A letter I sent to the Sports Editor of the Houston Chronicle, after the Texans blew yet another game in the 4th quarter of the 2010 season:

Now THAT was a bachelor party!  Whoops, I meant, now THAT was a football game!  I am reminded, once again, of why I love football.  I am also reminded that the reason I like to watch sports on TV (even though I would always rather play golf in the rain than watch a Super Bowl on TV) has everything to do with identification with one of the competitors, and of course your job is to tell me so much about my home teams that I come to think I know the players and I begin to root for them almost as though they were my own kids.

Well, I have to say, last night I actually felt kind of satisfied with being represented by the Texans and rooting for them.  I think they may be the best 5 & 8 team I have ever seen, and they reminded me, yet again, that sometimes bad things happen to good teams, just like they sometimes happen to good people.  If you gave me a choice between a 5 & 8 team like this and a team with a better record that conducted itself like, say, the Bengals or the Jets of the last few weeks, I guess I would have to say, I’ll take the Texans, because they played with character and determination and, unless their Karma is even worse than it appears to be (is that possible?), they just might be very good on any given Sunday or in any given year.

I will grant you that the defense actually was pretty good (they really only gave up 2 good drives all night), the offense was plenty good against a great defense, and the game was actually lost by the matchup of their special teams vs ours, which would seem to indicate a coaching breakdown.  I will also grant you that, after watching the New England Belichicks, I could easily get accustomed to having a team where every single player on every unit played like he was more concerned with executing his own individual responsibilities rather than with freelancing and trying to “make plays” (as Kubiak always seems to be encouraging).

Nevertheless, I thought the team showed great heart and true grit and I was very pleased to have them representing my city.  Yes, if we could get Bill Cowher or the next Sean Payton or somebody in that class, I would welcome the upgrade, but I suspect we will have a new defensive coordinator, a new special teams coach, and a much luckier team next year even if Kubiak stays on, and I remain convinced that Jeff Fisher would not be an upgrade – especially with the fact that the labor situation is likely to leave precious little time for a new head coach to implement a wholly new system for next year.