I can't wait for the Super Bowl to be over with

Son of Nixon is gloating over the Pats going to the Super Bowl.

I just can't get excited about this for a couple of reasons.

First of all, my father-in-law, who has known me (allegedly) for 13 years now keeps asking my wife if I'm excited, since I grew up in Connecticut and was never able to successfully give up rooting for the Sawx. It's hilarious, listening to her end of the conversation on the phone. So right there that's enough to want me to get things over with.

I never liked the Pats growing up because basically they stunk. Not that they were bad on the field--I mean, they were. But the organization as a whole really bugged me---just really lacked class. Plus, both my brothers were big Miami Dolphins fans (or Dolfans, as that peculiar form of obsessive-compulsive disorder is known), as the Fins were going through their period of arete under Shula, Griese, Csonka, etc. Needless to say, as the middle child, this made me a natural Raiders fan as the Raiders of that era (almost) always had Miami's number. Plus, as my dad liked the Redskins, it was a natural piss everybody off move, so it had that going for it.

Growing up in a conservative Catholic parish and as a faculty brat at a military academy in the early 1970s, I had to look far afield for heroes, and for whatever reason settled on the Holy Trinity of Muhammad Ali, Evel Knievel, and the dirt-bag looking Oakland Raiders of Ken "the Snake" Stabler et al. I guess it was my eight year old way of giving the bird to the world, my way of saying "how-dee-doo" to Richard Nixon, William Westmoreland, Pat Boone and Frank Gifford all at once. Fortunately, over time, it didn't take, and I settled down to more reasonable heroes: Margaret Thatcher, Pope Jay-Pee Deux, Reagan, and, of course, Snake Plissken. I think my Kurt Russell fetish was a way to keep hold to my roots, while my embrace of Thatcher/Reagan and the Pershing Missles was a way to stick it hard to the uber-commies in college.

Needless to say I fit in quite well at a small southern women's college.

Anyhoo, I have to confess I liked watching the Pats beat the Steelers because of the thorough beating it was---and when I mean beating, I mean beat down, as in take the guy out in the alley and kick the crap out of him while he was down. I mean, the state of Bill Cowher's comb-over was just deplorable. I mean, football, when you can see the proverbial teeth flying out of the guy's mouth, is a thing of beauty.

And the fact that they get to lay the smack down on the Eagles---easily the lowest class organization in professional sports (and by professional sports I include the NBA Pistons as well as Notre Dame football). Basically, Andy Reid is going to be served up like Michael Moore, in a g-string, to a convention of the American Association of Turkey Carvers. And this will be a good thing.

Yet, I can't get excited for them at all, even though I'd like to see Bill Belichick in a game of one on one with Andrew Sullivan. I mean, the humanity of it all! (And by the way, do you think it's dawned on Jerry Jones that Bill Parcells has one zero Super Bowls without Belichick on his coaching staff? Mmmmm, yep.)

For one reason, my brothers have both become Pats fans.

I'm sorry, you just can't do that.

You can't switch professional sport team allegiances but once after age 10. It's kind of like that once-in-a-lifetime capital gains tax exemption you can take for selling a house. You can do it once, fine, but after that you're a ho. As a kid, fine, but you'll learn your lesson well (as all those seventeen year old Chicago Bulls fans are learning about now). You can ally with a team as a kid that's local, or you can ally with one somewhere else because they're good and you're a kid and you really don't understand what loyalty means, and that's okay because you'll learn soon enough. (You can also ally with a team out of spite, as I did with the Raiders, but that's a Fish of an entirely different color). But if you switch as an adult (and by this I mean over the age of 13) you can only switch to a team that is currently in a state of suckage. Otherwise, you are nothing but a dirty rotten bandwagon jumper, and really only worthy of citizenship in your natural home, the Republic of France. And switching to another team in the same conference?

Perfidy does not begin to describe it. I don't even think the French have done that (would switching over to the Nazi side count as rooting for another team in the same conference? I need some clarification on this one.)

So them's the stakes. If you were a Pats fan when they sucked, if you got arrested throwing wing nuts at real NFL teams coming out of the visitor's clubhouse at Schaeffer Stadium, enjoy the party for the next two weeks. I'm sure Son of Nixon, the Irish Elk and others fit into this category, and I wish them well in their well deserved period of annoying gloating.

But otherwise, stuff a sock in it.

(And I'm not saying that just because I had to convert to being a Redskins fan as a condition of marriage)