NFL News & #BolekBestBets - NFL Week 3/NCAA Week 4

Good afternoon NFL fans and betting buddies of mine.

I'm short on time, so I will probably not give a ton of analysis - probably good for you.

Couple random NFL stories I wanted to mention:

1. Overreaction to Week 1 gives way to Overreaction to Week 2. If you live in the Chicago Bears market, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Week 1 - Bears destroy Colts and they're Super Bowl bound. Week 2 - they lose to the Packers (last I checked, the Packers are pretty damn good) and now the world is falling. This happened with a few teams (Packers, Cowboys, Giants, Broncos, etc). Odds are, your team that rotated wins and losses in Week 1 with differing performances in the games is probably not as good as their win and not as bad as their loss shows. Calm down, take a breath, and enjoy the rest of the season.
2. Too much fluff on these sports shows. The fact that I heard that Eli threw for over 500 yards, which has only happened a handful of times in history, about 1000 times less than the last play spat between the coaches is pathetic. Why is so much time spent on stuff that has little/nothing to do with the outcome? Are we so dumb as sports fans that they're catering to our supposed need for this? I'd like to think most people I know are better than this. I care about results, what happened to get to those results (i.e. stats). I don't need TMZ-style analysis entering ESPN and other sports shows.
3. If you got a ring, it don't mean a thing. Tom Brady yells at his offensive line. Peyton Manning yells at his offensive line. Aaron Rodgers yells at his offensive line. Jay Cutler yells at his offensive line. Guess who is the only one who gets critiqued for it....the guy without the ring - Jay Cutler.
   
   Peyton Manning makes a big mistake in a playoff game and throws a pick-6 to the Saints to help New Orleans seal their Super Bowl win years back. Despite having the best record in the past 7 years, Tom Brady hasn't won a Super Bowl in that time. Tony Romo fumbles a field goal snap that costs his team a chance at winning a first round playoff game. Guess who is the only one who gets critiqued for it....the guy without the ring - Tony Romo
   
   I'm not saying these guys (Romo and Cutler) shouldn't get blame for the mistakes that they make, but please have some perspective and realize that these other guys make mistakes too. If Peyton hadn't beaten the Rex Grossman-led Chicago Bears to win his lone Super Bowl, his mistake against the Saints would have been the main story of the Super Bowl, not the Saints winning their first Super Bowl.
   
   The media and general public tend to forgive the mistakes of QBs who have won Super Bowls. Keep in mind, there's only a handful of current QBs who have won a Super Bowl: Rodgers, both Mannings, Brady, Big Ben, Brees (six total QBs). Any QB not on this list who is considered good/great will eventually hear it from media/public if they fail to make the next step.
   

NCAA Week 4

K State +15
Baylor -8.5

Temple +7.5

USC -16.5

NFL Week 3

Fool's Gold Pick (0-2 so far) Oakland +4

San Fran -6.5 (falling for the trap)

NE +2 (or ML)

Cle +3

Ariz +3.5

Dal -7.5

I'm out of Survivor League for Don after picking New England like a sucker. If I was still alive today, I'd pick Dallas this week.

I don't have updated records - but for NFL, I know they're bad. I won my under bet last night, so I'm hoping I can get some betting momentum heading into the next couple weeks.

Good luck to everyone this week on bets and fantasy.

A Year in Headlights

Remember that short dating blog that I did last year? That was by far the most interested people were in reading my blog. I know people connect to more human stories - my human stories about the Bears not covering last week just won't cut it for the average reader I guess.

In all seriousness, I appreciate any reader that comes to my site and spends a few minutes every week (or even every month) taking a look at my opinion/thoughts on whatever the topic may be. The political blog I wrote last week was by far my most shared blog I ever wrote. I can't say I'll write a ton of those - if I had to guess, maybe one or two more before the election to be honest.

I've been straying away from the personal blogs lately because I get so hyped up on football season coming around that I lose some of my focus about other things around me. I'm going to try changing that.

Tonight's topic, however briefly I may address it, comes as the one year mark of my dating site adventure officially coming to an end. Anyone with a Facebook and who looked at my page today saw that Jen and I just celebrated our one-year anniversary, which went very well. I usually end up going overboard with days like this - so naturally I gave her a rose at midnight, bought ourselves a Galaxy 10.1 tablet, made breakfast for dinner, sent her flowers to her work and also spelled out "I heart U" in Coke Zero, Fresca and 312 cans - all of which were consumed in the apartment in the past 3 days - on our living room floor. The cans are still sitting there btw.

The guys reading this are hating me because their girls who are reading this are hating them - at least that's what I'm aiming for. I don't think you have to go as extreme as I did, nor do I think you should limit it to just special days (like anniversary, Valentine's Day, crap like that) - which I don't. Just make sure you don't take your relationships with anyone (including friendships, bonds w/ family, etc)  for granted.

Heading back to the dating relationship topic...the longer you are in a relationship with someone, the more settled you become, which may make you less spontaneous. I wasn't sure at first what I wanted to do for our one year, but knew I wanted to do something special. I'm usually pretty good at this stuff but was taking a while to come up with an original idea, something that would be something new from the Bolek arsenal.

I think I need to heed my own advice and start being a little more spontaneous with people, show them I care and that I won't take them for granted.

As the second year of me and Jen's great relationship begins, I'll need to keep this in mind. Spontaneous, random stuff are the stories we tell (or at least the stories we prefer to tell), not the boring routine. Most of you don't need to know how much sports I consume on a weekly basis or who my favorite bet is for the week (unless you're looking to completely fade my pick, which I understand). It's the randomness that people enjoy talking about AND hearing about.

I hope to keep things fresh and make the second year just as new and fun as the first year was.