This Week In Sports 12/13/06

Controversial Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens recently gave an interview where he made comments that caused babies to cry and old white ladies to pass out. When asked about his dropped passes (something he has been known to do when, say…gravity is applied to any passing situation), he had the nerve to respond with this:

"I'm not Superman. I'm human. Michael Jordan doesn't make every shot. Jerry [Rice] hasn't caught every pass. Tiger [Woods] doesn't make every putt. I understand the expectations of me. People want me to catch every ball. The likelihood of that happening is not going to be great. I understand that."

And with those vitriolic comments, sportswriters in America finally had this bastard. They were going to nail him to the wall this time! After all, he had just compared himself to some of sports’ all time greats! Why, he hadn’t even won a championship or an MVP, boy howdy!

But for those of us who don’t think with our anuses, he didn’t compare himself to them at all. For those of us, who aren’t constantly trying to find fault with a guy who can buy and sell, say…sportswriters with the change in his ashtray, he merely said that those guys, who are great, didn’t come through every time and he isn’t going to, either. It’s just not realistic to expect him to. I think that sounds pretty humble, and the sportswriters would think so too if they weren’t busy being all-around assholes.

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And speaking of hated athletes, in their quest to erase all positive thoughts and words about Allen Iverson from the hearts and minds of America, the sportswriters have decided to reject the notion that not only is Allen Iverson NOT one of the greatest players ever seen, he’s also a terrible human being and a poo-poo head.

Just because one doesn’t like Allen Iverson doesn’t mean he’s not a great player. It’s just means that you’re probably an older white man who likes his black people to be quiet and respectful to his betters, like a nigra should be.

Two things that can’t be argued about the man:

He is one of the two best guards in the league since Michael Jordan, the other being Kobe Bryant. He is one of the two most feared players in the league, the other also being Kobe Bryant. He is one of those rare players who cannot be stopped and can win a game just through sheer force of will.

He has never had a good team around him. People bring up the team that went to the Finals, but that team only went because Allen was throwing up 50 point games. I’ve never seen a bigger group of sad sacks in the Finals in my life. The only other player worth a damn on that team besides Iverson was Dikembe Mutombo, and he was already 58 years old by that point.


His critics call him a selfish ballhog, but they don’t ever want to talk about the subpar quality of his teams. Lately, all they do is point to how he has a past-his-prime Chris Webber (who still hasn’t been worked into the offense enough, I think), and yet he still shoots too many shots. They also forget the fact that since Larry Brown left town, his assists (currently 10th), as well as scoring (currently 1st), have been up. They don’t ever want to talk about how guys like Kyle Korver, Willie Green, or Andre Igoudala have never been consistent producers when given the opportunity. They don’t want to talk about how NO ONE on the Sixers plays defense, and how, at 5’11”, there’s not much AI can do to defend a lot of players, so it’s not like he can pick up the slack. And while I use this stat against LeBron James all the time, Allen Iverson is second on the league in steals.

I don’t like the idea that it’s Allen Iverson’s fault that the Sixers don’t win when general manager Billy King has been doing about as well as a guy who’s randomly picking a roster from the D-League players on NBA Live 07. If you move about 1000 miles west, you don’t hear any complaining about Kevin Garnett being at fault for why the Timberwolves don’t win. Everyone readily admits that it’s Kevin McHale’s fault, yet they’re in the same situation. Just admit that Billy King knows about as much as being a general manager as I do about inventing a machine that lets you hump your dreams in real-time. And seeing as how I’m not getting ready to pound Laura Oliver’s guts until her liver falls out while we ride a coal powered train throughout 1850’s South Carolina (an actual dream I had in the fourth grade), I’d say that my inventing career is turning out just like Billy King’s managing career: an abject failure.

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Today, it was actually newsworthy that Daisuke Matsuzaka was on a plane, flying back to Boston to sign his contract to join the Boston Red Sox. For those who don’t know, the Boston Red Sox paid $51.1 million dollars to the Seibu Lions for permission to talk to Matsuzaka’s agent and translator. I referred to it as the “world’s most expensive peep show.” And finally, the Red Sox have signed him to a 6 year, $52 million dollar deal, which basically means that they’re paying $17 million a year for a guy that might turn out to be a bust. Not since Isiah Thomas became the Knicks’ boss did one organization set itself to be made fun of so easily. And the ins and outs of this situation had become such frequent news that I was honestly able to spell Daisuke Matsuzaka from memory.

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I know this has absolutely nothing to do with sports, but KFC has started printing on their buckets of chicken that they have a “food safety assurance.” They want to assure the customer that their food is safe to eat and at first glance, it’s all well and good. But when you think about it, how many people had to die for KFC to put something like that on their buckets? How much flesh-eating bacteria was in there before they added the guarantee? You didn’t see Wendy’s telling everyone that there was “over 78% less severed fingers in our chili!” Taco Bell never felt the need to let us know that their beans had been “lovingly prepared with less human feces.” Burger King didn’t have a promotional blitz that included telling people about how there were no more chicken heads in their chicken tenders or no more psychopaths jerking off in the mayonnaise.

Which leads me to wonder: What the hell happened at KFC to make them put that on their buckets? What scandal was swept under the rug to keep us from vomiting at the thought of finding something awful in our two piece extra crispy? How many millions were paid to that lucky person to keep them from showing the thing that they found on CNN? KFC would tell me it was nothing. A giant “nothing” that required millions in damage control.