Humor Is Lost on Some Crowds
Today's New York Times and Boston Globe each had stories reporting that upon arriving in Indianapolis, Bill Belichick both expressed pleasure at being at the Super Bowl and made some mild pleasantries about that fact. The tone of both stories was of utter incredulity indicating each reporter felt it merited a headline along the lines of "LUCKY LINDY MAKES IT!!!"
Poor Bill. No, really. The more time passes, the more I feel the Pats' coach is a man stuck out of time in a world that cannot, no, refuses to make the slightest effort to understand him.
Start with the obvious. If Belichick's happy to be at the Super Bowl, it's because he's breathing. There is nobody, from team owner down to the most cynical sportswriter, who doesn't land at the airport of the host city and think "Hey, I'm at the Super Bowl. Cool!" That's because being at the Super Bowl is cool, and the coolness of the experience is in direct proportion to the amount of one's involvement in the event. Being a writer was cooler than being a fan who won tickets in some contest. Being a coach is about one million levels of coolness above sportswriting (How coaches feel when they LEAVE the Super Bowl is another story). Can't we accept that Belichick has human emotions even when he's on duty? So he's good at suppressing them. That doesn't mean they aren't in there somewhere.
As for being surprised Belichick made a funny or two, well, that indicates the reporters are prisoners of conventional wisdom, comedy-wise anyway. In my experience, Belichick was often humorous, or attempted to be humorous. This went unnoticed by many because in humor as in many other things, the Pats' coach is a man born out of his proper time.
Belichick's humor is subtle, dry and as understated as he can make it. Many legendary humorists (James Thurber comes to mind) were of that style. Like Thurber, most of 'em have been dead for some time. The wholly dominant style of comedy through most of Belichick's adult life, since "Animal House" in 1978, has been overstatement: the broad gag, the use of hyperbole, the ranting monologue dialed up to 11 for effect. Think "Bridesmaids," "Two & a Half Men" and the late Sam Kinison.
If a man has a Thurber sense of humor in a Kinison world, many of his jokes will move right past his audience. It's not that they don't get it. They don't even recognize it.
I yield to no man or woman in my appreciation of overblown, sophomoric to juvenile humor. But there's a place for wit as well as belly laughs in the comedy universe. Belichick should be congratulated for his contrarian approach to laughs, but it's not something he dreamed up for the Super Bowl. It's part of his personality that's always been there.
Now, if Tom Coughlin cracks jokes at HIS introductory press conference in Indy today, THEN you've got a front page story.
Hard Time
T.F. Green and Newark Liberty airports are not destinations often thought of with longing. But that's how the Patriots and Giants are thinking of them today. The flight to Indianapolis tomorrow represents about a 90-minute escape from the disorienting limbo of the Super Bowl off-week.
It won't be until they check into their maximum security luxury hotels that the players will absorb the wretched truth that they've only exchanged limbos. Being closer to the Super Bowl in terms of three-dimensional space will not bring it any closer in the fourth dimension of time. There's an eternity of tedium left until kickoff.
By both circumstance and design, the Super Bowl is very different from every other NFL game. By far the biggest difference, the most real of all the so-called "distractions" is how much sitting/standing/lounging around is involved for the players. The world championship of professional football is a test of patience as much as it is of strength, skill and will.
Tom Brady, taking one for the team as usual, spewed forth the obligatory "we wish the game was today" bromide this week. But cliches get that way because they're true. That's how Brady does feel, that's how they all feel. And that Brady knows full well how much time he's got left to fill up before 6:30 p.m. February 5 only makes his longing more acute.
Every football fan knows the feeling of wistfulness, aggravation and disorientation that comes on the weekend of the Super Bowl offweek when it sinks in there's no game to watch -- unless you count the Pro and Seniors Bowls, which no one does. Magnify that feeling by about a trillion, and you almost halfway to imagining how the Pats and Giants all feel.
Want to imagine another good test of patience? Think of answering the same question 10,000 times in a week. By and large, players don't mind the obligatory time they must spend with the media at the Super Bowl. It's something to do besides review the tapes of the Pats/Giants last six games one more time. It's nice to have the world make a fuss over you, too. But they'd like it better if the media got together and agreed to ask every question only once and shared the answers.
"The Super Bowl," observed Drew Bledsoe, not usually known for wittiness, "is a place where you get tired of your own life story."
Coaches, who deep in their hearts would prefer playing one game a year for which the practiced incessantly, are grateful for the extra time the Super Bowl makes for planning, preparing, and fretting. Players aren't, unless they're dealing with an injury as Rob Gronkowski is. They're used to having three days of practice and a week of study before a game. A few, like Brady, get more out of the extra time. Most get little or none, and there's always one or two for whom the delay creates the paralysis of analysis.
At the 14 Super Bowls I was blessed enough to cover, by the Friday before the game I couldn't wait for it to be Sunday evening. That's a writer! Believe me, all my fellow scribes felt the same way. That sentiment was one of the very rare occasions where I believe that for a microsecond or two I had some distant inkling of what it was to be like one of the people I was covering.
Well, football players are supposed to be able to take it, including tedium. The real problem comes during the Bowl itself. The first item on Bill Belichick's Super Bowl game plans is a full discussion of just how much standing around there is AFTER kickoff. Halftime is longer. The commercial breaks are much longer, and there are more of them. Rest assured every replay will take twice as long as usual. No official wants to be the zebra who makes the call to decide a Super Bowl, let alone a wrong call that does. The waiting will be enforced on 90 men whose bodies contain more natural biochemical stimulant than could be produced by all the meth labs of Fresno in a decade.
Considering how awful that waiting must be, and considering how a sport built on repetition and routine makes its championship game as singular and different as possible, I always feel there's no bigger miracle in sports than Super Bowls which are well-played and dramatic contests. It speaks well of the contemporary NFL that 21st century Bowls have so often been memorable or at least diverting ones.
I do know this. If I possessed some way of measuring the collective psyches of football teams to determine which of two rivals was the group that was least easily bored, I'd never ever lose a bet on the Super Bowl.
When A Protest Falls Somewhere Besides the Rose Garden, Does It Make a Sound? No.
Tim Thomas has a lot to answer for. Anyone who gives sports commentators an excuse to talk politics has committed a grave disservice to humanity.
There are two normal reactions to Thomas' decision to skip the White House ceremony honoring the Bruins for their 2011 Stanley Cup triumph because the goalie is EXTREMELY unhappy with the policies of President Barack Obama, and I had them both and in the proper order, that being a) who cares? and b) that's his business isn't it?. We got rights in this country, even Vezina Trophy winners.
It was sort of refreshing that the third Boston jock in history to skip a White House team ceremony had semi-coherent political motives for doing so. When Larry Bird stood up Ronald Reagan in 1984, a bad hangover was almost surely the reason. When Manny Ramirez stood up George W. Bush in 2008, well, your guess is as good as mine.
Then I had a third reaction, a mild bit of wistful sadness on behalf of Thomas himself. The Bruins' goalie was the only person affected in the slightest by his gesture of protest, and while it doubtless made him feel good and full of righteous satisfaction last Monday, in time he may come to see that day as the missed opportunity it was.
I assure you Barack Obama doesn't care that Thomas stood him up. Pols are very used to snubs, and millionaire professional athletes are not the demographic David Axelrod is counting on to sweep Obama into a second term come November. If Obama's a hockey fan, he's hiding it well. I don't think we've ever had a real hockey fan as President. Coolidge, perhaps?
Nor will those celebrating Thomas as a principled hero do so for very long. It is the nature of the overly political person that there's a new hero/outrage every day. Should Thomas let in three goals in a period next Tuesday against Ottawa, public opinion will not be concerned with his views on society.
All that will be left is that Thomas's teammates will have the memory of a pleasant ceremony where the President of the United States made a minor fuss over them while they had their picture taken, and he will not. And it's all due to a terrible if terribly common misunderstanding.
Like most of his fellow citizens, Thomas does not grasp that the President of the United States, any President, has two different and separate jobs in our political system. One, the big one, is the elected political leader of the executive branch of the U.S. government. THAT'S the Barack Obama Thomas is mad at.
The other Presidential job, less important but no less real, is our ceremonial Head of State, the individual who presides over rituals deemed important by our political system and society. Things like visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day, or hosting the President of Horribledumpistan at state dinners or having little White House moments for Americans who have done a thing.
Some President long before Obama (Carter is the first one I remember, honoring the 1980 Olympic hockey team) decided that having champion sports teams at the White House would be one of those rituals. Like all damn fool political decisions, once it became a tradition, this ritual became impossible to get rid of, and I'm sure other Presidents have wished they could. They're kind of busy.
The point that escaped Thomas is that the ritual ceremonial Head of State President is not political in any sense of the word. He's a purely totemic figure created to satisfy demands of, uh, national etiquette is as good as a phrase as any. Protesting a President by avoiding one of those ceremonies, which has been done by noted figures whose politics lean both right and left, is protesting a person who in a sense is not in the room at the time of said event. It's a gesture without a target, let alone an audience.
All Thomas missed was an occasion where America, in the person of its elected-for-now ceremonial Head of State, expressed the opinion that it admires sports champions, and that he, Tim Thomas, was one. Plus there might have been lunch or at least snacks.
And as time passes, if he and his descendants aren't too busy polishing their sniper rifles and gold bars and cooking canned foods at the Thomas Family Compound near the Montana-Alberta border, Thomas might come to regret passing up that token of his accomplishments.
Lots of Big Hits Needed a Script Doctor
If some focus group of groundlings had convinced Shakespeare the play needed a happy ending, "King Lear" would still have been a memorable drama. But it wouldn't be "King Lear."
If Bruce Springsteen gave a concert without multiple encores, it'd still be a great concert. But the audience would leave the building feeling more than a bit let down.
That's sort of how I feel about yesterday's AFC and NFC championship games. As football art goes, they offered their audiences all the catharsis one could want -- until their final scenes.
The Patriots beat the Ravens on a missed short field goal. The Giants beat the 49ers when they recovered a fumbled punt return. Those are the most and second-most anticlimactic ways thrilling football games CAN end. And I think only the most devout partisan fans of the two winners aren't at least a little downcast about the conclusions of two episodes of magnificently tense and melodramatic football, the very best the sport has to offer as a spectator experience.
Big plays of course, aren't necessarily good plays. The word big is value-neutral. But one (this one anyway) likes to see a close game determined by an action of the winners, not by a miscue on the part of the losers. It lessens the contest's value, including its historical value.
Super Bowl XXV was an outstanding game. But a game whose defining moment was a field goal missed is always going to be less celebrated in pro football lore and legend than a game defined by a field goal made -- such as Super Bowl XXXVI.
It's not that the endings of the two games are any aspersion on the winning teams. By definition, one-play games are games in which both teams turned in an effort worthy of a victory. But as a matter of aesthetics and out of pure human sympathy, I want a one-play game decided by a play that makes me cheer, not wince.
The AFC Championship Game in a Quote From Years Ago
"Every time you line up for a field goal in the second half, you're closer to losing the game" -- Steve Young in his playing days.
Morning-Day-Night Tripleheaders Are Tough at My Age
Hitting a bar to watch a big game with a bunch of diehard fans is an odd experience to check off the to-do list by 10 a.m., but I managed, after watching Tottenham Hotspur lose in extra time to Manchester City at the Kinsale by Government Center with the Spurs' Boston fan club. Any group which contains members who're having Buffalo wings at 9 a.m. is worth knowing.
So I need to regroup before the NFL comes on, and that will make my predictions briefer if not necessarily more accurate than is customary.
I never expect the Patriots to lose, and today is no exception. New England has more ability to win the muckers' game the Ravens want to play than Baltimore has to win the firehouse fast break game the Pats want to see. It's POSSIBLE Joe Flacco could hit two or three bombs for scores and upset that equation, but it's possible in the same sense Rick Santorum could have a major turnaround in Florida. Both are, as yet, purely theoretical possibilities unsupported by laboratory observations.
The NFC game is altogether more interesting, or rather, the forecasting I've sampled about the game is more interesting. It's as if nobody saw the 49ers-Saints game, or even knows its final score.
If I've heard one commentator babble on about the 49ers tough defense, I've heard a thousand. They're getting credit for a win they damn near turned into a loss all by themselves. Generating four turnovers is great, but it's not as great as allowing two 50-yard plus touchdown passes to lose leads in the fourth quarter is awful.
It is my belief, partially confirmed by observation, that road playoff victories are a significant indicator of success in subsequent playoff games. The Giants are the only team left, in fact the only team period, that's won a road playoff game this season. I don't see why they won't win another one, unless they too turn it over five times.
Oh, boy, a Patriots-Giants Super Bowl rematch. As far as Pats fans are concerned, that'd have to be the most annoying possible two weeks of Super hype.
Revis-No, Make That Delusionist History
Deion Branch is has had a long and solid career as a step-above-competent NFL wide receiver. He's a swell fellow to boot. But as a propagandist, Branch is a dismal flop. He hasn't learned the important rule that to be convincing, falsehoods must contain an element of truth, about as much as the vermouth in a proper Martini.
Branch's comment this past week that the Patriots "have been underdogs all year" was straight bathtub gin, pure moonshine in both senses of the word. We all know athletes enjoy the feeling of being scorned and persecuted by a hostile world almost as much as Newt Gingrich does, but really, there's a limit. A member of the most successful pro football team of the 21st century saying they're underdogs is about a light year past said limit.
Let's recap the facts of public, especially sports commentariat, opinion about the Pats this season for Branch and that odd subset of fans (all teams have one) that gets off on feeling put upon. In the preseason, the Patriots were team most favored to be the AFC representative in the Super Bowl, narrowly leading the Steelers and, let's not let anyone forget the commentariat has its problems too, the Jets and Chargers. There was no one, not even Rex Ryan, who didn't pick New England to at least make the playoffs.
Last but not least, for tomorrow's game against the Ravens, the one Branch was talking about, Las Vegas, which works strictly on math, not emotion, has made the Pats seven point favorites. That's an awful lot of points for a disrespected underdog to be giving its presumably better regarded foe.
It is true that when the Pats' defense had its problems this season, many commentators and fans said those problems might cause the team to be less successful than they'd previously thought. It's extremely unlikely New England players only heard that criticism from the outside world. I'm willing to bet that opinion was a prominent feature of Bill Belichick's remarks in the locker room throughout November and December.
That's a far cry from dismissing the Pats' Super Bowl chances altogether, which nobody did except on those days when radio talk shows felt the calls weren't coming in fast enough. One wishes players and the public would learn to discriminate between honest opinion and obvious emotion manipulation.
Branch, of course, was trying to manipulate himself, and almost surely failing. He's too sharp not to know the Patriots were overdogs all season long, just as they've been for the past decade. They are among the overest overdogs in the history of the National Football League. But for reasons of policy, they refuse to admit the obvious.
Some of the greatest teams in sports history, like the Larry Bird Celtics if one wants a local example, reveled in their identity as overdogs and made that image work for them to help them win. Remember Derek Jeter telling Aaron Boone to trust the ghosts? That's overdogism doing its thing.
The Pats will never acknowledge being favorites. Belichick won't permit it. Deep down, the Pats' coach believes, and I'm not saying he's wrong, that pro football is such a difficult endeavor that it's fundamentally surprising when any team wins a game, let alone his own.
But not even Belichick was willing to shatter reality the way Branch did. Indeed, I believe that as much as is constitutionally able, the coach took the opposite tack.
On Friday, after accurately noting that the Ravens are a tough opponent, Belichick expressed satisfaction with the Pats' practices and readiness for the game.
That's as close as close as Bill Belichick can or will ever get to saying "We got this."
Decisions That Don't Work Are Not Always Bad Decisions -- Got That, Ed?!
The oddest thing about Ed Reed's criticism of Joe Flacco is how inaccurate it was. Why it makes you think Hall of Fame defensive backs have some innate prejudice against quarterbacks, even their own.
As has been recounted quite a bit in Boston media this week, Reed said that Ravens QB Flacco got "rattled" in Baltimore's 20-13 playoff victory against the Texans. This was a mystifying choice of words. No one would use the word "stellar" to describe Flacco's play in that game, but "rattled" is le mot injuste.
Flacco spent almost the entire game unable to move the Baltimore offense more than about 12 yards a possession. He was sacked early and often, threw some incompletions lucky to hit the field turf and generated about a half's worth of three and outs. It took a modest fourth quarter rally by Flacco to allow him to finish with more passing yards than Tim Tebow had against the Patriots.
Still, Flacco's stone mediocre passing line of 14 for 27 good for 176 yards also contains two touchdown passes. Flacco neither fumbled nor threw an interception. For that matter, the Ravens had no turnovers and not a single penalty. No false starts, no holding, etc.
Those are not "rattled" numbers. Offenses led by "rattled" quarterbacks don't have penalty-free games. Flacco had the numbers of a competent quarterback facing a superior defense playing close or at its capabilities and making the best of that bad situation. Flacco did an excellent job of choosing the least worst option available on passing plays. Sacks are about 100 times less damaging to an offense than interceptions. Three and outs are about the same. They hurt, but they're flesh wounds compared to turnovers -- as the Texans themselves proved beyond reasonable doubt.
I think what Reed meant to say was that the Texans gave Flacco an unpleasant afternoon, and that he hoped his quarterback knows that 176 yards in the air isn't going to get it done in New England this Sunday. And that's when the fact that deep down Ed Reed hates all quarterbacks took control.
I wonder what Reed used to say about Kyle Boller?
