Pro Football? Pass the Pepper Spray!

I’ve been doing a lot of reading in United States history and writing a lot about our political system and how it has degenerated over the last few centuries. Actually, the more I read the more I realize how degenerate it was in the first place. Did you know that Washington not only owned slaves, but that during his terms of office slaves actually worked in the Presidential Mansion?

It wasn’t yet the White house, and maybe it was even called the Presidential Palace, because a lot of Americans went around addressing George as Your Majesty. (He actually preferred “His Mightiness The President.” No kidding.)

Anyway, despite of all this hard work and serious thinking, I noticed that when I wrote an entry about my frustration with the football team I follow, the New York Jets, that the readership of this blogue pretty much quintupled. Then when I write about cops arresting masked protestors and the ancient law that makes those masks are illegal, or the politics of Guy Fawkes, or government by television, the readership drops down.
Well, I think I have figured out a way to deal with this paradigm, and write about American politics while keeping the readership high. I got the idea when the police at U.C. Davis pepper sprayed the passively resisting sit-in kids, and the very casual pepper spraying fat cop, Lieutenant John Pike, became an Internet sensation. Suddenly there were images of Pike spraying the Sistine Chapel, Mount Rushmore, Guernica and Eduard Manet’s “Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe.”

And then suddenly pepper spraying began to become trendy. On black Friday a crazed Walmart bargain hunter pepper sprayed competing video-game shoppers, clearing herself a path through the crowd to a stack of X-Boxes, sending at least twenty of them for treatment. In North Carolina on Black Friday an off-duty cop pepper sprayed Walmart shoppers who were fighting over marked down smartphones.

In Connecticut Walmarts there were two Black Friday incidents of police using Tasers against unruly shoppers. In one incident a Taser was used to break up a fight over a video game. 32 year old man was tased for cutting twenty people and refusing to get back in line A few days later a Sears employee in Maine was maced while trying to stop two shoplifters and a purse snatcher in Wisconsin maced a good Samaritan attempting to stop her. The same week a 14 year old Harlem student sent nine classmates to the hospital by discharging pepper spray in their classroom and police were reported to have maced a man for cutting into a line.

Then this morning I was watching footage of an on field incident involving Detroit Lions star defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh stomping on the arm of a fallen Green Bay Packers player with his cleats. Suh, who has a $68 million contract, was suspended for two games and fined $20,000.

And last weekend I noticed how ineffective NFL officials were when fumbles occur; they just can’t seem to get players out of the pile, and we know that on the bottom of those piles players. The Jets Bart Scott has said “What goes on in a pile is sacred. You’re not supposed to talk about it,” Jets linebacker Bart Scott said half-jokingly. “People have tried to break my fingers. You do what you gotta do to get the ball out.” Ike Reese, a linebacker of the Philadephia Eagles said, Guys reach inside the face mask to gouge your eyes. But the biggest thing is the grabbing of the testicles. It is crazy.” And so the tiny referees try to haul behemoth linemen off the scrum to get to the bottom, find who now has the ball and stop the eye gouging and scrotum squeezing. Maybe it’s time to give the ref’s pepper spray.

Let’s face it a $20,000 doesn’t mean anything to psycho millionaires, but pepper spray might stop to the arm stomping and testes twisting. Let’s arm the officials! Helmet to helmet contact? Give ‘em a spritz! I’m tired of all the outrage when a player whose probably hopped up on hormones and has been exhorted to kill, not only by his direct superior, the coach, but by 80,000 drunken screaming fans, actually hurts somebody and the commentators all act like he has taken a dump in front of the Supreme Court. He is just doing his job. That’s highlight film. But when he goes into the Peewee Dance or an end zone mime routine, why not just have the umpire or the back judge pepper spray his Darth Vader helmet visor. It washes right off and this will shorten the game.
Sedrick Ellis Pee Wee Herman Dance
One way to deal with all this hypocrisy regarding the nagging problem of concussions that the NFL assures us that they are very concerned about, while trying to extend the schedule by two games, is to make sure that all the network play-by-play guys and color analysts are former players who have had concussion brain damage themselves. Usually players who are crippled or demented retire and vanish into the great silent majority. I say let’s put them in the booth!
If they are depressed, maybe the game or at least the job will cheer them up. In the 2010 season there were 162 concussions between officially reported between training camp and the Superbowl—9.35 per week, .62 concussions per game. A study of retired NFL veterans showed that over 60% had suffered concussions, and 26% had suffered more than three. (Wide receivers and defensive backs are far more likely to suffer concussions than other position players.) If there’s no risk of brain damage, let’s see how the brains work of the concussion veterans.

Let’s hear brain bruised Jet vets Al Toon and Wayne Chrebet do the Jets games. I’d certainly rather listen to them, even if they are slightly depressed, than I would listen to Monday night knuckleheads Jon “Chucky” Gruden and Ron “Jaws” Jaworski. Well, actually Jaworski says he suffered more than 30 concussions while setting the iron man quarterback record that Brett Farve broke. And who knows what working with Howard Cosell did to Jaworski’s brain. Gruden says, “I’ve learned a lot of four and five syllable words from Jaworski. I don’t even know if they’re real words.”

Wait, how many syllables is Orakpoed, three or four? Cyclothymia is five Sociopathy is five. Hey, megalomaniac is six!