No Heavy Lifting Required - II

It was only yesterday that I thought the run-up to the Super Bowl can make it difficult to come up with interesting themes to write about. It just got worse!

I'll bold the really stupid parts (which surprisingly, isn't the whole damn paragraph):

They make up the greatest quarterback/coach combination in NFL history. Five Super Bowl championships in seven appearances with another possible Sunday in Minneapolis against the Eagles. You could argue they couldn’t have done it without each other, but if you were forced to choose who is more responsible for the Patriots’ success, Tom Brady or Bill Belichick, who would you choose? We asked Globe columnists Dan Shaughnessy, Christopher L. Gasper, and Tara Sullivan to do just that. It wasn’t easy.

There's a reason for that - it's stupid, simplistic and insulting to anyone that follows sports. It's another lazy column template that Shank trots out a few times a year. It's also a hypothetical, so you're not saying anything of real value - it's closer to gossip than anything else. Did we ever hear similar arguments in the past (Chicago Bulls - Michael Jordan & Phil Jackson, etc.) or is the media just using a new and boring tactic to antagonize us again / still? You could just say something trite like 'it takes two to tango' and be done with it, not to mention your 52 other teammates that do the 'little things' like block for the quarterback, catch his passes, play defense and stuff like that.

I will give the man some credit - Shank thinks it's stupid, too:

Dan Shaughnessy

I hate the question. We shouldn’t have to choose. The fair, measured position would be to say that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are equally responsible for the Patriots dynasty of the last 17 years. The Patriots coach is the greatest of all time. The Patriots quarterback is the greatest of all time. Call it 50/50.

But we can’t do that here in 2018. This is an era of click baits and hot takes. The barking dogs of sports radio and television serve as the soundtrack of our sporting lives. Meanwhile, a splashy story in ESPN suggested that there’s tension at the top of the Patriots pyramid because egos are clashing and there’s competition over who’ll get the lion’s share of the credit when
the history of these Gillette glory days is written.

So we are forced to choose and I choose the coach — by 1/one-millionth of a percentage point.

Well, he thinks it's stupid - until he writes his next column asking you who's better - Celtics or Bruins?

I don't even want to read the rest of it. It's another tired theme that makes me lose interest as soon as I see the headline.

One other thing - you know what's really gonna make you lose interest immediately? Tomorrow night's Super Bowl halftime show! I tried my best not to ape Shank and go all 'get off my lawn' on the guy, but I despise Justin Timberlake. This fucking no-talent boy band hack is famous for one thing, and that's his part in the 2004 'Nipplegate' Super Bowl halftime show with Janet Jackson, sporting one small breast (big whoop), and the NFL is chump enough to let him embarrass them a second time. He embodies just about everything that's wrong with today's music industry - bland, corporate, bereft of skill. The Social Network was among one of the worst movies ever made, right down there with Ishtar. And you know what's gonna make it all complete clusterfuck / world-class dumpster fire of biblical proportions? He's going on stage and doing one of his 'songs'... with a hologram of Prince, who's been dead for over a year. When you suck as bad as Timberlake, you need to pull out all the stops to ruin a sporting event as best you can. The really ironic part of this? When he was alive, it was reported that Prince cannot stand Timberlake, most likely because the latter is a no-talent hack.

This is going to be by far and away the absolute worst, shit on the bottom of your shoes halftime show in history. It's gonna suck big, hairy donkey balls in the worst way possible. If I wasn't doing my normal halftime duties (dishwashing at a friend's house), I'd be throwing knives & dishes at the TV set. I can't wait to watch this asshole's career evaporate on that stage tomorrow.