How My Crappy Education Taught Me to Deal With Super Bowl XLII
As hard as it is to wrap your brain around, it’s now been seven full months since the Super Bowl. More than 200 days since the wretched, spirit-sucking aftermath of the Patriots coming within one minute of the greatest season in the history of sports. More than half a year since events like the Barstool Sports Mardi Gras Party in early February when I hung out with dozens of Stoolies and we all stood there with dazed looks on our drunken faces and struggled to find ways to talk about it. We were like survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, wandering around the beach, bewilderedly stumbling past chunks of the 2007 Patriots fuselage with the engine of the greatest offense in history still whirring in the sand behind us. And not even Stool cover models walking around the bar in body paint and booty shorts were enough to snap us out of our funk.
Initially, I reacted to the Super Bowl loss like most Pats diehards, with some good old fashioned repression and denial. Always works for me. I suppressed the feelings of disappointment and rage deep down inside myself, content to know that someday they’d come bursting out either in a road rage incident or with me screaming at some hapless store clerk. The day after the game, I took the day off from work, unwilling to face the 10,000 “What the hell happened?” conversations I was sure to get. Instead my lovely MILF and I put the kids on the school bus and went to see “Cloverfield” because 1. I knew no one would interrupt the movie to interview Eli Manning and 2. For some reason I was in the mood to watch New York get trashed by a pissed-off monster.
One thing I didn’t do was wallow in the misery. I’m sure the Boston papers were full of articles from smarmy, soulless columnists about where this game ranks on the all time list of Boston sports losses. “5. Magic’s Junior Skyhook. 4. Bucky Dent. 3. David Tyree...” But I would have none of it, any more than I’d want to rank the all time worst pains I’ve ever had in my crotch. “5. Kidney Stone. 4. Vasectomy. 3. Brother’s Karate Kick...” All I know is that all of the above hurt in places that are near and dear to me and I’d rather not dwell, thankyouverymuch.
Well now the Patriots are back. And, I’m happy to report, so am I. All the way back. Time has passed and as they say, healed all wounds, and now I’m more ready for the 2008 NFL season than I ever thought possible during the dark days of Lent and Beanpot Hockey. How did I pull it off? How did I go from on of the most painful non-groin-related moments of my life to sitting here on the doorstep of the new season more enthusiastic than ever? I fell back on my formal education.
I’m a proud graduate of Massachusetts’ State- and Community- College system. (Proof that the American Dream is still going strong. Keep hope alive, kids.) And that education did more than prepare me for a life of wage-slaving in some cubical surrounded by frightened dullards. My Liberal Arts training helped make me the well-rounded citizen of the world I am and propelled me on a course to write for the greatest newspaper and sportssmut website in the internet. And more than anything, those easy electives and gut courses prepared me to deal with the heartbreaking defeat that was Super Bowl XLII. Here’s how:
Political Science- The Poly-Sci courses I took in college taught me all the basics of US political history, about bicameral legislatures, The 3/5 Compromise, how a treaty is ratified. But not one of them made the far more practical point that all politicians... that is 100% of them... are corrupt, morally bankrupt jagoffs. It took a lifetime of experience to teach me that. No one had ever proved that point like Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Comcast) did this offseason, and for that I’m eternally grateful. Specter’s shameless witch hunt against the Pat, more than any other single factor, dope-slapped me out of the stupor I was in and ended the post-Super Bowl pity party for good.
Art 101- I admit I did take art courses in college. Mainly because I wanted classes with no homework, but also to see if all that doodling I did in all my real courses could have some sort of practical application. Instead what I learned was that 99% of art majors are super serious bohemian freakshows. But I did study all the “isms.” Impressionism, Cubism, Pointilism, all of which have taught me that when you look study something from close up and it looks like crap, take a step back. Or twenty, if need be. And often enough it starts to actually look like something half decent. For example, you can break down that final drive the defense surrendered, agonize over how the runt of the Manning litter ever got away from Ty Warren or how drive yourself nuts because Asante Samuel let that INT slip through his butterfingers. But step back and take the long view and you realize that going 16-0, while it will never be as good as a championship, is still a pretty remarkable achievement.
Calculus- If you take Tom Brady’s passer rating, plus Randy Moss’ YPC, add Wes Welker’s catch totals, then take the difference between the average age on defense last year as opposed to this year, and multiply it, then extrapolate those numbers over how many more productive years Brady and Belichick have left together, it adds up to a lot more championships. And there’s trigonometry here to. Because with three Lombardi trophies you can form a triangle and calculate cosines of the goddamned angles in ways that no other current NFL team can. So everyone else can screw.
Western Civ- Like the art “isms”, with history sometimes you need to take the long view. Every dynasty has a bad day now and then. When all roads lead to Rome, then Romans have to a lot bumps, pot holes and ruts to deal with that the Barbarians don’t. The Ming Dynasty wasn’t all expensive vases and Scorpion Bowls. Ghengis Khan and the Yankees both ran into Great Walls. The Ottoman Empire was done in by the invention of the Lazy Boy recliner with built-in footrest. But like with the Patriots of this decade, when you look at the big picture, you only see a dynasty’s sustained dominance, not the occasional failure.
English Lit- You might not know it to read this but yeah, I took English too. And in the Jan. 23rd issue of Barstool I wrote a column... in English... about how much I’ve always hated the NY Football Giants and how much joy I was going to take in watching the Pats dismantle them. And to this day I’m still getting emails at jerry@barstoolsports.com from Giants fans peeing in my eye about that article. Unfortunately, being able to read English doesn’t help as most of them are written in Incoherent Gibberish, but I get their point. It’s a point a guy who did write in English, Shakespeare, said much better: “Our enemies have beat us to the pit” which is exactly what happened to the Pats O-line on Feb. 3rd.
But now that’s all water under the Gillette Stadium foot bridge. The Pats lost, it sucks, but by now I’ve moved on. As bad as that loss was, now it’s History. And Politics, and Art, Math and English. If I’ve learned nothing else, at least school taught me how to deal with this.