This Week In Balls: Let’s Go, Um, Giants!
The Giants and the Eagles justify each others’ existence. Rooting for the Eagles is not the same without the Giants to kick around, and vice versa. Hey, these guys are just like me, only the opposite. There’s somebody in Newark who looks just like you (only backwards and upside down) who is pulling for the Giants — don’t you want this game for him?
After the jump, Michael Fichman reasons that if you cannot root for your bizarro-world self this Sunday, then really, you can’t root for anyone.
OK, so Super Bowl “week” (actually two awful and boring weeks) is drawing to a painful and scrutinized close. The game is almost an afterthought with the amount of commercial and media attention focused on the event for the benefit of part-time fans. (Will Leitch has a great take on this in his NYT blog.) But there will still be a game on Sunday, believe it or not, and the winners will earn gilded rings that they will sell when concussion induced-dimentia plunges them all into horrifying depression and debt around the age of 50-60 years (not kidding). More trivially, one of these teams will be allowed to call itself World Champion, “World” meaning, “United States.”
A few weeks ago in this space, I assessed the second round NFL playoff teams in terms of their palatability to the Philly sports fan. Since that time, all of our preferred squads (the Packers, Seahawks, Chargers and Jaguars) were eliminated, leaving us with two shitty options — the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. Furthermore, I wrote a column two weeks ago proclaiming my unbridled excitement at the news that they were demolishing the Spectrum. That column went over about as well as a fart in church (not that I’ve ever been there). So, with my credibility at an all-time high, I plan to offer more advice. I suggest that you root for the Giants this weekend: Not just so you have a team to root for, but because it makes sense.
As much as you hate to hear it, the fate of the free world depends on the New York Giants. I know, I know. Fuck those guys. Right. But there are so many ideological reasons for Philadelphians to root for them. Hear me out.
The underdog
1. Given a choice between rooting for an historic victory or an historic upset, I’d choose an upset any time. If the Giants win, it will be an upset equaled by perhaps only by Buster Douglas‘ defeat of Mike Tyson or the New York Jets‘ stunning victory over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. As of this writing, the Pats are favored by 12.5 points in Vegas. Only three teams have ever beat a spread like that in a Super Bowl: The Jets in SB III, the Chiefs in SB IV, and the Pats in SB XXXVI. Only ten of the forty-one total champions have won as underdogs. But none of these underdogs ever beat an undefeated team, a machine, rolling 18-0 into the game. Rooting for the undefeated Patriots is like rooting for a fait-accompli, like rooting for the Spanish Armada or the French at Agincourt. Either force would just be an anecdote if they weren’t trounced by the underdog. And Philly isn’t one to pull for the favorite.
Contempt breeds familiarity
2. The Giants and the Eagles justify each others’ existence. Rooting for the Eagles is not the same without the Giants to kick around, and vice versa. The teams owe each other an existential debt. I went to a Cleveland Browns bar to watch a Steelers game once, and I realized — hey, these guys are just like me, only the opposite. There’s somebody in Newark who looks just like you (only backwards and upside down) who is pulling for the Giants — don’t you want this game for him?
An Embarrassment of Riches
3. The Patriots and their fans are an evil and nefarious force on the verge of achieving ultimate victory… AGAIN…ONLY MORESO. Ugh. Teams from Boston are the best in the three major team sports right now. The Red Sox have successfully outspent the Yankees and they’ve won another championship. The Celtics stockpiled all the best available talent and they’re blowing away the NBA and the Patriots are on the verge of their 4th Super Bowl this decade and an unprecedented 19-0 undefeated season. The odds of having all three teams win their respective championships is apparently 29,000:1. The odds of Philly telling Boston to fuck off: 1:1.
Michael Fichman is a writer and DJ living in Philadelphia. He also blogs at Just Sayin’ and Pour The Science. Read more editions of This Week In Balls here.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
good points against the patriots. however, nothing would be worse for philly than to have a rejuvenated and confident superbowl championship winning new york giants team storm into next season on the backs of the most retardedly arrogant asshole fans ever to set stool on the planet. unless of course winning the championship equals blowing a load and taking a nap next season.