Serves you right

Fuck Boston.

There, I said it. I mean, it's not like it's going to come as a big surprise – everyone's thinking it these days, I'm just taking it one step further and going on the record with it.

Other than a tasty spin on baked beans, an occasional tea party and the Dropkick Murphys, nothing good comes out of Boston. Let's be rational about this – for every Matt Damon or Steve Carrell, there's a dozen Ben Affleck, Dane Cook and/or Jay Leno-type douchebags. New Yorkers are assholes and Philadelphia invented the short bus, but Bostonians are intolerable preppy fucks.

And it may hurt you to hear this, but I'm not sugar coating it anymore – at least Yankees fans are consistent. Red Sox Nation can't decide if they want to play pretend and mimic the Chicago Cubs or New York Yankees. Either the sky is falling or they're sticking out their chests and bragging in their stupid accents about how great they are.

Here's the world's worst-kept secret: to the rest of the world you are the New York Yankees (you know, the team you pretend to despise). You go out and rent the best players in hopes of buying a World Series. How is that any different than the "Evil Empire?" Pinstripes aside, there's absolutely no difference in between the Red Sox and the Yankees in the eyes of an Orioles or Devil Rays fan.

Speaking of the power shift in baseball, I blame The Curse of Jerry Seinfeld. No one who ever starred on his sitcom was ever able to salvage their career – they go on to play Tony Kornheiser in failed sitcoms or make blatantly racist comments at the local Improv. And obviously that's what turned the tide for George Steinbrenner, who's never been the same since he associated himself with the most overrated show in TV history.

Now, "The Boss" is a vegetable and his sons are running off one of the most successful managers in modern baseball history. Meanwhile, the Red Sox are about to win another World Series, Tom Brady and the Patsies are playing some of the best football we've ever seen and the Celtics actually have players other than Paul Pierce that people have heard of. There is no God.

Maybe if the city showed a little humility, people could look the other way, but these folks are so fucking retarded (I mean that in the "slow kid humping a doorknob," not the mentally challenged way) they tried to call in the National Guard in response to a movie advertisement (See: Hunger Force, Aqua Teen).

I've reached a new level of hatred at this point. I can't even bring myself to eat at Boston Market or listen to "More Than a Feeling" anymore. The situation has become that dire. Our only hope is that my mole (a.k.a. – my brother) continues to collect intell on the sweater-clad pricks and we figure out a way to bring them all down (which probably involves unleashing wild turkeys in the streets). In the meantime, I need to change the subject before I smash my computer over my wife's head.

[Pausing to take a deep breath]

Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, college football.

This would be the perfect time to institute a playoff system. Just take the top eight teams at the end of the regular season and pit them against each other in one bracket-style tournament. It doesn't matter if the top seeded team plays against No. 8 in the Insight Bowl or whatever money-making gimmick game you want – just as long as there's a playoff system everything will work itself out.

This year started with Michigan losing to Appalachian State and since then, all hell broke loose. Something like eight teams ranked in the top five have lost and we're halfway through the season. Ohio State is number one simply because they play in an overrated conference and they have an even easier schedule. Rewarding them with another chance to get creamed by a good team in the national championship game is a disservice to the rest of the country. So just take the top eight in the BCS rankings and let them decide who is the best team in the land. And don't tell me a tournament would extend the football season too far because some teams wait nearly two months to play their bowl games.

Or, here's an even better idea – have the NFL get involved and move the national championship game to the week before the Super Bowl. You could even have it in the same location, so people would have something to focus on instead of just how terrible a city like Jacksonville or Detroit really is. That's not really fair; those places haven't ever done anything to me and they've certainly never whored themselves out by letting Jimmy Fallon film a shitty movie during one of the most memorable sports moment of a lifetime. Serves you right, Boston. You asshats.

Brian Murphy is the 2005 Defense Department's sportswriter of the year. And he still doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Contact him at murf@the5holes.com.