I’m swamped at work and have about 5 projects that desperately need my attention, so it’s time to forget all of that for a minute and talk football. First, let me say how pleasantly unsurprised I am with my New York Giants. I have always believed in Eli Manning as a quarterback, but he is a quiet leader. Now, without Tiki, Shockey, Strahan or Plaxico, this is unquestionably his team. The team has taken on his workmanlike, no-flash, just win attitude, and after four games they have a vice-grip on the NFC East.

Leading the impressive arsenal for Eli is Steve Smith. Yes, that Steve Smith. League leader in receptions, yards, TDs, and first downs after four weeks.  Some are already beginning to compare him to Plaxico Burress, but I disagree.  Plaxico was a great receive because of his breakaway speed and his ability to go up get a jump ball.  Steve Smith is 5’11″ and, although he’s fast, that is not his strength.  Steve Smith’s strengths are his hands, his toughness, his crisp routes, perhaps most importantly, his ability to be where Eli thinks he will be.  Those qualities are what made Amani Toomer the greatest Giants receiver of all time, and that is the proper comparison.

As for the replacing Plaxico question, I have said before (and been called crazy for it), that there are advantages to having more than one weapon at wide out.  When a defense prepares for a typical offense, they will analyze the biggest weapon and attempt to neutralize it, then move on to the next one.  The advantage that the Giants had, at least for the past four games is similar to a new pitcher in baseball: no one knows their tendencies.

There may not be a receiver that has the skills of Plaxico Burress on the Giants, but they all have tremendous talent.  When faced with that, with the notion a teams sixth and seventh options at wideout are Sinorice Moss and a 6’6″, 225 lbs rookie who runs a 4.48 and looks like you put Brandon Jacobs in a stretch wrack and gave him a number 13 jersey.  As Dominick Hixon was injured, Mario Manningham stepped up and shined.  When he began to drop balls, rookie Hakeem Nicks stepped in and showed the world his air brakes for his first NFL touchdown–after Manning bruised his heel.

I am not at all suggesting the Giants are in a perfect position at wide receiver.  But they are not weak at that position either.  As the weeks roll on, defenses will amass film and pick apart receivers’ tendencies and exploit weaknesses.  My feeling is that Steve Smith will remain Eli’s safety valve, just as Amani Toomer was for so many Giant quarterbacks of the past.  The real interesting storyline will be whether it will be Hixon, Nicks or Manningham that earns the long-term starting role.

Of course, Eli Manning will have to stay healthy.  Giants fans could do without any further scares for the $100 million man.  Of course, there was some unintended comic relief provided by Tony Siragusa on the play.  Siragusa’s role on the sidelines is to serve as living proof that playing in the NFL can lead to daim bramage.  After Eli came up lame on the play, even though no Chief was within in 5 years of him, Siragusa chimed in on air to say “He got hit really hard on that play.”  Really?  By who, the 12th man?  Dr. Griffin?

Elsewhere around the league, Rush Limbaugh is considering buying an interest in the hapless St. Louis Rams.  I used to hate the Rams for the Mike Martz years, but now that Coach Spagnuolo is there, I can’t hate them (so much) anymore.  Rush owning them would seal the deal.

1. Complete collapse of the housing market. 2008 will certainly be remembered as the year the housing bubble went pop.  The median home price peaked in 2006 at about $250,000.  The median home price is now around $180,000.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were officially taken over by the government with no hope of being broken up anytime soon.
2. Wall Street Follows Housing Over a Cliff. In a related store, in 2008 we found out that Wall Street was as foolishly optimistic as that kid whose parents wrapped clothes in an Xbox box.  With no adults manning the shop, no one thought to look into all those subprime loan derivatives.   The failure of Lehman Brothers, and the death of the last five remaining large investment banks was the earthquake in 2008.  The Tsunami is on its way.
3. Bailout Mania. Congress realizes that they have skewed the housing market, encouraged risky behavior and destroyed several financial companies by providing easy access to money, by removing accountability and by introducing market distortions.  Congress immediately moves to fix the problem by providing more free money, completely eliminating accountability and further distorting markets.  At some point, a politician somewhere will read Ayn Rand.
4. Barack Obama Elected President. An unknown junior Senator from Illinois, who happened to be African American, was elected president by the largest popular margin ina generation.  The election will be remembered for a long time, even beyond the racially-motivated “historic” headlines.  Senator Obama spent record amounts in the primary and general elections, and was the first person to not use federal funds since Richard Nixon.  Hillary Clinton’s bid to be the first female presidential nominee, and Sarah Palin’s selection as the first female GOP vice presidential candidate will also be remembered for years to come.  So, too, will the media’s abdication of its investigative responsibilities.
5. Global Warming Begins to Collapse. In time, 2008 will be recognized as the last time anyone took Al Gore seriously.  2008 will be the coldest year in the United States in over a decade, and record cold and snow have plagued the rest of the world.  Although deranged lunatics will continue to shout from their daddy’s Escalades and their Hollywood mansions, 2008 will be the year that skeptics were finally given a voice.
6. Gasoline Prices. 2008 will be remembered for its dramatic jump in the price of gasoline, rising to over $4 per gallon in the United States.  The impact, however, will be felt for years as Americans begin to reduce their consumption of gasoline and thereby their dependence on foreign oil.  By December, the price of a barrel of crude oil had fallen nearly $100, a decline of over 70% from it’s summer time high.  Low prices for crude oil minimize the influence of OPEC nations and Russia.
7. Iraq turns a corner. The Surge shows dividends as Iraq is able to reconcile its political differences and unite its factions against foreign and domestic insurgencies.   In time, although the war was mishandled for too long, the decision to invade Iraq and the consequences of a free nation in the Middle East will be seen as the high point of the Bush administration.
8. NASA discovers water on Mars. After countless complicated experiments are conceived and tested, the little Phoenix lander scrapes the surface of Mars, and, a few millimeters below the red dust, it finds ice.  In time, this will be seen as an enormously significant find for human exploration of the planet.
9. Russia on the Offensive. Russia invaded Georgia and rattled its sword in the Western hemisphere, meeting with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and Cuban dictator Raul Castro.  These events signal a growing hostility towards the West.
10. Nobody’s Perfect, Nothing’s Impossible. After a 10-6 record in the regular season and nearly firing their head coach the year before, the New York Giants make an improbable run to the Superbowl, winning a record 10 straight games on the road.  They face the undefeated New England Patriots, the first team to ever win 18 games in a season and only the second team in history to make it to the Superbowl undefeated.  The Giants were expected to be sacrificial lambs to the Patriot’s crowning victory.  But, as they say, on any given Sunday, anything can happen.  The impossible odds.  The impossible catch.  The heartpounding final seconds.  This is why we watch sports.  These are the games we tell our grandchildren about.

Honorable Mention:
Fidel Castro resigns
The Large Hadron Collider fires up (and doesn’t destroy the Earth)
USS Lake Erie fires a missile that destroys a damaged sattelite in space
Banazir Bhutto is assassinated
Beijing hosts the Summer Olympics
Bill Gates leaves Microsoft

Now, maybe it’s a Freudian slip (you know, when you say one thing, but you mean your mother), but this is a wonderful summary of the media of 2008.  Now that they’ve made history and elected the least qualified candidate ever to run for president, they’re curious about what his plans may be.  You can’t make this stuff up.

At least I can take refuge in my Giants.  They have saved an otehrwise miserable year.  Of course, in January, I’m sure some of their wins will be “redistributed” to Detroit.  Spread the wealth and all.

It hit a nerve, because I realized how pessimistic I’ve become about the election.  One of the wonderful things that about sports is it teaches us, on a smaller scale, how to handle life’s challenges.  They faced overwhelming odds, but in football as in life, 80% of it is just showing up.  They showed up, and they fought their heart out and one the greatest upset in Super Bowl history.  They proved that, in life as well as football, Nobody’s Perfect and Nothing’s Impossible.

So I’ll take a cue from my gap-toothed friend and take a more positive outlook on the election.  In football, the most important game is the first Sunday in February.  Once you get there, the only thing that matters is the final score.  In politics, it’s the first Tuesday in November.  The goal is the same: forget the past and make history.

So here is what we have going for us:

Obama’s true colors are beginning to show.
Obama is a good politician.  It’s hard to survive the grinding, corrupt Chicago political machine without the cold-hearted blood lust that drives most politicians.  But when you’re ahead 12 points in some polls, it becomes easier to let your guard down and let those independent voters see your true colors.  Take, for example, the recent backing of Card Check (the Unionization Plan for America), the Fairness Doctrine (No Free Speech for You) and redistribution of wealth.  This is why Joe the Plumber is getting so much play, as is the interview from 2001 where Obama expresses his regret that the Supreme Court has not imposed redistribution of wealth just as it imposed desegregation.

Obama is ahead in the polls, right?
As others have pointed out, the polls are somewhat suspect.  Obama and McCain are getting the same support from their base (85-90%) and are splitting undecideds evenly (45% each).  The only way Obama is leading by 12% is if you believe (as the pollsters apparently do), that there are up to 10% more Democrats than Republicans.  Although Democrats historically have more registered voters (it helps when fictional registrations like “Jive Turkey” and “Mickey Mouse” are 99.99% Democrat), the largest disparity in recent history was about 5%, not 10%.  That could mean that the polls are biased in Obama’s favor, meaning the polls that show Obama only up by 3% might be accurate (or even those might be too optimistic).

Overconfidence breeds complacency (voter edition).
Obama’s supporters are wildly overconfident.  There is already a tendency of young, first-time voters to “forget” to actually vote.  Obama leads in first time voters by something like 3-1.  Every first time voter that doesn’t show up is 3 times more damaging to Obama than to McCain.  If the polls show Obama leading by 12 points going into next week, not a lot of young voters will drag themselves out of bed to actually vote.  On top of that, if you’re leading by 10 points in Ohio, voter fraud might seem unnecessary.  ACORN staffers may actually be limited to one vote each.  It could be another Dewey beats Truman morning next Wednesday.

McCain is still the safe choice.
I believe it was Mort Kondrake that said in mid September, that a minor to midsized economic crisis benefits Obama, but a major one benefits McCain.  Since then, the crisis has gone from “probable bad year” to “possible depression.”  (I don’t believe that, but perception is the issue).  People have seen the Congress spend $700 billion of their money and the market continues to go down, losing over four times that in value.  Most average voters don’t know or care what McCain or Obama did or said about the bailout, what they’re realizing is that Big Government can’t get us out of the ditch it dug.  This benefits McCain in two ways: (1) he’s a check on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid’s greedy, money grubbing ways and (2) he’s a calm, tested hand at the wheel.  Obama is neither.

Americans are not that stupid.
Obama cannot be taken at his word that he will not raise taxes on the middle class.  Anyone who believes that was either in diapers during the Clinton years or ought to be now.  His credibility has taken on water and is listing more every day.  Every cry of racism, every dodge and weave of tough questions, every “spread the wealth around”; every “they’re bitter and cling to religion and guns” comment slowly paints him as a and elitist, Chicagoland, race baiting, smooth talking, radical Marxist, anti-military, sit-on-the-pot-until-the-sewer-rats-bite-your-nuts-off, waffling, McGovernite he really is.  I have faith that my fellow Americans will see through this facade and vote McCain.

I don’t mean to single out Obama, many politicians, especially those running for president, have claimed a sudden, unexplainable rooting interest for teams then in the national spotlight, but come on-at least pick one team per championship.

Are we really that stupid?  I mean, I am a huge New York Giants fan.  Their Superbowl victory over the Patriots will live in my mind as long as I remember by own name.  Does that preclude me from running for office outside of New York/New Jersey and Connecticut?  It shouldn’t.  What’s wrong with saying, “Look, I’m a life-long Yankees fan, so I don’t have an interest in the outcome, but I hope it’s a good, well played game.?”  Or, even more ambitious, what about “I like the Phillies because the Devil Rays are a league rival?”

The point is, do politicians really believe voters are either (a) so stupid they won’t see through this or (b) so vain that they won’t vote for a politician that doesn’t kowtow to the local sports franchise?  I don’t know, if voters believe Obama won’t raise their taxes (yes, even those making less than $250,000 per year), maybe voters are that dumb.