This happens a lot in football. The game is afflicted by announcers who spend an awful lot of time wrapping football in the Great American Family Values comforter. They festoon it with jingoistic baubles and cheap patriotic gewgaws. And all of this is to place the game's fundamental destruction and brutality on some higher plane than that occupied by people who simply beat the crap out of one another in bars on a Friday night. This is how we end up with Thom Brennaman treating the national collegiate football championship game as though he were the Chad and Jeremy correspondent for Tiger Beat back in the day. This is also how we are going to be inundated with mendacious swill over the next two weeks on the subject of what a great story the Arizona Cardinals are.
Unfortunately, Pierce is slayed by the undying need of every Boston sportswriter to weigh the merits of every earthly entity against the Home Team, so the lone example he cites as proof of Arizona's mediocrity is one game against the Pats.
This does remind me of a great quote by George Will, of all people, who, despite being a patrician right-wing tosser, at least picked the right sport.
Football combines the two worst things about America; violence punctuated by committee meetings.
