Playoffs baby, it’s that time of year when the kiddies get all tingly just fantasizing about their team making it to the top. The hits get harder, the plays get more important, legends get made and bonuses get paid.
Not that I’m a die-hard football fan. I can’t rattle off names, plays, analyses, statistics. I watch football for two reasons – to see people get hurt and to hold on to one of the last connections I still have with my home town of Baltimore. The Ravens, a punishing gathering of miscreants and criminals, colors Black and Purple and a mascot ripped out of the morbid poems of a psychotic who died penniless and alone in the cracked cobble of Lord Baltimore’s city.
We play the Pats this weekend and this is one of the most important games of the playoffs.
The Patriots are the kings of postseason. If they advance, they’ll probably win the whole thing because it’s been a few years. If Baltimore wins, we’ll make it all the way only if we somehow congeal, like week-old hollandaise sauce, no easy feat. But back to New England for a sec.
I hate a team that claims a region as its home instead of sticking to a single state or city like respectable squadrons. On top of that their coach is a cheater and their quarterback is some pretty-boy cologne model all-American douschebag type. And the refs are all over his fucking jock, swinging from Brady’s nuts like monkeys from a fucking jungle gym.
Which brings me to the point. Our main opponent in Sunday’s game isn’t going to be New England. It will be the refs and, once they fuck us, it will be ourselves.
Baltimore is the black sheep when it comes to NFL referees. Without pulling the race card or resorting to gossip (though I did hear a rumor that Harbaugh is the only idiot who doesn’t send the referees 40-pound turkeys stuffed with gold coins for the holidays)(and seriously, what the fuck do all those refs do with all those turkeys and gold coins?) it could only be chalked up to some sort of grudge. It’s word in the ref’s changing room that in the off-season Ray Lewis has a wild night with the white wife of every NFL referee, leaving her quivering and satisfied just as her cuckolded, striped husband comes home.
Tony Corrente made a horrible pass interference call last week against Baltimore that led to an Oakland touchdown, made Chris Carr even worse in the Universe’s interpretation of him as a person, and killed the fucking wind in our sails. We only won because Oakland was so bad. The fact is, pass interference is the call we get most fucked on. It’s because the call can’t be reversed. The refs are angry about their own shortcomings, sure, but it’s not fair to take it out on us. So they call every pass interference call they can, even when our players don’t touch the receivers, even when the tackle came blatantly after a dropped pass. But a goddamn pack of wild dogs in Bengals uniforms could be gnawing on Todd Heap’s biceps and it would be ruled an incomplete pass.
Maybe it’s just because Corrente is a west coast dousche bag and high school social studies teacher in inland SoCal, a combo well-known to be antagonistic towards minorities and specifically people from gangsta port cities in a stifled post-industrial decline.
Pete Morelli is a 57-year-old who made it into the NFL at 46. He called absurdly close calls against us during our week 16 game versus Pitt, blocks that had nothing to do with the play, unnecessary roughness for legitimate hits which didn’t elicit so much as a peep when they were laid on Flacco, bullshit pass interference calls. This eventually destroyed our spirit, killed our team, led to us folding after we had 2 touchdowns called back .
Because that’s what we do. Like the girl whose step father calls her a slut so much she begins fucking the whole football team, our team gets so much referee abuse, so much more of a heightened supervision than any of our opponents, that eventually we just give it up. Watch, this weekend we’ll be called almost anytime we hit Brady, every pass play we break up, and every block we make. But any time our D line gets held for a Pats gain, Flacco gets hit a minute after the play, or Heap gets karate chopped just prior to reception the fucking stripes’ll turn a blind eye. You can’t throw flags on missed calls, though goddammit you should be able to.
On Sunday I’m not afraid of Brady or Belichik. I’m afraid of Gene Steratore, the Pennsylvania bastard in the Foot Locker outfit. Let him be warned, Baltimore is much closer to Washington, Pennsylvania than Boston. And if Baltimore loses, Gene, Ray Ray will be looking for your wife. She’ll be the one in the nighty, two martini glasses in hand, checking out her window for when a real man arrives. Specifically one who’s not blind.
Goddamn I love football.
