5 – 17

Is the combined record of New York’s two professional football teams.  That’s a winning percentage just a bit short of 23 percent.  Ugh.

It’s also a bit short of my August predictions, too.  My admittedly nonprofessional crystal ball saw the Giants finishing at 7-9 and the Jets 5-11.  At their current caliber of performance one team will be 4-12 and the other 3-13.

Now I’m not a huge football fan.  I do enjoy watching the games on Sunday, from a ritualistic point of view.  The family gets back from Church, the house is stocked with snacks, the girls do their own thing, I get into my sweats, grab some books to thumb through, sit down in my favorite one-man couch, remote in hand, and watch six hours of the games in high-def.  I don’t live or die for the game or the teams (I’m a Giants fan, by the way), but I do demand a winning season from the G-men and at least competition from the Jets (my late father’s team).

Now watching football isn’t that much fun anymore. 

It’s a long way from a decade ago.  Back then I pal’d around with a huuuuge football fanatic, a guy whose perfect Sunday involved downing a few pitchers of cheap but effective beer, smoking a pack of cigarettes, watching a dozen TV screens and the tattooed bartendresses at his local sports bar.  Of course he dragged me there often, like every week, me kicking and screaming, because I hate all that.  [Insert smiley emoticon.]  Back then I was living down in Maryland and I drank gallons and smoked bales of tobacco watching Jim Fassell coach Kerry Collins to that Super Bowl blowout.  The traveling circus traveled north to New Jersey in the early 0-0s, but with the buying of the house and the birthing of the child, my sports bar days calmed down to middle-aged me plumped down in an easy chair with a book in hand.

Can the Giants finish the 2014 season 4-1?  Can the Jets go one game over five hundred by December 28?  If so, my predictions will be accurate.  If not, which seems more likely, it appears cynical me was just a tad bit optimistic reading that Inside Sports magazine three months ago.