The further you get from professional sports, the better the competition.
It’s getting impossible to get very far from professional sports, however. I don’t know of any sport at any level where the participants — or more likely, their parents — don’t have “going pro” in the back of their minds. T-ball players are coached to come in with their sharpened cleats up. Even “amateurs” aren’t anything of the sort. There’s as much money in a gold medal as there is in the average NFL contract, if you play your cards right. And everyone’s playing cards.
When I got there again I seen that them men had got in two little bitty bunches down there real close together, and they voted. They did. They voted and elected one man apiece, and them two men come out in the middle of that cow pasture and shook hands like they hadn’t seen one another in a long time. Then a convict come over to where they was a-standin’, and he took out a quarter, and they commenced to odd man right there! They did. After a while I seen what it was they was odd-manning for. It was that both bunches-full of them men wanted this funny-looking little pumpkin to play with. They did. And I know, friends, that they couldn’t eat it because they kicked it the whole evening and it never busted.
That’s JJ Watt. He’s a prevensive end or a detented tackle box or some other position on the Houston Texacos, I think. Anyway, that’s not important right now. All you need to know is that he’s good. I mean real good. He can drink more Brawndo than any of the other prevensive players when the umpire give them a time out for a red card, or something.
They say he’s an animal in the weight room. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds awesome, don’t it? I don’t know what kinda animal. I mean, he could be a mink in the weight room for all we know. Maybe he’s, like, a sloth or a boa constrictor. But whatever it is, I bet it’s mean. You wouldn’t want to be trapped in a weight room with mean mink, I tell you what. He’d be all over you ankles in a heartbeat.
But most of all, he’s a college gradgiate. I mean gradyouate. Gladuit. I forget how to spell it, but he went to college for, like, years, and they gave him a piece of paper to prove it, just like the bailiff did for you in traffic court. Anyway, at 42 seconds in, you get a taste of all that collegiate goodness, when he tells you that fifty-five inches is five and a half feet.
Honestly, for that kind of insight, I figured you’d have to consult some sort of genius, like, say, Rob Gronkowski.
Pardon Me Sir, Do You Have Any Grey Poupon? Oh, And BTW, My Legs Are Jammed In Your Drivetrain
Jeez, when did all sports announcers turn into fourteen year old girls screaming like Bieber just walked in? The guy with his legs and his johnson stuck in the rear wheel of his competitor’s bike was a lot calmer than those two.
Let’s drift back in time, kids. Have a get off my lawn moment. Sports announcers used to be calm.
Of course, they drank whiskey out of a tumbler while broadcasting football games back then. They never pointed the camera at the announcers, because they only had one camera, and it was busy, so they did what they pleased. Oh, those college football games were announced like bowling tournaments. Both the play-by-play man and the color guy had eyes pinker than Bob Costas could ever dream of, but nobody cared. No one would know if they were wearing pants, either. You’d just hear these sonorous tones announcing that he’s just a soffamoor, with an occasional whoah nellie thrown in there when things got really wild. The dulcet tones of Cutty Sark and Lucky Strike, and not much blather.
You’d watch Monday Night Football and the 49ers or the Cowboys would be trampling some punching bag team into the turf on the way to their fifth touchdown, Emmit Smith’s jersey still clean, Jerry Rice’s uniform still as immaculate as the team photo, and the announcer would just say: touchdown. Just like that. He didn’t get excited, because he was betting on the favorite, and there was no way whatever New Jersey Generals the NFL had trotted out to get slaughtered were going to win, so it was the sound of a guy simply counting his money aloud like an accountant. There would have been a frenzy if the underdog got within two scores, maybe.
Bring back the low-key, stodgy, listless, phlegmatic, whiskey-soaked stentors!
(Thanks to Charles Schneider for sending that one along)