NFL WEEK 13 2025 THANKSGIVING SUNDAY POETRY EDITION

Rumpole Dolphis Adventure Update:

 A client called us on Saturday and invited us to the game this Sunday. Here is our review. 

We should have stayed home. First, our driver is off this weekend, so we ventured into an Uber to Hard Rock Stadium. Apparently the official Uber drop-off point is in Homestead, or at least it felt like it- after we walked for what seemed like forever, only to find our seats with Hoi Polloi around the twenty-yard line. How do you people fly commercial? The food options looked like they were created and executed by cooks fired by Taco Bell. Granted there were plenty of cold beer options, but then, there wasn't enough beer in the stadium to make any of the food options palatable. Even our clients at FDC would have declined the food. 

The seats felt like they were designed for Ms. Fishbone's first grade class.  Well, maybe not as roomy as the first graders have. And the patrons reminded us of the REGJB jury pool on Thursdays when most of the jurors who have a GED have already been selected and what is left is well, like Dolphin fans during a meaningless game. 

And then the final insult was the wandering in the wilderness, like a modern-day diaspora, searching for a place, like Moses looking for an oasis in the Sinai, where an Uber could get to us. 

In the final analysis the criminal justice system could make use of the conditions at Hard Rock: "Judge, the State's offer is six months' probation, special condition they attend a Dolphins game via Uber and must order twenty dollars of food." 

Defense Attorney: How about probation, special condition ten weekends of jail as our counter offer?

This may be the best football weekend of the year. Four great Turkey Day games, followed by great college football rivalry games on Friday and Saturday, and now we have our Sunday lineup. 

We lost our Ohio State/over parlay on Saturday, but got even and then some with the Under in the Alabama/Auburn Iron Bowl, which we sweated out until the final play. Overall, we had a very profitable$ Thanksgiving Holiday. 

In our world-famous Survivor Pool, Rumpole has the Patriots, and Dan Tibbet has the Chargers. The battle goes on. 

Our best bet is Indy at home -3 over the Texans. Load up on the sweet line and pay for that Rolex or Channel Bag for Xmas. Now don't go crazy here. The Texans have the best D in the league this year. But we think the Colts have more to lose today, and have the motivation to win by a TD. 

You know what else we like? YOUR Miami Dolphins, at home, -5 over a beat-up New Orleans team without their star RB Kamara. Miami is coming off a bye, and the team is tanned and well rested and ready to try and save their beleaguered coach's job. Very quietly Fins RD Achane is putting together an All-Pro year. He is a spectacular offensive weapon (that we just happen to have in our FF league, eschewing the overrated WR Justin Jefferson of the Vikes that an unnamed Judge drafted which is why his team is a basement dweller.) 

Just for fun: Jets +3 at home over the Falcons, Denver -6 (riding a 9 game winning streak) over the DC Commies, and maybe the Giants +7 just to keep is close in New England. 

How many of you fought for parking on Friday and went to a mall? You know what we did? We read poetry.  Try this. 

Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold. Those last lines we highlighted. We've just been saying that to ourselves over and over all weekend. 

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.