And Now They Stink

Remember that decade (that is technically still this decade) when the Patriots were good?

Ah, memories.

Seattle Schadenfreude

From birth to present, I've been a New England Patriots fan. Following the team's first (non-joke) Super Bowl appearance in 1997, Pete Carroll became their head coach; he skillfully took them from good to mediocre, to bad, to a joke (again) in a scant three years.

The year after I graduated from the University of Southern California, that very school (because Yahweh knows I'm a football fan and hates me) handed Patriots-ruiner Pete Carroll the reins of its vaunted football team.

Over the next eight years, I was left to impotently try to explain to my fellow alumni that Pete Carroll was a terrible football coach while he ostensibly "led" USC to two national championships and received (unwarranted) credit for returning the Trojans to prominence.

Finally, in 2009, the emperor's new clothes were revealed as USC sucked goat balls. And what has Pete Carroll done as a result?

He has bailed, taking a wholly-undeserved sick contract to coach the NFL's Seattle Seahawks.

While I feel bad for the football fans of Seattle and the meager-hope-trumping failure that they will experience in 2010, I am very excited to say to Pete Carroll:

Best of luck in in the Pacific Northwest, you mealy-mouthed sonofahamster. The ghost of Drew Bledsoe's career-that-could-have-been awaits you on "ESPN Purgatory".

Cold as ICE

Is there anything more American than the New England Patriots?

There is if you ask America's Immigration and Customs Enforcement--who, on Thursday, detained dozens of Guatemalan workers that were en route to Gillette Stadium to shovel snow for this weekend's playoff game.

Or maybe ICE is just a bunch of Ravens fans.

[via Deadspin]

Professional Sports + Monogamy = Frowny-Face Emoticon

First we had this...now we've got this.

Attention, extraordinarily-fortunate men and women who make up the tiny percentage of humankind that gets paid crazy-good money to engage in recreational activities that the vast majority of married/engaged/in-a-committed-relationship men and women support entirely with hefty chunks of their comparatively much-smaller salaries just so that they can occasionally escape to a fantasy world beyond their realities of quiet desperation while likely living to engage in said activities--for free--on the weekends:

Either stay single or choose a new career path. Should work out better for everybody.


[UPDATE (7:35 a.m. PST): The above blitheness aside, there's nothing funny about Chris Henry's subsequent death. Better odds he'll rest in peace than people will stop being lunatics.]

'Belicheat...'? 'Belichoke...'?

Nay.

I'll sacrifice alliteration for the sake of game-specific bluntness and propose "Beliterrible"--as in:

That was an absolutely terrible call that Bill Belichick made on Sunday night when he decided to go for it on fourth down, in doing so handing the game over to the Indianapolis Colts for no good goddamn reason other than that he's an egomaniac.

...

"Belimaniac"? Nah...sounds too cool.

Attention, Football Fans of Maine

You like the New England Patriots? I do...because I was born and raised in Massachusetts--34 miles from Foxboro--where the Patriots actually play.

By comparison, your state [capital] is two states and 199.23 miles away from Foxboro--which is in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal.

You don't like same-sex marriage? Then you don't like the Patriots.

Go ahead and abscond to Canada...and its socialized medicine. (GASP!)

(Seriously, though, Maine: Fuck you.*)


*Not you, Stephen King... You love the Red Sox and are dope.

Pilgrims' Progress (Where the Buffalo Fumble)

If you're a fan of any NFL team other than the New England Patriots, you probably hate Tom Brady because he's handsome and has led his team to more Super Bowl victories than he has yours. As a Patriots fan, I happen to like Tom Brady because he has led my once-maligned team to three Super Bowl victories (so far) and is handsome.

If you're a fan of any NFL team other than the New England Patriots, you were probably pleased with the Patriots' performance through the first three-and-two-thirds quarters of their opening game Monday night--Brady's first regular-season contest since suffering a season-ending injury in the first quarter of the previous year's opener: the offense's timing was off, the defense seemed to constantly be a step behind their opponents and Brady himself appeared skittish; hence, the Buffalo Bills were leading the Patriots 24-13 with 5:32 left in the game. As a Patriots fan, I was not pleased with their performance through the first three-and-two-thirds quarters of their opening game Monday night, as a result of which they were trailing the Buffalo freaking Bills by two scores with five-and-a-half minutes left in the game.

If you're a fan of any NFL team other than the New England Patriots, you probably weren't particularly concerned when Brady connected with Ben Watson in the end zone: after the Patriots missed the two-point conversion, they were still down by a touchdown and the Bills were getting the ball back with 2:06 left. As a Patriots fan, I was deeply concerned after they failed to score the aforementioned attempted two points, to the point where I had to struggle against the urge to contemplate the possibility that letting Matt Cassel go had been a bad idea.

During the ensuing kickoff return, Buffalo's Leodis McKelvin (to be known for the next week, at least, as "Scott Norwood") inexplicably ran forward out of the end zone instead of just taking a knee, got slugged into fumbling and Patriots' placekicker Stephen Gostkoswki (to be known for the next week, at least, as "Stephen Gostkowski Of All People") ended up recovering the ball at the Bills' 31-yard line. If you're a fan of any NFL team other than the New England Patriots, this was the moment where your mood began to turn sour. As a Patriots fan, this was the moment where my mood began to head in the opposite direction. Both of our instincts were correct, because we knew for sure that the game was destined to end in a ridiculous, come-from-behind victory for the Patriots.

Which it did.

Rather than bicker about the outcome of the game itself, I think we should come together in celebration of our shared ability to have accurately predicted it (at a certain point). Hooray for all of us!

Your Future Bowl Champions, the New England Patriots

Now that that silly Super Bowl featuring teams that I had no vested interest in is over, the model citizens at Sportsbook have laid the odds for next year's contest, and--voila!--the New England Patriots will be Super Bowl XLIV champions (at least according to a majority of professional gamblers)! This despite the team--in The Spread's words--"not even qualify [sic] for the postseason in 2008".

Hey, fuck you, The Spread. You just failed to qualify for the Grammar Playoffs, and you don't even have Brett Favre to blame.

[Deadspin]

Buzzsaw Unplugged

Seconds after the Arizona Cardinals' Larry Fitzgerald made an insane, 64-yard reception-and-run for a go-ahead touchdown with less than three minutes remaining in Super Bowl XLIII on Sunday, I produced my iPhone and typed out a congratulatory email to Deadspin founder Will Leitch, an honorably loyal-for-life fan of the perennial doormat that was, at that moment, on the verge of an impossible victory. I didn't send the email, mind you--as a born-and-bred supporter of Boston-area professional sports teams since long before the region's recent run of championships, I possess the forethought to never risk jinxing an underdog (especially one whose fans are not apparent among the wildly arbitrary accusations of racism that occasionally compel me to make a frowny-face on the internet); at the same time, I wanted it to be among the first five hundred emails that Leitch would receive after the Cardinals defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers, because I'm self-important. So I had it ready.

Then a bunch of ridiculous things happened in the game and the Steelers came back to win it, 27-23.

It wasn't my fault, Will and the few dozen Arizona Cardinals fans who actually exist. It wasn't my fault!

Let it be known in my defense that I bet a substantial amount of American dollars on the Cardinals without the points (Pittsburgh was favored by 6 1/2). So your moral loss, Arizona Cardinals fans, is my financial loss...unless you also bet on the Cardinals without the points.

Then again, a real fan of the team would've done that anyway...so, come to think of it...this is really my loss more than anyone's.

What the F, Cardinals?! Two Super Bowls in a row, I get my heart broken??

Stupid Nerd Ruins Sports for All Us Awesome Jocks

You hear about that America-hating terrorist foreigner who got to be president on Tuesday--Hussein Mutombo al-Qaida, or whatever his name is? Not only did that Arab Muslim illegally prevent George W. Bush--the greatest president ever 'cause he used to get hammered a lot and I seen pictures of him in a cowboy hat and he don't trust words--from taking his God-given third term, turns out that goddamn Egyptian postponed sport games in the process! 'Merica sport games!

It's bad enough that that smart-talking Negro got his liberal media friends to make that sexy lady who likes guns cry--he had no right to keep us real Americans from exercising our right to watch televised sporting events at their previously-established times. Now how am I supposed to teach my kids to hate those jungle bunnies who dunk too much?

Whole country's going to hell, I tell ya. Turning socialist...or communist...or whatever either of those words mean.

Eli Manning: 'Wait a Minute, I'm Terrible'

Now that that's out of the way, all that remains in the pursuit of NFL justice is a revocation of the Giants' Tecmo Bowl title.

Black Saturday

Damn you, National Football League. Damn you to hell.

As a New England Patriots fan, it was painful enough for me when my 11-5 team was inconceivably cockblocked from the playoffs by the busted-ass megalomaniacal quarterback of their division rival. The fact that the 8-8 San Diego Chargers--ever-so-fortunate to exist in a division that is the NFL equivalent of "Introductory Tambourine for Disabled Squirrels"--did make the postseason was salt in the wound. Conceive of that wound being located on your genitals and your genitals being on fire, then you might have an idea of how I felt about the comically-undeserving Chargers facing the despised-Manning-based and despised-in-general Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Wild Card round on Saturday.

Who could I possibly root for? Nobody, that's who. I wanted both teams to lose. Unfortunately, such an outcome is not allowed by the current NFL regulations.

Once the Chargers-Colts game went into overtime, I made the Sophie's Choice to root for Indianapolis. In keeping with my fan-karma this season, San Diego wasted no time in their march to victory.

An 8-8 team has reached the second round of the playoffs, while the 11-5 New England Patriots didn't make it past the regular season. I might not be very good at math, but I sure as hell know injustice when I see it.

Damn you, National Football League. Damn you to hell.

(And, I guess...go Buzzsaw.)

What I Think About When I Think About Soccer

When boiled down to its most basic elements, any sport can seem foolish--"bounce ball, throw ball at iron circle"; "hit ball with stick, run in diamond pattern"; "attempt to cripple people moving in direction opposite you, act surprised when someone gets crippled"--but I firmly believe that soccer stands alone as the silliest of all mainstream athletics. This personal tenet stems not from the fact that the game is foreign to me--as a citizen of a country where millionaires are made by their successful execution of a left turn, I am painfully aware that the bottomless standard for what is considered a "sport" is immune to geographical boundaries--but because soccer is the only widely popular sporting event whose rules explicitly prohibit the use of 50% of its participants' potential limbs.

("Not the goalie!" a proponent of soccer would be quick to point out, but that argument only further proves why soccer will never catch on in the United States: you know what other sport uses a goalie? Hockey (in both its Canadian and alternative-lifestyle incarnations). Goalies mean low scoring; low scoring means low interest among conspicuous consumers; disinterested conspicuous-consumers lead to a demand for a replacement product, which leads to NASCAR. Thanks, hockey.)

While the halving of competitors' available extremities as a fundamental aspect certainly gives soccer a stronger case to call itself "football" than a Sunday-afternoon collision of helmets and shoulder pads can ever claim, it also puts soccer on the level of potato sack racing--yet I sincerely doubt that "$250,000,000 and a Spice Girl" was among the prizes at your last company picnic. It is this irreconcilable contradiction that leaves me confounded by the popularity of soccer, particularly with regard to its small but vocal American fanbase. Whenever I try to argue to my countrymen and friends exactly how asinine is the hands-free game that they love so much, I inevitably end up at a loss for words.

At long last, I have come across a video (thanks to BoingBoing via Defamer) (seen above) that makes my argument for me, through the timeless magic of pictures and music. It's outdated, it's discomfiting, it's seemingly endless...

It's soccer!

Tom Brady Reads This Blog

Apparently daunted by Metroville's challenge to redeem last year's Super Bowl loss, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady opted on Sunday to cut his season short--more specifically, to less than one quarter of one game.

You're welcome, Matt Cassel.

Patriots, Act

For the last few weeks, as the regular baseball season began to drag its feet toward the playoffs and sports fans' attention began to wander toward autumn (in most cases because their fantasy baseball teams and/or their actual baseball teams and/or both were already in the crapper), people have been asking me, a fairly outspoken New England Patriots fan, if I am excited about the start of the NFL season.

Surprisingly--perhaps to no one more so than myself--my answer has been: "Enh."

The fact is, I'm mad at the Patriots. Not because they lost the Super Bowl last season and not because they fell one game short of historic perfection...but because those things happened as a direct result of the fact that the Patriots bought into their own hype. There's nothing wrong with a team believing that it can't be beat--one could even make the argument that such is the essence of athletic competition. But as soon as a team starts deriving that kind of unreasonable confidence less from itself and more from a third party--say, for example, bandwagon fans who were barely aware that the team existed before 2001--it has reserved itself a front row seat at its own Comeuppance Circus.

Think I'm overstating the matter? I suggest you familiarize yourself with the tale of the mentally disabled quarterback who earned a Super Bowl ring on the back of the Patriots' hubris.

Given that I am deeply familiar with the vitriolic hatred that fans of professional sports teams outside the Boston area have felt, with increasing dedication, toward fans of Boston-area-based professional sports teams ever since the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, I understand that most "Patraters" would be eager to view my apparent indifference as a surefire indication of a fair-weather fan. As it happens, those are people who had never given a second thought to Patriots fans prior to 2001...and that actually would make them, in a sense, "fair-weather haters".

I ask you this, fair-weather Patraters: Did you hate the Patriots fans back when Steve Grogan was running the offense on the field in Foxborough Stadium? No...you didn't. Because, not only have you never heard of Steve Grogan, you don't even know what Foxborough (also incorrectly spelled as "Foxboro") Stadium is. Mosi Tatupu--whom you've also never heard of--will gladly see you out the door.

At ten o'clock a.m. (PST) on Sunday, I will be seated front and center before my television set, surrounded by friends loved ones--all of them tried and true fans of the NFL team from Foxborough ("Foxboro" to the poseurs)--and I will be rooting for my New England Patriots with every last ounce of my sportsfan soul.

And if they don't lose to the Chiefs, which they probably won't, I'll be rooting for them to lose the next game...and, perhaps, the one after that.

I will do this because I truly love my Patriots, and I therefore realize that their media-drowned quest for a "perfect" season last year--and the ridiculous, jinx-tastic pressure that came with it--was what kept them from achieving a championship season.

Any NFL fan who would rather see his team have a perfect regular season (which, for the record, the Patriots did last year) than win the Super Bowl is the absolute antithesis of a genuine fan.

Which would mean that he's a New York Giants fan.

Which would mean that he's all about the Jets, now, because they have Brett Favre.

In either case, he calls himself a "New York" fan while rooting for a team that plays in New Jersey...which makes him a sad, sad shell of a person.

The Patriots Are 19-0! (As Envisioned By Reebok)

I knew Sunday's debacle was just a bad dream.

(Courtesy of Deadspin via Larry Brown Sports)

Hillary Clinton of Arkansas by Way of Illinois Sucks Up To Football Team From New Jersey in Attempt to Please New York, Lose Massachusetts

"Clinton grinned and said, 'Hm, I wonder why,' referring to Obama’s support of [the] New England [Patriots]."

That legendary wit of Senator Clinton was unleashed to point out the likelihood that Barack Obama's decision was motivated by the fact that he has been endorsed by Ted Kennedy and a number of other prominent Massachusetts figures.

Way to stick it to him, Hill! You've no doubt been a Giants fan fo' life!

Thanks to Dave for the tip.

'Twas a Big Weekend for the Overrated Spawn of Failures

If Miley Cyrus is to Billy Ray Cyrus what Peyton Manning is to Archie Manning, Hannah Montana's surprising success during a weekend shared by an absolutely incomprehensible victory on the part of the least Manning leads a person to wonder if there isn't a half-formed goblin child currently chained to a radiator pipe in the basement of the Cyrus home who at this time next year will be starring in the #1 movie in the country.

Super Bowl XLII Replaced With Faulty Tecmo Bowl Cartridge

The more times Tom Brady got sacked yesterday--courtesy of an offensive line that appeared to be made of ectoplasm--or threw passes that vanished into thin air, the more suspicious I became.

But it wasn't until the fourth quarter, when flailing nincompoop Eli Manning closed his eyes and hurled his umpteenth hopeless prayer of the game and the ball ended up magically stuck to the side of David Tyree's helmet, did I know for certain that the world was witnessing a complete work of fiction.

It was a bold choice on the part of the NFL, and it certainly paid off for Fox in television ratings. However, since the Patriots had worked so hard to stay undefeated through the season, it might have been nice if the league had given them a chance to play in the Super Bowl instead of replacing them with digitally-rendered suckbots.

A Super Bowl Olive Branch

So much has already been said in anticipation of today's historic contest that I am uncharacteristically compelled to refrain from throwing my own thoughts on the pile.

Instead, I will take the high road, and hope only that the Patriots will make Eli Manning violently suffer for his brother's staggeringly undeserved Super Bowl victory last year, regardless of the facts that (1) he had nothing to do with that outcome and (2) he's functionally retarded.

May the best team* win!


[*As long as it isn't the New York Giants, because they're not good.]