The Super Bowl Rant

OK... so now the 2004-2005 NFL season is over, and the New England Patriots are the world champions again. Let me preface this rant with saying that I take nothing away from the Pats. They're a good team, they're well coached, and they play extremely well AS A TEAM. Now... on with the rant.

With a little over 4:00 to go in the 4th quarter, the Eagles are down by 10. Now, with a decent amount of time left on the clock, the game is not out of reach. 10 points is a realistic defecit to overcome... it's not unheard of, and with the talent that Philly has on the field, they've got a fairly decent shot. Here's what's KILLING me. With the clock still running, the overpaid, arrogant, pampered Philly players are all WALKING back to the huddle like they have all the time in the world. People, this is the Super Bowl, and the clock is ticking. I don't know if it's that these a-holes have too much bling-bling wrapped around their necks and that's what's got them too tuckered out to run back to the huddle, or the keys to their Escalades are jabbing them in their pockets and they can't run, but for the love of God, this is the Super Bowl. This is what the whole season, and for some players, their whole lives has come down to.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will never play in a Super Bowl. I accepted that fact a long time ago, right about the time my father made me play saxophone for the 8th year in a row. But that's OK... I'm OK with it. I will, however, drop a little knowledge on you. I make a pretty good living doing what I do. Any one of these punks makes about 10 times what I do in any given year. Now, if all we did was change positions, and I was a wide out for the Philadelphia Eagles, and I was playing in the first Super Bowl that my franchise had been in through the last 24 years, and I was making what I am now, and some jackass from the Eagles was out doing my job every day, making what he's making now, I would be running back to that huddle. Would you consider that a run-on sentence? I don't know and I don't care. The point here is that I would have been running. So there.

Anyway, a couple more minutes go by, and Donovan McNabb finds Freddie Mitchell in the endzone. Mitchell makes a phenomenal catch, and now Philly is down by 3. The problem here, friends and neighbors, is that because these lazy ass punks walked around and wasted so much time hiding sharpies in their socks and cell phones in goalposts, that there's now 1:37 left on the clock in Super Bowl XXXIX. Get it? If you don't, that's one minute and thirty-seven seconds to get the ball back, march down the field, and get a minimum of three points against a New England team that's won this thing 2 of the last 3 years. I'm not sure if these retards couldn't do the math of the score defecit or couldn't tell time (I think that's why they have digital scoreboards in the NFL now), but for the life of me, I don't get the whole walking thing.

Regardless, because they wasted so much f'ing time, now they have to onside kick, hope to get the ball back, and go down and score. They don't wind up recovering the onside kick, but the Pats go 3 & out, and Philly gets the ball back with just under a minute to go. They do pretty much nothing, and McNabb winds up throwing a pic to end this debacle. I hate to say this because I was pulling for the Eagles to pull it out and dethrone New England, but it serves them right. I have to believe that I'm not the only person that noticed this. Joe Buck was saying pretty much the same thing during the broadcast, and I still can't figure out why the coaching staff wasn't jumping all over these a-holes. If these lazy shits would have moved their lazy asses, they wouldn't have had to onside kick, and would have had a bunch more time to actually put together a drive. I'm just beside myself over this.

Here's the thing... it's not really so much the money thing, but more a matter of pride. For crying out loud, you get to wake up every day and play football for a living. If I could somehow piece together a deal like that, you would never, ever, ever, ever hear me bitch about anything again. It's not at all that I don't like my job, because I do. I love it. It's great. But, come on now, people, if you could go out every day and play a game for a living, you would take it. All I'm asking is that these ball players take a little pride, and I don't mean the kind of obnoxious pride that you see in Randy Moss's endzone celebration when he pretended to moon the crowd, but the kind of pride that makes you feel good about what you do. The kind of pride that lets you put your head on your pillow at night, knowing that you did a good job, and knowing that you did what was expected of you and more. Yes, I know it's football, but come on. A wise man once said that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Wandering around while the play clock is ticking away precious seconds and lazily ambling back to the huddle doesn't exactly exemplify pride in my book.

As I'm writing this, Andy Reid is on the post-game show talking about how he's proud of the effort. For those of you that aren't football fans, Andy Reid is the head coach of Philly. Andy, tell me, when your now loser team was walking around while time was ticking away, how proud were you of that effort? I'm guessing that when you watch the tape of the last five minutes of that loss, you're going to be about as proud of that effort as my father was when I became a bartender after he spent over $100,000 on my education. OK, Andy... whatever lets you sleep at night.

Quick sidebar here... hats off to Terrell Owens. For the longest time, I thought he was about the biggest showboating punk in the NFL (I think that honor now belongs to Randy Moss), but tonight he came out, had a great game, and played on an ankle that he broke just six weeks ago. He didn't run his mouth, didn't come out and talk smack like a punk, and just did what he does best. Props, T.O..

Honestly, I could go on for hours on this. It pisses me off so f'ing bad that the bile in my stomach climbs up the back of my throat and I choke on it and have to drink eleven cans of Diet Vanilla Pepsi to make it subside. Well, maybe not eleven.

To wrap this up, again, I take nothing away from New England. I do, however, hope that they all contract the ebola virus, get food poisoning so bad that they can't leave the bathroom and all get horrific cases of crabs. Either that or their plane goes down somewhere in West Virginia, everyone survives, and the entire team is relentlessly ass raped by some backwoods family of rednecks until they all turn gay and decide that they'd rather play soccer. Again, back to my preface that they're a good team, and they simply out-classed the Eagles, so don't take my wishes the wrong way.

On that note, I'm going to sign off. Gotta get some sleep so that I can get up and do my job tomorrow... without mooning the crowd.

Until next time...

R