Sometimes, I envy my father. It's not his spooky mane of gray hair, his rapidly deteriorating hearing or the fact he's 62 years old and can still do 50 one-handed push-ups that gets me going. No, I envy my father because he has something that every person under the age of 20 in my hometown of Washington, D.C., wants — memories of when the Washington Redskins were a great football team.

I don't have such memories of the team. Mine are more along the lines of "Remember when Gus Frerotte broke his neck after he head-butted a wall celebrating a touchdown?" I love the Redskins, a fact that, if I look at it objectively, makes no sense. Still, every January, we fans convince ourselves that the upcoming year is going to be the one where the Redskins finally turn the corner. We tell ourselves we're one free-agent signing or one big-time coordinator away from a return to glory. Of course they never turn the corner, but we always hold out hope: that's what love can do to you.

I think the events that have transpired this season have been worse than anything else I've experienced. What's most depressing, I think, is not the tough loss after tough loss. It's that somehow, Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, only the most popular figure in the history of Washington sports, has morphed into Al Pacino's character from Oliver Stone's football opus "Any Given Sunday."

First of all, some words about "Any Given Sunday": like all of Stone's films, it's a mess. It's too long, too unrealistic and, most of all, too loud. Still, whenever I see it on cable, it never fails to rope me in, mainly because of Al Pacino's performance as embattled head coach Tony D'Amato.

Really, if you need any more proof that Pacino is the best actor out there, just look at "Any Given Sunday." Here, he takes what is not exactly the freshest of characters — the over-the-hill jock fighting to hold on — and brings a frightening mix of pathos, rage and desperation to the character. And this isn't even one of his best performances, although it does include the infamous "Peace with Inches" soliloquy, which my dad, a big-time Pacino fan, considers his finest moment. (Speaking of the "Peace with Inches" speech, which NFL coach do you think would be most likely to deliver a speech like that? My dad says one of the old-school, psycho coaches like a Coughlin or Parcelles, but I think it would have to be one of those enigmatic coaches who always keeps his players at a distance, like a Mike Sherman or Mike Shanahan. Also, I could see Belichick doing it in a few years, when the Tom Brady-era is on its last legs.)

The similarities between Gibbs and Pacino's Tony D'Amato are downright eerie. Let's quickly run down the list:

Both have undying loyalty to an aging left-handed quarterback: for D'Amato, it's 39-year-old Cap Rooney (Dennis Quaid), the once great QB who led him to two Pantheon Cups. For Gibbs, it's 37-year-old Mark Brunell. Brunell and Rooney might as well be twins, both because of the way they look and the way they play the game. Heck, their press conferences even sound the same (you know, cliché after cliché). While Quaid is pretending to be the dim-witted all-American, Brunell seems to be the real thing, which fills everybody in Washington with dread. Before Brunell even started a game, he was babbling to the Washington media about how he and his wife homeschool their five kids and how he's a close, personal friend of Our Lord Jesus Christ (that's what he always says: Our Lord Jesus Christ). This raised a few eyebrows around town. Of course, none of that would matter if he was any good, but, alas, he wasn't.

I wake up in the middle of the night with visions of Brunell having to take a running start in order to be able to throw the ball over 20 yards because his arm was so bad last year (look at the replays if you don't believe me: my 5-year-old niece has a better gun than Mark Brunell did during the 2004 season). Still, Gibbs has been sticking with Brunell, the same way D'Amato stuck with Rooney in "Any Given Sunday." Partly, I think it's because Gibbs doesn't have anybody decent to put in Brunell's place. Patrick Ramsey, the backup QB, has a great arm, but is also the last guy you want leading your team down the field in a crucial situation. The man has absolutely no instincts — when he gets on the field, it's like watching a walrus that was raised in captivity trying to avoid predators. Not good times.

Both have psycho assistants — Gibbs' Tom Hagen is offensive-line coach Joe Bugel, who held the same job during The Glory Years and put together The Hogs, one of the best offensive lines in the history of the game. Now, Bugel's responsibilities consist of screaming at officials and hiking his pants up to his trachea. Of course, this is exactly what D'Amato's loyal linebacker coach Montezuma Monroe (Jim Brown) does on the Miami Sharks coaching staff. What is it about old coaches, in any sport, who feel the need to surround themselves with other old coaches?

Neither one can deal with the media: really, the D.C. sports media is as brutal as their counterparts in New York or Boston, if only because Washington is a town full of reporters and our sports journalists feel inferior so they work extra hard to be able to stand up the legit media. A lot of coaches can't handle it: Marty Schottenheimer practically had a meltdown when the media kept asking him why he had four family members on a 13-person coaching staff. The incessant criticism of Steve Spurrier got so bad that he went into a shell and wouldn't talk to the press for a month, only to emerge late in the 2003 season when he pulled a George Costanza and started saying and doing anything he could to get fired (if the season went on one more week, we would have seen him streaking across the field in a flesh-colored bodysuit).

It's been hardest on Gibbs though, who isn't used to the 24/7 analysis that goes along with coaching in the Internet age. Part of the problem is that he's worried about making a mistake with the media: listen to his press conferences and you'll here a lot of "Hey" and "Up here," verbal crutches he leans on to appease the press (both are better, I suppose, than Spurrier starting every sentence with a protracted, "Weeellll").

D'Amato has the same problems: he complains about the officiating to the media (Gibbs has been fined an amount roughly equivalent to the GDP of Guatemala for all of his ref-bashing this year), bristles at comments about his offense being too conservative (Gibbs hears the same things), even going so far as to punch out a columnist who questions his play-calling. I think I speak for thousands of fans when I say I would love to see Gibbs do the same thing to Michael Wilbon. That might light a fire under this team. At the very least, it would remind us why we love the Redskins. Lately, that's been getting a little tough to remember.

Ray Gustini ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in political science and international studies. He is convinced that movies are an excellent way to analyze current situations.