Letters to the Editor
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Stimulation
djavier blathered:
Maybe until the Pats are defeated, you should just keep your ugly old head down under Mercury Morris's desk, okay? He looks like he needs the stimulation, and you obviously need whatever withered validation he can offer you.
Merc offers me no "validation" as I am not even a phins' fan. I just believe there ought to be truth in presenting depictions of former players, as opposed to slandering them. The truth here is that Morris didn't use until after he left the Phins following their 73, 74 SB successes. Portraying it otherwise is plain dishonest and I merely called an asshole on it, which is not the same as defending Morris
I DO understand that Brady's marriage woes mean he his looking for assorted more diverse off field diversions. So hey, maybe you ought to apply?
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Worst article I've read on Salon ever
Who wrote this below?
Are you paying attention at all? To anything?
One piece of wrong information has already been mentioned and I referenced that on Snopes as an earlier letter did. No need to repeat someone else's work, as King did with the falsehood about the champagne. So there's your single example. too bad you lack the courage to even have a signature.
#2 - you may have read a lot more and crappier articles on Salon. I have not. But honestly, I don't often read the sports articles. And you are wrong about everything you wrote here - whoever you are.
I wasn't a Miami fan then. But a lot of us were aware of Miami's eclectic cast of characters. The press was all over these guys. Csonka was said to have wrestled bears. Jake Scott just wanted to be a rancher. Warfield and Griese were said to have magical connection. Not having watched it live, you are probably unaware that a whole lot of people rooted for Miami because they were sick of the Cowboys being the greatest. Sound familiar knucklehead?
We didn't see all the games but we read about them and the sportswriters then were fewer and, generally, only the finest got published. Unlike today, which was part of my original point.
Regarding rose colored glasses: don't be so dense. It's a completely different game today.If I had to pick one significant difference that rises above the rest, it wouldn't be any of the rule changes or any of that. Not even the cheating the Patriots did this year. They are just stupid enough to get caught. Like the poor fools on the freeway as the rest of us speed by. The difference for me is the presence today of huge, extremely fast, and well disciplined lineman. But in that sense, the talent across the board is probably equally raised. It's only predictable and it happens to every sport; as more and more science is applied to a game or sport then more and more rules are required to keep it competitive - lest one innovator dominate the sport so completely that the value of the product is diminished significantly. And if you somehow entertain yourself with the idea that the NFL is a product any different than any sob-fest chick flick then you sir area an idiot.
You might begin your enlightenment of this phenomenon Anonymous Grasshopper by studying the short lived (1966 - 1974) but glorious pinnacle of Auto Racing known as the Group 7 Can-Am series.
Finally, though the differences are huge and many, the AFC was still an underdog to many of us then. So teams like Miami and Kansas City, the Jets and the Raiders were seen very differently than they are today. Especially by young people newly empowered by the 1960's that didn't really end until 1973 or 1974. But that is another story little scared anonymous poster.
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bumpy
Aside from all the wrong information that even the most casual search of the Web or Snopes.com might educate the author on, this is the sort of drivel I HATE paying my Salon dues to support.
Pity you couldn't provide even a single example of "all the wrong information" in the worst article ever. Please do educate the author and the rest of us. Or is it just that you were there, so they were best?
Always a drag to pay for something only to have it challenge your most cherished myths, eh.
--Anonymous
Permalink Wednesday, January 2, 2008 08:17 PM
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You're kidding, right?
Bump, you cannot possibly lambast Kaufman - rightly or wrongly - about self-importance, and then use your letter to talk about "I was there in 1972, blah blah." Are you serious? If you were a Miami fan, and I assume you were, because otherwise I don't see how you could have seen all their games in the days before Sunday Ticket, then yes, I'm sure they were exciting games, but that's because you were an invested fan in their outcome.
To have any significant memories of 1972, I figure you have to be about 50 years old. You're looking at your youth through rose colored glasses. Also, in 1972, you wouldn't have known you were watching an undefeated season until it already happened...this year, thanks to ESPN, we had to hear about the Pats maybe going undefeated since week three.
And this is the WORST article you've ever read in Salon? Ever? And you want too talk about self-importance? Please. It's a middle-of-the-pack article about sports.
--Anonymous
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the bye week theory
The point I was making about byes is that they are NOT 'useless' as KK claims. They are of inestimable value especially when a top contender is nursing injuries and needs to get key players back. Those key players then can make a difference.
Pray tell me which players the Pats got back after their bye week in week 10? I mean, you're saying that the bye week was important for the Pats to go 16-0, so surely you can tell me what important player the Pats got back after their bye week? The Pats lost running back Sammy Morris in week 6, and he's been on IR since then. Safety Eugene Wilson was out from weeks 8-13, so the bye didn't seem to help him that much. Rosevelt Colvin was injured and went to IR in week 11. So I'm not seeing much evidence on how the bye week helped the Pats this year.
The Pats played their toughest opponent, the Colts, in week 9 -- before they got their bye. And they still won, on the road, by taking over the game in the final seconds. I suppose they really woulda blown the Colts off the field if they'd had their bye week just before!
In fact, the Patriots were much more dominating in games before the bye week than after. Perhaps I should be cursing at the bye week system for giving opposing teams the opportunity to rest up for the Patriots and for giving their coaches extra time to game-plan for the Pats.
Re: your points about physicality. The league is less dirty these days, in that it's not legal to do a headslap or mug receivers downfield. At the same time, the players are all bigger and faster and collisions all involve that much more energy. Your legendary Nick Buoniconti, whom you would consider capable of destroying Tom Brady with a hit, weighed 220 lbs at his playing weight. In today's league he'd just be a slow white safety. He wouldn't even be on Adam Archuleta's level. So please spare me the old hogwash about how men were more manly back in the day. Football players of the modern day are a breed apart from your nostalgia-puffed he-men of yesteryear. The No-Name Defense of the early 70s would vanish right up Warren Sapp's ass crack, where they belong, along with all the rest of you pathetic rose-colored incontinence-encrusted old farts with your precious memories of single-bar helmets.