The Super Bowl has come and gone, and while I can’t speak for anyone, I’m nonetheless sure we can all agree that it sucked. If you’re like me, you gained almost no pleasure from watching the game itself, and if Sunday could be said to have been a good day, it was because the food was good and you had fun ragging on that farce of a championship contest with your friends and loved ones.
The game was made worse, of course, by the fact that we knew by the end of the third quarter that fucking Tom Brady was about to win yet another fucking Super Bowl. I’m so done with that fucking guy! Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl before I was legally allowed to purchase scratchy lottery tickets or cigarettes, or see an R rated movie by myself; he has won his most recent Super Bowl now, when I am in my mid-30s, a happily married homeowner with his first child on the way. I could buy scratchy lotteries or smokes at any point and probably not even get carded, but for the most part, I choose not to.
It’s been too goddamn long with this fucking guy! Tom Brady has completely transcended the normal annoyance and tedium of routine athletic dominance, becoming instead a crushing inevitable force. To make it worse, his inevitability seems to exist in defiance of mortality rather than serving as a reminder of it. As such, Tom Brady can serve as a symbol of whatever perpetual injustice you want him to be. Tom Brady is the racial housing and education gap. He is the gender pay gap. He is institutionalized police brutality and the wealth gap and privatized health care. Fuck Tom Brady, forever.
Today, I’m ranking Brady’s seven Super Bowl victories from least spiritually desiccating to most, as a way of quantifying my displeasure with this most recent turn of events. This will doubtless prove a vain and futile exercise from an emotional health standpoint, but at least there might be jokes. Also, I need to provide my final playoff pool and spread records, and that would be a weird thing to do in the context of an article about food and/or video games.
With any luck, this will be the last post in this space about this stupid fucking sport until season preview time rolls around in August. If the impossible happens, and the Vikings end up trading for Deshaun Watson, I may make an exception. Excuse me, I just bummed myself out. Fucking Kirk Cousins, I swear to god.
To the list!
Patriots defeat Rams, Super Bowl XXXVI: You can count me among the many who felt, at the time, that the Patriots’ Super Bowl victory was a heartwarming tale of the underdog triumphing against long odds. I thought this win was neat. I suck, I’m so sorry.
Patriots defeat Panthers, Super Bowl XXXVIII: Real talk: back in these days, my interest in sports was at its very nadir. I kept tabs on sports, but didn’t actually watch all that many games. As such, I don’t remember a single thing about this game except Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, which I didn’t actually see live. I seem to recall fucking off to do something else like, maybe three seconds beforehand.
Patriots defeat Eagles, Super Bowl XXIX: Again, I don’t remember too much about this actual game. I know I was sick of the Patriots by this point and was therefore pulling for the Eagles, but I’m not certain that was informed by anything other than reflexive underdog boosting.
Patriots defeat Seahawks, Super Bowl XLIX: By all rights, this game should be a good deal higher. Not only was I hugely into the Legion of Boom Seahawks, I was also convinced, going into this game, that the Brady/Belichick Patriots were actually a spent force that was feasting on a weak AFC, and that they would never actually win the big one again. It had been an entire decade since their last win, after all. Little did I know that, in total defiance of my beliefs, this game would herald the arrival of Dynasty 2: Dynasty Harder. Fuck. Anyway, this game would be much higher if I didn’t think it was also one of the two or three best games I’ve ever seen.
Buccaneers defeat Chiefs, Super Bowl LV: Y’all know me, and how I can’t stand recency bias. This game was a terrible waste of everyone’s time, to be sure, and if it hadn’t been a huge bummer I probably wouldn’t have even thought to make this list. But let’s face it, this game and this season should not have happened. I’m not sure if you know this, but there’s a pandemic on at the moment. It seems to me that having a football season is a pretty shitty idea under those kinds of circumstances. None of us should have given this horrible season of this horrible sport any oxygen, but we did. As such, we deserved to be punished. Also, I made chili and hot wings, both of which turned out great.
Patriots defeat Rams, Super Bowl LIII: This bullshit game would have easily snagged the top spot had it not had the decency to suck from start to finish. While it was undoubtedly one of the very worst games I have ever seen, inclusive of any number of meaningless late-season Vikings/Lions shitfests, I must confess that do find Belichick’s absolute dad-dicking of the Rams’ previously unstoppable offense quite hilarious. God, what’s wrong with me?
Patriots defeat Falcons, Super Bowl LI: I made the mistake of hosting the watch party for this one I made mac and cheese, which turned out well, but not nearly well enough. When it was all said and done, I felt compelled to apologize to everyone who came, not because of any negligence on my part as host, but because the game itself, having taken place a couple of weeks or so after Trump’s inauguration, seemed for all the world to have been a right-wing conspiracy designed to destroy the concept of hope. Fuck Kyle Shanahan, Fuck Julian Edelman, and Triple Fuck Tom Brady.
Final Playoff Stats
Playoff Pool Points Accrued (Super Bowl): 11
Playoff Points Missed (Super Bowl): 14
Differential (Super Bowl): -3
Playoff Pool Points Accrued (Total): 136
Playoff Pool Points Missed (Total): 94
Differential (Total): +42
Record Against the Spread (Super Bowl): 1-0
Record Against the Spread (Total): 5-11
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