Aside from adding my support to Conan O'Brien - especially given the thoughtful wit employed in today's written statement where he lays out why he thinks NBC sucks - the time has come to reflect briefly on the Green Bay Packers. Or, more specifically, on the end of their season in the Wild Card game loss on Sunday to the Arizona Cardinals. If ever there was a game that neither team deserved to win, it was this mess. The Cards pulled out a 51-45 victory in Overtime of the highest scoring game in NFL Playoffs history. To this very day both teams are insisting that they suited up their Defenses. Some people have even gone so far as to complain about the missed incidental face masking which maybe should have been a penalty, even though Aaron Rodgers then trumped that doofus complaint by kicking up the ball like a hacky-sack right to the Cards linebacker Karlos Dansby. No matter what might or did or someone imagined happened in an alternate universe replay of that game, Rodgers kicked this season out the door with the most appropriate metaphor of a play in Packers history. The statistics were all amazing. The heart was all empty. Team executives, coaches and a healthy majority of Packers' fans will say that this is a great young bunch of players. I don't disagree that this team has the ability to enthuse. But cheering for this year's version of the Packers is like getting all pumped up for a "Caddyshack" sequel or a new Kelsey Grammer sitcom or, heaven forbid, a run by the Cowboys at the Super Bowl. No, this Green Bay Packers season is one that will forever remain cemented in place thanks to one unfortunate memory. This was the year that fans at Lambeau Field booed Brett Favre as he played his way to an impressive victory. For the Vikings. I'm still nothing but a Packers fan. It tastes awfully different saying that, though, given that lingering memory.
It is an essentially human thing to cheer for athletic competitors, especially ones that you identify with on a personal level based on proximity, history or just plain adoptive fun. Cheering for the Packers this year took on a new level of identification that I think on some karmic level utterly doomed the experience. We were expected to cheer for the Packers out of a sort of guilty denial. As in "sure we know there's some major league bad juju going on here, but if you don't support them then all those years of cheering for good and bad teams will be cast aside and you'll be a Judas just like that 800-pound purple gorilla no one wants to acknowledge". To that I say "good day, sir." I will not be a party to this madness. Nor will anyone else until next year. Because Mike McArthy is a moron, Ted Thompson tortures puppies and anyone who thinks they had a chance this year almost certainly has at least one Favre jersey still hanging in their closet that they're pissed they won't ever be able to wear again.
Hope you also get something big off your chest today, even if it couldn't be any less important in life's grand scheme. Rock on.
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