The best part of the season is officially over. I hope that you enjoyed it and acknowledged it as such. From here on out, it’s going to be nothing but bullshit. We’ll see players slandering their opponents as “the ones who suck dick”, sports analysts will spend the next two weeks sucking whatever blue dick comes into their path and Spike Lee will send a picture of his dick to [insert celebrity from Boston here]. Take a deep breath. Unless you want to get wrapped up in the hype [you don't], just consider the season over. Watch the Pro Bowl, if that’s your fancy and move on. This is kind of great if you think about it. We get a 3 week head start of continuing our normal existence. Unless…well…you follow other sports. In that case, we don’t have shit in common and I would love to direct you to the nearest hockey blog [It's over there. To your left].
There’s only one major problem. We all have friends. And those friends REALLY want to watch the Super Bowl.
I’m sure it’s something that I’ve bitched and moaned about years prior.
“ So two Sundays from now, you can see me sitting on the couch sipping on Gin & Gatorade cocktails while being surrounded with people that pretend to care about football. It’s the thing about the Super Bowl that you kind of just have to hold back and accept. At least for one day out of the year, we are not social deviants.” -Last year
“The Super Bowl can hardly be considered an NFL game. NFL fans watch NFL games. Everybody else watches the Super Bowl. It isn’t as much of a gridiron clash as it is a social event. For one day out of the year, everybody including their mothers, fathers, half-uncles and aborted fetuses pretend to know about, enjoy, and understand the sport of football. However, the joke is usually on them, because the Super Bowl has been the host of generally bad games. I have been watching football for 15 years now, and every year the Super Bowl really knows how to disappoint. Allow me to run it down:
Super Bowl XXIX – The 49ers completely stomped the Chargers. It was the first time I ever felt truly depressed. The trend continued for years.
XXX- It was a defensive battle. Who the fuck wants to see that?!??
XXXI- The Patriots proved to America that they did not deserve to be in the Super Bowl. They did the same thing 10 years earlier.
XXXII- Okay, so John Elway finally wins a Super Bowl. It was a decentish game.
XXXIII- Okay, we get the point. John Elway is really good. Can I go home now?
XXXIV- Best. Game. Ever.
XXXV- In a drastic combination of XXX and XXXI, a defensive struggle shows that both teams shouldn’t have made it this far.
XXXVI- The start of the New England dynasty. Shudders all around. This was also the first rigged Super Bowl, showing that 9/11 fucked up more things for America than I will ever understand.
XXXVII- See XXXV. The AFC championship was way better.
XXXVIII- Adam Vinatieri kicks another game winning field goal? Naw, this shit aint rigged at all!
XXXIX- Wait, Adam Vinatieri saves the day again? Maybe football IS rigged…
XL- I was too busy rolling Gyros.
XLI- The opening kickoff was awesome…I don’t remember anything else…
XLII- Apparently this one was good, but I attended a dinner party instead, as I did not expect it to be worth two shits.
XLIII- Same as the year before, except replace going to a dinner party with sitting in my living room with the TV off, reading a vintage issue of Modern Bride. I wasn’t smoking cigs back then either. – 2 Years ago
“Fuck the Super Bowl, let’s do some collaging!” – 3 Years ago
You get the idea. I generally hate the Super Bowl. On the other hand, I generally love the Championship games, which is something you probably already knew. Even the commercials are better in the Championship Round. Just observe:
This commercial works on too many levels [or two]. On one hand, you have Peyton Manning being the absolute joke that he is, making fun of himself. The other pun is a lot more complicated and dates back to an otherwise forgettable Thanksgiving 1998 game between the Lions and Steelers. It’s so old and unpopular that I can’t even find a video of it on youtube. Basically, the game went into overtime and during the coin toss, Jerome Bettis called tails. Referee extraordinaire, Ed Hochuli, interpreted it as heads and gave Detroit the ball after it landed tails. It was one of the dumbest and most fixable botches of Eddie Hoch’s career and started him into a whirlwind of bad calls and ruined games. What we must keep in mind, however, is that Eddie is still one of the most respected refs in the game and is an inspiration to plenty of disciples to make the whole world sad. We saw plenty of examples this week, but in the end, it was some other turd burglar that ruined the games for everyone.
New England Patriots 23, Baltimore Ravens 20
I’m not going to lie to you, as I am not a liar and that is simply something that I do not do. I didn’t try very hard to watch this game. If you are actually familiar with my antics, then this wouldn’t surprise you. The game started at 3 and I was scheduled to work until 330. I took my sweet ol’ time, clocking out around 340. Then I waltzed around the store making puns at people for a good 5 minutes. Then I had a cigarette with Fran. Then I went downstairs to take the Browns to the Super Bowl. Then I stood in the kitchen for a few minutes, staring at hamburgers. Then I bought some cheese. I wasn’t even leaving the store until well after 4. I rounded the corner to find my coworker with 3 cases of water in tow, asking tourists for directions. I had to take a few more minutes to pimp slap her and give her proper directions. I also had to give her a tutorial on how to properly use a cart. You see, if you push the cart down the shitty sidewalks of SoHo, it is going to trip on every gap in the concrete tiles. I want to murder whoever designed these sidewalks. Once it trips, the water tumbles and goes boom and you’re gonna have a bad time. Especially when the cases of water crushes a wailing 5 year old French kid on a scooter. Nothing but a bad time. So naturally, I had to show her the proper method. You have to pull the cart, while lifting up the front end at every gap. She rolled her eyes at me and went on her way, pushing the cart instead of pulling it. I heard a tumble behind me as I checked my phone to see that the game was at halftime.
I got home to realize that I had not missed anything at all. The Patriots played their worst game of football imaginable, but yet it was still enough to overcome the Ravens, who I suspect was playing even worse. Flacco and Co kept slow-burning the ball, only to come up with nothing. The entire 4th quarter was a big suck-out fest. Immediately after a game-saving Flacco interception, Tom Brady and the coaching staff [with their infinite wisdom] decided to go deep.
Yes, that’s what you’re supposed to do. With 7 minutes left and up by 3, the clock can burn itself. It is much more efficient to throw a hail mary into double coverage. That’s some terrific game management. So the Ravens decided to return the favor by running 5 minutes off the clock in a drive that resulted in a turnover on downs. So therefore, the game should be over. All Tom needed to do was get one measly first down and they could all go home. But no, he can’t even do that. Joey Flacc gets the ball back and goes into Tecmo Mode, resulting in this great TD catch by Lee Evans [yes, he IS still alive!]:
Any eligible receiver who catches the ball, gains control and has two feet on the ground within the end zone, scores a touchdown.
There is no doubt in my mind that if this play had been reviewed, the Ravens would have won. Because of the fact that it was ruled an incomplete pass, it was not automatically reviewed and somehow no call came from the booth to do so. He did, for a minuscule period of time, have possession of the ball with 2 feet down. You can barely see it, but it’s there. Unfortunately, the NFL is rigged and this game was supposed to go into overtime. As long as Billy Cundiff played along with the charade…
This was Billy Cundiff’s “The Last Boy Scout Moment”, where he refused to do what the suits told him to. Obviously, the Ravens were supposed to lose in overtime, so Billy wanted to expose that by missing a 32 yard field goal. Either that, or he was simply overstimulated, over-anxious, overly nervous and running late to the line of scrimmage. He’s also not that great of a kicker, either. At the beginning of the drive, a stat showed that Billy is 5/17 in his career on 50+ yard field goals. For a team that cannot rely totally on its offense, a kicker like this should be unwanted. It’s almost too easy to make Cundiff the scapegoat. In a large sense, none of this is his fault, because it never should have came down to that play. The Patriots brought their F-Game and Jon Harbaugh’s squad still couldn’t overcome them. They only scored 6 points off of 3 turnovers. There are so many other things that can be said in his defense, but I would leave that up to the man that knows him better. We can also put into account that Cundiff rushing the kick was the result of Spygate 2.
Just as everyone expected, the Patriots made it to the biggun. I don’t know what is more true: that the Patriots are the best team in the AFC or the AFC was just plain awful. This is definitely the sloppiest Bill Belichick squad that has ever existed [yes, even worse than the Matt Cassel Experience]. Tom Brady is playing lazy [he got ousted by Flacco in every stat category. Flacco.], the defense can’t even stop a dishwasher and Billy Bill’s play calling is becoming more and more senile. With all of this in mind, yeah, I guess they’ll still win the Super Bowl. Meh.
New Jersey Giants 20, San Francisco 49ers 17 [OT]
If I were to actually talk about this game, it would be a scatterbrained mess. Instead, I’m going to just spit out free-form thoughts in the form of a list.
- Neither of these teams belonged in the NFC Championship. This is a shame, considering that a Green Bay-New Orleans revenge game would’ve been the best thing ever. On top of that, a New England-Green bay/New Orleans Super Bowl would’ve been the sickest shit you’ve ever seen in your life. It’d be a shootout resulting in 159 total points. Records would be broken and old men would have shat themselves. But we can’t be that lucky. It was clear from the beginning of the game that no matter what the outcome was, the Super Bowl is doomed to be ho-hum.
- This game was accentuated by the rain and defensive attack. It was a rare occasion when I actually enjoyed seeing defenses mangle the shit out of people. Eli Manning got the full-on ragdoll treatment. By the end of the game, his uniform was all brown on one side, with mud and grass stuck in his helmet, teeth and ears. It’s one of those sexy things that Sports Illustrated covers are made of. If taking an asswhooping gets you into the Super Bowl, then I suppose Jay Cutler may not be done after all.
- Although the Niner’s defense put the fear of fear itself into Big Blue, there was one fatal error they made 10 times. They just couldn’t cover Victor Cruz. They spent so much time trying to beat the shit out of Eli that double coverage on Cruz rarely ever happened. And when you’re dealing with one of the most ridiculous receivers in the league, one can’t help but think that they didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
-Kyle Williams is not a turd. He’s a turd burglar. He sneaks into houses, gets down into the septic tank and burgles the turds. That’s how demented he is.
If a ball is coming your way and you know that you’re not going to get it, DO NOT try to volley it with your foot. This isn’t soccer and even if it was soccer, it would still be an awful move and you would get shot execution style behind the stadium. On top of that, he pretended as if it didn’t even happen. He seemed to be genuinely confused, which confused the shit out of Ed Hochuli to the point that he had no choice but to call they play dead. [On a side note, that seems to be the only thing that Ed Hochuli knows how to do is ruin plays by blowing the whistle early. Good lord, who let him officiate this game?] Luckily for all the New Jersians of the world, a TD was scored shortly after, but still. If there’s any new rule for officials in the 2012 season, it should be “let the play happen, ask questions later”. Going back to the Turd Burglar, considering that he made the dipshitted effort to kick the ball, why wouldn’t he follow through and dive for it? No. The bastard didn’t even make an effort. If you’re smoking a doobie in Hell’s Kitchen and a police officer walks up, you throw that shit in the gutter or do something to get rid of the evidence. Not Kyle Williams. He carefully puts that shit out, slides it into his pocket and lights a cigarette. After that debacle, every time the ball was punted, my stomach would turn. I silently prayed that the Turd Burglar wouldn’t strike again. But a few drives deep into overtime [hey, at least Eddie did the coin flip properly!], it appeared as if the Niners were going to get the ball back with decent field position. That’s when Grandma noticed the missing turds.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
In all fairness, it isn’t Kyle’s fault that he fancies burgling turds. He was consistently in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which leads me to my next point…
- If Ted Ginn Jr was healthy, this game would’ve been much different. Not only would the Giant’s special teams have to deal with one of the biggest returning threats ever, the fumbles also would not have happened. Since the Giants scored 10 points off the Turd Burglar, nobody knows when else those points would have been scored, if at all. We can’t blame an unprepared kick returner in the rain to screw up from time to time. It’s just kind of heartbreaking that he had to play in the first place. It’s much akin to saying that the presence of TJ Yates prevented the Texans from winning it all. Or Billy Volek with the 2007 Chargers. Or Frank Reich with the Bills. Or Jeff Hostetler. Wait, Hoss won. Never mind.
-On the same train of thought, if the Dallas Cowboys could’ve prevented half of the injuries they incurred, this game wouldn’t have happened to begin with.
Now that the Super Bowl is set and ready to go, I am having a predicament about who to root for. I have spent the entire season getting in the face of Giants fans and I definitely can’t look like a bandwagoner. Although I have been liking the Patriots all season [sort of], I can’t help but feel like they don’t deserve to be there. The obvious choice is probably the one that I will go for: I’m just going to keep my mouth shut and blend in. If the Giants win, cool. If not, bummer. Whatever. I really don’t care. If I actually see the game, I’ll just get excited every time something exciting happens, yell out “Yay football!” and let the game unravel for the millions of fans that actually give a damn. It’s the least I can do.
If somehow this game ends up being watched by me and it’s something of actual merit, expect a decent-sized roundup the day after. If not, then it was truly a pleasure writing for you all this season. Now…WHO’S READY FOR THE PRO BOWL?!?!?!?
You said it, Billy!
-TeeCoZee
