Livin up to a name

It was just the most God-awful weekend of football last weekend. Maybe I was being punished for not writing during my vacation. Maybe it was give-take after the glorious "snowstorm" last Thursday. Maybe it was justice from all of the time I take from the Mama on my Sundays off spending seven hours in front of the tube (Is it a tube anymore? ... I don't know).

It began Thursday with da Boys losing. It wasn't so much that they lost, rather how (again). They come back from the dead and blow it. Why can't they be like the rest of the mediocre world and just lose? Don't comeback and give false hope. I am so sick of mediocre, I could scream. No, really. I hate mediocre. Average might as well be f***ing bottom of the barrel. There really is no difference, you know. If you lose half the time or all the time, you end up in the same place. Moving on.

The weekend got worse. On Friday, I felt like someone had tried to poison me. ... Hmmmmm. I spent the day in bed sick as a dog. (Are dogs really sick? All the time? Maybe the phrase should be "sick as a sick dog." But then why a dog? Why not a rhinoceros? Or an egret? Or even a pot-bellied pig? The questions of life.) I got up long enough to go have birthday dinner for my mother-in-law, but it was right back in bed. BTW, it was the first time I fell asleep before midnight (and stayed in bed til morning) all year, I believe.

Saturday was a little better, as the Boy's Cleary Sonics defeated the Girard Hornets in the opening game of the 10-year-old Big Dance. They lost in the second round to the Girard Tar Heels, but hey, the Boy is doing much better than I thought he would. He's made a few 3-pointers and is playing excellent defense.

Later, I saw my alma mater lose in the Louisiana High School Class 4A State Championship game. Didn't hurt my feelings all that much, as a close friend coaches for the team they lost to. Just getting that far for a third straight season is some accomplishment. Much better than mediocre, I might add.

The Mama and me finished the night off with dinner at one of my favorite restaurants -- Gimchi -- and a nightcap or two with Scotty at Sidelines. (Vacation makes me realize how much I really, really miss having Saturdays off.)

Now Sunday just plain sucked. Not to bore the non-football watcher with the details, but it comes down to this. The Mama and I have had an entry in what's called a knockout pool for the past 14 weeks. How it works is you put up 25 bucks to enter. Every week, you pick a team to win. If they win, you move on. If they lose, you're out. You cannot pick the same team twice. Last entry standing wins the pot. (Generally, when it gets down to like five, they agree to split the pot.) There were 13 entries left out of 304. We could taste the money.

You know where this is headed, I'm sure ...

So, as soon as we won the previous week, I knew who we were taking. We hadn't chosen New England yet, and they were playing the lowly Raiders. Even though I was on vacation, I drove to The T-P to keep my routine of talking to MLC, The Gene Pool and the rest of my cohorts to discuss my selection. Problem was, no one was up there when I came up. Bad Omen, I knew it. I started to doubt my selection, and then the call came. It was the Blowhole. He told me that the father of the Patriots quarterback had passed away, and the QB was leaving the team for an unspecified amount of time. Would he play? If he did, would he be effective? Could the lowly Raiders actually pull the upset. "Their defense is pretty decent," I told myself and the Blowhole.

You guessed it. I decided against the Pats. The first time ALL season I wasn't going with my original gut feeling. So we both went with the Washington Redskins, who were traveling to Cincinnati to play the 1-11-1 Bengals. Quite possibly the second-dumbest move I have ever made in my adult life. (The first has something to do with an X, a why and a pfffff.)

Sick. I mean sick. I apologized profusely to the Mama, and she was nothing but consoling. I felt better, but then I began to think it was as if I was doing the picking and she expected me to get it wrong at some point. Like there was no way I could pull off a piece of 7,200 bucks. There are such low expectations of the mediocre, I thought.

Then, the last piece of my football season remained alive. The part I cared least about all season suddenly became my No. 1 priority. It was my participation in a second fantasy football league. One I did just for kicks. And it started out great. I took a 50-point lead almost by halftime of the noon games. I still had my No. 1 player, Anquan Boldin, who was averaging about 15 points per week. I still had the second half. It didn't matter that she had (yes she) three players and a defense left.

You know where this is headed, I'm sure ...

Yep, Monday night killed me. I lost to a girl. The weekend of complete and utter failure was finalized. the lovable loser lived up to his nickname, as it was truly a loser weekend.

On Tuesday, we had the joy and pleasure of coming back to work.

And for the first time since Labor Day, we don't have anything to root for this weekend. The Saints play the winless Lions, and I could really care less. Fantasy football is over, as BMF faces the Plunderin Poons in Finks Bowl XV. Normally, I would root for my own conference to win, which would mean the Poons, but this year I truly don't give a damn.

So I come back to the premise that made me write all this. Is it really better to be mediocre than to be a loser. I have had a ton of both, so I should know by now. The truth is they both suck. Neither is worse than the other. Neither is better.

After this long-winded babble, what have we learned? I think it's that Al Davis was right.

Just win, baby.