Twin Cities, Minnesota Blog

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I’m posting this from my Sidekick II on the way to Pixel Grrrl’s for her high-def Super Bowl party–don’t worry, Phone Assasin is driving–becuase I lost my entire original post by trying out Writeboard (more on that in another post) so I have top rewrite it and this is the only time I have to do it. And that is a long way of saying NO LINKS FOR YOU in this post.

So, anyway, I was listening to MPR yesterday on the way to play touch football and the hosts were saying that they really had no interest in this year’s Super Bowl and then launched into a riff of how the Steelers should win because while the Seattle Seahawks’ quarterback Matt Hasselback was a thirtysomething, argyle-wearing, bald Christian, the Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was an Ent, slow-moving but powerful. It was an amusing bit from a couple of guys who clearly had no interest in discussing the game but felt an obligation to due to the cultural signifigance of the event.

Though as you know, I breathe football, I sota feel the same way. I’ve got no dog in this fight and therefore feel passionately about neither Pittsburgh nor Seattle.

That wouldn’tve been the case in my childhood.

As a tweenager, I made a new friend and we got along famously but I soon learned that he had just moved from Pittsburgh and, much to my chagrin, was quite naturally a huge Steelers fan. The Steelers. The team that beat my beloved Vikings in the Super Bowl.

And he wouldn’t back down; he wouldn’t do the decent thing and adopt to his new environs by pledging allegiance to his new hometown team. He had committed a flagrant breech of childhood fandom etiquette. To make matters worse, he was also a Pirates fan, a team that at that time was tearing up the league while my Twins were…middling.

If the expressions had been around at the time, I would’ve told him in no uncertain terms the he couldn’t come into “my house” and talk such trash.

I hated the Steelers, as I did the Dolphins and the Raiders, the two other teams who beat the Vikings in the Super Bowl. The Chiefs didn’t count because I was too young to have watched that game.

But I’m not a hater. Not anymore, anyway. I feel no hate, at least, for the Steelers, the Dolphins, or the Raiders.

The Cowboys, on the other hand…yeah, I still hate then. That’s one childhood trauma from which I doubt I’ll ever recover.

That trauma was inflicted in 1975 by Cowboys wide receiver Drew Pearson who, during the final seconds of the NGFC Championship game, on the infamous Hail Mary play, illegally pushed off on Viking defender Nate Wright to catch the Roger Staubach pass for a touchdown that sent the Cowboys to the Super Bowl.

It was my very first taste of injustice.

But no hate for the Steelers; in fact, I think they’ll win. I just think they’re tougher, have a ground game that can eat up the clock and a better quarterback. After all, he IS an Ent.

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