January 10?
I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about the Ratbirds missing the playoffs. On the happy side, thank God they didn’t make it because as the lowest seed if they made it out of the wild card they would play the Steelers, and when those two teams play someone always gets hurt. On the negative side, it would be fun to see them get knocked around by the Steelers one more time this year. 
BTW, Dave, I haven’t forgotten about our bet, I’m just lacking the address so I can pay up. I have a fresh, crisp, clean Terrible Towel sitting right here with your name on it.
One other thing I’ve been meaning to ask you: when you move, do you use Mayflower?
[sub]Mwahahahaha!!![/sub]
Damn, that was a cheap shot. You’re a Steeler fan through and through, Doors. 
Yes I am. What gave it away?
I hope Dave isn’t sore about that one. It’s something that he and I do every time we see each other in person and just continue on the Dope.
Yeah, I’ve figured that out, hence the smiley. I do the same thing with my steeler-loving friends. The exchanges are eerily familiar.
Weirddave, the crazy, alcoholic owner of the Baltimore Colts who gave you several bad seasons, and left town because you quit buying tickets, gave Indianapolis several bad seasons before he died. The Irsay who brought you grief is dead. He brought us grief, too, and he’s dead. Jim Irsay is a few clicks away from normal, too, but he makes better decisions. It would be meaningless for me to apologize for the Colts moving. That stuff happened miles above the average citizen. If old Bob had died earlier, maybe they’d still be the Baltimore Colts. I feel creepy thinking about it. History is history. Don’t be like those Cubans who moved north in the fifties, and still think they own Havana.
I think the colts did the right thing for two reasons:
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They knew they might play the broncos the very next week, so they went “vanilla” so to not give them any good tape for next week.
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Since the game was meaningless to them, it was a good time to play the reserves to tune them up for the playoffs, just in case.
I’d rather see the starters play and the teams play to win, but I’m just a fan, not a coach, GM, or owner.
As I said in the Steelers March to the Superbowl thread:
Personally, I think the Eagles’ coach made a major tactical error to just walk away from the last game in order to “preserve” his best players. You want to enter the playoff season with energy and momentum, not walking across the finish line like it’s just another day at the office. You especially don’t want to walk across and hear your fans boo you, even if you’re guaranteed a medal.
Reid should remember that the fans paid good money to watch their team. It was a packed house and he cheated them. Sponsors paid really good money to cover the game and he cheated them. Just because the Bengals are out of contention does not mean that they should be relegated to playing the Eagles’ understudies. Fuck Reid. It’s his job to give everyone a good match and he played the coward.
Kudos to Bill Cowhler for playing today’s game like it was the SuperBowl. That’s what I want to see. I actually do believe that the Steelers are marching to the SuperBowl. And if they meet the Eagles, I hope they send Andy Reid a message about how real men play football.
As a football fan who has occasionally been described as “rabid” (and without comment on the accuracy of that description), I’d rather see my team playing deep into January than fiercely contesting a meaningless game at the end of the regular season, whether or not I paid for the ticket.
Reid works for the Philadelphia Eagles - his job is to do what’s best for the team. Same with Dungy and the Colts. Sponsorships aren’t their concern - sponsors should know that investing in the final game(s) of the regular season is a crapshoot as far as importance. Sometimes the season comes down to the wire; when that hapens, sponsors get a larger audience and more than their money’s worth. Do they owe the difference to the team when that happens?
The goal of the NFL season is to win the Super Bowl. Reid, Dungy, and Cowher all made the decisions that they thought would best help their teams do that. That’s the job of a head coach.
And Cowher didn’t play yesterday’s game like it was the Super Bowl. Rothlisberger was medically cleared to play. You think Maddox would have started the Super Bowl just because Big Ben’s ribs were sore? He did the same thing Reid and Dungy did - try to make sure his big play guys were going to be fresh for the postseason.
Someone explain the “Irsay” joke to me.
Baltimore fans have cursed Irsay’s name for 20 years. Dave explained it well earlier in the thread:
Oh, it’s all ancient history, I agree. I just want the name back. A couple of years ago the NFL issued a commerative HO scale model train for the Super Bowl. Each SB had it’s own car, and the car for SB V was proudly emblazened with the logo and words “Indianapolis Colts”. Does that seem right to you? Before our current team adopted the name Ravens, Mr. Modell contacted Jimmy-boy and Drunken Bob about maybe bringing the name back. Jimbo and the lush said sure-for 50 million dollars in a blatent attempt to cash in on giving us back what is rightfully ours in the first place. There is no way that logo is worth anything close to 50 mil to the team. Tell me, as an Indianapolisian, wouldn’t you rather have a team with a nickname that reflects your town?
If a vacuum cleaner factory packed up and moved from Baltimore, would you demand they should turn over the Hoover name to the city? The Colts name belongs to the team, and the team belongs to Jim Irsay. Maryland has no more horse farms than Indiana, so the Colts name is just as geographically appropriate for Indianapolis as it was for Baltimore. The Ravens name, on the other hand, has a local significance to Baltimore, the home of Edgar Allen Poe. If you still love the Colts name, nothing’s stopping you from cheering for Indianapolis, along with the Indianapolitans.
Will Baltimore ever get the Colts name back? It’s not up to me, but my guess would be, “Nevermore.”
So you are under the impression that it was the Indianapolis Colts who won SB V? That’s…deluded. How about all of the pre-'84 players for the Colts. Every single one of them in the Hall of Fame has requested repeatedly that the NFL remove their names and articles from below the banner Indianapolis Colts in the HOF, because they played in BALTIMORE, and the NFL has refused again and again. Should their wishes count for nothing? I suppose it’s hard to understand for a city that’s only been in the NFL for 20 years, in an era of interchangeable players and loyalty only to a dollar bill, where going to an Indianapolis Colts game is no different than going to the movies or some other form of generic entertainment, but back in the day, the Baltimore Colts were an integral part of the fabric of the city of Baltimore. It’s a shame that that era is over, but the Baltimore Colts stand for that time when a football team was more than just a Sunday diversion for a community( watch the movie Diner for a good take on this ). Ask any old time fan of the Packers or the Browns, they’ll get it too.
Oh, and FTR, Maryland has historically been one of the premier areas of the country for horse ranching and breeding. The second leg of the Triple Crown is run here for God’s sake. Indiana stands for race cars, basketball and corn. Why not chose a name from one of those arenas?
Calling Baltimore the home of EAP is a stretch, actually. He wasn’t born there, didn’t grow up there, and it was one of three cities he lived there something like 5 years total. He was living in New York and Philadelphia when he wrote most of his well-known works. He just happened to die in Baltimore and is buried there, and his grave has become a morbid tourist attraction.
As much as I disagree with Weirddave about the OP (I think it was whining motivated by a losing team), I agree with him strongly about the identification of a team with a city. I hate the Browns and Ravens, but it was classy to leave the Browns in Cleveland. The same is true for the Titans, but I guess Houston disliked the Oilers too! The Colts belong in Baltimore, the Rams in St. Louis, and the Dodgers in Brooklyn.
There should be no confusion about past Superbowls either (which I had never heard of until you brought it up Weirddave). That’s just plain wrong. The idea of someone celebrating the dominance of the 70’s by the great Anaheim Steelers bothers me more than the idea of an ex-wife having fantastic anal sex (although I don’t even have an ex-spouse; I still expect it would).
Pardon me. It was one of three cities he lived as an adult (not counting his time in the military and abroad). He lived in Baltimore something like 5 years total.
Also, one presumes the associations of Colts with Baltimores has to do with horse racing. Since Indy is famous for a different kind of racing, they could have changed their nickname to something more appropriate.
There are distinguished race horse and draft horse farms in Indiana. We have a horse race track here in Anderson. Horse races have been a big part of the state fair since before I was born. That’s standardbred horses, pulling drivers on sulkies.One of you suggested “Racers” as a replacement name, but that was the name of a now-defunct minor league hockey team The Checkers were another failed hockey team (the current hockey team is the Ice.) “Pacers” is taken, too. The Speedway, Indiana high school team is the Sparkplugs. Even the arena football team has an automotive name (Firebirds.) The Detroit Pistons were originally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where a car-parts plant made pistons. The good car-racing names have all been used already. Indy’s minor league baseball team has been the Indians for over a century, so that’s out, too.
An amusement park’s ads proclaimed, “There’s more than corn in Indiana.” It’s true. There’s horses, and NFL football.