The Man Who Saved the Patriots

It’s kind of ironic that the same week the Patriots all but clinched the AFC East and their franchise Quarterback won the SI “Sportsman of the Year” Award, that Richard Seymour would call out Pat’s fans for being complacent and spoiled.

When Seymour said it, I thought there’d be complaints. But everyone agrees with him. The truth is a defense against libel. Pats fans are spoiled. We walk through the NFL like Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie shopping for another Super Bowl ring like the world owes us one. We’re Kennedys, going off on anyone who doesn’t roll over and give us exactly what we want with “Don’t you know who I am?”

I’ve been worried about the Yankeefanification of Patriot’s fans ever since they beat Carolina in Super Bowl XXXwhatever. That we’d glumly sit there, dower and joyless, demanding success like we somehow had it coming to us. That failure would infuriate us, but victory wouldn’t be any fun because we’ve come to expect it.

Well I’m on a one man crusade to remind everyone of how lucky we are to have this team. And how close we came to not having any team at all. To that end, here’s a history lesson. It’s the greatest Patriot story of them all. How one man and his penis saved the Patriots and changed the sports world forever. It’s the story of Zeke Mowatt.

Often in the course of human events, one small moment can profoundly change the world:
*In 1066 at the Battle of Hastings, a rumor spread among the Normans that William the Conqueror had been killed. The lines faltered and some men went into retreat. Sensing victory, Harold of the Saxons sent his cavalry in pursuit. But when William reappeared, the Normans counter-attacked and the cavalry was cut off. The battle, and the throne of England, was theirs.
*At Gettysburg, the 20th Maine, led by a school teacher named Joshua Chamberlain, repelled a Confederate attack at Little Round Top, thus saving the Union flank and bringing a turning point in the Civil War.
*At the Battle of Endor, Chewbacca captured on of those Imperial two-legged walker things and helped Han Solo take out the shield generator. The Rebel Alliance then blew up Death Star II, killed the Emperor, and brought balance to the Force.

Zeke Mowatt likewise had a monumental effect on history. He was a non-descript NFL tight end who played six years with the New York Giants before coming to New England in 1990. But the Patriots of that time were anything but ordinary. On the field, they were the Arizona Cardinals of their day, a perennial also-ran with a bad owner and incompetent management. Off the field, they were the Minnesota Vikings and all of southeastern New England was their Lake Minnetonka.

Their owner was Victor Kiam, who gained some level of 1980’s fame as the owner/pitchman for Remington razors and a sometime guest on Letterman. Kiam was sort of a low rent Donald Trump, and if possible was even less likeable than The Donald. The team president was Sam Jankovich, who had successfully built the U. of Miami into a football powerhouse by recruiting career criminals and then not distracting them by actually making them attend the U. of Miami. The Pats were led by Rod Rust, who was in his first, and last, year of NFL head coaching. Rust proved his defensive genius by holding his own team to a record low 181 total points.

The entire Patriot experience was dismal. They would finish 1-15. If they led the league in any category, it was probably Money Lost or Most Players in a Court-Ordered Drug Treatment Program. And there was no hope on the horizon. Among the people with the unenviable task of covering this team was a reporter from the Herald named Lisa Olsen. It was in the locker room one day that our man Zeke came out of the shower, detoured over to Ms. Olsen, and walked into New England sports history.

The reports vary somewhat but every observer, and there were lots, said Mowatt reached into his towel, grabbed Little Zeke, waived it at Olsen, and asked her if it was what she wanted. “You wanna bite this?” was the quote most often attributed to him. (And strangest, really. I mean, who really wants that?)

As controversies go, this one started out slowly. The first reports didn’t hit the paper for a day or two. Then it reached the airwaves. The national press picked it up. ESPN. It went from the sports page to the news section. In days it exploded into Brad/Jen/Angelina proportions. The entire nation was talking about the willie of the Patriots’ tight end. No one on the team could avoid being asked about it. None dared comment. Except the owner, who didn’t know any better. Kiam told a reporter that to him, Olsen was “a classic bitch.”

It was as if Kiam tried to put out the fire by throwing C4 on it. Every other NFL owner simultaneously spit their Chivas & rocks onto their TV‘s. Paul Tagliabue swallowed his tongue. Women, no longer content with boycotting Lady Remingtons, went after the NFL. The Commissioner, man of conscience that he is, called everyone together and did the “Blazing Saddles” “We’ve got to save our phony baloney jobs here, gentlemen!” bit. The answer was simple: take out a mob hit on Victor Kiam.

Kiam, stand up guy that he was, fired Rust. He replaced him with Syracuse U. head coach Dick McPherson, a man so cuddly and lovable toward his players he made Pete Carroll look like Uday Hussein. But the contract was still out on Kiam; the league wanted him gone. They forced him to sell the Pats to James Orthwein of the Anheiser-Busch family (whom I have personally supported over the years).

Orthwein had Jankovich fire MacPherson. Then he fired Jankovich. Then he hired Bill Parcells and told him to turn the Pats into a real NFL team.

You know the rest. Parcells drafted Bledsoe, McGinest, Brown, Johnson, Martin, Bruschi and Law. Now that the Pats were respectable, Bob Kraft bought them. They went to a Super Bowl. Eventually, Kraft brought in Bill Belichick, who drafted Brady and Seymour. He built a stadium. Three championships later, they’re the gold standard for all professional sports teams. And we owe it all to one man and his inability to keep his hands off his package.

I hope that if Zeke Mowatt ever has any regrets, his guardian angel will come down and show him, “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style, how much good he has done in this world. The stadium, the banners, the unforgettable games; we owe it all to him. As Clarence tells George Bailey, “One man’s life touches so many others.” And when Zeke Mowatt touched himself, he touched us all.