Even though I don’t follow football all that much, I was rooting for the New York Giants in tonight’s Superbowl. I wasn’t pulling for the Giants as underdogs or because I wanted to see New England’s perfect record ruined. I did it out of a different principle — to protest the ruin of the words that indicate traditions that we hold so dear in this country.

Over the recent months, I’ve been hearing a great deal about a scandal rocking the football world termed “spygate“. For those who follow football even less than I do, this scandal involved some individuals associated with the New England Patriots football franchise taping opposing teams in order to steal defensive signals. That kind of puts a tarnish on claims of being undefeated or of creating a dynasty or doing anything deemed honorable, you know — worthy of being called a patriot. To make matters worse, this scandal has drawn the attention of U.S. Senators such as Arlen Specter. Yeah, they’re doing so well with the war that they could spare some extra effort on cleaning up the world of professional athletics.

But it goes beyond even that. The term “patriot” was tarnished since it’s original use in another unscrupulous spy program, the USA PATRIOT Act. Technically, the word may have been tarnished long before that as detailed in my classic post from June 23rd, 2006, “Blacks are Terrorists“. What do Spygate and the PATRIOT Act have in common? Two things — raising something unamerican to the status of a virtue and calling it being a “patriot” and being things the government should leave alone because they will screw it up.

Most people who know me know that I am a strong individualist. I am so much of an individualist that I sometimes wonder if I’m doing it just to piss people off. Most notably, you can see this in my political and spiritual choices. And it doesn’t end there. My favorite sports team is the Detroit Lions. Nobody likes the Detroit Lions. I think that it has a little to do with Detroit itself, but for the most part I think it’s because the Lions never win. Everyone’s clamoring around the Colts, the Steelers and the Eagles because they win. Well, let the lemmings have their favorite teams, cause I’ve got mine and it’s the Detroit Lions.

Which is why I’m huddled around the TV at high noon on draft day. You have to be there early if your team perennially sucks. I’ve been there for the Andre Ware draft, the slightly less lame, but still lame Joey Harrington draft pick and the past three first round receiver picks. I thought that this year had to be better. Enough draft picks have been spent on offense lately, I was certain that it would be a defensive pick. I didn’t know if it would be a good one or not, since I don’t watch college sports. Watching college sports might lead me to watching high school sports, which would lead to middle school sports. Eventually this road leads you to have kids solely for the sake of them playing pee wee league sports. You’re the one who wants to be a big sports star — the kids just want to run around until they are tired and then get some ice cream. Most of the mock drafts that I saw had Detroit drafting either A.J. Hawk or Michael Huff. Again, totally meaningless to me, but at least they were highly touted defensive players.

This year, the fear set in for me after the fourth pick. The Titans decided to take Texas quarterback Vince Young with the third pick. Some were projecting the Jets to take the other heralded QB in the draft, USC’s Matt Leinart. But they passed him up to take an offensive lineman. The commentators all started saying that Leinart wasn’t capable of throwing in cold and windy games in New York. The thought then hit me — there’s no wind in a dome stadium and Detroit plays in a dome. Would this be a replay of the last umpteen years of first round offensive busts? I had a long wait to find out.

The Lions eventually took Florida State linebacker Ernie Sims with the ninth pick in the draft. Matt Leinart went tenth to the Arizona Cardinals. I drew a major sigh of relief. Except for the fact that this Ernie Sims guy has some sort of head problems. In the post-pick discussion there was a lot of talk about his concussion problems. That’s good. If he sucks, he’ll just knock himself unconscious so he won’t be able to embarass the team with his sucky play. But he better not suck, cause I want to see some wins — just like everybody else does.