No, Really, I Swear!

I couldn't really come up with one coherent column idea this week, so here's a bunch of thoughts I had while waiting for the best Sunday of the year:

One night in late August, my high school friends and I were hanging out with a few beers and talking about the upcoming NFL season. I should clarify that by "high school friends", I mean people that I was friends with growing up – I don't want to imply that I enjoy casual drinking with seventeen year olds. Anyway, one of my friends asked each of us to share our Super Bowl prediction.

I picked the Jets to play the Packers. I don't have this in writing, so I guess it doesn't count.

Two picks I DID get into writing? I said the Patriots would miss the playoffs and that the Redskins would make them. Again, I suck at picking NFL games and the fact that my Jets-Packers pick is still alive is basically a fluke. But like…I'm just sayin'.

I never expected to write a weekly football column for Fundamentally Soundd, but they're way too much fun to write. I don't even know what I'm going to writing about once the Super Bowl is done. Nobody writes a weekly basketball column, and I don't really like baseball or college basketball enough to write about them. Daggers all around.

I'll take the Jets by seven and Packers by 21.

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Championship Sunday is my favorite day of the season. The matchups and storylines are great every year, and each year almost always gives us at least one classic game. Last year's Minnesota-New Orleans game was fantastic, as were both '08 games (ARZ-PHI and PIT-BAL), '07 NFC (NYG-GB) and '06 AFC (NE-IND). Championship Sunday feels a lot like the few minutes riiiight after school got out on Friday before a three day weekend. In those few minutes, you knew you had the maximum amount of freedom with three full days separating you from class again. Similarly, today we get to indulge in two potentially awesome football games with the knowledge that we still get the Super Bowl to look forward to. There's literally nothing to do but sit back, watch Pokemon cartoons and ask mom to make a snack.

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I've said this before, but the NFL Network is awesome. Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin are great, Marshall Faulk and Steve Mariucci are pretty good, and Rich Eisen is the best studio host on television. I'd even take Eisen over TNT's Ernie Johnson, which is saying a lot. Anyway, Irvin told a great story this morning before bringing up an excellent point.

Essentially, he said that when he first came into the league he was interviewed by the man who at the time held all the Cowboys receiving records, Drew Pearson. The young Irvin felt overwhelmed by the man's stats and thought he'd never catch him (he did). He did, however, set a realistic goal of topping Pearson's Super Bowl ring total. After telling this story this morning, Irvin pointed out that in Green Bay, Aaron Rodgers will never break Brett Favre's records for passing yards or touchdowns. But since Favre only won one ring, Rodgers could actually eclipse Favre in Packers history by bringing home the Lombardi trophy and eventually retiring as a Packer.

Speaking of Favre, I remained a fan of watching him play football until he retired. Hate to pull a John Madden here, but big games undoubtedly felt bigger with Favre in them. Two of the best five football games of my college career (MIN-NO and GB-NYG) featured Favre. I know it's become chic to hate on the guy, but I never really jumped on that bandwagon for the same reason I don't hate Tim Tebow. You can't hate someone just because the media fawns over them, even if it is excessive.

Even though I never hated Favre, I don't have it in me to really defend him either. As much as I liked watching him play, he was obnoxious – but never criminal - in the way he treated women during his time with the Jets and Vikings. Plus, every post-game interview this season he kept praising himself for his toughness and how brilliant his career was. It would be a nice story if, like Emmitt Smith did with Dallas, Favre signed a meaningless contract to retire as a Packer. I don't think it's going to happen though. From what I can tell based on his arrogance during those post-game interviews and press conferences, Favre doesn't think of himself as "Brett Favre, Green Bay Packer." He thinks of himself as "Brett Favre, Inc."

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Finally , on-campus recruiting (OCR) is going on right now and all my friends who are juniors are freaking out. OCR is a big deal at Wharton because it's when all the big investment banks and consultancies come to campus to look for interns. Strong performance during an internship with a premier company after your junior year usually results in a full-time job offer for you, which takes all the stress out of senior year.

My friend Steve told me that he wished that NFL teams came to campus during OCR and that we could apply to have coaching internships with them. We wouldn't be doing grunt work like splicing film or getting Gatorade for people. Instead, the internship would be ten weeks of learning how to break down film and come up with a game plan. Maybe we could even learn how to tank for a better draft pick or engage in a bitter power struggle with management.

The classic Whartonite status obsession would obviously carry over to NFL OCR. Undergraduates studying finance are the only people in the world who think $15,000 for ten weeks' work is disappointing if it comes from one of the "less prestigious" banks. To be fair, I'd look down on anyone who only got an offer from the Panthers. That's so weak. At that point I'd probably just go to grad school.

My first choice would be the Cowboys. Since they hired Rob Ryan (Rex's brother) as the defensive coordinator, I figure that would be the ideal place to learn a lot about scheming while working for my favorite team. My nightmare scenario would be if I only got offers from Philadelphia and Washington.

People going into financial services often think about exit opportunities. Most investment banking analyst classes last two years, and many analysts move on to private equity or a hedge fund once the two years are finished. Consulting has a similar structure. NFL opportunities would be all about the coaching tree. You would THINK that you'd want to work for Bill Belichick, but his coaching tree's track record is pretty bad. If I was going to pick based solely on exit opportunities – defined here as which coaching tree you would want to be a part of – I'd pick Sean Payton and hope some of the Parcells magic is transferred to me.