I have other stuff to talk to my therapist about, luckily, but there is a part of me that feels churlish and a little silly about not appreciating Sunday's upcoming Super Bowl matchup. Yes, we've gotten somewhere between plenty and more than enough of both these teams in the monitors over recent years; yes, some of this grumpiness is surely due to the fact that there were more novel and compelling options than these two very good but very familiar teams. I didn't write that I felt wrong in my churlishness, though. I felt, and still feel, faintly silly about it—about my inability to get especially excited about a game between these two extremely good and evenly matched teams, each of which dominated their respective conferences throughout the season and both of which make for pretty fascinating counterpoints to the other. I think the game will be good, but I can't quite feel what I probably should be feeling about it.
That is only part of why we brought returning champion Dan McQuade back on the pod this week. Dan is very good at finding ways to have fun with things that are often not all that good, whether that be wandering through a dying mall or experiencing the specific anguish of a fan convinced against all reason that his team is going to lose. The idea was not that he would somehow talk me in to the Philadelphia Eagles, or even this game; the idea, if you must know, was that we would talk about those things and then take some Funbag questions at the end. But I did hope that some of his high spirits might rub off on me a bit.
And I think it more or less did? After the requisite tour through Eagles lore—from the appalling fabric of the old Cliff Engle NFL sweaters to the legend of the Princess Di Eagles jacket and the legacy of an iconic Philly bullshitter—we got down to the actual football talk, which was a nice reminder that there is going to be some good football played in New Orleans this weekend. We talked about the difference Saquon Barkley has made for the Eagles and mapped out a possible apotheosis for his season-long redemption tour. We pondered Dan McQuade's Keys To The Game and the thrill of watching your team do more or less what you want it to do. The question "Are Eagles fans whining less?" was addressed by one of the foremost experts on the question of Eagles fan derangement, and we arrived at a surprising answer.
And then we turned to the Chiefs, and more squarely to the question of why what promises to be an exciting Super Bowl doesn't quite feel that way. Are we, Drew asked, not excited enough about what the Chiefs are on the verge of doing? In lieu of a broader answer, I put mine in the first-person singular, explaining how and why I was offended by the team seeming to play the year in energy-saver mode. The three of us considered how a dynasty should or should not feel different in year three as in year one, and I told Drew to stop pocket watching when he noted that Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are not engaged.
Because there are other sports happening, and because the NBA was already in the middle of what wound up being a bewilderingly busy trade deadline, we talked about the biggest moves made to that date. (We will of course address the Wizards trading for Marcus Smart earlier this afternoon on a future podcast.) That meant trying to figure out what the hell happened with the trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis and change, which in turn meant an appreciation for Sheldon Adelson's distinctive personal aesthetic, a consideration of the slimey justifications and oafish particulars of the deal itself, and the ridiculous and impressive levels of OpSec behind this ridiculous trade. It probably won't surprise you that all three of us stepped up for the guy accused of being slovenly and unreliable; I continued my longstanding Luka Defense Squad efforts, and Dan related a thrilling experience watching Allen Iverson "practice" during his time with the Sixers. We also tried to put this deal into a broader context, with special attention paid to our own Patrick Redford's (still-evolving) reading of these moves as a measured response to teams that fear the imminent Age Of Wemby.
I bullied Drew into doing two Funbag questions. We cast the movie (or, I guess, limited prestige streaming series) version of Inside The NBA around Timothée Chalamet's dream role of Ernie Johnson. Dan's idea of casting Steve Harvey as Charles Barkley has haunted me ever since; I shared my pet theory of casting biopics, grounded in uh Oliver Stone's Nixon. Dan recommends exposure therapy as a way of treating a young child's problematic love for The Village People's "YMCA," and I draw a possibly false distinction between "seeming Italian-American" and just being from New Jersey. Dan does quite a lot of singing and talking about forgotten 1990's cultural products at the very end of the episode. I'm not judging that, to be clear. Everyone manages and expresses their Super Bowl-related excitement differently.
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