01.17.07 -- NFC Championship Game - A Battle Of Letters!

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NFC Championship Game -- A Battle Of Letters!

If ESPN has taught us anything--and it hasn't--it's that an important game shouldn't analyzed on a purely athletic level. Game film, quarterback arm strength, offensive and defensive schemes -- bushwa! Like any other entertainment product, you gotsta have a gimmick to sell it to Joe Sixpack out there. Otherwise, he might start to use his own judgment about stuff like what channels to watch, what president to vote for, etc.

For the AFC Championship Game--which we shall cover tomorrow--the gimmick is obvious. Peyton Manning never wins in the postseason, Tom Brady never loses. See, now there's a story you can hang your hat on. You can already hear Michael Irvin babbling incoherently over that one.

The NFC is a tougher sell. On the one hand, you got the Bears, the Pork Lover's Team. On the other hand, you got the Saints, who America has been shamed into adopting. See, if we all keep saying nice stuff about Sean Payton, Drew Brees and Marques Colston, we can all pretend New Orleans is okay! Yippee!

So I decided that this game shall be decided the way that all manly contests are decided--with poetry!

Chicago and Nawlins each have quite a tradition of letters, from both natives and transplants. So I've assembled these two cities' respective bards and they shall trade barbs in a simulated battle of wits that shall determine the NFC's Super Bowl representative.

NEW ORLEANS	CHICAGO
Walker Percy "There it is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place which, wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met and mastered."	Nelson Algren "Once you've come to be a part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real."
William Faulkner "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things."	Studs Terkel "At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day--indeed, officially proclaimed as virtues--the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours."
Tennessee Williams "Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."	Carl Sandberg "Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities"
John Kennedy Toole "Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul."	Jean Shepherd "Night people are aware of the real world. They wonder vaguely or specifically about where it's going. People who live in the day are interested in things; people who live at night deal with ideas... It all evolves around a concept of happiness. Day people love red tape, switchboards, lists, aces, the routine of a busy active life. Night people aren't eggheads, but they wouldn't mind spending a year in Maine doing nothing."

Wow, this is a tough one. Like the two teams, these two cities are pretty evenly matched. It almost comes down to a matter of personal preference. Do you prefer New Orleans' Catholic dichotomy of guilt and sin, its almost Egyptian obsession with death and the afterlife? Or do you prefer Chicago, that most quintessentially American of cities, and its literature of workers and hustlers, all of them trying to "make an honest buck in a crooked sort of way"?

I really can't say which way I lean...

Oh Christ, he's gonna be on every god damn pre game show, isn't he? Then fuck it, the choice is clear. Geaux Saints (+2). 'Cause I have to watch two weeks of pre-Super Bowl hype, all of which include this douche-and-a-half, I'll eat a glock.

Posted 01.17.07 08:09pm * Permalink