Hillary Clinton may have won three of the big states last Tuesday, but it’s not states that count, it’s delgates. She continues to lag in delegates, and now it’s mathematically impossible for her to win the nomination by the agreed rules. Nevertheless she continues to keep the drama rolling.

So now we have Clinton and Obama clawing and scratching at each other while McCain sits pat. McCain now has the luxury of proactively winning more support while the Democratic contenders do all his dirty work for him. For the Democratic Party, this is a horrible strategic mistake.

This draws a nice parallel to another of history’s big rivalries: that between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. Let me elaborate…

Just like two parties, both the Packers and the Bears are hoping to find the new leader. On one side you have the Packers who, like the Republicans, have picked out the person who they want to be the leader, and have begun to prepare him for the task. On the other hand you have the Bears who, like the Democrats, can’t commit to a leader, and the candidates for the role have to fight each other to win it.

The Packers will go into training camp committed to one guy — Aaron Rogers — and no matter what else has to be worked out for the team, the quarterback will spend his time preparing to lead his team and win games. Meanwhile, the Bears will spend the majority of their off-season distracted by multiple quarterbacks competing; whoever wins out will be underprepared, and he will be second-guessed all season.

So what’s my point? If the Democrats or the Bears want to have a chance of winning, they need to make a commitment to one person, stop the in-fighting, and start preparing to win because their opponents — the Republicans and the Packers — are already formulating their strategies to win.

After 17 amazing years, nine Pro Bowl appearances, two Super Bowls, and rewriting every meaningful record in the book, Brett Favre is hanging up his helmet.

There have been other great quarterbacks and there will be more. There have been amazingly accurate, high-percentage passers, and plenty of guys with more than one ring. But none of them was ever as much fun to root for as Brett Favre.

His absence will be felt on Sundays for a long time. (And what will John Madden talk about now? Just food, I guess.)

While baseball bears the moniker of “America’s pass time”, basketball has always had its loyal fans, and NASCAR seems to resonate well with the toothless gitterdones, I have always held the NFL as truly being America’s sport.

Just think about the difference. New Yorkers and Bostonians make a lot of noise when the Yankees play the Red Sox (and somehow this phenomenon manages to suck in all manner of outside interest). There is no city in the world where you can’t find a Chicago Cubs hat. All of Hollywood’s elite compete for court-side seats at Lakers games. But for four months out of the year, the entire world stops on Sunday while we all tune in to see our favorite teams and players.

While big market baseball teams (read The Yankees) spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year in order to steal the talented players from everywhere else, and buy a championship, as they say, teams in the NFL have had to make teamwork and coaching matter under a tight salary cap.

While the average hockey team is predominantly Canadian and European, and while the average baseball team is predominantly Dominican and South American, you still find that most players in the NFL are American — black, white, hispanic, or asian, there is no racial bias, but there is a bias toward being American.

While Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds use steroids to rewrite the record books, and while the NBA’s definition of traveling keeps bending to allow superstars to take five steps and slam dunk without a whistle, the NFL works each year to tighten the penalties and to stop teams from cheating.

And that topic, cheating, is what really pisses me off about spygate. It was cheating. Hardcore, in-your-face, no nonsense, no excuses… it was cheating.

Worse, the team that did it just happens to be the team that everyone has been calling the latest dynasty. The pundits have all praised the Patriots for being the first team to figure out how to win consistently since the salary cap was imposed. Little did they know that they were praising a team for figuring out how to cheat.

League commissioner Roger Goodell handed down his (weak) punishment before he ever got his hands on the tapes. But worse still, he learned that Congress wanted to see the tapes and knowing this, he had them destroyed. Come on, folks… you’ve seen Sopranos, you know how this works. I sure miss Paul Tagliabue.

What a dumb move. Really. But I thank the powers that be for the tenacity of Senator Arlen Specter who, as ESPN.com points out, isn’t buying it:

Specter heard that explanation from Goodell on Wednesday. On Thursday, Specter said, “The word absurd and ridiculous keep coming to my mind, because he [Goodell] says it with a straight face.”

Specter said it was unsettling to learn that the tapes, as well as notes, turned over by the Patriots in September had been destroyed in Foxboro rather than in the league’s New York offices. Aiello said the documents and tapes were destroyed after they were reviewed by NFL officials Jeffrey Pash and Ray Anderson, and that the call to destroy the material came from Goodell, saying “There’s no further use for it, so he said get rid of it.”

Specter said the league’s suggestion that the material, particularly the notes dating to the 2002 season, was destroyed because it might have afforded a competitive advantage is unbelievable.

“Everything has changed,” he said. “Nobody could use those. They are scrap paper — except evidence.”

What we really need here is a whistle-blower — someone who was a member of the Patriots organization, and who knows the extent of the cheating and what advantage it provided, and who would come out and tell the world the truth in order to salvage the integrity of the sport. Unfortunately, that will never happen. Anybody who did that would never work in professional sports ever again, and that’s too much to lose for anyone who’s worked to get to this level.

I hope Senator Specter gets to the bottom of this and delivers a huge slap in the face to Roger Goodell and the NFL and to the Patriots organization for the shame they’ve brought upon the one team sport that I always felt was above the rest.

I’m glad someone finally put an end to that bullshit perfect season. Sorry, Pats fans, but cheaters don’t deserve names like “dynasty” or “best quarterback ever”.

Thank you, Eli Manning, Michael Strahan, and all the true champions of the New York Football Giants, for pissing all over the crybaby GQ QB’s corn flakes, and preventing the NFL from being tainted the way that some other sports have become.

Yeah, that’s right. Fuck Randy Moss. Fuck Tom Brady. Fuck the players who think they’re bigger than the game. Take a look at that enormous “in your face” act performed by Randy Moss after is Super Bowl touchdown, and you’ll see exactly why it’s TEAMS that win championships, not players.

Last time I counted, Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and Ocho Cinco had a combined ZERO Super Bowl rings. The Giants won the Super Bowl with Jeremy Shockey on crutches on the sideline. I wonder if they’d have done so well with him on the field.

After 1,865 kickoffs in their 31 years as a franchise, the Buccaneers finally returned one for a touchdown on the same day that they clinched first place in the NFC South, beating the Atlanta Falcons 37-3.

I wish I could’ve seen it, but at least I got to see Brett Favre set a new all-time passing record, eclipsing Dan Marino. Favre’s name is now attached to every meaningful QB record in the NFL. Way to go, Brett.

Michael Vick received a 23-month prison sentence today for his part in the dogfighting conspiracy. He will also get 3 years of probation upon his release, scheduled for October 2009.

Who knows… he’s still young enough to come back from this sentence and possibly play again in the NFL. Other pro football players have served sentences and returned to the starting lineup.

Oh, if only we could have gotten similar swift justice for Barry Bonds. Had justice been served promptly in his case, he’d have never gotten his name tied to a record he didn’t deserve.

If Barry Bonds served time — even only a year — he’d come out 40 pounds lighter due to the inability to find quality steroids and HGH in prison, and even if he returned to baseball (what is he now, 50 years old?) he’d never be able to crush a ball into the river.

By way of the Freakonomics Blog, I’ve found a remarkably well-written — dare I say, gripping? — story about field goal kickers in the NFL. The author, Michael Lewis, examines the records of “clutch” kickers and compares them to average kickers and finds there’s not much difference — just a few memorable kicks that cement a reputation.

Or was that Bears-Cardinals game last night the most bizarre game ever played in the NFL?

I haven’t gotten to watch much football so far this season, due to moving and what-not, but I took some time out this weekend to get in a few games. I watched a spirited game between the Buccaneers and the Bengals, in which the Bucs pulled off a last-minute touchdown that required a booth review to overturn a bad call on the field, giving the Tampa their first victory of the year. Very impressive was the second ever start for rookie quarterback Bruce Gradkowski, who was very poised and confident for a rookie QB.

And then last night I watched another rookie QB make his second start in the NFL. Matt Leinart looked far too comfortable on the field to be a rookie. He was managing the game clock, reading the defenses, and making all the throws, even with the number one defense bearing down on him. By half-time, he had led the Cardinals (notoriously football’s worst team) to a 20-0 lead over the top-ranked team in the league.

Meanwhile, all the hype about “Sexy” Rex Grossman was for naught, as he threw for less than 50%, and gave away two interceptions and two fumbles in the first half alone. All hope was lost for Da Bears when they went into the locker room for half time.

The third quarter didn’t make things any better, as the score changed to 23-3 over the next 15 minutes. Grossman continued to play like shit, though the defense had started to create some opportunities for him. It was clear when the fourth quarter arrived that the game would not be turned around by Rex Grossman.

What happened next was astounding. After yet another preposterous punt on a 3-and-out, rather than going for it and trying to salvage the game, the Bears defense forced a turnover and returned it for a touchdown. Then, on the following possession, as Leinart started to march the Cardinals downfield again, the Bears defense force ANOTHER turnover, and returned it for a touchdown. The Cardinals started moving, and finally reached a punting situation, which the Bears punt returner returned for a touchdown!

Bam! Bam! Boom! And with just over two minutes remaining in the game, and no offensive points scored, the Bears are now winning 24-23 in a game they gave away for three quarters.

But Leinart still doesn’t give up, and he marches his team down field again, putting his kicker well into comfortable range for a game-winning field goal. But the Cardinals are a cursed team, and he shanks an easy FG to the left of the goal post. Bears win, remaining undefeated.

Incredible.

Every year, before the start of the football season, it’s the job of every sports pundit to make their ridiculous predictions about who will be the next Super Bowl champion. I can understand that you’ve got to have something to talk about in order to get the football fans primed for the upcoming season. I can also understand that you’ve got to remind them that your show exists in order to start getting viewers ready. Fine. But on ESPN’s NFL Today they dedicated an entire show to their predictions. How much is there to say, really, about something that won’t even happen for almost seven more months?

These guys are full of crap! Not only did they predict that Super Bowl XLI would be a rematch of Super Bowl XXXVIII between the Panthers and the Patriots… not only did they pick a winner — the Carolina Panthers — but they had the audacity to pick a score and to declare that the game would be won by a field goal kick. As if the 1:32 odds against being right weren’t bad enough for your pick, you’ve got to throw that out there?

And it gets better. They had a board up, predicting the entire playoffs with winners chosen, which showed the Pittsburgh Steelers playing in the AFC Championship game! I thought ESPN had the inside info, but maybe they missed the part about Jerome Bettis retiring, and Ben Roethlisberger breaking his face in half on some old lady’s car.

It’s all wasted air anyhow, since everyone knows the Buccaneers are coming back for number two, but just to keep pace with ESPN, let’s just jump out on a limb and say that the Buccaneers will beat the Cincinnati Bengals by a touchdown in the first ever Super Bowl to go into overtime, with a final score of 35-28, and Chris Simms will throw for 366 yards, 3 touchdowns, and two interceptions, while Cadillac Williams will run for the other two TDs. Is that ridiculous enough to sound riveting? Time to prep my resume for a sportscaster’s job at ESPN.

Bank of America Stadium

Among the many photo project ideas I’ve had is the desire to visit each of the NFL’s 32 stadiums.

Two weeks ago I found myself in Charlotte and while I didn’t get into the stadium, I did get a few photos. I plan to visit the inside when the Buccaneers come to play the Panthers.