9:06 p.m. - 04 September 2002
Football, football, football
Job stuff is still, unfortunately, foremost in our lives right now. But I don't want to talk about it anymore. Lee hesitates before asking me how my
day is because he knows I'll tell him and get wound up all over again.
Culinary school is looking better and better; I'm going to try to schedule a
tour/interview/this is the state of things sometime in the next few weeks.
On a completely unrelated note: Woohoo! Football season starts tomorrow! Even though I think it's supremely weird to start the pro season on a Thursday evening with no other games scheduled until Sunday. But I'm not Paul Tagliabue, so my opinion doesn't count. At least there's the possibility that tomorrow will be a good game: the 49ers and the Giants. I'm so glad that the Panthers are not in the same division as San Francisco. That may be the lone bright spot in the season this year: not playing San Fran and St. Louis.
Lee sent me a blurb from the ESPN pre-season ranking of teams (Carolina was 31, of course): If starting Rodney Peete as your QB is the answer to your problems, you're in deep shit. Well, they didn't put it exactly like that, but it's what they meant. And I agree completely -- what the heck was Fox thinking? It does not bode well for the rest of the season if he's making boneheaded decisions like that before they ever play a game.
Not that I think Weinke will be the go-to guy for very long. He hasn't been productive in the preseason, and last year the top receiver had half the receptions he had the year before. Yes, he had a bad case of the dropsies last year, but I don't think all of the decline in his production can be attributed to that alone. The rookie Fasani looked (or sounded, at least -- we don't get the preseason games so we listen to them online) pretty good in the games we listened to, so maybe he'll be the guy. I'm still peeved that Seifert got rid of a perfectly good QB in Beurlein. And don't even get me started on Kerry Collins.
Lee has bought the new edition of Madden NFL for the last several years and Front Page Football before that. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm fairly certain that he's bought a football game every year that I've known him. Anyway, with the new edition of Madden, he's been playing the Panthers' schedule for this year -- and so far he's 3-0. I keep bothering him by looking over his shoulder, though, so I think he's ready to help me figure out how it's played, too. He only plays as coach, though; he doesn't like to act as player and would much rather just choose the plays and make all the personnel decisions. It's not inconceivable that we could play against each other over the network, which was it's original purpose, but only if one or both of us gets better video cards. It turns out that the only computer in the house that runs Madden is the laptop.
Now, if only the real Panthers play as well as Lee's Panthers. We're already the joke of the NFL -- worse than the expansion team. My mom called the other night and asked if the world was ending: Duke, the Panthers, and Navy all won football games in the same weekend. But Carolina played Cleveland, and they open against Baltimore, so I'm afraid that it might have been a fluke. At least we'll have good food for kickoff weekend: grilled leg of lamb, grilled potato salad, and grilled veggies. Yes, I do believe in using as much of the charcoal as possible, why do you ask?
