Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Photo Day

After a few days in which there were no stories dumb enough to warrant a DSBHM post, we here at the GRBG were all set to give some rare praise to the mainstream media. In years past, the flow of media effluent started pretty much the moment that the conference championship game winners came down off of their Percocet buzzes. But this year the media seemed happy to wait until Super Bowl week, a move which would bring some much-needed sanity to the Super Bowl hype process.

Then Photo-gate broke out.

For those unaware, a very, very mild controversy erupted last week around whether the Green Bay Packers were trying to exclude players on injured reserve from appearing in the team's Super Bowl photo, presumably because the injured guys wanted to go with the cool laser background, while the team wanted to go with the more modest "pool of light on a black background" option.

above at left: LAZ3Rz!!!

Then the Packers decided to let everyone be in the picture AND throw in a free wallet-size potrait to those who registered in advance, and everything was cool.

Except somehow it wasn't, because Green Bay's gravy-brained QB, Aaron Rodgers, for some reason decided to dredge the whole thing up again by taking his injured teammates to task for not being around more, we guess because if they'd have been around, they'd have gotten the photo day message in their cubbies after snack. So now we're apparently supposed to believe that there is enough dissention within the ranks in Green Bay that it will somehow affect their performance on Sunday.

We've debunked the dissention meme before around here, so we won't bother doing it again. But what really irked us about this meme is the way it was presented on SportsCenter this morning. ESPN talking neck Sal Paolantonio all but winked his way through his report, trying to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the story while further fanning its flames. This is the sort of cutesy stuff that droves us bonkers, because it involves an implication that ESPN is smarter than its audience. The attitude that comes across is "We know this is stupid, but so are you, so sit there and take it." It is, but we're not and we won't. Knock it off.

For getting Super Bowl week off to just the wrong start, we're giving this meme an 8 on the hype scale. If this keeps up, we'll have worn the Mute button right off of our remote by Wednesday.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: B.J. Raji is Fat

The formula for the players being covered at the Championship Games and Super Bowl is pretty set in stone. The media will lionize the quarterbacks, praise the running backs, criticize the loud-mouth wide receiver, find some quiet lineman that exemplifies a stoic work ethic, dig up someone who's on the road to redemption and renewal, laud someone who's been nice to a dying child, and cross their fingers that someone says something stupid, or even better, solicits sex from an off-duty cop. Most years, the media find someone that they're going to crown their "darling"--past examples have included Steve Young, Jerome Bettis, Kurt Warner, both Mannings, and of course, Tom Brady. This year' early media darling is something of a sleeper...

...Packers' defensive tackle B.J. Raji. A google of articles related to Mr. Raji returns no fewer than 15,000 screeds written either about him or including him. That's a lot for a guy who was pretty much unknown to the general public until he intercepted a Caleb Hanie pass and ran it in for a score last Sunday. Sure, he was a first round pick in '09 and made the Pro Bowl this year, but c'mon, what percentage of America knows about a nose tackle in Wisconsin? 6%?

The overwhelming amount of coverage given to Raji has been positive, and it's all been about roughly what you would expect:

• Raji is an up-and-coming star in the NFL for a team in the Super Bowl, and is someone you should know;
  
• Raji made a great play picking off a guy who had thrown fewer than 10 NFL passes and running it in for a touchdown on Sunday;
  
• Raji was lucky that nobody knocked the ball out of his hands on the way to the end zone, making him the next Leon Lett; and
  
• Raji has an creative touchdown dance.
  

These all basically are newsworthy because of a plain and obvious fact: B.J. Raji is very, very big. Officially clocking in at 337 lbs--a number we're officially calling into question--Raji isn't quite the massive tub of fat that Terrence Cody is (right), but is the logical heir apparent to The Fridge, Gilbert Brown, Tony Siragusa, and all those lovable fatsos that have played in Super Bowls in the past. Suffice to say that if Raji was built like, say, Shawn Ellis, we wouldn't be seeing this much coverage of him. Heck, William Gay had a defensive touchdown on Sunday, and nobody is talking about him.

So if Raji worthy of all this praise, discussion, adulation, and in some respects, mocking because he weighs as much as a Harley? Well, if the articles were praising his play or saying how he'd impact the Super Bowl, sure. Alas, most of them aren't going into that; they're either retrospectives of his fun touchdown against the Bears, his dancing skills, or his girth. And that's all fine and good because he is a player in the game...but it's a chance for the media to discuss how he'll impact the game itself. Which, for the most part, it's not doing. More than anything else, it's using him as a prop for comedy or just character analysis.

Because this theme is about a guy in the game and there are traces of stories that are relevant to the game, we'll give this a 5 out of 10 for now. If there's still no real discussion of how Raji's hidden quickness will impede Pittsburgh's running game in the next 10 days, we reserve the right to bump this up a notch or two.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Bears and Jets Lost, Right?

In compiling our hype memes, we often find it valuable to take a look at espn.com's NFL page, which generally serves as a fine snapshot of what memes are lumbering down the precise middle of the media road. But we were taken somewhat aback by today's landing page:

To summarize, here is a breakdown of the linked articles by most featured team:

Chicago Bears (4) (plus a lead photograph depicting the overwhelming tristesse of Jay Cutler)
New York Jets (2.5)
Green Bay Packers (2)
New England Patriots (1.5)
Cincinnati Motherforgetting Bengals (1)
Johnny Depp as a Cartoon Lizard (1)

Deploying the fourth-grade math at our collective disposal, this means that the losers of last weekend's conference championship games somehow generated more than three times the stories as the winners did. Also, apparently the Pittsburgh Steelers franchise has been contracted by the league. We'd have thought that story would merit a mention, but perhaps ESPN is just saving it for the third hour of Cold Pizza.

Those inclined to be pro-mass-media (which at this point consists of about 20% of the people actually working in the mass media, and a slightly larger percentage of those people's mothers) can spin this as a positive thing: the media is holding off on saturation coverage of the Super Bowl participants until we get closer to the day.

But surely there must be something to say about these teams that trumps speculation surrounding the future of the (unfortunately) second-greatest Heisman QB of the last 25 years. Here, we'll get things started: can someone write something informative and revealing about Mike Tomlin, who has conquered more of his chosen world at a younger age than anyone since Alexander the Great (who, like Tomlin, had trouble beating patriots)?

Listen, no one is more grateful than we are that the hype has started off soft. Our teeth are pre-gritted for all the Ben Roethlisberger-is-great-because-he-no-longer-rapes-(as-much) stories. But whether the media is ignoriong the game by focusing on drivel like that, or ignoring the game by simply IGNORING THE GAME, it's still going down the wrong track. Still, though, we'll be kind and give today's espn.com front page a 5 on the meme scale, because we're expecting the deluge any second now.

Year Four of the Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme

On one of the coldest days that we can remember, Jets and Bears fans aroused from their slumber, hoping that it was just a dream that Caleb Hanie (yes, that's him on the left) was slinging passes to Johnny Knox in the NFC Championship game and that Mark Sanchez's fumble/incompletion wasn't actually called a fumble and returned for the game-winning touchdown. Then they checked their clocks and calendars, and realized no, it wasn't a dream. We were getting a Packers-Steelers Super Bowl after all.

One of those Jets fans? Yours truly. That was the bad news. The worse news is that our Fourth Annual Daily Super B0wl Hype Meme was deprived of the New York Jets, who would have made this exercise easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Consider that of everything that happened in the Jets season on and off the field, the Inez Sainz Scandal--which was not much different from the Lisa Olson scandal that sank the Pats entire season 20 years ago--wouldn't crack the 5 most memorable things from the year. The media landscape would have had a field day with Rex Ryan, Braylon Edwards, Bart Scott, and God Knows Who Else.

Alas, we're left with Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin.


But no worries. Because we know that while it is a challenge for the media to find 13 days worth of pure garbage and drivel to fill up their time before Super Bowl 45, we have the utmost confidence that they'll do it. So once again, starting tomorrow, we'll be bringing back the Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme, where we analyze, deconstruct, riddle, and crap on whatever particular story related to the Super Bowl has grabbed hold of the media. At the end, we'll assign each story a numerical rating, with a 1 going to a detailed analysis of how Tramon Williams is going to try to shut down speed-freak Mike Wallace, and a 10 going to any story about how all of Seoul is rooting for Hines Ward.

Based on our extensive past research, we expect to find more misses than hits. Even in a year minus the greatest walking soundbite ever. We'll begin tomorrow.

EDIT: We'll fill in the memes as we go.

1/25: The Bears and Jets Lost, Right?

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Media Day Interview with Jeremy Shockey

We here at the GRBG spend a fair amount of time making fun of Super Bowl Media Day. In particular, we take issue with the media’s unwillingness (or inability) to get any sort of interesting information out of the player interviews on Media Day. Half of the Media Day questions are nothing more than prompts for the usual player platitudes, and the other half are asked by puppets from Guatemalan TV.

But it has occurred to us that we might have been a little unfair. After all, we’ve only ever done two interviews here at the GRBG, and neither of them involved football players. So we decided to put our reputation where our mouth is by setting up and acing an interview with a Super Bowl participant.

Amazingly, we got through to Jeremy Shockey’s people, who set up an interview for this past Wednesday. Unfortunately, we soon realized that Wednesday was the actual Media Day for this year, and while we’d have loved to have interviewed Shockey in person, the GRBG’s travel budget is down significantly this year.

But, being the can-doers that we are, we’re not letting that stop us. We’ve decided to interview Shockey by asking him questions that he has already answered elsewhere—what could be more Media Day than that? We’ll show our work by providing links to the original quotes.

Gowanus Rotisserie Baseball Gazette: Jeremy, thanks again for taking the time to speak with us today. You’ve been associated with a number of great teams, both in college and the pros. What would you say is the most important trait a championship athlete can have?

Jeremy Shockey: “It’s a matter of being consistent.” (Think Exist)

GRBG: That makes sense. After all, nothing epitomizes consistency more than that otherwise mediocre Giants team that turned on the jets to win the SB two years ago. Speaking of which, by many reports you had an acrimonious departure from the Giants. How do you feel about your old club?

JS: “I don't have any personal vendetta against the Giants.” (Louisiana Daily News)

GRBG: That’s commendably big of you. But we’d be journalistically remiss if we didn’t point out that you told a nine year-old interviewer that "[i]f I ever a chance to play against a team that trades me [as the Giants did], it's not going to be a pretty sight." (Newsday's Kidsday). Any response to that?

JS: “It’s a matter of being consistent.” (Think Exist)

GRBG: That’s only tangentially responsive, but OK. Anyway, we often hear athletes comment that, to them, team accomplishments are more important than individual awards. Is that how you feel as well?

JS: "I'm a team person. I'm very team-oriented." (Football Outsiders)

GRBG: We thought so. But, again, how does that square with your previous statement that “I didn't get drafted to be a blocking tight end or a fullback to lead up in the linebackers”? (Think Exist) Or, for that matter, your comment following a loss in New York where you said "We got outplayed and outcoached. Write that down." (Football Outsiders)

JS: "[W]hat I said was not a team thing to say. I do let my emotions get to me at times. It's just the competitive nature in me. I don't like to lose. I don't like to lose at anything." (Football Outsiders)

GRBG: Hey, we understand. We had some unkind thoughts when Deadspin bit our bit and started running a daily super bowl subplot feature. We mean, we know that they’re the industry leader, but that doesn’t excuse—

.

JS: “It’s a matter of being consistent.” (Think Exist)

GRBG: What? We—was that an answer to the previous question? Or is that just how you chime the hour or something?

You know what, though? That was actually our fault. We’re the ones who derailed the conversation. Thanks for snapping us out of it.

JS: “I think I'm a real good person. I've got good character traits, I go to Church often, and I do community service. I think I'm a really good role model.” (Jock Bio)

GRBG: Amen. No doubt you’ve been shaped by your exposure to coaches Tom Coughlin and Sean Peyton, both of whom are branches of the august Bill Parcells coaching tree.

JS: “Parcells … the homo." (Sports Illustrated)

GRBG: Oh, Jeremy, no. We mean, (a) that’s wildly offensive and (b) no gay man would walk around looking like that. Moreover, we find it difficult to square that comment with your self-proclaimed “good character”.

JS: “It’s a matter of being consistent.” (Think Exist)

GRBG: Indeed. Well, Jeremy, as a parting gift, please accept this copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, handily pre-marked at the entry for “consistent”. Any final words before we let you go? (Though we have a sneaking suspicion of what you’re going to say.)

JS: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines.Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” (Jeremy Shockey via Twitter)

GRBG: Huh--we did not see that coming. Anyhow, thanks again for your time, and good luck on Sunday.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: National Labor Relations, Bored

Every year a couple of days before the Super Bowl, the commissioner gives his State of the League address. Roger Goodell loves this because he loves a television camera almost as much as Chuck Schumer, and he has about 9000 media members at his beck and call from a podium for an hour or so. It also gives him the opportunity to begin a propaganda campaign to advance whatever cause celebre he's in the mood for that given year, be it personal conduct, drug testing, labor negotiations, stadium construction or franchise relocation. And the media generally buys his spiel hook line and sinker, and starts an offseason meme with what issues it likes the most.

This year, the media has jumped the gun and already brought to the forefront the issue that Goodell is going to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing this week, next week, and until Proskauer Rose blesses a 500 page document: the upcoming labor war with the Players' Association. We've heard for a while now about issues like next year being uncapped, the odd free agency restrictions that are going to pop up, and that there may be no football played in September 2011.

Let's note that last point again: the media is fervently discussing that there may be no football played. In September 2011. Twenty months from now.

The media's insane fixation on the labor negotiations, a subject that was dry and esoteric in law school when we used to bring 40's to class, is best shown in this piece by the World Wide Leader's Tim Graham, who opines:

You've ignored the NFL labor situation, hoping it would fix itself before you invested one minute of your life, one ounce of worry.

"I'll just watch football," you thought. "I'll concentrate on the season, the stars, the X's and O's. I'll carry on as though the NFL is simply in the greatest league in the world, a game, a diversion from real-world issues -- not an industry."

Time to start paying attention to the big business, folks.

Big trouble is near.

Graham (like many of his cronies) goes on to list in exhaustive detail the issues that are going to be raised in a month or so during negotiations and what the ramifications are for the next season, and for the potentially hypothetical mythical 2011 season. But that section, like the rest of the media's coverage of the impending labor doom, is beyond misguided and unfortunate. Where to start?

1. "Big trouble is near." Mr. Graham is right--our President just proposed a budget with a $1.6 trillion hole, all indications are the nation will have deficits until Shawn Kemp is a great-grandfather, we're mired in 2 wars, Congress can't pass anything...oh wait, he means football in 20 months? My mistake.

2. This has zero bearing on the game. Not a single person on Indy or New Orleans will play any differently because of the labor negotiations.

3. There is no news. The closest we have for news is that the sides haven't really begun negotiating in earnest because there's no impending deadline where either side stands to lose anything substantial. We've known this. And we shouldn't be surprised by this--when was the last time substantial labor agreements were reached without a gun being pointed at someone's head?

4. Most of us don't care. Look, fans will care in about a month or so to know if Dan Snyder can sign every free agent on earth, if the Chargers are really going to be unable to keep Vincent Jackson, and if the Jaguars can afford to sign any players. (Strike that last one--nobody cares about the Jags.) But the details of how a contract between a behemoth organization and a union that protects 4000 players and retirees is negotiated and composed? Ugh. We'll take the final details, but really only care about knowing whether it impacts who our teams can sign and when training camp starts.

What we've got, therefore, is the media turning into Goodell--using the Super Bowl as an excuse to opine on what's going on in the league in general, the direction it's taking, and what issues are on the horizon. While this may have made sense 25 years ago when ESPN wasn't omnipotent and there weren't year-round programs and columns devoted to the NFL, it makes zero sense now, because we'll get the information we need when we need it. Therefore, we'll give this a 7 out of 10 because while it's football related, it's not game related, boring, and fairly meaningless.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Dwight Freeney's Injury

This is the story of your red right ankle
And how it came to meet your leg
And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled
And how the skin was softly shed.

--The Decemberists, "Red Right Ankle"

As proof that occasionally the sports media vultures actually do cover a story that's sports-related, we have the coverage over the ankle injury to Indianapolis' star defensive lineman, Dwight Freeney. As reported in a bazillion places, Freeney has a torn ligament in his right ankle, and is now questionable to play in the Super Bowl. This is, to say the least, fairly significant, especially because he's the only starter on either team that may miss the game due to injury and he's the best defensive player on either squad. The complexion of Indy's defense without him or with him in reduced capacity changes immensely.

We're all for covering this injury, providing injury updates, status on whether or not he's practicing, and ideally, some discussion of how this changes Sean Payton's game planning or Indy's defensive strategies. Unfortunately, we're only getting some of that because...well, because Freeney's basically in lockdown mode, saying he may practice later this week and hopes to play. Which means we're subjected to junk reporting like this gem from Peter King:

This is all conjecture now, but I'd expect Freeney will do everything he can to play, and will try to play. Unless the ankle is simply collapsing, I can't imagine him not playing.

What is this conjecture based on? Well, not a goddamn thing. King has no quotes from Freeney, Jim Caldwell, any other Colt, or even a physician. He doesn't even have the usual "insider who spoken on the condition of anonymity" view on it. All he has is pure conjecture. And he's the NFL reporter with arguably the best access in the country.

What we've got, therefore, is every NFL reporter and media head turning into Vinny from Staten Island, working off the same base of knowledge that Freeney's hurt and may or may not play, and saying blanketly whether or not he has the stones to get out there on the field and whether or not the Colts can win as a result. Again, this would be great if it were based on some analysis of his backups, the defensive schemes the Colts run, or the Saints' left side blockers. But it's not happening. Neither is getting more information on Freeney's injury, as evidence by the fact that today's big catch at Media Day is that he wears flip flops. Thanks guys.

We're not going to be too brutal on this one because it's a legitimate topic for coverage this week, but we're penalizing the media because they're not doing all they could with the story and actually saitate real football fans. Therefore, we'll give this a 3 on the bullshit scale, and hope that someone like Jaworski spends some time with tape and analyzing the real impact of Freeney's injury.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Tennis Parents and the Manning Family

The Manning family has emerged as a fertile source of cheap Super Bowl stories, with the media churning out favorable copy about the aw-shucksingest family of southern-fried athletes since the Davis Loves. In fairness, we should say at the top that this meme is less facially obnoxious than most, given that Payton Manning is playing in the game and father Archie Manning is most closely associated with New Orleans, (except, of course, when he is most closely associated with Mississippi).

Regardless, the flock of Manning stories have bothered us here at the GRBG in a way that took us a while to pinpoint. However, a weekend case of the sniffles, with its attendant cold medicine high, gave us a flash of insight into why the Mannings give us the willies: they make us think of women’s tennis.

Specifically, they make us think of the Williams sisters (and not just because of those weirdo Oreo commercials they made with the Mannings a while back). Like Payton and Eli, each of the Williams sisters were molded from a disquietingly young age to become champions. Like Payton and Eli, both have succeeded at winning championships. And, although we dislike comparing congenital narrowing of a spinal column with a senseless homicide, like Payton and Eli, the Williams’ sisters have a less famous sibling who has endured a significantly more difficult road in life.

All of which means that the Williams sisters and the Manning brothers share a lot of similarities. But what’s less obvious is that their fathers, Archie Manning and Richard Williams, are also similar. Why? Well, to be mean, because neither of them ever won anything on their own.

Take a look at ol’ Archie’s career NFL line:

35-101-3 W-L, 23,911 YDS, 125 TD, 173 INT.

Unimpressive, to say the least. We know we go to this well a lot, but compare those numbers to those of Steve Grogan, who was another scrambling QB on crappy teams, and happened to play almost exactly the same number of career games:

75-60 W-L, 26,996 YDS, 182 TD, 208 INT

Hmm. And it’s not like Archie won anything at Ole Miss, either—the Rebs went 15-7 during Manning’s upperclass years. The guy was the Shareef Abdur-Raheem of football, throwing up numbers on lousy teams.

And so there you have it. Archie Manning and Richard Williams won exactly the same number of professional playoff games, but also managed to crank go 2-for-3 in creating kids who would go on to greater success. So if you’re bored during the Super Bowl this year, just picture Serena playing QB for Indy, and imagine Payton in a tennis skirt. You’re welcome.

We recognize that we’ve injected a lot of our own stuff into this meme, so we’ll be kind and rate it as a 5 on the hype scale. Just don’t ask Archie any questions about how to play QB, because he hasn’t a clue.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Overtime Rule

One of the greatest moments in recent NFL history occurred on November 24, 2002, when the Detroit Lions battled the Chicago Bears for 60 minutes, only have the score knotted at 17. Erstwhile Lions coach Marty Mornhinweg sent out his team captain with one instruction--no matter what happens with the coin toss, take the wind. The Lions won the toss, took the wind, and all of America was stunned. The Lions went on to lose in OT. Since then, no coach has ever taken the wind.

The latest team to take the ball after an OT coin toss was the Saints in last weekend's NFC Championship Game, who then drove to the winning field goal with Brett Favre sitting helplessly on the sideline. This has lead to a chorus of more articles with the same theme we've seen for years: change the NFL's overtime rules!

Crticisms of the OT system is nothing new. So why bring it up now? Well because...NFL writers have two weeks to kill. Seriously, absolutely nothing discussed about proposed changes to the OT rule will have an iota of bearing on the Super Bowl itself. If the game is tied after regulation, the two sides will jog to midfield with Ed Hoculi and someone will get the ball first. End of story.

Further there are no original ideas being put forth on the OT rule. It's the same shit we hear every year. Move the spot of the kickoff. Guarantee each team gets one possession. Use the college rules. First team to six points. Make overtime a full 15 minute period. Pick the kicking team and spot of the ball the same way you'd divide a pizza (a personal favorite). These have all been rehashed ad nauseum since the first Bush Administration. If there was a scintilla of original writing or ideas to emerge, we'd be mildly interested, but that's impossible to find.

How does this rank? Well, it does have the virtue of being football related; it's far superior to Chris Mortensen discussing the Miami economy. But it's not at all related to the game, and nothing about it will change during the game. It helps nobody learn anything about the game or the teams involved. It's in the same category as yarns about the impending labor discord, paeans about Tim Tebow or queries about Al Davis' sanity--a league related story that's only discussed because writers think the Super Bowl is an excuse to discuss anything related to football. Hint to all media members: we have 3 months from the hoisting of the Lombardi Trophy to the NFL Draft. Outside of March Madness, pitchers and catchers and Lindsey Vonn, there's nothing grabbing our attention in that time period. You'll have our undivided attention on these issues in March. Wait. Just wait.

Therefore, let's give this a 6 out of 10 for being not totally frivolous but ultimately extraneous.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Colts' Destruction of Perfection

On December 27, 2009, America was introduced to a fine young man from Vincennes, Indiana, who was previously known only by the most dedicated fans of Big Ten football and jealous members of the Sorgi family...


...Curtis Painter, Peyton Manning's backup quarterback. While it's an old saw that the most popular player on a football team is the backup QB, Painter's introduction to the NFL and the Colts faithful was the exact opposite: he was roundly booed for the two quarters he played. On the field he didn't exactly sparkle either, the Indianapolis offense went from a Audi TT to a Ford Edsel in a matter of seconds, as Painter fumbled the ball almost immediately after entering the game, gave up the go-ahead touchdown, and manned the QB position so ineptly that Colts fans thought they had been catapulted back to the Jack Trudeau era.

Prior to the Painter appearance, the Colts were 14-0 and in control of their Week 16 opponent (the Jets). But the Colts brass decided well in advance of the Jet game that they had no interest in going for the undefeated season, as only the Super Bowl matters, and rested their starters in the second half, including Peyton Manning. And with Painter, down went the undefeated season, and as the meme goes, the chance for immortality.

This meme played itself out pretty thoroughly right after the game, as talking heads on ESPN debated the move endlessly and all Colts fans burned Bill Pollian in effigy. Now that the Colts are in the Super Bowl, the meme has resurfaced: were the Colts right to sit their players in the last two games, essentially tanking two meaningless reular games to avoid injuries for the postseason?

The truth is we can't analyze this meme that straight up, because it depends on what point the media is trying to prove. The press has seized on this occurrence, but is using it to ask three different questions.

1. Will sitting the starters in the last two weeks help the Colts win on February 7th? This is a perfectly valid question that's worth some debate and analysis, to the extent that's possible. Unfortunately, we estimate that only about 5% of all stories on 14-0-gate will take this angle.

2. Did sitting the starters at the end help get the Colts get to the Super Bowl? This is arguably water under the bridge and arguably relevant. Yes they're here and yes this is football related and yes we don't have a giant problem with "how they got here stories." But whether or not Dwight Freeney got to rest in Week 17 is something of a moot issue as they're here, in no small part thanks to playing two wildcard teams in the playoffs. We guess that about 15% of the articles in this issue will attempt to address this question.

3. Have the Colts destroyed their chance to be immortal? Sadly, this will be what 80% of the media circus focuses on. Which is too bad, because:
(a) it's irrelevant to the game;
(b) it's premature, as we discussed 2 years ago when the Pats faced the "best ever" debate;
(c) it's also old, because we already went through this meme a month ago; and
(d) we already know the answer (yes).

So how does this rate on the BS scale? Because there are three angles with varying degrees of relevance, we're going scale our by the ultimate takes the media uses and proportionally using the numbers by how often the media uses a particular story. Theme #1 rates a 1 as quite relevant to the game; theme #2 rates a 4 as marginally relevant to the game; theme #3 rates an 8 as drivel. Weighting them accordingly, we get a 7.05 score for the entire meme. Bad, but not epic.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Media Hydra that is Brett Favre

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

Hey, so, Super Bowl time! Pretty cool matchup, too, what with the august history and recent success of the Colts taking on the habitual haplessness of the Saints. Plus there’s all kind of interesting matchups to discuss, including a great one at QB. So, let’s see, what’s the lede on ESPN.com’s NFL page on Day 1 of the run-up to the big game?

JESUS H.W. CHRIST ON A POGO STICK.

We’re not going to lie to you—we here at the GRBG were kind of rooting for the Vikings last weekend, if only because the presence of Brett Favre at the Super Bowl would guarantee two weeks of shooting Daily Super Bowl Hype Memes in a barrel. If anything, we were a touch worried that it would be too easy, given the media’s well-known affection for and obsession with the Ol’ Gunslinger. The media often has an annoying tendency to make Favre bigger than the teams he plays for or the games he plays in, and that’s pretty easy pickings for a media critic.

But even we never suspected that the media would be willing to make Favre bigger than a game in which he is NOT playing. By that logic, ESPN should feel comfortable throwing a huge picture of Favre atop its cricket power rankings page, because he’ll have as much influence at Lord’s as he does in Miami.

Why? Why do they do this? Do we as a collective sports-watching body really still care about this man? We here at the GRBG sure don’t, and the cognitive dissonance between our collective antipathy and ESPN’s fawning coverage is enough to make us abandon whatever faith we had left in the efficiency of the free market of information. We actually received a ghostly text message from Adam Smith informing us that he’s as stumped as we are (though in happier news, the message also said he and Milton Friedman are very happy in their new condo, and are thinking of adopting a schnauzer).

.

It is almost literally impossible to come up with a story that is less related to this year’s Super Bowl. Accordingly, this story gets a 9 out of 10 on the hype scale, and even that sole dropped point is due more to the need to preserve some room to maneuver in case the media come up with even more base stupidity in the weeks to come. Buckle up, everyone—looks like it’s going to be a bumpy meme year.

Back on the Scene: Revenge of the Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme

Now that we’ve taken our winter break, we here at the GRBG are tanned, rested, and ready for our traditional kickoff event. Yes, it’s time to break out the Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme, our annual chronicle of the media’s rapid descent into self-plagiaristic madness leading up to the big game.

The two weeks between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl make it excruciatingly clear that the ravenous maw of the 24-hour sports news machine cannot be satiated by actual news alone. A whole lot of random debris has to get tossed into the furnace to keep the train running. News organizations are thus forced to scour the horizon for anything even vaguely resembling a story, which in turn guarantees that any original story idea will be copied, reworked, respun, and represented again and again.

The dynamic of the media during these two terrible weeks is perhaps best described in the words of the great philosopher Jay (of Jay & Silent Bob fame):

"[W]e're gonna make them eat our s--t, then s--t out our s--t, and then eat their s--t that's made up of our s--t that we made 'em eat."

So with that ominously accurate description in mind, stay tuned over the next two weeks as we devote a daily post to identifying, classifying, demystifiying, and, in most cases, fervently decrying a overhyped meme we notice burrowing into the media’s collective brain like an earwig on meth. We’ll add links to this year’s gems to this post as we go. Onward!

January 26th: Brett Favre, Somehow
January 27th: Curtis Painter Takes A Dive
January 28th: Overhauling Overtime
February 1st: The Manning Brothers & the Williams Sisters>
February 2nd: Dwight Freeney (or das Boot II)
February 3rd: National Labor Relations, Bored
February 4th: Media Day Interview with Jeremy Shockey

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Kurt Warner for the Hall of Fame

Now that the media has begun to get over the "shock" of the Arizona Cardinals odds-confirming trip to the Super Bowl, a lot of attention is being paid to Cards QB Kurt Warner. Now, media attention is nothing new for Warner. Nearly all football fans recall the many stories about Warner's inspiring rise from working as a stockboy at an indoor Christian football grocery store (or something like that--we're fuzzy on the details ourselves) to playing QB for the Super Bowl-winning St. Louis Rams. But this year's hype somehow manages to be even more over the top.

Specifically, many pundits have come out and said that if Warner leads Arizona to a win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, he would become a lock for the Hall Fame. This meme is fundamentally insane. In order to prove its insanity, however, we're going to have to veer into the scary land of numbers again. As we mentioned in our first meme post of the year, we are not great at math. In fact, we have to get naked in order to count to 21. But these numbers are pretty straightforward. In fact, they can be neatly summarized in a short topic sentence--watch:

Kurt Warner's Career Numbers Are Surprisingly Crappy.

There are lots of numbers which you could use to try to encapsulate a QB's performance. For season-to-season numbers, the DYAR stat at Football Outsiders is probably the best. But those numbers aren't available for most historic QBs, and for HoF purposes we need to compare Warner against everybody. So we propose to use three basic numbers, passing yards, TDs, and INTs as the basis, because those are the best conventional stats for measuring a QB's individual performance (all numbers taken from Pro Football Reference). How does Warner fare?

Passing Yards

Kurt Warner has thrown for 28,591 yards in his career. That looks pretty good at first glance. But it's only good for 38th place all-time, behind the likes of Rich Gannon, Jake Plummer, Donovan McNabb, and someone called Norm Snead, who sounds as though he ought to have played for the Pottstown Maroons. Does that sound like a list of HoF guys to you? And keep in mind that Warner's all-time ranking here is actually slightly inflated, given that he has played his entire career in the most passing-friendly age in NFL history. So put Warner in the HoF if you like. Just expect a hurt phone call from Jake Plummer the next day.

Touchdowns

Warner has thrown for 182 touchdowns in his career. That number ties him with Mark Brunell and Steve "Neckroll" Grogan for 40th place all-time.

Now, full disclosure: one of your authors here at the GRBG is a long-time Steve Grogan fan, and even had an autographed picture of Grogan on his fridge for a while. But there is no way, NO WAY that Steve Grogan should be in the Hall of Fame. 4oth place just isn't that impressive, especially when that place also manages to be behind Steve DeBerg. So it's hard to see how Warner's numbers in this category warrant anything other than a steady diet of post-career autograph sessions at memorabilia shows in the greater St. Louis area.

Interceptions

This is better for Warner, as he has thrown only 114 interceptions against his 182 touchdowns. The 114 picks put him 79th on the all-time list, which is good considering this is one list you don't want to be near the top of. So this category kicks Warner up a couple of notches. Still, though, it isn't nearly enough to overcome his profound mediocrity in the other two categories. The numbers don't lie. Warner just isn't good enough.

But, Wait, What About The Rings?

Yes, it's true that if Warner's team wins in Tampa, he will become just the 1oth quarterback to win more than one Super Bowl. But how much should that weigh into Warner's HoF case?

Of the nine previous multiple SB winning QBs, seven are in the Hall of Fame, one (Tom Brady) is still active, and one (Jim Plunkett) is, well, Jim Plunkett. Note also that Phil Simms is not in the HoF depite being the main QB on two Super Bowl-winning teams, even though Jeff Hostetler landed the plane for him one year in the Big Game itself.

So, although there is a tendency to put multiple winners in, there's also precedent for keeping them out when their numbers aren't up to snuff. We mean, can you imagine Trent Dilfer going into the HoF if Baltimore had repeated? Brad Johnson? Shoot, Eli Manning? Some pretty mediocre QBs have managed to win rings over the course of Warner's career. It isn't the unasssailable credential it once was. So let's all just relax and put down the gun when it comes to Warner's HoF chances. Kurt Warner should not be in the Hall of Fame.

This meme is a little hard to rate. On the one hand, it doesn't seem too bad, given that multiple rings is a strong indicator of Hall of Fame status. On the other hand, we have not heard a single media person cite any of the easily obtainable numbers we list above. That's a sure sign of a Super Bowl hype story--not letting the facts get in the way of an argument. For that reason, we give this one an 8 on the meme scale. Put down the pipe, fellas.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: Anquan Boldin Is Sad and Unhappy

In the second half of last weekend's NFC Championship Game, Arizona Cardinals' receiver Anquan Boldin was seen getting into a snitting match with the team's offensive coordinator, Todd Haley, over Boldin's lack of playing time. Boldin subsequently left the team's locker room without speaking to reporters.

above: ooh, c'est triste, n'est-ce pas Anquan?

These two events have been the launching point for several days of discussion regarding Boldin's actions. Talking heads have mulled over whether Boldin's actions could mean trouble for Arizona in the Super Bowl.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Cards will need both Boldin and his fellow wide receiver Larry "The 12th Cylon" Fitzgerald at their best in order to break down a tough Pittsburgh defense. So if Boldin is either sulking or a distraction to the team, it could make the difference in the game. This meme has a certain surface appeal to it, as Boldin is a potentially important player, and as Terrell Owens has made it his life's mission to demonstrate, a wide receiver in high dudgeon can torpedo a team.

However, once you think about it for more than five seconds, there are three reasons (which sort of build on each other) why this meme makes no sense.

1. Anquan Boldin Is Not A Quitter

How can we here at the GRBG make that sort of blanket assertion when we, admittedly, haven't spent all that much face time with Boldin. Well, the fact is, ordinarily we wouldn't, as we prefer to leave unsupported blanket assertions to the professional media. But there is a pretty persuasive piece of evidence supporting our assumption here, namely that Boldin broke his whole motherloving face earlier this year, and came back to the team. And when we say broke his face, we mean broke his face--he apparently looked like a late November jack o'lantern when they carted him off the field at the Meadowlands earlier this year. The injury was so bad that it almost caused his quarterback, aged Christian armor bearer Kurt Warner, to retire.

So if getting his head staved in didn't cause Boldin to lay down, how can we expect that a lack of PT will do the trick? We're not dealing with Matt Leinart here, folks.

2. At The Super Bowl, Nobody Is A Quitter

Even assuming Boldin was the kind of guy who would lay down when miffed, who the hell sabotages a Super Bowl, either by sulking or intentionally causing a distraction? Even Owens, the human distraction machine, rose to the occasion in his lone Super Bowl appearance, helping the Eagles keep the game superficially close against the Patriots. All of the player "distractions" that have cropped up (like Eugene Robinson and his hooker) have had their roots in stupidity, not selfishness.

The only possible exception here was caused by a non-player, Bill Parcells, when he bailed out on the Patriots the week before the game. And if you'll give us a little bit of room for speculation here, we don't think Parcells has the same character as Boldin--if Parcells broke his face during the season, we don't think he'd make it back. Though if somebody want to run the experiment, that's fine by us.

above: sexy, kind of.

3. It Won't Affect The Outcome

Now assume that, somehow, both (1) and (2) above are wrong. Boldin is a big enough jerk to quit on his team, and decides to do so in the Super Bowl. What would happen?

Well, although you can't know for sure, we got a pretty good peek at what would happen last week in the NFC Championship Game. It's tough to imagine Boldin blowing up any more in the SB than he did in Phoenix, unless he kneecaps Steve Breaston or something. It's also tough to imagine him being much less of a factor in the SB than he was in the conference championship. But did his antics or lack of effectiveness affect the team in the NFCCG?

Not really. All they did was score 32 points on the number 3 defense in the NFL, win the game, and end the franchise's baffling losing streak.

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So there doesn't seem to be any real way that the Boldin story will affect the game itself. This is a perfect example of a Super Bowl hype meme: it sounds like it's about the game, but it's really about the media's own coverage. Once one person speculates about the effect Boldin might have, the rest of the gang jumps on board, instead of first deciding whether the theory actually makes any sense.

For that reason, we give this one an 8 on the meme scale. Hang on, all--it will only get dumber from here.

Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme: The Arizona Cardinals Are In The Super Bowl !!1!THree

Ed. note: This marks the return of the GRBG's Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme; for details on the project, check out our previous introductions.

The sporting world's reaction to the Arizona Cardinals' Super Bowl berth has been marked by a fun combination of bafflement and condescension. The media has consistently treated the Cardinals like Red China, refusing to acknowledge their right to exist even as their power grew.

The New York Post had a typical take, likening the Cardinals' victory to a violation of the laws of physics:

The sentence that always connected "Arizona Cardinals" and "losers" now must be rewritten, or at least revised. The sun continues to rise in the east and the laws of gravity still apply but some absolutes are no more.

Heck, even Cardinals QB Kurt Warner has bought in, noting in his press conference that he "want[ed] to say Arizona Cardinals and Super Bowl in the same sentence", as though putting those two thoughts together in the past would have resulted in total protonic reversal.


at left: Warner, dressed for his offseason job as an evengelical exorcist.




The media is pimping this meme for two reasons. First, it gives them a chance to bloviate about the tradition gap between the Cardinals and their more august opponents, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Second, it lets them fill some time talking about the "historic" nature of the Cardinals' appearance in the big game.

But this meme has it all wrong. To the extent that the Cardinals have defied rational expectations, they've done it through their years of failure, rather than their month of success.

To show how, we at the GRBG will stoop to using math. This is ordinarily a dangerous path for us, as we last took a math class in 1995, and passed that class only through the grace of our TI-82 graphing calculator. Luckily, we think that the math in this instance tops off at simple division, so we feel good about our chances.

at right: our collective left brain.

We are now in year 43 of the Super Bowl era. This is the first time that the Cardinals have made the big game meaning they have gone 1 for 43 in Super Bowl appearances (See? Told you the math part would work out OK). There 16 teams in each NFL conference. Assuming, then, a completely random distribution of results, which the NFL's structure tries very hard to generate, a team should now expect to make a Super Bowl once every 16 years, on average. Historically, the odds were even more favorable, because there were fewer teams.

So how likely is it that the Cardinals would have made at least one Super Bowl in the 42 years before the '08-'09 season? The math gets ickier here, but our calculations (reproduced below for math dorks) figure that there was a 95.5% chance the Cardinals would have made the Super Bowl before now.

In other words, the remarkable thing here isn't that the Cardinals finally made it this year. It's that they somehow managed to f#$% it up for so long in the past. The press guys had 42 years to talk about how remarkable the Cards were, and you never heard a peep. But now that their results have finally started to become less remarkable, it's all that the media can do to keep from pitching over sideways in shock.

Because math was involved, we'll give this meme a 4 on our 10 point scale. But remember, every time you hear a story about how this Cardinals team is remarkable, know that it was the 42 previous teams that were the true standouts.

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Math time. We took a weighted average of the number of teams in a conference over the years, and found that it came out to about 14 (rounded for ease of usage). So the chances of a team winning at least once in 42 trials would be:

1 - ((13/14)^42) = .95571

Obviously there are some assumptions in here you could tweak, but for a back of the envelope job, we're OK with it. If you want real math, go to Football Outsiders. Poindexter.

Return of the Daily Super Bowl Hype Meme

It's once again the most wonderful time of the year, when sportswriters across this great nation converge on a single spot in order to spend 13 days analyzing a sixty-minute football game. A time when the 24-hour sports news machine begins to eat its own tail in a desperate bid for survival. A time when players are paraded out for a series of daily interviews so repetitive, one former Miami Dolphin likened them to going to the dentist every day to get the same tooth filled.

Yes, we've once again reached the traditional 13 day period between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.

These 13 days consistently produce the stupidest sports journalism of the year, simply because the length of the event overwhelms the typical sports journalism process. The process is ordinarily powered by talking heads taking ill-considered or insane positions on legitimate sporting topics in an effort to generate buzz. But that doesn't work for the Super Bowl, because there simply aren't 13 days worth of legitimate sporting topics surrounding one game. So instead the talking heads are forced to take ill-considered or insane positions on whatever meager shred of an idea they can come up with.

Thus are born Super Bowl hype memes, those bizarre talking points that seem to race through the media as desperately latch on to any passing idea that will let them kill the ten minutes until the next traffic report. We here at the GRBG have traditionally taken it upon ourselves to catalog and debunk these memes as they pop up, and this year will be no exception. Watch this space, as we drive ourselves crazy covering the coverage in a laudable attempt to shield you, the reading public, from the madness. Onwards.

Tuesday, January 20th: The Cardinals Defy Chance
Wednesday, January 21st: Anquan Boldin is Sad and Unhappy
Thursday, January 22nd: Kurt Warner for the HOF?

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.