I'm one of those guys that gets really calm when they are really angry. Real calm. Like a serial killer.
And what I am right now is so calm I could stop breathing. My heart could stop beating and my wife would wake up and find my lifeless corpse frozen in rigamortis staring at this barely started post.
Right here. I think it would stop right here, because the calm is ebbing and I'm about to freak the fuck out.
Earlier today I talked a little about the idiots that populate broadcast booths. Idiot used to mean something, you know. It wasn't just a term used for the guy that made a double lane change without signaling or the poor drive-through worker that had the GODDAMN nerve to fuck up your order. It used to mean someone that fell pretty far down one side of the bell curve when it came to intelligence. Something we can not say today without 50,000 thousand words of technical jargon and obfuscation.
Many of the people in the booths are idiots, dolts, people with vaunted sports careers and the speaking ability of a terrier with a Vanilla Ice tape stuck in its mouth.
But we'd like to, if for no other reason but our own sanity, believe that those people that rise to the ranks of General Manager of a multimillion dollar business are not idiots, are not even common, but are the very best of the very best football minds. Something like a genius or a master, kind of both, with talent and experience and drive and the ability to negotiate a complex and esoteric market like few on Earth.
I think that assumption is utter bullshit.
Isn't that what we've learned over the past two decades? That the appointed Seahawks beat reporter is not necessarily the best writer or reporter or analyst. That the appointed announcer, the "Joe Buck", is not the best spoken, most knowledgeable, most evocative. That the manager is some bland sycophant that glad-handed the right people. That even Chan Gailey can find another job.
Why do we assume that those people in charge of our passion, our hopes, our lives, frankly, or at least a big part of the better part of our lives, are not lucky-ass glad-handing idiots that bumbled into their jobs through connections like any Gailey or Buck or ...
Right now, after years of Bill Bavasi, after years of ferreting out the good from Tim Ruskell just to keep my sanity, after years of figuring out the NFL, and figuring out every draft board is 90% the same, and free agency is just about who pays the most, and that roster construction is subject to the arbitrary whims of scheme, and players are cut because of one missed field goal or one missed block or a run of bad practices; figuring out that if you draft Peyton Manning people will call you genius, and if you sign Drew Brees, people will call you a genius, and if you can not differentiate a regression towards the mean from a hole in your ass, people will call you a genius, I am approaching the point where I think I may be the biggest idiot, because I have entrusted fools with my happiness.
And I am not happy.
Josh Wilson is short. He's short. He's short. He's short.
Josh Wilson is so fucking short I can't understand how he walks or runs or attends state fairs without a good deal of embarrassment when tries to ride the rides.
Josh Wilson is so fucking short, it's a wonder he was drafted at all, because no corner within an inch of Wilson's height has ever succeeded in the NFL.
EVER.
At anything.
And Wilson clearly sucked. You know how I know, because every fucking training camp some Brilliant Football Mind, a Mora, if you will, took one look at Wilson, his height and awarded the starting corner spot to Kelly Jennings, and Jennings is so bad his mother once lobbed him a pass and Jennings caused starvation in Africa attempting to catch it. And every season, after Jennings is gifted the spot through practice, Wilson overtakes him. Sometimes it happens through the preseason. Sometimes it takes into the season.
And Wilson must suck a whole lot, because he sure looks awesome. I mean, I am not a Brilliant Football Mind, but I know what a nickel blitz looks like. I know what ball skills are. I know what it looks like when a player jumps a route and takes it to the house. I know what it looks like when a corner breaks up a pass and tips it to the safety and the safety streaks for a touchdown.
And I know what a fifth round pick looks like. It looks like scratch-it ticket with seven boxes unveiled to read "Shit", one that reads "Will Herring" and another that reads "Scott Fujita."
So he must suck like Stephen Hawking couldn't conceive, because Seattle just traded him for a flotilla made of fish dongs and the title of first mate.
No really, I just want to know, I jus--I just need to know that somewhere, someone has a brilliant plan in place, and I'm not just scribbling words about the world's greatest athletes and the empty suits lucky enough to buy and sell them like trading cards.
GOD FUCKING DAMN IT.
Well, to the brain damage factory for some forgetting potion. I know football doesn't mean shit in the real world, but my life is small, petty and mean, and I live this tiny span, this sixty years of cognizant life if I'm lucky, pouring my time and energy and money into believing in the Seahawks. And right now, I see a logo, a decal, an identifying set of colors, that I suffer for the sake of someone else's incompetence.