Dupe Me

Recently read... the idea that between Photoshop, selective news, a fragmented media culture and our general willingness to be deceived for comfort (diets, karaoke, cheat codes, cosmetic surgery, scams, etc., etc.)... that this may be the most deceived, both in ease and in number, generation in human history.

Now, the usual bloggy thing to do is to rail against this tendency, disagree violently while casting aspersions on the person who wrote it (and no, I'm not remembering the source right now, and that's besides the point anyway), or just go "maybe they are right" and finish off the post with a little bit of snark. (Precious snark. You'll never leave me!)

But I'm not going there. Instead, I recommend that we all, in the words of the Church of the SubGenius, pull the wool over our own eyes, before someone else does.

So how does this relate to sports? Simple. I'd like someone -- anyone, really -- to whip me up a better Super Bowl than this one. We've got the digital technology, we've all seen the Gatorade ads, and we're all convinced now that Sports = Entertainment, and Athletes = Public Figures... so this game is, simply, an entertainment product. One that is overwhelmingly likely to piss me off, unless there's an epoch-defying referee screw job on the Giants, so that Patriot Fan will spend the rest of their lives sounding more and more unhinged about the valor of their Perfectriots.

Instead, I'd like to dial up... Packers-Chargers. That'd give me two QBs that could do anything at any moment, and a nice gift to the Shooter Brother, who is a football bigamist by virtue of his decades in SoCal. (Yes, yes, I'd really prefer the Eagles getting in, but let's keep the fiction close to reality now, shall we.) That'd give me a game where I could be happy for either team on some level, and a betting line that would be more than Gosh, I Hope They Cover.

We've still got nearly two days to get this done, and I'm looking at you, NFL Films. Dust off that John Facenda emulator, and give America a "B" Game that, like the Moon Landing, we can take pride in. (Oh, and I like the Chargers in that game, because we all know that in a close game, Favre will blow it. Ask Brian Dawkins. Or some Cowboys DB in the '90s. Or the Broncos. Yeah, that's the whole list. Nothing more to see here, move along...)