Yay Patriots....Whatever.

I wish I could care about the Patriots. I really do. We just won our 2nd Superbowl in the past 3 years. But when Janet Jackson's impromptu flashing is my fondest memory from the entire night, I think it's fairly obvious that the Patriots mean about as much to me as Mike's mewling, pitiful attempts to make fun of me.

It was nice to see them win and all, and I halfheartedly rioted with the rest of my classmates, but I just don't care. Football season being over means that baseball season can finally start, that's all. I don't think I'm alone, either, Boston seems to be more of a baseball town than a football one. The Patriots are well appreciated for bringing world champsionships of some sort to town, but can anyone say they're truly as beloved as the Sox? I don't think so.

Terry Francona might have redeemed himself slightly in my eyes by leading the crowd in a chant of "Yankees Suck" at a rock event at the Paradise in Boston. This doesn't mean I won't stab out his eyes with a spoon if he blows Opening Day by leaving Pedro in for too long, but it's nice that he was willing to do that, if for no other reason than Grady probably wouldn't have been.

Vegas is actually picking the Sox as the favorite to win the World Series, at least at this early point in the year. I don't have the slightest clue when the last time THAT happened is, but I'll bet it roughly coincides with when the Peanut Farmer was president. It probably has more to do with how much of a mess the Yankees are more than anything the Sox did to improve themselves, but I'll take it. And it'd be really nice to win this year, because after this year we have a small group of people becoming free agents, including:

* Pedro Martinez
* Derek Lowe
* Nomar Garciaparra
* Jason Varitek
* Trot Nixon
* David Ortiz
* Kevin Millar
* Bill Mueller
* Scott Williamson
* Alan Embree

Ignore any vomitting sounds you may be hearing, that's just me. We actually have less money tied up in contracts for next year (64 million) than the Mets (66 million). That's messed up.

Also, Peter Gammons and everyone else are all still harping on the problem of team unity this year. The ONLY person who might be ticked off is Nomar Garciaparra, and to look at his situation logically, that annoyance isn't going to affect him. Look, he's either going to have an awesome season, or a terrible one. And that's because he'll either be "motivated" or "distracted" by his contract year, depending on which way the hacks who write 90% of baseball publications decide to go. He would've had this problem regardless of what happened this winter, the man is way too professional and dedicated to let something like the A-Rod trade actually affect him. This is the same team (pretty much) that attempted to kill me with "Cowboy Up" and the whole head shaving thing, and they'll have the same team unity. He did point out something I thought was interesting, though. The defense made 113 errors and let in 89 unearned runs, easily the worst in the division, and third worst in the league. This is based soley on my uneducated observations, but teams with really bad defenses have a much tougher time getting to the postseason than teams with good ones. Luckily, we've patched that up as well as we could, so we can cut down on those numbers some.

A mere 19 days now until Spring Training officially begins. Goodbye football, hello real sports.