For Super Bowl Sunday

(PDQ Bach 'calling' Beethoven's fifth)

Whatever. The truth is I barely care about football anyway, and I still hate the Colts enough to consider not watching the game on general principle. I'll probably watch tonight, but the proud Baltimorean in me (it exists....somewhere...) says that even the possibility of watching the Colts win the Super Bowl again is one indignity too many and unlike Baseball, I don't care enough about the sport to watch my hometown get humiliated year after year.

And that's another thing....I know I'm supposed to hate the Steelers, and I guess that insofar as I care about football at all I feel intense dislike whenever I meet a chauvanistic Steelers fan (we've had a few in the chorus over time...all of whom I dearly loved Sean:). But I'm rather ashamed at the gentility with which Ravens fans treat the Colts. I'll never forget journeying up to Baltimore for the Ravens-Colts playoff in '06 to watch in a Fells Point bar. That was the year the Colts won everything, so the experience was depressing enough without what happened next. As we boarded the Baltimore metro back to my parent's house (I'm nearly the only Baltimorean I know who grew up within walking distance of the Baltimore metro) there were a bunch of Colts fans in our train-car who were quite drunk and unhesitant to point out to those around them that Indianapolis just beat us with the team they stole from us. Other Baltimore fans in that car, being the class act among sports fans they've always been, turned the other cheek and did everything they could to make polite conversation with these obnoxious midwesterners. As always when it comes to Baltimore sports, the experience left me with curious mixture of pride and humiliation.