“As a woman living in post-Roe America,” declared another, “I’m exhausted from men telling women what to do with their lives.”
“How offensive to imply women are put here on this planet to help a man reach his full potential,” fumed a third. “We should be empowering women to achieve greatness however that looks for them. Having children or being a mother isn’t the currency we must pay to be treated as equal members of this society.”
And on and on they go in predictable, and predictably incoherent, statements. Apparently, it is offensive to say that women should help men reach their potential; but, in the next breath, men must help women reach theirs.
Manufacturing outrage is what feminist journalism does best, and its audience is eager for cosplay rebellion and narcissistic posturing even when, as in the case of the speech, the hyperventilating is far in excess of the fact. That even Benedictine nuns have joined the chorus shows how many women in all walks of life find such posturing near-irresistible.
Of course, if Butker had addressed the Benedictine College graduates to say that Catholicism was riddled with misogyny and homophobia, no popular petitions would have been launched. If he had said that abortion was a gift to humanity and that female priests would lead the church to glory, his words would have sparked dissent only in the most marginal of venues.
Let a man praise his wife for her devotion to family, and we witness a stampede of foul-mouthed nasties to their bullhorns.
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This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Chicago Great Western Railroad (CGW) by H. Roger Grant. Not being over-familiar with the US Midwest, while I’d heard of this railway I had no real background knowledge about it. The earliest charter was granted to the Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Airline in 1835, but no construction took place under the original management and the charter rights were passed on to the Minnesota and North Western Railroad (M&NW) in 1854. Actual construction of the line did not begin until 1884, connecting St. Paul, Minnesota with Dubuque, Iowa. The M&NW was taken over by the Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City Railroad under the control of Alpheus Beede Stickney, a St. Paul businessman. By 1892, when the system adopted the Chicago Great Western name, there were routes to Omaha, Nebraska, St. Joseph, Missouri and Chicago.
The Panic of 1907 ended Stickney’s control of the railway and it ended up in the hands of J.P. Morgan:
Even though Stickney had imaginatively assembled a Midwestern trunk line, he ultimately lost his railroad. The brief but severe Bankers’ Panic of 1907 threw CGW into receivership, a fate the company had avoided during the much more severe Panic of 1893. The nation’s financial wizard, J.P. Morgan, took control, and in 1909 a reorganized Chicago Great Western Railroad made its debut. Morgan wisely placed Samuel Morse Felton in charge, because the new president excelled as a railroad manager. His greatest triumph before joining the Great Western had been to turn the Chicago & Alton into a profitable property.
[…]
The Felton years in Chicago Great Western railroad history resulted in a rehabilitated physical plant. Changes in rolling stock caught the attention of thousands of on-line residents. In 1910, for example, CGW purchased 10 Baldwin 2-6-6-2 Mallets (“Snakes”, as employees called them), and the road’s own shop forces at Oelwein, Iowa, rebuilt three F-3 class 2-6-2s (CGW had 95 total Prairie types) into three more 2-6-6-2s. Unfortunately, these giants did not work out, and in 1916 the Baldwins were sold to the Clinchfield and the homebuilds were rebuilt into 4-6-2s. In the Mallets’ place appeared reliable yet powerful 2-8-2s, of which CGW owned 35.
The railroad became a leader in the use of gasoline and later diesel motive power. Before World War I CGW assembled a small fleet of McKeen motor cars, knife-nosed “wind-splitters” that replaced steam-powered branchline and local trains. Its 1924 gas-electric car M-300 was the first unit of any type sold by the Electro-Motive Co., and it helped replace steam on trains 3 and 4 on the 509-mile Chicago–Omaha run. In 1929 CGW remodeled three McKeens to make up a deluxe gas-electric train, the Minneapolis–Rochester (Minn.) Blue Bird. CGW was mostly satisfied with its pioneering internal-combustion equipment.
1906 advertising blotter for the Chicago Great Western Railroad’s passenger trains. Wikimedia Commons.
CGW’s independent life came to an end in the same era as a lot of small to medium sized railways disappeared into corporate mergers, take-overs, or bankruptcy:
Being a small road in an era when competitors were expanding through mergers led to the corporate demise of the CGW. Saying that shareholders “must be protected”, the board sought a partner. Although the expectation was union with KCS or perhaps the Soo Line, the aggressive Chicago & North Western, headed by resourceful Ben W. Heineman, made an acceptable proposal, and in 1968 Chicago Great Western Railroad history ended with it becoming a Fallen Flag.
C&NW operated CGW switchers and F units for a short time, and assimilated Great Western’s only second generation diesels — eight GP30s and nine SD40s, all painted in the final solid “Deramus red” seen also on KCS and Katy — into the yellow fleet.
Although for a short time much of the former Great Western maintained its identity as C&NW’s Missouri Division, that operating organization ended and its lines started to disappear. By the 1980s much of the trackage had been retired, and at the start of the 21st century only about 145 miles remained. Survivors include portions of the main lines in Iowa (Mason City to the Fort Dodge area; Oelwein–Waterloo; and a leg into Council Bluffs); the Cannon Falls (Minn.) branch; and terminal trackage around South St. Paul, Minn., and just west of Chicago.
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I did watch the S*per B*wl on Sunday, although as the Canadian broadcast carefully replaces almost all of the expensive, creative, one-off ads with exactly the same ads the network showed all through the rest of the season, I watched it on my computer, and kept my mute button handy to silence the roughly 2/3rds of the broadcast that wasn’t actually football-related. (Although I’ve read many people commenting that the “special” ads aren’t as good as they used to be, I watch so little TV that I’m hardly qualified to judge personally.) In Monday’s NP Platformed newsletter, Colby Cosh used the old “there’s two kinds of people” device to talk about Tom Brady:
You can easily have an opinion about Brady, and you probably do, even if you’ve never watched a whole football game. But I have no way of predicting what that opinion is. Do you see him as a cheerful, intelligent family man who has transcended his natural limitations through hard work and study? Or is he just the jammiest SOB who ever lived? There was definitely something cruel in watching the immobile Brady dismantle the Chiefs of Patrick Mahomes, a passer equipped with physical gifts whose possibility was inconceivable before he broke into the league.
That’s probably part of how Brady has driven such a fault into North American bedrock. If there were a stat representing handsomeness-to-physical-impressiveness ratio, he would dominate the NFL. When you see photos of young Brady, who famously dropped to the sixth round of the draft, you no longer wonder how he dropped so far but why he was taken at all. Did the scouts fall in love, as they are known to do, with the “good face”?
Ancient Brady is young Brady with less mobility and accuracy. Mostly, like a relief pitcher with nothing but a fastball, he just darts the ball very efficiently at nearby targets. (Trading New England’s targets for Tampa Bay’s was, obviously, shrewd to the point of genius.) He is becoming as specialized, as optimized for one function, as a punter. But in his case the function seems to be “winning Super Bowls,” and we can’t attribute one iota of that to innate gifts denied to ordinary mortals. What’s not to hate?
Speaking of the ads, I do think the Babylon Bee got it exactly right here:
As a comment at Ace of Spades H.Q. related, the S*per B*wl has lost a lot of its cultural capital over the last few years:
49 — I work at a somewhat woke company. While talking about some projects we were working on the new guy asked me “hey why isn’t anyone talking about the superbowl?” and I remembered that even last year everyone was talking about the superbowl none stop the monday after.
Well you’ve finally done it lefties you’ve killed the NFL.
Posted by: 18-1
I tuned out the halftime show, even though the performer was kinda-sorta a local boy (born in Toronto), and I was a bit nonplussed with the visuals (I had the whole thing muted, natch). James Lileks found the show to be oddly reminiscent of 70’s SciFi movies:
The halftime show had a strange 70s sci-fi aesthetic; for some reason I kept thinking of The Black Hole and Logan’s Run. The most interesting part was picking out the buildings in the New York skyline arrayed in neon. Ah, it’s the AT&T Building, Philip Johnson’s famous po-mo Chippendale tower! And that would be the Met Life tower, which is actually the base for a much-larger tower unbuilt after the Crash of ’29. Hey, everyone, let’s pause this elaborate routine and destroy its momentum so I can wax pedantic!
Then there were all those dancers in masks, looking like victims of surgery in an old movie where a gangster got plastic surgery. A way of incorporating the pandemic zeitgeist, right? Last year: EMPOWERMENT AND SEX AND SEX EMPOWERMENT! This year: faceless people moving in mass to choreographed steps, then dissolving into random panic. There was something wrong about it, like some dank gas blown up through a fissure, filling balloons that looked like the humans who populate the shadows of a nightmare.
Previous years, the Super Bowl event was pure excess — mad, crass, exuberant, American overdrive, American overkill, a mix of skill and brute force. Something about this one felt desperate and shellshocked. I suppose I’m reading too much into it. But I don’t think we need fever dreams and worried-looking buskers in empty fields, at this point. It would be nice just to have some Clydesdales again.
I saw on another site (sorry, forgotten where I noticed it) that the bandages were an in-joke for The Weeknd’s fans, who’d been teased with several social media posts about him recovering from some sort of mysterious plastic surgery procedure leading up to the performance.
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On Sunday afternoon, the 6-2 Minnesota Vikings visited the 5-3 Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium. Both teams were hoping to get recently injured stars back in time for the game, with Minnesota’s star wide receiver Adam Thielen recovering from a hamstring injury suffered in the Detroit Lions game and the Chiefs’ starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes (reigning NFL MVP) having suffered a knee injury (the Chiefs activated Chad Henne from injured reserve on Saturday as insurance). The Vikings hadn’t won a game at Arrowhead since December 1974, a 35-15 result, and came in hoping to change that and move to 7-2 on the season.
Adam Thielen started the game, but was quickly benched as his injury flared up again. Mahomes was not active for the Chiefs, so Matt Moore got the start.
Although the Vikings had the NFL rushing leader, they started the game with a run-deficient plan that saw quarterback Kirk Cousins throw three times on the opening “drive”, then yield to Britton Colquitt to punt the ball away. The second Vikings possession went by just as quickly with three plays and a punt. The Chiefs got on the scoreboard on their second possession with a long pass to Tyreek Hill that beat the Vikings’ coverage. The following drive may have featured the best play by former first-round pick wide receiver Laquon Treadwell, who had two key receptions on the drive that was capped off with a touchdown pass to Olabisi Johnson to tie the game at 7-7.
The second quarter saw each team eke out a field goal to keep the score tied 10-10 at the half. At that point, it was clear that November Kirk Cousins is a poor second to October Kirk Cousins, who was the NFC Offensive player of the month … 9 of 21 for 101 yards isn’t the kind of thing we’d been led to expect from the Vikings quarterback.
In the third quarter, the TV announcers re-iterated that Kansas City wasn’t known for their running game, just in time for a 91-yard scoring run by Damien Williams (have you ever noticed that TV announcers have a knack for pointing out something relevant about the game just before a big play happens…). The score was tied in the last few minutes, but the Chiefs were in field goal range and scored the winner just before time expired.
You knew from the very first drive that it was Bad Kirk time on Sunday afternoon at Arrowhead Stadium.
The Minnesota Vikings opened their contest against the Kansas City Chiefs in a manner that did not reflect their last four weeks of offensive excellence. Dalvin Cook had a pass bounce off his hands on the opening play and then Kirk Cousins tentatively flipped a pass into the flat in the direction of Adam Thielen but the low throw not only fell incomplete, it ended Thielen’s day. He came into the game with a “questionable” designation with a hamstring injury and did not see the field after the first drive.
[…]
Cousins overcame some frustration — that was caught, as always, by the FOX TV cameras — to give his team a chance to win.
The defense, however, showed its weakness again. After sacking Moore on second down, the Chiefs’ quarterback found Hill open over the middle for a first down. He created separation from Xavier Rhodes, who has struggled to shut down receivers as he did in the golden age of the Vikings defense. Moore then heaved the ball up to Hill down the sideline and he jumped over Trae Waynes for a 41-yard to put KC in field goal position.
Harrison Smith came through with a sack on third down but the Chiefs were still able to tie the game at 23.
Bad Kirk returned on the subsequent drive. Not only did he go three-and-out but Cousins’ only completion was a 7-yard loss.
The Vikings’ defense had a chance to redeem itself for a day of allowing big plays in big spots after Colquitt shanked a 27-yard punt to put KC at mid-field. Maybe two years ago they would have. This time around, Hill found space in the middle of the field for a first down to set up a game-winning field goal.
Here’s what it means: If the Vikings want to prove themselves as legit contenders, they can’t have Bad Kirk show up for any length of time. They can’t put everything on their defense. Otherwise they will end up walking off with the same defeated feeling as they did on Sunday at Arrowhead.
Everybody on the Vikings is going to have a rough go of it on Monday when they watch the game film of this loss.
Quarterback Kirk Cousins, whose inaccuracy throughout the first half left first downs and points on the field, will hardly be able to re-examine some of his poor showing. His offensive line won’t have an easier time of it, watching themselves bullied by their Chief opponents from quarter one to quarter four.
Vikings’ offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanksi may have to leave the room as the film comes to its last minutes, lest he see just how bland and predictable his playcalling was in the Vikings’ final two possessions.
Mike Zimmer may be the most uncomfortable of all Viking players and coaches, having to re-experience the fact that the one player his defense should have kept in check (Chiefs WR Tyreek Hill) had six catches for 160 yards and a touchdown in the game.
Buy: Adam Thielen was healing and close to playing. Thielen is a big part of this offense and makes it immeasurably better. His hamstring injury was described as minor all along, so it felt like missing the Redskins game and then having 10 days off would be a smart plan for him getting back on the field.
Sell: Playing Adam Thielen. Yet, that plan backfired early. Thielen tweaked his hamstring on the Vikes first or second drive and didn’t return. Now the team is dealing with an injury that can linger for weeks, and no one truly knows how long he’ll be out. The smart play would be to keep him out for the next two games, as that leads into the bye week. Will that be enough time, though? Hamstring injuries are the worst, and they can linger for a lot longer than three weeks. It’s something that can be problematic for the rest of the season if Thielen pushes too hard, and when he’s out it affects what the offense can do. One thing we all agreed on coming into the season was the Vikings WR depth after Thielen and Diggs, and now here we are two months into the season with no real go to guys after Diggs.
Treadwell had a good game today, Bisi Johnson has had his moments, and maybe we’ll see something out of Josh Doctson in the coming weeks. But not addressing WR3 in the off-season has officially come back to bite this team in the ass, at the worst possible time.
Buy: Kirk’s decisiveness to run on third and 7 early second quarter. One of the things that Mike Zimmer wanted to see from Kirk Cousins this year was more decisiveness when deciding to keep the ball and run with it. Early in the second quarter today, Kirk bailed from the pocket and took off, with a lot of open field in front of him.
Sell: Kirk sliding and coming up short of first down. Yet, with all the open field, Kansas City closed in pursuit, Kirk gave himself up, and went into the “steal second base” dive. The only problem with that was that he was a yard short of the first down, bringing up fourth down. Minnesota ended up kicking the ball away to the Chiefs, who took the ball and ended up kicking a field goal.
Buy: Getting the ball twice late in the 4th quarter with a legitimate chance to win the game. With a 23-20 lead, Minnesota got the ball with 7:47 left. A team that’s serious about putting away opponents goes on a long, clock eating drive there, and ends the game. But they didn’t. Still, with the score tied at 23, Minnesota got the ball back again with 2:30 left. All they needed to do was drive about 50 yards to get into field goal range and get out of there with a win.
Sell: Winning the game. Those last two drives were particularly frustrating. The Vikes had momentum on that first drive, as the offense had scored and then the defense forced the Chiefs to punt. A long drive there that ends in points seals the game. Even with that last drive, it was a very doable situation. They had the 2 minute warning, two timeouts, and the ball on the 25. It wouldn’t take much against one of the worst defenses in the NFL to get into scoring position, kick a field goal, and win the game. Yet, in those two drives, the VIkings ran six plays and lost seven yards. Remarkable.
Buy: Kirk Cousins with three touchdown passes. Sometimes Kirk Cousins makes a throw, and I have to rewind my DVR to make sure what I saw just happened. His TD throw to Kyle Rudolph, for example, was one of those throws. It was in traffic, down in the red zone, and he placed the ball in a spot that only Rudolph could get it. Incredible throw and catch
Sell: Kirk Cousins, airmail specialist. Other times, Kirk Cousins makes a throw and I also have to rewind my DVR to make sure what I saw just happened, because I ask myself how the hell a vet with that much time in the league airmails that many throws? It felt like he overthrew guys seven or eight times today, easy. Very frustrating to watch, when a couple of those plays looked like they were going to go for some big yards if he makes those throws.
Buy: The re-emergence of Laquon Treadwell. With Adam Thielen’s hamstring now officially “a thing”, Treadwell stepping up today was a welcome turn of events. Someone is going to need to become WR2, and why not Treadwell?
Sell: Laquon Treadwell having more receiving yards than Stefon Diggs. Still, let’s chat about Treadwell having more receiving yards than Stefon Diggs today, because THAT is NOT a recipe for success. One catch, four yards. Really??
Buy: Going for it on 4th and 1 right before the half. I loved the call. Minnesota was driving, and got down to the KC 15 with 29 seconds left. On 4th and 1, the Vikes decided to go for it, and Cousins found Irv Smith for a four yard gain, and a first down at the Chiefs 11.
Sell: The play call sequence after that 4th down conversion. Maybe it’s me, but it kind of felt that after the Vikes got the first down, they were content with settling for the field goal at that point. On first down Cousins was pressured and threw it towards Treadwell. On second down and third down Cousins threw it out of the left corner of the end zone. Really poor play calls for the pressure KC was bringing, and the Vikes still had a timeout to play with. Just seemed like a haphazard plan, and it turned out to be one of the turning points in the game.
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Dave Rappoccio on the least likely event that just apparently happened in the NFL:
What I think is funny is an irony that I don’t think anyone else has picked up on yet. Andy Reid, a coach with quite possibly the worst reputation for time management on final drives, now effectively, in a way, holds the record for fastest game winning comeback drive in an NFL game.
It is. It’s the fastest. The only way a comeback can be faster is if the exact same thing happens but the guy runs to the endzone slightly faster. There is no way to score a faster comeback. Extra Points or conversion attempts do not take time off the clock. Effectively, the Falcons, despite scoring the go-ahead touchdown…were never actually ahead. When the clock started again, the Chiefs had the lead. The Falcons lead was maybe a minute of real time, but in game time sits in a weird vacuum between dimensions, never to be found. This is the fastest game winning drive in NFL history, and the man who owns it couldn’t call a timeout properly if his lunch date depended on it. Andy Reid, a man who is so baffled by clocks he’s still trying to understand how daylight savings works, owns this record. This might low-key be the most amazing thing that happens all year. Sometimes football can deliver in ways you’d never expect.
This was very much a game of two halfs, as the Vikings moved the ball at will through the first half … through the air, if not on the ground, while in the second half the Chiefs came alive and threatened to take control of the game. Adrian Peterson had one of his worst games as a pro: at one point he’d rushed for something like one total yard on fifteen carries and he was being hit well before he got to the line of scrimmage on many of those runs. Early in the game, it appeared that the Vikings had scored a safety, as offensive holding was called in the Chiefs’ end zone, but the referee determined that the hold had started in the field of play, so it was not a safety. Teddy Bridgewater had another up-and-down performance with some nice throws, but two interceptions and only one touchdown. The offensive line did a somewhat better job against the Chiefs than they did against the Broncos, but Teddy was still not getting a clean pocket to work in as often as he should have. A bright spot for the Vikings was the play of rookie receiver Stefon Diggs, who posted the first 100 yard game for Minnesota this season. In his first two games, he’s caught 13 of 19 for 216 yards, making some observers wonder why he didn’t see the field earlier in the season.
Denver leading 21-10, the Chiefs threw incomplete on third-and-goal from the Broncs’ 8. As the pass sailed out of bounds, Denver corner Chris Harris threw his hands up in the “I didn’t do it!” gesture. Penalty, automatic first down for Kansas City. Defenders should never make the “I didn’t do it!” gesture, which only alerts officials to the fact that they did it. In football, the “I didn’t do it!” gesture is regarded by zebras as a notarized confession after a Miranda warning.
The Vikings haven’t won a road game in over a year, so last night’s matchup with the Kansas City Chiefs was a good test of the new coaching staff and how well they had prepared the team for the new season. Matt Cassel once again started for the Vikings at quarterback, and played all of the first half and most of the third quarter with the starters. It was a very hot night in Kansas City, so both teams had to watch their players carefully for heat-related issues. Adrian Peterson once again didn’t play (no reason to risk injury in meaningless games: we know he’s automatically on the 53-man roster).
Coming into the game, the starting offensive players are pretty much set (assuming that Matt Cassel has won the quarterback competition over rookie Teddy Bridgewater), but there were still battles going on for starting defensive roles at safety, corner, and middle linebacker. One player saw his chances of winning a starting position go way down was cornerback Josh Robinson, who was flagged for pass interference early in the game.
The Daily Norseman‘s Ted Glover takes us through the start of the game:
The Minnesota Vikings started strong, floundered for a little bit, and then ran away from the Kansas City Chiefs on a hot and humid night at Arrowhead Stadium.
The Vikings won the toss and deferred to the second half, and the Chiefs offense couldn’t get much going, other than a 16 yard pass to RB Knile Davis. A Dustin Colquitt punt pinned the Vikings back to their own three, where they took the ball on their first possession.
And all the Vikings did was march 97 yards on five plays. QB Matt Cassel hit RB Matt Asiata for 31 yards on a short swing pass, and after a couple of non-descript Asiata runs, Cassel uncorked the deep ball and hit Cordarrelle Patterson for 53 yards and a score, putting the Vikings up 7-0 less than three minutes into the game.
The Minnesota Vikings have signed former Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel to a two-year contract:
While you were waiting on the Vikings to sign a wide receiver like Greg Jennings, the NFL quarterback carousel just kept spinning.
Matt Cassel’s butt probably still smarts from where the door hit him on the way out of Kansas City — it hasn’t even been a full day since he was released by the Chiefs. Of course the signing of Alex Smith made Cassel expendable and expensive, which is always a bad combination. (The Chiefs also signed Chase Daniel to a three-year contract just to make sure the writing was on the Cassel wall, pun intended.)
[. . .]
Before you start screaming at me, I know that Cassel’s play has often been as consistent and odorous as an infant’s diaper since his breakout season in 2008 with the Patriots. I’m not going to argue with that. However, he’s coming to a team that just saw Joe Webb start a playoff game. I shouldn’t have to tell you that this tragedy must never happen again. Webb had his shot at backup quarterback and it didn’t work out in spectacular fashion. The Vikings needed a new backup to Christian Ponder, plain and simple.
Getting up on the curmudgeonly side of the bed, Patrick Reusse explains why he does not understand the modern Viking fan with an optimistic viewpoint:
The age for sincere emotional involvement with a sports team is 12. Anyone whining over the result of a game before that is a crybaby destined to grow up with few friends.
Which means, if you were 12 on Jan. 11, 1970, the last cheery moment you had about the eventual fate of the Vikings came before that afternoon’s kickoff of the fourth-ever Super Bowl.
Minnesotans as a whole were never more certain of anything than that the Vikings’ magnificent defense would stifle the Kansas City Chiefs and provide a pro football championship in only the third season of Bud Grant’s coaching tenure.
The final was Kansas City 23, Vikings 7. A couple of months later, NFL Films released a highlight tape from the game, complete with Chiefs coach Hank Stram cackling and ridiculing the Vikings throughout his team’s decisive upset.
It was a wound that never healed for Vikings fans that were at least 12 that day, and are now 54, older, or dead.
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After showing some excellent results in the first half of each of the first three games of the season, then mentally checking out for the second half, Minnesota finally broke the habit. Unfortunately, they broke the good habit, not the bad one, falling to the 0-3 Kansas City Chiefs by a score of 22-17.
One thing most seem to agree on is that even if he’s not the worst problem, Donovan McNabb has failed to live up to expectations. He’s been throwing the ball erratically and off-target (one Twitter comment jibed that he’s the perfect QB if receivers could catch with their feet). He was brought in on a one-year contract to take care of the team until Christian Ponder was ready to take over. “Taking care” of the team isn’t quite what you’d describe what he’s done in the last four games.
The argument is that it can be very bad to throw a rookie quarterback in before he’s ready to take over: some thrive, but many sink (taking their teams with them). The counter argument is simple: we’ve already taken four torpedoes, so why not give the keys to Ponder? If we continue to lose, we’ll be early favourites for the first pick in the draft next year (the “Suck for Luck” pick).
Here’s the immediate reaction to the game from various folks in the Vikings fan base and in the media:
Clint Starks, Viking Age: “With the Vikes moving to 0-4 and McNabb playing at what looks to be an all-time low the question moves to Ponder. Fans across Viking Nation are wondering when we were see the cocksure rookie from Florida State. Next week could present a good opportunity for the young rookie as the Arizona Cardinals are coming to Mall of America field.”
Eric J. Thompson, Daily Norseman: “For the fourth straight week, the Vikings have wrestled defeat away from the jaws of victory. It was more of the same for the hapless Vikes, coming up small against the Chiefs at the most inopportune times. Donovan McNabb missed passes with alarming consistency. Adrian Peterson was largely ignored in the second half game plan. The tired and inept secondary got burned. The pass rush disappeared.”
Tom Pelissero, ESPN1500.com: “Leslie Frazier said the Minnesota Vikings must “reevaluate everything” in the wake of their fourth consecutive loss on Sunday.
“That apparently won’t include giving consideration to replacing starting quarterback Donovan McNabb with rookie first-round draft pick Christian Ponder beginning next week against Arizona.”
Ray Tannock, BleacherReport.com: “Without giving away too much, some of the rising whispers in Minnesota have been for the possible sacking of quarterback Donovan McNabb in favor of the anticipated “quarterback of the future” Christian Ponder.
“Another comment that has passed in the wind over the weeks is whether or not this set of coordinators even know what they are doing.
“Defensive coordinator Fred Pagac’s inability to adjust to the opposition and Offensive coordinator’ Bill Musgrave’s inability to get the right players on the field and involved, have been a growing concern in the minds of Vikings fans; concerns that haven’t had much resolution through three games.”
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Given the ubiquity of video sites on the web today, it can be hard to believe that major TV networks only started systematically storing tapes of shows in the early 1970s. One of the “holy grail” recordings that historians were looking for was SuperBowl I:
Football fans know what happened in Super Bowl I. The game, which was played on January 15, 1967, was the first showdown between the NFL and AFL champions. It ended with the Green Bay Packers stomping the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10.
Unless they were one of the 61,946 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that day, or one of the fans who watched it live on NBC or CBS, there’s one thing that all football fans have in common: They’ve never actually seen the game.
In a bizarre confluence of events, neither network preserved a tape. All that survived of this broadcast is sideline footage shot by NFL Films and roughly 30 seconds of footage CBS included in a pre-game show for Super Bowl XXV. Somehow, an historic football game that was seen by 26.8 million people had, for all intents and purposes, vanished.
My favourite bit of information from the article is a lovely juxtaposition between the massive popularity (and wall-to-wall TV coverage) of modern SuperBowl games and this:
The recording also includes a shocking sight for a Super Bowl: empty seats. The game didn’t sell out, even with ticket prices that topped out at $12.
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On Sunday afternoon, the 6-2 Minnesota Vikings visited the 5-3 Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium. Both teams were hoping to get recently injured stars back in time for the game, with Minnesota’s star wide receiver Adam Thielen recovering from a hamstring injury suffered in the Detroit Lions game and the Chiefs’ starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes (reigning NFL MVP) having suffered a knee injury (the Chiefs activated Chad Henne from injured reserve on Saturday as insurance). The Vikings hadn’t won a game at Arrowhead since December 1974, a 35-15 result, and came in hoping to change that and move to 7-2 on the season.
