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My main memories of Dan Marino are of him in commercials for Isotoner gloves. It wasn’t until a couple years after that association was cemented that I learned he used to be a quarterback. But that doesn’t matter – if I see a picture of him my first thought is of Isotoner gloves.

Which I suppose means their advertising worked. Kind of. I never bought their gloves, but I certainly remember their ads.

And that brings me to today. I’m betting that the kids around the age of my youngest are going to remember Peyton Manning as the Nationwide guy.

And no, I will not buy Nationwide insurance either.

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
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The College Football Playoff committee has produced this year’s selection of teams, which means that a lot of people are unhappy.

In my case, I should be happy, because the team from down south is not in the playoffs. But the committee didn’t learn its lesson from last year.

And that lesson, that I mentioned last year but apparently the committee didn’t read, is that they shouldn’t place the 3rd-best team from a conference into the national championship playoffs.

One could argue that Alabama is the 3rd-best team in the SEC. And yet they have been selected as the 4th-best team in the country. Why not Auburn, the team that beat them and won Alabama’s division?

I’m not going to go on an Alabama conspiracy theory – I just think the committee is taking the wrong things into account.

They favor minimal losses over conference championships, and I take the opposite view.

I thought the debate in the committee would be between Ohio State and USC – both two-loss conference champions. I personally would have chosen USC, because OSU already lost to Oklahoma so we have an idea of how they would have done in the playoffs.

I like the idea of teams playing significant non-conference games, and I think the committee’s direction undercuts that. If they are going to reward minimal losses and ignore conference championships, it’s in teams’ best interests to setup a favorable schedule.

Plus, with the limited games, there is limited cross-conference comparison, so it’s hard to tell if a two-loss PAC-12 champion is worse than a one-loss Big-12 champion. Maybe the PAC-12 is tougher this year. Maybe Oklahoma would have another loss if they had to play Notre Dame. Now we won’t know until after all the bowls are done if USC should have been the fourth team in the playoff.

I do hope that Clemson will blow out Alabama, to give yet another sample point to the committee that a team that did not make its conference championship game should not make the national championship playoff.

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I’d like to present to you today an example of success:

Colin Kaepernick

The critics might disagree, saying that he’s a washed-up quarterback who can’t play in the NFL anymore. But if your definition of success is “currently playing in the NFL”, then over 99.9% of the people in the USA are unsuccessful.

Other critics might contend that he has brought division and conflict to our country with his antics during the national anthem. That might not look like success to you, but your goals are not his goals.

What are his goals? (I haven’t asked him directly, so I’m going off common knowledge and common sense here):

He wanted the country to be aware of (and discuss) the treatment of minorities. He accomplished that, so success.

Before that, as an NFL player he wanted to get his team to the Super Bowl. He accomplished that, so success. Rather, partial success, since he probably wanted to win the game.

Before that, as a college player, he probably wanted to make it to the NFL. Again, success.

I dare say he has accomplished more and been more successful before the age of 30 than many people are in the whole lives. You can say a lot of things about Colin Kaepernick, but unsuccessful should not be one of those things.

In the last month or three, we had the announcement of the 2017 NFL schedule. Now that we know who will play whom and when, we can start predicting wins and losses.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. View results of previous football seasons.

2016 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Cleveland Browns = 3-13
• Jacksonville Jaguars = 7-9

How they actually did was

• Cleveland Browns = 1-15
• Jacksonville Jaguars = 3-13

Kind of close, but not that great.

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Here are some handy tips if you decide to run for exercise (or any other reason, I suppose):

• If you see a swarm of gnats, put your head down and close your mouth.
• Don’t sprint through tall grass – you can’t see how uneven the ground is and you’ll sprain your ankle.
• If you’re running on the road and a car goes past you, be sure to look behind you before you veer back into the driving lane. This applies more to those of us who run on dirt roads that aren’t quite two lanes wide and have no shoulders or lane markings. It’s hard to tell if there’s another car behind a car that passes you.

Okay, okay, it is 2017 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2016 because they match with the 2016 predictions made in 2016 for the 2016 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2016”.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.
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