Driving > Disco

Chuck Klosterman, who used to write for Spin magazine and continues to write for Esquire, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer and the Washington Post, began writing some sports pieces for the worldwide leader a couple of years back, to provide sort of a "pop culture" point of view for reactionary sports stories.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and Klosterman wrote an article about what would happen if the Patriots lost Super Bowl XLII. Sadly, if I posted the whole article, it still wouldn't be the longest post ever put up here, so I'll keep it simple and cut to the chase:

If the Patriots win, they will just become this thing that scorched the earth for five months before capturing a trophy that was never in doubt. Future historians will describe this New England team as if it were a machine. Everyone will concede the Pats' superlative greatness, but the 19 wins will be just a collection of numbers. But if they lose -- especially if they lose late -- the New England Patriots will be the most memorable collection of individuals in the history of pro football. They will prove that nothing in this world is guaranteed, that past returns do not guarantee future results, that failure is what ultimately defines us and that Gisele will probably date a bunch of other dudes in her life, because man is eternally fallible.

Losing isn't everything. It's the only thing.

As I told a buddy of mine, the Patriots were screwed from the start. Make no mistake, they were outplayed, which is why they lost. But, considering the Spy-Gate stuff, including the latest accusations that they video taped the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, if they had won, they would be subject to the whole "asterisk in the record book," thing (which I'm sure a ton of people already assume is the case on their 16-0 regular season). Now that they've lost, I'm sure most everyone will say that they choked. Personally, I think the difficulty of a 16 game season without a loss produced sort of a "all highs, no lows," situation. They never lost, so they never had any setback for the team to "recover" from. The Spy-Gate stuff along with being under the microscope all season long as the team that "might" go undefeated, proved too pyschologically (and probably in some cases physically) exhausting.

I'm not a real "fan" of the Patriots. I like Brady and thought it was cool to be a part of only the 2nd undefeated team from an NFL regular season. So, not really a big deal to me. Just kind of a letdown. Of course, if the cheating stuff is shown to have been true, and they did get an unfair competitive advantage, then I guess nevermind...