Football Upsets: A New Hope

Alright it's not nearly as shocking as it would have been had Tom Brady not gone out with injury, but the Miami win today was justification for any Dolphins fan - much like myself - who have watched their model of consistent success really for the past 30+ years, tank and struggle to regain the franchises former glory these past few seasons (last year especially!).

There's still work to be done but something appeared, and really that's what has been missing thus far - something, anything! The first 2 weeks of the season revealed very little promise AT ALL for success so thankfully a strong performance was put in by Ronnie Brown, and units on both sides of the ball actually appeared for a nice change, which does give Miami fans a reason to believe in this rebuild. And so it would be that yet another team in a tailspin of hopelessness regained some sense of worth this Sunday - it really seems to be a common theme in the gridiron world this season.

It feels like a massive case of deja vu, with parallels being drawn from the Ti-Cats - Argos game from Week 2 of the CFL season. That's the game where this writer partied it up in the stands at the Rogers Centre with the other pockets of Tabbies fans who had made the trip up the QEW for the showdown. It was also an unexpected win and while my fellow Steeltown fans truly did not believe it was a sign that our team was about to make a serious run for the Grey Cup, we loved that we had silenced our rivals in their own house. I guarantee you'd be hard pressed to find a 'Phins supporter who believes that since Miami won today they're now clearly playoff bound, but considering the manhandling they received at the hands of Kurt Warner and the Cardinals last weekend you better believe this win helps a bit in recovering from that horrid experience.

But even more importantly wins like this are a sign of hope for the disheartened, or maybe they can be termed the "cheering deficient", those who really have had nothing to get excited about from their teams. It's awful seeing fans lose all hope in their teams, for both the fans of the troubled team in question to fans of the opponents destroying the hapless franchise. To witness a massacre in a sporting venue is never an enjoyable experience, I'm sure you can ask anyone in attendance for Western's 71-0 trampling of the York Lions this weekend and you'll find they'd prefer to not have had to sit thru that experience.

So what is sure to be the biggest story of this week of NFL action is not just something for Dolphins fans to celebrate but also fans of football in general. However, as a Miami fan, I get the feeling that I've been celebrating a bit harder than many others at this point, but that's alright allow me to pick up the slack for any of you who aren't enjoying this as much as maybe you should right now, it's cool.