HOLLYWOOD, CA – Last night marked the return to Prime Time of an old fan favorite…Peyton Manning. It certainly makes for a great story…in fact, this is me quoting myself from two months ago: “Manning torpedoed it right from the onset with a performance so bad even Chicken Parm sandwiches were embarrassed to be associated with him…but, with any luck, this actually is rock bottom and there’s nowhere to go but up, and Manning’s got a shot at redemption with that defense if he can somehow manage these games.” Surely it doesn’t take a Fox Mulder to come up with ways in which the NFL is working their magic to somehow, someway, get the beloved Manning that redemption. The idea of John Elway handing him the Lombardi Trophy is just too good an image to pass up, especially when Manning inevitably announces he’s retiring and going out on top. Could that be part of the deal? Sure, why not! These are paranoid times and anything’s possible.
Just ask Patriot fans, who were already getting their tinfoil hats ready when they learned Ed Hochuli would be using his big biceps to toss yellow flags in the AFC Championship – nobody beats the Patriots like Ed Hochuli. And this coming a week after Chiefs fans griped about the smoke alarm going off at their team’s New England hotel the night before their playoff game. Then the League “accidentally” forgot the game balls, and hired none other than the FBI to watch over them and their pressure gauges. I hope it was Agent Scully they got for the job, dictating into her recorder as she was autopsied each device. If somebody were to ask her what she thought of the Patriots’ tablets mysteriously malfunctioning during the first half, she’d probably have some ready-made, logical-sounding answer based in science… like, duh, they’re Microsoft tablets and not iPads. At least they weren’t made by Motorola, like the headsets the Patsies make opposing teams in Foxboro use.
As for the Carolina Panthers, their bandwagon has certainly grown (count my 10-year-old son among them), and they haven’t needed much help running up scores; being a team that goes for two while up by a gajillion points in the fourth quarter. They frankly look unbeatable… which is just the way the Illuminati would want it for the big showdown, right?
The last time the Panthers were in the Super Bowl was 2004, a full year after the X-Files went off the air. That Panther team that lost in dramatic fashion – remember that John Kasey kick-off that went out of bounds? A seemingly innocuous pat on the right buttocks before the kick by the Cigarette Smoking Man with an untraceable drug in a fake wedding ring. On that Panthers team was a journeyman named Rod Smart…who the year before was better known as He Hate Me, playing in a doomed league called the XFL. The XFL’s one and only season “coincidentally” coincided with the final season of the X-Files. Wait a minute, XFL…X-Files? There’s a connection there, and I think He Hate Me is somehow involved….in fact, has anyone ever seen He Hate Me and the Cigarette Smoking Man in the same room?
Crazy? Now who’s being naive. Talk to me after the Broncos win the Super Bowl.
The Truth is out there.
Come back tomorrow for a man that finds truth where nobody else can, Big Al Sternberg/Fake Sandy Alderson.
