This is the story of scientific inquiry into the nature of Sir Jarvis of Jones.
FANS: A BUST! A BUST! A BUST! We’ve got a BUST! A BUST!
YINZER #1: We have found a bust, might we burn him?
FANS: Burn him! Burn!
BLOGGER: How do you know he is a bust?
UPDATED. SEE BELOW
http://www.gq.com/sports/201502/roger-goodell-season-from-hell?currentPage=1
THE ARTICLE IS 3 PAGES. CLICK ON THE ARROW ADJACENT 1 OF 3 AT THE BOTTOM OF THE 1ST PAGE.
So large is Kraft’s sway with Goodell that one veteran NFL executive likes to call him “the assistant commissioner.”
Goodell said. “When we met with Ray Rice and his representatives, it was ambiguous about what actually happened.”
Within days, a lengthy ESPN investigation all but called him a liar. According to the report, not only did Rice tell Goodell exactly what happened inside that elevator….
…the nonstop drumbeat of bad news added up to a growing sense that Goodell and his owner bosses are tone-deaf to the issues that plague the NFL—and on the wrong side of history to a rising generation that increasingly sees football as too violent, too regressive, and too money-driven…
It’s also an open secret in league circles that some owners, especially Woody Johnson of the Jets, resent the preferential treatment Goodell is perceived to extend to his inner circle. (As the football world waits for the commissioner’s decision on whether to punish the Patriots for Deflategate, many are wondering how his relationship with Kraft will affect Goodell’s ruling.)
[The Ray Rice episode] reinforced a pattern that comes up again and again when you look at Goodell’s commissionership: When he’s reacting to PR crises and disciplining players, his judgment is poor. But when he’s negotiating on behalf of his owner bosses, Goodell almost never loses.
Tagliabue sees Goodell’s laser focus on profit and his combative stance toward players as key parts of the problem. “If they see you making decisions only in economic terms, they start to understand that and question what you’re all about,” he said. “There’s a huge intangible value in peace. There’s a huge intangible value in having allies.” As for his relationship with his protégé, Tagliabue says, “We haven’t talked much since I left. It’s been his decision. Bountygate didn’t help.”
Epilogue: The author has written an addendum to the original article.
http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2015/01/robert-kraft-roger-goodell.html
While reporting the piece, I heard many stories of Kraft receiving preferential treatment. One executive noted how Goodell seemed to jump to answer his cell whenever Kraft called. “Sure there’s special rules,” one league source said. “It’s the unwritten secret.” At a golf tournament last year, one source told me, Kraft is said to have called NFL headquarters and requested to be interviewed on the NFL Network. Within minutes, NFL producers in the broadcast truck were told to put Kraft on television. “Nobody else would have pulled that card,” the source said.
Kraft was reluctant to talk to me while I was reporting. One person close to Kraft told me that he was tired of being Goodell’s defender in public. The truth, of course, is that Goodell works for him. However Deflategate unfolds, the commissioner will need to tread carefully. His job security has always depended on the support of the 32 owners. And Kraft, a savvy billionaire who turned a $172 million investment in the Patriots into a $2.6 billion empire, appears to want to remind the commissioner that he is nobody’s assistant.
Bill, I love it when you check the grip on my balls, but could you please turn off the spycam? Oaaahhhhh…
JFS Shows Cleveland He Thinks They’re #1
Fresh off his epic demolition of the Cleveland Browns in his NFL starting debut, Johnny Manziel was reminded about his famous draft day text message to the Browns. As it was widely reported in the press at the time, Manziel had sent a text to the Browns asking them to draft him. The message said ‘I wish you guys would come get me. Hurry up and draft me because I want to be there. I want to wreck this league together.’ Following the Bengals game, Manziel was asked to clarify what he could have possibly meant given his evident inability to play in the big leagues much less wreck it. Luckily, Manziel was able to provide some real insight.
According to Johnny, he was increasingly astonished that he was falling down the draft board as he was convinced someone would be stupid enough to draft him with the #1 pick, or at least in the top five. After all, he reasoned, the Heisman committee was silly enough to name him the most awesome player in all college ball.
When Manziel slipped by the Browns’ first of two first round picks, he was more than dismayed – initially he was angry. He felt that a team as routinely woeful as the Browns surely couldn’t afford to be so dismissive of Johnny Football. However as the day progressed and team after team bypassed him, Manziel came to realize the deeper truth of the Browns’ strategy. Surely, he realized, no team could blow so many high level picks year after year as the Browns, purely through bad luck or incompetence. He figured that clearly the whole farce was a cleverly concocted way to enrich the leaders of the Browns organization at the expense of loyal, diehard Browns fans who inexplicably pour millions of dollars into the team coffers annually despite a record-shattering lack of results.
“I decided that if I couldn’t be a real NFL quarterback for a real NFL team, then I wanted to be part of this scam being perpetrated in Cleveland,” Johnny explained, “so as we were getting closer to the next Browns selection I texted (Cleveland quarterbacks coach) Dowell Loggains asking him to please draft me so that we could ‘wreck Believeland together’. But somehow the danged autocorrect kicked in and changed it to ‘wreck this league together’. Go figure.” But Johnny remains philosophical. “In the end, it doesn’t matter. I got what I wanted – lots of attention, lots of money, and an endless stream of babes totally lacking in taste and self respect.”
Asked if he thought he should start again next week, Manziel said, “Sure, why not? It’s almost mandated by the Factory of Sadness Franchise Handbook.”
Suggs – verb, infinitive form “to sugg”
1. To fail badly as a human being. “Ray Lewis suggs because he is an unrepentant murder accomplice.”
2. To be the victim of failed human beings. “It really suggs to be a receiver for Unibrow.”
3. To take a cheap shot or to cheat at something. “Harbaugh sobbed when Upshaw sugged Ben and got flagged.”
4. Anything associated with purple spandex. “Ravens sugg badly.”
5. To act like a horse’s ass but have the face of a jackass. (See picture above).
Here are mine. Add yours in comments.
I know there are many more, so let’s hear yours….
Ahhh, remember the good ol’ days!
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