Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Weather and the Patriots

In his most recent podcast, Bill Simmons joins the parade of journalists speculating that the warm weather in Phoenix will favor the Patriots' high-powered passing offense, and contribute to a Pats win. There is certainly a meme out there, amongst both analysts and fans, that holds that the Patriots passing attack has slowed down as the weather has gotten colder this year. But do the numbers back that up?

To find out, we've put together a chart showing Tom Brady's passing yards in each game, along with the weather conditions during that game as recorded in the official NFL gamebook:

Right away, Brady's big games in cold weather at Buffalo and against Philadelphia and Pittsburgh jump out--the cold weather didn't appear to have slowed Brady down much in those games (as least as measured by his yardage output). Similarly, the Pats' sack-drowning of Washington took place on one of the windier days of the season.

It's certainly true that, in general, Brady's passing yards are down since December. But given the big games Brady had in cold weather earlier in the year, it doesn't seem to makes much sense to chalk that up to the weather. Rather, a combination of opponents who were both fired-up and determined to cut down on the deep ball, and the Patriots' consquent increased focus on Laurence Maroney and the running game have combined to pull down Brady's ever so slightly.

So what does all this mean for the Super Bowl? Well, probably very little. It's true that the Super Bowl will likely be played in better weather than New England's other playoff games, or its previous game against the Giants--based on weather.com, it will probably be in the low 60's at kickoff.

But even if you ignore the above chart and assume that the Patriots do pass better in warm weather, it's tough to believe that the 15-20 degree difference between the first Giants game and the Super Bowl could have a measurable effect on the Pats--it's not as though it's going to be 85 out there. Moreover, given how well Brady threw the ball in the first game, it's tough to imagine that there's a whole lot of marginal upside for him in this game--exactly how many more yards can he throw for over and above the 355 he hung on New York last time?

So, for all of the above reasons, this meme doesn't pass the sniff test. Give it an A- for effort, but a D for accuracy. We figure that works out to about an 8 on the hype scale. Sorry, Bill.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Media Day Is The Message

There are a load of Super Bowl traditional clichés that we haven’t explored in our memes, because they don’t really apply this year. For example, we usually we get the annual Guy-Coming-Home-For-The-Super Bowl, a la Jerome Bettis in Detroit, except this year the marquee Arizonan is Jeff Feagles.

And usually the media can find some players on both teams to irritate/badger to the point of saying something stupid, but with the Pats’ roster properly lobotomized and Jeremy Shockey currently playing the back nine at Sawgrass, we’re starved for controversial figures. Even Randy Moss has been fairly docile.

But over the past few years, one meme has emerged as a guaranteed freebie column for every Super Bowl reporter—the disaster known as Media Day, and its rampant sucktitude. But do these stories make any sense? Let’s track the evolution of Media Day and its coverage:

1. Creation: Media Day is set up as an opportunity for presss to interview the teams. In the pre-ESPN days, this seems like a halfway decent idea, though nobody wanted to talk to punters in the 70’s either.

2. Devolution: Media Day goes from opportunity to zoo. As improved techonology makes it easier for reporters to travel to and report back from the game, Media Day goes from a couple of dozen local Warner Wolfs and the random George Michael to a few hundred beat reporters, and local TV and radio anchors from around the nation. Frankly, I blame Mike and the Mad Dog for this, as they’re the guys that started the whole Radio Row phenomenon. To the extent that folks in Boise needed to get the local paper's Central Idaho-specific slant on the Super Bowl, they can now do so.

3. Shark Jump-ation: Media Day goes from zoo to circus. The event expands well beyond domestic sports reporters to include media members from other countries and from incongruous publications like Us Weekly. An event leading up to a sporting event has clearly jumped the proverbial shark when half of the reporters there spent the prior month stalking Jennifer Garner and stealing pictures of Jessica Alba’s bump. Media Day questions become focused on moronic things like people asking Warren Sapp whether he wears boxers or briefs or 3 guys from Nashville trying to determine if Matt Hasselbeck is cool. (Answer: no.)

However, even as more random journalists start showing up, a hipster/Page 2/blog counter-take on Media Day develops, denouncing the whole show as passé and useless. This idea was original and true for about 1 year. However, like all things from hipster culture, the mass media caught on to the idea and co-opted it, leading to the next evolutionary stage of . . .

4. Ironization: Everyone rips on Media Day as passé and useless. A current google search for "Media Day" will turn up roughly 4000 articles written by smart alecks who pretend to be above the Media Day fray (when the truth is, of course, that they wouldn’t miss it for anything). No one dares ask a straight question at the Media Day interviews. In fact, roughly 60% of those attending are just there to take note of the dumb questions asked by the US Weekly crew.

The plus side of this approach is that underneath the whole silliness is an inherent truth: Media Day blows. However, we’ve now reached the point where the media has become consumed with ripping on the very existence of a day that (1) they created, and (2) they screwed up in the first place! Any problems with Media Day could be minimized just by having the mainstream media guys ask quasi-intelligent questions. Since that appears to be impossible, we get to read articles about Media Day that catalog only the dumb questions, and therefore have nothing to do with the game.

Of course, we realize that our anti-ironization stance will undoubtedly be seized on as the next big mainstream angle, leading to a chorus of articles mocking those who mock Media Day. That’s why we have blogs, after all.

So where does Media Day on the bullshit scale? Well, if a single story of note actually emerged from Media Day or an even notable quote, it would be something. Instead, we’re not even getting that. The Media Day story has morphed from a way to gather stories for the balance of the week into a scary hybrid of the media's self-regard and self-importance. By promoting a day as stupid, they’ve distracted us from the basic fact that they’re the ones that make it stupid. We give it a rock hard 9 on the meme scale.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Pats as the Greatest Team Ever?

Picking up on the theme of yesterday’s meme, the status of the desultory crotchety members of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, let’s look at another overarching theme for this fortnight: are the 2007 New England Patriots the best team ever?

A fascinating question. And the ultimate case of putting the cart before the horse. I think it’s pretty much beyond dispute that should New England honk the Super Bowl, they’re going to be remembered in the same context as the 1991 UNLV Running Rebels—a team that had a tremendous, epic regular season, and utterly choked against a good team when it mattered most. We at the GRBG hate to oversimplify matters, but you can’t take the throne of “best ever” when you don’t win the championship. And we haven’t played the damn game yet. How on earth can you even consider whether or not the Pats are in the pantheon until they’ve had a shot to win?

Still, let’s play along with this moronic game and buy the proposition that the Pats are inexorably destined to win on Sunday night. Great, they must be one of the best, right? Who knows? Another big cart/horse issue is that you have to believe how the Pats win the game is part and parcel with how they’re ultimately judged. There’s a reason that we consider the 1985 Bears and 1989 Niners to be in the Best Ever argument while the 1999 Rams are nowhere to be found—in addition to dominating regular seasons, they utterly annihilated their competition in the Super Bowls. Doesn’t it matter whether the final score is 63-7 or 21-20? I have to think yes.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that arguing about whether the Pats are the best ever is simply another matter of building the hype machine. “SEE THE BEST TEAM EVER!” “CAN THEY GO 19-0?” Please. Are you insinuating that whether or not the Pats lost that game to the Ravens would change anything about this game? This is simply a further extension of Teddy’s observations on the Neilsen ratings for the game: a way of promoting something that doesn’t need promoting.

It’s only fitting that we’re discussing this today, on the one year anniversary of Barbaro’s death and the day that they determined to scatter his ashes at Churchill Downs. (Why did this take a year to decide? What do I look like, his biographer?) After Barbaro romped in the Derby, the entire media and racing world had crowned him the next Seattle Slew, and our 12th Triple Crown winner. Two weeks later, he had lost the Preakness due to injury and running into a buzzsaw in Bernardini, and nine months later he was dead. This is not to pour on Barbaro, but to point out the obvious: they play the games because nothing is a fait accompli in sports. For all we know, Matt Light will get herpes and miss the Super Bowl, Lawrence Moroney’s helmet will end up in the Thurman Thomas Wormhole, and Tom Brady will spend half the game on the floor. That would probably change the end result and moot this debate, wouldn’t it? Denny Green notwithstanding, it's a bit early to crown their asses.

In short, let’s have them play the damn game first before we determine that the Pats belong in the upper echelon of teams. This debate is a pointless one until the game is over, but will become a real one should Belichick hoist the Lombardi at 10 PM Sunday night. Therefore, let’s give this about a 5 on the Bullshitatron for digging up a real idea at the dumbest time.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The '72 Dolphins

As yesterday and today were travel days for this year's Super Bowl teams, reporters were even more starved than usual for column inch fodder. So, as has happened repeatedly over the course of this season, reporters turned their grateful dictaphones towards various members of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins, in the mistaken impression that anyone is interested in Larry Csonka's thoughts on anything besides proper joust technique.
.
Zonk and the other members of that Dolphin team have been eating out for free on that season for more than 35 years now, but have really stepped up their collective game in the face of the Patriots' recent run. The Dolphins' reactions have run the spectrum from classy (cornerback Tim Foley complimenting the Pats' teamwork), to beligerent (Mercury Morris delusionally belittling New England), to frankly sorry (Don Shula damn near soiling himself on national television while rooting against the Pats against Baltimore). That said, most of the coverage has focused on the fact that the Dolphins are only grudgingly prepared to share the spotlight with another undefeated team.

But leave the specifics of their reactions aside and go back to the fundamental question that should be asked of all these pre-Super Bowl stories: Who the f%$# cares?

Learning what the 1972 Dolphins think of the Patriots does nothing to affect our understanding of the game of football in general, the Giants-Patriots matchup in particular, or even our understanding of any of the players who will play in the SB this year. Unless Bob Kuchenberg is planning to pull a Woody Hayes at some point (and we wouldn't put it past him), all these stories show is how easily the press can form symbiotic relationships with anyone or anything that might provide them with a story angle. Mercury Morris could light himself on fire outside the Delano tomorrow, and it would no effect whatsoever on this year's Super Bowl.


So lets let poor Mercury slide gracefully into the narcotized oblivion that swallows most former NFL players. and stop asking for his opinion on anything other than mustache styling. We'll all be better off for it, and maybe the press could get back to writing about, you know, the teams that are actually playing this year's game. Give this one a 5 on the hype scale. And remember, tomorrow we all bear witness to the skull-humping that is Media Day! Starting loading up on Advil now.

Super Bowl Hype Memes: This Was The Week That Was

For an explanation of the Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme, click here.

For those looking for a Cliff's Notes version of the week in insane and/or irrelevant Super Bowl hype memes, allow us to bring you up to speed:

• People from New York don't like sports teams from Boston, (except for the 50% of the city that doesn't care);

• The Giants play well on the road (except it turns out that they really play well against bad teams);

• Tom Brady is hurt (except he isn't);

• Tiki Barber and Jeremy Shockey are terrible human beings (except they really just aren't very good football players);

• Lots of people will watch the Super Bowl (except they'll only watch because they think everyone else will watch).

Tune in next week as the hype machine goes into overdrive!

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Neilsen and Schrodinger

Recent articles on espn.com, and Yahoo! (among others) have been dedicated to speculation that this year's Giants-Patriots Super Bowl will be a Neilsen ratings bonanza, possibly even the most-watched Super Bowl of all-time.

at right: a highly-rated Neilsen

The premise of the articles is tough to dispute (popular large market teams + history on the line + Tom Brady is dreamy = cash in your pocket), However, the two big questions (one frivolous, one fundamental) raised by the article might be more interesting. To wit:
.

1. Are there really people who are only occasional viewers of the Super Bowl?

According to the espn.com article, last year's Super Bowl between Indianapolis and Chicago was seen by about 93 million people. It goes on to speculate without a lot of detail as to methodology) that this year's viewership could top 100 million.

So where the hell were those 7 million people last year? Do they lack both friends and televisions? Do they hate both beer and hot wings? Are they somehow ordinarily averse to the spectacle of chemically-enhanced mogoloids running around crippling each other? In short, are they not entertained?

Could it be true that about 7% of Americans are terrified enough of falling behind the cultural curve that they will tune in to a game about which they do not care simply because they understand it to be more popular than usual? Sounds about right to us.

Our theory here at the GRBG is that these additional people will watch this year's Super Bowl mainly because articles like those cited above have told them in advance that everyone else will be watching.

In other words, the mere act of writing about the popularity of the game will cause that popularity to change. To the extent that dead cats and sportswriting can overlap, they have done so here.

above: an awesome illustration of Schrodinger's Box, from http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/ardlouis/

That's what makes this such a genius meme: it's self-fulfilling in a way that a prediction about the game itself could never be. But that clever bit of reality invention by the articles doesn't address the second, more fundamental question they raise, which is . . .

2. Who f#$%ing cares?

That's a pretty big question--in fact, it's arguably the big question for any piece of journalism. At the most basic level, when you sit down to write an article for a sports website, it seems as though you'd try to touch in some meaningful way on, well, sports. Yet somebody was (presumably) paid to write an article describing the popularity of a game, rather than the game itself.

As such, these articles are the opening salvo in an expected week-long barrage of meta-coverage of the Super Bowl. (We recognize that this blog is arguably also such meta-coverage; however, we're not passing our posts off as actual news, while the mainstream meta-coverage still presents itself as something other than mass media onanism.) As the football-related angles dry up to the point where hardcore fans long for the halcyon days of boot p0rn, writers are reduced to covering the coverage of the game, rather than covering the game itself.

This is an abomination to the true sports fan, with the notable exception of the official Super Bowl media day, which has now been anti-hyped to the point where it may, in first-order terms, be underappreciated. But more on that next week. For the time being, let's give a solid 7 to writing about watching.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Addition by Subtraction

It's difficult to think of two sports columnists as far apart on the intellectual spectrum as the New York Post's Mike Vaccaro and espn.com's Gregg Easterbrook. Yet Vaccaro and TMQ (among others) have come out with columns advancing the meme that the recent retirement of/injury to Tiki Barber and Jeremy Shockey have helped galvanize the Giants into their Super Bowl appearance this year. Barber and Shockey are posited to be great but selfish players who threw off the delicate chemistry of the Giants' locker room. Does this make even a damn bit of sense?

Well, no. Not really. Because Barber and Shockey weren't that great to begin with.
.

This meme has the same funadamental flaw as many barstool sportsman arguments, which is that it incorrectly conflates correllation (i.e., the loss of Barber and Shockey coming at roughly the same time as the Giants Super Bowl run) with causation (i.e., the loss of those two players is the reason why the Super Bowl run has happened). This is large in part because the media has underestimated the relative effectiveness of Barber and Shockey versus their replacements. Here are the invaluable Football Outsiders DVOA rushing ratings for Barber and his replacement:
.

'06 Tiki Barber:

8.0% (21st in the league)

.

'07 Brandon Jacobs:

16.3% (14th in the league)
.

Briefly, DVOA measures the per-play effect of a player on his team's chances to succeed. By that measure, Brandon Jacobs was nearly twice as valuable this year as Barber was last year. So the simplest explanation here is not that Barber's personality was hurting the team; it's that his play wasn't doing as much to help the team as Jacobs's does. What about Shockey, you ask? Let's look at the DVOA receiving ratings:
.

'07 Jeremy Shockey:

1.8% (25th in the league)

.

'07 Kevin Boss:

50.9 % (not enough playing time to qualify for rankings)
.

Let's acknowlege up front that this comparison is slightly unfair--Kevin Boss's rankings are grossly inflated by his TD catch against New England in week 17, and it's tough to imagine that he could keep that pace up for a full season. That said, Shockey's numbers are mediocre enough that it's likely not a tough a job to improve on him. These numbers also don't take into account blocking, where my admittedly amateur eye thinks Boss has an additional advantage. So again, it's not that Shockey's attitude sucks; it's that his play sucks.

.

For further proof of the relative importance of talent versus character, by the way, look no further than the Patriots, who have assembled recent teams around noted malcontents such as Corey Dillon and Randy Moss, and come through the experience looking pretty darn good indeed.

So the writers of the world don't need to try to peer into the walnut-sized brains of our nation's sporting elite to try to explain away the absences of Barber and Shockey. All that's needed is an accurate valuation of of their relative worth and an understanding of the bedrock principle that teams with good players are better than teams with bad players. For all of the above, give this meme a 7.5 on the hype scale.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Das Boot

For an explanation of the Super Bowl Hype Meme of the Day, click here.

BRISTOL, Connecticut: By nearly any measure, former New York Times Review of Books editor and current ESPN.com ombudsman Le Anne Schreiber has had a remarkable journalistic career. Sadly, that career came to an abrupt end Tuesday night, when Ms. Schreiber passed away in her home in Connecticut while watching ESPN SportsCenter's coverage of Patriot quarterback Tom Brady's ankle injury. One witness attributes Ms. Schreiber's death to "her damn head exploding," though doctors are officially attributing the passing to "a rapid pressure change in Ms. Schreiber's intracranial cavity."

* * *

The boot, the boot, oh my God, the freaking boot. For those who are still somehow blissfully unaware, Tom Brady was photographed on Monday wearing a protective boot/walking cast on his right foot. The photographs show him wearing the boot as he walks up a flight of stairs into his girlfriend Gisele Bundchen's place in Manhattan. Other photographs taken later that night show him walking without the boot, which was presumably removed at Gisele's in order to facilitate her licking whipped cream off of Tom's toes. End of story, right?

Any other week, absolutely. But during Super Bowl bye week, with baseball and college football gone, college basketball not really going yet, and the NHL and NBA in the boring middle of their regular-season slogs? Gold!

So SportsCenter reacted accordingly, eliciting the opinions of: (1 & 2) both anchormen; (3) ESPN analyst John Clayton; (4) Giants' defensive end Justin Tuck; (5) Brady's father; (6) an unnamed Brady teammate; (7) an official Patriots' spokesperson; and (8) ESPN analyst and former QB Ron Jaworski on the issue. Every single one of them said that the purported "injury" wasn't a big deal, and would have no impact on the game next week. After the first two people expressed that opinion, I was inclined to agree. Certainly no later than four guys in, I was convinced. Pontificators 5-8 caused my left eye to begin twitching, and were no doubt the cause of Ms. Schreiber's unfortunate demise.

Jaworksi needs to be singled out for special scrutiny here. Let me make clear at the outset that nobody on television knows more football than Jaws, and he is a generally a favorite of us here at the GRBG.

But during Jaws' segment, he gleefully admitted to having watched every New England offensive snap against San Diego at least 10 times in an effort to identify the moment the injury occurred. At no point was it explained why the hell it mattered when the injury occurred if it would have no impact on the Super Bowl. Regardless, Jaws carried on, running the film slower and slower, until he was finally able to find the precise instant that the second shot hit former Texas Governor John Connally. Also, Jaws thinks Brady rolled his ankle in the first quarter.

Honestly, mocking this is a little too easy, like shooting Super Bowl hype memes in a barrel. Even the ESPN guys seemed to realize the ridiculousness of their saturation coverage, but seemed powerless to stop it. Plus, a real injury to Brady would be a legitimate topic of discussion. So we'll take a little pity here and split the Meme Scale grade: 3 for the subject; 9.8 for the execution. I'm holding back on the perfect 10 only because these idiots have another week and and half to come up with something even worse.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Giants as Road Warriors

"I think as a team we seem to perform better on the road," Strahan said. "That's a great thing, because when it's the playoffs, if we're going to go as far as we want, we have to win every game on the road." --Michael Strahan

If this is the first time you're seeing that quote....worry not. It won't be the last. As has been discussed ad nauseum by everyone ranging from Rich Eisen to Mike Francesa to Maurice Carthon, the Giants currently stand at 3-5 at home and 10-1 on the road, and have won 10 straight after losing their opener to Dallas. This, to say the least, is fairly unexpected. One would presume that a 10-6 team would be the exact opposite: dominant at home, and trying to hold serve away from the Swamp.

In support of this strange stat, a slew of theories have been propounded as to why the Giants are a veritable juggernaut on the road and an inherent mediocrity on the road. Let's take a look at some of these, and see if they pass the smell test, and if so, how applicable they are to the Super Bowl, given that the Giants are technically the "road" team, and that they certainly won't be playing in New York.

1. There's no media pressure on the road. Well, getting on the road does escape you from reading the Daily News and listening to idiots like Max Kellerman spew epithets about interceptions and manliness. So does turning off the TV, radio, and paying attention in practice. I also find it hard to believe that the entire team of 53 gets distracted by the home media coverage while at home. And these aren't last year's Bears, where the Sex Cannon single-handedly cost them half their games; their losses have been a combination of Manning sucking, the defense sucking, and poor play in general. Can't attribute that to the NY media. This seems stupid.

2. There are no personal life distractions on the road. This preposterous theory was propounded repeatedly on ESPN, most notably by Mark Schlereth, with the notion that when you're on the road, you don't have to worry about things like getting tickets for your friends and family, paying your bills. Let's ignore the fact that teams generally don't travel for road games until 48 hours before game time. Who the hell would rather spend their nights in an airport hotel than their own bed? And has anyone ever heard of groupies? Are you telling me that football players are simply staying in the hotel rooms at night, ordering Cobb Salads, and watching Law & Order reruns? Didn't think so. This theory is utter balderdash.

3. Eli is not a cold weather quarterback. I think last week's game disproved this theory and then some. Also, it was cold precisely once in the Meadowlands this year--when they played the Pats in the finale. And even then it was warmer than the Bills game in Buffalo, which they won. Still not the answer.

4. The road schedule was easier. Hey, now here's a real idea. In the division, then swept the Iggles, were swept by the Cowboys, and had a "reverse split" with the Redskins. Nothing remotely odd about that series of events. Let's compare the non-division schedules for the Giants:

Home--Green Bay (L); NY Jets (W); San Francisco (W); Minnesota (L); New England (L)
Road--Atlanta (W); Miami (W); Detroit (W); Chicago (W); Buffalo (W)

There isn't a single road game against a team with a winning record, and a good team should win pretty much all of those games. By contrast, they drew two of the 4 best teams in football at home, and the Minnesota loss was their only defeat to a team that didn't make the playoffs. In fact, let's break their schedule down another way:

vs. sub-.500 teams: 7-0
vs. .500 teams: 2-1
vs. over-.500 teams: 1-5

This basically indicates what all Giants finds pretty much knew: they're good enough to beat every team they should, and have a puncher's chance against the elite of the league. Take on top of that the fact that they drew a crappy Tampa team in the first round, have peaked at the right time, and were playing teams that they already knew from 3 games earlier this year, and suddenly it doesn't look that odd. Which goes to the final explanation:

5. The Giants are one of the 4 best teams in football. Stupid? Let's look at the teams with the best road records during the regular season.

Patriots: 8-0
Colts: 7-1
Cowboys: 7-1
Giants: 7-1

Conclusion? Let's call this road record 50% scheduling, 25% a product of a team peaking at the right time, and 25% the fact that the team is actually pretty good. In other words, on the meme meter, give it a 6. Next idea, please.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Boston vs. New York

For an explanation of the Super Bowl Meme of the Day, click here.

Yankees versus Red Sox! Tomatoes versus no tomatoes! Comical accents versus . . . other comical accents! But Giants versus Patriots? Is the Super Bowl really a New York/Boston rivalry game, as suggested by John Buccigross on SportsCenter this morning? Let's run the numbers.

.

Yes, in many ways Boston versus New York is a true rivalry. Boston has long envied New York's usurpation of Boston's place in the financial and commercial world; New York has long been intensely annoyed by Boston continuing to consider itself the center of the universe despite that usurpation.

And it's also true that Boston has been getting the better of New York in many ways recently, from the recent dominance of the Red Sox and Celtics, to the installation of a Bostonian as mayor of New York City, to (SPOILER ALERT) the fact that the mysterious creature that destroys lower Manhattan in the movie Cloverfield turns out to be an giant, irradiated, developmentally challenged 11 year-old from Swampscott, Mass.

But how does that have fuck-all to do with a Patriots-Giants Super Bowl matchup?

The real NY/Boston football rivalry is between the Pats and the Jets, who play in the same conference and division. The Giants and Patriots only play each other once every four years, and even then nobody cares--scores of Giants fans sold their tickets to this year's game to day-tripping Patriots fans intent on seeing the completion of a perfect regular season in person. Can you imagine Yankee fans doing the same thing in the same situation?

The big problem with this meme is that it treats New York sports fans as a monolithic entity. In fact there are many sub-species of New York fan, many of whom hate each other, and many of whom couldn't care less about any potential rivalry game between the Giants and Pats. Because we here at the GRBG are nothing if not sticklers for precision in socio-athletic taxonomy, here is a breakdown of the four main species of New York fan:

Giantus Steinbrennerian

Roots for the Giants and Yankees, the two most popular teams in the region. This sub-species includes both front-running locals and casual arriviste sports fans who can't be arsed to seek out coverage of the less popular franchises. The former can be identified by their mustaches; the latter by their late arrivals and constant Blackberry use. This is the group most likely to care about this Super Bowl, as their Yankee roots cause their hatred of Boston to bleed over into football.

Testaverde Zeilonius

Roots for the Jets and Mets. Includes those who can only afford to buy remaindered sports gear, those attracted to lost causes, and people in Queens. The easiest way to identify t. zeilonius is to mention the name of a former Met or Jet player; if an answering call of anguish immediately follows, you've made a positive ID. This group is actually likely to root for the Patriots in this Super Bowl, out of a combination of antipathy for the Giants and a Stockholm Syndrome-like identification with their Patriot tormentors.

Freemanious Jeteratops

Roots for the Jets and Yankees. Characterized by wild mood swings, as the smug self-certainty of baseball season gives way to the free-floating anxiety of football season. Identifiable from their nesting patterns on Long Island. Were planning to root heavily against the Patriots, until the fucking Giants somehow got to the Super Bowl again, goddammit.

Giffordius Minayan

Roots for the Giants and Mets. Only rarely observed in nature, these reclusive creatures nearly all came of age as sports fans in the mid-'80's when both franchises were good at the same time. They have nothing in particular against Boston, but would like to finally see one of their teams win something as it's been since..., well, the mid-'80's.

* * *

So there you have it--out of the four main sub-species, only one will really view this as a rivalry game. So not only will this meme irritate the rest of the country by forcing more Boston/NY talk down their throats, it's also flatly wrong. For all of the above reasons, this meme gets a 7 on the pre-Super Bowl Story Desparation Scale. Try again, guys.

New Feature: The Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme

EDIT--links to each daily meme will be added below.

The bye week that typically falls between conference championship Sunday and the Super Bowl has destroyed more sportswriting minds than bourbon and syphillis put together. Writers have to pull thirteen days worth of storylines out of what is, at the end of the day, just the prospect of two groups of cutting-edge pharmacological freaks destroying their joints for our collective amusement.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, writers are desperate to find any sort of angle or unifying theme that will let them re-hash the same old matchup in a new way. Every day, someone in the media comes up with such an angle, which is then immediately seized upon by the rest of the media in order to stoke the figurative content furnace. Thus is born a meme.

The problem, of course, is that nearly all of these memes are powerfully, powerfully stupid. Which is where we at the GRBG come in.

Each weekday between now and the SB, we will catalog and test a meme that has bubbled up from the shallow end of the sports media gene pool, to see where it falls on the scale of Super Bowl hype ridiculousness (where a "1" is a discussion of whether the aggressive upfield pass rush of the Giants' defensive ends will leave them vulnerable to draw runs by Laurence Maroney, and "10" is any coverage of what Gisele Bundchen plans to wear to the game).

So check back frequently over the next few weeks, as we all slowly lose our minds. Cheers!

Monday, January 21st: Boston vs. New York/NY Fan Taxonomy
Tuesday, January 22d: The Giants as Road Warriors
Wednesday, January 23d: Brady's Boot
Thursday, January 24th: Addition by Subtraction
Friday, January 25th: Writing About Watching

Monday, January 28th: The '72 Dolphins
Tuesday, January 29th: The Pats Are the Best Ever
Wednesday, January 30th: The Devolution of Media Day
Thursday, January 31st: Cold Weather and the Patriots
Friday, February 1st: Arlen Specter is High on Drugs

The World's Oldest Maiden

Teddy & I had hoped to do something special for post #100 of the Gazette, but we're both to self-absorbed and wrapped up in work to put anything cohesive together at the moment. Maybe we'll do it for #101. Because this is too good a nugget to let go by:

Belated debut for 10-year-old

This is not an article on Shawn Kemp's 23rd son, this is a horse that's running for the first time when he's ten years old. TEN! For those not familiar with the normal life progress/schedule of a race horse, here's a brief synopsis of the typical development of a horse:

2 years old: Precocious horses start making their debuts in April, many others debut this year.
3 years old: Many more debut this year, others run in Triple Crown races. By September, the best are considered good enough to compete against "older" horses. Any 3yo that's any good is retired after this year (see Street Sense).
4-5 years old: Peak years of athleticism, maturity and fitness for a horse.
6-7 years old: Declining years for a horse. If you're still running at this point, you either aren't very good, or are gelded and have no stud value.
8 years old: The Tom Glavines of racing.
9 years old: The Charlie Houghs of racing.
10 years old: The Julio Francos of racing.
11+ years old: The Satchel Paiges of racing.

So starting a horse this old for the first time is even more far-fetched than Dennis Quaid getting a shot in the big leagues. It's just utterly ridiculous. And what the hell could keep a horse from running for so long?

Perez said he had heard a litany of ailments that delayed Sovereign Sigh's first start: sickness at 3, bucked shins at 4, this, that, and the other thing. "But once you get them over that hump, you're good to go," said [trainer] Perez.

This that and the other thing clearly lead to keeping a horse off the track for a quarter of his natural life. Well, after 8+ years to prepare, he should be ready to go, right?

"This horse can run, but I wish I had one more work in him," he said.

Ah. Maybe not. If you're at Hawthorne on Friday, bet against, as Zippy Chippy is not in his race.