I was not there yesterday when Adalius Thomas spoke by conference call to the local writers, so all I can say about it is based on what's been written. And no, this isn't a slap at my columnist colleague, Peter Schmuck; I'm not trying to work some kind of PTI or Siskel and Ebert thing with him. He just happened to be the one who wrote about what sounds like a somewhat contentious session with Thomas.

It's just strange timing for it to happen. For one thing, we have a perception about Sean Taylor's murder (speaking of which, people still have trouble referring to it that way) shaped largely by the fact that Taylor withheld himself from reporters throughout his NFL career. For another, we have a prosecution of Barry Bonds in court and in public that appears largely shaped by the fact that he spent his pro career being impolite with reporters.

We also have a long, long history of positive images about athletes and coaches being shaped by how they interact with us that, at some point, get blown to smithereens by reality. Eugene Robinson, the Falcons player, man of faith and wonderful interview, busted the night before the Super Bowl for soliciting a prostitute, comes to mind. So does Marion Jones, all sweetness and charm, right up until the moment she tearfully confessed to doping up throughout the prime of her track career. And, as I feel compelled to point out as often as possible, Jeff Kent, who was always around to talk to reporters -- and whom reporters admittedly liked because he did talk to them, unlike Bonds -- but who was subsequently revealed to be an enormous liar (the truck-washing/wheelie-popping story to explain his broken wrist) and phony.

Now, Adalius Thomas, being portrayed as being ungrateful for the love showered upon him while he was here, based on his comments about the Ravens in Sports Illustrated earlier this season and his prickly comments yesterday. After the initial Thomas-Ray Lewis exchange, a few reporters made it clear -- sometimes on the record -- that Thomas had "changed'' last year, had gotten full of himself, had blatantly grabbed for media attention as free agency approached, and had stopped talking to the locals in favor of national outlets. Without wanting to discount what they said, I can say I never, ever, saw that from him. I don't remember him ever brushing me off. I don't remember him ever being rude or uncommunicative or unavailable. The opposite; he was great copy all year. But I'm not around the team as much as they are. I was around enough to know that he was a freakishly great player who deserved every accolade, and subsequent dollar, he got, no matter who he spoke to.

The point is this: It's scary sometimes how much power we wield over how these guys are perceived by the world. They need to be more aware of it. Generally, the Ravens players are. You never know exactly when it will come back and haunt you, because there is no doubt that we hold grudges and take out vendettas. I will always believe that had Bonds not been so surly all those years, baseball might still be neck-deep in every steroid known to man, no one would be questioning baseball's records (like the ones Mark McGwire was setting), and there would be no such thing as a Mitchell investigation, a BALCO scandal, or "Game of Shadows."

Or, if Bonds had been given a pass for his testiness the way McGwire was, we'd be in a different place.

Worse, had Sean Taylor been as eager and engaging with the media as, say Curt Schilling -- or, in NFL terms, Chad Johnson or Tony Romo, or at least as neutral as Tom Brady or Donovan McNabb -- we'd be having a completely different conversation about his slaying right now. The fact that Taylor, in doing that, might have been completely full of you-know-what, the consummate phony, wouldn't have mattered. There would not have been that void in knowledge and personal interaction, which so many people filled with the thin, unsupported connection between his past misdeeds and his violent death. It would have been, "How could this have happened? He was such a good guy!''

That whole exchange between Thomas and Lewis earlier this year was one of the highlights of the season. The next chapter is Monday night (unfortunately, they won't face each other). One day, Thomas will spill about it. Inconveniently, that day wasn't yesterday. I won't hold that against him.

I will say this, though. Fifteen minutes of charm from Bill Belichick one afternoon doesn't make him less of a jerk.

Posted by David Steele at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
                    

Thanks to all the readers who took the time to reply to yesterday's posting about the murder of Sean Taylor, and who have e-mailed about this morning's column. That goes for those who agreed with it and those who didn't, even those who were really nasty, obnoxious and racist about it. America, land of the free, yada yada yada.

Thanks also to Roch Kubatko, who gave me props on Roch Around the Clock yesterday. I can ride coattails as well as anyone, outside of Scottie Pippen, that is.

And one more, for those who made the connection to the death of Len Bias, such as our mixed martial arts blogger, Pramit Mohapatra. I wasn't sure about making that leap, but the fact that so many readers, especially Skins fans and local sports fans, period, expressed the same deep, intense sense of loss that those my age remember from June 19, 1986, it convinced me that Sean is this generation's Lenny. People will remember the date and hold onto that pain and carry his story forward -- and, maybe, change a generation's attitudes about the factors that killed him. No question, people view cocaine differently now than they did before Len Bias (and yes, I know, it's not even close to being gone, but the perspective is different), and maybe 20 years from now people will view gun violence the same way. I know, wishful thinking.

There's an incredibly sharp divide on the national opinions being expressed so far, and a lot of people have pointed to comments made by the Post's Michael Wilbon and a column by the Post's Leonard Shapiro. I feel bad about that. They are both idols to me in this business. But I can't imagine disagreeing with them more than I do on this topic.

What it all is reminding me of is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the early days, when the news was full of reports of black people roaming the abandoned streets of New Orleans and looting businesses, and of people being murdered and babies being raped inside the Superdome. Completely hysterical reporting and vicious rumor-mongering passed off as fact and believed without question by millions, only to be later, at a much lower volume, disproved. Utterly dehumanizing, for no reason other than it was easy for people to believe that black people are savages incapable of being civilized. Turned out that instead of raping and pillaging, they were actually, you know, drowning and starving.

What it shares with Sean Taylor's case? The phrase, "I'm not surprised.''

With the scant evidence about the crime at hand, everyone has felt free to speculate about him because of his past, giving it relevance to the crime moments after the crime was committed, whether it's based in fact or not. That includes past acts such as, incredibly, leaving the NFL rookie symposium early; yes, you had to figure right then and there that anybody who'd walk out of that session was sure to get a hole blown through a major artery while in his home someday.

It also froze him in time, making it clear that nobody should have ever expected him to grow up or mature beyond the stage he was at when he was 20, and that it was a waste of time to think he could. You can't escape your past, it will always catch up with you, these people insist. Well, who says so? And does that go for everybody, or just the people whose mistakes get on TV and in the papers? Now, bringing a gun when you chase someone you think stole your ATV gets you the death penalty, served by some stranger breaking into your house two years later? I mean, do people even think these things through before they say them?

All right, now that I've tied Taylor, Bias and a natural and governmental disaster together, where does Linus fit in?

"A Charlie Brown Christmas'' came on last night. It was a very welcome respite from the depressing news all day. Still the best holiday TV special ever.

After that went off, I still wanted a break from intense, round-the-clock coverage of the tragedy. So I turned on ESPN. Neither OJ, Barry Bonds or pit bulls were involved in this incident, so the Worldwide Leader pretty much took the day off.

Posted by David Steele at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
                    

I've been dreading writing this all morning, for a lot of reasons, the biggest one being that a 24-year-old man with an 18-month-old daughter, who was doing nothing but relaxing at home late one night -- and a man who had a long, successful and wealthy life ahead of him -- is dead. That's what I hope people will understand about Sean Taylor, and I had a chance to talk about it this morning with Drew Forrester on WNST-AM's Comcast Morning Show, in my regular Tuesday 9 a.m. spot.

But I have this fear that it's not what some people are going to get from this horrible news. Already, from fans but also, regrettably, from people in my business, this story is being centered on his troubled past, tangles with the law, some involving guns.

A couple of talk-show dopes I listened to before leaving San Diego yesterday -- Colin Cowherd of ESPN Radio and Josh Rosenberg on XTRA Sports 1360 AM in San Diego -- figured that the breaking news about the shooting, when Taylor was in critical condition and gaps in information were just being filled in, gave them great opportunity to discuss (in Cowherd's case) how it shouldn't be any surprise that he got gunned down because he's not a good guy, like Tiki Barber or Tom Brady, and to discuss (in Rosenberg's case) the NFL's player code of conduct and mention the likes of Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson. This, because Taylor was a victim of an armed break-in in his home in the middle of the night, with his girlfriend and baby girl with him.

I hate this business sometimes.

Unfortunately, the same sort of thing happened when the Broncos' Darrent Williams was shot to death last New Year's morning: there seemed to be some need to find out whether Williams was somehow culpable for his own violent death. ("Did he have gang affiliations?'' No, but he did have infant children, like Taylor.) Same thing a year ago, when the University of Miami's Bryant Pata was killed the week before the Maryland game. And when, over the summer, NBA players Eddy Curry and Antoine Walker were robbed at gunpoint in their homes and tied up.

People were having a hard time distinguishing victims from perpetrators. For some reason. I can't imagine what that reason could be. ESPN.com writer LZ Granderson, after the Curry and Walker incidents, wondered the same thing.

Here is some of The Washington Post's coverage. And the Miami Herald's. And from the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, our corporate sister paper.

At some point, we'll discuss whether the Redskins should play this week. Off the top of my head, and in full knowledge of what a logistical nightmare switching the game would be ... I say no.

Posted by David Steele at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)
                    

The less said about the game that ended here in San Diego a few hours ago, the better. But as the Ravens head back east, situations are developing in Foxboro that could cause them big, big problems next Monday night.

The Patriots lead the Eagles as the second half is beginning. But they only lead 24-21, and just took the lead with eight seconds left in the half.

Now, they still might end up pulling away, covering the 24-point spread, and bombing the hell out of the Eagles in the fourth quarter with a five-touchdown lead. After all, Tom Brady did finally admit last week that, yes, they are "trying to kill people'' this season. And ESPN's Sunday Countdown had a feature this morning about the "Humble Pie'' that Bill Belichick hands out in the way of microanalyzing flaws and mistakes in film sessions every week to keep the players on edge - and about how Adalius Thomas made T-shirts for everybody with the phrase on it.

Well, losing at home to an Eagles team without Donovan McNabb until the final seconds of the first half is about all the humble pie these guys are going to need for next week. If the Eagles actually come back and win this, God help the Ravens next week. You think the Patriots are merciless now, watch out if they come to town after having their perfect season broken up and their bubble burst and the whole cheating and running-up-the-score routine thrown in their faces all week.

Chances are, the Patriots being close at halftime for only the second time all season is probably going to be enough humble pie for the Ravens to be paying the price next week.

On the topic of payback and running up scores, by the way, this Boston Globe story from Sunday tries to put everything about this Patriots season into perspective. This Herald piece, meanwhile, forecasts all the records the Patriots have a chance to break this season.

Posted by David Steele at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

It's been two days since Phil Dawson's kick broke the plane of the uprights and crossbar at M&T Bank Stadium, and a lot has been said and threatened. But the most basic question of it all has not been answered, and it's been raised over and over again: Why in the world are field goals not reviewable?

Again, this isn't the first time it's been asked; probably a few thousand asked it immediately Sunday night when they realized there was no point in Pete Morelli even going in the direction of the hood. It was raised again this morning when I appeared on the Comcast Morning Show on WNST-AM, with Drew Forrester, the first of regular appearances on the show. (Shameless plug.) The Ravens players looked perplexed about it after the game, although they had a lot of reasons to look perplexed, and why the kick wasn't allowed to be reviewed was sort of down the list. Higher up, certainly, was why they kept kicking to Joshua Cribbs.

Even in this CBSSportsline.com story, referenced in this morning's Sun, NFL vice president of officiating Mike Pereira offered no explanation for why field goals and extra points aren't covered in the review policy -- except to specify that they are not covered.

Every single other situation that has to do with boundaries and planes is reviewable. This isn't a judgment call, like pass interference or holding. You can review touchdowns and out of bounds calls and the spot of a ball, but with the single biggest visual on the field available, the gigantic yellow field-goal apparatus, video review isn't allowed. The only time the whole breaking-the-plane issue would be a problem would be if the kick went over or near an upright, and admittedly, that could be a tough call -- but not with cameras mounted in the right places.

As Matt Stover said after the game, "the wind could blow the ball back through the uprights, and it still would be good.'' That proved he understood the rule better than everybody else in the building, seemingly including the officiating crew. But when asked why field goals can't be reviewed, all he could do was shrug.

Of course, in the big picture, it doesn't matter so much that place kicks can't be reviewed; it matters more that someone decides in the offseason to make them reviewable. I'd have to think the NFL's competition committee will bring it up. I'd like to think, meanwhile, that this is the direction the protest, or discussion, or clarification, Brian Billick alluded to yesterday is aimed at getting at, instead of what it appears to be on the surface: a claim that the Ravens should have been given the win on a blatantly bad call, because the process of getting it right was faulty.

I mean, I want to give the Ravens the benefit of the doubt on this. I'd like to think the fans who keep calling and e-mailing, who are ignoring the fact that the zebras got the call right and focusing on the fact that the players were already in the locker room cutting off the tape, are in a distinct minority. I want to believe that radio analyst Stan White knows he's missing the point when he talks about how "there's little doubt'' in his mind that the refs twisted the rules to make their ruling.

It was a confusing, frustrating and disruptive situation, and it's another symptom of a bad system (enough with the red flags and timeouts and the rushing to the line to snap the ball before something can be reviewed). But everything going on now is still far superior to the prospect of the original call being left to stand and the Browns being denied what was rightfully theirs. That would have been completely unacceptable under any circumstances, and completely indefensible. Seriously, you'd be OK with winning a game because you got to the locker room too fast for the refs to catch either you or their own mistake?

It's refreshing to see The Sun's online poll revealing that fans don't believe the Ravens got a raw deal on the play, by a landslide. As of this posting, nearly 10,000 have voted and nearly 82 percent are OK with what happened. Results are not scientific, though, and who knows how many Browns fans have Googled the poll and jumped on it? Not to accuse anybody or anything, just saying.

One last anecdote: in the middle of the third quarter, right around the time Kyle Boller threw the pick that was returned 100 yards for a touchdown, the joke in the press box was that this game was highly unlikely to show up on this week's NFL Replay on NFL Network.

Guess what game is airing at 8 tonight?

Posted by David Steele at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
                    

This is already evolving as one of those "where were you when you heard'' moments in sports. Right up there with Len Bias' death, Magic Johnson announcing he had HIV, Barbaro at the Preakness, the Auburn Hills fight, Tyson biting Holyfield's ear and Joe Theismann's leg. Just off the top of my head, those are the ones that I remember. For the record, I can't remember at all where I was when Pete Rose got the boot.

Oh, uh, I'm talking about Bonds being indicted. 

I can say that when I called a friend at home last night about an hour and a half after it broke, he had not heard about it - and we immediately spent the next 44 minutes 42 seconds talking about it. (Thank goodness for cell-phone timers.)

Where was I? At home, just finishing taping a radio spot (every Thursday on WOL in D.C., airs around 8:30 p.m., don't miss it!) and was yakking with the host and idly glancing at ESPN News, with the sound down because Dick Vitale was talking. In the corner, though, under "Breaking News,'' there it was: "Bonds indicted on Federal Charges.'' (Capitalized just like that.)

Into the phone I said: "Why am I looking in the corner of the screen on ESPN News and seeing 'Bonds indicted on Federal Charges'?''

The response: "What?!?!?''

I started flipping to the other ESPN nettworks, then to the CNN stations. He ran to his computer. It wasn't even up on any sites yet, even ESPN's. He found it on the AP wire. (Irony: at that moment, on the site of the very paper that started it all, the San Francisco Chronicle, the lead item was Trent Dilfer replacing Alex Smith at quarterback for the next 49ers game; in a box further down, under Latest AP News, was an item titled "BBN-AP News Alert.'' That's wire-service code for a story on National League baseball of the very highest priority. It was a two-paragraph Bonds story, the first version they could crank out, but you couldn't tell until you clicked on it.)

Five minutes later, CBSSports.com had a box at the top of the screen, but not a story, just a headline and one sentence. In another minute or so, USA Today's site had a headline stretched across the top of its site, as if war had broken out.

"They finally got Capone,'' I said. "They got John Gotti. They took long enough,'' he said.

I e-mailed someone at another paper, who replied that the newsroom "just went into overdrive.'' Now it was spreading, like a virus. Within no less than about 15 minutes, it was on every newspaper's front page, not the sports page.

I started clicking around to radio stations. I admit I was surprised to hear almost no gloating. The one example I heard was from the update reader on Sportstalk 980 in D.C., who prefaced his report with, "There is good news in baseball today ...'' No one else was treating it like good news. The dominant reaction of various hosts -- I didn't hear callers right away -- was amazement of what was unfolding. No I-knew-its, no I-told-ya-sos, just shock that it happened, when it happened and what it meant.

To ESPN's credit, because it makes itself such an easy target sometimes, it proved the value of having a dedicated headline-news network. They've gone all Bonds all the time, without interrupting the preseason NIT basketball game or the Oregon-Arizona game on other networks. They called in everybody --as I write this, Victor Conte is on. They now have more legal experts and steroid investigators on staff than the Justice Dept. By the way, that includes Mark Fainaru-Wada, who just this week went from the Chronicle to ESPN and has been on TV more in the last couple of hours than he has in all the post-Game of Shadows years combined.

Eventually, I wrote about it for tomorrow's Sun. Back with more then. I am prepared for the possibility that by the time the paper hits the street, things will have changed enough to make everything I wrote completely wrong. So factor that in.

Posted by David Steele at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
                    

So, now we know who's starting at quarterback Sunday, because the head coach told us yesterday. What we don't know is what will happen when, or if, Steve McNair's non-throwing shoulder gets un-subluxated - that is, when he gets healthy.

Brian Billick wasn't exactly clear on that yesterday. And I threw out the idea that now, Kyle Boller can actually earn the job, or at least some respectability and faith from the organization and fan base, by stepping up the rest of the season.

But what if Boller doesn't? What if he stinks it up the next few weeks, and the losing streak grows to five, six, seven games? (That would mean losing this week to Cleveland, then all three on the infamous black hole of the schedule: at San Diego, home for New England, home for Indy.)

And what if then, after four weeks of sitting, McNair is able to play? The final three weeks, that is, in a season that at that point would officially be lost.

That's pretty much an absolutely worst-case scenario, true. But ... what would you do?

And no fair saying, "Start Troy Smith.'' (But a lot of you will say it anyway.)

Posted by David Steele at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
                    

Before we get back to the miserable topic of who should start at quarterback for the Ravens, a little levity, courtesy of Charlie from Owings Mills:

A guy walks into a bar wearing a Ravens jersey, and carrying a cat that also has a Ravens jersey on with a little Ravens helmet on his head, too.

The guy says to the bartender, "Can my cat and I watch the Ravens game here? My TV is broken and my cat and I always watch the game together.''

The bartender replies, "Normally, cats wouldn't be allowed in the bar, but it's not very busy in here right now, so you and the cat can have a seat at the end of the bar. But if there's any trouble with you or the cat, I'll have to ask you to leave.''

The guy agrees, and he and his cat start watching the game. Pretty soon the Ravens kick a field goal, and the excited cat jumps up and down on the bar and walks down the bar and gives everyone a high-five.

The bartender says, "Hey, that's pretty cool! What does he do for a touchdown?''

The guys answers, "I don't know, I've only had him for three years!''

Thank you, we'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your waiter.

Now, if you thought that was funny, check this out: Brian Billick hasn't picked a starter for Sunday's game. And that, as Mike Preston pointed out this morning (and as I hinted at yesterday) tells you that the savior isn't exactly sitting one spot down on the depth chart.

As much deserved abuse that is being heaped on Billick right now, you have to feel for him a little. Although he got himself into this by trusting Kyle Boller as much as he has the last five years, he clearly now realizes that he can't hand the reins to him now, and probably not any time soon, even though Steve "Air'' McNair (or, as Chris from Towson dubbed him in a postgame e-mail, "Error'' McNair), who served Billick so well last year and who the players still believe in, is (a) playing horribly and (b) apparently injured.

It all raises this question: Do 88 percent of you still want Boller to be the starter the rest of the season? The answer, according to this poll on CBSSports.com (just as unscientific and limited as the Sun poll last week), is clearly "no." According to this, only 85 percent of you want Boller instead of McNair.

There also is this to consider: after taking the field to resounding cheers, marching the Ravens toward the goal line in his first series and picking apart a bad defense playing a prevent, Boller still threw an awful pass into multiple coverage that got intercepted.

The approval ratings might still be high, but right now, where do you stand? More to the point, which quarterback will finally give that cat a chance to show off his touchdown celebration?

Posted by David Steele at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
                    

Few people with the privileges we have complain about their jobs as much as sportswriters do. But weekends like this are easy reminders of why we're so lucky to be doing this for a living. As much fun as it would have been the last couple of days to sprawl on the couch at home and watch the Navy-Notre Dame game and then the Patriots-Colts game, it was even more fun to be there in person.

Honestly, sometimes I feel like I'm gloating when I talk about things like this, like when I'm asked about the moments I cherish most, and I realize that I saw, for example, the Michael Jordan shot that beat Utah in 1998. These two games, on back-to-back days, are right up there.

Then again, there's the third leg of my weekend trip.

As we waited for the elevators to the RCA Dome locker rooms after tonight's game, a colleague said that, basically, this is the last NFL game worth watching until the AFC championship game. In response, I had no choice to point out where I was going tomorrow: to Pittsburgh for Steelers-Ravens.

"From Tom Brady to Kyle Boller,'' he said.

That was so uncalled-for. Boller might not even play tomorrow. Still, to the outside world, Boller is the instantly-recognized symbol of the Ravens' offensive futility.

But that's the NFL 2007 for you. Honestly, the next 2 1/2 months will be excruciating. But maybe the Steelers and Ravens will fool me tonight.

Meanwhile, it was unfortunate that we couldn't mention in today's paper that Notre Dame's Robert Hughes scored the first touchdown, and how meaningful that was. He's a freshman running back, and before the game there was a moment of silence for his brother, who had been shot to death back in their hometown of Chicago earlier in the week. The team had attended the funeral just days before the Navy game, and when Hughes scored, he was swarmed by the players on the sideline, embracing him. Besides that, the moment of silence also honored Ryan Shay, the marathoner who died during the Olympic trials in New York just hours before the game, and who was a former Notre Dame star.

So Notre Dame had a lot of emotion on their side. And Navy still managed to win.

Posted by David Steele at 9:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

There seriously can't be any more debate about whether this is the worst year in the history of sports, can there? The only remaining question is whether anything actually good happened. (Yeah, I know, some overall good was probably done. None of it comes to mind right now. I'm sure it will eventually.)

No, 2007 is doing to the rest of sports history what the Patriots are doing to the rest of the NFL: running it up. No other year is close, and yet it's November and the year still has its starters in, is throwing deep, going for it on fourth-and-1 and spiking the ball in the end zone.

I mean, did you ever, in your wildest dreams, think that one day you, sports fan, would hear of a judge referring to the home of a current National Football League head coach as "a drug emporium''?

On any other day, the revelation that a five-time tennis Grand Slam champion might have been on the pipe, or that baseball's all-time home run king might boycott the Hall of Fame, would have devoured the space and time of every sports media outlet in the land. Individually, that is. Yet they both happened on one day, yesterday. And both were totally eclipsed by the Andy Reid courtroom story.

You're afraid to say, "What's next?'' because you just might find out. Each story has been worse than the last, and there are still two months left. I don't even have a comment on any of the above stories, except for "Enough already!''

I have nothing left. Well, one thing, the original idea for this item, before Hingis, Barry Bonds and those ig'nant Reid boys took over. This cartoon from Saturday Night Live's "TV Funhouse'' (warning: language is fine, content is pretty adult), which, on recent viewing, reminded me of Bill Belichick.

Posted by David Steele at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Apparently, now it's personal. The consensus among commentators, whether they are NFL players, former players or the people who write and talk about them, is that if other players or teams don't like the Patriots running up the score on them, and they don't do something about it (like maim a couple of them every chance they get), then they're a bunch of wimps.

Furthermore -- and this is where it gets personal -- any non-player who doesn't like what the Patriots are doing is a wimp, too.

This column in this morning's Washington Post isn't the only place where this has been proclaimed, just the latest, and the fact that it's proclaimed by one of the best in this business, Sally Jenkins, only tells you how ingrained this idea is.

I don't like to think I'm soft. I don't think I have to prove I'm not by detailing my appreciation for NFL players getting busted in the mouth. But hell no, I'm not buying this idea that this garbage the Patriots are pulling is something admirable, that should be glorified and stands as a testament to the greatness and superiority of Bill Belichick.

It's selfish. It's juvenile. It places the Patriots and their pompous coach above the rest of the game, as it stands now and as it has been played for its entire existence. It disrespects all the players and coaches who have come before, who are here now and who will come after them.

It's extremely phony, because it presents the false premise that the team that rolls up the biggest margin of victory is the team that really is the best ever. It's ugly to watch and impossible to appreciate. It takes the beauty that otherwise would be inherent in dominance, and blows it completely out of proportion and destroys perspective.

It's the height of cynicism, watching a supposedly respected coach try to "take it out'' on opponents because he was caught flagrantly violating one of the most basic of NFL competition rules. And having his players, otherwise decent people, widely admired for their professionalism and lack of ego and pretension throughout their run of Super Bowls, buy into the misplaced vindictiveness, and become the same obnoxious boors they once were the antidote to. This, again, we're supposed to admire, and if we don't, we're punks, or haters, or hypocrites because everybody in the NFL cheats, or because you'd love it if your team could do it, but they can't, because they're punks. That's a depressing way to live, think and root.

Worst of all, it's stirred up blood lust in other players and in observers, whose desire to see Tom Brady have a helmet driven into his chest grows with every gratuitous fourth-quarter touchdown and resulting wild, overexuberant celebration in a 45-0 game. Is that what we really want -- players rejecting their own internal codes and destroying fellow players' careers, only because those players rejected the code and went out of their way to rub a loss in the faces of them, their organization and their fans? That's supposed to be fun? More fun that the NFL has provided in the previous 87 years? That NFL wasn't good enough for us, so this is what we need?

There are standards that have been set by NFL teams before, by men like Lombardi and Shula and Chuck Noll and Bill Walsh and, yes, Joe Gibbs, whom Belichick saw fit to treat like a bum last week. If those teams didn't shame and humiliate every opponent throughout their years of dominance, it was because they felt they didn't have to, not because they weren't able to. They didn't think they stood above and apart from the rest of the sport, even though they had egos and smugness and enemies. But they also had respect for the sport and those who gave their lives to it.

If you were losing 31-0 in the fourth quarter, and all the starters were on the sideline with their pads off and were laughing, and the backups were either running it up the middle or taking a knee -- guess what? You knew you had been whupped. You were suitably embarrassed. Making it 51-0 with the starters still bombing and blitzing away meant that the other team's goal had risen beyond just winning and excelling, and there literally would be nothing good on either side that could come of it. It wouldn't leave the impression that the team beating you was that much better than the one that "only'' won 31-0, that's for sure.

The idea that somehow those legendary teams are inferior to this Patriots team (which still has played only half a season) because they didn't bludgeon teams by 45 points and leave their starters in deep in the fourth quarter and keep throwing deep downfield and go for it on fourth downs with five-touchdown leads and scream and yell and pump their fists and spike the ball and beat their chests after every extra layer of humiliation and dare the other team to go outside the rules of the game and basic decency to cripple their star players -- well, that idea is not only ridiculous, but insulting to them.

That's what the Patriots and Belichick are. They're an insult. They're not inventing anything new and fresh for the NFL by doing this, they're introducing something ugly and pointless. The game is not better because the Patriots are doing this, it's worse, and it'll only get worse the more they do it.

They're treating a sport, its history and its reality like their locker-room urinal, all because they got busted red-handed. You can bet if they get the chance Sunday, they'll treat the Colts that way, too, which means they'll treat Tony Dungy that way, and a man like Tony Dungy doesn't deserve to be treated that way by a lowlife like Bill Belichick, no matter how much of a football genius Belichick is.

Go ahead, Patriots, win another Super Bowl, go undefeated, make history. But don't act like you're above the game and beyond its rules and codes and history. Not any more than you already have, that is.

But, you know, I'm the one who's soft. I've got these stupid standards and scruples. I hate it.

Posted by David Steele at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (71)