The NFL's Meanest Moments: 2009 Football Blues

Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
I don't want no other love,
Baby it's just you I'm thinking of.

Don't Be Cruel by Elvis

Sometimes NFL teams are just so bad they make ye madder then a hungry Andy Reid crying tears of rage outside the locked doors of a just closed cheese steak shop.

Sometimes teams are just plain cruel to their fans.

How else does one explain sadistic actions like forcing Carolina Panthers fans to endure watching Jake Delhomme destroy their team's chances week after week?  

Geronimo's Apaches were not known for their kindness to the captured but one wonders if even the tizwin soaked mean old medicine man would have made some poor, doomed southwestern wanderers sit through a Cleveland Browns game?

Hanging by the heels over a hot fire might have been preferable to watching Eric Mangini work his magic.

Lets look at some of the NFL cruelest moments of 2009.

1] Daniel Snyder's dangling of Jim Zorn was perhaps the cruelest example of a rich, sick spoiled cat tormenting his trapped prey.

George Steinbrenner, at least, fired his doomed men quickly and also actually won a few rings. DC's Chaplinish Little Dictator creates bad karma and that bites back.

As an old Roman sports writer once said all cruelty springs from hard heartiness and weaknesses, and there's a lot of that in D.C. 

2] All the endless Michael Vick hype inflicted upon helpless fans everywhere proved to be sound and fury signifying nothing, just like ESPN.

Vick was, save an Atlanta oasis, a non factor all year.

3] JaMarcus Russell did nothing not negative on the field but was a beast at the buffet. The bloated ex Tiger will have one lingering legacy in the NFL; he will be the poster boy for a rookie salary cap.

4] The Brett Favre media frenzy was enough to make a starved buzzard jump off a stinking gut wagon.

Even after a three interception early purple playoff exit will it all begin again? Surely Skip Bayless hopes so because Brett completes him.

The only thing remotely as nauseating is the coming who will pick Tim Tebow babble fest.

5] Eric Mangini managed a hat trick in Cleveland.

Early in his inaugural season he had fans, owners, and players hating him. Even crazed Frank Kush could not do that to the Colts.

But the Magic Man does have a rabbit in his hat. It's a neat trick  to annoy ball clubs so badly back to back that they fire you and pay you millions to stay away.

6] "I can't quit you." John Fox whispered to Jake Delhomme every week despite Delhomme destroying his team with turnovers weekly.

Has a coach ever had such team devastating man crush on a dire player?

7] Has a Super Bowl team team, save the recent Oakland Raiders of Mad Al Davis, ever been so incompetently run aground worse than the Lovie Smith and Jerry Angelo bad news Bears?

Almost every decision at every level has been dreadfully wrong. When one thinks about, doing everything totally, wrong, its utterly amazing.

And Lovie, even when losing by thirty points every week, still hides his defensive signals behind his play book as he sends them in?

What, exactly, is Lovie afraid of? Losing by fifty, instead of thirty five, every week if a Packer lip reader is tracking his calls?

8] Watching Gary Kubiak direct the Houston Texans is like living Ground Hog Day. Season after after season its the same results, early season destruction, late season just short rally, and home for the playoffs.

Play it again next year?

9] The 100 million dollar contract for an underachieving, big name free agent is a Daniel Snyder speciality and Albert Haynesworth came through in spades. 

A man making 100 million bucks should be in good shape enough to play twenty plays a game at semi full speed?

10] The NFL billionaires pushing PSLs on people has been the most morally wrong move as anything ever done to a fan in sports

Worse then extorting fans full price for preseason tickets, worse then nine buck beers, worse then forty buck parking, worse then the Chicago Bears Mike McCaskey killing the Honey Bears and the '85 Bears, worse then being forced to watch another House of Wax looking Jerry Jones halftime interview, worse even then giving Michael Irvin a speaking role on television, its just plain, pure cold hearted cruelty.

Enjoy the PSL's Giant and Jet fans!

They might even be coming to a college football team near you!

11] The St Louis Rams, Kansas City Chiefs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Detroit Lions ought to place abandon all hope ye who enter here above all their stadium entrances.

Faithful fans can expect these ball clubs to be very, very bad well into the twenty teens and beyond.

And with revenue sharing dying the bad teams are destined to just get worse. How's that ten buck Lion beer tasting now, Bubba?

12] In many games this year the often incompetent NFL referees seem to want to be the stars of the show instead of helping the game flow.

NFL fans are gifted with TV timeouts, dragging replay reviews, flags every special teams play and each time a quarterback is touched slightly, and now it seems the zebras are thriving on judgement calls that decide games. 

Can't the NFL hire full time professionals instead of bankers and big businessmen buddies?

I mean in their regular jobs havn't they bilked fans enough already? Isn't in the Constitution they we get bread and circuses?

Fans have a right to be free of those bastards for a few hours a week right? Must we live a referee reality TV show weekly?

Does one want to see the inescapable, always incompetent Walt Coleman more then Peyton Manning during a broadcast?

Recall when Pete Rozelle, Ralph Wilson, George Halas and Al Davis came up with the idea of the NFL at their weekly chariot race happy hour that this was the sports story that inspired the NFL spectacle and, oddly enough, the Terrible Towel.

"a people to whom one need only throw bread and give a spectacle of horses since they have no interest in anything else. When they enter a theatre or stadium they lose all consciousness of their former state and are not ashamed to say or do anything that occurs to them.... constantly leaping and raving and beating one another and using abominable language and often reviling even the gods themselves and flinging their clothing at the charioteers and sometimes even departing naked from the show. The malady continued throughout the city for several days"

"However, this I declare to be altogether remarkable: the fact that here, more than at other shows, dignity is forgotten, and men's minds are carried away in frenzy. The Green chariot wins: a section of the people laments; the Blue leads, and, in their place, a part of the city is struck with grief. They hurl frantic insults, and achieve nothing; they suffer nothing, but are gravely wounded; and they engage in vain quarrels as if the state of their endangered country were in question. It is right to think that all this was dedicated to a mass superstition, when there is so clear a departure from decent behaviour.

Don't let the zebras steal our Circus Maximus, by Jove.

Throw the dogs a bone, and some bread, along with that PSL bill.