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Taxing situation
Updated: Sunday June 24, 2001 1:10 PM
Have a comment or question for Dr. Z? Click here. When I tell you what faces me tomorrow morning, even you rippers out there will go easy, I guarantee it. Poor bugger, how could we dream of making his life any tougher? Tomorrow morning at 9:30 sharp I will report for an audit of my 1999 income tax return. I keep reading that the IRS is so understaffed that it can only do skeleton audits. Well, meet a skeleton. This'll be my third audit in the past decade. I don't want to dwell on this anymore because I'll get too depressed. Let's step into a happier world. Clint of Mesa, Ariz. -- and thank you for your nice words about my last piece, Clint -- wants to know which of the Super Bowls that I've attended (all but the first) do I consider the best. I can't answer that, as to the best. I can only give you my favorites. And I have trouble with the Roman numerals; I remember them by year. My favorite was 2000, Rams over Titans. Lots of courage by Tennessee, weird stuff by the Rams, including that winning TD bomb that defied all the percentages. My second favorite was 1980, Steelers over Rams. Steelers on the ropes 'til late, then they came on with a surge. Then, I guess, I'd have to say Niners over Bengals in '89, Joe Montana leading the last-minute drive. Then Giants over Bills in '91. Historically, the '69 Jets-Colts was the most meaningful, but I'm afraid I can't rate it alongside these others because I was too close to the scene. I was the Jets beat writer for the New York Post and in those days we stayed in the same hotel as the team and hung around with the players all week. Andrew of Las Vegas rips me for what he describes as my longing for the games of yesteryear. I don't long for them, I just appreciate some of the things they did then that aren't done very often now. I certainly love the game in any era and I thought my writing expressed it. Did I watch the amazing Monday night Antonio Freeman TD catch against the Vikings? Yes. Amazing. Is that attributable to the era or was it simply a thrilling, freak catch? At the end of his rip, this guy hints at something sinister -- "Maybe you're a Giants fan," which leads to even more nonsense. Right, Andrew. You've nailed me. I sit at home and drool on my bathrobe and long for the days of Mel Hein and Al Blozis. Might as well get the rips out of the way straight off. Randy of Tyler, Texas, who claims to "have written to this half-baked column for a year now," actually gets into an interesting point, after he's through carving me up. And by the way, I don't consider this column half-baked. It's fully baked, like the Redhead's peanut butter cookies. And another thing -- did you write before under a different name? C'mon now, admit it, I won't tell. The reference to me being "hired by Sony," is the clue. That same phrase was used before. I'm good at tracking down this kind of thing, see. Where were we? Oh yes, his interesting point. Why don't more teams elect to kick off when they win the coin toss? What's so great about receiving right away? He cites the scenario of a team gaining an advantageous position by kicking off at the start, having the last possession of the first half and then a second one, back-to-back, i.e., the opening possession of half No. 2. Well, I'll need a new paragraph to answer all this because the current one is getting kind of overloaded. I think a team like the Ravens, with a crushing defense and so-so offense, should choose to kick off every time, but no coach would agree. It sends a bad message to the offense, although the defense would love it. Lyle Alzado once told me that the guys on the '77 Orange Crush Broncos defense always wanted to lose the coin toss, so they'd be on the field right away. I asked their coach, Red Miller, why he didn't elect to kick all the time. He looked at me as if I were nuts. Coaches choose to kick off when there's a heavy wind. Bill Parcells used to do it every now and then. You'd see it in Buffalo, too, late in the season, when The Hawk is flying and those terrible winds come in off Lake Erie. I like the college rule, allowing you to defer, when you win the coin toss. As far as the back-to-back possession thing, well, they aren't really back-to-back because there's the halftime break in between. If you say it's of greater advantage to kick off in the second half, well, you can make your offensive adjustments, but the defense can make its switches, too. Good offensive coaches like to have the first possession in a game because that's when they can unveil their new stuff. Does this answer your question, Dr. Rippo? A final note -- just when this guy seemed as if he were actually turning human, he ends his diatribe with: "If this question is way past you, I will throw you an easy question. Who won the first Super Bowl." (He didn't even include a question mark after the last sentence.) Buddy, if this were only a different type of publication, I'd have some advice for you regarding what you could do with yourself and certain farm animals. Jim of Buffalo brings us back to the Giants-Bills wide-right Super Bowl. Don't blame Scott Norwood, the kicker, he says, blame Jim Kelly for abandoning the run for personal glory and throwing the ball so much. I'm reconstructing the game in my mind. The Bills did get into field-goal position at the end thanks to some terrific running by Thurman Thomas. It's a disgrace that he wasn't the game's MVP. I was a selector then, and I tried to convince the dim bulbs who were my fellow selectors who kept mumbling that you had to vote for a guy on the winning team that Thomas had twice the game that O.J. Anderson did, all to no avail. In fact, I bitched so long and so loud that I was never again a selector. Kelly had a lot of passes dropped. The Giants kept their LBs on the field with the idea of keeping the passes short and whacking the receivers in the intermediate zones. Big guys beating up on little ones, and it worked, because, as I said, after a while the Buffalo wideouts dropped the ball. Thanks, incidentally, for your kind words about my work. Mike of Long Beach, Calif., asks if the trend toward bigger linemen will stop or will we someday be looking at an entire line of 380-pounders. When I called Phil Simms about that '87 Super Bowl piece, we talked about it. In the '86 season, offensive linemen went 265-270 and spent plenty of time in the weight room. Now they're not much taller and they weigh around 320. I said that I felt that steroids were still in use; it's just that the better masking agents of today make them harder to detect. He disagreed strongly. Not steroids, he said, improved weight training. "They're doing it for longer," was his explanation. "They're starting early in high school, and the techniques and training methods are a lot better." We both agreed on one thing, though. A 6-3 or 6-4 frame can only handle so much weight. Joints and ligaments, especially in the knee area, do not gain strength proportionally, and too much stress is being placed on them, and more injuries are occurring to these monsters. The bigger they get, the more injuries we'll see. Will this halt the progress toward the magic four-double-oh? Quien sabe? I thought when the Broncos won two Super Bowls with smaller, more mobile offensive linemen that would reverse the trend, but it didn't. On the subject of weight, and I think I've related the story before, so please bear with an old-timer if this is familiar to you, I am closing my eyes and seeing a memorable scene. Spring practice, Stanford University, 1951. I am a sophomore tackle. I am walking off the field, exhausted after a scrimmage. Walking alongside me is one of those team-leader types, one of those inspirational characters we all hated. "I don't know what's wrong with you," he is saying, jamming his finger in my chest. "You're certainly BIG enough, certainly BIG enough!" He couldn't stop repeating it. I weighed 213 at the time. Nat of Ottawa wants to know how how much money I'd give Randy Moss, and why. First the copout. You'd have to relate it to your total cap funds available and all the other blah blah. Now the real stuff. Find out how long Cris Carter will be around to baby-sit No. 84. If it's two years, sign Moss for two years at big bucks. If it's one year, sign him for one year. What are big bucks? Can't give you an exact dollar amount, but something that will take your breath away. After Carter retires? Uh-uh. I believe Moss will go in the tank, unless the Vikings get another guy exactly like Carter, and you don't find those types easily. Don't forget, though, that I'm the guy who said Moss would never make it in the NFL. Bill of Brooklyn comes up with a very nice reminiscence about the days when I used to write a college football handicapping column called Pigskin Prophet for the New York Post. And I got in trouble for it, too. The Commandant of West Point wrote a steamy letter to our publisher regarding a line I wrote about an Army game, picking the Black Knights to upset someone or other: "Don't forget that any Army pick must be taken with a grain of saltpeter." He didn't think it was funny. Anyway, Bill volunteers to send me a tape of the Jets-Colts Super Bowl. Thank you kindly, but I've got one. I cherish it. Here's an offbeat reminiscence about that game. In the press box I was sitting next to a fellow who, how can I say this, liked to place an occasional wager. In fact, more than occasional. Later he wrote a how-to book about cleaning up in football betting. No, I can't give you his name. Honest. Not this time. Anyway, early in the week, when the line opened at Colts by 17 he got down on the Jets. But as the week wore on, the more time we spent around the Jets, the more apparent it became that their whole scene was chaotic. He got more and more nervous. "These guys are going to get murdered," he said. An hour before kickoff the spread had jumped to 19 1/2, and this guy, in a panic, washed his bet and bailed out by taking Baltimore and laying the 19 1/2. He could have caught a reverse middle, had the Colts won by 18 or 19 and lost both ends, and he was sweating it until it became apparent that this would not happen. Just before we headed down to the locker room, someone asked him, "How'd you do?" "Oh, I had the right team," he said. Yeah, and the wrong team. Both teams. Next thing I know he's writing a book on how to beat the odds. David Saks of Durban, South Africa, says, "I have resolved to write you weekly in the faint hope that by the law of averages you will get around to eventually answering my question." Hope faintly no longer, David. Answers are forthcoming, and Jimmy, you know I never tell you how to run things, but if Dave of Durban wants any more information, pipe him aboard, OK? During my entire lengthy rugby career I wanted to face the Springboks someday, just to see what it would be like. The closest I ever came was when our club, the Old Blues, gave two traveling Springboks a game with our side. "Guesties," we called them, a big monster forward named Jan Pickard, whom I guess had a reputation back home, and a center named David Stewart. Enough memory lane and onto serious things. "My fear is that if I perpetually ask Jaguar-related questions you will refuse to answer them," he writes. Well, I never drove one. Couldn't afford it. But I hear they're nice cars. Ohhh, not that Jaguar. The team. How clumsy of me. Basically, the question relates to LB Kevin Hardy. I've always liked him. I don't know how you cannot. Better on the weakside than the strong, I believe, because he's better in space than at the point, but gosh, look at what he's been playing with. Only marginals at MLB, and in front of him was Tony Brackens, who played as he felt on a given day, an upfield rusher who got out of position at times and was no picnic to play behind, especially when the enemy was running the ball. I don't know if they'll hit Hardy with the franchise tag, but they're nuts if they let him go. To Jim of Ossining, N.Y. : Thanks for the comments, plus the restaurant info, plus the Sing Sing stuff. Someone tell that guy from Tyler, Texas., that the latter does not relate to Frank Sinatra. Jim builds a case for Harry Carson for the Hall of Fame, but you're preaching to the choir because I've always put yes on the ballot when his name came up. Ryan of Chicago deplores the lack of meaningful free-agent activity by the Bears, particularly in the running back department. I think I mentioned last week that I agree. This franchise seems to be headed down, down, down. A polite gentleman named Michael of Durham, N.C., says he "submitted about a half-dozen questions last year, but they were all in the thick of the season, so I guess they were fighting through too many other inquiries to make it to you..." OK, now it's the thin of the season, so let's get busy here. And thank you for your very nice comments. The Panthers releasing Steve Beuerlein in favor of Jeff Lewis makes no sense, he says. Well, Steve's 36, and at some point you've just got to move on (at least I didn't say "go in another direction," which I've always hated). Lewis? Who knows? Obviously they feel he's got some potential. I've never seen it, but I don't make my living evaluating QBs. On the surface, it looks like a disastrous move. But if somehow they're right, and we've got another Kurt Warner here, well then. On to the Saints. That's a real thorny matter, the Blake vs. Brooks quarterback thing. I talked to Jim Haslett at the league meetings and he couldn't enlighten me on the subject. He said Blake is the starter if he's healthy. He loves Brooks. Where do we go from here? Personally, I think it'll be a training camp shootout. Finally, the Saints' D. I disagree with you about the "thin secondary." I think they're deep in corners. Haslett had them playing very well last season. I like the safeties, too. This is a very solid team. I haven't done the game-by-game yet, but I could see them at about 11-5, maybe better. Gary of White Plains, N.Y., quotes my last mailbag as saying that the Raiders are slipping, then he wonders how I could say that, given their decent offseason moves. Did I say that? I wondered, too. So I went and got the column. Here's what I said, actually regarding the Dolphins: "They lost to the Raiders by 27 points in the playoffs last season, and I don't think they've helped themselves that much, while Oakland is slipping enough to turn that number around." In other words, I don't think Miami can beat the Raiders this year because they aren't that much better or Oakland that much worse to make up for the 27-point whipping. Sorry it was worded so weirdly. My fault. The Raiders aren't slipping. I am. Pray for me when I face the IRS. Have a comment or question for Dr. Z? Click here. |
