Music City Miracle

I have nothing really to write today so I'm going to post a letter written by an incensed Buffalo Bills fan of mine who just had enough of the "Music City Miracle" one night. Sadly, the NFL never got back to him...

Dear NFL Network,

Let me begin by saying how much I enjoy the programming of the NFL Network in general and usually. However, I wish to register a complaint at this time with a program I watched this past evening.

I have just watched your special on the 2000 AFC Wildcard Game between the Tennessee Titans and the Buffalo Bills, and I felt that it was shameless and disturbing. The effort to engage in a revisionist history rather than to honestly confront the facts of the game is startling. While I understand that the 2000 Tennessee Titans "Miracle" play makes for a heartening and entertaining story, and such stories have become an essential cog in the NFL's marketing machine, the effort that has gone into misleading your viewers as to what happened on that day strikes me as almost Stalinesque.

In this particular program, while analyzing the so-called 'backward lateral' thrown by Frank Wycheck, NFL films touted their use of a 'computer simulation' to prove that the 'backward lateral' was indeed thrown backwards. This type of poppycock is what revisionist history is made of. The use of the computer simulation is particularly laughable--I could also have a CGI artist draw me a fake game film to show my point, but that's a long way from proving something. I can Photoshop myself in bed with Christie Brinkley, but that doesn't mean it actually happened.

What makes it so comedic is that you actually have game film. How many cameras are at an NFL playoff game? 100? And yet you turn to computer graphics to make your point. This shows to me that perhaps the cameras don't tell the story you want to tell, so time to go with the 'simulation'.

In all honesty, this program disgusted me. You want to create a rich tapestry of NFL history for your marketing machine, so you have to go on pretending that no mistakes were made in order to protect your celebrated 'miracle'. It's no secret where your interests lie in evaluating that throw. It is disingenuous to your viewers to recreate history to fit your interests. You cannot change what happened in that game, so stop lying to people to fill out your story. It was a forward pass. And while you're at it, talk about how else the officials decided that game, by reviewing Steve Mcnair's run but not Peerless Price's catch! You just can't face the fact that that game--and the great storyline that went with it--wasn't decided by the players on the field but by the officials.

Eventually your lies with catch up to you. The hubris of the NFL will be its downfall.

Sincerely,

W