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Random thoughts while wondering whether — for the first time since perhaps the Sid Luckman era several decades ago — the Chicago Bears defense will be as good as the team’s offense:
* Speaking of Luckman, you don’t suppose he ever complained about the crowd noise at home games the way Bears quarterback Jay Cutler did after Sunday’s season-opening victory vs. the Indianapolis Colts at Soldier Field. To his credit, Cutler wants fans to cool it only when the Bears are in the red zone.
As consolation for Raiders fans, here's Jaime Edmondson, who picked Oakland to defeat the San Diego Chargers on Monday night.
* You know it will be a good season for the Chicago Bears if you see more of middle linebacker Brian Urlacher on the field than you do on television commercials during games.
* It’s good to see former Northwestern standout John Shurna has signed with the New York Knicks. It’s unlikely he will supplant Harvard-educated Jeremy Lin — who has moved on to the Houston Rockets — as a fan favorite. But Shurna should help keep the team’s overall grade-point average at last season’s level.
* The Chicago White Sox defeated the visiting Detroit Tigers 6-1 Monday (Sept. 10). The victory assured the Sox of staying in first place in the American League Central for the rest of the four-game series. And assured Sox fans of staying off any ledges — well, most of them.
* “Those guys are starting to understand how close that 100 losses is,” Cubs manager Dale Sveum said after his team’s 4-1 victory over the Houston Astros. “That’s the goal [avoiding 100 defeats]. That’s the talk now and obviously they’re responding now.” Well, now that the bar has been set, you have to be feeling much better about the 2012 season, Cubs fans? No?
* For the Cubs (55-86) to avoid 100 losses, they need to go 8-13. That’s a .380 winning percentage. Which should be no trouble in that they have a lofty .390 winning percentage for the season.
Jaime Edmondson made the right call with Baltimore over Cincinnati.
* Speaking of uninspiring numbers, the official attendance for the Cubs game at Houston was 13,121 (32 percent of regular-season capacity). Toward the end of the game, the crowd looked vastly smaller than what you’d see at a spring-training game. Of course, the teams fielding spring-training-like lineups in a pairing of the National League Central’s two worst teams didn’t help.
* Speaking of attendance (which is a subject that the Sox seem subjected to on a fairly regular basis, the crowd at U.S. Cellular Field for the Sox-Tigers game was 30,287 (74.6. percent of regular-season capacity). Of course, a pairing of the American League Central’s two best teams did help. The Sox’ average home attendance this season is 24,255 (59.7 percent).
* Speaking of figures (although of the more impressive variety), Playboy Playmate Jaime Edmondson picked the Baltimore Ravens to beat the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders to defeat the San Diego Chargers on Monday night. She went 1-1. Which is pretty much how Week 1 went for her. According to the fearless football forecast department (NFL division), Jaime went 8-8. And if this paragraph serves as justification for running two photos of her, so be it. Not there needs to be any special reason to run picture of Jaime.
* News item: “The Illinois High School Association’s board of directors decided Monday not to grant a waiver request by the Chicago Public Schools to allow their teams to participate in athletic contests during the ongoing teachers’ strike.” A couple of observations: 1. You would think the CPS just might have better things to do — such as settling its strike — than concern itself with an extra-curricular activity. 2. If this was Texas, there would be no question football teams would be playing and no need for a waiver request (well, assuming teachers in Texas have the ability to strike).
Catching up to Playboy.com’s August 2012 Cyber Girl Jessica Workman is what the editorial staff at elliottharris.com likes to think of as work, man:
Speaking of Playboy Playmates or reasonable facsimiles thereof (and even if we weren’t), here is a recent video of Jessa Hinton, the July 2011 Playmate:
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