Above & Beyond

Last decade’s most successful NFL organization is without a doubt New England Patriots (Pats). Even though their Super Star is Tom Brady, but Gem of New England Patriots team is Kevin Faulk. First of all, why he is called Gem of Pats?

1.    Loyal to his team, 11 years with Pats.
2.    3,550 rushing yard.
3.    16 rushing TD
4.    424 receiving and 3,667 receiving yard.
5.    Receiving TD 15

Based on his statistics, one can easily jump into conclusion that he is all-round player; hence he is qualified for Gem of Pats title. But the truth is different, Kevin started his career as Running Back, he was an excellent running back. During his tenure with Pats, over a period of time, his coach asked him to do other jobs also like full back, punt return. Those are not glamorous position in NFL, but Kevin took those jobs without any hesitant rather than quit to join other team as Running Back, which made him a Gem of his team with his astonishing all round performance.

Kevin’s success story makes me think something else which is very important to our changing world and lifestyle. Now we are living in a flat world where the luxury of doing one task per one human is gone. We can’t say “my job description is XYZ and you are asking me to do ABC”. The tasks outside of job description also have to be done as long as we can do it with or without some self-learning. 

There is nothing wrong that a developer tests an application, a architect helps developing some small piece of code, a manager runs some test scripts, a QA engineer debugging a code, a store manager checkout customer while sales clerk out for an emergency.

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.

Michael Phelps: 8/8 : What else we need...

In this world, most successful political leaders, big businessman/woman, legendary sportsperson had some issues during their childhood. Here is the main difference between east and west cultures. In west, early diagnose, treat well, channelize towards the advantage path. In east, it is called karma, he or she committed sin in previous life so he/she has to pay back for that, even small childhood asthma not treated well and that becomes his/her lifetime disease.

When ever reporter asked Michael soon after his wins with world record, he usually replied that he was lack of words. He told in interview with NBC's Bob, he can visualize something well and remember a face with an occurrence, and he hate to lose, strive for perfection all time. Yes, he is dyslexic [most likely] with ADHD. His mom is a teacher, she diagnosed it well in advance, swimming is the salvation for ADHD, and hence US got a perfect swimmer for this century. The point is, during the NBC interview, they outspoken about the ADHD, which is not possible in east.

Dyslexia with ADHD is a gift with some disadvantage. But dyslexic person can think of multi dimensional way, which is not possible for an ordinary human. They have extra ordinary intuition sense and long term memory. Because of this extra ordinary power, they lacked some basic qualities such as language read/write, unable to concentrate for long time. They can’t pronounce a word with proper spelling, they tend to store all words as image and sound in their head, which ultimately created lot of clutter hence sometimes speaking difficulties or unable to express emotions. But there are lots of people born with this [approximately 1% of world’s population], and they are definitely gifted, they tend to achieve more and more, they never get satisfied. One good thing about dyslexic person is that, they will not bully others with their extra ordinary abilities, always want to keep low profile, feels low esteem [that are fuel of growth] and they have blinded eyes when seeing people’s color, culture but vivid view of their and world’s future in their head.

With the advance of technology, all things can be curable and all it required is, willing to accept the issue and seek for right treatment. Who knows there are millions of Michael Phelps out there?

Beijing Olympics – Spectacular opening

All Chinese people, it is the proudest time ever. What happened today is not just a game opening, China showed the world their spectacular growth, and how a country can progressively develop from no where. Just 30 years ago, China was one of the 3^rd world countries, not even able to control it’s own population growth, poverty, no contact with outside world. This is not a yet other opening ceremony, well blended with high-tech, history, hard working, elegance, colorful fireworks and emotions. I was touched by one of the earthquake survivor, 9 year old boy's China flag hosting march with athletes. wow...

Most Liked ones

1. The 360 deg. surrounding mega LCD screen.

2. The ground rolling LCD screen. So nice.

3. Whole lit up with loads of fire works.

4. The ship theme, brought ocean and boats  right in the middle of the stadium.

5. Unbelievable fireworks from start to end, real feast to our eyes.

6. Very First drum display for count down.

7. Walking on the vertical LCD,acrobats.

8. Torch rally passed from person to person step by step and final torch lighting part is really very creative. 

9. Flag hosting by earthquake survivor young boy with Yao Min was the highlighted one.

and 10.Last but not least , a big applause to all the hardwork behind it...

Let the games begin....

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.

Chennai Cricket Test.

Virender Sehwag played his life time innings at Chennai, scored 319 in 304 balls with 42 fours and 5 sixes. Wow...Chennai fans witnessed 3 one day innings from this hard hitter from this one test. This test match was full of batsman controlled, and bowlers wants to forget this match as soon as possible. I don't know why now pitches in India playing like this, because normally Indian pitches favourable for batsman for first 3 days and then bowlers pitch especially for spinners. But any ways scoring 319 runs at 104 strike rate is really great by Viru, added Chennai's dry and hot weather also into consideration. From South Africa side Amla and McKenzie also played good and Dravid achieved his main goal of crossing 10,000 runs mark, may be he might consider of retirement from test matches very soon. 

IPL and ICL - Do we need this?

Cricket is a crazy sports in India. Good and everybody needs one or more sports for time pass, passion, favorite hero's. Already Cricket draws some negative aspects since this sport is lengthy, time consuming, not promoting team work, based on individual performance, drains man powers etc. But a sport in any form required to guide youths to right direction so that they would not concentrate on other evil things such as drugs or gambling.

But now the creation of Indian Premier League(IPL) and Indian Cricket League(ICL) are overdose to already addicted Indian cricket fans. Because now itself the way we are watching cricket and spending time towards to cricket is more than enough.

This is utter copy of US based NBA or NFL franchise model. The money involves for this franchise from private party is huge and this money can spend for our infrastructure development or build some factories to give job opportunities for needy people. No body wants to spend money for non-profit business, but building factory or infrastructure development projects are now huge profit busiess in India. Why we are spending money towards already developed area?

We are the champions.(this time outside india)

After a long long long time, Indian cricket shines in Australia. Well deserve and much needed victory for young Indian cricket team. I have to emphasis one incident here, my opinion that is the turning point of this series. This was 4th match between India and Australia, Ishant Sharma as a rookie gave lot of runs in first 2 overs, Hayden just blasting him for fours and third over also not too good, that time, captain Dhoni had a chat with rookie, after that he just changed line and length, here you go, Sharma took 4 wickets and India won the game. After that he was a most dangerous blower for Aussies. I would recall previous incidents from Indian cricket, seamers came and went as unnoticed, if they gave some expensive overs, that's it, his career ends there. Our impatient captains and selectors sacked them and turn their concentration on finding spinners because they don't want to take risk by loosing matches, they had a very short term goals, which really hurts Indian cricket very hard for long time, we were champions in Indian soil and losers in outside India (even in Sri Lanka and future may be in Bangladesh). But this time something different. From this series, Indian cricket found much needed seamers Ishant and Praveen Kumar.

The series winning game was simply a team effort, everybody contributed their share to win this game. Especially Sachin and Praveen were good. Sachin is like lion nowadays, when he is hungry, he would use all of his strength to score runs for team. Earlier he was like tiger, score in all games and showed his strength almost all games. But lion is always better than tiger. Unfortunately I didn't watch this game, so I can't comment on Praveen's blowing in details but based on scoreboard, he was awesome. Way to go team India.

Excellent Cricket Match.

After many low scoring matches and rain delayed matches, yesterday we had an excellent and thrilling cricket match between India and Australia. First of all, Ricky Pointing from Australia and Gautham Gambhir from India played marvelous innings and made this game very interesting. India's players are tough and fought back very hard to win this game. I thought one point of time when Harbhajan and Pathan were on grease, we are going to win. But Lee is too good to take tailenders wicket, he just beat them with his pace.

I don't know what happened to Sachin Tendulkar, the ball he got out was very simple for him to play, having this many years of experience and genius cricket brain. I think he was bad form since this one day series starts, may be he become overwhelmed with continuous cricket career since he was 17. He can retire one day cricket now and concentrate on Indian domestic cricket to help Indian cricket to find more talented cricketers. Uthappa was good and our million dollar baby Dhoni was very slow to score his runs also cost us this game. But Dhoni wants to stay until the game ends, his intention was good but he just wasted lot of run scoring opportunities.

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.

Slap on Indian Cricket.

As last week end was full of sports action packed from wildcard football to India Vs Australia 2^nd test match, there was a bad decision hit Indian cricket and shocked all over cricket world. Harbhajan Singh young and dynamic Indian cricketer was banned from 3 test matches; the reason is very troubling and unacceptable by any Indian cricketers and fans that he made some racial comments to only one non-white Australian Cricketer Andrew Symonds. But I personally think none of the Indian cricketer will do this sin. Because we fought decade and decades to overcome “racially motivated” issues in India and even in oversees. I don’t have to tell Mahatma Gandhi’s name here, because everybody in this earth knows about what happened in South Africa and then India during our independence struggle.

Apart from that, very bad umpiring, which cost game for us. As of latest news, BCCI (Indian Cricket Governing Body) looking to discontinue this tour all together and ordered Indian team to stay at Sydney. I think they have to discontinue this tour, because without India this cricket series not going to succeed. We have to show our power to cricket world, that how important we are and can’t with stand any silly reason to ban our cricketer. Sometimes we have to very aggressive to prove our point to all of cricket world. I don’t think there is nothing wrong by discontinue this tour.