A Team of Destiny?

And I had to go open my mouth about how sports isn't real news.

You didn't have to be a Bears fan, a Cards fan, or even more than a casual sports observer to not notice how rediculous last night's MNF game was, and how miraculous it was that the Bears won.

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune beat me to it, but I thought it would be interesting to get a quick take on this game from three perspectives: the Chicago angle, the Arizona angle, and the "national media" angle...

For those of you who DIDN'T the game or don't care about football, here is what happened in a nutshell:
Statistically, the Cardinals dominated the Bears in many aspects of Monday's 24-23 loss:

Category Cardinals Bears
First downs 17 9
Total yards 286 168
Possession time 39:43 20:17
Turnovers forced 6 2

No offensive touchdowns scored by the Bears the whole game. Cardinals up by 20 points, with the ball, on the last play of the 3rd quarter.

To read exactly what happened (if you beleive what you are reading), check out the facts in Chicago's Mike Downey article.

The Bears moved onto 6-0, broke many NFL records in futility along the way, and the Cardinals went to 1-5, in a weird way doing much, much worse.

And not just because they lost. But because they caused one of those events that makes you seriously consider the intangible, the fantastical, and the hands of fate. It went to confirm the feeling and the notion of many people that "of course the Cardinals blew it, the Cardinals are forever doomed."

In the opposite way, it went to fuel the same type of conclusions on the other side -- "the Bears somehow won this game, they MUST be a team of destiny."

When reality is too rediculous to be believed, we often fall for such things. We think God or a mystic power is punishing a team, a person, a people, or whatever -- and God or another power is annointing another team, person, a people, or whatever. We place all credit or blame on something that seems to be obvious, seems to be the best solution to our confusion, but in reality....

is an illusion. The real reasons the Cardinals lost the game? Couldn't run out the clock, because they couldn't run the ball -- they blew assignments on the line, and they can't cover a punt. Looking for the real reason the Cardinals have lost historically?

Dan Bickley says it best, at the very end of his article out of Arizona.

Why did the Bears win? Lucky bounces, yes. More importantly, good timing and a better team, top to bottom. The Bears on their worst day still had enough against a worse team on a good day.

I am not trying to say there are no such thing as miracles. I am also not denying that there are things in the world that cannot be explained logically.

And I'm not saying that the world of sports isn't important. It can inspire people to do things they never thought possible - can give people emotions they've never felt before. Sporting events captivate us and entertain us in a way that other things cannot: they let us enjoy a daily drama, cheer and have fun, boo and be angry, and let us relax about life and just be fans.

But God does not care who wins. Curses are not held over professional sports franchises or their imagined communities of supporters. Fate is not taunting the Arizona Cardinals. The Bears of this year are no more a team of destiny than the '03 Cubs were "cursed" by a goat or by Steve Bartman.

The Bears might not be good enough to win the SuperBowl, or they might be. Clearly, they, like every other team in the NFL, will need to play well, and need to be a little lucky. The Cards are definitely good enough to play with anyone in the NFL, and they are not leaps and bounds behind the notion of being a respectable team.

Games like last night's make that pretty hard to see, though.