Super Bowl XLIII

A depressed country and state of economy is in deep recession, what we need now to a cheer-up, a gathering, a party, possibly a common event, the answer is tomorrow’s Super bowl XLIII (43) at Tampa. One team (Arizona Cardinals) playing for super bowl never won a super bowl and other one (Pittsburg Steelers) has rich super bowl history, they won 6 super bowls already. I personally want Cardinals to win the super bowl, which may bring some positive feeling, uplift to much needed country. But technically i think Steelers has edge over Cardinals, because of too much pressure of Cards to win this game and Steelers physical game,running game and defense are much better than Cards. The Cards defense has to find some ways to stop Big Ben and Steeler’s running game. Some good news for Cards is Big Ben and Ward both are suffering from minor injuries but don’t know how much that going to affect their games.

Cards has legendary Kurt Warner as QB and dynamic wide receivers Boldin and Fitzgerald but Boldin also got injury and he has some contract issue going on with Cards management. But this Card’s season was always filled with the 3 starts Kurt-Boldin-Flitz’s magic and Kurt Warner is at the top of his career. Definitely this 3 stars game going to be a talk for next week’s analysis within sports fans and gurus. With some help from Cards defense and some sloppiness from Steeler’s defense would make Cards Super Bowl champion.

This year’s super bowl preparation is full swing as usual, as i said this is what we need now to cheer up.  My predication is Cards winning at 21-17. I reject EA’s John Madden’s stimulation results completely. Enjoy the game!!!

Sources:

http://sports.espn.go.com/videogames/simulation/nfl?id=3861669

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XLIII

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Steelers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Cardinals

 

Unbeatable Titans

8 weeks completed since this football season started, as usual lot of interesting games and surprises. Titans came out as unbeatable team 7-0 so far, yesterday they beat Colts.  This team has all chances to win super bowl, they are fundamentally strong. It was great rejoinder to last 5 years continues domination of Colts.  Way to go Titans. But my favorite team for this season so far is Texans, what an offensive play by them. But they lost so many matches early, but last 3 games they are really good.

Bears came back really good after the lost against Falcons.  Lions, Raiders, 49ers, and Rams are really wasting their fan’s money and time. Lions are playing like cats nowadays, may be bad economy really hurting them very bad. For a change, Dolphins started winning some games. 49ers fired their coach and again they promised to build a good team, the same they announced when they hired Nolan 4 years ago.

Again NFL players started using steroid like substance, this time it was some weight loss pills to mask steroids. Saints players 2 of them are tested positive and 10-15 more players from other teams also tested positive. This is really bad for NFL and fans.  

Source:

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/afcsouth/0-5-176/New-Titans-winning-with-a-cushion.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3654528

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8705732/Report:-NFL-hit-by-'rash-of-positive'-drug-tests

 

NFL 4th Week Surprises and Unexpected market crash

Week 4 was interesting and Bears won at close contest against Eagles. Orton was good at first half and argus-eyed Bear’s defense played extremely good to stop Eagles for touchdown at 4^th quarter. I really liked McNabb’s throw to Jackson for first Eagles touch down, it was classic throw from McNabb. It was the ball descended smoothly towards Jackson’s hand, in between two Bears, very good to watch. It would have been a different outcome if Westbrook played. But anyways it was a great come back for Bears after a heartbroken lost against Bucs.

Favre thrown 6 touch down passes and it was his career high, hard to believe that this dude didn’t thrown 6 touch down passed still yesterday, having said that he played for 17 years. But that makes sense also, because Packers always loves running game. This is what Jerricho Cotchery told to reporters after the game.

“I asked him if he had tied a career high and he said, ‘I’ve never thrown six,’ said Jerricho Cotchery, who had two TD catches. That was like the end of the conversation because I’m scratching my head, like, ‘Really? He’s never thrown six touchdown passes before?’ He played great today.”

Jets scored 56 against Cardinals, and Cardinals also scored 35, the game was full of touch downs and passing games. Total touchdowns 13 and I had both Coles and Fitzgerald in my starting fantasy football lineup, score was really a firecracker.

Bills started this season with 4-0 for first time in 16 years. Same with Cardinals, but they are now 2-2. 49ers also started very good at this time. Raider’s coach’s fate is changing day by day, as per latest news Al Davis started discussing about replacement. Rams fired their head coach because of bad season start. Packers QB Rodgers was injured but okay for next week. New England Patriots now opens to accept defeats, so this is the chance to beat Patriots badly like Dolphins did it 2 weeks ago.

As usual Cowboy’s T.O breaks after first loss, and become crazy like he did it with McNabb and Garcia. He started complaining about his QB Tony Romo. He badly needs the ball all the time, but Romo throwing balls to others, in his words competitors. Cowboys were obsessed with last year Patriot’s 16-0 record so they lost their cool after yesterday’s losing against Redskins.

Market crashed very badly, after unexpected failure of bail out plan at US Congress. Now it is really a big challenge for US economy to rebound which it would obviously but timing is really question mark. My opinion is this would be prolong, painful recession. This is good time for investment also, but it is equal to catching a falling knife, be careful and catch it correctly or it will hurt your fingers badly (Thanks to my friend in California who quoted me this pearl of wisdom when we experienced 2000-2001 recession). Lawmakers afraid that this unpopular bail out plan might hurt their re-election, thats why they voted against it.

Source:

http://sports.yahoo.com

http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/nfl/index

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/news/economy/bailout/index.htm?cnn=yes

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95180529

Republican National Convention and NFL Season

Republican national convention had soggy start because of Hurricane Gustav. I felt until Sarah Palin’s electrify speech, this convention was soporific. Sarah Palin made an excellent speech and she is definitely a great leader. Her speech was packed with mordant, and yesterday McCain’s speech was comprehensive. But I don’t agree with Sarah Palin’s pitch as community organizer. She was selected for mayor post so community service is a job for her, where Obama choose to volunteer community organizer at Chicago South side. But experience wise both are count. I think now experience is out of scope.

Here best speaker award goes to Sarah Palin’s speech. It was great. The speech was specifically written to Sarah Palin, who is natural deipnosophist. But I think McCain campaign just experiment with this whole new pattern. Instead of centralizing theme, they changed the theme 180 degree within a day. McCain was talking like an independent and Sarah was talking like a pure Republican, in the middle we got confused. I don’t know whether the experiment failed or succeed. Any way, we had good conventions and this whole president selecting process was getting more interesting.

Based on my observation, Democratic party projecting themselves as representative of liberal, middle and poor people. Republican projecting as conservative, business and rich people. It is always good to have less government, less tax and more global economy. Democratic wants to provide more support to bottom level people, government sponsored health care, more tax, protective and less global economy. At same time, Republicans are against to gun control, pollution control and immigration reforms. Those are also really important to tackle now. But personally McCain did good things for immigration and pollution control. So it is really tough for American voters to select their next president at this election.

Yesterday was kick-off night for NFL season. The game was okay but not that exciting. Looking forward to watch weekend games. Have a great weekend.

Sports Channel : Bear's Offensive

Today as usual I met a friend of mine at train, he was just outburst about my yesterday's blog. There i mentioned that "who is smart? paying $1100 rent Vs $2200 mortgage". Because he is owning a house and exactly paying $2200 for mortgage!!!...Oops my bad, i just expressed my opinion and exactly matched his situation. I decided to strike the line. I started very positive about home ownership. In fact, i also started looking to buy a house at Naperville neighbourhood. It doesn't matter how much we are paying..all matters is "you are a proud owner of a home"...my friend.

Ok. Tomorrow is Bear's first preseason match. Now million dollar question is who is going to be the starting Quarterback. Bears has long history of changing quarterback within every 2-3 games. Bear changed 49 times their starting quarterback since 1992. As per latest news, Orton going to be starting quarterback for tomorrow's match against Kansas City and Grossman will be for Seattle match on Aug 19th. Ok. Now next question is, who will be for season opener. Smith said "don't read too much about quarterback selection now, just wait and see". My opinion is, both Orton and Grossman are bad starter for Bear's offensive so it doesn't matter who is starting, as long as defence playing good, may be Bear's can repeat same 7-9 record as last year.

Perfection denied by Confident Silent Killers.

WOW...what a game? I thought Peyton Manning is in field last 3 mins. of 4th quarter in place of Eli. I would say Eli became Eli+Peyton in 4th Q. Most happiest person from this game is parents of Eli because their sons give them “double whammy”. Everybody must be in edge of their seat in 4th Q. The failure of Pats is they are very protective to keep ball and didn’t take any risks like they did it in 4Q. May be they thought 7-3 is enough to win this game. They didn’t know that scoring more in first 2 Q will always helps final out come. Plax exactly did what he said in couple of weeks ago. Pats underestimate him and always single covered him. Finally they paid the price.
Cool , great season and great games and next season is not far away.

Patriots to Perfection - 21 Hours away.

All are set and final count down started for Patriots towards Perfection. Today I went to Costco for shopping and fans were line up to buy big plasma/LCD TVs to Beer and Superbowl cake. It is funny that wife's are looking at husband face, and husband are starring at TV set one by one.

Cricket: India not looking good at this time. Sachin out was heart breaking and unlucky one. Lets hope rain will save India.

Super Bowl - Heating up.

Much needed for chilly and snowy Chicago, already much trash talk from both sides from unexpected personalities. As per an unscientific survey, 51% people thinks that Pats going to win and 45% people thinks Giants. 4% people thinks game going to be tie(just kidding).

The talk of street is Tom Brady has faked about his foot sprain, just to confuse Giants camp. I don’t buy it since quality guy like Tom doesn’t require to fake or confuse somebody to win his game. He has solid QB abilities, good support from team so nothing he can achieve by faking, in fact if he is faking that would degrade his team’s confidence and they can’t practice well for Super Bowl.

First trash talk came from Mr. Plax(unexpected from him) that Pats going to lose by 23-17 score,which i strongly disagree. From Pats side it was Brady (again unexpected) that he just laughed and repeated the question about Plax’s prediction. So some fans thinks that Tom Brady is becoming arrogant. But that is also not true since he is already in 5th super bowl competition and he can jump earth to sky if he wants to, but he is not doing it and always down to earth. Plax’s predication is strong message to Pats because he is confidence with Giants D. Watch out Brady, your man Moss will be double covered all the time.

This time we have to thank Randy Moss for keeping quite all time since this season started. He was famous for lot of trash talking when he is with other teams. I think that he is true believer of Tom Brady and want to stay at Pats organization for long time.

So it's Yankees Nation Vs Sox Nation.

Baseball rivalry continues in Football also. Good that Giants made to final, I think that Giants going to help Pat's perfect season 19-0 at Arizona. The immediate beneficiary for this year superbowl is Fox TV since NYC team in final, TV viewership would go up. NY Giants deserve this win, because they have good players like Eli Manning, Brandon Jacobs and Plaxico Burress. They won most of their matches at road. Looking forward to see great super bowl match.

18-0 done and 19-0 is not too far.

Congrats Patriots again you have proved that you are the team of this decade. Great team play by patriots and are marching towards Arizona for final countdown. Today's match is clearly a team work ,no spectacular catches by Moss and throws by Brady. Defence played very good and converted all touchdown chances to field goals, which made lot of difference in today's match. I think game momentum changed when Brady faked a running game and gave ball to Moss for 12 yards run and again next game Kevin Faulk catched the ball and run for 10 yards. This two games changed Patriots chance in this match. Kevin Faulk is a great team player for Patriots, he can do whatever his coach asked him to do. He can be a running back, wide receiver, kick return, full back or sitting in sideline to encourage team. He is the gem for Patriots team. So without Moss-Brady factor, Patriots can win 2 games and now Patriots are in team play mode and easily they can beat Giants / Packers in superbowl.

Go Pats Go.

Indian Tigers eats Australian Kangaroos

So finally India won a test match at Australia after a long time. I was inspired by this title(Indian Tigers eats Australian Kangaroos) when India lost first test match, a leading Indian newspaper reported that " Australian Kangaroos eats Indian Tigers", good that now reverse happened. This team now is well blended and deserve for this win. Living cricket genius Sachin, Versatile Ganguly(sometimes aggressive and sometimes defensive depends on situation), wall like solid and tough Dravid, hard hitters Dhoni and Shawag, young and dynamic players Laxman, Harbhajan, Sharma, Pathan and Jaffer, last but not least Kumble (soon he is going to be highest wicket taker in world). So many more victories going to come for team India.

Ok..Back to Football, divisional finals are tomorrow and 4 strong teams and 2 winners. I don't know how Giants and Packers game going to be in this wild winter blast. Today we had a toughest day of this season in Chicago, today wind chill dips all the way south to -19F and really it was not pleasant even to stay at home. I don't know how NFL teams preparing players to play at this extreme cold.Clearly tomorrow games going to be interesting and all are looking forward to see Patriots Vs Packers Super bowl unless Giants really playing good in this extreme cold.

Playoffs - Divisional weekend.

Again weekend approaching with divisional playoff matches, this time all matches will be tough and each team have to fight hard to emerge as winner. My heart goes with Giants and Chargers. I think that Giants has more chance to win Chargers since Tony Romo had a bad December and Giants pass play would give Cowboys a little headache. Jacs match at Pats is really going to be cool game. Jacs defence is too good and definitely going to give some reality check to Brady and Randy. But anyway Pats going to win with hefty lead. Good games are ahead with great expectations.

Emotional Intelligence.

When I was watching today's football match between Steelers and Jacs, I noticed when steelers were 14 point deficient, the steeler's coach Mike Tomlin showed lot of emotions in side line and made his team to overcome all deficient and finally his team was leading by 1 point. But finally steelers lost the game though. But the fact is emotional intelligence playing a important role in sports, workplace and where ever we are working as team to accomplish a task. I did some research on EQ and found lot of good information's.

The main components of EQ are

Using Emotions

Understanding Emotions

Managing Emotions.

David Golman, author of Emotional Intelligence, defined “EQ” as an ability to understand one’s own feelings and to express empathy for the feelings of others. His studies showed that EQ is four times more likely than IQ to indicate your level of success. According to Golman, the communication skills responsible for EQ are:

1. Empathy (One must be careful not to confuse empathy with either sympathy,pity,emotional contagion,telepathy
   
2. Graciousness.
   
3. The ability to read others.
   

There is a possibility that high EQ person can be labeled as Sentimental(because of Empathy), Sensitive(because of emotionally helping others) or pushover(because of Graciousness). But the truth is EQ person are highly skilled and know how to out perform in team environments.

There is now strong business case for EQ and most of the Fortune 500 companies try to asses their employee's EQ level. Based on articles,unlike IQ, EQ can be improved and developed.

Here is link for more reading

EI Consortium

Playoffs - Wildcard weekend.

So finally playoff weekend around the corner. Tomorrow we have 2 good matches Redskins at Seahawks and Jags at Steelers. I'm excited to watch Redskins game because they are under-rated team in this season and they lost one of their team mate in the tragic event. I think Cliton Portis 's running game going to make difference in this game, because Seattle tomorrow going to be all wet thanks to west coast storm. Cliton Portis played really good game in his last 4-5 matches (i think avg. 86 yards per game) which makes the difference for Redskins offensive play. If you note Seattle's defense play was not that good as they were in first half of reg. season. Any way good luck to all teams to try to make second round. I hope everybody will enjoy this weekend.

Patriots : Festival of Football.

Tomorrow it is going to be fireworks and history going to write again, after Patriots beats Giants at New York. Yes, It is almost "walking in park" for unbeaten Patriots to beat Giants team. So I'm looking forward to celebrate victory rather than watching game. This game is too hyped so we are going to watch this match in 3 channels. Tomorrow whatever channel we change during peak time going to see Tom Brady and Randy Moss faces in screen. Tom need 2 more touchdown to set record and Moss needs one more catch to set another record. We are going to see 3 records tomorrow. I believe this is first time in any team sports to break this many records. Way to go Patriots!!!

American Foot Ball a training of Life

When I had arrived USA as first generations emigrate from India in the year 2000, I have no idea what American football was. I had seen this sports this in ESPN Indian channel couple of times and thought it is an intense, bloody game like euro rugby. But after started working in Silicon Valley, I was amazed by watching people talking about these sports in office every Monday morning and foot ball flying above my head in cubicle. I noticed that some of my team mates were upbeat from Sep first week to Feb 1st week until super bowl. This all compel me to watch this sports and my first complete football match was 2002 super bowl between Patriots Vs Rams. After Patriots won the match, I decided to watch all Patriots match and my favorite hero from that match is Adam Vinatieri because of his last minute kicking goal. Since then I continue watching football, and I learned following lessons from it which is very helpful for real life.

1. You should take risks on early part of your life. Most of the play selection in 1st and 2nd Quarters is pass play (risk selection prone to interceptions). If you score more in first half you would be better off in second half.
2. Especially last half of your life doesn’t take risks. Most of the play selection in 3rd and 4th Quarters is running play very safe and good game to pass time.
3. Always look for backup plan (Plan B) for every situations/decisions. This is very true after seeing each team’s depth chart.
4. Thrust others and give them plenty of chance to overcome there obstacles. QB throwing ball to wide receivers, even though they drop ball first couple of times. After they established correct chemistry, QB can throw ball in air, believing that his thrust worthy wide receiver will catch it at any cost.

More to come……