reasons why i may stop watching professional football next year

1.  the cowboys – TO reality show, michael irvin reality show, wade phillips and jason garrett coming back.  i’m all for supporting your team through thick and thin, but the thing is, i need to feel that someone out in valley ranch is at least trying to win a superbowl.  and if everyone in the world (including my mom, who knows absolutely nothing about football) can see that these are all things that are doomed to contribute to a bad season and jerry jones can’t, then there is nothing that is going to be done to rectify this situation.  last season was a complete abortion and it just seems that nobody in the organization learned a damn thing about it.  they just want to trot out the same players, the same coaches, and say that it’s gonna turn out better this time.  yes rooting for the cowboys next year is like rooting for w. to get elected to a third term.  no, i just don’t have the time to waste on such futile pursuits as rooting for the cowboys to make the super bowl.  and if i can’t root for the cowboys, why else would i want to watch football next year?

2.  peter king is KILLING me.  he is THE football writer of record for this era.  this week is ostensibly the biggest year of the year for king and all football writers.  the biggest game of the whole year.  the single biggest sporting event in america.  and on monday, he dedicates the first not 1, but the first two entire pages of his weekly column to the coaches.  and not ken whisenhunt and mike tomlin, but a two freakin’ assistants, todd haley and dick lebeau.  also notice that the black coach, mike tomlin is only mentioned once and only as setup to talk about lebeau.  that was bad enough, but wait, there’s more.  the next day on his tuesday follow up, he spends eight paragraphs of jake motherfucking plummer, who has been out of football for years.  my favorite line is this one:

Aren’t there a hundred questions you’d like to ask Jake Plummer?

actually, i just have one.  how did you completely suck all those years in arizona and still manage to get a starting job with the broncos?  is it too much to ask for the most popular football writer in america to write something about the game?  i suppose it happens to all sports writers.  gammons lost it a couple of years back, king has clearly lost it, and bill simmons is starting to lose it as evidenced by his last column about his dead dog.  if i can’t even read about football and be informed and entertained, you tell me, what’s the point?

3.  more than anything else, however, is this year’s superbowl matchup.  true, it’s not the nightmare of philly vs. baltimore, but it is still quite a lackluster matchup nonetheless.  a mediocre team that got hot vs. a wildly inconsistent offense that may be without its best reciever who is the heart and soul of the team.  a quarterback who believes that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as humans.  the saving grace of this game will be larry fitzgerald and troy polamalu, the only players on either side worth paying money to see play.  and for me, that is what this game simply comes down to.  can anyone cover larry fitzgerald, the only player who is having a transcendant post season.  i’ve watched all of the playoff games and seriously, i don’t think i’ve seen fitzgerald drop a pass.  

now obviously, the steelers have an amazing defense anchored by probably the most unique player in the NFL.  there are very few players in NFL history that you can turn loose like polamalu.  to see him and that wild mane of hair fly all over the field and just make play after play is really fun to watch.  let’s put it this way, aside from ed reed, could you imagine another safety freelancing like he does?  could you imagine what a disaster it would be to let roy williams loose like that on the cowboys defense?  so then the question becomes, can the steelers put pressure on kurt warner?  and seeing how warner is less mobile than me in the pocket, i would say yes.  

if i’m ken whisenhunt, this is my offensive plan.  on the 50% of plays where kurt warner will be pressured, have warner take the sack.  on the other 50% of the plays, unless boldin or breaston are wide open throw the ball to larry fitzgerald.  i don’t care if he’s double or triple teamed.  if there’s something that we learned this post season is that larry fitzgerald will catch the ball in traffic.  and not only will he catch the ball, he will catch touchdowns.

the line started at steelers -6.5 and has since moved up to 7.  fredo and i both agreed that even the orginal line was too high since whisenhunt probably knows ben roethlisberger better than ben roethlisberger does.  and even though the steelers seem to be a clearly better team, this kind of knowledge against a quarterback that isn’t transcendant is enough to cover the spread.  but you know what?  let’s forget the spread this week and just pick a winner.  i was leaning towards the steelers last week but after thinking about it, i’ve talked myself into the cards.  it’s just that kind of season where we will have a shitty super bowl champ.

and when the game ends, there’s a good chance that you’ll never hear from bobby the gook again.  i don’t know if it’s just because the cowboys were so disappointing this year or because the league has achieved near perfect parity, but football doesn’t excite me nearly as much as it used to.  or maybe i’m just getting old like peter king.