It's That Time Of Year

...when Shank pretends to care about high school football.

It is supposed to be the football highlight of a high school senior’s life. You invest a great part of your youth playing football and it culminates in the annual Thanksgiving Day game against a century-old rival. Morning football jousts give way to afternoon turkey, stuffing, and canned cranberry sauce.
The rest of the country has Friday Night Lights. Here in Massachusetts we have Turkey Day bragging rights.
Sweet.
But our ancient ritual has been modified and in many cases, severely diluted.
This is not the fault of global warming, the Internet, or millennial apathy. The change in our traditional Thanksgiving football rivalry games is owed to changes in the MIAA state football playoff format.

DHL Dan LXII - Profiles In Laziness

There's two today - myself for taking two days to note the following: Shank's second mailed-in column this week. Must he that Thanksgiving Week thing!

Picked-up pieces while waiting for another good NFL player to quit his bad team, threaten to retire, then magically show up in Foxborough, born again as a Patriot . . .

■ I am OK with almost any change in sports as long as the Lions continue to be on TV every Thanksgiving.

■ Joe Morgan’s letter to Hall of Fame voters (keep the steroid cheaters out!) is late and too simple. Nothing about this issue gets more clear as time passes.

■ Admit it, Patriot fans. Deep down you wish Bob Kraft had been the one to take on Roger Goodell instead of Jerry Jones. You loved feisty Bob showing up for the Super Bowl in Arizona, demanding apologies, and commissioning “The Wells Report In Context.”

What Do You Mean 'We', Kemosabe?

Shank continues to ride high atop the New England sports bandwagon (emphasis added here and there):

Be thankful, New England fans, for our bounty of success

You are a New England sports fan, and it’s Thanksgiving week, and there is so much for which to be thankful.

Ours truly is the best region for professional sports watching. The blessings are many. I was thinking of this back in October while watching the Cubs and Indians in their epic World Series. The Cubs hadn’t won a championship in 108 years and the Tribe are still sitting on a 68-year drought. The city of Cleveland went from 1964 until this year (Cavaliers over Warriors) without winning anything. And here in Boston we get agitated when the Bruins go two straight years without making the playoffs.

I'm pretty sure it's mostly Boston sportswriters and Michael Felger who get agitated when that happens.

In any event, the rest of the column's a good read and he makes a halfway convincing case, to the extent he avoids using 'I', 'we' and 'our' when discussing the local pro sports teams. We've' seen this sort of writing way too many times before from Shank to believe one word of it is sincere in any manner. We won't get fooled again.

There is one other thing that's been pissing me off for years:

The Patriots certainly play in a terrible division,

Compared to what? This is simply a lie that Shank keeps peddling because he doesn't have any editors that will call him on this, and I'm getting sick and fucking tired of having to keep pointing out the bloody fucking obvious. Go look at the records of all of the divisions this year. There are two divisions that have three teams at or above the .500 mark - the AFC East and the NFC East. In 2015 there was one division that met this criteria, and in 2014 four divisions met this criteria. In the past three years the AFC East seems to be the division that consistently comes up with the most wins, doesn't it?

You know what? I take the praise of this column back. Everything that guy just said, is bullshit! Thank you.

Bonus - No Larry Bird reference, but there is a Clive Rush reference!

UPDATE, 1:57 PM - On a second pass, this little bit of arrogant condescension jumped out:

...and management has a penchant for style-over-substance and pandering to Pink Hats,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most of the people you see in the stands wearing pink hats... aren't they all women?

Why is the Boston Globe baseball section such a hotbed for misogynistic intolerance? Shame on you, Mr. Shaughnessy! Shame!

Inseparable

As traditional as turkey and football, today's Shanksgiving column is designed to make you believe he's not the asshole he usually is during the rest of the season.

If the lion sleeps tonight, it’s probably because he ate too much tryptophan.

...

But football owns Thanksgiving — especially in Massachusetts, where just about every high school plays its final regular-season game this morning.

The first Thanksgiving was in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation, just a few miles from where Plymouth North (3-6) will play Plymouth South (7-3) at 10 a.m.

Et cetera, ad nauseum. Somehow it's always about Massachusetts, but you knew that already.

You also knew Monday's column was written not to disprove the notion that Shank's a lazy columnist. He is; that was his first column in eleven days. It was written for one purpose only - to leverage Gronkowski's forearm break in order to take shots at Bill Belichick, and nothing else. Mike's post below amply demonstrates this. Today's column is an annual, disingenuous staple written in order to lull the reader into believing there's a compassionate side to Dan Shaughnessy. Poppycock.

Tomorrow's column, or non-column, will prove the theorem; if the Patriots win, no column will be written unless something happens in that game that allows Shank to take one or more shots at Belichick and / or owner Robert Kraft. If the Patriots lose, all fucking hell will break loose.