Superbowl Halftime Shows

Ever notice that the last few Superbowl halftime shows have all been older people or bands?  I mean, look at the lineup of the last few:

Superbowl XXXIX (2005): Paul McCartney
Superbowl XL (2006): The Rolling Stones
Superbowl XLI (2007): Prince
Superbowl XLII (2008): Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Superbowl XLIII (2009): Bruce Springsteen

And this year's show will feature The Who.  Every year, when they announce the performer for the Superbowl halftime show, I always find myself saying, "Yeah, that's cool, but next year, can we please get someone a little more current?"  I mean, these are artists that our parents grew up listening to!

Ever since Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during Superbowl XXXVIII, there has not been a Superbowl halftime performer from after 1990, and that date is a pretty conservative estimate.  It's like they're afraid that the current class of top performing artists are too inappropriate for family viewing.  I beg to differ.  I can name quite a few popular artists from the last decade whom I believe are capable of performing a decent halftime show without being too provocative: Bon Jovi, Nickelback (at least, most of their more popular songs are clean), Daughtry (who gave a great halftime performance last Thanksgiving), Creed, Barenaked Ladies, Matchbox 20, Linkin Park, 3 Doors Down, Live, almost anyone on the country music scene, and even a few somewhat older but still relatively current artists like Billy Joel, Phil Collins, the Police, and Aerosmith.

Okay, so you might argue that the scope of my choices is rather limited.  I acknowledge that I mostly named the music that I like to listen too.  I guess the reason I'm complaining this evening is just a matter of my personal tastes in music.  In my estimation, about 95% of the music that I listen to is from the last few years, and is heavily weighted toward contemporary rock.  When I was at Tennessee this summer, one of my roommates was really into The Beatles, Jethro Tull, Yes, Pearl Jam, and Michael Jackson, among others.  His library had minimal music from the late 90's or the '00's.  My other roommate's library and mine had only one album by Switchfoot in common; everything else was from artists that I'd never even heard of.  They both groaned when I told them that my favorite band is Nickelback.  And the two of them always seemed to monopolize the music that was playing in our apartment.  One of my current roommates at LoCo is into the Beatles and classic rock, and another lives and dies by hip-hop.  In fact, out of all of the guys that I've lived with over the last few years, I can only recall two whose tastes in music were even remotely similar to mine.   Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against any of their music.  It's just that I could only listen to it for a short while before I needed to hear some of my own music. 

Now, I acknowledge that the post-Janet halftime shows have for the most part been of better quality than the ones in the past.  But I don't think it was because of who was performing as much as it was the format of the show itself.  When I think about it, the only thing about the Superbowl XVIII halftime show that was memorable (for lack of a better word) was the wardrobe malfunction, and that's not a positive note.  The rest of the show just stunk.  The emphasis seemed to be more on theatrics, dancing, and noise than on actual music.  I had bad feelings about the show when they first announced the last-second addition of Justin Timberlake to the lineup (ever since N*Sync broke up, he seemed to have let his libido run out of control, though I think he's toned it down a little since then).  But what really ruined the show, in my opinion, was the mash-up of bits and pieces a whole bunch of songs from a whole bunch of artists.  For a good halftime show, just keep it simple: one artist or band playing just a few of their most popular songs in their entirety.  You have to play the entire song - not just a little snippet or one verse - for the audience to really feel it.  But what really makes a good halftime show is the actual performance of the music - i.e., how well they play and sing.  Lighting and stage effects can turn a good performance of music into a kick-ass halftime show, but all of that goes for naught if the music is lousy to begin with.  I guess the reason you don't really see  hip-hop or death metal in the Superbowl halftime show is because the older generations of viewers can't really relate to that kind of music.  I have yet to meet a middle-aged person who blasts Jay-Z from his car's speakers.

And y'know, with the exception of the Rolling Stones (they're way too old to be dancing around on stage like that, and the midriff shirts just aren't doing it for Mick Jagger!), I actually enjoyed all of the post-wardrobe malfunction Superbowl halftime performances.  Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen were actually a lot better than I had expected, and I really got into the performances, even swaying along and waving my cell phone with the music, which caused my friends to think I was a tad off my rocker.  I guess I enjoyed these shows more because I had low expectations about them beforehand.  The last few halftime shows have been far from disappointing, and I'm sure I'll enjoy watching The Who perform next Sunday, but I don't think it would hurt to have someone just a little more current for next year's halftime show.

B-)

Conference Championship Predictions

Figured I'd weigh in on the upcoming NFL Conference Championship games this Sunday.  Now, I know that some of you out there in Reader Land follow sports a lot more intently than I do, and I don't pretend to be nearly as knowledgeable about all the ins and outs of sports as you guys are, but I still have my opinions, and feel the need to share them.  I'm just telling it the way I see it from my limited perspective.  Y'all are more than welcome to comment with your own opinions; all I ask is that you please do so in a respectful manner.  I mean, hey, what do I know?  I went 0-for-4 in my predictions last weekend. 

All right, enough rambling.  I'll start with the easier game to predict. 

NFC Championship: Vikings at Saints
On paper, both of these teams are pretty well-rounded.  Both Minnesota and New Orleans have Pro-Bowl quarterbacks in Brett Favre and Drew Brees, as well as a respectable, if not high-end, corps of receivers (Sidney Rice, Bernard Berrian, and Visanthe Shiancoe for Minnesota; Robert Meachem, Marques Colston, and Devery Henderson for New Orleans).  Both of these teams, though, can also get things done on the ground when necessary - Adrian Peterson has been a beast for the Vikes all season long, and Reggie Bush certainly made the Saints glad they drafted him in '06 in the Divisional Round against Arizona.  But as the saying goes, "Defense Wins Championships", and both defenses will have their hands full with the opposing offenses, though they both seem to be up to the task.  The Vikings have without a doubt one of the most fearsome D's in the NFL, fronted by Jared Allen and the Williams Wall.  I'm tempted to pick the Vikings at first, but don't count out the Saints' defense despite the team's struggles in December.  They did, after all, hold Arizona, a team that put up 51 points against one of the league's top defenses in the Wild Card Round, to just 14 points.  In the end, the offenses and defenses kind of balance each other out, and though both of these teams are used to playing indoors, I'm going to have to pick the Saints, simply because it's in New Orleans and they'll have the crowd on their side.  At any rate, this is certainly a game that I am looking forward to watching. 
Saints 26, Vikings 17.  

AFC Championship: Jets at Colts
First off, these were two of the last teams that I expected to see playing for a trip to Miami.  While the Colts had the best regular-season record in the league, their defense has been rather suspect, and all of the games that they won against competitive teams came down to a few fortunate bounces.  But that wasn't the case last week, as they held Baltimore to just a single field goal, keeping the mighty Ray Rice out of the end zone, and put up 20 on a Ravens team that has been historically one of the best when it comes to defense.  The Jets, meanwhile, seem to have been lucky to have even made the playoffs at all - it was only because the Colts practically handed them the game on a silver platter in Week 16.  This team has a lot of similarities to the 2004 Steelers - a sensational rookie QB, backed up by a rushing offense and a defense that were near the top, if not the best in the league.  One can argue that the Jets' beat San Diego only because Chargers kicker Nate "Baby Face" Kaeding consistently chokes in the playoffs.  But you gotta give a lot of credit to the Jets' defense for keeping them in the game against a very well-rounded Chargers team that had won eleven in a row.  I had predicted a humiliating loss for the Jets, but after seeing them last Sunday, I'm now a believer in the Gang Green.  Now, Mark Sanchez is no Ben Roethlisberger, and to say that would not have been a compliment in the regular season, but in the postseason, that's a good thing, because unlike Big Ben in his rookie year, Sanchez has shown a lot more poise under fire in the previous two rounds.  History is not on Mark Sanchez's side - no rookie QB has ever won a Superbowl, and (correct me if I'm wrong) only one (Dan Marino) has even made it to the Superbowl - but there's a first time for everything.  And as far as defense goes, the Colts aren't exactly the 2004 New England Patriots.  This has been without a doubt the most difficult game for me to pick in all my years of pigskin prognostication, and I kept flip-flopping between the two teams, but I think I finally have my answer.  Though I won't be surprised if I'm horribly wrong, with all due apologies to my roommate...
Jets 23, Colts 21. 

A Matter of Perspective

So I was reading the Greyhound (LoCo's student newspaper) last night, when I came across an opinion piece about Lane Kiffin leaving his job as head coach at the University of Tennessee to take the head coaching job at Southern Cal.  Normally, I tend to just skim over the headlines in the sports section, but this article caught my interest because I spent last summer at UT and am applying there for grad school, and remembered the excitement that was in the air when they hired Kiffin last year, so I read on.  The article's author makes a valid point about Kiffin taking advantage of a prestigious and highly coveted job opportunity, and how the fans might be taking it a little too personally.  The only thing I found wrong in the article was the line "The man is trying to support his family."  Which brings me to the point of today's post:  In the business of athletics, family is NOT a legitimate excuse for leaving a team for more money when you already make seven-plus figures a year.  I remember sportswriters using the same excuse  in 2008 to justify Ryan Malone leaving the Penguins for the Lightning.  Sorry, but that just doesn't wash with me.

Let me put things in perspective:  For the last few years, my family has been struggling just to make ends meet.  Both my parents work part-time, my dad having only recently found a job after four years of unemployment.  On top of all the bills and living expenses, they have to find some way to put both my sister and me through college.  The fact that I'm still at Loyola and not at some community college is all the proof I need of the existence of God.  My parents have completely drained their retirement funds.  I myself am down to my last $300, which will probably be used up in the next month on groceries and an application fee for a grad school that I might apply to.  I have worn the same pair of glasses for the last five or six years and badly need new ones, but that's gone by the wayside what with my dad having to replace his computer and my sister needing surgery on her toe, among other things.  I'm probably going to need a car when I go off to grad school, but I don't know how the heck I'm going to pay for it.  I have a job as a tutor, but it doesn't pay jack squat. 

You get the picture.  The point I'm trying to make is, if I had a wife and kids to support, I think I could live pretty comfortably on even $100,000 a year, a figure which I highly doubt that a college professor would ever come close to making.  According to the Greyhound article, Kiffin was making upwards of $2 million a year at Tennessee, and his new job at USC will bring in $3 million per annum.  Are his wife and kids really going to die without that extra million dollars?  In my humble opinion, he was already making enough to live pretty comfortably.  From that perspective, is one million dollars worth the shame of betraying all those fans who put their complete trust in you?  It's one thing to cite the need to support one's family when that extra money legitimately means the difference between a real house and the poorhouse.  It's quite another to say it when you already make more than you really need.

Loyola's Lousy Job of Planning

This afternoon, I was just about to leave my apartment to catch the CollegeTown Shuttle to the SuperFresh in Towson to pick up some much-needed groceries, when I realized that the shuttle isn't running this weekend.  Why?  Because Loyola decided to start their semester a week earlier than all the other colleges in the area.  It just keeps getting earlier and earlier every year.  My freshman year, we didn't start until after MLK day, but each year, we've been starting earlier and earlier.  This year, we started the second week in January, which is the earliest it's been yet.  Using the NFL playoff schedule as a baseline, it's the first time that I had to go back to Loyola during Wild Card weekend.

Frankly, I don't understand why Loyola feels the need to start earlier than everyone else.  It's just throwing everything off.  The shuttle doesn't run this week because none of the other schools are back in session, so I can't go grocery shopping because I don't have a car and none of my so-called "friends" are willing to lend a hand.  Loyola students who are taking classes at other schools are probably going to be thrown off a bit by having one of their classes start and end a week later than the rest of their classes, which could pose a problem when finals week comes around, meaning they might have to miss classes to take their finals at Loyola, not to mention the hassle it's going to cause for graduating seniors.  It also means our Spring Break is a week earlier than everyone else's, which really means nothing to me, since I'm not really of the partying type, but for those who do head for the beaches during Spring Break, I'm sure it's gotta suck that most of your colleagues are still in school and can't celebrate with you.  It's not just the other colleges in Baltimore that start later than us, but most colleges anywhere, it seems; my sister, who goes to Ithaca, is still at home for a few more days, and she's still going back earlier than the rest of her classmates.  Furthermore, if Loyola started and ended when everyone else did, we wouldn't have to worry about having our graduation on the same weekend as the Preakness, as it's been for the last several years.  It was convenient four years ago, when they had Bob Costas as the commencement speaker, but for relatives trying to book a hotel for the weekend, it's going to be a biz-atch.  What's really irritating is that Loyola even acknowledged that they knew about this on the letter they sent to parents of graduating seniors a few months ago. 

Okay, I think I'm done ranting for now.  I was just a bit p.o.'d because I was planning to cook dinner this evening, but can't because I couldn't go shopping for the ingredients I needed.  I can always order groceries online, but I have to do it a day ahead of time, and it costs an extra $10 that my broke ass really needs to save right now.  Whatcha gonna do?...

BCS

One of the great things about being in college is that, unlike when I was in high school, I can actually watch most of the Bowl games without having to worry about finishing piles of homework assigned to me over the Christmas so-called "break".  But with every Bowl season comes the traditional complaints about how college football needs to institute a playoff system to determine the real national champion.  And I couldn't agree more.  BCS, in my humble opinion, stands for Bull-Crap System.  The two teams playing for the national title should have to earn the right to do so, not be determined by some arbitrary ranking system.  My family and I are all fans of Penn State (my dad's alma mater), and for the last two years, I've been pretty excited watching the Nittany Lions work their way up the rankings with one win after another.  They even made it as far as # 3 in 2008.  But for the last two seasons, PSU's hopes of being able to play in the National Title Game were dashed to pieces with heart-breaking losses to Iowa (who, by the way, beat Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl this evening... darn!).  At that point, I kind of stopped following Penn State as intently, because I knew that they wouldn't have a chance to win a national championship.  While I'm glad that Penn State beat LSU last week in the Capitol One Bowl (what the crap is with all the corporate names, anyway?), it really doesn't mean anything for me as a fan.  It just proved that they could beat LSU, that they could win one game, but it says absolutely nothing about how good of a team they really are compared to all the other teams.

Every football fan in the country wants a playoff system in college football.  It's just the sensible thing to do.  Every other sport determines its champion with a tournament-style system, so college football should be no exception.  You might argue that adding several playoff games to a team's season might take its toll on the players.  But consider this: while most college teams that play in a bowl game end up playing 13 or 14 games total in a season, winning a state championship requires most high school teams to play about 15 or 16 games in a season in order to get there.  If high school players are tough enough to play that many games, I think college players should also be able to handle a season of similar length.  Additionally, a playoff system would give teams extra motivation to continue playing at a higher level throughout the season, even with a loss or two on their records. 

Only one major counter-argument remains: the corporate sponsors.  That's basically the only reason that we still have the BCS - so the executives, corporations, and local tourism industries can make tons of money from their respective Bowl games.  Maybe it's me, but all of these corporate names for Bowl games are just a tad ludicrous.  Every Bowl now has a brand name in front of it (e.g., the FedEx Orange Bowl, the AllState Sugar Bowl, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the Rose Bowl presented by Citi), with some having their original name completely replaced with a corporate one, such as the Capitol One Bowl (formerly the Citrus Bowl) or my personal favorite, the Papa John's.com Bowl (they just had to add the dot-com in there!)

That's why tonight, I propose a solution that will exorcise the BCS demons from college football once and for all: have a playoff system, but have the playoff games at the sites where the Bowl games would be played.  The National Championship Game would rotate from place to place every year like it does currently, but we could have the semi-final games in Miami (where the Orange Bowl is) and Pasadena (where the Rose Bowl is); the quarter-final games in Arizona (Fiesta Bowl), New Orleans (Sugar Bowl),  Texas (Cotton Bowl), and Orlando (Capitol One Bowl); and so on.  That way, the fans get their playoff system, and the sponsors still get their money.  Everybody wins!  So with this feasible solution in front of us, I believe it's high time that President Obama make good on the campaign promise he made on Monday Night Football and work to establish a playoff system in college football.  Because in the end, it just makes sense!

B-)