The Gimcrack Miscellany

Seriously, Sportscenter?!

Posted on 16. Nov, 2009 by The Gimcracker in Seriously?!, Sports

I just need to vent for a second about the coverage that I have seen in the media regarding the 11/16/09 Sunday night Colts vs. Patriots game, and this is just in the 12 hours after the game. I’m not going to waste a lot of your time, and I wasn’t going to do a post about the game because it sort of speaks for itself. But by golly someone needs to stand up and defend the Colts against this biased, band-wagon jumping, star-struck, Tom Brady-loving nation.

ESPN’s game recap is here (specifically 3 minutes in).

First of all, Trent Dilfer’s an idiot. He mentions that the Pats’ playing style changed once they were up 2 touchdowns, e.g. they weren’t applying “the same defensive pressure”. Just last year Trent Dilfer was sitting in that same chair defending the Pats for running up the score on the Browns/Jets (whoever) because of the fact that “Belichick never changes his playing style due to the score”. Trent Dilfer, you contradict your own statements, and you say whatever you think will not get you fired from ESPN, and thus you are a stupid sell-out idiot.

He goes on to agree that the Pats are a much better team than the Colts. In fact, all three anchors admit this nonchalantly as if the Colts didn’t just beat the Patriots. WITH HALF OF THE TEAM OUT ON INJURY.

Seriously, Sportscenter?

Let me explain how a football game works to you telecommunications degree college dropout washed-up retired mediocre NFL player-turned-commentators: the Patriots scored 34 points, and the Colts scored 35 points. Points don’t hold a higher value when they are scored in the 2nd quarter as opposed to the 4th quarter (in fact you could argue that the opposite is true, which makes you even more wrong, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt). Points also don’t increase the longer you have them. This isn’t bank interest, it’s a damned point in a damned football game. If you take 35 and you subtract 34, that leaves you with 1 – which is the score margin between the Colts and the Patriots, which means the Colts won, and thus out-played the Patriots.

Hold on a second – what about outside forces, such as cheating or bad officiating? I will now address that issue:

NFL’s game recap is here (specifically 2:30 – and everything Deion Sanders says).

Deion Sanders says for us to “watch the yellow line.” Deion: WHAT? I could say so many things about how I hate everything about the way that you choose to be:

1) The yellow line is not official
2) The view was not perpendicular to the yellow line, so the angle is not appropriate to judge the play (the official WAS perpendicular to the 1st down marker, unlike TV viewers)
3) Just because at one point in time a receiver is in front of a yellow line doesn’t mean that he can’t run back behind it. I bet you would love to give the Pats an unlimited forward progress pass if you could get away with it, wouldn’t you?
4) In the NFL when you bobble the ball you do not have possession. By the time the receiver obtained control of the ball AND his foot came down, the ball was clearly behind the yellow line.

It’s just another example of how the media loves to distract us with side issues instead of actually giving credit to the Colts for playing all 60 minutes of the football game. In my opinion, I think they’re threatened by us.

Something all these talking heads have in common throughout their analysis is that Belichick lost this game by going for it on 4th and 2. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever because the Patriots have the highest 4th down conversion rate of any team, plus it was only 2 yards. If they got the 1st down the game would pretty much be over because the worst case scenario for the Pats would be that the Colts would have to drive all the way down the field and score a touchdown with 20 seconds and no timeouts. I’m sick of the focus, once again, being taken off the Colts and put on an irrelevant side issue. THE COLTS STOPPED THE 4TH DOWN CONVERSION BECAUSE OF A GREAT DEFENSIVE STAND. Nothing else needs to be said about this issue.

One more thing. I watch Sportscenter on ESPN 4-5 days a week, and I have been doing so for almost 3 years. I have noticed that the news stories almost never feature the Colts, even though we’re 9-0 and clearly one of the best, if not the best, teams in the NFL. For some reason ESPN has this huge aversion to the Colts. I don’t know what it is, but I’m afraid there is still a stigma placed on the Colts for leaving Baltimore in 1984, and I have several examples of specific instances where ESPN and other networks have alluded to this. Come on now, has 25 years not been enough time to dry your eyes, Baltimore? Jeez.

Thank you for letting me vent, blog. I will buy you a sweet tea from McDonald’s tonight. But only if they’re still a dollar.