So It Has Come To This… [TeeCoZee's Super Bowl XLV Roundup]

Ah yes, the Super Bowl. That fancy occasion where football fans get all apeshit, pretending that they have been following “their team” all season long and the womenfolk [and all other football haters] tune in as well, pretending to be interested in the commercials. But even Ron Artest knows that the team you are rooting for is probably not your favorite team and the football haters are secretly hoping to be swept away by the dramatic intricacies of pro football. This all boils into the problem that the game is usually not very good, so the haters continue hating and the fans are depressed that the season is over. And the same thing happens every year. This is why we throw Super Bowl parties. Everybody can get drunk, eat way too much and act with a general sense of debauchery, all because the last football game of the year is being played. It has achieved holiday status. It is the only thing to look forward to after New Years. The World Cup doesn’t have shit on this. 111 million people gathered around the television to watch the same thing. That speaks volumes for professional sports in general.

However, there was one small problem: The Steelers are fucking playing…

To tackle what I thought was sure to be a mediocre game, I decided to concoct a special cocktail:

-3 Parts Lemon-Lime Gatorade
-1 Part Gilbey’s Gin

Voila! Gilbey-Ade! You see, Gatorade is the best lemon-lime substance on Earth. Not even Colt .45 comes close to it’s sheer awesomeness. Of course, I feel ironic drinking it, but I just love that damn satisfying taste! And Mr. Gilbey happens to make the most acceptable gin that money can buy. Obviously, this was a match made in heaven, or my kitchen. It goes in smooth, goes down smooth, and your teeth feel like shit hours afterward! It’s much akin to having sexual relations with a candy manufacturer.

So I had my Gilbey-Ade and my youth-sized Charger helmet. I was ready for some goddamned football! But of course, I couldn’t get that, could I? Nope, there has to be a National Anthem! And who’s singing it? Is it Madonna? No! It’s that one chick who has dedicated her career to being just like Madonna!

Tell me, do you think that Christina Aguilera botched the lyrics? Allegedly, she skipped the “O’er ramparts we watched” line and then combined it with actually singing “What so proudly we watched” later on. Now everybody is putting their Texas hats on and calling her an un-American Whore. Look guys, we have heard this fucking song over 10,000 times in our lifetime. At this point, the words have no meaning. I don’t even know what the song is about! I swear, I listened to this 3 times without even being able to tell where she even screwed up. There are much worse things she could do to achieve “un-American Whore” status. At least it wasn’t 10 minutes long. At least she didn’t sing “O Canada” instead. At least she didn’t seduce and chop the dicks off of every player on both teams, leaving just the punters to duke it out in this big, big game. Oh shit, that’s right! This IS about football! Why is everybody going babbleshit over misquoting lyrics to a ridiculously wordy song? Fuck it, dude. Let’s play some football.

As everybody expected, both defenses showed up in a big way at the start of the game. Roethlisberger & The Knuckleheads went 3 and out on the first drive. Aaron Rodgers [of whom I am pretty sure I have spelled the last name of all season] & The Possible Rapists answered back by actually getting a 1st down. Then they went 3 and out. Next drive, Beastmaster Mendenhall rushed for 15 yards, and then the Steelers went 3 and out. See a pattern? It isn’t as pretty as plaid, but it’s still a pattern. If there’s one side of the ball that both teams can play on, it’s on defense. I have rambled all year about how the Steelers are viciously boring because of their defense-heavy game plan. You have also heard me hype on about Clay Matthews and AJ Hawk as the Big Blond Militia starring Charles Woodson. The only way that the Steelers could stand a chance was if Roethlisberger had a good day or a missile hit the stadium and blew off Aaron Rodger’s right arm [in which case, he would still have his left arm and might have a chance at winning the game]. Deep inside, I was afraid this was going to happen. Luckily, my fears were somewhat settled mid-way through the 1st quarter. The Pack made a much needed scoring drive, with a couple of saving grace runs by James Starks. In fact, James Starks was getting me excited all damn evening. Every time he handled the ball, I would shout out his name. This could either mean

a. James Starks is a force to be reckoned with
b. Gilbey-Ade works

I’m going with both choices. After they were able to heartily showcase the tenacity of James Starks, Aaron Rogers decided to have some fun. He threw a beautiful 29 yard pass to Jordy Nelson, effectively getting the first points on the board. So, now that they’re down, I highly expected some quick points here. I thought that there was no way that Big Ben would go another 3 and out. He was going to score big time and some fans may never forget it. I was right.

OH SNAP! You done did it now! I have been talking all season about how the universe hates Ben Roethlisberger. For the record, the universe has a reason to hate him, as he is not only one of the dumbest, chunkiest quarterbacks in the league, he is also probably a rapist…or at least he was until the charges were dropped [aka the girl started receiving death threats written on footballs]. He has been sucker-punched, had his nose broken, I’m pretty sure at one point a ball hit him in the junk and now he has thrown a pick-6 in the Super Bowl. A pick-6 before he was even able to throw a first down pass. The universe is laughing at Mr. Roethlisberger, and PK & I were laughing with it. “Green and Yellow” chants started going off ever 15 seconds. It was a force hat couldn’t be stopped. The Packers were going to win this game and being wrong isn’t an option. Or at least we all hoped so.

As the 2nd quarter begun, I started to become aware of my current situation. Here I was, getting loaded off of gin and sports beverages, watching football, and being surrounded by people that weren’t getting loaded off of gin and citrus and did not care about football as much as I did. I decided to make a conscious effort to not look like a jackass, but I’m not exactly sure how it went. To my advantage, the Steelers were good at grinding down the clock, spending 7 minutes on a field goal drive. On the following drive, Donald Driver limped over to the sidelines after a 5 yard catch. He ended up with an ankle injury and was out for the rest of the game. Ditto for Charles Woodson, who got sidelined during the middle of the following Steelers drive. As time wore on, it became more evident that the Steelers just might pull off a comeback and it was making me meek and silent. Then this happened:

OH DOUBLE SNAP! Another one! Greenandyellowgreenandyellowgreenandyellowgreenandyellow! This resulted in Aaron Rodgers throwing a touchdown in 4 plays, because he’s Aaron Rodgers and that’s what he does is make big fucking plays because he’s actually a good quarterback that can throw effectively at long distances, you know what I’m saying? But of course, if there’s one thing that Big Ben can do as well, it’s leading his team to a quick score with the knowledge that the most dangerous defensive back is not playing. The Woodson-less defense was helpless against the Rapist’s passing attack. Of course, they scored a touchdown. The defense was caught off guard. So everybody went into the locker room during halftime, feeling a little optimistic. However, I wasn’t feeling optimistic about shit. While all the players are being enclosed rooms being motivated, everybody else in the world had to watch…the halftime show…

Top 5 Things I Would Rather Do Than Watch The Black Eyed Peas Do A Super Bowl Halftime Show
5) Get my arm broken after a risky game of dice.
4) Watch the Cremaster Cycle on acid…with my family
3) Eat a bowl of collected bacon fat
2) Get a butt transplant
1) Anything else

I don’t understand how atrocities like this are committed. Fox promoted the shit out of this halftime show. They have been advertising it since week 14 or 15. I was under the impression that they were still popular. I was wrong, as every song that they played I have been hearing for over 3 years. I just don’t…understand. This is the goddamned Super Bowl! This features the most expensive commercial slots on TV. People are paying thousands upon thousands of dollars on tickets. Why can’t the NFL spring for a halftime act that is more relevant? I can think of a dozen current musical acts that would fare better than them, and might even ask for just as much money. Letting the Black-Eyed Peas play the Super Bowl halftime show is like giving Three-Six Mafia an Academy Award. [Don't you just love dated jokes?] It was a mess, to say the least. They just kind of stood there, without much enthusiasm, but still sweating profusely. I remember at one point, I was thinking to myself “This is perfect! Now all we need is an overrated guitarist to come up from the stage and join them!”. When picking which one it should be, they had 3 choices:

1) Slash
2) Slash
3) Slash

Yeah, apparently, the only person they could get was Slash. So for some fucktarded reason, they played Sweet Child O’Mine, which makes no sense because it does nothing to pump up any crowd. Like, who wants to hear that shit? It’s one thing trying to listen to Axl sing that song, but Fergie?!? It doesn’t matter how many steroids she takes, the bitch can not sing. [In fact, who in the fuck even told her that steroids help singing? Because I want to punch him.] That’s the kind of things that makes a man want to kill! To the dismay of everyone, the Black-Eyed Peas did not apologize after their 13+ minute set. And somehow, all of the boos in the crowd were blocked out by people screaming incoherently. It was a dark moment for mankind.

The 3rd quarter was essentially fucked. On the first drive, the Packers went 3 and out…but were still able to rack up 35 penalty yards in the process. One of which was a facemask penalty that I will never agree with. There was no grabbing of the facemask involved, but the infinite wisdom of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman tried to assert that his hand slipped a little big under the facemask while going down. So apparently that warrants 15 yards. Smells like complete bullshit to me. The next drive resulted in Beastenhall carrying the Steelers to another touchdown. All of a sudden, the game was close, and I spent most the the 3rd quarter standing outside the window, chainsmoking, saying to myself over and over that I have a bad feeling. The bad feeling probably came from chainsmoking and trying to watch football through a window. But still, it was a bad feeling. A-Rodg spent most of the quarter throwing wild passes and it was evident that the Steelers were maintaining their composure. As Scott put it to me as the 3rd quarter went to a close, “The Steelers are an extremely boring team…but they’re efficient!”

So the game ended masterfully, as any Super Bowl should but usually falls short of doing. A-Rodg woke the fuck up when the 4th quarter started, throwing a beautiful 38 yard pass to Jordy Nelson, and then a creamy 8 yard touchdown pass to Greg Jennings. The offensive wheels started turning again, and with a 28-17 score halfway through the 4th, Ben needed to dial up a miracle. And a miracle they received. Although they wasted too much time, Rapelesberger and Co pulled off a decent scoring drive, ending in a 25 yard connection to Mike Wallace. And of course Antoine Randle El scored the 2 point conversion, because nobody was even aware that Antoine Randle El still existed, let alone was playing for the Steelers. But A-Rodg fought back, and killed close to 6 minutes off the clock on a field goal scoring drive. So with 2 minutes left and only one timeout, the Steelers would have to drive 87 yards to victory. They started off well when Heath Miller caught a 15 yard pass, then a 5 yard pass. After that, Big Ben had nothing left in him. Just like many women wish he would do more often, he shot nothing but blanks. Fireworks went off, there was dancing in the street, as for the first time in a great while, justice has been restored on Earth.

Final Score: Green Bay Packers 31, Pittsburgh Steelers 25

During the trophy presentation, I was struck by something somewhat odd. For some reason, the Super Bowl champions also get the WCW World Title Belt. I’m not sure how long it has been going on, but it appears that Clay Matthews is more excited for the belt than he is the trophy.

Don't worry, Clay. Some day you'll be champion. For now, you can just be a Super Bowl winner. But I swear, you can beat Goldberg's ass...

And just as quickly as it started, another NFL season comes to a close. I have to admit, I’m a little misty-eyed while writing this. It’s been a strange season, yes, but also a worthwhile one. We got to see Brett Favre fall from grace and Michael Vick be forgiven. We will forever remember the names of Peyton Hillis and LaGarrette Blount and most likely forget the legend of Dougie Stanton. I don’t know if there’s going to be any football next season. I wish that the lockout could just get resolved, but it’s starting to look more and more out of reach. But if there is football to be played, I will be there to report it to you in the most half-assed way that I know how!

Also, in the offseason, you can probably expect some draft analysis from me, as well as some classic game roundups. I mean, I need SOMETHING to occupy my time, right?

Have a safe and happy Spring and Summer, and will hopefully talk to you all again in 7 months!

7 months!

7 months.

7 months…..

[maybe]

-TeeCoZee

PS Thank you for reading this schlock all season. If it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be writing this sentence or the previous one. My motivations run off of your support and I can’t thank you enough.