Greek Week at G:TB

I hate the Titans more than any NFL team. I hate their flaming logo. I hate Jeff Fisher’s hick mustache/mullet combo and the inordinate amount of respect he gets despite having a 0.544 career record. I hate watching the ugly brand of football they’ve played for the past dozen years. I hated Jevon Kearse in his first stint with the Titans. I hated all the undue media fellation bestowed unto Steve McNair with his 6.9 ypa and Eddie George with his 3.6 ypc. I hate Derrick Mason, the worst 10,000 yard receiver of all time.

But my hatred for the Titans was truly born on January 8, 1999, the day when that which the mainstream media and other peckerless douchewads refer to as the “Music City Miracle” occurred. I freely admit that this hatred is stupid. Completely irrational. It’s just a game. The Bills couldn’t have won it all. The Titans are a bland franchise without a storied history, completely unworthy of my disdain. But I can’t shake it. I hated Bud Adams’ postgame comment that he had never seen anything like the “Home Run Throwback” play before. (Which is total horseshit. Unit M’s A-side intramural team ran that play in 1996. The Redskins ran it with Desmond Howard and Darrell Green, too.) I hate watching replays of that spot pass. It’s like the Zapruder film, you can’t really tell what happened. It always, and rightfully, appears on “Top 10” lists. And I know I’ll have to watch it multiple times before this weekend’s Bills/Titans tilt.

The team that plays in Tennessee doesn’t deserve to be called the Titans. To make my case I need to enlist the aid of Thomas Bulfinch, a Harvard-educated accountant who lived in Boston in the nineteenth century. In his free time, he summarized classic stories “in simple, condensed form for young or busy readers.” Kind of like what we do here at G:TB. Bulfinch’s most famous work, “Bulfinch’s Mythology,” was given to me by my grandmother when I was about 8 years old. Today I turn to this tome to take Tennessee’s Titans to task.

The Titans were a race of gods who begat, and were eventually overthrown by, Zeus and the rest of the Olympian gods. Jupiter ate all of his children, except for Zeus, who later tricked Jupiter into vomiting them up. Ripshit from exposure to digestive juices, Jupiter’s children got medieval on his ass and imprisoned Jupiter and the rest of the Titans in Tartarus. Homer said Tartarus was as far beneath Hades as Hades is beneath the earth. And from what Bulfinch has to say, being in Tartarus sucks. Thus being a Titan sucks.

The Houston Oilers were an original AFL franchise that was eventually overthrown and subsumed by the NFL. Then they were relocated to Tennessee, which sounds a lot like being banished to Tartarus to me, and renamed the Titans. But is this franchise sufficiently miserable to warrant the Titans moniker? I think not. The Titans have not experienced nearly enough suffering to qualify for Titan status. They should be stripped of the name and henceforth called something more fitting, like the Yokels, Bumpkins, Hillbillies or Inbreds.

But who has the right to bear the Titan burden?

There were a bunch of Titans, according to Bulfinch. The most famous one is probably Prometheus. He and his brother Epimetheus (but not his buddy Epididymis) were tasked with making man and animals, and providing them with various faculties like claws, strength, wings, and so on. Epi screwed up and gave all the faculties out to the animals without saving any for man. So Prometheus gave man fire. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to, and, as you probably know, he was punished by being chained to a rock where a bird would peck out his liver every day, and it would grow back every night only to have the whole bird pecking thing happen again. What you probably don’t know is that Prometheus knew some secret that would have gotten him off the rock, but he refused to drop a dime on his boy Jove (the stop snitchin’ movement started early) and he remains on the rock to this day. According to Bulfinch, “He has therefore become the symbol of magnanimous endurance of unmerited suffering, and strength of will resisting oppression.”

Sounds like the Bills to me.

Prometheus gave us more than fire. Pandora, the world’s first woman, was created to tell you about new music you like . . . er, rather to punish Prometheus and mankind for the fire incident. So without Prometheus we would be sitting around in the dark and not getting laid. Kind of like the Wheelhouse staff.

Pandora had a box (yeah she did!) that she wasn’t supposed to open. But she was a woman, and G:TB readers know that women never listen, so it’s no surprise that she opened it and all sorts of miserable shit poured out. Kind of like when Ralph Wilson opens his mouth at a press conference to announce a new coach. All that remained in Pandora’s box, much like a Bills fan’s heart, was hope.

But the Bills don’t deserve to be called Titans.

The Tennessee Titans are not the first Titans. There were the aforementioned Tartarus Titans, of course, but also the New York Titans, who later became the New York Je(s)ts. TR has previously summarized Jets misery in this space. The Titan name is more fitting for them than for Tennessee. Like the Titans of Greek lore, they briefly ruled the league (1969, clicks), and were then banished to the football version of Tartarus, losing games and sucking balls for eternity. Not only are they banished to a stretch of swamp off the Turnpike, said stretch is named for their cross-town rivals. And their fans are “the symbol of magnanimous endurance of unmerited suffering, and strength of will resisting oppression.” Tommy Bulfinch would approve.

The Bills are no Titans. Unlike the Jets, the Bills never ruled. They never had an ignominious fall from deity. They were never stripped of godhood. They were always merely mortal.

The Bills could be Tantalus – fulfillment is within sight, but perpetually out of reach. Rooting for the Bills is a lot like rooting for Sisyphus. You know they’re destined lose in the end and hoping for success is pure futility. Ixion was fucking bumming too. He was chained to a spinning, flaming wheel and had to constantly yell “You should show gratitude to your benefactor!” But these comparisons aren’t quite right.

The Bills are like Tityus. He was a giant, but not a Titan. He also tried to assault some goddess so he was given the same punishment as Prometheus. The thing with the birds eating his perpetually regenerating liver – that’s the analogy I’m making to the Bills, not the business with the assault. O.J. is a killer, not a rapist.

When the Bills move to Toronto in a few years, they have to drop the Bills mascot. It makes no sense outside of Buffalo. Hopefully they’ll read G:TB and rechristen the team the Tityuses, or even better, the Tityii. We shall see.

This is supposed to be a preview of a football game, not a classics lesson. So here’s some incisive analysis.

The Inbreds welcome the Tityii to Doublewide Stadium with open arms and a gap-toothed smile. They have the league’s #2 rushing offense. Inbred RB Chris Johnson leads the league with 959 rushing yards, averaging an insane 6.7 yards per carry. He’s apparently the fastest guy in the league. The Tityii run defense is as impotent as Raffie Palmeiro, giving up more total yards on the ground than any other team in the league. Opponents average 173.6 yards per game on the season, 209.8 yards per game in their past 6 outings. Their Barry Sandersesque 5.1 ypc against is the 14th worst ypc against in NFL history. Let me say that again. The 14th worst yards per carry against IN THE HISTORY OF THE EN EFF FUCKING ELL. They give it up like Ashley Dupre.

John Fox should have been fired on the spot the second he allowed Jake Delhomme to throw a single pass against the Tityii. Jeff Fisher may be an Inbred coach, but he won’t screw this up. The only way he can lose is if he puts Chris Johnson on the bench. Because every time Johnson touches the ball he’ll score. I guarantee Johnson has a historic performance on Sunday, barring injury. Three hundred yards is not out of the question. I’m not kidding. The Tityii gave up 210 yards to 31-year-old Thomas Jones. You don’t think Chris Johnson can top that? Hell (Tartarus?), Johnson could get 200 yards with Vince Young chipping in another 100 yards rushing … by the end of the 3rd quarter.

The Inbreds have the worst pass defense in the league, statistically, but I don’t buy it. They played the Steelers, Texans, Colts, and Pats. That skews their numbers a bit. Ryan Fitzpatrick will never be mistaken for Roethlisberger, Schaub, Peyton, or Brady. The Tityii couldn’t score at will through the air against Mount Saint Mary’s girls quadriplegic team. And the Inbreds are fair to middling against the run. This will be ugly.

Final score: Inbreds 38, Tityii 10