Tom Brady, minion of Mordor, delivers Super Bowl ring to Dark Lord Sauron

Tom Brady, gazing upon his master with unhinged admiration, can't
help but wonder why the Great Eye isn't wearing any Patriots swag.  

MORDOR – Tom Brady, famed quarterback of the New England Patriots and a top lieutenant to Dark Lord Sauron, just minutes after winning Super Bowl LIII began the grueling, days-long journey by horseback to deliver the coveted Super Bowl ring to his master in Mordor, the sinister realm at the outer reaches of Middle Earth.

Brady, a six-time champion of the National Football League, made haste from Mercedes-Benz Stadium immediately upon defeating the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday evening — forgoing the traditional displays of jubilant disbelief, long, tearful hugs shared among family members, and media interviews replete with iterations of “I just want to thank God” — in order to kneel before the Great Eye and present him with the Ring of Power.

“Seeing the look of pure, unadulterated joy in my master’s eye when I held the One Ring before him in my open palm felt better than any Gatorade showers from Belichick or victory blowies I could have received from Gisele,” said Brady, laughing maniacally and tilting his head upward toward the blackened sky, thick with volcanic ash, as he unleashed a guttural, pulsing growl in the fashion of the Uruk-hai.

Sauron, a colossal, lidless eye ensconced in flame and stationed atop the Tower of Barad Dur, nestled in the threatening shadow of Mount Doom, coveted the Super Bowl’s chief prize beyond all else, believing it to be the One Ring of Power that would finally bestow him with the necessary life force to retake physical form and crush the inhabitants of Middle Earth into subservience and despair.

The omnipotent harbinger of death believed Brady to be his best chance to recover the jewel, according to sources familiar with the Great Eye, who guaranteed the 41-year-old QB a starting position in the NFL indefinitely, regardless of the inexorable decay of skill and agility caused by the aging body. Brady agreed enthusiastically, without the glimpse of a second thought or even the slightest hesitation.

As of press time, Sauron, discovering that the ring didn't carry any magical qualities and was in fact just a useless sports trinket, ordered the Ring-wraiths to gut Brady with a Morgul blade and feed his entrails to a Fellbeast.

Orcs storm court after Duke’s second-round NCAA win, leave trail of mayhem and death

An ecstatic fan admires his Duke swag on the jumbotron before beginning his lethal rampage. 

PITTSBURGH -- A pack of orcs vacationing from Mordor unleashed a wave of destruction and ruin during the second round of the NCAA college basketball tournament yesterday, after storming the court in a cataclysmic celebration of their favorite school, Duke, winning what amounted to a fairly routine match.

The grotesque, elf-like creatures of evil, some bearing the White Hand of Saruman, left spectators both awed at the carnage – which included scores of casualties, a defiled gymnasium and an overturned hot-dog cart – and bewildered by the sheer force of the spectacle, the kind typically reserved for major upsets or awe-inspiring buzzer beaters. This game had none of those theatrics.

Duke, the No. 2 seed in the Midwest region, maintained a big lead over No. 7 Rhode Island during the entirety of the game, ultimately winning the rather meaningless match by 25 points.

“This is our year. I can feel it!” said one excited orc, Kallukahh, who erupted into an energetic rendition of the Duke fight song before feasting on the entrails of a nearby cheerleader. “Blue Devils for life, baby!”

The orc pack, 127 members strong, brushed off reporters’ questions when asked if it may have been overkill to trample more than 40 innocent people, heave maggoty bread at the opposing team’s mascot, or defecate in the basketball shoes of the losing team. Reporters who pressed the issue further had their heads swiftly ripped from their torsos, loaded onto catapults and flung into the throngs of remaining Rhode Island fans. 

“If you think that was too much, just wait until we bring a 10,000-strong army of Uruk-hai to the Final Four!” another orc, Bazkahh, screamed before chugging a Bud Light from the hollowed-out skull of the opposing team’s head coach. 

The man-flesh-eating humanoids were nearly unanimous in their praise of Duke’s play on both sides of the ball, calling the team’s offensive performance “flawless,” lauding its tight man-to-man coverage as “superb,” and hailing coach Mike Krzyzewski as “a modern-day genius” who was welcome in Mordor for dinner anytime. 

“Coach K is my fucking hero!” Ahkktahh, whose gnarled, bare chest bore a giant letter D in blue paint, said while aiming a crossbow at an infant girl in a Rhode Island t-shirt.

The orcs’ zeal for the five-time championship winners stems from the Dark Lord Sauron, according to sources close to the gigantic eyeball ensconced in eternal flame. To underscore his Duke fervor, the black-hearted ruler of Mordor had a university flag draped over the Tower of Barad-dûr just before the first tip-off of the tournament.

The Great Eye has a deep appreciation of the school’s lust for championship rings, saying it reminds him of his own unquenchable thirst for the Ring of Power, according to an interpreter of Sauron’s deep-throated voice of hell just before getting dismembered by a cave troll.

As of press time, the creator of the One Ring reportedly ordered his orc minions to prepare a contingency plan consisting of burning Duke to the ground, rounding up all basketball-team players and personnel, and throwing them one by one into the heart of the volcanic Mount Doom if they fail to advance to the Final Four.