BONUS HILARITY!
The Twitter account for Denver International Airport has been going at it all week with the Twitter account for Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport. It's been pretty great to follow.
Troy: "As you can imagine, I am very upset that the Steelers are once again not in the Super Bowl. I don't wish to offend anyone by expressing my opinion on the matter, so I'll let my Anger Translator, On-Field Troy, do my speaking for me."
On-Field Troy: "Super Bowl? SUPER BOWL! This ain't no Super Bowl without the Steelers! Yo mamma makes a better Super Bowl after eating a gas station burrito than this!"
Yes. That word in the picture IS "better" and not "butter." The idea of a Super Bowl made of butter is hilarious and intriguing, but not what Shawn was going for.
Rumor has it that sketch comics Key & Peele got their idea for Obama's Anger Translator Luther from Troy Polamalu. I'm sure Troy was nice enough to let them use the idea without crediting him.
I've never heard Polamalu raise his voice. All over my tv. RT @LesIzMore Being a quiet defensive NFL player doesn’t get you commercials
— D'Brickashaw (@DragonflyJonez) January 22, 2014
While Troy is a lovely human being off the field, doing charity work, mentoring younger players, and donating organs to those in need, Troy ON field is a dangerous beast without any sense of morals, integrity, or respect for human life. See the videos below for a few examples of how the big-haired veteran we know and love can turn into a monster for 60 minutes every Sunday.
Much like a football-playing Superman, Troy can jump offensive lines in a single bound.
Sometimes Troy's Anger Translator gets a little...TOO intense...
Head & Shoulders isn't the only product that Troy feels passionate about!
There are always three games on Thanksgiving Day: one with the Lions, one with the Cowboys, and then a night game that actually matters and entertains the nation. For two years in a row, the Baltimore Ravens have had the honor of being in the Game That Matters. In 2012, the nation got to watch a preview of Super Bowl 47 (to hell with Roman numerals) as big brother John Harbaugh's Ravens stomped baby brother Jim's 49ers two months before The Big Game. In 2013, the Ravens embarrassed the Steelers (not really, as there were a LOT of fundamentals that the Ravens needed to work on NOT screwing up, but let me have this one) in Baltimore to a crowd that righteously chanted "TOMLIN SUCKS" when Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin interfered with Jacoby Jones' amazing kick-off return run that SHOULD/WOULD have ended in a touchdown.
Even though he was fined by the league and put the Steelers' draft picks in jeopardy, Mike Tomlin wasn't done being reviled for his "blunder," as he repeatedly put it.
The Ravens were playing the Vikings in a snowy, rainy, slushy, cold, miserable Baltimore. The day was made MORE miserable by the fact that the Ravens were playing like snowmen with sticks for arms instead of actual human arms. But what to our wondering eyes should appear, but JACOBY JONES RUNNING IN ANOTHER KICK-OFF RETURN FOR A TOUCHDOWN!!
It was one of those games that makes football fans keep a defibrillator handy: in the final minutes of the game, the Vikings and Ravens traded FOUR TOUCHDOWNS IN 82 SECONDS. I was listening on my Ravens app, having chosen to stay home from the bar, and I can't decide if it was better or worse that I didn't have to see everything happen in front of me. I got to see the last touchdown of the day and frightened my dog by screaming with joy in the empty apartment.
If you thought Twitter wouldn't explode in snarky tweets about Jones finally getting to make the play he SHOULD have been able to make on Thanksgiving, then you don't know the internet very well at all. Here's a sampling:
No coach to block Jacoby Jones this time...
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 8, 2013
Professional burnnnn
Jacoby Jones couldn't do that if I was there
— Evil Mike Tomlin (@EvilMikeTomlin) December 8, 2013
Popular parody account burnnnn
Glad Leslie Frazier didn't pull a Tomlin.
— Joe Flacco's Ego (@FlaccosEgo) December 8, 2013
Fake Flacco burnnnn
Jacoby Jones has returned 6 kickoffs for 256 yards & 1TD over the past two games, producing a 42.7-yard average. #Ravens
— Patrick Gleason (@PMGleason) December 8, 2013
Jacoby Jones on the crazy final two minutes of the game: "You couldn't even really get emotional. It was too confusing." #Ravens#Vikings
— Luke Jones (@BaltimoreLuke) December 8, 2013
While Gang Green beat the Giants in OT (BILLY CUNDIFF, of all people, made the game-winning FG), Head Coach Rex "Coach Fatty" Ryan chose to put presumed-starter Mark "Uh Oh Hotdog" Sanchez in as QB in the fourth quarter...behind the barely-third-string offensive line players. In a sack that literally made me yell in sympathy pain, Sanchez got SMASHED between two Giants D-men and left the game with what is speculated to be a very severe shoulder injury. The press corps, sportscasters, and fans of all kinds are wondering just WTF Rex was thinking. When the NY media (a blood-thirsty bunch, to be fair) asked him about it in the post-game presser, Rex basically lost his damn mind. Twitter obviously exploded.
I made a Storify blog entry by pulling some of my favorite tweets about the Jets game tonight.
In a ground-breaking announcement today, NBA free agent Jason Collins has become the first non-retired professional athlete (baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer) to come out as a gay man. As you can imagine, the internet exploded...until Tim Tebow got shit-canned, and then everyone moved on. Sorta.
I'm an active ally in the LGBT movement, so I'm incredibly proud of Mr. Collins for taking the brave step of coming out and being true to himself. As he says in his Sports Illustrated article, "I didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major
American team sport. But since I am, I'm happy to start the
conversation. I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand
and saying, "I'm different." If I had my way, someone else would have
already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand."
Mike Wallace, formerly of the Steelers and currently of the Dolphins, was apparently the first person to "say something dumb" about Collins' revelation:
Honestly, as far as athletes' reactions to LGBT news, this is really, really mild. Wallace isn't hating on Collins specifically, or even gay men in general; he just said that the idea of someone being with a person of the same sex was a foreign concept to him. Now, I'm not trying to excuse Wallace's comments entirely; they WERE dumb and fairly insensitive to the gay community. But really? Admitting ignorance on a subject rather than just Twitter-blasting hate speech isn't, in my opinion, something to get that worked up over. Chances are good my comrades in the LGBT community disagree, but that's the lovely thing about being a human; we can all be a part of a supportive, collective movement and still disagree with one another.
Give Mike Wallace a break. I'm sure he got mad schooled by hundreds of people (on Twitter and on blogs) for every several dozen of fans supporting his statements. He took the tweets down and immediately apologized. Hopefully in the future he'll think twice before tweeting and maybe do some research as to why "guys wanna mess with other guys" to purge the ignorance from his mind.
I have a friend on Twitter (we bonded over our mutual love of tacos) who is a diehard (as much as possible) Bills fan. I sent him an article about how the much-maligned Kevin Kolb has recently joined my favorite underdog team, and these tweets were his reactions:
Shawn, on the other hand, isn't as my friend about Buffalo's chances of making it to the big game:
"Maybe it is the Bills year. Their year for what, I don’t know but it could indeed be their year. Maybe it’s their year to have more staff infections than the Cleveland Browns? Maybe it’s their year to get the #1 overall draft pick. Maybe it’s their year to throw more interceptions than yards? Who knows!"
Only time will tell if the Bills will return to the Big Show for the first time since I was a tiny child with no knowledge whatsoever of football, only the innate knowledge that the Cowboys were a terrible organization of terrible people and should be rooted against at all costs.
EDIT: One more opinion from Shawn: "My only other thought about this being the Bills' year is that the Super Bowl is NEXT year..." Oh, Shawn, so literal.
