NYC Poke
1/26/2009, 02:16 PM
Thought y'all might like this.
Razing Arizona
The Cardinals' presence in the Super Bowl is fluky and disgraceful.
By Charles P. Pierce
Posted Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, at 6:37 AM ET
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt WarnerI can tell you exactly when I began hating the Arizona Cardinals, and it wasn't when they came to Foxborough in December, took one look at the falling snow, and decided they would commit public consumer fraud for the balance of the afternoon. No, it was sometime midway through the BCS national championship game between Oklahoma and Florida. For those of you who missed it, Fox television announcer Thom Brennaman treated Florida quarterback Tim Tebow in a fashion that I am absolutely sure violates the anti-stalking statutes in at least five states. At one point, Brennaman said, "If you're fortunate enough to spend five minutes or 20 minutes around Tim Tebow, your life is better for it." And then he said, after Tebow got nailed for a taunting penalty, "That might be the first thing he's ever done wrong." This is the kind of stuff for which the Eternal Word Television Network was, ah, created, and Thom Brennaman made the late Mother Angelica look like Kathy Griffin.
This happens a lot in football. The game is afflicted by announcers who spend an awful lot of time wrapping football in the Great American Family Values comforter. They festoon it with jingoistic baubles and cheap patriotic gewgaws. And all of this is to place the game's fundamental destruction and brutality on some higher plane than that occupied by people who simply beat the crap out of one another in bars on a Friday night. This is how we end up with Thom Brennaman treating the national collegiate football championship game as though he were the Chad and Jeremy correspondent for Tiger Beat back in the day.
The rest here: http://www.slate.com/id/2209525/
Razing Arizona
The Cardinals' presence in the Super Bowl is fluky and disgraceful.
By Charles P. Pierce
Posted Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, at 6:37 AM ET
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt WarnerI can tell you exactly when I began hating the Arizona Cardinals, and it wasn't when they came to Foxborough in December, took one look at the falling snow, and decided they would commit public consumer fraud for the balance of the afternoon. No, it was sometime midway through the BCS national championship game between Oklahoma and Florida. For those of you who missed it, Fox television announcer Thom Brennaman treated Florida quarterback Tim Tebow in a fashion that I am absolutely sure violates the anti-stalking statutes in at least five states. At one point, Brennaman said, "If you're fortunate enough to spend five minutes or 20 minutes around Tim Tebow, your life is better for it." And then he said, after Tebow got nailed for a taunting penalty, "That might be the first thing he's ever done wrong." This is the kind of stuff for which the Eternal Word Television Network was, ah, created, and Thom Brennaman made the late Mother Angelica look like Kathy Griffin.
This happens a lot in football. The game is afflicted by announcers who spend an awful lot of time wrapping football in the Great American Family Values comforter. They festoon it with jingoistic baubles and cheap patriotic gewgaws. And all of this is to place the game's fundamental destruction and brutality on some higher plane than that occupied by people who simply beat the crap out of one another in bars on a Friday night. This is how we end up with Thom Brennaman treating the national collegiate football championship game as though he were the Chad and Jeremy correspondent for Tiger Beat back in the day.
The rest here: http://www.slate.com/id/2209525/