Brady Quinn has won a game as an NFL quarterback, which pretty much destroys my faith in the essential goodness of the universe. I did not enjoy watching that game. Buffalo had every chance to win and just threw each and every one of them away. If I wanted to watch that, I would have recorded last week's 49er game.

After struggling with about 3 different segues from that initial thought, each less entertaining and significantly less thoughtful than the last, I came to realize that I really don't have anything else to say about that. But I had to tell somebody. Brady Quinn? He even made a few awfully nice throws.

So with that in mind, screw segues. Let's talk the prediction game. I actually think that this (and a future post to make the issue clear) would be a good opportunity to explain what makes it worthwhile to continue pushing for ground. And that's the playoffs. We have, what, 6 weeks before the playoffs now? And as some of you know, the playoffs usher in a brand new competition in the games.

The first is a total free for all. It's essentially a replica system of the regular season prediction games except that predictions are made for every single playoff game, everybody starts back at zero, and perfect scores only count for 5 instead of 10. Ashamed by your regular season performance? Didn't start playing until week 13 and just couldn't catch up? This will be your chance to make up for everything.

The other is a seeded playoff system that includes the top 8 finishers from the regular season games. If there are any 8th place ties, the position gets tiebroken by a complex system of me counting up how many games you won outright over the course of the season. The player with the most outright wins, takes the tiebreak and wins the 8th seed. Couldn't be simpler. Seeds are staggered, so the 1 seed faces the 8 seed in week one, and so on. Scoring is also modified to accommodate head to head matchups as opposed to the free-for-all system currently employed.

The entire system will be explained in detail as we get closer, but I'd like you to be aware that even if you don't win in the regular season, you could conceivably have two extra chances to win during the post-season. One for the free-for all, and another one for any member of the top-8.

Personally, I'm a BIG fan of the head to head playoffs. I rather enjoyed beating the snot out of everybody last year.

In any case, onto the results:

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I didn't really want to think about football this week, for reasons that had to do with good and bad circumstances.

The Bad: The 49ers. It's hard when you lose a game by playing worse than a team that was playing worse than you. Wrap your head around that one, because I'm not changing it to make it make sense.

The Good: My god-daughter had her first birthday yesterday. And let me tell you that it was her party and she cried whenever anybody got within a foot of her, occasionally after she fell, a few times when she was hungry, and a couple of times when she wanted to. All in all, the whole night probably scarred her for life. But on the bright side, her family got to gorge on pizza and cake!

The Bad: I'm actually pretty lazy. That didn't quite make me want to not think about football, But it did make me want to not write about it.

The Good: I'm actually pretty lazy and I had better things to not do than think about football.

But then wjackalope found me at home and pistol-whipped me for making him wait. Don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty lazy, but it's amazing what a concussion and an 8mm barrel in your face can do to motivate you.

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Head Coach: Jack Christiansen

Key Losses: SE Clyde Conner, OT Bob St. Clair, DT Leo Nomellini

Key Additions: WR Dave Parks, LB Dave Wilcox, OG Howard Mudd, LB Ed Beard

Discussion Starter: Discussion starter here this week only because I really didn't have to stretch for this one. It's more of a convenient coincidence than anything anybody can really talk about, anyway, but... In 1963, the 49ers won two games, struggled with injuries and an ongoing thinning of the offensive talent, and went through a midseason coaching change. In 1964 they retained their interim coach full-time and went on to win 4 games. The 49ers now have won two games and are struggling with injuries and a lack of talent. Mike Singletary has the chance to be retained next season. The logical conclusion to this is that Singletary coaches the team for 3 more years with limited success and is then replaced by Mike Nolan. Just think about that for a while.

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In the midst of political turmoil and a presidential election the importance of which we haven't seen since as early as 2004, in the midst of mudslinging, war, economic downturn, and some other stuff I won't mention because they involve cheesecake - and not all of it good cheesecake. And I hate bad cheesecake sooo much...

In these troubled time people need a place to escape. For example: Written largely in the midst of World War II, The Lord of the Rings eventually exploded into popularity amidst the deep rooted social, national, and global tensions of the 1960s. Furthermore, the same national climate that bred the escapism of the 60s bled into the 70s, as the Vietnam war continued, while social equality movements continued to burn, particularly as immigration increased and the diversity, as well as the strength of minority groups increased with it. The escape from the tensions of the decade came to a head in 1977 with the release of Star Wars and the unprecedented public reception of the film. In the 80s, there was apparently something very severe that needed escaping from because, I mean, really? Ah-ha? Masters of the Universe? Personally, I'm still trying to escape The Smiths.

So you see my point. When important things happen, people want a place to enjoy unimportant things, even while those same people simultaneously move the world around them.

So here I give you a bit of escapism. I assure you, there are dragons. I assure you James Earl Jones has at least a bit role. I assure you, somebody here will sing in pitches which, simply put, neither man nor woman was designed to sing. And Kurt Russel will blow something up. Never before have the prediction game results been so exciting!

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Head Coach: Red Hickey (0-3) / Jack Christiansen (2-9)

Key Losses: G Ted Connolly

Key Additions: QB Lamar McHan, DB Kermit Alexander, DT Walt Rock

Discussion Starter:

As of this week, I'm tentatively getting rid of the discussion starter. The main reason is that it doesn't really start a lot of debate. Another part of it is just that it is very difficult not to repeat myself and remain interesting at the same time: I mean, really, I was talking about kickers last time! Before that, my question on commissioners was a huge hit!

The reality is simply that until we get to right around 1979, there won't be much discussion no matter what I do. And with any luck, this will also open a little more time for me to go over a little more comprehensive research material going forward.

If you want to discuss anything, though, feel free to talk about how much you're going to miss seeing where I go next trying to stretch the 196X season into something universal.

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You might not believe this, but the prediction games results actually got rained out yesterday. Yup. I could hardly believe it myself. I mean, it wasn't even raining in San Rafael yesterday. Clear skies and everything. But geographically speaking, the internets is, as we all know, a series of tubes located in Philadelphia, and it's best not to get them wet.

I'm only pretty sure that I'm not confusing the internets with a series of tubes made out of gremlins.

Back to the point, though, totally rained out. The commissioner of the predictions games results thingy came on ESPN and made an announcement and everything. Between nose picks, he probably even said something intelligible about it. I wouldn't know, though, because I was too busy watching him pick his nose. Those of you who were checking here for updates instead of ESPN didn't see that press conference, though. Instead your coverage just went straight into reruns of the Steve Harvey Show.

But they stopped playing the Steve Harvey Show after midnight, because bad things happen if you watch the Steve Harvey Show after midnight, especially when your tubes are wet.

Assuming that none of that makes any sense except in the most cursory way and that I've done my job (my job being to delay the actual results for as long as I can by making you read a bunch of nonsense) here are the results:

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I just finished watching the Broncos get throttled by the Patriots. I spent most of the game thinking, "boy, I really was smart for predicting that the Patriots would throttle the Broncos. Which felt good because yesterday I discovered that I couldn't pick a game if it was up my nose, which, now that I think about it, would probably also feel good. I also spent about ten minutes during the 4th quarter finishing The Tombs of Atuan, but then I went right back to thinking about how smart I was.

Then I came out here to input the scores, and as I got down to where my score was, the imaginary Jon Stewart in my head played an imaginary clip on his imaginary Daily Show and did a hilarious Jerry Lewis impersonation at my expense because I actually predicted that the game would end 24-26. He does that sometimes. He knows that I love his Jerry Lewis.

And then the imaginary Colbert Report came on, and things got really goofy (he eventually made imaginary fun of the rest of you for also missing the ball on that one)..

But then I had to get down to business. I knew that wjackalope was getting impatient, and contrary to the brash, manly front that I usually put up, deep down I really just want him to be happy. Or something. Whatever sounds good.

Anyway, I'll give you the short version. Stuff happened. People scored. Others didn't. And freecreditreport.com died and stopped making commercials. Or maybe that part was imaginary, too....

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Head Coach: Red Hickey

Key Losses: SE R. C. Owens, C Frank Morze.

Key Additions: DE Clark Miller.

Discussion:

I latched onto the kicking. So, kickers. No real structure, just kickers. There are people who argue that the kicker shouldn't be a part of the game, and I understand this. I disagree with it, but I understand it. To me, the value of having a 3 point play as well as the 6 point play far outweighs the negatives of having a guy who plays less than five minutes a game potentially deciding the Super Bowl [read more below].

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This has been a week of things happening that I didn't see coming. The Browns beat the Giants. I didn't see that coming. I discovered that Chris Rock has a brother who looks quite a lot like him, except more GQ, and who is also some sort of comedian and who has some show on Comedy Central. It's kind of like Eddie Murphy's brother, except without a memorable skit on the Chappelle Show. I didn't see that coming.

I'm not really going anywhere with that. It's just happenstance that I saw the commercial for the Tony Rock show before I started this writeup. Just like it's happenstance that Chris Rock's Bigger and Blacker is playing on TV right now. It seemed like the world was telling me that this was a Rock family sort of night. Or, at least, Comedy Central was telling me that.

But I can't really lay down some quotes from Bigger and Blacker. It's just not appropriate. On second thought, maybe I just should have written this thing about Little Big Planet. There's nothing inappropriate about that game. Heck, it's downright cute! It's just happenstance that a Little Big Planet commercial just went by on the TV a few seconds ago.

Now, at first glance, it appears that I'm writing this intro stream-of-consciousness-style based on whatever happens to be on TV, that I have no focus, that I'm just plain not trying. But that's only half true.

In reality, I have this whole thing tied together. I bet you didn't see that coming (see, I tied it together right there).

Now, let's see what we didn't see coming with the results*.

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