Tyranny of the moment

We live in reactionary times, informed and shaped by the Head Reactionary himself. Snap judgments are our thing. Spin gets swallowed, only to be replaced by reverse spin, which we then swallow whole with equal credulity.

And, no, I'm not talking about that business in D.C. with the kids in the MAGA hats -- who, if perhaps not entirely the baying mob of racists that snippet of video seemed to portray, were hardly prayerful cherubs being menaced by one mean Native American senior citizen. Or so the spin being sold us now would have us believe.

No. I'm talking about football, dammit.

Specifically, I'm talking about the wholly unjust thing that happened to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC title game, which they lost in overtime to the Patriots because of an unfair coin toss. The coin toss, see, was won by the Patriots. Tom Brady then did his usual Tom Brady things, marching the Pats right down the field to the winning touchdown.

People were outraged by this. (Because that, too, is what we do these days.) They said it wasn't fair that Chiefs wunderkind Pat Mahomes never got to touch the football. They said the Chiefs should have had a shot at answering, and because he didn't the overtime rules needed to be changed.

And clang went the cell door, imprisoning everyone in the moment again.

I say this because over in the NFC, the Saints and Rams went into overtime, too. The Saints got the ball first. They had the same chance as the Patriots to end it and go riding off to the Big Roman Numeral. Instead, Drew Brees threw an interception, and the Rams won it with a 57-yard field goal.

I'm just blue-skying here. But why do I think if Brees had, in fact, driven the Saints to the winning score like Brady did, no one would be clamoring for the rule to be changed?

The Blob holds a candle to no one in its weariness with the Patriots. But let's be honest: If the roles were reversed and the Chiefs had won the overtime coin flip and driven for the wining touchdown, would anyone outside of New England be talking about how unfair it was that Brady didn't get to touch the football?

Of course they wouldn't.

Truth is, 90 percent of this clamor to change what no one has clamored to change before is because it was the Patriots. And this, again, is coming from someone who holds no brief for Darth Hoodie and his occasionally shady legions. I'm as sick to death of them as y'all are. I'm banging my head against the wall just as hard at the thought of having to spend two more weeks, and yet another Super Bowl, hearing about Bill Bleeping Belichick and Tom Bleeping Brady and the New Bleeping England Bleeping Patriots.

As my inner teenager is saying right now: Borrrrr-ing.

That said, in both the NFC and AFC games, the overtime rules worked the way they're supposed to. And there's nothing inherently unfair about that. Kansas City had its chance to get Mahomes on the field for the win; it didn't even have to stop the Patriots from scoring to do so. All the Chiefs' defense had to do was keep them out of the end zone, the way it kept the Colts out of the end zone so many times in the divisional game.

It couldn't. Moreover, if Dee Ford doesn't line up offside in regulation, the overtime rules never even come into play. The interception on the play would have stood and the game would have been over.

I don't know how you blame the overtime rules for that. I don't know how you blame them for the Chiefs not being able to make a stop -- or even a quasi-stop -- when their entire season depended on it.

Don't like the overtime rules?

"D" up, then. It really is that simple.