- I was happy to see that I finally broke the .500 mark in my NFL Playoff Predictions this past Sunday. Especially after I hit in the first game, and a 50% tally would have meant a Steelers loss to the Jets.
- That means I now stand at 6-4 in the predictions business, which means I'd have made money, regardless of how the Super Bowl pick goes. That is, if I'd actually bet on these games.
- Three days after the fact, there isn't much I can add to all the post-mortems on the AFC and NFC Championship games. OF COURSE, it is delightful to see the Steelers making yet another trip to the Super Bowl. As Art II said on Sunday, it never gets old.
- The 35.something passer rating that Ben Roethlisberger had on Sunday proves one thing: that the NFL passer rating statistic is about as meaningful as the one that Neal Huntington used last year to tell us Charlie Morton wasn't doing so badly in the starting rotation. As Mike Greenberg said so well on Monday, if you watched the game there was no doubt who the best player on the field was, and it was Ben Roethlisberger.
- Must comment on the cause celebre of Sunday's game, and that is the Jay Cutler affair. I have always considered him an over-rated, whiny punk, and when I saw him on the sidelines, I thought of how Aaron Rodgers took a shot in the game and stayed in (and in the second game, both Roethlisberger and Mark Sanchez took some bad hits and played on), but I did say to myself that, hey, it's not for me to judge how bad the guy is hurt. It was interesting to see that most of the criticism leveled at Cutler has come, not from fans or media, but from other players. Justified or not, I think that this will dog Cutler for the rest of his career.
- It did bring to mind the criticisms that Hines Ward leveled on Roethlisberger in 2009 when Ben sat out the Ravens game due to "concussion-like symptoms."
- In the past six seasons, the Steelers have gone to the Super Bowl three times and missed the playoffs twice. Not sure how you might feel about it, but I'm OK with a couple of playoff-less seasons amid all those Super Bowl trips.
- And the Pirates are in the news this week for oh-so-quietly announcing an increase in ticket prices for 2011, the first ticket price increase since 2002. As these things go, it was a pretty benign increase, as it will only apply to tickets purchased on the day of the game. In the PG+ "DK on Sports" blog, Dejan Kovacevic points out that the Pirates sell fewer than 2,000 day-of-game walk-up tickets on average, and that this increase is expected to bring in less that $1 million over the course of the season. Interesting.
- Now I know of no business that can afford to hold their retail costs over nine years, so I do understand the Pirates looking to increase prices, but from a purely emotional point of view, how can the Pirates really justifying asking people to pay more money for a steadily deteriorating product?
- What this tells me is that when (if?) the Pirates ever do get good, or even post a winning season, the price increase that our friend below will take to market will hit Pirates ticket buyers like a freight train!
<--- The Most Disliked Man in Pittsburgh?
- Another lucky visit to Rivers Casino this morning. Turned $100 into $200 in a little under one hour at the blackjack table. It started poorly, as my $100 stake had dwindled to $30 after about ten minutes. Got lucky, though, thank you very much!!!
- A melancholy Happy Trails to Pittsburgh radio talk show host Doug Hoerth who passed away at the age of 66 today. Hoerth had been off the air for a number of years, but he was one of the best interviewers in a business that is now dominated by big mouthed gasbags. RIP, Uncle Dougie.
