Playoffs: Saints vs. Cardinals

New Orleans Saints vs. Arizona Cardinals (4:30 P.M.)

About the game:

This one pits the NFC’s #1 seed against last year’s Super Bowl loser. It’s big news for the Saints, who have not ever reached a Super Bowl. The fan support in New Orleans is huge, especially after the city went through so much devastation in Hurricane Katrina. Arizona was the top team in the lowly NFC West. They are definitely the underdog here, but then they were the underdog last year, too. And came very close to a Super Bowl victory. So don’t count them out.

Want to make Cardinals cupcakes? Get some ideas here.

Players you should mention in discussion:

Kurt Warner, QB, Cardinals
Sample question: Do you think Warner will retire at the end of the year? After all, he is 38 years old.
Fact you should know: Kurt Warner took the St. Louis Rams to the Super Bowl after the 1999 season. They won the game and Kurt was MVP.
Also: Kurt Warner’s wife is like 10 years older than he is. And before he went to that first Super Bowl, he worked as a grocery store stocker.

Vintage Kurt Warner

Darren Sharper, Safety, Saints
Sample question: How much of a difference did Sharper and the improved defense make for the Saints this year?! Right? OR: Do you think the last three losses suffered by the Saints are signs that the team is not going to do well in the playoffs, or was that just fatigue and injuries?
Fact you should know: This is Sharper’s first year on the Saints. He most recently played for the NFC #2 seed Minnesota Vikings.
Also: Sharper had 9 interceptions this year. He returned the interceptions for a league-record 376 yards this season. (Meaning, he caught the ball that the other team threw, and he ran it back in the other direction for a total of 376 yards this year. Which is a lot.)

Darren Sharper. How often are these player pictures adorable?

Who should I root for?

Typically I’d say you should root for the Cardinals as the underdog, but there’s a bigger picture here. Which is that the Saints are the underdog of the NFL, if not the season. So, if you want the underdog, go Saints.

Also, if you root for the Saints, you can say “WHO DAT!” a lot. (That’s the fan slogan. It’s fun!)

As for the Cardinals, they’re the team you want to root for if you want to support an aging QB (maybe) on his way out of the league.

Or if you really like birds.

Super Bowl: Fun Fact/Conversation Starter

Fun Fact: It occurs to me that I didn’t mention yet the fact that Ken Whisenhunt, Cardinals head coach and Eliot Spitzer-lookalike, was the offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers and was passed over for the head coaching job in favor of Steelers coach and Omar Epps-lookalike Mike Tomlin. That makes it something of a possible revenge game for Coach W, but I didn’t even consider the fact that it also means that he might have a leg up, since he’s playing a team whose schemes he knows/knew well.

Conversation starter: Do you think Whisenhunt’s experience coaching the Steelers will give the Cardinals an advantage?

Side note: Hayden Pannatiere is wearing Uggs in Tampa? At least the announcers called her on her stupidity. I mean, come on. It’s 70 degrees. Watch the Weather Channel!

Sider note: Did Jess travel to Tampa with Hayden? Shouldn’t they show him, too?

FifG Game of the Week: Pittsburgh Steelers v. Arizona Cardinals

Arizona Cardinals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (Sunday 6:28 p.m., NBC)

Why it’s good football:

It’s the Super Bowl! Duh.

Top team in the AFC vs. the top team in the NFC. Can’t beat that!

Why you might care:

It’s the Super Bowl! Duh.

Because, come on, if you’re going to watch one football game a year, this is it. There are great ads in between plays. There are parties with delicious food stuffs. Plus, everyone talks about the Super Bowl for at least one day after the fact, and you want to be a part of the conversations, don’t you? Be an American! Watch the Super Bowl!

Football is just like Pop Culture!

Maybe you are wondering why the man in your life is so excited about the Super Bowl when he is neither from Arizona nor from Pittsburgh and has never mentioned either team or any player from either team in conversation ever before this week.

Here’s the parallel.

I, like many women, love Sex and the City. I watched the whole series (granted, mostly on DVD since I didn’t have HBO for most of the show’ s run), and I will watch almost any episode that I click onto on TBS or TNT or wherever they play it. (Though they recently played the one where Carrie dumps Aidan again, and I couldn’t watch. Too sad. She should have married Aidan. I should have married Aidan. Oops, Digressing, digressing.)

So anyway, I saw the ads for the SATC movie, and my first thought was, Oh no! Why? But I thought, hey, maybe it’ll be better than I think. Then I saw the previews, and, well, it didn’t look so good. But I thought, hey, who can judge from 30 seconds?! Maybe it’ll be better than I think. And then I read the reviews, and those weren’t so good either. And at that point I didn’t even bother to assume it would be better than I thought, but guess what? I saw the movie. In the theater.

But why, you may ask. Why did you see the movie when it looked bad and the reviews were bad and the previews were bad and you didn’t want the characters to live on in some phony way that would likely ruin much of the experience of the TV show?

I will tell you why:

I am a woman. I love Sex and the City.

I had to see the movie.

Similarly, if you are a man (or woman, of course) and you love football, you have to watch the Super Bowl.

You have to.

Painful, but not as painful as paying $12 to see the movie.

Boyfriend/Husband/Dad/Other will be so impressed!

Fast Facts:

-People, please go to espn.com or si.com for fun facts. There are twenty million, zillion, trillion, jillion fun facts out there for this game. There are so many fun facts out there that I am overwhelmed. Maybe I’ll give you a couple that pop up a lot.

-Larry Fitzgerald (Arizona wide receiver, #11) is the son of a long-time Minnesota sports reporter who gets to cover his son in the big game. Pretty cool. Larry Fitzgerald always wears pretty blue dress shirts at his press conferences, so I like him.

-Ben Roethlisberger’s team won the Super Bowl 3 years ago, but his passer rating was the lowest for any Super Bowl-winning quarterback (22.6). (For the record, Kurt Warner won the Super Bowl MVP trophy and passed for over 400 yards when he and the St. Louis Rams won in the 1999 season.)

Conversation Starters:

-So, who do you think will win?

-Should Carrie have ended up with Big after all the crap he’s pulled?

-Hey, do you like these cupcakes I made? Aren’t they pretty?

Side Note:

I was in Tampa last weekend (I know, great timing, but my dad’s birthday was last weekend), and I did not see a single person wearing a single Arizona jersey. Well sure, you might say, it was a week early!

True, but guess how many Steelers jerseys I saw? Hint: A lot.

There were Steelers fans EVERYWHERE. On the street, at the mall, in Target, in restaurants, in cars with waving flags, you name it, there were Steelers fans. We drove to the Cracker Barrel parking lot in Haines City, FL to deliver my brother to his friends who live in Orlando (and their super cute baby), and guess who was there? In the parking lot walking to their vans, in the rocking chairs escaping the sun, in the general store buying candy… MORE STEELERS FANS! It should be something like a Steelers home game in Tampa. For realz.

This could be a preview of the crowd in Tampa.

Player Pronunciation:

Chike Okeafor (ARI): chee-kay oh-kee-fuhr

Deshea Townsend (PIT): deh-shay town-sehnd

Cute football player of the week:

Troy Polamalu, Pittsburgh, Safety

Kurt Warner, Arizona, QB

It's his second time here, but seriously, the interweb readers are obsessed with this guy. So a second win is deserved.

Ok, getting older, but still cute, no?

Who should I root for? The Quiz

Still not sure whose side you’re on for the Super Bowl? Take this short quiz, and you’ll have your team.

Directions: Choose A or B

1. In competitive situations, who do you root for?

A. the underdog

B. whoever has the best chance of winning

2. What color(s) do you bleed?

A. red and/or white

B. black and/or yellow

3. If you were decorating a room, what kind of accent piece would you buy?

A. a decorative bird cage from Pottery Barn

B. a steel coffee table

4. Which celebrity spotting would you find more exciting?

A. Former NY governor Eliot Spitzer

B. Omar Epps

5. What do you think about super religious men who marry older women?

A. So sweet

B. Creepy

6. How would you describe a guy who rides motorcycles and dates girls from gymnastics movies?

A. Douchey

B. Hot

7. Which do you prefer?

A. individuality, going against the grain

B. camaraderie, being part of a group

8. Close your eyes and picture yourself waving something in the air.

What are you waving?

A. a fan

B. a towel

9. Complete the sentence. I am…

A. … an aging retiree.

B. … a working class everyman.

10. You are shopping for something new to wear. Which would you select?

A. a feathered cap

B. steel-toe boots

Results:

Count the number of times you chose A and B.

If you chose more As: You are the perfect Cardinals fan.

If you chose more Bs: Go Steelers!

Super Bowl Cupcakes: Cardinals

Almost time for Super Bowl parties, people!

And because I am here to serve both the football fan readers and the cupcake gods, I’ve decided try to make some team-appropriate cupcakes that you can make, too! Because I’m not actually very good at baking or cake decorating, so if I can do it, YOU can do it! (Though you may or may not want to. Read on.)

My friend Kristy (of cupfin fame) and I toiled toilfully to come up with a few ideas for those of you who cheer for the Arizona Cardinals. Let me start by saying that the Cardinals’ mascot is not very cupcake-friendly. It’s very detailed and there is really no easy way to throw a couple of pretzels together to make an angry-eyed bird. Let me add that the the team colors–red and white–are a little boring, and I hate the taste of red icing. But we did what we could, and I hope our work will be inspirational to others.

Without further ado, the Cardinal cupcakes:

I used chocolate cake with white frosting, though I would recommend using red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting instead.

This is Larry Fitzgerald's jersey. As jerseys go, the cardinals are not too difficult to replicate.

The more traditional cardinals.

Ok, starting with the left and moving clockwise: cardinal is made of red hots, icing, a Reeces Pieces nose and a ring of red hots around the outside; second cardinal is made of a strawberry with icing for the eye and a chopped in half yellow Reeces Pieces beak; and finally the yellow-background cardinal is made of two Swedish Fish, white and black icing eye, and a Bugle for the beak.

We were really just going for a color scheme on these.

These are the "special" cardinals.

I've decided this one talks like Paul Lynde.

Next week: Steelers cupcakes!

FifG Game of the Week

Ok, folks, I know that this is a huge football weekend in terms of who will and who will not be heading to the Super Bowl. However, my entire football being has been focused on the Bucs. And a large portion of my non-football being, too. That’s a good 3/4 to 7/8 of my being that is now consumed with thoughts of whether the Bucs should have fired Jon Gruden (yes, but maybe not so late in the game if he wants to coach somewhere else this year) and whether they should have hired 32-year-old Raheem Morris, who has precisely 0 head coaching experience on ANY level (why not? we’ll probably suck this year anyway, and I like the risky move–Bucs are never risky). I’ve watched hours of ESPN-N (because my “bargain”-priced cable package doesn’t include ESPN), and I’ve checked every football/Bucs websites like 20 zillion times a day (because you never know when they’re going to ask Clifton Smith what he thinks about the firing). Does this mean I have no life (yes)? No, I don’t think so (no, seriously, I do).

Anyhoo, there are two big games today. The first pits the Arizona Cardinals against the Philadelphia Eagles to determine the NFC representative to the Super Bowl. After that it’s the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC.

Here’s the most exciting fact about this double-header: 3 out of 4 teams competing have bird mascots! Who would’ve thought? I think we as a society have come a long way in our acceptance of bird mascots. Can you imagine 50 years ago seeing this many bird mascots competing to participate in the biggest game of the year?

Conversation Starters:

-Can you think of bird names for each of the players in today’s games? I have one: Joe Flappo. As in bird wings. Flapping.

-Should there be a Game of the Week column at all when the blogger hasn’t been paying attention to anything but new coach press conferences all weekend?

Cute Football Player of the Week

Joe Flappo, Baltimore Raven

Quoth the raven: Hi, I'm Joe.

(Ok, so this was a goofy blog. Next time I’ll be more coherent. Enjoy the games today!)

FifG Game of the Week: I dunno. One of the four.

I didn’t write a Game of the Week this week. But hear me out: I’ve had to work late every day, and I have a headache.

If this were some syndicated column that wouldn’t count for much, but lucky for me this blog is mostly read by my friends who don’t like football. Tra la!

So I though, Hey! I should live-blog the Panthers and Cardinals game! And so I sat at my computer and tried that.

Here is an excerpt:

8:53 Applebee’s commercial. Does anyone like Applebee’s? I really don’t. It’s like Chili’s or Friday’s but with gross food. And I can never find a single thing to order ever. Yuck. You know what I do love? Chili’s Caribbean Chicken Salad. It wasn’t on the menu last time I went, though. Does that still exist?

So I thought better of the live-blogging.

But I would like to do a player pronunciation today, and that’s

Stephen Spach (ARI): stee-vehn spahk

His name sounds like the Star Trek Vulcan Spock. That’s funny. Right? Funny!

Fun fact (that I just learned): Stephen Spach used to have dreds.

The Dredded Spach.

This Spock kept to his bowl cut.

Ok, I will check in later if I have more to say about this game.

For the record, if fantasy season were still going, my team would be kicking butt right now with Larry Fitzgerald playing so well and Jonathan Stewart scoring. However, the fantasy season is over. And I came in 5th of 10.

FifG Games of the Week: The Playoffs, Wild Card Edition

Welcome to the playoffs!

Since there are now only four games per week, it seems a little silly to choose one game of the week. So I’ll go ahead and try to give you a few talking points for each game.

Game 1: Atlanta Falcons vs. Arizona Cardinals [Saturday 4:30 p.m., NBC]

This one is super young vs. super old as rookie QB Matt Ryan and the Falcons travel to Arizona to face 37-year-old Kurt Warner. (In football years, 37 is equal to like 97.) In January of 2000, Kurt Warner won a Super Bowl with the Rams.  In January of 2000, Matt Ryan was a high school freshman.  Hmm.

Pop Culture: Don’t you think Ed Hartwell wishes he was still a Falcon? Poor dude.

Player pronunciation:

Steve Breaston (ARI): steev brehs-tuhn

Reasons to root one way or another:

Falcons: Feel good story of young guy going to the Super Bowl.

Cardinals: Feel good story of an old guy going to the Super Bowl.

Game 2: Indianapolis Colts vs. San Diego Chargers [Saturday 8:00, NBC]

So, the 8-8 Chargers did make the playoffs and got a home game for winning the division. However, there really doesn’t seem to be much if any uproar about it, so never mind my thought that people would be upset. Oh well. Anyway, somehow lots of people seem to think the Chargers will win this one. I guess because of the home field advantage? Even though the Colts have won 12 games this year? And Peyton Manning was voted league MVP? Whatevs.

I think you all know who I want to win this game. (It rhymes with Schmolts.)

Fun fact:

-Indianapolis running back Joseph Addai had 1,072 rushing yards in 2007 and 544 in 2008. Lots of angry fantasy football players out there counting on big numbers from him.

Reasons to root one way or another:

Colts: Tony Dungy may retire this year, and it’d be nice for him to end on a good note. Dungy is widely respected for his calm demeanor and Christian values. He faced adversity a few years ago when his teenage son killed himself, but remained active in charitable work as well as football.

Chargers: The Chargers were pre-season favorites and faltered during the year. A good story for a team who managed to pick themselves up and dust themselves off heading into the playoffs.

Game 3: Baltimore Ravens vs. Miami Dolphins [Sunday 1:00, CBS]

Two unlikely teams in this one. The Ravens have a famously strong defense, but it was hard to imagine that a rookie QB/coach combo could carry the defense to the playoffs. Surprise! As for the Dolphins, they won a single game last year, and this year they won 11. QB Chad Pennington was dumped by the Jets last year in favor of Brett Favre, and the huge chip on his shoulder didn’t hurt his throwing arm at all. (Must have been on the other shoulder.) It probably didn’t hurt that the dolphins had former (really good) coach Bill Parcells pulling strings in the front office, either.

Conversation Starter:

-Who is the better story this year: Joe Flacco or Matt Ryan?

Reasons to root one way or another:

Ravens: Again, the young QB makes a nice feel-good story.

Dolphins: 1-16 one year, Super Bowl the next. Not entirely likely, but a great story!

Game 4: Philadelphia Eagles vs. Minnesota Vikings [Sunday 4:15, FOX]

The Eagles seriously backed their way into the playoffs with a Chicago and a Tampa (sigh) loss in the last game of the season. However, they did destroy the Dallas Cowboys, who were favored by many before the season started to be the NFC’s Super Bowl contender. So what do they have? Momentum! And what else do they have? A QB who is playing for a big new contract! Donovan McNabb might play somewhere new next year, though that likely depends on what happens in the playoffs, and this is a great time for him to show other teams how much money he is worth on a national stage!

As for the Vikings, they won the weak NFC North division and have the potential to do great things, but that potential rests on the legs of running back Adrian Peterson. The second-year Oklahoma grad is a phenom, and he’ll likely need to continue to be to win playoff games.

Cute Football Players of the Week:

Adrian Peterson, Vikings RB

An old photo, but he's still only 23.

Mark Sanchez, USC QB

No, he's not in the NFL yet. But he's earned this.

See?

Reasons to root one way or another:

Eagles: My friend Renada just moved to Philadelphia. Please root for them on her behalf. (I don’t like the Eagles, personally, so that’s all I got.)

Vikings: Their colors are purple and yellow. Pretty!