Tag Archives: Super Bowl

About the upcoming Super Bowl…

New England Patriots?  I suppose that isn’t too much of a surprise yet one has to give credit -to a point!- to the Jacksonville Jaguars for giving them such a hard game and, for a while anyway, making it look like the Cinderella underdogs might just unseat the proverbial king of the mountain.

The Philadelphia Eagles, the team that will face New England, sure looked unstoppable with the suddenly surging backup QB Nick Foles.

Weird year and New England, though certainly a favorite, may get quite the game from the Eagles, provided Mr. Foles continues what he’s doing.

So…anything big happened this past weekend?

You know, I’ve been away these past three days and it feels like I’ve missed just about everything that happened this busy weekend.

What, you say Saturday Night Live had a Trump related skit that was hilarious but didn’t feature Alec Baldwin as President Trump?!  Come on, man, that’s not possi–

Oh my.  That is hilarious.  So funny that I’m sure if there was an Alec Baldwin President Trump skit, it must not have been that goo–

I stand corrected.  Keep it up guys and gals.

******

On Sunday we had this little sport event over here on our side of the pond (and within the borders of our country) which we call the Super Bowl.  It featured the surprising Atlanta Falcons, whom pretty much everyone hoped would win, against the (boo!  hiss!) New England Patriots.

I’ve mentioned it before but when I was young, I didn’t really care to watch sports.  It was really boring to me.  Sometime shortly after starting my first year in a University, I slowly began to appreciate sports.  Eventually, I became a sports fanatic, though my interests are most certainly local.

I’ve mentioned before how I saw, on TV, almost every single game played by the then Florida Marlins (They’re now called the Miami Marlins) back in 1997 for what turned out to be their first Championship series.  There was no way going into the season to think they’d make it to the playoffs, much less with the Championship, yet they did and I’ll be damned if I missed even five games of that season, so devoted was I to watching.

By that point, however, I watched the Florida Panthers, I watched the Miami Heat.  And of course I watched the Miami Dolphins, my gateway drug team.

You would think after such a magical year of viewership, culminating in “my” team getting the ultimate prize, I’d become a full-fledged MEGA-fan.

This was not to be.

While I had great fun watching “my” team through that year, after the glow of the ultimate win faded away, I thought back to all those hours I spent watching the games and realized how incredibly lucky I was to see a season end this year…and how very, very, very unlikely it was I’d have that chance again.

I also did the math and realized I had spent and awful lot of hours watching sports when I could have been doing something else.

You know, like writing.

So I dialed it all back.  Waaaaaay back.

I still like catching a game here and there, though I’ve for the most part given up completely on Hockey and Baseball.  Yeah, I may be a “fair weather” fan, I suppose, as both our Hockey and Baseball teams have seen better days.  I barely catch Miami Heat games nowadays and, again, that could be a sign of my fair weather nature.

Yet I do catch the Miami Dolphin games and, of all sports, Football seems to be the one I stick with the most.

Part of the reason is that it doesn’t require quite as big a time investment as the other sports.  A Football season lasts 17 weeks and each team plays 16 games (each team has a 1 week “bye”).  In theory and if you make it to the playoffs, you may have another 2-3 games to play before its all over, depending on your rankings going into the post season.

Getting back to this Super Bowl, it featured the greatest comeback by a “down” team to win.  Of course, that team was the (boo! hiss!) New England Patriots and this article by Drew Magary pretty much explains why…

No One Is Happy For The Patriots

It encapsulates my feelings as well.  You can be a good team, hell, you can be the BEST team ever with the best Quarterback ever and the best Coach ever, and still be reviled for what’s been found out about you.  Specifically, your history of cheating.  Or, to be more clear, of being caught cheating.

Still, since I’ve become less of a sports fanatic than before (trust me, it is true), I’ve come to the realization that there’s no reason to get so damn emotionally invested in these games.

Sure, I’d love my Dolphins to rise up from the pit they’ve been in for far too many years and finally return to the glory they once possessed, but let’s face it: The Dolphins, and indeed every team in the NFL, is part of a business organization that looks out for their bottom line.  They all have high paid athletes whose emotional investment in the games they play is far above and beyond any fans’ investment as they are, you know, actually playing the games.

Further, sports is one of the most cut-throat goal oriented businesses out there.  You’re either good or not and the proof is spelled out by the score at the end of the game and your record at the end of the season.

The Patriots are good.  My Dolphins, not so much (though after this past year, there’s some hope!).

Though there is no love for the Patriots in me, I caught this article over at Huffington Post and even those most repulsed-by-the-Patriots, those who think Tom Brady should take a long walk on the proverbial short pier, should read this:

Tom Brady’s Mom Has Been Quietly Undergoing Chemo Therapy This Entire Season

I don’t know about you, but if there’s one pleasant thing to glean from the Patriots’ latest Super Bowl win is the thought that it gave Galynn Brady, Tom Brady’s mother, a reason to smile.

Even the most cold-hearted anti-Patriot fan should take a look at this photograph and recognize that it, if nothing else, is reason to be, if not happy for the Patriots, at least feel happy for Galynn.

My best wishes to you.