Round Four: Northern Divisions

This will be our final preliminary round before I am forced to choose the team that I feel most closely represents me within a constructed world of large men trying to run past larger men who like to knock them down. If it feels like there's been a longer wait between entries this time, it's because I worked all weekend, and that made it much easier to procrastinate. But now, down to business.

BALTIMORE RAVENS, AFC – The Baltimore Ravens are unique as a football team in that they seem to have some sort of literary pretension. They are named after Edgar Allen Poe's poem, “The Raven,” and one of their players is that giant kid who went to live in Sandra Bullock's house that time she had a southern accent, and they wrote a book about it. Remember when they used to do weird TV specials where they'd get professional athletes to run through obstacle courses tied to a dog or walk on a tight rope with an actress on their head or something? I think they should revive those, but make the events even more different from playing football. NFL Spelling Bee. I'd watch that, and I'd bet all my money on the guy from the Ravens.

CINCINNATI BENGALS, AFC – I assume that the word “Bengal” in this case refers to a tiger, and not a person of South Asian extraction (the big tip off being the orange and black stripes in the logo), but if the Redskins can have a Native American warrior as their mascot, I see no reason why the Bengals shouldn't have a guy who wears a turban and seems to have mystical powers of assassination that we cannot wrap our puny left-brained Western minds around. For the half-time show he could walk across hot coals and play a flute to a snake in a basket. On their fan gift days they could give away tiny flying carpets. If you're the owner of the Bengals and you're reading this, you should totally do that. You don't even have to credit me or anything for this idea--I am giving it to you for free.

CLEVELAND BROWNS, AFC – See? This is why nobody likes Cleveland.


PITTSBURGH STEELERS, AFC – Can somebody please tell me, are all Hooters Steelers bars, or just the one by my house? Because we're nowhere near Pittsburgh. I really like the concept of the Steelers, though. Pittsburgh is like, the capital of the Rust Belt, and they own it by saying yeah, you know who represents us? Steel workers. Not a bird from a poem, not a cartoon cat with a dopey name. A dude. Who makes things. Out of steel. Want to fight me? I didn't think so.

CHICAGO BEARS, NFC – The Chicago Bears are an institution. I know this because George Wendt told me so when he hosted Saturday Night Live. Wikipedia tells me that there are only two teams still left from the NFL's inception, and they are the Bears and the Cardinals, so these teams have some cred. Also, my sources tell me that former coach Mike Ditka had superpowers and could defeat any opponent, with the possible exception of a hurricane, if the hurricane was named Hurricane Ditka. This seems to have become classified information, because NBC has made sure that only one of the Chicago superfans sketches can be found online, and it's not even the good one.

DETROIT LIONS, NFC – Listen to me, ladies, if you ever find a man who is a Detroit Lions fan, marry him. You will be able to do whatever you want--cheat, ignore him, get fat-- it won't matter. He will stand by you. Because when I know a team is bad, it's real bad, and when someone can cheer for that team anyway, they can overlook any faults in anything. I would like to see the Lions get good, though. Their logo looks sort of like a medieval coat of arms, and they've been around almost as long as da Bears. They deserve some success for once. Also, I need to say that the first half of this entry is in no way meant to be a slight on my own mother, who is very beautiful and also married to a Detroit Lions fan.

GREEN BAY PACKERS, NFC – Cheese. They pack cheese, okay? And I'm not going to make any jokes about anything else they might or might not “pack,” because that's cheap. Especially when all of their fans work so hard to remind us that they're only packing cheese by wearing ridiculous cheese hats wherever they go. If Pittsburgh can celebrate their town's primary industry via the medium of football, there is no reason why Green Bay shouldn't be able to do the same thing if they want to. There's nothing wrong with packing cheese. It's a good job, it puts food on the table, and the rest of the country needs their cheese to be packed. So just shut up, all right?

MINNESOTA VIKINGS, NFC – Thousands of years ago, a race of proud warriors, with no fear of ice or sea, traveled thousands of miles on dragon shaped boats. They journeyed for months across water, and then land, in the frigid north, with nothing at all to guide them because they were traveling to a place they had never before seen. They trusted their gods to guide them: Thor, of the Thunder, with his mighty hammer; Loki, the Trickster; and Odin, the One-Eyed Father who yet saw more than any mortal could ken, and they made their way to where they would eventually settle. Minnesota. It's in the middle of the country, as far away from an ocean as you can get, there's more snow than Norway has ever seen, and the closest thing they have to fun up there involves accordions. So great job, Odin.

THE WINNER


There are two sides to the coin that is the American South. The side that most of us normally see is Jacksonville, Florida, where people value football and crazy mascots over education. But there are a few urbanized, super crazy areas like Savannah, Georgia, and New Orleans, and Baltimore, Maryland, where the streets are still cobblestoned and people like it there so much that they like to stick around and just hang out, even after they die (sometimes as ghosts, sometimes as sculpture; it's really case-specific). The living people talk with soft, genteel accents, and still take into account the rules laid out by Emily Post, whenever she did that. This is a culture I can sign on to. And I'll start by cheering for their poetic, spelling-bee winning football team.