Bursting Football Speech
We were down 21 0 at the half when I gave a speech. Our field was located a good half mile walk from the locker rooms, so at halftime, we would retreat to a filthy hovel of a room situated under the cement stands on our side of the field. It was always moist in there. I bet the walls were covered in spider eggs. The benches were ancient and looked like they could give you a thousand splinters just from one swipe. I think I would have preferred just retreating to an end zone and chilling there for the half, but this room gave us privacy. And when you're down 21 0, and you haven't beaten your main rivals for six straight years, you need a place to hide.
I was a senior. I had already been benched for a better guy WAY earlier in the season. I couldn't pass block. I couldn't pull. (Incidentally, pulling is the fucking worst. If you see an o lineman successfully execute a pull on TV, give him a standing O because that shit is impossible. Whenever a play called for me to pull, I prayed that it got changed at the line of scrimmage so that I wouldn't have to pull. When pulling, I always tripped, or ran into the center, or pulled so slowly that the back ran into me. Pulling is impossible). Once in a while I got in a token series at left guard, but otherwise my football career was all but over. One college liked me as a prospect, but that was only because they had put in the tape and mistaken me for another player. I didn't correct them. I'm no dummy. Why yes, I am 68. THE ROAD GRADER.
The coaches yelled at us and made some strategic adjustments (I think?), and then they vacated the crawlspace and left us alone. That's a big coach move: to yell at your guys and then leave them alone so that they can yell at each other some more on your behalf. Once the coaches were out of the room, no one said much of anything. A few guys muttered, "This fucking sucks," and "Come the fuck on, guys," but that was about it. I had never given any speeches to the team because I sucked. About the only time I ever got vocal was on the sidelines with the rest of benchwarmers, screaming out FIRE IT UP, RED as loud as I could. I must have yelled that a thousand times. I went real deep with my voice for it too, like an ump. Listen to my deep voice, everyone my Shannon Sharpe Jersey penis is very large! If I had been standing next to me on the sidelines, I would have rolled my eyes.
Anyway, no one was talking and, because I am an attention whore, I felt compelled to finally speak up. You can get away with being a benchwarmer and giving a speech if you happen to be a senior, because seniors have, like, seen some shit. And you can only pull that off one time, at the most. No one's gonna listen to a scrub senior more than once. If you wanna be Mister Motivational, you better be a John Elway Jersey team captain or a quarterback or someone who's really fucking good and clearly carrying the rest of the team.
"I'm so fucking sick of this. Authentic John Elway Jersey We fucking lose this game year after year after fucking year." (It's important to swear a lot.) "Is this how you wanna fucking go out? You wanna be part of THIS tradition, the tradition of losing? I DON'T!" I was really yelling now, like Hey that guy needs to chill yelling. "You don't fucking let this happen. You don't fucking sit here, hanging your heads, feeling sorry for yourselves because you think it's already over. GOD DAMMIT YOU GO OUT THERE AND YOU FUCKING KICK THEM IN THE FUCKING ASS!"
Now, I don't think I played a single down that half. If I did, it wasn't an important down. But in my mind, I TOTALLY gave myself credit for engineering the comeback. I was just like Homer Simpson taking false credit for his bowling league victories. Of course, the real reason we came back to win was because Eric, our running back, ran for over 200 yards. But I was already completely deluded. After the game, a couple of dudes were like, "Hey, who gave that speech? That was Drew?" And I was like OH YES, THAT WAS ME.
In general, a sports speech is delivered mostly to satisfy the ego of the person delivering it. Watch any NFL Films clip of Ray Lewis firing up his teammates for the eight thousandth time if you'd like proof. Just by telling you that dopey high school football glory days story, I'm engaging in a self aggrandizing, masturbatory exercise. It's a daydream. If you've watched enough movies where the hero gives a speech, (Braveheart, Gladiator, Patton, etc.), pretty soon you picture yourself doing likewise. Because in those movies, the players and/or soldiers are just automatons. The leading is more lionized than the action. I've muttered UNLEASH HELL to myself a thousand times at completely random moments. There's the illusion that your words have such remarkable power that they can magically unlock the talents and ambitions of those around you. MY WORDS! MY POWERFUL WORDS! Everyone wants to be seen as a leader. Everyone wants to be followed. Everyone wants what they say to matter and have a tangible effect on the real world.
8. Get fucking fired up. No I mean it. Shoot yourself full of Toradol, get red in the face, and GET FIRED UP, GOD DAMMIT. You see this chair? [throws chair] I'M NOT LEAVING THIS STADIUM UNTIL BLOOD HAS BEEN SHED AND WE HAVE WALKED OUT OF THERE WITH ALL OF THE ENEMY'S GOLD AND WOMEN! You are not men today, men. You are fucking WOLVES. You were born under a dark moon and raised to hunt and ache for raw flesh. You are drooling fangbeasts that live only to KILL. And they will see it in your eyes, men. They will see the dark hunger inside of you and know that DOOM awaits them, just before you slice through them and show them their beating hearts OH GOD FUCK YEAHHHHHHH!!!!
Colts (+7) 38, Broncos 24. They have to demote Phil Simms after this season. Something has to be done. I don't think he has anything to say other than "Good call!" any time something happens. For real, if you run a fullback dive up the middle on 3rd and 56, Simms will be like, "I like this call here, JEEM!" There are no bad calls in the Simms universe. Do these guys get personnel evaluations at the end of the season? I wanna be there when an HR person sits down with Simms and evaluates him while Simms sit there, failing to comprehend any of it. "I'm being evaluaeeted?!"
This is all crap. These owners didn't become billionaires by SHARING. They all want to beat the piss out of one another, and they'll do virtually anything to get an advantage, both economically and on the field (By the way, I used to be all right with Tirico, but he's become such an ardent shill for the NFL that it's hard to take him seriously anymore). There will always be teams that naturally draw higher ratings, or teams situated in more favorable geographic areas, or teams that attract more attention simply due to their historic record of success and/or general popularity. And Roger Goodell has his own club of darling teams: the Giants and Steelers and Packers, etc. He loves any team that makes the NFL help sell its horseshit.
It's no coincidence that teams like the Bills and Browns have struggled over the past few decades as their cities have experienced grave economic misfortune. Neither team can attract top tier coaching or GM talent, and they aren't raking in Fuck You Money side deals from Pepsi like the Cowboys can. The Double J may have to stay within the confines of the salary cap, but he can still ensconce his boys in a plush stadium and whisk them around on a private jet and surround them with insanely hot women and, on occasion, stumble upon a team that's good enough to make a run. There will always be that marquee effect that gives one team a boost over the rest of the league's derelicts. And that's why Lions fans were so pissed about that call. It was yet Authentic Shannon Sharpe Jersey another reminder that the Cowboys, for all of their atrocious mismanagement, are blessed with certain advantages that Detroit cannot ever have. For them to get ONE MORE goddamn perk in the form of a PI non call that would break any fan.
By the way, I wrote a very reluctant defense of Skip Bayless this week and now I feel dirty and gross. And some people replied that Bayless had no right to offer a "medical" opinion on whether or not Manziel is an alcoholic (Bayless didn't even use the term with confidence, btw). Oh, so I need a fucking official diagnosis to talk about this now? Let me just go procure a note from my local alcoholicologist so that I'm licensed to talk about Johnny Football getting shitfaced on an inflatable duck.
Patriots ( 7) 20, Ravens 17. For the record, you only get a Super Bowl ring if you're a member of the team's active roster at the time of the victory. If you get traded or cut during the season, it's up to ownership to decide if you get one (SPOILER: You get nothing!). That means that Ray Rice will NOT get a Super Bowl ring if the Ravens win it all. Instead, he will be turned into a vague abstraction and presented as an obstacle that the Ravens bravely overcame on their way to football immortality.
Imagine that trophy presentation. It will be ghastly. Imagine Cris Collinsworth saying, "After all they've been through " as confetti strews down on John Harbaugh and his bitchy bitchface. Imagine the fucking Ginger Hammer, standing up there like a pud, proclaiming, "What a fantastic season! Steve, your team fought through so much adversity and now you can call yourselves champions!" I'm telling you, lightning would strike the dais if that happened. God is cruel and unreasonable, but even He wouldn't just sit there and let that moment happen.
Oregon ( 7) 49, Ohio State 28. I figured that Oregon wore all green uniforms during the Rose Bowl to camouflage themselves and get an edge over Florida State. Why, it's like they're invisible! Where ARE they?! But now they're switching over to white and gray unis for this game, and the edge has been lost. I'm telling you: If Oregon blows this, it'll totally be because Ohio State can see them now. You had a good thing going, Oregon. Your hunger for maximizing merch revenue may cost you in the end.
"This week, I like the Broncos ( 7) to run roughhog all over the Minneapolis Colts! Not gonna make a pick in that Cowboys game, HOOOOOO! I will accuse myself on that one! That's a clear cockflick of internists! But I will say this: Don't sleet on those Cowboys. I know there was some counterVersace at the end of that Lions game. And I know people didn't like the sight of New Journey gunter Cris Carter hanging out in the lucky Shannon Sharpe Broncos Jersey box with Mr. Jones. He's our good fuck arm! But these Cowboys they STRIVE on diversity. Doubt them at your own fist!"
Ryan Lindley. The worst part of the whole Lindley fiasco was how announcers tried to be so nice to him. At the beginning of every start, they were like, "Tell you what, we asked Bruce Arians if he was gonna change his game plan for Lindley, but he's still gonna be Bruce Arians! Lindley really got comfortable after finally throwing those two touchdowns he'll never throw again!" It was like listening to a Baghdad bob radio broadcast. There's a difference between going easy on a guy and just blatantly living in fantasyland.
So we were checking out of our hotel for the weekend and we all were dragging after a long night of partying and my friends and I slowly eek towards the reception area to check out. While we all discuss the highlights of the weekend, and who was the most deep in the hole as far as gambling went, we noticed something. Standing outside of the 15 ft plane of glass that revealed the inviting atmosphere of the hotel, there stood a tall, thin woman eerily lurking between a Honda and Mercedes. I direct everyone in the lobby's attention as this woman proceeds to squat in between the two cars and drop trou and take a what I can only describe is a Snickers sized dump right there in between two vehicles. A singular log of shit. Everyone in the lobby is a mix between retching and standing agape at what is currently happening. Little did we know, it was about to get even better.
Trader Joe's John Elway Broncos Jersey Cinnamon almonds. If you need shellacked nuts and large plastic tubs of very small cookies, Trader Joe's is the place for you. But if you need, like, an orange, TJ's is of absolutely NO help. Remember: Trader Joes' is NOT a grocery store. If you're going on a standard grocery run, it's much better to hit up the local PathGiantKrogWay, and then go over to Trader Joe's for all the frozen shu mai you require. If you think you'll be able to tick off everything on a grocery list just by going there, you are in for a HUGE disappointment. Also, the parking lot is always hell on Earth.
"Baby, my final MVP pick is still JJ WATT OF THE TEXANS! So excited for the movie Selma, featuring my dear late friend Doctor Martin Luther King! Revolutionary? YOU BET! Loud in the sack? YOU COULD HEAR HIM FROM MY POOL HOUSE. I feted Dr. King on many occasions back in the 1960s. Well, after once such soiree featuring much champagne and Warren Beatty humping a rosemary bush, I got a call from none other than J. EDGAR HOOVER! Turns out, he had my whole place bugged by the Feds! 'Gimme what you got on King,' he demanded. But see, Hoover had made the first mistake! Demanding is the act of a man who needs something! I told him no way, baby.
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City girls getting into the sport Ryan Clady Jersey of polo From York Press
President Obama's choice of a wooden polo mallet for Prince George's first birthday was seen as the perfect gift for a royal baby. But when Prince George grows up enough to join the family tradition and play the Sport of Kings, he may find it has changed a great deal. To play polo today all you need is the nerve to take the first step into an adrenalin filled world and join in the exhilarating ride.
With the number of polo clubs in the UK having doubled in the last decade, and new members registering all the time, it is one of the fastest growing sports and now accessible to all. You may still end up drinking Champagne with the rich and famous and you will definitely meet some awe inspiring riders, but to join in you don't have to own a pony, or any equipment.
In fact, according to Claudia Aylott of the White Rose Polo Club, you don't even have to know how to ride. The club, at Townend Farm, North Cliffe, is the largest in Yorkshire.
Today the White Rose Polo Club has 60 ponies, lots of staff, a coach and professional player and its own polo pitch where chukkas are played at least three times a week. It regularly hosts tournaments including the Yorkshire Open Championship, The Summit Cup, and the Ladies Open Tournament.
It offers hen parties, birthday parties and corporate days, as well as private and group lessons for experienced and non experienced riders, and by the end of every lesson, everyone ends up playing a chukka.
"You can learn to ride just as you would for polo. Some people learn very quickly. It is addictive, once people have one lesson they want to come back. I have never had a lesson where anyone ever said they did not like it. All you need for a lesson is to wear is sensible shoes, a hat, and a mallet," she says.
Beginners, for example at a hen party, will start off learning how swing the mallets, have a go on a wooden horse, then on Womens Von Miller Jersey a real one, and finish up having a go at playing, leaving aside time for strawberries and Champagne.
"Lots of ladies are attracted because it is competitive, ladies are very competitive," she laughs. "I think for ladies the attraction is there anyway. A lot of ladies love horses, and some who come have got to a certain stage where they have tried eventing, or dressage, and this is something different, this is a team sport, and highly competitive. It is an exhilarating sport, it is challenging, it is a real skill, it Authentic Ryan Clady Jersey takes time to get good, and you always feel you have more to learn. It's a team sport, and it's fun!"
Polo is one of the few sports where both sexes can and do play together. They are both rated together on a handicap scale, and final scores take the discrepancy into account. For club member Joan Gough, 55, this is another of the attractions of the sport; "You can all be completely equal, men and women, and all ages." After giving up riding for thirty years she took it back up again eight years ago and joined the Authentic Von Miller Jersey club: "It becomes part of Von Miller Jersey your family life," she says.
There is definitely an air of jollity around the women who play polo. Similar to any high adrenaline, challenging sport, it brings you to life, it makes you fit, and it makes you feel happy. And of course there is the added attraction of the horses. The sport is all about speed, and whilst the stocky Argentinian polo ponies are very fast and tough, there is a growing trend to use retrained racehorses.
The White Rose Club retrains thoroughbreds from some of the many nearby racing yards in Yorkshire. In one chukka, which is one quarter of the match, the ponies could run one to two miles, so they have to be rested. You can't play a pony in more than two chukkas and these can't be consecutive. For Suzanne Hart this is the attraction of polo, it is all about "battling with another sentient being" .
She describes herself as "a bit older than 55" and is one of the women who took up riding in later life, seven years ago, and began to play polo. "Polo is a challenge, it is a chance to get right out of your comfort zone, it stretches you in every way, it gives your heart a scare every day, it is frightening I love it!" she says.
In a match there are four chukkas, one chukka lasts seven and a half minutes, you can't play a pony in more than two chukkas and they can't be consecutive.
The Argentine polo pony is a cross between a thoroughbred and a Criollo. Lately retired racehorses are being retrained to play polo. High goal teams like thoroughbreds because they are so fast.
High Goal Team describes a team whose players have a high grade handicap. The lowest handicap grade is S and it rises through 2, 1, 0, to 10.
There are only a few 10 goalers in the world, and most of them are Argentinian. Members of the English team would be 7 or 8, the best woman player has a handicap of 4, anyone over 2 is often a professional player.
Teams are handicapped by adding up the score, this makes it a level playing field for scoring, the discrepancy is shown on the score board, so for example there may be a one goal head start for a poor handicap.
The aim of the game is to score as many goals as possible, after each goal ends the direction of the players changes.
Each player has a job in the team, for example Number 1 scores goals, Number 4 passes balls forward and defends the goal.
The mallet swings like a pendulum, and you hit the ball, which is made out of hard plastic and about the size of an orange, with the middle of the mallet.
At the end of each chukka you have two and a half minutes to change over to new horses.
The cost of a private polo lesson at the White Rose Polo Club is 55.
White Rose Polo Club offers a Zero to Hero six lesson course for 250, which promises to teach you from scratch, even if Womens Ryan Clady Jersey you can't ride, to get to a level called constructional chukkas. Constructional chukkas is polo where you are taught as you go along. You can then join the Polo Club.
There are more than 70 polo clubs in the UK, a figure that has doubled in a decade, and some 3,000 registered players. There has also been a dramatic increase in young enthusiasts, with more than 1,500 school and university players registered nationwide.
Chiefs should have postponed game
As regular readers of this column may already be aware, I spend a great many hours each fall watching the National Football League on CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network.
However, as much as I enjoy watching professional football, the rationale behind the Kansas City Chiefs decision to play their scheduled game against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday baffles me.
After linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, in front of his own mother, he drove to the Chiefs practice facility and shot and killed himself in front of general manager Scott Piori and head coach Authentic Karl Mecklenburg Jersey Romeo Crennel.
Reports out of Kansas City say Piori and Crennel were about three feet away from Belcher when he blew his brains out, disregarding their pleas for no further violence.
Crennel and the team captains reportedly felt it would help the team healing process if they played the game instead of postponing it. But other reports quoted unnamed players as saying they were confused and stunned and didn want to play.
If Crennel, who by all accounts, is a fine man, could handle the situation psychologically, then that how he processes grief. I have no issue with how someone handles their grief, as long as they do it nonviolently.
But, I wonder if the decision truly was their own, as the league office stated, or if they felt pressure while in a very emotionally vulnerable state not to postpone the game.
Whatever the Chiefs Karl Mecklenburg Broncos Jersey felt, the fact remains that two Karl Mecklenburg Jersey human beings were lying on slabs in the morgue, not yet laid to rest with personal tributes or consoling words for the families, while two teams played an utterly inconsequential football game.
The moment of silence for victims of domestic violence before the game indicated that the public relations personnel were not entirely tone deaf. Yet, it seemed like a meaningless talking point that someone pulled off the printer in a conference room. It didn seem like a tribute to a 22 year old woman slain by the father of their 3 month old daughter.
In fact, the subtext of the decision to play the game one day after the murder suicide is that selling the game, or the shield, as they say in the league office, is more important than human life.
The public relations value of each October Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign by the NFL is transparent. More women than ever before are NFL fans. The league own statistics show that.
Regardless of how much the players adorn their apparel with pink, it can erase the red stain of Authentic Demaryius Thomas Jersey blood on all the athletes who have injured or killed their wives or girlfriends.
Belcher majored in child development and family relations at the University of Maine, where he was the student coordinator of a group called Male Athletes Against Violence.
If a man like that can kill a woman, what are women supposed to think about the men who put football above Perkins Womens Demaryius Thomas Jersey memory?
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