So anyway, I don't normally write about sports. It's boring. Really boring. With the exception of SI's Peter King, I have yet to find anyone in sports writing that can keep my attention for more than a paragraph or so. Add to that that I'm really not much of a sports enthusiast, and one has a solid case against me that I should in no way be writing about any sport of any kind. I don't like basketball...at ALL. I average about one whole hockey game a decade. I don't care that soccer is the most popular sport in the world...it's gay...really gay - Liberace gay. Golf...fuck, don't even get me started on golfing. It's not a sport - it's a game. There's a fucking difference. A sport requires some form of athleticism...of which there is absolutely none in golf. Fuck the textbook definition of a sport, for me, it's defined as something that requires both athleticism and talent. With just one or the other, it ain't a fuckin' sport...it's a game. With golf, you hit a ball with a stick, you walk after it, and hit it again. I can hit a ball with a stick, and I can walk. No one is ever going to accuse me of being an athlete. I don't give a shit that Tiger is a fucking billionaire...he's still not an athlete. So golf...NOT A FUCKING SPORT! I follow baseball just enough to know what's going on, and know which team's I do and don't like and generally why. I know marquee players when I see them, and I like going to Kaufman once in a while to see a live game. That's my world of baseball. I don't buy into the whole "baseball is the 'thinking man's' sport" bullshit. I'll admit, there's a design to it; there's strategy and nuance. But at the end of the day, most sports can say the same thing - it's just that the rest of them have added a certain level of physicality to that idea. Fat guys can play baseball...and be amazing! Do you ever see fat, world-class tennis stars...I don't think so. Sorry, bit of a digression there - point: baseball - sport yes; king of sports...not so much.
Then...there's football - the one sport I follow, particularly our local "team" - and the real subject of my little thought here for today. For me, football is just as intricate as baseball, if not more so. Again I refer back to the physicality of it - I offer that football is just as, if not more "thoughtful" than baseball...they just added a certain, shall we say, gladiator element. Fat guys play football too...they're called linemen, they have to be big in order to keep the other team from getting shit done. I will admit, even after watching football regularly for the better part of 20 years, I still don't understand the play-calling. I still don't have the first-fuck of a clue what a 'play-action' or 'screen play' are. I don't have the faintest idea what the differences between nickel, dime, 3-4, and 4-3 defenses are. But I can follow the game. I know what I'm seeing when plays work, and when they don't - and generally can spot the reason (or player) behind that success or failure. I'm familiar with more than just the marquee players for most of the teams in the league. And even in these "darkest of days", I'm still a die-hard Chiefs fan. They're not making it easy, but they're still my guys. It's times like this that you have to maintain your loyalty to your team - "Harvest is when they need you the most." Anything else, and you're just a 'fair-weather' fan and the team doesn't need you anyway. I hate fair-weather fans...fuck you! Go watch figure skating you prick! Digressing again, I know; anyway... Teams have their "rebuilding" years. KC has been rebuilding for about a decade now. Although in all fairness, I think this year truly meets the criteria for a rebuilding team - what with a new GM, new Head Coach, new (supposed) Superstar QB, and a roster with about 65% new faces (75% of whom are rookies).
So, I went through all of that...to get to this - my point: finally, the moment happened that (I'm guessing) most of Chiefs fandom has been waiting for for almost three years - Larry Johnson was fired yesterday! Hoo-fuckin'-Rah! There comes a time when certain elements or individuals become nothing but poison for a team, and lately, that poison for the Kansas City Chiefs, was RB Larry Johnson. And so they cut him out, like the cancer that he was. For the uninitiated, here's a summarized timeline of "LJ", and please note that it's vague and generalized, at best - I have neither the time, nor interest in looking up the specifics:
2004 (ish) - Priest Holmes is injured, opening the door for RB Johnson (who's spent a season-and-a-half bitching about being second banana to superior back Holmes); it's surmised that had Johnson been given a full season as starter, he might have broken every single-season running record in the league; then-coach Dick Vermeil makes the mistake of analogizing Johnson's newfound starting position to a baby taking off its diapers. Let the whining commence...
2005 & 2006 - Johnson becomes one of the (if not the the) top runners in the league; you can see his head inflate from the International Space Station...
2007 - Johnson holds out of training camp for more money (which is publicly chronicled on HBO's Hard Knocks), opting instead to pimp-it-out in his Miami condo all summer, goofing off and playing Playstation versions of himself; he breaks his foot mid-season...glad we gave him all that extra money!
2008 - Johnson half-asses his way through a rough season...my grandmother could've been a more productive player that year. He publicly trashes both the team and the city; he's suspended 3 games by KC and one additional game by the league stemming from allegations of assaulting a woman in a nightclub; a second assault charge follows as a woman claims he spit in her face; fuck it, he's rich - he can do what he wants, right?!
2009 - Johnson makes nice for the new regime change in KC; still manages to average less than 3-yards-per-carry, running the ball like I would after a big Thanksgiving dinner; October, after getting CREAMED by the Chargers, he uses his Twitter account to publicly bash Head Coach Todd Haley; he then continues his Tweet tirade by responding to all his detractors resulting from said bashing by calling them all faggots...on TWITTER!!! He's suspended for two weeks, resulting in a pay loss of about $630,000; he files a grievance with the team, half the suspension is lifted, he only loses about $300,000.
Yesterday - FIRED!!! See ya, ta-ta, get lost, beat it, toss off, fuck off, get the fuck outta here!
You know, I can't imagine what I would do if I was docked $100 from my paycheck...so losing 300 grand is just unfathomable to me. In the long run, it'll be like a speed bump for Johnson. His contract reneg from 2 years ago guarantees him almost $20 million!!! He's gonna get that money from the Chiefs, and now all he has to do is sit at home with his thumb up his asshole, and watch Sports Center! The only way he really loses in all of this is if he doesn't get picked up by another team - he's 30 this year, and he's an asshole...anything's possible. But not likely. If there's a silver lining, you could even call it justice if you want, it's that he won't have the opportunity to break the Chiefs' all-time rush record (set by Priest Holmes), which he was only about 75 yards from doing. I think every football fan in KC let out a big ol' honkin' sigh of relief on that one.
Fuck Larry Johnson...fuck him in his big, stinky poop chute!
For those keeping score, with this post I've officially matched my blogging output from my first year. That's actually only half-true, seeing as I began here on blogger in June of 2005. So I did as much blogging in half the time. But still...it's kind of a milestone of sorts I guess! Right?!?! (and I'm four posts from 150...that's fairly insignifcant compared to, say, Warrior Bard postings, but, again, a big acheivement for me!)
