You Can Say I Was On Anything But a Roll

Even though recently released odds for Super Bowl XLIV have America's Team at 9-1 to take the Lombardi Trophy away from the Steelers, after this news I see no chance of Skeletor and Co. bringing home the title next year in Miami.

Tom Coughlin Retires From Family To Spend More Time With Team

Bells are Chiming for Victory

At this point, we've all read the stories about the U.S.-launched missile that destroyed a National Reconnaissance Office satellite late Wednesday night, but in the words of George Oscar Bluth II (G.O.B. to his friends), "COME ON, U.S. military."

Aren't there other uses for the munitions of the United States, such as...

• Yankee Stadium
• The studios filming any one of the thousand "CSI: (Insert American City here)"
• Old Trafford
• The headquarters of the Blahg
• Jose Canseco's house, Roger Clemens's house, Barry Bonds's house, etc.
• The source of the immortal "Don't tase me, bro" catchphrase
• People still voting for Mitt Romney weeks after he dropped (excuse me, suspended) his Presidential campaign.
• Any supporters of the Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants, or New England Patriots.
• The person that invented speed limits
• Charlie Finley and John Hedyler (the brain trust behind the designated hitter rule)

That's all the punishment I can dole out at this time, but feel free to add your own suggestions.

True Colors Fly in Blue and Black

Congratulations to Mr. Jeremy Masten for correctly naming "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty as the Sunday Song of the Day.

Rest easy, everyone. We now have proof that the Sports Guy did not mix himself a Drano smoothie after last night's devastating loss by the Great Satan.

Now it all makes sense.

You bleed for your team, you follow them through thick and thin, you monitor every free-agent signing, you immerse yourself in draft day, you purchase the jerseys and caps, you plan your Sundays around the games ... and there's a little rainbow waiting at the end. You can't see it, but you know it's there. It's there. It has to be there. So you believe.

Of course, there's one catch: You might never get there. Every fan's worst fear. All that energy over the years just getting displaced, no release, no satisfaction, nothing. Season after season, no championship ... and then you die. I mean, isn't that what this is all about? Isn't that the nagging fear? That those little moral victories over the years won't make up for that big payoff at the end -- that one moment when everything comes together, when your team keeps winning, when you keep getting the breaks and you just can't lose.

And if none of this makes sense, well ... it does to me. I just watched somebody else's team win the Super Bowl. Giants 17, Patriots 14.

"Free Fallin' Out Into Nothing" by Bill Simmons.

I must confess that a small part of me hurts for the Patriots, Simmons, and the entire fanbase of the Great Satan. Set aside their former smug satisfaction, thoughts of Spygate, and Bill Belichick leaving the field last night with :01 remaning on the clock. Instead, think if you had been working towards anything monumental for months and months, only to see it taken away at the last moment by the black sheep brother of your greatest rival.

After weeks and weeks of pressure, constant questions about perfection, and tons of potshots, the Pats fell a few minutes short of immortality, and as Eli Manning knelt to the turf in Glendale, Arizona, I was reminded once again how the pursuit of perfection is an unforgiving journey.
History will not view the Pats' season as a success despite the second-ever undefeated regular season. Instead, they will be viewed as a tragic collection of figures that, by all accounts, should have finally ushered the '72 Dolphins out of the spotlight, and entered into a rareified status that only comes along every so often in this era of parity and mediocrity.

Now, everyone is undefeated once again. When the next season begins in September, we will have these inevitable discussions around the final team remaining undefeated, constantly wondering if they can make it all the way. Those conversations will be full of possibility and conjecture, but they will always contain the phrase,"Yeah, they're undefeated, but what about Super Bowl XLII...?"

I'm a Bad Boy 'Cause I Don't Even Miss Her

Congratulations to Ms. Stacy Villescas and Mr. Joseph Halbert for correctly naming "Boys of Summer" from the Don Henley album Building the Perfect Beast as the Friday Song of the Day. Thanks are also in order to my Dad and John Middleton for the Don Henley-related trivia. If a celebrity is from East Texas, he or she is going to get the 5-star treatment here at Running Down a Dream.

Speaking of "Running Down a Dream", the editorial staff would like to thank Mr. Tom Petty for the plug tonight during the Super Bowl XLII halftime show. You'll note that we did not have to pay a hefty $3 million for a halftime plug, but merely convinced Mr. Petty and The Heartbreakers to play our namesake tune in return for a YouTube plug. Here you go, Tom.

Oh, you also want to talk about that game that also occurred on either side of Mr. Petty's performance? I can do that as well. For a game that was largely forgettable through the first 3 quarters, that final quarter was probably the most intense 15 minutes of football that I have watched since the 2006 Texas-USC Rose Bowl matchup, and we're talking about a game that featured the hated New York (Football) Giants and the Great Satan.
I'm not sure what the collective reaction in your locale was to the escape by Eli "Harry Houdini" Manning from Pats' pressure and subsequent heave downfield to an obviously living right David Tyree, but everyone around me screamed things at the television that looked something like this:

"Icantbelievewhatjusthappened!!!"

"HowdidEliManningdothat?"

"WhatkindofdealdidDavidTyreecutwiththedeviltomakethatcatch?"

"Whyareweallyellingatthetvscreenoverteamswenormallyhate?"

(Yes, we were in the "talking so fast so that all of your words run together" mode.)

As 85% of you then witnessed, Eli Manning heaved a pass to the corner of the endzone into the waiting arms of Plaxico Burress, and millions of yet-to-be born children in the New York-Connecticut-New Jersey tri-state area will be saddled with names like Plaxico Wasserstein because of that famed connection.

In the end, Eli Manning stood as the Super Bowl MVP after outdueling Tom Brady, and I am currently eating a nice baked serving of crow for all of the grief that I constantly piled on the youngest Manning brother. Frankly, I'm expecting to walk outside right now and see a flock of pigs winging through the sky in a perfect "V" and cats living with dogs in perfect harmony. It's true, my friends. Hell has frozen over, Satan (not the Great Satan) has pulled out the tire chains, and everyone is stockpiling canned goods.

As someone once said, "It's not the end of the world, but I think you can see it from here."

I would write more, but I need to do little checking to make sure that the Sports Guy and Joey Halbert have not done anything rash after the Great Satan's once perfect season fell apart like a tumbleweed in the Arizona desert. In fact, Joseph summed things up well when he told me after the game, "How the mighty have fallen. Karma is a cruel, cruel mistress."

Too true, Joseph.

Too true.

So When Does the Plane Go Down?

5 Things You Probably Did Not Know About "The Big Game" taking place on February 3, 2008 (Note: Read this post with enough sarcasm to kill a horse, just not one named Barbaro).

1. Eli Manning, quarterback for the New York (Football) Giants, is related to another quarterback in the league, Peyton Manning, who happened to play in the "The Big Game" last year in Miami, Florida. Since Eli's aforementioned brother seems to be adverse to publicity and commercials, a large raise will go to the reporter who can scrounge up more information on this recluse.
   
2. The New England Patriots (coughTheGreatSatancough) are currently undefeated with an 18-0 record. What's that? You didn't know that well-hidden tidbit? Well, that's exactly why you're reading this post, my uninformed friend.
   
3. A man named Eric Mangini, who coaches a football team named after airplanes in New York, told on his former boss, Patriots coach Bill Belichick, after the initial game of the 2007 season. Some people got mad, some people paid large sums of money to a guy named Roger Goodell, and people keep talking about this thing called an "asterisk". There's really not enough reporting on this to forumlate an entire story, so let's just move on to the next point.
   
4. In the past 18 months, the quarterback for the Great Satan, Tom Brady, has fathered a child with a beautiful tv-star, Bridget Moynahan, broken up with Ms. Moynahan, began dating the world's most famous super-model, Gisele Bundchen, and compiled the greatest statistical year for a quarterback in the history of the NFL. At halftime of "The Big Game", Mr. Brady will receive a special present from the Make-a-Wish foundation because it seems that life has really dealt him a poor hand. No one deserves a string of bad bounces like Tom has had these past few years.
   
5. Did you know that Jerome Bettis is still from Detroit? Seriously, even though "The Big Game" was played there two years ago, you, the American viewing public, still need to know that the big, lovable, mass-transportation nicknamed lug was actually a native of the city where he won his first "Big Game". What? You didn't know that either? I'm beginning to think that you're a lost cause.

At least you're not dumb enough to believe that the Manning brothers actually have a father who played professional football, because that would just be ridiculous.

You Can't Take It With You

Perhaps it was not Shackelton's voyage to the Antarctic, and it certainly was not the FROZEN TUNDRA OF LAMBEAU FIELD, but the first annual Ninja Camping Trip this weekend to the desolate wasteland of the Cedar Ridge Campground outside Belton was by all accounts a success despite the cold.

I returned home to my comfortable abode expecting a warm welcome back to civilization, but what I received rocked me to my very core.

The madness from last week has not abated, and young Eli (Now, I'm up to 45% of Archie and Olivia's inheritance) Manning has now led to the New York (Football) Giants to that "big game" that will take place in Glendale, Arizona on February 3, 2008.

(Proper name of this "big game" removed due to a run-in with a NFL official).

The NFL can monitor me all it wants, but you know what game I'm talking about (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

In said "big game", the New York (Football) Giants will face "The Great Satan". This game is almost like cheering a matchup between AIDS and the ebola virus. In other words, no matter who wins, we all lose.

I'll Take a Quiet Life, A Handshake of Carbon Monoxide

In the words of Jacobim Mugatu of Zoolander fame,"I feel like I'm taking crazy pills", because I swear that earlier this evening I had a bad dream where a #5 seeded New York Giants squad quarterbacked by Eli (Black Sheep of the Family) Manning and coached by Tom Coughlin came into Texas Stadium and defeated a #1 seeded America's Team by the score of 21-17.

Wait.

What's that?

So, what you're telling me is that wasn't a dream?

That actually happened?

Just a second, I think I'm going to be sick.

(5 minutes later)

Okay, I've been out for a little walk around the block, took a few deep breaths, stepped down from that high bridge over the Brazos, and avoided stepping into oncoming traffic on I-35. Now let's approach this like a rational adult.

For the second time in less than twelve months, a Dallas team has gone into the playoffs carrying the #1 seed in its conference, and each team, the Mavericks last spring and now the Cowboys, have spectacularly flamed out of the playoffs at the first possible opportunity. I've never been a particularly huge Mavs fan, but I've been cheering for the Cowboys since the early 90's, and that's what makes today's loss so much more disappointing.

In the Mavs' loss last spring to the Golden State Warriors, Dirk & Co. allowed the games to slip away one by one and the "this can't be happening" feeling settled over the Mavericks' fanbase like a slowly descending fog. Today, the "this can't be happening" feeling descended on Cowboys fans like an anvil dropping on Wile E. Coyote.

Sure, we told ourselves that their poor form in December was an aberration and that they would be able to turn it on when it counted in January, but for the second straight season, and an NFL-record tying 6th straight time in the playoffs, we are wondering where it all went wrong.

If you need me, I'll be outside burning my apparently ineffective Eli Manning voodoo doll. In a further sign of the impending apocalypse, Eli was a clutch performer leading the G-Men while his much ballyhooed, corporate pitchman brother, Peyton, lost at home to a Chargers team that almost everyone expected them to beat handily. Up is down, black is white, and dogs and cats are living together in harmony.

It's a brave new world, my friends. Get ready for the end.