Change Patriots name to the Boston Corbetts

(635 words)

I don’t want the Patriots to win, but if they do I hope someone sneaks onto the field and replaces all the Gatorade with vats of boiling oil.

I tweeted that last week and an alarmed reader wrote that, gee, a guy as nice as I couldn’t possibly harbor such malicious thoughts.

The exchange shows there’s a growing gap between my on-line persona and the one that sneaks out when its animal instincts are provoked.

It’s like the title line from great Robert Earl Keen song, “I only use my guns whenever kindness fails.”

Mike Wilbon of ESPN, one of the few non-meathead network voices I respect, said the Patriots should have to forfeit the game. I think he was being hyperbolic, but I love it that serious commentators share my excessive hatred.

Others have said either Belichick or Tom Brady should be suspended.

That, too, seems extreme. Unlike the Patriots, most of us want to see a game where a fair-and-square winner is determined.

But if it is proven they are guilty of cheating — and sensible fans like me and the millions of others who root for the Pittsburgh Steelers and all that’s good and moral in the world — there needs to be some lasting consequence.

Here it is: the New England Patriots should be ordered to change their names.

So what would we call them?

The New England Cheaters? That’s too blunt and would alienate what is a strong fan base, albeit a misguided fan base that for the past 14 years has been cheering for cheaters anyway.

The New England Deflaters? That would likely inspire a slew of dandy mascots, but it wouldn’t sell jerseys and that’s what the NFL these days is all about.

You can think of pejorative options all day and not beat the one I hereby bestow.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you The Boston Corbetts!

This is so joyfully deft, so situationally perfect, it can’t be beat.

See, a Corbett isn’t a thing. It’s a real man.

Well, he was for the first 26 years of his life.

Born Thomas P. Corbett in London in 1832, he eventually moved to Boston, where he became forever synonymous with the city he loved.

Corbett didn’t deflate his balls.

He severed them! With rusty scissors!

I’ve never examined the document, but I have to imagine Roger Goodell addresses the infraction in the NFL player code of conduct.

But let’s not get all snippy.

Corbett is the man who killed the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. He’s maybe my favorite oddball historical character. He grew up with two obsessions: Jesus Christ and Boston prostitutes.

And because the two could not abide, he castrated himself to eliminate corporal temptation from his life. He eventually joined the Union Army which, I guess, was years away from implementing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.

The full story (first link) was for years my most popular post and it gives all the gory details. I expect it’ll enjoy a burst of popularity April 26, the 150th anniversary of the day Corbett killed Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Now, Corbett had been ordered to not shoot Booth, but Corbett said he disobeyed because God told him to. And for this Corbett was hailed as a hero across the nation.

I’d love to see the reaction if Brady says that’s why he did it.

It’s looking like he and the Patriots are going to weasel out of any real punishment for what is looking more and more like a significant infraction.

And if that happens I propose another name change, this one for Roger Goodell and his precious shield he’s all about protecting.

It should be the National Eunuchs League.

Because if he doesn’t punish the Pats, Goodell will be the one without any balls.

Related . . .

Boston Corbett: America’s Greatest Eunuch!

Civil War-gasm for Gettysburg re-enactors

Pro football’s a bore; here are five ways to save it

NFL not rich enough: needs throw-forward jerseys

America needs an all-gay NFL team

The Baltimore Rays & the NFL’s ongoing disgrace

Why do some many things suck so bad?

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The visit to the pharmacy had been a model of efficiency. I’d stopped in while I was waiting for some take-out lunch Chinese a few doors down.

I’d bought a $4.69 anniversary card for my darling and for me one of those 59 cent pingpong ball-size blueberry creme swirl lollipops I get when I know I can enjoy one home alone and in peace without the little whiners complaining about me never getting them squat.

I approached the register. The friendly older woman smiled and began her interrogation.

“Find everything you need?”

I had.

“Any coupons?”

No, ma’am.

“Do you have a Wellness card?”

I did not. In fact, right then all I had was a growing desire to complete my transaction and vacate the store before any of my neighbors saw I was a grown man who likes to lick lollipops.

“That’ll be $5.57.”

I gave her $6.

She gave me 43 cents as the obligatory receipt began to unspool. For my two-item purchase it was as long as the distance from my wrist to my elbow, or about what you used get when you’d purchase a used car.

She picked up a pen and circled a paragraph and informed me if I went on-line and filled out a customer satisfaction survey I’d have a chance to win $1,000. “And you’ll be eligible for great store discounts and sales!”

Whoopee, I thought

“Thank you,” she said, “and have a nice day!”

Too late. She’d already ruined it.

I’d already begun to calculate just how much a once-simple cash transaction has begun to suck.

It sucks she had to ask me three questions before she began processing my purchase. It sucks to environmentalists like me that stores feel obliged to hand over wasteful receipts for every single transaction, even ones involving cards and candy, knowing they’ll be in my possession for the three seconds it’ll take to stroll to the nearest trash can.

It sucks to have someone try to tempt me to their corporate website where the suckfest of a transaction will be multiplied ten fold.

I guess it could have been worse. At least she didn’t ask to “like” her on Facebook.

When did so many things begin to suck so bad?

Even though we can only skim the surface, let’s break a few of ‘em down:

Shoelaces — I guess back when they were made of simpler materials they used to be shoestrings, but now they’re made with some kind of expensive high-tech polymer that fails at its priority function of keeping shoes tied. I bought some expensive Merrell Gore-Tex shoes and the laces are always coming untied. It’s infuriating. 

U2 — I used to love ‘em. Now, I’m ticked when I see an ad that tells me they have a new album and I can get it. For free! Does everything they do have to seem so contrived? 

Reading long news stories online — Hard copy will always be preferable to online as long as every online is embedded with links and ads designed to get you stop reading that story and begin reading something else. Even though I know they are mostly idiots, I’m still surprised that the people who produce newspapers don’t realize they are destroying one of the most essential components of their business: readers with attention spans that have yet to be atomized. The people who produce online content don’t want you to read. They just want you to click. 

Bags — The wastefulness of making sure everything at the grocery store comes with its own bag drives me nuts. Even though I carry my own bag, clerks will sometimes try and sneak already self-contained items into individual bags to put in my bag. It’d be like the pizza shop giving you a box to carry home your boxed pizza. I have word for this kind of behavior. It’s bagnanimous.

Surrendering to commercial characters/catch phrases I swore I never would — Capitol One finally broke me. I now I think I’m being uproariously witty when I break any lull in the conversation with the question: “What’s in your wallet?” And, God help me, but I recently had a sex dream about Flo. She was wearing nothing but her holstered Progressive Insurance price gun. I haven’t had a sound night’s sleep since.

Business who think me “liking” them is good business — The sign outside the local tire store is asking me to “like” them on Facebook. Really? I’m going to like a tire store? It’s all so counterfeit. Give me good tires and friendly service and I’ll do more than “like” you. I’ll shop there and tell friends about you.

Our collective future — My 13-year-old daughter came and told me in a lesson about scarcity she heard some estimates gauge the world will run out of drinking water by 2050. I want to tell her not to worry, that everything’s going to be all right. But I don’t believe it. Instead, I tell her the problem will solve itself if all the 13-year-old girls in the world simultaneously stop taking 20 minute showers.

I asked my wife for her list of things that suck. Here it is: Meanness & disrespect in politics, Facebook angst, movie theater commercials, strip mall ubiquity, metrosexuals, litter and men with ugly feet wearing sandals with toes showing.

It’s a good list and I’m relieved she didn’t include “being married to you.”

Of course, any reasonable list of things that suck ought to include Ebola, prejudice, ignorance, poverty, ISIL and Roger Goodell.

And because I believe rampant negativity sucks, here’s a list of things that don’t: My Bose wave radio, Derek Jeter, love, joy, Christmas, children, grandparents, and you because you’ve taken the time to read this blog.

Oh, and 59 cent pingpong ball-sized blueberry creme swirl lollipops.

Funny, isn’t it?

One of the few things that these days doesn’t really suck is something I could sit and suck all day.

Related . . .

Now they’ve ruined jukeboxes

Oscar’s suck, movies bore

When summer sucks

When are batteries going to stop sucking so much?

Everyone hates Patrice King Brown: Here’s why

Beating supporters need an attitudinal switch

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The good news for the NFL this week is that for now feckless commissioner Roger Goodell is no longer the media whipping boy.

The bad news is the media are focusing on NFL star Adrian Peterson and the boy he whipped.

Peterson admitted to using a tree branch to whip his 4-year-old son so hard that it left open wounds all over the boy’s legs, butt and scrotum. You may have seen pictures of the scars.

Well, of the physical scars. 

The psychological ones sure to come from having someone you love terrorize you might not emerge for years.

My first reaction, of course, is distress. I can’t imagine anything a 4 year old would do to deserve such a beating (Peterson says he pushed his sibling off from a video game control panel).

But anyone familiar with the daily news is numb to that kind of brutality against children. 

What is news to me, however, is how much support there is for the 6-foot-1, 217-pound, locomotive who beat the boy.

“Spare the rod, spoil the child,” they say, citing the Biblical justification for more wanton violence against innocents than any six words in history.

They’re saying this is okay. It’s a way of life. 

This from Charles Barkley: “Whipping — we do that all the time. Every black parent in the South is going to be in jail under those circumstances.”

Well, then we either need to change or build bigger jails because it’s impossible to justify what Peterson did to his son.

I’m surprised to hear a black man from the South defend a peculiar institution that looks to the rest of the civilized world like something barbaric. Because he sounds just like the white Dixie politicians who used to defend slavery and Jim Crow laws and all the quaint Southern customs that led to lynchings.

This is just the way things are. 

I like Barkley and consider him thoughtful, if bombastically so.

But if he thinks Peterson shouldn’t go to jail for this, then he’s blind to a culture that needs to change.

He makes the good point that me, someone who grew up a privileged white guy in a nice neighborhood, shouldn’t judge Peterson, a kid who like many young black men, had to dodge the odds that said he’d either wind up dead or in jail.

Peterson’s father, an outstanding athlete in his own right, dreamed of playing in the NBA. Those dreams were derailed when a gun his brother was cleaning discharged into his leg.

My father dreamed of playing golf at Pebble Beach. And in 1985 he did.

When he was 13, Peterson’s father was jailed for laundering money for a local crack cocaine ring.

When I was 13, my father used to drive the car loaded with heavy stacks of Sunday newspapers so we could finish in time to go golfing where Dad would always win.

My father beat me at golf.

His father beat him with a switch.

Of course, maybe Barkley’s right. Maybe if my Dad have ever beaten me even once I’d have become more accomplished, more disciplined. More like Peterson, whose last contract was for $96 million.

So part of me sees the point Barkley’s trying to make.

Barkley says without the beatings he wouldn’t be where he is today.

Statistically, he’s one of the lucky ones — black men who’ve played professional sports and gone onto lucrative broadcasting careers. Many more turn out like Peterson’s father.

So savage beatings like the one Peterson gave his son may have worked out for Barkley.

To his credit, blowhard ESPN yapper Cris Carter said in an emotional interview that his mother was wrong to beat him and that the beatings have to stop.

No one can argue that cycles of violence and poverty are particularly crushing to the demographics Barkley so cavalierly defends.

So we can all see what tough love can do.

Maybe it’s time we encourage one another to try it with just a little less tough and a little more love.

Related . . .

What to say when you see a parent mistreat a child

The Baltimore Rays and NFL’s on-going disgrace

NFL Championships rooting guide: Who to hate

(1,089 words)

One of the most disappointing aspects about being middle-aged mature is I sense I’m becoming too nice. How nice?

I’m so sweet I could cause cancer in lab rats.

And I’ll thank you for not pressing my family for help in defining what I mean by  “sweet” and “middle-aged mature.”

Example: It’s the NFL’s Championship Weekend and I’m finding it hard to hate, and hatred is an essential for those of us living in cities rooting for teams that’ve tanked. I love the Pittsburgh Steelers, but the Pittsburgh Steelers are gone and if I can’t love I have to hate.

So whom do I hate?

The four teams remaining are the Seattle Seahawks, San Francisco 49ers, the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots.

Let’s break ‘em down.

• The New England Patriots -- You’d think hating New England would be easy and it usually is. Their coach is a cheater and their quarterback is a whiny pretty boy.

They are the first team to field and promote an honest-to-goodness serial killer, he being Aaron Hernandez. I hate teams that have receivers who habitually interfere with defenders on long pass plays. Interference is one thing. Murder is worse, although you’d be right to be confused after watching fan reaction to replays of egregious penalties.

It’s likely, however, that all of Hernandez’s victims were Patriot fans so that’s sort of a wash.

But I have had some nice times in Boston and my innate Boston hatreds began softening last year with the marathon bombing. I applauded the way they came together and truly marveled at the championship run the Red Sox put together.

And there’s this: the whole American idea was instigated by New England liberals and I respect that. So if Rush Limbaugh and guys like Ted Cruz are going to be furious that a bunch of Kennedy’s are going to get falling down drunk -- well, happily falling down drunk -- if the Patriots win, then I can put aside my primal hatreds for Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Hatred factor: 7.

• Seattle Seahawks -- The Patriots had a serial killer on their team, but it’s likely no team’s ever had more serial killer fans than the Seahawks. In fact, they all hung out the same bar in nearby border-hugging Bellingham. It’s the Waterfront Seafood & Bar and I got to enjoy a fine expense-account drunk there one night in 2003. At one time or another serial killers Ted Bundy, Hillside Strangler Ken Bianchi and D.C. sniper John Muhammed all used to get shitfaced there.

Bartender Wally Oyen had served all three and said they were all pretty decent guys and good customers, despite the fact that the three were responsible for the deaths of at least 50 innocents. He said, “You just never know. Bianchi was the nicest guy in the world.”

Just so you know he’s not all sunshine, he did have some harsh words for regular James Allen Kinney who in 1998 beheaded a woman. “Now, that guy was just a real obnoxious ass.”

I’ve forgiven Seattle for acting like so many whiny little bitches when the Steelers beat them in the 2006 Super Bowl, and I’d like to see a guy like Oyen happy so my Seattle hatreds are minimal. Hatred factor: 3.

• San Francisco 49ers -- My darling wife and I honeymooned in San Francisco in 1996 and a more splendid time I can’t imagine. It was a great place to start a marriage. We road the trolley cars, climbed the steps at Lombard Street, visited Alcatraz and enjoyed the stinking walruses lounging on the floats at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Best part? We on a postcard pretty day took a bottle of champagne, a sleeve of plastic cups, and strolled the sidewalk to the center of the Golden Gate Bridge. I popped the bottle and poured a dozen glasses for happy strangers and announced, “My sweetheart and I just got married and we want to share our happiness with you and the world!”

It’s a very international city and we were toasted best wishes to a long and happy marriage in maybe a dozen different tongues. At least I think that’s what they were saying. They could have been saying, “We love free hootch!”

Either way, I truly love San Francisco. It’ll always have a special place in our hearts.

So it’s too bad the 49ers have already won 5 Super Bowls, just one fewer than the Steelers. We can’t share our Super Bowl best titles with any other city. So, sorry, San Fran. Hatred factor: 8.

Denver Broncos -- The nearest I’ve been to Denver is 30,000 feet -- straight up. It’s one of the few major American cities in which I’ve never set foot. So they’ve got that going for them. All cities look better from a distance where you can’t hear any all the obnoxious big mouths. And I’m fond of the Broncos for the many times they were AFC doormats for the Steelers on one of our many marches to the Super Bowl.

I met John Elway at a celebrity golf tournament where I was interviewing celebs about their golf games. He was kind to me so he’s got that karma thingie working for him.

My old college roommate is in Denver and he’s a great guy. I saw him in Vegas last year and we had a blast. And he bought! So . . . Go Denver!

And another friend of mine from my old Nashville Banner days lives there. He’s a great guy, too. He actually outdid my old college roommate by helping me get a long string of fun paying gigs doing offbeat travel stories for msnbc.com from 2009-12. That it ended ugly when they cruelly slashed the pay wasn’t any of his fault either. So I still owe him a big solid. So . . . Go Denver!

There. Now, we’re even!

And I really like Peyton Manning. He’s fantastic. Great guy. Funny. A gamer. Plus, he was schooled by the great former coach and former Steeler/Chuck Noll protege Tony Dungy. So Manning was weaned on stories of the Super Steelers from the ‘70s. Again . . . Go Denver! Hatred factor, 2.

So here’s what I hope happens this weekend: Seahawks beat the 49ers; Broncos beat the Patriots.

And then I’d like to see the Broncos beat the Seahawks in a Super Bowl that is postponed for historically bad weather until March, which will be highly entertaining.

See, I’m a sweet guy, but I still have plenty of gripes about the NFL. Hatred factor, 10.

Related . . .

The toughest bar in America

NFL playoffs: a rooting fan’s guide

Can’t hate the Packers, but . . .

America needs an all-gay NFL team

(685 words)

I had two questions when I heard that Jason Collins of the NBA was coming out as the first openly gay athlete: Who is Jason Collins and who gives a crap about the NBA?

Only in the numbskulled realm of professional sports could this possibly be hailed as big news.

But yesterday it was all anyone was talking about. Everyone wanted to know how Collins’s announcement will this go over in the locker rooms.

Will there be tension? Will there be anger? Will there be ridicule?

Me, I’m hoping there will be romance.

I’d like to see one of Collins’s Washington Wizard’s teammates tell reporters that he’d been confused when he heard it was biologically possible for any professional athlete to be homosexual.

“I went to confront Jason over his sexual orientation in the shower, our eyes met, we embraced and our teammates all went as one, ‘Ahhhhh . . .’”

And they lived happily ever after.

Now, that would be a story.

I’m opposed to discrimination of any sorts against anyone, but I hope I live long enough where I see a day where people tease and berate men for being stupid jocks.

I love professional sports while being pretty sure I wouldn’t like any professional athletes.

Except Arnold Palmer!

It’s the tendency toward being meatheaded bullies that gets to me and historically there’s no greater target for them than the ones they suspect of being gay.

Yes, our biggest and strongest often pick on the small and the weak. It appalls me every time.

So I do admire Collins for taking this one small step -- if any 7-foot-tall man could ever be said to take a small step.

Nothing in our history can match the rapidity of American gays going from social pariahs to being accepted -- celebrated even -- just for being who they are.

Collins was hailed for his decision to come forward and fielded congratulatory calls from Presidents Obama and Clinton.

It has me wondering if I’d get to chat with any cool celebs if in tomorrow’s blog I announced I was gay. I’m going to have to sleep on it. 

But there’s no denying: being out is in.

Collins’s announcement led me to spend a good deal of time thinking about craven greedmeister Roger Goodell -- and I’ll try and forgive Collins for that.

I guarantee you the NFL commissioner is right now scouring his files -- and the FBI should be so efficient -- to find out if any of his homosexual players are brave enough to come out.

He wants the NFL, not the NBA, to be at the forefront of social issues. He believes America should look to professional football for its cues on what is right and what is wrong.

And in this regard he is absolutely correct.

Damn it.

This won’t be big news until a marquee NFL football player comes out and shouts he is gay! Gay! Gay!

This confession will make me seem small, but the Steeler fan in me prays it’ll be Tom Brady.

Me, I’d like go even further than Goodell. I won’t care if one player comes out.

I want an entire team of ass-kicking gays.

I want one courageous owner to say for the good of America he is going to field an entire squad of homosexuals. And I want that team to play tough, smart football and I want that team to win.

Imagine the stereotypes that would shatter. 

My experience tells me about 50 percent of the seats at any NFL game are filled by bigots and homophobes.

Seeing a team composed entirely of talented homosexuals would open the eyes and shut the mouths of idiot fans who reflexively yell “Faggot!” any time a player misses a tackle or drops an open-field pass.

It will be monumental.

It will signal America is finally becoming the place it’s always boasted it was: a place where no man or woman is judged by how they look, who they worship or who they love.

Can I still be a good progressive and say I just hope that team is not the Pittsburgh Steelers?

Related . . .

A gay news extravaganza

The gayest sports figure in Pittsburgh history

Gay marriage: Be still my beating heart

My gay friend John

Replacement refs? NFL must be joking

(725 words)

The conventions are now history and neither party did a thing to address the looming national crisis that by Monday is destined to plunge the country into a real depression.

Not a financial one.

A football one.

Are you ready for some NFL Replacement Refs football!

It’s a certainty that the dominant Monday storyline of the first week of professional football will be ridiculously blown calls.

Understand, blown calls are a dominant story line every week. No sport suffers more from poor officiating than the NFL.

This is curious because no sport is more over-officiated than the NFL.

Each game is regulated by seven on-field officials and a replay official who has access to 20 different cameras.

That’s almost one official for every two players, all under constant hi-def surveillance.

Felons in our maximum security prisons aren’t as carefully monitored, and these are men who’ve committed rape, murder, assault and various crimes involving narcotics and motor vehicles.

Of course, to be fair to our felons, many of those crimes have been committed by superstar members of the Baltimore Ravens, too, but let’s try to keep this on topic.

Over-officiating wouldn’t bother me if it led to correct calls in a timely manner. It never does.

It’s infuriating to sit at home or, worse, in freezing rain in an $86 stadium seat for upwards of three static minutes watching the referees confer and then -- whoops! -- blow the call.

They say a ball’s not a fumble when replays clearly show it boing-boing-boinging along the turf, that a backward pass actually traveled forward, or that a malicious Cro-Magnon lineman is innocent of clotheslining a precious quarterback when we can all see his severed head spinning there along the sidelines.

Instant replay has made the on-field officials incapable of making firm calls on obvious infractions.

I thought I came up with the perfect solution last year: First, get rid of instant replay and all but two officials -- one for the offense, one for the defense -- and ask the players to agree to play under the honor system.

That means if a player commits a foul, he needs to raise his hand and confess his infraction. Then he needs to apologize to the player he’s victimized while one of the two referees steps off the penalty yardage.

I’m baffled that the NFL, an organization that earns in excess of $9 billion a year, is risking the integrity of its game and the safety of its players in a dispute that amounts to chump change.

Many casual fans are surprised to learn regular refs are part-timers. They spend their work week practicing law, teaching school and doing a variety of regular Joe jobs (I found no evidence any of them works in optometric fields).

Why anyone would want to officiate NFL games as a sort of hobby is a mystery. Death threats over blown calls aren’t uncommon. I guess the Kevlar body suits needed to join the local bomb squads are just too uncomfortable.

So the NFL’s too cheap to invest in more professional refereeing, blown calls are rampant, and the expensive games keep getting longer and longer.

What are we going to do?

Call Enrico Palazzo!

He was the combination opera singer/home plate umpire who saved the day in Leslie Nielsen’s “The Naked Gun” (1988). He didn’t just call balls and strikes.

He goosed the players. He played to the crowd. He moonwalked.

The game he umped was one of the most entertaining sporting events I’ve ever witnessed -- and that’s not even counting the part where he heroically stopped Reggie Jackson’s attempted assassination of Queen Elizabeth.

Clown NFL umpires could entertain the crowd during the interminable time when the ball’s not in play.

Fact: every NFL games includes just about 11 minutes of the actual action. The remainder of the afternoon is just a bunch of people watching a bunch of guys mostly just standing around -- as good an excuse to guzzle $8 domestic beers as any.

A squad of bumbling Enrico Palazzos would enliven the often tedious day.

The Catholic Church takes itself less seriously than the NFL. It could use some levity.

Clown refs would be hilarious.

Funnier even than the joke the NFL’s about to force us all to witness Sunday afternoon.

Related

• Solution to NFL over-officiating: armless linemen!

• NFL not rich enough: Needs ‘throwforward’ jerseys