Where was the mumps virus when we needed it the most?

When The Coggin Toboggan wants to get serious it turns its coverage over to its editor and founder to bring everything to a screeching halt. Goodbye funny, say hello to self pity and depression.

Like the majority of Americans last night, I could not have cared about either team competing in Super Bowl XLIX. Pete Carroll is a 9/11 truther nut job, Bill Belichick is a curmudgeon who looked like he enjoyed the victory for all of 2.3 seconds before setting his sights on next season, and not a single player on either roster I wished to see have any type of success.

But, unlike so many fans I’ve heard complain about the game and those that wished injuries or even death upon the participants in last night’s Super Bowl, I say relax. It’s just a game people, there’s no reason for such negative thoughts!

That being said, I don’t think I’m asking too much when I say I wish a mumps outbreak had spread like wildfire throughout both locker rooms.

Look, Mumps is rarely deadly in adults (1 in 10,000 will die according to WHO), so I think we all could have felt a lot better about the outcome if every single member of each team and coaching staff had contracted the virus at halftime and incubated until the game was over.

Just think about it. We would have had the enjoyment of the game (which was thrilling) but when the virus stopped its incubation period at the final whistle and its symptoms began to appear, it would have been double the fun!

Just imagine, NBC cameras broadcasting a swollen throat Tom Brady desperately trying to take a celebratory sip of champagne, but being in too much pain to do so. Or maybe Richard Sherman face down on Seattle’s bench, too weak to move, as confetti showers down over him, sticking to his sweat soaked fever skin?

Maybe even, if we were lucky, Pete Carroll cursing God as his body is wracked with muscle aches because he had refused a Mumps vaccination, fearing it would give him autism?

At the very least I would have enjoyed seeing Robert Kraft keel over in his suite, surrounded by loved ones also clutching their swollen throats. Not dead, obviously, but at least in some discomfort.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Super Bowl we all deserved.