‘72 Dolphins remain most pretentious team ever

MIAMI, FL — Though it came late enough this season to give them all a good scare, the 1972 Miami Dolphins got together on Monday for their traditional champagne toast to celebrate the first loss of the football season’s last undefeated team and their continued possession of the vaunted “Most Pretentious Team of All Time” label.

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“The champagne toast is an important part of keeping our title,” said former linebacker Nick Buoniconti. “Not only is it incredibly obnoxious to celebrate the failure of others, but champagne has been a particular symbol of pretension for hundreds of years.”

According to sources within the team, many of the players are now readying for their annual media appearances extolling the virtues of the 1972 Championship squad and reasserting the difficulty of completing an undefeated season. The fact that the Patriots lost despite entering the game as prohibitive favorites will likely make those declarations even more believable.

“I’ve been trying to tell everyone. I’ve been on ESPN television, ESPN radio, ESPN the Magazine… Everywhere,” outspoken Dolphins running back Mercury Morris told SSNN. “Nobody wanted to listen, but we are the greatest, most incredibly pretentious group of football players there is. Even if the Patriots had managed to win – and I knew they never would – but even if they had, they could only ever have been equal to us in pretentiousness. Never more, see, because we’re infinity pretentious. We’re like if you divide pretentiousness by zero, you know?”

The head coach of Morris’ Dolphins team, Hall-of-Famer Don Shula, received media attention earlier this season when he suggested that even if the Patriots had finished their undefeated season, the “Spygate” incident would have tainted the accomplishment. Though he backed off that stance somewhat, he seemed happy that his team’s 35-year-old undefeated mark will stand unchallenged.

“Part of being the most pretentious team is always having reasons why you continue to be on top; why you’re still better than everyone, despite what the public might think,” Shula explained. “Was I prepared to continue looking down my nose at the Patriots if they had won? Sure – but naturally this makes it much easier.”