The latest season of the NFL is over, Super Bowl 56 is upon us. For those that don’t know, the team that I root for is the Miami Dolphins, who are not participating. Since their semi glory days when I was a child first watching the sport they have been mediocre at best, a clown show at worst. There was a bullying scandal, coaches that like South Beach’s readily available cocaine and hookers a bit too much and one of our best players of the past thirty years suspended multiple times because “he got high and forgot he wasn’t supposed to get high.”
Part of the team’s misfortunes have come because they haven’t had an elite quarterback since Dan Marino retired in 2000. His final game was a 62-7 loss in the playoffs, a game notable for being the largest margin of defeat in AFC playoff history but also for being watched by myself and two of my best friends at the now defunct All Star Cafe in Atlantic City on a pretty epic weekend. My memories of the time are both blurry and conflicted.
Among the things that Coach Flores contends in his law suit are that he was instructed by Miami ownership not only to use his history as a New England Patriots assistant to try and lure Tom Brady to the team but also that he was offered financial rewards to facilitate the team sucking in order to get a higher future draft pick to be used to obtain a new quarterback. When that plan failed there were months of speculation that the team would try to trade for Deshaun Watson, a fantastic talent that didn’t play a single down this past year. He was declared inactive for every single game by the Houston Texans as he dealt with multiple sexual harassment allegations. Did I mention that the team is a bit of a clown show?
I’ve gone on record as saying that if the team does sign Watson I’m going to take a bit of a break from them for the duration of his tenure, a stance that has led to allegations of racism, hypocrisy and wokeness. I’m pretty sure that at this point there is not much of anything that I can comment on the Interwebs without somebody trying to start an argument with me but regardless of what others might think I would also say these things if the team had gone after Ben Roethlisberger or any other white player that had similar allegations against him. I don’t know for sure where the line is but there are some players that I just can’t bring myself to cheer for.
My team might be a bit of a joke but rooting for them has never really put me in any of these ethical dilemmas. They have the eight highest total of arrests since 2000, but the majority of those were alcohol or drug related, with a few bar brawls thrown in. I’m not in any way minimizing the seriousness of driving under the influence or the damage that a professional football player can do to another person with a punch, but I’ve spent enough time in South Beach, minus the millions of dollars that these young men have, to know that I’m not in any position to judge the trouble that can lead to. When Randy McMichael hit his pregnant wife in 2004, Damion McIntosh knocked his wife to the floor in 2006 and Chad Johnson head butted his in 2012 they were all subsequently released.
How much any of that should matter is something that I’m not sure about. I’ve had the same favorite teams for longer than most of the players on them have been alive so I’m pretty much just cheering for laundry at this point. I wanted to root for the scrappy underdog Cincinnati Bengals in this year’s Super Bowl but that was before I read this post by fellow dad blogger Tobin Walsh and was reminded that their star running back, Joe Mixon, was suspended for the entire 2014 college season by Oklahoma for punching a woman in the face at a cafe. The video shows her slapping and pushing at him first but there is no justifying his response. The team as a whole has the third most arrests since 2020.
By comparison their opponent, The Los Angeles Rams, are 29th out of 32 teams. Among those was a domestic violence charge against Claude Terrell in 2007 that resulted in him being cut that very day. Nothing else in their history really jumps out.
The problem with this line of thinking is that each team will enter Sunday’s game with 46 players suited up and ready to go. The vast majority of them will be fine, upstanding members of society who shouldn’t be judged based on what their teammates or others that have worn the same uniform have done. The Super Bowl is supposed to be a game between two of the best teams in the league to determine this year’s champion and sometimes it’s OK to just sit and watch a great game without having to find other storylines and turn everything into a battle between good and evil. We will eat pizza and mozzarella sticks, hope for some good commercials and probably break out a few dance moves during half time.
I don’t have any gambling interest in the Super Bowl or any players that I particularly like. Joe Burrow, the Cincinnati quarterback, is on my fantasy team that keeps players from year to year so I’ve been paying attention to him for most of this season and seems like a pretty cool guy. His running back remains a problem though. Maybe I’ll just throw a few bucks down on the Rams to make it easier to choose a side.
It’s s good a reason as any other.
—
Previously Published on thirstydaddy.com
—
Shutterstock image
internal image courtesy of author
