Sporting Madness

So, I went 1-3 last weekend , which certainly isn't promising. However, it was a rather bizarre weekend of games, and I did beat ESPN's Bill Simmons , who makes about a kajillion dollars more for his writing than I do, so I'm okay with that. The thing is, the NFL is a league of parity; as we often recite, anything can happen on any given Sunday. This becomes even more evident in the playoffs because only decent teams make it this far; the gap between a 14-2 team like the Colts and a 9-7 team like the Ravens is far closer than the gap between the Ravens and the 1-15 St. Louis Rams, so it's much harder to figure out who's going to win.With that in mind, I do have a few thoughts about this weekend's slate of games. As always, these predictions are nowhere near guaranteed and are intended for recreational purposes only. Cardinals at Saints: (4:30 p.m. Eastern Saturday, FOX) This should be one of the most entertaining games of the weekend, featuring two high-po...

In just a few hours, the Pittsburgh Steelers will take to the field in Tampa Bay to try and win a record sixth Super Bowl title against the Arizona Cardinals. I’ve long been a Steelers fan, and these past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I support the team. There are plenty of great reasons including the history of success, the focus on coaching continuity and smashmouth defence and the tremendous players who have worn the black and gold over the years. However, sometimes you’re defined as much by what you’re not as what you are. The brilliant Joe Posnanski wrote one of the quintessential pieces on the Steelers for the Kansas City Star after their win over the Ravens. Here’s the first paragraph, which really cuts to the core of this franchise. Football is violence. It’s easy to forget that sometimes, easy to start believing that football is about other more pleasant things, that it is about coaching and strategy and star quarterbacks and fabulous catches and touch...

Photo: The cover of Bob Ackles' memoirs . It came as quite a shock last week to hear the news [Neate Sager, Out of Left Field ] of Bob Ackles' death at 69 [Ian Austin and Marc Weber, The Vancouver Province ]. Ackles was such an integral part of the B.C. Lions, the CFL and Canadian football as a whole that it seems weird to consider a future landscape of the game he loved so much without him in his prominent role. It's been a bad year for CFL icons: remember, we lost J.I. Albrecht [Stephen Brunt, The Globe and Mail ] back [Neate Sager, Out of Left Field ] in March [my piece], so Ackles' death takes away yet another of the characters who made this league great. Today, as an appropriate intro to the Lions-Blue Bombers game, TSN spent a half-hour of their pre-game show relating the tributes [a collection of them from TSN.ca ] to Ackles, a man who thoroughly deserved all of them. The collection of tributes they were able to put together on short notice was very impres...