super bowl? there's a super bowl again this year?

01/26/10

A good friend who still checks in every now and then checked in today and consoled me on how rotten I must be feeling in the wake of the Vikings game this past Sunday. Well, it probably hurts more than my busted up leg but since my leg doesn't hardly hurt at all that's really not much of gauge. The real pain from the leg comes from not being able to get to the liquor store on my own but that's a topic for another day. No, I wasn't too broken up by the locals' loss down N'Awluhns. But don't think for a second that I let that keep me from rattling off another way-too-long reply which I later recognized as a chance to do a little double dip for a ready made post here. With a few minor edits to protect the innocent and those guilty of victimless crimes, voila!!

I pretty much cut the emotional ties to the Vikings quite awhile ago. Not that they paid much attention and who would blame them? So Sunday's loss didn't hurt all that much. For the last several years I've kept a running mental tally to make sure that I didn't watch the cumulative equivalent of a full game per any single season. A play here, a play there (usually while raiding the refrigerator or the cookie jar while Miz Susan wasn't watching), that was OK so long as it didn't cut and paste to 60 minutes on the game clock. But I'd never sit down and watch a a whole quarter from start to finish, much less a full game. I did pretty well thru the first ten or twelve games or so.

Then Miz Susan got interested. So we started watching and I think we watched 3 of the last 4 from opening kickoff to the final gun. Bears, Cowboys, Saints---right? Even saw a good chunk of the Giants game. I'd already gotten to like quite a few of the Viking's players from reading the paper and catching the video clips on the 10 o'clock news. Favre's presence seemed to help build a team presence that I hadn't noticed of late. I hate the thought of getting all sentimental about the good old days when Dale Hackbart was roaming the secondary looking for wide receivers to clothesline but recent versions of the Vikings made me wonder if these guys were looking to set all-time NFL records for DUI's and domestic disturbance calls. I think that one of the things that can murder any NFL team is a lack of cohesion and Favre (as well as a crew of emerging team leaders---Shiancoe, Leber, Allen, Herrera, Rice among others) seemed to make a big difference that way. We haven't seen such a unity of purpose up here since Fred Smoot and Daunte Culpepper took half the team out on the boat ride with the hookers a few years back. Seeing the team playing together to win football games has been a refreshing change from the news coverage of them yachting on Lake Minnetonka to get high and/or lap danced by high-buck, out-of-state exotic dancers. I'm all for a rockin' team party but not when the boat right alongside is full of kids on a Sunday school outing.

It was a hell of a game. Not real pretty, almost Shakespearean in it's tragic aspects where the flaws of the characters are at war with their better natures. But isn't that what we watch sports for? Along with coaxing that 3½ point edge in for the win. Don't tell me you weren't sweating out Brees hitting one of his long guys behind the Vikes secondary for a 6-pointer in OT.

So I didn't really have much invested in the game other than having to talk Susan in off of the ledge when it was all over. Her quote just before she climbed out the window was something like, "They just flipp'n' lost this game, didn't they?" Well, yeah honey, someone had to and they pretty much set themselves up for it. Yeah the Vikes got screwed on some OT refereeing incompetence but that didn't screw them nearly so much as all their turnovers and a lack of pressure on Brees. Hand it to the Saints for making it look like Jerrod Allen had stayed back in Eden Prairie to watch the game on the weight room big screen and to let me go down to NO wearing #69. Susan sez that we will watch the Super Bowl but that she won't care about it. I think it's more likely that we'll be tuning in Channel 2 to watch Masterpiece Theatre.

I'll admit that the game got me stirred up and that I didn't sleep all that well Sunday night. That could have been the 3 Diet Cokes I had during and after the game though. I should have stuck to beer. You wanna talk heartbreak--try the Twins games against the Yankees in October. Those had me on the verge of suicide and I really didn't sleep well for a week afterwards. I haven't been so affected by any sporting event since Staubach underthrew that wobbler and Drew Pearson pushed off to come back and get it as some idiot ref sat 3 yards away taking notes. That was back in the days when the NFL's refs held down day jobs as high school AD's and insurance adjusters. It's comforting to know that the refs who are screwing your team now are working at it as full-time professionals.

My friend raved about Favre and I'd agree that it was awful hard to dislike Brett Favre this year---once he got here. He was a star on the field and humble off of it and a great interview when he did talk. I loved the electronics ads that Sears ran up here with Favre that were absolutely hilarious.

We'll never know if a Vikings win might have been that mystical healing force that would have had me casting aside my crutches and walking again. Failing that, it's back to the physical healing process for the knee. It's still faith healing cuz I just sit around and try to have faith that it's healing. The doctor has told me to make sure that I don't bend the knee any more than 20º. That suits me just fine. The less work the better as far as I'm concerned.

I'm glad for all my friends who had the Vikes with 3½; if I'd have set the line it would have been 4 but that's why nobody asks me to set the line. And if any of you think that your wives and kids don't know who it is that you're calling at half-time to lay off a little, well---keep dreaming.

There's definitely a silver lining to all of this. We can start concentrating on the things that really are important in our lives. Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month. And the Twins have signed Jim Thome which has got to be worth a win or two just on account of having him in our dugout instead of hitting against us. As they were quick to point out on the six o'clock, just 328 down the right field line in the new ball park. Not that Thome is a dead pull hitter anymore but you never know. Another 20 for him this coming year and maybe he'll go into the Hall with a Twins cap on his plaque.