To whom it may concern...

To the Campbell's Soup Company: You can add the adjective "homestyle" to your chicken soup label, but you're not fooling anyone.


To any of my professors at the University of Iowa from 1987-1991: I've been going through some old files and getting rid of a lot of things. As I use my paper shredder to convert your mimeographed packets into livestock bedding, I can't help but wonder if some of you would have made more sense if you had breathed fewer duplicating fluid fumes.


To Right Said Fred: I don't care if you're too sexy for your shirt, but I could go a long time without hearing that song again because, well, it hurts.


To Jimmy Fallon, who in his weekly thank you notes told the F12 key "Thanks for nothing": F12 is the shortcut for "Save as." I use it all the time.


To Comedy Central: Thank you for posting episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report online. My cable and satellite dish-free life is better because of you.


To the producers of the Golden Globes show who were shocked by Ricky Gervais' performance as this year's host: Did you not watch last year's show?


To all the Bears and Packers fans: I'll be honest with you. I did not care who won the NFC championship game, but I'm really glad it's over so I can quit hearing about how much you hate each other.


To Rex Ryan and the New York Jets: You had second and goal inside the two yard line, and for some reason none of the next three plays involved Shonn Greene driving it up the middle? You deserve to lose.


To Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers: After stopping the Jets on fourth and goal at the one yard line, you fumble the first snap and give up a safety? You deserve to lose, too.

It wasn't that bad...

"Bad passing. Bad blocking. Bad coaching. The team simply oozed rottenness from every bad play. Simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness."

--adapted from a film review by Opus the Penguin in Bloom County

After the Big Ten's 0-5 New Year's Day debacle, every sportswriter's commentary on the conference could have been summarized by Berke Breathed's intrepid penguin. The death knell was sounding for the conference, and sports pundit after sports pundit lined up to help deliver the eulogy.

That said, if any of them would have thought to shamelessly rip off Opus' diatribe like I did, they probably would have left off his classic disclaimer at the end: "OK, maybe it wasn't that bad, but Lord, it wasn't good."

And while it certainly wasn't good, the Big Ten's bowl season wasn't as bad as it seems to some. Yes, it did seem like the Michigan state legislature passed a new law preventing their state schools from taking any sort of football ability out of the state, and in the fourth quarter of the Outback Bowl, Penn State looked like it had an 84 year-old quarterback instead of an 84 year-old coach. But Northwestern put up 38 points on Texas Tech with their backup quarterback, and Wisconsin probably would have taken #3 Texas Christian to overtime in the Rose Bowl if their coach would have remembered that it was his running game that earned him a share of the Big Ten title when it was time to go for a two-point conversion at the end of the game.

And let's not forget that three other Big 10 schools played in bowl games before and after January 1. In a pair of showdowns with Big 12 schools, Illinois dominated Baylor, and Iowa (Go Hawks!) upset #14 Missouri without its leading rusher and its all-time leading receiver. In the conference's second BCS game, Ohio State held off a late Arkansas run to win the Sugar Bowl.

It's always easy to dwell on the negative. It's always easier to criticize. It's often easy to forget that there is good and bad in most situations. "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times," Leo Tolstoy wrote in Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's version of War and Peace. I'm sure Charles Dickens would agree.