{"id":1649,"date":"2014-05-10T21:57:49","date_gmt":"2014-05-11T04:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/?p=1649"},"modified":"2014-05-14T05:39:13","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T12:39:13","slug":"hierarchy-of-hate-jff-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/10\/hierarchy-of-hate-jff-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Hierarchy of Hate – JFF Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

JFF Hate Fest<\/a> \"JFF-Hate-Fest\"<\/a> With the 22th pick of the 2014 NFL Draft<\/a>, the Cleveland Browns selected the most insanely talented, over-rated, over-performing, over-hyped, most likely to succeed,\u00a0least sportsmanlike, most marketable, least classy, most electrifying player in the known universe: Johnny (Fucking Football) Manziel!<\/p>\n

And the crowd went wild… or wait, they wailed in agony… or they gasped in a paroxysm of orgasm… or they aired\u00a0their genteel displeasure in panting exasperation… or they rushed to the phones to buy their season tickets<\/a>… or they pegged their bets for the exact day and time that they could shout their “told ya so’s” from the rooftops\u00a0when he …<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

a) wins a Super Bowl for the long-suffering Dawg Pound<\/a>\u00a0and is named League MVP and<\/em> Rookie of the Year<\/p>\n

b) is ignominiously cut from the Browns roster after never having completed a pass in 342 attempts\u00a0and\u00a0having run for minus-57 yards<\/a>\u00a0in his sad, disappointing NFL career<\/p>\n

c) saves Tim Tebow from a burning building<\/p>\n

d)\u00a0is\u00a0caught in bed with a live boy or dead girl<\/a><\/p>\n

For the record, I love the hell out of him. I love to watch him play. I love to watch him “cash out.” I love to see him celebrate with his teammates… and Drake… and Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake… and LeBron James… and Megan Fox. After a lifetime of cheering for the\u00a0Texas Aggies, who used to be the Cleveland Browns of college football, I love the swagger he has bestowed upon\u00a0my alma mater.<\/p>\n

And I hate the haters… every last motherfucking one of you… I am so full of hate for your senseless nonsense, I created a handy JFF Hate Map just so you can determine the level of verbal abuse\u00a0I’m going to level on your self-righteous\u00a0ass\u00a0the next time you commit one of the following violations:<\/p>\n

1) Calling him a punk!<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Hide your kids! Hide your wife!<\/a>\u00a0My ears melt from the onslaught of pearl-clutching tut-tuts pouring forth when Johnny Fucking Football\u00a0– A 21-YEAR-OLD MAN-CHILD<\/a> –\u00a0behaves like… a 21-year-old man-child!<\/p>\n

Exactly how do you define “punk?” Is it someone who would\u00a0stalk, assault\u00a0and\u00a0strangle<\/a>\u00a0a former girlfriend? Drag a young woman\u00a0down three flights of stairs<\/a>? Boost some crab legs?<\/a>\u00a0Use his notoriety<\/a> to get out of a rape charge? Deploy\u00a0racist slurs<\/a> to bully a teammate? Goodness gracious, if that’s not the epitome of punk-i-tude… well, I declare!<\/p>\n

For the record, in the summer of 2012, prior to his\u00a0–\u00a0ahem<\/em>\u00a0–\u00a0Heisman Trophy<\/a>-winning season, Johnny Fucking Football\u00a0got in a bar fight\u00a0<\/a>and showed the police his fake ID\u00a0(admittedly dumb, but\u00a0how many of us had fake IDs in college? Anyone? Anyone? How many of us drank in bars? My hand is up).\u00a0He went on to sign his autograph for money<\/a>, which exposed his NCAA overlords for the exploitative hypocrites that they are<\/a>. \u00a0(By the way, signing autographs for money is\u00a0something Olympic athletes<\/a>\u00a0on college campuses can do without penalty. Does the NCAA believe it owns the rights to one’s own name? That’s what their lawyers argued – while they simultaneously posited that\u00a0impoverished, hungry\u00a0student-athletes would be in violation of their arbitrary rules if they accepted\u00a0 free food<\/a>. The NCAA would rather they go to bed without supper, just so the NCAA can keep hiding behind its fig-leaf of amateurish bullshit).<\/p>\n

On top of all this, JFF\u00a0then\u00a0talked some smack to competitors<\/a>\u00a0at a football game.<\/p>\n

OH. MY. GOD.\u00a0Think of the children!<\/a>\u00a0What an heinous display of unsportsmanlike behavior!<\/a>\u00a0What is this world coming to?<\/a> An athlete… talking trash… on the field of sport… when sports-entertainment networks repeatedly show highlight reels of victory dances and vicious hits. I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!<\/p>\n

I think I might have the vapors – especially after, as a sportswriter who covered high school athletics for seven years, I saw my fair share of parents screaming at their children<\/a> (and other\u00a0people’s children) until the tears flowed like the torrents that now fall for the inexorable harm that Johnny Fucking Football is causing The Impressionable Youth of America. Heavens to Betsy! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!<\/p>\n

2) Self-Appointing Yourself an Arbiter of Sport<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0– Um, yeah, remember the Simms boy? Big, white, (slow), prototypical quarterback? By now, even my mother-in-law has\u00a0heard that, at 5-foot-11, Johnny Manziel does not fit the measurements of the prototypical NFL quarterback.<\/a>\u00a0Nor does abide by the secret handshakes and unwritten codes of behavior for their oh-so-elite club (even though he’s a scratch golfer). He bails out of the pocket. He doesn’t check to his third and fourth receivers. He tries to save every play (and often succeeds in spectacular fashion<\/a>). He eats too much kale. He drives a Mercedes. He hangs out with Drake. No, he doesn’t fit the stereotype of a prototypical NFL quarterback… nor does he fit the\u00a0stereotype of your tired, packaged, run-of-the-mill sports cliches.<\/p>\n

Manziel\u00a0is not “a poor minority pulling himself out of the ghetto by\u00a0his physical abilities through the cleansing brothel of NCAA\u00a0sports.” Manziel comes from money<\/a>: The Manziels\u00a0may not be in the\u00a0Top 2%, but they probably clear the Top 5, long before he even signs his first pro contract. People can’t put him in the “poor athlete box” so I guess\u00a0they’re left with the “tragi-comedy that is Lindsay Lohan” box or the “poor Miley Cyrus road to ruin” box … or the, what? Chelsea Clinton consolation prize?<\/p>\n

I think he\u00a0makes people uncomfortable. I’m sure he\u00a0makes them\u00a0jealous: He’s a rich, good-looking, talented young man with charm to spare<\/a>. That’s an awfully nice package compared to the\u00a0scrawny, pimply-faced dullard\u00a0that sprang from your loins batting\u00a0.128 with a free-throw percentage in the sub-Shaq range.<\/p>\n

And as a rich, good-looking, talented young man with charm to spare, it’s clear (at least in the comments sections of most internet stories about him) that Manziel\u00a0doesn’t fit some sanctimonious moralizers’<\/del> people’s\u00a0ideas\u00a0of how (white)<\/em> people should behave. He likes to party<\/a>… which, come to think of it, most 21-year-old (white) American males like to do. They just don’t have the opportunities that Manziel does.<\/p>\n

He listens to rap music. He cashes out. He hangs out with hip-hop stars. He’s brash. He’s cocky. He has, in the words of Deion Sanders, “ghetto tendencies.”<\/a>\u00a0What does that say about him? More importantly, what does that say about you<\/strong><\/em>?<\/p>\n

How you feel (and how I feel) about Johnny Manziel’s behavior says more about ALL OF US than it says about him – and your smug\u00a0judgements\u00a0sure as hell aren’t\u00a0going to reform him into a 6-foot-4 (white) savior with perfect mechanics, outstanding speed and agility, and\u00a0a penchant for drinking a cold glass of milk before his\u00a08:30 nightly bedtime. Hell, he probably won’t even Tebow after his first touchdown. Your well-intentioned (and oh-so-unsolicited) advice isn’t going to shrink the chip on his shoulder, either. Quite the contrary.<\/p>\n

Your self-righteous\u00a0preaching only betrays you as\u00a0being gullible enough to be sucked into\u00a0the maw of the sports-entertainment machine – the very same machine that manufactured, built up\u00a0and\u00a0spit out Tim Tebow<\/a>. Remember him? Great white hope? A perfect, angelic foil to Manziel’s mythic devil?<\/p>\n

Manziel and Tebow* are two sides of the same coin. They’re storylines, concocted by media machines wanting to drum up clicks, links, ratings, viewers and readers so they can sell more advertising. Shocker! No different than a Disney princess movie – only possibly a lot more exciting. There is a hero (Tebow \/ AJ McCarron); there is a villain (Honey Badger \/ Manziel); there’s usually a goofy sidekick or two\u00a0(Les Miles \/ LeBron James); and a very catchy song (Draft Day<\/em><\/a> by Drake, natch, but be careful clicking that link, it’s explicit<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Want to peek behind the curtain of that storyline? There ain’t no wizard, friends, but there’s this: ESPN pulled a 6.1 overnight rating for the first round of the NFL Draft on Thursday – a 60% increase over last year’s broadcast and a veritable butt-whipping of perennial Thursday powerhouse, <\/a>The Big Bang Theory<\/a>, <\/em>which posted its lowest ratings of the season (when Penny and Leonard officially got engaged! Spoiler alert!). Advertising 101: Rating ultimately determine the rates<\/strong> you can charge your advertisers. Wonder how much a :30 will sell for in the 2015 Draft… I can assure you, the ratings won’t be as high.<\/p>\n

That same Draft night, Manziel was mentioned in 5.2% of all Tweets in the United States, according to an analysis by Emory University<\/a>. (How cool is that job?) The largest spike in Twitter activity occurred when the Browns picked Manziel with the 22th pick.<\/p>\n

Someone, somewhere is cashing out. Might as well be Johnny Football. More power to him.<\/p>\n

But, just in case you’re still confused, I built the handy hate map so you can decide where you fall on the spectrum: You might be one who refuses to watch lest your delicate sensibilities wither in the bright light of (shudder) REALITY<\/strong> or\u00a0you might just\u00a0become a huge-assed Browns fan\u00a0(and send your kids to Texas A&M) or you might not even care.<\/p>\n

I can assure you:\u00a0He doesn’t. \u00a0He probably just wants to be left alone so he can play football.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*And before you go hating on me for hating on Tebow, remember: I don’t hate Tebow. I think he’d make a great fullback. He certainly wouldn’t be a starting quarterback in today’s SEC (one that was\u00a0transformed in 2012 by the first 7,000+ yard offense – Texas A&M – led by one Johnny Manziel). I hate the media machine that transformed Tebow into a caricature of himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JFF Hate Fest With the 22th pick of the 2014 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns selected the most insanely talented, over-rated, over-performing, over-hyped, most likely to succeed,\u00a0least sportsmanlike, most marketable, least classy, most electrifying player in the known universe: Johnny (Fucking Football) Manziel! And the crowd went wild… or wait, they wailed in agony… or … Continue reading Hierarchy of Hate – JFF Edition<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rage","category-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1665,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions\/1665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}