I and several million others are looking for grief counseling today.

On Saturday, the UW-Whitewater Warhawks won the NCAA Division III National Championship in a 31-21 victory over Mount Union Purple Raiders. This was their third meeting for the national championship in consecutive years. The win is best defined by the opponent they beat:

• Mount Union had been unbeaten in 35 games.
• Mount Union had won by 24 or more points over every opponent this season
• Mount Union only allowed 72 total points all season
• Mount Union was favored by 21 points

Congrats to Coach Leipold and the Warhawks!

You have just been hired to run the Green Bay Packers, arguably the most storied franchise in the NFL, and this is what you say in the opening press conference:

“Most of you probably know I’ve been in the Chicago area for four and a half years. I’ve really loved living in the Chicago area. I’ve become a Bears fan. I hopped on the Bears bandwagon last year, went to both playoff games at Soldier Field.”

After that joke bombed new Packers CEO Mark Murphy went into spin control and assured the media he was no longer a Bears fan.

Not the right foot to be starting on, Mark.

Nod: Rob Reischel’s “Murphy picked as next president” in Packers Plus on Dec. 6th, 2007

Wayne sold his house in Sydney and moved his family to Green Bay, so he could follow the Packers for one season. He is attending all the games , home and away.

If you are a fan of the Packers, The Once In A Lifetime Fan.com is a must visit.

One of the great things about blogs is that your opinion is captured and, if people are listening, is heard.

The National Football League has a near perfect product; one that is designed for television, one that advertisers want to be a part of, one that is wonderfully unpredictable. I could go on.

This game in London today and Goddell floating the balloon about staging the Super Bowl outside the US has me wondering if the League has completely lost its mind. I don’t understand why you would takeaway home game from a team and its fans. NFL Europe didn’t work; that should be a hint about the viability of American Football in the Old World. And then you are going to take what is turning into the single most important yearly sporting event and hold it in another country? You don’t see the Premier League saying, “Let’s stage a match at the Meadowlands.”

Each of the major sports leagues seems to be forgetting to ask a simple question: “Is this what the fans want?” In the end, it is the only thing that keeps the machine running.

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece Friday [sub. needed] where they looked at the Wonderlic scores for all the teams in the NFL. Each NFL draftee is given the test, which is a ” tool that measures how well people comprehend problems — and how quickly they can solve them.” The test has 50 questions that need to be answered in 12 minutes. They gathered data from all over to provide a complete analysis of the 32 NFL teams.

In the #32 position, you will find the Green Bay Packers with a Wonderlic average score of 19.1. The highest scoring team was the St. Louis Rams at 24.6, scoring just below chemists.

The kicker (no pun intended) is that the lowest scoring of any occuption on the Wonderlic is “packer”.

It is tough to be a Green Bay Packers fan this year, but I found they have a blog. Players Nick Barnett, Ryan Longwell, and Scott Wells are writing for it.

No new posts since yesterday’s loss…

The only sport I watch religiously is professional football. I have been a life long Packers fan and Sunday the Green and Gold return to the field. There are playing the Detriot Lions at Ford Field.

The easy pick for the media right now seems to be that the Packers are going to have a disappointing season. WSJ had something on that. The local media is all over it. Brett is over the hill. They have had too many losses on the offensive line. The secondary is just as bad as they were last year. Whatever.

Like no other player in the NFL, when Brett Favre is on the field, you always have a chance to win the game. Sometimes, he pushes it and starts throwing INTs, but you take the good with the bad. It is the risks that he takes that make him who he is. Consider these stats from the Wisconsin State Journal:

Of his 225 consecutive starts (including playoffs), the Packers are 73-8 (a .901 winning percentage) when he doesn’t throw an interception; 48-31 (.608) when he throws one; 18-16 (.529) when he throws two; and 7-18 (.280) when he throws three. They’ve never won when he’s thrown four or more in a game (0-6).

GO PACK GO!