If I made you put $50 on whether Peyton Manning will start all 16 games next season, which side would you stake?  

I sent that question to six friends who love sports and know football. Here are their responses:

Russell Walks

Credentials: Fathered a brilliant sports mind while toiling away as a Vikings fan; Used to disappointment in December like its a bad Christmas present.

“Against.

Choking away trivia.
Angry.”

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Levi Hunt

Credentials: Lifelong Denver Broncos fan; Career-long Peyton Manning fan; Unusually honest about his fanhood; Reasonable, smart, and puts his head above his heart in matters of football.

“The under, definitely.

In fact, the really pessimistic part of me thinks he’s going to miss like half the season. … As a Broncos fan, I’m ready for the rebuild, but as a career-long Peyton Manning fan, I want for him to shut some more people up this year.”

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Andrew Bolognesi

Credentials: Excellent Madden player; Likes the 49ers ostensibly when its convenient; Makes fun of Trent Dilfer on the reg.

“I’d say yes only if they didn’t lock up the playoffs before Week 14.

“Yeah, I don’t think he can last a whole season. He’s old and his arm is weaker. But he’s a legend.”

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Jesselyn Parks

Credentials: Lifelong Jim Rome fan, for some reason; Seems to absorb sports knowledge through osmosis; Hates Steve Nash for no good reason.

“He will miss at least one. I say 2.”

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Shannon Rahn

Credentials: Fantasy football queen; Sings the Green Bay Packers’ siren song; Unfazed by the mythology of Peyton Manning.

“Why hello, it is nice to talk to you too.

I’d probably put it on no… I’m thinking he is getting older, has had a lot of injuries in the past, and will continue to be more injury prone and therefore be out a bare minimum 1 game.”

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Max Richter

Credentials: Raiders fan (!); Gets drunk on the phone with me and wakes up with Troy Williamson’s career stats page open as a tab on his computer; Refuses to take my serious sports inquiries seriously.

“$50!?! I ain’t neva done seen $50 befoe. I do declare that is too rich for my blood, comrade.

“I’m Jeb Montgomery Kirsanovich, the Good Ol’ Southern Gentleman Bolshevik. I specialize in the manufacturing of Red Rebel Yell, a corn-based vodka distilled in my grandpappy’s abandoned plantation just outside of Moscow.”

C’s last day at 116 Landers was yesterday, and I’m genuinely sad to see him go.  

We were never BFFs, but when you live with someone for nine months, you learn certain things about them and adjust to a level of comfortable living around them. He’s a good guy, and he’s moving on to New York City to take a job he actually doesn’t hate every single moment of working.

I met him a little less than a year ago, in a Chelsea restaurant that was terrible at refilling our New Year’s Day “bottomless” mimosa. Now, we’ve officially swapped cities.

He’s going to keep the house and its tenants — even the furry one — and two more roommates, J & K, will join me over the next two weeks. It will be an interesting shift… suddenly, I’m the Old Lion who’s lived here the longest.

Last night, we played some cards and a little pong on the patio after dark. Not the most momentous sendoff, but it was fitting considering how low key the last nine months have been for both us.

I think I could be really satisfied having a career like Doris Kearns Goodwin.   

She basically pours years into a historical subject – the relationship between William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, for instance – and then writes a massive 900-page book about it that wins Peabody Awards and Nobel Prizes.

Her professional life is almost entirely demarcated by what she’s studying, and I’m not crazy about the idea of only having something like five books to show for my entire career, but diving into a historical subject that deeply, divining out the truth from the apocryphal crap, sounds massively appealing.

Goodwin’s not alone; she has a bunch of contemporaries that do essentially the same thing, and I wonder if they ever get together and plan out their topics, so two of them aren’t both studying Lewis and Clark ^a for eight years.

But ever since I saw her consistently hold her own on Colbert, she’s my favorite. Although she did become a gentle punchline every time a segment took a raunchy turn – “Once again, my apologies to Doris Kearns Goodwin.”

I guess the impetus for all this is the constant barrage of brick walls I keep running into as I continue my quest to track down that stupid Chris Engler block from weeks ago. I know I should probably give up. At this point, everyone else is over it.

But I can’t stand the feeling of leaving an itch unscratched.

The long hot of the day had ended, but the heat hadn’t burned off. It was warm for the first night in half a year.  

I opened the driver’s side door, and he climbed over to the passenger side. He was patient as he waited for me to roll down his window. After two years with each other, we have certain understandings about things. The window is one of them. The towel that hangs next to the back door, blackened by the dirt that never made it into the carpet — that’s another.

He set his head on the window, resting an ear outside. When he sits like that, a world of smells can drift by his nose. Sometimes, he’ll close his eyes, his nose in overdrive, for the length of the drive.

I stretched my arm into the night and took a lazy left onto Ellis. Tick meds. Now that it’s warm, I have to get back into the habit of treating him. They make his skin crawl, and the thought of him escorting them into my bed makes my skin crawl.

A and I took him to the reservoir for his birthday, and I was disappointed that I didn’t realize until days later that during the trip, he was a literal Reservoir Dog. He got peanut butter for breakfast, half a pork chop for dinner. And he was too tired to move after a full day of hiking. That’s a pretty good third birthday for a pup, right?

Coffee in hand, I turned my music up and drove past my street. He was enjoying the night as much as I was. No need to hurry.

Dogs are funny. Having one, or even how you treat one, says as much about you than anything else. A good dog, who listens, who loves and knows… What’s better than that? What does that say about you, about your capacity for love and patience? Am I patting myself on the back too much for taking a West Coast farm rescue and turning him into my East Coast wingman?

When his legs got tired from propping himself up, he curled into a ball on the seat. Dog geometry is so naturally abstract. That was my cue. I looped back onto Lander and pulled into the driveway. He perked up. Home. He ran ahead of me to the front step and licked the hand holding the coffee when I dug around for my house key.

Ten years. That’s the goal. Good dogs, healthy dogs, get ten years. Anything else is frosting on the cake. He’ll get gray around the muzzle. Maybe the hips will go. The geometry is untenable. His eyes will cloud up, and one day he won’t retrieve. There will be a vet appointment, a shot, an easy lasting sleep. Tears. Later, much later, another pup.

But not yet, buddy. Not for a long time.

Happy third birthday, Chiefers. Thanks for everything.

Guess I can't pretend I live in West Hartford with the rich kids anymore pic.twitter.com/VzAbV6tS8K

— Matt Walks (@mgwalks) April 10, 2015