We interrupt this debate to bring you this helpful news alert: The world has a new reigning jackass.
This jackass, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a professional football player. The NFL seems to breed a bigger crop of jerks and street thugs with every passing year. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more outrageous than Keyshawn Johnson saying that a female reporter needed to be spanked, along comes Gerard Warren to snatch Johnson's crown away.
Warren is a defensive end for the Cleveland Browns, whose season is disintregrating before our very eyes, as you may have noticed. It doesn't figure to get any better this weekend, when they receive a visit from old rival and current giant-killer Pittsburgh. Evidently, Warren decided his team needed some firing up, which in itself wasn't a bad idea.
So what did Warren do to get his teammates going? Did he purchase them motivational tapes from Tony Robbins? No, he decided that he would attempt a flagrant hit on Pittsburgh's sensational rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Not only that, he announced his intentions to the media in advance. Always a good idea when you're planning to do something against the rules, no?
And Warren, bless him, didn't just issue a vague threat like, "We're going to try to get to the kid." No, that would leave far too much to the imagination. Instead, Warren helpfully supplied details, saying that he wanted to "go across [Roethlisberger's] head a time or two" and plant his elbow in the rookie's throat. He capped it all off with the kind of quote that sticks in the head:
"One rule they used to tell me: Kill the head and the body's dead."
This is a quote pulled directly from the Carlos the Jackal Motivational Handbook. (Actually, I seem to recall hearing that G. Gordon Liddy said something similar in front of one of the Kennedy kids, but that's another story.) And Warren knows illegal hits: he was fined earlier in his career for a crushing blindside hit on Mark Brunell, back when Brunell was a frisky 50-something down in Jacksonville.
A quote like that is plenty enough to qualify Warren for Idiot of the Year honors. But now comes the interesting part: What will Warren do in the actual game?
If Warren so much as breathes on Roethlisberger, he might as well send a telegram to the league office: "DEAR TAGS STOP PLEASE FINE ME STOP FINE ME REAL REAL BIG STOP A SUSPENSION WOULD BE GOOD TOO STOP YOURS CORDIALLY GERALD". When a repeat offender announces he's going to try to cripple one of the league's rising stars and then does, even the NFL has to look up long enough to notice, assuming they're not too busy cracking down on players displaying unauthorized tributes to dead friends on their uniforms.
And if Warren doesn't lay a hand on the kid, you can bet that the Steelers will have a few remarks of their own in the post-game. Something about an alligator mouth and a hummingbird ass. Warren almost has to try to kill Roethlisberger to save face around the league. I can't wait.
The NFL, as usual, is right on top of this. Reports have it that the league has issued a sterm warning to Warren for his remarks. Reportedly, discussions are ongoing on whether to send Warren to bed without supper.
If it were me, I'd say forget the warning. If Warren is so excited about killing people, I say let's give him a gun and send him to Iraq. Our guys could use a hand, and Warren seems like the kind of can-do soldier who'd love nothing more than toting an M-16 and wiping out insurgents.
It's a violent world, friends. Bill Veeck once said of the '70s, "The sports that fit the time were football, hockey and mugging." Veeck was a wise man, and his words ring true again today. Death? Mayhem? Blood and guts? Pass the popcorn.
Posted by Fred at November 12, 2004 07:44 PM