First appeared on January 28th
in The Lebanon Reporter
The beat down the Indianapolis Colts suffered in the AFC Championship came as a public service reminder to Colts fans everywhere that the New England Patriots remain evil personified. The long faces, missed opportunities and inability run, throw, catch or even stop the football seemed strangely familiar. Perhaps more maddening than the Colts performance was knowing the eternally perplexed Bill Belichick had found yet another slimy way to push NFL rules to their limit.
Colts fans found solace in the fact Belichick appeared so miserable that surely he, along with every other person who’s ever worn clothing since the dawn of time, had decided his old friend the hooded sweatshirt was in fact a bad choice. This epiphany arrived only after a torrential rainstorm swept over Gillette Stadium during the third quarter of the AFC title game. Of course a rainstorm on a January night in New England also served to prove to a national television audience that global warming is in fact real and that, after all these years, the Colts still can’t run the football.
So as the Colt equipment managers were busy collecting the stray pieces of their team’s pride from the field, you found yourself attempting to shatter the awkward silence that had consumed your viewing party by asking if anyone wanted more nachos or felt like driving the fourteen hours to Foxboro in order to crush Belichick’s kneecaps. But in the end you realized, that as a Midwesterner, violence just isn’t in your blood so you microwaved another corndog before chewing on the same question fans of 29 other professional football teams are asking themselves; “What do we do now?”
What do you do when the Super Bowl offers a completely unpalatable match-up? New England will be playing in the sixth Super Bowl of the Belichick Era while Seattle will seek to become the first team to repeat as World Champion since Belichick’s Patriots a decade ago. For most, choosing between the Seahawks and Patriots will be like choosing between a punch in the stomach and a kick to that one place your Third Grade teacher told you was very special and only for you.
This leaves the average fan conflicted. For when you’re dog is out of the fight, it’s human nature to back the scrappiest one remaining, to root for the man in the white hat to ride in swiftly on his trusty steed and overcome evil in a generically non-violent, yet oddly believable way. The problem with Super Bowl XLIX is that it will be played indoors; therefore the forecast calls for a 100% chance of no scrappy dogs or white hats.
The Hoodie and Seahawks front man Pete Carroll both arrive with unwanted baggage (see Reggie Bush, Spygate and the proper inflation of a football per NFL rules). Furthermore its widely known the Patriots torture unwanted kittens in their free time and the Seahawks are in essence the same guy who stole your girlfriend in seventh grade and then again in high school; twice. In short, these two deserve each other.
So we as fans are left to wonder if it’s in fact possible for both teams to lose the Super Bowl. And while it may seem unlikely nobody will win, it remains a hope many Americans will cling to come Super Bowl Sunday; 100% according to one unpublished and highly unscientific poll conducted minutes before writing this column.
So fear not disgruntled Colt fans for you still have time to lobby the NFL to enact a rule change that will allow each team to lose this game. It shouldn’t be all that controversial really, considering the Shield has a history of ignoring their own rules anyway.
© 2014 Eric Walker Williams
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