“Mama says stupid is, as stupid does,” – Forrest Gump
One of my favorite writers to hate read is USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan. She fancies herself a hot take artist who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is regarding the world of sports. Of course what that really means is that she specializes in fear mongering and mountain-out-of-mole-hill-making whenever she puts pen to paper. I’m not going to waste time recapping her past absurdity, but if you need something to do while taking a shit, here ya go.
What I would like to do today is discuss her most recent foray into the world of utter stupidity. It starts with the following headline:
Opinion: Big Ten’s decision to play football signals darkest day in conference’s sports history
So that’s a really stupid fucking opinion, and let me explain why.
The Big 10 is home to Penn State University where linebackers coach Jerry Sandusky spent the better part of 3 decades molesting little boys. School officials were made aware that something might be going on, but didn’t do shit about it.
Likewise, Michigan State University’s Dr. Larry Nasser also spent a hefty chunk of his tenure sexually assaulting female gymnasts.
One of Ohio State University’s assistant football coaches was allegedly beating the shit out of his wife on a regular basis.
And the University of Maryland recently had a football player die of heatstroke during practice.
Christine Brennan thinks playing football during coronavirus is so much worse than all of those things that she declared it the conference’s ‘Darkest Day’.
Here she is in her own words (italics represent Christine for the rest of the post):
For decades, the Big Ten has thought of itself as a different kind of sports conference, one that proudly touts the academic achievements and Great Lakes values of its like-minded, highly-regarded, internationally-ranked research institutions. The Big Ten wasn’t the SEC; it wasn’t the Big 12. It was better than that, and it was happy to tell you all about it.
Non-sequitur to this discussion, but she writes like she’s really trying to remind you that she’s a writer and it’s infuriating. You can just hear the douche coming through in her tone.
As proof, one only had to look at the conference’s prudent August decision to shut down fall sports in the midst of the global pandemic. It was only natural that the Big Ten would follow the Ivy League, and that the Pac-12 would follow the Big Ten. It was a tough decision, heartbreaking and costly, but it was the right one.
Maybe, maybe not. We’ve lived through pandemics before with no kind of shutdown whatsoever. There are a lot of people debating the appropriate response and it involves economic and social concerns as well as medical, so it is not definitively the ‘right’ decision. We probably won’t know what the right course of action would have been until years from now when we have the benefit of hindsight.
That’s the Big Ten for you, concerned about science, medicine and safety. Let the football factories of the SEC, Big 12 and ACC (Clemson’s playground) continue playing; the Big Ten was doing the right thing looking out for its student-athletes, treating them almost no differently than the student body at large, and that was all that mattered.
Christ, she just sounds like such a fucking nerd. Some guy from NJ.com wrote a similar article and I tweeted at him calling him a nerd via a homer simpson GIF. I feel really good about that.
Then came Wednesday, the darkest day in Big Ten sports history, the day the vaunted conference caved. It choked. It got scared. It became the SEC.
Can you imagine being one of the kids Sandusky molested and thinking back on the showers and the tickle monster and all that awful shit that you’ve probably been depressed and suicidal over for decades. It’s affected every aspect of your life – your ability to be vulnerable, to trust, your self esteem, everything, and then this bitch comes along and says that playing football during covid is worse?
How about gymnasts who, as young girls, were physically violated by a trusted medical professional. Do you think they got a chill when they heard the news that Ohio State was starting practice back up? You fucking idiot.
She goes on to blame Trump and the University of Nebraska, which is hilarious because of course Trump is to blame for everything and Nebraska hasn’t been a great football school for decades now.
I never would have expected the Big Ten presidents to be so shaky, so fearful, so afraid of their own shadow. I grew up in Big Ten country, in the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio, in a family that spent fall Saturdays at Michigan games. I went to Northwestern University, where I received undergraduate and master’s degrees.
You’re from Ohio, but you were a Michigan fan growing up? Noted. I’d like to shit all over you, but I’m a Cowboys fan and I grew up 10 minutes away from the Meadowlands, so I’ll just leave this here so others can judge you. And by the way, nobody cares about your master’s degree. You write for USA Today, it’s a newspaper for idiots. You write the garbage that gets left outside of people’s hotel room doors so they have something to read while they’re shitting out the powdered eggs from the continental breakfast they choked down in the lobby. In other words, yours is the newspaper of choice for traveling salesmen who want to empty their colons so they don’t accidentally cut a putrid gasser in front of a big client later that day.
I’m still very involved at NU to this day; in addition to being a professor of practice at the Medill School of Journalism, I’m a member of Northwestern’s 64-person board of trustees. I had no role in any votes or decisions NU made about playing sports in the pandemic.
She’s beginning to remind me of this substitute teacher we had back in middle school. I believe it was social studies class, but that’s neither here nor there. The thing is, we fucked with this lady so much that she turned around from the chalkboard and shouted “I have a masters degree in reading,” before storming out of the room. We never saw her again.
It’s actually hilarious that Christine here is a professor. I feel legitimately bad for her students because they are being swindled out of money if they follow any of this broad’s professional advice. Christine, nobody cares what you think about football, that’s why you were not consulted or offered a say in the matter You fucking dolt.
Meathead Media 