Hart Surgery: Ten Plagues of Sports

By: Micah Hart

As a Jew, I am constantly trying to explain the nuances of my religion to outsiders. This week in particular, being Passover, I generally receive an extra amount of questions (usually: “Why are you eating that giant cracker?”).

Far and away the longest week of the year, Passover is basically like a Jewish version of Hell Week (to put it in fraternity terms), where we are forced to eat strange foods to prove our loyalty to the brotherhood. If you’ve ever tasted gefilte fish, you know what I am talking about.

A big part of the Passover story, to put it in layman’s terms, is Charlton Heston’s casting ten plagues over Egypt to get the Israelites out from under the despotic rule of Yul Brynner.

So in honor of the occasion, I thought I would present ten things casting a pall over the sports landscape, much like frogs and blight did back in the day.

The Ten Plagues Of Sports

1. 40 times

Here is what I don’t understand about the entire process of selecting talent for professional football. I would guess that maybe 4-5 plays a game span longer than 40 yards. So why is a player’s time in the 40-yard dash so @#$%^ important?

Every year there are guys who come to the scouting combine, run a 4.2-something, and all of a sudden they are considered God’s gift to football.

There are plenty of examples from the recent NFL draft. The Vikings, looking for a replacement for the departed Randy Moss, bypassed USC’s Mike Williams, perhaps the nation’s most dominant receiver in his two years of college, in favor of South Carolina’s Troy Williamson, he of the 4.38 40-time.

Now, I watch a ton of college football, and I can tell you I have never heard of Troy Williamson. Does that mean he can’t be a good pro? Probably not. But it’s a great example of how teams make decisions too complicated.

Mark my words; Williams will be a better pro. But because he is slower than Williamson, he was passed over. How much slower? It’s like the old Jerry Seinfeld routine about the 100-yard dash in the Olympics: the difference between them is from now-to-now.

Ronnie Brown, recently selected #2 overall by the Dolphins, is another great example. Doesn’t it seem funny that the guy was drafted higher than his teammate, Carnell Williams, who started over him for two straight years (granted, only by three picks, but still)?

If you look at the greatest players in football history at almost every position, you will see a common thread - speed never defined their abilities. Jerry Rice? Walter Payton? Those guys were great because they were precise in their movement, not because they just blazed past the defenders trying to tackle them.

2. Fan Interference.

I know I wrote about this last year, but we continue to see outbreaks like last week in Boston during a Sox-Yankees game.

You know, all of the major sports have various PSAs about staying in school, the perils of alcohol, etc. Why don’t they just make some to ward off the crazies in the stands:

Kenyon Martin: “Hi, I’m Kenyon Martin of the Denver Nuggets.”

Milton Bradley: “I’m Milton Bradley of the Los Angeles Dodgers.”

Najeh Davenport: “And I’m Najeh Davenport of the Green Bay Packers.”

K-Mart: “As a professional athlete, I’m all about having fun.”

Bradley: (Looking serious) “But there is nothing fun about fans coming onto the field of play during a sporting event.”

Davenport: “So please, for your safety and ours, stay in the stands.”

K-Mart: “We don’t want to hurt you.”

Bradley: “But if push comes to shove, best believe it is on.”

K-Mart: “We will not hesitate to rip your eyes out and shove them up your ass so you can watch us kick the crap out of you.”

Davenport: “Seriously, I once broke into a girl’s apartment just to take a crap in her closet. Do you really think I would hesitate to pummel your face into Jello?”

THE MORE YOU KNOW (star passes by)

Please fans - leave your drunken fighting where it belongs - at a NASCAR race.

3. Golfers who complain about women.

The latest was Retief Goosen, who again fronted the ever-popular opinion that women should not be given exemptions into PGA events.

First of all, is there a group of less sympathetic athletes than golfers? This is a sport that basically wrote “Discriminate against as many groups as possible” into its bylaws. Talk about a group of guys born with silver spoons in their mouths - a typical rags-to-riches story in golf is a guy who learns to drive in a power window-less Mercedes.

There is exactly one - ONE - woman in the world actively trying to play in men’s events, and she is hitting the ball further as a 15 year-old than half the guys on tour. Is this seriously a crisis? Hey, at least she doesn’t drive a golf cart.

4. Steroids

Frankly, this subject makes me want to stick my head in the oven. I don’t know what is worse, that athletes blatantly cheat, or that they blatantly cheat and then have the stones to blame it on the bowl of Frosted Flakes they ate that morning.

5. Athletes hosting Saturday Night Live

Ok, I admit up front this is not a plague - I just needed the excuse to discuss the decline of what used to be the funniest show on TV.

Tom Brady did the best he could on SNL last weekend, but at this point, if they fire off even one amusing skit per week I consider it a moral victory.

I suppose it is the fault of the writers, but I place a lot of blame on the cast. If your team is the L.A. Clippers, then it doesn’t matter if Phil Jackson is coaching now does it? With the exception of Fred Armisen and a few of the females, this group wouldn’t know funny if it ran over them with a bus. And don’t get me started on Chris Parnell…ok, too late.

It’s pretty much understood that Anchorman was a funny movie - and even in that Chris Parnell managed to suck. His participation in that film is the equivalent of Sports Illustrated putting a ten-page layout of Barbara Bush in the Swimsuit Issue.

6. Guaranteed contracts

There are a lot of things that separate the regular work force from professional athletes (mostly several decimal points and a lesser penchant for fathering illegitimate children), but guaranteed salaries is perhaps the most glaring difference.

You want to know why the NFL is printing money right now while the rest of the leagues struggle? Because with the exception of signing bonuses (substantial though they are), footballers have to earn every dollar they make. You don’t produce? It’s off to the Arena League for you buddy.

Yet one glance at the NBA and you will see countless guys who play hard one season, get paid, then spend the next six seasons working on their production company/truck fleet/clothing line.

Look, I don’t blame them. I am one of the laziest people on the planet, and if I was handed enough cash to drink Dom P and eat caviar the rest of my life, best believe the Hawks website would suddenly become a haven for typos and double negatives.

If anyone ever did a study to see how players perform in contract years versus after they struck it rich in free agency, I would wager you’d be pretty impressed (disgusted?) at the difference.

Take away that security blanket from the NBA, MLB, and NHL, and you would see more players giving their all.

7. The BCS

Four months and counting until the next fiasco begins. Just in case you weren’t frustrated by it yet.

8. Terrell Owens

I have pretty much defended Owens during every fiasco he has been a part of so far. Sharpie-gate? Hilarious. The Ray Lewis dance? That takes cojones.

But I am going to have to distance myself from his recent rantings about needing a new contract.

Take that Latrell Sprewell! TO sees your “I have a family to feed” and raises you “I need a new contract even though I just signed a seven-year deal last season.”

Who does PR for these guys, Tom DeLay?

Owens pulled off an amazing athletic feat by playing in the Super Bowl weeks after breaking his leg - and has somehow managed to squander all his goodwill without even playing another down.

On the bright side, at least he plays in Philadelphia, where I hear the fans are very forgiving.

9. Overzealous emailers

You know who you are. You are the people who write in to columnists after any good performance by your favorite team to let them know they are wrong for having doubted you.

Typified by poor grammar and spelling, these emails serve no purpose other than to provide comic relief for a sportswriter and sometimes his readers.

It’s almost like a mad-lib:

Dear (Writer),

Hey (expletive), you said (team or player name) was going to (adjective for underperform), but did you see what (team or player name) did last night?

Why don’t you go back to what you know best, which is (synonym for carnal knowledge ending in -ing) (type of farm animal, plural).

If you had seen (number) of the games they/he played this year instead of (-ing verb) to your (family member)’s (magazine title), you would know they/he is (superlative) at (skill) and just may be (religious savior).

Eat a (expletive), you (expletive) (expletive) (expletive) (expletive) (expletive).

Sincerely,
(Some combination of name and favorite mascot)

(Note - none of these people are my readers. That’s not to say none of them send this type of email - I just rarely get emails from readers, so if they do, it ain’t to me.)

10. Lousy Owners

One thing that may puzzle me more than anything else in sports is how people can be so successful in business, so much so they can afford to spend 300+ million on a sports team, and then run said team so poorly.

How did they get rich in the first place? I’ve never seen a lottery winner buy a team, so they had to make the money somewhere fairly legitimate, right?

I have literally no business experience whatsoever short of selling Super Bubble to my classmates in 5th grade (three for 25 cents!), and I am firmly convinced I could run a professional sports team better than most do now (except of course for the Hawks and Thrashers - a finer specimen of humanity I’ve rarely seen).

Every new owner comes in with guns blazing, thinking if they just toss a ton of money at the problem it will be solved. Take Dan Gilbert, the new Cavaliers owner: within two months of buying a team well on its way to a playoff berth, he had already fired head coach Paul Silas and leaked that GM Jim Paxson might want to start updating his resume as well.

Predictably the Cavs faded by season’s end, missed the playoffs, Paxson got his walking papers, and now everyone in Cleveland is afraid LeBron will bolt when his contract expires in two years. If this were a challenge on The Apprentice, Trump would have fired him before the end of the opening credits (or so I imagine - I don’t watch it).

Then again, maybe I wish the ownership group I work for were a little dumber - then maybe I would get a long-term guaranteed contract and could stop writing this column.

Or at least leave the spell check off.

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Micah Hart is an original contributor to the CSR, and works in sports media in Atlanta. Micah can be reached at micahbhart@yahoo.com. He reminds you to Hook 'em Horns.

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