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America’s Team
“This region needs the Saints, now more than any other time in the 38-year history of the franchise. And the future of this team — and I would say even this incredibly needy region — is in your hands as much as any single person in the United States right now.”Are we actually suggesting –even when Bush owns a 37% approval rating– that the future of the Gulf Coast depends upon a used car salesman who owns a football team with gold pants? Additionally, when did we starting using the phrase “now more then ever” while discussing football? “now more then ever” is used by fear-mongering senators who want a bill passed, not a magazine that gives away coffee mugs with each subscription. I seriously doubt good reconstruction advice has ever followed a swimsuit spread. New Orleans needs dry land and a decent levy “now more then ever”, not a wildcard appearance. From what I understand about the Great Chicago Fire, we used shrewd urban planning and modern materials to rebuild the city- not a prevent defense and strong punting. I enjoyed, despite my criticisms, the Sports Illustrated article since it recalls my most treasured sports quote: Art Modell, the Cleveland Browns former owner, mandating that his coach choose a single starting quarterback because “he’s seen quarterback controversies rip apart a town”. Wow. “Rip apart a town”- as though a middle class mother of three would move the entire family after discovering her neighbors prefer the West Coast Offense. Moreover, no city –other then New Orleans and, possibly, Detroit– has more to worry about then Cleveland. In recent years, the city of Cleveland has declared bankruptcy, fought a massive fire on its river, required the mayor to wear a bullet proof vest in public and currently owns America’s highest poverty rate- making it the perfect location for filming “Robocop IV”. When the mayor has to wear body armor, your city needs Batman, not a pocket-savvy quarterback; and nobody –no matter how much money they have riding on a game– asks for a scoring update after hearing the river is on fire. When your town finds a way to explode some thing –a river– that the writing staff of the A-team never even considered flammable, you have problems that go well beyond local sports. Although, perhaps I’m just bitter about the Browns ineptitude. After all, the intellectual elite of Cleveland, its Plain Dealer News staff, seems to disagree. The Plain Dealer has less then 30 articles on “poverty” despite covering the poorest city in America. My search for “quarterback” maxed-out after 150 articles were found. The first article returned in the “poverty” search was even titled, “Poverty coverage is pretty poor“. Presumably, the editor agreed but thought it was best solved by a new starting quarterback, rather then additional articles. Cleveland is the world’s only city where the number of people who understand the difference between a flea flicker and double reverse, exceeds the number of people with health insuarance. We may not have jobs, but we’ve never cheered a trick play by the wrong name. RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI Leave a Comment |
