Friday, February 01, 2008

So, since everybody knows that 19-0 is inevitable, the Patriots and the city of Boston have scheduled the victory parade. As the people involved are mental giants of the first order, they have scheduled this parade for the Tuesday following the Super Bowl. That day just happens coincide with Super Tuesday, when Massachusetts voters are supposed to turn out for their presidential primaries.

After all, any Patriots fan who comes out of the inevitable festivities too intoxicated or otherwise impaired to do their civic duty is probably doing the Republic, if not the world, a favor. God knows, enough morons vote, what's twenty or thirty thousand nitwits when 20 or 20 million will vote on Super Tuesday? Who knows, maybe a lower than normal turnout in Massachusetts will finish off Mitt Romney. At this point, with the way he's come back from being written off in this election season, I'd believe it if Mitt ended up starring in a cheesy horror film (to paraphrase the Johnathan Winters character from It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)

I am not one of those people who will complain that the victory parade shouldn't conflict with the electoral process. After all, Tuesday is the only day it could possibly happen. It's just too short a turn around to expect the players to undergo a strenuous public appearance on Monday after the game is played Sunday evening in Arizona. Imagine the jet lag.

As for Wednesday, or a date thereafter... it simply can't work because eight Patriots have to go to the Pro Bowl which is to be played in Hawaii the Sunday after the Super Bowl. Now most people don't think Pro Bowl practices are critical, what with the fact that defenses are restricted in the sorts of schemes they can run and are forbidden to blitz. So there really shouldn't be much game planning, right?

Unfortunately, when you deal with vast intellects like the ones exhibited when Brady, Light, Vrabel et al. take center stage, even a Pro Bowl game plan starts to look like nuclear physics. And for my part, I'd hate to think that these Patriots might miss even one public appearance in Hawaii for the sake of a public appearance in Boston. Imagine what the harsh New England winter weather could do to Gisele's hair. The horror, the horror...as Kurtz would say.

This impending victory parade could be the first local appearance for Brady and Gisele after their engagement. Rumor has it, Brady has promised to spring for an engagement ring for Gisele if (when) the Patriots win the Super Bowl. Granted, the rumor originated in the National Enquirer so we have to take it with a grain of salt.

But my question is, what happens in the extremely unlikely the event of a miraculous upset? If the Giants win, what does Gisele get? A promise ring? A tennis braclet? One of those diamond heart pendants from Zales that will be advertised to death before Valentine's Day? Or does Tom have the backbone to give her nothing after this season is over. To tell the truth, I'd finally have some respect for him if he pulled that move.

Everything is lining up for the Patriots to beat the Giants severely, a perfect storm, as Bill Simmons put it. The layoff before the Super Bowl tends to favor the favorite. They've already beaten the Giants in the Meadowlands in December, so it should be a cake walk in Arizona.

Even better, this 19-0 season will have been achieved at a negligible cost. After all, it's only the collective soul of the New England Patriots that purchased this historic season. In the article linked above, Simmons referenced the book Blueprint, which documented the process in which Belichick, Kraft and Paoli built the three time champions. If the author of that book wants to chronicle this team, perhaps he could title the work: How to Go From David to Goliath in Seven Years.

Simmons compared a potential Green Bay vs. New England Super Bowl to the 1980 Olympic hockey game between the US and the USSR, in the sense that the entire country would be behind Favre in the same way that the Miracle on Ice game galvanized the nation back in the day. It is an interesting analogy, but I think this Giants team is better suited to the part.

Nobody went into the Lake Placid games thinking Team USA could beat the Russians, except Team USA. The game wasn't even on live TV. It was only as the game got going that people realized they were watching something historic, memorable and pretty damn amazing. It's only with 20-20 hindsight that people think that the Miracle on Ice game grasped American hearts and minds and it became a big deal. And deservedly so, it was an epic win for an underdog.

In the movie Patton, right as the German tanks are starting to make their breakthroughs in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944, the general says something very memorable. Patton says: There's absolutely no reason for us to assume. . .that the Germans are mounting a major offensive. The weather is awful and their supplies are low. The Germans haven't mounted a winter attack since Frederick the Great. Therefore I believe that's exactly what they're going to do.

Now I'm not saying the Giants can win. I'm not saying they're going to win. I'm not saying that even if they were allowed to play 14 on 11, any team could stop the Patriots from fulfilling destiny and going 19-0 or even 38-0. It's just one more thing that I want to have out there, along with what I wrote Tuesday last, on the off chance that in this historic season the one mark Tom Brady fails to achieve is that of becoming the first absolute douche to quarterback a team to four Super Bowl wins.

Speaking of QBs who won four Super Bowls, not too long ago, I caught Failure to Launch on cable. And it wasn't very good, even for that dismal genre. But I watched the whole damn thing because Terry Bradshaw stole the show. He was great. I really believe that he should have won an Oscar for that. Too bad the Oscars have to go to whatever films "challenge the intellect" or justify the politics of the populist view when there isn't a clear cut great movie like The Godfather or Gladiator out there.

1 comment:

Michael Seff said...

I always respect a good blog, which this is. But as you now see there is no such thing is sports as a sure thing. Blogger to blogger though this is a solid blog.

-Mike
www.pitchingideas.net