On Spielberg's LINCOLN - Part 2

[Spoiler Alert: In this post I reveal key plot points of the movie Lincoln, such as the defeat of the Confederacy, the end of slavery, and the assassination of the title charac - oops, sorry!]

As I said in Part 1, I'm less interested in doing a film review of Lincoln than I am in sharing some of my thoughts about the many choices that director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner had to make.  Here are some thoughts on those choices.

Why the 13th Amendment?
Ask any student of Lincoln to nominate a storyline for a Lincoln film, I think you'd get a list like this:

• The period between the Battle of Chancellorsville (Lee's masterpiece and the high tide of the Confederacy) and the twin victories at Gettysburg and Vickburg three months later turning the tide.  The movie would end with the Gettysburg Address.

• His handling of generals from First Bull Run through his eventual appointment of Ulysses Grant.  The movie would end with the surrender at Appomattox.

• The summer of 1864, as carnage engulfed the Union army and Lincoln's cause seemed lost.  The climax would be the fall of Atlanta and Lincoln's reelection.  The movie would end with Lincoln's Second Inaugural.

• April 1865 - using Jay Winik's excellent book as a template.  The surrender at Appomattox, the passage of the 13th Amendment, and the assassination of Lincoln would be the 3 key events.

But Spielberg and Kushner chose to put the 13th Amendment in the foreground.  It's an unexpected and brilliant choice.  Remember how, in grade school, you were taught that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, even though at 12 years old it sort of seemed obvious that it was?  Well, historiography has very much moved slavery to the front and center of Civil War studies, and a film about Lincoln that aspires to greatness must have slavery front and center.

Just as important, the trend in Lincoln studies the past couple decades has been to focus on his consummate political skill.  Honest Abe didn't just tell funny stories and give eloquent speeches - he was a shrewd and wily backroom politician, who perfectly balanced the factions of his own party throughout the war.  

The movie Lincoln zeroes in perfectly on those two twin pillars of Lincoln and Civil War history.  But still...if you wanted to make a movie about the politics of ending slavery, you could have made this movie:

• From the summer of 1862, when Lincoln first considers the Emancipation Proclamation through the Battle of Antietam in September, the victory that gives him the political cover to issue it.  The movie would end with the official release of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.*  

By making the film they did, they surprised this student of Lincoln, and illuminated a corner of history I didn't know particularly well.  More importantly, they found the perfect canvas to place the end of slavery as the only thing that mattered in the Civil War, and to emphasize the role Lincoln's political genius played in ending it. 

*  If you're interested in the politics of emancipation, try William Safire's underrated novel, Freedom

The Assassination Scene
As I recounted in a post a couple years ago, Ken Burns once said he'd never been to Ford's Theater, the site of Lincoln's assassination.  He couldn't bear to go there.  The only explanation I can give for this scene is that Spielberg couldn't bear to go there*.

*  I won't describe the scene if you haven't seen it, but let's just say Spielberg films around the moment without showing it.

Or perhaps, he was striking some sort of blow at John Wilkes Booth by not memorializing his infamous act.  Booth was America's first assassin (and first idiot actor activist), and believed he would be made world-famous by his dramatic act.  Spielberg kept him offscreen, the way baseball broadcasts refuse to show the imbeciles running onto the field to disrupt play.

But still...film the damn scene!  Let us, the moviegoer, experience the shock and horror.  Insult Booth by emphasizing him tripping in his dramatic moment - make him more of a cowardly klutz than a dashing avenger.

What a lost opportunity.

The Surrender at Appomattox
The surrender of the Confederacy was central to the passage of the 13th Amendment*.  But clearly, Spielberg didn't have the time to show this famous moment in all of its solemn glory**.  Nor did he want to skip it altogether.

*  although, perhaps not as central as the movie presents it.  Spielberg and Kushner take some liberties here, though as this post at Disunion shows, the story they tell is plausible 

I'm not sure what they could have done differently here, and perhaps showing Lee mounting his horse outside the Appomattox Court House is the best they could have done.  Showing Lee as clearly defeated and not as some chivalrous knight laying down his sword, has value too.

But I didn't find the scene quite believable.  Perhaps the problem is that the actor chosen to play Grant looks more like Sherman!

**  The modest commercial success of Lincoln will perhaps inspire other historical recreations of the Civil War.  They could do much worse than a film based on Bruce Catton's A Stillness at Appomattox

Lincoln slaps his son, Robert
This is the moment that has historians most perplexed.  There is no historical record of it.  There is no evidence he slapped his son.  If he did slap his son, it doesn't have very much to do with the passage of the 13th Amendment.  Unnecessary.


Where's God?
We live in a secular age - and Hollywood is a devoutly secular place.  But it is simply impossible to deny the significance of Christianity in driving the abolitionist movement.  (And for that matter, the 20th century civil rights movement.  It's worth remembering that its leader was Reverend Martin Luther King, and he didn't give speeches, he preached sermons.)  The typical radical Republican, as personified by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie, was a devout, even fanatical Christian.

But this film does deny, or at least ignore, the significance.  And in the only mention of religion in the movie, it makes a startling change.  Late in the movie, Abraham and Mary are in a carriage, and Lincoln says that after his Presidency he'd like to visit Jerusalem, the "city of Solomon and David".  But in Mary Todd Lincoln's own account of the story, Lincoln said he wanted to "walk in the footsteps of the Savior".

Lincoln himself, as near as we can tell, was ambivalent about religion, and certainly a latecomer to a belief in abolition.  But true abolitionists in Lincoln's cabinet, like Salmon Chase and to a lesser extent William Seward, were devout Christians, and it drove their belief in the righteousness of abolition.

It seems Spielberg and Kushner intentionally excised Christianity from the film.  And, to paraphrase Seinfeld, this doesn't offend me as a Catholic, it offends me as an historian.

###

I really didn't intend to write such a nit-picking post.  I loved this movie, I really did.  Every moment Daniel Day-Lewis was on screen I was utterly captivated - I truly believed I was watching Abraham Lincoln.

Perhaps, my admiration for the film and gratitude to Steven Spielberg for making it mean my standards are impossibly high.  And I found myself wondering afterwards more about the lost opportunities than the great moments.

But still...the 13th Amendment was the right choice.  Appomattox couldn't have been done differently.  The slap only took a second.

I just wish they'd taken us to Ford's Theater.

On Spielberg's LINCOLN - Part 1

A Sort of Review

I have a long history of being disappointed by history movies.

My biggest disappointment was The Patriot.  Hollywood has given us many wonderful WWII movies and a few Civil War classics.  We've had great movies about WWI and even one damn good flick about The French and Indian War (starring this guy named Daniel Day-Lewis).

But for reasons I can't fathom a century of film making hasn't given us a single great movie about the Revolutionary War.  Indeed, Hollywood hasn't even tried very hard - there have been fewer movies about the American Revolution since 1900 than there have been vampire movies since 2000.  (I'm not kidding; look it up.)

So years ago, when I heard the screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan was hooking up with Braveheart himself to do a flick based on Revolutionary hero Francis Merion, my hopes soared.  Alas, while the film has its moments (the Yorktown scene is worth ten minutes of your time) its absurd demonization of British troops and the overacting of its star ruined it.

For several years now, I've been engaged in a similar experience of cinema anticipation.  When I first heard Steven Spielberg was planning a film about Abraham Lincoln, an historical obsession of mine, Liam Neeson was rumored to play the 16th President.  I couldn't quite see the rugged Irishman in the role but figured, hey, this Spielberg fellow might be better at this sort of thing than I am.

I lost track of the project until that magical day when the first press photo for the movie was released. My  reaction upon seeing that picture was - Whoa.

Another inhabitant of the Emerald Isle had the part, and the likeness was staggering.  At this point, I went into history geek fanboy overdrive.  When Tony Kushner was announced as screenwriter I wrinkled my brow - not much in his oeuvre suggested him as an obvious choice.   But who cares - look at that picture!

I tracked the casting with the sort of attention one usually reserves for their financial portfolio.  David Straitharn as Secretary of State William Seward?  Hmm, I can see that.  Kelly Leak from the Bad News Bears as Alexander Stevens?  Inspired.  The Sheriff from My Cousin Vinny as Edwin Stanton?!*

*  watching the film, I was surprised at how many actors from my favorite television shows appeared: Arnold Rothstein from Boardwalk Empire, Boyd Crowder from Justified, Sol Star from Deadwood

And then finally, last night, joined by the Rock Star, I saw the film.  I'm no movie critic, and you don't need another amateur telling you Day-Lewis is brilliant (he is) or that the period details are perfect (they are) or that the movie's surprisingly funny (it is).

But I'm a bit of a Lincoln buff, and am particularly interested in the ways he's depicted in fictional settings - and all history movies are essentially historical fiction.   I found myself keenly interested in the many choices the filmmakers had to make - what to show, what to skip, what to invent - and found myself alternately applauding, criticizing, and puzzling over them.

I'll save that for Part 2.  But a word before I go there:

When I'm disappointed by a history flick, it's not because I'm a stickler for the facts.  My favorite history film is Edward Zwick's Glory, which is riddled with errors, inventions, and omissions.  Historian James McPherson in a brilliant review in The New Republic points all of them out, but concludes that Glory "is the most powerful movie about that war ever made."  McPherson argues that a movie is historical fiction and has a power to present the Truth accurately, even if it must change some facts to get there.

The big invention is presenting the 54th Massachusetts as consisting of mostly former slaves while in fact it was mostly former freedman.  The filmmakers wanted to tell the larger story of black soldiers - who were mostly former slaves - fighting in the Civil War, and changed some facts about the 54th to do that.

So, Part 2 won't be a collection of gotchas or a chance to show off my Lincoln knowledge (ok, it might be a little of that).  More of an honest wondering over the difficult choices involved in packing four of history's most momentous months into a 2 hour movie.  

Go to Part 2

An Enduring Democratic Majority?

A Brief History of Game-Changing Elections

[note: this is an update/re-write/mash-up of two posts I wrote 4 years ago.  See here and here for original posts.]


In the aftermath of most elections, there is a debate about its long-term meaning.  Specifically: does the outcome of this election mean certain political and demographic forces have aligned in such a way that the victorious party has built an enduring majority and will win many more elections?

Right now, Democrats hope (and Republicans fear) that the reelection of Barack Obama - and the specific demographic conditions that made that reelection possible - are the beginning of sustainable and durable coalition.

But we’ve been here before, haven’t we?

In 2004, George W. Bush won a relatively comfortable victory (at least compared to 2000) and a library’s worth of articles poured praise on Karl Rove, who had seemingly discovered the key to lasting Republican dominance: a passionate organized base that cares about family values. But only four years later, the Republicans lost the White House, and eight years later are in disarray. So much for lasting Republican dominance.

In 1992 Bill Clinton supposedly changed the game. A sax-playing Southern baby boomer who could name all four Beatles beat an old Washington hand who’d fought in WWII, ending 12 straight years of Republicans in the White House. A new era had begun! But by the time a quite tainted but still-popular Clinton left office, the Republicans had taken the House, the Senate, the White House, and the majority of governorships. So much for new eras.

Even the Reagan Revolution wasn’t quite as revolutionary as it’s made to seem. Reagan won an astounding 49 state victory in 1984 and a now-unthinkable 525-13 electoral college victory.  You didn't have to be Nate Silver to call that election.  But 4 years after the Gipper left office the Democrats had the White House back. So much for revolutions.

Only 3 elections in American history have been truly game changing, in the sense that the victory represented a political realignment that was sustained for decades after.  You may have heard of the three gentlemen who won those elections: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.

Thomas Jefferson - 1800
Now that was a messy election. First of all, as brilliant as the Founders were, they hadn’t quite figured out all this electoral college stuff yet, so when Jefferson’s running mate Aaron Burr* technically had as many electoral college votes as Jefferson, he made a play for the White House. It took a while to sort out, but Jefferson eventually took the oath and went on to create a sustainable majority that lasted for decades.

* While in office, VP Burr killed the former Treasury Secretary, attempted to crown himself emperor of Mexico, and got arrested for treason.  And people think Biden's a loose cannon!

Jefferson’s Republicans (not the same as today’s) had so thoroughly destroyed their political competitors, the Federalists, that his hand-picked successors (Madison and Monroe) took the White House for 16 more years, and by the time John Quincy Adams, the son of the last Federalist President, took office, even he was a Republican. The Federalist Party was dead.

That was a sea change election.

Abraham Lincoln - 1860
The remarkable thing about this election is that Lincoln's party, the Republicans (this one is the same as today), was fairly new.  It grew out of the ashes of the Whig party and ran its first Presidential candidate in 1856.  They won their first Presidential election - barely - in 1860.  By the summer of 1864 Lincoln's reelection looked unlikely, and the idea of lasting Republican dominance - or even a lasting Republican party - seemed improbable.

But Atlanta fell in early September, assuring Lincoln's reelection.  And then what a run the GOP went on.  From 1860 to 1932 the White House was virtually the sole property of the Republican Party, as Grover Cleveland* was the only Democrat to win a head-to-head election against a Republican.

*  And he did it twice; Cleveland was an outstanding politician, winning the popular vote 3 times despite being named Grover

Can you imagine that today?  A new party is formed, takes the White House in less than a decade, and holds it for nearly a century?

Franklin Roosevelt - 1932
Democrats looking for signs of a long fruitful electoral run should start here.  FDR came into office much as Barack Obama did: a long period of Republican domination ended with a Wall Street calamity, thrusting a Democrat with profound faith in government action into office.  The Democrat is reelected 4 years later, after the passage of huge federal programs and despite a still struggling economy.

In FDR's case, the Democrats went on to win 7 of the next 9 elections (losing only to war hero Eisenhower).  It took LBJ's Vietnam catastrophe to end this run.


Is Obama’s Win Sustainable?
Have the Democrats won that kind of election?

When analyzing whether an election has created genuine political realignment, you need to see if the conditions are easy to duplicate. And certain demographic trends, particularly the growing importance of the Hispanic vote, suggest it is possible.

And, as I hope to explore in a later post, the Republicans are out of step with the majority on social issues like gay marriage and abortion, and this situation will only worsen.  If the Republicans don't learn how to move to the center on social issues, they are going to have a hard time getting my kids' vote.

But several other conditions will be nearly impossible to duplicate in future elections.

The first is Obama’s charismatic hold on the electorate. He's not quite the rock star he was in 2008, but remains enormously popular, particularly with African-Americans and 18-35 year-olds.  That kind of star power comes along very rarely. Reagan had it. Kennedy had it. Its a wonderful thing for a particular candidate to possess, but it is not a quality to build a sustainable majority on.

Can Joe Biden duplicate that in 2016? Hillary Clinton? If you’re thinking Al Gore, remember that while he was briefly the world’s most improbable movie star and the winner of the increasingly ridiculous Nobel Peace Prize, he’s already failed in the role of filling the shoes of a charismatic predecessor.

The second thing the Dems won’t be able to duplicate is the Blame Dubya tactic.  A majority of voters in exit polls still blame George W. Bush for our current economic woes.  By 2016, the Democrats will own the economy.

And finally, there is this interesting trivial fact:  all but 2 reelected Presidents in U.S. history have seen their popular vote percentage increase on reelection.  The first, Andrew Jackson, only declined because a 3rd party candidacy won 8% of the vote.

And the second, of course, is Barack Obama.  Put differently, it was the weakest reelection win in U.S. history, suggesting voters were saying, "Okay, we'll give you 4 more years.  But if things haven't improved by 2016..."

And that the key, isn't it?

It is a very rare thing to build a sustainable majority and it cannot be built on personality.  His administrations have to govern with  performance.

That's how lasting majorities are built.

The Second Term Blues

This seems a good time to ask: how have modern Presidents fared in their second term?

As it happens, we have a lot of recent history on the subject.  With Barack Obama's reelection this week, we have reelected 3 Presidents - Clinton, Bush, and Obama - to consecutive terms for the first time since a trio of Virginians 200 years ago.

From 1800 to 1824 Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe each won and served 2 full terms in office. In fact, 5 of our first 7 Presidents won reelection and had the full 8-year run.*

* To the embarrassment of the Adams family, the only two who lost reelection were John and John Quincy.

A pattern had formed, right? Nope. The next 100 years was a long sad history of lost elections, assassinations, and natural deaths. From 1836 to 1933 only U.S. Grant and Woodrow Wilson served two full consecutive terms in office. Then FDR showed up and went on a DiMaggio-like run, winning 4 Presidential elections (and yes, the Yankee Clipper had his hit streak right smack in the middle of FDR's Presidency).

But once again, Incumbent Power seems to be back in vogue.  Which is curious, because second terms have been rough sledding for the past half century.

1964: LBJ & Vietnam

When Lyndon Baines Johnson easily won reelection in 1964, the tiny country in Southeast Asia called Vietnam wasn't a big election issue.  By 1968, casualties were soaring, the Democratic Party had splintered into factions, and Johnson bowed out of the race (he was eligible to run again, since his first time was the completion of JFK's term).



1972: Nixon & Watergate

It's hard to imagine now, but in 1968 Richard Nixon won the electoral college vote 520 - 17!  He carried 49 states.  This was one popular, successful President.

But the seeds of his destruction had been sown - the break-in of the Watergate Hotel occurred 5 months before the election.  In 1975, Nixon resigned in disgrace.


1984: Reagan & Iran-Contra
Reagan, too, won reelection in a massive landslide.  Like Nixon, he won 49 states and over 500 electoral votes *.  His second term is a little harder to judge.  He left office still popular, his Vice-President easily won election as his successor, and the Soviet Union's downfall, arguably hastened by Reagan's policies, was only 3 years away.

But the Iran-Contra scandal hobbled this term.  The curious part of Reagan's role in this is that his defense - that he wasn't aware of the actions taken by the Defense Department and the National Security Council - was in some ways worse than being guilty.  It suggested a level of detachment that possibly presaged the Alzheimer's that was to overtake him later.

*  This week, many stupid articles are being written about an 'Emerging Democratic Majority'.  As I wrote in 2008, only 3 elections in U.S. history have created enduring majorities (Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR).  Nixon and Reagan won much much more decisive reelections than Obama, but their party was unable to sustain the momentum, and there is good reason to suspect the Dems won't either

1996: Clinton & Impeachment

We're now fully into subjects where partisan fevers still run high, so I won't rehash the whole Monica scandal. But I think we can all agree that a term that includes only the second Presidential Impeachment in U.S. history wasn't an unmitigated success.

2004: Bush & Iraq/Economic Meltdown
You remember that one, right?


So, now Barack Obama starts his second term.  Excited?  Many Republicans believe they already know what will make his term a failure.  Massive deficits, 8% unemployment, the pending economic impact of Obamacare, Iran's quest for nuclear power, etc.

But second terms tend to have quite unexpected problems.  Most voters had never heard of Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, or housing bubbles when they signed up for a second term.

Who knows what this term will bring?

In Defense of Shallowness

In Which I Address The Meaning of Life, the Difference between Men & Women, and Other Big Questions

Like many men, when I return from a Guy Outing (day of golfing, weekend away, poker night), Mrs. Freetime and I have a conversation that goes something like this:

Her: So how is Bob’s new job going?
Me: Oh, I don’t know, it didn't come up.
Her: How about Jim’s daughter, is she feeling better?
Me: About what?
Her: Seriously?  She had pneumonia last month.
Me: Oh, right.  Hmmm, I'm not sure.  She's probably fine.
Her: Okay, I hesitate to even ask, but Rick's sister was going into labor as you were leaving.   Did she have the baby?
Me (proudly):  Yes, she did!  He got a text on Saturday morning, she had a baby, and mother and child are fine!
Her:  Oh, great, what did she have?
Me:  Um...
Her: Unbelievable.  What the hell do you guys talk about all weekend?!


What do we talk about?  Well, here's a sampling of things we talk about as we're sitting around the proverbial - and sometimes actual - campfire:

• The importance of relief pitching
• Elaborate retelling and embellishment of stories from our past that we've told and retold a million times
• The relative merits of bourbon, vodka, and beer
• How Texas Hold 'Em is great for television and Vegas, but draw and stud are better for a neighborhood poker game
• The Giants' secondary
• Movie and television lines, mostly from Seinfeld and movies featuring SNL players (Murray, Chase, etc.)
• Whether to lay up with a 7 iron or go for it with a 3 wood
• If the Beatles had stayed together, would their albums in the 70's feature the same songs that appeared on their solo albums (Imagine, Band on the Run, My Sweet Lord) or would it have been completely different stuff?
• Injuries to members of our fantasy baseball team
• The ways in which contemporary fiction addresses the angst we feel as we approach middle age not having achieved our most cherished dreams

Ha! Ha!  Just kidding about that last part!  We never talk about stuff like that.  

Women are reading this and nodding their heads.  Yep, that's my husband.  Men are so shallow.  

Yes we are!  We are shallow, and proudly so.  That's not to say we never have actual moments of angst.  That we don't think about the future or relationships or money or the Big Questions like God and politics.  We just don't talk about it*.

 *  Though I might argue that the Lost Beatles albums qualifies as a Big Question, certainly more important than religion

You see, shallowness is an extremely underrated quality.  Many women I know, for example, oh, I don't know, um, say, er, my wife...and some of my friend's wives...and various people I'm related to by blood and by marriage...you see, some women, and I realize I'm making an extreme generalization that isn't at all true of the many wonderful women who may stumble on this column, tend to, um, how do I put this...overthink things.

And they don't just overthink them.  In order to really truly think things through - I mean, to think things through to within an inch of their lives - you need to talk about them.  And talk some more.  And after you're done with incredibly long phone conversations with other women, they might want to loop their husbands in, get their take.

But we're busy.  Watching the Mets game.  Or checking our fantasy team.  Or watching Fletch for the 638th time.  You know, important stuff like that.

But here's the thing - and pay attention here, because I'm going to tell you right now the Purpose of Life.  No need to climb any mountain top or meditate or fast - I'm going to give it to you free right now.  The Purpose of Life is to seek happiness while living a moral life.

Bam.  That's it.   That's the whole shooting match there.  Seek happiness while leading a moral life.

And shallowness is an important part of happiness.  That's not to say I don't have a serious side.  I can be quite serious about subjects historical, literary, and political.

But I also turn my brain off.  A lot.  Well, that's not true, I don't turn it off.  I engage it in meaningless activities.  The quality of the Mets' bullpen is of little world historical import, and has no direct impact on my life, nor can I have any impact on it.  But I've spent a lot of quality time through the years pondering it.  Far more time than I've given to thinking about my "relationships".

So there you have it.  I've explained to you how men achieve happiness, and the meaning of life, all in one handy little blog post.  Now if I can just figure out whether Bobby Parnell has the stuff to be the next Mets' closer.

Why I Rooted for Lebron James

Being a sports fan is a lot like belonging to a religion.

There is a core belief system that makes perfect sense to you, but seems ludicrous to others*. There are  sacred stories, fiery preachers, and creation myths. Among the congregation are the fanatical, the merely devout, and the ones who only show up on the High Holy Days.  There are prayers.  

There are houses of worship - some old and majestic and rich in history, some new and modern and rich in technology. Conversions are rare, and usually caused by marriage or moving far away. Pilgrimages are made, saints honored, and sacrifices endured. The child is often raised in the religion of the parent, and people of the same region often have the same beliefs. Perhaps most importantly, there is faith – a faith that is often challenged, occasionally doubted, and sometimes rewarded.

And there is heresy.

*  To quote the great Dave Barry:  “…the thing about religion is that everybody else’s always appears stupid.  For example, if you read about some religious sect in India that believes God wants people to drink their own urine, you don’t say to yourself, ‘Isn’t that amazing, the diversity of belief systems Man has developed in his never-ending quest to understand and cope with the intricate moral dilemmas posed by a complex and uncertain world?’  No, what you say to yourself is, ‘These people have the brains of trout.’”


I have been guilty of a terrible heresy these past few weeks. You see, I’ve been rooting for Lebron James and the Miami Heat to win the NBA Championship. Yes, yes, I know all the reasons I should be burned at the stake. As a Knicks fan, my Heat hatred pre-dates the Decision. And the Decision itself is indefensible - I won't spent a single pixel on this screen defending it.  And all those Miami fans in white - they seem like a High Holy Day bunch, don't they - have not earned the joy of a championship**

**  Though if anyone deserves it less, it's that blue-clad crowd in OKC, who stole their team from Seattle, and near as I can tell are unfamiliar with even the basic rules of the sport.


But my religion has a core belief.  If you're a regular reader you know that I have long believed there is a great debate that happens in sports - the debate over the Great Player who piles up statistics, records, and awards, but either don't win enough titles (Wilt Chamberlain), take too long to win (Manning, Elway, A-Rod), or never win (Marino).

Most fans believe there is something inherently wrong with these players.  Sure, they break dozens of records, hit hundreds of homers and score thousands of points.  But they don't know how to win.

Critics ignore the weakness of their teammates.  They unfairly focus on a few post-season struggles.  And they exaggerate the abilities of lesser players who were blessed with superior teammates and/or coaching (Russell, Jeter, Montana, Brady).

In an ESPN poll conducted before the Finals - done in Electoral College fashion - 49 states voted that the Thunder would win the title (the lone dissenter being, of course, Florida).  They weren't merely rooting for OKC - they believed OKC would win.  They had so convinced themselves that Lebron had some sort of character flaw that his scoring, rebounding, assisting, and defending skills couldn't overcome.

This was complete nonsense. Lebron James had carried a bunch of horrendous Cavaliers teams far deeper into June than they had any right to go.  In his first season with the Heat, he won the Eastern Conference Championship and went to Game 6 of the Finals.  His career is absolutely filled with playoff and 4th quarter heroics.  And his game is so damned complete - he does EVERYTHING at a ridiculous high level - it seemed unlikely to me that these teenagers in powder blue had a chance.

And of course, I was right.  Oh yeah - that's the other reason I was rooting for the Heat.  Pre-season, I predicted they would go all the way, and was told by many people that they lacked all the necessary qualities of 'true champions'.

And boy, I love being right.  Or to go back to our religious analogy, righteous.


Related Content:

Manning-Brady: Best "Who's Better?" Debate Ever

What do Robert E. Lee and Derek Jeter Have in Common?

The Duper Level: Why Lebron should come to the Knicks

The Era of Mediocre Champs

The reigning Stanley Cup Champions are the Los Angeles Kings .  All available evidence suggests they are not a great team, or even a very good one.  

An 8 seed that barely squeezed into the playoffs, the Kings won fewer than half their games.   They fired their head coach during the season.  LA was particularly bad at putting the puck into the net, which I'm told is sort of important in hockey.  There are 30 teams in the NHL, and 28 of them scored more goals than the Kings.

The reigning Super Bowl Champions are the New York Giants.  All available evidence suggests they were not a great team, or even a very good one.

At 9-7, they barely squeezed into the playoffs.  Only 8 teams gave up 400 or more points this year, and the Giants were one of them (the other 7 missed the playoffs).  And while they scored a lot of points, it was still fewer than non-contenders like the Panthers, Chargers, and Eagles.   In one particularly bad late-season stretch they went 1-5, including a 13 point home drubbing at the hands of the woeful Redskins. 

The reigning World Series Champions are the St. Louis Cardinals.  All available evidence suggests they were not a great team - though they were a pretty good team.  Just not as good as the teams they beat in the playoffs.

In the Divisional Series they beat the Phillies, a team with more wins and a better run differential*.    In the Championship series they beat the Brewers, a team with more wins and a better run differential.  In the World Series, they beat the Texas Rangers, a team with more wins and a better run differential.

*  Run differential is a great simple stat to compare teams.  It measures the gap between your average runs per game and your average runs allowed per game - thus it covers EVERYTHING.  Hitting, Pitching, Fielding, Luck.  The Cardinals were 8th in Rdiff last year, which is good but not great.  They were tied with the Arizona Diamondbacks.  

Sports fans, welcome to the Era of the Mediocre Champion.

Before we move on, though, let's examine whether or not Champions really are more mediocre.  Maybe we're just in a bad stretch these past 10 months.  To the cloud!

Ok, I'm back.  And the answer is yeah, mediocre teams really are being fitted for rings more often. 

This is most obvious in baseball, where the expanded playoffs have changed everything.  4 of the last 10 World Series champs have been Wild Card winners.  Put another way, 40% of the last decade's titles would not have even made the playoffs in other eras.  

But in football, too, the champs' pedigrees have weakened, even though the playoff structure hasn't changed.  In 1979, the NFL went to a 16 game schedule, and from then till 2007 every Super Bowl Champ except the 89 Niners won at least 11 games, and all but three won 12 or more.  In the past 5 years, though, 3 of the Champs won 10 games or less.

And in hockey...well, who cares.  It's hockey.  But the Kings are the first 8 seed to hoist the Cup.*

*  I try to get into hockey, I really do.  It's a fast and furious sport, non-stop action from start to finish.  It has great traditions - there's no better championship celebration than the skating of the Cup.  And I grew up on Long Island in the early 80's when the Islanders were winning all those Cups, right after the Gold Medal win at Lake Placid.  But for some reason, it just won't take.

But the bigger question is:  does it matter?

As a Giants fan, my answer is a Big Blue No.  The past two Giants Super Bowls, coming from teams that struggled throughout the regular season, were far more exhilarating than the first two, won by teams that went 27-5 in the regular season.   The underdog, the Cinderella, the scrappy can-do kids who overcome doubt and failure and put it together for the championship run is the ultimate sports story.

The fact that the Cardinals, Kings, and Giants all beat better regular season teams on their run proves their championship mettle.    The sheer unlikelihood of it all makes for great drama, and a more satisfying win.

But there is a downside*.  Will the average sports fan, 20 years hence, remember the heroics of David Freese the way we remember the heroics of Reggie Jackson?  Will even Kings fans remember the players on this team the way even casual hockey fans can rattle off half the roster of those great Edmonton Oilers teams?  And while Eli Manning has secured his place in the sports pantheon, the rest of these Giants will not be remembered the way Terry Bradshaw's supporting cast is.

*  The other downside is the overuse of the most tired cliche in sports:  "Nobody believed in us, but in this locker room we always believed."  Yeah, as the Giants were getting thumped by the Redskins, when the Kings were being introduced to their new coach, when the Cardinals were losing pretty much every game in August to fall 10 games back, their locker room believed.

Cinderellas are great.  But greatness endures, and it would be nice if every once in a while a team for the ages impresses us with their dominance.

But fear not - we're in the midst of an NBA Finals that will give either Lebron James or Kevin Durant their first of what could be many titles.  This one we'll remember.


Related Content:  If you want a sport whose champions have really gone declined in quality, see this piece on NCAA basketball:  Heaven without the Stars.

  

Eli to Canton: The Math

It's been a week since the Super Bowl and I still wake up each morning with a smile on my face.

A wise man (my buddy Rob) once noted that being a sports fan is a losing proposition. Even Yankee fans end more seasons in heartbreak than not, and for fans of normal teams it's an endless cycle of disappointment punctuated by the occasional glorious title. (Or as Rob put it: "I'm 3-90, lifetime!")

Well, Giants fans have been blessed with two very special championships in 4 years. Sure, all titles are special, but these had a little extra seasoning. The combination of their serendipity, the closeness of the games, the quality of the opponents*, and the class of the organization...I'm getting weepy just thinking about it.

* Combined records of the 8 teams the Giants beat on the way to its 2 Super Bowls: 108-26. Six of the eight teams were 13-3 or better in regular season.

I'm not going to do any game analysis here - it's all been done to death. I really want to make two quick points, and then have an extended discussion about Eli Manning's Hall of Fame chances.

First, the two quick points:

• Underrated star of the postseason was Hakeem Nicks. He had a spectacular season (76 catches/1186 yards/7 TDs in only 14 games). But he was overshadowed by the even more spectacular Victor Cruz (82 catches, 1536 yards, and 9 TDs in 14 games, with a crazy-good 18.7 average). Cruz deservedly became a New York folk hero, but Nicks lit up the postseason: 28 catches, 444 yards, and 4 touches. In the combined 18 games, he passed Cruz in catches and TD catches. Nicks got way less love than he deserved*.

* Bonus video coverage: I think this catch was a much harder grab than the Manningham catch. And if you've never seen this highlight from a catch he made at North Carolina, check it out. It's as amazing as the Tyree Helmet Grab).

• I'm hoping the phrase "I can't throw the ball and catch the ball" catches on, as a general phrase for "I can't do everything." (I know, the original phrase was "My husband can't..." but I don't have much use for that.)

Now, on to Eli's Hall of Fame chances.

A Canton Career?

A lot of ridiculous nonsense has been spouted by people in the past week. Indeed, I believe that any writer*, announcer, or pundit of any kind who argues that Eli has now surpassed Peyton in greatness should immediately have their credentials stripped from them.

Peyton has won 4 league MVPs. Guess who has more? NOBODY! He has won more MVPs than anyone who has ever played the game. He's 3rd all time in passing yards. He's 3rd all time in touchdowns. He's thrown 125 more TD passes than Joe Montana. He's been in 11 Pro Bowls. He's one of the greatest of all time, and even Eli's most devoted supporters (of which I'm one) know he is not that.

* A special award for outrageous stupidity should go to Foxsports Jason Whitlock. On Showtime's Inside the NFL he made his unsupported-by-facts "Eli will surpass Peyton" argument. After Phil Simms and Cris Collinsworth (who clearly knew they were dealing with a moron) pointed out how the Colts crashed without him this year, he argued that was Peyton's fault, too, since he built the team around himself. How does this dolt have a job as a professional sportswriter and I'm writing this blog that only you are reading?

Eli may not be on Peyton's level, but he's building a fine career on his own. Many folks have made the Eli to Canton argument, and they talk about the Super Bowls and the fourth quarter comebacks and his unruffled demeanor. But you see, when you're talking Halls of Fame - football, baseball, basketball, whatever - it's essentially a math problem. You look at the numbers, do some projections, and voila' - you can make a pretty good guess at their chances. And guess what: Eli has a damn good chance of making the Hall of Fame.

Here's my methodology for projecting Eli Manning as a Hall of Fame candidate:

• I looked at the last six QBs elected, all of whose career started in the 80's or later (Elway, Marino, Moon, Kelly, Young, Aikman)
• I focused on six key metrics: passing yards, touchdown passes, interceptions, TD/Int ratio, SB MVP, and League MVP*
• I projected the remainder of Eli's career. I assumed a 14 year career, which would actually be below average compared to the aforementioned 6 (all played 15 or more but Aikman [12] and Kelly [who wasted 3 seasons in the USFL]
• I assumed, for Eli, an average of 3,500 yards and 20 TDs per year, over those six years. That is very conservative, I think, especially considering he went for 4900 yards and 29 TDs this year, and has two great young receivers
• Finally, I added another calculation, showing a more aggressive projection. I assume 16 seasons, at 3,750 yards per and 25 touchdowns per. Again, this is below his numbers the past few years, and 16 seasons is reasonable

* I chose these stats because they are the ones most valued by Hall of Fame voters. Completion percentage, for example, is not valued by the Hall, or Chad Pennington (highest all time) would be writing his Acceptance Speech.

LINK TO CHART: ELI MANNING VS. LAST 6 HoFers

So how do those proections match up with those six? Using the conservative numbers, pretty damn good. Nearly 50,000 yards passing and over 300 TDs. More Super Bowl MVPs than anyone. Only Aikman has more titles, but he destroys Aikman in yards and TDs*. His yardage and TD numbers also blow away Young and Kelly, and of course his titles blow away Marino and Moon.

* You can make a good case Aikman doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame. He was a pretty good quarterback on a team with a fabulous defense and the great Emmitt Smith.

His career would be most comparable to Elway - indeed, using my numbers, they would be nearly identical to Elway. Of course, Eli threw in a more pass-happy league than Elway. But Eli has one big advantage over Elway: his Super Bowl teams, especially this one, were built on his arm. Elway's Super Bowl teams were built on Terrell Davis' legs.

With these numbers (and they could be much better, if he plays like he did this year for a few years), he'd rank in the Top 10 of all time, maybe even the Top 5, in the two key Hall stats. Only 4 QBs in history have thrown for over 50,000 yards, and only 6 have thrown over 300 touchdown passes. Brady and Brees will likely join that group as well, but no other active quarterback is ahead of Eli's pace.

I thought the interceptions would hurt him more, but I was wrong. Yes, he led the league twice in picks, but again, using my projections, his career is a near-perfect match to Elway. And his TD/INT ratio is better than Aikman, Elway, Kelly, and Moon. (Again, Aikman's performance here is less than Hall-worthy).

And of course, he has the intangibles. He already has more 4th quarter comebacks than HoFers Staubach, Aikman, Griese, Dawson, Starr, and others. He'll likely pass Fouts, Bradshaw, Kelly, and Montana before he's done.

And finally, if you're wondering if he's just a beneficiary of the pass-happy NFL, the answer is "not really". Among active players, Peyton and Brady* are already all-time greats and Brees is cruising to Canton. But Eli is ahead of his 2004 classmates, Roethlisberger and Rivers, and Aaron Rodgers will suffer from a late start in his career. No other active player projects comfortably for the Hall of Fame right now.

* These two guys are playing for higher stakes right now: the chance to be known as the greatest of all time. But those quests took huge hits this year, as Peyton's assault on the record books was checked, perhaps irrevocably, and Brady...well, you know what happened to him.

Eli does have one big knock against him: Pro Bowls. He's only been to two so far. And in a conference featuring Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, and Matthew Stafford, it will be no easy task to make them in the years ahead. Of course, if he wins a 3rd Super Bowl he'll be a lock.

Of course, these are the conservative numbers. Use the aggressive numbers and you're approaching 60,000 yards and 400 touchdowns. Toss in another Super Bowl or two, and you have a career that Joe Montana would envy. Hey, a guy can dream, right?

Either way, the math looks good. Of course, in the violent world of the National Football League, health is the key. Eli Manning has been an amazingly durable player, but so was his brother. Eli needs to play a lot more football before he gets a plaque in NFL Hall of Fame. But at this rate, it's looking pretty darn good.

See ya in Canton.

Bonus Fun Fact for Jets fans who are sick of hearing about Eli: Sometime in the first game of next season, the announcers will inform us that Eli Manning has just passed Joe Namath in passing yardage

C Student in X's and O's

There's a lot of plays on that call sheet.

I have a confession to make. I don't really understand football.

I know a lot about football. I know that 4 yards a carry is a good average, that a facemask penalty is 15 yards, and that a slot receiver lines up off tackle. I could break down, in enormous detail, the differences between Dan Marino's 1984 season, Peyton Manning's 2004 season, and Tom Brady's 2007 season*. When a flag is thrown, I usually know what the penalty is. And recently, while driving home with the Rock Star, we tried to name every Super Bowl winner, and damn near got 'em all right (though I had a few out of order; it's tough to put those 70's Cowboys, Dolphins, and Raiders in the right order).

* In fact, I did.

But when I'm actually watching a game, I'm pretty sure that 90% of what is happening on the field is going over my head. In fact, I'm pretty sure that 60% of it is going over the head of a Pop Warner coach.

Football has always been an enormously complicated game - 22 players on the field have rather specific assignments on each play. Sometimes those assignments are simple, sometimes they have options and variations mid-play. How can you track all of them?

But today's NFL has taken to it another level. A few years back, ESPN Magazine broke down everything that goes on in the head of Peyton Manning prior to a snap. The defense is set up in a pass D - or is it a run D disguised as a pass D? The middle linebacker sneaks up one step...Manning keeps his eye on him. Strong safety takes two steps left. Manning barks out a few signals and changes the play...or did he? Hike. Linebackers shift, safety shifts, Manning throws a ball to an unoccupied spot in the end zone - where Reggie Wayne arrives a moment later to catch it.

Who could break that down as its happening? The answer is: nobody. Even Peyton Manning, sitting in a broadcast booth five years from now, won't be able to thoroughly break it down as he watches, say, Andrew Luck against the Steelers. To do so would require not only Manning's superhuman football IQ, but an inner knowledge of the workings of Luck's offense, detailed study of the Steelers pass coverage schemes, and certitude of the original called play, to know if Luck audibled or fake-audibled.

If Future Peyton doesn't know what just happened, what chance does an average fan have?

I bring all this up because, as you may have heard, the Giants and Patriots have a rematch of Super Bowl 42 coming up. The exhausting, mind-numbing coverage have focused almost entirely on non-football stuff. The Rematch. Eli playing in his brother's building. The personalities of the coaches. The history of Tom Brady's hair.

We do all this because, frankly, most of us can't have an intelligent conversation about zone blitzes, run blocking schemes and defensive audibles. That's why, on NFL Mondays all around the country, sports radio features non-stop discussions of things like clock management and body language. Few callers are smart enough to talk about a defense's failure to adjust to the right guard's interior blocking, so instead we call up and blame the loss on the head coach's sideline demeanor, or the fact that he went on it at 4th and 1 from his own 48.

We are, however, breeding a smarter generation of football fans. Tomorrow's football fans will have thousands and thousands of hours of Madden behind them - selecting defenses, calling plays, even strategizing seasons. This is much better preparation for Advanced Fanship than what I bring to the table.

I'm trying my best, I really am, to ignore all the silly stuff that has no impact on what happens between the lines. I like the way the Giants' offense matches up against the Patriots' defense; I worry about our safeties covering their tight ends; and I think, if Vince Wilfork brings his A game, look out.

But then I can't help noticing...the Patriots are 13-2 since Brady cut his hair...

Handful of Dust: An NFC Poetry Slam

Remember the Coffee Klatsch?

The Klatsch is a bunch of friends I worked with in the 90’s. Shin, Cormie, Stod, and I had many things in common: we worked in publishing, were literary dilettantes, admirers of select female colleagues, and nostalgic sports fans.

We also differed on important subjects, like war and economics and modern literature and Jennifer Aniston (for the record, I'm in favor of two, against one, and conflicted on another).

Anyway, back in 1990 when the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers met in the regular season Shin and I made a bet: if the Niners won I would write a poem in their honor; if the Giants won, he would do the same*. We repeated the bet for the NFC Championship game and later playoff games.

* Did I mention we were literary dilettantes?

The Niners won a classic game, of course, and I wrote a sports masterpiece that sadly, like most of Sophocles’ plays, is lost*. Shin repaid in January, and we went back and forth a few times over the years with various sports and teams.

* All the stars on those Niner teams had names that were also words, which I used to brilliant effect. Brilliant, that is, if you were a six year old who loved bad puns. There was ‘running Watters’ and ‘hit a Lott’ and ‘no white on that Rice’ and ‘Young arm’ (Steve) and "Young massive torso" (Bryant)...well, you get the point.

Over the past week, Shin, Cormie and I – with a nudge from Stod and a whisper from BAM (our Stu Sutcliffe, sans tumor) – engaged in the nerdiest trash talking of the year. Here, I give you, the NFC Poetry Slam:

Pre Game Trash Talk

Shin:

The roars were audible from Brisbane to Nyack

When Alex said simply, "Boys, get on my back"

Smith ran round Osi and right over J. Tuck

Grabbed his crotch and said "Eat my PeePee, JPP, you miserable f*ck"

He's vanished his demons, fulfilled all his whims

Hell, he's almost Montana, much better than Simms.

Corm:

There once was a guy from New York

Who got mad when we called Simms a dork

He talked lots of smack

But took much of it back

Through a rhyme scheme that almost did work.

Keatang (last line should be read like you're Seinfeld's mother):

He was picked number one and the orchestras sung,

But for a half dozen years he played like horse dung,

A sweep left for a score,

To Vernon for one more,

And suddenly he's Montana and Young?

Shin:

Since the day I was born I have loved me some Giants*

Just the sound of the word is like a brand new appliance

So yes, I hate me some Dodgers

And they should have picked Rodgers

But they'll clobber New York in defiance

* ed: he refers to the San Francisco Giants

Corm (channeling Robert Burns, after Eli missed practice with a stomach ailment):

Wee, sleekit, cowring tim'rous beastie

Eli, what gurglins in thy breastie

Thou need na start excuse so hasty

Wi burbling belly

Fear the Niners wad rin an chase thee

Wi murdering prattle.

Corm (channeling Thomas Percy, letting Alex know he’s not quite there yet):

And when yon task be fifteen yeere old

Then shall you be crowned kinge

Brisbaine’s Tana, that was once uprore

You did to quiet bring.

First strike the Giants from the realm

Dared they opprest this land

To Canton then, throughe manly feates

of football, head and hand.

BAM (poor guy’s a Browns fan, and has no dog in this fight):

Now NFL Football it ain't my best game

The Cleveland Browns they're just f*cking lame

But on a bandwagon I jump

Both Giants and Niners I trump

So either team can win, I'm the same.

Post Game Loser’s Poems

Shin:

On account of how I now know more of their names

And that yesterday was the first in forever where I watched two football games

I can say Brady's a fighter, and, it looks like, a lover

Manning's a winner, maybe even better than big brother

The Harbaughs a nice story but that one is over

Victor from UMass should be rolling in clover

The Giants are mighty and making big millions

And they should send partial share to Kyle Effing Williams.

Corm (channeling T.S. Eliot):

January is the cruelest month

Giants from back east, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Niner brains with spring rain

Fall kept us warm, a season's

Generous dose of forgetful snow, feeding

a fan's life with dried tubers

Eli surprised us, coming over the middle

To Cruz balls dropped like rain, tween our colonnade

And ran to sunlight, into the Superbowl

We drank beer, and talked it over

Bin kar keine Niner, stamm aus New York echt Giant 20

We cannot say or guess, for no one knows

A heap of broken images, where Williams stands

And the dead season gives no shelter, no relief, 17

From this dry stone no water,

Only Eli, whose shadow rose to meet us

Ending our year in a handful of dust

Reverse Jinxing the Giants

About the New York Football Giants...

I feel like the backup second baseman on a team where the pitcher has a perfect game going. Nobody is supposed to say anything to the pitcher for fear of jinxing it. But especially not an insignificant person like the backup second baseman. The catcher might obliquely discuss strategy with the pitcher, the star hitter might exhort the lineup to score more runs, the shortstop might remind his teammates to stay sharp on the infield. But bench warmers should sit meekly in the corner and say NOTHING to NOBODY about NOTHING!

That's sort of how I feel about this run the Giants are on. After a 7-7 start where the G-Men lost to some bad teams, needed 4th quarter comebacks for 5 wins, and were, in total, outscored by the opposition, this team is suddenly playing like an elite football team. And fans are wondering if...

Well, hold on there. I don't want any jinxy-cat thoughts to float into my head. I dream of exorcising the Trey Junkin demons*. I dream of shutting up every Patriot fan who thinks SB42 was a helmet fluke. I dream of making Ray Lewis cry on the sideline, erasing the stain of Super Bowl XXXV. But I'm nervous about giving voice to these dreams - I have a fear of jinxing this team like I never have before.

* Watching the clip still hurts, not just because of the epic meltdown but because the Niners should have been flagged for pass interference on the play. Mike Pereira, who has been a great addition to the Fox broadcast team, was head of officiating at the time, and he made the official decision that it was a blown call, and the Giants should have had a second chance to line up - this time for a chip shot field goal - to win the game.

Regular readers know I didn't have this superstition aversion in January 08. I had multiple blogasms back then. But this time, well, let's say I'm knocking more wood than a carpenter with the yips.

I'm a deeply rational guy. I don't believe in astrology or ghosts or sixth senses. I don't believe in black cats or unlucky numbers or curses. When someone has a feeling that something is going to happen, and that thing actually happens, I don't think it's because they have some sort of second sight - I think that a) they are incapable of recognizing the underlying rational thoughts that led to their feeling and b) they have conveniently forgotten the many times their feeling was wrong.

But when it comes to sports, I'm worse than a medieval peasant in the Transylvanian forest. For example, my daughter gave me some blue and white Mardi Gras beads to wear to the Cowboys game in Week 17. I wore them to MetLife Stadium and voila - Giants won the NFC East! Naturally I took them back to the stadium for the Falcons game and - they worked again!

Would they work on television? Sure enough, I wore them for the Packer game and even though Green Bay is 1,004 miles away from my living room, they worked! I'm sticking with the beads, baby.

I get this from my father. Poppa Keats is a religious man - he's a lector at his church, the pastor of his fire department, and wouldn't miss Mass on Sunday if he had to swim the Mississippi, climb Everest, and parachute from a skyscraper to get there. But he believes in a higher power - he believes the single biggest factor in the outcome of every Giants' game is whether or not he's watching. We frequently have conversations like the one we had Sunday night:

Me: What'd you think of the game Sunday?

Dad: Ah, I missed it.

Me: You missed it?! You missed the playoff game.

Dad: Well, I was watching, but Rodgers threw the TD pass to open the 2nd quarter so I turned it off. I put it back on again in the 4th, and he threw another one.

Me: Dad, I read a lot of articles about the game, and nobody seems to think your turning the TV off was a factor.

Dad: They won, didn't they?

In light of all this, I want to avoid any conversations of "If we win Sunday...". So in an attempt at a little counter-jinx, here's why the Giants won't win Sunday:

• The 49ers had a regular season point differential of +151! The Giants actually gave up more points than (400) than they scored (394). No team has ever won a Super Bowl with a negative regular season point differential.
• As for the myth that the Niners have a weak offense and the Giants a strong one...not really true. Niners are ranked 26th in offense and the Giants 8th, but that measures yards. In points scored they are 11th, the Giants 9th.
• You may have read this elsewhere, but the Giants are ranked Last in rushing. And not just rushing yards, but Last in yards per attempt, too. The Niner defense is ranked First in rushing yards allowed, and First in yards per attempt. That seems like a bad combo.

So yeah, the Niners struggled down the stretch, barely eking out wins against the Seahawks and Rams, and losing to the Cardinals. Sure, the Niners lost to two teams the Giants beat this year (Cowboys and Cardinals). And yeah, the Giants' point differential in each of the past four games is higher than their entire regular season combined (+15, +17, +22, +17), and they came against teams with a .500 record or better. And it's true that the last time these teams played the Giants best rusher and best linebacker were home nursing injuries.

But the important thing to note here is that I am not making any positive assumptions about this Sunday. I hope the gods (now that they are through with Tebow) are listening.

Tebow Has All the Tools...but One

Here at FreeTime, we like to kick them when they're up and lift them when they're down. This is partly because we're pathologically obsessed with The Overrated and The Underrated*, and partly because debate is sort of like Olympic diving - degree of difficulty matters.

* In fact, when I was coming up with a name for this blog, one idea was Overrated/Underrated, with every story focused on someone/thing that was overrated (Jeter! Clooney!) or underrated (John Adams! Eli Manning!). Notice how the Underrated guys need their full name spelled out?

Which brings us to the matter of Tim Tebow. I had a Tebow column halfway written on December 11, after the Broncos defeated the Bears. Tebow was riding high: the Broncos had won 7 of 8, his passing yards had increased 5 straight games, his TD-to-INT ratio was 8-1, and his critics were cowering in the corner. It was time to strike.

But alas, on December 12th I was diagnosed with a detached retina, and two days later had surgery. While I was recovering Tebow fell hard. The Broncos got crushed by the Patriots, trampled by the Bills, and in week 17, an important game against the Chiefs to guarantee a playoff spot, Tebow put up the following line:

6 for 22, 60 yards, 0 touchdowns, 1 interception.

The Broncos scored 3 points and needed the Raiders to lose in order to backdoor the playoffs. I don't care how much you mistrust stats: that is some seriously crappy, unclutch, non-winning football. And as anyone who saw the game will attest, it wasn't just a statistical nightmare; it was an avert-your-eyes horror show.

So the moment had passed. I couldn't pile on then.

But now Timmy's back! He had his best game as a pro Sunday. It had the usual Tebow dramatics but with a twist: big passing numbers! He even broke John Elway's Broncos' record for playoff yards. So, it's time for me to enter the fray.

Now let me stipulate a few things first:

1. I like Tim Tebow. He seems like a genuinely good guy in a sports world filled with bad guys.

2. I like the Tebow story. It is like every sports movie every made - the underdog who is told he can't do it but pulls it off in dramatic fashion.

3. I especially liked the fact that Tebow beat Ben Roethlisberger, who is, let's say, not a good guy.

Finally, he has many qualities that are useful in an NFL quarterback. Useful, but not necessary. For example:

1. He is big and strong, which is useful but not necessary (see Drew Brees).
2. He is very good at running the ball, which is useful but not necessary (see Peyton Manning)
3. He is fiery and animated, which is useful but not necessary (see Eli Manning).
4. He had great success in college, which is useful but not necessary (see Tom Brady).
5. He is a morally upright person, which is useful but not necessary (see Ben Roethlisberger).

Those five quarterbacks won 8 of the last 10 Super Bowls. All but the injured Peyton made the playoffs this year, as usual. And while all of them are different, they share one thing in common: they are really really good at throwing a football.

And that's my problem with the Tebow Debate. It's become, like most sports arguments, a litmus test on Stats vs. Winning*.

* And unlike most sports arguments, a litmus test on religion. But I'm not going there. For that, I recommend this piece by Fran Tarkenton in today's Wall Street Journal.

But all of this ignores the most important question: Can a quarterback have long-term success iin today's NFL if he can't throw well? And Tim Tebow cannot throw well:

• His YPA (yards per attempt) is 6.4, 29th in the league behind, well, pretty much everyone but Curtis Painter. YPA is arguably the single most important passing stat.
• His completion % is 46.5%, 34th among the 34 QBs who threw enough passes to qualify. He is the only QB in the league under 50%.
• TD % is 4.4 (meaning, he throws TDs on 4.4% of his passes). Not bad, at 13th in the league, but still beyond such stalwarts as Christian Ponder, Mark Sanchez, and Matt Moore
• His INT% is solid. At 2.2 he is 9th in the league.
• But that is offset by his QB rating. At 29th, he is behind Colt McCoy, among other mediocrities. QB rating measures efficiency and loves a low INT %. But the rest of Tebow's game is so horrendous, the paucity of picks doesn't help much.
• His Yards Per Game is 34th. The only starter in the league who is lower is Josh Freeman.

And finally, there is Game Winning Drives*. Ah, the fans say, what do you have to say now, Smart Guy? He's tied for the league lead with 6, which is impressive. But there are two problems with that. One is that a guy like Aaron Rodgers has only one - not because he can't do it, but because he's so damn good all day long he generally spends his final drive taking a knee.

* Definition: An offensive scoring drive in the 4th quarter or OT that puts a team ahead for the last time.

But the other is this: do you know who has been better than Tim Tebow at game winning drives? Go ahead, I'll give you a minute. No, it's not Eli Manning, who also has 6 but was the starter in more games. It's not Alex Smith, with 5, though he was good, too. Drew Brees? Good guess, but he only had 4.

No, the best comeback quarterback in football this year was John Skelton. Casual fans don't even know who he is, but football fans know he took over the Cardinals' starting job in November. He played in 8 games for the Cards this year, starting 7 - and had 5 game-winning comebacks. 5 comebacks in 8 games? That's amazing...but something tells me he won't be on the cover of Madden next year.

Finally, the last worrisome thing for those who picture a Tebow plaque at Canton someday...

Tim Tebow isn't playing in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or even the first decade of this century. He's playing at time when explosive passing attacks have taken over the sport. You've seen all the stats elsewhere, but this paragraph by Gregg Easterbrook captures well what a passing league the NFL is right now:

It's the year of offensive stat-a-rama throughout the NFL. There have been five 5,000-yard passing seasons in NFL history; three of them were this year. Drew Brees and Tom Brady both eclipsed the previous passing yards record in the same season. Records were set for passer rating, completion percentage and team yards from scrimmage. In the regular season, NFL teams averaged 235 gross passing yards per game, surpassing the previous high of 221 in 1995 and way above the 1971 average of 156 yards. Three of the top five rushing teams missed the playoffs while all the top five passing teams made the postseason. Detroit just gained a spectacular 882 yards passing in two games over six days -- and lost both because opponents gained 928 yards passing. The Packers and Patriots, with the league's lowest-rated defenses, just used scoreboard-spinning to win the conference top seeds. The league's No. 1 defense, the Pittsburgh Steelers, is already out of the playoffs, torched by Denver. In this year of offensive stat-a-rama, even a sputtering offense trumped the best defense!

I like Tim Tebow. It's a truly great sports story. And I'll be rooting for him this weekend against Patriots.

But enjoy the show now. This is the modern NFL, where a quarterback has to be able to consistently throw balls into very tight spots. And that is the one thing Tim Tebow cannot do.