I have been waiting since 1959 to use this word; it was on one of my vocabulary lists that I was given as I was about to take the PSAT exams as a junior in high school. My English teacher that year – – Miss Reed – – explained that any literate individual would be able to converse naturally using any of the words on her list.
The word for today is “antepenultimate”.
“Penultimate” means “next-to-last”; “antepenultimate” means the thing on a list that is just before the next-to last entry or “next-to-next-to-last”.
And so – – with deference to Miss Reed wherever she may be in the cosmos now in 2026 – – today is the antepenultimate version of Football Friday for this football season. Can I get a “Hallelujah!” for that? It only took my 67 years to find the need to use that word…
Normally, I just begin with a review of last week’s “Betting Bundle”; but as I went looking, I realized that this had been an up-and-down year with the “Betting Bundle”. Notwithstanding the losing record to date, I thought I had been on a winning surge recently. Here are the results as of this morning counting last week’s entries:
Spreads and Totals: 3-2-0
Season to Date: 40-43-2
And …
Money Line Parlays: 0-1 Loss= $100
Season to Date: 17-25 Profit = $457
When I went back to look at how things stood in the past, I found th entry from 21 November 2025, I realized that my sense of a winning surge was correct. Here is how things stood as of 11/21/25:
Spreads and Totals: 17-34-2
Money Line Parlays: 10-16 Loss = $31
The “Season to Date” results are not something to crow about, but I think I have salvaged a modicum of respect for the last 9 weeks of “Betting Bundling”.
College Football Commentary:
In the aftermath of Indiana’s climb to the top of the college football world in 2025, some folks were motivated to claim this Hoosier team as the best college football team ever. There is no way on this planet – – or any other planet around any other star in the known universe – – that I would choose to engage in that debate. However, I will offer up this data for your consideration; it would suggest that the 2025 Indiana schedule was a stiff one.
- There was a 12-team playoff roster this year. Nominally, that list of teams would be considered “tough competition” over the course of the season.
- Indiana played 5 games – – out of its 16 games overall – – against teams that were invited to the 12-team CFP in 2025. Those games were:
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- Oregon (twice)
- Ohio State
- Alabama
- Miami
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- Indiana won all five of those games with a cumulative score of 165-76.
No matter how you come down on the theoretical argument of “best college football team/season ever”, you have to recognize that Indiana’s 16-0 record was not accumulated against a bunch of patsies. In fact, one of the “out-of-conference patsies” that Indiana had scheduled last season was Kennesaw St. – – the team that was the C-USA champion in 2025.
A former colleague sent me a note after Indiana had won the CFP Championship Game:
“Cigneti (sic) set himself up for ridicule with his initial press conference and then he jammed his words up everybody’s [terminal end of the alimentary canal]. What would it take to beat that performance?”
Well, maybe if Joe Flabeetz who had never coached above the high school level, took over the football program at Rutgers and in his second year he went undefeated and won the CFP Championship, it would be comparable. Other than something like that …
I read that Fernando Mendoza’s younger brother, Alberto, is going to transfer from Indiana to Georgia Tech next year; Alberto Medoza was a freshman QB on the Indiana roster in 2025/26. Let me say this unequivocally:
- Alberto Medoza is a sharp young man.
If he were to stay in Bloomington, IN for the rest of his college career, he could never equal – – let alone surpass – – his older brother’s legacy there. Alberto was part of a national championship team; that can never be taken away from him; now the best thing for him is to go and find somewhere else to play QB for a college football team.
NFL Commentary:
Jordan Addison – – WR for the Vikes – – was arrested last week on charges of trespassing. Addison was allegedly in the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tampa and had been asked several times to leave the premises by hotel security personnel. Addison did not comply and the gendarmes were summoned to the scene. Supposedly, Addison was not cooperative with police as he was escorted from the facility, and the result was an arrest for trespassing after he was repeatedly told to leave the premises. That’s all that was in the report; no weapons involved; no fisticuffs; this sounded like a situation that started with a misunderstanding and inflated itself into something out of nothing, possibly with the help of a few adult beverages. But a little bell rang in the far recesses of my brain that sent me to Google.
Jordan Addison is a good WR; he could play for just about any team in the NFL. Jordan Addison is also not a very good “citizen”; he has more “rule-breaking issues” at the age of 23 than one might wish for:
- He was cited and arrested for driving 140 mph on a Minnesota highway. He plead guilty to a misdemeanor speeding charge and reckless driving charges were dropped.
- He was suspended by the NFL for 3 games for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.
- When the Vikes played their “London Game” last year, he was held out of the first half of that game as a “coach’s decision”. No further explanation ever came forward.
I said that Jordan Addison was a good WR who could play for anyone – – but he is not irreplaceable. I think he really needs someone to sit him down and force feed him about 10 years of maturity in the next 6 months lest he develop a reputation of “not worth the trouble”.
Jeff Hafley’s hiring by the Dolphins continues a long tradition in Miami. In the offseason between the 1999 and the 2000 NFL seasons, the team hired Dave Wanstedt as its head coach. He lasted until the middle of the 2004 season.
- Since that hiring decision in 2000, the Miami Dolphins have had 10 head coaches (counting interims) and NONE OF THEM had ever been a head coach at the professional level before.
- Welcome to Miami, Jeff Hafley.
Here are some comments/observations from last week’s Divisional Round Games:
Pats 28 Texans 16: The Texans’ defense did its job; it held the Pats to 248 yards of Total Offense for the day. The Texans’ exit from the playoffs rests squarely on the shoulders of the Texans’ offense AND on the résumé of the play-caller last weekend. The Texans could not run the football; not counting two frenetic scrambles by CJ Stroud, the Texans ran 20 times for 37 yards. The problem was that the Texans adapted to that lack of a running game by going to another mode of attack that was equally inept; they kept dropping Stroud back looking for “chunk plays” that were not happening. The last eleven offensive plays called for the Texans were drop back passes by CJ Stroud; there were no mysteries for the Pats’ defenders to worry about. If you add in the sacks and the “frenetic scrambles” by CJ Stroud, the play caller for the Texans had him dropping back to pass more than 50 times in the game.
Rams 20 Bears 17 (OT): Tell the truth; when the Bears tied the game and sent it to OT with that TD pass that had less chance of completion than a random “Hail Mary”, you figured that the Bears were going to pull another win out of their collective [rhymes with ‘glass bowls”]. I admit that I could not see how the Rams might survive that deflating incident. But they did. The Rams were outgained 417 yards to 340 yards for the day; the Bears were 9 for 19 on third-down tries and 3 for 6 on fourth-down tries. The Rams won because they also registered 3 INTs in the game that kept the game tight from start to finish; it was a one-score game all the way to the end.
Broncos 33 Bills 30 (OT): The Bills dominated the stat sheet; they outgained the Broncos by 100 yards; they had an eleven-minute advantage in time of possession; they converted 10 of 15 third-down tries. And they lost the game. Five turnovers will do that to you. Given the Bills’ dominance here and the absence of players like Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow from the playoffs this year, the Bills and their fans must wonder what it might take to have the Bills play in the Super Bowl – – let alone win it. Somehow, I doubt that firing their head coach – – as they did earlier this week – – is the move that will put the team over the top.
Seahawks 41 Niners 6: If you are a Niners’ fan, you might console yourself by thinking that the major injuries to top-shelf players on both sides of the ball finally caught up with the team and even the unmitigated genius of Kyle Shanahan’s playcalling could not withstand the onslaught of the barbaric Seahawks. If that makes the fanbase feel better, so be it. However, there are some realities that need to be confronted:
- On Jan 3, 2026, the Seahawks beat the Niners 13-3.
- On Jan 17, 2026, the Seahawks beat the Niners 41-6.
- In eight quarters of football over a two-week stretch, the Niners scored zero TDs and only 9 points.
- That is 1.2 points per quarter of football and that won’t feed the bulldog.
- To make matters worse, the Niners never made it to the Red Zone let alone the End Zone last week.
The Niners end their season with a 12-5-0 regular season record despite multiple devastating injuries; that accomplishment alone is noteworthy. At the same time, one has to wonder if that sort of thing is “sustainable” when you look at the roster:
- Brock Purdy is about to become “expensive” from a salary cap standpoint making personnel decisions a tad more difficult.
- Christian McCaffrey is 30 years old and has been used a whole lot in his career.
- Brandon Ayuk is not likely to be back with the team next year and Jauan Jennings is not exactly a “happy camper” with the team, so the WR position is not outstanding.
- George Kittle is 32 years old and will need to rehab from a torn Achillies tendon in this offseason.
- Trent Williams is still a stud at left tackle – – and Trent Willams is 38 years old …
- The Niners’ defense was rocked with injuries and held together with spit and bailing wire by defensive coordinator, Robert Saleh – – who is now on his way to Tennessee to take over that franchise.
The Bottom Line here is that the Niners were eliminated from the playoffs last weekend and the franchise has a lot of work to do in this offseason if it hopes to get back to the playoffs next year.
Games This Week:
Pats – 5 at Broncos (43.5): I doubt that the Pats would be the betting favorite in this game if Bo Nix has not broken his ankle on a meaningless kneel-down play last week. Sean Payton says he has complete faith in his backup QB, Jarrett Stidham – – but what else would you expect him to say. So far in this NFL season, Stidham has taken one snap; ironically, it was a kneel-down play. Stidham is no stars-in-the-eyes rookie; he has been in the NFL since 2019. He has always been a backup in his meanderings around the league starting only four games in seven seasons, but he has been around big games in the past. I think the Broncos will try to take the air out of the ball – figuratively of course – and feature their running game as much as possible to keep the game close and give the Broncos’ defense a chance to make a big play. While Drake Maye has played excellently all year, he has been known to “put the ball on the ground” (8 times this year) and to “throw it to the wrong color jerseys” (also 8 times this year). I look for the game to be a defensive game with limited possessions. That being the case, I will take the Broncos plus the points; put that in the “Betting Bundle”.
Rams at Seahawks – 2.5 (46.5): These teams met twice in the regular season and split those two games; this one is “winner-take-all”. In mid-November, the Rams won in LA by a score of 21-19; in mid-December, the Seahawks won in Seattle in OT by a score of 38-37. There is not a lot to glean from that data. Everyone seems to focus on the Seahawks’ defense which is understandable because that defensive unit is as good as any in the league. However, the Seahawks offense is not a slacker; the Seahawks scored 482 points in the regular season and only the Rams and the Paats scored more. The big unknown here is Sam Darnold. If he plays as he did most of the time in the last two regular seasons, Seahawks’ fans will be thrilled and Vikes’ fans will be muttering “unprintables” for the next several weeks. If he plays as he did in last year’s game against the Rams and throws multiple INTs, this game will turn ugly. I am sorely tempted to take the UNDER here but will resist that temptation. I think Sam Darnold controls the ball and moves his team just enough to win by a field goal which is also just enough to win and cover; give me the Seahawks and lay the points; put it in the ‘Betting Bundle.”
And of course, there must be one last Money Line Parlay for the season:
- Broncos @ +210
- Seahawks @ minus-140 $100 wager to win $431
Finally, here is a perspective on the importance of these two games this weekend from Marv Levy:
“This game is not a ‘must win’; World War II was a ‘must win’
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………