Good vs Evil

It was an all-around great football weekend, with Purdue thumping Iowa (which I was able to hear in the car, courtesy of XM), the Colts taking out the Jaguars (as Ramya said "Poor Jacksonville- they have so little else going for them"), and of course, Notre Dame's continuing humiliation.

But earlier today at lunch, we were discussing how golden boy Tom Brady is on pace to shatter my boy Payton Manning's single-season touchdown record. I commented that while in 2005 Payton was throwing a ridiculous number of touchdowns because the defense stunk and the Colts needed 48 points to win games, this year the Patriots are mercilessly running up the score an crappy teams. Dana (who is a Pats fan by marriage) continued to defend them, but I know what I've seen.
Then, look what the lead story on ESPN.com was: Good vs. Evil, which opens with the tagline: "Patriots at Colts has a powerful, compelling narrative. Namely -- Good vs. Evil. The fact that I don't even need to tell you which team represents Good and which stands for Evil says a lot about how low New England has sunk." So there- I'm not the only one who's noticed. I was as much of a Pats fan as anyone back in the day, when they were the scrappy band of good-guy unknowns, but the fact is that after years of constant praise and string of championships, they've become just another arrogant juggernaut. Don't get me wrong, if the roles were flipped and the Colts won a string of Superbowls and became big jerks, I'd defend them just like Pats fans are doing now. But for the time being, I'm tired of New England's attitude.

Seriously though, check out the column. As usual, he discusses several other topics, including college athlete graduation rates (this report seems to indicate that Purdue athletes are more likely to graduate than the average student- though the football team's rate is pretty sad) and the way movies have dangerous objects exclusively for the purpose of staging a fight scene (like the magic gate of death in Harry Potter (which I, immediately after reading, proclaimed to be the dumbest death scene ever because the stupid gate had no possible purpose) or the office tank of sharks in Dr. No).