left in the game. Only down by 3 points, with David Acres as a kicker, this was an amazing opportunity to pull off an improbable comeback after losing an onside kick. However, they didn't have anyone deep to receive the punt (dumb!), so it dribbled all the way to the 4 yard line. Then, they managed to gain one yard on a pass in the middle of the field, taking the clock down to about 20 seconds. Come on, McNabb. I like Donovan McNabb, but he sure didn't show many smarts in the 4th quarter today. Can you imagine Elway, Montanta, Marino or (ugh) Brady with 45 seconds to work with, only needing a field goal?
  • The Patriots are now being labelled a dynasty, but they have a chance to redefine the word over the next decade. I cringe at the thought, but the Pats have such a solid nucleus and a great coach. It is almost unfathomable to think that they won't win another Superbowl in the next few years. As much as it pains me to say it, Belichick and co. simply find a way to get it done.
  • I'm grateful that the Fox commentators didn't overdo the bit about Brady's grandmother dying last week. My condolences are out to the Brady family, but many players have personal tragedies that they are dealing with. The ingredients were all there to make this a soppy story, but, thankfully, Fox resisted. It was mentioned, I thought, in a classy manner, and then dropped. (Of course, I didn't watch any pregrame. For all I know, there could have been an entire half hour segment on the death of Brady's grandmother.)
  • The halftime show was boring. Of course, I don't know if I've ever been entertained by a Superbowl halftime show, including last year, when I was in the shower during the wardrobe malfunction (not that I wanted to witness that travesty!) Come on, though! Paul McCartney??!! Can't they do better than that?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The agony of victory....a.k.a. picking my jaw up off the floor

Allright. I've now had nearly 24 hours (although its taken me a couple of days to complete this post) to calm down, reflect upon and digest the improbable gut wrenching game yesterday in which the heavily favored Colts lost to the Steelers 21-18. I wrote last year of not being as emotionally attached to the Steelers as I have been in the past. I wrote last week of how I thought that I might be spending too much valuable time following the Steelers, especially since I have absolutely no control over the outcome of their games. Let me just say this: yesterday's game was probably in the top five emotionally draining, and ultimately gratifying, experiences of my life. Ouside of my wedding and the birth of my two sons, I can't remember being as nervous, deflated, joyful, stunned and exhilirated as I was yesterday----all withing about a ten minute stretch of seemingly neverending time! What could have been a devestating loss to live with in the offseason (and, forever, for Jerome...
Read more

"The Axis of Evil and the Doctrine of Preemption Three Years On"

Jerod and I attended a lecture by Brookings Institution fellow Michael O'Hanlon last night at Park University in Parkville, MO. The lecture was part of the Jerzy Hauptmann Distinguished Guest Lecture series. As a Park University M.B.A. alum, I received an invitation to the 13th annual lecture in the series. I like going to events like this, especially since I was interested in the content of this particular lecture, of which the title was the title of this post. Dr. O'Hanlon described himself as a Sam Nunn Democrat at the beginning of the lecture. It's always difficult to prevent political feeling from entering into objective analysis, and I don't know how you measure the "objectiveness" of analysis, but I feel that most Brookings scholars are at least "fair", and Dr. O'Hanlon was no exception. His analysis of the doctrine of preemption was focused on the effectiveness of the doctrine, as opposed to any moral righteousness or implications of the...
Read more

Removing a password that was created in a previous version from an Access 2007 database

Earlier this week I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to remove a password from an Access 2007 database (file extension .accdb). The database was created in a previous version of access and subsequently "upgraded" to the Access 2007 format. I believe some type of a wizard was used to perform the "upgrade." The security model is evidently different in Access 2007 than in previous versions. It doesn't appear that you can set/unset database passwords. Instead, in Access 2007, there is an option to Encrypt with Password. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be logically similar to the earlier version password architecture, but there was no way that I could find to easily remove the password that had been created in the earlier version when using the Access 2007 interface. Access security has always been confusing to me, and I need to take the time someday to understand how the security model is supposed to work in Access 2007. An...
Read more