Props Mike Florio, You Crybaby

Many of you readers, like me, are appreciative consumers of the excellent work Mike Florio does to bring us NFL news on profootballtalk.com.  I began "banging it here for the daily rumor mill" a couple of years ago before Mike made it big and started filming those forced studio head-shot segments with his clip-on tie and bug-eyed sidekick, Joe.  Yes, in those halcyon days, much like today, Florio flung ca-ca of all kinds at the wall and we found entertainment in watching some of it stick and some of it fall.

I want to take this opportunity to give props to Mike Florio for digging up a particular sticky manure rumor that stuck this weekend, the Raiders signing Jeff Garcia.  I sourced Florio's post of the rumor in an article I wrote for this site, an article many of you read and commented on.

Florio has built a well-earned reputation among ardent football fans and even some in the league as a good news source.  Indeed, Florio outperforms the whole of ESPN's football clown college when it comes to reporting on the Oakland Raiders, distancing himself far ahead of such heralded "journalists" as Chris Mortenson and John Clayton in terms of credibility.  Kudos to you, Mike Florio, NFL gossip oracle king.

Indeed many of us who use the Bleacher Report also use Profootballtalk.com in common to slake our pitiable football obsessions.  Our money and our website hits are just as good as any other entertainment-obsessed mob, it's just we don't care how many babies Brad Pitt and Octo-mom spit out or rake up.  We are grateful serfs in your kingdom as long as there is football to talk about. 

But alas, all of it sits uneasy among us admiring peon subjects who dare hack away on the Bleacher Report, for the king is displeased with our discourse.  He said so himself in the very next post on the Rumor Mill following the Garcia rumor. 

Hark:

Here’s our official take:  The bleacherreport.com is a pile of crap...stuff can apparently be posted there by pretty much anyone…We suggest ignoring anything and everything posted at bleacherreport.com until they become something other than a wild west repository for anything that anyone feels like posting.    

Our oracle is responding to the bogus rumor that started on this site last week about the Chad Johnson/Michael Bush trade.  That false prophecy vexed the king even more than the recalcitrant three-way Broncos-Redskins-Browns blasphemy that started here in the midst of the Cutler tantrums.

The king is fraught that "anyone" can post "anything" on Bleacher Report and because of the fine work the B/R site does to present our laymen's nonsense, we who are not worthy appear legitimate.  This causes great stress for the king who has to take time from his primary duty of throwing crap against the wall to debunk crap other people throw up against the wall, as so many of us who read the Bleacher Report and the Daily Rumor Mill can't tell truth from fiction unless Florio restores order.

Bleacher Report, as a forum for the common fan to throw crap against the wall, has spoiled the sacred grounds of NFL gossip that king Florio rules, has distempered the tyrant, and he has passed unto his judgement accordingly.

So shame to those who find humor or entertainment in seeing the reaction of the frenzied fan sheep herd when they are provoked from such an unclean source.  You have angered the king.  You have delayed the critical task of crap-throwing.  Repent!  For it is an unholy license with which you wield your cruel trickery!   You are monsters of sports reporting.  And shame on Bleacher Report for harboring such monsters. 

But is it irony that Florio's success as a crap-flinger has inspired other crap flingers to fling crap?  Is not king Florio, who so vilifies these monstrous rumors, not the face of the rumor monsters themselves?  Is it not the king's own face that repels him?  Oh the horror, the horror. So many, many tears!

Let this be the caution that comes of this tale of hypocrisy and woe.  That ye shall be damned by faint praise even by your most strident admirers, when you damn them for admiring too much.

This article is posted under "Humor" for you Mike.