Please Lord deliver us from the Patriots

Back in the day, the Dallas Cowboys were “America’s Team” not because they were the favorite of every NFL fan, but because they were the favorite of bandwagon fans who either didn’t have a team or had a lousy team. And why was that? A lot of other teams were perennially successful, and often even more successful (people tend to forget that Dallas went through a dead period during the 80s). What made people gravitate toward the team was the way they were marketed, and as some of us old enough to remember, that marketing strategy had something to do with the exposed bosoms of their cheerleader squad. I remember as a youth growing up in small town Wisconsin, the local bookstores sold posters of the Cowboy cheerleaders. Back then, the Packers were in the beginning stages of their 25-year term in football purgatory, and few were “outraged” about an out-of-town team selling itself in such a way far from home. Furthermore, the Cowboys only won two Super Bowls in their first 30 years of existence, so they were not exactly raining on anyone’s Super Bowl dreams.

Of course the Cowboys mostly suck now, and the New England Patriots would seem to be their natural successor to the mantel of “America’s Team.” But the Patriots aren’t selling anything except the desire to see them get beat, by anyone. True football fans are sick of seeing the Patriots in the Super Bowl practically every year for close to two decades now, with the same Brady and the same Belichick. Fans want to see something “different” for a change, and if the Devil’s handiwork sends them once again to the Super Bowl, we can only pray hard that the Lord deliver us from another Patriot title, especially when they don’t even deserve to be there. This weekend both the home teams lost their respective conference championship games, and both with the aid of official interference. An obvious pass interference that even a blind man could see that was not called prevented the Saints from being in position to win the NFC title late in regulation, before losing in OT. A phantom roughing the passer penalty and the nullification of Brady’s third interception with less than two minutes to play erased a dramatic come-from-behind victory by the Chiefs after they had fallen behind 14-0 at halftime in the AFC title game.

What is left for us is that the Los Angeles Rams behind Jared Goff can find the same kind of magic that the Eagles did with a backup quarterback last year. Unfortunately it seems somewhat unlikely that no matter how much praying goes on, Goff doesn’t seem to be the kind of quarterback who would inspire much hope to pull it off. But miracles do happen, and let us hope that the Lord hears our prayers to deliver us from those damned Patriots.