As the Patriots creep ever closer to immortality, it seems like every human colostomy bag in America is lining up to diminish what they're about to accomplish. Arlen Specter, Mercury Morris, Gregg Easterbrook and a million others are tearing at each other for a place in the spotlight so they can be the loudest one to tell us the Patriots record doesn't mean anything and Oh, by the way...Pay attention to me everybody...

With all that being thrown at the Patriots, it's the perfect time for some good news, and it's come in the form of LB Andre Tippett getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. That makes him just the second career Patriot in Canton after John Hannah, and it's long goddamned overdue.

Tippett was a beast. One of the great pass rushing LBs in NFL history who was also unblockable against the run and could drop into pass coverage with the best of them. There are only two reasons he had to wait so long for induction:

1. In spite of his efforts, the Patriots sucked for most of his career.
2. Lawrence Taylor

Tippett suffered from comparisons to Taylor as they played the same role on two very different teams. Was Taylor better? Sure. But not by so much that one was a first ballot guy and the other had to sweat it out for 14 years. As the Globe pointed out, Tippett had 100 career sacks, Taylor had 132.5, a difference of 1.4 per season. He also had two fewer cocaine suspensions than Taylor and never got the publicity that comes from instant-classic quotes like "She set me up like a motherfucker..." Mike Vrabel, who's been wearing a Tippett throwback jersey in practice said it as well as anybody: "We get the media guide and I look at those numbers and I'm like, I had a pretty good season [12 1/2 sackes], I'm still six sacks away, or whatever, from Tippett. So, it's like he really was a great player. He gave the fans of New England something to look forward to when they had a bad team."

My favorite Tippett story came off the field. In his playing days he lived in a condo not far from where I lived in Weymouth. There was an old bucket of blood nightclub in town called The Great Escape (aka The Great Mistake) where Tippett was hanging out one night with a buddy. According to the news reports Tip, a black belt, kicked the crap out of some guy. Anyone who knew anything about Tippett,... and The Great Mistake ... knew what had happened. Some douchebag, full of more liquid courage than brains, tried to make a name for himself by picking a fight with toughest guy on the Pats. And he found out the hard way what every quarterback, tight end and offensive lineman in the NFL already knew: you didn't F with Andre Tippett. He was already a legend, that night he was a hero. Now he's an Immortal. Congratulations. It's about time.