Locals have now had a week to recover from the Patriots' Super Bowl loss.
My recovery is blessedly complete. In fact, I was fully over the loss as soon as I finished watching Bad Bunny's excellent halftime show. By that point, the handwriting was on the scoreboard and I figured the Pats were toast. So I turned off the SB and turned on All Creature Great and Small on PBS.
I was pretty mixed on whether I wanted the Pats to win to begin with. I'm a frontrunner, fair weather fan, but I did watch a few games this year once the team got good. I liked the coach and what little I knew of the team. So go Pats!
But I can't stand the Trumpist team owner Bob Kraft, especially given that, shortly before the Super Bowl, he made a pointed and highly publicized appearance at the premier of Melania, the apparently pointless puff-umentary about FLOTUS.
So, I was there watching the Big Game rooting for the team to win, but for Krafty to lose. Guess I couldn't lose.
I was also cheered by Kraft's not getting elected to the Football Hall of Fame. In truth, given some of the crappy team owners who are "enshrined" in Canton, Ohio, Kraft probably should be there. But Kraft has been shamelessly lobbying for election, almost but not quite exceeding the aggression and zest with which his BFF has begged for a Nobel Peace Prize.
A week before Kraft was dissed, former Pats' coach Bill Belichick also failed to make the Hall of Fame cut. The rejection of Belichick's candidacy is perhaps even more ridiculous than Kraft's coming up short on the ballot. Love him or hate him, Belichick wears an awful lot of Super Bowl rings, and that all can't be 100% attributed to wonder-GOAT Tom Brady. But Belichick is a gruff, snide jerk, so he didn't get voted in his first time on the ballot. In large part because he's a jerk. (As an aside, if being an a-hole were a dealbreaker for election to the Football Hall of Fame, there probably wouldn't be ten people in there.)
An interesting aspect of these dual HofF snubs is that Belichick and Kraft have been at odds for the past few years. One of their main beefs was Kraft having engineered a documentary, The Dynasty, which pretty much ignored Belichick's role in all those Super Bowls wins.
In the aftermath of the documentary, there's been some back and forth sniping between Bill and Bob. But when Belichick failed to make the Hall of Fame, Kraft was supremely gracious. The Pats' owner:
...issued a glowing statement on his former coach, acknowledging their differences, then saying, “He is the greatest coach of all time and he unequivocally deserves to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.” (Source: Boston Globe)
How to Belichick return the favor?
Well, on the eve of the Patriots' ignominious Super Bowl appearance, Belichick appeared with his girlfriend at a UNC basketball game while she was wearing an Orchids of Asia tee-shirt. Orchids of Asia was the Florida massage parlor where, back in 2019, one Robert Kraft was arrested for engaging in prostitution. The charges were dropped in 2020, but the reputational damage had been done. And the million jokes and memes regarding Kraft's not-so-happy ending have still not exhausted themselves.
Anyway, as The Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy wrote:
This was nothing less than a declaration of war on the Krafts. It almost guarantees that the Belichick-Kraft feud will never end, and creates a world in which it’s impossible to imagine Belichick ever being inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame. [Note: not to be confused with the the overall Football HofF.]
Did Belichick really need to remind the world that, whatever success he achieved in the NFL, he's now a mediocre college coach at the University of North Carolina. And did he really need to remind the world that for the past few years he's been embarrassing himself by having his 24-year old girlfriend Jordon Hudson hanging on his arm - and humiliating himself by having Hudson (50 years Belichick's junior) call the PR shots for him. This isn't the first time she's made him look like a fool. And it likely won't be the last.
But what was Bill Belichick thinking? That this stunt was funny? That it made him look cool?
Agreed that it is kind of funny, but it made him look like petty and nasty. Which may well be Belichick's true self. But it sure doesn't make him look like a mature, accomplished, pretty darned great football coach who should absolutely be in the Football Hall of Fame. Belichick may think his GF is polishing his brand, but all she's doing is tarnishing it.
What's remarkable to me is that Bill Belichick is actually managing to make Bob Kraft look good.
Shaughnessy speculates that the Football Hall of Fame voters will come to their senses, and that both Bill Belichick and Bob Kraft could well end up getting elected next year now that the voters have vented their initial spleen and shaking their animus out of their systems. This would put them together on the dais at Canton in 2027 when next year's winners are inducted.
Won't that be a wonder to behold. Not a big football fan, but I could well tune in for that show.
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