sportsjabber.net

One of my favorite moments in sports is, against all odds, the “deuce” in tennis. Not for the physical act of hitting a fluorescent ball over a net, which I find about as exciting as a city zoning meeting, but for the competitive purity of the concept. You can’t win the game until you’ve won it decisively, by two points — no flukes, no games determined by a bad call or a single sketchy bounce. A one-point difference may be a lucky coincidence. A two-point difference leaves no doubt.

Not only is that kind of certainty practically impossible in almost any other sport; in practice, it’s often directly contradicted, sometimes in the most fundamental, big-picture ways. Which is how, as an unabashed playoff advocate in a sport that is finally on the verge of making a playoff a reality, I find myself once again grappling with the problem of the thoroughly mediocre New York Giants in the Super Bowl.

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