How to Be Last in College Pick 'em (while trying)

So, it's almost the end of the third week of college football 2013.

I am about to be last in my group's college pick 'em for the third week in a row.

Here's how you do it:

• Think Texas is good.  Yeah, they've got like 77 high school blue chip players on the roster, and the largest budget in the country (see this week's SI article on them and USC) but they aren't very good.  Kansas State will be favored against them in Austin next week.  Oklahoma might beat them to death in the Red River Rivalry later this month.  Hook 'em Horns.
• Think South Carolina is a top five team.  Yeah, they lost, by double digits, last week to Georgia. They didn't cover this week.  Great.
• Be on the wrong end of the half point in the biggest game (so far) of the year -- see Alabama (giving 7.5).
• Don't believe Northwestern can cover big against teams they usually struggle with.  
• Be a Purdue graduate.  Need I say more?
• Notre Dame? They covered the first week...right?  1 for 3 is...okay, it's why I'm in last place again.
• Who can guess on a 35-point spread? Not me.

I love picking.  And I'm a big fan of college football.  But sometimes...it's just frustrating.

I'm one week of last place away from using the Diane Chambers method.  Remember her, from Cheers?  She picked games based on which mascot would win.  See, I'd have gotten the A&M-Bama game right, too, right?  An Aggie beats a Tide right?  I'm still trying to figure out if a Boilermaker -- whisky in beer, right? -- beats a Leprechaun.  I guess the leprechaun is fighting.

Wish me well next week.  Wildcats over Longhorns. Rah.

Blue About Blue Jasmine

I have to open by saying that I was disappointed with Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.

Maybe I'm feeling the same thing critics did who saw The Lone Ranger this summer, expecting something at least somewhat different, then getting...a different vision from the director.

I was disappointed first because, unlike his last two movies (Midnight in Paris and To Rome with Love), which were devastatingly funny, Blue Jasmine almost never is.

Okay, deal with that.

Second, I always want someone to attach to, to empathize with, to care about and root for.

In Blue Jasmine, you feel like it's supposed to be the main character, Jasmine (not her real name), played well by Cate Blanchett, but I dislike her from the opening scene -- where's she's annoying an older woman she doesn't know with her life story while on a plane.  I never got over it.  Call it personal.

But it seems Woody never tries very hard to make her likable.

Her life is as blue as the title, and the song that is the signature (and in the background, I think) through out -- Blue Moon.   She has "no prospects" and is forced to live with her sister, Ginger (goes with Jasmine, right?), played with some vulnerability and zest by Sallie Hawkins, in San Francisco.

After Barcelona, Paris, and Rome, San Francisco doesn't quite lead in this movie the same way (the setup is there with the opening plane trip), with cuts back to Jasmine's former life on the East Coast with the sleazy, oily dead husband Hal (played with sufficient oil by Alec Baldwin).

The pieces are all there.

But, despite the director's best twisting to gain tension, we aren't really hoping Jasmine lands the next husband -- saving her from the "menial" (her word) work she needs to do to get some kind of life.  

In the end, we don't care.  And Woody leaves us not caring.

Maybe next time.

The Myth of the Great Nats

Today, for a moment, we're talkin' baseball.

Today Dave Cameron on ESPN Insider wrote "Can Nationals make Miracle Playoff Run?"

Well, of course.

But...

See, based on last year's success, everyone things this is a great team.  Always on the verge of breaking out.

This blog is to tell you that they've got it wrong: they are a plus .500 team that got lucky last year.

First: their everyday lineup isn't that good.  Jayson Werth is having a year werth his money -- .330 and leading the team in homers.  But he's not the scary clean-up hitter a team as scary as the Nats are supposed to be is supposed to have: he's no Puig, no Kemp, no Votto, no Cabrera.  You get the picture.

Harper hits .270.  He hits a lot of homers, but he misses a lot of games.

Desmond is a good shortstop, but he's a .270 hitter, too.

Who in this lineup is Votto? Puig? McCutcheon (Werth is trying)?

Second: their pitching after the top 3 or 4 is lame.  Zimmerman, Gonzalez, Strasburg are top rate.  Haren has been up and down. The bullpen has been bad.

The Braves beat them like they are the red-headed stepchild.

I could go on and on.  But you see my point: people talk up the Nats, but where's the substance?  Who is it that's driving this bus?  Harper?  He's no Miggy.  Nobody is.

So, maybe the Nats make a run. I root for them.  But it'll be because they grind their way out of it, not because they are this great team that is just a bit off.

Who Wants Tiger Back?

Three weeks ago, in the aftermath of Phil's historic (epic) win in The Open, I wrote here of the wonder of Phil's win and the message it sent to Tiger and Lee Westwood, who both failed to grab the claret jug.

Now, having seen Jason Dufner play a classically PGA tour round of golf -- fairways and greens -- knocking it close often enough to shoot 10 under for the four days and 2 under on Sunday.  That beat Jim Furyk by 2 and the rest of field really wasn't in it after Henrik Stenson inexplicably made 5 on the short par-4 14 that he can reach with a driver.

To repeat what you've probably heard too many times already: Dufner is the 18th non-repeat major champion since Tiger won the US Open on one leg at Torrey Pines in 2008.  Only Phil, Rory and Padraig Harrington (remember him? did he make the cut at Oak Hill?) have won two majors in that time.

The PGA Tour has become Phil and the pigmies. Or Tiger and Cubs, given Woods has won five times this season.

But is this what we want to see?  Henrik Stenson winning the Masters?  Jonas Blixt taking the US Open?

History tells us that golf goes through periods like this, not dominated by a single golfer.  But we have to go back to the period between Arnie's ascension and Hogan's retirement to a time when there was no dominant force in the majors.  Since Arnie, we have seen Jack take the mantel from him, then Tom Watson, then Nick Faldo & Seve Ballesteros, then Tiger Woods.

Now, Tiger is still playing.  But since the knee injury he is, for lack of a better, more complex analysis, "past his prime," and golf awaits his successor.  Is it Rory?  Or some unknown at this point?

Sundays in majors are more interesting if there's a Tiger in the hunt. Or Phil.  Or even Rory.  Dufner v. Furyk v. Stenson v. Bradley isn't the same.  Until one of them wins a couple majors and grabs the mantel.

We need "juice" in the majors, like Muirfield, where Tiger hung there to finish 6th and Phil played one of the great rounds of all time to come from five groups back to win.

We've seen too much in the last 5 years of the ho-hum.

Bring back Tiger, so we can have someone to root against on Sunday in the Masters...the US Open...the  Open...

If he won't win number 15, we at least want him to be there on Sunday.  And it'd be great if there was the next great golfer standing in his way -- someone who wins two majors in a year and starts us talking about "the next Tiger" with some accuracy.

Miracle at Muirfield: Phil Overcomes; History speaks to Tiger, Lee

Was that an amazing Sunday?

As Paul Azinger said as they started back nine coverage, "I foresee an eight-way playoff."  There were that many people in contention.  Lee Westwood, not hitting a fairway on the front nine, but hanging onto the lead until Adam Scott took it with a run of birdies around the turn.  Tiger hanging there, with the announcers, rightly, intoning "he's only 2 (or 3) behind".  Hunter Mahan.  Henrik Stenson, and, of course, Ian Poulter, though they exaggerated the likelihood he'd end up in a playoff at +1.

Then along came gun-slinging Phil.  Birdie on 13.  Birdie on 14.

Then he pulls the classic Phil -- blows the birdie putt on 15 too many feet by.  Rut ro.  No one with his record misses more puts like this.  Then he makes it -- a swirly -- and goes to 16, where he backs the shot off the green.  And makes the 7-footer for par.  It's his to win.

No one can express how crazy the two 3-woods he hit to the green on 17 were.  Into the wind, over the bouncy ground.  No one else had gotten there.  Phil had an eagle putt.

Then he goes ahead and makes the birdie putt on 18.  He didn't need it, but nothing like making it look good, right?

It was a bad day for Tiger.  Everyone used to talk about how he "scared" the other players (a tough thing to do in golf, btw); well, guys who scare you don't bogey the opening hole.  They just don't.  That's not called momentum.

And once he made his first birdie, he turned around and missed a makable birdie putt on the next hole (the 10th) that would have gotten him right there.  Missed it.

Tiger Woods circa 2000-2005 doesn't miss that next putt.  He makes it and charges.  As Westwood was going bogey-bogey, no birdie on 9, behind him.

He's not that Tiger Woods anymore.

The new one seems to have trouble putting four good rounds together at a major.  Today's 75 was a disaster -- he shoots par and he's there at the end.  Does Phil pull off those shots to beat Tiger?  We'll never know.

But here's what Muirfield says about Tiger: he may never get 15.  He is the world #1, but that's not winning majors.  He's a horse for courses -- he'll probably win at Firestone next month, since it's one of his horsey courses -- which can mean a lot of wins.  But only at Augusta, the one major that stays at one locale, does this play in his favor.   When's the next US Open at Pebble or Torrey? Or British at St. Andrews (okay, just two years)?

I'm not going to be surprised to see him use his experience and knowledge to pull "a Nicklaus" and win a green jacket to cap his career, but he'll have to win somewhere else to prove he has any chance to get to 18 majors.

The other telling round was Lee Westwood.  Two stroke lead, putting better than ever.  And he's got a bigger lead as no one moves on him early in the day -- failing to go hot on the first 5 holes, which was the logic of the week.

He didn't hit fairways early, didn't make putts late.

If this is about horses, you would never bet on Westwood again (to win).  Not all maidens win their first one; he might be a good place/show bet but win? He's had more top 3's in majors than anyone since they started playing the Masters and hasn't won.  It says "won't win."  He's 40.  Yeah, maybe next year, or the next, he continues the Open trend of 40-something winners, but he's no Ernie Els or Phil Mickelson.  He may be Darrin Clarke, but is that a trend to count on?

After how he finished the US Open, you can't believe Phil isn't going to be totally psyched to return to Oak Hill, where he played his first home Ryder Cup, with a claret jug in hand.  He's playing with house money, and we know how Phil loves to gamble.

It was a great day of golf, with one man making almost all the great shots.  He deserved to win.  And Muirfield proved itself again to be a course that finds Hall of Famers to win.

Alone at the Lone Ranger

Gore Verbinski's Lone Ranger is apparently a huge flop -- opening with about $50 million in sales, where it cost an estimated $225 million to make.

I can't say why it cost so much money to make, but I do not understand why it opened so poorly -- it was much hyped and, though the reviews have been bad, you would think that that wouldn't matter (will it stop people from seeing Grownups 2 this weekend?).

It's really not a horrid movie.

But that's not to say it's good.

I'm sure someone has said that it's Pirates of the Caribbean in the Old West.  Given Verbinski directed Pirates and Johnny Depp stars in heavy makeup, I can see that.

But it's not half as clever nor does the camp work half as well.

It's too long by half an hour.

I thought Armie Hammer was good as the Masked Man -- hey, he's supposed to be an uptight guy -- and I thought Depp chewed the scenery as Tonto.

It also wasn't as funny as it wanted to be.  Some of the visual humor just wasn't funny.  I laughed heartily at some of the comments.

And, I have to add (I know, again, this isn't original material) the horse (Silver) was probably the best part.  And, yes, the funniest.  Poor Depp, can't beat a horse for laughs.  All he has is a dead raven to work with.

But, still, there are good action bits, with Depp and Hammer bouncing around trains -- twice -- and doing all sorts of action/adventure things that border on slapstick & ridiculous.  And Tom Wilkerson makes a fine villain, grinding through his lines like a real Westerner who happens to know John Locke.

So, I say, act like it's an adventure and go see it.  It's not significantly different from the other pallid action hero films this summer -- Iron Man, for instance.

Man of Steel

I saw it.  To paraphrase a friend: I didn't hate it.

There's a plot.  A lot of plot.  Two hours and twenty minutes of plot.

This guy Cavill who plays Clark Kent, or the guy who will be Superman (they only come up with that late in the movie), is a hulk.  Yeah, there's beefcake for the women.  And he's beefcake.  As Superman, of course,  he doesn't have to be a Shakespearean actor.  He's not (as far as one can tell).

The highlight of the movie is, of course, Amy Adams.  She's got the right amount of spunk for the part of Lois Lane, with the right amount of light to make you think she's not so serious that she won't take Superman seriously.

He's Super.  Got it.

Laurence Fishburne is a Shakespearean actor.  He's wasted in this movie.

Russell Crowe has Oscars.  If he's not wasted, you won't remember this performance.  Guaranteed.

The whole "Krypton-is-exploding" plot seems...well, who cares?  He's from another planet; Earth's atmosphere and gravity make him Super.   Super.  Got it.

Grew up in Kansas.  Dad was Kevin Costner, obviously with a ball field in one of the cornfields, pitching Middle Western American values all over the place.  Clark...errr...Super...buys it.  Eats it up.  Makes him the hero.  Got it.

Not sure why Zod follows Ka-El to Earth -- something to do with DNA I would think he could just take from his crew, but, hey, I'm not from Krypton nor am I a geneticist.  Not sure why Zod is a cold-blooded killer -- guess it's supposed to be a "I-am-a-warrior" thing -- but that's beyond cliche.

It's beautifully shot -- you know all the CGI stuff -- but...

Yeah, it lacks a soul.  He's made of steel.  Got it.

There'll be another.  Got it.