I have to be careful here, because the last time I gloated over gut-stomping the Detroit Lions it was 1998 and the Vikings turned around and lost the very next game to the Bucs, 27-24. That 1998 team went 15-1 in the regular season and then went Wide Left in the NFC Championship game against Atlanta.

I have always maintained Sherman wasn’t thorough enough in 1865 and look, the Falcons proved me right.

Anyway, the Vikings are the Red Sox of the NFL. They have Buckner, we have Wide Left. They have Bucky Dent, we have Drew Pearson. And I’m sure there are other parallels but I’m hungry and cranky and not feeling like researching it further. Besides, their pain, as The Voice says in Field of Dreams, has been eased.

But I digress.

The good news: my humble, bumbling, good-for-nothing Vikes put an epic whipping on the Lions yesterday which was so thorough, and so dominant, that I…well…I dunno what. But it was really, really great. (How’s that for inspired writing? “It was really, really great.”)

How bad was it? It was 42-10 bad. It was scoring six touchdowns on our first six possessions bad. It was colossal. Stupendous! It was…must I say it? (”You must, you must!” said the sheriff of Rock Ridge.) It was glorious.

I don’t want to get all weird and junior high about a football team, but somehow, miraculously, this team that started 3-6 is now 6-6 and is in the thick of the playoff hunt. Not only in the thick of it but actually favored to win one of the spots.

Can I have an amen? Hallelujah! TESTIFY!

On the flip side, the Miami Dolphins keep losing. I’ve never really cared for Miami and their whole champagne-popping shtick. I always hated that U-shaped thing on Larry Csonka’s helmet and that 1974 Super Bowl VIII thing still bugs me. (Yeah, yeah, I should let it go. So I hold sports grudges. Sue me.)

Anyway, no team in NFL history has ever gone 0-16. The league moved to a 16 game schedule in 1978 and two years prior to that the Bucs went 0-14. (And 0-12 into the next season, going a mind-numbing 0-26 before finally winning the franchise’s first game. It’s knowledge like that which convinces me that one day, in my lifetime, the football gods will deliver a Super Bowl to my beloved Purple…I mean, Tampa Bay won one. That’s akin to Gollum falling into Mt Doom with the Ring. It was the beginning of the end of all things.)

Anyway (redux), here is the current roll call of teams among which the 2007 Dolphins find themselves as they desperately try to avoid their head-on collision with infamy.

1975 Chargers 0-11 before winning a game
1984 Bills 0-11 before winning a game
2000 Chargers 0-11 before winning a game
1977 Buccaneers 0-12 before winning a game
2001 Lions 0-12 before winning a game
2007 Dolphins 0-12
1986 Colts 0-13 before winning a game
1980 Saints 0-14 before winning a game
1976 Buccaneers 0-14 these schmucks never won that year

Anyone remember that scene in Silver Streak where the bad guy on the runaway train gets hung out the locomotive and can’t pull his body up and into the train in time to avoid his head being smushed like a melon against an oncoming rail yard switch? That’s gotta be what the players in Miami are feeling like right about now. I mean, they just got whacked by the Jets…the Jets!!!…to the tune of 40-13. And the Jets suck. And now here comes that switch.

P.S. While double-checking my facts I found quite possible the most horrible designed website ever. Look here…it scrolls!!!