Dear Pittsburgh

The sun is up
The sky is blue
It's beautiful
Why'd you go for two?

Things that are exceedingly stupid in the realm of professional football: the severe lack of understanding of late game point strategies. There's 1:39 left at this moment, and jacksonville is down by 1, 29-28, but they're marching and look sure to get in field goal range for the win here. Why are they even in this position? 29 points seems like an odd total for the Pitiablesburgh Steelers, eh? Well, they scored a touchdown with roughly 10 minutes left in the fourth to close it to 23-28. Extra point to close it to 24-28, but some idiot with a chart declares that they should go for two, with the short-sighted idea that putting themselves within a field goal is the way to go. A reasonable idea if we're down to one or two possessions left for the game, but - with ten minutes left? Huh? Ne'er mind that an EP and a TD puts you up by 3. The chart says do it! And worse, they get it, but a holding penalty puts them back at the 12 yard line. Surely now you kick the EP???!?!?? No, they go for it, and don't get it. So it's still 23-28. They score again, it's now 29-28, and of course they go for two this time. And don't get it. Clearly two EP's would have put them up by 3, but two failed two-point conversions have left them up by one.

Sure enough, Jax just marched and kicked a figgie to go up 31-29. And "Ben" (not-the-grin) just fumbled to lose the game.

STOOPID!!!!!!!!!! Just for the math record, .97 times 1 equals .97, and .4 times 2 equals .8. And whatever the percentage for two point conversion attempts from the 12 yard line is, "?" times 2 points is probably less than the .9 times 1 the EP attempt would have grabbed.

I can't stand it. I will post something more substantial later about life in 2008 in Phoenix, but for now i shed tears for the future of mankind - if the leaders of football squads can't follow simple rules of math & logic, where does that leave the rest of us? Surely doomed. For future reference, if you are down by 5 with a substantial amount of time left, kick the EP!!!! Don't be STOOPID!!!