ESPN pre-emptively avoids fueling “underdog” criticism, picks Patriots to win

Until the last few weeks, it was hard to find a group of more stubborn people than the ones that’ve been swearing since Superbad came out that the Patriots are the world’s worst cheaters, no matter what kind of context or retractions or “You haven’t really thought about this for more than 3 seconds, have you?” comes in their general direction.

We’ve all been there. It usually goes a little something like this:

“Patriots should be banned from the NFL for cheating! All their Super Bowls have asterisks!”

“For the Spygate thing, or the Deflategate thing?”

“Both! And they taped the Rams!”

“Ok, well, the Rams story got retracted, in Spygate they had cameras in the wrong locations in the stadium as opposed to the places that are allowed, and in Deflategate the NFL’s own numbers proved that the deflation was in line with what should’ve happened given the weather situation. MIT proved it and everything”

“.........”

“...................”

“.......They’re still cheaters, I know what I see! And there’s probably even more we DON’T know!”

You know the old expression, you can lead a horse to water, but sometimes he tells you to go screw yourself.

Over the past few weeks though, we’ve got a new contender on the scene:

Everyone who apparently blacked out and can’t remember every time they said some variation on the Patriots looking somewhere between hung over and washed up. Noodle arm, anyone?

Since I have neither the time nor the crayons to point out everyone that buried New England after the Lions game (us included!) or the Titans game, or the Steelers game, or after the VERY UN-BELICHICK-LIKE loss to Miami on special teams, Fear the Beard, you do the honors:

If you need to go have a cigarette after that thread, we feel that.

Various sports-talking folks at ESPN, on the other hand, are not pleased that, just like last time we did this with them, The North Remembers™.

Here’s the thing: we all make mistakes. People hit “Reply All” on emails that the entire company is CC’ed on. You forget that cooking bacon without a shirt on is a bad idea. Show me ONE person who hasn’t texted their ex. It happens! All it takes is a simple “Whoops, my bad!” and that’s that. Done. No harm, no foul.

So perhaps in an effort to avoid doing this whole thing all over again like on Chappelle’s show when Charlie Murphy slaps Rick James back and Rick goes

“WHY’D YOU HIT ME LIKE THAT??”

“Cause you hit me, man!”

“THAT WAS WEEKS AGO!”

“No, that was tonight!”

....ESPN has admirably wised up a bit and *mostly* picked the Patriots to win on Sunday. Bold, I know. Anybody remember those Doritos commercials, “Only for the Bold AND Daring”?

Out of the 72 experts that voted (their words, not ours), the World Wide Leader is basically voting 2 to 1 that the Patriots win their 6th Super Bowl - 45 surely cheerful votes went to New England, compared to 27 for the Rams, good for a 62.5% to 37.5% split, respectively.

Seems pretty decisive!

That said, obviously these two things have nothing to do with each other, but you’ve got to admit the timing is juuuuuuust perfect enough that maybe the football gods have a sense of humor after all.

Can’t be feeding those Patriots and their “Everyone thinks we suck” mantra, right?