Jottings from the Granite Studio

This has nothing to do with Chinese history and everything to do with Boston sports. If you don’t care about the latter, then click here to read historian Ken Pomeranz’s marvelous post on The China Beat about Han Dynasty reformer/usurper Wang Mang.

Bill Belichick cheated. Fine. He ordered a minion to videotape the opposing team’s coaching staff to see if he could decode their signals. Two things. The Barry Bonds defense: Everybody does it, people have a grudge against Belichick and so he was the one they busted. Second, ‘Camera-gate’ (eyes rolling) had exactly 0.0% to do with the Patriots subsequently going 17-0.* Was it stupid? Absolutely. But Belichick’s that kind of guy. He’s monomanaically obsessed not only with winning, but supremacy, and for Bill that means having crushed your enemies and made their mothers weep. Think of him as the Khubilai Coach. (Yeah, I know Ghengis would have been better, but the alliteration didn’t work, sue me.)

The opposing coach this weekend is Norv Turner. Even if you know nothing of NFL football, all you need to do is read this casino anecdote by ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons to know everything you need about Coach Turner:

We’re eating breakfast (Bish, Hopper, Mike and myself) as Hopper recounts his blackjack experience with Norv Turner — or as he likes to call it, “My Brush With Non-Greatness”:

“Norv was up about two grand,” Hopper explains. “Suddenly he scaled down his bets from $100 to $25 and started playing conservatively, like he had taken a pill that turned him into a giant wuss. I couldn’t believe it. He stayed on ‘16′ against a (dealer’s) face card three times in a 10-minute span. All three times, he screwed me, and I ended up with his crappy card. All three times, the dealer ended up crushing us. And Norv’s just sitting there with this dumb smile on his face, counting his hundred-dollar chips. Meanwhile, I’m losing a hundred a hand.

“So after the third time it happened, I leaned back, looked at the ceiling and muttered, ‘The coach … is … KILLING me …’ Just like that. The coach … is … KILLING me. Up until that point, he didn’t know that I knew who he was. He stayed for two more hands and bolted. I drove him away.”

The mental image of a failed football coach mangling a blackjack table and driving Hopper insane was just too good … for the next 15 minutes, we couldn’t stop talking about it. How could a man get hired to coach an NFL team when he can’t even play blackjack? We were flabbergasted by this. For instance, would someone like Mike Shanahan ever stay on “16″ when the dealer had a “10″ showing? I mean, EVER? Of course not.

“Norv seemed like a nice enough guy,” Hopper said, “but there wasn’t anything ‘coach-like’ about him. Can you imagine someone like Parcells just sitting there and taking it while I bitched about him at a blackjack table, right in his face?”

“How many teams has Norv coached?” Mike asked.

“He was an assistant in Dallas and the head coach in Washington,” I answered. “In both places, he lost respect of the players pretty quickly.”

“I can see why,” Hopper sneered.

We started talking about something else. About 10 minutes later, Hopper started shaking his head again. He couldn’t stop thinking about Norv.

“If I owned an NFL team,” Hopper said, “before I hired a coach, I’d take him to Vegas for a weekend and play blackjack with him. That would tell me everything I needed to know about the guy. Everything.”

In homage to Simmons, my personal prediction: Pats 31, Chargers 14 and at least once during the game Belichick calls Tom Brady over to the sidelines and tells him to “sweep the leg.”

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*Not to jinx anything, but have I mentioned that I’m having The Best. Sports. Year. Ever. The Red Sox won the World Series. The Boston Celtics are the best team in the NBA. The Pats are an unstoppable force for doom. Arsenal has been at or near the top of the table for the entire year AND they have a game in hand over Manchester United. My God, even the Boston Bruins are sucking less than usual. Eventually the sports karma gods will exact their retribution, but for now…I’m liking it.