The 2021 NFL Week 13 Roundup | Goalllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!
The Penguins
ZOO Zurich is one of the best-known zoos in Europe. Having opened nearly a century ago in 1929, it’s amazingly only the third oldest zoo in all of Switzerland, of which the country boasts 15 zoos. 15 zoos for a country the geographical size of the Washington DC metroplex (but mostly Alps mountain ranges BTW) claustrophobically populated by 9 million friendly and well-heeled residents. Say what you gotta say about the Swiss: they love their cheese but it’s clear they love their zoos more. Well the trademark event Zoo Zurich trots out for visitors year in and year out is its world renown Penguin Parade. Just as its name suggests, the zoo’s Emperor penguins amble hilariously down the main promenade to suspended iPhones and pointed fingers every day at high Noon. As long as the ambient temperature is south of 50 degrees, that is. (Please YouTube it; it’s hysterical).
On Thursday, Dec 2, 2010 the famous Swiss penguins had well-completed their chilly journey when just a short 7 minute human walk due south, a much-anticipated event at FIFA World Headquarters similarly offered suspended iPhones and pointed fingers but for VERY different reasons. Delegations from the United States, South Korea, Japan, Australia and Qatar gathered anxiously as the FIFA Selection Committee privately voted among the 5 contenders for the much-coveted right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. After the blind vote totals were IN, then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter confidently commanded the room from a blue podium ornamented with a golden replica FIFA trophy set off just to his right. He slowly and with his trademark dramatic flair ripped open the giant white envelope he was handed and announced to squeals … Qatar the winner. Not bad for a country which up to 2010 had yet to ever participate in a World Cup (it still hasn’t) and claims a land mass smaller than that of Connecticut. Just as soon as the proclamation was heard, a race for answers commenced. In its wake, the cozy, gentlemen’s honor, cloaked and money-steeped corrupt FIFA musculature would be exposed to worldwide ridicule, outside fact-finding autopsies and supposed public reformation. But there would be no re-vote. Qatar kept its gold balloon and this time next year we’ll all see how well it floats.
The FIFA World Cup host country selection process is an evolved and — on paper — not a complicated one. FIFA allows any Country to host so long as they haven’t played host to the immediately preceding two World Cups and that there will be enough capacity stadiums to organize 64 matches for 32 Teams sliced across 28 days. Oh and accommodations for ALL including the throngs of fans expected. Simple, at least theoretically. Form a package, put together a showstopping high-wattage campaign, empanel a luminary-studded committee, sketch out the pie-in-the-sky numbers, conduct some boozy luxurious on-site tours, meet all submission deadlines, push a button and hear your name read aloud on Selection night. Easy, right?. Its always a bit more nuanced, and as things in FIFA-life tend to be, it always involves everyone’s favorite game: What’s In It for ME?!?! And that’s precisely where FIFA’S sticky giant hands got caught in the cookie jar. If only the Selection Committee hadn’t said and demanded the quiet parts out loud in permanent medium including wiretapped phone calls, text messages and emails, we wouldn’t be so lucky. But here we are with an unnerving and breathtaking glimpse into a real-time train wreck, post mortem.
The journey to host the 2024 World Cup actually began in spring 2008. That’s when the bidding process kicked off in earnest. All the bright lights, rumored interests and disinformation campaigns cranked up to coincide with their counterpart campaigns officially filed with FIFA HQ. In essence, an official paper Application and an expected “dark ops” processing fee to ensure proper receipt. It was nauseatingly just par for the course. AS is typical with EVERY laborious campaign Season. The 2024 World Cup would differ with the staggering volumes of cash changing hands even late into 2010 — two years later — just ahead of the Announcement. Here, the FIFA Executive/Selection Committee is comprised of 22 special members derived from the 211-Country strong FIFA Congress (don’t ask). 22 members, 22 votes. First to 12 votes WINS. The Executive Committee, in turn, tends to the Application Desk and answers any questions applicants may have. The Executive Committee is extremely well-suited to side-hustling, an outgrowth — cancer — metastasizing from Leadership it turns out unsurprisingly. Don’t forget, the President of FIFA Sepp Blatter sat ON the Executive Committee at the time. It’s all so incestuous; and it gets worse from there. Almost as soon the five wannabe host nations self-identified, the green machine began flowing evermore. At the time, every nation with credible intentions got into the mud fight for the shiny prize. The Unites States was no exception. And under the tight cloak of FIFA, it all unpacked hidden from outsider view. Graft on a scale that doesn’t do the word justice is how grotesque and unseemly the 2022 bidding process devolved. It ended up taking FIFA down.
It’s too involved to tuck into a neat and orderly Headline Story today, so I’ll just jump to the bottom line. FIFA’s Executive Committee was famously on the take and made clear to all callers: Host Countries needed to pay to play with the highest bidder taking all. It would be the last such wink-wink FIFA ultimatum would ever make. The FBI in a shocking 2015 takedown of FIFA cleared out the cupboards, the floorboards, the cancer and FIFA Leadership via an army of agents, network of wiretaps, trove of digital evidence and an American informant — Chuck Blazer. Unfortunately for FIFA, Chuck didn’t like to pay taxes so much and really didn’t even pretend so much to evade detection. And so the IRS and the FBI had questions of his international largess. It’ll make a great movie one day. BUT In the end, Of the 22 men on the FIFA Executive Committee that selected Qatar, 15 are either forever FIFA-banned, suspended, behind bars OR fighting extradition to the United States for prosecution. Two are deceased. This includes longtime FIFA USA emissary to FIFA, the late and familiar Chuck Blazer. Only one member survived unscathed. The rest quit. As did FIFA President Sepp Blatter (who was indicted and banned). Just as well. Reading through just the highlights, one member demanded $4M for an education center, another incredibly asked for an honorary knighthood. Others preferred traditional cold hard cash in the 9 figure range. All to sway their votes on Dec 2. Once Qatar’s head stopped spinning and gleaned the rules of the road everyone was unofficially held to, they pressed the gas. Certainly helping matters were the rich bottomless accounts of cash the country was able to tap. The Executive Committee well-tended to, Qatar looked to top off the tank at FIFA’s quiet request. In early 2010 BEFORE the December event, Qatari state-run Al Jazeera (now beIN Sports) lobbed over $300M for FIFA broadcast rights and a $100M topper once the announcement was official. And another Qatari $480M separate payment to another hush-hush FIFA Account in 2013 just to cement the relationship. $880M plopped into the FIFA piggy bank. Nothing to see here, everything on the up and up. NO drama, Qatar swept each of the 4 rounds of voting. And garnered — surprise! — 14 votes in the 4th round. The votes for Qatar never dipped below 10.
And so we’re left one year out with our very first FIFA World Cup in the Middle East. Not a terrible thing. For a Sport that lives on global breadth and inclusion, this wouldn’t be so bad in isolation. But then logistics had its go of things. Who wants to volunteer to play in the scorching 130 degree heart of a Qatari Summer? No worries, Qatar countered. They’d drawn up fanciful modular stadiums with advanced hi-propulsion AC systems designed to lower pitch temperatures 45 degrees AND be solar powered. Green and mean. That’s nice. But These were targeted and untested solutions aimed primarily at the players in semi-outdoor stadiums. What about the thousands upon thousands of spectators? And what happens when you’re not in a Stadium? Weather death risk was and IS real. So Summer 2022 was scrubbed. Instead FIFA and Qatar landed on December 2022 which answered some questions and raised a whole host of others. Renegotiations commenced with all broadcasting partners around the world and soothed roiling anger with Countries whose players would be yanked from overlapping League play. So the stadiums and infrastructure are (or will be) ready, all 32 countries are aboard and the December weather will be great. The stage is set for a worldwide sensation in a years time.
Too bad about all that sausage-making in between. There is a school of thought that pins blame directly on Qatar for their flagrant abuse of money in finding their Host Country’s bid a successful one. That anger might be misdirected. That Qatar and every country so-interested (USA included) had to wield a checking Account just to get into the building is a symptom of a much more troubled, sickened institution that feeds it. FIFA is now making all types of noise and machinations self-hyping the reforms they’ve put in place to prevent such corruption from every taking hold again. Bold, fresh new terms like Governance, Accountability, Oversight. Inspired reform born of necessity. How quaint. We’ll be keeping a side-eye on FIFA when the it comes time to award the 2030 World Cup. In the meantime, it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between march of the Penguins up at Zoo Zurich and those 7 minutes away at FIFA. I vote for the ones at the zoo ALL day.
I probably went a little overboard with our Headline Story, so I’ll keep NFL chitchat to a minimum. But as Week 13 concludes, the wheel of fortune continues to spin. Some ascend, some swivel in-place while others spin off out of control and off the table. The Cards took to the road to check-in on the emaciated Bears. What they found disturbed them and they left SHOOK, 33–22. ARI QB Kyler Murray made his triumphant and carefully calibrated return and arrived just as he left: a menacing force. He along with REC Deandre Hopkins made Christmas memories for a Team sure to factor into Super Bowl talk. At 10–2 they maintain the most bulletproof record in the League. AS for Chicago, well they’ve LOST 2 fewer games than ARI has won. Numbers like those spell lights OUT. Gonna be a cold winter in the 312. Over at Heinz Field, all the talk was about the writing on the wall confirmed this week with news that this will be Big Ben’s final year. His performance so far in 2021 is a shadow of his historic greatness admittedly. But his Team’s defeat of the Ravens proved that he and his brothers have NO intention of walking into the headlines to a sad trombone. With a HUGE assist from another wildly uneven Lamar Jackson outing and crucial missed 2 point conversion, the Steelers remain in Wildcard playoff contention. Proof that Ben will power through until the mighty end in the proud Keystone State tradition. And over in Cinci, the hotsy totsy Bengals turned stone cold at the hands of a crazy resurgent Chargers squad, 22–41. Justin Herbert played like the past month never happened. A lovely 61 yard arcing pass to Jalen Guyton looked as if it was rendered in slow motion. It wasn’t. But the Bengals DEF was. The Team’s real pain is still being felt in real time.
IN Detroit, Vikings QB Kirk Cousins had a HECK of a game but the Lions escaped with their FIRST win of the Season. Wooohooo, they are on the board now: 1–10–1. Yah it still doesn’t look good but 1 is more than none, as the optimist would say. Well leave it at that. But MIN suffers the indignity, to the NFL’s worst team no less. In KC, the Chiefs are BACK with their 5th win in a row, this time against a supposedly rejiggered DEN, 22–9. WOW, talk about a comeback. The KC DEF was on-fire Sunday and drove in for the win. Denver and QB Teddy Bridgewater wilted in the aftermath. The careening Hawks FINALLY got their seal of approval handed to them by the 49ers, 30–23. The troublemaking SF squad was done-in by avoidable sloppy mistakes; not the hallmarks of the student studying and leaning past instruction. This bodes ill for NFC contention. Their infighting naturally benefits the downstate Rams who promptly rung up the Jaguars at SoFi, 37–7, as expected. Anything less would have spelled disaster for LA. No disaster this week. Sean McVay will take that. Over in Sin City, the Raiders resume their slide as WAS somersaults to their incredible 4W in a row, 17–15. QB Taylor Heinicke and Antonio Gibson looking playoff ready. In ATL, the Bucs see yet another game where Tom Brady throws for 4 TDs. For the Falcons, fans witness another where their QB Matt Ryan throws for none. Eeeek. Midwest hotshots the Colts shutout the Texans in a game where QB Carson Wentz had a nice go of it while MVP-in-waiting Jonathan Taylor exploded yet again (32 carries/143 yards/2TDs). No words. AND NO points for HOU. Is there symmetry there? And FINALLY, the plight of your NYC twins. The Fins stomped the Giants with Tua Tagovailoa and the DEF singing Christmas Carols to a snow-embanked NYG QB Mike Glennon. Gardner Minshew suited up for Philly and blasted the Jets back to Halloween. Let’s see if Minshewmania 2.0 can reignite in the City of Brotherly Love. He keeps showing out like he did on Sunday, they’ll be cheesteaks named in his honor. You know you’ve made it when that happens Time for Dinner.
