Like Richard Nixon, I'm a coach not a player

Not everyone was happy about the breadth of the punishment that the New England Patriots received for being caught stealing play calls from their opponents. Voicing his distaste of the matter and offering a more appropriate sanction was Kevin from O'Fallon. Kevin wrote into the St. Louis Post Dispatch suggesting that the Patriots had also cheated in Super Bowl XXXVI and that the only way to make amends would be to play the game again...this November.



Kevin's treatise, perhaps edited by the Post's staff (hey, been there Kev--they edit out the good jokes :( !!LOL!!), failed to offer adequate specifics. Where, for example, would they play? Back in New Orleans? But that's merely semantics, other hard questions: Would the Rams have to be coached by Mike Martz or Scott Linehan? Who would play? Does Aeneas Williams come out of retirement? Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk reunited? Where's Tony Horne nowadays--not playing softball on our team, that's for sure.

All of which makes me believe, that Kev's tongue was firmly entrenched in his cheek when he wrote into the paper. Although, it is funny to imagine him (whoever he is) picking up the Sports section, reading the article, and destroying his house a la Chris Farley when he was told he was drinking Colombian coffee crystals. "You...son of a...You lied to me!"

(Sorry about picture size)

So maybe O'Fallon has produced another in a dying breed of satirists, one capable of keeping us all in check and balancing out the doom and gloom of Mallard Fillmore. And if so, that's a good thing.


Thankfully as followers of sports media we've had writers keep us in check--like Bill Simmons who reminded us that not only was there a war going on, but people are dying: "We live in a world in which global-warming activists charter private jets to take them from speech to speech, then tell people not to use so much toilet paper. We live in a world in which American kids are getting killed every day in the Middle East and nobody will mobilize a valid protest until the President finally decides, We're having a draft lottery...So save me the moral indignation about CameraGate. The whole world is screwed up." Yes, the whole world is screwed up and until the problems in the Middle East are solved and global warming is ended then, will you be allowed to think, "Wow, that was kind of a sleezy thing for the Patriots to do," without being a total dick. It's just too bad that you can only feel bothered by a certain number of news stories at a time. "Hey what do you think about the Jena 6?" "Who whoa whoa, hold up there guy, have you heard about a little thing called global warming? Or I don't know, maybe the war in Iraq? Those are the two issues we're concentrating on right now. Come back when those are solved and we'll talk about your Civil Rights crisis." And I love (this has offically become a tangent) that in the same paragraph (cut off by my elipses) Simmons mentions Friday Night Lights compared to Perez Hilton's new show--how one will be cancelled and the other is trash! Of literally the tens of thousands of things in the world to be morally indignant about, Bill Simmons chooses the fact that NBC might cancel Friday Night Lights. In his defense, though, it was a kick ass pop culture reference.


While that was one end of the spectrum, the other end was likening this whole scenario to Watergate. That little old political scandal which resulted in the resignation of the President of the United States and in combiantion with the Vietnam War sent America spiraling into an era of political skepticsm. Yeah, come to think of it, it was sort of like that. "Patriots have their Watergate." "Belichick's actions Nixonian." Give me a break. This would have sort of kind of been like Watergate had Roger Goodell told Belichick to tape the Jets, then denied the whole thing and fired Gene Upshaw when he tried to uncover the truth.

Where has journalism gone? I actually don't want to know the answer to that question, I really just want to hear Skip Bayless tell me how to feel about Barry Bonds.