"it's just hard for me to fathom anyone would do anything like that"

nb: i have no idea what this photo is about but it is the 2nd result for "cheaters" and it is awesome. it is attached to a page entitled "Intermediate Biomolecular / BioProcess Engineering (ChE 438)".

so this belichick taping scandal is still going on. now we don't just have former assistant coaches being mysterious and ultimately really sketchy and limelight-grabbing and all "look at me, i'm russell crowe in the insider and belichick is the tobacco company" about it. players are joining in too! mostly this article is a rehash of what has occurred: i still love the claim that belichick just misunderstood the rules, which is up there with roger clemens "i thought it was a ball i was throwing at piazza, not a splintered bat" excuse.

the article is interesting, though, in that it is quite a study in faffing the fuck about. on one side, you've got the john maras and the bill polians talking about how it's time to move on and everything was solved satisfactorily. on the other side, you have the coaches who were running the increasingly-lengthy list of video-taped teams out-and-out stating that this is really alarming and gross behavior, and that they don't want the image going out to the public that all coaches are stealing signals to this extent. both sides are dragging this out like man with a pay-by-pop prostitute. mike martz, coach of the ill-fated rams' super bowl team in 2002, put it best when some mentally-disabled reporter asked the insulting "they probably would've beaten your team anyway so why do you care?" question:

“For somebody to say that, it’s kind of disgusting,” Martz said. “The whole point is if they really cheated. To say he took some steroids and it did help or it didn’t help, that’s never the point. The point is, to all these high school coaches and high school kids and college kids, that if they did cheat, that’s the point.”

which is a good point! lovie smith, the defensive coordinator of the rams that season, while doing his characteristic "aw, can't we all just love each other" thing, stated that he just couldn't "fathom anyone would do anything like that," which i think is so adorable. lovie is too busy with hugs to cheat!

ultimately, if specter is actually serious about taking this to the next level, which the committee seems genuinely worried about, belichick's going to be thrown under the bus. i mean, honestly, does anyone think goodell is going to look at his options and choose "defend the most disliked, unpleasant coach in the league" over "let's not risk our anti-trust understanding"? bill's already been convicted in the league's court of significant breakage of rules; this is why he was fined $500k, and why the patriots were fined an additional $250k and a first round draft pick. if you think about it, we're talking a $2m fine here, in cash and goods. they've already openly agreed that he cheated. why are they dragging this out? why do we need to know the extent by which he cheated before they just go ahead and remove him from the league for a year? how many minutes passed after the vick guilty plea before he was banned indefinitely without pay? did they ask ricky williams how many bowls he smoked before sacking his ass?

i'm not just saying this because i'd rather not have to see his freakishly torn up visage (seriously! it wasn't that long ago that he looked like this! as an aside, that photo is the last time belichick ever smiled.) grace my screen anymore, either.

america used to be awesome

yes, because all boston losses are caused by karmic injustice

so i found this which is like WELCOME TO THE WAAAAAAAAAHMBULANCE, POPULATION BOSTON!

so i made this. sign my petition!

[Ed.: i would also like to say that first petition is like ALL ABOARD THE HMS WHINYBOAT, NOW DEPARTING FROM BOSTON but i didn't think of that one until just now.]

"meanwhile jeremy shockey was at home eating a whole pint of ice cream"

this guy is a hero! it's never occurred to me to just...go up there and join famous ("famous") people and act like i belong there before. i mean, not without having been invited/forced to by someone else first, so the electric six and the giuliani hooker thing totally do not count.

thanks alex for title of post, i was stuck

for about a week, 97% of america were giants fans (with sincere apologies to my two pats fan friends)

subtitled: the last thought on this from me that i haven't had time to actually finish/post due to illness and business


i mean seriously, look at these two guys, they're the opposite of hateable

it's weird to watch your team, with its qb that you've spent the last several years defending even to other giants fans, and its internal squabbling, and its ridiculous star former-running back bad-mouthing the team like a lady spurned every chance he got, and its jeremy fucking shockey--well, it's weird to watch that team, that seemingly completely hopeless heartbreak of an imitation-2005-vikings team, become a national phenomenon.

but there it was, plain as day. people on television, actively rooting for the giants! the team that suddenly came out of nowhere and was showing supposedly far superior teams who was boss! the team that ruined the fairy tale endings predetermined for both (either?) brett favre and (or?) tony romo! the fever pitch that seemed to be there by the friday prior to the super bowl was kind of mind-blowing to me. people i know who hate football were like, "let's go giants!" ruin the fairy tale for brady and co. too.

the thing is, it's not just about people loving an underdog story. that's part of it, really. honestly. but it became apparent, witnessing the sheer glee every non-boston media outlet and commentator had on sunday morning, tearing into the pats like they were some pulled pork, that it was way more than wanting the underdog to win.

simply put, the patriots have come to stand for every single last thing that is wrong with professional sports. i mean, like all of the sports. performance enhancing drugs? alleged criminal behavior towards women? terrible sportsmanship? over-confident douchebag playboy qb? cheating, for god's sake? check, check, check--there isn't much need to go on, unless you like being vaguely depressed. in a age where every sports illustrated is half-filled with stories about tony romo fucking some "famous" blonde or another, or the various dramas of michael vick or kobe or blah blah blah, and the other half is updates on records with questionable asterisks next to them, you've got to assume that everyone's just exhausted from the douchebaggery.

it certainly isn't that anyone truly believes the giants don't partake in several of the activities named above (and i doubt every accusation leveled against the pats is 100% true). but it's easy to believe. dorky eli manning was the complete antithesis to tom brady, and a lovable lug like strahan was the complete antithesis to 'roid-raging fuckbags like rodney harrison. and, while coughlin might be known around the league as a task-driver and a blowhard, belichick is a man almost universally hated--i've talked to pats fans who refuse to defend him, which is saying a lot, i think. other coaches refuse to shake this man's hand.

no one needed an underdog. we just needed a team that wasn't the definition of why people start giving up on sports. the giants were that. everyone will hate them again in a week or two, but for now, that helmet catch made people feel like kids again. you know, back when sports seemed like it was full of awesome people you wanted to hang out with. back when sports didn't seem like predetermined events, and you really believed anything could happen on any given sunday. i lost this feeling when i was about 12*. i'm thankful the giants gave me it back, even for a few days.

the downside of all of this is, i'm just not looking forward to all those millions of sobbing pats fans that suddenly came into being in 2002 now becoming giants fans and ruining my bars.

* why? because the cowboys.

maybe the jinx was that you were outplayed?

no, i'm sure it's gisele's fault, you're probably right.

an update from our tattooed patriots fan friend

in a surprising move, victor thompson seems a little bummed about his helmet tattoos now. though it's not all tears and regret for the lowell, ma gentleman:

"After the game ended I started (partying) ... I woke up drunk. It was a good thing I had my helmet on,"

despite the whole thing being a total bummer over which everyone he knows is secretly laughing at him and perfect strangers will probably point at him in stunned amusement for years to come, thompson doesn't really regret the decision per se, stating that he has tentative plans to tattoo his entire head silver, to more resemble a helmet, and has started working on getting tom brady himself to come by and tattoo his signature on the "helmet" with a tattoo gun.

somehow the drunken discussion between thomas and me one night during the playoffs about his old-school 49ers helmet and my old-school giants helmet tattoo plans (like, on our arms, not our fucking foreheads) seems way, way less retarded now.