It was roughly halfway through the NFL season when I noticed the Carolina Panthers were sitting pretty at six wins and a single loss. “No,” I said to my friend, “this cannot be.” Not the team who two years ago started the season with one win and finished it with fifteen losses. “You got a problem with Carolina?” my friend said to me. “You’re damn right I’ve got a problem with Carolina,” I said. “But just watch,” I assured him. “They’ll start losing once they play some harder teams in the second half of the season.” I then said something I would now. three months later, regret.
“If Carolina wins the Super Bowl,” I said. “I’m never watching the NFL again.” I repeated it. “If Carolina wins the Super Bowl I’m never watching the NFL again.”
Ten weeks, five wins, and one playoff berth later I did not doubt my foresight. Sure Carolina made the playoffs but it would take three wins against superior teams in order for them to merely reach the Super Bowl. In any case, Dallas, another team which had arisen from the depths of mediocrity, would trounce Carolina simply, in my humble justification, because they had won three Super Bowls just this past decade (although maybe we shouldn’t count those two against Buffalo). Dallas was worthy of, in some silly sense, a pass to the next round of the playoffs.
Final score: Carolina 29, Dallas 10.
As any true-blooded fan of football will tell you, Dallas sucks. “The Rams,” I told my friend, “will crush Carolina.” You do not beat the Rams at home. Nobody beats the Rams at home. In fact, no home team in the entire state of Missouri had lost a home game the entire season!
I was not worried.
I had forgotten, however, that the St. Louis Rams are coached by Mike Martz, the biggest proprietor of tomfoolery this side of the Mississippi. With more than thirty seconds and one timeout left in the game, the Pete Rose of head coaches would of course toss the ball into the endzone and at last, after three ego-bruising months, dismantle my fear of suddenly having nothing to do on Sundays. We all know what followed.
Final score: Carolina 29, St. Louis 23 (OT).
“I’ve had it!!” The Carolina defense will not stop Donovan McNabb, the Eagles defense will dominate and although Philadelphia fans do not deserve anything but a swift kick in the bum, they do at least deserve a chance to play in the Super Bowl after three appearances in the Championship game. (Alright, so they don’t deserve even that.) I was not worried.
Final score: Carolina 14, Philadelphia 3.
Thanks a lot Philly.
“Who is this team anyhow!?” I wondered. Are they in North Carolina or South Carolina? Why does this place get a team and Los Angeles, the second biggest market in the country, gets zilch? Worried? Who gives a damn about worried, I’m mad! When the season started who could you name besides Julius Peppers and Stephen Davis? (And don’t say Rod Smart; he doesn’t count.) Jake Delhomme? What kind of big game quarterback has a name no one can pronounce? Oh wait, sorry Brett.
For two weeks I had been hoping the Panthers didn’t turn me into a liar. A liar you say? Yes, for who could ever leave this? Who could stop watching a sport in which a team who lost fourteen games in a row to finish off a season could be in the Super Bowl two years later? Who could leave a sport in which teamwork, discipline, and unselfishness are the mantras to success rather than big names and contracts? Carolina and New England? Win or lose, these are my kind of teams, these are my kind of coaches. If we can pray for anything next year, let it be that the rest of the league follows suit. And perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to see Bengals vs. Cardinals for Super Bowl XXXIX.
I thank you New England for saving me. I thank you Carolina for eliminating the proliferation of my superficial judgments of unproven teams. . . and for not turning me into a liar.