Not so long ago, qz.com reported a statistical analysis of broadcast NFL games revealing that an average broadcast of 3 hours and 12 minutes contains only 11 minutes of actual action. One hour of the broadcast is commercial breaks, about 20 in all with a total of 100 commercials.

So about two full hours of NFL broadcasts are players just standing around. Somehow, that was the best part of watching the Dolphins lose their opening week game 33-8 to the Indianapolis Colts.

It also bears mentioning that the Colts hadn't won a season opener since 2013, and even more impressively, according to ESPN, no team had scored points on all 7 of their offensive possessions since 1978. (The last team to do it? The Baltimore Colts.)

Another year, same old shitty Dolphins.

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The NFL gave out its season senior superlatives "honors" the night before the championship game. The Miami Dolphins won the coveted Bridgestone Cluch Performance Play of the Year... for a trick play touchdown in the second quarter of a game against the Eagles that would see the two teams combine for forty-one more points after the "clutch" play. Hrm. It feels like a participation award. Thanks, Bridgestone.

But that wasn't the only trophy to go to someone still on the Dolphins' payroll. The award for the nebulously defined "comeback player" of the year went to Ryan Tannehill (who accounted for $18 million against the Dolphins salary cap despite not playing a single down for the team).

In 1972, Miami Dolphins quarterback Earl Morrall was awarded the NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award for playing an integral role in leading the Dolphins' to the NFL's only undefeated season. The comeback moniker was justified because the previous year, Morrall had been discarded by the Baltimore Colts who preferred instead to give 38-year-old Johnny Unitas yet another chance.

In 1994, Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino was awarded the NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award for passing for 30 touchdowns and over 4,000 yards on the way to a 10-win season. The comeback moniker was justified because the previous year, Marino had torn his Achilles tendon in the fifth week and ruined what was projected to be a division-winning season.

In 2008, Miami Dolphins quarterback Chad Pennington was awarded the NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award for surviving an 11-win season without suffering further injury. The comeback moniker was justified because the previous year, Pennington had played in only nine games for the New York Jets, losing the eight of them that were not against the Miami Dolphins.

In 2019, Tennessee Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill was awarded the NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award for coming off the bench mid-season to ultimately lead his team to the AFC Championship game. The comeback moniker was justified because the previous year, Tannehill had been a Miami Dolphin.

Congrats to Tannehill for successfully getting out of the talent-sucking tar pit. And thanks to Friend Randy for passing along news that Tannehill was finally a winner. I'm sure he wasn't gloating. (Randy's a Dallas fan.)

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In general, I've never been a big music fan. In specific, I've never really cared for Prince, who died yesterday at 57. However, I do want to go on record as saying that I think Prince might have been one of the best performers in the history of pop music.

I saw him in concert only once. That once was nine years ago, at the halftime performance of Superbowl XLI on February 5, 2007. In addition to being Peyton Manning's first championship, it was also the first Super Bowl played in the rain.

Conditions were miserable. There was no warmth in Miami that evening. The rain was cold and steady, penetrating the ponchos that most of the crowd were wearing. The wind cut straight to the bone. Honestly, it was the least comfortable I'd ever been in a football stadium. I suspect that most of the nearly 75,000 people in attendance shared my opinion.

Of course, it didn't help that there wasn't much entertainment to take our attention away from the foul weather. Cirque Du Soleil was a terrible pregame act, bringing out some acrobats to do whatever acrobats do. Two note to future programmers: 1) it's impossible to see what a single acrobat is doing on the 20 yard line, and 2) football fans don't care about acrobats.

The game, when we got to it, wasn't much better. The Chicago Bears — and especially their hapless quarterback, Rex Grossman — were terribly outclassed by Manning's Indianapolis Colts. The Bears took an early lead, but then ran out of gas. Though it took a while for the score board to catch up, the game was a rout.

Honestly, by halftime, I was considering walking out of the stadium and calling it a night. When the public address announcer asked the fans to reach under their seats and light the small LED flashlights we were given, I said no. Enough was enough. Then Prince came to my rescue.

They assembled the stage at midfield and poof! Prince appeared in a cloud of smoke with his electric guitar — in the rain! He proceeded to put on one hell of an invigorating performance. He demanded that we clap, and we clapped. He told us to sing along, and we sang along. He closed, fittingly, with Purple Rain, and it rained. It was exactly what we needed to hear. It turned a disasterous outing into a night to remember.

So, while I've never owned a Prince album or seen Graffiti Bridge, I do recognize that the world lost someone special yesterday. Thanks, Prince.

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Do you remember how excited I was that there was going to be no NFL football in 2011 because of the lock-out and how that meant that I wouldn't have to watch the Dolphins suck in 2011? Boy, I could use some lock-out now.

Dolphins update: Chad Henne was placed on Injured Reserve yesterday, meaning that he is done playing for the season. The team signed Sage Rosenfels to back-up new starter Matt Moore. Most of you have probably never heard of at least 2 of those 3 players before the previous sentence. Welcome to the Miami Dolphins 2011!

If it seems that I run a "dolphins quarterbacks suck" post almost every year, it's because I do and they do, too. Henne joins Chad Pennington as the second Dolphin quarterback from 2010 who is broken for 2011. Rosenfels was a starter for the Dolphins in 2005, and was cut by the New York Giants on Tuesday, because he had been too sick to play all preseason! Rosenfels was chosen over such luminaries as Trent Edwards, who has missed more games due to injury in his career than he has started, and Brodie Croyle, who couldn't make the roster of the Indianapolis Colts after they realized that they only had one quarterback on their roster that wasn't Peyton Manning. We're so bad that Jake Delhomme, a quarterback so unreliable that he is unwanted by 31 of 32 NFL teams, wouldn't even entertain the idea of playing for us. Matt Moore, a cast-off from the NFL's worst team in 2010 will be our 16th starter in the past 12 seasons. Hurray?.

The NFL season is only 1/4 over, and already pundits are suggesting that the Dolphins are playing for last place in the hopes of drafting Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck first overall in the 2012 NFL Draft. Luck is often compared favorably to Peyton Manning, the first overall pick of the 1998 draft for the Indianapolis Colts. It's not that I think Luck isn't good, it's more that I think the Dolphins wouldn't take him if the opportunity arises.

The last time that the Dolphins had the first overall pick, way back in 2008, they took an offensive lineman first overall. Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco were the first two quarterbacks taken in 2008, and both have proven themselves admirably in the years since. Of course the Dolphins took Chad Henne with their third pick in the 2008 Draft. That leads us back to today, where the Dolphins need a lot more than just a little Luck.

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Another year, another Super Bowl. But lest you fear that you don't know enough to make a good pick in your office pool, there's always a celebrity nearby to show you the way. For the 21st year running, Scripps Howard News Service has polled 103 of the world's best and brightest most desperate for attention for their Super Bowl picks. Figuring that there must be some wisdom in the masses, I took a look at the figures:

• Sixty-two of the 103 stars polled (60%), including Haley Joel Osment, who has correctly predicted 9 of the last 10 Super Bowl winners, losing only on the Giants' improbable 2007 victory, took the Colts to win.
• Mode score predicted for the Colts is 35. Mode score predicted for the Saints is 28. Four different celebs picked the Colts 35-28, including Pat Robertson, who apparently still feels that New Orleans will get what it deserves.
• The celebs agree with Las Vegas, culminating in an average over/under of just better than 57 points. A very slight majority, 52 of 103 celebs, took the over.
• The only NFL team owner to have a say in the poll is the Miami Dolphins' Serena Williams, who picks the Colts because she cryptically "knows" Peyton Manning. She was among the 10 celebs who declined to venture a guess at the final score. I could say something very critical here, but she'd no doubt threaten to kill me if I did.
• Average final score predicted: 30-28. The only celebrity to pick the Colts winning 30-28 was Russell Johnson, better known as the Professor on Gilligan's Island.
• The smartest celeb reporting is clearly Dennis Farina: "I hate to bet against Peyton Manning because I think he's probably the best quarterback since Dan Marino." Damn straight, Dennis! For the record, Farina, who previously won the Scripps Super Sage Award for picking the closest final score in the 2005 Super Bowl, picks the Saints, 31-27, which looks an awful lot like 30-28.

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I had the good fortune to obtain Super Bowl tickets this year. This time yesterday, I was sitting in the rain and gusting wind of the coldest, wettest Super Bowl in history. I tell you, there wasn't a dry eye in the house when the contest was over, and it wasn't because the Bears were trampled by the Colts, giving Peyton Manning his first NFL Championship. No, it rained and rained and rained. And then it rained some more. Trey and I briefly lamented not wearing raincoats to the game, but then we realized that those people who were wearing raincoats were just as soaked-to-the-bone as we were. Yet I still saw dozens of people in the fourth quarter who were still wearing torn, useless plastic bags as though they were life preservers and holding seat cushions over their heads like umbrellas. Fortunately for us, there was a stadium employee kindly warning us of a large puddle on the way to our cars. Most of the crowd walked through it anyway, as our shoes and socks had been completely saturated hours earlier.

Trey and I arrived early in anticipation of the day's events. While that meant that we were parked close to the stadium, it also meant that we would have to wait for nearly an hour to leave once the game was over. There is much truth in the cliche, "First In, Last Out." To my disappointment, the $20.00 I spent on a corndog, pretzel, bottle of water, and a Pepsi didn't go towards paying for a quality parking staff. At least they were a very large corndog and bottle of water. Though I hate Pepsi, as the "Official Soft Drink of the NFL," it was the only caffeine that I could get before the game. I'd forgotten how awful it tastes! Thankfully, the rain quenched my remaining, unsatisfied thirst.

As my first visit to Dolphin Stadium (formerly Dolphins Stadium, formerly Pro Player Stadium, formerly Pro Player Park, formerly Joe Robbie Stadium), home of the Miami Dolphins, it was practically a trip to Mecca. We spotted fans wearing gear from 26 of the 32 NFL teams (Bills, Jaguars, Lions, Panthers, Texans, and my hometown Falcons were not seen), but after the Bears and Colts, the team far-and-away best represented was the Dolphins themselves. I even had the opportunity to watch Dan Marino, whom the locals all apparently simply call "Danny," working on the CBS pre-game show with James Brown and Shannon Sharpe. (It was kind of comforting to see how the town still fully embraces him: the stadium is on Dan Marino Boulevard, and the city is peppered with billboards on which he pitches everything from weight-loss systems to used cars.)

I cheered for the Bears, and Trey rooted for the Colts. I'm not much of a Colts fan for the very sound reasons that they have long been over-hyped, they used to be in the AFC East with the Dolphins, and they are quarterbacked by an ex-Tennessee Volunteer. (Sure, Grossman is an ex-Florida Gator, but at least he's incompetent.) By the second quarter, it became apparent that the Bears were horribly outclassed (as expected) and wouldn't be much of a challenge for the Colts. Trey and I had predicted at the start of the playoffs that any AFC team could take any NFC team in the playoffs this year, and after seeing the Bears' miserable performance in the Super Bowl, I still think that's true.

Watching the game with Trey proved insightful, if irritating. He made several excellent points about both teams' strategies and execution. After Devon Hester returned the opening kickoff for a Bears' touchdown, Trey pointed out that an opening return always boded bad things for the scoring team. He reminded me that the same thing happened in last month's NCAA BCS Championship game for Ohio State, who, like the Bears, tanked the rest of the game. Most amusingly, early in the 4th quarter, after Grossman completed 2 passes and was moving the Bears down field, Trey proclaimed, "if [the Bears' coaches] call another pass play here, they are complete idiots." When on the next play, Colt's cornerback Kevin Hayden returned a Grossman interception for a touchdown, icing the game, Trey got the meanest looks from some nearby soggy Bears fans, as though Trey himself had stuck the dagger in the Bears' heart. I laughed and laughed.

I'm resentful of the fact that Peyton Manning secured his Championship ring (and cemented his legacy as one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history) in Marino's hometown, but at least it rained on that punk's parade. Now I'm home, and I'm almost dry. It's certainly something that I'll have to do again. Next time, I'll be prepared: I'll take a snorkel.

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Sometimes posting to a blog is like being in a food fight: throw enough pie and someone's GOT to get hit in the face. (This column is going Larry King style, baby!)

• Bravo Channel is showing both The Princess Bride and Back to the Future today. Could those be two of the best movies ever made? I say yes!
• Huge underdog University of Georgia today beat (nay, CRUSHED!) the mighty Auburn Tigers, destroying any hopes Auburn had of running for the national title. Go Dawgs!
• Television advertising execs just don't understand: the current Bellsouth ads use the song "Stuck In The Middle With You" to promote that product. The song was written about sitting between recording executives. Can telecom execs be that different?
• Of all the cars I've ever owned/driven, the one I miss most is a 1985 Ford Crown Victoria LTD Country Squire Station Wagon.
• Recent studies say that happy people are sick less often than people who are optimistic or active. That means that a cynical asshole like me will likely outlive the rest of you bastards so long as I'm happy being a cynical asshole. Hooray for science!
• Julia Roberts' single sexiest film role was as Tinkerbell in Hook. Does that say worse things about her or me?
• The National Football League has a patent on confusion; it is simply impossible to tell who is any good from week to week. Some may call this parity or equality but I call it exciting. Chicago: undefeated. Dolphins: incompetent. Final score: Dolphins 31, Chicago 13. I say this, I sure look forward to December 31, when the Dolphins play the currently undefeated Colts.

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