The Empire’s Death Star in Sports: The New England Patriots Have Fallen!!!
The Empire’s Death-Star In Sports -- The New England Patriots -- Has Fallen!!!
I must confess that, at this juncture of the Super-Bowl, I am salivating at the thought of the New England Patriots losing this Super-Bowl game; and believe it or not, I started writing this particular blog just a little before halftime of the Super-Bowl. I must also confess that I am biased against the football version of the evil empire -- The New England Patriots -- because the referees, years ago, invoked the obscure Tuck Rule that benefited the Patriots and deprived my beloved Raiders of a trip to the Super-Bowl. Incidentally, my Raiders have never been the same.
I chalk up the Patriots lost to the Eagles in this Super-Bowl 18 as bringing ‘balance’ to football. There are times when the masses must know that the ‘game’ -- be it life in general or specifically, in Sports -- is not rigged and that there are times, rare as they may be, when the seemingly, invincible Goliaths are defeated by the Davids… and that such aforementioned rare defeats occur outside the confines of the Bible. How many times have we seen the New England Patriots seemingly on the proverbial ropes only to have them pull out what is tantamount to an miraculous, impossible victory… lest we forget, last year’s visceral, heartbreaking Super-Bowl between the Atlanta Hawks and the New England Patriots… with the latter snatching the victory.
There are those football fans who truly believe that the Patriots get all the breaks… but the breaks are there for all the teams to use -- but the truth is that the Patriots do it better than all, even if it is cheating. What football team out there -- even the winning football franchises -- that bemoan the supposed ‘breaks’ the Patriots get -- are not jonesing to have Coach Belichick as their coach? By the way, my Raiders are paying coach Gruden some 10 million a year, which causes me to wonder what a Coach Belichick would be worth on the opened market?
I, among many, deem Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, respectively, akin to Darth Vader and the Emperor (Star Wars) -- only none of them have the charisma of Lord Vader. Truth be told, notwithstanding my envious, biased, prose, objectively, Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback that ever played the game of football and Bill Belichick is football’s greatest coach. The stats show it and we will be waiting a long, long time before we see a coach/player combination like Belichick and Brady. Those of us who are fans of the game thought that Joe Montana/Bill Walsh, of the famed San- Francisco 49ers, would be the template of Super-Bowl’s success, but Belichick and Brady have far outperformed the former pair.
If I were bold, I would go ahead and publish this blog that was finished when the Eagles were leading the Patriots, 32 to 26 -- but I am acutely aware how Tom Brady/Bill Belichick has the uncanny knack of causing many sports fans much angst/heartbreaks by snatching victories out of what seems to be certain lost. So I will wait until the whistle is blown to signal the end of the Super-Bowl 18… hoping that the Empire’s Death-Star -- the New England Patriots – has indeed fallen!
I could not finish this blog without commenting on the half-time show, which to me was one of the worst in the NFL’s storied history… it did not help matters that my favorite artist’s hologram, Prince, was used to help Justin Timberlake in his atrocious performance… the only performance that could have been worse than that of Timberlake’s would have been if he had performed with his lip-syncing ex-girlfriend, Britney Spears! I have used Prince’s Super-Bowl Half Time show performance to illustrate to the young whippersnapper (Justin Timberlake) how it is done and done literally in pouring Floridian rain… so drill town and enjoy a live performance that has and will stand the test of Super-Bowl’s Half Time shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuJN-sY43bQ
