NFL Week 9 - Mixed Results

There were three games this week the outcome of which interested me. Two of them did not come out the way I would have liked. Happily, the game I was most interested in did get the desired result. That would be the Redskins taking on the Jets, or as ESPN.com columnist and possible anti-semite Greg Easterbrook likes to call them, Jersey B and the Potomac River Basin Indigenous Peoples. The ‘Skins, of course, just barely won. Against a shitty team, they trailed for much of the game and only managed to squeeze out a victory by a mere three points. And that was in overtime. Considering the decimation of their starting O-line and their apparent inability to form anything remotely resembling a killer instinct, I should probably be happy that the Redskins are even above .500. I didn’t see any of that game, as I was on a plane during most of it, but it’s probably a good thing. It must have been nerve-wracking.

Let’s move on to the second game of interest this Sunday. That would be the Chargers against the Vikings. I spent the morning in Minneapolis, only a few blocks from the Metrodome, and as I walked past some tailgaters, one of whom appeared to be spraying purple stuff on her hair, I neglected to tell them that I wished to see the Vikings lose. My interest in this game was purely personal, and fiscal as well. I had picked San Diego this week for my survival football pool, or as I prefer to call it, my football tontine. Granted, the Chargers have been rather disappointing this season, but it’s not like the Vikings are a great team. Damnit! I have been eliminated from the tontine. I felt pretty good about that pick. Part of the charm of this sort of tontine, though, is the unpredictably of professional football. Ah, well.

This brings us to the third game I cared about this week, which would be the brutal contest between the NFL’s two best teams, the Patriots & the Colts. And I really wanted to see the Pats lose. After what they did to the Redskins last week, I wanted to see them go down. Those dudes are getting arrogant. Really arrogant. And that pisses people off. It makes them dislike you. At least in America, anyway. We like underdogs. Matt Stone, co-creator of one of the greatest TV shows ever, once remarked that when South Park was just starting to blow up, everything written about him and Trey Parker seemed almost glowing and reverential. Whereas once they had created an enormous hit, and Comedy Central was throwing shitloads of ducats at them, the tone changed completely.

The main focus for my ire in New England is Bill Belichek. Not only is he the Sith Lord of the NFL, he’s a cheat. Everyone knows he’s a cheat. I hate when cheaters win. It sets a bad example. I would much prefer to see someone like Tony Dungy triumph, someone humble, upright and understanding. And I am rather fond of the Colts, and of Peyton Manning in particular. All season people have been talking about how great the Pats are, how they might go undefeated (they won’t) and not giving enough credit to the Colts. Peyton is endearing because despite being a complete bad-ass on the field, he appears to be a total doofus. He clearly doesn’t take himself very seriously, or else he wouldn’t appear in commercials wearing ridiculous wigs. Men want to dislike star quarterbacks. This is due to envy, obviously. But Peyton’s goofiness brings him back down to the level of the rest of us (except for his being a superstar and incredibly rich, of course). Tom Brady, on the other hand, is easy to dislike. At least if you’re a man. In addition to being a complete bad-ass on the field, he is also really good-looking and well-dressed (even though that newsboy cap he sported during last Sunday’s press conference was a definite sartorial misstep). I’m not quite ready to give him credit for his wardrobe. He might employ a stylist; I wouldn’t put it past him. Most dispiriting of all though, is the fact that Brady has (demonstrably) had sex with Bridget Moynihan and Gisele Bunchen. Whereas I have not.