Between the Bridges in Broad Channel

Between the Bridges in Broad Channel

by
Peter J. Mahon
January 26th, 2017

GAME DAY!

Super Bowl Sunday has become an unofficial national holiday.  Everybody can celebrate no matter what your religion – or even if you don’t like football!  The Super Bowl is an event unlike any other, as people gather throughout the country and make the game one of the most watched TV events of all time, every year.  Yes, we Americans take our annual Super Bowl games very seriously – perhaps a little too seriously.

Case in point – many of you have probably never made the connection but the term “fake news” which has been bandied about so much as of late got its start back with Super Bowl 49 which featured “Deflate-Gate” which was a never-ending investigation of the New England Patriots’ balls, and if they were big enough. After the kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism that brought us Watergate, various and brilliant members of the fourth estate determined that, just maybe, the footballs Tom Brady uses were just a little deflated – from the perfectly fine 12.5 pounds per square inch to the possibly lethal 11.5 pounds per square inch.  And it’s just possible Brady deflated them intentionally.  Or he had the ball boy do it, during a 90-second trip to the bathroom, all caught on tape.  Or the ball boy was just going to the bathroom.  It was never specified if the bathroom in question was gender neutral so maybe there was more to this issue than meets the eye.  I’m still not sure.  But it did wind up in federal court so I am certain this is very serious stuff! 

    

Before this soft balls scandal the NFL didn’t care much about inflated balls. If it did, it would have kept track of all everyone’s balls, and made all teams use the same ones.  But it doesn’t.  It lets both teams hold their own balls, and do whatever it likes with them, within reason.  But now the NFL has to care, because a few self- important Shamus word smiths with story deadlines said so even though most of them probably wouldn’t know the difference between a bootleg and a bump and run.
 

Perhaps I am being a little too hard on them.  Truth be told, the first time I heard the term bump and run I thought it was something nasty a pervert did while riding the subway.  When I asked a friend of mine who is a football fanatic she told me that a bump and run is when a defender hits a receiver and then goes into pass coverage.  She went on to explain that the subway pervert thing I was thinking of is called “frottage”.  At that point I was too embarrassed to ask what cheese had to do with a subway perv.

In any event, like I said somewhere above, this Super Bowl thing is a big deal and so I would like to make a suggestion.  The Broad Channel VFW will be holding a Super Bowl “Tail Gate” Party on Sunday, February 5th , with the doors opening at 12 noon.  You are all invited to come on down and enjoy the pre-game afternoon hours with your family, friends and neighbors with ice cold beers, hot dogs and hamburgers.  Of course you will then be welcome to stay for the game itself which will kick off at 6:30 pm to cheer on the team you have bet your February mortgage money on!

Due diligence requires that I inform you that this event will not be an actual “tail gate” party as this year it will be held inside the Post in the canteen area.  This is now required by the VFW’s lawyers because the pick-up truck we had parked in the back yard last year for the Super Bowl 50 tail gate party accidentally rolled into Jamaica Bay and Matty Conklin nearly drowned as he claimed, for the life of him,  he could not figure out how to open the tailgate while holding a beer in his hand!

It’s for a great cause and, as always, all donations and proceeds will go to support the Post’s activities in supporting our disabled veterans.  So spread the word about this event and come on down yourself on Super Bowl Sunday.  Looking forward to seeing you there.  Maybe someone can explain this "frottage" cheese thing to me.

Broad Channel, why would anyone want to live anywhere else?