Thank you, thank you!

I am a Giants fan but I was kinda rooting for the Pats on Saturday. Why (besides the loss not hurting my G-men)? To get those damn '72 Dolphins to STFU!

Or maybe, just maybe, the scribblers stop steno-ing everything that plops out of their mouths, and then they can be that tree falling in a forest, and really, who CARES if it makes a sound?

And I'm not referring to the poster who beat me by a few minutes to this thread.

Lindberg might have been the first to cross the Atlantic in a new-fangled aero-plane or Sputnik might have been the first into space...

Thanks to King for calling out the cranks among the 1972 Dolphins.

C'mon King. Proofread.

I completely agree with you about the '72 Dolphins. They should relax; if the Patriots go 19-0, it's not going to tarnish their legacy.

However, the champagne bottles are supposed to be an urban legend. Don Shula's been denying it all month.

For me, the point where it really felt wrong was during the Ravens game, when New England was struggling repeatedly to come from behind while MNF had Shula actively rooting against them in the booth for at least a quarter or more.

The television broadcasts made the story about whether or not the Patriots would lose (which was hardly against the odds for the season) rather than about whether they could hang on and just do enough to win (which was hugely against the odds for the season).

The 1972 Dolphins' point of view was and is a minor, tangential story until the season is completely over, but it has become the main theme of the coverage. The real story was the Patriots trying to hold on toward the end while their opponents gave their all trying to bring them down. The Giants game was especially remarkable in that respect.

PS, Anon, you'd be surprised at the turnout for an outdoor Stars game in Dallas.

http://www.snopes.com/sports/football/miami72.asp

I'm not saying a few guys aren't acting like pricks, but are we sure that "for years, they've famously popped champagne bottles to toast themselves when the last undefeated team loses for the first time"?

Perhaps this is the case of a few pricks ruining the bunch of roses.

Good to have you back, King.

Coleman

Oh, and allow me to add that if the Pats do go all the way, they should thank the Giants for giving them a real tune-up heading into the playoffs. We'll have to wait and see what kind of effect it has on the Giants (moral victory?, or foolish waste of a chance to rest and scrimmage against the best team in the league?), but I don't think there's much question New England will benefit from it.

After all, the Pats have been acting like pricks all season. "Cheating? Yeah, we did, who cares?" The NFL has behaved like pricks on their behalf "Can you see the tapes that we decided were bad enough to impose the largest fine in the history of the NFL? No, we destroyed them, nothing to see here, trust us!" and in NFL Network ads "What comes after a dynasty?" intoned by a smug jackass at a diner counter. If all that weren't enough, we had Chris Collinsworth and his co-announcers actively rooting for the Pats during the Giants game. Even when the Pats were down by their largest deficit all you heard was the announcers talking about how amazing the Pats were and how they wanted to have their babies. This in a game where they clearly caught one of the Pats players trying to poke one of the Giants in the eye. Yep, that spells class to me!

To me and a LOT of other people, this season will always end in a *.

The Phins of '72 have nothing to "Get over". They've already made it abundantly clear they don't give a rat's patootey if the Pats go 19-0 - and should the latter do so, they will be welcomed atop Mt. Perfecto. The only thing is that an asterisk would be added for all the years of cheating Bellichick employed.

:) Just kidding!

What we do know, and most forums - like SI, Sporting News concur- is that the Pats will now have to make a run and take the whole enchilada. Going 16-0 but blowing a playoff game will render them as forgettable as other teams that made a great run but blew it in the playoffs in the end - or the SB.

In other words, the pressure is on the patsies to take it all, and anything less will be regarded as a failure. They created this mountain themselves.

The '72 Phins are generous and magnanimous and are not "cranky old men" as depicted by the useless nabobs of negativity in the media.

IF the Patsies make it they can join the Phins as the only two teams to go all the way without losses in the 'SuperBowl' era.

Just go off somewhere and smoke some more rock.

Miami's opponents in '72 had a combined winning percentage of .367. New England's opponents this year played .469 ball. And for all of that, the Patriots outscored their opponents at roughly the same clip as the Dolphins outscored theirs. In other words, they beat a schedule packed with elite teams as badly as the Dolphins beat up on a bunch of tomato cans.

I understand your point here King, but I got a good chuckle out of seeing a .469 winning percentage referred to as "packed with elite teams".

Well, yeah that's an elite schedule. I mean, they had to play the Dolphins and the Jets twice. Helps to be in the AFC East, I suppose.

I don't doubt that Stars fans would fill Texas Stadium (or the new 'Boys Stadium) for a hockey game, but King proposed an annual COLD weather outdoor game--which doesn't quite describe average Dallas winter weather. The Panthers playing on the beach would be good spectacle, too, but gimicky rather than "Yeah! Cool!", at least to me.