Wooden Sharks and Lombardi Trophies

In 2001 my family and I traveled to Micronesia for a scuba diving vacation. To get from Hawaii to Micronesia you need to fly to Guam then take a short flight from Guam to your desired island. Pretty simple, except there are two vastly different ways to travel from Hawaii to Guam: a 7-hour direct flight to Guam International Airport or a 14-hour island hopping sojourn that stops at every borderline significant atoll large enough to warrant a 7-11 between Hawaii and the land of the brown tree snakes. (You can probably guess which flight we took.)

In our defense, we chose the island-hopper in large part because of my older brother's hyperbolic description of the Continental Airlines flying experience following his recent trip to New York:

Each seat has it's own TV with on demand movies and video games!!!

The lunch service makes Wolfgang Puck look like a hobo!!!

The flight attendants give out free pillows... and hand jobs!!!

The middle seats on the plane fold down, turning the cabin into a giant dance club with free champagne and a complimentary Puff Daddy performance!!!

None of us were huge Puff Daddy fans and free pillows are standard fare on airlines, but the allure of great food and non-stop on-demand movies and video games combined with the intrigue of stopping at various islands outweighed the additional seven hours of travel time and numerous take-offs and landings. Unfortunately, we were not aware that the island hopper used a smaller plane, which does not have individual TVs on each seat, and the constant take off and landings eliminate the need for substantive food service. Instead of a high-class non-stop dance party in the sky, we had 14 hours of Lifetime made for TV movies, cardboard flavored sandwiches befitting a vending machine, and small bags of Frito-Lays potato chips dating back to the mid-70s whose packages were mostly likely colored with lead-based paint. If the trip didn't kill us, the liver damage and kidney failure would. Awesome.

On the bright side, stopping at the individual islands provided an interesting glimpse into local culture and a great sense of the size and topography of the islands in the Western Pacific. I suppose that's like saying that the bright side to catching the flu is that you get to stay home and watch "The Price is Right" reruns in between bouts of vomiting and diarrhea; but after 14-hours on an airplane with only a few bits of cardboard, freeze dried turkey, potato chips and lead-based paint in your stomach, you start clinging to any ray of hope to delay cannibalism and outright anarchy.

After 12 hours of the Micronesian death march, when all hope seemed lost and we started openly debating the merits of eating my little brother, one stop made the entire trip worthwhile: Kosrae.

Kosrae is the final stop before Guam, a tiny, borderline insignificant island that wouldn't make anyone's list of Top 500 places to visit before you die. Tourists traveling to Micronesia go to Chuuk or Yap. No one visits Kosrae. There is nothing notable or interesting about the island except for one exceedingly cool local craft available for purchase in the airport: hand-carved wooden sharks. They range from one to three feet long, have exceptional detail, and real shark teeth, expertly affixed in the life-like jaw. They are the single coolest hand crafted item I have ever encountered in my travels and would look amazing sitting majestically atop my coffee table, boldly announcing to any that enter your home that you are a man who doesn't take any guff. You are an apex predator, a cold, icy killer with testicles anywhere from 25 to 200 percent larger than the average non-shark possessing male. Even better, the sharks weren't that expensive. They ranged in price from $20 for the smaller ones to $40 for the larger, more intricate carvings.

So, of course, we didn't buy one. We talked ourselves out of the purchase using contrived logic.

We don't want to carry it around in our luggage the entire trip

Only stupid tourists buy things in an airport

Clearly, they'll be available on the other islands

So, instead of plopping down $40 for a three foot long, gorgeous, hand-detailed Hammerhead shark, I kept my wallet in my pocket and got back on the plane. Worst. Decision. Ever. As we later learned, the wooden carvings are Kosrae's signature item and only available for purchase on the island.

I walked away from, hands-down, the most awesome, staggeringly bad-ass souvenir of my life because I didn't want to potentially regret spending an extra Hamilton. That is the reason why, ten years later, my coffee table lays bare instead of adorned by a fearsome virile totem to my masculinity. It is also why I am still so upset over the Chicago Bears losing the NFC Conference Championship game to the Packers this past Sunday.

Don't get me wrong. The Packers were a better, more talented football team and deserved to win the game. The Bears skirted through the season on luck, pluck, and verve, avoiding significant injury and seemingly catching every opponent at the best possible time. They played Detroit without their starting quarterback. Twice. They beat Green Bay by a field goal after the Packers committed 18,000 penalties. They beat a Dolphins team starting their third string quarterback, one so bad he was cut the previous year by Kansas City. They played Minnesota without Brett Favre. They clinched a first round bye after Green Bay lost to Detroit and Philadelphia lost to a Minnesota team led by Joe Webb (whose name I had to Google). In the first round of the playoffs, they got to play a 7-9, hide-the-women-and-children dumpster fire Seahawks team after Seattle miraculously upset the heavily favored Saints and Green Bay beat Philadelphia on the road. They caught every break all season long and their luck finally ran out at the worst possible time.

At the beginning of the season, I thought the Bears would be lucky to finish 7-9. They had no offensive line, no wide receivers, a secondary with more holes than a Michael Bay script, and a quarterback with a specialized ability to target perfectly thrown passes to the other team. After their miraculous 4-1 start, my Dad and I agreed that we would consider getting to the playoffs a wildly successful season. After they improbably clinched the division and an 11-5 record, we concurred that a single playoff victory would make the entire season worthwhile. We had no delusions of grandeur with this team. But, that's not how I feel today.

An NFL team only gets a few chances to win a Super Bowl. Just ask Peyton Manning, who's been to the playoffs eleven times and only has one Super Bowl to show for it. Or ask Tom Brady, who won three Super Bowls in first five seasons, but fell short the following six years. In fact, neither Manning's nor Brady's best team ('05 Colts, '07 Patriots) won the Lombardi Trophy.

Football is a bizarre game of chance and circumstance. A contest played by twenty-somethings with a ball that doesn't bounce straight. Crazy things happen and the best team doesn't always win. When you have a chance to win it all you need to capitalize and, despite their numerous flaws, the Bears had a fantastic opportunity to win the Super Bowl this year. They won in an unorthodox fashion - incredible special teams, opportunistic defense, and an offense that did just enough to keep Bears fans from vomiting in their mouths - but with a rock solid defense, a coaching staff that boasted four members with previous NFL head coaching experience, and only two games between them and immortality, the time was now.

Yes, Jay Cutler got injured. Yes, the defense gave up early momentum to the Packers. Yes, Todd Collins played so poorly as Cutler's replacement that they pulled him with 37 seconds remaining in the third quarter, even though it meant that if emergency back-up Caleb Hanie left the game the Bears would have to start Devin Hester at quarterback. Yes, the Bears probably didn't even deserve to be in the game in the first place. The fact remains, the Bears squandered a golden opportunity to win a Super Bowl and who knows when they'll have another chance to win it all. Dan Marino led the Dolphins to the Super Bowl his rookie year and, through the course of his Hall-of-Fame career, never made it back.

It doesn't matter whether you're the best team or the most deserving. It doesn't matter whether the breaks go your way. It doesn't matter whether you should be happy just to get as far you do. It doesn't matter whether some of your starting offensive linemen couldn't crack the starting line up for the local high school teams. It doesn't matter whether your back-up quarterback is appropriately named after an alcoholic beverage since he drives you to drink. At the end of the day, when you find yourself in the Kosrae Airport of football games, you better damn well buy the shark. Otherwise, a decade later, you could be left with an empty coffee table and an ocean of regret.

I'm pretty sure this Bears team will retool the offensive line, add some weapons to the receiving core, and return better than ever, primed for a Super Bowl run. But, I was pretty sure I could get a hand-carved wooden shark in Chuuk and my coffee table is still noticeably bare.

Why the NFL changed forever last weekend

My generation is different. Way different. Not march-to-the-beat-of-our-own-drum different, but march-to-the-beat-of-some-new-cool-instrument-you've-probably-never-heard-of-before-that-we-invented-so-we-didn't-have-to-be-pigeonholed-into-marching-to-a-drum different.

For instance, I met some high school friends at the beach the other day and discussed what everyone is doing with their respective lives. One is working a standard 9 to 5 job. Of the other four, one is starting a local organic baby food company, one launched an online alcohol venture, one created their own line of handbags, and the other started making and selling handmade stationary. As I said, different.

We Millennials - the stupidest name ever, only marginally preferably to the original moniker, Generation Y, though I suppose it's telling and a positive sign that our collective independence warranted a name other than "The Generation after Generation X" - are incredibly skeptical, independent, impatient, romantic and determined, a result of constant bombardment from advertisements and growing up with the Internet, which provided us an unprecedented amount of information and made it possible to do anything from anywhere at any time. We question everything. We refuse to do something solely because "that's how it's always been done". We require sufficient motivation and rationale to accomplish a task but, once provided justification - no matter how small - we're doggedly determined and fiercely loyal to our convictions. We are a bizarre hotbed of emotional angst and entrepreneurial inspiration. As I said, different.

Until now, society could ignore our quirks and hope that we would normalize once we began graduating from college and entering the "real world". But, that never happened. We never lost our sense of myopic independence. We kept doing things our own way and the impact of this notion is appearing all over society, including sports. In fact, this weekend's NFL Divisional Playoff games were a microcosm for our generations quirks and a changing of the guard that ceded control of the NFL to our generation. We planted our flag in the league and we're not giving it up any time soon.

The past decade was ruled by stoic, calculated, brilliant tacticians. Tom Coughlin. Tony Dungy. Andy Reid. Bill Belichick. They dominated by implementing systems that forced individuals to submit their personalities to that of the team and won with execution, not emotion. They never boasted about their success. They were too busy winning.

But now, everything has changed.

Dungy is retired. Coughlin didn't make the playoffs. Reid lost in the Wild Card round. Even Belichick, almost unquestionably the NFL's best game day tactician, is 0-3 in the his last three playoff games, each of which involved heavily favored Tom Brady led teams. Meanwhile, Rex Ryan is 3-1 in the playoffs the past two years, each game played as a road underdog; Mike Tomlin is 4-0 in the playoffs with a Super Bowl win in 2009; Lovie Smith has a Bears team many called the worst in the NFC North at the beginning of the season a win away from the Super Bowl; and Pete Carroll somehow pulled off one of the most stunning playoff upsets in recent memory with an utterly crapulous Seahawks team playing without a single Pro Bowl player.

What secret do these four coaches share that differentiate them from the previous generation of coaches? They value the love of their players as much as their respect.

Belicheck's players respect him, but Ryan's players love him. They'd crawl a mile through a sewer pipe, like Andy Dufresne breaking out of Shashank, for him. Lovie Smith couldn't coach his way out of a three sided paper bag, but his players would bear his children. Today's young people are more emotionally fragile and independent than the previous generation. They don't just follow orders. They need to be invested in the cause. Giants cornerback Antrel Rolle says he wishes Giants head coach Tom Coughlin was more like Rex Ryan. A modern NFL head coach needs to connect to his players emotionally as much as professionally.

This skill doesn't manifest as much during the 16-game NFL regular season where grueling schedules negate the effects of emotion. Similarly, long playoff series of the NBA and Major League Baseball generally lead to a triumph of talent and strategy over emotional solidarity. But, in one game - winner take all - the ability of a team to rally around a common goal and impose their will on their opponent is vastly magnified and a coach who can successfully wield this emotional hammer has a powerful weapon at his disposal.

After their stunning upset of the Patriots, Jets linebacker Bart Scott gave one of the best post-game interviews in sports history. He channeled his inner pro wrestler and launched into a minute long vitriolic tirade about the Jets frustration with the pre-game praise lauded on to the Patriots wherein he rips the New England defense to shreds saying, "they couldn't stop a nosebleed". If that sounds familiar, it's because it's the exact same thing Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan said about the Jets defense after their week 16 loss to the Bears. Only three weeks later, minutes after an intensely emotional victory, the Jets defensive emotional leader angrily parroted the words of his head coach.

Rex Ryan didn't just provide his team an excellent game plan, he provided them the inspiration they needed to execute it. When Rex wages war in the media, he does not do it to intimidate the opponent. He does it to incite his own team and deflect any pre-game criticism onto himself, instead of his players. That, my friends, is the brilliance of Rex Ryan and exactly what makes him a successful football coach in the modern NFL.

Our generation is a weird bunch, prone to insufferable bouts of narcissism and intense individuality and we'd be the first to admit it. But, it's time to start getting used to it.

Expect more of us wanting to work from home. Expect more of us starting our own businesses. Expect more melodramatic television shows starting vapid, emotionally challenged protagonists. Expect more tattoos, more weird hair-dos, and more jeggings, lots and lots of jeggings. Also, expect more NFL teams succeeding on emotion instead of execution.

That's just how we roll. As I said, different.

What a trip to McDonald's can teach you about Bears football

I took my two year-old daughter, Haley, to McDonald's this weekend. Not because I wanted to go or because I somehow enjoy feeding my daughter deep friend assemblages of hoof, beak, cartilage, and cardboard, but because she learned that a magical establishment exists that rewards her with a toy for eating delicious finger "food", dipped in brightly colored high fructose corn syrup that she can request by name. "Daddy, can we go to McDonald's, pleeeeeeeeeeeease?". As a parent, I am extremely invested in the healthy development of my child and take immense pride in her burgeoning language skills. But, let me tell you, nothing takes your parental pride down a notch quite like the realization that you've taught your child how to ask for McDonald's. (Example #3,487,247 that parenting is impossibly difficult.)

Yet, as much as I disapprove of providing my daughter access to consumable items - I refuse to call it food - that cause childhood obesity and ass cancer (Yes, I know it's called colon cancer. I just think ass cancer better encapsulates how much it sucks.), I do not want to unnecessarily elevate the status of junk food by turning it into some sort of forbidden fruit. A quarterly fast food foray is better than a twelve year-old with sexual fantasies about clowns, french fries, and chicken nuggets.

Generally, during our trips to the Golden Arches, I only buy food for Haley, but it had been three years since my last tryst with Ronald McDonald so I ordered a six-piece chicken nugget Happy Meal instead of the usual four piece meal, two extra shame nuggets for Dad.

Holy wave of nostalgia, Batman.

The nuggets tasted exactly like I remembered from my high school days, when I had the metabolism of a horny bull moose - for the record, that's approximately 47% greater than a regular bull moose - and could polish off a twenty-piece nuggets, large fries and a chocolate shake in a single sitting. A lightly crisped, toasty crust, surrounding a homogeneous, succulent, vaguely chicken-flavored chewy interior. A simple, guilty pleasure that satisfies both your hunger and inner child, provided you don't think about what actually constitutes a "McNugget".

As I watched Haley smile, play with her soon-to-be-forgotten fuzzy bear toy, and snack on french fries and nugs, I developed a grudging respect for the stalwart consistency of McDonald's. Haley doesn't know the food is bad for her. She just knows that it tastes good, she can eat it with her fingers, and she gets a cool toy. McDonald's may not be the apex of culinary arts, but they serve cheap, satisfying, reliable food, an experience that has not changed in any significant way in the past 50 years. You can malign the quality of the goods, but not the effectiveness of the product, much like the Chicago Bears.

The Chicago Bears are the McDonald's of the NFL: Never pretty and tough to swallow, but undeniably effective and staggeringly consistent. For the past 91 years, the Bears have won with a combination of defense, toughness, special teams, and rugged masculinity (I'm looking at you, Jim McMahon) that is effective, but both gut-wrenching and difficult to watch. Even the '85 Bears, the paragon of Chicago football and perhaps the greatest team of all-time, wouldn't crack any one's list of Top 25 most beautiful or exciting NFL teams.

Beauty is Montana to Rice. Beauty is Manning to Harrison. Beauty is Tom Brady to whoever-the-scrappy-white-guy-is-who-happens-to-be-catching-the-ball-today. Beauty is not running the ball 40 times a game, generating 5 turnovers, and winning 13-3. But, that's how they do it in Chicago. They win ugly.

This creates a problem of perspective, because winning ugly doesn't score you any bonus points with fans. When people think of great teams they reminisce about crisp passing offenses, flashy running plays, and high-flying wide receivers. They don't take into account the fact that a team with Devin Hester running back kicks will consistently start drives at their own 40 instead of their own 20 (or sometimes they won't even have to start drives at all when he runs the ball back for a touchdown). They don't factor in the ability of Charles Tillman to routinely punch the ball out of opposing wide receivers hands when he tackles them. But, whether we like to admit it or not, winning ugly is still winning.

Take, for example, Peyton Manning. Manning is the Whole Foods of the NFL, his offensive arsenal a buffet of delicious and nutritious local and organic options. Yet, despite his offensive wizardry, he has a 9-10 lifetime record in the post season and more home playoff losses (4) than any quarterback in NFL History. I love Peyton Manning and think he's more the victim of sub par coaching and defense than poor play, but fans and media consistently overrate Manning-led teams due to their aesthetically pleasing style of play. But, beautiful football can't compensate for sub par defense any more than offering organically grown, sustainably harvested broccoli can compensate for charging 17.95 for a floret.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for Bears football any more than I'd advocate for McDonald's. I'd far rather cheer for a team that put on a glorious, dominant display of offensive football than a team that squeaks out ridiculous, cover-your-eyes, hide-the-women-and-children wins with punt returns, tipped balls, and fumble recoveries. But I respect both for what they do and think neither gets the credit they deserve for consistently excelling because they do so in unorthodox fashion. It's time we gave the Bears and McDonald's their proper due, even if they do end in painful trips to the bathroom.