Monday was another bad night for watching football. We had rain, violence, fraud, and scenes of miserable failure. If I had to pick a Super Bowl winner right now, it would have to be Kansas City. The Chiefs have that smart, speedy kind of confidence that has always been the mark of Dick Vermeil’s best teams.
Now he has the Chiefs, looking big and fast and cool. If it is true that speed kills, then Kansas City will win the whole thing. Priest Holmes will kill you all by himself. He follows his blockers better than any other running back in the League, and Dante Hall is so quick that he barely needs blockers.
Even a retread like quarterback Trent Green can look great in Vermeil’s Gotcha! offense, which is way too smart to be a failure in this Here today, Gone tomorrow, free agent league where nobody hangs around long enough to become a legend. My wicked old friend Max McGee wouldn’t last three weeks in the NFL today. He didn’t have enough respect for the Rules.
And so much for that, eh? The time has come to move beyond simple football predictions. What the hell? Let’s try Baseball. That looks easy. So why not predict that the musty Chicago Cubs will win the World Series this year? They are long overdue, and the times are right for it.
George W. Bush is a baseball man, so I wonder about who he’ll choose to win the Series this year, if only to know who to stay away from.
I have never had much faith in our embattled child-president’s decision-making powers. He comes from a long line of Losers.… I know that is not what you want to hear/read at this time, especially if you happen to be serving in the doomsday mess that is currently the U.S. Army.
I take no pleasure in being Right in my dark predictions about the fate of our military intervention in the heart of the Muslim world. It is immensely depressing to me. Nobody likes to be betting against the Home team, no matter how hopeless they are.
I have done that, from time to time, and it never fails to leave me feeling guilty and confused, even if I win. Winning is vitally important in the gambling business, but it is better not to publicize your most shameful and predatory bets. How many red-blooded Americans really want to go down in history having voted for George Bush and Military disaster in 2000?
Not me, Bubba—but I feel the pain anyway. Any failure of this magnitude is a shared experience, like it or not. Not every passenger on the good ship Titanic voted to hit that iceberg. Of course not; it was the Captain’s decision—and the Captain went down with it, just like his father.
It is up to the rest of us to make sure this fool of a President doesn’t take us all down with him.… WHACK! And that’s it for realpolitik, eh? That evil crap can take all the fun out of Football.
But I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is Victory.… And why not? Victory is good for you and don’t let anybody tell you different.
—October 13, 2003
“POLITICS IS THE ART OF CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIRONMENT”
BYHST
That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that “it doesn’t matter who’s President” has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World—or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property—or been hounded by the 1RS for purely political reasons—or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.
