We'll Be Right Back

MORE Sports news (in my defense, it's pretty hard to ignore it when Your City, however dumpish, is Super Bowl Bound, Baby!): Colts To Rest Starters This Sunday. Huge Mistake or Colossal Blunder?

Yesterday I intended to mention that Manning is the only man in NFL history to have quarterbacked his team to a league championship despite being coached by Tony Dungy; today some unexpected dark-humorist at the Racist Beacon highlighted the fact that every team the Father Confessor of Pro Ball leaves makes it to the Super Bowl the following season. I say, forget the homo-bashing; never trust a former athlete who doesn't gain weight.

Second, Steve Politi of the Newark Star-Ledger with that rarest of rarities, the interesting Tweet:

Love this: Tailgating Colts fans, trying to shut up the chanting Jets fans, respond with "Jer-sey Shore! Jer-sey Shore!

It's damn near impossible to ignore this sort of thing, not that I want to. The Hoosiers went undefeated in '75 and '76 when I was at IU, and I remember how difficult it was to forget basketball and get back to concentrating on sex and drugs.

One thing professional fuhball does, better or more efficiently than almost anything else, is connect you with the rest of America, or with that virtual America which requires constant reassurance that its choice of carbonated beverage, counter-persperational stick, or brokerage firm is the one preferred by most other virtual Americans. And makes you sexier. In other words, the real America.

For one thing, it's always amusing to see what expertise multiple millions of dollars will buy you. Cialis™ Brand PDE5 Inhibitor, for example--fine local product, by the way--will direct you, via boilerplate, to its ad in Golf Digest. How much did Lilly pay for that advice, do you imagine, when it had to be staring them in the face at every Board meeting? Was there ever any discussion about Going Viral? But my favorite, for sentimental reasons dating back to Operation Arc Light, are the military recruitment, I mean, military lifestyle adverts, the latest of which--it's either the Army or the Post Office; who really listens?--promises that after all the parades held in your honor when you get back home--which time isn't specified--you'll have your choice of careers: Astronaut, Stock Car Pilot, or Dynamic Corporate Order Taker Who Doesn't Have To Wear Camouflaged Pajamas During The Daytime and 8000 Miles Away From Anyone You'd Need To Camouflage Yourself From, Aside From Your Fellow Soldiers, Occasionally.

How interesting is it that anyone with a truckload of cash can make anything sound reasonable? The military gave up on people actually serving their country by signing up thirty years ago; now the fact that they advertise like pheromone-scented body gels is simply taken for granted. Like, say, that Hero's Welcome.

I know, I know; this is not exactly a revelation. Still, that After the cheering has died down… routine raised my gorge a bit. First you get the wholly artificial "We're not spitting on our returning War Heroes like those hippies did" routine; then it's used to lure cannon fodder because, for one thing, none of the 18-40 year olds so busy patting themselves on the back for their patriotic spirit will stop long enough for a perpetual two-year hitch. If it wasn't for the Networks stopping every so often to pat themselves on the back for tossing to some Guardsman spending Super Bowl Fortnight risking his ass to salvage our domestic political bluster you'd almost forget we were at War. Wouldn't you?