Chapter 6
Smalley needn’t have worried. The Temps made the playoffs easily. It had been a foregone conclusion, Quinn reasoned, not because he was arrogant or the team was even that good but because in the NFL, it was possible to have a losing record and still make the playoffs. The Temps, at nine and seven, were certainly better than that. Maybe not much better but still good enough for a system that was like The Grammy Awards, with its zillion categories and nominees.
Indeed, Quinn was surprised that his dead grandparents weren’t in the playoffs or Sami, who owned the newsstand he frequented. It was a system that rewarded mediocrity or the merely good, particularly in the early rounds. To make it beyond the division championships, however, the Temps were going to have to be better than
