I’m guaranteeing the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to beat the hated New England Patriots on Sunday and go on to win the Super Bowl.
Take it to the bank!
And the last time I felt this arrogant about a prediction was Nov. 8 when I assured everyone that on Jan. 20 Americans would be unified in celebration of the landslide election of President Hilary Rodham Clinton.
For what it’s worth.
But I have a good feeling about the Steelers. They haven’t lost since Nov. 13 (it was a bad week for liberal Steeler fans) and are riding a 9-game win streak into Foxboro. They are 5 1/2 point underdogs against the Patriots.
The Steeler dominance upends my custom of artificially rooting for teams based on on cities where I’ve enjoyed getting drunk or ones populated by women who were easy when I was single.
By that standard I used to think I’d one day write a glorious ode about why I was rooting for the Cleveland Browns to win the Super Bowl but it doesn’t look like that’s ever going to happen.
Rooting for Pittsburgh is in my blood. I absolutely love everything about the city. Oddly, it only meets one of my essential criteria for fandom.
Sure, it’s my go-to for drunken revels, something I’ve been doing with reckless abandon (is there any other kind of abandon?) since, oh, the fifth grade.
But all the Pittsburgh debutants I knew when I was single were way too proper and refined for my ambitions. Man, it took me years to find a girl loose enough to even consider letting me kiss her.
Know what I did next?
I married her!
I was 33.
I never kissed a girl from Boston, which is ironic because I feel like I’ve been screwed by people from Boston more than any city on the planet.
The Patriots cheat.
I’m not being rash. My source on this is the Patriots.
In 2007, coach Bill Belichick agreed to pay a $500,000 fine for Spygate, and Tom Brady dropped his appeals and served a four-game suspension for playing with under-inflated footballs, a phrase bound to induce snickers among those of us with juvenile bents.
Coincidentally, I was recently watching football with my cousin and he predicted pretty boy Brady would be the next celebrity athlete to undergo a sex change operation, ala Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner.
It’s an interesting hypothesis, one that at the very least would silence sports talk radio critics who contend Brady’s been female all along.
As for the NFC, I’m hoping Green Bay wins. I had a splendid time in Wisconsin on a 2009 travel story. I like the people and know they’ll be having fun in Sobelman’s in Milwaukee, a saloon where I’ve never felt more at home for an out-of-stater.
I’ve driven through Atlanta, which given its historic traffic problems is like winning a Super Bowl. But I’ve never socialized there for even a moment — and airports don’t count.
I wrote about Atlanta in ‘14 and how two measly inches of snow turned the entire city into the snowbound Donner Party.
I revere native son Martin Luther King Jr., and he may have become a Falcons fan. Or maybe not. He died young, just 39, in 1968 and was blessed with wisdom and foresight.
Had he lived, I could see him becoming enthralled with the leadership principles of a young Chuck Noll as he led the Steelers to four Super Bowl championships in the ‘70s.
Had King not been murdered, he’d be 88 years old. I like to think he’d have eventually moved to Pittsburgh. I imagine him at a Steeler pep rally smiling and waving a Terrible Towel.
So I’m hoping for all these reasons the Steelers kick the Patriots butts this weekend and go on to win their 7th Super Bowl.
Because the Patriots cheat and the arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward Pittsburgh.
Steelers 35, Patriots 13.
I have a dream.
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