Football Season Wrap Up

Another new year passes, and another football season ends. This is the way of the world. At least, this is the way of my world. You see, college football ends on New Years Day, more or less. And Dallas, well they haven't been relevant in the new year for a long time. Soooo, lets start the wrap with the more depressing of the two.

Dallas Cowboys: Another season has come and gone, and another season has seen the Cowboys fall into mediocrity. A few weeks ago I had plans to write about a Dallas collapse that was imminent. I never got around to actually writing it, and of course now I wish I had, because this is EXACTLY what I have come to expect out of them the last few years. I have a love hate relationship with this team. More so than any other team I think. I root for the Cowboys to do well. I never want to see them fail. I have, however, grown to expect it because of TWO critically important people.

One is the owner. Jerry Jones is a rich kid with a VERY expensive toy. He wants waaay too much control of it, and it has shown in the way he micromanages the team. From the day to day coaching down to the draft selection. He is not the greatest football mind in America, yet he insists that his will be done regardless of whoever else is telling him he is wrong. I have mentioned that great leaders will surround themselves with great people. Well Jerry surrounds himself with people he knows he can manipulate and push around. Not always the best combination. When he hired Bill Parcels I thought, "Finnaly, he has realized his follies and is learning!" That clearly wasn't the case as he quit, and JJ was left with a gap to fill in the Head Coaching spot. Once JJ relinquishes day to day football operations to a knowledgeable football mind, this team will succeed.

The other one, and for those who know my wife you know that I am treading on thin ice here, is Tony Romo. Go ahead, throw statistics at me. Tell me he had the fourth best passer rating this year. Or in 2009 he was in the top ten. I will counter with this though: in the last game of the season, a game that by the team's own admission was a playoff game, he laid an egg. An INT, and a fumble in the game. And he only threw for 289 yds on 37 attempts. He seems to do well at the end of games when the game is on the line, but when it is pressure packed to start with, he just doesn't do well. Take a look at his playoff record, and his record in games at the end of the season that really matter. This quality, unfortunately,  is transferred to the team, which all too many times takes the traits of its star player. JJ is inexplicably devoted to TR, and I guess that is good in the sense we are not always wondering who the QB is going to be. And to be fair, they had a lot of other issues this year as well. A new defense was supposed to start off rocky and then build to elite by the end of the season. That didn't happen. And for some reason the running game is only good against inferior opponents. I actually see that as a trend in most of the professional teams. Most teams run to make the PA seem like it might work, and if the defense doesn't respect the run, then they pound it in there. Most NFL teams are content to throw it a gazillion times a game and hope it all works out. That's another post though. Back to TR. He has had ample time, in my opinion, to rectify his problems. He is still making a lot of the same mistakes that he made in his rookie season. The difference is now there is a scouting report on him and people know how to defend him, and he can not get away with it any more.

Getting back to their season, and more importantly the end of the season, they said that the last 4 games essentially added up to an extension of the playoffs. They wanted to win them all and go into the post season with the momentum that the win streak would provide. At the time they had a TWO game lead on the Giants and instead of coming out that week and beating them to put them away, they lost. Something the team has grown accustomed to doing. That was when I was going to write the blog, because essentially they had already been eliminated in their own little playoff, and that was not going to bring good things. Additionally they went on to lose 3 of their last 4, including the ultra important "Win and your In" game. Their problems run deeper than any one player, and my dislike of Romo aside, they have the talent at all of the positions to get the job done. I am not sure what else they need, except to put it all together. That is what young head coach Jason Garrett needs to do. Start leading the team and getting them to gel. Make them work for each other, instead of the paychecks that JJ signs. There is always next season. I will endure the offseason with thoughts of drafting the one magical player that will fix all problems. Of course that will not happen, but maybe, just maybe, the team will come out better and stronger next year.

Michigan Wolverines: I have not neglected this team like the professional team I root for. A large part of that is actually that over here, it is much easier (and cheaper) to follow college sports than the NFL. I purchased one package through ESPN that lets me follow all college football aired on the ESPN family (which is about 90% of the teams that I follow). I don't have that option with the NFL. But since I have documented quite well my feelings on Team 132, I will not go on and on. I will wrap up this season by simply saying it was a refreshing change of pace to the last three years. I saw a clear outlined picture for goals that was established early in the year, and adhered to as the year went on. At the conclusion of the season, there was not talk about being happy with a 10-2 record, it was a disappointment that there was not a B1G Championship trophy to display. Goals. RR never seemed to value these set in stone goals to shoot for. I don't know if that had any influence on the seasons, but it was refreshing to see them this season.

ETC. All my attempts to load the hype/highlight video of the season that I made have failed. No one wants to hear my awesome selection of music that I put to it. If you want to see it, go to YouTube and check it out on my channel (ChThrillHill). It will be without music though.

Good luck to Alabama and LSU. Can't say that I will be staying up all night to watch that one, but it should prove to be a defensively competitive game. Their combined secondaries are probably better off than 1/2 the NFL secondaries (Dallas' definitely included).

Speaking of NFL, good luck to the remaining teams. I have no dogs in the fight but I guess if I had to pick any team left it would be the Texans. They seem to be playing good team ball right now.

Posts will continue through the off season. As I said in the first blog, I follow a lot of sports, so as the relevent ones come around, I will post on them. Expect a Super Bowl blog, a March Madness Blog, and of course opening day of Baseball is coming up. In the mean time, stay safe, and enjoy the off season (only 237 days left).

Fortitudine Vincimus

Opening Remarks

First I have to give props where props are due. My wife, Mindy, has started a couple of blogs and that, combined with my love of sports and their respective blogging has inspired me to start my own. This will be a sports themed blog with life lessons and stories along the way as they fit in. I follow all sports to some degree, but my biggest interests lay rooting for the Michigan Wolverines football team, the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, and just about any respectable Mixed Martial Artist (definitely more to follow on that as the UFC has been a passion of mine since i saw my first UFC fight 6 years ago).

You may have noticed that there is no theme for my rooting interests, so I will take a moment and outline why I root for the teams that I do. Starting with the NY Yankees. The best explanation, and it is similar for most of my rooting interests, is that i grew up on them. When I was a young child we lived in New Jersey, and my parents picked up on them while they were there. I grew up watching Yankee baseball, and have continued to follow them now as an adult. Second, UM football. Well, we moved to Michigan in my younger years, and that is where I spent most of my rememberable youth. As such, in Michigan you were a MSU fan or a UM fan, and you had to choose sides. I remember one particular teacher of mine who was a diehard MSU fan. I hated her. So I suppose I picked UM partially to rub it in her face every time UM won. I also enjoyed the culture of UM fans. A bit arrogant, a bit witty, and always able to back up claims of superiority with stats (btw, a stat that will almost certainly remain in UM's favor is the most wins in college football, and the best winning percentage ). So there's that. Anyways, moving on I root for Dallas out of a lack of Michigan professional football teams. My mother is from Texas, and her family are all huge Cowboy fans, so I was more or less forced into this as well. I am not complaining, I enjoyed watching them, especially as they won.

Herein lies the tie in with the title of the blog. Yes my rooting interests are all over the place. Yes some will say I only rooted for teams that won. The point though is that they haven't been winning lately. I endured through all the bad seasons, perhaps reliving their glory days a bit too much at times, but always I was their true and loyal fan. "There is always next year" came out of my mouth more times than I care to recall, but I endured, and still endure in many cases. Seven years of futility against UM's biggest rival. My wife had never seen a UM/OSU game with me in which UM won. Dallas abysmal season last year.  The Yankees heartbreaking loss in 2004 to the Red Sox. A lot can be determined about a person by who they root for year in and year out. The fair weather fans and bandwagoneers are flaky and superficial. The diehard fans are the ones that I want to surround myself with. Tough hard nosed individuals who will stand by their team no matter what, because that's what loyalty in fandom is sometimes, endurance.

I doubt there will be any Pulitzer Prize winning prose on this blog. I just hope to express my opinions and feelings and maybe relate to one or two people out there. Expect a post a week for starters. I will update when news worthy things happen. If it is twice a day, or once a month, so be it. Seasons are seasons and of course more will be posted now about the Wolverines since they are active and very much a part of the national football landscape. Also, Dallas is making a playoff push which will be mentioned again. The Ultimate Fighter season finale is Saturday. Always stoked to root against Michael Bisping.

Fortitudine Vincimus