Be sure to notice the poop.

The subject of this grand theft is in the photo. It’s a banner that was hanging in The Pit, the nexus of student life at the University of North Carolina, a couple of days before a UNC-Duke basketball game. I had seen the banner earlier in the week when I came over from Duke to visit, and I thought I simply had to have it.

On this particular morning, I was at The Pit in the predawn hours as part of a routine college prank. I came prepared with a pair of scissors to snip it away. The only other person in The Pit was a sleeping Gulf War protester. The perfect crime.

(If someone sees this picture and recognizes this banner, I’ll be happy to return it with my apologies.)

The funny thing was that my hatred of all things Carolina was already fading. In my sophomore year, I was pretty obnoxious. I was in the band, and I had no sense of decorum. Especially when UNC came to town and laid a 20-point beating on Duke — even after this weekend’s unpleasantness, it’s still the biggest Carolina win in Durham for a couple of decades. So while I’m making amends — I’m sorry, Dean Smith and Kevin Madden, if you happened to hear anything I said. (In fairness to my 18-year-old self, Madden shouldn’t have taunted Robert Brickey. I was just sticking up for a schoolmate of mine who probably had 100 more pounds of muscle than I did. No, I don’t know why Duke ever let an idiot like me attend.)

Maybe I already knew I was going to be surrounded by North Carolina grads when I went into journalism. (I had no idea I’d marry one of those Carolina J-school grads.) Or maybe I was just growing up.

So today, I get a little puzzled when I look at my Facebook feed around a Duke-Carolina game and see all sorts of hostility. A certain veteran sportswriter, someone you’d think you could count on to see things from a dispassionate point of view, spews the same sort of nonsense I spewed as a sophomore.

Most of it is just teasing. And it’s fun. But I’ve lost patience with outright hatred in sports. I outgrew it, and I’d like to think I would’ve done so even if I hadn’t married “the enemy.”

For one thing, we Official Mainstream Media Sports Journalists learn quickly that the athletes rarely have the same passions as the fans. College hoops players all have connections from AAU and camps. They just picked different schools. Pro athletes have far less control over their team choices and far less reason to care, which is why I’ll give my obligatory Lifton shoutout and tell him to calm down about the Redskins and Giants.

In MMA (which some of you know as “UFC” or perhaps “killboxing”), the athletes have tremendous mutual respect. Go to a Fan Expo or a tryout for The Ultimate Fighter, and you’ll see a bunch of people acting like they’re at a class reunion in which most of the class got along great. It’s a mutually supportive group of people trading stories about their careers and their training. Then they get on mats and try to tear each other’s arms off.

It’s a beautiful thing. And perhaps that’s one reason why I’ve had misgivings about the rise of the latest breakout star in women’s MMA, Ronda Rousey. Or why I’m far less interested than the typical MMA fan in the blood-feud main events of the sport — Chael Sonnen-Anderson Silva, Jon Jones-Rashad Evans, etc.

My tastes are not popular tastes, of course. I’m the one who loves the Olympics and prefers a good biathlon party to a Cold War staredown. For me, the 1980 hockey memories and the fantastic film Miracle are more about the triumph of the underdog than some Commie-smacking propaganda moment.

But if I’m an old fuddy-duddy, I’m guessing I’m not alone. A few years ago, Maryland had a good run in basketball and tried to play itself up as Duke’s new rival. Didn’t work. The Terps’ fans had all of the nastiness and none of the creativity.

The Duke-North Carolina rivalry is special because there’s an underlying respect. They’re great schools. Great basketball programs. (That’s why the football rivalry isn’t that big a deal. There’s a “Victory Bell” that sits in the possession of the most recent winner, but we Dukies can’t really recall what it looks like. Give Cutcliffe another year or two, though — we may see it again in my lifetime.)

When one side isn’t worthy of respect, the sport suffers. Disrespect leads to the insanity of putting out bounties for injuring opponents in football. It leads to the tragedy of soccer hooliganism.

And it’s a lot less fun than a biathlon party.

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Since Linsanity has taken just about every basketball fan in existence hostage (including me – I wrote a piece about it for my own site), it’s only right that New Yorker, basketball fan and Popdose buddy Julian Velard wound up writing a song about it. “The Mighty Lin” is a bouncy tune that you can’t help but smile while listening to. If you dig that, make sure you also check out Julian’s latest album, Mr. Saturday Night, and keep an eye on his website for upcoming tour dates.

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Having served as an Official Mainstream Media Sports Journalist for a long time, I can tell you that we do indeed know that all this Super Bowl coverage is overkill.

Flickr user AngieSix; Creative Commons license

No, most people wouldn’t admit that. Certainly not when they’re deciding how many people will be going to Media Day or the several press conferences each coach will endure throughout the week leading up to the Biggest of Big Games.

But deep down — yes, we know. We know Media Day has become a circus in which people writing about the spectacle now outnumber the people creating it. When MTV VJ “Downtown” Julie Brown got credentialed, Media Day officially ceased to be a useful event for Official Mainstream Media Sports Journalists.

And we know the coach’s press conferences, though giving NFL Network a bit more programming, are relatively useless. You might get one or two injury updates as a result of 15 questions all worded slightly differently.

“So, Coach, has Gronkowski’s ankle improved?”

“Well, he seemed OK yesterday, but we’re taking it day-by-day.”

“So was he able to practice?”

“Yeah, he ran some routes.”

“So is he better?”

“We really don’t …”

“Do you have before-and-after X-rays from Monday’s practice and today’s?”

“Um …”

ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning addressed Gronkowski Overkill on their show yesterday morning, so you know it’s serious. But when you don’t have an injury to ask about, things get weird. You get the questions from the back-row guys with very specific feature assignments: “Coach, can you talk about how your linebackers play differently when the ball is on the left hash mark instead of the right?”

Fact is, not much changes between Wednesday and Thursday of Super Bowl week. Each team practices for the umpteenth time. Each team has known the opponent for 10 days. Each team has known for months that Madonna is performing at halftime, and contrary to what Lifton thinks, that’s not a bad thing.

(Seriously — the Rolling Stones and the Who can drag their dessicated bodies onstage to pretend they can still hit all these notes, but we’re all in a huff about a woman who dares to look good in her 50s? Oh, the horror!)

And if you’re in one of the 30 million or so households that watched last week’s games, chances are pretty good that you already know all you need to know about these teams.

What we don’t want to admit is that our target audience should be the extra tens of millions who don’t watch a lot of football during the season but will tune in Sunday. And they just need a little guide to remind them which QB dates models and which QB is the little brother of the really good QB they’ve heard about — Walter Payton or somebody?

That’s not as much fun for Official Mainstream Media Sports Journalists. We want to tell you how much this means for Eli Manning’s legacy. Or how many celebrities we spotted when some dude decided it would be fun to bring an Official Mainstream Media Sports Journalist to an Official Celebrity Super Bowl Party.

The bottom line is that it’s one game. It’s not the Olympics, where someone’s lifelong dream is realized every few minutes. It’s not the World Cup, where some team of nobodies is going to come from nowhere and surprise one of the world’s big powers in a group-stage game. It’s one game between two well-known teams and a whole lot of expensive ads, of which USA TODAY readers will select the stupidest and declare it the “winner.”

(No, I don’t know where USA TODAY gets the AdMeter people, either, but I’m guessing their TV preferences lean away from Arrested Development and toward Two and a Half Men. So maybe they get Nielsen-rating families?)

It’s a great occasion, absolutely. It might be the only thing that brings people together in this multicultural country with a lot of loud political fringe groups and poor public transportation. It would be a little hypocritical of me to enjoy the celebration of Australian culture in each year’s Australian football Grand Final and not enjoy the uniquely American Super Bowl. Some people might be a little queasy with all the military-industrial rhetoric, but we can always watch Puppy Bowl until game time if we prefer.

So please forgive Official Mainstream Media Sports Journalists if we’re fishing for angles leading up to the grand occasion. It may not lend itself to quite as many good stories as the NFL thinks. But you wouldn’t want to miss it.

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It was kind of like that episode of Freaks And Geeks

I had long since repressed those traumatic memories, but they were dislodged in the wake of the Denver Broncos’ victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Wild Card game. As with me in dodge ball, no one gave Tim Tebow a chance against Pittsburgh’s famously punishing defense, as drawn up by their legendary coordinator Dick LeBeau. But as it was pointed out all last week, the Steelers’ repeatedly stacked the box with both safeties, leaving no deep coverage. While this was largely effective in stopping Denver’s excellent running game, it also left Pittsburgh’s secondary vulnerable for Denver to turn play action mid-range passes into big plays, which is exactly what happened on the first, and last, play of overtime.

Contrast that with the run of improbable come-from-behind victories Tebow during the regular season. In those games, the Broncos’ opponents followed the traditional method of protecting a late lead, which adds cornerbacks to prevent the receivers from going out of bounds and stopping the clock, and places the safeties higher up the field than usual to prevent a big play. You can give up yardage as long as they don’t get behind you and the clock keeps moving. This made no sense because Tebow is unlikely to have consistent success throwing deep. But over-the-middle passes to a wide-open receiver with room to run? No problem. This is why Tebow could look horrible for three-and-a-half quarters and look like a world-beater in the game’s late stages.

This Saturday, Tebow Time came to a crashing halt, as it did in the regular season, against the New England Patriots, whose defense this year has been a shell of what it was during their rise to greatness a decade ago. But Bill Belichick is no idiot, and his defensive scheme played into Tebow’s greatest weakness. Fifteen of the Broncos’ plays in their 45-10 loss to the Patriots went for negative yardage. What looked like repeated breakdowns of Denver’s offensive line was more likely the result of Tebow’s inability to recognize the Pats’ disguises and adjust the protection at the line of scrimmage. The Patriots showed him respect, but no mercy, proving for the second time this season that God’s favorite quarterback is no match for Satan’s favorite coach.*

If nothing else, Tebow has been fascinating to watch because he’s challenged football’s conventional wisdom about running a college offense in the National Football League. Now that there’s a significant amount of game film on what he can and do, we’ll all be watching next season to see both how teams prepare for him and how he adjust. But with his first year as a starter in the books, there is no metric that suggests that Tebow is even an NFL-caliber backup quarterback, no less a starter. His fans may point to his 7-4 record as proof that he has the intangibles of a winner, but New York Jets fans were saying the same about Mark Sanchez a year ago, and now they want to run him out of town. There’s a fine line between “poise” and “big loser.”

The beauty (or pain, depending on who you root for) of the NFL is that its parity-driven structure means that the difference between winning and losing can sometimes be the result of fluke plays. If, say, a botched snap, a wrong call by the officials, and an “immaculate reception” goes your way in a season, an otherwise 8-8 team that misses the wild card turns into 11-5 and a possible first-round bye. For example, if, in the Broncos’ 13-10 overtime win against the Chicago Bears, Marion Barber doesn’t make two Marion Barber-like mistakes, the Broncos finish 7-9, miss the playoffs, and there is no talk of divine intervention helping Tebow. If Tebow is to succeed, it should be because he realizes he was very lucky and remains dedicated to quickly improving his craft. As a neutral who enjoys watching good football, I want him to do well, but that doesn’t mean I want him anywhere near my beloved New York Giants.

Best. Day. Ever.

Speaking of which, perhaps Tim Tebow would be well served by looking closely at Eli Manning’s career. Like Tebow, his critics have suggested he’s had a sense of undeserved sense of destiny throughout his career (due to his father and brother), and whose greatest career achievement to date was more the result of a strong defense and a bit of luck than his own ability.

But beneath his goofy exterior and a persona that rivals Derek Jeter for blandness is a competitive streak, intelligence, and self-confidence that is, well, Jeter-esque. Out of character, he made headlines in the pre-season for suggesting that he should be considered among the league’s elite. That those words came after a 2010 season where he led the league in interceptions and the New York Giants failed to make the playoffs for the second consecutive year made him the subject of ridicule. It didn’t help that the off-season that saw him lose two of his favorite targets (Steve Smith and Kevin Boss) and two linemen (Shaun O’Hara and Rich Seubert).

Manning responded by proving the doubters wrong, throwing for a Giants single-season record of 4,933 yards, with nine fewer interceptions. Like Tebow, he specialized in late-game heroics, setting an NFL single-season record 15 touchdown passes in the fourth quarter. Similarly, many of those wins were also the result of Manning’s ability to pick apart a prevent defense.

The difference is that, for much of the season, Manning carried the Giants on his back, his right arm keeping them in nearly every game as their usually powerful running game stalled and their weak secondary was picked apart by Manning’s opposite quarterback.  Manning also improved as the games went on because he’s become very adept at reading defenses at the line of scrimmage and making quick decisions. Tebow, on the other hand, too often relied on his defense to keep the games close so that he could pull out those clutch victories.

The truest measure of Manning’s improved leadership isn’t that he orchestrated those comebacks, but in how he has dealt with those off-season transactions. The rebuilt offensive line struggled early, but Manning became more adept at throwing the ball away where in previous years he would have taken a sack, or worse, made a dumb throw that resulted in an interception. At tight end, rookie Jake Ballard, who rarely ran routes at Ohio State, turned in Kevin Boss-like numbers, while Smith’s replacement, Victor Cruz, a virtual rookie (he was injured for most of his first year) who was undrafted, showed big-time playmaking skills as he salsa-danced his way to a Giants-record 1,536 yards with nine touchdowns.

It’s unfair to compare Tim Tebow to Eli Manning, just as it has always been wrong to compare Eli to his Hall Of Fame-bound brother. They’re all at different stages in their careers and in different systems. But like Eli Manning in his first few years, Tebow is young and driven to become the best he can be. Proper coaching, both on the field and in the film room, could correct his deficiencies (and it helps to have John Elway right there to guide him along and maybe fix some of the flaws in his delivery). A veteran backup who’s not Brady Quinn would also be good. But that’s of little consolation to Denver fans today as they head into a long off-season.

* For the record, I care precious little about Tebow’s religious or political beliefs as they relate to his ability. I made that cheap joke mainly because it also takes out Belichick. Many athletes in all sports openly display their faith and they’re not used as a lightning rod in the national shouting match about religion. That said, Tebow’s eye black and alignment with Focus On The Family make him fair game.  In the name of discourse, please keep all discussion of Tebow’s faith out of the comments for this post. 

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2006 Olympics: Are you ready for some shooting??!!

That’s biathlon. Fitness, guns and a rollicking party around the course. You’d think Americans would flock to this sport. Being popular in Europe is no longer a detriment, not with Fox and ESPN competing to broadcast every meaningful kick of a soccer ball on the continent.

But even during the Olympics, when the spotlight shines on figure skating and curling draws its cult following, biathlon is virtually invisible. All we know about the U.S. fan base is that Chicago Bulls legend Scottie Pippen showed up to check out some World Cup races last year. (The NBA’s answer to Napoleon, David Stern, may disagree, but the typical German reaction to that video would be “Who’s the guy in the middle?”)

A couple of things work against the U.S. biathlon movement. Most people tend not to live near the relative hotbeds of biathlon in this country. The World Cup races Pippen saw took place in Fort Kent, Maine, a location Smithereens fans would call miles from nowhere.

It’s also a sport that tests viewers’ attention spans. Broadcasters can hop between four-minute skating routines and two-minute ski runs with ease. Biathlon races require a bit of context to set up those dramatic moments when exhausted skiers raise their guns on the shooting range with all the pressure of last-second free throws.

(No, they don’t shoot at each other despite this great ad:)

And Americans also tend not to win biathlon races. The U.S. team is getting better — a month before the Vancouver Olympics, Tim Burke and German Andrea Henkel, the woman on the right in the Pippen video, were on the verge of ruling the biathlon world as boyfriend and girlfriend. But I can offer a first-hand perspective on how things went in the Games, having interviewed a lot of disappointed Americans on a snowbank in Whistler.

Still, Lowell Bailey is a solid ninth in the current World Cup standings, and several women have had decent results this season. And these things take time. In Whistler, I saw the USA take its first medals in Nordic combined. Maybe I’ll be standing in Sochi in 2014 with icicles forming on my hood (I never said it was easy to cover) to see Burke or Bailey break through in biathlon.

But the biggest issue for U.S. biathlon interest isn’t the fans. It’s the broadcasters. During the Olympics, American broadcasters don’t fallen in love with Germany’s Magdalena Neuner (she’s on the left in the Pippen video and the inspiration for this moderately creepy fan video) the way they fell for Nadia Comeneci in 1976. The rest of the quadrennium, Universal Sports and other U.S. networks have you covered if you want to see Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller hit the Alpine slopes, but watching biathlon in the USA means one of two things — you’ve found a feed of Eurosport’s excellent coverage that you’re not supposed to be watching, or you’re at biathlonworld.com watching with no commentary. That’s an endeavor for hard-core nerds like me.

When fans get a chance to see biathlon, they respond. Close races get the usually cynical folks in Olympic media centers to stop and pay attention, particularly when they get to the shooting range and the race hangs on every bullet.

In person? It’s a party. Read about it or check out some video:

It’s all the color and pageantry of European soccer without the uneasy feeling that the people in the other stand might want you dead. If your kids get bored, there’s plenty of snow in which to frolic.

Realistically, it’ll take a U.S. success story to create a biathlon boom in this country. Or maybe Tim Burke can follow Apolo Ohno onto Dancing With The Stars.

But we Popdosians aren’t subject to the whims of popular taste. Maybe we can’t start an earth-shaking movement — “Mellowmas” has not yet entered the Oxford dictionary, as far as I know — but we can tune in and enjoy.

If you want get a sense of what you’ll see on Biathlon World without the commentary, watch highlights from this race in December:

The graphics make it easy to follow. To give some basics:

0:00 This is a pursuit race, which means skiers start in the same order in which they finished the sprint, which is usually a day or two earlier in a typical World Cup weekend. If you were 30 seconds behind the leader in the sprint, you’ll start 30 seconds behind the same guy in the pursuit. Notice Lowell Bailey starting fifth — he had a fantastic sprint.

0:22 The first shooting stage is prone (lying down). Sweden’s Carl Johan Bergman misses one, which means he has to ski one lap around a penalty loop. (That takes about 22-30 seconds.) Bailey knocks down all five targets but takes a while. Shooting in biathlon is sometimes a risk/reward game — you can try to mow through the targets quickly, but that increases the odds that you’ll miss and incur a penalty. Watch Norwegian great Ole Einar Bjorndaelen, who sometimes looks like he has a machine gun strapped to his back.

1:34 The leaders all shoot cleanly on the second shooting stage, also prone.

2:35 The first of two standing shoots, and again, most leaders shoot cleanly. The mild wind and the pressure weren’t affecting the leaders here.

3:30 It all comes down to the fourth and final time at the range. France’s Martin Fourcade and Bergman, who has skied quickly to make up the ground he lost on that early penalty loop, go mano-a-mano. Bergman misses twice. Fourcade obviously notices, giving a celebratory gesture as he knocks down his fifth target and skis away to a comfortable win.

Final results: Fourcade wins by 25.5 seconds. No idea why the Czech Republic’s Jaroslav Soukup gives up at the end and settles for third. Burke misses twice in the third stage and once in the fourth, finishing ninth. Bailey finally fades in the last shooting stop with three misses, finishing 13th. (Bjorndalen, meanwhile, sprayed shots all over Sweden by the looks of things, missing four out of five in the last shoot.)

The women’s races draw about as much interest as the men’s. Neuner and the hotshot German women are powerhouses — perhaps they could use an ad campaign in the USA like the Maria Sharapova ad featuring a Popdose staffer at the 0:08 mark. The Ian Anderson lookalike and actalike who spoke with me for my “biathlon party” story told me emphatically he didn’t care who was competing. Or winning. He might still be partying somewhere in Whistler Olympic Park.

Fun stuff to watch. Now if only we could convince U.S. networks to let Eurosport unblock its web streams in this country …

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WAS @ PHI -8.5: This spread seems out of control to me for a divisional matchup between two teams who aren’t going anywhere.  The Eagles did a nice job of keeping themselves in the hunt with victories in their last three games, but the jig is finally up.  I don’t think they’ll bother to bring their A game to this one, which will give the Redskins a good chance to remain competitive.

SNF @ STL +10.5: St. Louis has a pretty good reason to put forth zero effort in this game (draft standing) while San Francisco has a very reason to put forth 100% effort (home-field advantages in the playoffs). So it seems like this should be a slam dunk victory for the 49ers.  But it seems too much like easy money, and with Vegas involved, there is never any such thing.

CHI @ MIN -1.5: Yet another game where both teams have little motivation to exert themselves.  I like Chicago here, because they’ve got a shot at getting back to .500, so they’ll put forth a little more effort than the hopeless Vikings.

DET @ GNB +3: I think this game will be treated much like a preseason contest between both teams, with each offense getting pulled from the field as soon as they’re looking sharp.  But Green Bay’s got a lot more depth than the Lions so I expect their second unit to have a good bit more success at putting up points.

CAR @ NOS -8: This game is impossible to pick because it all depends on what’s happening in the San Francisco game.  If the 49ers jump out to an early lead, the Saints will pack things in.  Otherwise, Brees will run roughshod over Carolina’s pathetic defense.  Based on my above pick of the Rams to keep things close, I think New Orleans will have good enough reason to leave their starters in an put up a large number of points in this one.

TEN @ HOU +2.5: Houston’s locked in as the #3 seed, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to want a win here.  They limped their way into the playoffs, and they’re offense needs plenty of fine-tuning, unlike many of the other playoff-bound teams.  They’re better than Tennessee, and they’ll show it here.

IND @ JAC -3.5: Another game with major draft implications, but I don’t think this one holds any surprises.  The Colts will lay down for the Jaguars and make sure that Andrew Luck is available to them come draft day.

NYJ @ MIA -3: The Jets aren’t out of things yet, but the Dolphins would love to play spoiler here and dash their playoff hopes.  This one seems like it could be very tight – even going to overtime – so getting the points is probably the safe move here.

BUF @ NEP -10: The Patriots can secure home-field advantage throughout the playoffs with a win here, and they’ll deliver.  Their offense should score about twice as many points as the Bills here, so look for a final score of about 45-28 or thereabouts.

TAM @ ATL -11.5: Tampa just wants their season to be over.  They won’t even bother showing up in this game.  Atlanta should cover easily.

BAL @ CIN +2: Baltimore is going to bring their A game, while Cincinnati is simply not in the same class.  A spread of a touchdown or more might be tempting, but this number of points simply isn’t worth it in a game that Baltimore will be trying very hard to win.

SND @ OAK -3: San Diego is out of the playoff hunt, and the Raiders will need some help from Denver, but that doesn’t mean that this won’t be a hard-fought game.  These teams HATE each other and there’s nothing the Chargers would like more than to be responsible for ending the Raiders’ season.  The Raiders’ defense has been doing their absolute best to give away games in the fourth quarter, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see Rivers and company engineer a late drive to steal a victory here.

KAN @ DEN -3: I think that the wheels have come off for the Broncos.  Kansas City will have the same attitude as San Diego – there’s no way they’ll like down for the Broncos here, and I think they might actually pull off the upset here.

SEA @ ARI -3: I tossed a coin here, and it came up Seattle.  So, take the points, I guess.

DAL @ NYG -3: I can’t help but believe that the Cowboys will find a way to choke this one away.  It’s in their DNA.

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Here’s the computer’s picks for Week 16, for what it’s worth.

HOUSTON TEXANS at INDIANAPOLIS COLTS Computer’s Pick: Indianapolis (+6) Bet Amount: $1.80 (Consensus)

COMMENTS: Teams that break epic losing streaks often get inspired and win two in a row.  I think that will happen here.  Houston is seriously running out of gas and won’t be able to match the Colts’ intensity.

OAKLAND RAIDERS at KANSAS CITY CHIEFS Computer’s Pick: Kansas City (-2.5) Bet Amount: $17.82 (Conflict)

COMMENTS: The Raiders are engaged in a pretty epic late-season collapse, and will get their asses handed to them by a Kansas City team that is undoubtedly riding high after taking down undefeated Green Bay last week.

DENVER BRONCOS at BUFFALO BILLS Computer’s Pick: Buffalo (+3) Bet Amount: $5.23 (Consensus)

COMMENTS: I think the magic is over for Denver.  I think Buffalo will eke out a win as a home dog.

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS at TENNESSEE TITANS Computer’s Pick: Jacksonville (+7) Bet Amount: $6.14 (Conflict)

COMMENTS: Both these teams won’t bother to show up for this game, so I think Jacksonville will be able to lock down the win against the spread after the game ends with a final score of 6-3.  I don’t really know or care who is going to actually win.

ARIZONA CARDINALS at CINCINNATI BENGALS Computer’s Pick: Arizona (+4) Bet Amount: $0.35 (Gamblor only)

COMMENTS: The Cardinals are looking pretty hot, but this is a tough game for them to play.  I think Cincinnati will be able to win at home by more than a single scores, so that’s who I’d take here.

MIAMI DOLPHINS at NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS Computer’s Pick: Miami (+10) Bet Amount: $83.16 (Consensus)

COMMENTS: As it did at the beginning of the year, the computer is stupidly loading up on Miami against the Patriots.  Since the computer’s big bets have been reliably awful this year, I’d go the other way and ride the Patriots.

CLEVELAND BROWNS at BALTIMORE RAVENS Computer’s Pick: Cleveland (+13) Bet Amount: $5.84 (Conflict)

COMMENTS: Can Baltimore actually cover this spread?  Yes.  Yes.  A hundred times yes.  Cleveland is going to get murdered in this game.

NEW YORK GIANTS at NEW YORK JETS Computer’s Pick: New York Giants (+3) Bet Amount: $6.57 (Gamblor only)

COMMENTS: I don’t see a clear winner here.  I like that the Giants are essentially getting a free home game here, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they make the most of it against the slumping Jets.

MINNESOTA VIKINGS at WASHINGTON REDSKINS Computer’s Pick: Washington (-6.5) Bet Amount: $20.99 (Consensus)

COMMENTS: I can’t conceive of the Redskins beating anybody by more than a field goal, so I like the Vikings here, despite their issues.

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS at CAROLINA PANTHERS Computer’s Pick: Tampa Bay (+7.5) Bet Amount: $6.36 (Gamblor only)

COMMENTS: Tampa Bay is completely mailing it in.  They won’t bother putting up much of a fight against a Carolina team that is playing for pride and actually has the ability to light up the scoreboard at times.

SAINT LOUIS RAMS at PITTSBURGH STEELERS Computer’s Pick: Pittsburgh (-16) Bet Amount: $102.04 (Consensus)

COMMENTS: I’m not sure if this spread will hold (it’s predicated on the idea that Roethlisberger will play) but even if he does, it’s way too much.  I’ll stick with my insistence that Pittsburgh simply cannot be trusted to cover large spreads, regardless of who they’re playing against.

SAN DIEGO CHARGERS at DETROIT LIONS Computer’s Pick: San Diego (+2.5) Bet Amount: $58.81 (Consensus)

COMMENTS: San Diego is muy caliente, and they’re going to be pushing really hard to claim the AFC West.  I like them a lot here.

SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS at SEATTLE SEAHAWKS Computer’s Pick: Seattle (+2) Bet Amount: $6.52 (Consensus)

COMMENTS: I don’t see why this spread isn’t larger.  Seattle’s greatest strength (Marshawn Lynch) is going to be completely neutralized by San Francisco’s greatest strength (their run defense).  And all other factors point to San Francisco winning easily.  Sounds fishy to me.  I’ll be a contrarian here and take the Seahawks.

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES at DALLAS COWBOYS Computer’s Pick: Philadelphia (+1.5) Bet Amount: $7.54 (Son of Gamblor only)

COMMENTS: This game should mean a lot to both teams, but it’s pretty much the heart of choking season for the Cowboys, so I expect them to find some way to throw this game away.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Eagles actually blow them out.

CHICAGO BEARS at GREEN BAY PACKERS Computer’s Pick: Chicago (+13) Bet Amount: $5.58 (Gamblor only)

COMMENTS: Teams that have long winning streaks snapped also often lose two games in a row, and with the pressure off I think Green Bay will probably phone this one in – particularly if San Francisco loses and the Packers are assured home field advantage throughout the playoffs.  I think we might see a surprise victory for the Bears here, and at the very least a cover.

ATLANTA FALCONS at NEW ORLEANS SAINTS Computer’s Pick: Atlanta (+7) Bet Amount: $1.29 (Conflict)

COMMENTS: Everyone will be hoping for a shootout to decide their fantasy football championships, and I think these teams will deliver.  Both are looking sharp and hungry for the postseason, and while it’s very unlikely that Atlanta can catch New Orleans for the division, both teams will be eager to get a win here.  It’s fully possible that the game goes down to the wire, or at least the spread portion of the game, but I still like Atlanta getting the seven points.

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Wait, Popdose? The place in which they celebrate the holidays by digging up treacly Christmas songs and talking about each other’s mamas?

Yes, Popdose. The site written by people who have lives. The site read by people who don’t spend every Saturday night watching sports. The site run by people like Jeff and Jason who are far cooler than the people a typical sports writer would get to meet in real life.

And even though all of these people involved — even Lifton — are far cooler than I am, they aren’t afraid to discuss unfashionable things. I’ve spent the bulk of my sports writing career on soccer, MMA and Olympic sports, so being unfashionable suits me. While Jeff, Jason and company lament the state of an industry (music) in which “Kidz Rap” is well-financed while perfectly good bands are scraping to find money for guitar strings, I’m lamenting the state of an industry (sports/sports media) in which pundits shout at each other for hours over Tim Tebow while the inspirational people who captivate millions every four years have to do everything short of a bake sale just for the right to pursue their sports in poverty.

After all, no one said life was fair. Art imitates life. And sports imitate art. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, sports aren’t fair, either.

Take the BCS. (Please, as Micky Dolenz might say in imitating Henny Youngman.) Every year, the college football championship formula gets its share of criticism, both just and unjust. The NCAA has never adequately explained why every other division can participate in a playoff system while the Football Bowl Subdivision (we know it as Division I-A) student-athletes are better served in a bowl system that pads a lot of wallets of people far away from college campuses. On the other hand, the sports punditocracy conveniently forgets the incoherence of the pre-BCS system, in which national champions were crowned by the whims of sports writers and coaches.

And the sports punditocracy — especially the “jockocracy,” in Howard Cosell’s words — too often raises the wrong arguments about the BCS. College linebackers-turned-TV-analysts, acting like they’re auditioning for the role of Bully #4 in an upcoming episode of One Tree Hill, complained that a bunch of computer nerds who never played the game were deciding the national champion instead of a bunch of football coaches being informed by their sports info staff on Sunday mornings that Powerhouse State actually lost late the previous evening.

So the formula was tweaked, giving the “humans” (poll voters who may or may not be taking every game into account) final say over the “computers” (automated rankings designed to take out the biases and, unlike the typical college football coach, account for every single result).

That’s why this year, Oklahoma State failed to qualify for the BCS title game despite finishing second in the computer rankings, suffering its only loss a day after a plane crash killed a couple of beloved campus leaders, and crushing everyone else in its path.

One would think Oklahoma State would have the pathos vote as well as the computer vote. Or that the human voters would decide one LSU-Alabama game was enough this year, and maybe another team deserved a shot at the mightly Louisiana school. But those who “know football” voted for Alabama because, gosh darn it, they just think Alabama’s a better team. Just like figure skating judges who think the Russians are better than the Canadians. Or boxing judges who didn’t see that American’s punch that bounced the Uzbekistan fighter off the ropes. Or dog show judges who keep picking the mop-haired poodles over the kick-ass Australian shepherds.

College football has made progress since 1990, when an 11-1-1 Colorado team that needed a questionable call to beat Notre Dame and the “fifth down” absurdity to beat Missouri inexplicably won one of the recognized polls ahead of 11-0-1 Georgia Tech. But it still combines beauty-pageant judging with big-money politics (ask Boise State). Not a recipe for fairness.

Most other sports pick a champion objectively. But are they fair?

College basketball fans think so. A 68-team tournament gives everyone a reasonable shot at the title, right. Sure, but it also means a 34-1 team that destroys every team in its path until losing at the wrong time might watch someone else win the national title. That happened my senior year at Duke, and while my classmates and I have unforgettable memories, I’m under no illusion that Duke was the best team in college basketball that year. The next year, Duke DID have the best team in college basketball, but it only made the Final Four after a referee was lenient on Christian Laettner and let him continue one of the best shooting performances ever in a college game.

Even with playoff systems that take an eternity, as in the NBA and NHL, the best teams over 82-game regular seasons often end up bounced out. Baseball now makes a mockery of its 162-game regular season with expanded playoffs in which a hot pitcher can undo six months of a great team’s work.

Tennis isn’t fair, with players forced to wear their bodies out through never-ending tournaments to climb the rankings. Boxing and mixed martial arts aren’t fair, with good fighters losing title shots if they’re perceived as dull.

We can rant and rave about all of this injustice. Some people make a good living doing just that on radio and TV.

Or we can just remember this: These are games. Outcomes aren’t predictable.

To get into some mediocre philosophy major’s hair-splitting: We can demand that sports should be just. The BCS, in which teams can do everything they’re supposed to do and still not get a shot at a championship, isn’t just. College basketball probably is — teams know their March games will matter more than their January games.

But fair? That would demand referees with superhuman infallibility. Tournament selection committees that can take raw data and weigh in any extenuating circumstances. Soccer fields with immaculate grass and no wind. Golf courses with no divots.

As the Scots said about golf: “It ain’t supposed to be fair, laddy.”

And so the sports world, like art, imitates life. That gives us plenty to talk about.

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