Now about that football game…It’s disingenuous for the Dolphins to cry “foul” after being beaten up by the Pats. Please. Is or is not Miami’s defense paid to stop their opponents from scoring? This past Sunday the ‘Phins failed miserably. What’s worse is that they can’t face the fact that they have no one to blame but themselves. It’s shameful behavior for a group of fifty or so grown men.

All those piling on The Patriots for “running up the score” on the Dolphins omit some essential truths. NE’s vaunted defense was god-awful too. Unable to wrap up for the second straight week the Pats allowed over 400 total yards and three offensive touchdowns. When Belichick put Brady back in after Taylor returned an INT for a touchdown, Miami had just scored 14 points in 65 seconds. NE has a long history of failure in Miami including such upsets as last year’s 21-0 drubbing and the 29-28 loss during their last Superbowl season of 2004. Plus I know it’s way down on the list but Total Net Points Scored remains an NFL Playoff Tiebreaker. Clearly Belichick isn’t taking any chances this year.

That’s what he is paid to do.

AF

Now the Packers… that’s a small town team. I trick or treated at their houses as a kid. Most of my family owns some stock in them, and my kids will inherit my parents’ season tickets someday. The Packers don’t win every game (ha!) of course, but not because they lack sufficient “goodness.” Rather, they’re an actual team with actual people. Teams win. Teams lose.

I wonder what’ll happen when the Colts, as all teams do, start to decline? Will Gregg tut tut them for succombing to the “dark side?” I guess by Gregg’s shallow moral calculus, we can all be angels if we wait around a few years.

Besides, all my Pat fan friends tell me the only evil athletes are those…those TRAITORS Johnny Damon and Roger Clemens.

Seriously?

Not to put too fine a point on it, given that I agree with you about Easterbrook, the man who is given the opportunity to be wrong about more different subjects in more different specialist publications than anyone else in America today (once upon a time, it was considered amazing that Jerry Pournelle could be given a platform to be always wrong about one subject on which he knew nothing — namely, computers — in a specialist publication, Byte; but Easterbrook? I figure that, at the rate he is going, he will soon be allowed to write a column for Immunology Today where he will deny that HIV causes AIDS and wibble on about how garlic prevents Demonic Humours), but the obvious example of a genuinely nice guy coach who has won a championship is listed in this very article: Tony Dungy.

His involvement with those homophobic “Family Values” creeps in Indiana is a stain on his record, to be sure, but I’ve still never heard anyone who knew him or worked with him describe Tony Dungy as anything but a nice guy. Heck, until he finally did win The Big One, the reason “everyone” gave why he hadn’t done so yet was that he was too nice.

That said, the fact that there exists at least one Nice Guy coach doesn’t invalidate your larger point that the list of championship coaches who are or were arrogant or assholes (or both) is a pretty fucking huge one.

As for me, I like both the Colts and the Patriots, because I like competence; seeing teams perform at the very highest level is always thrilling, with the obvious exception of those times when they are dismantling my favorite teams. And, if anything, I’ve found the Pats to be nowhere near as arrogant as they could be. Hell, these guys could act like the Tom Landry-era Dallas Cowboys if they wanted to turn their current team personality up to eleven; they’ve got all the elements in place, even with a head coach who looks eerily like Robert Klein.

Why? Because he’s beamed relentlessly into my subconscious every week by marketers. Because before, when he’d lose, he’d go out of his way to blame his WR for taking the wrong route (usually on TV while making the face), the refs for not calling bumps at the line and just about anything else that wouldn’t involve him taking any measure of responsibility (Ty Law owned the motherfucker). Because he couldn’t beat Florida. He was in all ways ARod, the supremely gifted athlete, one of the best of all time, who couldn’t win the big one.

It’s a better story. Now it’s just a Russell – Chamberlin scenario where one guy will have to pile up championships just to show that the other guy (despite seeming ‘better’ and having won some championships) is just a little less of a team guy and a little more of a loser.

Peyton likes his numbers. Peyton LOVES to win. And as sweet and funny as he might seem in interviews and commercials, Peyton is a killer. He’s out there to humiliate the other guy just as much as Brady is.

If Marvin Harrison could have been cloned, or if he just had a player as skilled and in tune as MH I truly believe that Brady would’ve smoked out Peyton in the stats, and won one additional Super Bowl.

Brady is just unbelievable.

but easterbrook was right in one column about vick pointing out that our factory farmed meat is produced under circumstances just as cruel as those inflicted on dogs by vick. but we only love dogs in this highly hypocritical country. fuck any other animal.