ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?: I probably should say something about new NFL season, which starts tonight with the Giants-49ers game up the road at the Meadowlands. I'm not sure what I think about this starting-on-Thursday thing; this contest so far has had the feel of a pre-season game and besides, it makes it tougher for people nationwide to bet on all the games when they have to remember one more game on the Thursday before.
As for the season itself, there's really no point in making predictions because football is the only sport in which a team can go from absolutely awful to championhip-caliber in one year- after all, the last three Super Bowl winners (the Rams, Ravens, and Patriots) were all ghastly the year before and entered their championship seasons seemingly in peril. Who's the team this year? Could it be the Browns, or the Falcons, or the Lions? Nah, not the Lions. Not as long as that big galoot Matt Millen is in charge.
So how about my Vikings? Well, they have a good quarterback, which is more than I can say for a lot of teams, if a team's got a QB it's hard to totally count them out. But you never know what Randy Moss' next tantrum will be about, and the defense has been so depleted by salary cap departures that when they signed free agent Greg Biekert last week, he became the one and only Vikings defensive player that I've heard of. I predict they go 9-7; no playoffs. As for the regular season I'll go along with the conventional (and thus most certainly wrong) wisdom: Rams over Steelers in Super Bowl XXXVII.