Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

So that's it, then: the season is over, and we are now officially waiting for next year. Soon there will be free-agent signings galore, and then the draft; then minicamps, followed by training camp. Before we know it, another regular season will have begun in the NFL, and everyone will be lining up to knock the Tampa Bay Buccaneers off their perch.

The Buccaneers.

It's a brave, new world, folks.

So, my final post about the 2002 NFL season is at hand. Commencing forthwith:

:: There's a generally-held belief that blowouts are inherently uninteresting and boring. In the case of the Super Bowl, where blow-outs have traditionally been the norm, it's reached such a point that the corollary belief is that the commercials are more interesting than the game itself. I don't agree. Blowouts are certainly interesting if it's your team doing the blowing out; as a Bills fan, I can confirm that my attention was riveted in that AFC Championship Game twelve years ago, when the Bills dismantled the Raiders 51-3. But blow-outs can be interesting on other grounds, as well. Yes, some are boring -- Super Bowl XXIX, for example, when the 49ers whalloped the Chargers 49-26 -- but some are definitely interesting. This game is an example. Just the fact that it was the Bucs who were blowing out the Raiders, and not the other way around, was interesting in itself. And the game wasn't quite the blow-out that the final score indicates; the Raiders had actually closed to within thirteen before the Bucs put it away and then appended the exclamation-point. But to the extent that anyone expected a blow-out, it was not expected to be the Raiders on the receiving end. On that basis -- the unexpected nature of this blow-out -- I found the game interesting.

:: All week I heard about the veteran leadership abounding on the Oakland sideline. So where was it? Why were Jerry Rice, Tim Brown, Bill Romanowski, Rich Gannon, et al not in their teammates' faces, getting them the #$&%!! back into the game? When they caught Rice on camera early in the third, sitting on the sideline moping, I knew the game was over, despite the flicker of life the Raiders showed a little later on.

:: I was very pleased to see the Super Bowl won decisively by a team that executed fundamentals so solidly, after a season where fundamentals were tossed aside by just about everyone. It's great to see that defense still wins championships; that running the ball and grinding the clock when one is leading in the second half is still excellent strategy (Dave Wannstedt, are you listening?); and that one does not need a stellar passing game to win a Super Bowl.

:: Joe Theissman is still an idiot. In his pregame pick, he announced that the Raiders would win. OK, fine -- a lot of people picked them. But he went on to say why: "The Raiders were, week in and week out, the best team in the NFL this season." Was Joe watching the same NFL season that I was? Was he watching when the Raiders went on a four-game losing streak? Was he watching when, "week in and week out", there was no clearly dominant team in the league? Hell, the Raiders didn't even have the better regular-season record of this year's two Super Bowl teams. I wonder if Theissman's brain was affected when his leg was broken all those years ago.

:: Commercials: I liked three of them. There was the FedEx Castaway spoof, the "Osbournes" Pepsi Twist ad, and the Bud Light ad with the guy who decided to get a third arm. That's about it. (Oh, and a new SportsCenter ad where Joe Montana is a chef, and he loses his Super Bowl ring in the food, to have Stuart Scott find it.)

:: Halftime: What on earth was Shania Twain wearing?! Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. If this is what country music is about these days, then Patsy Cline must be gyrating in her burial place.

:: Pregame: I'm probably going to hell for saying this, but I'm finally tired of "God Bless America". I understood why the song shot to the forefront of our consciousness after 9-11-01, but now apparently we're to hear it at every sporting event -- even before the actual National Anthem. Still, Celine Dion sang it well. This year featured one of the better "Star Spangled Banner"'s in recent memory; the Dixie Chicks did a simple rendition, solemn and with lovely vocal harmony. I was baffled that they did away with player introductions; maybe everyone was awestruck by the Patriots' "Introduce us as a team" gimick from last year. It was nice, though, that they did a little season-recap for each team, showing their respective roads to the Super Bowl.

:: Postgame: since when do they do music in the postgame? What's up with that? The game ends, and then it's: "Congrats, Bucs. We'll give you the Vince Lombardi Trophy just as soon as we're all done listening to Bon Jovi!" And I was glad to see that Chris Berman still pulls out the orange necktie for special Buccaneer occasions.

And, finally, a couple of thoughts about the NFL itself.

:: While I can somewhat agree with the "purists" with regards to the current structure for overtime games, I have to conclude that a system whereby a team can win without the other team even touching the ball needs to be tweaked. My thinking is this: first of all, keep the coin toss, but don't kick it off -- just give the team winning the toss the ball, at the opposing twenty yard line. If they're going to march down the field and score, make them march down the field. Second, if they do score, I think the other team should then get one possession in which they can either tie or win, depending on what the first team to score did. However, after both teams have each had a possession, then go right back to sudden death. I think that overtime is "sudden death" because of football's status as the most physical of the major sports; you don't want these guys out there for an extra hour or two beating on each other.

So, just to take a hypothetical example: if the Bills and Jets play to a tie in regulation, a coin is tossed. The Jets call it and win, and they get the ball first. Then, suppose they start at the 20 and drive downfield for a field-goal. Then, the Bills get a possession -- also starting at the twenty. They, too, drive for a field goal. Now the Jets would get another possession, and the game would progress as before until the next team scores. Then, game over. This would not cheat the Bills at all, because they would have had the opportunity to score a touchdown on their OT possession, and thus win the game. Of course, this system would create a few weird instances: in my above example, if the Jets' QB throws an interception on his first snap in OT, and that interception is run in for a touchdown, then the game's over -- because both teams will have had possession once, and the Bills would have a lead.

So: the first team to take the lead after both teams have possessed the ball, should win in OT.

:: Finally, a word about parity. I read a commentary a few weeks ago (I don't recall the writer or location, unfortunately) that complained about parity because it's meant the end of dynasties in the NFL, and thus there will presumably be less of a sense of history forged nowadays. I don't agree. First of all, dynasties in themselves are pretty rare. There really was no "Team of the 1990s" (I don't consider the Cowboys thus, because they won their three championships in four years early in the decade and were lackluster after that), so the last true dynasty was the 49ers of the 1980s. But their three championships in the 1980s were spread out, so I can't believe anyone thought they were a dynasty when they won their first. Conversely, many were convinced that the 1985 Bears were the start of a dynasty, but it never came to pass. So, I don't think we can really predict whether or not there will be dynasties.

However, it seems at least partly true that the old style of dynasty may be a thing of the past: a team putting together a core of players and keeping that core together for a long period of time. Future dynasties, thus, may not be the result of accretion of great talent on a single team, but rather by great front-office personnel and coaches on a team. Scouts and coaches are going to be more important in the future, and whereas we very well may not see a Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s again, I also think we're unlikely to see a situation where a Chuck Knoll or a Don Shula or a Tom Landry can coach a colossus but then spend ten years coaching mediocre teams because the colossus eventually got dismantled. John Gruden might not win another Super Bowl with this same collection of Buccaneers, but I'd be shocked if his coaching career ended sometime in the future without another title under his belt. Selection of personnel is going to get more important, and this is the real reason why the Bengals and Cardinals are such train-wrecks: not only do they lack talent, but they also lack the proper management team to bring in talent in an era when talent can be acquired much more easily and not nearly as capriciously as in the day when there was the draft and little else.

I like parity. I like the fact that a team can go from being a doormat to a Super Bowl champion quickly. I like the fact that of the 19 teams that posted records of .500 or better in 2002, 12 posted losing records in either 2000 or 2001. I like the fact that "Wait 'till next year" can actually have some meaning now, as opposed to before when it meant "Wait until we have an awesome draft, start developing those kids, and then have another awesome draft the year after, and the same thing over four years until we're a great team".

The way teams acquire players has changed, but the game is still the same. It's still line-'em-up, run and throw, stop the other guy, for sixty minutes each Sunday. So we've had five new Super Bowl Champions out of the last six Super Bowls. So five of those champions were teams that to that point in their franchise history had never won a Super Bowl before. So the best team in the NFL can actually change from year to year much more fluidly than before. Football is still football, the Super Bowl is still the Super Bowl, and the best team in the NFL was still crowned yesterday.

The Buccaneers are the Champions, and long live the Champions. At least until September.