Dans Hamptons

I have special powers when it comes to watching football on television. I root for a team and unless I do something wrong, they win.

I can hear a hundred thousand fans screaming.

“The Falcons just scored a touchdown to tie it up. And now there’s been a fumble on the kickoff. They’re going to score AGAIN.”

I come running into the living room from the kitchen where I have gone to get a beer, but it’s too late. The field goal kick is sailing through the uprights.

“The Falcons WIN! The Falcons WIN!” the announcer is screaming. “Unbelievable!”

Three guys in club chairs are glaring at me. I’ve betrayed the whole room.

I’ve had a lifetime of experience with this. Sometimes it’s subtle. They call a bootleg double reverse, something very, very fancy when they should have just thrown a slant down the middle. I can’t help it if they do that.

Sometimes it’s hopeless. I can see that from the get-go. I’ll just turn the TV off and go do something else. There’s limits to my special powers. Even God couldn’t get wet-behind-the-ears Chad Pennington to rise up and beat the New England Patriots when the best quarterback in football, Tom Brady, is firing on all cylinders. Some things are just better left alone.

All of which brings me to what was probably the most depressing day of my life, Monday, January 22. I spent this entire day, a bitter cold drizzly day, lying on the couch in the living room feeling sorry for myself. I could not understand it. My powers had failed me. I had worked amazingly hard on Sunday, January 21. I had watched television for more than seven hours in a row in the living room, with loving family members occasionally coming in to feed me, and it was all for nothing. A complete waste of time.

The first game was between the New Orleans Saints and the Chicago Bears. Two years ago, in the aftermath of Katrina, New Orleans didn’t even have a stadium. They played all their games as “away” games, and they wound up hopeless, losing almost everything. I didn’t even pay any attention to them two years ago.

Last year was not much better. Again, they lost almost all their games, although this time, they did play home games in New Orleans, though at the Tulane University stadium before hopeful but small crowds.

This year was another matter. Their Superdome had reopened for business and record crowds showed up to watch them and cheer for them.

I watched them play for half an hour or so one weekend, but they were sputtering along, a small little team when compared to the behemoths they had to play against. I thought they might rise to mediocrity. But I didn’t feel motivated to bring in my special powers.

I should say that, during the season, I am not some fanatic who has to watch professional football every Sunday, no matter what. In fact, during the season I rarely watch it. I have lots of other things to do. I let the season sort itself out for a while. I come into the picture with just two or three weeks to go, figuring that up until then, the teams should be allowed to play on their own to see how they do.

And then, I bring my special powers to bear. Which is what I began doing when I tuned in a New Orleans game, with just one week before the end of the season, and watched them simply take apart a bigger, and better opponent. It was a close game and I stepped up to help them right toward the end and they won it. I did a little dance around the living room as I watched them doing a little dance around the coach on the sidelines with twenty seconds to go and it all wrapped up. New Orleans was going into the playoffs. They were the last team to sneak through. And they didn’t know — nobody ever knows when this happens — that I was right there behind them.

New Orleans got to play in the Conference Championship game against Chicago on January 21 by defeating Philadelphia. In the Philadelphia game, we worked beautifully together. They may have been small, but with me in the picture, they played with reckless abandon, and they cut the bigger team down. The defense was everywhere. And they had the biggest variety of offensive weapons I have ever seen in one team. Deuce McAllister, a big refrigerator of a running back, would smash straight through the line for six yards. And if they were watching McAllister, Drew Brees would throw to Colston, Miller or to Henderson, or to Campbell, each of whom could make circus catches. And if those guys were covered, there was their amazing broken field runner, Reggie Bush, the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner from USC. New Orleans, in front of their hometown fans, simply took the starch out of Philadelphia on January 14. On January 21, they would be playing Chicago, a team with the best record in professional football, but they’d sweep by them and they’d be in the Super Bowl. They’d do this because, good as Chicago was, I was behind New Orleans. Also, the Chicago quarterback was the highly flawed Rex Grossman. Grossman could be very good, or he could be very, very bad. I don’t know if Grossman is a Jewish person or not, but there are very few people with names like Grossman playing out there, and I wanted to root for him, maybe even help him. But I’d seen him play and often he was just so embarrassing. He’d run into his own player. Or he’d throw it to the other team. Or he’d get sacked running around in the backfield, when anybody could see he could have gotten out of it and tossed it to the guy up on the sidelines.

There are Jewish athletes from time to time in sports, but rarely in football, and with his name and everything and as a Jewish person myself, I felt sort of embarrassed watching him play. Look guy, either be good or go be something else. Get into real estate or something. I wasn’t going to help him.

Between me, all those guys with the Saints and the flawed Rex, Chicago didn’t stand a chance.

And so it was that I sat down in my living room at 3:30, turned on the TV and watched as the New Orleans Saints fought the big Chicago Bears, the big, big bears, just about evenly. The Bears were flat-footed. The Saints were all over Grossman. In the middle of the third quarter, it was Bears 16, Saints 14. And I let it be known. The Saints were going to roar ahead to the Super Bowl.

Then the Saints collapsed. Final score, Chicago Bears 39, New Orleans Saints 14. I had stayed in my club chair. I threw all sorts of spells at Chicago. I threw everything good I had at New Orleans. They got crushed.

At 6:30, the game ended and almost immediately I switched over from FOX to CBS to watch the New England-Indianapolis game and I felt awfulness coming. Maybe I’d blown a fuse. Maybe my plug had disconnected from the wall. But I felt this strange sense come over me. I just didn’t care.

New Orleans was not going to be in the Super Bowl to play against the New England Patriots. (What a game that would have been.) And you know what? New England would be there certainly — with all American quarterback Tom Brady at the helm they would be there — but having defeated Indianapolis, they’d be playing Chicago in the Super Bowl. So what?

Well, I could root for New England in the Super Bowl. That would be something. In any case, Brady would have to beat Indianapolis without me. And he would.

Well, he didn’t. It was a close game. And New England led all the way, until, with a minute and a half to go, Indianapolis’ quarterback, Peyton Manning, engineered a touchdown to put Indianapolis four points ahead. Brady and the Patriots got the ball, and began to march up the field to win the game, and time simply ran out on them.

It reminded me of something. Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach for the old Green Bay Packers, once was asked how it felt to lose some games. He had lost some.

“We NEVER lost a game,” he told the press. “Although, there were times when time ran out before we could win.”

Well, I could have helped Brady there during that last minute and a half. But I just didn’t.

And so, it’s a bummer. I lay there on Monday and just felt so bad. It was a miserable and bitter winter’s day. No more holiday celebrations. Football’s almost over. And my fire’s gone out.

Chicago versus Indianapolis. What kind of Super Bowl is that? How about Cincinnati versus Cleveland? Or Knoxville versus Memphis? These are tinker toy teams. And I really don’t care. They can play the game without me. I have no favorite. There will be no Super Bowl Sunday for me. I’ll just lie here for two weeks, and everybody can just have a good time celebrating when the time comes and maybe once in a while somebody can come and look in at me lying there in the dark. I don’t know what to do.