IX. Eli-Sox

Where do you see Eli Manning in five years?
-Militant Dwarf

Great question, and I can envision 8 different scenarios for Eli’s career:

1. Next season Eli and Coach Coughlin adapt to the departure of Tiki “you’ll-miss-me-more-than-you-know” Barber by implementing an offense that emulates what coaching staffs in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Indy have done in the past: controlling the ball with short passes, keeping defenses off balance with the run, and throwing a healthy amount of out-and-out bombs. The Giants run this new offense to great success, the defense gets healthy, Osi Umenyiora comes to a game wearing a loincloth, and the Giants roll deep into the playoffs. Chances of this happening: 0.02%. Chances of this happening if someone, anyone, other than Tom Coughlin was the coach: 10%. So at least we still have Tom around, you know, just to really screw-up any chance the Giants might have.

2. Coughlin sticks around, the team is the most undisciplined in the NFL….again….despite being led by a “disciplinarian” coach, Eli craps the bed 6-9 times during the course of the season, Shockey applies to the University of Miami as a graduate student because he misses The U so much, and Brandon Jacobs is lost for the season after he tries to run over and through the 483rd consecutive tackler….in the 2nd game of the season. Chances of this happening: 98.7%. I’m fairly sure this all already happened.

3. Eli gets the “you could start by acting like a man” speech from the Godfather (played in this instance by Michael Strahan), and the speech has such an effect on Eli that he starts running the team with authority, punching Shockey every time J-Shock opens his mouth without written consent from Eli, and inflicting payback on any of his teammates that gave him a wedgie back in the day. Chances of this happening: 0%...Only possible in alternate universes, another Matrix, etc.

4. Eli moves to another team after a disappointing stay in NY, becomes a huge star on a small market team with much less media attention than NY such as Cleveland, and then is brutally murdered by vindictive Giants fans, aka my dad. Chances of this happening: 11%.

5. In a court hearing, Eli is stripped of his family name by father Archie and brother Peyton, reason: “the defendant has shown gross incompetence and lacks any resemblance to the men of the family.” Cooper, the eldest Manning brother, throws a wild party at club Pure for not being the 1st brother thrown out of the family and inadvertently sets the record for “most strippers found dead during the post-party”. Eli changes his last name to Dipshit. Chances of this happening: 42%.

6. Eli finds out about girls, has successful surgery to attach an artificial scrotum and some marbles to his privates, and learns how to party to the point that he becomes the newest party scene star of NYC. His meteoric rise hits a snag though when he starts sharing a bachelor pad with Lance Armstrong and Matthew McConaughey; then subsequently catches a crippling case of VD from one of McConaughey’s sloppy seconds and is forced to retire from the NFL. Chances of this happening: for sheer entertainment, we can only hope 100%.

7. Eli joins a new street gang of NFL QB’s whose sole purpose is to go to night clubs, pick up women, and keep it real. The gang features Brad-Y Quinn as the cool youngster, Tom Brady as the de-facto leader, Matt Leinart as the guy with the sex advice, Michael Vick as the guy with a little too much sexual experience so that the other members of the gang are leery of sharing a bottle of water with him, Donovan McNabb as the guy who whines about everything and always consults his mom before making any plans, and Eli as the schmuck who can’t get so much as a phone number. Jake Delhomme isn’t invited to join the gang because he doesn’t know how to have a conversation in the conventional English language, and Tony Romo is also excluded because nobody likes a crybaby. In this scenario Eli is demoted to 2nd string QB behind the Pillsbury Throwboy so as to focus his attention on ‘keeping it real’. Chances on this happening: 0%, because we all know Brad-Y and no one else would be the leader of any NFL-QB-BadBoy gang.

8. Eli just treads water in the NFL for 8 or more seasons, never leads the Giants past the wildcard round of the playoffs, retires to a great sigh of relief from the fans, and in retirement opens up a chain of car washes in Jackson, Mississippi. Chances of this happening: 33%.



How is John Q (a self-proclaimed Yankee diehard) going to deal with baseball season now that he lives in Boston?
-Militant Dwarf

He'll handle it easily, because at heart John Q truly is a Red Sox fan. Don’t believe me; I’ll prove it to you:
-John Q has time and time again gotten inebriated to the point where he makes breathtakingly awful decisions.
-By their own choice to become Red Sox fans, said fans have already made a horrible decision.

-John Q prefers being in the company of people that are annoying and/or prone to idiocy, similar to how Johnny Drama only likes girls that have a deficiency such as a harelip, elongated forehead, or stubby legs.
-Red Sox fans are annoying idiots; Skeet is a prime example of this. For those of you who don’t know who Skeet is (and I envy you), if you’re ever in a pub and you hear another patron loudly proclaiming crap like “I used to pinch hit for Ted Williams” or “I invented the question mark”, then the chances are that you’ve just met Skeet or someone like him.

-In college while searching for a pen in John Q’s campus desk (no really, we were looking for a pen and not a lighter) we, Santa’s Helper and I, stumbled upon a pair of feminine handcuffs, which might infer that John Q is a masochist.
-{From Britannica……mas·och·ism gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc., also see Fans, Red Sox}

So I think we’ll be seeing John Q rocking a Ortiz jersey while talking about going to the “bah” and “watching the sawks” within the next 3-4 months, easy. At that point I will foot the expense of hiring Dolph Lundgrun (who isn’t exactly busy these days) to predict "pain" for John Q and then “break” him.