A little less than two weeks back, Sports On My Mind’s D.K. Wilson castigated those who’d “cheer for a football team owned by a rich, drunken White fool who is quick to break out an umbrella and dance on the graves of the dead who are a by-product of a Crescent City™s sullied gifts to a nation.” He wasn’t specifically singling out Bill Plaschke (above), but it’s nice to imagine otherwise, especially when the LA Times columnist gushes, “America needs the New Orleans Saints to win the Super Bowl.” (“one team’s history can be found in a museum featuring paper bags once worn by embarrassed fans and tear-stained tissues used by happily weeping fans…the other team’s history can be found in a Mayflower moving truck.”)
As our country lurches and heaves through the ankle-deep sand of its economic recovery, it has not helped the national psyche that every time we turn to our national pastimes for assurances that the little guy can still survive, we run smack into Goliath.
The New York Yankees won the World Series. Gee, that was fun. The Lakers won the NBA championship. Loved here, hated everywhere else.
North Carolina won the Final Four. Bear Bryant’s old team won the Bowl Championship Series. Jimmie Johnson won his fourth consecutive NASCAR championship. The Connecticut women’s basketball team has won 61 consecutive games.
And now Peyton Manning is getting ready to win another Super Bowl?