"Rip-off!"

"We paid for blood!"

"Let's tear this place apart!"

A seasoned fan of The Simpsons may recognize these quotes from an episode in which Bart and Lisa end up on opposing hockey teams, and the game comes down to a penalty shot by Bart against goalie Lisa, but they choose instead to abandon their sibling rivalry and embrace, allowing the game to end in a tie. The fans in the stands, however, are not pleased with the outcome, and a riot ensues.

These quotes ran through my head over and over again as I watched, mouth agape in agonizing frustration, as the overtime clock hit five minutes, then two minutes, then less than a minute remaining.

Come on. This isn't really gonna happen, is it?

Eight seconds left. It was up to Shayne Graham, the kicker.

47 yards...he'll hit this. It's fine--I don't care. Just put us all out of our misery.

No good--wide right.

One final chance for my guys to win it. There's one Hail Mary left in the arm of Donovan McNabb.

It's up, and in the air an impossibly long time. Would there be an equally impossible catch on the other end of that arc? Was a miracle in store today?

Nah. Incomplete. Game over.

75 minutes of abysmal football went for naught as the Philadelphia Eagles and Cincinnati Bengals played to a 13-13 tie in Cincinnati yesterday. It was the first tie game in the NFL since Atlanta and Pittsburgh did it in 2002. Nothing in the NFL says, "Man, these teams stink" quite like a tie game. Neither squad could get anything done, and watching these players punt and throw interceptions to each other all day was akin to watching a couple of guys try to fit a couch through a door too small--they try a couple of different ways to get it in there, but man, that thing's just not gonna fit.

Bengals fans must at least be encouraged by the fact that the Bengals didn't lose for a second straight week. I, however, had to deal with the fact that my team, who hung in there for an entire game with the Super Bowl champion Giants last Sunday night, couldn't beat a 1-8 team. All day long, I pessimistically kept saying, "Well, the Eagles have to play a team who's won one game all season, so surely they'll lose." Well, they didn't lose, but they certainly didn't win, either.

In addition to a rare tie, we also got to see another NFL anomaly on Sunday. The Chargers-Steelers game was decided by a late Jeff Reed field goal that put the Steelers ahead 11-10. It was the first game in NFL history to have a final score of 11-10 in 12,837 games played, which I thought was pretty neat. Yeah, it's kind of an irrelevant statistic, but it's a fun one. I've gone on record as saying I don't like overanalysis--you know, something like "the Steelers are 4-0 if Ben Roethlisberger completes between 15 and 25 passes, is picked off less than twice, and is seen eating an ice cream cone on the sideline at some point during the game." Analysis is okay, but sometimes I feel like these sorts of stats muddle the game and are mostly just there to fill airtime on all the 24-hour sports networks. But since the first ever 11-10 final is a stat that doesn't target a particular player or team, and it's just more of an oddity than anything else, it's a stat I can get sort of nerdily excited about.

Meanwhile, I'm desperately hoping for another anomaly: I want the Detroit Lions to go winless this season. Not because I'm a cold, heartless goon who likes seeing teams wallow in misery (well, that actually depends on the team...), but because they've been so bad for so long that I want them to completely bottom out so sweeping changes are made in an effort to make the team competitive again. They haven't had a winning season since 2000, and you would think if they went completely without victory this season, something would have to give. Matt Millen is already out as team president and CEO, so that's a start, anyway. Unless it's a team I don't like, I do take a lot of enjoyment in seeing a team successfully rebuild itself, and that's what I'm hoping to eventually see in Detroit.

Now, if the Giants or Patriots or Cowboys or Redskins or Falcons or Steelers or Buccaneers or Packers or Ravens were to go 0-16, I would enjoy that purely because I'm a cold, heartless goon who likes seeing teams wallow in misery. But come on--we all know none of these teams are going winless anytime soon.

Speaking of another potential anomaly, I don't think the Tennessee Titans will go undefeated this season, but I've also picked against them numerous times this year and they've proven me wrong over and over again. I'm not the biggest Titans fan in the world, but I also don't dislike them. I won't be upset if they do pull it off--believe me, I'd rather see the Titans do it than a lot of other teams in the league.

The only problem I have now is that I'm not sure if I should root for the Eagles to beat the Ravens this Sunday, or if I should hope they play to a tie for the second consecutive week. That's an anomaly that would be tough to match.