Office pools without borders

I'm sitting here enjoying a little slice of Americana this morning – an office pool for the NFL playoffs. I'm not filling it out yet, just looking at it and listening to Jeffrey Foucault's Ghost Repeaters and savoring the moment a little longer.

It's not hard to keep up with American sports here – thanks, espn.com – but it is a little hard to keep up your interest sometimes. The novelty of staying up until 1 a.m. for NFL games wears off after a while. Likewise with getting up at 5 a.m. to watch the World Series. I've never seen a game from any U.S. sport in a bar – they're too busy showing soccer and rugby and European Tour golf.

But you can usually find someone to talk sports with, either an American with a favorite team back home, or a expat from elsewhere who may never have been to an NFL game but frets over his Fantasy team just as fervently as any Yank. I've been to football watching parties where the laptop got passed around more than the beer.

I just didn't pay as much attention as usual this year. There aren't a lot of games on TV, I got here too late to join the fantasy league, the Bucs were awful, the Falcons were up-and-down, I missed a chance for a return visit to Lambeau Field ... all of that cut into my interest.

But enough with the disclaimers. I still should be able to outsmart a bunch of Britons and Aussies and Canadians, right? Let's make some picks.

Wild card round: Packers over Cardinals, Cowboys over Eagles, Bengals over Jets, Patriots over Ravens.

Conference semis: Packers over Saints, Vikings over Cowboys, Colts over Bengals, Chargers over Patriots.

Conference finals: Vikings over Packers (sorry, Jim!), Colts over Chargers.

Super Bowl: Colts over Vikings in a classic, 35-34.

There, that was easy. I'll expect you to be thinking of me when you see Peyton Manning hoist the Lombardi Trophy on February 7.