12 Things I Know Are True (UPDATED)

• Calvin Pace’s advertisement encouraging people to get tested for HIV is obviously not intended as an encouragement to get tested for drugs specializing in performance-enhancement. True. However, he has seven sacks in fewer games than his cohorts, yet leads the team. Pass it around, Calvin.
  

• Vernon Gholsten (remember him?) is a man with a gigantic, heat-inducing magnifying glass above him, held by an equally gigantic kid with a boredom problem, who basically represents… Well, me, maybe. I don’t know. True. No sacks, no interceptions.
  

• Mark Sanchez has managed to appear dumb before even coming to New York. Why must he try to act like Tom Brady before taking a snap? Why must the Mets wear black to look like the Yankees? A pointlessly silly comment. He's given us a fun year. Everybody went on about his poise and then went on about going on about his poise. I don't need to discuss. The Mets, with Jason Bay, and without a starter to support Johan Santana, have only a long-delayed decision to go with the old throwbacks next year. Although apparently they will still wear black. Why? Isn't black too hot to wear in the sun?
  

• Mark Sanchez will start opening day?? Really?? Somebody call Browning Nagle and ask him how his career went as a rookie starter. I know, I know. Matt Ryan. Joe Flacco. Keep intoning. Breathe. Repeat. Ignore the statements about sophomore slumps. Both Matty Ice and Flacco have had statistically good years, even if their teams are underachieving. Remarkably, I have hope for Sanchez. With 12 TD's to his 20 INT's (and counting!) he really is on pace to become the next Joe Namath.
  

• Rex Ryan has changed the “culture” at Hofstra – er, Florham Park – er, Cortland. He is apparently OK with players making mistakes. He smiles more than Eric Mangini, but then I do, too, and I suffer from depression. The question is, what will activate the Ryan gene for inexplicable behavior? Yeah, but Rex Ryan weeps!! Did his Dad ever do that, in front of his team?
  

• The Jets will lose their first six games of the regular season. This will bring the culture back to normal. Lies. They won the first three games, a brief spat of winning that brought sunshine through my barren soul. The culture remains intact because they lost the next three after that, stand at the final week 8-7, poised for an improbable playoff spot and what will likely be a loss at home for their last game at the Meadowlands. Fair is fair.
  

• Real, imagined, fictional, absolutely true, player, entourage – in any event, rape against women surrounds the real culture of American football. True, I guess. Although we heard less about it this season. It didn't mean it didn't happen. A player seems to die every year in a needless act of violence, too. And at least everybody's topic was head injuries.
  

• Plaxico Burress will not sign with the Jets because he’s probably going to serve as much time as Michael Vick (but possibly more than Donte Stallworth?) Sure, whatever. But who would have guessed that Michael Vick would become mundane? The key is the phrase, "only in Philadelphia." A friend of mine came back for a visit after 15 years, and he immediately picked up on the general air of hostility that pervades the City of Brotherly Love. Is Mike Vick a better person. The Philadelphian's answer: "Oy dannow. Down eesk may. What you looking at may faw? That's got no nuthin' ta dow wit may."
  

• Thomas Jones and Leon Washington are both a little hurt, feelings-wise. But Shonn Greene is going to be a better pick than Mark Sanchez. (I know, I know. They play different positions.) No. Leon Washington is a little hurt because he shattered his leg. Thomas Jones should be hurt because he's not in the Pro Bowl. Shonn Greene is a little hurt because he hasn't quite lived up to all our expectations.
  

• But, more importantly, will Danny Woodhead still play for us this season? What a movie that would make. YES!! Danny Woodhead: #83. 131 total yards. The pride of Chadron State, Nebraska.
  

• Kellen Clemens will start for us? Really? Really?? No.
  

• Nobody is reading this right now. True.
  

Last Night

It has been so long since I last posted. I know where I am in this world enough to know that creating anything will get you nowhere except further along in your creativity, which is something, at least. Sometimes that doesn't seem enough, though. Sometimes you look in other places, and what you discover is that the person you want to be is staring back in the mirror wondering what needs to be done that day. Strange how it doesn't make you any happier with yourself. But there you are. Now get on with it.

You are a Jets fan, after all.

Last night, I watched the Bears-Vikings on MNF, nurturing a an unsurprising grudge. This game represented what I hoped would be a culmination of feelings bottled up all year. These are feelings that many similarly self-respecting people have been quietly sharing for some time, I would imagine. Nurtured within these is a deep desire to see Brett Favre crash and burn the way he did last year. I try not to act like a petty man, but I am one by nature. I like to see bad behavior punished, no matter how long it takes. Like so many people, for one reason or another, I have come to genuinely dislike this singularly narcissistic, selfish, and talented man. He abandoned me, Paramus, Massapequa and Massapequa Park the way he once abandoned the entire state of Wisconsin, and now I feel that one thing that might still unite this nation of deluded religious fundamentalists and featherheads would be to share a mutual desire to see this one man punished in the manner of the ancient Greeks.

And thus it seemed possible. For three quarters, he seemed befuddled, rushed, hurried, even confused. He had undermined his coach earlier in the week, and with that his team, just as usual. He wasn't the incompetent, bored jackass of last year, but a 23-6 deficit to the Bears sufficed. The score drew closer, though. So I watched the whole game. I can't remember the last time I watched an entire Monday night game. You try doing it and teaching tenth graders at 7:45 am Tuesday morning.

Then there was that drive that ate up what seemed like five minutes toward the end of the fourth quarter and drew the tie with an absolutely brilliant pass to Sidney Rice. My heart sank because I was obviously witnessing what makes this self-centered man special to begin with. He is not like you and me. Obviously I felt renewed and overjoyed when Cutler won the game with a touchdown pass, but the possibility of losing a bye to the Eagles was not enough. I want to see the man crushed. I want his spirit broken the way he broke ours. The work is not yet accomplished. But I feel in my heart it will be.

That night, I dreamt that I had a boil on my face the size of a golf ball. I was about to teach class, but Brett Favre, in a Brooks Brothers suit, stepped forward and walked into my principal's office and insisted, without acknowledging me at all, "That Roche can't teach today in that condition!" Damn you, man! I will have my revenge!