I Don't Even Enjoy Watching Football

OK, I understand that the Giants won the Super Bowl last year in the most dramatic of fashions. That was the sports highlight of the decade for me, and I appreciate it greatly. I understand that as a result I am still in the Championship refractory grace period, so I really can't be too mad, but genetically I am mandated to complain, so I'm going to use this space to complain for a little bit, and then we will never speak of this again. Ever. After my fantasy football horrors, some of which I've written about in past entries, I needed the Giants... and they couldn't give me what I needed.

I feel like someone broke my heart. I found myself for the first hour or so just pacing in my apartment, completely unable to think about what to do with myself. Have you ever had a great relationship and then you just get dumped unexpectedly for no reason? That's never happened to me, but I'd imagine that's a pretty good analog for what I feel right now. What makes it worse is that the Eagles did not play that great a game (they were horrid in the first half) and the Giants moved away from all their strengths all year to play like a totally different team. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways:

1) John Carney: All-Pro Kicker - OK, let's just say I look past the second missed kick, conditions weren't great and it was pretty long, but how the sweet cinnamon fuck do you miss that first kick? I hate you John Carney. You know why no kickers make the hall or fame? This is why.

2) Eli Manning: Dolphin Fucker - Let me just say that I own an Eli Manning Jersey. There is an amazing story I tell about how I got it. It was October '07 and my roommates and I were cleaning up after a bitchin' Halloween party and watching some football. The Giants were playing the Dolphins in London and while it wasn't a terrifically played game the Giants were victorious and my roommate Pete and I started having a feeling that it was possible something special was going to happen this year. So I went online and ordered an Eli Manning jersey off an eBay vendor. I paid, they shipped it, and I waited... and waited... and waited. A month passed and still no Jersey. I contacted the seller, they assured me that it had shipped and that I just needed to be patient. More weeks passed and still nothing, I contacted the seller again and he arranged for me to get a refund. Whatever, it was forgotten as the Big Blue Wrecking Crew went on to make the playoffs and history. The Super Bowl came, Eli made the Great Escape, David Tyree make the Helmet Catch, and Pete and I broke our couch celebrating. The next day a package came in the mail... it was my M.I.A. Eli Manning jersey that apparently had gone through an amazing journey of it's own over those three plus months. I considered it an omen of greatness, a sign of change in the air, that Eli was the quarterback that I would cherish for the next decade. Today I ripped off that Jersey, threw it on the floor and have no intention of picking it up anytime soon. I was debating throwing it away or burning it, but that would show more emotion than I feel he's worth right now. I simply don't care enough about him to pick the jersey off the ground.

3) Third Down is Pretty Important - WTF was going up with the Giants D in the second half? I feel like they were totally unable to make any 3rd down stops. Their D was a totally juggernaut and then just let McFagg (zing!) do whatever he wanted on third down. I understand later in the game when Eli couldn't keep his squad on the field that they might have gassed out, but why at the start of the second half?

4) Illegal Blocks in the Back - doesn't that sound like the name of a movie about prison rape? This made me irate and gave me very bad feelings about the Giants even early in the game. The big difference between previous Giants teams and the one we've seen from Halloween of last year until this week was that they were extremely disciplined and didn't commit many penalties. Penalty yard differential has been one of their strongest points. So what do they do this week? They just say "fuck it" and commit retarded penalties at every possible opportunity.

5) The Freaking Challenge - What was the point of that? No one on planet earth thought that challenge would result in a Giants' first down, so what's the point? Did Coughlin decide that his strategy wasn't working so he'd take a page out of Andy Reid's book and just make a retarded challenge? Seriously, this was like me busting my ass at work all year and then on the day of my annual review deciding to call in sick with a case of Werewolf.

6) 4th & Inches - OK, Brandon Jacobs is one of the most physically intimidating running backs in the history of the game. He could give an angry look on 4th & inches and they would move the sticks. If he were running after me down a dark alley I would just drop my pants and hope he'd be gentle. So what do they do? They run a QB Sneak with the Dolphin Fucker. My jaw dropped and my testicles leaped back inside my body. Idiotic. That was the end of the game, I just saw red for the remainder.

That's it, I'm done. Football is over for me, and I'm looking forward to Mark Texiera, Inglorious Bastards, Jessica Biel playing a stripper in a major motion picture, and sampling the Angry Whopper, which I'm intrigued with mostly because it's so-awesome-it-must-have-come-from-Japan name.