Even if I had tickets, I wouldn't go!
Friday, January 21, 2005
By Ray Ratto
Special to ESPN.com
The good news is, the weather is supposed to stink in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia Sunday.
Bart Starr's QB sneak won the famous Ice Bowl playoff game.
The bad news is, it can't stink enough..
Oh, sure, it's supposed to be cold in both places, hardly a surprise in a state that long ago cornered the market on the Amish. In fact, it has an excellent chance of actually snowing in Philly, and a coin-flip's chance in Pittsburgh.
Well, that won't do at all. We want greatness this Sunday, but if we can't have it, we may as well have spectacle. And there's no spectacle like Antarctica come home to roost.
Look, it could be that the Falcons and Eagles, Patriots and Steelers can produce artistry and grace in lousy weather, but that's not the way to bet. The defenses are too good.
So we must, for the good of our own entertainment needs, root instead for hideous weather. Snowdrifts. Wind. Sleet. Ice. Locusts. Rivers of blood, too, if the merciless and thuggish God who invented The Weather Channel can manage it.
We want the works. And here's why.
One, we're inside.
Two, the Ice Bowl. And the Fog Bowl. And the Tuck Rule Game. And the Snowplow Game. And all that stock footage of Jerry Eckwood being tackled on an off-tackle run and hydroplaning through a lake for 15 yards.
We're not kidding, either. Those are the memorable playoff games, the ones played against a Siberian backdrop, the ones that keep popping up this time of year, when NFL Films wrests control of the sports networks from PokerPokerPoker.
Tom Brady demonstrated the difference between a fumble and incomplete pass in the Tuck Rule Game.
Bad-weather games are almost by definition classics, and bad-weather championship games are glorious examples of the sport at its most primordial. Would you remember the Bengals-Chargers AFC title game in '82 if the wind-chill wasn't minus-59? Would Bart Starr's quarterback sneak at the end of the '67 NFL title game be one of the game's great moments if the entire game hadn't been played on a sheet of ice? Would the Raiders-Patriots game, the one that brought America the Tuck Rule, been as memorable if it hadn't ended with Adam Vinatieri sweeping away a foot of snow from the place of his game-winning field goal, and the Pats players making snow angels?
Let me help you with that. Of course not.
Besides, these two games have been analyzed beyond death by every yapping skull, former player and two-bit pundit since Sunday at about 8:05 p.m., EST. Everybody had a two-bit opinion, and amazingly, your cable bill is way more than two bits.
Let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow ...
PITTSBURGH -- CBS's top sports executive said the lousy weather expected for Sunday's game between the Steelers and Patriots is a blessing.
Blustery days in New England and frigid temperatures in Green Bay have always, for some reason, given a boost to ratings in playoff games past, said CBS Sports president Sean McManus.
That's especially true, he said, for the playoffs.
"I'm rooting for terrible weather" on Sunday, McManus said.
Exceptionally bad weather should give the networks a spike in ratings, he said.
The forecast for Sunday in Pittsburgh looks like snow, frigid temperatures, and then maybe a little more snow.
-- The Associated Press
But guess how quickly all that analysis goes up in reefer smoke when the sky gets pissed. Do the words "Im-damn-mediately, Giggles" strike a responsive chord?
Thus, we must have the Yukon death-storm Sunday, and we must have it sweep across Pennsylvania. We must have bitter cold. We must have sub-zero temps. We must have great whopping Nunavut-sized drifts that cause the snowplow boys to have to clear the yard lines repeatedly.
We want tackled running backs to come up from the pileups spitting out mouthfuls of snow. We want Bill Belichick wearing his sweatshirt like the Unabomber, and Bill Cowher wearing a fur-lined chin-strap. We want Michael Vick's breath to shatter as it leaves his mouth, and Donovan McNabb's mom to ice over while making soup on the sidelines.
We want the Great Unplayable Game to be played. Twice.
And why?
Because it's fun, damn it. Because it'll be sure-fire water-cooler talk Monday morning. Because it will reward the hardiest men, and allow the losers to bitch loudly about how different the game would have been if it hadn't been played on Martha Stewart's soul. Because we want the fans at Heinz and Lincoln Financial Fields to show us their love through the medium of hypothermia.
And because we want games to remember for all time when the whole circus moves to Jacksonville two weeks from Sunday. Crap weather has a way of making that happen in ways that mere victories and defeats do not. And on the very healthy likelihood that the AFC winner will breeze in the Super Bowl, we'll need memorable games to carry through until the degrade-a-thon we like to call the NFL draft.
So that's why we want weather that stinks, big time. That's not too much to ask now, is it?
But if it is, maybe we could settle for the Liquor Fairy to drop an extra sixer of beer and a vat of Tractor Shed Red. After all, even if there isn't a blizzard to watch on Sunday, maybe we can drink enough to think it is.
Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com
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