Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

Saturday night promises to be the kind of night that any good football fan lives for: the family around, the weekend in full swing, Illinois’ Rose Bowl appearance just a few days off, and the chance to watch the New England Patriots (with a likely win over the New York Giants at the Meadowlands) sweep the regular season and solidify themselves as official front runners for the title of “Greatest NFL Team Forever and Ever—and Nineteen-Seventy-What?”

The Dolphins won, breaking a 14-game losing spree, and the Patriots also won, keeping their history-sculpting win streak alive. The local-favorite Chicago Bears made the NFL headlines this week as well, becoming one of many recent Super Bowl runner-ups to find themselves officially eliminated from the playoffs. Now is the time of year when fantasy leagues come to end and families full of football diehards abandon their holiday shopping to watch their teams complete the process of sinking or swimming. If your team’s still treading water, a telling weekend awaits.

If you count the guys on each team’s eight-man practice squad, there are currently more than 1,950 players in the NFL — and 19 of these saw their college action at the University of Illinois. Among them, Kelvin Hayden and Aaron Moorehead (both with the Indianapolis Colts) picked up Super Bowl rings in last year’s big show, and Jameel Cook (now a Houston Texan, but a former Tampa Bay Buccaneer) got his own hardware in early 2003. But only one active Illinois alum has two rings, and that’s New England Patriots free safety Eugene Wilson. Following an unflinching defeat Sunday over the Pittsburgh Steelers — viewed by many as the last hope to take down the Pats — the Patriots look well on their way to putting Wilson and his teammates in the history books as the first franchise to go undefeated in the regular season in nearly 35 years. And if all goes according to Bill Belichick’s plan, Wilson will have another ring to add to his collection.

Say what you want about luck or wobbly refs or divine intervention. The fact of the matter is that even the royalty of the NFL needs, on occasion, a little help from the opponent to keep a reign going. Yes, I’m talking about the Patriots vs. the Ravens. Sure, the Pats, facing likely defeat, came back like champions. But, in the final minutes, the Ravens (some of them, at least) played like men determined to lose. An ill-advised time out? Bart Scott’s double penalty of angry passion? The NFL cherishes its brutes, but it’s the players with the smarts that prevail in the end.

After last week’s Polite Power Rankings hit the virtual newsstands, a reader offered this advice: “Instead of profiling the top 16, you should do random teams throughout…. That way, if I’m a fan of a weaker team I can occasionally look forward to your coverage of my team.” My initial reaction was: What’s a Raiders fan doing in the middle of Illinois? But the truth is, sports fans migrate and they bring their teams with them, and in a university town full of transplants and transients, there just may be some Dolphins diehards looking for a fix. So each week, the Polite Power Rankings will profile the top five teams and a selection of 11 others from among the list.

If you’re free on a Sunday afternoon, stop by one of the so-called sports bars in town: Jillian’s or Buffalo Wild Wings or Billy Barooz or the Esquire. You may be surprised to find that Bears jerseys don’t rein supreme. Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Dallas, Denver — these cities and more have their representatives in Champaign–Urbana. But regardless of where they hail from, all fans want to know who’s good, who’s better and who’s best. And for these fans, we inaugurate the Polite Power Rankings.