And as a Bears fan, there are teams I “hate”. The Green Bay Packers come to mind. But this is the sort of hate you have for your brother who picks on you every day after school. You hate his dumb ass; but he’s your brother… so you can’t really imagine life without him. Besides, you’re just going to get even the next time you get a chance anyway.

But then there are the other teams who aren’t in the family (AFC teams, non-NFC North teams). I hate them like I hate malaria in Africa. I know I should hate them, but I don’t really think about them all that often. Nor do I really care what they do unless we are playing them that week.

Enter the anti-christ

But every once in a while there’s special exception to this structure. Enter the Dallas Cowboys. Like everyone else in the NFL I didn’t like the Cowboys much when they were winning all those super bowls in the 90s. But in the last 3 weeks I’ve grown to hate this team with a new passion.

As you may know, the Bears are on an epic 3 game losing streak against the pathetic AFC West. Its horrible.

But its the role 3 former Cowboys have played that has soured me forever on this team.

Cowboy Curse?

If you google “Cowboy Curse” there are over 4 million returned results!!

At the beginning of the season I was excited the Bears picked up 3 Cowboys who had been cut. Wide receiver Roy Williams, running back Marion Barber and special teams ace (WR) Sam Hurd.

Roy Williams, when he played for Martz in Detroit was the league’s best receiver. We needed a good receiver. Now, granted, when Roy went “home” to the Cowboys he looked horrible. But I was still excited.

Marion Barber is known as the “Barbarian”. He’s a beast by any man’s measure. He’d make the perfect compliment to our stud, Matt Forte I thought.

And Sam Hurd was brought in to replace Rashied Davis who was a great special teamer and overall great guy. We needed a new special team ace and Hurd fit the bill.

Then it all went wrong.

After beating the San Diego Chargers and losing our starting QB Jay Cutler most Bears fans were still feeling optimistic. We were playing 3 more games against the Raiders, Chiefs and Broncos.

The Raiders lost was tough. A game that could have been won if we hadn’t turned the ball over 3 times in the first half. Our defense was just epic.

The Chiefs lost, though, was devastating. Not only did we lose our best offensive weapon, Matt Forte. We had several opportunities to win the game. Including two opportunities involving Barber (who didn’t line up on the line of scrimmage and thus had a TD called back) and Williams (who let a ball pass through both hands in the end zone). It was rough.

The Broncos lost capped off this 3 week nightmare. Again Marion Barber cost us the game and Roy Williams didn’t live up to expectations. And we got Tebowed. Ugh!

And then there was Sam Hurd.

Yesterday Sam Hurd was arrested for felony drug charges. He didn’t buy a bunch of blow for a big party either. He wanted to be a player and sell. What an ass. And, again, a Cowboy.

This is the curse of the Cowboys coming down hard on the Chicago Bears my friends.

How about them Cowboys? Screw ‘em!

No polls to discuss.

No one left standing to cry.

Imagine all the fans happy cheering today.

Playoffs? PLAYOFFS?!

One of my first posts on this blog was about the BCS.

See, I went to a school where we found out who had the best football team on the field. The University of Montana Grizzlies play in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision as opposed to that vile fiend your team likely plays in know as the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision. You know, the one that gets to play in all those bowl games.

I can understand your love for these bowl games. I mean, who doesn’t get a little amped up to watch the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl or the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl or especially the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl?

But all I see is dirty, corrupt, inglorious money.

Don’t tell me your version of college football is about who’s best or the student athletes or (gag) tradition. Its not. Its about the money.

And not money for the schools. Or even the football programs. But money for the fat cats who run this vile wretch you (clearly must) love, the BCS.

But I’m Getting Off Topic

Imagine–if you can–imagine a playoff.

In the Football Championship Subdivision we have a 20 team playoff. It used to be a 4 team, and then an 8 team and then, just recently a 16 team playoff. And it works really simply.

The 10 conference champions all get automatic bids. It doesn’t matter if you are in a good conference or a bad one. If you beat everyone in your conference you’re in. Its that simple.

Then, there are 10 at large bids. These go to the other good teams who didn’t win their division. Not much politics, just the next best 10 teams.

Thanksgiving weekend is usually when the bottom 8 teams play each other. Then, after that we have a 4 week 16 team tournament.

Its glorious.

No really, imagine…

I’ve heard rumors there’s actually a few who want a playoff in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Some call for a 4 team, some an 8.

Yawn.

Lets imagine a 20 team playoff like the Football Championship Subdivision.

That would give us 11 automatic bids.

Atlantic Coast Conference: 15th ranked Clemson
Big East Conference: 23rd ranked West Virginia
Big Ten Conference: 10th ranked Wisconsin
Big 12 Conference: 3rd ranked Oklahoma State
Pacific 12 Conference: 5th ranked Oregon
South East Conference: 1st ranked LSU
Conference USA: 21st ranked Southern Miss
Mid-America Conference: unranked Northern Illinois
Mountain West Conference: 18th ranked TCU
Sun Belt Conference: unranked Arkansas State
Western Athletic Conference: unranked Louisiana Tech

Now, before you bemoan the fact that 5 of these 11 teams aren’t even in the top 20, shut up. You want to keep the BCS? Bottom line, you win your conference you have the right to see if you can win a national championship.

Having EVERY conference champion go also has benefit of having conferences THAT MAKE %$#&@!& SENSE! People have little reason to move conferences other than geography. What a novel idea.

Imagine… The at-large Bids

Now we have 9 at large bids to fill. And we simply take the 9 best teams available. Period.

#2 Alabama
#4 Stanford
#6 Arkansas
#7 Boise State
#8 Kansas State
#9 South Carolina
#11 Virginia Tech
#12 Baylor
#13 Michigan (which without BCS politics probably would be Oklahoma… but…)

Now, I ask you BCS lover, who in the nation has a legitimate right for a chance to play for a national title that isn’t listed above?

Who? Seriously, I’m asking. Who?

Now comes the fun part! Playoffs!

Its the playoffs. We have 5 weekends of GREAT college football. 19 total match ups. And most importantly, 1 National Champion.

Admittedly, this would be way cooler as a graphic. If you want to do that for this cause, let me know.

Nov 26th: The Thanksgiving Weekend Bottom 8

Game 1: Northern Illinois at Michigan in the big house.  Since we need a winner, we take Michigan at home.

Game 2: Arkansas State at Clemson.  Clemson wins.

Game 3: Louisiana Tech at TCU. TCU wins.

Game 4: West Virginia at Southern Miss in the weekends only ranked matchup. West Virginia wins.

Dec 2nd & 3rd: The Big BCS FU

Friday, December 2nd

Game 1: #9 South Carolina at #8 Kansas State. South Carolina wins.

Game 2: #13 Michigan at #4 Stanford. Stanford wins.

Game 3: #11 Virginia Tech at #6 Arkansas. Arkansas wins.

Game 4:  #18 TCU at #2 Alabama. Alabama wins.

Saturday, December 3rd

Game 5: #10 Wisconsin at #7 Boise State University. BSU wins.

Game 6: #15 Clemson at #3 Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State wins.

Game 7: #12 Baylor at  #5 Oregon. Oregon wins.

Game 8: #23 West Virginia at #1 LSU. LSU wins.

Just take a moment and let these two days of glory sink in. Friday would be declared a national holiday. It would be glorious.

Dec 10th: Upset weekend

Of course, one thing you should know about any playoff. Its rarely the highest ranked teams that go all the way.

Game 1: #9 South Carolina at #1 LSU. Of course, LSU is very good and wins.

Game 2: #5 Oregon at #4 Stanford. Stanford wins.

Game 3: #7 Boise State at #2 Alabama. Boise State wins.

Game 4: #6 Arkansas at #3 Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State wins.

Honestly, what game here DON’T you want to watch? Oh, you love the BCS match ups? Great, have fun.

Dec 17th: The Final Four

Game 1: #4 Stanford at #1 LSU. LSU wins.

Game 2: #7 Boise State at #3 Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State wins.

Dec 24th: Christmas Eve.

Come on people. Its Christmas Eve. How about we let these student athletes enjoy time with their families?

Dec 31st: New Years Eve National Championship Game!

Now, I might actually stay up on New Years Eve!! Lets do this thing!

#3 Oklahoma State takes on #1 LSU in Texas Stadium for the national championship. In triple overtime, just before mid-night in whatever time zone I happen to be in #3 Oklahoma State stuns #1 LSU to win the first legitimate national title in NCAA football history!!

Congratulations Cowboys! You’re national champions!

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines a tyrant as such:

tyrant |ˈtīrənt|
noun
• a cruel and oppressive ruler
• a person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way

Kim Jong-il, Albert Ma, Muammar Gaddafi

If you remember, sometime last week I made the case to unfollow Albert Ma. It was a (futile) retaliatory gesture wielded against an unjust, cruel tyrant. Otherwise known as the Fantasy Football Commisionor of the #lotrasFFL.

Well…

Albert Ma Won

The plan was simple. Hit this guy where it would hurt. His Klout score. Get people to unfollow him on Twitter and stop interacting with him. In short, I failed. Not only did the plan not work, Albert actually gained followers on twitter! I know because they tweeted me about it! And to add some insult to this injury, Karen (the poor girl who got taken by Albert) didn’t even unfollow herself.

There are really no words to describe this sort of brutal beatdown by this oppressor. However, I will say I’m more than one beer in as I type these words and reflect on the experience.

Fallen Heros

However, there were a few who unfollowed. A few who fought to see justice brought down on this tyrant. Matthew H Smith, who has more important things to do than get caught up in Fantasy Football shenanigans, unfollowed Albert. Don L Day, I have no idea what prompted him to unfollow, but his sacrifice was much appreciated. Dylan Howell, his next beer is on me… he had his Girl’s business account unfollow as well! Dave Yasuda is just a solid guy; I appreciate the unfollow man. Kevin Wilson (husband of Karen) may have just served me another beer. For that and the unfollow I am grateful. And finally, Jeran Dahlquist, my Bears compatriot who followed me down this foolish path: I’ll always be grateful.

Yep, that list is that short.

What was Learned?

1st, Albert is way too popular for his own good! Haha!

2nd, unfollowing people feels too personal. I had more than one comment that they wanted to shame Albert, but an unfollow was going to far. I find this true myself. Anytime someone unfollows me who I’ve made a connection with it feel personal. Probably too personal.

3rd, apathy is easier than action. Action takes risk. Action takes movement. Action takes sacrifice. Apathy asks for none of those things. Its the easier choice.

So, What’s Next?

Albert has won this round, but he won’t win week 7 in the #lotrasFFL. Stay tuned. Albert will get his! Trust me, you’ll know all about it.

Note: If you don’t currently follow Albert Ma on Twitter please do so now so you can unfollow him at the end of this post.

Albert Ma = Kim Jong-il?

By most accounts Albert Ma is a nice guy. By some accounts Albert Ma is the Kim Jong-il of Boise, ID. I’m now convinced he is that later.

Here’s the story.

The Villian

Albert Ma believes in living the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. Admirable (or ridiculous, I can’t remember which). He is also a big fantasy football fan.

The result of these two passions is the Yahoo! Fantasy Football League, #lotrasFFL, where Kim, er… Albert is Dictator, er… Commissioner.

Enter our Protagonist

One of the people Albert invited into his league of pain and deception is Karen Rush-Wilson, aka Team Krush, aka @KarenRushWilson. Adoring mom. Loving wife. Autism Advocate (which her young son has). Someone trying to make her life simpler; because lets face it, life can be a mess at times.

The truth is Karen isn’t a Fantasy Football virgin. She played in her first league EVER last year. She placed 12th out of 18. Not bad. More importantly she tried. And she wanted to learn and get better. And she did.

But Karen is still a fantasy football newbie. And she engaged in exactly zero trades last season. I know, I was commissioner of that league.

So when The Racist Dragon, aka The #lotrasFFL Commissioner, aka Kim Jong-il of Boise, ID, aka Albert Ma requested a trade it was probably with some excitement Karen viewed it, as it was her first time.

The Rub

Its still unclear how the trade was accepted and approved by the league. But it was.

Albert, knowing he had chosen the least experienced player in his league, offered a trade with Karen in what has been described as a “rip-off deal”, “recockulous”, “hogwash”, “shameful”, and the “dirtiest crap I’ve ever seen”.

The trade? Wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald for tight end Dallas Clark.

Albert–immediately being called out–defended his actions only by saying, “it was worth a try”. And then after the trade went through (did I mention he was commissioner?) he gleefully proclaimed, “Laughing all the way to the #lotrasFFL championship.“. And further justified his actions by claiming he was actually the one taking the risk in the trade because Arizona quarterback Kevin Kolb was probably going to be a flop this year.

Can this Oppressor be Stopped?

Many have asked Albert to do the right thing. He has thus far declined. Karen has even thrown herself at Albert’s mercy receiving something like the kind of reception Kim Jong-il’s personal stylists get when they suggest he start shopping at the Gap.

Shame won’t work. If you remember, Albert takes some pride in the fact he is shameless.

What Albert does hold dear though, is his Klout Score. God only knows why; certainly no one else does.

Stop the Oppressor, Bring Justice

To bring Albert’s Klout score down, and bring him inline with the wishes of the #lotrasFFL–to say nothing of common decency–we must do 3 things friends:

1. Unfollow Albert Ma on Twitter (only for a week).
2. Stop engaging with Albert Ma and his content on the internet (again, for a week).
3. Encourage others to follow your lead in toppling this fantasy football tyrant.

Justice’s Goal

If we can bring Albert’s Klout Score down by any amount probably by 10 points (from 65 to 55) in the next week, he will no doubt capitulate to Common Decency and return Karen’s best player for… admittedly, his best player.

If we can’t break Albert by destroying his Klout score, then Karen do I have a trade for you.

Stay tuned…

Mind you, the Superbowl Shuffle was done before they won the Superbowl! Hellz ya. I was a Bears fan for life.

Little did I know at the time I was devoting myself to over 2 decades of debacle and misery. But, like any good fan, I stayed true to my team hoping for returned glory year after miserable year. The 2000s have been particuarly hard since the Bears have actually had talent on the team (as opposed to much of the 90s). Yet, we’ve only made it to the playoffs 3 times this past decade and only won any playoff games in 2006 when we made a Superbowl run.

That 2006 Superbowl lost convinced me that Rex Grossman could never be a winner in this league. You can’t play like a pro-bowler one game and like a JVer in the next and expect good things week end and week out. Lovie Smith though, stood by his quarterback, something I both respect and hate about Lovie. Long story short, we haven’t been back to the playoffs and we haven’t had a quarterback. Until 2009 that was.

The trade for Jay Cutler this off-season shook all Bears fans to their very core. This was the #$%^ing Chicago Bears. We don’t make blockbuster trades. That’s left to the Washington Redskins, Dallas Cowboys or Oakland Raiders… But, in March we did the unthinkable and traded for a very young probowl QB who was going to walk around on Lake Michigan when he wasn’t winning us every game we played.

I drank the cool aid. Lovie and Jerry showed me something that I didn’t think they had in them. And our 2009 season was the most disappointing season in memory. I don’t really have a point or moral here other than to say I hope the 2010s are better for the Chicago Bears than the 2000s were.

Bear Down, Chicago Bears. Bear Down.

Well, as you can imagine, this was pretty interesting if not all together depressing… which I suppose could be expected as I sipped my coffee and was reminded that half the world lives on less than a couple bucks a day!  At any rate, some of his stories were really quite intriguing as he retold his interviews with these different people and I'd encourage you to waste some time paging through this book if you ever get the chance.

But one thing really stuck out to me… it was the poor in places like the U.S. and Japan who really "felt poor" even though they had much more compared to the others in the book from places like Thailand and Kenya because they had a much deeper sense of "relative poverty".  In other words, the people around them had so much more than they had they felt much poorer; where as people in Kenya, who live in poverty, have less than others around them but it wasn't as if they had so much less that they felt completely isolated from the society around them.

Maybe not the most profound stuff ever, but it did make me wonder how I make people around me feel poor and vice versa.

You can see it here if you want: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kdYYcV3xFw 

 I have nothing to say in my defense.

 Imagine a world where the nations top 16 teams played it out over a month from the beginning of December to the beginning of January.  Teams like Michigan wouldn't be getting hosed by this computer and teams like Boise State could actually get a chance to show they are a good team.  It would be amazing.  But, alas, the ol' mighty dollar wins in the end and these freaks in charge don't want to give up their oh so precious "bowl games".

 All I've ever seen in bowls are flakes, nuts and fruits… go figure.

A few manupulative stats for your reading enjoyment:

• The top 20% of the economic ladder (that's you if you're reading this) consume 49% of the world's fish and meat.
• The bottom 20% of the economic ladder (those are the people you never see) consume 4% of the world's fish and meat.
• The U.S. consumer spends over $10 billion annually on their pets (fluffy is real cute).
• The UNDP estimates it would only take an additional $9 billion annually for all to have access to clean water (over-rated).

Listen, I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I don't want to feel bad myself. All I'm suggesting is that we take some time to prioritize what we are thankful for this year and choose to use some of our hard earned money to reflect that.