A great matchup for Super Bowl XLV

The best teams in football advanced to the Super Bowl today – Green Bay and Pittsburgh. On paper this appears to be an epic matchup between franchises with great legacies, and it’s likely to draw a huge TV audience in the U.S. and around the world. The pairing of the Packers and Steelers also underscores […]

Thanks to television, the NFL is truly the national sport

Baseball may traditionally be America’s national pastime, but as a spectator sport football is king. That’s a tribute to television broadcasting. In a continent spanning four time zones (and I’m excluding Alaska and Hawaii), football has an enormous advantage in capturing the attention of the public. Even in an era of Monday night and occasional […]

Try as I might, I can’t get behind the Green Bay Packers

You’d think someone who spent a significant chunk of his life in Wisconsin, met his wife there and has two cheesehead children would be backing the Green Bay Packers in the NFL playoffs. But that’s not the case with me. I tried to like the Packers when I lived in Milwaukee in the late 70s […]

Hitting the baseball perfecta

Inspired by a few trips to the betting window over the years, I’ve developed a system of rating how good a sports day I’ve had. To hit the daily double, my two favorite teams – the Cleveland Indians and San Francisco Giants – must win. That happens fairly often (although the Tribe didn’t exactly give […]

Capping off the NFL season

Steelers Saints Hall of Fame Game Football Originally uploaded by mfarago.pittsburghsportsweekly At the risk of alienating a work colleague who is a die-hard San Diego Chargers fan, I hereby link to this year-old photo of Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin. The Steelers whacked the Chargers this afternoon at snowy Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, setting up […]