Sports - NFL Predictions

For those of us who are fans of American football, something like a holiday is about to happen. Preseason has concluded, the bugs supposedly have been worked out and strategies have been established, and now the real thing can begin. The game can really begin, there will be winners and losers, drama and foregone conclusions, and the so-called experts will opinionate and in the end be wrong.

Take heart fans of teams that aren't located on a coast or in a pre-approved championship city. I did a quick search of Super Bowl predictions, and sites as diverse as ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and About.com failed to make a single accurate pick of the Super Bowl champion. 

Year	Predicted	Actual	Result
2003	New York Giants Over Kansas City Chiefs	Tampa Bay Buccaneers Over Oakland Raiders	WRONG
2004	Seattle Seahawks Over Indianapolis Colts	New England Patriots Over Carolina Panthers	WRONG
2005	Pittsburgh Steelers Over Seattle Seahawks	New England Patriots Over Philadelphia Eagles	WRONG
2006	Indianapolis Colts Over Seattle Seahawks	Pittsburgh Steelers Over Seattle Seahawks	WRONG
2007	New England Patriots Over New Orleans Saints	Indianapolis Colts Over Chicago Bears	WRONG
2008	Philadelphia Eagles Over San Diego Chargers	New York Giants Over New England Patriots	WRONG
2009	Pittsburgh Steelers Over Philadelphia Eagles	Pittsburgh Steelers Over Arizona Cardinals	WRONG
2010	New England Patriots Over New Orleans Saints	New Orleans Saints Over Indianapolis Colts	WRONG
2011	Atlanta Falcons Over San Diego Chargers	Green Bay Packers Over Pittsburgh Steelers	WRONG
2012	Green Bay Packers Over Denver Broncos	New York Giants Over New England Patriots	WRONG

So, regardless of who proclaims themselves an expert and how “complex” their prediction model, in the end it’s all just a guess and one that’s more often informed by fandom than facts.

Happy Labor Day, America. Welcome to the end of another long summer, albeit one that failed to reach the scorching high temperatures of 2012 here in the upper Midwest. Labor Day always has been one of those mystery observances, important only for the fact that its passing means the great wheel of the year has began its final revolution and autumn isn't far away. In my youth, back in the days before year-round schools and making up snow days, Labor Day meant one last camping trip before returning to the drudgery of school. In reality, though, Labor Day is a holiday celebrating, well, organized labor. According to the US Department of Labor website:

“[Labor Day] constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

The origins of the observance are debatable, but New York’s Central Labor Union celebrated the first Labor Day on September 5, 1882 and by 1884 the first Monday in September had been designated as the official “workingman’s holiday”. The first official recognition of Labor Day came in the form of local and state ordinances with Oregon the first state to ratify a Labor Day bill on February 12, 1887 and on June 28 of that same year Congress passed an act making the first Monday of September a national holiday.

In the years since its inception, the meaning of Labor Day has transformed. Today being pro-union is out of vogue and if you polled people on the street, most probably would connect the Labor Day holiday with the end of summer instead of the triumph of unions. Humanity easily forgets its past and each generation tends to take what the previous one fought to achieve for granted. In our modern era we assume certain worker’s rights will be respected, that we’ll get a handful of holidays a year, and that we’ll be paid for our work, but it wasn't always that way.

So, to bring it back to reality, here’s a little ditty from Van and Schenck that says it perfectly - the rich get rich and the poor get laid off…

Beer - the Beverage of Moderation

I came across this beer ad while perusing the September 1955 issue of Life Magazine. It’s the sort of thing we usually see when an industry is under attack for the quality or impact of their product. Today we’re treated to television spots white washing high fructose corn syrup, fracing, and clean coal. Apparently, the brewing industry felt it needed to gussy up its image in the 50s with a bit of wholesome square-dancing. When you look at these ads you can always tell what the manufacturer is trying to hide – corn syrup isn’t natural or good for you, fracing is destroying the environment for energy that largely will be shipped overseas, and clean coal isn’t clean at all. The tag line “America’s beverage of moderation” leaves me thinking there was a push against drunkenness in the mid-50s. It probably was part of the Beaver Cleaver-izing of the nation – the push toward white-bread sameness and squelching of anything that didn’t fit neatly into the pre-drawn lines. Then again, it’s hard to argue in favor of public drunkenness, isn’t it?

 

Quote for September

But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head ...the harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on.


~ Robert Finch

1954 Dodge

1954 ad for Dodge – any Dodge, just Dodge.

What’s the most striking thing about this ad? The color of the car. What is that color anyway? Sea foam? Pepto-Bismol-blue? Butter mint green?

Happier in a Nash

1940 Nash ad from Time Magazine and the ad executives have taken to iambic pentameter...or at least bad, Robert Frost-esque poetry. As last Sunday's car ad showed, Nash was one of many small car companies in business before World War II. Once the post-war market dried up, Nash couldn't keep pace with the Big Three. They eventually became part of American Motors Company (who brought you the AMC Pacer among other duds) before finally being devoured by the competition.

Like the Hudson, I admire Nash's art deco styling. That proud nose and those bumped-out fenders can't be beat. By comparison everything on the road today is vanilla with flavorless sauce.

National Bourbon Heritage Month

Welcome to National Bourbon Heritage month. There’s nothing like getting sauced before marching out in the woods armed with a shotgun to hunt forty-five pound rabbits! Something about this guy just screams Elmer Fudd and it suggests an alternate reason for the hapless hunter’s speech impediment. The G&W ad is from the November 1937 issue of Life Magazine and I think it features the least realistic rabbit I've ever seen sort of Bugs or Roger.

What makes any particular whiskey bourbon? Well, according to the Fed:

• Produced in the United States
• The grain used in its manufacturing must be at least 51% corn
• It must be aged in new, charred-oak barrels
• It must be distilled to no more than 160 (U.S.) proof (80% alcohol by volume)
• Though there isn’t any defined period for aging bourbon, it must placed into the barrel for the aging process at no more than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol by volume)
• It must be bottled at 80 proof or more (40% alcohol by volume)

The history of bourbon is as convoluted and confused as the dirt roads that wind through the hollows and hills of Kentucky from which the spirit is reputed to originate. The first distillers in Kentucky arrived in Bardstown in the 1770s and most historians agree that by 1783 when Louisville was founded some of the area’s earliest inhabitants had already started distilling whiskey. In the eastern reaches of Old Bourbon County exports of corn whiskey became widely known as “Bourbon”, a name that stuck. At some point the barrels used for aging bourbon were charred, something often accredited to Baptist preacher Elijah Craig, and now the practice of aging bourbon in charred oak barrels has become an earmark of good bourbon whiskey.

So, raise a glass of oak, smoked cornfields, and cold limestone springs and take a moment to sit in the year’s aging sunlight. Soon enough everything will be sleet and snow, but for the moment the mellow fire of summer burns inside and everything is softened.