KaraMia doesn't care about this post...

(and neither do most of you, but I don't care!)

I've been giggling since February. I finally got over it last week, and then the draft happened and it started all over again.

First, here's what got me giggling back in February...

Meet Adalius Thomas.





Adalius Thomas is one big mother-truckin' linebacker who can drop into coverage, stuff the run, and has speed off the edge. He does it all. He's played something like eight different positions at one time or another.

He was the cream of the free agent class this off-season, and my New England Patriots did something completely out of character. They opened up the checkbook and put a push on for the big stud.

So that had me giggling.

And then they went nuts.

Donte Stallworth, erstwhile Saint and Eagle, and certified burner (4.2 40 time in college). Sure, probably a bit of a head case. And some involvement in the League's substance abuse program, which is never a good sign... But... 4.2 in the 40!

They added his former college teammate Kelley Washington (6'3 with speed... 6'3 with speed... 6'3 with speed), and then brought in the next Troy Brown (speedy, smart, undersized with a huge heart), in Wes Welker. (Plus the guy absolutely killed the Patriots in a game at Miami this year... Getting him off the Dolphins was a two-fer).

That's three pretty good new wide receivers for a team that was one first down away from the Super Bowl. By now, I'm giggling every time I drive by The Razor (Gillette Stadium's wicked cool unofficial nickname).

And the draft was still coming, and the Pats were holding two first rounders (they absolutely robbed at gunpoint the Seahawks, getting a first for Deion Branch...).


They came into the draft with some real needs on defense. Their Linebackers are getting old, and got abused by the Colts last year, and they need a defensive back, where Safety Rodney Harrison is still a force, but is getting limited by injuries.



So they go and draft Harrison's replacement, right down to nasty temperament, Brandon Meriweather. Meriweather's the guy who stomped on another player during the Miami-Florida International game. He's a little smaller than Rodney (Rodney's 6'1 and 220, Meriweather's 5'10 and 190), but he hits bigger than his size.



The Pats traded their second '07 first rounder for the 49'ers '08 first rounder which looks to be a decent deal if they didn't have anyone else of 1st round caliber on their draft board. They also gave away their 3rd rounder to Oakland, for Oakland's '08 3rd, and some other flotsam pick.



The announcement of the Oakland trade was interesting, because there had been rumors all day about Oakland trading Randy Moss, their disgruntled superstar. Since it didn't happen with the 3rd round swap, I figured the deal was off the table, as there was no way you can get Randy Moss... That's Randy Moss, he of the 6'4 frame and blazing speed and fierce temperament, for some low second-day draft picks...



But oh my God. Coming back from dropping the boy off at CCD, word hit the radio that Moss was in Foxboro, undergoing a physical. He had apparently agreed to contract concessions, and was coming to New England for a 4th round pick. A fourth round pick. Four.



Oh



My



God.







Rumors about Moss had been floating around the Patriots for months, back to the middle of last season. Everybody pooh-poohed them, saying Belichick would never bring in someone like Moss. An obvious malcontent, a locker room problem.

But remember Corey Dillion? He was an absolute @sshole his final season at Cincinnati, a real cancer in the locker room, and he came to the Patriots and got the message.

Doug Gabriel, Moss' erstwhile Raider teammate? He came to New England, didn't get with the program, and was shown the door. I don't think Belichick's all that sentimental. I think he's a football coach, looking to win football games, and is going to do it with the best players he can get who buy into his system. And Randy Moss, for all you can say about him, wants to win football games.

I almost feel bad for the Colts. Almost.

Maybe I'll stop giggling by July. But I don't think so...

David Halberstram, RIP

Author David Halberstram was killed in a car accident in California yesterday.

I've only read two of his books, "The Fifties" and "The Education of a Coach" (about Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick), but two's enough to know we've lost a giant of letters, and a wonderful example of a person with a view not clouded by political affiliation or partisan zeal, but instead by a realistic assessment of who we are as a people and the breadth of our potential as a nation.

Look at the commencement address he gave at the University of Michigan in the spring of 2000.

You are fortunate enough to live in an affluent, blessed society, not merely the strongest but the freest society in the world. In this country as in no other that I know of ordinary people have the right to reinvent themselves to become the person of their dreams, and not to live as prisoners of a more stratified, more hierarchical past. We have the right to choose: to choose if we so want, any profession, a venue to live and work in, any name. As much as any thing else this is what separates us from the old world, the old world across the Atlantic and the old world across the Pacific, where people often seemed to be doomed to a fate and a status determined even before their birth. We have the words of the great physicist I. I. Rabi to remind us of that special freedom, of the privilege which comes with choice. When he received the Nobel Prize, Rabi was asked by a journalist what he thought: I think he said, that if I had lived in the old country I would have been a tailor.

I do not think the stunning success of this society took place by happenstance. Both by chance—and by choice—I have become something of a historian of the second half of the twentieth century. I graduated from high school in 1951, and from college in 1955, and my professional career, throughout the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam took me through the stormiest years of much of the last 50 years. And if there is one great truth which categorizes that period in America it is that this nation has systematically become more and more inclusionary in race, gender and ethnicity—that we have made a constant and increasingly successful effort to make the playing field as level as possible, and to open doors once firmly closed.

When the question of inclusion or exclusion, one of the most basic to the concept of a state, has arisen over the years—when the status quote has been challenged—not every one has been in accord with the premise of a more inclusionary society, whether in sports, in the military or in the economy. There have always been doubters and they were always convinced, that the old ways were the best, that this impulse to open America up, much of it court-driven would somehow weaken us, that newer Americans were not as worthy as old and that the different groups hungering for a fairer share of the good life were not as worthy as those who had held power before them.

I am old enough to remember when a great many influential Americans were absolutely convinced that Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays would fail in the great arena of sports, and that our military would be significantly weakened by the integration of the armed force. You might like to wonder that when you think of Michael Jordan or Colin Powell, and their respective brilliant careers. These doubters, those who favored the status quo (in many cases it should be noted, because it favored them) also believed that the descendants of slavery who had worked so hard for so little for so long and who had been voiceless in our society for so long would somehow weaken our economy, if given a fair place in it.

The truth is, not surprisingly, that this effort to be inclusionary has made us in all ways a better, fairer and stronger society. And as for the economy being weakened by being more inclusionary I should mention to you that the year that I graduated from high school, 1951, the Dow stood at 250. Yes, that's right, 250.

I believe that this great American ideal, to be more just, to be more inclusionary, to offer to the children of others the educational possibility we would want for our own children, has given us not just strength but much of our common purpose. We still believe that we can improve ourselves and make this a better and more complete nation: we may argue with each other about the rules in the social contract, we can dispute each other's arguments, we are often cantankerous. But slowly steadily we are on our way to becoming the world's first universal culture. No wonder then that our popular culture has such power throughout the world—it is something that people all over the world can understand.

Looking at the commencement address he gave at Tulane in 2003, it's essentially the same, but with a nod toward the contemporary issues of the War on Terror and the occupation of Iraq:

But I would ask you today not to be fearful--we are not a fearful nation, we have never been one, and the members of our own families who settled in this country often after the most difficult and arduous of journeys were most assuredly not fearful people. Instead I want you to look forward to the essentially rich future which lies ahead of you, the blessed future which goes with the great good fortune of being a college educated citizen of this bountiful and most dynamic country.

This is something missed by those whose modus operandi is to complain first about America and ask questions later. We have problems, sure. But give me a country that doesn't have problems? Don't give me some two-bit European country with a social class system out of the 1600's. There is no place on this planet that matches the opportunity we provide, and the results we achieve.

It's something John Winger hit square on the head. We're the Mutts. We're the wretched refuse kicked out of every decent country in the world. But mutts are stronger than purebreds, because mutts mix the best traits and leave out the bad teeth and hemophilia you see in the British Royal family.

And that's what Halberstram was talking about.

And somehow, I think he would've been please to see the connection between Bill Murray's character in Stripes and his own Pulitzer Prize winning career...

PS - Yeltsin, Halberstram, who's next?

The Saints are coming...

Thoughts for this weekend of conference Championship football.

Bears Vs. Saints.

I feel for RW and Gino, I really do. You see, I believe in the football gods. I believe in a heavenly bureaucracy which oversees and influences the football season to achieve purposes; to teach humility, to uphold sportsman ship, to reward careers of great impact. Why else would a team named "The Patriots" win in the 9/11 year? How else to explain Pittsburgh's improbable Superbowl run last year, but to reward ultimate nice guy Jerome Bettis with a Superbowl in his hometown as his swan song? These things don't happen by accident.

Given that line of thought, how can you pick anyone but the Saints today? They've even got a ready-made song to go with the occasion (which they play before each home game), and their fates seem, like Sauron and the Great Ring, inexorably tied; in the Saints case it is to the hope and future of their once great city.

The song I'm talking about is "The Saints are Coming", by U2 and Green Day. Not getting ESPN, I had no idea that the song had been played at the first home game at the Superdome this year. And then Isaw the video, and the crusty old sentimentalist in me got simultaneously chocked up and pissed.

I got choked up because I still think of the US and her military as a force for good in the world, and pissed because the failure of local, state, and national government during the Katrina disaster is such a blemish on those of us who work(ed) in government. This video, and its portrayal of a history that never was, triggers those emotions.



Thanks to Brian for turning me onto this vid.

As for the "other" game, my beloved Patriots vs. the Induhniapolis Colts, here's couple of thoughts.

a. I had a stepfather from Indiana. Don't really care for Indiana, or Indianians. Sorry.

b. It's quite distressing to me that the Colts vs. Patriots is starting to look like the Red Sox vs. the Yankees, and I'm rooting for the Yankees end of the equation.

c. I really hate to say this, but with all the hits the team has taken over the past two years (the Bruschi stroke, losing three coordinators to head coaching jobs elsewhere, Rodney Harrison's injuries, the Deion Branch fiasco, the Adam Vinatieri fiasco, the Seau injury, etc etc...), it's amazing that they're in the AFC Championship game. This team is playing with house money.

Here's the thing: the Colts have to beat the Patriots to win the Superbowl. That's why they (improbably) lost to Pittsburgh last year -- they hadn't beaten the Pats in the post season yet. Peyton Manning must exorcise the demon for this team to move on.

It's like the Patriots first Superbowl in 1986. To get there, they had to run the table of road playoff games against the Raiders (exorcising the 1976 phantom rushing the passer call that knocked the Pats out of the playoffs), the Jets, and the Dolphins. Playing in Miami, where the Patriots were like 1 and 306. Sometimes things have to be done first. And beating the Patriots is what the Colts have to do first in order to win the Superbowl. It is their destiny...

But, as we've discussed, since this is the Saint's year, I'm guessing it's just not in the cards for Manning to go to the Superbowl this year. Because if he goes, you know he has to win for the curse to be completely lifted. Argh... this gets confusing.

But put a gun to my head, and I'm going to say Patriots. It's not that I intellectually think the Patriots can beat the Colts. The Colts are a superior team, and built in a way that match up well against the Pats.

Here's what the Patriots are good at: they are very good at taking away that one thing you want to do. They gameplan very well for that, and their players are disciplined and able to focus on the task at hand.

But the Colts can do a lot of things. And even if the Pats take Harrison and Wayne out of the game (an iffy proposition I grant, but what they've got to do), Manning can still kill you with Dallas Clark and Joseph Addai. Do the Pats have enough bullets to take out everything the Colts can throw at you? I don't know. With a bunch of backups in the secondary, and old and slow linebackers.... I just don't know.

Ugh.

Head=Colts. Heart=Patriots.

Actually, I almost hope it's the Colts, especially if the Saints win the NFC game. I'd hate to be responsible to bumming out the entire city of New Orleans, all over again when the Pats beat them in Superbowl XLI...

Performance enhancing drugs in football...

See this story, I'll wait while you go and read it:

Patriots ink Levitra marketing deal.

Back?

Okay, baseball is one thing. Rafael Palmeiro can go and talk about Viagra and he'll get razzed, but it doesn't hurt his team. There's something vaguely not quite right with Baseball anyway, as baseball has references to players with "three balls" and bats are called "wood". Maybe baseball is appropriate for groinal issues.

But please, "The New England Patriots football performance brought to you by Levitra: when you're flogging a wet noodle, think Levitra and the New England Patriots!"

"Brady sets up to pass, the rush is on, he scrambles, evades the sack!, And remember, when you're penile dysfunction problems cause you to evade the sack, think Levitra and the New England Patriots!"

"The snap, the ball is down, Vinateri kicks, Patriots score!!! Which is more than you're doing if you don't take Levitra, the Official Erectile Aid of the New England Patriots."

Actually, this works on many levels. Perhaps they could bring back Zeke Mowatt as a celebrity endorser. Maybe even Lisa Olsen.

Well, that's it. Say goodnight, Gracie. The 2003 New England Patriots football season is officially over.

(Note, this was written before today's dismantling of the Philadelphia Eagles. All is forgiven. Go and support your team, go out and buy some Levitra today.)