To Watch Or Not To Watch...

A week from today I have a very important life decision to make. Do I miss the “Big Game” for the first time in my entire life because it features two teams that I do NOT want to win, or do I watch it anyway, simply for the cultural significance? (Note: By “Big Game” I actually mean “Super Bowl,” but I’ve noticed that apparently nobody is legally allowed to refer to it as the Super Bowl except for the NFL, so every advertiser, radio station, supermarket, and car wash refers to it as the “Big Game,” so as not to risk the wrath of Roger Goodell and his legal hounds of hell. Of course, I already mentioned the phrase “Super Bowl” twice in the last sentence, so I guess the cat’s out of the bag and I’ll keep on referring to it that way for the rest of this blog post, despite the fact that my arrest is now imminent.)

There have been occasions when I have rooted for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the past, but those days are long gone. At this point I have grown sick of him and his winning ways, and his smug smile, and his Hollywood good looks, and his avocado ice cream. Fine, I’ll admit that he’s the GOAT, but I want that GOAT sacrificed already! I have no interest in seeing him and his merry band of Patriots win yet another Super Bowl.

Then there’s their opponent, the Philadelphia Eagles, who at first glance might seem like the obvious choice to root for, as they are big underdogs with their backup quarterback, Nick Foles, having to make the start for the injured Carson Wentz. But here’s the problem—I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan and thus the sworn enemy of the Philadelphia Eagles and the other teams in the NFC East Division that do not have a star on their helmets. I have been conditioned since birth to despise the Eagles with every fiber of my being, and at times have even borrowed fibers from other people’s beings so I can hate them some more. There is simply no way I can root for them to win.

Yet watching the Super Bowl is a tradition for me and the idea of completely missing it for the first time feels just plain wrong.  So what am I to do? Do I just watch the commercials and turn it off during the actual game? Do I slide in a video of Super Bowl XXX, when the Cowboys gloriously beat the Steelers 27-17 and watch that instead? Do I watch the game anyway, despite despising both teams, and root for the Goodyear Blimp to crash onto the field and end the game early? Or do I just watch a Three Stooges marathon instead, so I get to see an entirely different brand of violence for four straight hours?

These are the options I will be pondering for the next seven days. In the meantime, I’ll start stocking up on junk food just to play it safe.

51 Musings About Super Bowl LI

Now that the Super Bowl is yesterday’s news, here are a few musings from one of the more than 100,000,000 viewers. Well, more than a few musings—51 to be exact…

1. Former President George H.W. Bush sure likes to smile. Honestly, if I could open my eyes, let alone smile at age 92, I’d be satisfied.

2. Coins are really a relic of the past. I think they should flip a debit card from now on.

3. Before the game started I noticed that Matt Ryan had a big red mark on his forehead, presumably from his helmet. He might want to talk to the equipment manager about getting better padding on the helmet, or to the trainer about getting a cream he could rub on his head, because it looks unsightly.

4. Note to FOX: Considering the costume Scarlett Johansson wears in the movie Ghost in the Shell essentially makes her look naked, you might want to consider putting that trailer on at the END of the Super Bowl after kids have gone to bed, as opposed to at the very beginning, when their young little minds are attentive and ready for warping.

5. The Falcons running backs are FAST! Or at least they are for about two-and-a-half quarters.

6. Tom Brady has very impressive teeth.

7. I very much enjoyed watching Tom Brady get sacked repeatedly.

8. I like the fact that Arthur Blank, who gives off the vibe of being a sweet older gentleman, dresses up like a 1920s gangster.

9. Two pizzas, three family-sized bags of potato chips, a bag of tortilla chips, a jar of salsa, a relish tray, 20 cocktail shrimp, six chocolate cream puffs and a box of chocolate-covered pretzels is overkill for a family of four.

10. My favorite commercial was the talking celebrity yearbook photos, but if you told me before the game I would really enjoy a commercial with talking celebrity yearbook photos, I would have thought you belonged in a loony bin.

11. Robert Alford seemed so casual by the end of his 82-yard interception return, I thought he was going to lie down at the one yard line and take a quick nap before going into the end zone.

12. No matter the game situation, Bill Belichick always looks like he has gas pains.

13. The way he’s able to keep his toes inbounds on every ridiculously difficult sideline catch, I think Julio Jones may have a career in ballet when he’s done with this whole football thing.

14.  I think Rob Gronkowski and Stephen Gostkowski should open up a law firm together. I’d call every day just to see how the receptionist answers the phone.

15. When Julian Edelman kept on not quite getting to those passes in the first half I wondered if his giant bushy beard was slowing him down.

16. My 7-year-old son is a bit of a frontrunner. Before the game started he said he was going to root for the Patriots. When it became 21 – 0 he said, “I’m going to start rooting for the Falcons now.” That didn’t turn out so well for him.

17. I’m torn between finding that whole Terry Bradshaw shirt stain gimmick incredibly amusing or incredibly annoying.

18. It turns out that if you shut off your television at halftime, you mercifully don’t have to sit through Lady Gaga’s show.

19. My favorite moment of the game by far was seeing Dwight Freeney and Martellus Bennett’s helmets stuck together like two reindeer locking antlers.

20. At the point at which the score was 28 – 3 in the third quarter, and the outcome seemed like a foregone conclusion, I briefly considered turning off the game and watching Netflix instead, but then I thought it would be fun seeing the Falcons’ reaction to their first ever Super Bowl win, so I kept it on.

21. I wish I’d turned off the game when it was 28 – 3 in the third quarter and watched Netflix instead.

22. I don’t know much about Falcons coach, Dan Quinn, but he sure looks like he would be fun at parties. I might invite him to this year’s seder.

23. At the point at which Stephen Gostkowski booted the extra point off the upright to keep the score at 28 – 9 instead of 28 – 10, I thought, “Ha, ha! They can’t do anything right, today!”

24. The five-second The Walking Dead ad showing Negan’s barbed wire bat thudding to the ground got me more pumped up than any play in the entire game.

25. Speaking of The Walking Dead, it seems appropriate that that show is filmed in Atlanta, because I’m sure the day after the Super Bowl most of its residents were walking around like zombies.

26. I’m pretty sure the catch Julian Edelman made with the ball bobbling around one inch off the ground was all CGI. I mean that’s not possible, is it?

27. It wasn’t until the score became 28 – 20 that I suddenly said, “Oh crap.”

28. It’s always nice seeing Jon Lovitz, even if it is only subliminally.

29. We had salsa, but I really wish we had guacamole.

30. As the Patriots methodically made their comeback it suddenly occurred to me that spotting the Falcons 25 points to give them a false sense of security might actually have been Belichick’s game plan.

31. The deer-in-the-headlights expression on Tom Brady’s face in the first half, gradually switched over to Matt Ryan’s face in the second half. Someone should do a cool time-lapse photography series to document this.

32. I’m generally into sci-fi and horror TV shows, but the ad for this new series Legion that showed the baby with the freaky blue glowing eyes did not appeal to me—it just gave me the heebie-jeebies.

33. The way that Tevin Coleman was laying on the ground after he injured his ankle, I thought they were going to have to put a chalk outline around the poor man.

34. If you had told me before the game that James White would score three touchdowns, a two-point conversion, get 139 total yards and set the Super Bowl record for receptions with 14, I would likely have said, “Which team does he play for?”

35. At some point either Troy Aikman or Joe Buck (I couldn’t tell which) tried to make a lame joke about the Falcons epic collapse by saying “Houston, we have a problem.” I almost got the sense that some “clever” producer handed him that line because of the half-hearted way in which he mumbled it.

36. When Danny Amendola scored the two-point conversion to tie the game at 28 with 57 seconds left in the game, I knew there was no way in hell the Falcons were going to win at that point.

37. Despite the agony of watching Amendola make that conversion, I have to admit I like saying, “Amendola.” Sort of rolls right off the tongue.

38. When the Falcons got the ball back with less than a minute to go, I suddenly wished it was the Packers in this situation, because you know Aaron Rodgers would have hauled off a 60-yard Hail Mary to win the game as time expired.

39. I thought it was interesting that for the overtime coin toss three Patriots came out, but only Matt Ryan came out for the Falcons. Were the rest of his teammates weeping on the sidelines?

40. And when the Falcons lost the toss, I really think Ryan should have asked the ref if they could do best two out of three.

41. Watching Tom Brady operate in overtime was like watching a skilled neurosurgeon slice into a brain—completely nauseating.

42. By the end of the game Brady had thrown the ball a record 62 times! To put that in perspective, in Super Bowl VII in 1974, Bob Griese threw the ball a grand total of 7 times in his Dolphins 24 – 7 win over the Vikings. Oh how times have changed.

43. Chris Myers’ feeble attempt at getting an interview with Brady in the crush of reporters right after the game made me realize he would not be very good in a mosh pit.

44. I noticed during the celebration that the confetti was shaped Lombardi Trophy. Must have taken somebody a long time to cut all of those out.

45. As they showed the Falcons players walking off the field, it occurred to me that their team doctor better place an order for several metric tons of Prozac.

46. Scrolling through Twitter I noticed lots of people calling Brady a GOAT, which made no sense to me until the next morning when I suddenly realized this was an acronym for Greatest Of All Time.

47. And after his performance, Brady may indeed be the GOAT. In fact, I’d argue that they should just put him in the Hall of Fame right now and waive the whole wait for five years after your retirement routine.

48. My 10-year-old son was mortified by all the communicable disease possibilities presented by all those guys kissing the same trophy.

49. Did anyone else notice how Roger Goodell practically sprinted off the stage the moment he handed Robert Craft the Super Bowl trophy? Guess the comish wasn’t invited to the Pat’s after party.

50. Speaking of after parties I’d be curious to see how Bill Belichick is at one of those. Does he sit in a corner taking notes the whole time or does he drop his pants and dance on the bar like no one’s watching?

51. Early prediction for Super Bowl LII: Cleveland Browns 6, Chicago Bears 3.

Have I Accidentally Become an Arizona Cardinals Fan?

I have been a fan of the Dallas Cowboys since birth. Indeed, I think my first words were “Tom” and “Landry” in that order. Growing up in New York in the 1970s, being a Dallas Cowboys fan was not that uncommon. They were known as “America’s Team” and went to five Super Bowls during that decade, winning two of them. In fact, in those ten years they amassed more regular season wins than any other team – 105. By contrast the two New York teams—the Giants and the Jets—combined for 103 wins during the same span. So it’s easy to see how a young, impressionable lad, just learning about football, would cast off the hometown teams in favor of a more winning prospect. The “America’s Team” tag even let you rationalize that you really were rooting for the home team—just one that was national in scope.

The 1980s were not as kind to Cowboys fans. They saw their team have a few good seasons early in the decade, but never make it to a Super Bowl. Then, in 1989, the unthinkable happened—a 1-15 season. America’s Team had hit rock bottom. While I was still loyal to my team, I was also disgusted. I was in my junior year of college, so I stopped paying so much attention to football and turned my attention to what was really important to me at the time—rock music and beer.

Somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, the Cowboys got good again. They were dominant in the mid-90s and it was in the midst of their dominance that I moved from New York to Arizona. (My move had nothing to do with the Dallas Cowboys’ dominance, so hopefully you didn’t accidentally infer that from the preceding sentence. If so, I apologize for any confusion or mental distress this may have caused.)

I moved to Arizona in July of 1995, and on Christmas night of that year I had a “bucket list” type of experience. I got to go to a Monday Night Football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Arizona Cardinals. It was the last game of the regular season and not only did I get to see the Cowboys win 37 – 13, but I also got to see Emmitt Smith break the record for rushing touchdowns in a single season, when he scored his 25^th of the year in the fourth quarter. (FYI- his record has since been broken.)

That night was a Cowboys fan’s dream. And I was certainly not the only Cowboys fan who got to experience that live at Sun Devil Stadium. I would estimate that Cowboys fans outnumbered Cardinals fans on a scale of 8 to 1 at that game. My section was particularly blue. In fact there was only one (not exaggerating) person in the entire section wearing Cardinals red. He was sitting about ten rows in front of me and after the Cowboys scored their first touchdown and the crowd erupted, he turned around and looked at the sea of blue behind him and sadly shook his head like a little boy who lost his puppy. It wasn’t a Cowboys home game, but it sure felt that way.

About a month later the Cowboys were back at Sun Devil Stadium where they won their third Super Bowl in a span of four years. That 27 – 17 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers was the last great moment for the Cowboys, with lots of mediocrity and occasional okay-ness ever since.

***

When I first moved to Arizona, I hated the Cardinals. I didn’t hate them as much as I hated the Giants, Redskins, Eagles, Steelers, or 49ers, but I hated them nonetheless. This irrational animosity was borne of the fact that at that time, in 1995, the Cardinals and the Cowboys were in the same division, and diehard football fans are conditioned to hate their team’s division rivals. (Side note: Whenever I say I hate a particular sports team, my eight-year-old son says, “Dad, you shouldn’t hate them. They’re just doing their job.” Rational little bugger.)

Then, in 2002, the NFL realigned the league and the Cardinals and the Cowboys were no longer in the same division. I didn’t have a specific reason to hate the Cardinals anymore, but I still did so out of habit. Mostly I just ignored them, though, since they were just as irrelevant as the Cowboys during that timeframe.

Four years later a sequence of events began that would cause my fan loyalties to evolve in unexpected and unsettling ways. Late in 2006 my wife and I became parents. While the arrival of a child is a major life change, it brings with it a thousand different smaller life changes. One seemingly innocuous, but ultimately crucial, thing that changed was how I occupied my time during my daily commute.

For several years prior to the birth of our son, my wife and I carpooled to work every day. While driving we would either talk or listen to music on the radio. But a few months after our son was born, my wife and I figured out a way to work it out so she could be a stay-at-home mom and I was now driving to work alone. This meant: 1) I could no longer use the carpool lane, which practically drove me to tears as I watched the carpoolers whizzing past in the diamond lane while I sat in gridlock traffic; and 2) I could listen to whatever ever I wanted to on the radio.

After years of listening to the same two or three music stations, I started to turn the dial. I still listened to music, but sometimes I would listen to NPR instead. Soon enough, I started to prefer listening to talk radio instead of music in the mornings. Then one day NPR had a pledge drive. As those of you who listen to NPR know, their pledge drives, while well-intentioned, are about as exciting as listening to paint dry. And listening to paint dry is infinitely less exciting than watching paint dry. So I started to turn the dial again and I soon stumbled upon a sports show called the Doug & Wolf show.

Up until that moment I had never listened to sports radio. Even though I am an avid sports fan, I always wrote off sports radio as nothing more than mindless jocks shilling for the hometown teams. But somehow the gravelly voice of Ron Wolfley (a former Pro Bowl fullback for the Cardinals) quickly wormed its way into my consciousness and I couldn’t seem to turn the dial. The banter seemed more intelligent than I would have expected and they were talking about a topic I enjoyed, so I kept on listening. The only problem was 90% of their chatter was about Arizona sports teams, which I didn’t have a specific interest in at the time.

Once I stumbled across Doug & Wolf I began to listen to them occasionally, when I had my fill of NPR in the morning. During football season I would chuckle to myself while they talked about the woes of the Cardinals and hope they would mention the Cowboys, which they would from time to time. Then, in 2008, the Cardinals got good enough to win their division and shockingly, win all their playoff games to make it to the Super Bowl. I started to listen to Doug & Wolf much more frequently during that season and soon knew way more about the Cardinals than I did about the Cowboys. When the Cardinals made it to the Super Bowl I didn’t know how to feel or who to root for. I intrinsically hated them, but they were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers who I intrinsically hated even more. So I ended up rooting for the Cardinals, and was genuinely upset when the Steelers took the lead and won in the final minute of the game.

With that Super Bowl I let my hatred for the Cardinals fade away. I found it easier than I imagined to root for them, especially with the exceedingly likeable Larry Fitzgerald and Kurt Warner leading the way. I was still a Cowboys fan first and foremost, but I didn’t mind if the Cardinals did well. And I started listening to Doug & Wolf more regularly and learned more and more about the hometown football team.

In the meantime, the Cowboys have been mediocrity personified. Prior to this year they went 8 – 8 for three straight seasons and bungled their chances to make the playoffs in the final game of the season each of those years. I’ve still rooted for them, but they certainly haven’t made it easy or particularly fun. That is until this year.

This year has seriously tested my loyalties. Both the Cowboys and Cardinals have been very good and in Week 9, they faced off. My son asked me who I was rooting for and I said the Cowboys, but as I watched the game I wasn’t even sure myself. Instead of cheering for either team, I found myself staring at the screen blankly, feeling lost and confused. Who did I really want to win? It was tough to say. But at the end of the game I found myself both upset that the Cowboys lost and pleased that the Cardinals won. That sort of made my head hurt.

A few days later my friend Mike contacted me and said he had an extra ticket to the Cardinals – Rams game if I wanted to go with him. I gladly took him up on it. So last Sunday I found myself at the first regular season football game I’ve been to since Christmas Night 1995. And things had changed a bit over the course of 19 years. No longer were Cardinals fans in the minority. Indeed, the place was a sea of red. Every time the Cardinals scored, the place exploded, and I was right in the thick of it, screaming myself hoarse by the end of the game.

As we left the stadium, with the Cardinals victorious and in possession of the best record in football, I felt something that I hadn’t felt for a football team in a very long time—proud. And then I suddenly got scared, because I realized I may have become an Arizona Cardinals fan when I wasn’t looking. Sorry, Tom Landry.