Quick Question: As most sports writers are now telling us that an undefeated season is not as important as winning the Super Bowl, what was all of that unending hype about?

As we headed into the last week of the 2009 regular season we at last had some respite from all of that irrelevant hyperbole about how a modern NFL team just might make it through the season and the playoffs undefeated. When the Colts handed a victory to the Jets, finally in week 17 there were no more comparisons to Brady and his Patriots who almost made it, or to Griese and his '72 Dolphins who did make it.

Alas, thankfully, there is also no more talk from former Dolphins bragging about the past or venting about the differences between the then and the now. They have once again sipped the champagne.

Besides, dragging out the old Dolphins every time some team looks golden for a few weeks is a bit much when you consider that most of the young people of today who watch the NFL weren't even alive when that team won them all.

Larry Who? Mercury What?

Isn't a Shula like a kielbasa?

And what did they call that no name defense again?

Yeah, well, okay, while I may be old enough to remember those undefeated Dolphins, my sons and their friends have maybe just heard of them. But if they have then you can bet your leisure suits that most of these younger folks think Csonka and Morris wore leather helmets.

I say that this hyperbole was irrelevant because it wasn't another team that finally ended the "dream" for the Colts, but was in fact the Colts themselves who ended their pursuit of perfection and deliberately settled for imperfection. Well at least if not the Colts' players then it was the Colts' coaches, management and owner that purposely stopped this long glorious run to immortality. The pundits and fans can argue until Detroit wins a Super Bowl whether it was the smart thing to do, but it will not change the fact that in so many ways the Colts were dead wrong in choosing to end their quest for The Undefeated Season.

What really shanks my punt is that after being blitzed for most of this season by all of the hype we finally realized what we should have known all along in that neither the Colts nor the Saints were going to make it to an undefeated season! Even if the Saints had not legitimately lost on the field, that determination was ultimately never going to be left to the players and determined on the field of play but rather in the hard, cold business settings of the owner's office.

Yet we Fans had to endure all of those weeks on end about how great it was, how great these teams were and about all the imaginary scenarios of possibly getting two undefeated teams into the Super Bowl. Bah! We were suckered, fooled, sacked in our own living room end zones, because this was never going to be about going undefeated. We forgot that this is the NFL Today, its professional sports, it's all about business and has nothing to do with glory or history or the Fans because it's all about the Money. We've seen it too many times in the past when a team tanks a game to rest players since they have clinched their division, or a bye and home field. So why did we allow them to run this (double) cross pattern on us again?

The NFL likes to say that on any Sunday any team can beat another.  That is never truer when they won't allow their best players to play. Yet the NFL talks about the integrity of the game. Bah, again. Where's that integrity when a team pulls its best players and allows another team the chance to continue their season with what amounts to a win by forfeit? Call it what you want but the Colts threw that game just as sure as a boxer who takes a dive in the fourth round. Integrity indeed.

It is also said that in the NFL regular season everybody wins one and everybody loses one and this usually holds true despite the rare Patriots' success or the Lions' dismal disasters. But how much more true this holds when you get to the end of the season and the team management decides when to lose and when to win. Most all of the pundits and many fans claim that holding players out is the "smart" thing to do because it is after all, just all about winning the Super Bowl. Bah, yet again! Having a chance to win them all is about more than just winning, its about character, its about perfection, its about immortality.

So tell me what would you think of a NASCAR driver who slows down to eighty miles an hour because he is saving his gas and his car for the next big race. What the heck, this driver is way ahead in championship points and it's a long season, right? Besides the race he is running now doesn't pay the winner as much as the next one so he's pretty darn smart to hold back. Meanwhile it doesn't matter that all the fans have paid top dollar to see this race, so what if they aren't getting their money's worth out of this guy, or in the case of the Colts, an NFL team that has clinched.

How about that boxer, but instead of taking a dive he just floats around the ring to keep a safe distance from his opponent because this fight isn't for the championship? He's paid a million bucks or more to dance around the ring for twelve rounds and throw a few jabs to score enough points, but he's not going to take any chances. Meanwhile the fans pay $49.95 for cable access.

A fix is a fix, a sham is a sham, and just playing out the string is an insult to the Fans and to the game itself. Besides, dog gone it, its un-American!

So, you say, the NFL is a business. Okay, and like any business they are in business to make money, and boy does the NFL take our money! But we hand that money over for a product, a product that provides us with entertainment and a product that the NFL promises will be the best that they have to offer week after week. So what happens when the fan pays a week's wages to take his family to a game and the NFL reneges on that promise to field its best product and try to win the game? When the best players are pulled at halftime to make sure they don't get hurt or to just give them some rest so they can play in another game, does the NFL hand out refunds or free tickets to that next game when those players will be allowed to play? Of course not, any more than Direct TV is going to send subscribers a small refund check for the NFL Sunday Ticket package that costs an arm and leg.

Likewise the NFL promotes its marquee players to sell tickets and to make money. By doing so they want people to come watch these marquee players play. "What are you doing this Sunday?" Screams the radio pitchman. "Come see Kurt Warner and the Arizona Cardinals take on Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers!"

Isn't it wrong to demand the high prices for this privilege only to then not allow the players to play at all or to finish a game that has not been decided?

Somewhere along the line professional sports decided that their players weren't just entertainers but were to be held to a higher plain. Then somewhere along that line we allowed them to convince us that they were right. But in reality a professional player in any league is just that, a public entertainer who is paid well to display his or her talents.

So what would you say if you paid four hundred bucks or more to see a Paul McCartney concert only to be told that because he has four more concerts in bigger cities Old Paul needs to rest his voice, so instead you end up listening to three hours of McCartney covers by the runner-up from "American Idol"?

Would you demand your money back if you went to a movie staring Robert DeNiro who then disappears an hour into the film when his character's role is now being played by Larry The Cable Guy?

You wouldn't settle for any of this so why do we settle for what the Colts did? Basically aren't all football players' just performers like musicians or actors who are being well paid to entertain us? Why shouldn't these athlete entertainers be performing in every contest that the fans are paying to see them perform in?

All of these other examples would be considered a rip off, so why do the NFL and other professional sports get away with it as being "smart"?

The NFL wants its fans to love their teams, to be devoted to their teams and in return the NFL promises that it will give these fans the best effort from their teams to win every game. But this honest effort to win apparently is only when management deems it is prudent. Most NFL teams are now worth more then a billion dollars because the Fans spend billions of dollars on NFL merchandise and to watch the games. What the Fans are getting at the end of the season in return for their devotion and hard earned cash is a replay of the preseason when the best players are pulled after the first quarter, or don't play at all.

Football is a rough sport and injuries are part of the game but the teams and players have been well compensated in taking those risks. For the entire season the NFL owes it to their Fans to play to win every game, not to play it safe when looking towards the future in lieu of an honest effort towards victory.

The NFL tells the Fans that it is smart to rest their players before the playoffs yet they are talking about extending the season to eighteen games. Why? So the teams who are on top and headed for the playoffs can then take a dive in Week 16 instead of Week 14? Won't the players be even more tired after 18 games than they were after 16?

This extension is not for the Fans' benefit anyway, it is just another way for the greedy owners to make more money. But these owners will market this extension as a way for the Fans to see more games. Yet if they really wanted the Fans to be able to see more games they wouldn't start most of them at the same time on Sunday mornings and afternoons. How about that TV rule that does not permit the showing of "extra coverage" of those games, which run too long? It never matters what the score is once the old clock strikes because off goes the game, the fans can just check for updates on the 10 o'clock news. Likewise would the NFL play games on Thursday nights that are only available to subscribers of the NFL Network if they were even remotely concerned about the fans seeing more games? Want the fans to be able to see more games, spread them out a little more at the end of the week. What's wrong with a game or two on Fridays and Saturdays?

This owners' greed also has a lot to do in not playing to win before the playoffs because the deeper a team goes into the playoffs the more money there is to be made. There is nothing wrong with that of course, with success should come monetary gain. Except that by not playing their top players while trying to win every game before the playoffs the owners and the teams are already cheating their fans and are thus being dishonest about the money that they have already been paid just to make even more money in the playoffs. Again, where's the integrity?

Furthermore how many playoff teams, let alone Super Bowl winners, have NOT raised the price of their tickets for their next season?

But perhaps the biggest lie about this "smart" move of teams holding out players at the end of the regular season is that the NFL supposedly claims that it goes to great lengths to insure the integrity and legitimacy of every game. As in every profession sports' league the public must be reassured that every game is on the up and up, the league crushes any hint of gambling. They conduct league wide drug-testing, reviews of the referees, prohibit teams from spying on one another, requires up to date and precise weekly injury reports, and so on and on, all in a concerted effort to insure the public that every game is legitimate. But with such false claims of legitimacy the NFL only displays its own hypocrisy at the end of every season when playoff bound teams are allowed to sit their best players, which effects the outcome of the game. Isn't this the same as a fixed game? Isn't this the same as shaving points?

Of course the fans are simply told that the NFL allows this "fixing" to insure that certain players are not injured. But football is a team sport and while some players are better than others one player does not insure the outcome of every game. As if it wasn't enough that fans have to put up with the constant rehiring of spoiled prima donnas and potential convicts who have had one, two or a dozen run ins with the law because, we are told, nobody can fill their shoes, every year at playoff time we have the added lie that no one can replace certain key players so they must be protected for the playoffs. Yet it is always inevitable that someday because of age, injuries, retirement or finally, convictions, one day we turn on the game and by golly those shoes are being filled by somebody new! As always life, and the game, will go on.

To buy into this playoff injury excuse what we have to forget are all of the replacements that have come off the bench to replace an injured 'star' and have themselves shined just as bright. Steve Young instantly comes to mind when he had to replace the once thought irreplaceable Joe Montana. There are many other examples but here I will take us back to that undefeated Dolphin team in 1972.

As I mentioned in the beginning this Dolphins team is generally known as having Bob Griese at quarterback, and Griese was their QB in their Super Bowl win. However in week five of that undefeated season Griese was injured and was replaced by an 'old man' who had once played for Coach Shula at Baltimore. That old man was Earl Morrall. It was this replacement quarterback who led the Dolphins through most of that perfect season and wasn't replaced himself by Griese until the AFC Championship game. Despite that late season replacement Morrall was acknowledged as the 1972 AFC Player of the Year and was also awarded the first ever NFL Comeback Player of the Year.

But this wasn't the first time that Earl Morrall, as a replacement QB, had stepped up. In 1968 Morrall became the starting quarterback when the then Baltimore Colts QB was injured in the last exhibition game. Morrall lead the Colts to a 15-2 season that included two playoff victories and the famous loss to Joe Namath's Jets in Super Bowl III, which cemented the AFC's legitimacy in pro football. That year Morrall, this replacement quarterback, was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player.

Two years later Morrall would again replace that same Colts' injured starter in Super Bowl V and lead them to a victory over Dallas. By the way, did I happen to mention that this quarterback who Morrall replaced, twice, was not only considered irreplaceable but is considered by many to be the greatest quarterback to ever play the game? Twice Morrall was the replacement in two Super Bowls for the great Johnny Unitas. Now please tell me just who is so great that they can't be replaced in the NFL today.

Two Quick Questions:

1) Who won the Super Bowl XXV in 1991?

2) Who is the only undefeated Super Bowl Champions?

Most of us cannot answer the first without looking it up unless we are diehard Giants' fans. But most of us can answer the second question. If this year's Colts do go on to win this Super Bowl XLIV they will just be one out of XLIV teams to win it. Someday, in another five hundred years or so, as the Super Bowl continues on, and if the good Lord allows our Great Nation to continue, these modern day Colts will be just another of the DXXX other teams who have won it. But if they had gone on to win it as an undefeated champion they would have been one of only two Super Bowl Champions to go undefeated. They would have been immortal. Instead by not playing to win they chose to cheat themselves, the fans and the game.

Besides, like I mentioned before, playing not to win is un-American.

When the NFL allows teams to 'throw' games by resting players for the playoffs it is an insult to the fans. But when a team like the Colts deliberately sack their undefeated season for the same reason it is a crime.

That is why more than ever this year I would like to see a team that has overcome adversity win the Super Bowl. A team that at the beginning of the season had so many injuries in its offensive line that it gave up more sacks than a Mom and Pop's corner grocery has in its inventory. Make it a team with a backfield that has no playoff experience, and as an added bonus make the quarterback the survivor of a controversy in his replacing a legend. A team that has lost one… no make it two All-Pro defensive players for the season yet their team's defense remained among the leagues best.

But most of all make it a team that went into the last game of the season with that same winning mindset and attitude that it had in the very first game of the season. A team that had already made the playoffs by winning seven out of it's last eight games with the only loss coming with no time left on the clock. A team that had nothing further to gain or lose by winning or losing that last game of the season yet still started the usual players and played to win at all costs despite the possibility of injuries. A team that played and won that last game like they were already in the playoffs. A team that gave their fans everything they had from the first game to the last. Yeah a team like that deserves to win the Super Bowl and just because my Packers fit this to a T, well, that would just make it all the sweeter.

Go Packers!

God Bless America!

Semper Fi,
Mike

"Copyright 2010.  Michael E. Tank   All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."