This weekend, we will get yet another Super Bowl featuring Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and the rest of the Very Bad Team (or Too Good Team—take your pick, really) from Foxborough. There will be nachos. There will be alcohol. There will be chaos that will send the monsters of H.P. Lovecraft’s dark dimensions into a roiling rage. Here at The Dot and Line, a very serious website dedicated to animation, we find ourselves faced with a choice this week: Shall we confront this all-American madness head on with a meticulously chosen team of both cartoon and live-action competitors framed around the concept of ice (as in, the winter of Brady’s discontent; as in, icing the competition; as in, adding a chill factor to these proceedings), or shall we ignore it entirely and blog about cartoons like we normally do?
Obviously, we have chosen the way of ice. (George R.R. Martin was with us.) So the rules for the following list were simple:
- Fuck the Patriots.
- Gucci Mane is on the team.
- Live-action and animated characters and performers are included.
- Each character has to have something to do with ice or the cold—literally or figuratively.
Mainly, the goal here is to hypothetically hand the Very Nutritional, Very Regularly Pooping Tom Brady his own Very Nutritionally Loaded, Very Regularly Pooping Ass. Were such a team to exist, it would, obviously, do just that. It would also look like this.
Management and Coaching Staff
Owner: The Ice King (Adventure Time)
Let’s lay it all out on the table: The Ice King didn’t want to buy this team, no, but his loyal penguin aide Gunter (whose time as a snapper for the Minnesota Vikings still haunts him) reminded him of something he said long ago in the first season of Adventure Time: “Do you know what ‘Ice King’ means!?” Then he picked up the phone.
General Manager: The Snow Miser (The Year Without a Santa Claus)
Shrewd and tight-fisted with the dollars, Mr. Snow Miser was the only frostbitten bastard the Ice King would trust with his front office. His loyal minions keep the team’s affairs in frigid shape.
Head coach: Tonya Harding As Portrayed by Margot Robbie (I, Tonya)
If the 2017 movie season proved anything, it’s that Tonya Harding As Portrayed by Margot Robbie — just like the IRL Tonya Harding — is a force to be reckoned with. From a strategic perspective, she’s Belichick if Belichick knew how to use his words, and she’s obviously filled with more fury than The God Coach Eric Taylor on his worst day. There is literally not one human we are more scared of, and that’s exactly what we need.
Offensive coordinator: Sokka (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
Strategic, adaptive, and talented, this newly-hired coach from the Water Tribe brought his trademark Boomerang Offense to the team in the beginning of the season. The wide receiving corps has been flying high ever since.
Defensive coordinator: Sailor Mercury (Sailor Moon)
Calm, level-headed, and obsessed with analysis and numbers, Ami Mizuno keeps the defense tight and and point. We hear the nights on the first planet in our solar system are pretty cold, too.
Special teams coordinator: Ben Wyatt (Parks & Recreation)
Ben Wyatt is two things: a loving husband and an especially committed strategist around all things winter- and ice-related. When his kickers score a field goal, he has been known to shout “BA-BA-BOOEY!”
The Offense
Quarterback: Elsa (Frozen)
Strategy, strength, and quick thinking are all skills the best quarterbacks have in abundance, but Elsa is a different breed entirely. Girl can sing. She’s also the emotional anchor of this team, one with wind and sky and — reportedly — willing to “let it go.” The Pats are so laughably screwed.
Running backs: Balto (Balto); Ghost (Game of Thrones)
Ghost may have been the runt of his litter, and Balto may have gotten his start in Alaska’s Iditarod (where he is known for saving a town full of children after overcoming frozen mountains, avalanches, perilous blizzards, and brutal racism), but both of them are among the most loyal and dogged (heh) players ever to run the ball up the gut. Balto thrives in the open field while Ghost is the definite power back, and how they both do it all with their jaws is mind-boggling. They are Very Good Boys.
Wide receivers: Iceman, (X-Men); Killer Frost (The Flash); Frozone, (The Incredibles)
Three words: speed, speed, speed. The main skill these water vapor–condensing players have in common is the quickness with which they freeze up icy platforms, allowing them to glide past the opposing defenses, and the acrobatics with which they manage it. Also, “FROZONE IN THE ENDZONE!” is something the Ice King has always wanted to say.
Tight end: Vanilla Ice
His talents on the gridiron are almost as offensive as his music. A journeyman player just out of free agency, he has told reporters that, in spite of his age, he’s been learning a lot just from some of the younger, but more senior, members of his team: “There’s nothing I respect more than my teammates—especially El Gato, baby.”
Center: Gucci Mane (El Gato: The Human Glacier)
There is no finer living, breathing embodiment of icey-ness on this planet. That Gucci Mane is simultaneously both human and a majestic glacier is some benevolent cosmic wizardry we have yet to comprehend and nonetheless benefit from every day. Let’s be clear: he and Elsa combined do not counteract the warming effects of climate change, but it sure does feel like it if they stand within a 500-mile radius of each other. It helps that Gucci is also an exceptionally good all-around player, communicator, and once referred to himself as “colder than a polar bear sleeping in a freezer.” He’ll be the first thing the other team sees before their dreams die on the vine.
Offensive tackle: Isaac McDougal, the Freezing Alchemist (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood); Captain Cold (The Flash)
Offensive guards: Mr. Freeze (Batman & Robin); Mr. Freeze (Batman: The Animated Series)
Some questioned Coach Harding’s decision to put not one, but two Mr. Freezes on her offensive line. One, after all, is a notorious punster, and the other was so traumatized by his grief that he became perhaps the coldest man in football — even for this team. Isaac McDougal, too, was a controversial addition, given his murderous past. But it was hard to argue with the results.
The offensive line’s secret weapon, however, is Captain Cold, a.k.a. the Artist Formerly Known as Wentworth Miller. He’s not the nicest player, but his pragmatic and understanding approach to the game—and a positively chilling blocking technique—ties his fellow teammates together so admirably that they have become beloved by fans around the world. They’re all now active on social media as well. Cold downplayed his influence on their camaraderie: “We’re just trying to get out there and play a good game of football.” Sources say that just seconds after he finished speaking, he froze and killed a squirrel that attempted to make off with his sandwich.
The Defense
Nose tackle: Manny (Ice Age)
Manny the Mammoth is the most mountainous and icily unmovable member of the team. He exudes raw power and Ray Romano snarl and has not once quavered in the face of his enemy. He is the backbone of this defense, and any center unlucky enough to come face to face with him knows it.
Defensive ends: The Wendigo King (Avengers Assemble); Yeti (Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!)
Frigid, cold-hearted snow demons of the highest order, the Wendigo King and the Yeti seem like they’d be natural defenders on a team like this, but it wasn’t always this way. In fact, the Yeti begged to join the Ice King’s crew to try to impress his high-school crush, Elsa. When she turned him down, he wandered, reportedly tormented, until he came across an even more miserable snow demon, the Wendigo King, devastating a village at the base of a snowcapped mountain. This is how their conversation went:
Yeti: You’ve clearly got some anger issues. Why don’t you play for us?
The Wendigo King: I can’t.
Yeti: What do you mean you can’t?
The Wendigo King: I mean, I can’t!
Yeti: What are you afraid?
The Wendigo King: No, I mean I really can’t, you moron! I don’t know how to play football! [Shoves Yeti.]
Yeti: Whoa. Is that all that’s stopping ya?
Inside linebackers: Korra (The Legend of Korra); The Night King (Game of Thrones)
If Elsa leads the offense, the legendary Korra is both the heart and brains of the defense. Like her fellow Water Tribe member Sokka, she’s a genius competitor, and she’s also one of the flat-out best-trained members of the entire team. There aren’t many people in this world who the Night King, commander of Game of Thrones’ ice zombie horde, will follow, but Korra is one them.
Outside linebackers: Muk (Balto); Luk (Balto)
The Patriots may be good, but are they good enough to take on two of the savviest— and egregiously named — polar bears ever to swim or walk the Arctic? Come on, now. Brady, they’re coming for your Very Regularly Pooping Ass.
Cornerbacks: Sapphire (Steven Universe); Ice (Justice League Unlimited)
Sapphire’s predictive abilities make her an invaluable resource in the backfield and, naturally, she leads the team in interceptions. Ice, on the other hand, is one of the finest team players of any permutation of the Justice League. (Hell, she even put up with Guy Gardner.)
Safeties: The Ice Dragon (Game of Thrones); Zan (Super Friends)
Yes, if the Patriots somehow make it past a wooly mammoth, two polar bears, two snow demons, an ice zombie with an undead army at his back, the Avatar, a Crystal fucking Gem, and a veteran Justice League member—yes, if—they will have to contend with a goddamn dragon that breathes goddamn ice flames and also a shape-shifting Exxorian with complete command over water. Worst comes to worst, Zan turns his body into a giant sheet of ice over the end-zone. These are the toughest safeties in the game since Troy Polamalu and Ed Reed. In other words, game over.
Special Teams
Punter: Sanka Coffie (Cool Runnings)
“Ice! Ice? You mean winter as in ice? You mean winter as in igloos and eskimos and penguins and ice?!” Yes. And no one in the game has a colder right toe. Except…
Kicker: Big Boi (Outkast)
“Cooler than a polar bear’s toenails,” all those years playing the straight man to André 3000’s wonky out-of-this-world flow have made Daddy Fat Sax’s kicks as sharp as his lyrical kickers. “The same motherfucker who took them knuckles to your eye” is about to take his toes to the Lombardi Trophy.
Snapper: Olaf (Frozen)
Enthusiasm is its own skill. If only Gunter weren’t retired.
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