Let's go Eagles, I guess

I’m finding it hard to care too much about the Super Bowl.  I’m ready to just move on to the Winter Olympics and curling.  I’ve continued to become less and less of an NFL fan.  Part of that is the Jets being the Jets.  Part of it is NFL players disrespecting the flag of the only country in the world where they could make millions of dollars playing football for a living (just because they have the right to do it doesn’t make it the right thing to do).  And part of it was the seeming inevitability of the Patriots making it to the Super Bowl again.  Of course, I was rooting for the Jaguars despite their amazingly ugly uniforms.  In the NFC, I was really hoping for the Vikings to make it to the Super Bowl.  The home Super Bowl would have been cool and I would have had no problem rooting for Harrison Smith against the Patriots.  As it is, we have the Patriots, no Notre Dame players, and another team that I’ve never liked.

This is the second Patriots-Eagles Super Bowl.  The first one was right after I transferred to Notre Dame.  Charlie Weis had been hired as Notre Dame’s new coach.  I was rooting for him because I thought him winning the Super Bowl would be good for Notre Dame.  Oh, how silly that was.  I didn’t hate the Patriots then.  They had not become the NFL’s evil empire and they hadn’t been caught cheating yet.  As a Jets fan, my least favorite teams were the Dolphins and the Raiders.  As time went on, the Patriots kept winning the AFC East, got caught cheating, lost Super Bowl XLVI to the Giants (which was wonderful), kept winning the AFC East, got caught cheating again, and then won two more Super Bowls.  Those two were my least favorite Super Bowls of all time.  The first one was between my two least favorite teams.  The Patriots have certainly become my least favorite NFL team and I despise the Seahawks because of Pete Carroll.  The good news was that one came right after the Patriots were caught cheating for a second time so it was clearly tainted and they won thanks to some terrible coaching decisions so we could easily blame Pete Carroll for the loss.  Then last year the Patriots won in the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history thanks to some terrible coaching decisions again, but I had nothing against the Falcons so there was no silver lining in that one.

This makes it six out of seven Super Bowls where I’ve hated at least one of the teams (that includes the 49ers who I hated because of Jim Harbaugh, I’d be cool with them now).  A team I’ve hated has won three out of four.  Super Bowl L was the exception.  I can live with the Jets not being in the Super Bowl (and not getting anywhere close most years), but can’t I at least get some Super Bowls where there’s not a chance of a team I hate winning it?  I revisited my Sports Hate Power Rankings.  Let me update my list in terms of NFL teams:

1. Patriots
2. Seahawks
3. Raiders
4. Dolphins
5. Cowboys
6. Redskins
7. Eagles

I’m not a Giants fan, but I’ve always disliked the other NFC East teams.  I wouldn’t say I hate the Redskins and Eagles, so I can live with the Eagles winning the Super Bowl, but I definitely don’t like them.  I drink by mood, so I have tried to avoid Sam Adams.  I made a couple of exceptions for Celtics games.  On Friday I went out with some people after work and the selection was limited so I had a Sam Adams Cold Snap.  Last night, I had Brooklyn Naranjito as kind of an anti-New England/anti-Philadelphia beer.  I bought a six pack of Troegs HopBack Amber Ale.  It's from Hershey, Pennsylvania.  So that's my Super Bowl beer to support the Eagles.  It's pretty good.  

It’s also noteworthy that the Bills are not on that list.  I have nothing against the Bills.  The Bills and Jets have very rarely been good at the same time during my lifetime.  The first four Super Bowls I watched featured the Bills losing.  I got a little tired of them losing the Super Bowl every year, but I don’t hate them.

Also, the NCAA got rid of those terrible standardized courts a few years ago.  They’re still pretty much standardized and not nearly as good as just playing on the regular arena courts that have much more personality, but their not nearly as bad as those sterile-looking courts of the past.  When does the NFL get rid of the standardized/zero personality Super Bowl logo?  I googled and found a logo that isn’t great, but it would be significantly better than the silly standardized logo that they’ve been using since Super Bowl XLV.

I would call this logo solid, not great.  But solid is much better than the stupid standardized logo.

I’ll have a post soon about the renovated Nassau Coliseum.  I was there last weekend for some college basketball.  I’ll be back in the coming weeks for some NBA D-League basketball (you most likely know it as the G-League, but it will always be the D-League to me).  Until then, let’s go Eagles!