Plenty of storylines to whet the appetite
WE don’t always get this kind of diverse buffet table on Championship Sunday, a high-end brunch that will satisfy everyone from cornflakes lovers to omelet aficionados (even those of you Fancy Pants who prefer to spell it “omelette”) to the heretics who actually prefer Canadian bacon to a nice extra-crispy slab of Nueske’s. There really is something for everyone.
If you prefer a well-established dynasty playing as much for its place in history as for another duck-boat parade, there are the Patriots. If you want a genuine Cinderella, there are the Jaguars about whom, for years, there were always three certainties: ugly uniforms, empty stadiums, and a 3-13 record.
That game is the “early” game on Sunday (even though kickoff isn’t until 3:05 p.m., meaning most of the second half will be played in dreary darkness — normally the picture-perfect setting for another joyless Patriots bludgeoning). There are three fascinating things to watch for in this one: 1. Bill Belichick will not be coaching against Tom Coughlin, but that really won’t matter in the hours leading up to the game. Much of the preliminary buzz has centered around these two former co-workers on the 1988-90 Giants who twice met in Super Bowls, both times resulting in epic upsets for Coughlin’s Giants over Belichick’s Patriots. (Note: This obsession is known in most parts of Amer-
2. Tom Brady allegedly hurt his hand this week in practice. There hasn’t been this much conversation about hand since George Costanza had it, and then lost it. The odds of this adversely affecting Brady’s performance are roughly equivalent to Belichick showing up on the sidelines in an Armani suit borrowed from Pat Riley.
3. CBS ought to have one of its cameras trained exclusively on the Patriots owner’s box so that when the inevitable referee’s whistle (or three) helps the Pats out of a tight spot, we can actually see Robert Kraft yell “Dilly, dilly!” (Note to Patriots fans: this is known in most parts of America as “a joke.”) So that’s the lid-lifter. This is the score that Americans who reside in the 44 ½ states that aren’t Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the eastern half of Connecticut will hope for: Jaguars 77, Patriots 0. This is the score that actually will happen: Patriots 35, Jaguars 10.
By then, we should all be ready for the Angst Bowl, which will round out this football smorgasbord perfectly.
We also will be quite ready to stop hearing about the dueling tales of woe from friends, family, and perfect strangers who will gladly tell you about all 4,000 different times the Eagles have broken their hearts since Chuck Bednarik sat on Jim Taylor as the final seconds of the 1960 NFL Championship Game ticked away, and the infinite number of times God himself has struck Vi-
kings fans dead going back to the beginning of time (or at least 1961, when they entered the league).
Of course, the problem with making light of these tandem troubled-soul franchises is that most of the sad-sack stories are hard-earned and true. There was a fascinating stat that NBC flashed during the Eagles-Falcons game last week: the four current Philadelphia pro teams have been in existence a combined total of 325 years.
They have nine championships among them.
Nine.
(It should be a civic law that the titles won by the old Philadelphia Athletics (5), Philadelphia Warriors (2) and USFL Philadelphia Stars (1) be included whenever such history is revealed. I proposed this on Twitter. It was met with 104.5 percent approval from Philly respondents.)
But the Vikings have done their share to kneecap Minneapolis, St. Paul and the rest of the northern arm of the United States. They were the first team to lose four Super Bowls, the very first of which — Super Bowl IV, New Orleans, 1970, Chiefs 23, Vikings 7 — was every bit the impossible-to-believe upset that Jets-Colts had been a year earlier.
And that doesn’t even take into account Gary Anderson’s missed field goal, or Blair Walsh’s missed field goal (which all but necessitated he join cousins Brandon and Brenda in exile far, far away from Minnesota) and the 41-0 thumping the Giants gave them in the 2000 NFC Championship Game.
It was amusing, from a distance, watching Philly fans swallow their tongues on fourthand-goal from the 2 last week, as the Iggles barely survived. And downright fascinating to watch Vikings fans instantly transform from here-we-go-again to HOLY-@$#$@-DID-THAT-JUSTHAPPEN!? in an eyeblink at the close of the miracle against the Saints.
Amazingly — impossibly, actually — one of these teams is actually going to win this game and go to the Super Bowl. Vikings 17, Eagles 14 (6 OT).