Here we are at week 17, and there’s still a ton of playoff scenarios in the air. This includes the #2 seed in the AFC (Balt or Pitts) and NFC (SF or NO), the final division winners in the AFC West (Denver or Oak), and the NFC East (NYG or Dal), and the last WC spot for the AFC (Jet, Titans, Bengals, Raiders). Dallas or the Giants are eliminated fro the playoffs with a loss, as is Denver. The Raiders have a shot if they lose because of whatever the Byzantine rules are for determining that final spot should everyone fail.

Which brings us to the other side of the standings. The ‘Suck for Luck’ standings. There are 2 teams left in the race. The St Louis Rams and the Indy Colts. If both teams lose, Indy gets the pick because of lack-of-strength of schedule. Jacksonville, the team facing the Colts, has to be thinking “Hmmmmmmmm, this would be a great time to activate all the practice squad guys . . .” Their prize for winning this game would be to face Andrew Luck 2x a year for the next 12-15 years. I bet they are thrilled about that. Which brings us to St Louis. They have invested a lot of time and money into Sam Bradford, but after a strong rookie campaign, they fell flat on their collective faces this season. None of which is Bradford’s fault, but you have to wonder if they’d go with the guy they have, or shoot the moon and take Luck. Bradford has missed the last 2 games (5 overall), andd will likely miss the last one against the Niners, so it doesn’t look like StL will win. Since they look to probably stick with Bradford, and shit-can their coaching staff this offseason, this means StL trades out. Shit, they could trade out and end up with Griffith III. I saw the highlights of that Baylor game. Craaaaaaazy shit. 67-58? Griffith didn’t even have that great a game, 24-33, 295 and a TD, but they had a whopping 485 on the ground.

Speaking of college football. Here we are at game #22 of the final 64, or some shit like that, and I’ve seen maybe 10 minutes of football. And that was the opening of the Cal / Texas game.  Cal looked OK til they killed their first few drives with turnovers. Then I got bored. The Stanford game looks good, the Rose Bowl is always exciting (I have a lot of Duck alum friends) but LSU / Alabama? The 2 teams that played to an epic 6-3 battle? ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..  Until they come up with a playoff system, this shit’ll be rigged to death. I may watch some of the pinstripe bowl (shit, we run out of names yet) to see the Rutgers WR Mohamed Sanu. There are some games that just lend themselves to taking a look at, at least. The Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl. But the GoDaddy.conm Bowl? How does that rate? Ark St. vs Northern Illinois? Really? I mean, seriously, did any of you watch the Beef ‘O’Brady Bowl? What the f*ck IS the Beef ‘O’Brady Bowl?  Or the Belk Bowl? I’ve visited the Belk Bowl, but that was after drinking too much whiskey.

And hey, locally we have the 10th annual Kraft Fight Hunger Emerald Blue Diamond San Francisco Nut Bowl between 2 stunningly mediocre teams in Illinois and UCLA. Illinois is at a decent 6-6, but they got there by LOSING their last 6 games.  UCLA won (!) the Pac 12 South with a stellar 6-7 record (and bowl sanctions aganist USC) and 2 staggeringly huge losses to USC (50-0) and Oregon (49-31).