A Window On My World: The Cover 2 Defense vs The System

Welcome, Good Readers, to another Window On My World...

First of all, let me start this post by emphasizing that I am not:

• A Communist
• A Jesus-hater
• A little bit "funny"

All clear?

OK, so in keeping with those three key points, let me say that I like football, I played football, and I can't stop playing Madden 2008 on my XBox 360.

That said, football season is upon us yet again, and I find the whole thing terribly depressing as a strange fever yet again grips our Great America.

I am not the first (nor will I be the last) to make the observation that if the avid football fan threw one-tenth of his football-focused brainpower into more weighty matters, the Monday water-cooler conversation would shift from...

"Jesus, did you see how they couldn't get shit done against that Cover 2 defense on Sunday? For the money they're spending, they should lose their jobs!" to...

"Jesus, did you see how we haven't gotten shit done against some of these Iraqi insurgents these past few years? For the money they're spending, they should lose their jobs!"

For cryin' out loud the security guy at work - normally a surly fellow with a "Fuck it, no changin' things, no sense complainin' about it" attitude - was telling me today about how he constructs a gigantic weekly grid with each regular season game. He uses this matrix to plan his "loser's survival pool" (naturally "because there's less skill in picking the winners") and then tweaks the thing for various scenarios that could play out across the year before making his picks. Naturally, he updates the grid each week that he survives...

His political views? All sorts of things rile him up, from the war to how long it takes to plow around our building, but they all elicit the same response "Eh, fuck it. There's no fighting The System..."

I'm not even sure what "System" he's talking about, exactly, but from our conversations, I know that it's spelled with capital letters and has an insatiable thirst for power mixed with a cold disdain for the Average Joe. So it's... um... that "System"!

But still! No fighting it?!? Look up from your grid, man! There's shit going down!

We're at war! Our elected officials are too busy looking for anonymous sex in airport restrooms to save our Great America! The Canadian dollar, once an object of mockery to be spent like Monopoly money by drunken college kids at Montreal strip clubs, is practically at parity!

The only good news I've heard in a while is that chocolate rations are up.

I know, I know, football is an escape from reality. It's entertainment on an over-the-top scale, featuring ridiculously fit athletes pushing themselves to the limits and beyond.

In a world where you can't fight The System, complaining doesn't do you much good. But you can always lament to any stranger how the Patriots let their key receivers get away last year and threw the season away in that last game against the Colts. (OK, any stranger wearing a Sox hat and named Sully/Murph/Whitey...)

And whether you're talking about The System or the Pats, you can't change anything - but at least thousands of people didn't die in the 2006 playoffs.

More importantly, this year, the Pats essentially smashed a bug with a sledgehammer by loading up on free agent receivers. That's like hitting a giant Undo Button!

There are no do-overs as far as The System is concerned, and there's no starting fresh each year.

No, The System just keeps digging in, looking to sustain itself, trying to muscle over people and crushing most of them like bugs. And when the system wants something, it's not afraid to ally itself with its enemy's enemy, regardless of the consequences. When it meets resistance, it stops at nothing...

Um...

OK, I'm starting to see the appeal.

Go Pats!