I’ve had it with excuses, you dig? Nobody in history ever came up with one that wasn’t lame, hilarious, disgusting or all of the above. Look. I’m a long-suffering Jets fan, okay? And just when it looked like things would turn around, Parcells retired, Belichik left for the Patriots and a very good team fell apart. After 2004, they traded away almost every one of their best players. In the 2000-2001 season, I was at a loss to why Testaverde passed for 400 yards on Christmas Eve and the Ravens still won. Well with the Jets out of postseason play, I reluctantly rooted for the Ravens. After Tony Banks had made every QB and DB laugh at him, Trent Dilfer stepped in and never lost a game. Including the Super Bowl against the New York Giants.
I was fine with it. But I took a beating at work, because I was devoted to the Jets, but lived and worked in Baltimore City and county, respectively. One of the games I’d seen the Ravens lose that season was with Banks at the helm in a stormy Miami during some tropical storm. I razzed the guys at work the next day and they said “They couldn’t help that, it was nothing but rain and mud.” And I SCREAMED with scorn-filled, ironic laughter and retorted, “Oh, you mean they (the Ravens) can’t compete with an NFL team in NFL weather? What, are they really NOT in the NFL?” and of course that shut them up. But after the Christmas break, going to work was less fun than no fun at all. So when I was for the Ravens as they bulldozed their way through the playoffs, I heard lots of things, none good.
And I had no excuse to offer.
Except for the Curse of Joe Namath. After Super Bowl 3, when he said that the Jets would “beat the Colts on Sunday” and guaranteed it, the AFL upstart caused a ton of hate mail. Then the Jets beat the Colts, making it worse. The Jets have never been back to the big game since. Mishaps, career-ending injuries, messy tabloid romances, intrigue and an ever-stingy Hess and family didn’t want to spend money for a winning team.
Then there’s the hard times that Namath went through: a few broken bones, bad knees, and finally being traded to the Rams, a team with once-picturesque uniforms in blue and white. They had switched back to their classic yellow and blue, which was ugly. Joe took his curse with him. One game he actually took himself out of the action and told the coach he just couldn’t handle the pain anymore. And the Jets, well, I guess Broadway Joe had split the curse between himself and the team. The Jets ruined the careers of Curtis Martin, Wayne Chrebet and Chad Pennington, among scores of others.
But my belief in sports curses is a bit iffy. The Madden Curse hasn’t really stopped, but it did get weirder, yet no matter what, I wouldn’t blame a curse for reality. And definitely not use it as an excuse, either. So now you know what’s maybe real, not real and just plain lame. Blaming an NFL loss on the weather–heat, cold, rain, freezing rain, snow or whatever–has nevesr been a cool thing to do. Blaming weather for losing an event inside? That’s despicable. And why the hell did they ever send blimps to arenas or domed stadiums? These are but a few of mysteries of professional sports.
See TYT’s take on sports (really lame) excuses here.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 