Is it Over?

I can't watch ESPN.

The NFL Network? Well that might as well be video of my own execution for as far as I'm concerned.

SI.com? Absolutely out of the question.

I flipped on sports radio 850 WEEI yesterday, they were talking about Vinatieri. I changed the channel.

Since Sunday I've lived in a self-imposed football free coccoon.

It's been four days and I'm still not ready to face the reality that the Patriots were eliminated one game short of the Super Bowl by the much heralded though marginally accomplished Indinapolis Colts.

If only it had been anyone else. If only we didn't have to find ourselves overwhelmed and inundated by Peyton Manning ball washing for the next two weeks, then maybe I would be a normal human being again by this point. Alas, I am not.

Thinking about the game still makes me angry. The name Reche Caldwell is banned from my ears, don't utter it near me lest my fury turn on you. I'm thinking of cutting up my MasterCard due to their involvement with that goofy nitwit that wears number 18.

Sadly I have learned that there are casual fans in this country who think things like, "Wow, I'm really happy for Peyton Manning, he seems like such a nice guy." And, "I like his commercials, espeically the one where he cheers for the regular people. Such a fine gentlemen and role model for our children." Really? Are you fucking insane? Did you forget that the role model himself sumarily threw his entire offensive line under the bus after last year's loss to Pittsburgh?

Is he a great quarterback? Yes. Was this victory on Sunday a coronation of him as the premier signal caller in the NFL, vindicated and freed from criticism through superior play? Absolutely not., He didn't win this game for the Colts, the Patriots, Tom Brady, Reche Caldwell, and Todd Sauerbrun gave it to him.

As Bill Simmons said on Monday, "We had it."

I think that's what makes it so difficult to accept. They should have won. In fact they had the game won. At the Colts 28 yard line, with less than three minutes to play in the first half, up 21-3 the Patriots had tickets to Miami punched. A touchdown
and the game is over. A field goal with no time left for the Colts to score at the end of the half and the game is probably still over. Yet that's not how it happened. A questionable offensive pass interference call, a bonehead penalty, and a sack pushed the Patriots out of field goal range and gave "D-Caf!" a shot to get back into it.

I'm a wildly sore loser. Anyone who knows me can vouch for that, and this week is no exception, I'm full of heinsight and bad intentions. I want Reche Caldwell to go down in the history books as the Bill Buckner of football. How do you drop a ball when you are so wide open that the announcers are screaming about no one being on your side of the field? Sure he might not have scored on that play, but where would he have been stopped, at the five, at the two? To say that play didn't cost them the game is grossly understating the importance of that drive. They ended up losing by four, a touchdown there instead of a field goad... well thanks again Reche.

As you can probably tell I don't know where to start. This is actually my third attempt at writing this. I started out thinking I would write a nice couple of paragraphs about how the Colts were the better team and, in a tremendously out of character move, I would try to be a good sport. I can't do that. I hate this Colts team and everything about it, especially it's quarterback too much. Then I thought I would write about how the we saw history on Sunday, as the Pats dynasty faded into the past. But as I started writing I became less and less convinced that was the case.

The result of those false starts is this meandering pointless post which may or may not get relegated to the deleted file soon after publishing.

I'm still unable to put into words how frustrating it is to lose a game to a hated rival when victory is so near. Now that I think about it, it's probably what the Colts have felt about the Patriots until this year. The problem for me is that it's not suppossed to be this way. We're used to winning that game, and while we have lost in the recent past, we have never lost the close game that hinged on clutch plays by dueling stars. Tom Brady has always been able to kill 3:30 with a three point lead. Bill Bellichick has always been able to pull out last minute defensive miracles against powerful offenses. They have always taken advantage of their chance to win in the end.

But not this time. It's like having your girlfriend let her ex shave her head randomly, you want to still like her, but how can you deal with the change and disappointment?

I have learned a few things from this experience though. There is nothing on TV during the day aside from ESPN. I can't even count the number of hours I've killed watching Family Guy and 24 dvds merely to avoid the possibility of seeing a Super Bowl preview on SportsCenter. I also learned I don't really go to any non-sports related web-sites, and God forbid I go to one of those now, lest there be a picture of a Dungy, Manning, Vinatieri circle jerk.

Random aside: do you think Vinatieri advertises for the regional pizza chain in Indiana and have they, like Papa Ginos did here, started calling all their non-pizza appetizers kickers?

So I guess the question is what do we do now? Well for one thing I need to think more about the dynasty and whether it's actually over. My initial thought was that it most certainly is done. Teams historically fall off dramatically in the sixth year after their first Super Bowl victory, (the Steelers and Cowboys both missed the playoffs) but do we really count that first one? They didn't even make the playoffs the following season. The real dynasty started after they won the second one in '03, which I guess would give us three more years of competitive teams. And with Brady and Bellichick still in their primes (at least Brady...eek) at the helm, will the fall off be that dramatic? I'm still not sure, but there will certainly be more about this coming later.

Another question: do I now root for the Bears? Worse, do I now have to put my Super Bowl hopes on Rex Grossman? I guess I do. I'm certainly not rooting for the Colts because if they win I will have to avoid all sports media outlets for another month while the world slowly washes Peyton Manning's ass crack and apologizes for calling him a choke artist for the last five years (when he was a choke artist, THE choke artist).

I absolutely loathe the idea of Indy winning a ring. I don't want them mentioned in the same breath as the Patriots of this decade, and while I'm no fan of the Bears either, I guess I'm throwing my hat in the ring for a repeat of the '86 Super Bowl Shuffle.

I guess that's it for now. I should get back to watching the Lifetime Movie Network anyway, they were starting to wonder where their one viewer went. More on the fallout, the Super Bowl, and the future of the Patriots coming soon.