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Widespread Panic and the Transcendental Power of Music September 23, 2007

Posted by Matt in concert, music.
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Originally Posted 9/23/07

The moments of our lives pass by in a blur, leaving us many times in a bleary state of confusion as we stumble from one day to the next in this destitute plane of existence where the masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation in a furious attempt to manifest themselves as one of the fittest who survive to the next round of play. But sometimes, yes sometimes, there are events that allow us to leave behind the unsatisfying nature of our world, grasp the edge of the precipice above us and ascend to a new level of consciousness where, at least for a short minutes, we experience a heavenly sort of euphoria in which, for once, it all makes sense. It’s the kairos between those times of drudgery and annoyance and the insatiable desire for more. Time seemingly stands still and all is right with the world.

Last night was one of those moments…

Yesterday evening I had the incredible opportunity to experience one of those occasions again, this time in the form of a group of middle aged musicians from the Deep South – Widespread Panic.

My friend Josh and I arrived on the scene well before the show began, giving ourselves plenty of time to grab a couple of beers on nearby Beale Street and enjoy the ambiance that only a band like Widespread can bestow upon their eager followers. We walked through the corridor of hippie merchants, selling everything from t-shirts to rocks to ummm…tobacco (yeah, that’s it) pipes, drinking in the overwhelming feelings of love and peace and music saturating the air around the arena.

We entered the FedEx Forum s few minutes before 7:00pm and found a spot on the floor, relatively close to the stage, that offered us an excellent view of the musical proceeding that awaited us. The opening act was the amazing Mavis Staples, a 60-something year old African American R&B artist and longtime civil rights actvist, who just brought the house down with her powerful, emotionally charged set that left the audience in a frenzy for more.

After her 45 minute performance, there was about a 30 minute break in which they put the finishing touches on the stage for the upcoming jam band extravaganza that awaited us. I enjoyed watching and chatting with fellow concertgoers, who seemed to range from teenagers to old-school deadheads, listening to their tales of Widespread shows past, bad trips, and the amazing, ethereal power of music.

Widespread hit the stage around 8:30 and the multitude of thousands, many of whom were there for the second consecutive night went wild in an ecstatic cheer as they ripped through song after song, John Bell’s raspy I’ve-seen-and-done-it-all voice tearing through the air about us as new lead guitarist Jimmy Herring blew the roof off the arena with his wicked southern fried picking. The masses of dirty hippies danced and shouted with a groovy jubilation as they moved through favorites like Fishwater and Tall Boy before stopping momentarily near the end of the insanely good first set to again bring out opening act Mavis Staples for two numbers – the classic soul song, “The Dark End of the Street” and the old Pops Staples song that Widespread covered on their Bombs & Butterflies album, “Hope in a Hopeless World” – that she sang with such an honest passion that you could not help but be moved.

After a short break, the band reemerged for a rollicking seemingly nonstop second set that kept the tired, sweaty masses grooving continually, perfecting the art of stoner white-boy dancing. Song after song led into one another with little time to rest between the extensive jam sessions and ending with an unbelievably cohesive selection of songs that stretched on and on for eons, lifting the crowd higher and higher into a new stratosphere of cognition far above those dwelt in by ordinary men. It was an undeniable spiritual experience, carrying all of those present and conscious into a sort of musical nirvana where we were no longer individuals doing our own thing and dancing to our own beat, but we were one – moving together as a single organism in a spasmodic rhapsody of inspiration, beyond the normal exihilaration of live music and into a whole new reality. That ending selection of back-to-back tunes with long periods of zen-like jamming in between, stretching from Stop Breakin’ Down Blues to Driving Song to Greta to Conrad, left the tired, heaving masses yearning for more….and soon we were obliged to receive it.

When JB and the boys returned for their regular encore, the standing room only crowd again let out whoops of joy, the knowledge that this special night was not yet ending settled deep within their mesencephalon causing that well-known rapturous pleasure. The combination of This Part of Town and Flat Foot Flewzy brought the entire sweating, stinking congregation to their feet with a transcendental power flowing through their veins, the spirit of oneness taking hold as the wholeness of the crowd came together for one last dance of unassailed elation.

Just past midnight, when it was over, we all went our separate ways, piling into our hulking metal automobiles in standstill traffic on the crowded downtown Memphis streets, with the feeling somewhere in the back of our minds that perhaps our otherworldly awareness was only an illusion and once again we would be doomed to a life of cubicles and nondescript subdivisions and the quiet desperation infecting the teeming masses, but, then again, maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe there is a zen-like light at the end of the tunnel that we, together as a community can someday reach where there is no rich or poor or black or white or gay or straight. Maybe, just maybe as we flail about in the darkness of our world we can together find the answer.

But, until then, we’ll still have Widespread Panic…

Don’t Mess With the SEC September 20, 2007

Posted by Matt in Football, Razorbacks.
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Orginally posted 9/20/07

As you probably all realize, I’m a huge football fan and an unabashed numbers geek, so naturally I love breaking down statistics to see who, at least statistically, is the best.

Last week, while eating lunch with some of my friends from church, the assertion was made that the SEC (Southeastern Conference for those of you who aren’t football fans), while consistently good, is vastly overrated by the media. I, of course, took great offense at this and this week vowed to prove my friend wrong.

So, I took the four arguably biggest football conferences – the SEC, Big 10, Big 12, and Pac-10 (I looked at including the Big East and ACC, but due to their swapping of teams with each other and Conference USA, I left them both out) – and broke down their numbers over the last 10 years to see just where each of them stand in the grand scheme of things.

The first two columns contain the total Win-Loss records for all of the teams in each conference along with a %. The next column gives the total number of teams that had at least 10 wins in a single season over the 10 years. Then we have the Win-Loss record for bowl games and a winning percentage. The Nat Champ column gives the number of national championships won by teams from each conference (If there was a split championship, each team was counted). The Top 10 column gives the number of teams that finished in the top 10 and the Top 25 gives the same. The last column gives the total number of players drafted by the NFL through 2005 (the 2006 stats weren’t included on the site I used for my research). The top conference in each category is highlighted in yellow.

Tot W L W-L% 10 W Bowl W-L Bowl % Nat Champ Top 10 Top 25 Drafted Players
SEC 839 616 57.7% 28 43–32 57.3% 3 21 53 364
Big 12 837 630 57.1% 25 34–39 46.6% 3 19 40 260
Big 10 744 586 55.9% 24 33–34 49.3% 2 18 41 317
Pac 10 665 529 55.7% 21 27–28 49.1% 2 17 28 272

Then I took the four teams by conference with the highest winning percentage over the 10 years and calculated the same statistics.

Top 4 W L W-L% 10 W Bowl W-L Bowl % NatCh Top 10 Top 25 Drafted Players
SEC 370 132 73.7% 19 22–15 59.5% 3 17 34 195
Big 12 374 132 73.9% 23 19–16 54.3% 3 18 29 140
Big 10 357 143 71.4% 16 20–18 52.6% 2 13 27 168
Pac 10 315 173 64.5% 13 15–15 50.0% 2 10 14 115

Lastly I looked at the middle four teams by conference with the next highest winning percentages.

Mid 4 W L W-L% 10 W Bowl W-L Bowl % NatCh Top 10 Top 25 Drafted Players
SEC 287 200 58.9% 8 15–13 53.6% 0 4 15 103
Big 12 273 213 56.2% 2 10–16 38.5% 0 1 8 88
Big 10 264 218 54.8% 7 12–12 50.0% 0 5 12 108
Pac 10 251 225 52.7% 7 10–11 47.6% 0 6 11 107

The Pac 10 has been strong in recent years with the emergence of USC as a national power, but overall their conference contains far too many weak or mediocre teams to be considered at the top. The Big 10 has good players, as evidenced by the number of NFL draftees, but overall it has seen better days. The Big 12 is extremely top heavy, as can be seen by their excellent top 4, but after that they start to lag behind.

So, in my eyes, this solidifies the preeminence of the SEC in the NCAA. What do you think? Does this prove anything?

Talking Theology with a Five Year Old September 17, 2007

Posted by Matt in Rachel, evil, theology.
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Originally Posted 9/17/07

My daughters are very analytical children, always asking questions about everything from natural phenomena to the origins of the clothes on our backs, but this weekend one small query from her threw me for the proverbial loop.

“Daddy,” she asked with an inquisitive sort of look on her face, “Who is Satan?”

I was taken aback for a moment with the immensity of her three word query. How do you answer?

Do you take the premodern viewpoint that the devil is a celestial being constantly waging a dualistic war with God that he is doomed to eventually lose? Do you fill her with Dantean stories of eternal torture to frighten her into doing the right thing? Do you tell her of a shadowy figure, bathed in darkness and with an unquenchable yearning for death, destruction, and corrupted human souls?

In other words, do you tell them something that you believe to be in error?

My children are rather intelligent, if I do say so myself, but I don’t think she is quite ready to grasp the idea that I would espouse. I don’t think she could understand that the idea of the devil is a metaphor for a human nature that tends toward the worship of self. I think she would have trouble with the idea of the devil as an excuse for behavior that is not consistent with the way of Christ. I doubt that I could tell her about how the notion of an evil supreme being most likely came from the influence of the dualistic Zoroastrians on early Christians.

Do you tell a small child that we, all of humanity, are the devil?

Well, in order not to bruise her delicate psyche and turn her into a religious cynic like her father, I took an easy way out.

“Well, honey, some people think that Satan is a really bad thing that is against God and tries to make you do what you are not supposed to.”

This time my non-answer placated her inquiring mind without resorting to the invalidation of my own beliefs, but it won’t be long until I will be forced to give stronger explanations and at this point. Then, before you know it, the investigations will turn to ideas of sin and evil and the social constructions behind them and, once again, I will be flabbergasted and at a loss for a correct answer that will not tear down the belief structure that she has built.

Whew! Nobody every said that parenting was easy….

Thirtysomething September 16, 2007

Posted by Matt in growing older.
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Originally Posted 10/16/07

When I awoke this morning, it seemed as though there was nothing different. The house was in the same order it was last night. The girls were still at my parents’ so it was uncharacteristically quiet, even for 5:45am, but that was no different than yesterday. I felt physically the same as I did yesterday and have felt for the last few years. Though the change may be somewhat invisible, there is something different….

Today I turn 30.

It seems strange to think that the decade of my 20’s is already behind me. Besides the extra cushioning I’ve gained over the years and the fact that my hair seems to be transplanting itself from my hair to other places, things don’t seem all that different. I’m not ready to give up on my youthful idealism for cold-hearted capitalist pragmatism. I’m not ready to trade in my music collection for Kenny G. I’m not ready to give up my last vestiges of coolness (If I ever had any to begin with).

So, what other important events took place on this day in history?

1793 – Marie Antoinette was guillotined during the French Revolution
1859 – John Brown led the raid on Harper’s Ferry
1916 – Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood
1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded
1962 – The Cuban Missle Crisis began
1978 – Karol Jozef Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul II
2002 – Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 signed into law by President George W. Bush

Othere who share this birthday:
1854 – Oscare Wilde
1925 – Angela Lansbury
1946 – Suzanne Somers
1947 – Bob Weir (of the Grateful Dead)
1958 – Tim Robbins
1962 – Flea
1977 – John Mayer

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, activist Jerry Rubin made the famous statement, “Never trust anyone over 30.”

But, I hope that at least some of you will still trust me….

Day Care Dangers September 16, 2007

Posted by Matt in Rachel, Rebekah, music, random.
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Originally posted 9/16/07

No, this isn’t about the large red welt that has been on Bekah’s arm for much of the last week in the shape of one of her classmate’s oral cavity, this is a far more malevolent problem.

I try hard to be a good father and to raise my children up right, forsaking those things deemed to be wrong or unbecoming in their behavior, but, alas, sometimes no matter how much we impress upon them the importance and outright goodness of some things over others, they still fall prey to their peers or to the habits of adults who have them in their care. You all know I’m a huge fan of a wide variety of music and I try to influence my children with the same sense of musical diversity – with everything from Willie Nelson to the Dead to the White Stripes and several, several other groups played within the walls of our home. Rachel picked up the love of music from an early age, singing everything from Old McDonald to Disney princess songs to Folsom Prison Blues (You haven’t heard anything until you’ve heard a 3 year old sing the words, “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die), but her transgression today will be a tough one to overcome.

This afternoon I was working in the garden and she was tagging along, asking me what various objects were and about the germination of plant seeds (in this case, collard greens),when she suddenly broke out into song. My daughter has a wonderful singing voice (not something she inherited from her father), but she regularly has a problem with knowing the correct lyrics to songs. So, she can sing a great melody, but many times she either makes up words along with the few interspersed lyrics that she might know or she’ll just vocalize the melody with several La’s and think nothing of it. Today was one of the latter and after she serenaded me with a few bars of nonintelligible lyrics, I came to realization that she was

<gasp> belting out “Before He Cheats,” by Carrie Underwood.

So, after five years of living together and countless times of sitting together listening to the best (at least in my mind) music in existence today, she’s singing that?? Are you kidding me?

Incredulously, I looked at her with eyes pleading for some acknowledgment that this wasn’t actually happening and asked, “Honey, where did you hear that?”

“At day care. We always listen to KIX 106″

At that moment a small part of me died as I realized that for several months my poor, sweet, innocent little girl had been subjected to so much poorly written garbage under the guise of country music. For a moment, I was afraid that all was lost. My 5 year venture into the realm of fatherhood had seemingly been a total and abject failure…..

But then she asked me to put on some Johnny Cash and then I realized that all was not lost.

Get Rich or Die Tryin’….for Jesus! September 14, 2007

Posted by Matt in god, poverty.
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Originally posted 9/14/06

There’s a show on FX that I occasionally catch called 30 Days. Each episode is a sort of mini-documentary done by Morgan Spurlock of “Super Size Me” fame, where he either puts himself or has somebody else live in an uncomfortable situation for 30 days. He has survived on a minumum wage job, lived with illegal immigrants, and lots of other things. One episode in particular involved a woman who was an avowed atheist put into a staunchly conservative Christian home for 30 days. After I watched the episode and pondered on it a little while, I realized that I tended to side with the woman on much of what was talked about over the family. One of the issues in particular had to do with, you guessed it, money and Jesus.

She faithfully attended worship services with the family and was involved in weekly Bible studies throughout the episode. After her first trip to this mega-church, that was not only housed in a multi-multi-million dollar building, but also had ever amenity you can imagine, she came away with one major question – “How could a group of people that claim to follow Jesus justify spending so much money on things like this when people were going hungry in the world.” The husband in the family’s answer was something like, “What, just because we’re Christians we can’t have nice stuff?”

Here in suburban Memphis where we live, there are monstrous churches on seemingly every corner that had to have cost millions upon millions of dollars. There’s one congregation that I know of (and it’s not even one of the biggest ones) that is currently building an $11 million expansion.

I don’t mean to be judgemental, though I know I am too much of the time, but couldn’t all of the money have gone to a better use? There are great charitable organizations out there like Heifer Project that are working to bring some relief to the 1.1 billion people in the world that live in extreme poverty (defined as those living under $1/day). $11 million dollars would buy 22,000 heifers or 88,000 goats or even 44,000 water buffalo for the poorest in our world.

The older I get, the more I realize how screwed up Western thinking really is – especially when it comes to this prosperity gospel that is infiltrating churches of all types.

Professional Sports as a Microcosm of Society September 13, 2007

Posted by Matt in sports.
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Originally posted 9/13/07

There is an epidemic in the world of professional sports, a sickness that has now dragged all three of the major organizations under in it’s despicable, cancerous grip – the disease of cheating.

The news of Bill Belichick’s Patriots videotaping opposing teams in order to get an edge was just the latest in a run that includes everything from Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal to NBA referee Tim Donaghy’s gambling. I would venture to say, though, that this seemingly sudden series of sordid skulduggery is not just the work of a few bad apples, rather, it seems to be a product of something bigger, something with a monumental scope over not just the world of pro sports, but engulfing the entirety of our society.

What is it about human nature that drives us to shrug off mantle of ethics, rebuffing our inborn conscience and the well-being of others to gain selfish glory? But the finger cannot just be pointed at others, we are all guilty. We all find occasion to bow at the altar of ego, forsaking all for the god created in our own image. It’s a sad, but true, fact of life that our self-indulgency will drive us to do anything, regardless of who we may hurt along the way, to get ahead.

Is it a byproduct of a capitalist society, where the shrewd and powerful can elbow their way to the front of the proverbial line? Is it because of our inner need to be loved and viewed as a “somebody?” Is it greed? Is it the result of invisible Frank Peretti-like demons hanging on your back? Or is this just the way our species continues to perpetuate itself through natural selection, eventually weeding out the “lesser” among us, giving rise to the next evolutionary phase, the Nietchzean superman?

I don’t know. But I do know that this malady is not just restricted to the world of sports. It can be seen everyday in the businessmen stepping on the heads of their peers to get ahead or in our political leaders, eschewing all ethics in order to reach that next platform of supposed significance or in the test-taking teen with a desire to make the grade or in the person speeding down the expressway, weaving between fellow drivers in their mad attempt to keep a timely schedule, regardless of the chance of an accident.

Were these athletic personalities wrong to cheat their way to the top? Of course. But, before we start casting our pharisaic stones, let’s take a moment of self-examination to remove the piece of timber from our own eye.

Our Scare for the Day September 12, 2007

Posted by Matt in Rachel, family.
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Originally Posted 9/12/07

As those of you who know me and read this blog know, our daughter Rachel began her educational journey this year as a kindergarten student in our local public school system. So far she has been riding the bus to school from our house in the morning and departing from the public transportation vehicle at a neighbor’s house along with their children until one of us can get there to pick her up.

Well…today D had to work late, so the task fell to me to pick up the girls. I left work early today to attend to a doctor’s visit that ended up dragging on for nearly two full hours (mostly spent sitting and waiting), but by the normal time of 5:40 or so I was at the house to pick up my beloved older daughter.

When I arrived, it was obvious that something wasn’t right. The garage door was closed, there were no lights visible on the inside and there were no children outside playing. I scratched my head a bit then exited the car to try and find out exactly what was going on.

Almost as soon as I stepped on the grass, I saw a little head poke up above the railing of the front porch and heard my little girl crying “Daddy!” running down the steps and throwing herself into my arms in a fit of sobs.

It turns out that there was nobody home. Rachel got on the bus, but the neighbor children did not follow suit. She rode to their house and departed obediently just as she always does, but there was noone there to greet her. She was all alone.

She explained to me that she had been trying to sleep on the front porch swing(!), but that it was rather uncomfortable. My heart really broke, though, when she said these words,
“Daddy, my eyes hurt.”
“Why do your eyes hurt, honey? What’s wrong?”
“I was praying to God and looking at the sun and now they hurt.”

At any other time, I would post some sarcastic remark about my daughter apparently worshipping Apollo, but it really upset me to think of her all alone, wondering if anybody would ever show up to help her.

She did the right thing in the situation by staying at our neighbor’s house for the nearly 2 hours after the bus left, but we are completely dumbfounded about the fact that this happened at all. So far, the family down the street have not answered their phones this evening and, as of a few hours ago, they were not at home but, rest assured, she won’t be staying over there any longer.

In With the New September 5, 2007

Posted by Matt in Bible, theology.
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Originally Posted 9/05/07

Our church has accepted the challenge to read the Bible in it’s entirety during this calendar year and, while my own reading has been less than exemplary in this endeavor, it has been a good experience thusfar as our Sunday morning classes and sermons have centered around the scriptures of the week. We are nearing the end of the 39 books of the Old Testament and beginning to gear up for the second leg of our journey through the world of the Supreme Deity and His people, and so the unavoidable subject of transition has arisen – what exactly is the difference between the old covenant and the new?

When I think of God and his celestial parentage with the Israelites, I think about my own 5 years of experience as a father and the arduous task of teaching young children the difference between right and wrong. Young children, with their developing brains and knowledge, lack the ability to engage in deep, abstract thought. Due to their lack of wisdom, they cannot reason through their decisions in the same way that we (well most of us) as adults can. So, instead of vague guidelines, we, as parents, must set down concrete rules with known consequences to train our children not to hit or bite or take their friend’s toys.

God gazed down upon the people that he had guided through millions of years of evolutionary creation only to see them running amok, doing whatever they pleased. Heck, even a good man like Noah would occasionally have a little too much wine and uncover the family jewels. So after some time, He set down the ground rules, beginning with the Decalogue (i.e. the Big Ten) and running through the voluminous ordinances and punishments listed in the exceptionally monotonous book of Leviticus. But God was not just some wrathful supreme being casting thunderbolts at the misbehaving mortals, rather His love and caring can be seen in the meticulous nature of His legislations just as we continue to deeply love our children even when we sometimes must slap their hands or put them in timeout or string them upside down by their toenails (well…maybe not that one) for certain misbehaviors that we do not want to see repeated.

Then several hundred years later another fellow came on the scene – someone not claiming to just be a prophet of God, but to actually be the incarnate Deity Himself, Jesus. While being questioned by the Pharisees in Matt 22, Christ deftly sums up the entirety of the old Law with two seemingly simple sentences, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He then makes the stark pronouncement that, “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

It is with this proclamation that the people of God began the maturation process away from rules set in stone and began the journey toward a more enlightened existence in which they had few definite celestial guidelines and a wide open field in front of them. So then it seems, as Christians, all of our actions should be governed by those two statements. Can we flip the bird at the driver who just cut us off on the highway and still love our neighbor? Can we pass by the destitute and downtrodden and still love our neighbor? Can we buy a gun for self defense in the small chance that someone may try to harm us or (gasp) take our meaningless material possessions and still love our neighbor? Can we live in a gated and walled community and still love our neighbor? Can we dehumanize our enemy on the battlefield and still love our neighbor?

Paul also addressed our personal actions and their affects on others in Romans 14 in his chapter-long soliloquy on matters of conscience. His statement in vs. 14 of this chapter very well sums up my own radical relativism, “I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” So then, from the words in this chapter we learn that our actions must be governed by our conscience and our desire to not offend the consciences of others. It is through this worldview that we accept the tolerance of the postmodern world and move forward to a new era of peace and love and understanding.

2007 NFL Predictions – Who is the Champion? September 4, 2007

Posted by Matt in Football, sports.
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Originally Posted: 9/4/07

Over the past two weeks, we’ve looked at both the NFC and AFC regular seasons and I’ve given my predictions. Well, mark your calendars and call your bookies because today I will gaze into the metaphorical crystal ball and bestow you with knowledge of the future – who will win it all in 2007?

Wild Card Games

New England def. Denver

Nobody wants to face Bill Belichick in January, especially not in Foxboro. The

Patriot defense will stuff Bronco RB Tyrone Henry and give QB Jay Cutler fits as

they march on to victory.

Indianapolis def. Cincinnati

In what promises to be the most exciting game of the Wild Card round, the two

high-octane offenses will race to see who can score the most points, but it will be

Indy’s defense playing at their best that makes the difference.

Chicago def. St. Louis

The old adage that “defense wins football games” definitely comes into play here

as Urlacher and company dismantle the Rams’ offensive machine.

Dallas def. San Francisco

The 49ers mediocre division does them no favors against the tough Cowboys,

who are the only wild card team to advance past the first round. Tony Romo and

Terrell Owens will pick the Niner defense apart.

Conference Semi-Finals

San Diego def. Indianapolis

In a huge playoff matchup, 2007’s best team faces off against the 2006 champ – one of the greatest quarterbacks in recent times versus one of the best running backs. Though it will be a close contest, I’ll give the game to the Chargers for their stronger defense and their home field advantage.

New England def. Baltimore

In this battle of two elite defenses, the final score will come down to whose offense can prevail. With the Pats’ huge improvements over the offseason and one of the greatest postseason coaches in history, look for them to pull out a squeaker.

New Orleans def. Dallas

Though Dallas has played well to date, they are no match for the offensive onslaught from the Big Easy. The Saints incredible running back tandem of Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister will carry them to a big playoff win.

Chicago def. Philadelphia

Though Rex Grossman remains the worst quarterbacks still in contention, the Bear juggernaut, led by the best defense in the league and a quality young running back, keeps rolling on.

Conference Finals

San Diego def. New England

It is really hard to pick against the Pats this deep into the playoffs, but the Chargers are really that good. Ladanian Tomlinson will carry the team over the Pats’ tenacious defense and to their first Super Bowl appearance since 1994.

New Orleans def. Chicago

Chicago looks as though they have the game in hand as their defense wreaks havoc on Drew Brees & Co., but a late interception thrown by the awful Rex Grossman leads to a Saints TD and the first Super Bowl appearance in their 30 year history.

Super Bowl XLII

The teams begin by trading TDs with their incredible running games, but soon San Diego’s defense begins to take over. With New Orleans unable to stop Tomlinson, the Chargers gallop to victory atop his shoulders.

San Diego 31 – New Orleans 21