Athletes Behaving Badly

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Right now the city of Chicago is caught up in Bears-fever. People are somehow convinced that they will be playing in the Super Bowl in February. Of course, given the most-recent performance they will be lucky to be in the lead at any point during their first playoff game. Still, hope springs eternal, as they say. The thing is that the team is just a tad distracted. You see one of their key defensive players is a moron of galactic proportions. Tank Johnson is a very big man. He is a big scary looking man and he is on the defense of the Bears. The defensive side of the team is the strong part of the team, or so they say. He is an intimidating man. Much like the character of Lenny from “Of Mice and Men” he is also apparently as dumb as a stump and that is quite and insult to a few stumps I have met in my time. Mr. Johnson is already on probation for being caught outside a Chicago nightclub with his Ruger 9mm. Of course everyone knows that you cannot visit a Chicago nightclub without your 9mm automatic pistol. I mean, come on, if you don’t have one when you arrive at some of the more popular nightclubs around her they issue you one. Anyway, apparently the police don’t take to kindly to the idea of large, potentially violent men who may have been drinking walking around the streets with loaded pistols. So, Tank got himself arrested and he is currently on probation. Tank got himself into trouble again back in February of this year by being at another nightclub and disrupting traffic with a limo he had hired. The genius then insulted police officers and got into a scuffle with them. The police ended up macing him. This past Thursday morning the police in the northern suburb of Gurnee issues a warrant to search Tank’s home. Once again Tank was found possessing firearms without a license. In fact six misdemeanor counts of possession of a firearm without a license were issued against Tank. Why exactly this man feels the need to carry so many firearms is unclear. Like I said, he isn’t exactly a genius. What happened next has to qualify Tank for the Moron Hall of Fame. Instead of staying home and learning from the fact that he and nightclubs do not mix he decided to go out to another nightclub. The details of what happened are not really clear. He got into some kind of trouble. Shots were fired. A man who is a close friend to Tank and his supposed bodyguard was killed in the shooting. Needless to say Tank was not in the game this past Sunday and most of Chicago is saying it’s time to cut their losses and let him go. As of the end of the Tampa Bay and Chicago Bears game Bears coach Lovie Smith was reported as saying Tank was still part of the team. I predict this will last until sometime on Monday and then we shall see who is still on the Bears. Regardless of how I think they will do in the post-season the Bears are in the playoff hunt and the very last thing they need is such a distraction. You have to wonder about football players. I wonder if maybe something akin to post-traumatic stress syndrome happens to them. They play a violent game and for three hours or more every week they are expected to pound the hell out of other men using their bare hands. It takes a certain type of person to do that and they are the type of persons who might be a little prone to violence. We just throw them back into civilization on Monday and expect them to be model citizens. Maybe that’s a tad unrealistic. There is no excuse, however, for basketball players. The NBA is rapidly becoming about as safe to watch as a gangland shootout. A recent game between the New York Nicks and Denver Nuggets descended into chaos and fighting. Exactly why this happened isn’t clear. The New York Nicks pretty much suck like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. One of the players on the New York team grabbed one of the Nuggets around the neck and threw him to the ground. In hockey this would be acceptable. In basketball this is frowned upon. However, before you knew it one of the Nuggets players came over and cold-cocked one of the New York players and then bravely backed up rapidly and ran away. You have to admire the sportsmanship in the NBA. What exactly happened to this particular sport? Michael Jordan may have had an issue with gambling and Scottie Pippen may have been a big baby at least more than once but they never ran around punching other people. Dennis Rodman may have, but the big guys didn’t. Now you never know when a fight is going to break out when you are watching and NBA game. What is amazing is that the NFL players don’t get into fights on the field nearly as much. You see some pushing and shoving but rarely is there a fight that breaks out and clears both benches. I don’t know if this is because the refs are better in that particular sport and get them to stop faster than others or what. Maybe it’s the fact that about two minutes after the supposed violation or insult you get another chance to try and pound that other person into hamburger meat. Then again you look at a sport like hockey where fighting is almost encouraged. People gleefully smash other player’s faces into the boards and glass. Blood can easily be found on most ice rinks. Yet they hardly ever seem to get into trouble outside of the rink. There have been exceptions, of course, you have to admit that that as a whole the hockey players are very well-behaved. They also tend not to get involved in shooting each other in the behinds with steroids. Of course, the trade-off is that they play in a sport that no one cares about except for a bunch of Canadians and my friend Scott. There’s something wrong in sports. I don’t know if it’s the money and the fact that athletes seem to be getting younger or younger. I don’t know if it’s the type of people who get offered huge contracts. I don’t know if it’s the fact that these people get surrounded by sickening sycophants who cater to their every whim no matter how ridiculous. I just know that too many athletes seem to think it’s all right to treat everyone else like garbage, that it’s ok to resort to violence, and that you really need to be walking around carrying weapons. I just know that Tank Johnson needs to get off of the Bears. He is a distraction they don’t need. He is also apparently unnecessary. Finally, apparently he is an idiot and really football has enough of those to go around. Yes, I am talking about you Terrell Owens. Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is now available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com. Once again, it would make a great Christmas present.