Well, it’s Friday night.  I am sitting on my ass watching Superbad, waiting for Friday Night Lights to start and my friend to arrive from D.C.  What better to time, to reintroduce myself to world of sports blogging!  The sitting on my ass part of the evening I’ve become quite accustomed to, thanks to my two day stint of jury duty which was mercifully terminated earlier today with a sweet dismissal.  For those of you who have never been summoned to jury duty, you should definitely thank god, or whatever other daemons you may pray to.  It truly is the holy grail of boredom.

Anywho… I’m pretty excited for Friday Night Lights.  Call me gay if you like, but it really is an awesome show.  And by awesome, I mean, bizarrely entertaining considering it’s so bad.  But at least, there was like 30 seconds of football footage in the last episode, so it’s not completely a soap opera.  Either way, Lyla Garrity or “Minka Kelly” in real life is so smokin hot that even the almighty himself has deemed her worthy of his man meat (speaking of man meat… Superbad really goes to the extreme on the profanity and the crass language… unnecessary).  And along with Minka comes an array of super hot 20-25 year old chicks playing high school girls, centered around all the drama of a high profile high school football team without any of the hassle of actual football.  Yea, it’s great.

On the subject of football, it just so happens to be Super Bowl weekend.  The riveting match-up of Arizona v. Pittsburgh awaits us.  This is of course assuming that we can control our urges to burst into flames with excitement long enough to actually make it to kickoff.  Joking aside though, I secretly have high hopes for this game.  I can really see it going either way, and the Cardinals and Steelers have enough exciting offensive and defensive players respectively to make for some good football.  I am, of course, rooting for the Cardinals, like any self-respecting American should.  After all, what kind of person doesn’t root for  the underdog.  I’d like Larry Fitzgerald to have 8 TD catches and 2 passing TD’s (breaking news from The Shockey Brigade:  Larry Fitzgerald is good.  You heard it here first).  I expect Kurt Warner to throw for 5 TD’s, run for 2 more and return a punt for a TD.  I fully expect the following play: a triple reverse, followed by a backward pass, culminating in an 80 yard bomb from Boldin to Breston at the 5, when just before he’s tackled he laterals to a trailing Edgerin James for the score (you’re welcome Ken Wisenhunt).  In any event… I’ll thow this prediction out there:  Arizona 27, Pitt 23.

But let’s be honest for one second.  Super Bowl Sunday really means only one significant thing:  Only 50 hours left of the Giants being Super Bowl Champs.  What a great year it was though.  Despite the dreadful ending which was aptly detailed by my compadre Derek, it truly was a fun season.   I was a cocky son of a bitch to everyone I spoke to about football, and it was really enjoyable being Super Bowl Champs.  As this comes to an end though, my only solace is that the Eagles, Patriots, and Cowboys all have enjoyed the same fate as my beloved Giants, and they will watch the game from their couches, like me.  And with that… I shall leave you all with this…

Memories…

 Enjoy the game.

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It’s probably been a tough few weeks for this Giants fan. Pretty sad. What’s more discouraging is that the thoughts and emotions that are so graphically depicted here mirror my own. I’m pretty certain that if someone had put a camera in my face on the train back after the game and asked me to verbalize the pain and suffering I was enduring, I probably would’ve ended up sobbing like a little girl. Or it would’ve been really violent. There were a lot of Eagles fans on that train.

Anyway, I’ve basically gotten over it. The Knicks are playing pretty well, and the Australian Open has actually been pretty entertaining. I think I can now describe my Giants-related stages of grief.

Denial - No way we lost that game. I spent all last night dreaming about it (including a dream where the refs gave Donovan McNabb the option of either taking off his tattoos or throwing an interception. Weird, huh? Does he even have any tattoos?), so naturally this is a dream and I’ll just wake up and it will be 6 am and it’ll be time to go to the game. No way Gilbride would call for a shotgun direct snap sweep right on 3rd and 3 with the game on the line with a guy who’s not as good at getting three yards as the guy who would eat his helmet if he could (cause he’s tough, get it?). We haven’t done that all year. No way that happened.

Anger - Okay, seriously. Did Gilbride really call for a shotgun direct snap sweep right on 3rd and 3 with the game on the line with a guy who’s… whatever. And did we really just let a team that had no business being in the playoffs (see weeks 1-12, 16 and 18) come into Giants Stadium and win? Are there really THIS MANY Eagles fans on my train right now?!?!?

Bargaining - The season’s over, but at least we have two second round picks next year. It’s not that bad, right? And maybe, just maybe, if the Eagles lose to the Cardinals I can feel better about football/life and get on with everything.

Bitterness - Kurt f-ing Warner is leading the NFC in the Super Bowl? Psssh, okay, not watching. Football is over, and it usually sucks in general. Especially the Super Bowl - never lives up to the hype. C’mon Nadal!

Acceptance - See below.

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Which Nacional is this?

Tonight’s big Copa Libertadores match features El Nacional vs. Nacional. Talk about confusing. This like a baseball game between the Nationals and The Nationals. Right?

Of course, after a little of the usually-necessary South American soccer research that it’s actually not that confusing. Nacional of Paraguay will be travelling to El Nacional of Ecuador (I think). Still, I got a kick out of it. It also reminded me that no matter how lame MLS nicknames can be, odds are Houston or Kansas City fans don’t have to worry about playing another team called the Dynamo or the Wizards. (Edit: Hmm, nevermind.)

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 A new feature from your favorite Shockey Brigader, as I attempt to have the “Football/futbol/soccer” tag replace “Man Crush” as our most-referenced topic.

Source: www.soccerbyives.net

Key U.S. internationals Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey (pictured above) are playing at the top of their game ahead of their huge February 11th World Cup Qualifier against Mexico. Donovan, for his part, has scored five times in friendlies for Bayern Munich since moving there on a loan earlier this month.

Saturday
England FA Cup, Kettering Town-Fulham, 4:30 p.m. FSC
     - Clint Dempsey is playing as well as he ever has, scoring three times in his last five matches. On Saturday he leads Fulham to non-league Kettering Town.
Argentina, River Plate-Boca Juniors, 7 p.m. Fox Espanol
     - You’ll have to listen to it in Spanish, but few derbies around the world can match the atmosphere of River-Boca. Absolutely worth watching. Replay Sunday night at 8 p.m. on FSC.
Friendly, USA-Sweden, 8:30 p.m. FSC
     - The U.S. will field a young squad for their first friendly match of 2009, but it should be interested see what sort of impact the likes of Charlie Davies, Sacha Kljestan and Kenny Cooper can make.

Sunday
England FA Cup, Liverpool-Everton, 10:45 a.m. Setanta
     - Starting U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard starts for Everton against their city rivals Liverpool. Howard hasn’t allowed a goal in five matches, but Everton has not beaten Liverpool in ten years.

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